A Checklist for Murder

by Anthony Flacco

  Only Lyle knows if his remorse over the damage he inflicted upon his own daughter is genuine. But he saved two lives on the day that he dared to come forward.

  • • •

  Victoria received a call shortly after Peernock’s jail-cell arrest for the solicitation of murder. Pam Springer, the deputy district attorney who had been assigned to Peernock’s case, wanted Victoria to come in to Springer’s office right away. But she wouldn’t say why.

  Victoria showed up fearing that something had gone wrong with Peernock’s case, that she was about to be told that the charges against him would be dropped on some asinine technicality.

  Instead she was greeted by a tall, attractive woman with short blond hair and cool blue eyes, who was every bit as expert as Victoria in keeping her feelings hidden behind a professional mask when duty called for it.

  At the moment the mask told Victoria nothing.

  Once inside Pam Springer’s office, Victoria sat down and tried to read the woman’s expression while the DDA took a seat behind her desk. Springer’s slim face could look alternately sharp and cold or angled and pretty, depending on the light, the occasion, the mood. She gave Victoria the news with a soft voice and a dry smile.

  “No point beating around the bush, really. We weren’t going to tell you, since at this point there isn’t much you can do. But in case he got to somebody else that we don’t know about yet …”

  “Please. Just tell me what this is about, if you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind. But we have to let you know, and there’s no easy way to do it, so here it is: Robert Peernock was tape-recorded in jail soliciting for a hit man to kill you and Natasha.”

  “What??”

  “Seems there was some debate over whether they should firebomb your car or kill Natasha with a drug overdose and make you take the blame.”

  “No. You don’t … this isn’t …”

  “Don’t worry. The guy turned on him. We’ve got him. Strengthens our case against Peernock, actually.”

  “Strengthens your—?”

  “But you might want to take extra security precautions. I mean, we’re telling you this on the off chance that he got to someone else. Someone who might still come looking for you.”

  There was much more to the conversation, of course. Victoria was able to recall bits and pieces of it once she left the building. After she’d finished throwing up in the ladies’ room.

  Robert Peernock’s response to the charge of solicitation of the murders of Victoria and Natasha was unequivocal. He cried out that the jailhouse snitch was a paid liar and that the DA’s story was simply an excuse for the DA’s office to justify freezing all of Peernock’s money. To Peernock, this was proof that Victoria Doom was actively working with the prosecution to rig a conviction.

  Victoria acknowledges that he was right about one aspect of his suspicions; she was certainly doing everything she could think of to help put Peernock away. The attempt on her life had given her the final element of legal power she had not been able to secure up to that point. Now all of Peernock’s money was cut off to him. And since his assets were completely frozen, he could no longer afford private attorneys.

  Deputy DA Springer and Victoria Doom decided not to tell Natasha about the hit man. Not yet, anyway. Peernock had no way of knowing his daughter had moved away, that she had married, or that she was in Hawaii. Secrecy was Natasha’s best protection; Steve Fisk’s caution in having had Natasha flown out under an assumed identity had paid off in spades. Naturally she would have to be told before her time to come back and testify, but for right now there had to be a limit to how much she was expected to cope with.

  But Victoria received one of her Christmas presents a month early that year when her husband gave her a shotgun with the barrel cut down to the minimum length. So while Robert Peernock was being arraigned on the additional charge of solicitation of a dual murder, screaming that this “bullshit charge” was simply one more example of the governmental plot to destroy him, Victoria was keeping her new present propped in the footwell of her office desk.

  She was also granted a permit to carry a concealed pistol. Since it was next to impossible to obtain such a permit in Los Angeles County at that time, the fact that she actually got one was a mark of just how highly the system had begun to assess Robert Peernock’s level of potential danger.

  Like the nurses who avoided telling Natasha about her mother’s death, the attorneys in Los Angeles may have underestimated her ability to comprehend her father’s animosity. After all, she had been there the first time he’d tried to kill her. Today she says she wouldn’t have had much trouble comprehending the idea that he’d tried to hire a murderer to finish the job for him.

  Nevertheless, the warmth she was feeling as a new bride in Hawaii came to represent a focal point she would badly need later on. She had no way of predicting the deeper challenges that lay waiting, because she had yet to meet the confusers or to hear the accusations and suspicions that would be leveled at her, one on top of another, by individuals eager for fresh interpretations of the events behind the night of slaughter. Even as she lived in the hope of a safer future, the gray cloud of despair she had dared hope to have escaped back in California was already approaching relentlessly across the sea, drawn magnetically by the pull of unfinished business.

  She had one more dance with Daddy left ahead of her. This one would not last for a matter of hours, as the last one had.

  It would go on for days.

  CHAPTER

  19

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon on December 21 when the bailiff finally came out into the hallway and called Tasha into the courtroom. For her, the past two days leading up to her time of testimony at her father’s preliminary hearing had been marked by a steady buildup of tension and a sick feeling of dread.

  The return flight to California was an ordeal of apprehension as Tasha wondered how hard she would be grilled. Immediately on her arrival, the authorities told her about the hit man. There was no avoiding it. They had to explain why she was to be accompanied by two bodyguards twenty-four hours a day, why she was to be whisked away to a secret hotel for the duration of her stay, why she was not even to be allowed to step outside the room without a guard. There was even talk of placing a heavy bulletproof vest over her for the journey from the car into the courthouse.

  She was relieved when they decided just to bring her through a back door of the court building, arriving with her each day at varied times. Everything felt bizarre enough already.

  Pam Springer warned her that her father’s attorney, Bradley Brunon, would probably do everything he could to cast doubt on her story. This was because in the past months, not a single piece of solid physical evidence had been found that could tie her father to the scene of the crime. The case so far had boiled down to her credibility against her father’s.

  Robert Peernock’s explanations had grown more polished with practice, his denials more emphatic. And although no one inside the system who had observed his behavior since his arrest on September 4 retained the slightest belief in him, any slip of Tasha’s memory would be seized on by the defense and turned against her.

  Now as she stood and slowly walked through the door into the courtroom, she settled the invisible blanket around her feelings the way she had learned to do at home years ago.

  Tasha avoided looking around as she was sworn in. She knew her father was in the courtroom, but she was in no hurry to meet his gaze. She didn’t want to feel any more of his energy. Evil was the word she had privately used to describe him ever since her grade school days, and the night of the murder only reinforced her conviction that he had somehow lost himself altogether to evil. And the evil always seemed to find a way to prevail, to push through any situation against any adversary.

  As she took her seat in the witness chair, the fear flashed through her that somehow her father had managed to get his hands on some kind of weapon, perhaps bribed a guard with the money his gir
lfriend had pulled out of his heavily stocked bank accounts before Victoria sealed them. She wondered, if her father had resolved to finish the attack right inside the courtroom, did anybody here have the power to protect her?

  Fortunately for her, Pam Springer was the first to begin the questions. That helped put Tasha at ease a little. Springer’s cool, efficient demeanor and professional polish conveyed a sense that things were under the control of forces that could still overpower sheer evil. Tasha fixed her eyes on Springer, hoping that it was true. She didn’t look anywhere else as the initial questions began. The easy questions.

  Springer: “Do you know the defendant in this case, Robert Peernock?”

  Natasha: “Yes. He’s my father.”

  Springer: “Is he seated over here in the middle of the counsel table next to the phone?”

  Natasha twitched in shock as her eyes flew open in surprise. She hadn’t noticed the man sitting there and at first he didn’t seem familiar. But as she took in his features, the eyes, the skin, the build, she realized he was her father indeed. “Oh. Yeah,” she breathed in amazement. Since the arrest his hair had changed from bleached blond curls to straight, dark brown. His beard was gone. His chin was bigger, the skin around the eyes was tight. It finally hit her just how hard her father had tried to disguise his appearance with the plastic surgery. “He looks way different,” she added, exhaling with a sound that was halfway between a bitter laugh and a shudder.

  Tasha knew that Springer didn’t want her to volunteer any comments, but the last remark slipped out. She wanted to go on, to rage at him, to demand that Robert tell them who the hell he’d been planning on fooling, by changing his face around like that. But she forced herself into silence. Springer had warned her how even the innocent volunteering of some little comment might be used to help the defense in some way.

  Over the next few hours, the whole story slowly came out. Tasha never faltered, never broke down. She spoke clearly, sticking to the direct, simple sentences that Pam Springer had asked her to use. Sometimes when the questions elicited the most painful answers, her voice would drop so softly that the judge had to ask her to speak up and to repeat her responses. But she kept on without breaking, answer by answer by answer, building the huge jigsaw puzzle one tiny piece at a time.

  Finally they got to the final moments of the crimes.

  Springer: “What happened next?”

  Natasha: “Then he stopped the car and put us both in the front seat.”

  “Now, who did he place in the front seat first?”

  “My mom.”

  “He then placed you in the front seat?”

  “Yes. On the passenger side.”

  “When he placed you on the front seat, was the hood still on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you still handcuffed?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the front or in the back?”

  “In the front.”

  “When had he removed the handcuffs from the back to the front?”

  “When I was in the bedroom.”

  “Before he carried you out?”

  “Yes. I told him I couldn’t feel my hands.”

  “When he placed you in the front seat of his car on the passenger side—

  “Yes.”

  “—Were your feet still tied?”

  “Yes.”

  And later, Springer asked: “Natasha, had you ever driven that car before?”

  “No.”

  “Did you like the car?”

  “No.”

  “Did your mom drive the car?”

  “No.”

  “Did she like it?”

  “No.”

  “Did she, in fact, hate that car?”

  “Yes. She thought it was tacky.”

  “Natasha, did your mom drink and drive?”

  “No.”

  Before she could stop herself, Tasha raised her gaze to meet her father’s. Her heart immediately jumped as the old feelings of fear shot through her. She was face-to-face with the man who had turned into a demon before her eyes and destroyed her family. How much power did he really have? Was he going to lunge for her right now? He seemed to be capable of any kind of violence. She tore her eyes away and turned her head, but it took conscious effort. She knew she could never get through this if she let his eyes meet hers.

  She didn’t risk looking at him again for the rest of her testimony.

  Upon cross-examination Bradley Brunon did everything he could to challenge her credibility. To make Robert appear supportive, he brought out the fact that Tasha’s father had paid for her medical bills and dental bills. He brought up her horse.

  Brunon: “Did he buy you a horse?”

  Natasha: “Yes.”

  “When did he buy you a horse?”

  “After he broke my arm.”

  “Is that the arm you told the doctors and everybody else you broke while falling?”

  “He told them that.”

  “Didn’t you also tell them that?”

  “Because he told me not to tell anyone, and my mom did not want me to tell anyone.”

  “So, you told the doctors that you fell in your house and broke your arm, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You continued that lie for approximately four years?”

  “I didn’t tell anybody else besides the hospital.”

  “You told numerous people at the hospital, did you not, including the doctors and nurses?”

  “Yes.”

  “As far as you know they all believed you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you were a persuasive liar on that point?”

  And so it went, for three days. Brunon and Springer alternately attacked her and defended her credibility while she held tightly to her story. It was to be the easiest questioning she would endure in the case; there was much more to come. But at least for now it was over.

  Her portion of the preliminary hearing ended on the twenty-third of December.

  This was not a trial yet; Peernock’s innocence or guilt was not to be determined here. But enough evidence was laid out, and the judge found Natasha’s testimony believable enough, that the case was successfully bound over for trial.

  Her testimony had just ended when the bodyguards took her aside into a small room down the hall from the courtroom. Tasha had complained bitterly about not being given any freedom to see anybody while in Los Angeles to testify, but the police were firm in their conviction that she simply could not be allowed to risk independent movement. So an artificial little reunion with her younger sister at the courthouse had been the best they could offer.

  Moments after Tasha entered the room, her eleven-year-old sister was brought in. The girl was now living with her full-time foster parents and the two hadn’t seen each other since before the crimes. The bodyguards stepped out to give them a few moments of privacy while they sat in two chairs facing each other in the barren little room. Later, even years later, the memory of the encounter would stick with her clearly.

  There was an awkward silence as her sister looked strangely at Tasha, taking in her drastically changed appearance. Tasha wondered what she must look like to her and what she must be thinking. Finally the little girl spoke.

  “Your hair looks really stupid.”

  It wasn’t the best of circumstances for a fulfilling reunion.

  So Tasha’s Christmas present that year was the knowledge that she had successfully helped to put in motion the long process of forcing her father to answer for the crimes of that terrible summer. As the bodyguards escorted her to the airport, automated holiday carols were playing everywhere. But the weight of what she had just endured hung heavily on her, making her feel alone while the entire Judeo-Christian world was on a giant Muzak high.

  The carols tolled in the airport while the ticket agents screwed up her tickets and the carols tolled in the police station where her
bodyguards took her to wait for four hours while somebody in a command position figured out what to do and the carols tolled back at the motel where they finally put her up for the night.

  The carols were still Muzaking away on Christmas Eve when Tasha’s bodyguards finally released her to the next plane for Hawaii. I’ll be home for Christmas.

  Daddy had received a visit for the holidays from his supposed-to-be-dead daughter. And during this season to be jolly, Tasha had brought him the gift of a living, breathing souvenir from their last dance together on their final night in the Peernock house.

  CHAPTER

  20

  As the year drew to a close, Victoria found her practice suffering severely. Even though she had farmed out most of her non-Peernock cases, she barely kept her head above the paper river flowing her way from Dern, Mason and Floum. She had even farmed out Natasha’s civil cases to avoid any conflict of interest, concentrating on the probate settlements and the lawsuits against Robert’s estate. Although that cleared her of any hint of conflict of interest on Natasha’s behalf, it also lowered her prospects of financial gain from a case that had already sapped her resources to the breaking point. She was learning that no amount of work will maintain a sole practice when a lawyer is forced into court every day on endless rounds of motions, while her practice collects no money for the efforts and has to function solely in the hope of future compensation.

  She went into the holidays in a miserable state, unconsoled by the early present from Richard, which she still kept propped in the footwell of her desk. Physically and mentally exhausted, she was finally beginning to face the thing she had feared most when deciding whether to take the case: she no longer saw how she could keep going against virtually unlimited resources fielded by an entire law firm bent on overwhelming her.

  Confronted by the loss of her practice and complete defeat as Natasha’s advocate, she spent the holidays discussing with her husband, Richard, whether or not she should let go while there might still be something in the case to save. Noble as it can sound to fight to the very last, such a strategy would not only leave nothing for her but could leave Natasha’s next attorney with insufficient ammunition to salvage the case.