Sex. Murder. Mystery. (58 page)

“Look, you guys,” Mary Kay said, gesturing to her pregnant belly. “I'm six months! Can you believe it's number five?”

Amber and Angie were breathless. Though they hadn't seen Mary since July, they had talked on the phone at Christmas and there had been no mention of a pregnancy.

Mary Kay kept rambling.

“Oh, I missed your birthday,” she said. “I'm really sorry!”

The sisters said that was all right. They had come to see her because they had heard some things on the television news about “some allegations.”

The smile vanished. “Great,” Mary Kay said, “this will probably be in the newspapers tomorrow.”

Then she started to cry and slumped back into the driver's seat and fiddled with the keys, still in the ignition. Amber and Angie moved closer and stood next to her; the rain fell hard, but it didn't matter much to them.

Mary Kay admitted that she had stayed in the van in the driveway without getting out because she thought some reporters might have followed her.

And then she talked for the next hour or two, and though the former neighbors and favorite baby-sitters knew nothing about what Mary Kay Letourneau was saying, they didn't ask any questions to fill in the gaps. In fact, neither said very much at all. They didn't know what to say. They didn't know if she was confessing to a crime or telling them the whole thing was some big mistake.

Mary talked in a stream-of-consciousness manner that was almost incoherent and then stopped to cry. Her tears seemed to fuel her and she would talk some more.

Amber and Angie started to cry, too.

Mary Kay said she had just returned from “a meeting with the boy's mom.” They were trying to work things out. The boy's mother was very upset; she had just found out. It was a mess that she was trying to sort out.

“They say I can't see him until he is eighteen,” she said.

“That's a long time,” Amber said, offering the kind of remark used to soothe.

“Don't tell me that's a long time,” she said, almost as a wish that it wouldn't be so. Tears convulsed her once more. Mary Kay was coming undone and the Fish sisters didn't know how to make her feel better.

At one point, she turned around and said, “Steven actually asked me if I loved the boy more than I loved him. Can you believe that he would say that?”

“What did you say to him?” one asked.

“I explained to him, no, I just love you in different ways.”

Both sisters were sobbing at the thought of Steven and his brother and sisters dealing with the terrible allegation against their mother.

“Amber,” Mary said, almost teasingly. “I've never seen this side of Angie, this is so odd.”

The comment hurt. Angie had never been the “emotional” one, but she had always loved Mary Kay and her family. As much as her sister, though she didn't always show it. As the time flew by, the girls noticed that Steve Letourneau was home, peering out the window every so often. One asked if they could go inside. Mary Kay shook her head.

“Steve's really upset about this,” she said. “I don't want to bring any of this inside. He found some letters that say how I feel about the boy.”

“…
sometimes I feel your kisses, but you're not there. I miss the sounds we make together. I want your arms around me holding me forever
… ”

A couple of hours went by and Amber and Angie still felt as though they didn't know what had really happened. It was late, well past one A.M. They hugged Mary Kay good-bye and she asked them to keep in touch. She especially wanted to be informed on what the media was saying about her. The sisters agreed.

“I'll call you soon,” she said.

On their way back to Carriage Row, the sisters decompressed. They were confused and in shock. They believed the allegations were not true. Mary Kay hadn't come out and said there had been any inappropriate contact. If there hadn't been any inappropriate contact, then the whole thing would blow over.

“I don't think she touched him,” Angie said.

Amber wasn't so sure.

“No, they kissed, she said.”

“No way,” Angie said.

“Yeah, Mary Kay said they kissed.”

Angie disagreed. “I didn't hear her say that.”

“She did. She might have said it under her breath… 'All it was was a kiss… ' “

Mary Kay mentioned a “meeting with the boy's mom” that had taken place before the twins met her in her driveway, but she didn't elaborate on what had transpired. In fact, it had not gone well. As most would expect, Soona Fualaau was not a happy womaa
How could she be?
Her son's teacher, only three years younger than herself, was pregnant by her son Vili. Soona was overwhelmed and angry. She had seen her son go off with Mary, she had seen a closeness develop between the pair.
But this? This was too much
. She brought the director of the Boys and Girls Club at White Center to keep her from decking Mary Letourneau when they met at the Des Moines marina in front of Anthony's Homeport restaurant. Mary gave Vili's mother a letter explaining her feelings.

Soona recalled the encounter later: “She kept saying the sex was wrong, but I do not believe that she fully understands that she had crossed the boundary that should never have been crossed… She never said 'I'm really sorry.' And it goes back to that I think she's crazy.”

A caring woman who was smarter than her resume, Soona Fualaau was charitable toward the teacher carrying her grandchild.

“She really needs help because I think she's living in fantasy land.”

Chapter 38

IT SIMPLY COULDN'T be true. Normandy Park neighbor Tina Bernstein had hoped that whatever was unfolding at the Letourneau place next door was the result of a disgruntled student, an enemy, maybe even an off-the-wall mistake. She also considered the possibility that Mary Kay might have been framed, maybe even by Vili Fualaau. Tina struggled with what she'd gleaned from early news reports, because she had little recent firsthand knowledge of what Mary and Steve had been up to. She hadn't seen Mary much over the course of the past few months—not much since the summer when school closure meant the neighborhood was the center of activity for all moms and kids.

As she ran through the scenarios of what had happened—what she had allowed herself to take in—Tina felt there had to be an explanation for it.

Maybe whatever happened, only happened once, she thought. Yes, I'll bet it only happened once
.

Tina was at a loss for what to do and she thought of flowers.
Mary loved flowers
. She drove to the QFC grocery store that sits at the bottom of the neighborhood hill and bought a mixed bouquet from the in-store florist. She wanted Mary to know that she still cared about her and what was happening, and in the end, she'd be there for her if Mary needed her.

She parked at her house next door and walked up the Letourneaus' sidewalk to the front door and knocked.

Mary timidly poked her head from the doorway.

Tina could already feel the tears coming on.

“You need a little sunshine around here,” she said, handing over the flowers and reaching out to hug her neighbor.

Tina Bernstein would never forget that day. Seldom had she seen such trouble in someone's eyes.

“She was very hesitant to say anything and I didn't want to pry. It was very personal. We didn't have that type of relationship, but yet I felt if you've been wrongly accused here, maybe there was something she wanted to say… we started talking. I asked if I could come in. She looked like she needed someone to talk to. She was pretty hysterical. She had a hard time stopping crying. Steve was gone. Out for a run or something.”

Inside, when her composure came, Mary focused her anger on Steve and their marriage.

“If you haven't noticed,” she said, “our marriage hasn't been that good.”

Her tears drying on her cheeks, Mary went on to tell Tina how indifferent Steve had been to her father's bout with prostate cancer. When she'd learned of the dire prognosis more than a year before, Steve had offered no comfort. The clock was ticking on a great man's life—a wonderful father, a brilliant legislator, a candidate for the presidency—and Steve Letourneau was nothing short of impassive about it. It hurt her. At a time when she needed him most, Mary said, her husband turned his back on her.

Tina knew there were two sides to every story; every broken marriage had distinct versions of why everything went down in flames. Mary blamed Steve and Tina didn't defend him.

“Steve did have an attitude,” Tina Bernstein said a couple of years later. “He had possibly a chip on his shoulder. Yes, there were times when he could be really nice, very pleasant to talk to. Treated the kids well. There were times when he… ” Tina hesitated. “Let's say I could see what Mary was saying about certain attitudes he would have toward people. I understood what she was saying… I don't want to give examples, though.”

Tina didn't ask about the potential charges, other than to see if Mary had legal representation. Mary said she had talked with a lawyer in Bellevue, but wasn't sure.

“Let's talk to Dave Gehrke and see what he says. He might know someone,” Tina offered.

A few minutes later, Steve, looking glum, came home and made his way to the back bedroom. Mary caught his eyes, and pointed to the bouquet.

“Oh, look,” she said, “Tina brought us flowers.” She tried to smile.

Steve said nothing and left the room.

This is pretty intense, Tina thought
.

When it was time to leave, Tina hugged Mary once more. The shattered woman told her neighbor that she thought everything would work out. She thought things could be resolved within the family. The family would be moving after the school year—a school year that Mary intended to finish at Shorewood.

“I did something very wrong,” she said. “I made a very bad mistake.”

When Tina got home she told her Boeing worker husband, Lee, what was going on and Lee got on the phone immediately to call David Gehrke, a lawyer, neighbor, and a buddy since high school. It was a rough week all around for those with ties to the little pod of houses in that Normandy Park neighborhood. Ellen Douglas's brother—and one of David's closest friends—had died in a tragic motorcycle accident just as the investigation into Mary Kay Letourneau began.

Married to a schoolteacher, David Gehrke was by his own admission a late bloomer. At almost fifty, he was the father of two small boys, with a “busy enough” law practice in Seattle. He could be doing better, but he had no real complaints. He was a sensitive man with eyes that welled with tears when emotional subjects were broached. People who knew that side of him joked that he was the “first lawyer known to have a heart.” He wore a bracelet with the initials WWJD—What Would Jesus Do. David and his family lived in a house above Pacific Highway in Des Moines that was only a stopping spot until they could build a dream home on property in the Normandy Park neighborhood where the Douglases, Bernsteins, and Letourneaus resided.

“It's Mary,” Lee said on the phone that day.

David instantly knew about whom and what Lee was referring. He listened while his friend filled in some blanks, saying that Mary was freaking out, worried about the media, worried about what she was going to do.

Poor Mary, David thought. How terrible to be accused of something you didn't do
.

David knew the Letourneaus only casually. He knew Mary Kay better than Steve, whom he thought was a commercial fisherman.

“He was just never around,” he said later.

With people coming in for the wake for Ellen Douglas's brother on Saturday, it wasn't the most convenient time to arrange a meeting. Mary Kay and David talked briefly later that night and agreed to talk in-depth at the Gehrkes' later that weekend. When Sunday came, the pair sat for three hours at the dining room table overlooking a backyard with a swing set and littered with soccer balls and other boy stuff. Bagels from the morning sat on a plate. Mary Kay sipped tea, told her story, and wondered about her options.

Knowing Mary as he did, at first the lawyer assumed that the charges were unfounded. Mary set him straight.

“It's all true,” she said. “We are in love.” She went on to describe the boy in “glowing” terms. He was a great artist and a sensitive soul. He was the love of her life. Mary said she and Vili walked with the same rhythm and saw the wonders of life through the same eyes.

That complicated matters. Big-time. David told her that the law didn't recognize the possibility of love between a thirteen-year-old and a grown woman. In fact, Washington State had recently drawn a hard line and changed the statutory rape law—consensual sex between an adult and a child. It was now called “rape of a child.”

The options included denying the charges and fighting it out in court. If she pleaded not guilty, David said she could suggest that the boy had been the aggressor, or maybe it was all some teenage fantasy that went too far. Maybe the sex never really happened. Mary Kay saw that scenario as ridiculous. Almost laughable. She didn't think it would work. “I'm carrying his baby,” she said.

Scratch that
.

Another option was pleading guilty and seeking treatment in lieu of any jail or prison time. From what he knew of her, David considered Mary a perfect candidate for treatment. She was a first-time offender. There had been no other victims. She was highly regarded by the community.
She wasn't some pervert
. The only hitch was that by seeking treatment she'd have to admit she had a problem. She'd have to register as a deviant, a sex offender. The program that David Gehrke considered her ticket out of serious prison time was the result of Washington's Special Sex Offenders Sentencing Act or SSOSA. The 1984 law allowed for supervised outpatient treatment for sex offenders with no other felony convictions. In reality, it was a brutal regimen of counseling, drugs, behavior modification, and constant supervision. Some sex offenders who'd tried it said they preferred prison—or castration. Female sex offenders were so rare that Washington didn't have a program in place at the women's prison.

The choice was not pretty.

Mary Kay wasn't in tears that afternoon, though she might have been if she fully understood the restrictions that David Gehrke said would come with a SSOSA program. She left the meeting seemingly upbeat. Somehow it would work out. She didn't even think it was a crime, and maybe if that was understood by others things would be all right.