A Checklist for Murder (22 page)

She would later learn that they could be far worse.

•   •   •

Peernock was transported to the jail hospital for treatment of the injury to his left ear, but he refused to provide the doctor there with information needed to treat the wound.

While he was being booked, a dejected Robert Peernock said, “You should probably just shoot me right now and save the taxpayers a lot of money.”

The jail watch commander immediately refused to book him, as required whenever any arrestee displays possible suicidal tendencies. Peernock was transferred to the Los Angeles County Jail and placed in a medical unit on suicide watch.

By now there were a whole lot of people with a strong personal interest in seeing to it that he lived to go to trial.

At 3:00
A.M.
on that same September 3 morning Tasha was still awake up in her room with Patty, but she wasn’t tired yet. Their friends had begun to wear down and were talking about going home, when the phone rang. Tasha picked it up in a hurry, thinking it must be a call for her at that late hour and hoping the rest of the household hadn’t been disturbed by the ring.

Steve Fisk was on the other end of the line. He sounded a lot more tired than she was. Tasha knew that for a guy who shows up at work around 5:30 every morning, 3:00
A.M.
is more than just a little past suppertime. But Fisk knew of her late hours and told her that he wanted to hear her voice, to hear with his own ears that she was still alive, and to hear her reaction himself when he informed her that Robert Peernock had just been arrested.

There was a pause on Tasha’s end of the line. She didn’t yell or scream or break down crying. Although Fisk couldn’t see her, he could imagine her nodding her head silently, the way she often did just before she spoke.

“Cool,” she said softly. And then, after another brief pause, “Did he get hurt or anything?”

“You’re worried about him getting hurt?”

“Well, it’s just that …” After a moment she continued as quietly as ever. “It’s good news anyway.”

Fisk asked if she’d mind if he got to be the one to call Victoria Doom and tell her about the arrest.

“Now?”

“Gee, I thought I’d get some sleep first. Maybe I’ll call her after she gets to her office. How about that?”

“Good idea.”

“So anyway, now you can get some decent rest.”

“It’s still early.”

“Uh-huh. Good night, Natasha.”

“You too. Oh, and hey, I just—Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Natasha. You’re welcome.”

She hung up the phone and told her friends the good news. They made a lot more fuss about it than she did, because they thought that the news meant that it was all over now. They had no way of knowing that for Natasha it only meant that she had been given the chance to begin the fight for the Peernock family women. Tasha had grown up in that house; prior to receiving this news of his arrest she had already spent thirty-one days of her life in various hospitals, recovering from things that her father had done to her.

She knew, perhaps better than anybody, that Robert John Peernock had absolutely no intention of taking all this lying down.

There’s many a beast then
,

in a populous city
,

And many a civil monster.

—Othello,
Act IV, Scene I

CHAPTER

15

“M
s. Doom?”

“Yes.”

“This is Detective Fisk calling. Good news and bad news.”

“Great. Make it a double on the good news and hold the bad news, if you don’t mind.”

“Well, the good news is we finally got Peernock.”

“Oh! Oh, thank God! That is great …. That’s great.”

“Yeah. Arrest went pretty smooth.”

“Does Natasha know?”

“Oh, yeah. Called her right away. Also got word to her little sister’s foster parents.”

“Okay, then. All right …. I guess I can’t stand it after all. What’s the bad news?”

“We subpoenaed his bank accounts. The ones we can find so far, anyway. There was some $240,000 in cash that we know of, but it looks like a lot of it is already gone. It’s been spent since he went on the run.”

“What? Like hell! That money belongs to those kids! At least half of it, anyway. And maybe more once we shake everything out. All right, that
does
it. Peernock’s had his share. I’m going to find some way to lock up the rest right now until we see what’s going on with all the estate and probate work.”

“Um, yeah. But that wasn’t the bad news.”

“… It can be worse?”

“Think so. Thing is, you can’t get at the rest of the money right now. Whether any of it belongs to Natasha or not.”

“Sure I can, I just—Why not?”

“He’s given his girlfriend power of attorney. Everything has been put in her name. And she’s used another sixty thousand dollars to hire a lawyer named Bradley Brunon, supposed to be one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the state.”

Victoria hung up the phone feeling as if she had just stepped over a cliff. If this Brunon guy was really that good, then Natasha would, in effect, wind up paying for the lawyer who had managed to put her father back out on the street. Free to finish off his disobedient daughter once and for all.

Before the month was out, Victoria had synchronized her efforts with those of the police as much as possible, to avoid retracing their steps. Fisk stayed busy on the Peernock case despite the cascade of fresh, real-life murder mysteries that landed on his desk each week. This one still burned at him.

As for Robert Peernock, as soon as he was arrested he immediately began denying guilt and accusing the detectives of beating him up, stealing his money, and furthering the government’s plot against him. Peernock had his story straight in such detail that Fisk knew any bit of evidence the police could uncover might be the final key needed by the prosecution. So Fisk set to work using subpoena power to gain fast access to whatever paper trail Peernock might have left behind while he was still at large.

Meanwhile Victoria was busy obtaining temporary letters of administration allowing Natasha, through Victoria’s office, to protect what was left of the family estate. She was successful by the second week of September. Next, on September 20, she obtained a court order granting an injunction to completely freeze any estate money. The following day she obtained a lis pendens to prevent any of the Peernock houses
from being sold by anyone until the chaos around the case could be settled. But these actions marked the end of any relatively easy law work on the case.

Robert Peernock had begun to generate copious amounts of paperwork of his own, writing from within his jail cell.

LETTER TO NATASHA

From Robert Peernock,
Booking No. 9269283, L.A. County Jail
September 29, 1987

Dear Natasha,

It is so sad what has happened. I had nothing to do with Claire’s death or your injuries….”

Natasha stood mute with shock as she scanned the rest of her father’s letter to her. It had arrived by regular mail, addressed in his own handwriting. Despite all of the police protection and the secrecy surrounding her presence there, it had been sent directly to the home where she was hiding to recuperate.

In his letter he spoke to her just as if she had not been present for the nightmare of torture they’d shared as their final father-daughter activity. He went on to insist that Claire had driven away with Natasha around 11:30 on the evening of the crime. He lamented that the story Natasha had told the police would likely leave him to fight the gas chamber. Although he promised to defend himself “no matter what it costs,” he reminded her that by the time all of the lawyers involved were finished, there would nothing left of the family estate for the two girls.

Natasha’s blood hammered under her struggle to believe
the impossible words in her hands. Her father claimed that he did not know the extent of her injuries because
the hospital would not allow him to see her
, and that the police would not even provide him with that small amount of personal information. He claimed that the police first told him that she had struck her head on the steering wheel, but that they were now saying that he was somehow involved. In the same paragraph, he went on to remind her that even though they had suffered their share of arguments over innocuous things such as her schoolwork and getting a job, he would not deliberately do anything to harm her.

Natasha’s hands began to shake as she read these words, in her own father’s handwriting, completely disowning any knowledge of a night she would remember with agonizing clarity for the rest of her life.

The worst part came next, when he spoke to her in the grave tones of a hurt and concerned father. He reminded her that he used to give her swimming lessons and bike-riding lessons and that as a little girl she had been his constant companion, riding around everywhere on his shoulders. He reminded her that he had always supported her and had done what was expected of a father. He pointed out to her that this horrendous story she had told the police was going to put him on trial for his life.

Still, he encouraged her to use his insurance to get plastic surgery (even though he had just claimed to know nothing about her condition).

He returned to his description of Victoria Doom as a money-grabbing attorney who would do nothing more than dream up excuses to drain the family finances, leaving little or nothing behind as he fought to pay for lawyers for himself and his girlfriend.

He added another paragraph reminding her of his long fight against the state and told her that in the past, state authorities had dreamed up charges against him but that he
“sued the state and won.” Though he hoped to win this case as well, everyone was going to come out ahead except for the Peernock family.

He told her that the police had beaten him and described the county jail as “the worst place in the world.” He claimed that people inside there get beaten or killed frequently, and said that she should hurry up and get her plastic surgery because his insurance wouldn’t cover it if he died while awaiting trial.

Then again—he repeated that he’d had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder or her torture and bludgeoning. “It is,” he lamented, “like a nightmare, what has happened to our family.”

He concluded by asking her to write to him and assuring her that he missed her very much.

It was signed tenderly, “Love, Dad.”

She did not break down emotionally. The invisible wall had already slid into place inside her. She knew that it was more important than ever for her to remain calm and get the letter to the police right away. After that, it would be all the more important for her to remain alert, even in this protected environment.

Because now she knew for certain that he was never going to give up.

Letters were not the only form of writing that Robert John Peernock was doing inside his isolation cell. Working with the stub of a pencil that he sharpened by rubbing the tip back and forth over the cement floor, he filled legal tablets with notices to judges. He repeatedly voiced his fears that because he was a target of a state-orchestrated murder charge, he would never be given adequate representation from state-appointed counsel. Serving as his own attorney, he began to exercise his knowledge of the court system to file civil suits and draft his own motions. Fighting his lack of formal schooling, he pressed his high intelligence to the task of
mounting his best legal resistance to the events overwhelming his life.

As he tried to stop the seizure of his funds and his household possessions, he simultaneously battled the juvenile court system’s forced placement of his youngest daughter in the government’s foster care.

And Peernock offered a much different picture of the night of the crimes.

He talked of a long struggle that he and his late wife had both waged in attempting to stop Natasha from using drugs. He claimed that Natasha frequently came home drunk, and that her behavior in this regard was an emulation of Claire’s own drinking problem. He explained that while Claire often avoided alcohol for quite a stretch, she always fell back into her addiction sooner or later. He stated that after a couple of drinks she was completely unable to stop herself from going on an alcohol binge.

He appealed to the court system, over and over again, to allow him enough access to his funds to hire investigators. He assured the courts if they let him do that he would be able to gather plenty of information to prove his story. He claimed that on the night of the crimes, a hopelessly addicted wife had fallen back into her alcohol cravings and had gotten into an argument with Natasha, who was only slightly more sober. He explained that at this point he left the house in disgust and returned to a shelf-painting project that he was working on in the backyard.