A Silence of Mockingbirds (7 page)

Sarah was not a single mother, abandoned, left to raise a child
without support from Karly’s father. Nothing could be further from
the truth. Sarah was never a single mother. From the outset, David
was Karly’s primary caregiver. Even the chart notes made by nurses
following Karly’s birth document that fact:

“Husband is supportive. Father of baby very concerned and primary
caregiver. Baby has been rooming in and father doing most of baby care while
mom rests. Offered newborn class. Mom feeling too sore and wants father to
go. Father took baby to class. Husband helps with baby. Patient anxious, needs
lots of support and detailed explanation of procedures.”

Within a couple of months of Karly’s birth, Sarah returned to her
freewheeling ways and resumed her social nightlife as a regular fixture
at various clubs around town.

T
he city’s nine-hole course
and club, called Par 3, located north of town on Highway 20, is a favorite
among locals. Parents bring their children out to play the putt-putt course.
Couples sit in the booths, sharing fries off each other’s plates and ordering
another local brew. Women and men weathered by too much golf and too many
cigarettes totter on bar stools in a trance, pushing the chiming buttons of
the video poker machines.

Eric DeWeese was manager at Par 3 the afternoon I stopped by
following that phone call from a very distraught David. David said
he’d heard Sarah had posted a flyer at Par 3 announcing a benefit
golf tournament in Karly’s honor, but it was all part of Sarah’s newest
moneymaking venture.

It was one of those rare dry winter days in the valley with a hand-drawn sun stuck to a felt-board sky, looking all make-believe. I sat in
the parking lot at Par 3, gathering notebook and pen, and praying to
learn what became of the Sarah I once knew.

A cursory scan as I passed through the door didn’t reveal the flyer
mentioning Karly’s Angels. Overstuffed booths on my right, bar on my
left. One man sat hunched over his bourbon, another over his second
beer, the first bottle still on the bar.

A television blared from behind the bar. Leaning between the two
men, I asked the girl wiping a glass if the manager was around, and if I
could please speak to him. I could smell a burger sizzling on the grill,
and beer sloshed on the floor for the last how many years.

Eric slid into the booth across from me. He was darkly handsome,
all khaki and yellow polo, clean-shaven as a deacon. He sat sideways,
back to the window, face to the bar, ready to hop up at a moment’s
notice.  The barmaid turned the TV down a notch.

“What can you tell me about Sarah?” I asked.

“She’s very attractive, very pretty, very flirty,” Eric said. “A fairly big
gambler, though. If she had $500, she’d spend it. If she had $1,000, she’d
spend it. She was a party girl, always liked to have a good time.”

He paused, and in his best manger voice asked, “Can I get you
something to drink?”

“I’m good,” I said. “Did you know Karly?”

“I knew Sarah for four years before I even knew she had a daughter.
Crazy, huh? I assumed Sarah didn’t have custody. She wasn’t much of
one to talk about personal things. She was the kind who’d ask you to
watch Karly for ten minutes and come back eight hours later. Sarah was
kind of a lost soul.

“I feel sorry for what happened and all, but anybody who thinks
Sarah is a victim is a fool. Sarah put Sarah first, not Karly. Good mothers
don’t go out gambling. That gambling thing is a big turn-off.”

“Is that why you never took up with her?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Eric said. “I hired her as a cook but after a couple of months
I moved her to the bar. But then $300 to $400 came up missing. I
never came right out and accused her of stealing but I had to let her
go. She quit coming out for a while after that but then she showed up
again. She’d have a mimosa, gamble, golf, have lunch, drink, smoke and
gamble some more.”   

“You ever see her use hard drugs?” I asked.

“I’ve seen her smoke some pot. She was taking pain pills left and
right. She’d had some kind of surgery—I don’t remember what. But she
was popping those babies left and right. You damn sure shouldn’t be
taking those if you’re drinking.”

“Do you think Sarah is an alcoholic?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Eric said. He shifted around in the booth, so
he could see the ESPN scores better. “But she didn’t have the same kind
of addiction to alcohol as she did to gambling.” 

“You think Sarah was involved in her daughter’s death in any way?”

He pondered that question for a minute before answering.

“It’s not too farfetched to think she could do this. Why would you
go off and leave your child the way she did all the time? I never saw any
signs of abuse but she sure had a lot of free time to spend here.”

“How’d you learn of Karly’s death?”

“A customer from HP told me. It was shocking, that’s for sure. I
don’t view Sarah as a victim. I think she ought to be accountable for
some of it. You should talk to those people over there.” Eric nodded
toward a round table back past the bar.

“Friends of Sarah’s?” I asked.

“Used to be,” he said.

I looked out the window, too dark to see anything but the out-buildings. The sun had long slipped beyond the green velvet coastal
range hemming west Corvallis. I wasn’t in any hurry. There was a warm
bed waiting for me at Carlene Moorefield’s house. Come anytime,
Carlene said, and meant it.

“No telling when I will be coming and going,” I had warned her.

“No worries,” Carlene said. “Here’s a key. Come and stay anytime.”
This was the third or fourth of many such visits.

“You think those people back there will want to talk to me?” I asked
Eric.

“Sure, why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know. If they are good friends of Sarah’s they might
find me intrusive.”

“Not a chance,” Eric said. “People around here aren’t sorry to see
Sarah go. She can stay on the east side. Good riddance.”

I was surprised by the curt tone in his voice. “When’s the last time
you saw Sarah?”

“She was by here not long ago,” Eric said. “I gave her permission to
hang up the flyer.”

“The flyer still there? I looked for one but didn’t see it.”

“Nah. I heard that her ex was a pretty stand-up guy and I got to
wondering if he knew about this nonprofit of Sarah’s. I wanted to
know if he was involved in the charity. I had some reservations and my
immediate thought was, is this legit or is Sarah in Bend gambling all
this away? So I asked somebody who knows David.”

That’s when Eric found out David didn’t know a thing about Karly’s
Angels. Just another get-rich-quick venture of Sarah’s, Eric figured. So
he ripped the flyer out of the window. He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of
Sarah since.

Friendships formed over barstools can wear thin during the
drought times in a person’s life. After Sarah e-mailed God and everybody and
told them about being honored by
Glamour
magazine, her former pals
at Par 3 sucked on filtered cigarettes and discussed the matter over glasses
of chilled Chardonnay and foamy beer.

“Have a seat,” Lee said, scooting to the right and offering me the
chair next to Gina. Pam sat at the far end, opposite Lee now. I don’t
think anyone ever introduced me to the squatty fellow sitting directly
across from me.  The regulars had seen me earlier, talking with Eric.
Who’s the new chick? What’s she want?

I put down the notebook and told them about how I knew Sarah. Invited them
to ask any questions they wanted. They didn’t have any.

Lee, a Desert Storm veteran, looked more poet than soldier in his
long black wool overcoat and rocker hair the color of barbwire. Lee ran
around with Shawn’s brother Kevin back in the day, before that nearly
forgotten war, and before Kevin overdosed.

“We’d raise hell together,” Lee said. “Shawn’s parents were the nicest
people. If we were at their house, his mom would bring us sandwiches
and Shawn would yell at her to take them away. I asked him once, why
do you treat your parents so badly? His parents were so nice, but Shawn
was a fat, spoiled, rotten kid. A really horrible guy. He was nuts.”

Lee knew Sarah, too, from her bartending days. “She wasn’t a bad
person,” he said. “Just somebody who made bad choices. She was always
the same weak girl, a heavy gambler.”   

How had Sarah’s gambling problem escaped me all these years?
“So you ladies belong to the Sand Tramps?” I asked. Sarah had
pulled together the all-girls league. Gina nodded. Even in the dead of
winter, Gina has the honey glow of someone who spends a lot of time
in the sun, planting flowers, pulling weeds. “Matt, that’s my husband,
would take care of Karly a lot,” Gina said. “Our daughter Mia and Karly
were playmates.”

“What kind of mom was Sarah?” I asked.

“I love Sarah to death but she was not cut out to be a mom,” Gina
said. “Sarah treated Karly more like a possession than a daughter. She
wanted Karly to have the best clothes; she was all about that trendy
stuff. She liked to show Karly off but she wasn’t about spending time
with Karly. Moms put their kids first. Sarah never did that.”

“Shawn, now he was trouble,” Pam interrupted.  

“What do you mean?”

“He was controlling. Sarah took up running because Shawn told
her she was getting too fat. I was scared of him from the start.”

“Really? Why?”

“It was gut instinct,” Pam said. “When Sarah introduced me to him,
I just thought, he’s not a good person. Sarah and I quit hanging out after
she took up with Shawn. She was always in a hurry to get home to him.”

“Well, not always,” Gina said. “Matt would watch Karly a lot. He is
pissed at Sarah. He doesn’t think she should have gotten off scot-free.
Sarah’s a good manipulator, good at getting her own way. Karly was
at our house the week she died, running around crying, puking and
shaking, ‘I want my daddy! I want my daddy!’”

Hearing Gina quote the dead Karly punctured something in Pam.
Holding back her corn-silk hair, she hunkered over the rim of her wine
glass. A fierce thunderstorm gave way to tears. A fellow sitting nearby
moved his beer and handed her a napkin.

We all grew silent. There was no talk of Beaver basketball or what a
beautiful day it was in the Valley. Gina placed a hand on Pam’s shoulder.
There’s a time when tears are the only appropriate response. Pam’s
shoulder-heaving sobs are what I would have expected from Sarah the
day she told me Karly had died. How had she remained so calm about
that?

“That e-mail Sarah sent out after her trip to New York, that upset a
lot of us,” Pam said.

“Yeah,” Lee said, taking a draw from his beer.

“Sarah is all about the money,” Pam added. “Anybody who knows
Sarah knows she’s all about the money.”

“You think she had anything to do with Karly’s death?” I asked.

“We never saw any abuse,” Gina replied. “I mean it bugged the hell
outta me when Karly showed up with all her hair missing. You don’t lose
that much hair. It’s not normal. I told Sarah to take her to the doctor.
You can’t tell me as a mother she didn’t know Karly was being abused.
Toward the end, Sarah was spending much more time with Shawn’s
daughter than she was with Karly.  I didn’t know what to think.”

B
etrayal can only occur in relationships built on love and
trust. The kind of relationship I had with Sarah at one time.
The sort she had with David, briefly. The devoted kind of
relationship that any child ought to be able to expect from her mother.

I worry about how betrayed Sarah is going to feel reading these
words. Several people have asked whether I fear Sarah. I don’t know
the answer to that question because I no longer know Sarah. There are
times when I wonder if I ever really knew her, if any of us ever did. Or
was she betraying our affections the entire time we were loving on her?

It’s the betrayal that Karly experienced that propels me onward. She
comes to me in my dreams, not as the dead Karly, per se, but as a little
girl distraught.

The young girl cries in my dream, begs to be held, and to be
comforted. She pleads with me not to leave her alone. She is eight or
nine, close to the age Shawn’s daughter Kate was when Karly was killed,
but it’s not Kate. When Sarah and Shawn first began dating, Kate was
eight and Karly was two, almost three. I hold the girl in my dreams and
comfort her. I hold her close and tell her I will never, ever leave her
alone, not for one second. When I wake, I’m the one crying.

When I began writing this book, I asked Jack if Shawn’s parents, Hugh and Ann
Field, would be willing to be interviewed by me.

Karen:

Just wanted to let you know I talked with S’s parents about
the issues you mentioned and they chose to stay with their original stance.
They do not want to talk. I tried to explain the advantages but they politely
declined.

They want truth and at the same time are leery of the price
they might have to pay in addition to what they have had to pay already. Good
luck on the investigation and writing.

Jack

I’m not sure what Shawn’s parents want revealed, and as long as
they refuse to speak with me I’m not likely to learn. But the one thing
I do know from my years as an investigative reporter is that only those
who have something to hide do the hiding. Everybody else talks.

Hugh and Ann have been covering for Shawn for a very long time.
As an adolescent, Shawn was a bad attitude sprouting. He was arrested
at sixteen with a couple of buddies full of bravado gone sour. The three
of them broke into several homes and took hostage one of the boys’ own
mothers. They intended to steal Shawn’s brother’s truck and joyride to
Colorado—to do some skiing—but local lawmen caught them before
the trio could finish the chorus of “Ride Like the Wind” and then hauled
their butts to juvie.

Ann and Hugh can protest all they want that their son is too good
of a boy to have killed a child. Oh, bless him, he wouldn’t pour salt on
a slug, wouldn’t flick a fly from a watermelon. Shawn couldn’t possibly
have hurt a child. But the evidence doesn’t support their view.

Well, yes, Hugh told the courts, the boy-turned-man had stolen his
credit cards, had forged his name, and run up a bill in the thousands
of dollars without any way to pay for it. Shawn found working such a
distasteful bore. Points of contention with his son are seen best in the
clenching of Hugh’s jaw. Getting along with a son intent on not getting
along with anyone can sap a good man, but that’s no call for airing dirty
boxers on the public square. Nope. In front of God and everybody
listening, Hugh and Ann declare their son has been wrongly accused.

But I suspect that when they sit silently across the dinner table, they
avoid looking into each other’s eyes and seeing the truth of their son.
I bet Hugh and Ann have stood shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen
pouring black coffee, peeling a banana and asking, “Do you think he
could have done this thing?” And I’d bet they’ve howled against the
bitter winds that delivered to them one son dead from an overdose and
one imprisoned.

Not long after Jack sent me his note that Shawn’s parents didn’t
want to talk to me, I received another one from him saying Ann Field
was worried that digging all this up would harm her granddaughter.

Jack said he talked to Shawn’s mother and that she was suffering,
thinking about the book. “Her fear is that Kate will be the one most likely
to suffer when your book comes out,” Jack said. “She can’t understand
how you can push ahead on this book when you know you are going to
hurt people.”

I hope to never know the kind of grief Ann Field endures. It is not
my intention to add to Hugh or Ann’s heartache. Nor do I want to harm
Kate in any way. David is concerned about her, too. He considers Kate,
not Sarah, to be Shawn’s other victim. Kate is not her real name. I told
Jack to tell Ann I wouldn’t use her real name.

Not that it really matters. It’s not as if Kate doesn’t wake up every
morning knowing that her daddy puts on his prison jumpsuit one leg
at a time. It’s not as if she hasn’t sucked back salty sobs, thinking of how
hateful her father had been that last morning of Karly’s life.

I didn’t tell Jack but I came across some postings on an online forum
discussing Karly’s death. I can’t be sure the remarks are Kate’s but that’s
the claim made:

“Im shawn fields daughter. He never abused me so i dont understand
why he would abuse karly. She was like my sister and sarah was like a secind
mom. PLEASE DONT ACUSE SARAH OF THIS CRIME. she had nothing do with her daughters
death. She loved her more than anything. I was there so i know the BIG details.
I was at school when karly died though.”

If she had lived, Karly would have turned nine in January 2011,
the date of the above post. Loving daughters are a delight at almost
any age. Nine-year-old girls are all ankles and elbows, throwing back
the covers on the day and running barefoot over our hearts. If Kate
really did author that post, she might have been thinking about her own
ninth birthday in 2005 and the trip she took to Disneyland without her
father. He couldn’t go because he was in jail, awaiting the outcome of an
ongoing murder investigation.

I replied to Jack and told him I think Ann’s fear is misplaced. Kate’s
suffering is going to be far more reaching than any book I write. The
deceit we buy into is the belief that as long as we aren’t talking about our
hurts, they have no power over us.

Ann Field and I disagree over how one softens the blow for Kate
growing up with her father imprisoned for murder. I don’t think such
a thing can be “softened.” I think it ought to be dealt with, openly and
honestly.

Even during midday, when I’m wide awake, I hear the words
of Judge Holcomb echoing: “Might there have been an intervention that could
have saved this child’s life?”

Of course, an intervention could have saved her. Absolutely. Sarah,
alone, could have offered her daughter salvation. Instead, she betrayed
her.

Karly’s death is not simply a tragedy— it’s an unforgivable shame. It takes
the complicity of a community, and a nation, to stand by in silence as a child
is tortured to death. That ought to give us all nightmares of children weeping.