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CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIFORNIA

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 2023

9:00 A.M.

On Wednesday morning, neither Detective Horn nor Detective Burns were at their very best. The night before, they had stayed up late while, with search warrant in hand, Huntington PD CSIs had conducted a thorough search of Joel Franklin’s Camaro. The contents of the passenger compartment had been revealing. They had included a shovel, a .32-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, a backpack stuffed full of clothing, a laptop computer, three cell phones, a passport, and an envelope stuffed with loose cash that added up to thirty-five thousand dollars.

Seeing the shovel had been especially chilling. “If we hadn’t intercepted those phone calls from Joel to Marc,” Ray said, “I’m pretty sure he would have ended up in the trunk of that Camaro right along with Adam. Joel may have been headed for Tijuana, but I doubt either Marc or Adam would have made it to the border. They’d have ended up buried in a shallow grave somewhere between here and there.”

Joel’s laptop had been handed over to Huntington PD’s tech guys, but by the time Ray and Monica showed up at police headquarters, they had not yet cracked it. While they waited, the two detectives decided to divide and conquer. With two additional search warrants in hand—one for Marc Atherton’s residence and one for Joel Franklin’s, Ray Horn and Monica Burns, accompanied by local officers, set out to execute them. Ray went to Joel’s place, which happened to also be Adam Brewster’s residence in Holly-Seacliff, while Monica headed for Marc Atherton’s apartment in Huntington Beach.

Aside from a laptop computer, nothing much showed up at Atherton’s place. Other than personal items—clothing, a few dishes, and a chintzy thirty-two-inch flat-screen TV—there was little else. On a guess, Monica sat down in front of the laptop and keyed in the same numbers Marc had given her as the password to his cell phone—1, 2, 3, 4. Sure enough, the combination worked on his computer as well.

She scrolled through his recent search history. She found one for driving directions from Sea-Tac Airport to the Brewsters’ address in Edmonds. He had checked with any number of car rental firms before settling on Enterprise, and the confirmation date on the emailed rental reservation was dated February 22. That alone was enough to show premeditation. Hotel and flight reservations were dated the same day and led back to a credit card belonging to Joel Franklin.

Monica could barely believe her eyes. How dim could Marc Atherton be? He hadn’t even gone to the trouble of deleting his search history. If this team had a mastermind, he wasn’t it.

Then one of the Huntington Beach PD Tech Unit guys came over and handed her a computer printout. “What’s this?”

“We cracked Joel’s phone. This is his most recent search history. We’re printing out texts and email correspondence as we speak.”

“In the meantime, can you set me up with a computer?” Monica asked.

“Sure thing,” the guy said. “Come with me.”

He led her back into the TU, located an available computer, and got her logged in. Monica located Joel Franklin’s last search: “Cheapest flights from Tijuana to Mexico City.”

“So that’s where he was headed,” Monica muttered to herself.

The next one up said: “Charles Brewster Homicide, Edmonds, Washington.” Monica typed that into the desktop’s keyboard and up popped a link to a website called komonews.com .

The video opened with a view of the KOMO TV news desk, complete with a pair of news broadcasters, one male and one female. The caption at the bottom of the screen proclaimed KOMO MORNING NEWS .

The guy spoke first. “Since earlier this month, we’ve been following the case of the brutal slaying of video game executive and Edmonds resident, Charles Brewster. His widow, Clarice Brewster, has been charged in the homicide. She’s currently out on bail and living under house arrest while awaiting trial, but our reporter Darla James has an update for us this morning. What do you have for us, Darla?”

The camera view switched to a young female reporter, one Monica recognized, standing outside the headquarters of the Edmonds Police Department.

“Thank you, Gary,” Darla said. “You’re correct. Clarice Brewster has indeed been charged in her husband’s murder, but this morning, anonymous sources close to the investigation are reporting that the focus of the investigation has recently changed, and detectives on the case will be following up on leads in Southern California. I asked Edmonds Police Chief Richard Nelson about that, and he would neither confirm nor deny. If I learn anything more, I’ll be in touch. Back to you.”

The clip ended and Monica sat staring at the screen. Then she checked the printout. The clip may have been from the morning news, but the timing of the search indicated it had been made much later in the day, at 3:34 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28. The flight search had happened mere minutes later at 3:58 p.m.

It was easy to connect the dots. The moment Joel knew that the focus of the investigation was shifting to California, he had begun making arrangements to get out of Dodge. But had Joel called his supposed partner in crime to warn him that the jig was up? Obviously not. Joel had been busy looking out for Joel and nobody else.

Once the CSIs had turned their attention to the Camaro’s trunk, they discovered Adam Brewster had been lying on a bed of clear plastic bags filled with shredded paper. Since they were more interested in the blood and DNA evidence on the outsides of the bags, they hadn’t paid much attention to the contents.

But now Monica was all about the contents. Joel had probably expected he’d be able to dispose of them at the same time he got rid of Adam’s body, and maybe Marc’s as well. Abandoning her borrowed desktop, Monica went looking for the guy who had brought her the printouts.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said. “Can you help me find the evidence that was taken from Joel Franklin’s vehicle last night?”

“Can do,” he said. After a quick phone call, he turned back to her. “Most of it is in the evidence room, except for the bags of shredded paper. They’re in a locker in the impound garage.”

“Great,” she said. “Take me to the impound garage. It’s the shredded paper I need to see.”

At her request, Monica was led to the garage’s sole interview room, where one of the bags of paper had been placed on a table for her convenience. After activating the room’s recording equipment, she donned a pair of gloves and then tore open a bag. Grabbing two handfuls of shredding from the topmost layer, she spread the pieces out on the table. She could tell at once that they were bits of countless sales receipts—Safeway, Walgreens, Home Depot, BevMo. Clearly these were all debit sales receipts, and she didn’t need to actually piece them back together completely in order to figure out what was going on.

Rather than looking for bits of paper listing the names of products and their prices, she went searching for the ones showing subtotals and totals. And there it was. On every single shopping receipt she examined, just above the total, was a line indicating the amount of cash back—usually that turned out to be forty dollars, probably the maximum allowed.

By the time she had collected and photographed ten or so of those, she sent the photos to Ray along with the following message:

Joel may have been writing checks to himself, but take a look at these. Here’s what Joel shredded. Every time he went shopping for anything, he gave himself forty bucks. He really was robbing Adam Brewster blind.

Ray called back almost immediately. “Congrats,” he said. “How the hell did you figure that out?”

“School of hard knocks,” Monica told him. “I graduated with honors. My ex used to do the same thing.”