Sex. Murder. Mystery(214)

But talking to the audacious and unrepentant Mary Kay from prison after the second arrest brought her no real answers for the questions that ran through her mind daily.

How many crazy things can you do? You don't watch your back. You don't care what happens. You feel as if you are on top of the world. I can do anything! So here she is sitting out in front of her house having spent the entire day with him. Going to a movie, getting a six-pack at 7-Eleven. Saying 'Fuck you' to the court!

For Kate, the greatest bond that she and Mary Kay had when they went their separate ways after Arizona State was the fact that they were mothers.

“The thing I find so difficult and so ironic is that she's a mom who is dedicated to her kids. I don't question the dedication. It is definitely there. What I don't understand is how, how can you make the decision to repeat this business when the most important thing in your whole life is your children. Who you live and die for, dressed, bathed, fed, educated, developed. Called the shots. Ran the house. Everything. Made sure they had the perfect birthday party. Had the right stuff. Not for other people, to impress them. But for her. That was her fulfillment.”

But Mary Kay squandered it all for the night in her car with a teenage boy she had been forbidden to see. Kate would try, but she could never fully accept Mary Kay taking that kind of dangerous, irrevocable risk. Not when she knew that Mary Kay really did love her children. She just had to.

Abby Campbell phoned Michelle Jarvis with the terrible news. If Abby had done so with the thought that Michelle would commiserate with her over the injustice of it all, she was disappointed.

“She damn well deserves everything she's getting now,” Michelle said. “Because she's pissed it all away.”

Her remarks caught the mother of five off guard. “I can't believe you're saying that,” she said.

Michelle sighed. “That's how I feel.”

And she hung up. Michelle had been through good times and bad times, ups and downs, with Mary Kay. Bad times that got her an inch from big trouble, but nothing like this. What else could she say? Her children were without a mother now. And unless there was some kind of a miracle, Michelle knew Mary Kay was going to prison. There was no arguing it or wiggling her way out of it with tearful brown eyes. She'd broken parole. There was no second chance. Cake had used that one up already.

Michelle bitterly gave Tony Hollick the heave-ho that same day. It was high time, she thought.

“I hold you personally responsible for her being back in jail,” she said. “It's your fault. If you had not stirred up all of this crap about how this medication was going to hurt her centers of spirituality, love, blah blah, and all these other side effects, then she would have been on her medication and she probably would have been able to control herself and not be back with Vili again.”

Devastated by the news of the arrest, Tony held back. He didn't debate and he didn't charm. He hurt too much. The woman he loved was in serious trouble and Michelle Jarvis and her ranting couldn't change that at all.

It was a given. Indeed there was the look of shock and anger when eyes met throughout the Highline School District the morning Mary Kay Letourneau was arrested. But there was also the look of bitterness. The wound was gaping and bleeding. The jokes would come once more. But even worse, it was Election Day for a school funding levy and voters were coming into the schools with one thing on their minds—the pretty teacher in the steamed-up car with her former student. They weren't thinking about education and how much it should cost and which programs were worthwhile. No, they were thinking Mary Kay.

The levy lost.

“Bad feelings were dredged up again and this did not help. There are many of us who believe that Mary Letourneau cost us the election,” said one administrator.

They were all there. The media vultures had descended on Seattle and the King County Courthouse as they always do when they can mix sex, a crime, and a pretty woman into their newspapers and television shows. Producers and cameramen from 48 Hours, The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and the usual local suspects strung cable like Chinese noodles through courthouse hallways to Linda Lau's courtroom.

For a woman who had jailhouse tantrums over her hair and attire, the Mary Letourneau who showed up at her resentencing on February 6, 1998, had let herself go. Her hair was no longer the sun-streaked coif of a woman out of touch with her crime and the public's perception of it. Instead, she was a mess. She could have achieved the same look by using a garden rake and a can of hairspray. But she hadn't, of course. Her red King County issues were long and limp on her skeletal frame, her face ashen and devoid of blush and lipstick. She weighed barely more than a hundred pounds.