Apparently, Satoshi could work.
In our brief afternoon together she had demonstrated empathy, compassion, humor, and assertiveness. Important pieces, but I still didn't know whether or not she could love.
I had seen something else, too. I had seen a woman who was wary. Not just of me and whatever I, and Locard, represented. She was not just fearful of the consequences of telling me her story. Satoshi was frightened of something she felt might harm her imminently.
What was it?
I made no progress in answering my own question. And without having typed a word, I recognized that I had never asked her one of the most important things I had flown to California to learn. I folded up the computer, stuffed it in my shoulder bag, and rushed to the nearest pay phone. I glanced at my watch and decided to try her apartment.
The phone was answered on the first ring. I asked for Satoshi.
"No, she' sum… not here. May I take a message?"
"Is she still at school? I have that number. Should I try her there?"
"Um. No. Do you want to leave a message?"
"Please. My name is Alan Gregory. I just met with her on campus and need to talk with her again as soon as possible."
"You're that guy from Colorado?"
"Yes."
"Where are you now? What's your number?"
"I'm at a pay phone. I don't think it will ring through. Wait, I have a cell phone with me."
"Give me that number? I may be able to have her call you right back."
"Can't you just give me her number?"
"She wouldn't be pleased if I did that"
More paranoia? I wondered. I dictated the number of my cell phone.
The woman on the other end of the line said, "Wait there five minutes. I'll try and find her and have her call. I'm Satoshis roommate by the way. I'm Roz."
"Roz, is Satoshi okay?"
"What do you mean?"
"She seemed… worried about something today"
"She's not herself. Let's leave it at that."
I left it at that and said, "Thank you, Roz."
A few minutes later the phone rang and startled me, despite the fact that I was waiting for it to do just that. I answered it after half a ring, saying, "Satoshi?"
"Yes?"
"Its Alan Gregory. I'm at the airport. I forgot to ask you about something that I need to know. Do you mind?"
"I don't mind. It's all right. I only have a few minutes before I need to T.A. a class, though. I hope it won't take long."
"It shouldn't. I'll be… blunt. I'm trying to determine if your sister was involved in a relationship around the time she disappeared."
"You mean a romantic relationship? Are you asking about a boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"Not that I know of, no. She hung around with a group of kids, mostly Tami's friends. But she wasn't dating anyone. I would have known about that. She and I were close. We talked a lot."
Despite my promise of frankness, I had hoped to approach the rumor indirectly.
That attempt had failed. So I decided to confront the innuendo straight on.
"I've heard, but have not been able to substantiate, that she might have been involved with… an older man. Someone in town.
Do you know anything about that?"
"You're kidding."
"No"
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"But you suspect someone specific, don't you? I can hear in your voice that you are… I don't know, casting for a… a certain fish."
"I don't suspect someone in particular. But at that time there were people in Steamboat who suspected that the relationship between your sister and Raymond Welle might have been… less than professional. Improper, even."
"What? Raymond Welle? Dr. Welle? You think that my sister was involved with Dr. Welle?"
"Perhaps."
Her voice became hard and all remnants of her accent evaporated.
"No way. She idolized him."
I didn't find that argument persuasive.
"If she felt so positive about him, why would you rule out a more "
"It's not possible. That's all."
"Satoshi, please help me understand why. If the rumors are false, I need to be able to put them to rest."
"It's simple. Mariko would not have taken me to see him if he was being inappropriate with her."
"You saw Dr. Welle? You mean professionally?"
"You didn't know? I understood that you'd spoken with Dr. Welle already. My father said he gave you permission. I assumed Dr. Welle had told you that he'd met with me."
"But you didn't think he would have told me about the rape?"
"No. He wouldn't be allowed to, would he? Wouldn't he be forbidden to breach confidentiality?"
"Yes, he would have been prohibited, but the reality is that I didn't know you had seen him professionally. Your father didn't mention it to me. And Dr. Welle certainly didn't."
"My father didn't know. I only saw Dr. Welle once. It was Mariko's idea. It was right after I told her about… that time with Joey. She thought he could help me like he helped her."
I tried to keep the dates straight.
"I thought you said that no one knew about what Joey did to you except for Mariko." "I'm sorry. When I said that, I thought you already knew about my meeting with Dr. Welle."
"You saw Welle-what?-a day or two before your sister and Tami disappeared?"
"I saw him that same afternoon. After school with Mariko. She came with me. She took me to see him."
"To his office?"
"No. We met him at his ranch."
At his ranch?
"Why did you meet him at his ranch?"
She seemed perplexed at my question.
"That's where Mariko took me. I never asked why."
"Was he… helpful?"
She was suddenly hesitant.
"He was kind. He listened to me. But he said he couldn't see me again without my parents' permission. And, of course, I couldn't ask them for permission.
They would want to know why I needed his help. I couldn't tell them that. Then Mariko disappeared and…"
"You never saw him again?"
"Never. Maybe around town once or twice, but not professionally. Is that it? I really have to go."
"One more thing. Did he send you to someone else for help? To a colleague, maybe?"
"No"
"Did he arrange for you to see a physician after the rape?"
"No"
"Did he encourage you to report the assault to the police?"
"No."
"To your parents?"
"I really do have to go. No. He didn't do any of those things. He was… compassionate. That's all. I really have to go."
I thanked her.
She said goodbye.
I had to give Welle credit for refusing to see Satoshi for more than one psychotherapeutic intervention. There were many reasons for him to refuse.
Treating two siblings in the same family was risky business in any circumstance. Although it was always a difficult choice to refuse to see someone in crisis, it was the ethical decision when the patient was a thirteen-year-old who was lacking parental permission for psychological treatment. But why hadn't Welle made subsequent arrangements for Satoshi to see a physician? And why hadn't he referred her on to someone else in town for further evaluation and psychotherapy? I didn't understand that.
Perhaps Satoshi's memory of the events was clouded by the trauma she had suffered.
Satoshi's conclusion that Mariko would not have taken her younger sister to see a man with whom she was romantically involved was logically flawed. If the transference in Mariko's therapy permitted her to view Welle positively enough to become involved with him romantically herself, she wouldn't have refused to involve her younger sister with him, either.
I was also troubled by the very fact that Mariko even knew where Raymond Welle lived.
And why had Welle not told me he had seen Satoshi
for a crisis visit? That puzzle wasn't so hard. I quickly determined that there were lots of reasons why he might not have been more forthcoming.
One, I hadn't asked.
Two, he didn't have permission from anyone to discuss Satoshi's visit with me or with anyone else.
Three, he actually didn't have the legal right to see Satoshi at all. She'd been thirteen, below the age where she is permitted in Colorado to consent to her own treatment.
Four, when he did agree to see her, he saw her at the Silky Road RANCH. Not at his office. A questionable decision, for sure.
I concluded that if I were in Raymond Welle's shoes, I'd probably keep Satoshi's visit to myself as well.
But with the information that Satoshi had given me about her visit to the Silky Road Ranch I was in a position to view Raymond Welle differently. I now knew that Welle knew that Joey Franklin was a rapist, which was something that Raymond Welle didn't know I knew.
I typed furiously from moments after takeoff until moments before landing, trying to capture the essence of what I'd learned from Satoshi
Hamamoto. It seemed that the more I learned about the case of the two dead girls, the longer my task list grew.
At the top of the list: talking with Joey Franklin. Meeting the famous young golfer no longer felt at all like an option.
Once back home I faxed my report to A. J. and spent a couple of hours puzzling through the new information with Lauren. She had as much difficulty as I did deciding what any of it actually meant.
While we started getting ready for bed, she spelled it out.
"Let's pretend that it's all true. Right? Raymond Welle now has two possible motives for killing those girls, or at least being involved in their deaths. We were concerned when we thought he might have been covering up for being sexually involved with Mariko, correct?" I nodded.
"Well, now he might also have been mixed up in order to cover up for whatever Joey Franklin had done to Satoshi."
I'd already traversed the same ground.
"Sorry, that doesn't work for me. Why would he cover up what Joey had done? He kills Tami to protect Joey? Why? It doesn't make sense."
She was getting frustrated.
"I don't know why. I don't think we know enough yet to know why. But every road we get on in this case seems to take us straight to Raymond Welle."
"And to the Silky Road Ranch."
"And to the Silky Road Ranch." I said, "We're neglecting Dorothy Levin's disappearance. Can it be connected to Welle, too?"
"You haven't heard anything new on that, have you?"
I shook my head.
"I'm scouring the news. Nothing either on her disappearance or on the shooting at the tennis house. And apparently the police in D.C. still can't find her husband."
My wife didn't hesitate for long. She said, "Sure, the disappearance can be tied in. She was accusing him of campaign improprieties. She was in the line of fire when someone took some shots at his campaign rally. She disappeared while she was interviewing witnesses in his hometown. Circumstances alone tie her to Ray Welle. Is there anything really there? I don't know. No one knows."
I was suddenly troubled by something Lauren had just said. But I wanted to think about it for a moment, so to keep her talking I said, "Pretend it's all related.
What's the connection? What could it be?"
She thought about it while she disappeared into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
She was still holding the toothbrush in her hand when she stuck her head back into the bedroom and said, "There's only one way that I can see for Welle to be connected to Dorothy's disappearance. Dorothy's disappearance and Tami's and Miko's deaths have to be related somehow. The investigations must overlap.
Someone Dorothy was investigating for her article would have to have been involved-somehow-in Tami's and Miko's murders."
"Are you suggesting someone other than Welle? He's the constant in all this, obviously."
"I'm not sure. I think someone other than Welle, or in addition to Welle. I'd guess it would need to be someone who was involved in whatever campaign-finance irregularities Dorothy was investigating for the Post. Someone who also has a link to the murders of the two girls."
"That should be a relatively short list of people. Dorothy's article in the Post names names, doesn't it?"
"But it doesn't list her sources. I wonder if her editor would help us out"
"Her editor won't give up sources."
It was my turn to brush my teeth and pee. When I stepped back out of the bathroom Lauren was propped up in bed, rereading the fax of Dorothy's last Post article and making a list of all the names that had been mentioned.
I said, "I don't think I even bothered to mention this to you before, but Joey Franklin was in Steamboat the day that Dorothy was murdered. I saw signs welcoming him to town."
She stopped writing and glanced at me sideways.
"He was?"
"Yeah, he played golf with Raymond Welle that morning. Welle was coming from the golf course while I was waiting at the ranch." She said, "More circumstances I don't like." Emily waddled up and placed her head in Lauren's lap. She scratched the dog's ears.
"Is Joey still up in Steamboat Springs?"
"I don't know. What are you thinking?"
"We could go talk to him."
"Just like that? I haven't cleared it with A. J."
"Do you think she'd mind?"
"No. As a matter of fact, I think she'd be pleased. But what do we ask him? If he remembers raping Satoshi Hamamoto? I don't know why, but I sort of suspect he'd deny it."
"No. We ask him things he has no reason to deny and see what he does. Did he know Tami's friends? Did he know Miko's friends? How much does he contribute to Welle's campaigns? And oh, by the way, did he know Satoshi?"
"You really want to do it?"
"We both have tomorrow off. It's hot down here. It's cool up there. And I'd really like to see what Joey has to say for himself."
"He doesn't have to talk with us."
"Nobody does. Why would he refuse, though?"
"Maybe because he's a rapist?"
"There is that." She raised the tablet she was writing on.
"You know, I don't recognize any of these names. The gist of Dorothy's article is that when Welle was financing his first run at the House seat in 1990, and again during his second run in 1992, Japanese money was tunneled into his campaign through local business interests that supported the ski area. The names in the article are mostly the Japanese who were involved."
"Not Taro Hamamoto, though?"
"No. Not him."
I tried to recall the details of Ray Welle's political career.
"Welle wasn't elected in ninety, was he?"
"No. He didn't even get his party's nomination until ninety-two. And he won for the first time in ninety-four."
"His first nomination? That was after his wife was murdered?"
"Yes. Gloria actually died during the second campaign."
"A lot of death around that man."
I climbed into bed.
"More than his share." * * *
We decided to drive up to the mountains early and make a cold call on Joey Franklin. Either he'd be in town or he wouldn't. Either he'd agree to see us or he wouldn't.
The sky above us was still dark when we left the house. The sun finally cracked the lip of the horizon over the eastern plains as we were climbing Floyd Hill on 1-70. I watched the show in my mirrors and Lauren spun on her seat to gaze as the sky transformed itself from the colors of morning coffee to the pastels of cotton candy.
We actually talked about baby names for most of the rest of the journey to Steamboat. So far our lists of favorites shared no common ground and the effort felt to me like a parlor game. Lauren compared it to jury selection. She argued that we were still at the stage where we both felt as though our preemptory challenges were infinite. Later, she assured me, push would come to shove and our discussions would get more contentious.
Twice we stopped so that Lauren could use restaurant bathrooms. She was developing a thing about fetal health and gas-station facilities.
Steamboat Springs' golfing choices are finite. There's the new Haymaker course and the proletarian Steamboat Golf Club, and there's the Robert Trent Jones-designed course at the Sheraton. Not surprisingly, the morning I'd been cooling my heels at the Silky Road, Joey and the congressman had been playing at the lovely Yampa River Valley course at the Sheraton. Lauren and I decided to try there first.
We arrived in the shadows of Mount Werner shortly after nine and tracked down the course starter at the pro-shop desk. He was busy copying names onto a log sheet. I asked if he knew where we could find Joey Franklin. Without hesitation, the starter told us that Joey's foursome wasn't due to tee off until almost ten.
He thought Joey might be having breakfast upstairs on the deck and suggested we look out there for him.
"Who might he be with?" I asked.
"I thought he was meeting you." The starter finally glanced up from his paperwork. He looked at me suspiciously and smiled at Lauren, who took a half step forward.
She said, "Oh… he is, a little later." She didn't bother to mention the fact that Joey didn't know it yet.
The starter leaned over the counter, and his eyes traveled the length of Lauren's legs until arriving down at her feet. She was wearing open-toed sandals and had painted her toes the color of the grass on the greens.
"You're not planning on playing in those, are you?"
She shook her head.
"No. Not that it would make much difference to my score, I'm afraid." Lauren, to my knowledge, had never swung a golf club in her life.
He laughed.
"I feel like that some days, too. Might as well play in flip-flops, you know?
Pretty sure that Joey's meeting with Tony and Gary and… Larson.
His sponsors. You know them?"
She shook her head and widened her eyes.
"Haven't had the pleasure. But I'm certainly looking forward to it." We headed up the stairs toward the deck. I said, "You're quite the flirt."
She replied, "Whatever." After a few more steps, she asked, "What did he mean by 'sponsors'? Like golf club companies? Nike and Reebok? Endorsements? That sort of thing?"
"I'm sure that Joey has plenty of endorsement contracts, but no. I think he meant the kind of sponsor who provides seed money for young golfers. When he was first starting out as a pro, Joey probably accepted financial backing for tour and living expenses from individuals or groups of individuals in exchange for a percentage of his future earnings on the tour. The people who bought in to provide that support are his sponsors."
Cold Case Page 23
