Sex. Murder. Mystery(185)

Though Mary Kay thought the world of this child, she never spoke of him again.

Later, when she thought about it, Amber Fish would bet money that boy she had talked about years before was the same one she had been accused of raping.

Amber and Angie knew that Mary Kay was not supposed to have any contact with Vili, but they were certain she broke that rule—though she never came out and confided that she had. There were occasions when she would whisper into the phone.

“The twins are here… I'll have to call you back. “

A couple of times, the girls would later say, Mary Kay held the phone up to Audrey's little round face.

“Yeah, do you want to hear her?”

Those calls were more important than the others were, though they were often quite brief. Mary Kay didn't want to leave the house, partly because of the media mob, but also because she didn't want to miss any phone calls.

“She had her phone in her hand at all times. All of the diapers were around her, the remote control and caller ID in her hands the whole time.”

How much had her great-grandchildren really seen of their mother's relationship with her sixth-grade student? It was a question Nadine had asked herself time and time again. She worried and wondered. She knew that Stevie, Jr., was certainly old enough to figure out what had been going on. In fact, she knew from conversations with Steve and Sharon that the boy had been out with his mother and Vili in the van at night.

“For a cover,” she surmised later of Mary's insistence that her oldest accompany her and Vili on their nighttime excursions. “If Steven had questioned it, 'I had Stevie, Jr., with me, what could be going on?' ”

A telephone conversation between Sharon and Nadine confirmed Stevie, Jr., was not the only one who knew what was going on.

As Sharon told it, Mary Claire burst into tears one day as she sat at her grandmother's kitchen bar.

“What's the matter? Did Grandma say something to hurt your feelings?”

The girl continued to cry. “I love my mom,” she said. “But I don't want to love her because I know that she did bad things and I don't like what she did. But I'm supposed to love her because she's my mom. I saw her and Vili in bed together.”

Sharon Hume was devastated by the disclosure.

“What was I going to tell the child?” Sharon said to her mother, Nadine. “We know your mom did wrong, but your mom is sick. We just have to wait to see how things turn out.”

Later, Steve Letourneau's grandmother learned through his girlfriend Kelly Whalen that Stevie, Jr., saw his mother and Vili in the shower, but kept his mouth shut.

“She probably threatened him,” the grandmother said later.

Later Nadine recalled a photograph that had been taken of the Letourneau children not long after they were separated from their mother. The great-grandmother didn't recognize Stevie and asked a family member who the boy was.

“Oh, my God, he looks like a zombie. He looks so withdrawn and pathetic. Couldn't believe it. It was Steven.”

And as the weeks passed, cracks the size of the Grand Canyon emerged when it became apparent that things had been very ugly in Steve and Mary Kay's household. As if the sex stuff wasn't bad enough, Nadine learned there had also been physical violence. And while no woman deserved to be hit, if there was one who did, as Nadine viewed it, Mary Kay was a good candidate. Steve's grandmother wouldn't put up with any man backhanding her, but she felt Steve had done the right thing because he told her that he had no choice.

His story was that he was defending Mary Claire.

“He said the only time he ever laid a hand on her was when she was seven months pregnant and he shoved her because she was going to hit Mary Claire. 'You aren't laying a hand on her,' he said. She said, 'That's my child and I will if I want.' 'No, you won't.' He grabbed her by the arm and he shoved her back on to the davenport.”

Steve, of course, didn't tell his grandmother about the purported altercation with the van in the driveway, the holes he allegedly punched in the walls.





Chapter 53

NOTHING STEAMED MARY Kay more in the summer of 1997 than the visits with the psychologists who were trying to figure her out. Picking apart her brain, reexamining her childhood, dissecting her marriage. The whole concept of the treatment was absurd. She thought one woman used “brainwashing” and “concentration camp” techniques as she “tried to break me down to nothing.”

“These people aren't helping me any,” she told Amber and Angie Fish one afternoon when they were at Normandy Park helping her with Audrey. “I know what's good for me.”

The treatment provider in Federal Way was particularly cruel. She reminded Mary Kay of Steve's mother with brown hair.