A Deadly Game (22 page)

One detail Janet shared with the police was that Scott liked to hunt and fish. She knew he had been to Lake Lopez and Lake San Antonio-both freshwater locations-but as far as she knew, he had never fished in saltwater. She was also not aware of any other women Scott dated that year and admitted that she avoided him after their confrontation. She also knew that Scott owned the Shack. The only time she'd gone there, she spotted him and left immediately.

Janet also told the police that she was a vegetarian, and that while they were dating Scott had stopped eating meat-a statement that corroborated Amber's story about Scott becoming a vegan for some girlfriend because "the sex was great."

"I asked Janet about their intimate relationship," Brocchini later wrote. "Janet said, 'He had issues.' Janet said Peterson did some weird things at a bar after they broke up. It was only second-hand information from Peterson's roommates. However, Janet heard Peterson got real drunk and began exposing his penis in the bar. Janet said Peterson was very self-conscious about the size of his penis, and whether he could please a woman."

Size did appear to be an issue for Scott Peterson. While investigating the case, I learned that he had developed names for Brocchini and Grogan that suggested a fixation with sexual performance. Sources close to the investigation told me that Scott role-played a cross-examination of the two detectives, addressing them as "half-pints," "runts," "little five-foot-nothings," and "pricks." His questions were wildly immature, focusing on the size of their penises and their sexual abilities.

Janet Use told Brocchini that Scott had expressed a desire to meet her family and friends, but that he rarely talked about his own family. Janet said her friends all liked Scott, but she had never introduced him to her dad. "She said her father does not like people who are 'slick,'" Brocchini noted. "Janet told me Peterson thinks he is real smooth." Still, Janet had been in love with Scott. She still had photos, gifts, jewelry, and clothes that Scott had given her.

"I asked Janet how sure she was [that] Laci knew Peterson was in an intimate relationship with her" after the bedroom incident, Brocchini wrote. "Janet said [that she had] made it obvious to Laci that Scott and Janet were in an intimate relationship."

Checking the dates, the detective realized that Scott and Laci had been married less than a year when Scott began his affair with Janet.

In the coming weeks, Janet Use would continue to cooperate with police, sending them a package that contained a necklace Scott had given her and photos from the time they were dating. She enclosed six color pictures, including one of McKenzie at Janet's home, a snapshot of Scott relaxing beside Janet's coffee table, and one of Janet posing with the twelve dozen roses Scott had presented her on their first date. In an accompanying letter, Janet explained that she only kept a handful of the photos. She had angrily thrown the rest away after their breakup. In a moment reminiscent of Monica Lewinsky, Janet would later forward to Brocchini a black Hugo Buscati dress that Scott had given her as additional proof of their relationship.

Looking for more insight into this period of Scott's life, Detective Brocchini also interviewed a housemate of Scott's, but Robert Aguirre had little to offer. Rob had not known Scott before he moved into the house in 1998, and even after he moved in Scott revealed little about himself. It wasn't until three weeks after Scott moved in that Laci called the house and Rob discovered that Scott was married.

During that time, Rob said, Scott "associated" with women other than Laci, but he could not-or would not-say whether Scott had been sexually involved with any of them. He described Scott more as a "big brother" than a peer.

Aguirre told the detective that there were "many" nights during college when women stayed over at the house. When pressed further, he simply said that he couldn't recall any specific woman who spent the night with Scott. Even after Brocchini showed him a photo of Scott arm-in-arm with Janet Use, Rob said that he "would not or could not" recall this woman spending the night with his roommate.

Brocchini then asked if he could remember any woman discovering Scott and Laci in bed together. "It could have happened," Rob told the detective. "I just don't remember."

As the conversation between Scott and Detective Grogan drew to a close, the detective asked Scott to consent to a collection of blood and DNA evidence and full body photographs. Scott replied that he was sure that the detective had a search warrant for this. When Grogan produced the warrant, Scott did not read it; he simply went along without further comment. Scott was fingerprinted and photographed that afternoon, and technicians also collected cells from the inside of his cheek for DNA testing.

Detective Buehler soon joined Scott and Grogan, and together the three drove to Doctor's Medical Center to draw blood samples. During the twenty-minute ride, Scott sat up front next to Buehler. Grogan sat in the back seat and listened. Unbeknownst to Scott, a tape recorder was capturing his remarks about his mother's ill health, snowboarding, his wife's Land Rover, and the detectives working overtime.

Once at the hospital, the technicians took about fifteen minutes to collect blood samples from Scott. During the return trip, Grogan asked Scott if he had talked to his attorney about taking the polygraph.

"Yeah," Scott replied.

"What's his feeling on it?"

After hesitating, Scott told Grogan that his lawyer, Kirk McAllister, had some issues with the DOJ polygrapher, Doug Mansfield.

"I know he's very opposed to Mansfield, but I don't know if he's opposed to somebody else or not. I mean, that would help kind of put some of this stuff to an end. But... I don't know, it's something to discuss with him anyway and see what he thinks," Scott said.

Changing subjects, Scott began chatting about the media's role in the search for his wife. He also inquired about using a psychic who had contacted him to assist in the search for Laci.

Buehler told Scott that he could not recall a case in the past several years in which a psychic played a role in the recovery of a crime victim.

Arriving back at headquarters, Grogan once again suggested that Scott consider taking the polygraph.

Scott told the police that his attorney regarded polygraphs as "police voodoo."

The day ended dramatically with Laci's mother Sharon Rocha appearing on CNN's Larry King Live. Lee and Jackie Peterson were also guests on the program.

Larry was off that night, and Court TV's Nancy Grace was filling in. A video clip of Officer Ridenour opened the show.

"We still have hope that Laci Peterson is out there and alive," he said. "And so we think it's critical. And as long as the media wants to continue to cover this, we're going to be here to provide as much information as we can and get the community support."

Next, Nancy Grace introduced Jackie Peterson. "Where is Scott tonight?" she asked. "I would imagine he would be out begging the viewers to help in the search for his wife."

"He is," Jackie Peterson told viewers. "And he has. And he is with friends this evening that have been searching all day. We go out every day. We have many volunteers. We're headquartered at the Red Lion Inn. It's so many nice people and such work. But, it's so ... we need more. And we're not going to give up hope."

Grace asked Jackie about the police saying that Scott had "cooperated to an extent." "Now, what did they mean by that? To an extent?"

"We don't know," Jackie conceded. "We don't know what they mean."

"Has he taken a polygraph?" asked Grace.

"I don't know if that's ... if he's been asked to do that. He's been cooperative. They've . . . he's made available to them everything they've asked for," Mrs. Peterson responded.

Next, Nancy turned to Sharon Rocha. "Do they have any leads so far? Anything at all?"

"To the best of our knowledge at this point, there was a robbery or a burglary across the street from their home," Sharon told Nancy. "And they've actually made two arrests today. We were hoping that would be connected, but at this point, we're being told that it's not, so ..."

Lee Peterson got the final word.

"If you knew Scott," he said, "as far as him being implicated, it's a nonissue."

CHAPTER NINE

JANUARY 4, 2003

In the wee hours of January 4, members of the Modesto Narcotics Enforcement Team, in cooperation with the Department of Justice, began twenty-four-hour surveillance of Scott Peterson. This, along with the tracking device affixed to his car, gave the police realtime access to Scott's actions.

As the surveillance teams followed Scott, scuba divers were busy searching the waters of the San Francisco Bay and the shoreline near the Berkeley Marina. Over the next several days, police would reinterview witnesses and work to narrow down Scott's time line by calling the numbers taken from Scott's cell phone.

Brocchini's first call was to Karen Servas, the Covena Avenue neighbor who'd found McKenzie running loose on the morning Laci disappeared. The detective had already interviewed her, but when her number showed up on Scott's call list, he talked to her for a second time.

Servas confirmed that she had received a call from Scott on December 24 at around 8:00 P.M. Scott asked her if she had seen Laci that day. When Scott phoned again several days later, she was in New Mexico. He left her a message asking exactly what time she had found the dog. Servas called back and told him that she had found a receipt from the store she had gone to right after returning McKenzie to his yard. It was stamped 10:34 A.M. Retracing her steps, Servas determined that she must have returned McKenzie to the couple's yard at about 10:20 that morning. Scott claimed that he left home at around 9:30 that morning. If that were true, that meant that the frame during which Laci disappeared spanned about fifty minutes.

Servas also mentioned to Brocchini that another couple who lived around the corner, Greg and Kristin Reed, told her that they had seen Scott's truck parked in his driveway around 9:40 A.M. on Christmas Eve. Servas told Brocchini that the Reeds were on holiday in Carmel and would not be back until early the following week.

"I asked Servas if she could remember anything suspicious or concerning to her," Brocchini noted in a report.

The chilling account that Servas gave next has never been reported. Servas told the detective that she does not receive any of the national news channels on her television. On Christmas Day at about 5:00 P.M., she went over to Scott's to watch the news. While there, she heard some things that alarmed her.

Servas recalled that Scott and his parents, Lee and Jackie, were in the dining room with another couple. Scott invited her to stay for turkey dinner, but she declined, saying that she had to go home to pack for her trip to New Mexico in the morning. Besides, she mentioned, as a vegetarian she did not eat turkey.

About ten minutes after Servas returned home, Scott called and asked her to reconsider, telling her that he had added tortellini to the menu. Servas agreed and walked back over to the Petersons'. Scott and his parents were still there, but the other couple had left. Taking a seat at the dining room table, Servas noticed that Lee and Jackie Peterson seemed distraught. As they chatted, Scott told his parents that the police had taken a gun and some white rags out of the washing machine on Christmas Eve. He seemed upset that the officers had not immediately told him that they were seizing the items.

Upon hearing that police had taken the gun and the rags, Scott's mother made a comment that struck Servas as odd: "At least you didn't go shooting that night."

Servas then opened a bottle of wine and started preparing the tortellini. A Christmas message from Laci was still printed on the chalkboard tacked on the room's bright yellow wall, she noticed, and "Scott was acting like everything was fine."

As Brocchini jotted later in his report, "Servas said Scott mentioned three or four times that he was willing to take a polygraph. However, because the officers thought he was too emotional, they thought he should not take it." None of this had happened, of course. Scott seemed to be rehearsing a new batch of stories. "Later, Servas heard Scott saying, 'Too much time had gone by, so he couldn't take a polygraph.'"

Servas told Brocchini that she had seen Jackie Peterson on Larry King Live the previous night. "Servas said Jackie told Larry King the police had not asked her son to take a polygraph," Brocchini noted. "Servas said Jackie knew that was a lie when she said it because Jackie was present when Scott was talking about the polygraph at least three or four times in the house."

Servas told Brocchini that she was staying with friends and wasn't intending to return home. When he asked her why, she explained that she had a "weird feeling."

"Servas told me that she has looked directly into Scott Peterson's eyes on at least two occasions and Peterson looked back," Brocchini wrote. "Servas said she is not returning home because she is afraid of what she'll see the next time she looks into Scott Peterson's eyes."

"I don't want to see him," she said.

At the conclusion of the interview with Servas, Brocchini wrote the following notes:

From reviewing Servas' statement, I noticed the following false statements:

1)
 
Peterson told his parents and Karen Servas that police had removed the handgun from inside his residence rather than the glove compartment of his truck.