by Kate Gable
I know that if he's getting away with doing something to his wife, he must think that I'm a fool, inexperienced, someone who will never get to the bottom of what's going on. I have that to my advantage. Now, I just have to use it.
"Thank you for coming in, Mr. Kaslar."
"Robert, please," he says.
We shake hands and I point to the sturdy metal chair with a straight back for him to sit in.
I arrive right on time and don't make him wait long. I may use time to my advantage later on when I want him to think about something that I reveal in the interrogation, but for now, I don't want to make him wait. I want to show him that I appreciate him taking the time to meet with me.
"I have to be at work at nine, ten at the latest."
"Okay. Then we'll be brief."
There's a cup of coffee in front of him, which I'm certain the deputy brought in. It has the same familiar branding on the front, moose and the antlers from the local coffee shop just around the corner.
It's much better than the kind that the assistants and the front desk people make here in the department usually reserved for special and honorary guests like Robert.
I open the file demonstratively in front of him, even though I have memorized every detail in it. I want him to see how big it is and to acknowledge the fact that his wife is actually missing, and we are actually investigating it.
Unlike back at his house, Robert doesn't appear to be nervous. He's not wearing a beanie on his head. His hair is freshly washed and so is his face. He's wearing a button-down shirt with an unwrinkled collar, something that he either ironed or had taken a lot of effort in keeping unwrinkled. The shirt has a checkered pattern of blue and white and he's wearing a pair of khakis, the uniform of a computer scientist.
"So, what do you want to ask me?" he asks, folding his hands in front of me and looking straight into my eyes.
I wonder where all of this confidence is suddenly coming from.
Does he know something that we don't? Is he certain that we will never find out?
"I want to go over your testimony again about how your wife went missing."
"Yeah, sure. If you want to waste more time," he says nonchalantly, but keeping his gaze straight on me.
"You think it's a waste of time?"
"Yes. I think it's an insane waste of time. I told you everything that I know." Suddenly, he is fired up, irritated, on edge, and the way it happened, it was like a light switch. One minute calm, the next, pissed off.
“There are certain inconsistencies.”
"Like what?" he snaps.
"Like the fact that you said you weren't aware of the fact that your wife was pregnant. Your wife was, let's say, obsessed with having a child, but you?”
"I already told you I didn't really want to, but if she wanted to, that was fine by me."
"Despite the fact that you just had a baby with your girlfriend?"
"I don't want to talk about that.” He clenches his jaw. "I'm here to talk about my wife. My personal life has nothing to do with this."
"Actually, I would disagree with that statement, wholeheartedly."
"I don't care," he snaps again. His nostrils flare and his eyes narrow.
I wait for him to make a move to say something else, but he seems to calm himself down. "Look, my wife found out I was having an affair. Big deal. Our relationship was off the rails way before that happened, okay? She said she wanted to have a baby. Well, we never had sex. Like once every two, three months if I was lucky. You don't do that if you want to have a baby, right? My wife had a lot of issues. She wanted to do IVF, okay?"
"So, you knew about that?"
"Yes."
"You didn't mention that before," I point out. "I don't know what you know, Robert, please. I just need you to tell me as much as you can. It'll be easier for both of us during this process."
"I'm sorry that I lied about the affair," he says after a long pause. "It was stupid. I shouldn't have done it."
"The affair or the lie?"
He hesitates but says, "Both, but that has nothing to do with my wife's disappearance, okay? I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't there when she came home from her business trip. You know that. You must have gotten some sort of footage from the neighbors, right?"
I nod but reveal nothing.
"What about the cameras on the back? You said that there were cameras. Did you see her leave? Did you get any details about what might have happened or are you still processing those?"
Suddenly caught off guard by his question I respond, “The truth is that there are no cameras to process.” So, therefore, I have no idea if she ever went out that way or if he ever took her out that way.
"Well, whatever. I don't know what happened. Elin was the last person to see her. She said that she came into the house. So, I guess that's what happened. I was working late. She wasn't here. I didn't get home until the morning. So, I don't know what you expect me to know, but I don't know a thing."
I inhale slowly and exhale even slower. He's very good at this. The guy that I met at his apartment was sketchy, out of control, and shy.
Now he seems like a completely different person. Is it because we're recording the session?
Is it because he wants to appear like an outraged husband?
Is it because he actually has no idea where his wife went?
"What do you think happened?" I ask, folding my hands in front of him and intertwining my fingers. "We're out of ideas."
"Already? You're the LAPD, how can you be out of ideas?"
"We've interviewed, simple as that. We interviewed her friends, canvassed the neighborhood, talked to your neighbors. She's gone. So, unless you give us something to go on or someone to talk to.”
“What about her parents? What did her parents say?" he asks.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I say.
“They have no idea. They live in South Carolina,” he barks. A little droplet of spit lands on my cheek and I wipe it off and glare at him.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't spit on me," I say.
"Listen, I'm just upset," he says, leaning over the table.
It takes all of my strength not to pull away from him and remain exactly where I am despite the fact that he's invading my personal space. "I don't know where my wife is, okay? I want you to find her. I didn't tell you about my affair because we all know that it looks bad. She caught me. I have a child. I want to leave her, okay? I was going to leave her."
"What if she was pregnant?"
"I don't know. It'd be a miracle if she were. So what?"
“So what? He or she’ll be your baby.”
"Yeah, but I don't want to be with her anymore. I want to be with my girlfriend and my baby. So, if the paternity test says that the baby's mine, then I'll accept the child as my own. Pay child support, do visitation, whatever."
This catches me by surprise, but I decide to just go with it.
"Let's go back to her parents. They don't like you very much, do they?"
"Yeah. They don't. They never have."
"They mentioned that you haven't visited them for the last few Christmases," I point out, quoting verbatim from the interview that another detective had conducted with them.
"Yeah. So what? I don't have much time off and I didn't want to waste it flying over there and spending time with people I don't like. She went by herself."
"They seem pretty convinced that you have something to do with their daughter's disappearance."
"Listen, Danila and Brad have hated me for years, okay? They never wanted us to get married. They never wanted to get to know me. They always tried to poison our relationship. I was putting up with it, but I wasn't going to make any extra effort. Not on her behalf anyway."
"Why? She's your wife."
"Every time she would talk to her mom, we'd get into a huge fight, okay? Her mom was pressuring her to have children way before she was ready. Making her feel bad about how old she is and how everyone her age has
children. All of that crap that women think. In reality, my wife, she didn't want to have kids at all, not for years. That was fine with me. We would have been happily married for many years if her parents hadn’t gotten themselves so involved in our lives." He sits back in the chair and takes a few big gulps of his coffee.
I regroup. I look through the file to try to think of a different way to approach this conversation. He has revealed some additional clues, but we're nowhere near to getting to the real answers.
"Listen, I have to go," he says, looking at his watch.
"We're not through with this conversation," I say.
"That may be the case, but I am, okay? I came in here. I talked to you on three separate occasions. I think that's enough."
"It's not, I have a lot of things to still discuss with you."
"I'm tired of going in circles, okay? You don't seem to understand. I had nothing to do with my wife's disappearance and the more time that you focus on me, the less time that she has."
I listen for past tense and I listen for any clues as to the fact that he might think that she's no longer here, but I don't hear anything.
"I would like you to stay longer, please. I'll get right to the point. I have a few more questions."
"I can't. I told you how much time I had."
"This isn't a request," I say, getting desperate.
"Yes, it is.” He stands up. "Unless you are putting me under arrest. You're asking me to stay and I'm not missing work because of this crap." He stands up and walks to the door. He waits for me to stop him, but he and I both know that I can't.
"Next time you want to talk to me, you call my lawyer," he says, putting the metaphorical nail in the coffin.
He walks out of the interrogation room and I see the case slipping between my fingers.
23
After a somewhat disastrous interview, I lick my wounds over lunch. Early lunch, it's barely eleven, but my stomach is growling since I haven't had anything substantial to eat since the night before. Much to my surprise, my phone goes off. When I look down at the screen, I see that it's Mark.
I had programmed his phone number from his card into my phone just in case he ever called without really expecting him to. I'm tempted to let it go to voice mail, but then I click accept.
He invites me out for drinks after work for happy hour. I know that I should go back to Big Bear, but all of the driving is wearing me down. I need a break. Just someone who doesn't work in law enforcement. I need to talk about something different, be with someone different.
When he asks me out, I just say yes. I have a whole afternoon until our meeting, so I decide to drive up to Reseda to talk to Robert's girlfriend. I don't know if I'm going to get any answers, but she's the one person I haven't spoken to yet. I wonder what details she can shed on this whole situation.
I check in with Captain Medvil and he approves the move, even though he's still upset with me for not getting through everything we needed to cover with Robert earlier. The thing about this job is that everything is in delicate balance. You really have only one, or at most a few opportunities to get a confession. In this case, we don't have a body. We don't even have much evidence that she didn't leave of her own free will. So, everything seems to be pinned on that elusive confession.
The general public thinks that confessions are either something that only guilty people admit to, but there's a long history in criminology of detectives getting innocent people to confess to crimes they didn't commit. It's easier and it's much more common than you think.
It starts with admitting that you were there. After hours of interrogation, maybe you could be there. Maybe you just forgot.
Once the suspect admits to that and places himself at the scene, then it's easier for you to nitpick and get him to confess to other things. I would go so far as to say that no detective wants a false confession, but that doesn't mean they don't want a confession.
In certain circumstances, you just believe that someone did something. You see through the evidence. Sometimes the evidence is meager, or light, and other times, there's just still not enough of it, no matter how much there is.
The confession seals the deal. It presents the case for the prosecutor on a silver platter, so to speak. All detectives want to close cases and solve crimes.
Zigzagging up the narrow Laurel Canyon road, I admire the houses perched on the cliff sides and their precarious existence, despite the mudslides and the rains that occasionally take one or two of them out every year.
This was always one of my dream places to live. Hollywood Hills is very similar, but this is the canyon that I always drive when I try to get to the valley. There’re even a few houses that cost about $5 million each that I can't help but dream about. I'll never own a house like that, not as long as I have this job. Wait, let me correct myself. Not as long as I am an honest cop.
When I first got started, the precinct by MacArthur Park in downtown LA got shut down. They actually had a sting operation with a few undercover cops taking down their coworkers, that entire precinct or, very nearly all of it, consisted of corrupt cops who dealt drugs and used their shields for protection to gangsters and the mob.
One of them actually had a house in the Hollywood Hills and another one. If you lived in Calabasas, all the property was registered in the names of their wives or children or close friends, but everyone knew what was going on, at least after the sting operation.
I get to Reseda in no time flat, due to hitting practically every green light and encountering very little traffic. The house is located on a little treelined street with cars parked out in front instead of in garages. This is an older area, and the houses have a historic craftsman quality to them, while others are just low-level construction popular in the '70s. Very few had garages at that time and very few were required to have attached garages.
I park in front of Margaret Layne’s house and note the giant red rose bushes spilling over the white picket fence that's freshly painted and clearly loved. It looks like a lovely little house, in a picturesque little town, in a Hollywood movie, rather than in a bedroom community attached to so many others in Los Angeles.
There's no way to get to the front door except to open the gate. I walk through the rose garden and knock on the bright blue door. There's no doorbell, just an ornate brass knocker in the shape of an elephant.
There's a Subaru parked in the driveway and I know that she has a baby, who I really don't want to wake up. I knock again hoping that I'm not too loud but yet loud enough to get her attention.
Margaret answers the door with a big smile on her face and her hair tied up into a loose bun on the top of her head. She smiles widely at me and I notice the beads of sweat on her forehead and across her chest, like she has been exercising. Her face is flushed, but beautiful with delicate features and big almond eyes; she's slim and dressed in yoga pants and a matching sports bra.
I introduce myself and her face falls immediately. I ask her if I can come in to talk for a little bit. She hesitates and finally agrees.
She shows me inside her craftsman bungalow with wide white trim around the single pane windows and a matching trim around the fireplace and living room. Everything in the home looks well-loved and taken care of. There is a big tapestry above the sleek gray couch featuring an elephant as well as a few more elephant style décor items; elephant candlesticks, a lamp with the trunk of the elephant holding up the shade, and barely visible etchings of elephants on the curtains swinging in the wind.
"I just finished a yoga class," she says, pointing to the couch for me to sit down. There's no coffee table, just two end tables and I realize that this is probably because she has a small child who's just starting to walk.
"My baby is in the other room sleeping," she says quietly.
"Okay, good. This shouldn't take long. You were doing yoga?" I ask, wondering if someone was home babysitting the child while she was in class.
"Yeah. Online. I teach over Zoom," she says. "I have c
lients all over the US and some in Europe. I usually teach seven days a week, occasionally six." She wipes her brow with the back of her arm. "Sorry, I'm so sweaty," she says, getting up and grabbing a towel from her yoga setup in the other room.
There's a laptop on top of a chair angled down as well as blocks and a stretch band on either side of the teal green yoga mat. I'm not usually a fan of small talk, but it's easier to dive into more difficult conversation topics after a little bit of chitchat.
I ask a few more questions about her practice, and she tells me that she's been doing it for a few years after getting fired from a yoga studio due to a series of layoffs and consolidations of spaces.
"I figured this way I'd be in charge of all the income that I bring in. Sometimes, it's not as much as I used to make, especially in the beginning, but now I have a good group of clientele and it has really grown."
"Good. I'm glad that's working out," I say.
I pull out my notebook, signaling that we're about to get down to the nitty-gritty. I ask her about Robert, and she confirms that they've been seeing each other for close to two years.
"How did you meet?"
"Actually, at work. His company brought me in to do this meditation and yoga practice for the employees. We started chatting. He was a really funny guy. We had a lot in common. He likes horror movies and so do I. So, he asked me out."
I wonder if it would be odd for a yoga teacher, who is all into peace and tranquility, or at least should be, would be into horror movies, but I guess it's just as much of an interest as any other.
"So, did you know that he was married when you met?"
"No.” She shakes her head.
"You didn't?"
"No, I would never go out with someone who's married."
"So, what happened?"
"I looked through his phone one day. I don't even remember why; it was like a message came in and he told me to give it to him or something like that, and that's when I saw her name and all their conversations. He was never really active on social media. He didn't list himself as married, nothing like that. So, I had no clue."
