Redemption (21 page)

The Fourth of July

he morning of July 4 didn’t start off badly. For the first time in over a year, Dad said we were going to barbecue. I was surprised—he grilled outside only when he was happy. He already had pork steaks marinating in the refrigerator. He had been to the grocery store, and it was the first time in a long while that I hadn’t had to stock the kitchen.

I thought,
Okay!
I was looking forward to it. Maybe he’d had a change of heart. Maybe his sanity was coming back to him. He’d bought the baked beans, and we were actually going to cook and eat together for once. No one was coming over—not Rosa or anyone else. He was going to all of this trouble just for Christy and me. I was looking forward to the Fourth of July.

By 1 p.m. that day, I was no longer hopeful.

Dad was drunk, and he was fighting terribly with Christy. I used to give her my car keys in the evening when I knew he was drunk. I wanted her to be safe from him at night, and if that meant taking my car, so be it. A few days earlier, she had gotten caught driving without a license and been arrested. He had to bail her out, and he was pissed. He was also mad because I had taken her to get a haircut and a new inexpensive outfit the day before. He didn’t want any of his money being spent on Christy.

He wanted to know how she was going to pay him back for the haircut. Oddly, he wasn’t demanding the bail money.

“Fuck you. You’re my father and you’re supposed to provide for me, you drunk asshole,” she yelled back at him.

I tried to calm Christy down so we could just leave. I told her we’d go to the big St. Louis Fair (it was called the VP Fair then) and forget about him. But I had to take my dog out first. Caitlin was still housebreaking, so she had to stay in the basement. Christy and I went downstairs to get her, then walked past dad in the living room, heading toward the door. We didn’t make it outside—Caitlin stopped and peed on the carpet right in front of Dad.

He got up off the couch and started kicking the dog.

“Stop it!” I was screaming and grabbing for my little dog.

“This goddamned dog has to go!” he finally said.

The dog was my one love, my one piece of independence. I told him no. “The dog stays.”

“I’ll kill her then.” Dad stood over me, glaring.

“If the dog goes, I go,” I said. I was just numb from all of the fighting. At that moment, I didn’t care if he hit or kicked me. He knew I didn’t care, so he tried a different approach.

“Fine, go,” Dad said, looking at Christy. “I have your replacement.”

He grabbed her, and they started fighting. They were throwing things—pillows, cups, lights—at each other. She was kicking and screaming as he threw her around. Both of them hurled foul, disgusting insults. They were so physical that I couldn’t get between them without getting hurt. They had torn down the blinds in the front room. They were heading toward the back of the house.

Christy and I were both crying hysterically.

I begged Dad to stop punishing her. Whatever she had done, it couldn’t be that bad.

He said, “Shut up, bitch.” I don’t know which one of us he was talking to.

He took Christy into his bedroom, which he never used. It was the only bedroom with a lock. The other bedroom was across from his, and I used to sleep there. One night, he kicked in that lock when he came looking for me. He never had that lock repaired.

I screamed and yelled that he didn’t need to do this. I begged for him to take me into that room instead. He held onto Christy tightly while she screamed.

“Do whatever you want to me, just please don’t take her.” I was sobbing uncontrollably.

He threw her across the room and slammed the door, nearly crushing my fingers. I heard everything. I knew what he was doing to her. I knew the sounds of zippers and struggle and clothes and submissive tears.

I could hardly breathe as I crumpled onto the floor outside of Dad’s bedroom door. Christy’s screams curdled my blood. Her voice still wakes me up in my worst dreams. I got up and ran outside to try to break into the bedroom window. The window was six feet off the ground, and there was no way I could reach it without a ladder. I didn’t have that much time. I ran back inside.

I don’t know how long he kept her in there. It felt like eighteen years. He finally threw her out. Her black mascara was all over her face, and her skin was red and bruised. I think he stayed in his room. I didn’t see him again for a while.

I pulled Christy outside on the front lawn, and I put her into my car. I gave her my keys and told her to leave. She didn’t have her license, but she could definitely drive. I had just experienced the biggest failure of my life—my failure to protect her. Christy had to get out of there, and I wouldn’t let her come back in if I could help it. We tried to stop crying as she opened the car door. We barely breathed. We didn’t say anything to each other. We didn’t look at each other. I told her to pick me up in front of the neighbor’s house, where he couldn’t see us, in an hour.

I was going to argue with him some more. I was going to do something or say something to make him realize what he’d done. I was going to make him understand that he had become a despicable madman. But once she was gone, I couldn’t fight with him. I didn’t have anything left in me. All I could do was cry. I didn’t talk to him. I just went downstairs to our living room where I fell onto the couch in a heap. He had decimated me years ago. Now he had decimated both of us.

I was face down on the couch when I heard a noise, a loud popping sound. On hearing the noise again—a gunshot—I looked up. He was standing in my doorway with the gun by his side.

He had fired the .22 caliber, hitting the wall a foot above my head.

He leaned the gun against the bookshelf in the room.

He smiled.

He said, “See how easy an accident can be?”

I don’t remember what else was said. I only remember his sinister smile. He went back up the steps, leaving the gun there to further terrorize me. I looked above my head, and there were two small bullet holes in the wall.

My whole body shook, but not from the gun he’d just waved at me. I wasn’t scared for me; I couldn’t care less what he did to me. I wished he had killed me because I couldn’t stand the pain I felt. I was in shock that he had raped my sister.

I stopped feeling.

I stopped crying.

And I got real quiet.

I waited downstairs for a long time, until I didn’t hear him moving around anymore. If he did come down those stairs, I had already planned to fly out the basement window. All I heard above me was silence. After twenty minutes, I knew he had passed out or left. I ran up the stairs, and I didn’t see him. I didn’t know where he had gone—I guessed he was in his bedroom. I grabbed my little red purse from the dining room ledge. I kept it there for inspection because he was always going through it anyway. I ran out the door to the pick-up spot in front of the neighbor’s house. Christy was there waiting for me.

That afternoon, she and I had plans to go to the VP Fair with a group of friends. We went out all the time, not just on this day. We were accustomed to living with terror inside our house. Then we’d walk out of our hellhole and act like everything was okay. We’d put on our normal faces so we could have somewhat ordinary lives with our friends. We didn’t want anyone to know about the monster we lived with.

We went to the fair and pretended that nothing was wrong. We drank, hoping it would dull our senses. It didn’t. We passed the time by going to the Olive Garden and hanging out at a friend’s house. Late that night, around 11 p.m., I was able to drive. I was exhausted but sober. I planned for us to stay at a hotel. But I realized I had to go back to St. John.

I’d left my new dog in the basement. I had to get Caitlin. If she were still alive, it wouldn’t be for long.

The Scene of a Crime

had told myself I wouldn’t let Christy come back into that house. I made a huge mistake that night when I let her crawl through the basement window with me. We were only going to get my dog from the basement; she was fine.

But then Christy wanted to grab her things. I told her not to go upstairs. She said she had some things she had to get.

Everything was quiet, so I thought it would be okay. She took to the steps. I was right behind her. I had the gun in my hands. If Dad was there, he would only hurt us over my dead body.

We saw him sleeping on the couch. The sight of him made me so sick my head spun. I leaned the gun behind the dining room ledge in the corner against the wall where I usually kept my red purse. We both grabbed a few of our things.

And just like that, I snapped.

I couldn’t take it.

I couldn’t live with it.

Now was my chance to break out of the prison he had created for me.

I didn’t think about right and wrong—obviously. I thought only about my life, my sister’s life, and our chances for survival.

I walked slowly over to the dining room ledge and picked up the gun in the corner. My fingers felt the smooth wooden sides of the gun. My thumb and pointer finger slid onto the cold metal trigger. I didn’t know whether or not the safety was on.

I didn’t aim; I didn’t even look at what I was doing. I just pulled the trigger with my eyes shut. I guess I hit him in the shoulder, in his collarbone. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t anything. I picked up the gun and leaned it on the ledge about eight feet from the couch. But the outcome was obvious. I picked up the rifle.

He woke up, bleeding, and bolted to his feet. He told me to call an ambulance right that fucking second. Instead, I pulled the trigger. I dropped the gun on the floor in between us. I felt terrible for what I’d done, and I wanted to help him. I handed him a pillow to soak up the blood.

I ran to the phone to dial 911. The upstairs phone wasn’t in its usual spot. I ran downstairs, but I couldn’t find one there either. Then I remembered that he had pulled all of the cords out of the wall in our cruel and gruesome fight earlier that day. He didn’t want us to be able to call for help while he terrorized us and raped my sister. Now I couldn’t call for help for him. He started cursing and screaming that he was going to kill us this time. We were fucking sorry-ass little bitches.

He passed out on the couch, probably from a combination of being shot and shit-faced drunk. I had done wrong. I knew that, and I was sorry for it. But there was a force rising inside me that was even stronger than remorse. Since the age of eight—most of my life—he had humiliated and terrorized me. I felt deeply, irrevocably damaged. Every part of my mind and body had been mangled and tortured by my father.

A very bad feeling swelled. Darkness coursed through my veins.

I could see the gun on the carpet. My intention had been to shoot him and scare him. I wanted him to finally understand that there would be consequences for raping his daughters. I just wanted to convince him that it was in his best interest to stop abusing us.

But whatever sanity I had left was gone in that instant. I stopped contemplating right and wrong. I stopped feeling. I still cannot recall exactly how I brought myself to the point of killing; I do not know exactly how I did it.

But the outcome was obvious. I put my fingers back on the trigger, cocked the gun, and fired it without thinking. I fired it without reason or compassion or sanity. I hit him in the head. He did not get up off the couch again. I could hear the choking, the gurgling.

Then everything went fuzzy. It is still dark.

If I felt anything at all, the feelings were numb and indescribable. Was I scared? Was I in denial? Was I horrified? Was I relieved? Did I cry? Did I throw up? I don’t know. My mind floated into a fantasy world so I could try to walk out of the house and survive. Did I even deserve to survive? I had done an evil thing.

But I was alive.

I turned my back. I walked away.

I was a murderer.

Christy screamed. I cried. As fast as we could, we left that house. We took my dog with us.

I was safe.

Christy was safe.

Sealing My Fate

flipped out.

I became stupid. I became despicable.

Wearing an old pair of my grandmother’s gardening gloves, I threw the gun, used shells, and the gun case into the back of my LeBaron.

I dropped Christy off at her friend Melanie’s house. Around 4:30 a.m., I stopped by a convenience store to buy cigarettes, and then checked into the Airway Hotel. I drove to my friend Ron’s house. I had no one else to turn to. I was not functioning at all. Whatever he told me I should do, I would do it.

I was me; except I wasn’t me at all. I was in shock over everything that had happened. The day had begun with pork chops marinating in the refrigerator. Then Drunk Dad kicked Christy’s body all over the house and raped her practically right in front of me. Then I made a choice to get my dog and some toothpaste and wound up killing the very man who had once given me life. I couldn’t believe any of it. I had seen him on the couch with my own eyes, but I still couldn’t believe he was dead.

I flipped out.

I had dreamed about killing him. I had wondered what life would be like for me if he were dead one day. But this wasn’t real. This was worse than any nightmare I’d already lived through. I wanted to go back. I would’ve done anything to undo that day.

What I had done couldn’t be real.

Except that it was real.

I had never done anything more wrong in my entire life.

Yet I made it worse.

I asked Ron what I should do. He said he’d throw the gun, shells, and case into the Meramec River. His girlfriend, Theresa, overheard the plan. Ron didn’t have a car, so I left him mine. I called Jason to come get me. He picked up my sister first, then me. We went to Hardee’s. I tried to stop crying long enough to explain what I needed. Jason knew something had happened, but he didn’t know what or how. I told him only that my father was dead on the couch—someone had shot him, and I needed help.

Jason agreed to take us back to our house on Eminence Avenue, and go up to the door to “find” Thomas Lannert dead. I would run to the neighbor’s house to report the crime. Jason ran to the front door, but he couldn’t bear to look inside the house. I could. I was inexplicably drawn to it. I couldn’t
not
look. Nothing was real. I had to see.

My whole body shook.

I doubled over for a second, wondering if I would pass out or throw up. I got myself together enough to run to Mrs. Custer’s house to tell her someone had broken into our house, and my father was dead. She called the police while I cried. Jason was around somewhere; Christy was right there with me. I started losing my breath. I was hyperventilating, and I recognized the feeling because sometimes this happened during Dad’s most violent rapes. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t find air anywhere. Then I started to panic.

Mrs. Custer brought me a wet rag to put on my forehead. I tried to calm down, because Christy was becoming hysterical. My main concern at all times was my sister.

The paramedics and police arrived.

My jig was up fast.

The police took Jason, Christy, and me in for questioning immediately.

I didn’t hear his statement, but apparently Jason gave us up upon arrival at the station. At that time, he didn’t think I’d done it. But because of conversations he’d overheard, he thought I had paid someone to do it—someone like Ron.

Christy and I became suspects immediately, so mug shots were taken. Christy and I were separated briefly, and I didn’t know where they took her. I figured she was in an office nearby experiencing the same harsh treatment. Officers fired questions at me, each one cutting into my core.

My head filled like an intricate, silken web. I couldn’t see through my thoughts or make sense of them. I was spinning. I thought I might pass out, but I didn’t. I was too shocked to cry. I had no tears left for my father or myself. I’d already bawled for hours. I was too cold inside to speak. I had to sink into a quiet, safe, imaginary place.

While in that place, I beat myself up for what happened. I was supposed to take care of my sister.
Stacey, look what you have done
, I thought.
She never ever should’ve gone back to that house. I never should’ve done what I did
. My heart beat nearly out of my chest thinking about what would happen to Christy. There was no reason for us both to get into trouble for this. This wasn’t her doing. I vowed to get her out of police hands any way I could. I would say or do whatever police wanted as long as they’d let Christy go. She was still fifteen years old. She still had time to get her life back together. I was already broken; it was far too late for me. No matter what, I knew right then and there that I would take the rap—all of it—if I could.

I sat in the interrogation room with Detective Tom Schulte and Detective House. There was a jail cell right outside the interrogation room. Christy was handcuffed to the cell; I could see her through the small window. She was crying hard.

They let me go out and talk to her. She cried harder. The officers came over to me and yelled at me to stop talking to her. I went back into the interrogation room. Then they let me go back out. The same thing happened a few times before they kept me in the room and questioned me. I didn’t want to speak. After all, anything you say will be held against you. While I was waiting to be questioned, I asked to speak to a lawyer.

Detective House said it was a holiday, and they were having a hard time reaching one.

“I’ll just call one,” I said, looking at the phone in front of me. I hoped they’d at least give me a phone book.

House swiftly removed the phone, and I didn’t see it again.

Then the questions came at me like angry swarms of bees.

“We know you killed him, Stacey.”

“Why did you shoot your father and say it was a break-in?”

“Tell us now, or your sister will be in big trouble. You don’t want her in more trouble, do you?”

“We know you did it.”

“Think about your sister. You could help her get out of this mess if you just confess.”

“We know you used his .22.”

“We know. You did it.”

I heard their voices, but eventually I didn’t see their faces or their mustaches or their hairy arms or polyester-blend pants. My mind went numb, and I couldn’t feel anything anymore in my body. My mind went to the same place it had gone when my father hurt me. I could be there without really being there.

One man’s voice broke through my cocoon. Detective Schulte asked the other officer to step outside of the room. “Look,” he said, “I know it was you, or I know it was your sister. I know things have happened in that house that never should have happened.”

He was sent to get the confession. He was stern but compassionate. I knew he knew I’d been abused. That’s what he was alluding to, anyway. I knew he could tell, and I was ashamed and horrified. I wasn’t at the point in my life where I am now. I could barely tell a guidance counselor that my father hurt me, and when I did, it didn’t matter. The word
rape
was not yet in my vocabulary. It was too heavy, harsh, and loaded. It was too embarrassing and dirty. I could barely speak, let alone tell a husky stranger—a man—what I had been through. I didn’t have the words.

But I could relate to what he wasn’t saying. I could understand what Schulte was implying. All I was able to say was my father “hurt” me. And what did those words mean?

Schulte told me he’d help me if I did the right thing. He said things would be all right.

He made me feel like all of this could go away. He made me feel like it wasn’t too late.

I was able to listen, but I still didn’t say much to him. I uttered, stuttered, searched in my tangled head for what I was supposed to say.

Here is how I remember it.

Schulte went on, “If you don’t take the blame, it’s going to look bad for your sister.” Looking back, I can see he was trying to get a confession from me because I was eighteen and easy to prosecute. She was fifteen, and it’s harder to punish a minor.

“You need to look at her,” he said. “She’s stronger; she’s stockier. You’re thinner. People will understand if you tell the truth.”

He was right. Christy was broad and strong. She looked darker than I did, too, with her black eyeliner and tougher clothes. I was super skinny with chicken legs. My hair was cut in a conservative bob. Based on physical characteristics, she looked like the sister who could’ve done it. She looked more capable.

Schulte was kind, and he suggested that he knew I had been abused. He said he would help me if I helped him. Meanwhile, House doggedly pushed me to admit guilt.

I finally answered, “I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just let her go.”

They said they would let her go if I cooperated. So I tried to do whatever they said. I would’ve done whatever they said anyway. The last thing I was looking for was more trouble.

“If you feel bad about what happened, then tell us everything right here, right now,” House said. They were doing this good cop–bad cop thing on me. “If you don’t tell us, it’s because you’re cold and not remorseful.”

House took my lack of tears as coldness. Neither of them really understood me. They didn’t get that an eighteen-year-old can be devastated beyond tears. Part of my pain—my shock—was pure remorse, and that’s why I agreed to their demands. They told me I could still do the right thing by going back to that house. But really, they wanted me to confess there.

“I’ll go back, but I don’t want to go into that room,” I said. “Please don’t make me go into the living room.”

I was losing my mind at this point. My thoughts were broken; my body quaked inside. My emotions ran so high I became numb, and then police officers with video cameras began buzzing around me. Ever since I was eight years old, I had been the master of the poker face. If I cried or showed emotion when things went horrifically wrong, then things just got horrifically worse. I reverted to the behaviors I knew.

I needed someone to tell me to do the right thing. What was the right thing? I had no one but these officers to talk to or confide in. I didn’t know a soul to call. I needed a lawyer, but I had been led to believe that wasn’t an option.

Obediently, I went back to St. John.

I chewed gum. I chewed it hard and fast, hoping maybe I’d feel something. Maybe I wouldn’t look like I was going through the worst twenty-four hours of my life. At that moment, I truly wished I’d pulled the trigger on myself instead of him.

On the way there, in the back of a cop car, I just chewed and squinted my eyes as my insides went dead. By this time, my short blond hair—usually so neatly combed, curled, and teased—splayed out in front of my head at least three inches. It was fried, the kind of hair a girl has when she’s trying to look crazy. Or when a girl has not been given a brush before or after her mug shot.

I worried about what was going to happen at that house. I had a sense that he was still alive, and he was really going to kick my ass this time. I felt my father all around me. I could hear his voice and smell his skin. I could hear the sound of him swallowing. There was no way he could really be dead. In my mind, he was very alive. He was still terrorizing me.

I worried about my dog Caitlin. I had dropped her off with a friend in the middle of the night, and I needed her warm, forgiving fur. She was my only comfort, and she was so far away. I had nothing. The police wanted me to be as uncomfortable as possible, and they were succeeding.

I worried about what was going to come out of my mouth. If I spoke, what would happen? I didn’t want to be the girl who’d been sexually abused by her father since she was eight years old. She was a helpless, shameful, and stupid victim. I didn’t want to be the young woman—I couldn’t believe I was really eighteen—who loved her dad but hated her abuser. That woman made no sense. I didn’t want to be the teenager who was abandoned by her mother over and over again. She was angry and scared. I didn’t want to be the protective older sister who would have done anything to keep her little sibling safe.

She was a murderer.

I went with Detective Schulte to my house. The cameras went on.

“I decided that he did not deserve to live,” I stated blankly into the videotape as per Schulte’s exact instructions. I would never get the chance to change what I said, or to put it into context or to show the tears that the jury would want to see.

I not only told Schulte what happened, I showed him, too. I did it while his people followed me around with big black VHS cameras. I crept into the basement window where I could slip right in without my father hearing me. I showed him where I picked up the gun in my basement bedroom. He didn’t notice the two bullet holes above the couch. He didn’t notice the broken window blinds and cracked bedroom doors or other signs of physical struggle all over that house. So I just kept doing what I was told. I showed him how I walked up the stairs with that gun and set it on a ledge that pointed at my father’s sleeping body.

My father’s body was still there on the couch.

That was enough.

That is enough.