Gathering Lies

And there again we have one of life’s little tricks—it takes away the people you love, and replaces them with assets.

So what do you do? Do you say, “Go away, Life, I don’t want your filthy lucre”? I think not. Not, at least, when the meter reader is at one’s door.

So I moved into my parents’ house shortly after the arrest. Then last month, in April, out on bail, I went to Thornberry along with five other women who were invited there, just like me. We were all potential but as yet unpublished authors, and I suspected from the first that each of the others was running from something—also like me.

No one admitted to that, of course. Not at first. It took the quake to make us trust each other enough to share our stories. By then, it was far too late.

Because the time sequence of the two events that changed my life this past year can become confusing, I am writing them down here in much the way I write my notes for a legal brief. Much the way, in fact, that I’m writing the notes for my upcoming trial.

It is early May now. Last January I’d taken on the case of a woman arrested for prostitution. She was middle-aged, black, not particularly attractive—in other words, a piece of meat, nothing more, to the five Neanderthal cops on duty at the jail that night.

The woman was released when the morning shift came on. Five cops from the night shift followed her into an alley and gang-raped her for more than an hour. They used everything on her—nightsticks, guns, themselves. When it was over, Lonnie Mae Brown had just enough strength left to check herself into a hospital, before falling unconscious. When she came to, she refused to report the incident to the cops.

She also refused all tests. She was afraid of retaliation—and I couldn’t dismiss her fears. The rape of women in jail has been common in recent times, as has punishment for anyone who talks. Though Lonnie Mae’s rape had occurred outside in an alley, public outrage about renegade cops was high on the totem pole of police reform. The stakes, for the cops, were high. For that reason, if no other, they tried to make the victim look guilty.

A young, black doctor I knew sized up the situation and called me, thinking that, as a lawyer, I might be able to tell Lonnie Mae what her options were.

Not that she had many, so far as I could see. I was there in the hospital when she woke from a sedative, and the first thing she did was shoot up straight into the air, her eyes wide and on the hunt for tormentors, hands flailing at invisible ghosts.

The most I could do for her was to be honest, since she was refusing the rape tests. I told her as gently as possible that without them, there wouldn’t be enough evidence for the Prosecuting Attorney to press charges. I said if she needed to talk, though, to call me.

I fully expected never to hear from her again. But three days later, I did. She had decided to file a complaint, she said. Would I go to the station with her?

I was surprised, and I didn’t think it would do her any good. But I agreed. I picked Lonnie Mae up, and stood by her side while the cop taking her complaint had a chuckle or two over her story. He clearly didn’t believe it. Nor did he like the fact that I’d come in with her.

“Look, Counselor,” he said sarcastically, “if this really happened, how come your client didn’t get tested in the hospital?”

“She’s not my client,” I said sharply. “She’s my friend. You just make sure that complaint gets into the right hands.”

I was so angered by his attitude, I took Lonnie Mae home and sat with her, as she cried and wrung her hands.

“I just never thought it would do any good to have them tests,” she said, over and over.

Privately, I thought she’d been in too much shock to make that decision in the hospital. But it was too late for that now, and all I could do was try to comfort her. She seemed to need to lean on me, despite the fact that she hardly knew me. I felt bad for her, and distressed that I couldn’t do more for her. So I made myself available.

Lonnie Mae’s apartment was comprised of two rooms, a miserable little place in the worst part of town. The halls were filled with bums, crack addicts, pimps and rats. In the living room, on a packing crate that had become an end table, were crumpled, un-framed snapshots of a baby and two toddlers. She had lost touch with them over the years, she said wearily. “Social Services took ’em away long ago, and I ain’t seen ’em since then. I signed the papers, you know, for adoption. I figure that’s best. Ain’t no kind of life, livin’ with me.”

Silently, I agreed with her, but it wasn’t my job to judge her worth as a mother. Something in her defeated tone sparked my anger again, however, and with that, I thought of something I stupidly hadn’t considered before.

“Lonnie Mae,” I asked, “where are the clothes you wore during the rape that night?”

“Oh, they’s in the closet, over there,” she said tiredly. “The hospital put them in a bag.”

“May I see them?”

She nodded, and I crossed over to the closet. Opening it, a whiff of cheap, heavy perfume hit my nostrils, almost gagging me. Beneath it was a scent of sweat, a leftover, I assumed, of long nights on the streets, hustling johns in cars and in broken-down hotels.

There was gold in that closet, though. When Lonnie Mae had been picked up for prostitution and gang-raped, she was wearing a fake fur jacket, a red imitation leather skirt, and purple fishnet stockings. It had been three days since then, and she had already showered away any sperm that might have been used as evidence. The clothes she’d worn during the rape, however, were right here where she’d tossed them upon coming home from the hospital. She hadn’t taken them out of the bag, or washed them—and they were loaded with sperm. In particular, the cops hadn’t bothered to remove the fishnet stockings, that night in the alley. They’d torn through them, leaving them tattered around her legs, and in their macho celebration they had been sloppy, spewing DNA around like liquid confetti.

I asked Lonnie Mae if I could take the stockings. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them, but I told her I was certain they could help. She said sure, and I stuck them in the trunk of my car when I left her that day.

Later that night, Lonnie Mae’s tenement burned to the ground. Dental records identified her body, which had been burned beyond recognition. The fire was thought to be “accidental,” caused by a space heater that tipped over in another apartment. Four other people died that night.

Maybe it was an accidental fire. Certainly, I couldn’t fault the arson investigators, who had a difficult job to do.

In my heart, however, I couldn’t shake my belief that the five cops, or somebody working for them, had had a hand in it. Surely they had been told that Lonnie Mae had filed a complaint against them. They would have been questioned, even if the complaint was not believed. And the accusation, if it developed into an arrest, and then trial, could destroy them. In their minds, the next reasonable step might well be to rid themselves of their accuser. No victim, no arrest. No testimony, no trial.

Maybe they thought, too, that the murder of a prostitute would go unnoticed in a city the size of Seattle. And maybe they thought that by killing Lonnie Mae, they’d be sending a message to me: Back off from this, or we’ll fix you, too.

If so, they really should have known better. Spurred on by both anger and considerable guilt over not protecting Lonnie Mae somehow, I met with a Prosecuting Attorney I had known for years. I posed a hypothetical question: If someone were to come across a piece of evidence that could put some bad cops in jail, what would be the best thing to do with it?

She gave me the party line, of course: If I were that “someone,” as an officer of the court I’d be guilty of obstruction of justice if I didn’t turn over evidence of a crime.

“I didn’t say it was me,” I told her. “What if this someone didn’t trust the authorities? Or the security of the evidence lockers?”

Her name was Ivy, which sounds as if she’d be a soft touch. Ivy O’Day was no fool, however. She guessed right away that I wasn’t talking hypothetically.

“This is strictly confidential, Sarah,” she said. “I think I may know which cops you’re talking about. We’ve been working with Internal Affairs, putting a case together against them for some time now. So far, it’s largely circumstantial. One good, solid piece of evidence that they’ve actually committed a crime could help. If you’ve got that kind of evidence, Sarah, you’re obligated to turn it over. If you’re worried about evidence lockers, you can give it to me. I’ll see it’s kept safe.”

“Still speaking hypothetically, Ivy, if I managed to find that kind of evidence, and I turned it over to you today, would you move on them? Right now?”

She hesitated and looked uneasy. “Not immediately. We’re still putting our case together.”

“So when would you file charges?” I pushed.

Ivy looked down at her hands, and it took her a few moments. “Maybe in a week, a month…” she said. “But, Sarah, if you have evidence…”

“I didn’t say I had evidence, Ivy. Like I said, I was talking theoretically.”

I asked her to keep me apprised of how their case was developing, and said I’d let her know if any such evidence came my way. But the hairs on the back of my neck had been raised in there. I wasn’t all that sure, anymore, that I’d talked to the right person. The Prosecuting Attorney’s office worked too closely with the cops. What if someone in the office—if not Ivy herself—had turned? Why hadn’t she just said, “Sure, Sarah, if you have solid evidence they committed a crime, we’ll move on them today”?

The fact that she hadn’t did not fill me with confidence. So I hung onto Lonnie Mae’s stockings, which was all that was left, now, since the fire. I had them tested secretly at a private lab in the East. Then I got a friendly DNA expert to read the results, confidentially and free of charge. There were six different kinds of DNA present, he reported, some in minuscule amounts, but more than enough to stand up in court. Five of those samples would be from the cops, I knew. The sixth would be Lonnie Mae’s.

When my expert asked where he should send the report, I told him to hold on to it for now. All that was left was to wait for Ivy to prove herself by filing those charges. Then I’d come forward with the evidence—and not until then.

Obstruction of justice be damned. I’d figure it out somehow.

The important thing was, I now knew that at some point I could get the five cops convicted of rape—and with any luck, of arson and murder, as well. I’ll get them for you, Lonnie Mae, I promised. You may be gone, but I swear to God, they’ll never forget your name.

It should have gone down that way. And would have gone down that way, if I’d just lain low with the evidence. But then I blew it.

The next night after work, I met with a friend, J.P. Blakely, at her office. J.P. was a Private Investigator who had helped me on several cases. I told her everything about Lonnie Mae and the cops. After talking about it for an hour or more, and considering how to proceed, both J.P. and I needed a drink. We headed for McCoy’s, which was a cop hangout, and not a place we’d ordinarily frequent. It was the nearest watering hole, though, and we ran across the street from J.P.’s office in a blinding rain.

The place was nearly empty, but while we were sitting at a table out of sight of the bar, four of the five cops who had raped Lonnie Mae piled in. I knew who they were by this time, because their photos had been emblazoned across the front page of that day’s Seattle Times. A complaint had been filed against them for rape, the caption read. The following story said the cops had issued a statement to the press denying all guilt and claiming that the prostitute in question had been out to get revenge for her arrest.

I felt a small sense of satisfaction that I’d been the one to leak the story to the Times in the first place. At least it was out in the open now. One step forward—and maybe, I thought, it would get Ivy off her ass. The papers had dubbed the cops the “Seattle Five,” and the rest of the media had begun to follow suit. The scandal would take on a life of its own. It would not simply “blow over.”

The four cops who had just come into McCoy’s didn’t see us, and we had an opportunity to eavesdrop. At first, they were relatively silent—gearing down from their day’s work, it seemed. Then, as the drinks flowed, they became louder and louder. There was much backslapping, and I heard Mike Murty, the suspected head honcho of the Five, brag that there probably wouldn’t even be a trial, now that the “black bitch whore” was dead.

They continued in that vein, while J.P. and I stared at each other, growing more and more outraged. Though we didn’t hear it in so many words, there came a moment when we were both certain the Five had set that fire and murdered Lonnie Mae—not to mention the others who had died along with her.

It was then that we rose as one and strode around the divider that separated us from the bar. The bartender saw us coming, and moved away as if sensing trouble. There were no other patrons in McCoy’s at that time, and maybe it should have occurred to me to be afraid. But I wasn’t accustomed to drinking much, and I’d had two glasses of wine.

I grabbed Mike Murty by the arm and swung him around. “You son of a bitch!” I said. “You sick, worthless piece of crap!”

He slid off the stool and hovered over me, all six feet of him. With his thumbs in his belt and his feet planted wide, he laughed. The other three stood, too, surrounding Murty and me.

“Move along, little lady,” one of them said. It was Al Garben, a weasily guy with a mustache that didn’t quite hide a mean mouth.

J.P. pushed her way between them and me. Though she was only five-four, she stood toe to toe with them, her blue eyes blazing. “She’s right. You always have been sick bastards.”

Jake Suder laughed. “You got a problem with us, J.P.?” He stuck out a hand that was reddish and cracked, chucking J.P. under the chin. She knocked it away—but not before I remembered Lonnie Mae telling me about that hand, and the things it had done to her.

“Enjoy your drinks,” I said angrily. “There won’t be any where you’re going.”

Murty laughed again. “We’re not going anywhere, bitch. Unless, of course, you’re inviting us to your place?”

They all laughed, stepping forward and closing in on us. “That’s right,” Al said. “Maybe we’ll just stop by one of these nights. You know—a routine check, to see if you’re all right.”

Tad Sanders, the youngest one, grinned. “Maybe we’ll find that she’s more than all right. Maybe we’ll find that she’s real, real good.”

He leaned so close, I could smell the beer on his breath and see the peach fuzz on his chin. Not much more than twenty-two, he already had the look in his eyes of a predator.

J.P. put a palm against his chest, like a crossing guard. “Get back, asshole. All of you get back.”

“You think you scare anybody?” Al Garben taunted. “Little yellow-haired thing like you?”

“You’d better be scared,” I said, not even thinking as words tumbled from my wine-loosened tongue. “I have enough evidence to put every one of you away for good.”

“You’ve got evidence, bitch?” Murty laughed. “Not by a long shot.”

“Believe it,” I said. “Lonnie Mae gave me all I needed before she died. And you’re not getting away with it—not the rape, or her murder.”

J.P. flashed me a warning. I saw it in her eyes, just before I saw the threat in Mike Murty’s. J.P. grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “C’mon, Sarah. You’ve had too much to drink. Let’s go.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, slurring the words a bit. “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Anyway, I need a shower, to wash the filth away.”

We had to get our coats, and when we rounded the room divider again to go out the front door, I saw that the Five were having a serious conclave at the bar. They weren’t laughing anymore.

I should have felt a small sense of victory. But even without J.P.’s warning, I knew I’d said far too much.

Late that night, I tried to throw a net of protection around myself by calling Mike Murty at home. I told him I did, in fact, have evidence that he and the others had raped Lonnie Mae. I said the evidence was safe with someone unknown to him, and that if anything happened to me, it would go directly to someone in authority outside the Seattle PD. I told him that agency would nail them for the rape, Lonnie’s murder, and my death, as well. Then I closed with the argument that the Five’s best chance was to throw themselves on the mercy of the court—and that they’d better make sure I stayed alive to see them there.

I thought this would stop them. At the very least, I hoped it might buy me some time.

But that’s when the Seattle Five came after me.

Let me be clear. Most Seattle cops are good people, doing jobs they love and are proud of. Early in my career as a public defender, however, I’d acquired a reputation with even the good ones. To put as nice a slant as possible on it, they loathed me. I was the one who got people off after the cops worked their asses off tracking them down, taking them in, filling out paperwork, testifying in court. I didn’t mind their griping about me. It got me on the nightly news, and if that could in some way help a client, I was all for it. I dressed in snappy clothes for court, and to draw even more attention, I deliberately wore my thick blond hair in a loose, flowing style I was told was sexy.

Actually, Ian’s the one who told me my hair was sexy, even to the point of using it in our foreplay. One Fourth of July night we lay naked on my bed, I and Seattle’s top-ranking police detective, and watched the Space Needle fireworks from my window. Almost absentmindedly, Ian stroked my hair against himself, over and over till he was fully aroused, reaching climax just as the final burst of fireworks spilled from Seattle’s best-known phallic symbol. I recall getting into the spirit of things, though I never told him, during or after, how uncomfortable the position had been. In those days I’d have done anything for Ian, put myself in discomfort, even danger. I loved him with nearly my entire heart, leaving no room for anything else but the law.

Ironically, it was the law that came between us. Ian was a dedicated Seattle cop who spent long days putting evidence together to bring my clients into court. He had a hard time accepting that I had a job to do, and that I took pride in doing it.

It didn’t help matters that some of the accused I managed to get off weren’t innocent. That’s the thing about DNA—it can be used, if one knows how to present it in court, to free the guilty as well. And a lawyer’s job is to defend her client, innocent or not.

Law, I learned, has a way of wearing one’s purity down.

So Ian and I would argue about my work, and at first it was fun—something we did as part of foreplay, to get us excited. Later, it became something I dreaded.

“If the jury doesn’t understand DNA when the prosecutor rams it down their throats, over and over for hours till they become benumbed, it’s not my fault!” I’d argue, my voice shaking because I wanted more than anything to get the argument over with and get back to where we were “one.”

“You keep it going!” he would shout back. “You know exactly what you’re doing, and if the jury gets bored and doesn’t even listen, it’s your fault, not the prosecutor’s. You plan it that way. You weave a damned spell in the courtroom, and no one can see beyond it.”

He once went so far as to say that if I loved him, I would go do something else for a living—like mow lawns.

I couldn’t believe he was serious, and perhaps he was not. Ian, a linebacker type with red hair and an Irish temper, had a way of flying off the handle and saying things he didn’t mean. Later, he’d apologize, and things would go back to the way they had been. Until next time.

One night last January, however—two nights after I’d called Mike Murty and threatened him with Lonnie Mae’s evidence—Ian didn’t show for dinner. When I finally reached him late that night, he said he’d been busy. He didn’t know when he’d have time to see me again.

The next day, three uniform cops raided my apartment while I was out. A judge I barely knew had given them a warrant based on a flimsy tip the cops said they had received. They “found” crack cocaine and miscellaneous drug paraphernalia in my bedroom closet.

I do not use drugs, and never have.

I was arrested coming out of a courtroom, a moment I’ll never forget if I live to be older than sin. The charge was possession of illegal drugs with intent to sell, a felony, and after the usual delays and continuances, I didn’t expect my trial to go forward until early December. I walked through all these procedures like a zombie, in fear and disbelief.

The next day I made bail but lost my job, and for a brief time I fell into a depression. My only comfort was that they hadn’t found Lonnie Mae’s evidence when they planted those drugs. I’d taken it from my trunk, after we left McCoy’s, and had given it to J.P. to put in a safe place.

I was too afraid now, though, to hand it over to anyone—even Ivy O’Day. It was the DA’s office, after all, that had pressed charges against me. Had Ivy told someone about my visit to her? The wrong someone? Had the cops, in fact, been searching for the evidence at the same time they planted those drugs?

Depression mingled with fear. Then, one day I woke up angry. From that morning on, my days were consumed with thoughts of how best to destroy the Seattle Five.

The next day, I walked over to Seattle Mystery Bookshop. Between talking with Bill Farley and looking through volumes on the shelves, I formulated a plan to write a book blasting the justice system in general, and crooked police in particular. Bill was all for it.

“It’s a bestseller in the making,” he told me, his white hair gleaming under the store’s light. “Especially with you being a lawyer. It’ll put you on talk shows, maybe even Larry King Live. You can get your story out that way.”

I wanted my story out, not just for myself, but for Lonnie Mae Brown. I still hadn’t heard from Ivy O’Day, and no charges had been filed against the Seattle Five. Lonnie Mae’s stockings remained in their plastic bag in a safe in the office of J.P.’s accountant, where she’d put them the night I handed them to her. After the confrontation with the Five in McCoy’s, she was afraid they’d search her office, and she hid the stockings in a brown envelope with old tax forms she gave to her accountant for storage.

As for me, as the weeks went by I was growing more and more frustrated and less and less willing to depend on justice taking its course. Lonnie Mae might still have been alive if the system put monsters like those cops in jail, instead of either ignoring the complaints against them, or letting them out on bail. And Lonnie was by no means an isolated case. Time after time, over the years, I’d seen it happen—rapists, murderers, child molesters given light sentences, only to be released from prison and kill, rape and molest again.

That I had defended some of them became an issue that confused me, leaving me sleepless and worn. My faith in jurisprudence—my vision of what the rule of law required—was nearly gone by this time, a state of mind at least partially responsible for what happened later, at Thornberry.

So I bought a new laser printer and reams of paper. By this time I was living here at my parents’ house, and one morning I took a cup of strong, hot Fidalgo coffee to my father’s desk, sat at my computer and began. After several awkward attempts, piling up pages by the hundreds in the trash can, I found myself working twelve, fourteen, even eighteen hours a day on this, my first book, Just Rewards. It became more important than anything I’d ever done, and the obsessive drive that had seen me through law school carried me now into this new world of writing, with that “fire in the belly” writers talk about.