The Victim (50 page)

“
Ozzie Garcia would have been the perfect victim for that scheme,” Anton said. “He was either still high or coming down when he gave his statement. Obviously he’s not mentally okay. It would’ve worked.”

“
But again,” Jack said, breathing through his frustration. “I’ve watched this video countless times from start to finish. Where in the seven hours and fourteen minutes do the agents get up and press buttons on the copy machine?”

Mandy leaned over the desk, scrolling back the status bar to precisely the right moment.

“
Watch…now!”

Whatever it was, Jack and Anton missed it. They shook their heads and looked to Mandy for guidance.

Mandy sighed. “Okay, watch.” He dragged the status bar back. “Watch Garcia’s right hand. You see in this frame it’s on the table, right? He’s got a cigarette between his index and middle finger. It’s about half smoked, right?” Mandy clicked on the
play
button. “Now…see?” He paused the footage.

The cigarette was gone.

Mandy played it back again. This time, zeroing in only on Ozzie’s right hand, they watched as the little speck of white suddenly vanished, his hand moving a few inches in an abrupt, jerky fashion. Replaying it once more, Mandy pointed out that the stack of papers in the tray did not appear until after the quick cut.

He stopped the video. “Look, guys. It happens. Cops wanna think they got their man. Sex offender. Witness sees him with the dead girl before she goes missing. Their minds are made up. The interview wasn’t going the way they had hoped so they resort to extreme measures. Plain and simple, I’d say there’s a good, ten, fifteen minutes of footage you didn’t see because that was cut out. They tried to be careful. Shit, it worked, too. They wait until over five hours into the interview to break out the lie detector bit. They know that if they delete the footage, anybody who’s been watching the whole time’s not going to notice a quarter-second hiccup. You can blame that on the camera.”

“
Editing the video is destruction of evidence,” Jack said, his eyes zeroed in on the paused screen. “You could have a post-conviction claim on those grounds if you can get a video expert to review the footage. But the copy machine bit is fair game. Cops are allowed to lie to you, even trick you during a statement. They can do anything except fabricate evidence.”

Mandy clicked
play
again. “Listen to the interview. The tone changes from here.”

In the video, Special Agent Laurie palmed the right side of his hair. “Look, Osvaldo…we’ve been running around in circles for like five hours now. Were you or were you not in the Tonto National Forest with the girl?”

They could hear the sound of Ozzie’s shoe bouncing off the floor. His thumbs rapped a fast-tempo beat on the table.

“
You say I’m with her? Yeah, I’m with her. Whatever the fuck you want, that’s right. The forest, the motel, the fucking moon, man. Wherever the fuck you want it, brother.”

Laurie asked, “So you were camping in the forest with the girl when? Yesterday? The day before yesterday?”

Garcia reached for one of the five Coke cans in front of him, guzzling it down. Foam bubbled in his chin whiskers. “Can’t remember that. Whenever you say. You’re the boss.”

The younger agent chimed in. “According to the owner of the motel, you were with the girl two days ago.”

Ozzie nodded furiously. “Yup, yup, yup, yup.”

Laurie’s fleshy back rose and fell as he sighed. “Osvaldo, you strangled the girl, didn’t you? That’s how you killed her.”

Garcia gazed forward, his eyes bulging. “Well pin a fucking ribbon on your chest, soldier. You done got your man!”
He slammed his Coke can down on the table, soda spraying from the lip.

“
You buried her out there, didn’t you?” Laurie added.

Garcia breathed into his hands. He hugged his thin body, frantically rubbing his hands up and down his arms and shoulders. “Bury ’em deep, soldier. Them bears can be awful persistent.”

Laurie asked, “Can you tell us where you buried her?”

Garcia laughed, his head snapping back and forth. “Not a chance, hombre. She’s gone. You’ll never fucking find her.”

Mandy stopped the video.

“‘
She’s gone. You’ll never fucking find her,’” Jack said. “That was the first line of the prosecutor’s opening statement. Powerful, right?” He pointed at the computer screen. “I know, these are the ramblings of someone who’s lost their mind. Don’t think I didn’t craft my entire defense around it. But it was a circumstantial case; unfortunately, the circumstances change when you’re a registered sex offender. I said he’s crazy but three doctors found him competent to proceed to trial. He didn’t satisfy the legal threshold for an insanity defense. As for the statement, the judge found that he knowingly and voluntarily understood his rights when he waived them.”

“
Who testified that they had seen her with Ozzie?” Anton asked.

Jack pointed to the box on the floor. “His trial transcript should be in there. Owner of the Desert Rim Motel out in Payson. Pakistani guy named Mohamed Abedi. He contacted police the day before Ozzie was arrested. Remember, she had been missing for three days at that point. That’s what got the search centered around the Payson area. She was reported missing out of Phoenix by her mom on March 12, 2003.”

Jack got up and hovered over the box, leafing around until he found it. He showed it to Anton and Mandy.

“
This is her. Thought you should know what she looked like.”

They looked at the missing persons poster put out by the Phoenix Police Department. A 602 number was emblazoned across the bottom of the page, along with the name of the detective that callers should ask for.

“
She was reported missing out of Phoenix,” Anton said. “But then this motel owner, this guy Abedi, calls local cops up in Payson to say he’s seen her?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. Claims she was staying at the motel with two men, Garcia and Simpson. Then the search effort moves up to Payson. Garcia’s found on the 16th, camping out in the Tonto National Forest.”

Anton gripped the edges of the poster. The girl didn’t look eighteen, but then again teenage appearances could be deceptive. She looked much younger. The matte gray backdrop indicated that it was professionally taken, perhaps for a yearbook.

She was a chubby girl, her eyes reduced to little points, scrunched between her insolent squint and the round flesh of her cheeks. She wore a thick layer of corpse white makeup that cracked where it had dried. Her little eyes were shaded jet black, the same color as her lipstick.

Her thin greasy hair clung to the sides of her face. It was black with bright pink streaks. She didn’t smile, just held her black lips in a tight, apathetic line. Anton could see the top of her baggy Insane Clown Posse T-shirt before the image cut off.

“
I can see why this poster wasn’t plastered all over the national news,” he said, studying the poster. “Doesn’t quite fit the criteria for a newsworthy missing white girl.”

The poster said that her name was Lola Jane Munson and that she was eighteen. Last seen on March 12, 2003, near her home in Phoenix, Arizona.

“
Must have been printed before Abedi called the Payson Police,” Mandy said.

Jack nodded. “This poster was printed on March 13th. It was circulated around the Phoenix area. Didn’t make it up to Payson until Abedi called the police up there.”

The photo described the girl’s height and weight. Not much else.

“
There’s no mention of her tattoo,” Anton said. “The five letters on her wrist. The same tattoo that Evan, Kelsie, and Daniella all had. Usually they mention tattoos, scars, and other distinguishing marks.”

“
Unless she got it at some point between when that photo was taken and when she got arrested in Flagstaff,” Mandy said. “Remember, if this girl was part of the Miles of Mountains program and she and her friends ran away, maybe they all went and got those tattoos together, as a symbol of unity. You know, like soldiers who’ve been through war together.”

“
Lola had a tattoo when she was arrested for shoplifting up in Flagstaff in January,” Anton said. “But she didn’t have one when her mother, presumably, provided this photo to the police. And look at the backdrop. It’s like a grayish canvas. The kind they prop kids in front of for yearbook photos. Jack, didn’t you say that Lola had dropped out of high school her junior year?”

“
Yeah.”

Anton waved the poster at him. “Then this photo’s at least a year old, maybe more, by the time it circulates. By the time she goes missing, she has a tattoo. She’s been through a goddamn concentration camp in the mountains, beaten, deprived of food. You think she spends almost ninety days in the mountains she’s gonna look the same? And a year, maybe two years later?”

Jack held out his palms. “What’s the point?”

“
The point is, I want to know who this motel owner identified. It sure as shit wasn’t the same girl that’s in this photo.”

Mandy added, “One other thing you’ll both want to know. I ran a background check on Frank Wheaton—you know, the bond depositor in the shoplifting case? I know that we were able to find his Arizona record but remember, this dude’s a biker. He travels all over, means he’s probably got a record all over. Believe me, I arrested plenty of bikers from all over when they would flood South Beach for those long holiday weekends.

“
In 2001, Frank Wheaton did a year and change in Corcoran, that’s a prison in California, for possession of meth with intent to distribute. He was sentenced to four years but got paroled early. Get this…on March 16, 2003, he’s flagged at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix trying to board a flight to Mazatlan. Gets flagged ’cause he’s on parole and he’s trying to leave the country. Gets held on a parole violation before he’s extradited back to California. Gets sent back for a six-month tune-up.”

Anton’s mouth dropped. “So on the day that Ozzie’s found by the police, the same day that I have my crash on the Beeline…Frank Wheaton’s in Phoenix trying to board a flight out of the country?”

Mandy nodded. “Yup. Look, a few of my buddies from the Miami Beach Police Department left to take jobs with federal agencies. FBI, DEA, ICE. I got this one buddy, a guy I used to work Crime Suppression with, who took a job with Customs and Border Protection. We still talk, throw each other info every now and then. You know, CBP keeps passenger data that goes back for years. Chances are, if you’ve ever been on a flight in the United States, the federal government knows about it. And the Freedom of Information Act permits disclosure of that kind of stuff so it ain’t like it’s classified. I’ll shoot him an email, see what I can find on Frank Wheaton’s travel plans.”

“
Please do,” Anton said. “I’d be interested to know why Frank Wheaton’s trying to hightail it to Mexico the same day Lola Munson was presumably killed.”

CHAPTER 53

She had never been in a courtroom before. That much was obvious. It wasn’t the sight of it, probably a lot smaller than she had imagined. It was the premise. A sanctuary of the law, where justice prevailed. A place where one had to answer for their transgressions.

Maybe the religious undertones of it all fascinated her, although judging by the little silver crucifix around her neck, probably not. Like a good Catholic, fascination and fear would go hand in hand.

She was a thick, matronly woman clad in pale green nursing scrubs.
Kendall Regional Medical Center
was stitched into the breast. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She had chubby cheeks and wore too much eye shadow. There was a single gold hoop in each ear.

She fiddled with the purse in her lap while Sylvia went through the introductory questions, reminding the witness to please speak up. Somewhere in there Anton could make out the eighteen-year-old girl his client once dated. In all likelihood she had once been beautiful, but work and the responsibilities of the post-college years had caught up with her. Anton wondered if she had children. She wasn’t wearing a wedding band, but that didn’t matter.

He wondered if in any way, the process of letting her looks go could somehow be attributed to what Bryan had done to her.