Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

“He kept asking me who they were. We looked at them in the little window in the back of the camera. I told him I didn’t know. I assumed they were my mother’s relatives. She borrowed my camera. She never told me the pictures were there. I found them when I went to use it. But it must be her relatives, no? Who else would it be?”

“What did Pike do then?”

“A few days later he told me he was going back to the United States and he wanted me to come with him for a visit. He invited me to come stay at his house near San Diego.”

“And you wanted to go?”

“Sure. Why not? But I told him I couldn’t. I had no visa for the United States. He told me no problem. And as I told you before, he got the visa.”

“Harry is looking into that, how Pike obtained it so quickly,” I tell her.

“Yes, and there was another problem too. Emerson must have been in a rush,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he insisted on completing the application for me, the application for the visa. He said I would sign it but he would fill it out be cause it would go faster. I didn’t like that. What, he thinks he’s smarter than I am?”

“So what happened?”

“I gave him my passport because he needed information from it to fill out the form, but he got my name wrong. I didn’t see it. He just had me sign the form. I wanted to look at it, but he said he was in a hurry. He had to go someplace and he took the form with him. Next thing I know he comes back with the visa and my name is not right.”

“Wait, wait, wait…you mean you didn’t go to the U.S. consulate with him when he delivered the application?”

“No. He said it wasn’t necessary, that he could take care of it. He took my passport and the application and the next thing I know he has the visa.”

“But the name is wrong. Did he misspell it?”

“No. He didn’t put down the last part of my name-Nitikin. I always used it, Katia Solaz-Nitikin. Solaz is my father’s name. My mother’s family name is Nitikin. It was on my passport. Emerson knew I used it. It was the name on the modeling agency website. It made me angry because if he’d let me fill out the application, I would have done it correctly. It’s the way he was. He always had to do things, even if it wasn’t his business.”

“A control freak,” I say.

“Yeah.” She snaps a finger and points at me. “That’s it.”

“But in the end the name on the visa wasn’t a problem. I mean, you got into the country all right?”

“It would have been better if I had not.” She looks around at the dismal surroundings, the concrete floor and the dingy walls of the small room we are in, with a female sheriff’s deputy outside the door.

“What happened next, between you and Pike?”

“When we got to his house, everything changed,” she says.

“Changed how?”

“Emerson seemed different. Nervous, as if he was watching me all the time. I told you about the money, how he took it away from me. He told me we were going to take trips to see things, but we didn’t. He would buy me clothes, take me to clubs. But I could tell he wasn’t doing this because he liked it. He was doing it to keep me quiet, so I wouldn’t ask to go back to Costa Rica. Then I found out that before we left to come up here, he had copied the pictures from my camera to his computer without telling me. It’s why I forgot to bring my camera. Emerson took it out of my bag where I kept it and he didn’t put it back. So when I took the bag it wasn’t in it.”

“Where’s the camera now?”

“At my mother’s house in Costa Rica.”

“And the pictures from Colombia, they’re still in it?”

“As far as I know. I asked him that.”

“Pike?”

“Yes. I asked if he erased them when he copied them to his computer. He didn’t ask me. He just did it.”

“What did he say? Did he erase them?”

“He said no, they were still there.”

“And you believed him?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“Is there a telephone at your mother’s house, any way that we could call down there?”

“No. She has a cellular, but she turns it off when she goes to Colombia.”

I give her a slip of paper and a pen and Katia writes the address of her mother’s house on it. In fact, it is a description of how to get there.

“Is there anyone in Costa Rica who could retrieve the camera for us, a friend or relative who could get it from the house and ship it to us?”

She thinks for a moment and shakes her head. “Lorenzo, perhaps.”

“Who is Lorenzo?”

“Lorenzo Goudaz. He is a friend of my family, but he has no key to my mother’s house. Besides, he will be angry when he finds out what has happened to me. I introduced him to Emerson in San José but Lorenzo didn’t like him. He told me not to trust him.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said Emerson was too nosy, asking too many questions. He told me to be careful. I should have listened to him.”

I take his name and telephone number to put on Harry’s short list of contacts in Costa Rica in hopes that perhaps this Lorenzo can contact Katia’s mother.

“You say Pike had a computer with him in Costa Rica and he used it to copy the pictures.”

“Yes, a laptop.”

“I assume he brought it back to the States with him when he came home?”

“Of course. That’s how he printed the pictures in his study. The ones the police took from my bag.”

A cop’s best friend, your own computer, the first thing they seize at any crime scene. Only in this case, it’s gone.

“Do you know what happened to it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Pike’s computer is missing. The police didn’t find it at his house.”

“It was on the desk in the study. It’s where he kept it. It was there when I left that night.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I saw it when I put the note on the desk.”

According to one of the homicide investigative reports, Pike had a website for his business. A wireless antenna for the Internet and a printer, all in the study. But there was no computer.

Ordinarily this would be a problem for them, limiting leads. More often than not, the answer to what happened is in the computer, e-mails and the things people research on the Internet, all of which leave tracks. But the police don’t seem to be concerned at all in this case, probably because they have Katia and a seeming mountain of evidence against her. But like the missing cache of coins, they didn’t find Pike’s computer on Katia when they arrested her, and they can’t explain why. All the little unanswered questions.

According to Katia, it all comes back to the pictures.

I ask her about her mother and whether she has ever had any problems with the law.

“I know what you are thinking,” says Katia. “My mother goes to Colombia, so she must be involved in drugs.”

It’s obvious from the way she gripped this that the same thought has crossed Katia’s mind. “No. It’s not true. She has never had any problems of that kind, and she would never do that. I would know. None of my family has ever had anything to do with drugs. You can check, but you will find nothing. Besides, I don’t think Emerson was looking for drugs. It was something else.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. It’s just a feeling. But I don’t think so. He was looking for someone or something in those pictures. You should talk to my mother,” she says. “Maybe she knows something.”

“How do I get in touch with her? Do you have a phone number in Colombia?”

Katia shakes her head. “She has no cell phone with her. I don’t even know where she stays. Usually she calls home every week or so from a phone in the city.”