One to the Wolves, On the Trail of a Killer (18 page)

Neither Juve’s Camaro nor Paul Apodaca’s VW was a large enough vehicle to ram Kait’s
car with such force that it traveled over 700 feet, jumped the median, and ended up
on the opposite sidewalk. But a police car could easily have done that. If a renegade
cop had forced Kait off the road and fired a shot at her car to scare her, it was
not impossible that Juve might have become excited, leapt from his Camaro and impulsively
finished her off with a smaller caliber weapon.

In 1990, when psychic detective Noreen Renier had channeled Kait, she had described
a scene that resembled the one I now was visualizing.
“I leave my friend’s house and I’m cut off … They’re coming to both sides of the car
… I’m shot. Execution style.”

“I’m thinking along those same lines,” Pat said when we compared theories. “I’ve
suggested to the Cold Case detective that the Hispanics may have been hired to frighten
Kait into keeping her mouth shut or to create a drive-by scenario to obscure a hit
by somebody else.
11
He seems to find that concept interesting. He’s going to interview Paul Apodaca in
prison and try to find out what really happened at the crime scene.”

“What about the resurfaced witness?” I asked her.

“I don’t think he’s made much progress with her,” Pat said. “If he discovers he’s
been fed a false lead, he’ll go ballistic. This isn’t a man who’ll take kindly to
being manipulated.”

By now the Attorney General’s Office had completed its investigation of the evidence
room problems and announced that no one would be prosecuted. The two principal embezzlement
suspects were reassigned to a different department. The manager of the evidence room,
who was cited in an independent review as the person most responsible for concealing
the thefts, resigned. She, then, was placed in charge of the New Mexico State Crime
Lab. “We have no reason to suspect that she is anything but the best,” said the spokesman
for the Department of Public Safety. “We are quite fortunate to get her here.”

The mayor expressed his pleasure that no uniformed officers were arrested.

The police chief was awarded his full retirement pension. He told reporters that he
was looking forward to sleeping in, drinking coffee with artificial sweetener and
cream, and watching football on television.

The only people to suffer were the whistle blowers.

I asked Pat when the Cold Case detective was going to interview Paul Apodaca.

“I don’t know,” Pat said. “It’s been over a month since I’ve heard from him. I’ll
give him a call right now and ask him about that.”

A few minutes later she called back, sounding stunned and disheartened.

“He’s been transferred out of the Cold Case Unit,” she told me.

To: Lois Duncan:

Subject: Re: i worked w/kait at
the import store

Wow, lo these many years later, and I hadn’t thought about the whole tragic thing
since I moved from Albuquerque shortly after Kait’s murder! What a shock to stumble
upon a website and all of the crazy goings on possibly connected! I
used to work at that store when Kait was clothing manager, and I
had a weird experience of my own. I found a packet of heroin in a box of
fans. That was shortly before Kait was killed. I now live in a different state, b
ut I
’ve
never forgot
ten
Kait
,
even though she and
I
didn’t know one another well. I have a child of my own, and can’t imagine what you’ve
gone through. Here’s my phone number if you want to reach me. Sincerely,

Kim*

After all this time, the final pieces of the terrible puzzle were seemingly tumbling
into place — the smuggling of drugs from the Orient; potential Asian recipients in
place in Albuquerque; VIP drug addicts and/or administrators of drug cartels with
easy access to drugs coming in from Mexico but no way to obtain the valuable white
heroin from Asia; a crooked body shop where drugs were distributed — and Kait, planted
solidly in the middle of all of those.

I phoned Kim. My heart was in my throat. What if she turned out to be yet another
fraudulent informant? What if she’d never worked at that shop at all?

But the moment I heard her voice —kind and concerned and intelligent — I sensed that
whatever she had to tell me would be true.

“In 1989, my boyfriend and I were working as musicians,” Kim said. “We traveled around
a lot and stayed in various cities for short lengths of time. Every place we went,
I’d get a day job to supplement what we earned in nightclubs. We were in Albuquerque
nine months and I worked at that import store for two or three of those. I remember
Kait being clothing manager but didn’t know her well.”

“What were your duties?” I asked her.

“I worked the floor and helped stock shelves,” Kim said. “Shipments came from a central
distribution center out of state. Boxes were stored in a back room, brought out one
at a time as needed, and unpacked by whoever was available.

“When I found the heroin, it was evening and we were just getting ready to close.
I unpacked a box of fans and discovered the packet. I recognized it as heroin because
I worked in bars and was familiar with drugs. I also knew how the little packets were
folded.”

“Did you report it to the manager?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t tell anybody who worked there because I didn’t know who might be involved.
Somebody there must have been expected to intercept it, but somehow missed it. Since
it was only one packet, I’m guessing it was a sample and the game was just getting
started. The major deliveries were probably scheduled for later.”

Kim said she took the packet home with her. Then she phoned her brother, an out-of-state
police officer, to ask him what to do. He advised her to call the FBI. Federal agents
came to her apartment and seized the heroin. She never heard from them again.

A week later, Lenore*, the manager of the import store, was fired, allegedly because
upper management paid a surprise visit and found the store “not up to merchandising
standards.” That came as a shock to everyone, especially Lenore. Kim said she went
into work that day and found Lenore crying. She said Lenore was young and ambitious
and prided herself on running a tight ship. She was a strict but fair boss, and all
her employees respected her.

“She didn’t deserve to be fired,” Kim said. “She was doing a fine job. I’ve wondered
if the feds might have contacted the home office and demanded to know what was going
on at their Albuquerque store. The could have used a pretext to get rid of Lenore
so they could bring in somebody from upper management to keep an eye on things.”

There was tension in the air, and Kim had started to get nervous. She quit her job
and started working at a restaurant. Soon after that, she read in the paper that Kait
had been shot.

“I was stunned,” Kim said. “I’d never known anyone who was murdered. And the coincidence
of the timing — Kait gets promoted to clothing manager; I find the heroin and turn
it in; Lenore gets fired for some bogus reason; and a couple of weeks later Kait gets
killed. All within such a short period of time.”

“The stumbling block for me is the apparent randomness of the drug importation,”
I said. “The person who stuck that packet in with the fans must have intended it to
go to a particular person. But if all the employees were arbitrarily unpacking boxes,
how could they make sure the right person would intercept it? Especially if there
were dozens of boxes, all coming in from the same distribution center.”

“All of them were supposed to be from that distribution center,” Kim said. “But that
doesn’t mean they all
were
. Many of the boxes came by UPS. The average employee, seeing those boxes come in,
would assume they came from the distribution center, but they could just as well have
come from a foreign country. If someone was alerted to watch for those particular
boxes, they could intercept them on the loading dock or in the storeroom. Kait’s boyfriend
and his friends were in and out of that store all the time, visiting Kait.”

Kim talked with Pat and reiterated all that she’d told me. She also agreed to put
Pat in touch with her brother, who could confirm that Kim had told him about finding
the heroin.

“Kim speculates that the new manager may have been assigned to check out the situation,”
Pat said. “That store wasn’t computerized back in 1989. Since Kait was handling the
invoices, he may have asked her to watch for incoming shipments that didn’t match
up with statements from the warehouse. If Kait told Dung about that, and he repeated
it to people in the smuggling ring, that could have gotten her killed. That would
account for his saying, “This is all my fault!’”

“There’s another possibility,” I said. “What if Kait was ordered to intercept the
heroin and refused to? Remember what Susan told her girlfriend about Kait’s telling
Dung, ‘I know what you guys are up to, and I don’t want to get involved.’ That was
only days before the murder.”

“I want to know how Susan fits into this,” Pat said. “How did she know about Kait’s
ultimatum to Dung? It’s not likely Kait would have told her. But if, for some reason,
she did, why didn’t Susan report it after the shooting? She had plenty of opportunity.”

“Are you suggesting that Susan may have learned that from Dung?”

“I don’t know what part she may have played in this, if any, but she’s told lie after
lie, and there has to be a reason. When Susan applied to rent the space in front of
that import store, she told the property manager she was doing so with an inheritance
from her parents in Texas. I’ve run a background check, and her parents are alive
and living in New Mexico. As soon as Kait died, she abandoned her cracked ice business,
applied for Kait’s job at the import store, and talked the new manager into hiring
her boyfriend to work on the loading dock. Ten days later, they both stopped coming
to work, without even picking up their paychecks. What does that add up to?”
12

“It seems to suggest something I don’t want to believe,” I told her.

The state of New Mexico was in turmoil. Good and bad were tumbling like dominoes.
When I pulled up on-line editions of Albuquerque papers, I was never prepared for
what I might find:

State Treasurer Robert Vigil and former State Treasurer Michael Montoya are arrested
on federal extortion charges. Montoya plea bargains and testifies against Vigil. Vigil
is convicted and sentenced to prison. Montoya is later sentenced to prison as well.

Jay Rowland, Albuquerque’s independent police review officer, is notified that his
contract will not be renewed.
Rowland states his belief that his ouster
was orchestrated by the Police Union.

David Iglesias, U.S. Attorney from New Mexico, who publicly expressed his shock at
the names of the VIPs in the buried narcotics report, is fired.

Manny Aragon, President Pro Tem of the New Mexico State Senate at the time of Kait’s
murder, is charged with fourteen counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering.

Ken Schultz, mayor of Albuquerque at the time of Kait’s murder, is charged with similar
offenses. He plea bargains and agrees to testify against Aragon.

Raul Parra, a contractor involved with the scheme, admits to skimming $3.3 million
from the Metro Court audiovisual contract. Parra says he transferred more than $600,000
of the ill-gotten money to Manny Aragon.
An outraged Aragon insists, “I am completely innocent!”

Toby Martinez, former Metropolitan Court administrator, is charged with similar offenses.
He plea bargains and agrees to testify against Aragon.

When Manny Aragon realizes that the computer records and spreadsheets will now be
allowed into evidence, he changes his plea to “guilty.” The plea deal results in a
sentence of sixty-seven months in federal prison (as compared to the eighteen years
he would have received if convicted on all counts at a trial) and nearly two million
dollars in fines and restitution. He is
given a private send-off party by many of Albuquerque’s most prominent citizens.

Manny’s brother, Charles Aragon, pleads guilty to possession with intent to distribute
almost half a million dollars worth of marijuana. He has two prior federal drug convictions,
one for being chief financier of an international drug smuggling operation at the
time of Kait’s murder.

A newspaper article by Mike Gallagher reveals that former senator Aragon has been
on the radar of federal agencies for over twenty years and has a long record of business
dealings and friendships with convicted felons. It also discloses that Aragon was
a partner in a construction business with Jerry Padilla Sr., a three-time convicted
heroin dealer. The year of Kait’s murder, Padilla was sentenced to ninety-six months
in federal prison.

That same Jerry Padilla and his family head Los Padillas, the most dangerous street
gang in New Mexico, known for distribution of heroin and other drugs.

And so, we have come full circle and are back to the drug scene — crooked political
figures consorting with the state’s narcotics king pins.

One of Betty’s readings said that, to solve Kait’s case, an investigation must “
start from the top and trace information downward.”
I had assumed that this reading referred to the top tier of the police force.

Now I was starting to wonder if I’d misunderstood it.

JUNE 2010 —

A SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Supreme Court of New Mexico has found that the 1997 amendment which abolished
the 15 year statute of limitations for all capital felonies and first degree violent
felonies, applies to all crimes committed within the 15 year period BEFORE its effective
date of July 1, 1997. The State will now be able to prosecute all capital felonies
and first-degree violent felonies committed after July 1, 1982.

In other words, the police department was wrong in their assertion that further investigation
of Kait’s case would be wasted. In the event that her killers are arrested and indicted,
they will be able to be prosecuted, since her murder took place in July 1989.

More things are continuing to happen, and they’re happening quickly — most importantly,
the
U.S. Department of Justice has launched a full investigation of APD.

I cannot help but recall Betty Muench’s prediction:

“
There are certain beings who will seem to be working on their own, but who have the
abilities of training from higher authorities and thus can know the manner in which
to infiltrate certain groups that will have to be inspected from the inside out.”

The U.S. Department of Justice has the power to do that.

Although Don and I have
agreed that Kait’s personal case is of minor importance compared to the Big Picture,
we have not lost hope that eventually it will be solved. F
rom dozens of unrelated sources, a gigantic amount of information has accumulated
to produce a convincing scenario that I never could have imagined at the time I wrote
Who Killed My Daughter?.