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men went upstairs to an interrogation room and began the taped conversation at midnight. They would not finish until 1:30 that morning.
    What follows is the first complete rendering of the taped interview between Brocchini and Scott Peterson, including those portions not admitted at trial.
    Detective Brocchini started a tape recorder, then began to speak. "Pretty much, Scott, we'll just go over what we already talked about so I can make some notes."
    Scott mumbled his agreement. "Tell me about the morning?"
    Very matter-of-factly, Scott recited their activities. "Ah, okay. I don't know what time we got up," but he did say that Laci was up first and had cereal for breakfast. He noted that his pregnant wife got sick if she did not eat as soon as she got out of bed.
    "I laid around in bed longer, I got up at, I don't know, eight o'clock or so." Brocchini noted that Scott made no mention of anybody making the bed. "I showered. We were watching her favorite show, Martha Stewart [Living]. Watched a little bit of that."
    "You didn't watch the whole thing through?" Detective Brocchini interjected. "No."
    "You remember what part you saw?"
    "I don't know, some cooking deal, cookies of some sort. They were talking about what to do with meringue." This trivial fact would become a crucial reference point at trial, one that would prove embarrassing for the prosecution but even more damning for Scott. "I can't remember your house . . . the converted garage area, is that your TV room?" the detective asked. "Yeah."
    "Did you eat any breakfast?" "I had a bowl of cereal." The events Scott described in that first interview struck me as
    odd when I first reviewed the transcript of this conversation. Police photographs in the kitchen showed no cereal bowls or other breakfast dishes in the sink. There were bowls in the dishwater, but no one looked in the refrigerator to see if Laci had begun marinating French toast for her brunch the next day, as Scott would later claim. This item would have been evidence that she was alive in the morning hours on Christmas Eve. Of course, if Laci had cleaned the kitchen that morning, that would have been one more activity-along with mopping the floor and possibly making the bed-that would have delayed her walk with McKenzie.
    "Okay," the detective prompted. "When did you realize you were gonna go fishing?"
    "Ah, that was the morning decision, it either-"
    "That's a morning decision?" Brocchini asked.
    "... Go play golf at the club or go fishin' ..." Scott said.
    "Okay."
    "It seemed too cold to go play golf at the club." Scott chuckled. "So, ya know, decided might as well-"
    "Uh-huh." For a passionate golfer, it is rarely too cold to play. However, Christmas Eve out on the bay in a fourteen-foot boat sounds awfully chilly.
    "Laci told me what she was gonna do for the day," Scott volunteered.
    "And what was that?"
    "She was gonna finish cleaning up, like I said, she was mopping the kitchen floor, then take the dog for a walk and then she was going to the store to buy for Christmas morning breakfast tomorrow. That was gonna involve prepping the breakfast, and she was gonna make gingerbread cookies for tonight." Scott explained.
    "What was she mopping?" Brocchini asked.
    "The tile in the entryway area." When the detective pressed him to be precise, Scott specified that it was the back entryway area.
    "Right where the mop was outside?" Brocchini asked, his dark eyes peering over his glasses to watch the young man's response.
    "No, no, no." Scott said she was working in the area that led out to the back patio.
    "There was a lotta places she planned to go," he continued. "She had me put the bucket by the front door."
    "So she asked you to put the mop bucket by the front door?" Brocchini repeated.
    "Yeah, she's, you know, eight months pregnant, can't pick it up for anything, so I filled it up for her, put it in, ah, I think that's the central place." Scott didn't seem aware of the mounting inconsistencies in his story.