by Jance, J. A.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“You should probably try to rest now.”
“No,” Hannah said. “Before I worry about getting some rest, I need to speak to Lieutenant Manning here. There are a number of things we need to discuss.”
60
Van Nuys, California, June 2017
The room was silent for some time after the two doctors left. When Hannah spoke again, it was with a question. “Do you have one of those phones that can do videos?”
“Yes, why?”
“Because I think you’re going to want to record what I have to say, and you should probably start by reading me my rights. I’m prepared to plead guilty to everything I’ve done. Since I’m in no condition to write out a confession, recording it will have to do.”
It took some maneuvering on Crystal’s part to position the phone, propping it up on the tray on Hannah’s bed in a way that captured both their faces on the screen. Although Hannah was sure the officer knew the cautioning words by heart, she pulled a small laminated card out of her jacket pocket and read the contents word for word.
Once her rights had been read and those present for the recording session stated, Hannah wasted no time in coming to the heart of the matter. “After my son went to prison for murdering Dawn, his first wife, he made a list—his A List, as he likes to call it. In it he listed all the people he held responsible for his destruction, and he vowed to get even with every one them.”
“He wrote it out?” Crystal asked.
“He didn’t actually write it—he tattooed it on his arm, and not the full names either. Just the first letter of each of their names—D for Dawn, L for Leo Aurelio, K for Kaitlyn Todd, A for Alexandra Munsey, and A for Ali Reynolds. He called it his A List—A for annihilation. He was determined to take them all down. Each time one of them was dealt with, Eddie adjusted the tattoo by x-ing out that person’s initial, starting with Dawn, even though she was already dead long before he went to prison. But when it came to dealing with the others, I agreed to help him.”
“Why?” Crystal asked.
Hannah shrugged. “Because he was my son,” she answered simply, “and because he was all I had left.”
“How many of the individuals on that tattooed list are dead?”
“Four—Dawn, Leo, Kaitlyn, and Alexandra.”
“And why is Ali’s name on the list?”
“Because she was the one who brought the media into play. Without that none of it would have happened.”
“I take it you weren’t the actual triggerman in any of those cases?”
“No, I provided the funding. Eddie chose his preferred target, Luis had the necessary contacts and connections, Gloria made the hiring arrangements and handled payments to the various contractors.”
“So you’re saying it was all four of you together?”
“That’s how it was to begin with,” Hannah answered, “but over time things changed. I paid for all the hits in advance. Once they had my money, Gloria began to think she could boss me around. She and Eddie both started ignoring my wishes and shutting me out of the conversation. They treated me like I was nothing more than a walking, talking ATM. And when Eddie and Gloria both forbade me to come to Alexandra Munsey’s funeral, that was the last straw.”
“Why was coming to the funeral so important?” Crystal asked.
“Wait,” Hannah said suddenly. “What happened to my purse?”
“It’s probably still with the wreckage. Why?”
“I came for a trophy,” Hannah replied. “I wanted a trophy, and I had it in my purse.”
“A trophy?”
“I have Leo Aurelio’s ashes back home in Folsom, along with a copy of Kaitlyn Todd Holmes’s death certificate. This time I wanted a printed program from Alexandra Munsey’s funeral, and I came here in person to get it. First Eddie told me I shouldn’t come, and then Gloria stopped by and told me the same thing. We had words.”
“And you came to the funeral anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe Gloria decided to come after you on her own.”
“No, Gloria is not an independent operator. She takes her orders from Luis.”
“Ali claims you saw Gloria at the coffee shop across the street just before the crash occurred?”
“That’s right, she was sitting there just as pretty as you please, waiting and watching, expecting me to see me die. But I’ve got news for Gloria and for the rest of them as well. If I’m going out, I’ll do it on my terms not on theirs.”
“You said Luis has the contacts. That makes it sound as though he’s central to this operation. How does it work?”
“It’s too hard to smuggle money in and out of the prison. People pay for the various services he provides, but Gloria handles all the monetary transactions.”
“What about communications?” Crystal asked.
“He’s got a cell phone,” Hannah answered.
“In his cell in prison?” Crystal asked.
“You’d better believe it. Gloria let that slip sometime ago when she came by to do one of my manicures. She probably thought I wasn’t paying attention, but I was.”
“If you were not involved in the actual homicides, do you have any way of proving that any of this is true?”
“I have the account records.”
“What kind of records?”
“Luis operates on a cash-only basis. There’s a garage refrigerator at my place in Folsom. That’s where I keep my cash—hard, cold cash, as it were. It’s also where I keep my ledger. I’ve been blessed with having a good deal of money in my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m not careful with it. I’ve always kept track of exactly how much I had, of where it went, and why.”
“So the ledger is still there?”
Hannah nodded. “Along with a little over two hundred thousand dollars in cash.”
“What can you tell me about those other deaths?”
“Leo Aurelio was found hanging in his prison cell and was presumed to have committed suicide. Kaitlyn died in a one-car automobile accident when she plunged off a snowy highway. And Alexandra Munsey? She was gunned down in her home.”
“But you don’t know any of the individuals actually involved as the doers in those incidents?”
“No, I operated strictly behind the scenes,” Hannah answered, “but I’m getting tired now. Is that all you need?”
“I believe you’ve given me enough probable cause to go for warrants, and I’ll be doing so. I’ll also be placing you under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to commit homicide. I’ll be making arrangements for a uniformed officer to be stationed outside your door both before and after your surgery.”
“To protect me or to keep me from running away?” Hannah asked.
“Tell me this,” Crystal said. “Are you prepared to turn state’s evidence and testify in a court of law against the others—against your son, Luis Ochoa, and Gloria Reece?”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Years ago, when Eddie first went to prison, he told me about his list. When I offered to help him with it, he said that two people with nothing to lose going up against four people with everything to lose gave us pretty good odds. He was in prison, and I’d already survived one bout with cancer. Now my cancer is back, and I’ll probably die of it, but the same holds true. Someone with nothing to lose going up against three people with everything to lose can win hands down. Eddie, Luis, and Gloria all think nothing will ever touch them. I want to prove them wrong.”
“All right, then,” Crystal said, “in that case the guard will be here primarily for your safety and protection.”
“I’m not certain I take too much comfort in that,” Hannah said. “I have it on good authority that guards can be bribed on occasion.”
“These won’t be,” Crystal Manning replied. “I’ll see to it.”
There was a soft tap on the door, and a young woman entered the room. She wore a lanyard wit
h photo ID and carried a clipboard. “I’m from admissions,” she said. “Even though Ms. Doe is being admitted to the hospital under a pseudonym, we need to straighten out her insurance coverage and next-of-kin arrangements before she undergoes surgery.”
“You can do that while still keeping her identity off the books?” Crystal asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll step out into the hall, then,” Crystal said, turning, collecting her phone, and switching off the recording. “I have some calls to make, but I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
“She seems nice,” the admissions clerk said once the door swung shut.
Hannah nodded. “She is. She’s also my granddaughter. When you get to the part about next of kin, you can fill in her name—Crystal Manning.”
The clerk had already taken a seat and was putting pen to paper. “What’s her phone number?” she asked with her pen poised above the applicable box on the form.
“I don’t know,” Hannah answered. “You’ll have to get that from her. She may be my granddaughter, but we’ve only just now met.”
An hour later, as they rolled Hannah’s bed through the hallways toward the OR, she was thinking about Crystal Manning and that ginger-haired boy named Rory Davis Munsey. Eddie hadn’t wanted her to go to the funeral because he was afraid people would recognize her—and that they’d all end up being caught. What he hadn’t anticipated and what he should have feared was the idea that if she actually met any of those people in the flesh—the ones who were Eddie’s presumed enemies—they’d turn into people in their own right.
But she had and they had, and that made all the difference.
61
Carmichael, California, June 2017
On that Sunday afternoon, California Bureau of Investigations Agent Bob Owens was having his best golf game ever! On the front nine, he’d made two birdies and an eagle. On the back nine, he’d birdied the par three. As he waited his turn to tee off on the fifteenth hole, he was six under and cleaning everybody’s clock, but that’s when his phone rang. It didn’t actually ring, because out of respect for his fellow golfers he had silenced the damned ringer, but when it buzzed in his pocket, he dragged it out and looked at the screen. Seeing his boss’s photo appear in the caller-ID window, he went ahead and answered.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I need you to come in,” Agent in Charge Samantha Jacobs told him. “I’ve got search warrants on one of the unsolved cases you and Mansfield worked years ago, and they need to be executed immediately.”
“Which case?” he asked. Unfortunately, there were several to choose from.
“A guy named Leo Aurelio,” Samantha answered. “He was a lifer at Folsom who supposedly committed suicide.”
“I remember,” Owens said. “The one who was later found to be plugged full of fentanyl.”
“Yup, that’s the one.”
“Where are we searching?”
“According to Lieutenant Manning from the LAPD, the warrants list four separate locations—two are cells at Folsom Prison, one is a residence in a Folsom area retirement community called Arbor Crest, and the last one, also in Folsom, is on Rugosa Drive. Lieutenant Manning says that Leo Aurelio was the hired hit man who killed the wife of a guy named Edward Gilchrist. After Leo was arrested, he turned state’s evidence and testified against the guy who hired him, a guy who is currently serving life without at Folsom. Now, according to Gilchrist’s mother, she’s been underwriting her son’s vendetta against a number of people whom Gilchrist regards as responsible for his fall from grace. At least four of those individuals are dead, and all of this has been accomplished with the help of another lifer at Folsom, Luis Ochoa, and his niece, someone named Gloria Reece. The residence on Rugosa belongs to her.”
“And the Arbor Crest residence belongs to the old lady,” Owens added. “I remember her. She’s the one who offered to pay Leo’s final expenses. Have you called Danny?”
Danny was Danielle Harper, Bob Owens’s current partner.
“Did,” Sam answered. “She doesn’t live too far from here, so she’s stopping by the office to pick up the warrants and check out a vehicle from the motor pool. Where are you?”
“On the fifteenth hole at the Ancil Hoffman Golf Course in Carmichael.”
“Sorry about that,” Samantha said.
“Tell me about it,” Owens grumbled.
“Do you want to ride with her, or do you want to take your own vehicle?”
“I’m already halfway to Folsom as it is,” Owens told her. “Have her meet me at the prison. Has anyone advised the people in charge that we’re coming their way?”
“That would be negative,” Sam replied. “According to Manning, there’s a good possibility that some prison personnel may be involved in this whole business. It’ll be better all around if we spring the warrants on them at the last minute—less chance of a cover-up that way.”
“Hey, Bobby,” one of Owens’s fellow golfers called impatiently. “Are you going to stand around gabbing on the phone all day or are you going to play golf?”
“Okay,” Owens said into his phone. “Tell Danny I’m on my way.”
“Sorry about your golf game,” Samantha said.
“You have no idea.”
With that, Owens returned his phone to his pocket and dropped his driver back into his bag.
“Wait a minute,” another of the foursome demanded as Owens reached for his club cover. “Does that mean you’re calling it quits?”
“Got to,” Owens answered. “I’ve got warrants to execute in a cold case,” he said, unstrapping his bag from the golf cart and hefting it onto his shoulder. “I’ll have to pay up what’s owing at the nineteenth hole some other time.”
The other guys were all professional law-enforcement officers, too—Johnny Richards was a captain with the California Highway Patrol, Cuzzy Arwine was an assistant chief of police with the Sacramento PD, and Gabe Ortega was the chief deputy for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. All three of them knew the drill. They knew that Owens had to go, but that didn’t keep them from razzing the hell out of him as he went.
After walking off the course and dropping his golf bag into the trunk of his Camaro, he thought about going back to his place to change clothes but decided against it. There’d been an urgency in Sam’s voice that put speed over decorum. He had his badge along, and that’s the only thing he really needed. The people at Folsom would have to take him as is, golf shorts and all.
As Owens headed for Highway 50, he wished he could call Bill Mansfield and let him know what was up, but there was no point. The last time he’d stopped by Bill’s “memory home” to see his old partner, the poor guy had slipped so far into dementia that he’d had no idea who Bob was. And that was one of the reasons the two of them had left a number of unsolved cases behind, including this one—Leo Aurelio’s. That had more or less marked the beginning of it. Bob Owens had been the new kid on the block back then, though when things started going haywire with Bill, Owens couldn’t help but notice. Reports didn’t get filed in a timely manner. Leads didn’t get followed up on. When Bill was called into court to testify, he blew his testimony more than once, forgetting key details. As a result several people walked who never should have.
At first Owens had let things go and simply chalked it up to the fact that Bill was absentminded. But then one day Bill got hopelessly lost trying to get back to the office from an interview. That’s when Owens had finally blown the whistle to the agent in charge. Within a matter of weeks, Agent Bill Mansfield was medically retired from the CBI and Bob Owens was in the market for a new partner.
As Owens headed out, he checked the GPS, which told him that going to US-50 would be slightly faster, so that’s the way he went. Once on the highway, he called Danny. She had headed out slightly before he did, so she was only about five minutes behind him.
“Sam called me off a golf course,” he told her, “so I’m not exactly dressed for the
part. You’ll need to take lead.”
“No problem,” Danny said, “but what can you tell me about the case?”
“Leo Aurelio died in prison,” Bob explained. “When he turned up dead in his cell, hanging from a rope, the death was presumed to be suicide. Later on, he was found to have a fatal dose of fentanyl in his system. His manner of death was ruled to be undetermined, but since he was in prison and had no relatives to keep the investigation on course, the investigation went cold in a hurry and stayed that way.”
Owens didn’t bother to go into the details of how much Bill Mansfield’s worsening condition had contributed to that.
“What about the two cells we’re supposed to search?”
“One belongs to a lifer named Eddie Gilchrist, the guy who hired Aurelio to murder his wife. The other belongs to Luis Ochoa, another lifer, who’s been aiding and abetting. The Arbor Crest residence belongs to Gilchrist’s mother, and the Rugosa Drive residence belongs to Luis Ochoa’s niece, Gloria Reece. Both of them are presumed to be participants in a program of revenge against Edward Gilchrist’s enemies.”
“Sounds like fun,” Danny Harper told him. “I can hardly wait.”
Call-waiting buzzed. “I’ve got another call coming in. See you at the main gate in a couple,” Owens told his partner. Then he switched over to the other call. “Hello.”
“Agent Owens?”
“Yes.
“Lieutenant Manning with LAPD here—the detective who obtained the warrants. Are you at Folsom yet?”
“I’m just pulling in to the parking lot,” he answered, “but thanks for calling. I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you. What exactly are we looking for?”
“My cooperating witness says Ochoa has a cell phone. At the moment I’ve got Gloria Reece confined to an interview room. Once she asks for a lawyer, she’ll make one call and any incriminating evidence will disappear. So call me back on this number as soon as you execute those two in-prison warrants.”
“Will do,” he said. “Anything in particular we should be looking for?”
“I believe Luis has access to a cell phone. Finding that would be a real prize, but be aware it’s likely that some of the prison staff may be involved in all this, so play your cards close to the vest. If there’s any advance warning of the search, crucial evidence is bound to disappear. And one more thing: Before you leave the prison, I need you to take a photo of the tattoo on Edward Gilchrist’s forearm.”
