by Lois Duncan
Two neighborhood witnesses also testified to having seen Juve’s Camaro pull up in front of the Garcia house after the shooting, and seeing Miguel leap out and run to the kitchen window. “I heard him knock on the window,” one of them said. “And then somebody opened it, and he told them he had something to pass them because he wanted them to hide it. So he ran back and he grabbed what looked like … a gun or rifle or something, and he got it, and he ran back. He passed it in and he told them, ‘Hurry up and hide this. … I just killed somebody.’ ”
Another witness, an inmate at the Detention Center, described a conversation with Marty Martinez.
“[He told me] they was driving along and … one of the people, I’m not sure which one, said they was gonna shoot somebody, and he [Marty] said he didn’t think that was a good idea,” he said. “He thought they was just joking around, and he was sitting back in the backseat, and the next thing you know, he heard them shoot and shoot again, and then he said by the time he looked up the car with the girl in it had ran into a pole. … He kept asking, ‘You think I can get in trouble for that?—because I didn’t want them to shoot her, I didn’t even know.’ ”
The DA attempted to follow up on this.
“And he didn’t know this was going to happen?” she asked.
“He said they had said something about it, but he didn’t think they was really gonna do it,” the boy said.
Don and I found that statement supportive of our suspicion that the shooting had been planned in advance.
After hearing five hours of testimony and deliberating thirty minutes, the grand jury handed down an indictment on charges of “willful and deliberate” first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, shooting at an occupied vehicle, conspiracy to commit that crime, evidence tampering, and conspiracy to tamper with evidence.
A bench warrant was then issued for Juve’s arrest, but when the police went to get him, he was gone. His attorney, who had assured the court that Juve was no flight risk, told he press, “I can only speculate he’s been frightened off by all the commotion.”
Miguel Garcia was still in custody, however, and was arraigned on March 5, 1990. He pleaded innocent to all charges, and his bond was set at $100,000.
Meanwhile, Mike Gallagher was performing his own investigation. He spent most of one week following Dung around and was surprised by the company he was keeping.
“He gets picked up by Mexicans in Hertz cars who take him to strip joints,” he told me. “I don’t mean just at night, but during the day when you’d expect him to be at work. The guys are the kind of thugs I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. They stand a head taller than Dung and look like they just broke out of the pen.”
He had also checked into the insurance scams in Orange County.
“The car-wreck deal is primarily a Vietnamese scam and it goes on all the time out there,” he told me. “Apparently the participants in a wreck get a couple of thousand, while the lawyer pockets fifty thousand and the doctors and pharmacists rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are definitely talking the kind of money people get killed for.
“I’m not having too much luck getting background information on that R & J outfit, because it’s not in business any longer. It folded last year, shortly after the Westminster Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney’s office closed down two medical clinics in Westminster for multimillion-dollar insurance fraud. It’s coming down to Vietnamese ownership, but it’s pretty tangled as to exactly who owns it, because we’re dealing with about fifteen limited partnerships.”
By now Don and I had spent a month holed up in the efficiency and were climbing the walls. We decided to sell the house and rent a town house.
The move to a town house from a five-bedroom home with a den meant a great reduction in living and storage space, and we had to find homes for the pets and get rid of possessions. The hardest of those to part with were personal mementos—sports trophies, kindergarten artwork, jigsaw puzzles carefully assembled and glued onto cardboard backing, sheet music from band recitals, ceramic molds of tiny handprints, handmade ashtrays and spool holders we’d received as Christmas presents.
We took with us the dozens of double-size photograph albums, because the largest number of the pictures they held were of Kait. Despite the fact that my father, Joseph Steinmetz, had been an internationally known photographer, I had not developed an interest in photography until Kait was born, so our older children had been shortchanged on baby pictures. Soon after Kait’s birth I had taken a photography course which had led, not only to a hobby, but to a supplementary career. From babyhood on, Kait’s face had appeared on magazine covers, and now, as I leafed through the albums, I found her on page after page—sniffing a flower, stroking a kitten, climbing a tree, wading in a stream, running through sprinklers—and always in evidence on her left cheekbone was “God’s fingerprint.”
The irony of that term wasn’t lost on me now, as I loaded the albums into boxes to store in the garage. What a stupid name for a hole in her face, I thought bitterly.
The one positive thing that occurred during that transition period was that Brett resurfaced.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” he said. “I just had to get my act together.”
We were pleased to learn he no longer was working with rock bands and had become a member of the “establishment,” living in Miami and working as a computer operator. And, like Kerry, who had changed careers from television newswoman to free-lance writer so she could be at home with her children, he had started writing articles and submitting them to magazines.
Among these was an essay called “Our Little Hell,” which he read to me over the telephone: “It was a warm Sunday night, and I had just gotten off work and was beginning my usual wind-down ritual of nodding off in front of the television, when a late, unexpected phone call changed my life forever. The caller informed me that my eighteen-year-old sister, Kait, had been shot twice in the head by unknown assailants and was in critical condition in the hospital.
Less than eighteen hours later my beautiful sister and friend passed away.
Kait had always been what I would call a good person. She was a loving, caring young woman who wanted to be a doctor. Why would anybody kill a person like that? What kind of world do we live in that such a thing can happen?
While struggling to answer that question I’ve come up with a horrible possibility. What if this seemingly wonderful planet of ours is actually Hell, a training ground for Evil? Perhaps we who live here were evil ourselves in a past life and, as punishment, were sentenced to be preyed upon in this current one. Here in Hell some of us are cursed with the fate of being “good” for the sole purpose of honing Evil’s skills.
Let’s imagine that our Hell is comprised of a large meadow in which we (the good) are a flock of Sheep who do nothing but graze. Protecting us are the Dogs (the police) whose job it is to keep a constant watch for Wolves (Evil), while the Shepherd (God) tends His flock.
The sole purpose of this flock in Hell is to give Evil something to practice its talents on. Our Mother Sheep always told us that if we were good little lambs and stayed in the middle of the flock, we could count on being safe. Only the foolish ones who tempted Evil by existing on the outer edges of the flock would meet disaster. What Mother Sheep didn’t understand was that those on the outside edge had practice escaping Evil’s advances. They did so on a daily basis and knew how to take care of themselves.
One day the wolves came sneaking around—as they always did—looking for an easy target. Without warning they attacked! The sheep on the outside sensed the strike and fled, splitting the flock down the middle. The sheep in the center had never been exposed to this type of threat and hadn’t noticed how close the wolves were. Before the naive sheep could react, the wolves killed a lamb and escaped into the night.
The Dogs had been drinking coffee at a Dunkin’ Donuts, and the Shepherd was sleeping.
“What do you think?” Brett aske
d. “Is it a good analogy?”
“I have problems with it,” I said. “The wolves didn’t split the flock, our lamb went frolicking to meet them. And I can’t accept that our world is a training ground for Evil. Isn’t it possible it might be the other way around, that it’s a place where Good can learn to stand up to Evil and defeat it?”
“So, where was the Shepherd?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
That night I had a troubling dream. I was back in our family home and was going into Kait’s bedroom to kiss her good-night. She was lying, propped up on one elbow, but as I approached the bed, she suddenly rolled over on her back and playfully pulled up her knees to block my view of her face. Then she lowered her knees abruptly, and I found myself looking down at a boy of about seventeen. He had an interesting, foxlike face with a pointed chin, and was gazing up at me with Kait’s insolent green eyes.
I knew I should know who he was, but I couldn’t say his name. Once I had known him well, but I had somehow forgotten him.
“This isn’t your time,” I told him. “I want my daughter.”
He was instantly gone, and it was Kait on the bed again.
I gathered her into my arms and hugged her so tightly that neither of us could breathe.
“I want you back inside me again,” I whispered. “I want you back where I can keep you safe.”
But I could not do in a dream what I had not done in life, and I could not blame the Dogs, and I could not blame the Shepherd. Raised by gentle, devoted parents, who had believed that all people were good, I had not taught any of my lambs how to recognize wolves.
13
THE SPRING OF 1990 was long and cruel and windy, and I hated it. Just as flowers were beginning to break through the earth, we were hit with a sudden cold snap that killed the unopened buds and littered the ground with hailstones. On Easter I took a hyacinth out to the cemetery, but when I went back later to water it, it had blown away, pot and all.
At home in the town house I told myself I had to start working again. Nine months had passed since Kait’s death, and that was enough. It had taken me nine months to bring her into the world, and the same length of time to see her out of it, and I couldn’t continue indulging myself in bereavement. I had one teenage mystery still due under a three-book contract, and I was expected to write four to six articles a year for Woman’s Day. All my editors had been sympathetic and understanding and had exerted no pressure on me to fulfill my obligations, but I knew I couldn’t continue to vegetate indefinitely. Besides, Don and I were used to a double income, and I had not earned a penny for three quarters of a year. Our house was up for sale, but we were continuing to make payments on it, while at the same time paying rent on the town house, and our financial situation was not looking good.
I couldn’t dredge up enough energy to create fiction, but I did write an article for Woman’s Day, based upon personal experience, about how to help friends in crisis. It wasn’t much fun to write, but my editor liked it, and I realized I hadn’t lost my ability to put words on paper.
The day I mailed off the article, Mike called to tell me he had been able to track down one of the two phone numbers and thought that possibly the other was for a beeper. The unlisted number had belonged to someone named Van Hong Phuc, who lived in Santa Ana. Mike said that although Van Hong Phuc still lived at the same address, his (or her) number had been changed to another unlisted number immediately after Kait’s death.
“Don’t let APD or the defense attorneys get wind that I’m investigating this,” he said. “If APD finds out, they’ll close down my sources of information, and the defense will get their clients off by implicating Dung and making a better case against him than the DA can make against Garcia. As of now the defense attorneys think Dung is dead. Somebody told them his suicide attempt was successful.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“You figure it out,” Mike said. “All I know is I overheard them talking about what a drag it is that Kait’s boyfriend killed himself, because, if he was still around, they would sure like to talk to him. I’m expecting any time now to set motions for discovery.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Discovery is where the prosecution has to show the defense all the material they have,” Mike explained. “Personally, I don’t think the state’s going to show the defense everything. One reason I say that is that normally in most homicide cases, once the case has gone to the grand jury and the suspects have been indicted, everything the police have is filed in the records division, which means you or I or anybody else could go down and pay a dollar a page and get the file. In this case that hasn’t been done. They keep saying the case is still under investigation, despite the fact that the grand jury returned an indictment. My guess is that APD may be busy editing the file to get rid of anything that points to a Vietnamese connection.”
“Because they don’t want to have to explore any avenues other than ‘random shooting’?”
“Right,” Mike said. “Those suspects are easy marks. APD wants to keep the case real simple—‘Here are the guys, it was a random shooting, let’s get on to other business.’ If they’re doing that, it’s something to be concerned about, because if they don’t play it straight—if they withhold information from the defense—even if the Hispanics are the killers, they’re going to walk. The defense is bound to find out about it eventually. Then they’ll file an appeal, and the case will be thrown out. That’s what happens when cops don’t follow the rules.”
If Miguel Garcia was truly the person who shot Kait, I certainly didn’t want him back on the street where he could kill others. But I couldn’t rid my mind of the call from the tipster. It would be atrocious to have the Hispanics prosecuted as mischievous, gun-toting drunks on a joyride, while men who might have been responsible for hiring them sat back and laughed.
Could a link be established between the Vietnamese and the Hispanics? In an effort to tie them together I again phoned Betty Muench. She did a new reading and gave it to me over the telephone:
QUESTION: WHAT MAY WE KNOW AT THIS TIME ABOUT ANY POSSIBLE LINK BETWEEN THE HISPANICS (ESPECIALLY THOSE ACCUSED OF KAITLYN’S MURDER) AND THE VIETNAMESE (ESPECIALLY DUNG NGOC NGUYEN AND HIS CLOSEST ASSOCIATES)?
“This is a very strange reading,” Betty told me. “The story seems to be taking a whole new direction. A lot of this makes no sense to me at all.”
ANSWER: There is a sensation which will seem to fall down over the face, and there will be a smooth-as-glass feeling.
“In other words, we’re talking about a smooth operation,” Betty said.
ANSWER: There is an image formed of a kind of statuary which will be seen as if looking up at it, and there is a serpent’s head which will be made of a kind of green metal, a kind of turquoise with a darker outline of turquoise. This would seem to be something made out of brass or bronze which is weathered, and this is large and one can look up at it. This will seem to be a symbol of some great clan or force, and this will have power and wealth, and there will be the hiring of what they consider lesser ones—the Hispanics. The image will have to do with a certain Vietnamese group which will hold this power, and they will simply use the Hispanics to do their work
“It seems they just use them and throw them away,” Betty said. “They feel superior to the Hispanics and consider them expendable.”
ANSWER: There will be known that one of the suspects in this murder will have relatives very close to this place where this reptile head will be and that there will be under this head many meetings. These meetings will be inconspicuous, as it will indeed be a public place. With this one suspect’s relatives involved already, there will be no problem to recruit from this locale those who will do their bidding. There will be in this image that which will show that the reptile is, in a sense, seen as valuable and that this is a symbol which will be used often, and even in this locale there is something which will denote the following of this reptile theme.
There will be in this then a connection, but the relationship of one of the suspects to ones who will have already worked in this connection with the Vietnamese will become even more clear and evident. There cannot be the linking in simple ways. It will have to do with finding other ways in which payment is made than in instruments that can be traced. There will be payment in some unusual ways, and favors will exist. There is in this code of this reptile that which will have them functioning in a mafialike fashion, and there will be a code which will have the Oriental label to it. This symbol of the reptile can be looked for and found in some unusual places. A name will link all this with certainty—a Hispanic name, as common in Los Angeles as in Albuquerque. The same first letter as Garcia, but not Garcia. This one, Garcia, sought this so-called “honor” and must now undergo the pressure, and this one is in jeopardy also at this time from the reptile.
“Miguel Garcia feels that he’s being protected, but actually, he isn’t,” Betty said. “He’s as expendable as the rest of them and can easily be eliminated, especially if the police pick up Juve and cut a deal with him.”
Betty then mailed me the transcript, along with a note:
* * *
Dear Lois,
I hope there is something here which will help resolve this case. There is something very wrong in a system that serves to protect the wrongdoer. Be careful, but don’t give up.
Love and blessings,
Betty
* * *
As usual, she would not accept payment.
It was Don’s opinion that we should share this reading with Mike.
