Chapter 31
ERIC SNAFF WAS just standing there on his front porch with his hands on his hips, watching us get out of Cindy’s car. Nothing about him seemed creepy. He wasn’t doing anything overtly disturbing. I told myself to be a little more open-minded.
Eric greeted Cindy with a handshake. She turned and said, “You remember my friend, Lindsay Boxer?”
“Of course. I still owe her a favor for not throwing me out of the party when I told her why I was there.” Then he looked at me and said, “You’re a detective with the San Francisco PD, right?”
I nodded.
“Honestly, I appreciate any help I can get in finding my daughter,” he said.
Eric brought us into his extremely neat house.
Nothing was out of place. I made a quick note of his shockingly good taste in interior design.
This house would’ve stood up to the snootiest of San Francisco socialites.
I wondered how much it cost to decorate this way.
Can he afford decor like this working in youth services?
Cindy and Eric sat on a mid-century-modern couch.
I took a chair across a tasteful coffee table.
An old habit I used for most interviews.
I never liked to get too physically close to the person I was interviewing.
An instructor in an interview course I attended my first year on the job had recommended maintaining some distance from a subject, and it had really stuck with me.
We talked for a few minutes. General, focused small talk. Sometimes it could reveal a lot.
After a few minutes, I asked if we could see Nicole’s room. Eric didn’t hesitate to lead us down a hallway to a closed door. When he opened it, I could see dust float up in the air, filtering the sunlight.
The bed was neatly made and the room was pristine, aside from the layer of dust. One wall held a half dozen framed photographs of Nicole and her friends.
She was certainly photogenic, and looked to be an active athlete as well.
In addition to soccer, there were photos of her playing volleyball and tennis.
Eric stood with us for a moment in the room, then stepped back out into the hallway. It seemed like he was overcome with emotion.
When we returned to our places in the living room, I started in with the questions I really wanted answered.
“The night we met you at the party in San Francisco, you said you’d gone to the Chronicle first,” I stated.
Eric nodded.
“What time did you get into San Francisco?”
He thought about it for a moment, then said he’d probably been in the city for about an hour before coming to the party.
“What time did you leave the city?”
He shrugged. “As soon as I got my car after the party. I guess it would’ve been around 7:30 or 8.”
“And your car is the white Jeep Cherokee that’s in the driveway? Is that the same car you recently drove to San Francisco?”
He nodded. Now he looked a little concerned. I wasn’t about to let him in on the best tactic I had available to me—checking into the history of his FasTrak toll account. That would be my easiest way of determining how honest he was being about his comings and goings.
Then I hit him with both barrels at once, so to speak. “Why do you think the local cops aren’t doing enough to find your daughter?”
The question left him flustered for a moment. “They seem to think she’s just a runaway. I guess they think Nicole ran away because of me.”
“Did she?” I leveled a good stare at him and added, “You had nothing to do with it?”
That did it. Eric broke down and started to cry. He excused himself for a moment. He walked into the kitchen, pulled a paper towel off the roll, and blew his nose noisily.
Cindy turned to look at me with an expression on her face I couldn’t read.
By the time Eric got back to the couch, he was a little more composed.
“You ask me if I had anything to do with my daughter’s disappearance? Truthfully, I don’t know. Maybe I could’ve done something different. Maybe I should’ve seen some warning signs. I’ll tell you, it’s tough to be a single parent, especially a single dad to a daughter.”
I’d seen some good actors. Even some professional ones who were charged with crimes. Either Eric was one of the best I’d ever seen or he was sincere.
When we’d arrived, I’d been expecting to tie him to Tina Barnes’s murder in Golden Gate Park. Now I wasn’t sure what to do.
Cindy broke in. “You told me about two other girls missing from the area. Carly Nash and Katie Dharma. How much interaction did you have with them?”
Eric said, “I met Carly once. I recognize Katie from Nicole’s school. But I didn’t really know either of them. I’ve been making notes. I’ve got my own list of suspects.”
Cindy asked if she could see his list of suspects. He disappeared into one of the back bedrooms, then returned with a sheet of paper. There were half a dozen names with some notes written off to the side. He told Cindy she could keep it.
It was a little awkward as we left the house. As soon as we slipped into Cindy’s car, she said, “What did you think?”
“I don’t know. He’s convincing.” Clearly Eric hadn’t expected to be grilled. But I hadn’t expected to be persuaded by his answers.
Cindy let out a quick laugh. “Now I’m the one wondering if he’s full of shit.”
“We need to gather more info. Things will unfold soon enough,” I said.
I decided not to tell her I was having my doubts.