Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (23 page)

Jonah Shacknai occasionally broke into tears, which seemed genuine. And certainly understandable.

He was positive that Becky hadn’t been depressed, nor had she evinced any suicidal ideation. Naturally, she was sad and worried—they all were—about Max. But Becky was not a woman easily disheartened or given to moods.

“Things are suspicious—” Detective Palmer began, and Jonah Shacknai looked up suddenly.

“
Are
they?” he asked, startled.

“Do you think that she would kill herself?”

“She might have felt responsible—for Max,” Jonah said slowly. “But no—
no
! She would not have added to my troubles—unless she was so overwhelmed with guilt. No.”

Once again, Jonah asked what seemed suspicious. Palmer hadn’t answered him before.

“We can’t really answer that right now as we’re in the midst of an investigation,” Todd Norton said. “That’s why the Coronado police called us in—to find out what happened.”

Jonah Shacknai himself was never a suspect in Becky’s death. The Ronald McDonald House had security cameras at all its entrances and exits, and even in the hallways that led to rooms. The investigators were able to obtain images of Jonah at the entrance doors to the McDonald House, and in the corridors, arriving and leaving his room. They could absolutely place the times Jonah had gone to his room and then left to sit with Max, and his return to the McDonald House to catch a few hours’ sleep. They had videotape of where he was on Tuesday night.

Jonah told Norton and Palmer that Becky’s relatives were on their way from Missouri and wanted to stay at his estate.

“Probably they can’t. We haven’t released the scene yet,” Norton said. “But we do need you to sign a permission form that allows us to search your property.”

Jonah had no objection to that. At this point he still had very little information about how and where Becky perished. He asked where she had been found, and Todd Norton told him she was lying on the grass courtyard below the balcony outside the bedroom where her computer was when the first police arrived.

Asked if he could think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Becky, or might be obsessed with her, Jonah pondered that.

“She was an extremely beautiful woman,” Palmer said. “Was there anyone who stalked her?”

“Her ex-husband contacted her almost every day,” Jonah said. “His name is Evan Solanev.* He lives in Arizona. He texts her and they’re not creepy but kind of strange. Like, ‘Can we have lunch?’ and ‘I’ll do anything.’ He’s very religious, but he seems to be well on the other side of wanting her back. She showed me his messages. They were married for three and a half years. He was studying to be a nurse, and Rebecca is—was—a nurse.”

Asked about Becky’s friends, Jonah said her older sister, Mary Loehner, was her best friend, and that Becky didn’t have close friends in Coronado.

“She took our Weimaraner, Ocean, to the park often. He’s protective—but not aggressive. We had a guard dog but it died last year, and we’re looking for another.”

“Any particular reason?”

“No. No threats or anything like that. We tried one out two weeks ago, but it didn’t work out.”

Once again, Jonah Shacknai looked up sharply. “Do I
need
protection?”

“No—not at this point. We’ll let you know if you ever do.”

The San Diego detectives learned that Becky had arranged for Ocean to be at the Camp Diggity Dogs kennel for a few days after Max’s fall because she felt that was better with “people coming and going.”

The investigation was embryonic at this state. Palmer and Norton hadn’t even been inside the house yet—and they said quite honestly that they didn’t know what had happened.

“I need a change of clothes,” Jonah said. “Can I go in and get some?”

“In a few hours.”

Shacknai asked the detectives to be very sensitive when they spoke with Becky’s family. “They’re very religious.”

“How is your son doing?” Palmer asked.

“He’s very critical,” Jonah sighed. “Very, very critical condition.”

Jonah Shacknai hadn’t said anything that would indicate he was at all estranged from the dead woman. Indeed, he spoke very tenderly about her. But he also seemed anxious that there might be someone in the shadows, someone who could be hazardous to him and his children. Given the hellacious losses he had had to deal with for two days, that was understandable.

*   *   *

San Diego County deputy sheriff Dan Pearce was assigned to the San Diego County District Attorney’s High Tech Crimes Task Force (known as CATCH). He is a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner (CFCE) and has achieved the Master Level of Computer Forensic Science Certification. In layman’s terms, Pearce has the knowledge to trace what has happened inside computers, on the Internet, and cellular phones. Highly trained technicians such as Pearce can use Cellebrite’s Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) to extract data from approximately 95 percent of the smartphones, PDA devices, and cell phones in use today. Information can be extracted without changing the original data on the source phones.

Becky’s cell phone showed that a call had come in at 11:48
P.M.,
and that was probably Jonah’s last call to her. If there had been a text or voice mail message from him, it was no longer there. It could have been accidentally—or deliberately—erased.

Joe Friday of
Dragnet
never heard of computers, cell phones, smartphones and all the other devices available in the twenty-first century, and most criminals don’t realize what trails they now can leave behind.

On July 13, Deputy Pearce examined a Hewlett-Packard laptop computer, whose only active user account was Rebecca Zahau, and an iMac computer whose single user account was Jonah Shacknai. Both of the computers were from the guest room/computer room with the balcony where Becky Zahau had allegedly hung herself. He also had her Samsung cell phone.

Pearce reached three conclusions:

1. A review of the Internet history showed no searches were conducted for the terms: suicide, rope, knots, or hanging.

2. A review of the Internet history from Becky’s computer during the last twenty-four hours showed numerous searches and viewing of pornography, including lesbian and anime pornography. [The latter is a Japanese style of animated cartoon, often with violent or sexually explicit content.]

3. There were
no
documents found related to suicide.

What were the investigators to make of the Internet links that someone had connected to in the hours during which Becky Zahau died? Would
she
have searched for pornography? In her grief over Maxie, concern for Jonah, and the chaos they were all living in, why would she seek out such X-rated links on the computer? The only other person on the estate that night was Adam Shacknai.

Adam had already told detectives that he’d watched porn on his cell phone early on the morning of July 13—before he left the guesthouse and discovered Becky hanging from the balcony. He said he’d never been in the mansion itself the night before; he’d gone directly to the guesthouse where his room was. The computers were in the main house.

It was confusing. Was it perhaps possible that someone had killed Becky and deliberately roamed on the computers to make it look as though
she
had been watching erotic sites?

It seemed unlikely.

Among the items seized on the Shacknai estate was a Japanese video titled
The Housemaid.
Its scenario was chillingly similar to aspects of the life Becky lived—a beautiful maid who was in love with her wealthy employer, who adored his child. It was an erotic love story.

*   *   *

Quite possibly, Jonah wasn’t as close to his brother, Adam, as he was to his longtime best friend, Dr. Howard Luber. Luber was like another brother to him, a man with whom he shared his deepest feelings. The two men had known each other for sixteen years. After they met at a dermatology seminar in Hawaii, they had become best friends. They usually spoke every day.

When the investigators asked Dr. Luber about Jonah’s relationship with Becky, the dermatologist said they had been together for just under two years.

“They have—
had
—a special relationship,” he told detectives. “Jonah found a great deal of happiness with Rebecca—much more than he did in either of his marriages. They were very compatible and she brought tranquility into his life. Before that, his marriage to Dina could be chaotic. But Jonah and Becky were both involved in nutrition and exercise.

“Some people frowned on the difference in their ages—he was more than fifteen years older than Rebecca—but he ignored that. He loved her.”

Jonah Shacknai was a PhD and Howard Luber was a medical doctor, and they had both lived in New York when they first became friends. Eventually, they and their wives moved to the Phoenix-Scottsdale area and they often double-dated or shared family activities. At that time, Jonah was married to his first wife, Kim. The men’s wives were also good friends.

Jonah had started his business in 1988, and he was wildly successful in the pharmaceutical and beauty products field. Eventually his corporation, Medicis, was responsible for putting “Restylane” on the market. The substance was quickly in demand for plumping up and erasing wrinkles and restoring a youthful look. Actresses, models, and everyday women swear by it. And so do a lot of men, but they’re not as vocal about the treatment that takes years off their appearance.

Other companies rushed to imitate Restylane. And there were other pharmaceutical products that Jonah Shacknai spearheaded, all of them successful.

Luber had known Jonah through both of his marriages and now understood his contentment with Becky Zahau. With her gone forever, he knew his friend would be hit hard. Especially now that he faced losing Max, too.

Dr. Luber acknowledged that Jonah’s brother, Adam, hadn’t known Becky very well. He lived and worked thousands of miles away from Arizona
and
California. The life of a tugboat captain was a world away from Jonah’s lavish lifestyle.

And on his current trip west, Adam surely had had virtually no chance to get to know Becky better. He had been in Coronado only a dozen hours before he said he’d discovered her naked body, hanging.

Chapter Six

The Coronado Police Department and San Diego County investigators had, of course,
two
incidents to investigate further. Maxie’s tragic fall and Becky’s death were inextricably connected even if only by the timing. If the manner of Becky’s death and Maxie’s fall had any correlation was yet to be seen.

As far as anyone knew for sure, there were only three people in the mansion when Max Shacknai went over the second-story railing: Max, Becky, and her sister Zaré. Becky had been in one bathroom washing her hair, and Zaré was taking a bath in another bathroom. Max wasn’t a toddler, and it wasn’t unusual for him to be out of sight and earshot for fifteen or twenty minutes. There were corners and dead spots in the huge mansion where sound didn’t carry well.

But Max’s accident was loud enough to wake the dead, an eerie expression in this case. Becky and Zaré were horrified when they heard the loud crash of the chandelier that hung over the circular front entry. While Becky rushed to kneel beside the little boy and do what she could to help him, she shouted to Zaré to call 911.

Zaré was so upset that the operator misunderstood her. A tape of her call shows that the 911 dispatcher thought Zaré was calling about her
mother
who had fallen down and injured herself. Zaré’s voice was so full of sobs that it was hard to figure out what had happened. Frustrated, Zaré finally just gave up trying to explain; all that mattered was that the operator said that paramedics had been dispatched and were on their way.

Nobody knew why Max had gone over the rail. He was a very active little boy and he had a Razor scooter that he zipped wildly on through the halls of the huge home. It was beside him on the floor of the entryway, along with a soccer ball and a deep red stain of blood.

Of course, Rebecca Zahau was horrified to find him barely conscious under the chandelier. So was Zaré. Becky loved Max and photos of them together certainly validated that.

Some people believed that Max had Asperger’s syndrome, a much milder form of autism. Recently, experts in child behavior have said that Asperger’s has become a convenient catchall diagnosis for very active children. If, indeed, Maxie had Asperger’s symptoms they were slight.

And anyone who has parented little boys knows how lively they can be, seemingly indefatigable.

Maxie Shacknai was bright and full of joy, a charismatic, elfin child who loved to play sports—especially when his father was there to watch him make soccer goals. Now he was silent in the intensive care unit. After his fall, he had gasped only one word out; it sounded like “Ocean,” his dog’s name.

Monday had been a blur for all of them, with Jonah at the hospital with Max, and Rebecca staying home and taking care of whatever needed to be done there. She felt that Maxie’s birth mother, Dina, should be there with Jonah, watching over their son. As much as she longed to be at the hospital, Becky stayed away.

She knew that Zaré was distressed and disappointed, but the only reasonable thing to do was to send her little sister home. The aftermath of Max’s fall and the desperate wait for some word about him had destroyed all possibility of Zaré having the fun vacation she had looked forward to. Hopefully, Max would recover and Zaré could come to Coronado or Arizona another time.

So Zaré was scheduled to fly home late on the afternoon of July 12. Rebecca’s sister Mary would meet her plane.

Another time, Rebecca promised Zaré. She had even managed to hide her own desperate concern about Jonah’s son, stretching the truth as she assured Zaré in text messages that Maxie seemed to be doing better, that he wasn’t in as deep a coma as he had been.

Rebecca kept texting Zaré until just before the teenager’s plane took off.