Who Killed My Daughter?

  “Who did she see?” I asked, trying to remain calm.

  “The guy I heard talking about it didn’t give a name.”

  “Tell the police,” I said. “They won’t listen to us.”

  “They record their calls. I don’t want my voice on tape.”

  “Then call Mike Gallagher at the Journal. I’ll get you his number.”

  My own recorder was hooked to the phone in my office, but, as luck would have it, I had taken this call in the kitchen. Now, I raced to the other extension, punched the record button, and snatched up the receiver, to be greeted by the dial tone.

  The man had hung up.

  I was shaken by that phone call, not only because the man had sounded so sure of himself, but because what he told me seemed to confirm what Noreen had said about Kait’s activities on the night she was shot. Betty, also, had told us, “There will be this which [Kait] will have done just that night …” and, in another reading, “There will be this that is felt as an occurrence that evening, a visit incomplete and information incompleted, a clue she was looking for missing and no cooperation.”

  Still, I could see no way that Kait could have gone “snooping” anywhere that night. Every minute of her time appeared to be accounted for.

  I dragged out the well-worn police file and began to reread it. In an interview Gallegos had conducted with Susan Smith, I found a piece of information that had previously slipped past me:

  Smith said … the victim went to her parents’ house for dinner. … [Kait] came to [Smith’s] home at about 2130 hours and they sat around her home talking for a while.

  I wasn’t used to thinking in terms of military time, and the number 2130 had made no impression on me. Now I realized it translated into “nine-thirty P.M.” Kait had lied when she told us she was eating at Susan’s, and she had lied to Susan when she told her she had eaten at our house! She had set herself up with an overlapping, two-sided alibi to give herself three secret hours in which to do something she didn’t want any of us to know about.

  I turned back to an earlier section of the report that contained a statement that had been incorrectly attributed to me by Gallegos: “Mrs. Arquette said her daughter had eaten dinner at her home earlier in the evening and then left, saying she was going to visit a friend.” I had discounted that inaccuracy as a careless but innocent misquote and had not considered it important enough to take issue with, but now I could see that it camouflaged a three-hour time gap.

  I wrote to Noreen and asked her to concentrate her next session on finding out where Kait had been during those three missing hours. I also told her that Kait had been an organ donor and gave her the name and address of the man who had her heart and lungs. We couldn’t very well ask him to fly to Florida so Noreen could do her next reading with her hand on his chest, but perhaps she had the ability to zero in long distance and draw some residue of Kait’s energy from her hand-me-down organs.

  I wasn’t aware that Noreen had done her second reading until it was over and I received the recording in the mail:

  NOREEN: This is Gwen and Noreen. It’s November 27, 1990—in the evening. I want to work on the case for Lois Duncan involving Kait. Her heart’s still here and her lungs. Her heart … her lungs … her heart …

  I’m still alive! Gwen, take me to where you want me to go.

  GWEN: We’re interested in the night you were killed. You left home saying you were going to Susan’s house. We need to know what happened between the time you left home and the time you got to Susan’s.

  NOREEN: I went up the hill toward the north to that big place up there—walls of some sort around parts of it—not all of it, because there’s a lot of land up there. I go up there. There’s a man. …

  GWEN: Are you alone?

  NOREEN: I’m alone when I’m driving.

  GWEN: Are you driving your car?

  NOREEN: I’m driving my car. No, wait a minute—am I driving my car? I am at first, but I’m meeting somebody. I’m meeting somebody at a shopping center with a C in it. I park my car and get into his. His has got a four-wheel drive.

  GWEN: Was he expecting you?

  NOREEN: We had plans to meet to go to this—I want to call it the Desert Castle.

  GWEN: How well do you know this person you are with?

  NOREEN: We’ve been friends—or maybe more.

  GWEN: Tell us more about this person.

  NOREEN: He’s sort of … Mother wouldn’t like him.

  GWEN: Does she know him?

  MOREEN: She’s met him maybe once or twice. But I could see her disapproval.

  GWEN: Did you have a romantic relationship with this person?

  NOREEN: Yes.

  GWEN: Does it continue?

  NOREEN: Without her knowing, yes.

  GWEN: And so it was prearranged to meet at this spot?

  NOREEN: Yes.

  GWEN: And you had an appointment at the Desert Castle?

  NOREEN: Yes.

  GWEN: Upon your arrival at the Castle, how are you greeted?

  NOREEN: There seem to be a lot of other cars. It’s a semicircle driveway. There’s an important person there that I’m not supposed to know is there. I promise I won’t tell. They let me go. I shouldn’t have been there at that time, because the other person came and didn’t know I was coming. It’s a person I wasn’t supposed to see or know about. And I see him. And I see his car. It’s concealed to some extent, because of the circular driveway. It’s a big, long car. It’s black, dark.

  GWEN: Had you seen it before?

  NOREEN: No, I had just heard about this person.

  GWEN: Had you met him before? Did you know who he was?

  NOREEN: I knew him from the town—we’re not in town now. I know who he is. He’s the person in the other picture I drew that they don’t recognize. I can identify this person. He’s a very powerful person with this group of people that I shouldn’t have been hanging out with.

  GWEN: What happened at the Desert Castle?

  NOREEN: Things are happening there. I shouldn’t have gone at that time. There are people there. There are things happening there when we get there that I shouldn’t have seen. I shouldn’t have been there. It was not the right time.

  I just want to get out. I don’t want any more to do with it.

  I don’t know why everybody seems so mad at me. There’s an argument of some sort. I tell them there’s a friend I have to meet. Once I get back, I still have a little way to drive. It’s important. I have a friend to meet.

  I tell the people at the Desert Castle my friend is expecting me, I have to leave. So I get to leave, but everyone seems to be angry with me.

  GWEN: Tell us about the argument.

  NOREEN: The argument was just … I told them people knew I was coming there … they expected me back for dinner … that they knew I was going there. I lied. No one knew I was going there. I lied about … several things to several people. I’m sorry I lied.

  GWEN: How long were you there?

  NOREEN: Maybe an hour and a half.

  GWEN: How did your male friend act while you were there? Toward you and toward the other people?

  NOREEN: He’s mad at me. He seems to be mad at me. I don’t know why he’s so mad at me.

  I go. I go with my friend. I calm down. I’m okay. He drops me at the mall, and I get in my own car and go to my girlfriend’s house. When I leave there, I’m killed.

  GWEN: Driving?

  NOREEN: Yes.

  GWEN: How far from your friend’s house had you gotten?

  NOREEN: I was followed before that. Because the people knew where I was going. I told them I was going there. I think someone was sent after me. Someone followed me. I felt fear and danger when I left the hill. I met my friend. I tried to act as normal as possible. She was in a good mood. I leave her—and I’m cut off.

  GWEN: What do you want to tell us about that? Concerning how many people were in the other vehicle?

  NOREEN: I only see two. I was cut off. They?
??re coming to both sides of the car. They want me to roll the window down.

  GWEN: Are you still driving?

  NOREEN: No, I’ve stopped. They’ve cut me off.

  GWEN: Who are these people?

  NOREEN: People sent from the hill.

  GWEN: What is your conversation with them when they approach the car?

  NOREEN: Just “Roll down your window.” I’m shot. Execution style.

  GWEN: Do you see any weapons?

  NOREEN: I see a gun. I see a silencer on it—this big thing on the end of it.

  GWEN: Do you have any feeling about what prompted this?

  NOREEN: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I saw someone I shouldn’t have seen. I saw things I shouldn’t have seen. They had to make sure there was no way I would ever talk, and this was a way of silencing me. The crime that was committed against me was to silence me.

  I will never be silenced! I’m not a bad person! I was just young and I just was curious about life and people and things, and excitement and people in exciting positions were interesting to me. I was good! I was a good daughter to you, Mother! I told you almost everything. Almost.

  GWEN: Is there anything more you’d like to tell your mother now that you didn’t before?

  NOREEN: Don’t stop what you’re doing. Just remember the police have fear. These are very powerful people who are involved. You may not be able to prove a lot of what you write or say, but those involved will know it’s the truth. The police are frightened. They don’t want anything to do with all of this. They want to mark it up as something, different than it is and not to go beyond that. They have somebody to convict. They want to let it go at that.

  GWEN: Besides the things you saw that night that you shouldn’t have seen, did you hear anything in particular that you shouldn’t have heard?

  NOREEN: [her voice rises in a tone of anger and frustration:] It wasn’t what I heard, it was who I saw! It was who I saw—who I saw—who I saw!

  GWEN: Is there anything in particular you would like to tell your best friend?

  NOREEN: My best friend would be my mother.

  GWEN: Is there anything you’d want to tell Susan or your boyfriend?

  NOREEN: I’m mad at my boyfriend. I’m still mad at him. My girlfriend—I love her.

  GWEN: Will you be continuing to help your mother with this case?

  NOREEN: I still live. [Long pause] Yes … yes.

  The tape ended, and I continued to sit without moving, too emotionally drained to get up from my chair. Hearing Kait’s words, uttered with Kait’s inflections, by the husky voice of a middle-aged stranger, had been the most bizarre experience of my life. And they were Kait’s words. I didn’t have the slightest doubt of that. The “shopping mall with a C in it” was Coronado Center, the largest mall in Albuquerque, only blocks from our home. And how many teenagers other than Kait addressed their mothers as “Mother”? All her friends had called their mothers “Mom.” Even the flowery term Desert Castle sounded right to me, since Kait had had a tendency toward romantic exaggeration. The outburst of irritation had been familiar to me also—“It wasn’t what I heard—it was who I saw—who I saw—who I saw!” I knew without having to hear it the accusatory statement that would naturally have followed: “Mother, you’re just not listening! Don’t you ever pay attention?”

  Who was the man Kait saw at the house in the mountains? And who was the alternate love interest who had driven her up there, a person I hadn’t approved of and had met once or twice? Which of Kait’s many past boyfriends had I seen so infrequently? Usually they’d settled in like members of the family.

  My mind flew back to the very first boy Kait ever dated. His name had been Rod, and she had brought him over two times. I’d tried to discourage the relationship, because Rod was too old for her, a former high-school dropout who had returned for a degree. I’d been afraid he would take advantage of Kait’s starry-eyed romanticism, and as it turned out, I was right to be concerned. She had bought him a silver bracelet with their names engraved on it and, the very same day she gave it to him, had discovered that he was involved with another girl.

  She had cried herself to sleep that night, and as far as I knew, she’d never dated Rod again.

  But that had been four whole years ago, it couldn’t be Rod. Perhaps it was Tuan, whose number had appeared in her phone directory? But, no—I’d met Tuan more than twice. How often had I met Khanh? And what about Nam? Would Kait have been foolish enough to confide in one of Dung’s friends? It was hard to imagine, but I wouldn’t have put anything past her at that point in her life. According to Betty, Kait had “trusted all the wrong people” and “exposed herself at every turn,” so who knew where she might have turned for emotional support?

  The phone rang, and I reached automatically to answer it. It was the psychologist friend who had given me Many Lives, Many Masters, calling to tell me about the success she’d been having using past life regression to help certain patients discover the roots of their phobias.

  Any other time I would have been eager to hear about this, but at that moment I needed to talk myself. Interrupting her in midsentence, I poured out everything that had been happening, including Noreen’s description of Kait’s “Desert Castle.”

  “I think I know where that is,” my friend said. “There’s a mansion that fits that description near the base of the mountain trail where my husband and I go hiking. It’s the closest thing to a ‘castle’ I’ve seen in New Mexico.”

  “How do I get there?” I asked, and she gave me directions. If it hadn’t been late in the day, I would have gone right then, but in November the night comes early, and I didn’t like the idea of being caught in the foothills after dark.

  I decided to postpone my search for the Castle until morning.

  23

  I FOUND THE MEDITERRANEAN mansion without any difficulty, although the distance from Kait’s death site was much more than twelve miles.

  It sat, nestled in the foothills, overlooking the city of Albuquerque, exactly as Noreen had described it, with the Sandia Mountains a snowcapped backdrop.

  I parked my car a little way down the dirt road, slung my camera around my neck, and approached the building by way of a rocky footpath on the north side. The gate was locked, and I didn’t see any sign of life; no cars were parked in the courtyard or in the circular driveway.

  I climbed over the gate and walked across the courtyard. When nobody appeared to confront me, I continued on under the archway and up the tiled stairs to the bronze-mounted doors of the main building. The term castle suited the place perfectly, and it even had four outbuildings, including an animal house and a cabana for the swimming pool.

  I peered in through the windows and saw that the residence was furnished, but there was a feeling of vacancy about it, with deck chairs blown over by the wind; scum in the swimming pool, and tumbleweeds lying in drifts among the marble statuary.

  I decided that if I hadn’t already set off a silent alarm I was probably safe enough, so I strolled through the grounds, snapping pictures from every angle. Then I climbed back over the gate and drove back to town, where I had two sets of prints made, one to show Don, and the other to send to Noreen.

  When I got back to the town house, I found a message on my answering machine to phone Barbara Adams, secretarial assistant to the psychic Nancy Czetli.

  “Nancy got your letter,” Barbara told me when I returned her call. “The moment she opened the envelope she got this big rush of fear for you. She got some very strong feelings about what happened to your daughter. She feels your daughter was killed because she observed drug transactions. Nancy feels there’s a drug runner involved who was crossing state lines and was involved in a transaction with some sort of VIP. Nancy says to tell you you’re playing with fire and to be real careful.”

  “Will Nancy be willing to work with us to find out more?” I asked.

  “Nancy doesn’t like to work directly with families,” Barbara said. “The
request has to come from the police.”

  “There’s no way we can get the police involved in this,” I said. “They won’t consider anything except ‘random shooting.’ ”

  “Typically Nancy does not work with families,” Barbara said. “Their emotional involvement can get in the way of her objectivity. Another problem is, she may be able to tell you who the killer is, but you won’t be able to do a damned thing with the information. You can’t go into a court of law and say, ‘This is what a psychic says,’ so it can’t be used as evidence. When she works in conjunction with the police, she gives them leads, and they physically follow up on them to establish proof.”

  “APD won’t do that,” I said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  Then Barbara said, “If that’s the way it is, I don’t suppose the police would furnish you with photos of the crime scene?”

  “No,” I said, “but we have them on a videocassette. Our oldest son taped the television news shows.”

  “Let me check back with Nancy and get her reaction,” said Barbara.

  The following day she called back.

  “Nancy says get out of the way before they get you next,” she said. “She says what you’ve got to do is try to get the system to do the work for you. She is really concerned that you don’t keep pushing on your own. There’s heavy-duty drug traffic going across state lines and well-to-do people are involved—be real careful of that—she’s real concerned, she says leave that alone.

  “What you want is to get the FBI involved. Do you have proof that the police have removed stuff from the files and that sort of thing? If the police are saying to the FBI, ‘We’ll handle this, stay out of it,’ then your hands are tied unless you can prove shoddy police work or a possible cover-up. Then they can get involved in the case.”

  “We can’t do that unless we have more information,” I said.

  After another exchange via Barbara, Nancy did break down and agree to work with us directly, but only if I promised not to pursue things she told me not to follow up on.

  “She doesn’t want to be responsible for your being killed,” Barbara said. “She’s really concerned about that.”