Small Sacrifices (40 page)

They had met first in late July in a park along her mailroute in Cottage Grove. He was a teacher on his lunchbreak; she was a mail carrier but she still planned to become a doctor--once she

got her life and family back on track. The scene was tailormade for the first chapter of a Harlequin Romance novel--the beautiful tanned blonde woman in walking shorts, a cast on her arm, her "uge greenish-yellow eyes meeting those of the wonderfully handsome

bachelor.

He knew who she was; he would have had to have been in

Siberia or illiterate not to know. He knew about the rumors, but 272 ANN RULE

he couldn't picture her as a murderess. She looked so wholesome, and so sad behind her obvious effort to be cheerful.

Matt Jensen was very tall with bright blue eyes, black hair, beard, and moustache--Diane's idea of a perfect male. He was younger than Diane by a year or so, even though the beard made him look older. He would be the first "civilian" (nonpostal) Diane had dated for a long, long, time.

Jensen remembers when he'd first heard about the shooting.

"I'd been away for a week's vacation, and I got back to the Eugene area the Monday after the shooting. I'd left this quiet little area, and a lot of things happened that weekend: a bank robbery, a resignation of a police chief, and the Downs shooting.

"So--yeah--I remembered it."

Later, Matt spoke to Diane in the park. "I think most people had made up their minds that she was guilty--and I hadn't. I couldn't believe it--I wouldn't allow myself to think that anyone-not anyone I was sitting there talking with--could do that. We discussed children. I have a child by a former marriage--in the same age bracket. No, I couldn't believe she'd done it." Matt withheld judgment. He felt sorry for Diane; he was nice to her. They talked once in the park and then, two weeks later, they met in the park again. Diane had had a dream; she said she needed to tell him about it. It had been a wonderful dream in a way--but not when she had to wake up.

The sunny park grew chill and even the bird songs seemed hushed as she spun out the dream for him.

"Christie came to me, and I asked her how she found me, and she said, 'Cheryl brought me'--and then Cheryl came walking out of the shadows and there was blood on her shirt and stuff; She had two little holes in her chest. I asked her, I said, 'Cheryl, I thought you were dead!' And she just goes, 'No, I was faking it. I knew they were going to take Christie away, and she wouldn't be able to get back to you.' So Cheryl brought Christie back, and then Cheryl showed us how to sneak Danny out of Sacred Heart and all that good stuff. It was just wonderful. Cheryl knew how to do everything. We were all together again."

Matt felt extremely sorry for Diane as he listened to her wish-fulfilling dream.

j|. Later, Diane would relate the identical dream to KEZI reporter Anne Bradley. Diane's best dreams always involved Cheryl coming back to save all of them with her cleverness, there to lead them out of terrible traps.

Matt told Diane he lived in a little house not too far from the park. She smiled, and repeated his address to him. Of course she knew his address. She was his mail lady.

"I didn't want any involvement," he recalls. "But, somehow, she gave me her phone number--and I gave her mine." Jensen, like most men, thought Diane's figure exceptional-slender and yet full breasted. He was a normal young male, and she was beautiful. Her story of being railroaded by the police fascinated him. But they had no common interests beyond that. She seemed to need a good listener, and that was fine with Matt. He didn't expect to see her again. But, one night--a Friday in August--Diane called Matt Jensen, and asked him if she could come over, just to talk. He told her to come ahead and was somewhat surprised when she brought a bottle of whiskey. She had told him that she didn't drink.

"She lied a lot to me, but I didn't realize it until later." They had a few drinks. Matt smiled at the way Diane downed her whiskey, holding her nose and grimacing. She hated the taste of it.

Jensen had no way of knowing that he'd won a lead role in a now familiar script. Diane could have walked through the part with her eyes closed; the dialogue was new to Matt. They sat on his living room rug and talked, but he made one proviso. "Look, 'I don't want to know about anything that happened that night. I don't want to know--I don't care to know."

Diane seemed to appreciate that; she'd talked about "that night" enough already. Despite his treachery, Diane talked about Lew; she always did, even with other men. "I have a reminder of him with me that will never go away," she confided.

"What do you mean?" Matt asked.

She looked at him with half-closed eyes, smiled slightly, and said, "I'll show you."

She stood up gracefully and removed her blouse, turning so Matt could see the red rose etched into the skin of her shoulder. She wore no bra, and she turned more, revealing her naked

breasts. She didn't bother to put her blouse back on; she remained topless, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Matt Jensen's fireplace.

They were intimate that night. It was pleasant for him, but there was no commitment; they were both in their twenties, members of a generation with relaxed sexual mores.

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"I didn't think much of it--but she seemed so desperate to have a friend, someone to talk to, to be with."

Matt Jensen was hesitant about seeing Diane again; Cottage Grove was a small community, and everyone knew Diane Downs. He didn't care to parade down Main Street with her. A double standard perhaps, but a familiar one. The woman was notorious, mostly through her own PR efforts; she was not the ideal companion for a young educator.

Diane had had plans for Matt Jensen almost from the first time she saw him--something beyond casual sex and light conversation. And yet they didn't have intercourse again during the rest of the summer. He had never intended to go that far in the first place and had been surprised; he was careful to forestall the opportunity for more physical intimacy. He was unaware that when Diane Downs wanted a man it was virtually impossible to walk away from her. In the beginning, Matt was on hold, an alternate. When Diane realized that Lew was truly lost to her, she felt a tremendous vacuum.

She chose Matt to fill it.

It was September when Diane's pursuit of Matt Jensen began in earnest. Their dating lasted only three weeks, with Diane instigating their meetings. She called to ask Matt to go to a movie, or she brought Chinese food over to his little house, spreading out the little "goldfish" white buckets with great ceremony. Once they had breakfast together at a restaurant owned by the mayor of Cottage Grove. Matt squirmed some at that, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings.

They had so little to talk about. The subject of the shooting had been declared off-limits, and Diane's interests didn't coincide with Matt's. When they watched movies on TV, or listened to music, it was OK--but there was nothing more there. At least not for Jensen. Diane didn't read much. He was surprised to find that she often spoke in platitudes and homilies, sounding like a school girl's C-theme. ("You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink--", "Everything always turns out for the best.") At first, he thought she was joking, and he laughed aloud. But she was serious. It was as if Diane didn't really understand the way

'-humans were supposed to feel and used her trite quotations to guide herself.

She told Matt she found him an "escape from all the craziness." She clung to him more tightly.

During the single time they'd been intimate, Diane had been an eager sex partner, but something held Jensen back from further intercourse. In the end, in spite of her attempts at seduction, they would sleep together only three times.

Diane's views on sex matched the rest of her conversation-stilted and slightly unreal. Saccharine. "To me, sex is the ultimate way of showing a loved one that you love them," she wrote to him once. "I have tried to perfect the art of sex, to get as much pleasure out of it as possible, and to make my partner as happy as can be. Animals have sex outside of love. I feel that I am above animals. I have a heart and soul. I feel good and bad. Love is expressed through trust, hugs, remembering his favorite food, and patience. But sex is probably the most pleasant way of saying, 'I care.' "

More effective, perhaps, then sending a Hallmark card, Jensen thought wryly.

Diane had long since learned that men hated to be owned. She talked a carefree game, insisting to Matt that she wanted only friendship. She wrote him another-transparent letter: "A woman is like a delicate butterfly sitting in the palm of your hand. If you

try to close your fingers around her too tightly so she can't leave--she will be crushed and die. I prefer to think of the butterfly--not as a woman--but as love . . . Love cannot be suffocating or imprisoning. It must be free and giving." Matt Jensen was beginning to feel like a cloistered butterfly, despite all Diane's platitudes oh the benefits of freedom. His stomach churned at the sight of a red, white, and blue mail jeep. Diane knew where he worked, where he parked his car, his license plate number. She left notes for him under his windshield wipers. "She staked me out," he recalls ruefully. "She knew when I got home for lunch--or after work--and there she was at the door. She'd stop by my job."

. Clearly, she considered him her candidate for a full-time I lover. She told him that there were no other men in her life, but then she would slip and talk about going to bars, about all the men who were hitting on her. "There were so many different sides of her--even then. She was manipulating me.

"She played the vulnerable little girl with me--and told me

"ow the police had mistreated her. I truly felt sorry for her--at .first." Diane told Matt that he was the only person she knew who 276 ANN RULE

could carry on an intelligent conversation. His brain was very I important to her, she said. But all conversations with Diane were ultimately one-sided monologues, and as innately intelligent as I she was—she was no intellectual.

When Jensen realized that she wasn't going to stop popping in to see him, he gave notice to his landlord and rented a place on the river twenty miles away. "I didn't tell her where it was." J

Christie was making good progress with Carl Peterson. He'd found her guarded and wary at first, but they'd come to the point where she almost felt safe enough with him to share secrets. Fred Hugi was so encouraged by Christie's progress that he had filed an affidavit with the juvenile court:

I talked with Dr. Carl V. Peterson ... on Tuesday,

September 27, 1983 and Wednesday, September 28, 1983. Dr. Peterson informed me that it is his professional opinion that Christie saw the person that shot her on May 19, 1983, and that Christie will be able to describe that person and events surrounding the shooting in the future. Dr. Peterson informed me he believes Christie should be able to do this within a period of four to six months. Dr. Peterson is not in a position to know whether Christie's recollection will corroborate or contradict Elizabeth Diane Downs' recollection of the event. . . Hugi asked for a continuance of the matter "due to its extreme gravity and importance to all the parties. I believe that in fairness to all parties, the case should not be litigated . . . while there remains a reasonable probability that Christie Downs may be able to provide crucial eyewitness testimony as to the

identity of her assailant. In a case of this magnitude, we should only proceed with the best evidence that can be reasonably obtained."

The delay was granted.

Dr. Peterson sent a letter to Susan Staffel in late September. "he had asked him to evaluate the appropriateness of eventual

visits between Christie and Diane.

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As you know, I have seen Christie on an approximate weekly basis since therapy was initiated on 6-29-83. A letter

to your office on 9-14-83 outlined progress through that date. I have since seen Christie three additional sessions ... I have helped Christie to access some of the feelings she associates with her sister's death. Throughout the duration of that work, I have continued to be struck by the strength of Christie's resistance or blockage to accessing feelings she undoubtedly associates with the perpetrator of this crime. In part

because of her blocked feelings, I am of the opinion that Christie is currently incapable of adequately protecting herself from the prospect of further emotional damage. As if

sensing her own emotional vulnerability, Christie does not display the near universal strong desire to be reunited with her mother that typically follows a separation . . .

Peterson said that any visits between mother and daughter would have to be closely supervised. He hoped to meet with Diane before she was reunited with Christie so that he could help her support Christie.

In the interim, Christie and Danny were doing better and better, living at the Slavens' house. For the first time in their lives, they lived in a child-centered home. Ray and Evelyn noticed though that Christie still tended to feel personally responsible for anything that went wrong. It was as if someone had said to her since birth, "It's all your fault, Christie." Steve Downs made a trip to Eugene in late September to see Christie and Danny. He invited Diane's brother Paul to have dinner with them one evening. Paul reported to Diane that Christie looked fine and that Danny had laughed a lot and made cute remarks.

Fred Hugi knew Steve was in town, but he couldn't follow Downs twenty-four hours a day. Hugi did not know that the Children's Services Division now allowed Steve to take the children out with him all day, unsupervised. If it had even occurred to Hugi that such a thing might happen, there would have been fireworks. Nor did Hugi know that Steve Downs was talking and meeting with Paul Frederickson and other members of Diane's t family.

Paul told Steve how lonely Diane was for Christie and Danny, what a rough time she was having. Time and distance had soft