Small Sacrifices (34 page)

Diane was shocked to learn from friends in Chandler that Doug Welch and Kurt Wuest were again in Arizona. The two

young detectives had more people from Diane's past to interview, and they were making a final stab at locating cartridges or slugs from the missing .22 Ruger. Dick Tracy was in Oklahoma to interview Diane's sister, Kathy, and then would travel on to Louisville, Kentucky, armed with a search warrant for all Diane's records from the surrogate parent clinic. An Oregon law allows an exception in the privileged communication statute between patient and doctor when the protection of children is concerned. Diane called yet another news conference in late June. Around her neck, she wore Cheryl's gold chain with a tiny gold ingot added to it. Diane had had the gold bar engraved with the dates of Cheryl's birth and death. This was her new talisman, her new symbol.

She sat on a black leather couch in a room panelled with birch. A box overflowing with children's toys rested on the floor at the end of the couch. Wes Frederickson was nearby.

Eyes blazing, Diane turned toward the cameras.

"I ask any mother out there if someone came to her house and took her kids, wouldn't she act mad? Stamp her feet?" Diane explained that Danny would recover completely. "Your mind controls your body, and if I can love Danny enough, I can make him walk."

No one in the watching public knew about the abuse her

babies had endured, and it was easy for her to make Fred Hugi and the sheriffs detectives look like villains.

"I can't believe I've come to this. If the detectives had done their job--"

Diane had learned how to deal with detectives. She explained that it was now her duty to share her perceptions with the citizens of Lane County. Cognizant of the publicity on the lost levy, on the millions of dollars needed to run a sheriffs office, she advised the viewers that their tax dollars were going to pay inefficient, cruel, dishonest detectives. Her message was clear. What had befallen her could happen to anyone watching her.

"I gave them access to my house, access to my body. I let them do tests, gave them my personal letters. They know I didn't do it. Now they're too proud to back off. They sacrifice the mother of the children ... I was never afraid of the dark, but now I am. I see it all over again. I have nightmares and I cry. I've always been able to help and I couldn't help my kids. We had a ^ot of memories and now we have to make new memories when

228 ANN RULE

Cheryl isn't there, so the hurt gets (will get) softer. I loved her and somebody took her--"

Diane began to cry and then pulled herself together. She explained that she had to be strong for Christie and Danny. Fred Hugi strode to his set and started to snap it off, resisting the temptation to kick it. The woman was good; he had to give her that.

"What will you do 'after'?" a reporter asked.

"I don't know. Right now, there is no future . . . They're

[The police] supposed to be finding the man that hurt me and who could come back again and hurt me. They're helping him!" Through it all, Diane's voice remained sweet and soft, the voice of a woman in so much pain that she couldn't possibly be shading the truth.

"Why did someone shoot us? I don't know. Why did someone shoot a 7-Eleven kid for $30? Why did someone kill five

people down in Chino [California]? I don't know why people do things. Why does anybody kill anybody? It's insane." The more astute viewer noticed that when one of Diane's

arguments seemed to work, it would be repeated often. Even the inflection of her words remained the same, as if she had merely replayed a tape. She never stuttered or stumbled over a phrase.

Just keeping track of Diane's television appearances was a full-time job. Wes and Willadene kept three sets in their living room. One was tuned to KVAL, one to KMTR, and one to KEZI. Little notes listing the respective times of news broadcasts were taped to the sets.

Forbidden to see her children, Diane was still very busy. She had her diary, she had her tapes to dictate, she had the police to joust with, she had a media interview anytime she chose to ask for one. As the summer lengthened, she gave literally dozens of

"exclusive" confidences to members of the press and TV, in addition to her large press conferences. And soon, she would have her postal job back.

Diane made a number of calls to Chandler. She called the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office to turn Steve Downs in for arson and insurance fraud, explaining that Steve had deliberately burned her trailer, and that he'd reported his sports car stolen-when it was really safely stored--so he could collect insurance. She was very angry with Steve for telling the police about the .22

Ruger.

Best of all: unbelievably, incredibly, Lew was back in her life.

Doug Welch and Kurt Wuest found Lew Lewiston still wary

about what Diane might do. And he grieved for the kids--those somber little kids that he'd tried not to think about when he and Diane were together. He believed that if he hadn't started with Diane, she never would have shot the kids.

In an effort to get her to admit what she'd done, Lew decided to call Diane--and tape the calls for the police. If she ever admitted the truth to anyone, he thought it would be to him. She always told him he was the only one who really understood her. It was legal. Both Oregon and Arizona statutes put forth guidelines for taping phone calls. Calls may be taped surreptitiously if "at least one of the parties taping is aware of it," preventing only a third party from taping callers unaware. Lew was deceiving Diane. If not lying outright, he certainly left much unsaid. It didn't bother him. She was the champion of deception, of manipulation. She could lie and wheedle and cry and laugh and pout and charm at will. She always had and he suspected she always would. Playing fair with her now seemed a negligible concern.

If she wasn't locked up, Lewiston fully expected to see Diane Downs again soon and, quite possibly, there would be a gun in her hand the next time he saw her. If a woman could shoot her own children to get a man, she would have no compunction at all about shooting his wife.

Whatever there had once been between them, any attraction, fascination, love, or desire that Lew had felt for Diane Downs was dead.

The smoky-whiskey autumn nights were gone, but there were ghosts. Sometimes, when Lew turned a corner, he could almost hear a phantom clink of empty glasses in the back . . . and muted music, the strange, harsh music Diane had preferred to his country western. Times like that, it seemed as if her scarlet-talon nails were still clutching him and that she would never, ever, ever, let him go until she had destroyed all of them.

In Chandler, Kurt Wuest and Doug Welch obtained permission from the new owners of the house on Palomino Street to dig up their recently landscaped backyard; Steve Downs remembered that he'd once shot at some cats there with the elusive .22 Ruger.

"The new owners had built a patio—concrete slab—and beyond that, they'd put down river rock over black Visqueen," Welch remembers. "We ripped the whole thing out. When we were down to sand, we found some old guys—retired—who had metal detectors and they went over it ... we didn't find the casings. The county paid to have the backyard put back together again." That left Mexico.

Jesse Pinon had sold Stan Post's old truck—which might still carry some of the .22's casings in it—to his brother: Raphael Pinon Acosta, who lived God-only-knew-where in Mexico. Welch and Wuest needed an interpreter and a guide.

Manuel Valenzuela was a retired Chandler police captain, a private investigator, and a polygraph expert. He had given the lie-detector tests to the Chandler witnesses. Manny spoke such exquisite Spanish that no one would ever peg him as an American. He explained how to contact someone in Chihuahua: "You don't pick up the phone and call Raphael. You have to find someone in Mexico who might possibly have a phone. They get on a CB and contact somebody who lives closer to Raphael. Then, if they feel like it, they'll go hunt him up, Raphael will get on the CB and eventually his message will be transmitted to the guy with a phone."

It took Valenzuela three days to find Raphael Pinon Acosta. The most expedient way to get to him was to charter a plane. However, the area was rife with drug smuggling; low-flying planes were an endangered species.

Yes, Raphael still had the black truck, but he lived a hundred miles beyond Janos, the hamlet Valenzuela suggested for a meet. He doubted that his bald tires were up to the trip. Manny coaxed and cajoled. It was agreed. On July 5, the truck would be presented in Janos, Chihuahua, Mexico, for processing by two cops

from Oregon.

An American police officer carries little authority south of the Mexican border. Indeed, carrying a badge is often dangerous. Valenzuela agreed to accompany Wuest and Welch. Hell, he said he'd drive them, which was just as well. The trip to Janos would take six and a half hours over highways that did little to merit the name.

Minus guns or police identification, they crossed the Mexican border at Douglas/Aqua Pieta. Guards, lounging in tilted-back chairs, stared blankly at the trio. Valenzuela spoke softly out of the corner of his mouth, telling the Oregon detectives to keep calm. They needed a visa; for that a driver's license would probably do. Kurt Wuest decided not to confuse the issue by saying he was born in Switzerland; he simplified his birthplace to "Chicago." The Federates, their .45s dangling from their gunbelts, searched Valenzuela's car, grunted, and lazily waved them on.

They were in another world, mile after mile of bad roads with precipitous curves. Every so often, they came upon a checkpoint. Sometimes they were signaled to stop; sometimes not. Near most checkpoints there were burned-out car hulks, their windows shattered by bullets.

Laughing, Wuest asked, "What's that? Somebody who didn't stop for the checkpoint?"

Manny didn't smile. "You got it."

They arrived in Janos in the heat of noon. The Pinon pickup was parked in front of the Cafe Harris ("Polio Empanisado, Hamburguesas, Sandwiches, Tacos, and Burritos"),

Manny took Raphael aside and explained something to him. Wuest and Welch could hear him say, "ninos children . . . morte

. bang, bang . . . Madre," and saw Pinon's eyes widen in horror. He nodded solemnly and gestured grandly toward his truck.

Welch had just begun to pull up the carpeting in the cab when the local policeman pulled up. His expression was not friendly. Once again, Manny explained in Spanish, and once again

they were waved on. Welch's fingers moved over the truck floor. 232 ANN RULE

And--almost miraculously--there were bullets there! Seven live rounds and a couple of casings!

The entire population of Janos had by this time gathered around the truck, staring. Welch contained his enthusiasm as he nodded triumphantly to Wuest and Valenzuela.

Doug Welch recalls his naivete then; he was so caught up in cops-and-killers real live drama. "Here we were in an international investigation. We had to go to a foreign country to solve it, but

we'd done it!"

He paid Rafael $50.00 for his time and trouble--and the

temerity to drive 100 miles on tires with no tread at all. It was three weeks' wages. Rafael was elated. They were all elated. But how were three "civilians" going to get bullets and casings across the border to Aqua Pieta? Welch solved that by tucking the seven live .22 rounds and the empty casings in the only hiding place the Federales might not search: his jockey shorts.

"I figured unless they actually 'honked' me at the border, I could get those rounds out of Mexico--and we wanted those rounds."

When they reached the border after midnight, the Federates didn't bother to search either Valenzuela's car or its passengers. Once they got far enough into Arizona, they stopped so Welch could fish the bullets out of his shorts, and he breathed--and sat-more easily. It was now Doug Welch's thirty-second birthday. He felt he had much to celebrate. He'd bought a bottle ofTequila in Mexico. He discovered it had leaked all the way to Aqua Pieta. The leaky Tequila may have been an omen. Not one of the bullets, and none of the casings, matched those Jim Pex had.

The case was a nightmare, the kind of investigation that sands the promontories of illusion off an eager young detective in a hurry. Dick Tracy could have told them that. The ones that look as if they're going to work throw you the hardest.

At Oklahoma State Technical College in Okmulgee, Dick

Tracy talked to Kathy Downing. Tracy could hear Israel in another room, screaming from the oppressive heat of the humid

little apartment, or perhaps a nightmare.

Kathy Frederickson said she'd married Downing on March

16, 1980, in Flagstaff, but they'd only lived together a couple of months. Diane had driven Kathy to the Eugene airport the night before the shooting. Kathy explained that she wouldn't be staying

with her husband long; she was going into military service in October.

Through mere coincidence Diane had married a Downs and

Kathy a Downing, but Kathy had emulated Diane's behavior in many ways—first, as a potential surrogate mother, and now as a potential Army recruit.

Kathy said she'd seen guns in Diane's possession, but she didn't recognize the picture of a .22 Ruger semi-automatic and the bone-handled steel revolver Tracy showed her. She had helped Diane pack for several moves but didn't remember seeing any guns. Kathy did remember back to the time in September, 1982, after Steve had blacked Diane's eye; Diane had got the rifle out then and was loading it and threatening to shoot Steve if he came back. "But it worked out OK. Steve didn't come back, and Diane cooled down."

Diane often loaded and unloaded guns when she was mad at Steve. Her Aunt Irene recalled to Welch a time when Steve was late delivering Diane's new waterbed. Diane sat on the edge of the couch, loading and unloading, threatening to kill "the son of a bitch."

Seeing how troubled Kathy was now, Tracy asked her the