Small Sacrifices (41 page)

11 ened Steve's heart; he had forgiven Diane for turning him in to the police, and he'd changed his mind about thinking she could really hurt their children.

Steve called Diane on October 1 and asked her if she wanted to see the kids—not talk to them or anything, just have a look at them to be sure they were doing OK? Of course! Steve instructed Diane to be at a certain spot at a shopping mall and he would walk I by with the kids. Diane agreed readily.

Steve called her the next morning and told her the mall was too public. Instead, he suggested that he bring the youngsters to Island Park under the bridge in Springfield at 10:00 a.m. Steve felt sure he could control the situation.

^ Diane was at the park early. She saw Steve's car approach Bl^ and watched as he led Christie to a bench over the rise of a little B hill. He beckoned Diane to the car where Danny lay sleeping in the back seat. She peered in at her beautiful blond boy. He didn't

• look paralyzed to her; he looked as though he might wake up and

^ run around the park the way he used to.

Diane had not seen Christie for almost three months. But she had fooled the cops, the DA, the damnable CSD—even Christie's counselor. And, especially, Steve. It didn't take her long to break down his arguments that she was just supposed to look at the kids. She wanted to hold Christie in her arms.

Diane would say later that Christie was thrilled and delighted to see her, that her daughter ran to her and smothered her with kisses and hugs. Diane remembers that even Steve cried. She took advantage of his emotional response to pry the name of his motel out of him. A meeting in the park wasn't enough; she wanted more time with her children—especially Christie. Steve agreed that she could come to his room at the Red Lion Inn at four that afternoon.

She was prompt. Diane peeked into Steve's car and saw a

wheelchair. So Danny was still paralyzed. That, she knew, was the hospital's fault; all Danny needed was enough love.

Steve wanted Diane to sign custody papers giving him the children. Maybe he felt he had to offer her something as an inducement. He let Diane take Christie away with her—alone—

»j for a ride.

They didn't come back when Diane said they would. Downs

waited, frantic, pacing his motel room. He'd violated a court ji order to let Diane see the kids. Now she'd taken Christie away, B^^ .and he couldn't even remember where she'd said they were going. 280 ANN RULE

It was almost dark--and Diane still hadn't come back.

Steve was just about to call the sheriff--even though he knew he'd probably be arrested for allowing Diane to take Christie-when he saw a car turning into the motel's parking lot. He held his breath. It was the Ford Fiesta. Diane got out. And then he saw Christie, holding her dead arm in her good hand. Christie alive! All of his terrible imaginings vanished.

Diane laughed at Steve for being so upset. She and Christie had had a wonderful time.

"Christie and I went... to Hendricks Park for an hour and a half. It was so neat to hold hands and laugh. We talked about the old times, and a little about the good times in the future. We talked about Cheryl some and Danny's legs. We talked about school and reading."

Diane had pointed out that she was the one who sent Christie her clothes and shoes and candy. Diane insists that Christie asked to go home with her that night.

Christie had learned from Steve that Cheryl's body had been cremated, and that Cheryl's ashes were in Arizona. Christie had difficulty understanding this; she told Diane that she wanted to be in Arizona because that's where Cheryl was. Diane said Christie had asked about the shooting, but Diane insisted she had told her daughter she couldn't discuss it because she'd promised the police she wouldn't.

"We talked about the old days and Cheryl and doing cartwheels. She was angry that I wouldn't tell her [about the case], I said, 'I'll tell you when it's over--I'm keeping a diary.' " Christie asked about Lew. Diane answered, "He doesn't like me anymore."

"Why?"

"He believes everything people are saying."

And then Diane had had an inspiration. Why not take Christie to visit with Grandpa and Grandma Frederickson? "We walked around the side of the house to the backyard. Even my dad cried--and he forbids crying. He put her in front of the computer

[to play]." Christie could use only one hand. Her reaction time was much slower, and her speech was garbled. But her brain was just as sharp as always.

Steve was so upset when Diane finally brought Christie ( back, that he wouldn't let her see Danny. She didn't get a chance

to see if her theory that she could make him walk was valid.

* * *

rrEl

SACRIFICES 281

Evelyn Slaven noticed something wasn't right when Steve returned the children that night. The kids had been so happy and

relaxed lately, and suddenly they were like somber little mice.

"It wasn't something really obvious--but neither Christie nor Danny even said 'Goodbye' to their father. They just came in the house very, very quietly. I assumed maybe they'd had a bad jay--I had no idea that Diane had gotten hold of Christie. Christie

didn't say anything about it."

Carl Peterson found too that his optimistic "four to six months" until Christie could testify had lost validity. Since Christie's visit with her father, they were, mysteriously, almost back where they'd started. When he questioned Christie gently, she turned away. She had nothing to say.

Christie kept the secret well. No one knew that she had seen her mother--alone--for hours. Without preparation.

October 7 was Christie's ninth birthday. Diane and Paul took a cake and presents for her to the CSD offices, trailed by reporters and cameras.

Diane looked sensational in the pictures. Her hair was newly cut--as short as a boy's--in a shining blonde cap. She wore a long-sleeved sweater and tight jeans that showed off her perfect figure, and she smiled as she gazed down on a sheet cake that said

"Happy Birthday, Christie: I Love You, Mom." The icing was white with--naturally--bright red roses in each corner. Behind Diane Paul appears in the photographs, his arms heaped high with gaily wrapped presents.

They were not allowed to see Christie. Nobody knew that it was already far too late. Interviews had been set up with Carl ^|| Peterson for Diane on September 28 and October 14; she kept

neither of them. There was no reason to see him. She and Christie understood each other.

Diane still smiled for the media cameras, but she wasn't really smiling much in private. Although she'd had her victories, jthey trailed far behind her losses. Anxiety and depression gripped "her again. On October 13, Diane scribbled in her diary, "I've been drinking a lot the past few days. I just wish I could be dead . . . But I had a great idea. Tell ya later if it works! Gotta go--" Matt Jensen remembers the night of October 13 well. It was a ^hursday, and he was ready for bed when the phone rang, shortly

282 ANN RULE

after eleven. It was Diane Downs; he hadn't heard from her for a long time. Nor had he thought much about her.

"She wanted to come over," he remembers. "She went on and on about how lonely she was, and how she needed to come over. I wasn't interested. I kept saying 'No. No,' and she kept telling me she really needed to come over. I began to get annoyed, and I even hung up on her--but she called right back.

Finally--I was kidding--I gave her this impossible situation--like if she could get an ounce of pot, and a six-pack of beer, and all this stuff--then she could come over. But it was late, it was Cottage Grove, Oregon, and there's no way she could have found all that stuff. So it was like I was saying no, but I was trying to kid her too so she wouldn't feel really rejected. I just wasn't interested.

"So she says she will, and I didn't think she would--but she came over. And she walks in with a six-pack, and the first thing she says is--'Guess what? I'm on birth control pills now,' and I said, 'Oh, really. I didn't think you were before,' and she says,

'No, I just started--I just got them.'

"So I asked her if she didn't have to take them for a certain amount of time before they were effective, and she said no. Just out of the blue, she was telling me 'It's safe. It's safe.'

"I guess I was a damn fool," Jensen says now. "Looking back I can see I was set-up. It wasn't a seduction--it was a manipulation; she was using me."

Two days later, Jensen moved out of his house; Diane's

late-night visit was almost forgotten.

Diane's diary entry for October 14 is gleeful: "It worked!

Remember that guy I dated a couple of times? Well, I called him up and ended up going to see him. I talked him into doing you-know-what, because I knew it was my time of the month to get pregnant. I hope it worked. I just can't live without my kids." Whether it had worked or not remained to be seen. Diane had been trying to become pregnant for a year; she had not conceived a second time even under the optimum conditions at the Louisville clinic. And now, she was under tremendous stress.

She continued to drink a great deal, but--even drunk--Diane ( could work out intricate plots. She did not want Steve to have custody of Christie and Danny, and she figured that the Children's Services Division would do exactly the opposite of what

she wanted. If CSD learned that Steve had let her see her children, they wouldn't let him have the kids. Diane wanted CSD to know about her visit with Christie--but in a roundabout way. On October 16, Diane wrote to Lew, telling him she'd seen her children, thanks to Steve. The letter is written in a drunken scrawl, addressed simply to "Lew, c/o Chandler P.O., Chandler, AZ, 85224."

Over the next few days, she called the post office and left messages for Lew: he must not open the letter she'd sent. He

must send it back! If he opened it--and told anyone what was in it--she warned that his life wouldn't be worth anything. That would not only make him open it, but he'd get the information immediately to the Lane County Sheriffs Office, which was what she wanted all along.

It worked. It also scared Lew enough to file charges against Diane and request a restraining order.

Fred Hugi was appalled when he heard that Christie had been alone with Diane. It explained everything--why Christie had closed up with Peterson, why she was so afraid again. "I felt really incompetent," he remembers grimly. "I couldn't even protect one little girl. I wondered how many other times Diane had seen Christie. When you're dealing with crime, something that's admitted to one time usually means it happened a lot of times. Diane was getting more organized, stronger--just as she'd said ... I didn't even have an investigator to check it out."

Those few investigators who were left in the DA's office were all busy on other cases. Crime had not stopped in Lane County in the six months since the shootings on Old Mohawk Road. Hugi had myriad cases to handle; so did everyone else. The Downs case was always with him, but he had to push it to the back of his mind in order to do the rest of his job.

Diane had managed to see Christie and foil Steve. She had seduced Matt. She was winning again. She kept her fingers crossed "as the due date of her menstrual period approached. She would

not allow herself to start bleeding. It was important to her survival that she be pregnant.

She was. Her sixth pregnancy had begun.

Later when her secret was out, Diane explained to television reporter Anne Bradley the symbolic meaning of this pregnancy,

"I got pregnant because I miss Christie, and I miss Danny and I miss Cheryl so much. I'm never going to see Cheryl on earth 284 ANN RULE

again, I just--You can't replace children--but you can replace the effect that they give you. And they give me love, they give me

satisfaction, they give me stability, they give me a reason to live and a reason to be happy, and that's gone. They took it from me."

And then Diane smiled faintly at Bradley, and remarked, "But children are so easy to conceive."

Matt Jensen--who had already made one grievous mistake-made another. He called Diane. A friend having dinner at Matt's new house commented he would like to meet the infamous Diane Downs, hinting that he didn't believe Matt knew her well enough to call her up. Loosened by a few beers. Matt called Diane. She was delighted and said she'd be right over.

Diane arrived wearing mini-shorts and high boots that clung to her calves. Jensen's friend eyed her appreciatively. There was no question that the woman was a knock-out „

"During the course of the evening," Jensen remembers ruefully,

"she suddenly leaned over to me and whispered, 'I'm pregnant.' I was in shock. I didn't know what the repercussions would be. I was upset--I told her she'd set this up, that she'd used me--and I didn't want anything to do with her." Diane had been amazed at his agitation. "Don't worry," she soothed. "I didn't mean to use you."

"I see what you were after," he countered. "I see what you did, and I don't want to see you anymore."

When Diane left, she was smiling. He would forgive her, she knew, when he began to understand. She would explain it all to him when he wasn't so bent out of shape.

Diane hadn't been to a doctor when she told Matt that she was pregnant. She didn't need to go; she was positive. But she went anyway on November 8, and she told her diary the great news had been verified: "Found out that I am positively pregnant!

YEAH!"

She had done it. She was no longer despondent. "That is why on October 13, 1983," she wrote the author, "I chose to again get pregnant . . . For nine months, I had love again. There was a child inside of me, kicking and nudging. Someone I could love who was with me. Each day, she reminded me that we had a future."

Diane wrote Matt Jensen letters, deluging him just as she'd inundated so many other men in her past. Diane, who seldom evinced guilt--about anything--was the consummate master of

slathering it on others. To Matt: "I am writing this because I don't want to pop up on your doorstep and invade your territory. You seem to be a person who likes your privacy and invites friends over at your convenience. I respect that and hope you also respect me enough to take five minutes or so to read this . . . Thanks."