Small Sacrifices (8 page)

"That's where it isT'

Williams shrugged. "We don't have the reports yet. I'm laying odds though."

Williams's remark didn't make much of an impression on

Hugi. It was the kind of banter that proliferated in cops and DA's offices. He moved to another desk and listened to that first sketchy story of the shootings: a mother and three kids. He knew he was next up.

District Attorney Horton assigned homicide cases on a rotating basis. Hugi had been slated to prosecute the first murder case in Lane County as April ran into May. On May 1, a thirty-twoyear-old California man was shot to death outside a Eugene tavern. The defense indicated it would employ a "Vietnam delayed-stress syndrome" tactic. That would have been "Fred Hugi's murder," but Dave Nissman, another assistant DA, had evinced interest in prosecuting a delayed-stress case. He asked Hugi to trade and Hugi had stepped aside gladly. He'd seen and heard enough of Vietnam first hand to last him a lifetime. And he thought delay ed^ress

reaction was a cop-out. Let Nissman have it.

That meant that this shooting was sure to be his, and Hugi ^asn't particularly fired up about it from what he'd heard so far.

c.very attorney has his own set of criteria of what makes a ' 'good "onucide," pragmatic standards set apart from emotion. The least

-^ught-aiter cases involved bar fights and bum knifings. It was "^d to wring sympathy out of a jury for victims who hadn't kerned to care much about themselves or anybody else.

, Hugi kept a mental list of pluses and minuses to rate homi\u^ cases. Pluses were: respected and innocent victims; victims

50 ANN RULE

and suspects who didn't know each other; multiple victims; lengthy difficult investigations; suspects who tried to evade conviction rather than confessing. Few assistant district attorneys yearn to prosecute a case where the killer is found standing over the body with a smoking gun. The challenging cases polish skill and set adrenalin flowing. Hugi found circumstantial cases preferable to eyewitness cases; physical and scientific evidence were a lot better than eyewitnesses or confessions. A defendant "innocent by reason of insanity" was to be avoided if at all possible. Other DAs had their own guidelines; this was Fred Hugi's mental list. He was a prosecutor who wanted to feel he'd made a difference in the lives of those he represented. Overwhelming evidence mattered to him only when he was the reason for obtaining that evidence. He didn't want convictions handed to him on a platter.

DA Pat Horton buzzed Hugi's phone and summoned him. |

"Remember I promised you the next homicide case?" Horton asked, r

"Yeah." Hugi answered with moderate enthusiasm. | "Well, you got it." fl Hugi nodded. He didn't even know the names of the victims. He would find out, and then try to piece the case together. If Williams wasn't just blowing smoke--if the mother had shot herself too--it would be over quickly. Mental. Mother goes crazy. Shoots kids. The biggest decision Hugi would have to work out would be which institution to send her to. If it turned out to be a ringer, he'd simply have to get in line again and wait for a better one next time around.

On the otner hand, there were aspects of this case that

interested Fred Hugi. It was too early to tell.

Fred Hugi went back to his office, pulled out a fresh yellow legal pad, and started a list: MAY 20, 1983--THINGS TO DO, and QUESTIONS? Good or bad, if this was his case--and it was--he was going to do it right. He hoped the press wasn't going to build it into a huge sob story, hampering his work, maybe even distorting facts.

Why did Fred Hugi, a private man, a loner, choose to be a courtroom lawyer in the first place? He detested publicity. Unlike many prosecuting attorneys who use publicity as a stepping stone

build a private practice, Hugi had come from a successful rivate practice because he was intrigued with the system and the

^ay it should work.

His goal was quite simple. He wanted only to be the kind of nrosecutor a victim would choose to handle his case, to be "some-The who will make the system work and do whatever it takes to

see that it does work." That he could occasionally be a rescuer or an avenger was the part of his profession that gave him the most satisfaction. Talking with the press gave him the least. Born in the Bronx three months before WE Day, Fred Hugi is third generation American: German-Hungarian (Swiss really), the son and grandson ofmeatcutters. His grandfather was instrumental in starting the first labor organization for meatcutters. His father moved his family out of the Bronx to Woodb ridge. New Jersey, so that Fred and his sister, three years younger, wouldn't have to grow up in the city. And then the elder Hugi rose at four in the morning to commute seventy miles roundtrip to New York. His wife ran a little store in Woodbridge.

Hugi began pre-med studies at Rutgers University. He hated it, but he did like botany and earned a degree in, of all things, forestry. On June 1, 1966, commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, Fred graduated, married Joanne on June 4, and left at once for Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to train with the Army

Corps of Engineers. He had aspired to helicopter pilot training at Rutgers, but it didn't seem fair to pursue such a dangerous avocation now that he had a wife. They were sent next to Fort Lewis south ofTacoma, Washington. It rained constantly. They loved it. Fred and Joanne knew it was only a matter of time before he ^s sent to Vietnam, a conspicuous consumer of second lieutensnts.

He left in May of 1967 and returned exactly a year later. It ^s not the last time that the parameters of a searing experience in Fred Hugi's life would be marked by the coming and going of "ie month of May. Hugi will not speak of Vietnam, except to say ^hat he came back wondering why any man could not be happy as ^ng as he had enough to eat, a roof over his head, and no one mooting at him.

Qualifying for his private pilot's license, Hugi took a job with LQe Simpson Timber Company in Shelton, Washington. The forstry

graduate roved the Olympic Peninsula--not in a plane, but "company jeep--locating scattered plots of timber, measuring

52 ANN RULE

trees, and predicting growth. He liked the outdoors, and he lik^ trees--but he saw the job as a dead end. Hugi soon perceived that

it was not the foresters, but the financial people, who made all the decisions in the timber business.

He went back to college at the University of Oregon on the G.I. Bill, eventually earning both a Masters in Business and a Law Degree. His interest in law had always revolved around defending the innocent. He believed then that the system worked that the defense attorney did protect the innocent who had been falsely accused.

By 1973, Fred Hugi was making a comfortable living in private practice, as a defense attorney. He often ate lunch with the assistant DAs in the courthouse across the street, and he listened fascinated, as they discussed their cases.

"Once I realized how the system worked, I saw that the glamorous law school notion of defending the innocent could best be accomplished from the State's side of the case," Hugi later remarked. "Defendants were not wrongfully accused. It was the innocent victims of crime that needed the protection." On November 12, 1975, Fred Hugi joined the Lane County

District Attorney's Office. A neophyte, he was assigned to prosecute misdemeanors in District Court. At first, there was no pressure. He couldn't worry about how a case was going to turn out if he wanted to because his cases were assigned each evening. When the day was over, that day's cases were over. The next morning, there would be others. Gradually, his case load included a general assortment of offenses from juveniles to manslaughter with an automobile. Eventually, after he paid his dues with misdemeanors, he would work up to felonies. But in the heirarchy of

the DA's office in 1976, Fred Hugi was a long, long way from representing the state in a major murder case.

When he walked away from the Lane County Courthouse, he

could forget it--head up home and be on the river in his drift boat, fishing for steelhead, in half an hour. Sitting in that craft that blends so subtly with the water's own color, he viewed a McKenzie River shoreline much like the nineteenth-century photograph in his office.

Still, Fred Hugi was by nature a workaholic. So was Joanne. They had no children. They had weighed parenthood seriously-But, should they have children, they would want to give them

time and attention. Each of them was entirely involved in a

areer. When Fred was in trial and Joanne had a particularly Difficult problem at the university, they scarcely had time to talk

each other. That was their choice; they were adults. But children deserved more. He had grown too used to staying on the job until midnight if he thought he needed to. When he was

worrying a problem, he closed the rest of the world out. Years oassed and once in a while he and Joanne talked about having lyds but they'd never changed their minds. As each took on more and more career responsibility, they figured it had been the best decision.

On the morning of May 20, 1983, Hugi started to fill in the Things-to-Do list on the neat yellow pad, but something tugged at him, a strangely compelling urgency. He had to get to the hbspital, and he couldn't really explain why. Hugi and Paul Alton, one of the DA's investigators, arrived at McKenzie-Willamette Hospital at 10:00 a.m.

They found Christie and Danny Downs in the ICU, their beds arranged at the top of a light-bulb-shaped room so that the medics could monitor their vital functions at a glance. It was apparent to Hugi and Alton that the kids were desperately injured.

The two men stood quietly at the end of Christie Downs's bed. It was well nigh impossible to see Christie herself through all the tubes, monitor leads, and bandages. A clear oxygen mask was clamped over the lower half of her face; only her thick goldbrown hair, her eyes, and her eyebrows were visible. Her left

hand was heavily bandaged, and so was her chest. Above the transparent mask, she watched them. They could see that she was conscious and alert.

But she looked very small and lost, as if the odds were all against her survival. She was alone, except for doctors and nurses;

there were no family members waiting to see her.

And then Christie's eyes caught Fred Hugi's and locked

there.

Paul Alton glanced over at Hugi, started to say something, ^d paused, astounded. He had never seen Hugi show any emoion

beyond irritation and impatience. There were tears rolling ^wn Hugi's cheeks. Alton looked twice to be sure. He was not mistaken.

P ,1 "^t was ^lsit simple'" Alton remembered. "In that moment, ^d 'adopted' Christie. Nobody was going to hurt her anymore--1101 unless they went through Fred first." 54 ANN RULE

The bonding was as immediate as it was surprising. Fred

Hugi—the man who gave too much of himself to his career to have anything left for kids—was caught unawares. Christie and Danny Downs became, in a heartbeat, his to protect. His to avenge.

He knew full well that there was nothing tangible he could do to stop them from hurting, or dying. And yet he felt compelled to stay with them. As Alton watched, bemused, Hugi pulled up a chair and sat down just outside the globe of the ICU where he could see both youngsters.

He sat there for a long time, and he could hear the machines that kept them alive clicking, blipping, chkting-chkting. Christie and Danny breathed so quietly that he had to check occasionally to be sure that they did, indeed, breathe.

Fred Hugi watched over them—as if by sheer force of will, he could hold death away from them.

On the back of a hospital form headed "24 Hour IV Therapy and Fluid Balance Record," he scribbled notes.

Fri-5/20/83

10:05 McKenzie-Willamette. I

w/8 year-old & Stephen Daniel

Mother due down soon.

Things to Do—Check clothing for stippling.

Go to scene—

Metal detectors.

Beer cans?

I.D. weapon that fired rounds.

When will she leave hospital? Need someone else to talk

w/her—PK? Get tape recorder.

Lew—33? Cheryl—The child that died. 1

Check on stippling on Diane.

Diary

He was starting from scratch. The cops were starting from scratch. None of them even knew yet what kind of gun had fired the shots into the kids. Fred Hugi was just learning their names. It was no r

longer "kids"; it was "Christie" and "Danny" lying there, breathing so laboriously.

This case wasn't going to be so easy after all.

Given his choice, Hugi wouldn't have left the children at all, hut there was so much to do. The list got longer and longer. Each time he was away from Christie and Danny that first Friday, Hugi hurried back to check on their conditions and to sit with them for a while. They were still alone, although their father was said to be on his way from Arizona. Their mother apparently was not well enough yet to leave her own room in the same hospital.

Hugi talked with John Mackey and to the nurses on duty the night before in the ER, gathering their impressions. Mackey felt that the shooter had probably stood near the driver's door--as Diane had described--because of the angle of the children's wounds. Hugi's notes were almost indiscernible hen-scratchings. The river had to be searched; the scene had to be searched. The townhouse on Q Street had to be gone over in daylight. He wanted to confer with Doug Welch and Dick Tracy, and with Sergeant Jerry Smith and Bob Antoine from the Springfield Police Department.

There was so much to catch up with.

I Jim Pex had been up since 2:00 a.m. Pex--formally James 0. Pex--was a Criminalist III with the Oregon State Police Crime Detection Laboratory in Eugene, an expert in forensic science. In demand by dozens of departments in Oregon, he was trying to Juggle the forensic work in too many investigations.

The principle put forth by the great French criminalist Edmund Locard--that the criminal always leaves something of himself (no matter how minute) at the scene of his crime, and always carries something of the scene away with him (again, no matter