A Deadly Game (12 page)
Next they did an exercise called "the four corners," walking the dog around the entire intersection. In the process Merlin relocated Laci's scent, and took off westbound down the center of Highway 132. Brocchini and the others followed the dog about four hundred yards before pulling up. It appeared that the dog would have continued running on the highway if they hadn't stopped him.
Valentin told Brocchini she could testify that Merlin followed Laci's scent from 1027 N. Emerald southbound, then westbound on Highway 132. "I told him again that this trail was consistent with a vehicle trail," Valentin later wrote in her official report. Brocchini realized that the path Merlin had taken was the exact route Scott Peterson had driven to go fishing. The detective later measured the distance from Scott's place of business to the spot where the dog was pulled up. Merlin had trailed Laci Peterson's scent 1.1 miles.
It was after 10:30 in the evening when Lieutenant Valentin and Merlin completed the search around 1027 Emerald Avenue. Captain Boyer gave the detective all the items they had used: Laci's pink slipper, her Ralph Lauren sunglasses and case, her brown hairbrush, and her husband's Gap slipper.
It had been a very long day, but Brocchini went back to headquarters to examine Scott's truck, impounded earlier that evening. His search proved fruitless. "During this search I did not see Peterson's tan camouflage jacket that I had seen in the truck on 12/24/02. I also did not see the Big 5 bag containing two fishing lures, the backyard umbrellas that were wrapped in the blue tarp, the tan-colored tarp that had been bunched up in the back of the truck, or the shotgun shells I saw in the green toolbox," Brocchini later wrote. "It appeared that Scott Peterson had removed several items from the truck between 12/24/02 and the time the search warrant was served."
Brocchini did find a partial roll of chicken wire and a small hand tool that had a gardening fork on one side, and a hoe on the other. "The tool was coated with dry cement," he wrote. "It looked like it was used to mix ready-mix cement. There was loose ready-mix cement in the bed of the truck."
In a subsequent search, police found what appeared to be four small bloodstains on the interior side of the driver's door. A suspected bloodstain was also collected from the back of the steering wheel.
Following a preliminary inspection, the pickup was turned over to the FBI Forensic Evidence Team, which had traveled from Sacramento to assist the police. Members of the team sprayed the questionable stains with Hemo-Glow, a fluid used to detect bloodstains. All the areas fluoresced. In addition, an area of the interior door pocket and on the vehicle's door handle tested positive.
At 10:45, Detective Grogan received a call from Scott Peterson asking about the bloodhound search. The detective advised him that the dogs had tracked away from his home through a series of residential streets down to Yosemite Boulevard, then turned west. During the five-minute conversation, Grogan admitted that the dog had lost the scent after traveling a distance on Yosemite.
"Have you been able to get any sleep?" Grogan asked before hanging up that night.
The detective recorded Scott's reply, "He did not sleep well in a different bed. He now had the comfort in his own home with the 'smell of Laci' in their bed."
Within twenty-four hours of Laci's disappearance, her family and friends set up a command center at a local inn, the Red Lion Hotel, to assist police in their search for Laci. The general manager, Brad Saltzman, donated rooms for the effort. Thousands of fliers with Laci's photo and reward information were printed. Hundreds of people hit the streets in those first days, distributing the materials and searching the Modesto area for signs of Laci.
Sharon and Ron Grantski and Jackie and Lee Peterson were out before the cameras in these early days, but Scott was nowhere to be found. The young husband and father-to-be was declining all requests for television appearances, telling journalists that he wanted to keep the focus on Laci-not on him. This was unusual behavior for anyone in Scott's position, and in fact it brought about the opposite result: Scott's absence quickly became a topic of interest in the press.
Ironically, I later learned that it was one of Scott's parents, either Jackie or Lee, who had alerted the national media to the story through a connection with the Associated Press. It is my belief that Scott never expected the media attention that this case drew. I think he also miscalculated the abilities of the 270-member Modesto Police Department. He probably thought that some small-town cops on Christmas Eve were no match for him, and expected the story to disappear rapidly from the news when Laci's body could not be found. H so, Scott Peterson chose the wrong small-town cops. The MPD has a 90 percent homicide clearance rate, almost a third better than the national average.
Detective Craig Grogan dispatched officers to the Berkeley Marina, where Scott Peterson said he had launched his boat on the day Laci disappeared. The temperature was a cool 52 degrees, the December air humid, as Sergeant Andy Schlenker and Detective Rick Armedariz pulled into the marina parking area at 201 University Avenue on December 27. The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline were buried in a dense layer of morning fog as the officers stepped out of their car.
The marina, owned and operated by the City of Berkeley, is administered by the Parks and Waterfront Department. The expansive facility encompasses fifty-two acres of water and includes 975 berths. Also on the grounds are several restaurants, a Double Tree Hotel, and a 3,000-foot-long public fishing pier. The parking lot immediately north of the marina's boat basin includes a four-lane launch ramp that is open to the public. An automated Iron Ranger ticket machine stands next to the boat ramp, providing customers a receipt upon payment of the $5 launch fee.
As Detective Armendariz snapped photos of the area, Sergeant Schlenker located groundskeeper Mike Ilvesta. Ilvesta confirmed that members of the press had been canvassing the landing pier, trying to find anyone who had seen Scott on December 24.
Ilvesta was working that day from about six-thirty in the morning to 2:00 in the afternoon. He recalled that there were few visitors to the marina that day, and although the day was "cloudy and overcast," it had not rained, despite what Scott had told the police.
Over the gentle clanging of sailboat riggings, Ilvesta described seeing "a new, full-size, dark green, Ford 4x4 extended cab pick-up truck with a small boat trailer" arrive around 12:45 P.M. on December 24. The Ford's trailer was empty, and the vehicle was backing into the ramp area. The driver was a white male in his thirties, with sandy colored hair, wearing what looked like a polo shirt. The Ford was blocking Ilvesta's path, and the driver was having trouble backing the trailer down the ramp. Ilvesta waited while the man drove back and forth, trying to align the truck and trailer. After several minutes, the driver succeeded and Ilvesta was able to pass. Ilvesta left the area and continued with his workday.
Producing a photograph of Scott's bronze pickup, Armendariz showed it to Ilvesta. The groundskeeper said that while the truck he had seen looked similar, he couldn't be certain it was the same one. The detective next showed Ilvesta a photo lineup that included a picture of Scott.
Ilvesta studied the images but didn't recognize the driver of the Ford. Armendariz then produced a picture of Laci, and asked if he had ever seen her at the marina. He had not.
The investigators next interviewed the marina's waterfront manager, Cliff Marchetti. Marchetti had spent much of December 24 working in the office on the south shore of the grounds, across the boat-filled marina. He did not go over to the boat-launch area, and he had not seen any customers. He did confirm Ilvesta's account of the weather as "cloudy with overcast" but no rain.
Marchetti said it would be unusual for a fisherman to take a fourteen-foot aluminum boat out on the bay in late December because of weather conditions and the fishing season. He explained that crab fishing was the only type of fishing a person could do in a boat at this time of the year. "All other fishing is out of season," he explained.
Two workers at the marina's bait shop said they did not remember seeing anybody in the boat launch area on December 24. They, too, remembered it as a cloudy but not rainy day. In addition to crab, they said, the only fish likely to be caught were "sand dabs," a flat fish, and possibly perch and sturgeon.
The detectives next drove to a Chevron gas station on Frontage Road in the city of Livermore, trying to establish where Scott allegedly bought fuel. The assistant manager told them he had worked Christmas Eve, and provided police with the surveillance tape for that day. He then directed the officers to another Chevron station on North Vasco Road, where they retrieved another surveillance tape.
Meanwhile, at the adobe-style police headquarters in downtown Modesto, Detective Buehler was interviewing two of Laci's friends, Stacey Boyers and Lori Ellsworth. Laci's friends had briefly met the tall, rugged detective at the Red Lion Hotel on Christmas Day. He'd been working round the clock since the case broke. For Buehler, the Peterson case came on the heels of a double homicide he had been assigned ten days earlier. The long hours were taxing on the divorced dad. While his ex-wife cared for their daughter, Buehler had full custody of his teenage son and needed to be home for him.
Buehler had been managing well enough thus far-his boy was getting A's and B's in school-but the night calls were hard. When his son was younger, Buehler sometimes bundled him up in a blanket and took him along to crime scenes, leaving him to sleep in the back of the unmarked car while he conducted his investigation. He'd gotten the scare of his life one night when he returned to his vehicle to find the boy gone. He combed the area frantically, until moments later he found his son in the CSI truck talking with the guys. With only that brief but terrifying experience to go by, he knew he could not imagine how the Rochas were coping.
Buehler gave Laci's friends an update on the case. Police were examining several possible scenarios: one based on the assumption that a stranger had entered the Petersons' house, committed an act of violence, and taken Laci's body away, the second involving Scott. Both Stacey and Lori told Buehler they thought it was more likely that Scott was responsible. They were growing increasingly suspicious as the days passed.
Stacey had been at the Peterson home on Christmas Day, and observed Scott "doing an unusual amount of vacuuming" in the laundry room and the living room near the chairs and couch. When she questioned him, he said he was just trying to occupy himself. If Laci were there, he said, she would be doing the same thing because she was "extremely clean." Both women found his remark strange. They knew Laci and Scott quite well, and while Laci was a big fan of Martha Stewart's entertaining style, neither she nor Scott seemed like "clean freaks."
Stacey also told Buehler that on Thursday evening, when Scott and his family were told to leave the residence before the search, Scott announced that he was growing "angry." He didn't like being taken out of his "comfort zone," he told Stacey. Yet, neither woman believed there was any trouble in the couple's relationship and could not direct Buehler to anyone who might disagree.
As Buehler took notes, Stacey told the officer that she and Laci had been best friends since the third grade. She'd last spoken with her on December 23 at around 4:45 in the afternoon, when Laci called to talk about the holidays and her pregnancy. The mom-to-be complained that she was physically uncomfortable but said she was excited about becoming a mother. Stacey knew that Laci had experienced "female problems" in the past and confirmed that she was overjoyed with her pregnancy. Laci had recently begun complaining about her breathing, and Stacey suggested that she give up her walks in Dry Creek Park. It seemed "unlikely that she went walking in the area of Thousand Oaks Park," Detective Buehler concluded after speaking with Laci's friends. "This location would require one to walk down and return up several grades."
Despite Scott's overnight trips, Stacey had never heard Laci express any mistrust of her husband. Laci was not the jealous type, she said. She had never heard the two quarrel or complain.
Then, around 5:15 P.M. on December 24, Scott had called Stacey in a panic. (Stacey probably got the time wrong by a few minutes; at 5:17 Scott was just talking to Sharon Rocha.) He told Stacey that the police were on the way and said something about his dog being found by a neighbor in the front yard. He asked Stacey if she knew anyone who drove a white Ranger, but she had no idea what that question meant.
Lori Ellsworth spoke up next. She and Laci were close; they spoke every couple of weeks, and she often attended dinner parties at the Petersons. Lori confirmed that Laci had seemed tired in recent days. It made no sense that she would have been walking McKenzie in the park on Christmas Eve. Nor did Lori believe that Laci would leave home without her cell phone at this stage in her pregnancy. Lori also described the couple's golden retriever as a "barker," and believed McKenzie would make noise if someone tried to approach his mistress.
Both women said they had never heard Laci discuss the couple's finances but thought that she and Scott were doing fine, assuming that between them they were earning more than $80,000 a year. The women described the jewelry that Laci had recently inherited. The pieces were very important to Laci. She'd been wearing several of them in late November, when the women got together to watch The Bachelor. The jewelry was not really Laci's style, but she refused to leave the pieces at home because she feared they might be stolen.
