Sex. Murder. Mystery(162)

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.