The Castaway - Chapter 9

One of my favorite things about this job is getting to travel and visit new places. I've been all over the United States on various cases. I love experiencing the way people live in other parts of the country and visiting places that I've only seen in movies and television. I've been to New York City, Miami, Seattle, St. Louis, San Francisco and many others.

I never thought I would be going to Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I never thought I would be going to Arkansas period. The pilot announced that we would be landing soon and I wondered if I would stand out like a sore thumb in my suit and tie. Maybe I could pick up a John Deer hat at a truck stop to help me blend in. I was sure I'd be able to find one in the airport. Hell, there was probably a John Deer shop in the terminal.

I stepped off the plane at the Little Rock National Airport and I admit I was surprised. I expected a small, hick-town with Confederate flags hanging from the windows of the general store and the barber shop. But Little Rock was actually a large metropolitan city with over a half-million people. It didn't look much different from Los Angeles.

Some yuppie in a business suit bumped passed me in the terminal like I was in his way. He continued without even acknowledging me and began yelling at an imaginary person, "Holy shit Jim, that's not enough time!" I saw the flashing blue light in his left ear and realized he was too busy with his telephone conversation to be bothered with something as trivial as respect. "Not much different from California at all." I thought.

I picked up my rental car outside the terminal and headed south on Interstate 530 toward the town of Pine Bluff. Within thirty minutes the highway became very open and quiet and I was clearly out of the city. I wasn't used to seeing this much green while travelling on the highway. Both sides of the Interstate were bordered by 100' trees. I don't know what kind of trees they were, but they were thick and green and standing side-by-side as far down the highway as I could see. And the northbound and southbound lanes of the highway were separated by this large grass median. It must have been 100' feet wide and continued all the way down the center of the highway to the horizon. The "city-boy" in me wondered how much time and money it took to plant all those trees and grass.

As the sun began to set, the orange sky cast a soft glow on the treetops and there was this incredible peacefulness all around. The Arkansas River followed along the eastern edge of the highway, not too far in the distance. It occasionally glanced at me through the thick blanket of trees like a dog running alongside me, curiously watching the new stranger in town.

I exited the highway and traveled a few more miles along a narrow, winding road. Occasionally I saw a house or two nestled back in the pine trees, looking lonely and forgotten. I didn't see any people around. Nobody riding bikes or jogging. No kids playing in front yards or throwing footballs in the street. It was kind of creepy. I swore for a moment I heard a banjo.

I turned onto the Pierson's dirt road and I could see a few mobile home trailers up ahead. A big, steel flagpole towered 50' in the air from one of the front yards. Proudly flapping in the wind at the top of the pole was a Confederate flag. "That's more like it," I said, "now I feel like I'm in Arkansas."

I spotted the Pierson's address spray-painted on the side of a big oak tree. I pulled into the gravel driveway and up to the single-wide mobile home. Two elderly men were sitting on the porch. One was sitting in an old rocking chair and one was sitting on a wooden stool. They weren't talking to each other. They were just sitting there staring at me. As I got out of the rental car with a friendly smile, the guy in the rocking chair spat a big, brown glob of something onto the dirt. Gross. Good distance, though.

I introduced myself and asked for Charles and Valerie Pierson. The man on the stool told me that Charles was on "a run" up to St. Louis. I assumed he was talking about a truck driving run and not a jog. He said Charles wouldn't be home until tomorrow morning. I realized these two men weren't old at all, maybe in their 50's, but those 50-something years had not been kind.

The man on the stool told me that Valerie was working and she wouldn't be home for a couple of hours. I asked where she worked and he told me, "The Jiffy Mart down on Hwy 365." I smiled, "Of course she does," I thought.

The man in the rocking chair asked, "Whadaya wannem fer?"

I hesitated for a brief second while my brain translated Arkeneez into English. I said, "I'm sorry, I can only discuss that with the Piersons."

Rocking chair guy spat another glob onto the dirt without breaking eye contact.

I thanked them for their time and 30 minutes later I was pulling into the Jiffy Mart on Hwy 365 in the town of Redfield. Two gas pumps out front offered customers a choice, "unleaded" or "diesel" at a "non-California" price of $1.85 a gallon.

The Jiffy Mart was small, but looked like any other convenience store. The windows were plastered with cigarette and beer advertisements. I walked inside with my notebook and asked the teenager behind the counter for Valerie Pierson. She looked me up and down while chewing her gum, then yelled over her shoulder, "Hey Val, there's a salesman here for ya!"

Valerie came out from the back room and looked at me rather strangely. I held up my badge and introduced myself as a detective from California. She smiled politely and said, "Well that would explain the suit." The clerk snickered and said, "And the funny accent."

Valerie invited me into a little office in the back of the store without even asking me why I was there. "It must be pretty serious if they put you on a plane from California." She offered me a chair. She didn't seem too concerned and I wondered if she had figured out why I was there but was just good at hiding it.

"I'm a homicide detective," I told her, "and I'm investigating the murder of Rebecca Novell."

Valerie's eyes widened and her hand immediately went to her mouth. "Oh my God," she whispered, "Becky's dead? When?"

"Probably about the same time she disappeared." I answered, and I saw tears welling up in her eyes.

Valerie seemed genuinely surprised and upset. She sat down at the desk and stared at me as if she was hoping I would say, "Never mind, just kidding."

Valerie said, "I reported her missing to the police but nobody would help me. I tried to get them to do something for months. They just kept telling me that I wasn't her mother so I wasn't allowed to make the report. I begged them to help me find her. I told the police that Becky's mother was on drugs and had abandoned her. I was the only mother Becky had."

I interviewed Valerie for about an hour. She told me about the night that Rebecca disappeared. A night that Valerie would remember for the rest of her life. Valerie told me that her daughter Kelly and Rebecca went to a party at a friend's apartment a few blocks away. She said the girls left the house before it was dark outside and they promised not to come home too late.

Valerie said the girls hadn't returned by bed time and she was very upset, but she didn't know where the apartment was located and there was no such thing as cell phones in 1986. Valerie was awakened later that night when she heard the girls come home. She didn't get up to check on them and just decided to yell at them in the morning. She was just glad they were home.

The next morning Valerie went into the girl's bedroom and only Kelly was there. She woke Kelly up and asked where Becky was. Kelly appeared confused and said that Becky was supposed to be getting a ride home from the party with some boy.

Valerie told me she jumped in the car and made Kelly take her to the apartment where they were the night before. Valerie said she pounded on the door and eventually a 30-year-old black man answered. Valerie demanded to know where Becky was and the man simply told her that one of the teenage boys took Becky home last night.

I asked Valerie if she could remember the name of the boy who took Becky home. She shook her head as she thought about it. "It's been over twenty years, I can't remember. I told Oceanside Police his name when I reported it, but they didn't even write it down. They refused to take a report because I wasn't her mother. They didn't even seem to care that teenagers were partying at the home of some 30-year-old man!"

Valerie told me that she went out the next day and tried to find Becky's mother, Patty Novell. She said she drove up and down Oceanside Blvd. and asked several of the local prostitutes but couldn't find Patty. Valerie told me that she continued searching for Becky every day. She took time off work and drove around asking Becky's friends and checking local hang-outs. She went back to the apartment several times and asked if that boy had returned. The man always told her, "No."

Valerie told me she was driving down Oceanside Blvd. about a week after Becky disappeared and she saw Patty standing by the bus stop. Valerie pulled up to the curb and yelled at Patty, "Where the Hell have you been? Becky's missing and I can't find her!"

Valerie said Patty looked confused and high on drugs. Valerie said to Patty, "I need you to come with me to the police station, they have to talk to you." She said Patty suddenly looked worried and then she turned and ran off. Valerie said she screamed at Patty to please help but Patty kept running. Valerie said she never saw Patty again.

Valerie told me how Becky's disappearance changed her entire life. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat, she neglected her family and obsessively searched for Becky day and night. She called Oceanside Police Department every week and asked if they had found Becky, but she always got the same response. Becky had just disappeared. Valerie eventually lost her job and then her husband left her and moved to Florida.

Valerie said that a few months went by and Kelly started using drugs and alcohol and getting into trouble. Valerie said she realized she was going to lose Kelly too if she didn't get her life back on track again. Valerie told me that she asked a friend to continue checking with Oceanside PD and keep her up to date on any progress. Valerie then packed up Kelly and all of their belongings and drove to Florida to reunite with her husband Charles.

Valerie said her friend called with weekly updates but the news was always the same, no sign of Becky. Eventually the calls from her friend came less frequently and eventually they stopped all together. Valerie said she and her husband Charles eventually moved to Arkansas where Charles had grown up and had family. She said Kelly got married and now lives a couple of hours north in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Valerie said she always prayed that Becky was okay someplace. She said she often thought about where Becky might be today at 34-years-old. She said she tried to imagine Becky with a husband and a family of her own. She said deep down she always feared that Becky was dead.

Valerie looked at me from across the desk. "Why wouldn't the police help me? This was a 13-year-old girl for Christ's sake! Don't they know what can happen to a 13-year-old girl out there alone?"

I didn't have an answer. My anger toward Oceanside PD was growing with every step of this investigation. Somebody seriously dropped the ball on this one. I knew I couldn't blame Becky's murder on the police, I knew better than that. Becky was let down by a lot of people. Her mother abandoned her and chose a life of drugs over raising her daughter. Valerie allowed her two teenage girls to attend a party without knowing anything about the friends or where they lived. And the police had an opportunity to investigate this immediately and get to the bottom of it. They could have discovered who Becky left the party with that night and they probably would have identified her killer.

But because of these mistakes, I was sitting in a Jiffy Mart in Redfield, Arkansas twenty-one years later trying to piece everything together. Instead of doing their job, the police chose to blow Valerie off and claim that a missing child can only be reported by the natural parents. That's bullshit. There has never been a law in California that require you to be the natural parent of a child in order to report that child missing. But I know from personal experience that it takes a lot of time and effort and paperwork to handle a missing child case and 99% of the time the kid's back home before you even finish the report. That allows for complacency. That allows for laziness and negligence on the part of the police and I saw it myself time and time again. "Just wait 24-hours before making the report." Cops used to say it all the time and it was just to save themselves paperwork. It was all bullshit.

Fortunately, in 1990 the Federal Government stepped in and mandated that any child under the age of 18 who was reported missing was to be entered into the national database immediately - regardless of who reported it. Unfortunately that law came four years too late for Becky.

I made arrangements for Kelly to drive down from Bentonville the following day for an interview. Charles would also be coming home and I would be interviewing him as well.

I drove back up to Little Rock and checked into a hotel at about 10pm. There were no hotels back in Pine Bluff or Redfield. I lay awake for a couple of hours thinking about the new twist on this story. Becky was last seen leaving a party with a teenage boy. Did they run off to Las Vegas together? Did they get into a fight and he dropped her off on some street corner? Did this kid rape and murder Becky and then dump her body? Of all the scenarios that had crossed my mind in this case, I must admit, I never thought of Becky's killer as a high school kid.

I wondered what Kelly was going to tell me the next day. Did she really tell her mother everything that happened? Had Becky's best friend been keeping any secrets for the last twenty years? What really happened that night at the party?

I drifted off to sleep with so many unanswered questions.