15. The Missing Pages
The Missing Pages
The forty pages had not been stolen. That is the thing I want said first, because in a novel they would have been stolen and in life they were in the wrong box.
Ray Dominguez drove up there himself on a Thursday and came back with it and called me on Friday morning at six-fifty.
"Can you come in."
"To the station?"
"To the station," said Ray. "Front desk. Ask for me. Bring nothing and touch nothing and Doc — " a pause " — I want you to eat something first."
There were four things in the forty pages.
The first was a supplemental interview list, dated 27 November 1998, on which Carl Tomasetti appeared, at last, with a check mark and the notation *coop.
, voluntary, at rest. 11/24.* So he had been interviewed.
Eleven days after she disappeared, ten days after the restaurant staff, at his own restaurant, voluntarily.
The second was the interview summary itself, one page, typed.
It is a perfectly ordinary document. He had employed her since 1992.
She was a good worker. He was fond of her, "like family.
" She had been unsettled in recent months.
She had talked about moving on. He had offered her the management of Cabrillo's to keep her and she had seemed to be considering it.
He had last seen her on the evening of the fourteenth when she finished her shift at approximately 10:40 p.m. and he had locked up himself at 11:15.
He was, per the last line, "extremely distressed" and had offered a reward.
The third was a handwritten note, unsigned, on the back of the interview summary, in a different hand from the typing:
*C.T. — check re: Reyes kid, Casey seeing him? CT says yes, says R. rough w/ her, says C. had bruise in Aug. Says R. father money. Follow up.*
I read it four times.
"He gave them Gavin Reyes," I said.
"He gave them Gavin Reyes," said Ray, "on the twenty-fourth of November, 1998, in the voluntary interview he asked for."
"And Reyes was in Las Vegas."
"And Reyes was in Las Vegas, which they established in about a day and a half, and here's what happened next." Ray turned over the fourth document, which was two pages, and which was the reason a seventy-nine-year-old woman had been told in February that there was no evidence of foul play.
It was a chronology. A working detective's chronology, handwritten, four columns, dated 12 January 1999. And the last three lines of it read:
*— no phys. ev. / no scene / no veh.*
*— boyfriend (Reyes) alibi confirmed, LV, 11/12–11/16.*
*— emp. (Tomasetti) reports subj. discussed relocating (LA). Mother disputes. Emp. add'l: subj. withdrew savings 11/2 ($4,500). Consistent w/ voluntary departure.*
"He told them about the money," I said.
"He told them about the money."
"Ray, how did he know about the money? That's her passbook. That's a savings account at a bank on Chapala Street with her name on it and her mother never saw that page."
"Yeah," said Ray Dominguez. "That's the one, isn't it."
We sat in a small room with a bad window for a while.
"So the chronology is this." Ray counted it on his fingers, slowly, like a man laying stones.
"Girl goes missing on the fourteenth. Ten days of interviews, staff, nothing.
On the twenty-fourth the employer comes in voluntarily and hands them two things: a boyfriend with a temper and a withdrawal from a savings account.
The boyfriend turns out to be in Nevada.
But the withdrawal stands, and the withdrawal plus 'she talked about relocating' is a runaway, and in February a detective with forty other files writes *no evidence of foul play* and gives it to a newspaper.
" He put his hand flat on the chronology.
"The whole story this town has believed for twenty-eight years came out of that man's mouth in a voluntary interview eleven days after she died.
He wasn't hiding from the investigation, Lila. He *was* the investigation."
"And the second withdrawal," I said. "The two thousand in September. He didn't mention that one."
"No. Because that one's a deposit on an apartment in Goleta," said Ray, "and an apartment in Goleta is not a woman leaving the area.
It's a woman leaving a job." He closed the folder.
"I've got Goleta Coast Properties pulling the 1998 leasing records this morning.
I've got the Oxnard car — the seller's dead but his son has the file, because his father kept everything, God bless a man who keeps everything.
And at eleven o'clock I'm going to go and ask Gavin Reyes to look at a green Wagoneer. "
"Ray."
"Doc."
"He gave them Reyes," I said. "He sat in a room and told a detective that a twenty-six-year-old man had been rough with her and that she'd had a bruise in August." I could hear my own voice going somewhere.
"Ray, she *did* have a bruise. She had a fractured tooth in August of 'ninety-three and a bruise on her jaw in November of 'ninety-eight and he was in the room for both of them.
He took the true thing — the thing he did to her — and he handed it to the police with somebody else's name on it. "
Ray Dominguez stood up and went to the bad window and looked out at the parking lot.
"When I was in patrol," he said, "there was a guy used to come into the Mesa substation about once a month with information.
Helpful guy. Knew everybody. And it took us about six years to work out that every single thing he gave us was true and every single thing he gave us pointed away from his brother-in-law.
" He turned around. "The most useful person in a case is a thing worth looking at.
Nobody ever taught me that. I had to get to fifty before I noticed. "
Reyes, and the Wagoneer
Gavin Reyes made a statement on the ninth of June, in a conference room, with a lawyer he had hired and then told to be quiet, and it took three hours, and it ended his career.
I was not there. I got it from Ray, later, and from the councilman himself in a coffee shop in August, which is a conversation I'll come back to.
He told them everything he had told me on a bench, and then more.
That he and Casey had been together eight months.
That he had lied in 1998 and had gone on lying.
That he had been parked up the block outside her apartment on the seventh of November and had seen her sit in a green Wagoneer for forty minutes.
And then the thing he had not told me, which he had been working up to for three weeks and which he had, I think, finally understood the meaning of only when he said it out loud:
"She got out of the car," said Gavin Reyes, "and she didn't go straight in. She stood on the step for about a minute with her back to the door. And then she went in. And I have thought about that minute every day since I was twenty-six years old and I always thought she was thinking about me."
He resigned from the council on the twenty-second of June, before anybody asked him to, in a two-paragraph statement that did not mention the case.
There were people in this town who wanted more from him than that, and I understand them, and I am not one of them.
The lie he told at twenty-six cost a woman twenty-eight years of *no evidence of foul play*, and he knows it, and he will know it at eighty.
There is no sentence anybody could hand down that improves on that.
What his statement did was change the shape of the file.
Because the Wagoneer put Carl Tomasetti at Casey Marsh's apartment at night, a week before she vanished, in a vehicle, alone with her, for forty minutes — and Carl Tomasetti's interview summary from 24 November 1998 said that he had last seen her at the end of her shift on the fourteenth and that their relationship was "like family. "
It is not evidence of a murder. Ray said that four times in eleven days and he was right every time.
It is, however, a reason to go and knock on a door.