The Unbidden Truth (35 page)

“Come now. You have people who can fake birth certificates, death certificates, send ashes to a grieving family. This would seem very minor in comparison.” She tossed the pictures on the table and sat facing him again. “If I go the other route, Mr. Laudermilch, I'll go all the way. Articles, interviews, a publicist, maybe a book contract, bodyguards. It won't be for just fifteen minutes.”

After a moment he reached for the photographs and studied them. “What name is the young lady using these days?”

“Her real name. Carolyn Frye.”

He slipped the photographs into his pocket and stood up. “Ms. Holloway, it's always a pleasure to see you. Frank, Lieutenant, I'll be off now. I'll be in touch.” Frank walked out with him.

“Jesus,” Hoggarth said. “Blackmailing the FBI in front of a police officer. That's going too far.”

“So turn me in.” She looked at her watch. “What time are the other two guys going to show up?”

“One-thirty.”

Frank rejoined them and she asked if Bailey was still there. “Let's send him out for something to eat,” she said. “It's going to be a long day.”

“Herbert was making a carload of sandwiches. That would be fastest,” Frank said. “He can go round up some for us. I'll put on coffee.”

“What makes you think she'll be free to go anywhere?” Hoggarth asked.

“They aren't going to convict her,” Barbara said. “It's either acquit or a hung jury. If it's hung, the D.A. won't push for a new trial.”

“Ha! So you think.”

“No. They won't. You're going to see to that.”

He stood up, then sat down. “First the FBI, now a cop. What's the threat and or the bait this time?”

“You'll see before the day's over.”

F
rank called Herbert and told him to get enough sandwiches for five ready for Bailey to pick up, he was on the way. Barbara unlocked her closet, brought out the easel with the Georgia

O'Keeffe poppy and replaced the maps on the other side. Milt Hoggarth sat silently, his face a study in suspicion.

When Bailey returned and put a box of sandwiches on the table, Barbara picked up her briefcase and motioned to him and they went out to the reception room.

“Take whatever you want to eat into Shelley's office,” she said. “I want you to make a copy of this.” She brought the tape from her briefcase, the tape recorder and the blank tape. “But wait until we're all in my office with both doors closed. No noise. Okay?”

He shrugged. “It's going to be a lousy copy,” he said, eyeing the tape recorder.

“I'm not after high quality,” she said, “just so it's audible. We'll keep the original.”

“I thought you weren't going after that gang until the trial was over,” he said. It wasn't really a question, but it was close enough.

“That could still be the plan. It depends on what those two guys want to talk about and how much they already have.” She turned to Maria, who had been as happy to see her as Frank's secretary had been to see him. “Have something to eat,” Barbara said. “After two men come, no calls, no interruptions unless it's Shelley. She'll call if we have to go back to court early.”

Then she went into her own office, sat down and ate her lunch.

The two investigators were prompt, arriving almost exactly at one-thirty. Captain Jon Diebold was a massive man of about sixty, over six feet tall, broad, with white hair, a deeply weathered and tanned face, and blue eyes that seemed too small for such a large face. His companion Carlos Romero stood inches shorter and was stocky, with thick black hair and limpid big brown eyes.

Hoggarth made the introductions and after they were all seated at the round table, Barbara said, “What can I do for you?”

Diebold took the lead. “Ms. Holloway, my colleague and I are conducting a joint investigation and we have reason to believe that Ms. Frye could be of help. We are here to ask permission to interview her.”

Barbara shook her head. “You know we are awaiting a jury verdict at this time. I'm afraid your request is not possible.”

“Look, if she can't help us, two minutes are all we need. If she can, twenty minutes. We're not here in an adversarial pos
ture. Simple questions and either she has answers or she doesn't.”

“I'm really very sorry, but this is not a good time. Ask me your questions. Maybe I can help.”

He drew back as if she had offered to bite him. “I'm afraid not,” he said.

Romero leaned forward then. He had been watching the exchange intently, and she suspected his big brown eyes saw things that eluded the little blue eyes of the captain. Softly Romero said, “Perhaps you can help, Ms. Holloway.” His English was flawless with an attractive accent. “We are conducting an investigation into the death of her father, and her mother, of course. But primarily into her father's death. We believe that Ms. Frye, as a small child, may have seen something or heard something that would help in our investigation.”

Slowly, choosing her words with care, Barbara said, “In 1978 Robert Frye was on the staff of Senator Jerome Atherton. He was assigned to look into a letter the senator had received concerning possible cross-border slave labor. Or perhaps something else entirely. Before Robert Frye could deliver the results of his investigation he was murdered. Carolyn Frye was seven at the time. Of what assistance could she be now, gentlemen?”

Romero nodded. “Your senator has never admitted to such an investigation, Ms. Holloway.”

“I know. And he is still denying any knowledge of it, but you know and I know that what I said is true.”

“Yes. It is true. Perhaps if I tell you a story, you will be so kind as to reciprocate and tell me another?”

“I think that would be a fair exchange,” she said.

“Many years ago,” Romero said, “in one of our small vil
lages near your border there lived a widow, her seventeen-year-old son Juan, and her eleven-year-old daughter Martica. They were poor, but Juan had found a source of income. Two, three times he had gone north to work, sometimes for a week or two, or perhaps months. He sent money home, or brought it when he returned, and he brought his little sister small gifts. One was a Polaroid camera. She was very proud of it. One morning she set out with him to bid him goodbye, as he was leaving again for more work. She asked him this time to please bring her back a certain doll. He promised that he would. She took a Polaroid picture of him at the pickup place, along with others in front of a truck, then she stood and waved until the truck was out of sight. He never returned.

“When her mother saw the picture, she was very afraid and she took it away from Martica. The person who arranged for the workers to find jobs was gone, the police were corrupt, there was no one to ask for help, and the mother took her daughter and moved from that place after many months passed and Juan had not come back. None of those workers who left with him ever came back.

“In time, six years later, the mother died and Martica found the picture in her Bible. She had learned enough English that she could write letters, and she wrote for help, not from her own police because she knew that evil things happened to people who suspected how corrupt they were. She wrote to some of your senators and to a governor. One senator sent an investigator who found Martica and won her confidence. She gave him the picture which he found exciting because it had a license plate that was partially visible. She circled the head of the man who drove the truck. There was also a woman, but in the picture she was turned away and her face was not photographed.”

No one moved or made a sound as he talked. Now he spread his hands and shrugged expressively. “She never heard from the American again. He, of course, was Robert Frye. In her village they did not get American newspapers. She knew nothing of his death. She came to believe that he was as corrupt as her own police, and her fear grew. She fled that part of the country and settled in Puerto Vallarte where she found work, married, had a family and tried to forget. Many North Americans travel to that part of the country and their newspapers follow. She saw the story about Robert Frye on Sunday, and this time she went to the police. I am the result. It was decided that I should try to interview Ms. Frye immediately before she vanishes once more.”

“Thank you, señor,” Barbara said. She stood up and crossed the office to the easel with the poppy and turned it to reveal the map of Southern California. Romero sucked in his breath and stood up and Diebold jumped to his feet. Both men hurried to her side to look, with Hoggarth close behind.

“How did you get that?” Diebold demanded.

“Let's sit down and I'll tell you,” Barbara said, returning to her own chair. She told them about her interview with Inez, then the investigation her own team had made. When she finished there was a prolonged silence until she broke it. “If you will excuse me a moment, I'll see if we have coffee.” She saw that Maria had anticipated her, as usual, and looked past her to Bailey.

“Did you make a copy that's audible?”

“Not great, but you can hear it and understand,” he said, handing her the tape.

She took it and the tape player, asked Maria to bring in the coffee and returned to her office, holding the door for Maria following closely behind her.

Then, as they sipped coffee, she played the tape. Hoggarth's face turned redder and redder as he listened. When the voices stopped, and Jerry Garcia was strumming the guitar again, she turned the tape player off and Hoggarth exploded.

“Jesus Christ! You've been sitting on that? How long? How did you get it?”

“Lieutenant, you're an observer, remember? You don't have a role to play here yet.”

“I believe we have much to talk over,” Romero said softly.

She nodded. “I believe we do.”

Later, with the picture Inez had given her of the Wenzel brothers and their wives with their truck, and the newspaper picture with Greg Wenzel's head circled on the table, she said, “That picture of Greg is what made her remember the rest of it. She thought that was the man in the picture from her father's briefcase, a man she thought was a king, and then realized it couldn't be. She saw him, the man who looks like Greg, doing something to her father's car during the night. And that's all she knows. She can't be a witness. A defense attorney would rip her to shreds. Post-traumatic stress, possible juvenile schizophrenia, amnesia. She would not be a credible witness.”

“But may we take a statement from her, even if no one ever calls her to testify?” Romero asked. “Perhaps she can recall a number from the license plate. Martica, alas, cannot.”

“She has not mentioned such a number. She was interested in the man she thought was a king, and she was only seven. I believe she is in grave danger. The man at the car that night knows she saw him, and he knows she overheard a conversation. All these years he believed her to be dead, now he knows she's alive. My duty is to protect her.”

“I'll put her under police protection,” Hoggarth said.

After a moment Barbara nodded. “After the trial, and only if she agrees. She will need a few nights of rest first.”

Romero bowed his head slightly. “Thank you. You had a piece, I had a piece, now we have a picture.”

“Yes,” Barbara said. She looked at Diebold. “And your part? How did you, a captain, get involved?”

He was looking at the map, and kept looking at it when he said, “I was a rookie in the group sent to investigate that. I found one of the bodies. They had been there for weeks, months maybe, nothing human about them, nothing recognizable. When I heard the Mexican authorities were making inquiries and had the right date, that it might be reopened, I wouldn't send anyone else. I had to take it myself.” His voice dropped lower. “None of them had a hat or even a cap.”

In her mind Barbara heard Joe Wenzel's mocking question: “What did you do with their hats?”

Frank had been quietly listening, but now he spoke. “I believe, as my daughter does, that Carrie is in danger, but I also believe my daughter is, too, and that she will be until that whole crew is locked up. That tape isn't conclusive, as we all know. It's corroborative at the most. Your investigation is going to be involved and it will take a long time.” He looked at Hoggarth. “I suggest you get them for a more immediate crime while the investigation proceeds.”

“You mean Joe Wenzel, don't you? Frank, they all have airtight alibis. That was the first thing homicide looked into. Give me something to go on, for Christ's sake.”

Barbara responded before Frank had a chance. “They decided to kill him last summer. He was a healthy man and could have lived another twenty years or longer, and he was not
going to ease up on his demands. Meanwhile, two sons were coming along also wanting corporate executive paychecks. They had to get rid of him. First they burned the house. They had to make sure that whatever tapes he had in the house were destroyed. Also, they got the key to his safe-deposit box and probably the gun at the same time before they set the fire. They knew they would be suspected of his murder, and they planned alibis right down the line. Then Carrie came along and must have seemed a godsend, someone easily framed. Nora bought the wig. Find out where Luther was on Friday before the murder. I suspect it was his job to keep Joe out of the way long enough for Larry to impersonate him and get to his safe-deposit box for any other tapes. I don't know how they got his driver's license, maybe Luther swiped it. The cash wasn't important, just another bit to add to the frame-up of Carrie. Greg's job was to have a good alibi for the pertinent times, and then get to the motel to pick up the killer. A few hairs in the motel room, a few white and black fibers, her fingerprints on a glass, make sure someone saw a person dressed like her and wearing the wig enter the motel room. They were all set. It would have been a snap for any one of them to pick up the glass ahead of time. They thought of everything.”

“And where the hell did the killer hang out waiting for Greg? Walking up and down the parking lot?”

She shook her head impatiently. “In the empty room that Greg has a key for. Go in there, get dressed, ring Joe Wenzel's doorbell and get admitted. Joe was already dead by the time that person was seen standing at the open door. Plant the incriminating evidence, then go back to that empty room and wait for a ride.”

Hoggarth looked disbelieving.

“Look,” she said, “review Carrie's statement about what Joe said to her as she was walking to her car. It sounds as though he fully expected her to go along with him, and he was sore because she wouldn't. I suspect Nora called him earlier, pretending to be Carrie. If she whispered something to make him believe Carrie would play along later, he would have opened the door. Look out the peephole, see a white blouse, face turned away but with long black hair showing, that's all it would have taken.”

“A family conspiracy,” Hoggarth said in disgust. “Without a shred of proof. Right, I'll haul them all in.”