Small Sacrifices (45 page)

In her isolation, Diane got sick. Her arm hurt, and her head ached and she had a fever and her vision blurred. She was sick to her stomach. She had only her diary to complain to.

December 29, 1983, was Danny Downs's fourth birthday.

Diane bought him a Smurf Cake and a remote control race car that he could manipulate along its tracks from his wheelchair. She arranged for KMTR to be present when she picked up the cake, and then she took KVAL with her to the CSD offices.

On December 30, Diane was still sick, but she went to work. The doctor had said the pain in her arm might mean a crack in the mend, but it wouldn't help much to rebreak it and try again. She just couldn't stand pain.

On December 31, she wrote, "Well this is the last day of '/. 1983. Big deal. I'm not much on sentimental New Year's. I may

hope that 1984 is better. I want my kids home and start a new life."

The Eugene Register-Guard listed the ten top stories of the year. The Downs shooting ranked first. The failure of the levy to finance the sheriffs department and the District Attorney's office was third.

Diane started the New Year by returning to church. She was accepted graciously at the Bethany Baptist Church in Springfield. „„

Reverend Craig Brooks refused to judge Diane.

She was self-conscious now; people seemed to know her

wherever she went, and it no longer warmed her. She felt comfortable only at church. She went often--not just on Sunday

mornings. And she joined some of the church women's groups. Diane said she didn't really care who the killer was anymore; she just wanted to get on with her life; 1983 had been a "bum-mer" for her, but she was ready to start fresh.

Christie was coming along so well after her setback that Dr. Peterson felt she would be able to testify in a grand jury hearing within weeks. * ''

Cheryl would have been eight years old January 10, 1984. Doug Welch was glancing through the classifieds of the Spring-.

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field News when he spotted a notice in the "Personals" that made gooseflesh prickle along his arms. The first and only time he'd seen Cheryl Downs flashed across his memory; he was instantly back in the ER, viewing the dead little girl in the green shorts.

CHERYL LYNN DOWNS

Jan. 10th, 1976-May 19, 1983

We loved you very much

Jesus loved you too

He took you to heaven

When you were only seven

We miss you. Mom

Grandma & Grandpa

Welch recognized Diane in that poem. Her birthday wish for her dead child--it was the sort of symbolic gesture Diane liked. Names engraved on a unicorn. Names printed in a paper. Neat. Happy Birthday To Cheryl.

As if they truly were pitted against an army and not a lone woman, the prosecution team was quietly beefing up its troops. Paul Alton and Welch had been back a month in January. The Lane County DA's office had also scraped up the funds to rehire a six-year veteran who would be of immeasurable assistance in a case that looked as if it might finally be headed for trial: Ray Broderick.

Broderick, a one-time Chicago street cop and detective, is a dark-haired, lanky Irishman. Married young, the father of four, Broderick wrested a college education in night school from Loyola after he became a cop. Working the bad streets of Chicago, one memorable bloody shoot-out turned his thoughts to Oregon and a better place to raise his kids. Quickly hired by the Eugene Police Department, he only stayed two years. Broderick is, at heart and by natural propensity, an investigator, and it could have taken him too long to work up through the Eugene hierarchy to detective status. He talked it over with Pierce Brooks, and Brooks

» empathized. Investigators are a different breed of cat from a street cop. Some men excel in one area; some in another. Brooks, then Broderick's chief, agreed that he should resign and find a spot where he could be a detective again.

And so Broderick had moved over to the District Attorney's office as an investigator. Ray Broderick's area of expertise is far afield of, say, Paul Alton's brilliance in firearms identification. Ray Broderick literally reads people--what they say, of course, but more than that--the way they speak. Body signals. Eyes shifting to the right or to the left, or turning up until the whites show. He is fascinated with the intricacies of conversation, the patterns that can be woven with words. His innate perception allows him to elicit a great deal from what is both said--and unsaid ... a long silence, a quickening of breath, or a cessation of breathing for a beat or two. Ray Broderick is not a man with whom the guilty would choose to speak. He is personable and gregarious, a man of considerable wit--although given to atrocious puns. And yet he is always listening and evaluating on

multiple levels.

Broderick had listened to the voluminous Diane Downs tapes and he had seen her countless times on television. He found her mistress of the pat answer, with the same words weighted exactly as they had been in other interviews. This habit of repeating

verbatim answers was, he knew, a typical defensive pattern. Broderick explains that when people who are able to feel emotion are bereft, their heads drop, their eyes lower and their voices soften. In the individual who feels nothing, there is ,a flatness, a stilted quality, as he attempts to feign sorrow. And, Broderick noted, Diane's "grief seemed plastic.

"I am continually amazed," Broderick says, "at how many people will believe something merely because it is said aloud. It may be a patent lie, but it has been spoken--and therefore it must be true."

Broderick can spot a lie, but he can also recognize the truth-and that was what he heard on the afternoon of January 9, 1984. To help Christie and Danny remember (and eventually to use them in trial), Fred Hugi had gone to a group that makes anatomically correct dolls used all across America in counseling victims of child abuse. Ginger Friedeman, Marcia Morgan, and Mike Whitney made three dolls the same size as Christie, Cheryl, and Danny Downs. Dr. Peterson had suggested that Christie and Danny take the dolls home to the Slavens' house so they could get used to them. Ray wanted to meet the children; picking the dolls up was his excuse.

Brenda Slaven and Danny Downs warmed to Broderick

immediately.

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"But Christie stayed away. I could see her watching me, judging me."

Broderick is a talented cartoonist and he drew cartoons for the three children. They liked that, and he could sense Christie was edging closer to the group. "I felt an immediate affinity for Christie, and it seemed to be mutual."

But she was like a little rabbit at the border of a clearing. She was so bright, and she'd been so hurt. Christie was poised for flight during the first half hour or so the DA's investigator drew his funny pictures for them, making Danny and Brenda laugh out loud.

Ray reminded the kids he'd come to pick up the big dolls, and the three youngsters rushed to carry them back, playing with them for a while on the way. The dolls were deliberately dressed in the Downs children's old clothes. It was apparent to Broderick that the "Cheryl-doll" was, for Christie, an extension of her dead sister.

Casually, he asked where the dolls would have been sitting when they rode in their red car. Christie looked up at him, and he could see this new game was something she wanted very much to participate in.

"There was only one couch in the living room, and Christie said we needed two couches because the car had two seats. The Slavens said, 'Well, let's go downstairs; there are two couches down there.' "

"You put the dolls where they're supposed to be," Ray said to Christie when they were in the rec room. "I was amazed. She immediately placed the three dolls exactly where we'd all figured the kids must have been that night."

It was a tense moment, but he played it very quietly. Christie was anxious to tell him something.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Broderick asked softly.

Christie started to explain something to him, but he couldn't understand her. "Honey, that doesn't make much sense to me. You be your mommy. You play her part."

Christie hesitated for a moment. Then she moved over to the car that was made from two couches. No one in the room said 1 anything.

"Kinesthetically, it was all right," Broderick recalls. "Christie walked to the 'front door' from the rear of the 'car.' She hunched over and she pointed her finger at 'Cheryl,' 'herself,' and 'Danny.'

Of course there was no roof on the couch-car, but Christie's body bent over as if it were there."

Pow. Pow. Pow. Christie pointed her finger at the dolls.

"Emotion took over. She broke up and started crying. She said she could tell me more, but she was sobbing. I told her that it

^s OK—that we didn't have to."

Ray Broderick gathered up the dolls and went to meet Fred Hugi. "I was overwhelmed by the flow and the honesty of Christie's actions," he told Hugi. "As a technician, I was struck by how totally correct every move was—she hunched over because the car 'roof was there."

Broderick sighed. "As a human being, I feel awful. But Christie's over the hump. Christie will make you a great witness."

The list of people Christie trusted grew longer. She had confided in Carl Peterson, and she felt safe with the Slavens, with Danny, with Paula Krogdahl, and now with Ray Broderick.

She needed to trust Fred Hugi, perhaps most of all.

"We were rapidly getting to the end of our rope," Hugi remembers. "Something had to happen. We were running out of postponements with juvenile court. We had to appear there and be sure Diane didn't get the kids back. We always wanted to find the gun first, and then have Christie remember and tell us what she remembered."

There was no gun. And Christie was remembering, yes, but she could balk at any point.

It was essential that Christie and Fred Hugi become friends. There was little doubt in Broderick's mind that Fred already loved Christie—but in a removed, protective stance. He had been there in the hospital when Christie was critical, but that was a long time back and they hadn't talked. Hugi had watched over her, silently. He wasn't comfortable with children; he didn't even talk that much with adults.

The truth was that Hugi was scared to death of confronting Christie. He didn't want to do her any harm, and yet he needed to ask her questions. He had to become so familiar to her that he was like an old shoe. He prevailed upon Ray Broderick to sit in on their first few meetings—for Christie's sake, and for his too. After Christie and Susan Staffell had visited Fred Hugi's (. office—with Broderick acting as buffer—several times, the little girl and the quiet prosecutor began to feel comfortable enough to talk cautiously together. Twice a week now Christie spent time with Hugi and Staffell. Hugi knew she didn't want to be there.

The meetings usually started at 3:30 and ended at 4:15--but the forty-five minutes seemed hours long as Christie sat obediently across from his desk, and he searched for the right words. Again and again, Hugi found himself backing off, talking only about safe subjects. He couldn't bring himself to talk about things that would make Christie unhappy. After each failed meeting, he would blurt to Broderick, "I didn't get anywhere today, damn it!" But they had. Christie had a child's clear perception of who really cared about her--and she sensed that Mr. Hugi did. Even on the days when they ended up talking about cats or fishing or just went out with Susan to buy an ice cream cone, they made progress. It wasn't something that could be rushed.

Christie knew Mr. Hugi was one of the good guys; she could not know how much her pain hurt him too.

Neither of them were huggers. It might have been easier for the little girl and the intense lawyer if they had been able to end their meetings with a hug, but they weren't touchers and that was that. Nevertheless, Christie understood that Mr. Hugi would protect her if the day should come when she must get up in a

courtroom.

If they ever got to trial, Hugi would have to ask Christie devastating questions in court, and he hated the thought of that. But he had to prepare her. He explained to her everything about a trial; nothing would come as a surprise. He let her play witness and judge. She sat, such a small figure, in the judge's chair, gazing down on the empty benches of the gallery. And always, Hugi promised Christie that he would be there for her. Whatever happened, he would be her friend, instead of a threatening presence. But in the long run--if they went to trial--he knew it would be hell for Christie. Could she actually point an accusing finger at her own mother and meet those strange greenish-yellow eyes without flinching?

Diane didn't talk much about the case in her diary anymore. She was fighting for her parental rights. She wanted to attend parentteacher conferences; she wanted the children taken out of Dr.

Peterson's care and assigned to another psychologist. She was still convinced, she wrote, that Danny would walk again, if only he could have proper rehabilitative care. She wanted him moved to the Philadelphia Spinal Cord Institute at the Shriners' Hospital there.

Wes Frederickson did not help her with her bills now. Al 312 ANN RULE

though she was still living and eating at home and had a good job, Diane had to take out a loan for her expenses.

The situation in Wes and Willadene's house was disintegrating. Diane's mother was beginning to pick up on veiled references to the secret Diane shared with her father--the stuff that had happened so long ago. Willadene resented it when Diane wouldn't tell her what was going on.

A fact-finding hearing to see if the children might be able to come home was postponed for sixty days. Sixty days! That was a lifetime for Diane. Jim Jagger warned her that at first she would probably only have visitation rights, then overnight visits, and then maybe one day the kids could actually live with her. She had nightmares. She dreamed the kids were home, but

Danny didn't remember her. He wouldn't give her kisses.