Murders



PROLOGUE

Ill

There is no more idyllic spot in May than the Willamette Valley

that cradles Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. Sheltered by the

Cascade Range to the east and the steel-blue and purple ridges of

the coastal mountains on the western horizon, the valley was an

oasis for pioneers more than a century ago. It remains an oasis

today. Rivers thread their way through Eugene and Springfield:

the Willamette, the McKenzie, the Mohawk, the Little Mohawk--

nourishing the land.

Eugene and Springfield are sister cities--but far from twins.

Eugene, with a population of 100,000, is bigger, brighter, and far

more sophisticated. Eugene has the University of Oregon and the

prestigious Hult Center for the Performing Arts. Eugene is the

runners' mecca of the world--spawner of champion after champion;

it has been estimated that one out of three of its citizens run

regularly. Not jog--run. Eugene is fitness personified, with bicyclists'

paths emblazoned along the edges of even the busiest y?

downtown street, sacrosanct. Eugene is the successful sister of "

the paired cities, cool and slender, professional. Her restaurants

serve artichoke and ricotta pie, salads with raspberry vinegar,

Brie and pate and wild mushroom and sorrel soup, and vie with

one another to discover ever more obscure spices.

Springfield, half Eugene's size, is the sister who never graduated

from high school, who works for Weyerhaueser or Georgia- pacific, and no longer notices the acrid smell. People in Spring"eld

work a forty- or fifty-, or sixty-, hour week and, if they still ^ed exercise, they go bowling or to a country-western dancing Bvern. The appetizers in a good Springfield restaurant are carrot ^icks, celery, pickled beets and soda crackers; the entree is

xcellent chicken-fried steak or prime rib. The main street is ailed Main Street and it wears its neon signs in proud prolifera

4 ANN RULE

tion. Excepting Portland, Springfield is the largest industrial region

in Oregon, and yet pioneers' descendants cling to tradition

even as factories threaten to obliterate the old days. It is a city

unpretentious and homey.

A long time back, Clint Eastwood lived in Springfield for

a while.

The dipping, curving Belt Line freeway connects Eugene and

Springfield, and their boundaries merge into one another. Some

citizens live in Eugene and work in Springfield--or commute to

Eugene from neat ranch houses in Springfield. Both cities have

wonderful parks and spectacular scenery. Between the two, everything

that anyone might seek--barring tropical temperatures--is

available.

Willamette Valley winters are long and dismal for rain-haters,

clouds hanging so low that they obscure even the huge buttes

looming north and south of Eugene. In May when the sun glows

and the rivers have absorbed the rain storms, it is as if the gray

days never were. Oaks and maples leaf out, brilliant against the

darker green of fir and pine. The air is drenched with the sweetness

of fresh-cut rye grass, wild roses, strawberries, and a million

bearded irises. Beneath this sweetness: the pungent lacing of

onions, sawdust, cedar, and the fecund smell of good red earth,

furrowed and waiting for seed.

May, 1984.

It was ironic that it should be May again. Four seasons had

come and gone since it happened. May to May. Neat. Some

slight sense of order finally after months of chaos and uncertainty.

Oregon has good springs and bad springs, depending on the

point of view. This May was not good. The wind that whipped

around the Hilton Hotel and the Lane County Courthouse was as

sodden as a handkerchief drenched with tears. Rain pelted and

slashed and dripped, finally trapping itself in small torrents in the

gutters at Oak and Eighth Streets. The first day of the trial so

many had waited for was a day to stay at home, light a fire, and

read a good book.

And still the parking lot across the street from the courthouse

was full, and the Hilton had dozens of rooms reserved for out-oftown

media.

The carnival began where the elevator doors opened onto the

courthouse's third-floor lobby. Cameras and lights and reporters

and microphones. Technicians laying cable along the floor, cov-

SMALL SACRIFICES 5

ering it carefully with silver duct tape. Photographers leaning

nrecariously over the "No pictures beyond here" barrier, pressins

their luck for a forbidden candid shot. The hall was filled--not

with sadness, but with excited expectancy.

The would-be gallery lined up--a hundred, two hundred peonie

shivering and drenched, women mostly, hoping to be admitted'

to the inner sanctum of Courtroom Number Three, to pass

beyond the double oak doors whose two tiny windows were covered

with butcher paper blocking even so much as a peek inside.

Uniformed deputies and a thick rope attached to a heavy steel

stanchion held them back. The women, and a sprinkling of

embarrassed-looking men, carried raincoats and lunches in precisely

creased brown bags. Those first in line had been there for

hours. Occasionally, necessities of nature forced one or another

to dash around the corner to the restrooms, a neatly folded

raincoat left to save a place in line. The fabric marker was always

honored.

Oregonians, all Northwesterners, are a civilized breed. Even

so, when the doors finally opened, there was a stampede. Two

little old ladies were carried along in the surging tide of human

bodies, their black, laced shoes inches above the floor. Unruffled,

they sailed in, and found two narrow spots on the long benches,

hats still firmly planted on their heads.

The long wait promised to be worthwhile. Advocacy both for

and against the defendant was passionate. The gallery murmured

and twittered; spectators half-rose to crane their necks for a

closer look at the principals--mostly at the defendant.

Few eyes lingered long on Fred Hugi, the lone assistant g

district attorney who would be prosecuting this case for the State.

Thirty-nine years old, his dark hair already salt-and-peppered,

Hugi had shouldered the final responsibility for bringing the defendant

to trial. Tall, lean (or downright skinny, depending . . .),

tough as whipcord, he wore a moustache that gave him the look

°f a man from another, earlier century--some frontier lawman or ^dge, maybe, peering solemnly from a browning tintype.

From time to time, Hugi's brown eyes swept over the court- ^om. They seemed to fix on no one, and they revealed nothing. rL^ glanced over his notes on the long yellow legal pad. Behind hls tightly capped facade, he was champing at the bit, eager to get on with it. He was neither pessimistic nor elated; he was "^mensely relieved to find himself at last in court. By avocation a

°ng-distance runner, Hugi saw the weeks ahead as a marathon--

L

6 ANN RULE

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steady, determined pacing after meticulous training. Brilliant and

stubborn--no, tenacious--Fred Hugi never gave up on anything

he set out to do, even though his singlemindedness had been

known to irritate the hell out of people around him.

The words before him blurred. No matter. He was ready. He

knew it all by heart; he could make his opening statement in his

sleep. He'd lain awake too many long nights, worrying this case--

seeing it from one angle, and then reversing it, turning it in his

mind like a Rubik's Cube. Sometimes he suspected he knew more

about the defendant than he did about his own wife after almost

two decades of marriage. It was a good thing Joanne understood

him, accepted that her husband had to do what he had to do, and

left him alone, unquestioning; he'd been obsessed with this case

for a year.

The defendant sat so close to him now that with the slightest

extension of his right elbow, their arms would touch. Hugi caught

the scent of jail soap and a faint whiff of acrid perspiration. He

was accustomed to the peculiar economy of space in Lane County

courtrooms. The prosecutor, the defendant, and the defense attorney

sat adjacent to one another along one nest of tables. Normally,

the State and the Defense in a major trial have their own

space, but these battle lines were only imaginary, drawn in the

air--as thick and impenetrable as iron walls. Fred Hugi sat on the

far left, the defendant sat in the middle, and Jim Jagger, attorney

for the defense, sat on the far right. They composed the triangle

around which everything else would revolve.

Hugi saw that the accused seemed confident, rolling--as

always--with any punch, leaning over often to whisper and laugh

in Jagger's ear, ignoring the prosecutor. That was fine with him.

He had taken infinite pains to be seen as only "a dopey guy," an

unknown factor. The defendant clearly viewed him as negligible.

No threat. That was exactly the way Hugi wanted it.

He, on the other hand, had tremendous respect for his opponent.

Smarter than hell, a quick study, and, through the defense's

rights of discovery, aware of his whole case going in. The worthiest

of adversaries, armed with a clever attorney, and backed,

seemingly, by a huge fan club.

It was bizarre that the crimes the defendant was accused of defied credulity. Their very nature threatened to turn the tide

against the State. Too cruel to believe.

Fred Hugi had waited so long for this moment. Days had

become weeks, and weeks months--months that had promised to

_________________ SMALL SACRIFICES 7

stretch into a lifetime. This was the case that appeared initially to

he simple--even ordinary in a macabre way--and easy to adjudicate.

He'd been hoping to be entrusted with a murder case that

might demand much more of him. Something interesting. Something

that would challenge him, push him to the wall, and hone his

trial expertise. When the Downs case came along, he had made

the erroneous assumption that it would be over in a day or so,

that it would take just long enough to clear to make him lose his

place in the long line of assistant DA's waiting for a "good"

homicide. ^:

Easy. It had been hell. There was every indication that it

would continue to be hell. There had never been a single moment

when this somber, intense prosecutor had shouted "Aha! Now

we've got it! From here on, it's a shoo-in."

H A year in Vietnam had tested Fred Hugi severely; a year

jousting with this media-savvy defendant, and with at least half

the population of Eugene and vicinity, had been worse. Prosecuting

a defendant like this--for particularly heinous crimes--scraped

roughly across the grain of middle-American mores. Fred Hugi

knew he was sniping at traditions as entrenched as Mom and

apple pie. His eyes slid again over the packed gallery and he

winced at the row upon row of "concerned" citizens.

He figured they sure as hell weren't there for him. Solid

support for the accused. If he recognized this outpouring of sympathy,

he knew the jury would see it too. It did not occur to him

that some of the spectators might be there simply to hear the juicy

details of the defendant's purportedly promiscuous sex life, or

even that some of them might be his cheering section.

He felt quite isolated. That was OK; he was accustomed to it.

Fred Hugi believed absolutely that what he was doing was

right--that he had no other way to go. He had someone to answer

to and if he lost, he would lose big.

And so would they.

He looked at the jury. Twelve jurors; three alternates. Hugi

had rather unorthodox theories about juries. He considered the ^remony of voir dire to pick unprejudiced jurors basically bullshit,

easily abused, and a vehicle for influencing likely jurors to ^e a position before they heard any evidence at all. He was no

S°od at it; he knew he had neither charm nor charisma and he ^tested having to play the game.

Now Jim Jagger was good at it. Jagger and the prospective

L

8 ANN RULE

jurors had chuckled and chatted. Hugi had been content to play

off Jagger. As long as his opponent hadn't attempted to slant facts

that might come out in the trial ahead, Hugi kept his mouth shut.

But he tensed when he heard the defense attorney ask about

religious affiliations and insinuate references to his own church

work. Still, Hugi was relieved that it was Jim Jagger up there and

not Melvin Belli, who had been scheduled to head the defense

team. Belli would surely have held press parties on the top of the

Eugene Hilton every night, effectively turning this bleakest of

tragedies into a media circus. |

Hugi had just about had it with the press; he glanced at them,

packed into the first row behind the rail. He suspected for most of

them this was all headlines only—not pain and blood and tears.

They were as bad as the gallery—worse, really; many of them had

pandered to the suspect, dancing obligingly to whichever tune

was called. Well, now they'd get their headlines all right. He

couldn't stop that, but they might be in for a surprise or two.

Hugi hadn't changed anything about himself for this trial.

Balking at the advice of his courtroom expert—DA's Investigator,

Ray Broderick—he'd refused to grow his hair longer so he'd look

less rigid. Nor would Hugi consider modifying his apparel. In

court he always wore a conservative, off-the-rack suit with baggy

trousers, or a blazer and slacks, a regimentally striped tie, and •

heavy, polished, wing-tipped shoes. He rarely smiled.

Hugi's strategy in this trial was to be a teacher. He was going

to show the jury exactly what had happened, presenting some —

extremely technical evidence and testimony. Would the jurors •

understand it? Would they even try to understand it—or would it

strike them as repetitive and boring? And one of his witnesses

was very fragile, in danger of being broken beyond repair.

The trial would be like walking on the cutting edge of a knife. •

With it all, he was as ready as he would ever be. He would i|

demonstrate what he believed devoutly to be the truth. That was •

what justice was about. The truth. No frills. No high jinks. No

pratfalls. I

Hugi expected that he would have to play catch-up after voir

dire. He assumed he wasn't likeable, so why should the jurors

warm to him? He knew some people—particularly the cops—delighted in calling him an asshole. Hell, sometimes his own

jinvestigators called him worse. When he was working on a case,

he could be a juggernaut—and Lord help anyone who got in the

SMALL SACRIFICES 9

way or failed to complete an assignment. But he never asked

anyone to do more than he himself did.

TheJ&oil-dys^ hadn't been as bad as Hugi expected. He'd

used all his challenges, and he still had some reservations about

the final twelve, but basically it was a crapshoot. He would have

been just as happy to pick the first twelve people who came out of

the jury pool. Same difference.

All he asked were a dozen intelligent human beings with

common sense, salt-of-the-earth people who couldn't be flimflammed.

He knew that most people are frightened of making a

decision. Americans have become so used to "seeing" the crime

committed on television that anything else--including real life--

becomes fraught with "reasonable doubt."

He looked at his jury now, sitting up there, getting used to

their new roles. How many of them had guts enough to look

someone in the eye and say straight out, You're a-murderer! All

he needed was one bozo who had already made up his mind and

four to six weeks of trial would be down the tubes.

Fred Hugi was asking for a conviction on murder. He needed

all twelve of those jurors. He couldn't afford to lose even one of

them.

The defendant only needed one to beat the murder charge.

Everybody on the West Coast had heard the story by now, and

half seemed to suspect a "railroad." Hugi thought of the stacks of

letters in his files, calling him and the cops everything from cruel

fascists to crooked grandstanders. Was one of those fifty percent

sitting up there at this very moment, smiling guilelessly down at

him? If someone wanted on a jury bad enough, it wasn't that hard

to come up with the right answers on voir dire.

Fred Hugi bit down hard, unconsciously grinding his teeth.

The weeks ahead were so important to him. This was more than

Just a trial. For him, it was as simple as good against evil; the ^rdict waiting down the road might help him allay his growing feeling that the system wasn't working.

He rose to make his opening statement. The accused listened,

°ored at first, and then with an incredulous expression. For the wst time, Fred Hugi was a recognizable enemy. A dangerous enemy. The defendant bent over a yellow legal pad, furiously brawling huge letters, and then holding it up for Hugi to see. He ead it without missing a beat in his presentation to the jury.

10 ANN RULE

The tablet read, LIE!

Jim Jagger reached for the pad and shook his head slightly.

The pad hit the oak table with a slap; the defendant was seething.

Someone was lying. Maybe when they emerged from this

courtroom a month or two down the road, the question of who it

was would be put to rest forever. . . .

a

i

CHAPTER 1

May 19, 1983.

It had been, if not a quiet night, at least a normal night for the

Springfield Police Department. Cops know that hot weather encourages

impromptu parties and triggers family beefs. The SPD

log for that twenty-four-hour period lists the expected ration of

trouble between a quarter after ten and twenty minutes to eleven

Thursday night.

An anonymous caller complained at 10:16 p.m. about a party

on North First Street. "RP [reporting party] called to report a

loud party in the above area. Unit dispatched. Responsibles contacted.

Noise abated. Subjects to depart the area."

"Suspicious conditions" were reported--again anonymously

--at 10:22 p.m. "RP reported hearing a small child crying. Unit

dispatched. Involved parties contacted, found to be a dispute

between children. No crime involved."

At 10:32 the call was a bit more serious. "RP called to report

a male/female verbal dispute in the apartment complex on North

Seventeenth. Male half reported to be carrying rifle. Units dispatched.

Charged with menacing. Lodged Lane County Jail."

At the headquarters of the Lane County Sheriffs Office in ^ugene. Sheriff Dave Burks's officers were also pulling a fairly Viet shift. Rob Rutherford was the graveyard shift sergeant;

^elective Lieutenant Louis Hince would be on call for anything ^at might require his detectives; thirty-one-year-old Doug Welch as at home in Springfield with his wife, Tamara, and two young ^s. Richard Blaine Tracy (of course, "Dick Tracy") was a year

Way from retirement after twenty-six years as a cop, and he

°uld be just as happy if nothing heavy came down before he left. Forced, Tracy was getting ready for bed alone in his Eugene

12 ANN RULE

apartment. Kurt Wuest was away at a training seminar that Thursday

night. Roy Pond was working days.

Assistant DA Fred Hugi, radio and television turned off, was

reveling in the quiet of a perfect spring evening at his lodgelike

home set far back in the forest along the McKenzie River. It was

a different life out there in the woods, and he was a different man.

He wore frayed jeans and battered logging boots as he planted

seedlings to thicken even more the forest outside his windows.

Joanne Hugi, co-director of the computer center at the University

of Oregon, was lost in concentration in her computer

room. It made her husband smile; he, who had degrees in forestry,

finance, and law, had been baffled by the single computer

course he'd attempted, and he'd challenged Joanne to try it. She

had proved to be a natural, understanding terms and concepts that

eluded him. Hugi gave up on computers, but Joanne flew with

them, higher and higher. He was extremely proud of her. She'd

worked her way up at the university from an entrance level job to

the top.

The sun set long before 10 p.m., and Hugi paused to look at

the filigree of tree branches silhouetted against the last bit of sky

before he took his dirt-caked boots off and went inside. The

Hugis' two cats sat on the deck, alert, staring at the glowing eyes

of something--probably a deer or raccoon--out there in the woods.

The Hugis had come to this perfect spot along the McKenzie

after years of living in the kind of apartments students could

afford in the city. It was well worth the half-hour commute into

Eugene. Sometimes, they could hear logging trucks zooming by

far away on the road, but usually they heard only the wind in the

trees, or rain, or the cry of a nighthawk. |

The bad call came into the Springfield Police Department at 10:40

p.m.: "Employee of McKenzie-Willamette Hospital advises of gunshot

victims at that location. Officers dispatched. Arrived 10:48

P.M." w

Rosie Martin, RN; Shelby Day, LPN; Judy Patterson, the

night receptionist; and Dr. John Mackey, physician in charge,

comprised the evening shift in the emergency room at the

McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield.

The McKenzie-Willamette ER as it existed in the late spring

of 1983 was a little cramped, a little out of date. Paint on walls

and baseboards had been scrubbed dull and drab; the waiting

room furniture was chrome and peeling vinyl.

rSMALL

SACRIFICES 13

Facing the two sets of doors that led to the circular driveway ff Mohawk Boulevard, the three treatment rooms were to the

right: Day Surgery nearest the street, Minor Treatment in the

middle, and the Trauma Room at the back. On the left, Judy

patterson's desk was just behind a small waiting area near the

street doors. Five feet or so behind her desk there was a small

bathroom and beyond that a larger waiting room.

The floors were hospital-waxed shiny--the forest-green-andwhite-swirl

asphalt tile popular in the 1950s, patched here and

there with odd squares. The rooms smelled old. Old wax, old

dust, old disinfectant. Old sorrows, it would seem, with the sharpness

of immediate grief dulled by time. The old ER had known

decades of pain.

That velvet black spring night Dr. Mackey and his staff,

working in an almost obsolete ER, would be the first to encounter

what was unthinkable for Springfield, what would be unthinkable

for even a big city. None of them would have much time to think

during the hours they fought to save the injured, their white shoes

sliding on floors slick with fresh blood. Only later would terrible

musings rush in to destroy all hope of sleep.

SBelby Day is a slender, soft-spoken woman near forty, with six

years' experience in the McKenzie-Willamette ER. She wears

white slacks and pastel, patterned smocks. When she remembers

the night of May 19, 1983, tears well unbidden in her eyes.

"We were working the 4 p.m. to midnight shift. We had the

usual kind of 'nice day' injuries--lacerations, bumped heads,

sprains, and broken bones. We were busy steadily, but there were

no real emergencies. Dr. Mackey was finishing up with a patient ^ a quarter after ten, and Rosie and I were in that little back

room doing paperwork. There's always paperwork to catch up ^th. Judy was out at her desk in the corridor ..."

Judy Patterson, a smiling strawberry blonde, works two jobs 10 support her son Brandon, who was nine in 1983. She is the ^ceptionist in Pediatrics at Eugene's Sacred Heart Hospital on

ne day shift; after five, she puts in another five or six hours as he ER receptionist at McKenzieWillamette.

Rosie Martin was pregnant in the spring of 1983, into her

econd trimester. Already her belly had begun to get in her way

diri^ moved swiftly to care for patients. She was tired, but she

un l ^mplain to her co-workers. She and Shelby worked to- oether quietly in the back room.

14 ANN RULE

When Dr. John Austin Mackey had a full beard, his nurses

wondered if he ever smiled. When he shaved it off, they saw that

he had been smiling all along behind his hirsute facade. Tall,

balding, and broad-shouldered, a bear of a man, Mackey inspires

confidence. The perfect emergency room doctor; his assessment

of patients' needs is deft. In his late thirties, married, and the

father of young children, he had worked full-time in the ER for

eight years.

Because they were winding down, the others told Judy she

could go home a few minutes early. She was scheduled to leave

anyway at 10:30, but she grinned gratefully and grabbed her

sweater and purse. As she walked toward the ambulance doors, a

woman in the hall, a relative waiting for a patient, called to her.

"There's someone out there honking their horn and yelling

for help. You'd better check."

Judy whirled and walked back to where Shelby Day and

Rosie Martin were shuffling paperwork.

"Someone needs help out there. They're laying on the horn."

Judy ran back then to the ambulance entrance. Rapidly, she

propped open both sets of doors to the drive-through.

Rosie Martin grabbed an air-way and an oxygen mask and

headed toward the drive-through. Their most common crisis was

cardiac arrest; that's what she and Shelby Day expected to find.

It was strange, though, that they had had no prior warning.

Invariably, paramedics and police called to warn that they were

coming in with a critical case so that the ER crew could gear up.

The two nurses hurried through the double entry doors into

the emergency drive-through. A shiny red foreign car was parked

under the rain roof. The fluorescent lighting bounced off the car's

glittering paint, casting eerie elongated shadows. It was almost

impossible for them to see inside the car.

"What's going on here?" Rosie Martin asked.

"Somebody just shot my kids!"

A slender blonde woman in jeans and a plaid shirt stood next

to the car. She was pale, but she was in control. She wasn't

crying and she didn't appear to be hysterical. Desperately she

implored them to do something. The two nurses and the young

woman gazed at each other for a fraction of a second, and then

llic emergency personnel went into action.

Kosie Martin had reached the car just ahead of Shelby DayShe ducked through the passenger door; she'd seen a child lying

across the right rear seat. Rosie emerged, carrying a girl with long

_________________SMALL SACRIFICES 15

hrown hair. The child had to be heavy. Dead weight, Shelby Day

thought, and then bit her lip. Rosie carried the little girl in maroon

corduroy slacks and a bloody multicolored T-shirt as if she had no

weight at all, draping the child carefully around her pregnant

abdomen.

As Rosie rushed past Judy Patterson's desk, she turned her

head slightly. "Judy! Call a code! It's bad!"

A "code" meant Code 4, a page to summon all available

personnel to the ER. Judy Patterson called the hospital operator

and told her to activate a code.

Back in the drive-through, Shelby Day saw there was another

child on the back seat, behind the driver's seat—a yellow-haired

little boy, hardly more than a toddler. She ran around the front of

the car and leaned over to release the back of the driver's seat.

Her fingers numb with shock, she couldn't find the right lever. She

heard Dr. Mackey's voice behind her. %yS

"What's going on, Shelby?" he asked.

"These kids have been shot," she said softly.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," the doctor murmured.

It was not an oath; it was a prayer. Only two words had

registered in Mackey's mind: "kids" and "shot." He could see

over Shelby's shoulder to the tiny child who was gasping for air

and crying weakly.

The blonde woman murmured that the seat lever was on the

side. Shelby's hand reached the right spot, clicked the catch free.

Before she could straighten up, Dr. Mackey had reached past her,

scooped the little boy up in powerful arms, and disappeared into

the hospital. He had seen what the nurses hadn't noticed yet.

When he leaned in to get the little boy, he'd glimpsed yet another

figure crumpled on the floor in front, and thought, My God!

There's a third one! What are we going to do?

Mackey was sure Shelby Day had seen the third child a

moment after he had. But in the shadows, in her shock, she

hadn't.

The quick look he'd had at the first two injured youngsters

^old Mackey they were dealing with chest wounds. Short of a

lrect head shot, there is nothing more cataclysmic than gunshot

founds into the chests of little children. Mackey too shouted at

""y Patterson. The command was short, but Judy understood.

• "Find Wilhite!"

br ^v' '» clue was still caught in one of the shirts. Pond slipped it into a

// siu&

dear envelope.

n'ck Tracy had almost two decades on the other detectives in

-- County. "Silver Fox" attractive--white hair, ice-blue eyes--

Tracv could be dapper and shrewd or play the country hick to perfection. A long time back, when he played football in Warwood,

West Virginia, Tracy was All-City, All-State, All-Ohio-Valley.

He won a scholarship to the University of Iowa, but with the

Korean War he joined the Marines. Like everyone else on this

case he hadn't planned on being a policeman either. He hadn't

even liked cops. But here he was, with a quarter century of law

enforcement behind him.

Dick Tracy had cleared every homicide he'd ever worked;

Welch had never worked a homicide as a detective. Off-duty,

Doug Welch researched the stock market; Tracy was an avid

student of metaphysics. Fellow cops tormented Welch by telling

him he looked like Howdy Doody. Tracy had his name to contend

with. They would be only the first of a number of "odd couple"

partners in a case just beginning to unfold. Dick Tracy turned into

the emergency drive-through. Louis Hince waved him down, leaned

into the car window. "The family's waiting for you to pick them

up at the E-Z Mart. The mother's evidently been shot too and she

needs treatment. Bring them back here."

"How about the children?" Tracy asked.

Hince shook his head. "One little girl is gone. The others are

critical."

Tracy sighed and turned his car northeasterly. He expected ^to find an hysterical mother waiting for him in Rutherford's police cruiser. Instead, he encountered a woman still in control: "very

"atlonal, considering what she had undergone." Tracy had seen in "manner of emotional responses to disaster. He didn't know the ^oman or her father, who seemed as stoic as she was; he wouldn't resume to predict how they might react when the numbness

°re off. Anxious to get his passengers back to the hospital, he

_ fessed down on the accelerator.

. Back at McKenzie-Willamette Hince motioned to Doug Welch.

Ihi10 s ^"""g m with the mother now. I want you to work with "lm in questioning her."

fath was tw0 mmutes to midnight when Diane Downs and her

food^ ^nce again entered the McKenzie-Willamette emergency In- Dr. Mackey leaned protectively toward Diane, quietly tell

34 ANN RULE

ing her that Cheryl Lynn had died, that she had been dead on

arrival. Welch watched Diane's face as she heard the news. Her

expression was impossible to read, a faint flickering of emotion,

and then a closing in. Stoic.

Diane followed Tracy into a small treatment room. Welch

joined them. The woman was young, slender and quite pretty.

Her face was a papier-mache mask.

Welch found Diane's demeanor flat, almost brittle. She laughed

inappropriately; her mind didn't appear to be tracking. It seemed

to him that she simply would not accept that her little girl had

died.

Tracy and Welch accompanied Diane into the X-ray room.

Dr. Mackey came to tell Diane that Christie was critical and in

surgery. She thanked him for letting her know. I

Dr. Miller came to treatment room number eight and told her

that they were cautiously optimistic about Danny. He described

the bullet's pathway in Danny's body.

"You mean it missed his heart?" Diane asked.

"Yes."

There was too much for the family to absorb that night. Diane

was confused over which of her daughters had died. Wes made

the final identification. Shelby Day remembers him as he stood,

impassive, in the center of the trauma room, gazing at the body of

his younger granddaughter, nodding slightly as he said, Yes, that

is Cheryl.

While the doctors worked over Christie and Danny, Diane

talked with Dick Tracy and Doug Welch. She spoke rapidly in a

breathy teen-age voice, her sentences running on with no discernible

ending. They scribbled frantically to keep up with the fountain

of words. / fl

She said she had had no alcohol that evening and no drugs or

medication. She did not smell of liquor; her pupils looked normal.

(Indeed blood tests would bear this out.) She was coherent and

sober. Her brittle shell of vivacious cooperation remained intact.

It was as if she felt compelled to keep talking; if she stopped, she

might have to remember.

Doug Welch studied her. "Her words were like ... the only

way I can describe them . . . like verbal vomit. They just kep1 flowing.

"You have a tremendous amount of recall," Dick Tracy_ commented at one point. "You must be fairly intelligent."

SMALL SACRIFICES 35

"There are eight levels of intelligence," Diane explained. ^nd I'm at the seventh level."

They had never heard of the "eight level IQ theory" but ™iane Downs was undoubtedly very intelligent; her vocabulary,

syntax, and ability to answer their questions indicated that. And

vet she was like a robot programmed to respond. She had taken

" a mantle of words to protect herself, talking faster and faster

and faster.

It almost made them dizzy.

Shortly after 1:00 a.m., Springfield Police Detective Sergeant

Jerry Smith and Detective Robert Antoine came into the room.

Diane held her hands out while Antoine swabbed them with a five

percent solution of nitric acid--a routine test to discern the presence

of trace metals that might have been left had she fired a gun.

The next-of-kin must always be eliminated first. A positive reaction

to the test (GSR-Gunshot residue) wasn't that precise. Especially

with .22's. Rimfire .22's have a very low antimony-debris

factor. Smoking a cigarette, urinating, or using toilet tissue can

leave similar residue.

The tests on Diane's hands were negative for the presence of

barium or antimony. Antoine sprayed her hands to test for other

trace metals. Iron would turn her hands reddish; copper dusting

would elicit a green tinge.

Negative.

Tracy and Welch started with the easiest of questions. How

many policemen, doctors, and nurses begin by asking legal names

and birthdates--as if putting the dead in some kind of order will

numb the pain? And how many laymen answer with eager efficiency?

Those who still have first and middle names and birthdates

cannot possibly be dead or dying.

Diane gave her own full name: Elizabeth Diane Frederickson

Downs, born August 7, 1955; she would be twenty-eight in two months. Christie's birth date was October 7, 1974; Christie had "cen seated in the right rear seat of the red car. Stephen Daniel's

wthday was December 29, 1979; he'd been in the back seat with ^"nstie, on the left. Cheryl was born January 10, 1976; she had ee" on the floor in front, sleeping under a sweater.

^'The car is yours?" Tracy asked. ^ Yes," Diane nodded. "I bought it in February--a red Nissan sar MX with silver streaks on the side."

the i" was tlme ^or ^le harder questions. Diane explained quickly

"orror along the dark road, the stranger with the gun, her

36 ANN RULE

flight to save her children. They had gone to see a friend of hers

that evening: Heather Plourd, who lived northeast of Springfield

on Sunderman Road. Diane knew Heather wanted a horse, and

she had found an article about horses that could be adopted free. |

Heather had no phone so Diane had taken the clipping out to her. f

After a visit of fifteen or twenty minutes, they'd headed home. j

Diane said she had detoured impulsively to do a little sight-seeing, 9 but when she realized her children had fallen asleep, she turned

around and headed toward Springfield.

Again with no particular plan, she'd turned off Marcola Road

onto Old Mohawk and gone only a short way when she saw the

man standing in the road, waving his arm for her to stop. Fearing

an accident, she had pulled over. - --

"Can you describe him?" Welch asked. II

"He was white ... in his late twenties . . . about five feet,

nine; 150 to 170. He had dark hair, a shag-wavy cut, and a stubble

of a beard--maybe one or two days' growth. Levis, a Levi jacket,

a dirty . . . maybe off-color, light T-shirt."

The man had been right in the center of the road. 1

"I stopped my car," Diane continued, "and I got out, and I

said, 'What's the problem?' He jogged over to me and said, "I

want your car,' and I said, 'You've got to be kidding!' and then

he shoved me to the back of the car."

And then, inexplicably, the man had stood outside the driver's

door and put his hand inside the car. Diane heard loud

"pops" and realized with despair that the man was firing a gun at

her children! First Christie, and then Danny--and finally Cheryl,

who lay asleep under Diane's postal sweater on the floor of the

front seat.

"What did you do?" Welch asked, shaken by the picture of

the three children trapped in a dark car.

"I pretended to throw my car keys. That made him angry. I

wanted him to think I'd thrown the keys into the brush. He was

about four or five feet away from me. He turned in my direction j

and fired twice, hitting me once. I pushed him or kicked him--

maybe both--in the leg. I jumped into the car and took off for the

hospital as fast as I could."

"Did you see the gun?"

"No . . . Wait ... Yes .. ."

"Can you describe it?"

"That's difficult."

"Do you have any weapons?"

SMALL SACRIFICES 37

"A .22 rifle that's on the shelf in my closet at home. You

could go and ^ k if y°" wanted."

"We'd have to have you sign a consent-to-search form to do

that," Tracy advised.

"That's OK. I'll sign that."

She was very cooperative. If Diane voluntarily signed the

form, there would be no need for a search warrant. Tracy handed

her the consent form. Diane perused it, and then read it aloud.

She came to a paragraph stating, "I understand this contraband or

evidence may be used against me in a court of law." She paused

and looked at the detectives. "Does this have to do with someone

who's a suspect?"

Tracy nodded.

Diane said that, of course, she had no objection to their

searching her car or the duplex at 1352 Q Street in Springfield

where she and the children lived. Anything that might help find

the gunman quickly. She signed the form.

But there was a stilted--forced--quality in Diane's speech,

hiding some fear they didn't understand.

The detectives were beginning to tumble the crime more

slowly around in their minds. They didn't really know if the

shooting had happened in Springfield or in the country, even after

Diane had shown them the river site. They wondered if she might

possibly have recognized the person who had shot them but be

under some constraint not to tell. Was the killer holding a worse

sword over her head? Had he let her go to get treatment for her

kids on the condition that she return, having told the cops nothing?

The most unlikely chance meeting on a lonely road made the

investigators think that the killer had to be acquainted, or have

some specific connection, with Diane Downs.

It was an emergency situation. They had to check out her "ome, and they also had to get to Heather Plourd's to see if anyone waited there with a loaded gun, possibly with hostages, w Diane to come back. Officers were dispatched to both addresses.

^ck Tracy left the ER briefly and joined Jon Peckels as he

Photographed the red car, his strobe light illuminating the interior. ^ ""^thing glinted in the intermittent flashes. Bullet casings. They ^oed like ^o .22 caliber casings. Both men saw them, but they

"n t touch them. The car was sealed, ready to be towed to the

cri^ ^"^y ^ops for processing by the Oregon State Police

ANN RULE SMALL SACRIFICES 39

»"

As Tracy strode back to the ER, he saw Diane's parents in

the waiting area. The father looked grim; the mother's face was

swollen from crying. Wes Frederickson verified that Diane owned

a rifle which she kept stored in its case, as well as--he thought--

a revolver. "She had those weapons because her ex-husband beat

her up in the past."

v^ant to stay in the hospital, although he told her that she must--at

least for a few days. She made him promise not to tell her father

about the tattoo on her back. It was not an ordinary tattoo; it was huge rose etched in scarlet on her left shoulder.

Beneath it was a single word: Lew.

When Tracy asked Diane if she owned, or possessed, any

other weapons, she remembered that she had an old .38 pistol, a

Saturday Night Special. It was a cheap gun and unpredictable;

she kept it locked in the trunk of her car away from her children.

Tracy and Welch had walked into Diane's life at a crisis point; it

was akin to walking into a movie in the middle. They had to play

catch-up in a hurry.

Diane said that she had come to the Eugene-Springfield area

only seven or eight weeks earlier. She had lived all her life in

Arizona, working as a letter carrier in Chandler for the previous

two years. Her parents had urged her to move to Oregon, and

she'd done so--mostly to please them--to give them more of a

chance to be with their grandchildren. Since her father was the

postmaster of Springfield, he had helped her transfer and she was

presently working as a letter carrier in the Cottage Grove Post

Office. She was divorced from her first and only husband, Stephen

Duane Downs, twenty-eight, who was still living in the

Chandler/Mesa, Arizona area. She gave them his phone number.

They talked for more than two hours, and the clock on the

wall inched its way toward 3:00 a.m. The circles under Diane's

eyes purpled. Still her voice held strong, and her words tumbled

out, bumping into each other.

It was after 3:00 a.m. when the two detectives left Diane and

headed out to join the men at her townhouse on Q Street.

Dr. Terrance Carter, an orthopedic surgeon, treated Diane's

wounds. Her left arm was broken, but there was no nerve or

tendon damage. Fortunately, she had still been able to open and close her fingers--and drive--despite the pain. In a week or so

she would need surgery to strengthen the arm. Carter excised

tissue around all three wounds to insure drainage.

He took Diane's blood pressure and pulse. Both reading5 were normal.

Carter also found Diane quite flat emotionally, her v/ords so

alive and rapid while her eyes looked somehow dead. She didn'1

fcr

CHAPTER 3

MSG ID 3293 SENT 5/19/83 2340 FROM TID 42 (AI)

AM.EGS.EGO. * * * ATTEMPT TO LOCATE ARMED SUBJECT

* * WHITE MALE ADULT POSSIBLY ARMED WITH

.22 SEMI-AUTOMATIC WEAPON. DESCRIBED AS WMA 5'9" |

150-170 LBS DARK BROWN SHAGGY HAIR, STUBBLE

BEARD, WEARING DIRTY T-SHIRT, LEVI JACKET, BLUE

JEANS. POSSIBLE VEHICLE INVOLVED '60 TO '70 YELLOW

CHEVROLET CHEVELLE, BEAT-UP, NO LIE. KNOWN.

SUBJ. WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH SHOOTING IN

MARCOLA AREA. OCA 83-3268. j

LANE CO. S.O., EUGENE, 687-4150 VLB.

--First teletype sent by Lane County i

Steve Downs had spent a pleasant Thursday evening in Mesa,

Arizona. He and his date had gone for a walk around the reservoir

in the cool of the evening and then returned to her apartment.

Although he and Diane had been divorced for two years, their

lives had remained entwined--often abrasively--until she'd left

for Oregon. With his family gone almost eight weeks, Downs was

finally beginning to feel single, although he missed the kids. He

missed Diane, too, in a way. Their relationship had derived fron1 the can't-live-with-her/him; can't-live-without-her/him school--ft111 of passion, jealousy, estrangements, and reconciliations.

The desert sky over the Superstition Mountains had faded

from the peach and yellow striations of sunset to deep black by

the time Steve's roommate--advised of the tragedy in a phone call from Wes--located him. The man blurted out that all three o1

SMALL SACRIFICES 41

Steve's kids had been shot. Steve's new girlfriend drove him to

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