At their penalty phases, she had taken the stand again and had testified about how being kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held prisoner for two days, convinced she would be murdered, had changed her. She told of being placed in a group home for troubled teens, which she left for the streets as soon as she turned eighteen, of being afraid to sleep alone in a room, of overdosing on codeine, feeling numb, ashamed, and afraid. She had lost a lot of weight at first, had been in therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, and was taking medication for anxiety.
“What courage,” the prosecutor had argued. “What bravery this young girl has shown, coming to this courtroom again and again, to have to look at this man, this monster who subjected her to the worst nightmare imaginable, raped her, kept her tied up like an animal, and was prepared to kill her. You saw what he and his brother did to Lisa Greenman and Brandy Ontiveros, ladies and gentleman. This young woman was the Hardys’ next victim. She would have been strangled and buried in the woods with the others. We’ll never know why she was released. Maybe Mr. Hardy here got cold feet. Maybe he was afraid his mother would find this girl and turn him and his brother in to the police. Or maybe he had an argument with his brother over her and decided to let her go to get back at him. Who knows? Whatever the reason, she is the lucky one; she wasn’t killed and buried in the woods. Nicole survived to speak here for herself and for Brandy and Lisa. She told you what these animals did and what her life has been like because of it. It was hard for her to relive the horror of those days and nights, but she came here and she faced the man who did that to her, and she told you what he did. What do you do, ladies and gentleman, what should society do, to a man who can do such sadistic things to a young woman like that—and not just her but all those young women? What penalty is severe enough to punish him for what he has done to Nicole Shumate, to Lisa Greenman and her mother and stepfather, to Brandy Ontiveros and her mother and her little daughter, who will have to grow up knowing her mother was murdered and live her life in the shadow of such evil?”
And so on.
That had been fifteen years ago. Nicole was twice as old as she had been when she was kidnapped, with a husband and children. Other than that and her criminal record, we knew nothing of her life since the trial. I knew what I wanted to ask her—sort of: more detail, more specifics of what was said and done by whom—anything not in the police reports which might shed some light on what Andy and Emory’s actual roles had been in the crimes—and why Andy had released her.
Dave and I didn’t talk much as we drove the winding road from the valley floor into the mountains. I don’t know what was on Dave’s mind, but I was thinking of the fact that we were about to walk in on Nicole’s Saturday morning and ask her to reminisce with us about the most horrible experience of her life, to help one of the men who inflicted it on her. And the many ways, each unkinder and more humiliating than the last, in which she could say no to us, tell us to take a hike and that our murdering son-of-a-bitch client should rot in hell. It’s interviews like this one, I thought, that make me glad not to be an investigator.
Wildfires had burned through this country in some recent summer, and as the road climbed, we saw canyons and valleys where nothing remained of the pine forest, as far as the eye could see, but row upon row of blackened tree trunks. The presence, here and there, of a bit of green—a young evergreen or a patch of brush—seemed less a message of hope and renewal than a comment by nature about all that had been destroyed.
Part of La Cresta had been burned over in that fire, and we drove past streets of cleared lots with concrete pads. On some of the lots stood new houses, complete or under construction. We were relieved to find that Edelweiss Drive was in an area that the fires had missed.
The Madisons’ house was set well back from the street, on at least a half-acre. It was sort of a cross between mountain cabin and mid-twentieth-century split level, with redwood siding, a bay window, and a two-car garage. The area around it had been cleared of trees and bushes as a defense against forest fires, but beyond that, big pines cast shade partway into the cleared area. A soccer ball and a few colorful plastic toys were scattered in the yard, and a child’s pink bicycle with training wheels stood next to the steps to the door. A dark green SUV was parked in the driveway. My heart sank to see it; I realized I’d been hoping no one would be home.
We parked on the street in front of the house and walked to the front door. The spring morning was chilly, and the air felt sharper and thinner at this altitude. Three big unglazed pots filled with petunias and geraniums stood on the concrete pad in front of the door, and the musky scent of petunias and the faint, sharp taste of geranium leaves mingled with the scent of dry pine needles and wood smoke in the air.
I rang the doorbell and waited. In a minute, a deadbolt clicked, and the door opened a few inches, releasing a faint smell of coffee and cooked bacon. A woman, half visible in the opening, looked out at us. “May I help you?” she asked—the kind of “may I help you” that means, “What are you doing here?”
“My name is Janet Moodie,” I said, floundering ineffectually for the right tone, the right expression. “I’m one of the attorneys for Marion Hardy.” The woman stood still, saying nothing. She was a few inches taller than me and slender, with red-brown hair. I nodded toward Dave. “This is Dave Rothstein, an investigator in Mr. Hardy’s case.”
I held out a business card, and she reached a faintly tanned hand, trimmed nails shiny with clear polish, outside the door and took it. She looked at the card, then from me to Dave and back to me. From inside the house I could hear the indistinct sound of a television playing a children’s program, then running footsteps and a child’s voice behind her. “Mommy, who is it? Is it Aaron?”
She turned her head away from us and looked down. “No, honey, it isn’t Aaron. Go back inside and watch Magic Schoolbus for a while, okay?”
“Okay.” I heard the child move away into the house, and the young woman turned back to us, reached up and undid the chain latch, then walked outside, closing the door behind her.
She was slender, with a soft, pretty face, gray eyes, and long light-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore tight jeans and a pink hooded sweatshirt. She looked at the two of us, her expression tense and watchful. “I thought he’d be dead by now,” she said.
I shook my head. “No, he isn’t,” I said, as neutrally as I could, trying to convey in those words that I understood why she would think that after all these years, but not to hint either that I sympathized with her for wanting him dead or that I didn’t. “We’re working on a habeas corpus petition for him.”
“You’re not trying to get him freed, are you?”
I hedged. “Well, to be honest, there’s not really much chance of that. We’re more focused on the penalty in his case.”
She looked at me intently. “You don’t think he deserves the death penalty, after what he did?”
“We think there was mitigating evidence that should have been presented in his case and wasn’t. We’ve got some reason to think that maybe his brother was more responsible for the crimes.”
“Yeah. He should have been executed for sure.” She seemed to relax a little at the idea that we shared at least that bit of common ground.
“Why—do you think he was worse?”
“They both deserved it. I don’t know why he didn’t get it, too.” She stopped, looked down at my card in her hand, then back to me. “He was—he was worse. His brother—your client, I guess—was kind of a dope. The dark-haired one—Emory—he was a real creep.”
“Kind of a dope? How?”
She thought for a second before answering. “I don’t know. It just seemed that his brother kept ordering him around and griping at him. And he hit us.”
“Emory?”
“Yeah.”
“You and Andy both?”
“Yeah.”
“So did he—Andy—seem slow?”
“No, not really. But his brother treated him like
he was. That’s what it was, I guess. He acted like he didn’t have any respect for him.” She stopped again to think, and looked up again, her expression in some barely perceptible way more open to us. “I remember that the district attorney, Mr. Dannemeier, kept saying that Andy was the leader in the murders and all that. I guess because he was older and he was the one who let me go. I remember it seemed strange. But I figured he knew something I didn’t.”
“Did you ever tell Mr. Dannemeier that Andy didn’t seem to be the leader?”
“We talked about it. I told him what I saw—about Emory’s attitude and all.”
“Did you tell him how he treated Andy?”
“Yes.”
“How did he respond?”
“He didn’t seem to think it made any difference. He said Andy killed the two girls, that he’d confessed to the police.”
Dave asked the next question. “Did anyone from the defense ever talk to you before the trials?”
“I remember someone tried to, but I wouldn’t talk to him. I just wanted them both dead.” I recalled from the trial transcripts that she had been asked by Emory’s lawyer if she had refused to speak with his investigator.
“No one before Andy’s trial?”
She thought for a moment before answering. “No, I don’t remember anyone else.”
“Did anyone tell you not to speak to the defense?”
“No. Mr. Dannemeier said someone might try to question me, but it was my decision whether or not to talk to them.”
She glanced back toward the door. Dave asked the next question. “Do you have any idea why Andy Hardy let you go?”
She looked back at us and then down again, her eyebrows knitted into a frown, shook her head and looked up. “No. I’ve thought about it a lot. You do, you know. Why me, and why not them? I used to keep running it over in my mind, trying to figure it out.”
“Do you remember how it happened?”
She stood silent for a moment, obviously thinking, before answering. “I remember he came to the shed where I was earlier that evening with some food and later a glass of juice. The juice tasted bitter, and it was grainy, as if some coffee grounds had gotten into it. I told him it tasted bad. He said he’d get some other juice, and left. But he came back after just a minute and said we had to hurry and that he wasn’t going to hurt me. We went out and got in the truck, and he kept whispering to me to be quiet. After I was in the truck he tried to close the door real quietly, and it didn’t close completely. That’s when I thought about jumping out.”
“What happened then?”
“I think he had some trouble with the truck, backing it up and making the turn in the driveway. Like he wasn’t really used to driving it.”
“Which direction did he turn on the road?”
“Left. Back the way we came.”
“Toward town?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he say anything in the truck?”
“Not until I opened the door. Then he said, ‘Don’t jump; I’m not going to hurt you.’”
“What happened then?”
“I told him I didn’t believe him, or something like that. And then I jumped.”
“Did he try to grab you and pull you back in?”
She closed her eyes and thought for a few seconds. “Not that I could see,” she said.
“What did he do then?”
“Just pulled out, made kind of a k-turn, and drove away back toward the house.”
“He didn’t get out and look for you?”
“No.”
“What did you do after that?”
“I ran into the woods and hid for a while and then started walking along the edge of the road in the direction we were going—back toward town, I guess. I remember a couple of times I saw headlights coming from the direction of their place, and I got scared that he was coming back for me and ran into the woods and hid.”
“Could you tell whether it was him?”
“One of them might have been the truck. It was moving kind of slow. When it was past I came out and kept walking along the edge of the road, but then I thought I saw the headlights coming from the other direction, and I hid again. I decided then that I wouldn’t try to hitch a ride with anyone until it was light, and I just kept walking and hiding until morning. Then I flagged down a truck with some kind of contractor’s logo on it and told the guy in it I’d been kidnapped and asked him to take me to the police.”
It was Dave who asked her the hard question. “Would you be willing to sign a declaration about what you’ve told us?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not about to do anything that would help him get away with what he did.” She looked behind her at the door and then back at us. “I need to go back inside; my little girl is in there.” She reached her hand for the door knob and shivered as if shaking off a spasm of pain. “It’s hard talking about this, you know. I’ve done all I can to forget it. It’s a good thing my husband’s off fishing today, or I wouldn’t be out here talking to you at all. He’s had to deal with what they did to me. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for him. Probably dead by now. Certainly not here.” With a gesture and a turn of her head she indicated the tidy house, the car in the driveway.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said.
“It’s your job, I guess,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to have it. I really have to go now.”
She opened the door as we were thanking her and edged inside with a nod and a small dismissive gesture. The door closed behind her, and I heard the chain latch slide into place.
Dave and I walked back to the car in silence, conscious that Nicole might be watching us from the house.
As we drove away, I said to Dave, “You should probably have gone alone. You might have figured out a way to put her at ease more, get her to talk.”
“I doubt it,” Dave said. “I don’t think she’d have talked to me at all if I’d shown up alone when her husband wasn’t there.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure I agreed with him.
“What are we going to do with what she told us?” Dave asked. “She’ll never sign a declaration to help Andy.”
I agreed. “But she did confirm that Andy wasn’t calling the shots, and it looks as though Andy meant to let her go, she didn’t just escape.”
“Did she say at the trial that Andy was the leader?” Dave asked.
“No, she didn’t. That was the DA’s theory, but he didn’t ask her. I guess he knew she wouldn’t go there.”
“Smart man.”
“And a little unscrupulous. He knew she wouldn’t support his theory and was hiding it from the defense.”
“No one from the defense thought to ask either, then.”
“No. Dobson wouldn’t, because he never talked to her and didn’t know what she might say. And Mark Levenson didn’t at Emory’s trial, because the DA’s theory was good for Emory.”
“That story she told about the juice,” Dave said. “I’ve never read anything about that before.”
“Neither have I.”
“Rings a bell, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I just wonder how much Andy knew.”
40
Jim called me in July to let me know the court had granted his motion to depose Carla. It took a few weeks to find a court reporter and work out a date when Jim, Deputy Attorney General Brenda Collinson, and the court reporter could all meet in Canfield, but they eventually arranged for a deposition at the Holiday Inn, on a date around the middle of September.
Not much else happened that summer. Andy called about once a week, and we talked about inconsequential things. The case of one of my former clients, Dwayne Orton, lurched another step forward—his federal attorney emailed me to say that the district court magistrate assigned to the case had ordered an evidentiary hearing on the question of whether Dwayne’s trial attorney had acted ineffectively when he had advised Dwayne to refuse a plea bargain offer of a life sentence—and then stopped aga
in, when the attorney general asked the judge in charge of the case to overturn the magistrate’s order. And in another old case of mine that I’d given up when I left the state defender’s office, the state Supreme Court issued its inevitable decision affirming the death judgment.
* * *
The week after Labor Day, I flew up to Alaska, my first trip there in two years. When my mother was alive, I’d made a point of visiting a couple of times a year, but she died, and then Terry died, and I stopped wanting to travel anywhere for a long time. I’d never liked Anchorage while growing up anyway, and after my mother’s death I felt as if one string that had kept me tied to Alaska had given way.
I flew into Fairbanks and spent a couple of days with my younger sister Maggie, and we drove to visit my older sister Candace for her birthday. Candace and her husband Emil lived in the mountains outside Anchorage, in an alpine house with cathedral ceilings and awesome views out the tall windows. Astrid, their older daughter, was living in Seattle, and the younger one, Rachel, had flown in from Dutch Harbor. Astrid couldn’t get home for her mother’s birthday, Candace explained, a little smugly, because she was eight months pregnant and wasn’t supposed to fly. It was a comment on Gavin’s unmarried state and my lack of grandmotherly fecundity; I let it pass.
Maggie and I sometimes rolled our eyes about Candace and Emil, who’d settled early into safe civil service jobs and the big house in Eagle River, raised three well-adjusted children, and, with glum earnestness, taken on the responsibility of looking out for Mom after Dad died. They were estimable and well off, but Candace seemed to feel resentfully that Maggie and I had somehow gotten a better deal in life.
By the time I left for home, after Candace’s birthday party and a couple of days hiking and berry picking with my sisters and Rachel, I felt about as good as I ever had since Terry died. “You’ve got to come home more often,” Maggie said, as we said goodbye at the airport. “We really miss you. Even Candace does, you know.”
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