Sex. Murder. Mystery(163)
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.
“I didn't think two people being in love could be wrong,” she said later. “I knew that as a teacher it was a big no-no falling in love with a student; a shame on the profession. And I'd have to resign. But a crime? No.”
David Gehrke had the case of his career and he probably didn't know it. Not long after he talked to Mary Kay, he enlisted his friend Robert Huff, a struggling lawyer ten years younger, to help out with the case. Robert Huff was one of those men pushing forty who appeared to favor the Miami Vice stubble look of the early eighties. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, with chic glasses and a decent wardrobe. He also had a car about to be repossessed and a stack of complaints at the Washington Bar Association, mostly from disgruntled clients complaining that he didn't answer phone calls or letters.
Next to Bob Huff, David Gehrke, with his Jesus bracelet, soccer kids, and office in Seattle's landmark Smith Tower, seemed as rock solid as they come. David provided the heart of the case, the guy the public would come to know. As Vili and Soona Fualaau's lawyer and Mary Letourneau's “media representative,” Robert Huff was the guy supposedly pulling the strings.
The two were quite a pair. Whether tipping back Lemon Drops at a bar, partying at a Jimmy Buffet concert, or plopping down on a nude beach and ogling the women like they were a couple of schoolboys, the two were best buddies. It wasn't that hard to figure out the symbiotic nature of the relationship. On the surface David provided respectability and helped Bob out when he got into trouble. And Bob? He provided the fun.