I had entered the world a precocious and unappealing child. The things I wrote about in my early years were not the kinds of subjects most children are drawn to, and I had spent those years filling lined composition books with poetry. I still had those books, but I hadn’t read them in years. Now I was curious enough to go search them out and found them stored in a box in the garage.
I opened one notebook at random, and as I leafed through it, I came across a poem I had written when I was twelve:
THE SONG OF LIFE
by Lois Duncan Steinmetz
(October 7, 1946)
This is the song I am singing tonight
When the stars are pale and the sky is deep.
It’s a song I have learned from all things bright,
When the weeping laugh and the laughing weep,
When the dying live, and the living die,
For something is singing that’s stronger than I,
Like the sun or the rain or the earth or the sky,
While the sleeping wake and the waking sleep.
This is a song of forgotten things,
The flowers of summer, the hush of the snow,
The millions of glorious, golden springs That blossomed and faded and died long ago.
It’s a song that was made when the earth was begun
Of the dances we dance and the races we run,
Of the laughter and tears that will never be done
And the millions of things that we never will know.
Where did that come from? I asked myself in bewilderment. At the age of twelve I couldn’t have understood such concepts. Was it possible that they had seeped over from a previous personality who had “thought through all her teachings” and “been very strong in the belief of her own knowing”? In his book Dr. Weiss had cited studies by Dr. Ian Stevenson, professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who had collected over two thousand case histories of young children who displayed reincarnation-type memories. A number of those children were able to speak foreign languages to which they had never been exposed, an ability Dr. Stevenson attributed to learning that had been acquired in previous lifetimes.
Most of those past-life memories had faded before puberty, as had the promise of genius I had shown as a child. By the time I reached adolescence I was a typical teenage girl with an unremarkable IQ, and an eye for good-looking boys. The only two things that set me apart from my peers were my driving desire to be published and the fact that I knew with certainty that I would have five children.
“Betty’s reading says that my purpose in this lifetime is to give out my ‘truths’ through the media,” I told Don that evening. “I’m going to write a book about Kait’s murder.”
“I’m sure you will,” he said.
“I’m going to start it now.”
“How can you write it now? You don’t have an ending.”
“The ending will come,” I said. “I’ll just write until it does.”
That night as I lay in bed, willing morning to come quickly so I could get up and start working, I thought about what the reading had said about my children. Their past-life personalities were clearly defined, yet all had the power to move beyond those identities. Even Kait could still grow, as she watched from another dimension and learned that the people to be trusted were the people who loved you.
My renegade baby—my student—my rebellious young warrior! I had no doubt now who the green-eyed boy in my dream had been.
16
WHEN I GOT UP the next morning I was pleased to find that I was sane again. How could I ever have considered driving off a bridge! As soon as Don and Donnie left for work, I rushed to the bedroom I used as an office, inserted a disc in my computer, and began to type: “Our daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette, was murdered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday, July 16, 1989. They got her at night.”
Although it was emotionally draining to set our story on paper, the writing itself was not difficult, because the chapters were already laid out for me. I had kept meticulous records of everything that had happened and by now had fifty-three pages of single-spaced notes. I also had dated copies of all Betty’s readings, newspaper articles arranged in chronological order, and a drawerful of tapes of all our phone conversations since the death threats, including those we’d had with members of the Homicide Department. There was no way I could get any facts wrong or misquote anybody.
“Is it legal to record phone conversations without the other party knowing?” Don asked doubtfully.
“It must be,” I said. “The police are the ones who told us to do it.”
As I watched the story unfolding chapter by chapter, it became increasingly apparent to me that the police were not following up on anything we’d told them. It had been three months since Sergeant Lowe had said Barbara Cantwell would be calling us, and we still hadn’t heard from her. I wrote another letter to the FBI in Orange County, asking their help in investigating the car-wreck scam, and, as before, they didn’t respond.
In May I took a break from my book to fly to Dallas to celebrate Erin’s fifth birthday. While I was there, Kerry confided to me that for most of her life she had been having a recurring past-life death dream.
“I died in Auschwitz,” she said. “In the dream I’m standing in the queue, waiting to be taken to the showers.”
My second daughter had a tendency to be overdramatic.
“I think your imagination’s working overtime,” I said.
“I’ve always felt Jewish,” she said. “Remember back in high school when I told you I wanted to convert to Judaism and you wouldn’t let me?”
“Sixteen was too young for such a major decision,” I said defensively. “You wanted to convert because you had so many Jewish friends, and you loved going over to their houses for all the celebrations. Chanukah lasted seven times longer than Christmas, and they got more presents than you did.”
“It went deeper than that,” Kerry insisted. “I kept choosing Jews for friends, because I felt so comfortable around them, and all their prayers and traditions felt so right and familiar. So, of course, I married a Jew.”
“A fallen-away Jew. Ken doesn’t even observe the High Holy Days.”
“Things have changed,” Kerry said. “He’s attending services now, and we do Shabbat on Fridays. Wait until you hear the girls recite the shehecheyanu!”
That night I was introduced to the Jewish Sabbath. We ate at a table set with Ken and Kerry’s good china and dined on kugel and home-baked challah, and I saw my son-in-law in a whole new light as he lit the Shabbat candles and led his family in prayer.
“Blessed is the Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, for giving us life, for sustaining us,” the children intoned in sweet, soft voices before lunging for the challah.
Before I left, Kerry told me she was converting to Judaism.
“For my Hebrew name I’ve chosen ‘Keshes,’ ” she said. “That means ‘rainbow.’ I chose it because of the rainbow that appeared over our house the day of Kait’s funeral.”
“Won’t your belief in reincarnation be a problem?” I asked her.
“I’ve discussed that with our rabbi, and she says there’s no conflict,” Kerry assured me. “Judaism doesn’t promote a belief in reincarnation, but it doesn’t reject it either. Our rabbi also told me she’s had visitations from the dead, and she doesn’t have any doubts about their validity.”
When I got back to Albuquerque, Don told me that he had been trying without success to get back the correspondence from Kait’s desk
“First Sergeant Lowe said I could pick everything up,” he said. “Then Gallegos said I couldn’t. Then the sergeant said I could have everything back except some letters. Now Gallegos tells me that everything has been tagged as evidence, and we can’t get any of it back until after the trial.”
“If they’re calling the shooting ‘random,’ how can Kait’s things be evidence?”
“I have no idea,” Don said. “It’s been ten months now, and th
ey haven’t even looked at the stuff. I asked Gallegos if they’ve translated the Vietnamese letters, and he said, no, they don’t see any reason for doing that.”
“They must be holding those letters to keep us from having them,” I said. “They know that if we get them we’ll have them translated ourselves, and there might be something in them to implicate Dung and his friends.”
Mike had given me the name of Mary Martinez, the head of the Crime Victims Alliance in New Mexico, as someone to call if we had questions about legal procedures. Now I phoned her and asked what our rights were in this situation.
“The law says you have a statutory right to have your daughter’s possessions returned to you unless APD has a ‘compelling’ reason for keeping them,” Mary told me. “The problem comes with interpreting the term compelling. The police can say, ‘We need these things for the trial,’ and they’re not required to tell you what use they’re going to make of them.”
“A reporter friend has suggested they may be editing the file,” I said.
“They could be,” Mary said. “Everything the DA gets must be shared with the defense. The police would want to get every bit of information out of that file that might be used to work in favor of the suspects.”
“But isn’t that illegal?”
“Of course, but it’s done every day. When the cops take notes, those notes are their personal property and they can pick and choose what they want to write up for the record. If something comes up in an interview that doesn’t support their scenario, there’s nothing to prevent them from leaving it out of the report. That way they can shape the case into anything they want it to be.”
“What if my husband and I went directly to the DA?” I asked.
“That depends on which DA is handling your case.”
“It’s Susan Riedel.”
“The little bit I’ve dealt with Riedel, I’ve found her to be ethical,” Mary said, “so she probably would do what she’s supposed to do and share everything you tell her with the defense. And even if that’s the right thing, you may not want it, because chances are the result won’t be what you’re hoping for. The defense will grab on to this Vietnamese angle and run with it, and since the cops aren’t willing to make the effort to try to prove murder-for-hire, the men who quite probably shot your daughter will walk.”
“But all we want is the truth!”
“As far as the law is concerned, the truth just complicates things,” Mary said. “It’s the duty of the defense attorneys to get their clients off, and to do that all they need is to raise a ‘reasonable doubt.’ It’s their job to take the truth and twist it around. It’s amazing to see how tiny bits of information can be warped in front of a jury to make them think something entirely different happened.”
“What if we hired a private detective?” I suggested. “Then we could play the same game as the police and give the DA only the information that points to murder-for-hire.”
“That could backfire on you,” Mary said. “The defense can subpoena the detective and bring out all the things you don’t want divulged.”
“So this is how the justice system works in America!”
“It’s deplorable, and there isn’t any way to fight it. If you try, you’ll be labeled a mental case. ‘Isn’t it too bad about Lois Arquette! You know, that tragic experience has really affected her. Look how paranoid she is now. Look how negative she is toward the law-enforcement agencies. That poor, demented woman is so pathetic!’ ”
I was too depressed to discuss that subject any further.
“Do you think we will ever get Kait’s things back?”
“You can give it a try,” Mary said. “Put the request in writing. Write a formal letter saying that when there is no longer a ‘compelling’ reason for those things to be held, you want them returned to you. Send copies to everybody at APD. Send a copy to your lawyer. Address a copy to the evidence room, and specify that you want it to be attached to the evidence tag, so your daughter’s things won’t be ‘inadvertently destroyed.’
“I wish I’d known enough to do that myself. When my teenage son was murdered, all his things that had been marked as evidence were thrown out—just dumped in the trash—between the trial and the appeal.”
As if that wasn’t enough, on May 29, Mike called to tell me that he still had not been able to turn up an accident report on Kait’s car wreck. He did, however, have a copy of the report on Dung’s wreck on August 15, 1988.
“The ‘accident’ took place in Santa Ana,” Mike said. “It was an insurance scam from the word go. Dung rear-ended a vehicle filled with Vietnamese gang members, and all of them were taken to Humana Hospital complaining of neck injuries. Dung was driving a privately owned car, a Plymouth Sundance with California plates, registered in the name of An Le.”
“An is Dung’s alibi for the night Kait was shot!” I exclaimed. “He’s also one of the two men who was with him when he stabbed himself!”
“And he’s the cousin of Bao Tran, the paralegal who sets up the car wrecks,” Mike told me. “Tran used to work for a lawyer named Minh Nguyen Duy at a law office in Garden Grove, but he apparently switched jobs right after Kait’s murder. He’s now vice-president of some sort of bedding company. I’m trying to get his home address and phone number. I’d like to see if they match up with what we have for Van Hong Phuc, which would mean he’s the person who was called from Kait’s apartment as soon as she was pronounced dead.”
“How do you know he set up the wrecks?” I asked him.
“I got that from Ray, Dung’s Hispanic friend,” Mike said. “Ray also claimed that An is a big-time cocaine dealer. Dung fed Ray the same line he did Kait about having a sister in L.A. who provided him with money. He also bragged to Ray about the insurance scam. Ray told me that a year ago August, Tran and two other Vietnamese men, all decked out in three-piece suits, came to Albuquerque in a big black car and drove Dung and An back to California to stage wrecks.”
“If you could get the accident report on Dung, why can’t you get the one on Kait?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Mike said. “It just doesn’t seem to be on file anywhere. Since she rented the car with your credit card, maybe you can find out about it. Why don’t you call the people at Snappy Cars and tell them you’re having problems getting insurance coverage for Kait? You could say the company’s boosting the rates, because they say she’s high risk, and you want to know if she had a wreck in their car.”
“Why do I have to lie? Can’t I just play it straight with them?”
“You do that, and you’ve blown it,” Mike said. “You know what their reaction would be—‘If this is for real, why haven’t the police been in touch with us?’ This will only work if you play it really cool, Lois.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, but I knew I couldn’t do it. When the people at Snappy asked me the obvious question—“Why don’t you ask your daughter if she was involved in a wreck?”—I wouldn’t be able to keep from bursting into tears.
The following day I flew to Las Vegas, Nevada, to meet Robin and help man her audiocassette booth at the national convention of the American Booksellers Association. When I checked into the hotel, I found a message that Robin had missed connections and wouldn’t be able to get a flight in until morning. We had planned to have dinner and take in a show on the Strip that night, but I didn’t feel up to an evening on the town by myself, so I ate in the hotel coffee shop and went to bed early.
Normally, I am a light sleeper, conscious of everything—rattling rainspouts, cat fights, the sound of Don’s snoring—but that night, in a lumpy bed in a second-rate hotel, with roars of drunken hilarity floating up from the casino, I slept as though in a coma and woke up in the morning with Kait’s distinctive voice ringing in my ears:
“THE CAR THEY TOOK SOUTH WAS THE WATCH CAR—THE BEIGE VW!”
The beige VW went south? That doesn’t make sense!
It was true that a beige VW had been seen near the murder sit
e, but Juve Escobedo’s car had been a gold Camaro.
And the three Hispanics had apparently never left Albuquerque. For me that had been the stumbling block in Betty’s second reading. She had said that the killers had spread themselves out in a triangle—one going south with the car, one going west, and the third—“the one with the least guilt in all this”—going northeast in the direction of Chicago. I had read that at first as a reference to Dung and his cronies, but in a later reading she had identified the Hispanics as the triggermen.
“THE CAR THEY TOOK SOUTH—”
My heart crashed into my ribs, as another piece of the puzzle tumbled into place. The reading had not been wrong; I had misinterpreted it! I had consolidated two sections that should have been viewed separately!
By the time I met Robin at the airport, I was so excited that I blurted everything out while we stood waiting for her luggage.
“I had this dream, but it wasn’t a dream!” I found myself inadvertently using the same words that Donnie had when he phoned me at the Cape Cod Writers Conference. “In the dream Kait said there was a second car involved in the shooting! The Camaro may have been the hit car, but the VW was the scout car!”
“But the reading said—”
“I asked two different questions in that reading. First, ‘What may I know about the circumstances of Kaitlyn’s killing … about the car and any people involved?’ The answer to that was a literal description of what Kait saw during the final moments of her life ‘just before she will have departed.’ A low rider pulling up next to her. Two heads in the front and one in the back. A rifle or long-barreled pistol ‘like the handle of a plastic brush’ protruding from the car window. That coincides exactly with what the police say happened.