by Larry Darter
As the detectives spoke to more and more people, it became evident to those in attendance who they were. Others started seeking out the detectives to speak to them. Another writer friend of Silverman’s told them that Fiona had provided the crucial alibi for Hurst regarding his wife’s disappearance that saved him from arrest. Another friend confided Silverman had once told her she was the only person who knew what had happened to Hurst’s wife. The woman said she asked if she meant she had a theory or had actual knowledge. Silverman had declined to elaborate.
Ortega and Drew found all the tidbits of information intriguing but not very useful. Much of it was hearsay and not admissible as evidence. A lot was not only hearsay but double hearsay, far removed from the supposed original source.
A few of Silverman’s friends urged the detectives to take a hard look at Nelson Welch as a suspect, stressing the two were extremely close and spent several evenings together. One woman told them, “They did sleep together once, but the relationship was otherwise platonic. Fiona pressed for a more serious relationship, but Nelson resisted.” The woman also told them when she had spoken to Welch after the service, he had seemed very cavalier about Fiona’s death. She said that Welch had told her, “This is the only way things could have ended between Fiona and me.”
As Ortega and Drew prepared to leave, a woman who had known Silverman since they had been undergraduates at USC caught them on the way out. She also reported hearing insensitive comments that Welch made after the service. “Nelson said that Fiona created a web that was difficult to get out of,” the woman said. “I thought that was very strange.”
“Do you know if there was any physical volatility in their relationship?” Drew said.
The woman nodded emphatically. “He pushed her once when they were out in public,” she said. “Fiona was very embarrassed by it. She told me it was over between them, and she wouldn’t put up with that. But obviously, it wasn’t over.”
The detectives left the theater knowing little more than they had when they had arrived, as far as things that might help move their investigation forward. Entering the second week after Silverman’s death, the physical evidence had so far yielded nothing of value.
The fingerprints lifted at the house had not led them to a suspect. Ballistics could not connect the bullet to a weapon. The spent bullet casing had revealed neither fingerprints nor a link to the murder gun. Ortega and Drew were still waiting for the department’s Scientific Investigation Division to analyze Silverman’s clothing for hair and fibers. DNA from a hair fiber could identify the killer. They were also still waiting on the results of the handwriting comparisons on the documents they had submitted. It seemed all they could do at the moment was to continue investigating Nelson Welch. He had no apparent alibi, had failed the polygraph exam, and now had lawyered up and had ceased to cooperate with the police.
“Interesting that so many people at the service told us Welch had behaved oddly,” Drew said.
“Everyone in that crowd was odd,” Ortega said. “So, I don’t find it that interesting.”
Drew laughed and said. “Well, they are writers, actors, and movie executives after all. What did you expect?”
Ortega smiled and nodded knowingly. “Yeah, those people are a weird bunch.”
* * *
At 1:30 P.M., Ortega and Drew rolled up in front of Nelson Welch’s Sherman Oaks residence with two marked LAPD Van Nuys units. Welch’s car was not in the driveway. Two uniformed cops attempted contact at the front door with no response. It seemed Welch had not returned home after the memorial service. A patrol office retrieved a sledgehammer from the trunk of his shop. He smashed open the front door. The detectives followed the uniformed officers inside. They cleared the residence and verified there was no one inside.
Ortega briefed the uniformed cops on what they were looking for and then divvied up the search areas. The house was tastefully decorated. There were shiny hardwood floors, framed lithographs, and bookshelves lined with classic books. Each of the uniformed cops scoured a different room.
Ortega and Drew focused on Welch’s office. They searched for his day planner and a notepad with paper similar to that the cadaver note had been written on. After they had finished with the office, they went to the master bedroom and inspected dozens of pairs of shoes for bloodstains.
“I hope we find something,” Ortega said. “I’m not up for another disappointment.”
After four hours at the house, Ortega and Drew admitted defeat. They had found no notepad, no day planner, no gun, or anything else that incriminated Welch.
Ortega left a copy of the warrant on the dining room table since Welch had never returned home during the search. Two patrol officers secured the broken front door as best they could. Then Ortega released the Van Nuys cops from the scene.
“He is going to be pissed we broke his door,” Ortega said.
“I’m sure the city will pay for it when his lawyer sends them the bill,” Drew said.
Shortly before six, the two detectives got in Ortega’s car to drive back to West Bureau.
“I’d hoped it would end tonight,” Ortega said.
“I’m still not convinced Welch did her,” Drew said. “But he’s a weird duck. I’ll give you that.”
“If it isn’t him, this case has got a long way to go,” Ortega said. “I’ll write a warrant to get his cell phone records. That will give us an idea of his whereabouts the weekend before Christmas.”
“If he had the phone with him,” Drew said. “They put so much CSI shit on television today it educates the crooks. When I was working property crimes, I had several burglary suspects tell me they never took their cell phones with them when they were working.”
“Yeah, they call that the CSI effect,” Ortega said. “I’ve worked homicides where suspects tricked out the scenes to confuse the investigators because of stuff they had seen on television.”
“Lucky that half the stuff they put on those shows is bullshit,” Drew said.
Ortega laughed. “How many more names of her friends and acquaintances do we have left on your list?”
“Enough to last us the rest of the week at least,” Drew said.
“It ain’t over yet, Youngblood,” Ortega said.
Drew smiled thinly. “Something will turn up.”
Chapter 16
Ortega and Drew spent the next two days interviewing more friends of Fiona Silverman. The friends provided little new information. William Hurst finally returned Drew’s phone calls on Thursday. He told Drew he hadn’t attended the memorial service because reporters were continually pestering him. His wife’s case had officially reopened, and he said his attorneys had advised him not to talk to detectives.
“This will be our last conversation,” Hurst said to Drew. “If you have anything further, you must call my attorneys.” Then he hung up.
The detectives received Welch’s telephone records in response to the search warrant. The records included mobile tracking data that identified the locations where the phone had been. That proved another disappointment as the tracking data showed Welch had never been near Silverman’s house the weekend before Christmas. The data showed he had been at the house on Christmas Day, as he had already told the detectives. That suggested he probably hadn’t left his phone at home to go there secretly that weekend. Welch’s last calls to Silverman had been on the Friday before Christmas, the day she was killed, at 11:16 A.M., and then at 8:57 A.M. on Christmas Day. The detectives agreed that if he had called Silverman on Christmas Day as a ruse to make it appear he had been unaware she was dead, he likely would have called several times rather than once.
Friday morning, the LAPD handwriting analyst the detectives had delivered the handwriting samples and cadaver note to, called Ortega with the results of the comparisons she had done. She had concluded that a match between Welch’s handwriting on the fake visitor’s log and the cadaver note and envelope was “highly probable.” But a “highly probable” rating was not the
definitive identification standards the detectives needed to use the comparisons as evidence. They couldn’t use it to arrest Welch. She added the landlord’s handwriting samples were definitely not a match with that of the cadaver note writer.
After Ortega hung up with the handwriting analyst, he and Drew drove to the Hollywood station for another interview with one of Silverman’s friends.
* * *
The friend, a film producer named Leland Wagner, looked like he had just stepped out of a Rodeo Drive clothing store. His long black hair was swept straight back, and he wore tan slacks, a bright green linen shirt, and a pair of stylish Italian sandals. After answering a few of Drew’s preliminary questions about his friendship with Silverman, Wagner launched into an impassioned monologue.
“It shocked me when I heard Fiona had been murdered,” he said. “It made no sense to me.” Wagner stared over Drew’s shoulder off into the distance for several moments. Then softly, as if he were talking to himself, he said, “Yeah, it makes sense to me.” He reestablished eye contact with Drew and continued. “I think Bill Hurst did it. She told me years ago that Bill Hurst killed his wife. Either Hurst told her, or she found out by investigative work. I can’t recall all the details. But I think she told me he admitted it. Fiona was a journalist. She knew how to get information out of people.”
Wagner paused as if for dramatic effect, then continued. “Fiona introduced me to Hurst once when he was in L.A. visiting her. Before she did, she took me aside and said, ‘Let me tell you about Bill Hurst.’ Then she told me what had happened. She said Hurst and his wife went to the country. They argued. She was going to divorce him. He flipped out. He didn’t mean to do it, but he killed her. Then there was a cover-up.”
“Did Fiona help Hurst with the cover-up?” Drew said.
“Yes, she told me she provided the alibi to the police that kept Hurst from going to jail,” Wagner said. “You see, Detectives, Fiona and Hurst were extremely close. But on another level, she had him by the short hairs, if you get my drift.”
“You could sense that from the conversation you had with her?” Drew said.
“Not so much at the time,” Wagner said. “I’m projecting years later. Hurst makes more sense than anyone else. I know you were both at the memorial service. You heard everyone say what a noble soul she was and ‘I have no idea how anything like this could happen to her.’ I’m not saying that… Well, what I am saying is this. There was plenty of good in Fiona. She was a beautiful person in many ways. But she was someone who could find out about anything. She was bold beyond anything you can imagine. Fiona was capable of extortion. It wasn’t beneath her. She was getting older, and she was broke. She wanted a payday. That’s my opinion. But, hell, maybe I watch too many movies.”
“So, when the New York authorities reopened the case into the disappearance and possible murder of Hurst’s wife, you think she might have demanded a little hush money from him?” Drew said.
“That’s my feeling about it,” Wagner said. “Anyway, I didn’t have time to talk with you at the memorial service. I had a meeting I had to go to right after it concluded. I just thought it was my duty to come here and to tell you what I know. I’m also willing to share the information with the New York police if they wish me to do so. I have to say, though, that I’m a little concerned about Hurst. He is a wealthy and powerful man. The Hursts are as big as the Trumps in New York.”
Drew asked Wagner a few more questions, and then they concluded the interview. After walking Wagner out, Drew returned to the interview room and sat back down at the table with Ortega.
“That guy thinks Hurst killed Silverman, too,” Ortega said. “I just wish he could give us more than his opinion.”
Ortega and Drew faced a thorny problem. They needed to come up with something they could use to compel Hurst to cooperate with them. Unless they obtained evidence linking him to Silverman’s murder, their investigation was stymied.
“Welch is still a viable suspect,” Ortega said. “After the handwriting analysis, I think we still have to look at him.”
Drew didn’t agree but didn’t contradict his more experienced partner. “Maybe we’ll get something from SID on the hairs and fibers collected from Silverman’s body,” Drew said. “But absent anything like that, there doesn’t seem much we can do. All we’ve got is a circumstantial case.”
“Yes, and the last time I called SID, they told me there is currently a four-month wait for results on hair and fibers,” Ortega said. “I don’t think things have improved much at SID since O.J. as far as efficiency goes.” He looked glum.
“Don’t worry, Rudy,” Drew said. “Something will turn up.”
* * *
At 3:00 P.M. Ortega and Drew filed into Lieutenant Walsh’s office for their end of week update. Ortega gave the report.
“It sounds to me like you guys have done a lot of outstanding work,” Walsh said. “You’ve just hit a brick wall. It happens.”
“We had agreed to work through the weekend,” Ortega said. “But there is really nothing to work on at this point.”
“Well, keep your fingers crossed. The deputy chief has said nothing to me about kicking the case to open-unsolved yet. Maybe he won’t. The media interest in the case has died down. Until you catch another case, you can stay on it. But as I told you, you’re back on rotation come Monday morning.”
“Hopefully, something will turn up, and we can clear the sucker,” Ortega said. “I just hope they don’t take the case away from us when we get the next one.”
“I won’t take it away from you unless the deputy chief doesn’t give me any choice,” Walsh said. “If you catch other cases, as long as we have it, you guys can work it as a hobby case as things develop.”
The detectives returned to the squad room and cleared their desks for the weekend. At four, they left the bureau for their respective homes.
Chapter 17
On Monday morning, Drew was sifting through the cardboard box of documents the detectives had collected from Silverman’s house on Christmas Eve. He was separating the documents into two piles. One contained the correspondence that he would book into property as evidence. The other pile contained documents and personal correspondence that he would release back to the victim’s family.
Drew picked up something he’d missed while combing through the documents the previous times. It was a letter Hurst had mailed to Silverman the year before she was murdered. It wasn’t the letter, but the envelope that caught Drew’s attention.
On the envelope, Hurst had misspelled Beverly as “Beverley” in the same way the writer of the anonymous note postmarked before the police had discovered Silverman’s body had misspelled it. The writer had sent the note to the Beverly Hills police alerting them to a cadaver inside Silverman’s home. Drew’s pulse quickened as he looked at the envelope. He rolled his chair back and interrupted Ortega, who was catching up on the chrono in the Silverman case murder book.
“Rudy, check this out,” Drew said, handing him the envelope.
Ortega took the envelope and examined it for several moments.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Beverly is misspelled the same way as on the cadaver note.”
“It’s not much, but it is one more thing that points to Hurst as the killer,” Drew said. “That note is one reason I’ve always thought he might have been the shooter. And, not just because of the misspelling. Hurst is the only person who was in Silverman’s closest inner circle who wasn’t from Los Angeles. The letter was mailed to the Beverly Hills police, probably because the killer knew her mailing address was Beverly Hills. But evidently, they didn’t know her house was in Los Angeles, not Beverly Hills. You would think a local like Welch would have known that. But no reason someone from New York would have been aware of it.”
“Too bad Hurst typed the address on this envelope,” Ortega said. “If he had printed it, we would have had a sample of his handwriting.”
He stood up. “Well, I’m headed to San
Pedro to pick up the documents we had analyzed so I can book them into property.”
Ortega grabbed his jacket off his chair and put it on. “You go ahead with what you’re doing,” he said. “When I get back from questioned documents, we’ll get lunch.”
Drew nodded and went back to sorting the documents and correspondence. His phone rang, and he answered. He dropped the document he had been looking at out of surprise when he realized the caller was named Hurst. Not William Hurst, but his younger brother Roger.
“I’m humiliated to have to call you,” Roger Hurst said in a soft, nasally New York accent. “But the authorities in Westchester County here in New York have been talking with me since they reopened the investigation into Valerie’s… my brother’s wife’s disappearance, and possible murder. They thought I should call you.”
“About our case regarding Fiona Silverman?” Drew said.
“Not specifically, perhaps,” Hurst said. “It is more about background information on my brother you people in Los Angeles might find interesting.”
“Okay, tell me about it,” Drew said.
“Let me begin by telling you that my family and I are fearful of my brother William,” Hurst said. “He has always had a bad temper and is prone to violence when he gets angry. I don’t believe saying William has a sadistic streak would be inaccurate. My siblings and I have always believed he was behind his wife’s disappearance.”
“Was your brother violent toward his wife?” Drew said.
“In the months before her disappearance, William subjected Valerie to emotional, social, economic, and physical abuse,” Hurst said. “She told me once he had beaten her to the point she’d gone to the hospital.”
“Mr. Hurst, I can see how all this applies to the New York case, but I’m not sure it helps us very much,” Drew said.
