One to the Wolves, On the Trail of a Killer (8 page)

The luncheon on Saturday was a highlight of the writers’ conference. As we neared
the end of the main course a woman across from me suddenly exclaimed, “Aren’t those
pretty!” I turned in my chair to see a young man headed in our direction with an elaborate
arrangement of silk flowers. People were craning their necks to follow his progress
as he worked his way across the room, struggling to avoid colliding with tray-laden
wait people.

Assuming the floral arrangement was for the luncheon speaker, I resumed my conversation
with the person next to me. Then, to my astonishment, the flowers were plunked down
in front of me.

The conversation at our table was extinguished in a heartbeat. Everybody stared at
me expectantly as I removed the card from its envelope. The message on it was the
last I would ever have expected.

Mrs. Arquette, I wish you the best in finding Kait’s killer. I don’t think I have
the answers you seek, but someday I would like to meet you. You’re a strong mother
and I wish Kait had introduced us before she left. I hope this arrangement shows that
there are some out here who are still looking and love her very much. Rod.

I felt as if somebody had crashed a fist into my chest. According to psychics, Rod
was Kait’s secret second boyfriend. For four years I had been searching for evidence
that this man existed, and now suddenly, here he was!

Our lunch plates had by now been removed from the table and a glass of tangerine sherbet
of the exact same shade as the flowers sat melting in front of me. Somebody at the
head table was clinking a spoon against a glass to indicate the start of the program.
Mumbling an awkward apology to my tablemates, I picked up the flower arrangement and
carried it out to the lobby.

“Do you know who delivered these?” I asked the clerk at the front desk.

He said he did not.

I went up to my room and set the arrangement on the table next to the bed. It was
exceptionally pretty and clearly not inexpensive. There was even a little feathered
bird nestled among the clusters of pastel blossoms.

I wondered if it had a bomb in it.

How in God’s name could I know the intentions of the sender? Who was this “Rod” and
how did he fit into the picture? Was this the young man who allegedly took Kait to
a party at a “Desert Castle” where she saw a VIP involved in a drug transaction

The phone rang.

I snatched up the receiver, but it was only Michael checking in with the news of the
day.

“So what’s going on at the conference?” he asked conversationally.

“Rod sent me flowers,” I told him.

“The kid you described in your book? He’s finally revealed himself?”

“Not exactly,” I said. I read him the message on the card. “He doesn’t give his last
name or say how to contact him.”

“What was the name of the flower shop?” Michael asked. “I’ll check and see if they
remember the order.” A short time later he called back to report that the proprietors
had no trouble recalling the flower arrangement because they knew the young man who
bought it.

“They don’t know his name, but every Friday since Kait’s death he’s come in to buy
flowers to take to her grave,” Michael said. “It’s gone on so long that he just asks
for ‘the usual.’ Next Friday I’m going to fly back here and try to intercept him.”

“Oh, and guess what? Susan left me a message on my voice mail. She won’t give me her
home address, but she told me what city she’s living in and has agreed to meet me
at a coffee shop in a shopping mall. I’ve made plane reservations for this evening.”

“You’re going to fly there!” I exclaimed. “This has to be costing you a fortune! Couldn’t
you just ask her questions over the phone?”

“I want to get a look at that dog bite scar,” Michael told me.

Michael sent us a tape of his interview with Susan and then phoned to discuss it.

“She was pretty convincing,” he said. “But her statements conflict with each other.
She told you that she left Albuquerque because she was scared. She told
me
she relocated because of a wonderful job offer.”

“What was your impression of the scar on her arm?” I asked him.

“It’s a straight slash about four inches long, and I didn’t see any opposing set of
tooth marks. Susan says it tore a bunch of tendons and required three hours of surgery,
which seems like a lot of damage for a nip from your own dog.
1
She told me, ‘The scar looks weird because it got stitched funny.’ I asked if she’d
be willing to let us look at the ER report. She insisted she has nothing to hide,
so I’ve mailed her release forms. It’s important to nail this down because an amazing
number of people suffered suspicious injuries following Kait’s murder.”

“Dung’s suicide attempt—”

“It goes far beyond that. Dung’s Hispanic friend, Ray Padilla, and two of Ray’s woman
friends had their arms and wrists slashed. Ray’s the guy who told police that Dung
had friends in California who were big time drug dealers. When your book came out,
Marty Martinez was found lying in his doorway with his wrist slashed, an alleged suicide
attempt. And after Miguel Garcia got out of jail, he was shot in the stomach, another
alleged suicide attempt. And Robert Garcia, APD’s false eyewitness, was found dead
in an alley. That adds up to a lot of injuries to people linked in one way or another
to Kait’s case.”

Susan did not sign the forms to release her ER records. She told Michael she hadn’t
received them. He mailed her a second set, which she didn’t sign either. After that
she screened all her calls and would not respond to those from Michael.

I wrote to her, pleading with her to sign the forms so we could get that issue off
our platter. “The doctor’s description of your wound should clearly indicate that
it’s a dog bite, and that will be that,” I wrote.

She did not respond.

True to his word, Michael flew back to Albuquerque to hang out at the flower shop
and wait for the mysterious “Rod” to show up the next Friday. Rod came into the shop
right on schedule, and Michael intercepted him.

“Rod and Kait went to high school together,” Michael reported. “He has an I.D. bracelet
she gave him for his birthday. He had to change schools and the two lost track of
each other, but he ran into her again in 1989 and they started going out for coffee
or to a movie on nights when Dung was off with his buddies. Rod says Kait was close-mouthed
about what was going on in her life. He says he didn’t know anything about the car
wrecks until he read about them in your book. And he swears he didn’t take her to
the Desert Castle.

“Two days before the shooting, Kait asked him, ‘What would you do if I died?’ He thought
she was joking.
2
Then, she did die, and he’s been going through hell ever since. It sounds like she
was priming herself to confide in him, and he didn’t take her seriously. We definitely
need to find out if the print on that Budweiser can belongs to one of the Vietnamese
suspects.”

I phoned the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Albuquerque and requested
that they provide APD with the immigration files for Dung and his alibi friends. I
spoke with an agent named Doug
3
who was extremely sympathetic because his daughter had gone to school with Kait and
because his friend, Police Chief Sam Baca, had told him Kait was killed by the Vietnamese.
Spurred by that disclosure, Doug had ordered the immigration files for Dung and his
friends sent up from the regional office in El Paso. When he attempted to give them
to the APD, the police had not wanted them, so he had sent them back to Texas.

I asked him, please, to get them back and check to see if they contained any information
that might help us.

He did so and phoned me, sounding very excited.

“There’s something crazy going on!” he said. “An Quoc Le has a double!”

“A double?” I repeated blankly.

“In 1987, an An Quoc Le who lived in Westminster was naturalized in California. A
person with a different face, but with the same name and same date of birth, was naturalized
in Albuquerque in 1991. I’m not sure yet which is the legally naturalized An Quoc
Le. I’ll have to compare the fingerprints.”

“An Quoc Le is a common Vietnamese name,” I said. “Couldn’t this be a coincidence?”

“No,” Doug said with certainty. “One of these guys is an impostor. The An Quoc Le
who came to Albuquerque was admitted to the United States in 1982. An Quoc Le Number
Two, the one in California, was naturalized in 1987, using the same Alien Registration
Number.”

I gave him the Social Security number for “our” An Quoc Le.

“That matches the one who was naturalized in Albuquerque,” Doug said. “We’ve definitely
got two individuals. Hopefully when we get through investigating we’ll denaturalize
one of them. When I find out more, I’ll let you know.”

Day after day we waited for him to call back, but, like other good men before him,
he seemed to have been road-blocked. An Quoc Le continued to enjoy the lifestyle to
which he had become accustomed, and we were never to hear from that nice INS agent
again.

However, something did soon come out of Albuquerque to give new direction to our thinking.

“Does the name Matt Griffin mean anything to you?” Michael asked me.

“Wasn’t he the cop who was the ‘Ninja Bandit’?”

“That’s the one,” Michael said. “The press started calling him the Ninja because he
dressed all in black and leapt over counters during bank robberies. His get-away cars
were stolen sports cars. He’s currently serving a life sentence for shooting a witness.”

“I remember that,” I said. “He was arrested the same week Kait was shot.”

“That story is back in the news again,” Michael said. “In January 1989, Griffin killed
a man named Peter Klunck. The official story was that it was self-defense. Well, it’s
now come to light that the APD Internal Affairs files contain information that Peter
was once Griffin’s snitch. There’s also a rumor that Griffin’s fellow officers covered
up for him.”

“What does this have to do with Kait?” I asked him.

“The federal prosecutors have demanded to examine the I.A. reports. APD refuses to
release them.”

“But what’s the connection—”

“I’m getting to that,” Michael said. “A P.I. in Albuquerque, Roy Nolan *, has been
investigating an auto repair shop that’s an alleged chop shop for stolen cars. A cop
friend of Nolan’s told him that one of the I.A. reports contains information that
Vietnamese were stealing getaway cars for Griffin, which were later dismantled at
that shop. That isn’t as crazy as it sounds, because one way the fraud rings operate
is by stealing cars to use to stage hit and run accidents.

“If it’s true that members of Dung’s bunch were working for Griffin, then it’s likely
they have inside knowledge about the Klunck shooting. If that includes the fact that
cops planted an alibi gun at the scene, it would put that group in a position to blackmail
those cops.”

“Can APD be forced to release the Internal Affairs files?”

“A judge has ruled that they must, but they continue to refuse to,” Michael told me.
“My guess is they plan to hold out until it’s too late to prosecute. The statute of
limitations on criminal prosecution runs out on January 27.”

In February, Don and I made a trip to Albuquerque to visit Donnie. While there, we
went to the library to see what we could find out about Matt Griffin.

We started by pulling up articles from the time of the Klunck shooting. According
to the
Albuquerque Journal,
police Chief Sam Baca told reporters that Peter was shot twice in the chest —
when in reality he was shot three times in the back.
The
Journal
also had somehow obtained a confidential report that disclosed that the three officers
who fired at Peter gave conflicting statements. Matt Griffin, whose bullet was defined
as the one that killed Peter, refused to give a statement at the scene. Officer Robert
Valtierra said Peter had a gun in his
left
hand. Sergeant Paul Heatley said he clearly saw a gun in Peter’s
right
hand. Officer Steve Nakamura, who did not fire at Peter, reported that Peter was
unarmed.

The gun that Peter allegedly had been carrying was not found until seven hours later
when a derringer turned up fifteen feet from where Peter fell. It tested negative
for prints.

Griffin then gave a statement that he had fired in self-defense. The grand jury, who
weren’t aware of the conflicting statements of the police officers, found them not
criminally liable, although they did raise questions about the delayed appearance
of the derringer. Peter Klunck’s parents had questions about that too, and in January
1990, they filed a federal wrongful death and civil rights suit against the police
chief and several officers. The city settled out of court for $325,000, which the
Kluncks placed in trust for Peter’s son, born twenty days after his death. The settlement
contained no admission that Peter’s civil rights were violated.

The Klunck family refused to give up on the civil rights issue and contacted the FBI
in Washington D.C. In December 1993, a federal grand jury subpoenaed APD’s Internal
Affairs files, which APD still refused to release.

An editorial in the January 10, 1994, issue of the
Albuquerque Journal
gave an update on the case:

“Five years later, Klunck’s death is still haunted by troubling questions ... Now
thanks to investigations by federal prosecutors, a startling possible link between
Klunck and the officer who fired the fatal shot — Matt Griffin — has been included
for the first time in public records. Prosecutors say they have developed evidence
that Klunck and Griffin were engaged in criminal activity together and Klunck was
in the process of making the officer’s criminal activity known on the day he was killed
... Could a policeman who had possible criminal links with Klunck have a compelling
personal reason to want to silence Klunck— a personal motive for firing bullets into
the man’s back?”

I phoned Peter’s mother, Renee Klunck, and asked if she would talk with me. She said
to come right over and the moment we met we bonded into instant sisterhood.

“When I read your book, I went out of my tree!” Renee told me. “I sat there, pounding
my fists on the kitchen counter as I read the names of the very same cops who dealt
with us.

“Our son had a drug problem, and Griffin was part of it. A police officer told the
FBI that Griffin had Pete pushing speed for him. Then, in October 1988, Griffin ordered
Peter to steal a car for him, but this time Peter turned him down. Pete’s girlfriend
was expecting a baby, and he was getting into rehab and trying to turn his life around.

“On the day of his death, Pete was scheduled for an appearance in court, and he told
me he was going to blow the lid off APD. But it was more than just squealing on Griffin.
Pete had the goods on VIPs who control the New Mexico drug scene. That morning he
called his girlfriend and told her he loved her and if anything happened to him he
wanted her to keep the baby.”