A Deadly Game (30 page)

"She said he deflected, gave her only brief information about leaving the house shortly after 9:00 A.M., returned home, noticed Laci had not prepared any food nor was she baking," Buehler later noted in his report.

Sharon then tearfully told the detectives about something that occurred just the night before. Scott had come over to her house, she explained. He was talking on the cell phone about Laci's due date, and she overheard him state that the expected date for Conner's birth was February 16. The conversation completely surprised Sharon, who knew the correct date was February 10. When she tried to confront Scott about the error, he brushed her off and walked away.

In San Diego, Grogan dialed the Petersons. "Lee, I caught a flight today, and I'm down here in San Diego," Grogan told Scott's father. "There's something I want to talk to you about, I think it might be upsetting to Jackie. I didn't want to just drop by. We haven't found Laci or anything like that, but I was hoping that maybe I could meet with you for a few minutes, and then you could decide on how best to handle it with Jackie. Do you think that would work?"

"Um, yeah, I suppose, can you tell me about it?" Lee inquired.

The men arranged to meet at Einstein Bros. Bagels at Lomas and Santa Fe by the freeway.

"What is this all about?" Lee Peterson asked the two detectives seated at the table in the bagel shop.

"When Scott came in with you a while back, I showed him a photo that was sent to us, and it's a photograph of him and another girl," Grogan started.

"What?" Lee exclaimed. "And what circumstances?" "Well," Grogan said, pushing the photos across the table to Scott's father.

"Well, how old are these? Who is this?"

"We've talked to her. Those photographs were taken this Christmas. So it was taken on December ..."

Stunned, Lee interrupted. "This Christmas?"

"It was taken December 14 of this year," Grogan explained.

"Where are they taken?"

"She lives in the Fresno area, and it was on the day when Scott said he was meeting his boss in San Francisco," Grogan said.

"How did you get these?" Lee asked.

"Well, we talked to the girl, and she gave us this photo," Grogan said. "This is a function that they went to together. She sent out this photograph of her and Scott in some Christmas cards to other people. I don't know how many photos are out there, but my concern is that you and Jackie were going to see one of these in the paper. Now I know you're probably thinking, can you believe me or not, and am I trying to put something over on you or something like that. All I can tell you, sir, is that I give you my word that those are the circumstances."

Again Lee Peterson interrupted. "Did she volunteer these or ... ?"

"Yeah, she had the photographs."

"[Does] she know him as someone else?" Lee asked.

"Scott was telling her that he was not married to start with. They had been set up by a friend, a mutual friend. They carried on a relationship from about mid-November and they haven't actually seen each other since Laci's disappearance, but they have continued to talk over the phone."

"Since Laci's disappearance?" Lee repeated.

"Yeah," Grogan replied.

"I'm shocked," Lee told the detectives.

"There's something very disturbing. . . . It's one thing if it's just some relationship that, I mean people have affairs," Grogan said. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but..."

"That's true," Lee interjected. "You know, I don't know if I should talk to you fellows anymore without talking to Kirk. You know, I'm a babe in the woods here. I don't know law enforcement or, you know, lawyers or whatever. And I don't want to say something that could be taken out of context later, or whatever. So, I don't think I can talk to you anymore,"

"All right," Grogan agreed.

"Well, just wanted you to understand before this hit the press," Detective Owen added.

"This is gonna hit the press?" Lee shot back.

"I don't know if these photos are going to be in there or not. My problem is she sent out photos to a lot of people," Grogan said.

"These photos?" Lee asked again.

"It's a photograph similar to that, that she sent out in her Christmas cards," Grogan replied. "And I don't want you to see Scott in this photo [for the first time] in print."

"Well, you wouldn't release that to the press, would you?" Lee questioned.

"She was under the impression that her and Scott had a relationship and she was proud of him, so she was sending out Christmas cards to her friends," Detective Owen explained. "She came to us with the pictures."

"She came to you?" Lee asked, still stunned. "Since Laci's disappearance? Why in the hell would she do that?"

"She says that at first, Scott said that he was not married. And then the friend that set them up to start with made some inquiries and found out that he was married, and told this girl. The girl then asked Scott about it on December 9. Scott told her that he had lost his wife." Grogan paused and looked at Lee Peterson. "That concerns me."

"I don't know, what can I tell ya?" Lee stated, clearly confused.

"She felt a little lied to because she found out Scott was married," Owen clarified.

"Well, what do you want from me?" Lee asked the detectives. "Why are you . . . except to protect my wife and I and so we'll have prior knowledge of it."

"I understand that your job as Scott's father is to try to protect him," Grogan comforted.

"Sure," Lee agreed.

"And I'm not trying to dissuade you from that. But I wanted you to know that these exist, that we didn't release them. This information is very concerning. If Scott told this girl that he lost his wife before, weeks before Laci disappeared ..."

"That sure isn't proof that my son was involved in this thing," Lee said, defending Scott. "And I'll stake my life that my son was not involved in his wife's disappearance. I'm behind him. And I can understand someone having an affair, I mean, it's not a good thing, but I can understand. ..."

"It seems to me that you weren't aware of this girl," Grogan stated. "Are you aware of any others?"

"No. Maybe this was at a party. Maybe Laci was in attendance and they were taking funny pictures because I have pictures of them in Hawaii with mutual friends ..." "No," Detective Owen interrupted. "Why not?" Lee asked.

"Couple of reasons," Owen began. "One is [that] the photographs kind of speak for themselves, but the other thing too is, the gal that's in the photo talked to us."

"I'm shocked, but I still don't think my son is involved in his wife's disappearance," Lee said. "He may have had an affair, but the kid couldn't hurt a flea. I mean, he feels bad when he hurts your feelings."

It's hard to interpret Lee's reactions in this conversation. He is certainly showing the protective instincts of a parent. Yet his denial seems so strong that I'm not sure he knew exactly what he was protecting. Did Lee Peterson ever really know his son?

"If we could clear out Scott, that would be fine with me," Grogan explained. "But we're weeks into this, and we're not able to do that."

"How about the forensics from the boat and the car?" Lee asked. "I will bet you that there's nothing there."

The detectives explained that some items had been sent out for testing but the results were still pending.

"You guys have gotta believe me, he's the least likely person to harm anybody," Lee repeated.

"He hasn't been real truthful with us, though," Owen told him.

"You mean about this?" Lee asked. "Oh, he's probably not going to volunteer something ..."

"But in a case like this, it would be better that he tells us up front," Owen told Lee. "There are other things he hasn't been truthful about, so you kinda have to think ..."

"Can you tell me what those are?" Lee asked. "If I was under investigation, and my wife disappeared, I don't think I'd be talking about an affair I had with some other woman. I doubt either of you fellows would either. If you knew that you were innocent, and all you had to do was wait things out and be, you know, be exonerated, I doubt you'd be volunteering anything either."

"I understand that you had concerns right from the beginning," Grogan said. "But, I mean, if Scott wanted to be out from under the microscope on this thing, there's a lot of other things that he could have done. I mean, we're in an adversarial position right now, where I can't talk to him without his attorney. . . . He's refused to take the polygraph test. Everybody else in this investigation that we've asked has taken one.

"The key thing that bothers me, and I want you to think about, is him telling this girl that his wife was lost and he's crying and upset in that conversation with this girl," Grogan advised. "She had the impression that he was saying his wife had died. That is several days before, that's December 9, before Laci disappears. And that concerns [me]."

Lee grew defensive. "I don't know, maybe he was drinking or something. I don't understand that either. But my son did not hurt anybody."

"The other thing you need to know is that we felt an obligation to also notify Laci's family about this," Grogan said.

For the rest of the conversation, Lee Peterson struggled to come up with an explanation for the photos. He seemed unwilling to believe that his son was actually involved in an affair-never mind in Laci's disappearance.

"I want the truth, and I know the truth. Scott's not involved," Lee insisted.

"Well, if you know the truth, you just found out that you didn't know all the truth," Owen pointed out.

Later that evening, Detective Buehler received phone calls from Laci's father, Dennis Rocha, and her brother, Brent. Both men expressed concerns about the safety of their family, and asked whether Scott was going to be arrested, and what actions they should be taking.

Buehler advised them both that there was no arrest pending. "The mere fact that Scott was involved in a relationship outside of his marriage was not enough to arrest him for the suspected violent crime," the detective noted. The investigation would continue, "slowly and cautiously," he said.

As Buehler was ending the conversation with Brent, a call came in from Amber Frey. She had just received a letter from Scott in which he returned a picture of her-the first one she'd ever given him. In the accompanying note, Scott told Amber that he didn't deserve to have the picture. The letter was handwritten on Double Tree Hotel stationery from Bakersfield, but was postmarked from Modesto. She was unsure what it all meant.

Buehler received one other important call before ending his shift-this one from Kim Peterson, who'd been running the volunteer search center. After hearing the news about Scott's affair, the family had decided to close down the center.

"Peterson advised it would be difficult for them to have this volunteer center continue to run with Scott being there in view of the circumstances and knowledge that had come up," Buehler entered in his report. "The family members were all of the belief that Scott had killed Laci and now they only hoped to recover her body and locate it."

Kim also told Buehler that the volunteer fund account contained some $20,000. Sharon Rocha was concerned that Scott might try to access the money for his own use. Indeed, the police later learned that-despite his parents' contributions to his upkeep, Scott did inquire about using the center's funds to pay for his personal expenses.

On January 16, the long-awaited National Enquirer story hit the newsstands. Though the article did not identify Scott's girlfriend by name, it was accompanied by photos of the two of them together. It also contained information about other potentially incriminating evidence that police had gathered in the course on of their investigation.

Detective Craig Grogan's first order of business that morning was to call Sharon Rocha at her home on Marklee Way. As he had anticipated, she was distraught. Grogan asked Sharon if he could come over that morning with a recording device for her phone, to capture any calls from Scott. Sharon agreed, and they arranged to meet at 10:30 A.M.

As he pulled up in front of Sharon Rocha's house, Grogan got a call alerting him that Lee Peterson hadn't spoken with his son since police had shown him the photos the previous day. This was puzzling: What father wouldn't call his son immediately under such circumstances? Was Lee afraid that Scott would just lie to him as he had everyone else? Like Jackie, Lee showed a consistent attitude throughout the investigation: Their son could do no wrong, but they would never confront him about the truth.

The police concluded that the Petersons, on some level, must have suspected Scott was complicit in his wife's disappearance.

Grogan related the information to Buehler, then stepped out of the vehicle into the cool January air. Sharon Rocha answered the door, looking exhausted. Brent and Amy Rocha were in the living room, along with Ron Grantski, Sharon's friend Sandy Pickard, and another unidentified woman.

While Buehler remained in the living room, Grogan followed Sharon and Ron to a back bedroom. Laci's parents outlined the reservations they'd been having about Scott. Sharon said she was particularly troubled by Scott's "nonchalant attitude" about her daughter's disappearance. She was also bothered by the fact that it had taken more than a week before Scott actually sat down and answered her questions about the events of December 24. Even then he was "hesitant," and she learned little from their discussion.