Date With the Devil (14 page)

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Authors: Don Lasseter

BOOK: Date With the Devil
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Investigators would soon learn that Stacy lived in Visalia, seventy miles north of Bakersfield. Mahler had either deliberately lied to keep detectives from finding her, or perhaps he had simply misspoken.
Describing the Monday house visit, Mahler said, “We were there for all of two minutes because I needed to grab my computer. Things looked normal other than, you know, there was some blood. I'm not going to lie about that. It freaked me out, but freaked out Stacy even more. I told her we would deal with it later.”
Just to see how truthful Mahler would be, Small asked, “Where was the blood?”
“It's in my bedroom, exactly where I left [Kristi and Edmund], exactly where he started slapping her.” Forensic technicians would find considerably more blood than could have been caused by slapping someone.
At Small's request, Mahler diagrammed on paper the house interior and indicated where he had seen the blood.
Back to Stacy's presence, Mahler said she refused to stay in the house that night. To placate her on that Monday, they checked into the Standard Hotel, on Sunset Boulevard.
To make certain he understood Mahler's stated sequence of events, Small asked him to reiterate how long he stayed at the Marriott and how long at the Standard. Mahler said, “Well, if you want to include Saturday night, which was late at night, I was at the Marriott Saturday night and Sunday night.”
“I thought you said—”
Mahler interrupted to alter his version. “I checked into the Marriott Sunday morning and checked out on Monday.” He knew the hotel records could be examined. He and Stacy had visited Cole Crest briefly on Monday and stayed at the Standard that night. Stacy, he said, returned to her home, up north, on Tuesday. “Before dinner I went back up to the house and tried to clean up some of the blood.” He denied finding blood anywhere else except in his bedroom.
“When you were there and saw the guy slapping her, did you see her bleeding?”
“I wouldn't say so far as bleeding, but you could see that, you know, she got smacked.”
“Did anyone else see Edmund there in your house?”
“I think Donnie did, but Karl did not.” Mahler spun off on another tack, hinting that Edmund had sometimes supplied Donnie with drugs.
Small replied that this was irrelevant to the case. “I don't give a crap where Donnie might have bought anything. We're not dope cops.”
“In that case,” Mahler declared unequivocally, “Donnie bought his drugs from this guy.”
“Is he also a drug connection for you?”
“No. What? For me to get dope? No. No. I don't do dope.”
“None at all?”
“None at all.”
Both detectives had heard statements by Jeremy Moudy and Donnie Van Develde describing David Mahler's prolific use of drugs. They seemed quite believable, while Mahler's credibility had started to spring serious leaks. Perhaps feeling his boat starting to sink, he tacked in the other direction. “Cocaine? Once in a while. And that's not an admission.”
Vicki Bynum remarked, “We don't care.” Small agreed.
Ostensibly relieved by their disinterest in his denials, Mahler shifted directions again, to Cheryl Lane. Mentioning that she was his former girlfriend, Mahler said she was due in court today and would be curious why he wasn't there to advise her. He even wondered aloud if the detectives planned to ask if she provided sex to him to be her lawyer. They showed even less interest in that tangent than in his duplicity about narcotics.
Bynum needed clarification on the female relationships. “I'm confused about Stacy. Is she your former fiancée?”
“No, no, that's Kitty, but she's out of this. Stacy is someone I've known for twenty years.”
“So she's a very good friend?”
“She's a very good friend. We have consensual sexual contact at times.”
“Was she with you at the Marriott and the Standard?”
“No, no, she was not at the Marriott. I was there by myself. Well, not by myself, but not with Stacy.” Tom Small wanted to know who was there with him. Mahler stammered, “Uh, well, this gets tricky. But I'm going to let you know. A gentleman I know just like—like with Conoscenti—can arrange it that there's company involved. I'm not going to call it ‘prostitution. ' I know, I know, you don't even care about that.”
Bynum made it clear that they worked major crimes, not vice.
“Okay”—Mahler nodded—“it was a prostitute that I got through another gentleman who fancies himself a pimp. His name is Atticus King. He's a black guy, two hundred forty pounds, about five-eight. He's a taxi driver, uh, as a guise to transporting women.”
“So, were you using cocaine at the hotel with King and the hooker he brought?”
“No.”
“Were you high on cocaine at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach?”
Mahler confessed that he “partook a little bit.” Small asked how much. “It was enough for me to enjoy myself and have champagne with strawberries.” He claimed the client who met him there, and whose name he would never divulge, had given him the cocaine.
Small asked Mahler to reconstruct what happened in the few hours preceding his arrest. He replied that he had gone out with a few friends for Chinese food, returned home, got on the Internet, and made some cell phone calls. “And
bada-bing,
I started hearing banging on the front gate. And I'm thinking, someone's out there, and it's not Karl. I had just spoken to him. This leads me to a text message I had received, threatening me. It said, ‘If you don't comply, you are the one going down. If you don't pay us ...'”
Given the opportunity to explain, Mahler told a long story about someone who had borrowed $13,000 and hadn't paid it back. Kristin had mentioned knowing a person who could help collect it without going too far illegally. “The guy comes over. I give him a few bucks to do the job. The next thing you know, I'm [being] called every single freaking day for more money.”
“What's the person's name who owes you the money?”
Mahler acted reluctant to reveal it, but he said, “Now you're getting into serious business because he's a [police] officer. I don't know how much you want to despair [
sic
] his department. You know what? I will give you the name, because I'm so mad that he hasn't paid me. It's Robert Jimenez. Do you know him? Well, there you have it.”
The interviewers needed more details. Mahler said it was an extremely complicated matter and rambled on for several minutes. He said he had posted bail for Cheryl on a felony count. “I was on the hook for thirty thousand. Cheryl and I weren't even seeing one another anymore and it was too much money [to lose]. And she did wind up skipping bail. That's when I hired Jimenez for seven hundred dollars to bring her in. But he did a bad job. He failed to do anything right. But he comes over the next day, demanding money.”
“When is all of this?”
“About a month ago. He started making threats, showing me a pistol.” Jimenez, Mahler said, had coerced him into making a loan of $7,000. Kristin, Mahler purported, had then put him in contact with someone named Rick, who, for a fee, would persuade Jimenez to return the money. Rick had shown up at Cole Crest on Saturday night, just before Edmund made his appearance.
Mahler threw in another twist. He claimed that Kristi had called Rick to come and pick her up in Newport Beach and take her back to her home, but he had apparently let her down. “While they were in my house, they were bickering about it. I was in the middle of a dangerous mess. He started talking to me about wanting twenty-five thousand dollars. It was blackmail, extortion in my mind.”
It became apparent to the detectives that Mahler's convoluted story of financial intrigue and threats was designed to throw them off the track and make them believe he feared for his life. Thus, when the officers showed up at Cole Crest the previous night, he had hidden in Jeremy Moudy's closet. How much of it was true, or what portions were fabricated, bore little relevance to the investigation of Karl Norvik's allegations that David Mahler had shot a woman named Kristin. Still, they dutifully took notes and kept open minds.
Mahler again mentioned that he had contacted Stacy and had asked her to come be with him. “We have plans to go out to breakfast together tomorrow morning.” He expressed surprise that she hadn't arrived yet at the Hollywood Station.
C
HAPTER
17
C
LINGING
TO
P
AST
L
OVE
The interview of David Mahler by Tom Small and Vicki Bynum had consumed nearly two hours, and it would last seven more. As it progressed, Stacy Tipton drove her red Jeep Cherokee from Visalia to Hollywood, about two hundred miles.
Mahler had reached her by cell phone after his arrest and asked her to come down. She had no idea what had happened to cause the police to pick him up, but she assumed it was either on a drug charge or related to some financial shenanigan. Or maybe he had slapped around one of his girlfriends. It probably had something to do with the blood found in his house. He had seemed nervous and edgy during her visit on Monday, less than a week ago. The idea of sleeping in a house with someone's blood on the carpet had freaked her out. So they had stayed at the Standard Hotel.
Driving alone gave Stacy the opportunity to mentally relive highlights and low points of their long relationship.
It had all started out so nicely. She loved the way he treated her in the early years, courteously opening doors, allowing her to enter a room in front of him, and ordering for her in restaurants. Even when they worked on business matters together in his apartment, they made it a team effort. She later described it. “He concentrated deeply and we kept conversation to a minimum. He spent a lot of time with intensive telephone conversations. But he would always break at twelve noon and we would have our little bagels with cream cheese and our fifteen minutes together in the kitchen. That's when we could talk. To me, that just showed how dedicated he was. Even though he was doing business at home, he would always dress professionally.”
When Stacy met David's mother, it had been a thrill to hear her say that David had never talked to her about any woman in his life except Stacy.
The move West, though, had altered everything. Mahler's behavior had slipped downhill gradually. He became domineering and selfish. His desire for strippers, hookers, and porn actresses had hurt Stacy, but she didn't want to end the relationship. People feared him and he seemed to enjoy dominating them. Still, she clung to love ties.
The miles zoomed past Stacy as she drove south on I-99 and approached Bakersfield, where she and David had rendezvoused a couple of times. The corners of her mouth turned up in memory of the fun times, but other recollections pained her.
Stacy recently had found solace in her dogs. She had started raising pugs and would say, “They are the love of my life. I have owned three litters of the cute little pug puppies. They are my babies. Love me, love my dogs.”
Once, a dog had been the start of an unhappy experience at Cole Crest. “I was outside, late at night, playing with my dog, and David was yelling at me about it, criticizing my doggy. I just walked away and went to a neighbor's house. It was cold and windy, and I had this light outfit on with my little dog in my arms—nowhere to go. Some guys had just moved into the house and were running some kind of computer operation. I used my cell to call a taxi and was waiting for it, but cabdrivers could never find their way up there. It was like hours. I wanted to get somewhere to get warm. Those guys invited me in and offered me a shot of tequila 'cause I was freezing and my nerves were shot. Finally the taxi showed up and took me and my pup down to a motel on Sunset Strip. Usually, I had very little money with me, but that time, fortunately, I had enough to take care of my expenses. The next day, I went down to Newport Beach, where I had friends. The point is, don't ever mess with my dogs.”
Ascending a stretch called “the grapevine,” over the Tejon Pass crest at 4,144 feet, and through the Tehachapi Mountains, along a stretch known for generations as the “Ridge Route,” Stacy thought about the most recent argument with David. He had been furious because he expected her to be with him on that Sunday, May 27. But she had bought the new Jeep Cherokee and her father had insisted on some final mechanical adjustments, including assuring the door locks worked. She had tried to call David, but she hadn't made the connections. Then, on Monday, he had called to say he had been arrested. He was still angry at her for standing him up on the previous Sunday. But it had been so innocent. Perhaps, she wondered, if she had been there that weekend, she could have kept him out of the trouble he was in.
With about an hour more to drive, Stacy looked forward to seeing David and hoped things would turn out well for him.
C
HAPTER
18
T
HEY
W
ERE
G
OING
TO
L
EAVE
S
OMEONE'S
H
EAD
AT
M
Y
D
OOR
Moving on after a short break, Tom Small asked if Edmund had been a drug supplier to David Mahler. He replied, “I'm not going to lie. Yes, I've gotten coke from him.” He emphasized that it was for his personal use. “I have never sold any of it. I will admit that I once bought nine hundred dollars' worth of meth so Cheryl could have it at my house when she needed it. She had a real problem and that's partly why we broke up.” He admitted that he had tried meth a few times for enhancement of sexual experiences.
Out of the blue, Mahler asked Small, “Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“You seem like a genuine nice guy to me. You're the kind of guy that likes making love. You make love to your wife. You may have wild sex now and then to keep it passionate, right?”
The ploy of intimate personal ingratiation didn't fool Small. He answered, “Very interesting. Very astute.”
“So you don't need a stimulant like meth for sex. But I'm in a different zone.”
David Mahler had concluded that the police raid at Cole Crest must have been the result of an informant calling them. Dying to know who, and what the person might have said, he resorted to inserting inquiries into his answers in the hope that Tom Small or Vicki Bynum would reveal it. Speaking casually, Mahler said, “So I'm just thinking. We got Robert Jimenez probably calling you to give you information. Rick—now there's another guy I'm curious what he would do. And that guy Damien ... You know who contacted you, and I don't. So I'm just trying to put the pieces together.”
The bait didn't even tempt Small. He used the comment as a transition to his next question. “So what is Damien's play in this?”
“I told you. He's the guy who introduced me to Kristi. And he would call me every now and then and say, ‘I got a girl here. You want to meet her?'”
To Small and Bynum, that description fit several people: Atticus King, Edmund, and now Damien. “How often do you get these girls?”
“Lately, not at all, because, remember, I've had girlfriends. I had my fiancée, Kitty, and Cheryl, and Stacy. So I haven't done it for a while.” Mahler seemed to have forgotten speaking about having a prostitute at the Marriott Hotel with Atticus King.
Small brought up another subject. “We did a little check on you and we know you have guns in the house.”
Mahler turned indignant. “You know I have guns? I do not have guns. If they checked my whole house today, you will see there are no guns there.”
“No guns at all?”
“None at all. There was—at one point, there was a gun that Robert left there, but it was picked up.”
“Other than that, have there ever been guns in your house?”
“Never.” He guessed that Cheryl had told the police he had a gun, and then speculated it may have been reported by Karl Norvik. “Now, if that's coming from Karl, I'll be very honest with you. Karl sometimes gets a little riley when he gets drunk. I have a very real-looking water pistol. This drunken idiot sometimes—when he's drunk, I'll say, ‘Get out of my room.' It's nothing but a water pistol.”
At Small's request, Mahler described the toy in detail and said it could be found in a drawer under some black sweatpants.
“Okay, that's the only gun you have ever had?”
“That's it, in my whole life.”
Veering away from that subject, the detectives spent some time hearing about Mahler's business and personal relationships with Sheldon Weinberg, and the links with Kitty, Cheryl, Kristi, and Michael Conoscenti who was also known as Damien.
Small's facial expression tensed. He asked, “Do you know where Kristi is?”
“No, other than the fact that I was told she was looking for drugs two days ago.”
“Who told you that?”
“Rick.”
To Small and Bynum, this made no sense at all. Rick, the guy who had been extorting money and threatening Mahler, was now feeding him information about Kristi searching for drugs?
“Where does she live?”
“She stays in Sheldon Weinberg's place, in Calabasas.” Mahler gave them the address and phone number.
After a prolonged discussion about Mahler's cars, and his part ownership of a Mercedes and a home in Orange County, he admitted that they had been obtained from a relative of Karl Norvik through some financial arrangements.
“Where is Karl?” Small inquired.
“You know, it's funny you asked that, because it's freaking me out right now. I spoke to Karl [by phone] not thirty minutes before the officers arrived at my house and he told me he was in Orange County. But when the police came, I knocked on his bedroom door and someone said, ‘Hold on.' I'm like, ‘Karl, the police are here.'”
The detectives noted that David Mahler had given a protracted alibi of being frightened for his life, fearing that people who wanted to hurt him might have been outside. But now, he spoke of telling Karl the police were there. His inconsistencies weren't helping him.
Small said, “I'm going to ask you a question I'm really curious about. How did you wind up in Jeremy's closet?”
Perhaps realizing his mistake, Mahler tried to recover lost ground. “Scared shitless, okay? Here's why. I've had all these threats. After knocking on Karl's room, I hear someone screaming, ‘Just a minute.' I know Karl is not there. I had just spoken to him in Orange County. My mind started saying, ‘Is Robert up to something? Is Rick in there? Who is in Karl's room knowing the police are here and not answering the door?' I didn't even want to know. I went down to talk to Jeremy and I went in his closet. It's not like I was, you know—”
“Was Jeremy expecting you?”
“No.”
“Did he and his girlfriend hide you in the closet?”
“No. I just wanted him to answer the gate and see what the police wanted... . I overreacted and got scared.”
Small wouldn't let him off the hook. “Why didn't you go let them in? You are the main resident, and you knew it was the police. I'm just curious.”
“I thought it was possibly someone setting me up. I had received a text mail telling me that someone's head was going to be dropped off outside my door. I didn't know what to think, to be quite honest with you.”
“Was there ever a head left at your house?”
“No.”
“Were any kind of body parts deposited there?”
“Not yet. But that doesn't mean I'm not nervous about it. These guys are experts. I wouldn't put it past them to leave a head at my door.”
A series of questions followed about Mahler's drug usage. He complained that he had already answered them several times. Small apologized. “Sometimes I forget what I have asked.”
Mahler responded, “You don't have a short memory. You're smart. I'm a lawyer. I know the technique of repeating questions to see if the answers are consistent.”
Vicki Bynum broke the growing tension with her musical laugh, saying, “That's better than admitting that we're really getting old and we don't remember.”
Returning to the alleged incident of Edmund slapping Kristin in Mahler's presence, Small asked, “Did anybody else come to the room?”
“Donnie did. Remember, I mentioned that?”
“So Donnie saw Edmund and Krissy going into this little episode?”
“Yeah, and then he left right away. He was smart.”
“Did you summon him up there, or did he just arrive on his own?”
Indignant again, Mahler snapped, “First of all, I've never summoned him up there. If I called him at all, it was in answer to him calling me first.”
“Okay, how were you dressed when Donnie was there?”
Mahler wasn't certain. He said he could have been wearing shorts, his pants, or a bathrobe. Small wanted to know what kind of a bathrobe. Mahler said, “A white Marriott robe. I always take them from hotels. Sorry. Arrest me.”
“At the time you had the robe on, were you wearing anything else?”
“I would imagine nothing. I'm not sure where this is going, but—”
Ignoring his concern, Small inquired why Mahler went to the Marriott that night. The reply came out sounding sarcastic. “Because that's where Atticus was. It's my favorite. You should try it. I had called Atticus and told him there was too much drama at my place, and he suggested we meet at the Marriott.”
A harsh tone colored Small's next words. “So you go to the hotel, and right after that, Kristi turns up missing.”
Mahler tensed. “Uh-huh, okay. Are you making an implication here?”
“I'm just trying to figure out where Kristi wound up.”
“Okay. Well, that would be something that Edmund or one of her other friends would have to tell you.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
“Well, I'm not so sure she is missing. I'm getting told from Rick just two days ago that she asked him for drugs. She and Rick are close enough that he wouldn't make up a story like that.”
Small grew edgier. “We're trying to locate Kristi, and that's really what this is all about. And I think you can help us.”
Mahler appeared to scramble. He suggested calling her cell phone and mentioned that she often stayed with a guy named Jeff. “Allegedly, he's the guy who picked her up from Newport Beach, so she says.”
Small unloaded. “David, I think your story's full of shit!”
Mahler recoiled as if he had been shot. “Why?”
“Because Edmund wasn't in that room at the time you were prancing around in that bathrobe.”
Quickly recovering his bravado, Mahler replied, “Why do you say that? I do it all the time.”
“It comes from what people have been telling me. I think you are mistaken. Maybe you had a little too much vodka in you.”
Sounding like his feelings had been hurt, Mahler whined, “But I'm not full of shit.”
That's not what Small had said. He had told Mahler that his
story
was full of shit. But the detective didn't bother to respond and clarify the distinction. Instead, he said, “Maybe you're clouding things because something happened in that room you don't want to remember. Or maybe there was an accident. Something went on in there that left a lot of blood. And there's blood in other places in your house.”
Still dancing around the main point, Mahler retorted, “I haven't had time to check the place out and look. I haven't even looked around. My concern was my bedroom.”
 
 
Later discussing that segment of the interview, Tom Small said, “I lost my temper with him. I was fed up with his evasions and lies. He just wanted to hear himself keep talking. So I figured, why not push his buttons and see what happens?”
Turning to Vicki Bynum, Tom said, “You kinda kept the situation nice. I basically told him that everything he was saying was bullshit.”
Laughing, Vicki complimented her partner. “It was an amazing game, mostly between Tom and Mahler. They were sparring with each other for hours.”
Small explained, “Mahler didn't want to put it down. With him, everything is negotiable, so he started trying to set up some trading chips and negotiate his way out of being charged.”
Keeping his focus on the main issue, Detective Small said to Mahler, “Until I lay eyes on Kristi, I have to consider her missing. No one knows where she is, but people did see you and Kristi together.”

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