Shocking True Story (19 page)

When Janet became pregnant two months after they met, she told Paul that if he didn't marry her, she would do something drastic and make him sorry for the rest of his life.

"I'll take a coat hanger and kill your baby and flush it down the fuckin' toilet if you don't do right by me like a real man!"

Connie Carter was equally persuasive.

"I'll fix your other nut with a pair of pliers!" she threatened.

When Paul Kerr agreed to make the drive to Las Vegas for a wedding at the Little Chapel of Flowers, he did so with the idea that he was saving two lives. His own and that of his unborn child.

"Oh, honey, I'm gonna be a grandma," Connie cooed to her daughter as they drove southeast through the wooded northern reaches of Oregon before heading east toward the Nevada desert and Las Vegas.

"Gonna be a grandma! The youngest and prettiest grandma in Timberlake," Janet sang to her mother.

"Maybe not the youngest," Connie laughed back.

-

THE PREGNANT BRIDE WORE A CREAMY white faux pearl-accented Gunne Sax dress that her mother had picked up at a thrift store for twelve dollars. Heavy bleaching to remove a big red stain from the bodice left the dress quite fragile and frayed. The groom wore new blue jeans and a clean button-up long-sleeved shirt. The witnesses who signed the marriage certificate were Connie Carter and Ron Something or other. The signature made out by an old man who worked for the chapel was so illegible, no one could make it out.

In the end, that wouldn't matter. Neither the bride, the groom, nor the ever-present mother-in-law, held much hope for a long-lasting union. They all hoped that for a "first marriage," it would turn out all right.

Connie won more than one hundred dollars on a gas station slot machine just after the ceremony. She jumped for joy and bought a big bag of nacho cheese-flavored Doritos and a six-pack of beer for the long ride home to Timberlake. Despite the windfall, there would be no wedding night in a fancy bridal suite. Of course, there wasn't enough cash for that. After giving half of her winnings to her daughter, Connie told the newlyweds the money was a good omen for the future.

Paul Kerr wanted to believe it was true.

"Big dummy me," Paul confided to a friend several years later, "for awhile, I thought we were going to be happy. I
wanted
us to be happy. Really, I honestly did. I thought having a baby would settle us both down. I know Janet was young. I was young, too. And I was stupid. I thought caring for our baby would make Janet grow up some."

-

JANET LEE KERR NEVER LEFT 44 Klipsun Avenue without leaving a love note for her new husband. It didn't matter that she was headed off drinking, sleeping around, or scrounging for money for drugs. She told him she had a hard time showing her feelings, that putting them on paper was easier. Paul Kerr found letters taped to the front of their empty refrigerator. He found his wife's missives at work in the bottom of his lunch box, in the bathroom next to his toothbrush, under his pillow. Once, he even found a note pinned to his Jockey shorts.

Janet left note after note, each beginning with the same salutation (though when she was in a hurry she wrote the initials SB instead of Sugarbutt; and one time she called Paul "Sweet Ass"—which he nearly considered an affront because it too closely resembled "Candy Ass. ") One note written less than a full week after their wedding was saved by the bridegroom. He tucked it into the pages of a car magazine and put it in the closet. Paul treasured it because it seemed so genuine. Janet's love, her deep devotion, touched him. In the beginning, he felt lucky to have a wife who loved him... and soon, a baby, too.

Dear Sugarbutt:

You know you are my one and only. My big man. No woman could ask for a bigger man. You are my Sugarbutt and I love you. Oh, we will have the best life together. You and me. I want you right now! I'll be out late. Going with a girlfriend to get her hair cut and then over to the mall for a little shopping (she's doing the shopping, not me!) Don't wait up for me.

Love you!

Janet

Note from Val:
OK, two thoughts here. Sugarbutt and Sweet Ass are the worst nicknames or so-called “terms of endearment” I've ever heard. I'd leave you without looking back if you called me either of those. Secondly, when Paul says “Big dummy me,” I thought, that's the smartest thing he—or anyone in this story thus far. I almost wrote “twisted tale” instead of “story” because I know how much your last editor was in love with the term. :)

Thursday, August 29

"TOMORROW," she said once more.

I was floored.

"Tomorrow," I repeated slowly, allowing myself the extra time for it to sink in. I was glad Jett had made the invitation over the phone. I doubted my face could conceal my shock and doubt. "I guess I can be there," I said before hanging up.

Jett Carter had extended the most unexpected of invitations. She had to work a big Labor Day Weekend sale at Ho! and would not be able to make Janet and Deke's wedding at the prison chapel. The happy couple-to-be thought it would be nice if I stepped in to take her place. There were good reasons for it. I was already cleared to visit at the prison. I lived only a couple of miles away. And, just maybe they might have thought, my presence would put them in a more favorable light when I wrote
Love You to Death
.

"Are you going to bring a gift?" Valerie asked with a laugh when I told her the news of the prison nuptials. "How about a set of His and Her hacksaws? Maybe a file for the wedding cake? Bride's registered at the hardware store, I'll bet."

"Probably Walmart, too."

Both of us knew that nothing could be brought directly into prison—at least not by the honesty-inclined. Everything had to be mailed in. Even so, on the wall behind the prison visitors' desk was a huge display, maybe three by ten feet that had been mounted to the wall. It was labeled with perfect laser-printed letters: LOOK WHAT WE FOUND WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE. Amid the items on the contraband collage, among other things, was enough cutlery to outfit a gourmet kitchen store, albeit a filthy and disgusting one.

Valerie crossed her legs tightly together when I told her how the flatware had been smuggled in.

"In there?" she said, wincing and pulling her thighs together.

"Yeah. In
there
."

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"God, Val, of course it hurts, but sometimes mothers will do anything for their daughters."

Mothers, I explained, were the worst offenders of smuggling contraband. Sisters were less inclined to smuggle something in their vaginas. Daughters almost never did. Daughters, for the most part, were glad to finally have their wayward moms right where they knew they'd be—for the next ten years.

The display behind the desk also featured paper clips, the metal clips from ballpoint pens, disposable lighters, even a pair of handcuffs.

Valerie was incredulous when I told her about the cuffs.

"Why in the world would anyone smuggle handcuffs, of all things, into a prison?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Who knows? I never said these people were bright."

Lastly, there were at least a dozen photographs of drugs and drug paraphernalia on the display. The real stuff had been hot-glued onto the board in the past, until the pills started to disappear.

Val again was appalled. "How'd the prisoners get to them?"

"Not the
prisoners
, Val."

"Visitors?" She shook her head in disgust.

"Nope. The
staff.
Seems the guards helped themselves to what was up there on the board. One guard who had been at the prison for ten years—was even Corrections Officer of the Month on three different occasions—was fired when it was discovered she was replacing some of the pills with aspirin from her purse and red and yellow Skittles from the employee vending machine."

That night, I ironed the front of a shirt and the cuffs and tried to choose a tie. It had been several years since I held a "real job," and my ties were beginning to look as though they might be out of fashion. Too wide. Or too narrow. I wasn't sure which. I chose a blue-and-yellow striped tie to go with a navy blazer and slacks.

"Stripes are classic," I announced to Val as she shifted on her side of the bed while reading the paper.

"Uh-huh. 'Classic,'" she said without looking up from the business section, "is another word for old."

♦

I WAS SURE MURIEL-THE-PRISON-FLACK regarded me as an annoyance by now. She had seen more of me than the lifers that would never leave the razor wire-crested walls of Riverstone. She wore her bright red hair bunched up in a bouquet with one of those plastic clips that looked like a shark's jaw. It was fitting. The woman
was
a shark. She wore a green suit that would have cost a month's worth of groceries at my house.

"Are you in the wedding?" I said as she led me down a polished cement corridor to the chapel.

"You've got to be kidding. I'm not in it. I'm not going to it."

"You seem kind of dressed up," I remarked.

She looked satisfied with herself and smiled. "The
Nancy Grace
people are back."

"Satan's brother again?" I asked.

"Yeah. This time the inmate is going to tell all—supposedly the flip side to those touchy-feely books by Sylvia Browne."

Sylvia Browne was a chain-smoking psychic who, through her vague connections to God and the afterlife, had become a rich woman. It was good to have connections. Sylvia proved it.

"What are you doing here on a Saturday? I thought someone with your seniority wouldn't have to work on the weekends, let alone a holiday," I asked, knowing the jab would eat at her.

She made a face, a sneer.

"Cross-training. We all have to work one holiday a year. This is my time, plus
Nancy Grace
is in town, too."

Muriel stopped and pointed to an open doorway. "The chapel."

I scanned the confines of the small room. It was hardly a chapel. It was more of a craft room than anything. A weaver's loom occupied one corner. A trio of easels, another. In back of the room were a cabinet and a kiln for ceramics. Pottery, evidently, was very popular at Riverstone. Rows and rows of cups and bowls stood ready for glazing and firing.

"New inmate income project," Muriel explained when she noticed my stare. "With the garment profits fading, the girls are looking for something new to make some canteen money. Calling their venture 'Hoosegow Pottery.' Supposed to sound kind of country, I guess."

The chapel portion of the room was up front. Taped to the wall was an enormous "stained glass" made from torn bits of colored tissue and black construction paper. It portrayed a shepherd and his flock of lambs on one panel and the Virgin Mary on the other. It wasn't bad, as far as prison art went. It would have been enhanced, of course, with some light illuminating it from behind. But in prison, real light is always in short supply. Light fixtures buzzed from the ceiling like a horde of fireflies.

A guard with slicked back hair and a skimpy brown moustache sat under the Virgin Mary. A prison ID badge indicated her name: Darlene Fulton.

Muriel introduced us and indicated the officer was in charge.

"Not the minister. Darlene is in full control of this wedding."

She left us to wait for the bride, groom and chaplain.

The chaplain arrived first. His name was Vernon Hess. He had been ministering to the ladies of Riverstone for nearly twenty years. It was, he said, his calling from God. He was in his late forties, with black hair and skin as pasty as the rack of unfired greenware adjacent to the makeshift altar. Weddings were a rarity at Riverstone. Few women could hang on to their men once they were incarcerated, let alone snag a new one. The concept of prison groupie had never made it over to the women's prisons as it had at the men's institutions. Male criminals could frequently find several women to "save" them from loneliness and a corrupt, unfair system. Few women could pull it off.

"Call me Father Vern," he said while we waited.

I doubted I would call him anything.

Deke Cameron was ushered in next. His tie was far worse than anything I could have dredged up out of the dankest recesses of my closet. He wore one of those godawful "salmon" neckties that, until that very moment, I had mistakenly assumed only Midwestern tourists purchased when they came to Seattle. It was a full-length airbrushed fish, its head pointing to Deke's protruding belly. He had no jacket on and his corduroy pants made a swishing noise when he walked across the room to stand by the chaplain and Officer Darlene.

Father Vern smiled and pushed the button on a CD player for the music.

It was at that moment that I realized Connie Carter had not been asked to witness the supposed joyous event of her daughter's wedding. I guessed that Officer Darlene and I would be the names on the license when conspirator and victim were joined as one and it was all over.

From the boom box came the strains of Nazareth's “Love Hurts.” I knew Deke Cameron had felt the song was about him and Janet and the predicament of their love.

Yes, love hurts. Yes, love wounds. But love doesn't take a shotgun and point it at your gut to kill you.

As I waited for the song to run its longwinded course, I watched Deke sway slightly to the music. Father Vern cleared his throat for the vows. Officer Darlene held the second CD, poised to put it in the minute the singing stopped.

"...Love is like a flame...it burns you when it's hot. Ooooh, Love hurrrts... ."

Janet Kerr was led to her second wedding in shackles. She mouthed a "glad you are here" to me and stood next to the man that would be her husband. She wore the same outfit I had seen in the photos of her Pierce County trial. It was a wine-colored skirt and a white blouse. Her weight increase since the trial was more than evident. A safety pin had been used to bolster the button and zipper at the back of the skirt. Janet's hair was in a tiny ponytail and for the first time, I noticed she was wearing makeup.

It was over in a flash, surely the shortest wedding ceremony I'd have been party to—besides my own, which lasted all of two minutes. Father Vern admonished the bride and groom that while there would be no touching during the vows, a brief kiss would be allowed at its conclusion.