Small Sacrifices (61 page)

Diane shakes her head wearily and rolls her eyes. This is all so ridiculous. Patiently, bored, she explains it to him again. If 426 ANN RULE

someone was hurt she didn't want anyone to pick up the injured party and injure him further. So she couldn't just roll down the window. She'd taken the keys for the children's safety. What if Cheryl had tried to climb up on the seat and hit the gear shift?

He wants more details, and she sighs with exasperation.

"My goodness, Mr. Hugi! That was a year ago!"

"Not a very significant event in your life?"

"Not before--"

OK. Take it again. Five of the jurors are taking notes.

Why hadn't she pushed the man back?

Because she'd been caught off guard. "I've had no reason to doubt anyone."

Diane's description of her entire life has been one long saga of rejection and betrayal, but now she says she has never had reason to doubt anyone.

She'd seen Christie shot, because the dome light was on. What details might she remember, even after a whole year?

". . .the eye contact and the bullet holes ..."

"You slammed the door on him?"

"No, Mr. Hugi. I did not."

Diane's yellow eyes are blazing. She is enraged with Fred Hugi. How dare he insinuate that she didn't really try to save her children? He is just like Doug Welch and Kurt Wuest were in that interview so long ago now. Her hatred for Hugi is palpable.

"Go ahead," she hisses. "Ask me another question."

"And then, he--"

"He asked for the car again."

Wonderingly, Hugi asks, "A car with three gun-shot kids in it?"

"Who can make sense out of an insane man?"

"Person--"

"Man--"

"Person--'

"Man." ,:

Tell it again, Diane. The stranger hits her hand with his gun; she deflects the gun. He demands the car again, and she fakes throwing the keys over her left shoulder with her right hand. He looks in that direction. She pushes him. She leaps into the car and leaves.

She recalls that her arm was hit (shot) when he was three or

four feet away, but she somehow managed to get the key in the ignition and drive off before he could reach her.

"You never saw him again?"

"No, thank you. I have not."

"You drove fast?"

"I don't know, Mr. Hugi."

"Past enough—as you said—for the car door to slam shut?"

"I guess—"

She recites the drive to the hospital by rote. She has told it so many, many times. The injured mother comforting her dying children.

"At the stop light, I saw the towel around my arm—"

"You took care of yourself," Hugi cuts in.

"I did everything for those kids to try to save them! If I passed out, they wouldn't have a chance."

She cannot recall any car behind her, any lights in the dozens of houses she'd passed. She'd seen only a white fence. She had thought only of getting to the hospital.

She had known immediately that she had some blank spots

but the detectives had pushed her to come up with something. "I think the detectives were unfair because they wouldn't accept what I didn't know."

Hugi reminds Diane that none of the hospital personnel had seen her shed a tear.

"Isn't that funny? I only saw the doctors ten minutes that night, and the nurses fifteen. I don't imagine they saw much of anything."

"You feel the hospital was responsible for the children [Cheryl]

dying?"

"I only found out here how Cheryl died. She died almost instantly. She had clots in her throat. When they cleaned that out, all the blood came up from her lungs. She had heart wounds, spleen. There was no blood on the car carpet."

Diane is near tears now—but the tears are of rage and

frustration.

After lunch, the courtroom is packed tighter than it was for the morning session—if possible. Diane resumes the witness stand, her now-flat eyes fixed on Fred Hugi.

"You ever suffer head injuries?" he begins. The State's psychiatrist, Dr. George Suckow, needs this information so that he can validate—or dismiss—the possibility that Diane suffers 428 ANN RULE

from amnesia, repression, memory loss, and/or unconscious transference when Hugi calls him as a rebuttal witness.

"Yes. When Steve and I were married. In the living room--in 1975."

"This night?" Hugi asks, referring to May 19, 1983.

"Nope."

"Ever wake up in a different place and not know how you got there?"

"Nope."

"... but you had memory problems from the time of the shooting until you got to the hospital?"

"No."

"Your memory bad in the hospital--?"

"Yes."

"When does it get better?"

"The next morning when I woke up--I still had gaps and holes in my memory."

No, she does not remember that she described the suspect differently to Dick Tracy and to Rob Charboneau.

Hugi pounds her with questions. How could the shooter

know the children were there inside the car? Was he walking into the headlights? Could he see?

"I wasn't inside his head."

She cannot remember where the shooter stood--inside-outside--his arm through a window . . .

"Mr. Hugi, your people wanted everything to be exact."

"You were being pressured?"

"Yes."

"You faked throwing the keys--and then you said you lied. Which is true?"

"What I just said. I faked--"

"Why?"

"People were hassling me. Steve and others. I had a lot of self doubt--but I never doubted that I didn't shoot my children." She has forgotten the trees, the white lines, the road itself-but inside her own body, she thought she was going fast. Yes, she'd told the detectives she'd never fired a handgun, never owned one, never "possessed" one. "That's true--they were (, Steve's."

"... never possessed?"

"True."

"Never possessed?"

Diane calls for time-out. To her "possess" means to own. She does not want to talk about the .22 Ruger.

"It was Steve's gun; it was in my house."

Her arm had pained her terribly and acted "kooky, real weird." She hears that the detectives considered her wound a flesh wound. She shrugs her martyr's shrug.

" 'I don't know who shot my kids' you said," Hugi asked.

" 'I haven't the vaguest idea'?"

"True."

" 'I do know,' you said."

"True."

"The suspect 'held my arm and called me a bitch'?"

"True."

"You said the yellow car tied in?"

"True."

"How does it tie in?"

"I don't know . . . everyone told me nothing made sense, your people, Steve, Lew. Even my dreams didn't make sense."

"Your parents told you that too?"

"Not my parents."

"You said, 'they' touched you—threatened to pluck your tattoo?"

"I said that."

"Why?"

"I believed it until I got some help."

"When did you decide to get help?"

"I didn't. My attorney did, 'cause I was on the verge of suicide. You listened to the tapes—they're idiotic. That woman was in trouble. Why didn't you get me help?"

"If you shot your own kids, would you have gone crazy?"

"I wouldn't do it, Mr. Hugi."

"Ever threaten Steve?"

"That depends on what you mean."

"His life?"

"No."

"Point a gun at him?"

"No—I'm the type of person that would cut off my nose to spite my face. I say lots of things to impress people that should never be said—that don't mean anything. I make my flip remarks

• • • If I kept my mouth shut, a lot of times, I'd save people a lot of trouble—including myself."

Over objections, Fred Hugi points out that Polly Jamison's 430 ANN RULE

tests reveal that Diane is a deviant sociopath. Diane looks puzzled. She does not understand this term either.

"You told Detective Norenberg [a handwriting expert] that a trial is a play and that the best actors will win," Hugi reminds her. "You thought I would cut you off and not let you explain your answers?"

"Yes."

"Have I cut you off?"

"No. I appreciate that. Thank you."

Fred Hugi turns to Jim Jagger: "Your witness."

"When you said that you didn't care if they caught anyone," Jagger begins on re-direct, "that you wanted it dropped, I called the sheriffs office and told them I was getting you to a psychologist?" She nods indulgently. "Don't I always [say the wrong thing]?" Hasn't Jagger always urged her to be honest with him from the beginning? Guilty or innocent? Hasn't he urged her not to talk so freely? Hasn't he said, "Do what you feel is right. We'll fly by the truth. Even if you're inconsistent, we'll deal with it later?" Of course. She nods with a smile.

Jagger has more inconsistencies to deal with in Diane's myriad versions of the shootings than any lawyer might wish for in three trials. He stresses Diane's Baptist upbringing, the Good Samaritan story. Given her religious training, she had no alternative but to stop for the stranger.

Jagger tries to erase the picture of the promiscuous woman who prefers married men. He asks Diane to tell about the many men she has dated with whom she had no physical intimacy. There was Scott; and Ray, who "certified your dog bites"; Rick who wanted to adopt her children; and Tim who played softball and video games with them. But then Lew had come along and he had "higher priority."

"Did you have priorities more important than men?" Jagger asks.

"My business, flying, and my kids."

Fred Hugi objects to the admission of Diane's second diary, the post-shooting diary. "The diary is totally self-serving . . . it's t, Diane Downs's world as she would like it to be." At length. Judge Foote sustains Hugi's objections. Diane may refer to the diary to refresh her memory in court, but it will not be admitted.

* * *

Fred Hugi has a few more questions.

Diane assures him she has not been abusive to her kids for at least two years. Not since her divorce. "My life goes on spans—

milestones."

"Did your plan to move to Oregon include Lew?"

"Initially, no . . ."

"You expected him to join you here?"

"Yes."

Diane scolds Hugi, "Christie's been in a lot of trouble and you people are forgetting that. She's taking over a lot of Cheryl's personality and that scares me really bad. She also woke up crying about wetting the bed and she's never wet the bed—"

"You never recall grabbing Christie by the throat either?" Hugi spits out.

"NO!" Diane's throat blossoms pink.

Hugi walks away. He is done with her.

"I told my wife, 'Look at that ugly creep!' Well, my wife drives down the road--fill she sees is the white line

. . . He was on drugs, I figured. .. His eyes were so

big. I seen lots of'em at Sisters--or right here on the

Mall. ..»

--Jim-Bob McCoin, Witness for the Defense

The bulk of the defense's case rests on Diane's shoulders. In four and a half days on the stand, she has given testimony even beyond the scope of questioning by her own attorney and Fred Hugi.

The gallery waits expectantly for more--but Jagger has no big guns waiting in the wings for the defense. No surprise witnesses. There is John Hulce, the elderly gentleman who spotted an old yellow car days after the shooting, and Basil Wilson, who saw a tramp with the green and blue bag in the country club. Wilson wears a white cashmere sweater with the country club emblem over his heart as he explains that "all hippies look alike" so he cannot really describe the bum with the bicycle who had the audacity to wander into a private club.

The defense deserves points for variety. Jagger next calls two witnesses who describe themselves as "chicken farmers": JimBob McCoin and Norm Hilliard, who contacted Jagger some

weeks after the shooting. He referred them to Roy Pond, who found that they shared an address on the same street--but six blocks away--from the Wes and Willadene Frederickson residence in Springfield.

It is late in the day when their names are called, and they

have apparently imbibed freely to brace themselves for the ordeal of testifying. Alcoholic fumes waft through the courtroom as each makes his way to the stand. Hilliard and McCoin visited Marcola Road that May night, although they had never crossed the threshold of the Springfield Country Club--and had no desire to. Norman Preston Hilliard, thirty, and his good friend, Jim-Bob McCoin, were, as they phrased it, taking care of some "game chickens" out at a friend's house between the golf course and the Mohawk Store.

Since cock fighting is illegal in Oregon, it is prudent for Norm and Jim-Bob to downplay their errand that evening. A two-car caravan left the chicken coops for Springfield about a quarter past nine. Andy Waldron, a friend, drove Hilliard; Jim-Bob and his wife followed in their own vehicle.

Hilliard recalls, "We was due for dinner at Jim-Bob's mother's house at 9:30, and we got there at 9:25."

As they approached the bridge over the Mohawk river (just at the intersection of Marcola and Sunderman roads) Hilliard had seen a man near the bridge, hitchhiking. He recalls that he had a steady look at him; the man was wearing an army fatigue jacket, blue jeans, and was carrying a "sky-blue" bag. His round face was unshaven, and he had "deep, deep, dark eyes." The man's hair had been medium brown with bangs combed down, cut below his ears and above his shoulders--"shaggy, windblown"--five feet, ten inches, and about one hundred ninety-five pounds.

"We was going about forty to forty-five miles an hour. I heard about the shooting the next morning and didn't give it no thought until I saw the second composite. I compared it to my wife and children--if that happened to them--and I called her lawyer."

Hilliard has difficulty remembering his contact with Detective Pond. "Something I'll need to remember in my life, I'll keep notes. I never thought it would come to this that a man has to remember every minute to be that perzact!"

Jim-Bob McCoin figures he saw the man at the bridge "between 9:20 and 9:25--1 never pack a watch--I break 'em." The man was on the north side of the road, headed toward Springfield. He had hair a little past his ears, looked like he hadn't shaved in six weeks, and wore a green army fatigue jacket and blue jeans. Jim-Bob remembers the stranger as fat and chunky, under five feet eight."