The car was registered to Mary Katherine Letourneau, a registered sex offender.
The Seattle police officer drove back and pointed his spotlight at the car. In an instant, Mary Kay Letourneau got out and walked toward the beam. In her haste, she left the driver's door open. She was alone, she answered, when the officer asked if she had someone with her. She had no identification; she gave her sister Terry's name when asked who she was. Vili Fualaau emerged from the car and also gave a phony name. Mary Kay said they'd only been in the car six minutes, though the condensation on the glass and on the hood of the car indicated much more time had passed.
“There was great hesitation in both parties in giving their names,” the officer later said.
Later, Mary Kay said she had gone to a movie by herself, went to Nordstrom, and when she returned, Vili was waiting for her. He had run away from home.
Vili laid out the story differently. He said that he had paged Mary Kay earlier in the evening and she had picked him up. They went to a movie, bought beer, and sat in the car for an hour and a half.
And though no one will ever know the truth, Mary Kay and Vili have told varying stories of what happened that night and the days before.
Just after three A.M. television reporter Karen O'Leary was awakened by a phone call from KIRO's overnight assignment editor.
“Karen,” he said, “you're not going to believe this, but Mary Letourneau's been caught with a sixteen-year-old!”
Karen sat up. “What?”
It must be some other boy. Not Vili, she thought. Vili was fourteen.
The editor filled her in on the arrest and Karen was rocked by the news. She had thought that Mary Letourneau had been fixated on Vili and no other boy.
What? she thought.
And as more information came to her that morning as she prepared for a trip out of town on another scandal story, Karen O'Leary was left feeling sad and duped.
“Everything that had come earlier had been a lie. All of the people that had said Mary Kay Letourneau should go to prison are right. I was wrong. She needed to be in prison. She made no effort to stay away from him. She didn't even wait a reasonable amount of time. She didn't wait a year, two years, five years… ”
Mary Kay has her own special memory of Karen O'Leary. According to Mary Kay, the TV reporter approached her at the Kent jail just after the lawsuit was filed. According to Mary Kay, the breathless reporter was indignant over the suit Bob Huff had filed.
“Maybe she wanted me to call off the dogs or something, I don't know her purpose in telling me that.”
But it was something else Karen said that really stuck in her memory:
“Mary, Vili says he's going to wait for you. Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard?”
What is the purpose in saying that? Mary Kay wondered. Out of all the things in the world, what would I want to hear more than that? Why would that be sad? It was Vili's choice and I couldn't have been happier.
The rest of the morning, details were made available. It was the inventory of what was found in the car that provided clues to what might have been going on between the pair and made it clear that whatever Mary Kay and Vili had told police didn't quite mesh with the facts of the case. Under the carpet by the gas pedal, police found Mary Kay's passport. In a little lockbox given to her by pal Abby Campbell were sixty-three hundred-dollar bills. Investigators found books, toys, young men's underwear, shoes, and baby clothing. Receipts for more than $850 from Nordstrom. Two rolls of film and a disposable camera containing more film were sent to the lab for developing. A couple of beer bottles were found, one almost empty, one unopened. Two ticket stubs to Wag the Dog, the movie Mary Kay said she'd seen. A letter from Cascade Middle School suspending Vili from the school for smoking was found, too.
When the film was processed it showed pictures of Mary Kay Letourneau, Vili Fualaau, and their daughter, Audrey. Some of the images were taken indoors; others were out in public. Seattle's Pike Place Market was readily identifiable.
They also found a message pager issued just a few days before.
Chapter 68
MARY KAY LETOURNEAU broke hearts all over town the morning of her second arrest. Among those who shared the disappointment and the sorrow were the Fish twins. How could this be? How could she let this happen? They wondered if she was sick and unable to control herself.
“We thought she was somewhat erratic at times because we knew her personality, but we never put a label on it,” Angie said later.
For those closest to Mary Kay, the ones who knew her before she was notorious, it was an excruciating betrayal that spoke of both mental illness and selfishness. Neither of which were attributes those who knew Mary Kay wished ascribed to her.
As practical and logical as Kate Stewart could be, she had put her marriage at a bit of a risk by standing by Mary Kay and running a media command center out of her century-old Chicago two-story. She'd defended her college friend to her husband's family. She explained all that she could to those she allowed to know her connection with the teacher in love with a student. Kate even accepted that it had been love.