Small Sacrifices (44 page)

She gave Anne Bradley another interview. This time, Diane sat next to her parents' Christmas tree. She looked ill; she had purple circles beneath her eyes and her complexion was pale green and blotched. The room, empty of children, spoke volumes. Diane spoke of her desire to cooperate completely with the investigation--to do anything that would help Christie's memory return, although she herself didn't think it would be good for Christie to be forced to remember.

*Sections of the transcript of the Bradley tape appear in earlier chapters and are so credited.

Fred Hugi's New Year began not in January but in December. He had been so disheartened when he learned that Diane had seen Christie. However, by December the county had squeezed funds for the Downs investigation from their frugal budget—not much, but enough for a couple of detectives.

"Then it went from the worst possible in November—to the best in December," Hugi recalls. "We never had a point where we could say "Aha! This is it'—it wasn't that kind of a case. All we ever got were little gains here and there, but they added up. In December, we started to get our investigators back—Paul Alton and Doug Welch came back. You could just feel it—all of a sudden we were starting to get stronger . . . And then, of course; we had Pierce—and that really helped."

Pierce.

Pierce Brooks lived just down the road a piece on the

McKenzie river bank, a country-mile neighbor to Fred Hugi. Brooks's proximity for advice on a murder case is akin to Michael DeBakey's being on hand to assist a young surgeon in a heart bypass.

Pierce Brooks is a policeman's policeman; his name sparks H instant familiarity in law enforcement circles. A cop for almost J forty years, Brooks has led a life that sounds like fiction, but isn't. He signed on with the Los Angeles Police Department in 1948 when he was in his early twenties. A decade later Brooks was a homicide detective on his way to becoming a legend. Brooks was the Detective Sergeant assigned to investigate the murder of a kidnaped Los Angeles patrolman in a desolate onion field north of Bakersfield. A bitter, tragic case for any cop-—yet the lessons Brooks learned in this investigation (later 300 ANNRULEt

the subject of Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Fieldymade him an expert in the successful prosecution of the most difficult homicides. Pierce Brooks spent ten years as an LAPD homicide captain. He was technical advisor to Jack Webb for both "Dragnet" and

"Adam 12." His office and den walls are papered with commendations--and a movie still of a younger Brooks and a younger

Jane Russell as he pilots a blimp high over California.

When Pierce Brooks retired from the Los Angeles Police

Department in 1969, he was a long way from being retired from police work itself. He became first the police chief of Springfield, Oregon, and then chief of the Lakewood Police Department in Colorado. He returned to Oregon to take over the job as chief of the Eugene Police Department.

Lane County, Oregon, is where he prefers to stay--and few would blame him--after so many years of scrutinizing the gritty, murderous failings of his fellow humans. Brooks can well afford to retire. But staying home wars with his other interest, his avocation, his obsession. He is one of the definitive experts in America on homicide, particularly serial murder.

By 1980 Pierce Brooks was being called in as an investigative consultant on so many major homicide probes that he had to choose between consulting and being the Eugene police chief. He chose the former and went to Atlanta to work on the child murder cases there, and then to Chicago to assist in the Tyienol poisonings probe. In 1983 Brooks was nearing his goal of establishing a nationwide computer network to catch serial killers, but he was seeing little of the McKenzie River, and more and more of the inside of airplanes winging across America.

Brooks, who has a special investigator's badge presented by Sheriff Dave Burks, was talking with Pat Horton one winter day when Horton mentioned the Downs case. On the road so much in 1983, Brooks hadn't followed the case closely.

"I hear she might not be guilty after all," Brooks said.

"What do you think?" Horton tossed back, his face void of expression.

"I'd have to know more about it to give an opinion."

"Want to take a look at it?"

Brooks was hooked as cleanly as a trout skimming along the t, McKenzie. Fred Hugi drove him out to the scene, out to the bend in the road that came closest to the Old Mohawk River. It was cold and the maples were bare once more. The fields of wild phlox had been plowed under, the mountains' outlines muted by

lowering rain clouds. The smell of blood had blown away long ago.

Brooks did a lot of listening in the next few days. He talked with Hugi, Jim Pex, and with Ed Wilson, the pathologist who had done the post-mortem on Cheryl. He watched a televised reenactment of the shooting and noted that Diane laughed gaily as

she demonstrated to Dick Tracy and Doug Welch how she had escaped the gunman.

Pierce Brooks and Fred Hugi spent a lot of time together. Brooks could feel Hugi's determination to someday, someway, gather the ammunition he needed to try Diane Downs for murder. Brooks drove the Marcola-Sunderman-Mohawk routes with

Doug Welch and Kurt Wuest. He was impressed that the young detectives were confident but not too cocky to ask questions of an old pro. He looked at the murder car, the shiny red Datsun still soaked with long-dried blood. Basically, Brooks played devil's advocate, throwing "What ifs?" and "Buts" at the detectives and at Fred Hugi.

Brooks listened to one of the last Lew tapes--the one that contained Diane's latest version of what had happened. Brooks's face was unreadable as Diane's breathy sobs filled Hugi's office:

". . . God, I can't believe it and it is ugly--it's--it's as ugly as when I was a kid. Really bad. And I can't tell them now because I don't think that they would believe me. And it's just, it isn't important to prove it to them. Steve won. That's it. I quit-they can throw me in jail and I don't care, because I can't prove that Steve did it ... Uhhhh," she sighed, "I promised you that nobody would ever touch me until you and I got back together."

"Ummhumm."

"But I got touched--and I got threatened."

"Are you saying now that you got raped, and then he shot the kids?"

"It wasn't a he. It was a they, and no, I didn't get raped--I didn't. It was just the things they said, and the things they did, and only one of them talked. The other one didn't say a damn word. He just held me. And he had his hand over my mouth ... I did kick. That's why I got shot, by the way. He said, 'You have

kids in the car; you don't want me to hurt your kids, do you?' So you try to be a good girl. Do what you're told, you don't argue, you don't tell anybody--because everybody will hate you and think that it's your fault. The same shit from when I was a kid." 302 ANN RULE

"So they just--the two of them just held you there and talked to you and then they shot the kids and left?" Lew's voice rumbled.

"No, then they said--I don't remember the whole conversation--My God, it's been two months . . . But there was ugly

stuff, and then they mentioned Steve--"

"What do you mean ugly stuff? Verbal--or are you talking about--"

"Verbal and emotional--and physical. I don't like to be touched. I don't like guys--like I said, you're the only one that I really ever truly respected, and the touch wasn't bad--and I don't say that to impress you, damn it. You're the one that wants the answers. And so when somebody forces themselves on you, forces me to accept something and is gloating over it, I hate it. It's just--that is the ugliest thing that could happen to me in the whole world--having to relive what I lived when I was twelve years old

. . . and I couldn't stop it any more now than I could back then. It was awful and it's just one of these things where you just--you just space out, and go someplace else. It isn't real. It's not happening to me. It's just different, you know. It's somebody else--it's a movie or something. It's just not real. And then all of a sudden it dawns on you that they aren't there just to do that. That's just fun and games for them--because they know who you are. They use your name, they used Steve's name, they talk about

'plucking your rose,' and taking it with them, and I only know of one rose and that's on my back. And that scared me real good because as crazy as they were acting, for all I knew I was going to lose my shoulder. And then, they said, their motive basically was to get me off somebody's back, to get me out of somebody's life. That's why--I told the cops that it was Steve--but I don't know that it was Steve. Stan used to do crazy things--"

But Diane had fought, she told Lew through sobs. "We were going to get out of Steve's life, and he wouldn't have to worry about the kids anymore, if they were being taken care of or not being taken care of, and that Lew wouldn't get to raise his kids, and stuff like that. They said all those things. Then they shot the kids and I watched--Yeah, I watched. That's right, I watched,

'cause that son of a bitch shot me and I couldn't do anything. I » hate--and then they turned around and he put the gun up to my v head and I kicked him in the balls, and he says, 'Oh, you think

you're real smart. Huh, bitch? And he grabbed my arm and he shot me, and I yanked, and he missed--so then he shot it again.

And then they just stood there and said, 'Now, let's see you get out of this.'And left."

"Well, then you saw what they looked like, right?"

"Only one."

"So it's nobody you know--or is it somebody you know?"

"No--it's nobody I know. I only saw him because of one reason. They had ski masks on. When I hit the gun and kicked the guy, I grabbed his mask and pulled it off. The one behind me that didn't say anything. I have no idea what he looks like. I can tell you that if--he was tall enough that his hot breath was in the back of my head." ||,1'

Something rang lip hinky in Pierce Brooks's mind. There

were too many versions. He shook his head slightly. The two-man theory bothered Brooks. (It must have made Jim Jagger feel uneasy too; he called Fred Hugi and said, "Disregard that twoman story. Diane was only relating a dream.")

After reviewing the entire case, Pierce Brooks strongly agreed with Fred Hugi and the sheriffs detectives that Diane Downs had guilty knowledge in the shooting of her three children. He also told them that the long wait for arrest seemed unavoidable. Hugi's mind lightened when the old pro agreed with him.

Convincing an old homicide man and convincing a jury were two different things. In preparation for the "Onion Field" trial, Brooks had had to show the jurors the precise route of the police partners' abduction, exactly what it was like out there in the onion field in the dead of night--in effect, to recreate the actual murder. He had arranged for maps, aerial photography, mannequins to represent the victims. The crime scene had figuratively moved into the courtroom in a visual, palpable sense.

And it had worked. The onion field jury had been able to visualize the case as clearly as any detective working it.

"You have a very complex case here," Brooks said to Fred Hugi. "You have casings found lying out there on a rural road. You have tool marks on those casings that look like so many hen scratches to the layman. You have bullet angles, and you have blood spatter. What you're going to have to do is graphically display what happened. Look, if I have to draw myself pictures sfter thirty-five years in this business, you're going to have to show a jury."

Hugi agreed. The car could be reconstructed in styrofoam or Plywood and brought into the courtroom; the children could be brought in to the courtroom too--as life-size dolls.

304 ANN RULE

Pierce Brooks said he would be around for a while. When the time came to talk about arrest, he'd share his experience on that too.

Christmas, 1983, neared. Last year, Steve had had the kids, but Diane had taken them tons of presents. And last year there had been Lew. Lew was gone for sure, and Diane had none of her children with her--save for the fetus growing within her womb. It helped a little to listen to its heartbeat through the doctor's stethoscope. Diane hoped to have Christie and Danny back by January, if she could just light a fire under Jim Jagger. Diane wasn't aware that Doug Welch was back in the detective unit. And she'd never even heard of Pierce Brooks.

It snowed five days before Christmas. Diane spotted Matt Jensen on the street; she'd been waiting in the snowstorm, watching his car, needing to see him. Jensen saw her and turned the other way. She couldn't understand why he was so mean and antsy when he saw her.

Everything was getting worse.

Diane carried the mail, trudging through the snow to deliver brightly wrapped packages, her stomach queasy in early pregnancy, fatigue heavier on her shoulders than her mailbag.

On Christmas Day Willadene did her best to make it seem

like a regular holiday. It was a travesty. Of her five children, only Diane and her brothers Paul and James were home. John and Kathy didn't make it. Willadene had only three living grandchil. dren now, and none of them played under the tree. She cooked a huge meal, but it didn't help the pall over the house. Even Willadene was depressed; she, of all people, usually managed to keep a cheerful face. This year, she just couldn't. Israel was in Oklahoma, Christie and Danny were in their foster home. Cheryl's ashes were in Arizona.

Diane passed out the presents, and later somebody suggested they play dominoes and cards. They did. Wes lost--and he got mad.

"I guess I just figured it would be different when we got older," Diane wrote in her diary. "It wasn't. He still hates to lose, and I'm still affected."

Wes, Willadene, Paul, and James left for California the next day. Alone, Diane had too much time to think, and it grated on her. She filled pages in her diary. Lew came back to her in memory, as strong as if he was there in the room with her.

Funny--when Lew's world was all desert and heat, and the snow kept piling up outside her parents' white ranch house, she still found it difficult to accept that Lew would let the police blackmail him, turn him against her.