A Deadly Game (17 page)

Shawn called Scott again and accused him of having a wife. "He denied it," she said. Several hours later, Scott called her back and left a message on her answering machine. "I listened to the message. It was him, and he's all crying on it and said, you know, 'Shawn I'm sorry, I lied to you, ah, I know, when I said I have never been married.' He said, 'It's been very painful for me to talk about it. I lost my wife. Just give me a call, please don't tell Amber anything, you know, I wanna tell her in person.'"

When Shawn returned Scott's call, he said that he'd told people different stories, but still insisted he wasn't married. He told Shawn that he "lost" his wife-the same line he had used on Katy Hansen . . . and that he would use on Amber.

When Shawn threatened to go to Amber, Scott implored her not to. By this time he was sobbing.

"Are you currently married?" she demanded. "I need to know. He said, 'No, no, no. I'm not currently married.' His wording was 'I lost my wife,' but I didn't really know what that meant."

Scott was still begging her to let him tell Amber. "I need to know that you've told her," Shawn told Scott. "You need to call me immediately when you tell her because if this evening she doesn't know, I'm calling and telling her."

On Monday, December 9, Shawn received another call from Scott. He told her that Amber "knew everything." Shawn did not immediately call her friend to confirm this was true. Two days later, when Amber and Scott attended a birthday party for Shawn's fiancé, Scott was introduced to Amber's friends and treated everybody to drinks.

"What does Scott drink?" Buehler inquired.

"He drinks a mix of wine, tequila, vodka, and gin." Shawn said everybody liked Scott after meeting him that night.

"He's a likable guy," Buehler stated.

"Uh-huh," Amber chimed in.

"No doubt," Buehler continued. "I mean, that's what everybody has said. But, you know, we look a little past that when we're working something like this. Don't feel bad that you guys ended up in this kind of situation."

"He's a con man," Brocchini interjected.

"He's a salesman. He's very convincing," Buehler added. "He appears very sincere."

"Can you relate some of the stories Scott has told you since you met him?" Brocchini asked Shawn.

Shawn said that Scott had told her that he'd become a vegetarian for six months during college when he was dating a "vegan." He stated that it was "worth it to stop eating meat because the sex with her was great."

On the day he dropped his girlfriend off at the airport, Scott told her, he drove straight to a restaurant and "had a nice big, fat, juicy hamburger."

Scott talked of his travels to Europe, particularly Spain, and about skiing and sailing and spending time in Alaska. He told Shawn that his uncle owned a cabin there, where he and his brother often went to fish.

The majority of Scott's conversations revolved around "finding that special person." He talked about his hopes for the future and thanked her for introducing him to Amber. Scott often told Shawn how "nice and understanding" Amber was. She was "special." "He was not dating her for 'sport,'" he said. Scott had been searching for an "intelligent person" like Amber his entire life, she remembered him saying.

"Did he tell you any of his hopes, did he talk about family or kids?" Brocchini asked Shawn.

"I finally asked him, 'If my friend [Amber] has a child, would that bother you?' He said, 'Oh, no, that wouldn't bother me at all.' That's a whole 'nother story that Amber can tell you," Shawn giggled.

It was 12:41 P.M. when Brocchini switched off the tape recorder. The two detectives stood up to stretch their legs before continuing their session with Amber Frey, who asked Shawn to leave the room,

saying that she was uncomfortable discussing her romantic relationship with Scott in Shawn's presence.

"Okay, we are starting again here on December 30 of 2002 on Monday at 11:50 A.M.," Buehler said as the taped interview began again. "Just start from the first time you heard about him, first time you met him, and any detail you think of that..." Buehler instructed. What follows is the first complete published account of the initial police interview with Amber Frey.

"First time I heard about him, I can give a date. It was early November," Amber began nervously. "Shawn told me about this guy she met, and he was absolutely wonderful. She said that we would be a good match. It was November 19 when he called me. He left me a message, and said Amber, this is Scott Peterson, I'm friends with Shawn Sibley, and I'd like to meet you.'

"He left his number, and I called him back. He didn't answer, so I called again and said, 'Well, Shawn said you're not very good with the phone,'" Amber explained. "He reached me on November 20, and I said, 'Oh, we finally caught up.' We talked briefly, and he said, 'Well, I'm going to be in town, can I, I would like to take you to dinner, if that's okay, or if you'd like to go,' and I said sure ..."

Amber continued, in a rambling fashion, to recount the details of her first conversation with Scott. At one point she asked Scott how she would identify him in the restaurant, and he jokingly described himself as six feet tall, with a big belly. He then asked Amber how he would be able to recognize her.

"I said, I'm a thin woman, small-framed, five-seven, somewhere in there . . . you know, blond hair. And he goes, 'Well, Shawn didn't describe me to you?' I said, no, not really. He goes, 'Well I won't have a problem asking every attractive blonde I see, Are you Amber?'"

They arranged to meet at 7:00 P.M. at the Elephant Bar on North Blackstone Avenue in Fresno. Amber arrived early and went inside. "A gentleman came in. I thought it was him. We made eye contact, and he somewhat fit the description, but I said, 'Oh please, not him.'" Buehler chuckled.

"He passed, and I sat down, looked up, and saw a good-looking man in a suit with a big smile on his face, and he said 'Amber? I'm Scott,' and he gave me a little peck on the cheek and a hug."

Scott was staying at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Fresno. He'd been in a suit all day, he said, and he wanted to check in, change, and have a shower before dinner. Cynical women might have hesitated at this, but not Amber, who was already finding Scott charming.

"So we go in, and he carried all his luggage. He had emptied it from that truck. He said 'This is kinda embarrassing because I almost live out of my truck.' So we get in the hotel, he pulls out two glasses and a bottle of sparkling wine, or no, cha-actually it was either sparkling wine or champagne. At this point I, I don't recall the difference. I was like, 'Oh.'"

After he cleaned up, Scott placed a strawberry in each glass and poured wine in each glass. After their drinks, the two set off for dinner at Edo-Ya, a local Japanese restaurant. The two were shown to a table, but Scott didn't remain seated for long. Instead, he left to talk to the maitre d'. Few restaurants accommodate private seating these days, yet somehow Scott managed to secure a private room. There he promptly ordered another bottle of champagne. Amber listened, entranced, as Scott talked about himself and his travels to Africa, Ireland, and Spain. She had no idea that the grandiose self-portrait he was painting was pure fiction, apparently improvised on the spot.

The conversation turned to the upcoming holidays. Scott told Amber that he was going to Alaska for a weeklong trip with his brother and father for Thanksgiving.

"And then for Christmas, he said, 'my parents always go to Maine. From there, the twenty-eighth, I'll leave for Paris, 'cause I have some business there.'"

"So when will you be back?" she asked. He told her he would return at the end of January.

"We talked about my daughter briefly," Amber recalled. "I said, today she is twenty-one months old. He goes, 'Wow, so her birthday is in February.' I said February 20. Mine is the tenth, I told him, and he is like, 'Oh wow, that's just, you know, coming up.'"

Amber told the detectives that she and Scott remained in the private room until the restaurant closed. "We were having a good time eating and enjoying each other's company." After dinner they went to B.B.'s, a karaoke bar next door. Amber said that she and Scott both got up and did a karaoke number.

"He asked me if I smoked, and I said no. And he goes, 'Oh good' and he leaned over and gave me a kiss and said, 'Oh no, you don't smoke.' It was just a simple innocent kiss."

The two danced to Frank Sinatra tunes before heading back to Scott's hotel. On the way, they stopped at a local convenience store where Scott purchased a bottle of Tanqueray gin and some tonic water.

"Then we went back to the hotel. . . and then we started kissing, and everything else. We ended up having sex that night-protected," the twenty-seven-year-old blonde added.

The next morning, Scott drove Amber back to her car. He said he would be traveling for the next week, but would try to call. He did call her twice while he was away-both times supposedly from an airport. They got together again on December 2.

"It was his first time coming to my house," Amber said; it was only their second date. "He got here and picked me up and hugged me and said, 'Where's the little one?' And I said, 'Oh, she's at school. ... I thought we could pick her up.'"

"He was really excited about getting to meet her," Amber said. Scott brought gifts with him that day, including a house plant and a bag of groceries. She still had the plant, although its leaves were wilted.

"He brought in a bag, and he also brought dinner and wine for that night. 'Everything else is packed; all we need to do is get the little one,' he told her. And I said okay. And so, he just kinda hung out and then we went to the school, and he walked with me into her class and got her and we left."

Outside, Scott and Amber struggled to get Ayiana's car seat safely installed in his Ford pickup. "That's terrible," Scott exclaimed.

"My car is not even baby-proofed." Amber had no idea that Scott had his own baby on the way.

Eventually Scott secured the car seat, and they headed to the park. The threesome strolled through the park and began to bond that day, even as the pregnant Laci Peterson prepared for the arrival of her unborn son.

Amber told the detectives that her two-year-old daughter seemed to be drawn to Scott. As the three were crossing over a walking bridge, however, little Ayiana reached out to hold hands with both adults, and for some reason Scott declined to take the girl's hand. Mixing up her medical terms, Amber told the detectives that she thought that Scott said he had "rigor mortis" in his hands-a possible reference to arthritis.

Nevertheless, she recounted, "He had a smile plastered on his face." "I just can't stop smiling," he told her, beaming. "This is just so awesome." Finding a spot in the park for their picnic, the three of them relaxed together until dusk, when they returned to Amber's apartment.

When they got there, Scott presented a gift he'd brought for Ayiana. It was a child's pop-up version of The Night Before Christmas. During an interview with police, Scott volunteered that he and Laci had spent time at Barnes &; Noble two weeks before her disappearance and that they had purchased children's books. Did Scott purchase Ayiana's present on that trip? Or, as Scott's half sister, Anne Bird, suspects, could this have been the very gift Anne gave Laci at her baby shower?

After Ayiana went to bed, Amber and Scott stayed up talking. In a tender moment, Amber showed Scott pictures of herself when she was pregnant, just ten days before Ayiana was born. Back home, Scott's own wife had only weeks to go with her pregnancy. Her due date was February 10-Amber Prey's birthday.

Scott offered to get a hotel room that night rather than staying with her, but Amber encouraged him to stay, and he did. They were intimate again that night.

The following day, Scott called Amber to tell her that he'd be in town around four or five o'clock. "Seeing as you are going to be in town anyway . . . would you mind picking my daughter up for me so that I'm not late?" Amber asked. "And he goes, 'Oh, I'd be honored to. Do you think she would come with me?' And I go, 'Yeah. You know, we spent the day yesterday.'"

Brocchini and Buehler sat silently as Amber detailed the events of her third date with Scott.

"When I came home," she said, "it was six o'clock, probably almost six-thirty. Ayiana was in her high chair eating, he was in the kitchen. There was wine on the table. There was bread-he cut the bread and spread the pesto on it-and he had dinner in the oven, and I was like, 'Wow.'"' The perfect man had waltzed into her life.

Amber and Scott took Ayiana out later that evening to pick out a Christmas tree. When he was interviewed later by police, the worker at Cobbs Ranch Christmas Tree Farm commented that Ayiana's "parents" had dressed the little girl more warmly than themselves. Scott grinned the whole time.

When they got home, Scott, Amber, and Ayiana began trimming the tree. At one point, Amber asked Scott if he had ever been married. Not surprisingly, Scott said no.

"Ever been close?" Amber asked Scott.

"No," he replied.

Scott shared Amber's bed again that evening, and the two talked about trust. He left in the morning, telling Amber that he was headed to San Francisco.

During those first few days, Amber said, there was almost no indication of anything amiss. The one exception, she said, was when Scott's cell phone rang on either December 2 or December 3, and he had to "step outside" to take the call. Scott implied that the call was business-related and said there was "gonna be a lot of yelling."