He’s going to be fine because we’ll be able to show where he was during that period of time.
But as John grew later and later, she was once again left to wonder and worry where he was and what he was doing.
Is he sneaking off to do drugs again?
She called one of John’s close friends to see if he’d asked for a ride to the mall, but the friend said he hadn’t seen John.
“I’m worried because he’s really kooky right now,” Cathy said.
Cathy called John’s girlfriend, Jariah, who had been in rehab since November, but was supposed to come to the condo with her three-year-old son that afternoon for a visit.
“Have you talked with John? Are you still going to be able to come over?” Cathy asked. “John was supposed to meet me for lunch and he’s not here. Did he say anything to you about going anywhere else?”
“No,” Jariah said.
Cathy had left about twenty-five messages for John that day, but hadn’t gotten a single response. “Where are you? I’m waiting for you,” she said, trying to sound more concerned than accusatory so as not to anger him. By that point, she was thinking she should take him back to the county mental hospital that night.
Around 1:30 P.M., Cathy finally gave up and drove home. On her way, she heard the helicopters overhead, still searching for Chelsea, she presumed.
By the time Jariah arrived at her condo around two-thirty, Cathy was beside herself.
“Have you heard from John?”
“No,” Jariah said.
“This is weird,” they both said. “This is really weird.”
Chapter 5
Two men knocked on Cathy’s front door just after 3:00 P.M. Dressed in street clothes, they identified themselves as law enforcement. In fact, they were members of the Fugitive Task Force, which is made up of sheriff’s detectives and U.S. Marshals.
“Does John Gardner live here?”
“No,” Cathy said.
“Is this where his mom lives?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking they must have mistaken her for his sister.
“Is he here?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No,” she said. “What is this regarding?”
The officers explained that they were there about the missing girl, and because John was a registered sex offender. “We need to talk to him. Can we come in?”
Cathy thought they just wanted to question him, as she’d anticipated they would. After he’d first gotten out of prison, she’d warned him that he’d always be a suspect, so he needed to be sure he had witnesses to verify his alibi when a girl went missing or was assaulted. “They’ll always look at you,” she had told him.
Informing her that they needed to secure the house, the officers gave Cathy the option to sit on the couch and not move, or to leave. But if she left, they would have to take her to the sheriff’s station for an interview. She chose to stay on the couch with Jariah and her son, Alan* (pseudonym*).
“You can go and look,” Cathy said. “He’s not here.”
They went room to room, finding no John and no Chelsea, until they came to a locked door. When Kevin wasn’t home, he left the door to his office locked because he kept expensive video equipment in there. The officers demanded that she open the door.
“I don’t have a key,” she said.
Cathy called Kevin, who said he could be home in fifteen or twenty minutes to open the door, but the detectives said they couldn’t wait that long, and broke it down.
“Do you know where Chelsea is?” the detectives asked.
“I don’t know,” Cathy replied.
“Do you know where John might have put her?”
“I don’t know.”
Around three forty-five, the detectives allowed Jariah to go outside to smoke a cigarette, while Cathy stayed inside with Alan. Cathy came outside to tell Jariah something, when they saw a guy walking down the street. Thinking it could be John, the cops took off running after him.
Fearing it was John, Cathy was petrified that the police would fire their weapons at him. “My son is mentally ill,” she shouted. “Please don’t shoot him!”
But it wasn’t him.
The detectives persuaded Jariah to call John to see if he would tell her where he was, and he did: Hernandez’ Hideaway, a restaurant and bar on Lake Hodges. As soon as they got this information, two detectives jumped into their cars and sped off toward the restaurant, which was fifteen minutes away. Several other detectives kept searching the condo and watched over Cathy and Jariah.
They’re going to kill him because he’s really out of his mind, Cathy thought. He’s going to run or he’ll mouth off and they’ll just shoot him, anyway.
At one point, a tall detective came over and spoke to her in a tone she found quite threatening. “If you know something, you’d better tell us,” he said, jabbing his finger in the air at her.
Cathy felt like her world was collapsing around her. She was not just tired of their questions, but she was also starting to become unglued. “I don’t know anything!” she screamed. “I’ve told you, I don’t know anything!”
The detectives didn’t tell Cathy they had arrested John at 4:16 P.M. on suspicion of rape and murder. Cathy only found out because her oldest daughter, Shannon, called from Los Angeles after seeing it on the news.
“Oh, my God, Mom, they’ve arrested John!” Shannon cried.
But with the detectives sitting nearby, listening, Cathy didn’t want to say anything out loud. “I can’t talk,” she said, and hung up.
Other family members called too, including John’s father’s family in Iowa, who had also seen the TV news stories. But Cathy didn’t pick up for the same reason. She was too upset to talk, anyway, so they left messages.
“We are praying for you,” said Mona*, one of John’s four half sisters.
Shannon sent her sister Sarina a text message, Call me ASAP.
She never sent texts, so Sarina was concerned and called her right away, but she couldn’t get through. So she called Cathy, who was quiet on the phone when she answered.
“Momma, is something wrong?”
“Yes.” In shock, Cathy’s voice was clipped. “The police are at the house. John has been arrested for a suspected rape and murder.”
“Did he do this?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Cathy said, then hung up.
By six o’clock, the media had lined the street outside Cathy’s condo. Around nine o’clock, a new crew of investigators arrived, including a team of FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) agents attached to the sheriff’s homicide unit, swarming around her house with crime scene investigators (CSIs), going through her things and carrying out computers. As the detectives served search warrants for specific items in the condo, a female agent informed Cathy that they’d found a pair of women’s underwear with John’s DNA on them. There was no question about John’s guilt in the agent’s tone, which came as quite a shock to Cathy.
Are they lying?
They’d