A Checklist for Murder (21 page)

Or, Fisk wondered, did Peernock know something about evasive maneuvers that the police hadn’t figured out yet? He had, after all, successfully eluded the manhunt so far and didn’t seem to be putting all that much effort into it.

Fisk stepped up his efforts. He was already down to four hours sleep a night. He supposed that he could survive on three.

On August 25 he released Sonia’s car back to her after it had been searched and tested for bloodstains. It had come up clean.

Later that day he served a warrant on Foothill Savings to get Robert’s full financial profile there. On the same day he got his first look at Peernock’s family insurance situation and discovered that Robert was the beneficiary of a $50,000 policy on Claire with Cal-Farm Insurance Company.

He didn’t know yet that the insurance policy was just the tip of the iceberg, but he realized that another point had fallen into place on the motive side of the board.

On August 29, Sonia brought Robert to the office of her attorney, Paul Moore, to execute full power of attorney from Robert to Sonia. He also prepared a new will. Either Robert was aware that some sole practitioner named Victoria Doom was checking around for the original family will with the idea of sealing off Claire’s property, or he had simply decided that taking care of loose paperwork was a good time-filler while evading a “Wanted” bulletin. Attorney Moore knew Peernock was considered a suspect in his wife’s death but didn’t
specifically
know that an arrest warrant was outstanding. He later said that detectives had called him on several occasions, but never
specifically
advised him that Sonia would be arrested if found to be aiding and abetting Peernock. Apparently, like a good attorney, he didn’t ask.

•   •   •

At 11:00
A.M.
on August 31, the Foothill Station received a call from attorney Mark Overland, who advised them that there were new developments; he was not representing Robert Peernock after all. Now it was clear to Steve Fisk that his last hope for a peaceful and easy surrender of the prime suspect had dissolved. He angrily resolved to get Peernock off the streets immediately. Not only had this case haunted him from day one, but the exclusive work time that Fisk had been allowed to dedicate to it had expired weeks ago. Other cases were piling up and demanding his attention, stealing time from his Peernock investigation, from his sleep pattern, from his family. Worst of all, with every passing day that Peernock remained at large, the fugitive stood the chance of slipping through the police net by virtue of the sheer overload facing the Homicide Division. Fisk asked himself how he would live with it if Natasha turned up dead and Peernock walked away from the charges facing him simply because there was no one left to testify against him.

The COBRA unit was ordered to set upon Sonia and to stay with her no matter what. Their orders were to find out once and for all if she could lead them to Robert Peernock.

It was early in the day, so Natasha was again most likely asleep if she didn’t have to be somewhere; she had no way of knowing that in Steve Fisk and Victoria Doom there were now two individuals who had made it a personal struggle to protect her in every way they could find, to do their jobs so thoroughly that nobody, not even someone who had thought of all the angles, would get the chance to finish what had been started on her.

But neither the overworked lead investigator nor Natasha’s beleaguered civil attorney knew that Peernock had barely opened his bag of tricks.

Victoria’s eyes slammed open in the darkness and she gasped loudly as she sat up in bed. She glanced over to make sure
Richard didn’t hear her, then sat for a moment panting with relief.

It was only a bad dream. Peernock wasn’t really sneaking in the window, come to get the “Agreement” that made him look so suspicious. He wasn’t in the house, armed and gunning for her and her husband.

She decided to go into the living room for a while. There was plenty to do. She could always think back over her plans to locate Peernock’s numerous bank accounts to prevent him from being able to cash them out and flee with his daughters’ funds.

She sat heavily at her desk, wiped the sleep from her eyes, and began typing notes. Back in law school Victoria had gotten her typing speed up to a hundred words a minute. The rapid clicking sounds filled the next several hours.

The COBRA unit set upon Sonia again on September 1. This time she was followed every time she left the house. Long lists of all her movements were filed at the Homicide Division, but for the next two days nothing came to light.

September 3, though, was an especially busy day. Sonia was followed to Foothill Savings and observed there for half an hour, where she now had power of attorney to handle Robert’s money for him. There she complied with Robert’s wishes and transferred his bank account to her name. Now Sonia had total control over Peernock’s money and none of his enemies could take it from him in their attempts to frame him for this awful murder. Another blockade had just been raised against Victoria Doom’s attempt to seal off Robert’s access to the family funds.

But on that same September 3 day, an eerie devil wind out on the Nevada desert rose up from the sand. Whirling stronger and stronger, it blew itself all the way to Los Angeles. By the time it arrived, the swirling hot air had reanimated
itself into the form of “Robert Thomas” from Amarillo, Texas.

“Robert Thomas” made a beeline for the office of Dr. John M. Goin, a plastic surgeon on Wilshire Boulevard. There he had a final follow-up check on his plastic surgery. Peernock/Thomas confided to Dr. Goin that he was worried about how he was healing. He seemed to think that one of his eyes was coming out a bit crooked. Apparently one disfigured face in the family was plenty. But Dr. Goin gave “Robert Thomas” a clean bill of health and sent him packing for Amarillo.

Robert Peernock stepped back into the hot summer sunlight outside Dr. Goin’s office. This time the “Robert Thomas” identity blew back out into the desert forever. Peernock didn’t need it anymore.

As Peernock headed back to his Mustang, he had no way of knowing that Natasha was at Victoria Doom’s office at that moment, signing an application form for a temporary letter of administration that would give her the power of all the probate matters in the estate of her late mother. He had been a bit too busy to keep up with Victoria’s actions regarding his cash flow. Another paper door slid shut around the family resources. Even though a river of cash was still escaping through Robert’s transfer of family accounts into the control of his girlfriend, Victoria had just helped his determined young daughter to move another step closer to shutting down Robert’s access to escape funds.

That evening the COBRA tailing unit observed Sonia making repeated stops at Gelson’s Market, but she did not seem interested in groceries. Instead her activities concentrated on the pay phones there. She was observed through binoculars from a distance of about seventy-five yards, making brief
phone calls and then hanging around waiting for the phone to ring.

An undercover officer went to the phone next to her and pretended to use it, eavesdropping on Sonia’s next conversation. Sonia turned her back on him, but she kept talking softly. The officer clearly heard her giving banking information and making reference to an attorney. The undercover cop heard the name “Bob” and clearly heard Sonia say, “I love you,” and “I miss you.” A few minutes later she hung up and walked quickly back to her car. The COBRA unit tailed her as she drove back home.

It was getting dark on September 3, time for Natasha to be wide awake. The swelling was gone on her face now and the shaved portion of her head was beginning to grow back out. She planned to cut the rest of her hair soon and to just wear it all very short as it grew back. At least she could look a little closer to normal then.

She studied her face in the mirror. The deep red scars were getting lighter. If she hung out in dark rooms, she might look normal someday. The dark rooms wouldn’t be a problem; she had always joked about being allergic to sunlight and now the doctors had warned her specifically to avoid it for the next couple of years to give her scars the chance to lighten up as much as possible.

She pulled a baggy black sweater over her head. Gently. Some of Patty’s friends were coming over to keep them company. Tasha still didn’t feel like company too much these days, but Patty was going stir crazy, so she decided to play along. It would give her something to do while she waited for bedtime to come at sunrise.

At 9:30
P.M.
, Fisk’s detectives activated another search warrant and went through Sonia’s belongings at her condo while she was away using the public phones at Gelson’s Market.

They seized two 35mm films, three cassette tapes, and some of her black shoes to check the soles for the presence of blood.

At 10:40
P.M.
, when Sonia returned home, she parked in her space in the back of the building. Detectives Fisk and Castro approached her as she walked up to her door. Another major thread in Sonia’s life came unraveled as they placed her under arrest and sent her back to the station in a West Valley patrol car.

Fisk had decided that the waiting game was not paying off; it was time to sweat Sonia as hard as necessary. The COBRA unit had convinced him that Sonia knew where Peernock was and that he was in the immediate area. Steve Fisk had determined that Sonia Siegel was not going to sleep in her bed again until she had given up her boyfriend.

He isolated Sonia in one of the tiny, windowless interrogation rooms and gave her time to take in the atmosphere. Chipped and peeling insulation tiles lined the walls. The musty air made the place feel like a particularly suffocating elevator car that only went down.

Steve Fisk began to explain the facts of life. Quietly.

“Sonia,” he told the frightened woman, “I know you love him and you’re trying to be loyal. You’re trying to do the right thing. But this man has a murder warrant out on him. He’s going to be charged with first degree when we get him. He could go to the gas chamber.”

“I don’t believe that he—”

“Listen to me. There’s more. We know he’s been armed in the past, so we have to assume he’s armed now. Do you understand what that means? Every cop out there who winds up going after him will assume that they are confronting an armed murderer who was capable of whacking out his own family with some kind of steel bar.”

“Robert would never do anything like—”

“Sonia it’s
too late
for that! You have to let a court decide
if he would or not. You’re not a judge and neither am I. But Sonia, if you don’t hear anything else I say to you tonight, make sure that you hear this …”

He leaned in closer.

“Sonia, if I have to choose between one of my detectives going home alive and Robert going to the coroner’s on a slab, what do you think my choice will be?

“You
have
to give him up now, Sonia, if you really love him. It’s the only decent chance he has for a peaceful arrest. Listen to me. If you tell me where he is, I promise to go pick him up myself. He’ll come back alive, as long as he doesn’t try to do something stupid. He’ll have a chance to fight this out in court.”

Fisk moved in close for the clincher, using his gentlest but most determined tone.

“Give him a chance, Sonia, if he won’t give himself one. Some young hothead cop is going to get jumpy out there and kill him flat out, sooner or later. We’re
never
going to just let him walk away on this, Sonia. Never.”

No one who wasn’t a seasoned felon could stand up under the past month she had just endured. Fisk could see that she was cracking. All she needed now was a little push.

“You’ll have anonymity. We’ll say we acted on a tip, that’s what we’ll tell the papers. Give him up, Sonia. If you
really
do love him …”

He brought down the velvet hammer.

“Save his life.”

At 1:00
A.M.
on September 4, detectives Fisk and Knapp drove to the Vagabond Motel in Woodland Hills and checked with the desk clerk. They had two possible room numbers; Sonia wasn’t sure if it was 213 or 215. The clerk told them that the family in room 213 had just checked in the night before. But room 215 was occupied by a single man who had been there for over a week, registered under the name
of White. One thing was strange. The man had put a California license plate number on his desk registration, but his gray Mustang had Nevada plates.

Fisk called the room on the front desk phone. A man answered cautiously. “Hey, Bob?” Fisk began cheerily. “This is Steve. Sonia told me to call you. She wants you to know that she won’t be able to come over tonight.”

When the man on the other end responded affirmatively, Fisk motioned out the window to his partner Officer Knapp, who was standing outside the door of room 215. Knapp began beating on the door and demanding that Peernock open up for the police. When Peernock cracked the door open to peek out, Fisk and Knapp both knocked it aside and dived through. They pulled him down immediately without a shot being fired, A couple of the plastic-surgery stitches behind one of Peernock’s ears tore loose in the scuffle, but he was otherwise unharmed during the arrest.

As Fisk had promised, Sonia had saved Robert’s life.

If Sonia had seen the things Fisk and Knapp pulled out of Robert’s room, she might not have felt quite so loyal. In addition to $500 in his wallet, he had $25,761 in cash. He had a packed suitcase. And he had a book titled
The Australia Traveler’s Survival Guide
. Since he hadn’t advised her of any plans to see Australia, she might have wondered if this was another independent decision on his part.

Like the new face.

By 2:00
A.M.
a saddened yet relieved Sonia Siegel was delivered back to her condo by a patrol unit after she confirmed that Robert had had no stitches on July 22 when he left but that he had when he came back from Vegas. She had to realize that he was alive and therefore he was going to be able to fight for his innocence. Things could have been worse.