A Deadly Game (14 page)

Examining the flatbed trailer in more detail, he noticed what appeared to be "four distinctive round impressions in the dry ready-mix." The one anchor he found in the boat seemed to match the size of a water pitcher that was on the flatbed. The pitcher was about one-third full with murky water and ringed with gray residue, apparently from the ready-mix concrete.

"It appeared adding ready-mix to the water made these anchors," Brocchini noted. "After the cement mold set, they were removed from the pitcher and set on the flatbed trailer. From the distinct circles on the trailer, it appeared at least four anchors were made. We could only find the one anchor that was inside the boat."

That anchor had no line attached. It consisted of two separate and distinct colors, as if the cement was not properly mixed. The upper portion was gray, and seemed consistent with the powder sprinkled around the pitcher. The lower half was white, resembling the mix found inside the shop vacuum in the warehouse. Reexamining the rib line of the boat's interior, he could come up with no reason the cement particles would be there, unless Scott had used the cement anchors to weigh Laci's body down and cement had crumbled off as she went over the side.

Detectives also discovered a pair of yellow needle-nosed pliers beneath the boat's bench seat; clamped in the pliers was a black hair. A piece of red line was lying on the floor nearby. Detective Hendee, the crime scene manager, observed that the hair in the pliers appeared to be human. Placing the items into sealed bags, he marked them into evidence to be sent for DNA testing. "It's unknown whose hair it was, but it was my understanding that Laci Peterson had black hair," Detective Hendee noted.

During the search, Captain Chris Boyer waited outside the building with Deputy Eloise Anderson and the cadaver dog, Twist. Brocchini wanted them to examine the interior of the warehouse. Once inside, the animal "hit" on an area on the south side of the workshop, next to the boat. Brocchini watched as the canine "made a strong hit on the three milk crates that were on the ground against the south wall." One of the crates contained a large roll of shrink-wrap; the other two held tie-down straps and other assorted items. The dog also had an "indication" on the bow of the boat, along the starboard, or right, side.

As the officers discussed the dog's reaction, Brocchini saw someone open the garage next door and drive his truck inside. He walked over to speak with the man, who identified himself as Ron Prater.

Prater had been Scott's neighbor on Emerald Avenue since August 2002. Although he knew Peterson by sight, he did not know his name. Scott kept to himself. In fact, although they worked mere feet away from each other, Prater said the two had never actually acknowledged each other. It was another example of a Scott Peterson many might not recognize: the supposedly congenial, neighborly young man who had never introduced himself to someone he saw on a regular basis. Maybe Prater just didn't have anything Scott wanted or needed.

Prater and his boss were both working on the mornings of December 23 and December 24. He wasn't certain which day he had seen Scott there, but thought it was either Monday or Tuesday. When he arrived for work between 8:30 and 9:00, Scott's truck was parked, facing north, in front of his open garage door. Prater observed three green and white sacks stacked in the bed of the pickup, along the left side. He assumed they were some sort of fertilizer product.

The detective asked if the bags could have been ready-mix cement. Prater could only say that the sacks were the right size. Prater also noticed a pair of brown shoes on the open tailgate. Brocchini recalled seeing a pair of brown shoes when he was surveying the shop, and went back inside to retrieve them. When Prater identified them as the pair he had seen, Brocchini marked them into evidence. While inside, the detective also checked for the bags, but he found nothing matching Prater's description. The detective was convinced Scott had made the anchors on that very day; they would have set up in plenty of time for the "fishing trip" the next morning. When asked about Scott's boat, Prater told the detective he had seen it parked, but never actually hitched to Scott's pickup.

At 5:40 P.M., Detective Grogan called, asking Brocchini to return to the Peterson residence and collect a small sample of what appeared to be fresh concrete on the north side of the driveway. Grogan thought it might be leftover concrete that had washed into the dirt along the driveway.

Meanwhile, another detective on the case, George Stough, was following up on a lead from a woman named Diane Jackson, who had reported witnessing the burglary across the street from the Petersons. At 11:40 on December 24, Jackson was driving along Covena Avenue. As she passed the Medina residence, she saw three "short of stature, dark-skinned, but not African American guys" standing in the front yard near a van. As she passed, the men turned and looked at her. Two of the men were standing at the rear of the vehicle, and a third person was in the front yard. At the time, she thought they were landscapers, but when she noticed them staring as she passed, she changed her mind. At first she said the van was white, but then decided it might have been a darker color.

"Try to remember back as you were driving by and see if you can visualize the van in your mind," the detective told her.

"It might have been tan or brown," she replied. In any event, she said, it was an older model, with a door or doors that opened at the rear. She couldn't remember anything else.

After the interview with Jackson, Detective Stough phoned the Medinas again, related what Jackson had told them, and asked if that description "rang any bells." Mr. Medina said it did not. He asked the detective to speak with his wife. Susan Medina listened intently, then asked if the men were Vietnamese.

"All I have is short in stature, dark hair, dark-skinned, but not African American," the detective said.

Mrs. Medina recalled a Vietnamese crew that had poured some cement at their home in July, but those workers had a construction truck, she told Stough, not a van.

At 7:30 P.M., Scott Peterson phoned Detective Grogan and told him he was sitting in his pickup outside his home. Members of the press were there, interviewing a uniformed police officer. Scott wanted Grogan to stop the cop from speaking to the media and have the journalists leave the neighborhood so he could return home for the night.

"As long as the members of the press are not on your property, I cannot force them to leave the area," Grogan told him. "However, I could have the officer remove the crime scene tape and leave the area. You can possibly return home if the media loses interest and leaves the scene."

Scott opted to have the officer removed from the scene. The detective explained to him that his house was not secured and he would be taking responsibility for it if he returned. Scott agreed.

The press is a ravenous animal; it will chase a story until fed. And the meal doesn't always have to be the truth. In fact, if a tale is good enough, complete enough, the media can become satiated and bored, leaving of its own accord. But Scott approached this inevitable part of the search as a guilty man from the inception, and his behavior piqued the press's interest. Although his mantra was "I want the focus to be on Laci," he never explained persuasively how a husband's pleas and or press appearances could have a negative impact on the search. Meanwhile, Sharon, Ron, Brent, and even his own parents were benefiting the cause with their press conferences.

Furthermore, in his private dealings with the police, Scott still didn't seem very curious about the progress of the investigation. "Scott's demeanor was courteous throughout our telephone conversation," Grogan noted in a police report several days after Laci disappeared, but "he did not inquire as to the result of the search warrants. As I received this telephone call, Detective Buehler and Detective Brocchini gave me a recording device for my cellular telephone. A portion of our conversation was captured on audiotape." At 10:00 P.M., Detective Brocchini contacted Captain Boyer and asked to have the Brooks Island area of the San Francisco Bay searched by cadaver dogs and the marina parking lot searched by tracking dogs. Boyer asked for Laci's sunglasses and pink slipper to be delivered as scent objects, then scheduled three patrol boats, two cadaver dogs, one dive team, and a helicopter for nine o'clock the next morning. The police also made available a team of specialized cadaver dogs with the ability to smell bodies in the water.

Members of the Contra Costa County Search and Rescue team initiated the search an hour early on December 28. It was a nippy 53 degrees, and the air was thick with moisture as the three orange crafts were launched. Police did not limit themselves to Brooks Island, but widened their scope to include forty miles of shoreline in nearby Richmond.

Later that morning, Detective Brocchini called Deputy Chris Boyer and told him that two trailing dogs had searched the parking lot. The first dog, from Alameda County Emergency Services, was unable to detect any scent in the lot area. The second dog, Trimble, had begun searching at the northeast entrance of the launch area. After turning north, he ran approximately ten feet, turned and circled several times in the immediate area, then stopped by his handler's side, indicating that she had no scent. Eloise Anderson then moved Trimble closer to the launch area and directed her to check that section of the parking lot. Again, the dog circled, sniffed the nearby foliage, and returned.

Trimble was next walked to the northwest entrance of the boat launch area, where she was again given Laci's items to smell. This time, the dog turned north and trotted about thirty feet. "She then turned, circled and headed south towards the launch area with a steady pull on her harness," Anderson later wrote in her report. "She took me to the western-most point of the pier at the launch area, and pulled steadily to a pole pylon where the pier took a sharp right and then a sharp left turn. She went approximately 15 feet past the sharp left turn, turned around and returned to the pylon where she again checked out over the water, turned and stopped, indicating the end of the trail."

"Deputy Boyer said this is not a conclusive search," Brocchini noted in his report. Yet, "in his and the handler's opinion, the dog was reacting to Laci Peterson's scent as it ran through the parking lot and down the right side of the boat ramp."

Meanwhile, Detective Grogan had been working at headquarters almost nonstop since Christmas Eve. Although his suspicions about the case were growing, he had no hard evidence or material leads. Then the phone rang.

An officer was calling to report a strange conversation with a sexual assault counselor, Jill Smith. Smith said she had counseled a "confidential victim of a sexual assault" about two weeks earlier who claimed to have been lured into a brown van, either a Chevy or Ford, by the woman's ex-girlfriend.

"While in the van, two men and two women raped the victim, and a satanic ritual was conducted," the officer related. "The victim told Smith that the group frequented area parks and was currently living at Woodward Reservoir. Smith stated that during the ritual the group mentioned a Christmas Day death, and that she would read about it in the paper."

After news of the brown van broke in the press, the Modesto PD found itself racing with Scott's defense team to gain control of the vehicle. A private investigator hired by Mark Geragos was reportedly offering two thousand dollars for information about the van, and police feared the defense team might get hold of it first and "find" evidence that Laci had been inside.

Grogan immediately dispatched two officers to the Woodward Reservoir to search for the van. Theories about the brown van and satanic cult were quickly seized upon by the media, many of whom seem to have read too many detective novels. Satanic murders have been reported in contemporary America, to be sure. However, almost without exception they prove to be the work of a single demented individual, not a collective action by some cult or coven.

When the Modesto officers ultimately located the brown Chevy van, the human occupants-Rayoune Miranda, 33, Sherry Miranda, 36, Mary Renfrow, 63, and Donnie Renfrew, 55-were carefully interviewed. They had been camping at Woodward for about three weeks, they said. One of the four, Rayoune Miranda, told the officers that he had been in Modesto the previous week when Yosemite Boulevard was blocked off with police vehicles. The officers were given permission to search their trailer, tent, and van, but nothing of significance was found.

However, the van was also home to six resident mice. When the vehicle was turned over to the DOJ for examination, the rodents escaped into that office for a time. The van was never reclaimed by its owners, and when the MPD and District Attorney decided to sell it for scrap, Geragos immediately purchased it. Many reporters thought he must have a real lead that might exonerate Scott, but the van was never produced at trial. Its current location is unknown.

In another part of the station house, a call was coming in to the Laci Peterson Hotline from Laci's prenatal yoga instructor, Debbie Wolski.

Wolski, part owner of the Village Yoga Center in Modesto's McHenry Village, told an investigator that Laci had begun classes during her first trimester, but soon quit because she wasn't feeling well. Laci resumed classes in her second trimester, and attended regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays for the next five months.

On one Wednesday in December, either the fourth or the eleventh, Laci had attended a session wearing about fifty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds. Wolski described the pieces as a pair of one-carat solitaire diamond earrings, a single brilliant cut two- to three-carat diamond necklace, and a large diamond ring with a three-carat stone in the center, a diamond stone on either side, and a row of half-carats in a platinum or white gold setting. On her left ring finger, Laci wore her wedding rings. Asked if the pieces were real, Laci blushed and said yes, explaining that the diamonds had belonged to her grandmother. Laci hinted that the rings only fit her because her fingers had swollen during her pregnancy.