PROLOGUE
Ill
There is no more idyllic spot in May than the WillametteValley
that cradles Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. Sheltered by the
Cascade Range to the east and the steel-blue and purple ridges of
the coastal mountains on the western horizon, the valley was an
oasis for pioneers more than a century ago. It remains an oasis
today. Rivers thread their way through Eugene and Springfield:
the Willamette, the McKenzie, the Mohawk, the Little Mohawk--
nourishing the land.
Eugene and Springfield are sister cities--but far from twins.
Eugene, with a population of 100,000, is bigger, brighter, and far
more sophisticated. Eugene has the University of Oregon and the
prestigious Hult Center for the Performing Arts. Eugene is the
runners' mecca of the world--spawner of champion after champion;
it has been estimated that one out of three of its citizens run
regularly. Not jog--run. Eugene is fitness personified, with bicyclists'
paths emblazoned along the edges of even the busiest y?
downtown street, sacrosanct. Eugene is the successful sister of "
the paired cities, cool and slender, professional. Her restaurants
serve artichoke and ricotta pie, salads with raspberry vinegar,
Brie and pate and wild mushroom and sorrel soup, and vie with
one another to discover ever more obscure spices.
Springfield, half Eugene's size, is the sister who never graduated
from high school, who works for Weyerhaueser or Georgia- pacific, and no longer notices the acrid smell. People in Spring"eld
work a forty- or fifty-, or sixty-, hour week and, if they still ^ed exercise, they go bowling or to a country-western dancing Bvern. The appetizers in a good Springfield restaurant are carrot ^icks, celery, pickled beets and soda crackers; the entree is
xcellent chicken-fried steak or prime rib. The main street is ailed Main Street and it wears its neon signs in proud prolifera
4 ANN RULE
tion. Excepting Portland, Springfield is the largest industrial region
in Oregon, and yet pioneers' descendants cling to tradition
even as factories threaten to obliterate the old days. It is a city
unpretentious and homey.
A long time back, Clint Eastwood lived in Springfield for
a while.
The dipping, curving Belt Line freeway connects Eugene and
Springfield, and their boundaries merge into one another. Some
citizens live in Eugene and work in Springfield--or commute to
Eugene from neat ranch houses in Springfield. Both cities have
wonderful parks and spectacular scenery. Between the two, everything
that anyone might seek--barring tropical temperatures--is
available.
Willamette Valley winters are long and dismal for rain-haters,
clouds hanging so low that they obscure even the huge buttes
looming north and south of Eugene. In May when the sun glows
and the rivers have absorbed the rain storms, it is as if the gray
days never were. Oaks and maples leaf out, brilliant against the
darker green of fir and pine. The air is drenched with the sweetness
of fresh-cut rye grass, wild roses, strawberries, and a million
bearded irises. Beneath this sweetness: the pungent lacing of
onions, sawdust, cedar, and the fecund smell of good red earth,
furrowed and waiting for seed.
May, 1984.
It was ironic that it should be May again. Four seasons had
come and gone since it happened. May to May. Neat. Some
slight sense of order finally after months of chaos and uncertainty.
Oregon has good springs and bad springs, depending on the
point of view. This May was not good. The wind that whipped
around the Hilton Hotel and the Lane County Courthouse was as
sodden as a handkerchief drenched with tears. Rain pelted and
slashed and dripped, finally trapping itself in small torrents in the
gutters at Oak and Eighth Streets. The first day of the trial so
many had waited for was a day to stay at home, light a fire, and
read a good book.
And still the parking lot across the street from the courthouse
was full, and the Hilton had dozens of rooms reserved for out-oftown
media.
The carnival began where the elevator doors opened onto the
courthouse's third-floor lobby. Cameras and lights and reporters
and microphones. Technicians laying cable along the floor, cov-
SMALL SACRIFICES 5
ering it carefully with silver duct tape. Photographers leaning
nrecariously over the "No pictures beyond here" barrier, pressins
their luck for a forbidden candid shot. The hall was filled--not
with sadness, but with excited expectancy.
The would-be gallery lined up--a hundred, two hundred peonie
shivering and drenched, women mostly, hoping to be admitted'
to the inner sanctum of Courtroom Number Three, to pass
beyond the double oak doors whose two tiny windows were covered
with butcher paper blocking even so much as a peek inside.
Uniformed deputies and a thick rope attached to a heavy steel
stanchion held them back. The women, and a sprinkling of
embarrassed-looking men, carried raincoats and lunches in precisely
creased brown bags. Those first in line had been there for
hours. Occasionally, necessities of nature forced one or another
to dash around the corner to the restrooms, a neatly folded
raincoat left to save a place in line. The fabric marker was always
honored.
Oregonians, all Northwesterners, are a civilized breed. Even
so, when the doors finally opened, there was a stampede. Two
little old ladies were carried along in the surging tide of human
bodies, their black, laced shoes inches above the floor. Unruffled,
they sailed in, and found two narrow spots on the long benches,
hats still firmly planted on their heads.
The long wait promised to be worthwhile. Advocacy both for
and against the defendant was passionate. The gallery murmured
and twittered; spectators half-rose to crane their necks for a
closer look at the principals--mostly at the defendant.
Few eyes lingered long on Fred Hugi, the lone assistant g
district attorney who would be prosecuting this case for the State.
Thirty-nine years old, his dark hair already salt-and-peppered,
Hugi had shouldered the final responsibility for bringing the defendant
to trial. Tall, lean (or downright skinny, depending . . .),
tough as whipcord, he wore a moustache that gave him the look
°f a man from another, earlier century--some frontier lawman or ^dge, maybe, peering solemnly from a browning tintype.
From time to time, Hugi's brown eyes swept over the court- ^om. They seemed to fix on no one, and they revealed nothing. rL^ glanced over his notes on the long yellow legal pad. Behind hls tightly capped facade, he was champing at the bit, eager to get on with it. He was neither pessimistic nor elated; he was "^mensely relieved to find himself at last in court. By avocation a
°ng-distance runner, Hugi saw the weeks ahead as a marathon--
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6 ANN RULE
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steady, determined pacing after meticulous training. Brilliant and
stubborn--no, tenacious--Fred Hugi never gave up on anything
he set out to do, even though his singlemindedness had been
known to irritate the hell out of people around him.
The words before him blurred. No matter. He was ready. He
knew it all by heart; he could make his opening statement in his
sleep. He'd lain awake too many long nights, worrying this case--
seeing it from one angle, and then reversing it, turning it in his
mind like a Rubik's Cube. Sometimes he suspected he knew more
about the defendant than he did about his own wife after almost
two decades of marriage. It was a good thing Joanne understood
him, accepted that her husband had to do what he had to do, and
left him alone, unquestioning; he'd been obsessed with this case
for a year.
The defendant sat so close to him now that with the slightest
extension of his right elbow, their arms would touch. Hugi caught
the scent of jail soap and a faint whiff of acrid perspiration. He
was accustomed to the peculiar economy of space in Lane County
courtrooms. The prosecutor, the defendant, and the defense attorney
sat adjacent to one another along one nest of tables. Normally,
the State and the Defense in a major trial have their own
space, but these battle lines were only imaginary, drawn in the
air--as thick and impenetrable as iron walls. Fred Hugi sat on the
far left, the defendant sat in the middle, and Jim Jagger, attorney
for the defense, sat on the far right. They composed the triangle
around which everything else would revolve.
Hugi saw that the accused seemed confident, rolling--as
always--with any punch, leaning over often to whisper and laugh
in Jagger's ear, ignoring the prosecutor. That was fine with him.
He had taken infinite pains to be seen as only "a dopey guy," an
unknown factor. The defendant clearly viewed him as negligible.
No threat. That was exactly the way Hugi wanted it.
He, on the other hand, had tremendous respect for his opponent.
Smarter than hell, a quick study, and, through the defense's
rights of discovery, aware of his whole case going in. The worthiest
of adversaries, armed with a clever attorney, and backed,
seemingly, by a huge fan club.
It was bizarre that the crimes the defendant was accused of defied credulity. Their very nature threatened to turn the tide
against the State. Too cruel to believe.
Fred Hugi had waited so long for this moment. Days had
become weeks, and weeks months--months that had promised to
______SMALL SACRIFICES 7
stretch into a lifetime. This was the case that appeared initially to
he simple--even ordinary in a macabre way--and easy to adjudicate.
He'd been hoping to be entrusted with a murder case that
might demand much more of him. Something interesting. Something
that would challenge him, push him to the wall, and hone his
trial expertise. When the Downs case came along, he had made
the erroneous assumption that it would be over in a day or so,
that it would take just long enough to clear to make him lose his
place in the long line of assistant DA's waiting for a "good"
homicide. ^:
Easy. It had been hell. There was every indication that it
would continue to be hell. There had never been a single moment
when this somber, intense prosecutor had shouted "Aha! Now
we've got it! From here on, it's a shoo-in."
H A year in Vietnam had tested Fred Hugi severely; a year
jousting with this media-savvy defendant, and with at least half
the population of Eugene and vicinity, had been worse. Prosecuting
a defendant like this--for particularly heinous crimes--scraped
roughly across the grain of middle-American mores. Fred Hugi
knew he was sniping at traditions as entrenched as Mom and
apple pie. His eyes slid again over the packed gallery and he
winced at the row upon row of "concerned" citizens.
He figured they sure as hell weren't there for him. Solid
support for the accused. If he recognized this outpouring of sympathy,
he knew the jury would see it too. It did not occur to him
that some of the spectators might be there simply to hear the juicy
details of the defendant's purportedly promiscuous sex life, or
even that some of them might be his cheering section.
He felt quite isolated. That was OK; he was accustomed to it.
Fred Hugi believed absolutely that what he was doing was
right--that he had no other way to go. He had someone to answer
to and if he lost, he would lose big.
And so would they.
He looked at the jury. Twelve jurors; three alternates. Hugi
had rather unorthodox theories about juries. He considered the ^remony of voir dire to pick unprejudiced jurors basically bullshit,
easily abused, and a vehicle for influencing likely jurors to ^e a position before they heard any evidence at all. He was no
S°od at it; he knew he had neither charm nor charisma and he ^tested having to play the game.
Now Jim Jagger was good at it. Jagger and the prospective
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8 ANN RULE
jurors had chuckled and chatted. Hugi had been content to play
off Jagger. As long as his opponent hadn't attempted to slant facts
that might come out in the trial ahead, Hugi kept his mouth shut.
But he tensed when he heard the defense attorney ask about
religious affiliations and insinuate references to his own church
work. Still, Hugi was relieved that it was Jim Jagger up there and
not Melvin Belli, who had been scheduled to head the defense
team. Belli would surely have held press parties on the top of the
Eugene Hilton every night, effectively turning this bleakest of
tragedies into a media circus. |
Hugi had just about had it with the press; he glanced at them,
packed into the first row behind the rail. He suspected for most of
them this was all headlines only—not pain and blood and tears.
They were as bad as the gallery—worse, really; many of them had
pandered to the suspect, dancing obligingly to whichever tune
was called. Well, now they'd get their headlines all right. He
couldn't stop that, but they might be in for a surprise or two.
Hugi hadn't changed anything about himself for this trial.
Balking at the advice of his courtroom expert—DA's Investigator,
Ray Broderick—he'd refused to grow his hair longer so he'd look
less rigid. Nor would Hugi consider modifying his apparel. In
court he always wore a conservative, off-the-rack suit with baggy
trousers, or a blazer and slacks, a regimentally striped tie, and •
heavy, polished, wing-tipped shoes. He rarely smiled.
Hugi's strategy in this trial was to be a teacher. He was going
to show the jury exactly what had happened, presenting some —
extremely technical evidence and testimony. Would the jurors •
understand it? Would they even try to understand it—or would it
strike them as repetitive and boring? And one of his witnesses
was very fragile, in danger of being broken beyond repair.
The trial would be like walking on the cutting edge of a knife. •
With it all, he was as ready as he would ever be. He would i|
demonstrate what he believed devoutly to be the truth. That was •
what justice was about. The truth. No frills. No high jinks. No
pratfalls. I
Hugi expected that he would have to play catch-up after voir
dire. He assumed he wasn't likeable, so why should the jurors
warm to him? He knew some people—particularly the cops—delighted in calling him an asshole. Hell, sometimes his own
jinvestigators called him worse. When he was working on a case,
he could be a juggernaut—and Lord help anyone who got in the
SMALL SACRIFICES 9
way or failed to complete an assignment. But he never asked
anyone to do more than he himself did.
TheJ&oil-dys^ hadn't been as bad as Hugi expected. He'd
used all his challenges, and he still had some reservations about
the final twelve, but basically it was a crapshoot. He would have
been just as happy to pick the first twelve people who came out of
the jury pool. Same difference.
All he asked were a dozen intelligent human beings with
common sense, salt-of-the-earth people who couldn't be flimflammed.
He knew that most people are frightened of making a
decision. Americans have become so used to "seeing" the crime
committed on television that anything else--including real life--
becomes fraught with "reasonable doubt."
He looked at his jury now, sitting up there, getting used to
their new roles. How many of them had guts enough to look
someone in the eye and say straight out, You're a-murderer! All
he needed was one bozo who had already made up his mind and
four to six weeks of trial would be down the tubes.
Fred Hugi was asking for a conviction on murder. He needed
all twelve of those jurors. He couldn't afford to lose even one of
them.
The defendant only needed one to beat the murder charge.
Everybody on the West Coast had heard the story by now, and
half seemed to suspect a "railroad." Hugi thought of the stacks of
letters in his files, calling him and the cops everything from cruel
fascists to crooked grandstanders. Was one of those fifty percent