Gathering Lies. Meg O'Brien
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was gold in that closet, though. When Lonnie Mae had been picked up for prostitution and gang-raped, she was wearing a fake fur jacket, a red imitation leather skirt, and purple fishnet stockings. It had been three days since then, and she had already showered away any sperm that might have been used as evidence. The clothes she’d worn during the rape, however, were right here where she’d tossed them upon coming home from the hospital. She hadn’t taken them out of the bag, or washed them—and they were loaded with sperm. In particular, the cops hadn’t bothered to remove the fishnet stockings, that night in the alley. They’d torn through them, leaving them tattered around her legs, and in their macho celebration they had been sloppy, spewing DNA around like liquid confetti.
I asked Lonnie Mae if I could take the stockings. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them, but I told her I was certain they could help. She said sure, and I stuck them in the trunk of my car when I left her that day.
Later that night, Lonnie Mae’s tenement burned to the ground. Dental records identified her body, which had been burned beyond recognition. The fire was thought to be “accidental,” caused by a space heater that tipped over in another apartment. Four other people died that night.
Maybe it was an accidental fire. Certainly, I couldn’t fault the arson investigators, who had a difficult job to do.
In my heart, however, I couldn’t shake my belief that the five cops, or somebody working for them, had had a hand in it. Surely they had been told that Lonnie Mae had filed a complaint against them. They would have been questioned, even if the complaint was not believed. And the accusation, if it developed into an arrest, and then trial, could destroy them. In their minds, the next reasonable step might well be to rid themselves of their accuser. No victim, no arrest. No testimony, no trial.
Maybe they thought, too, that the murder of a prostitute would go unnoticed in a city the size of Seattle. And maybe they thought that by killing Lonnie Mae, they’d be sending a message to me: Back off from this, or we’ll fix you, too.
If so, they really should have known better. Spurred on by both anger and considerable guilt over not protecting Lonnie Mae somehow, I met with a Prosecuting Attorney I had known for years. I posed a hypothetical question: If someone were to come across a piece of evidence that could put some bad cops in jail, what would be the best thing to do with it?
She gave me the party line, of course: If I were that “someone,” as an officer of the court I’d be guilty of obstruction of justice if I didn’t turn over evidence of a crime.
“I didn’t say it was me,” I told her. “What if this someone didn’t trust the authorities? Or the security of the evidence lockers?”
Her name was Ivy, which sounds as if she’d be a soft touch. Ivy O’Day was no fool, however. She guessed right away that I wasn’t talking hypothetically.
“This is strictly confidential, Sarah,” she said. “I think I may know which cops you’re talking about. We’ve been working with Internal Affairs, putting a case together against them for some time now. So far, it’s largely circumstantial. One good, solid piece of evidence that they’ve actually committed a crime could help. If you’ve got that kind of evidence, Sarah, you’re obligated to turn it over. If you’re worried about evidence lockers, you can give it to me. I’ll see it’s kept safe.”
“Still speaking hypothetically, Ivy, if I managed to find that kind of evidence, and I turned it over to you today, would you move on them? Right now?”
She hesitated and looked uneasy. “Not immediately. We’re still putting our case together.”
“So when would you file charges?” I pushed.
Ivy looked down at her hands, and it took her a few moments. “Maybe in a week, a month…” she said. “But, Sarah, if you have evidence…”
“I didn’t say I had evidence, Ivy. Like I said, I was talking theoretically.”
I asked her to keep me apprised of how their case was developing, and said I’d let her know if any such evidence came my way. But the hairs on the back of my neck had been raised in there. I wasn’t all that sure, anymore, that I’d talked to the right person. The Prosecuting Attorney’s office worked too closely with the cops. What if someone in the office—if not Ivy herself—had turned? Why hadn’t she just said, “Sure, Sarah, if you have solid evidence they committed a crime, we’ll move on them today”?
The fact that she hadn’t did not fill me with confidence. So I hung onto Lonnie Mae’s stockings, which was all that was left, now, since the fire. I had them tested secretly at a private lab in the East. Then I got a friendly DNA expert to read the results, confidentially and free of charge. There were six different kinds of DNA present, he reported, some in minuscule amounts, but more than enough to stand up in court. Five of those samples would be from the cops, I knew. The sixth would be Lonnie Mae’s.
When my expert asked where he should send the report, I told him to hold on to it for now. All that was left was to wait for Ivy to prove herself by filing those charges. Then I’d come forward with the evidence—and not until then.
Obstruction of justice be damned. I’d figure it out somehow.
The important thing was, I now knew that at some point I could get the five cops convicted of rape—and with any luck, of arson and murder, as well. I’ll get them for you, Lonnie Mae, I promised. You may be gone, but I swear to God, they’ll never forget your name.
It should have gone down that way. And would have gone down that way, if I’d just lain low with the evidence. But then I blew it.
The next night after work, I met with a friend, J.P. Blakely, at her office. J.P. was a Private Investigator who had helped me on several cases. I told her everything about Lonnie Mae and the cops. After talking about it for an hour or more, and considering how to proceed, both J.P. and I needed a drink. We headed for McCoy’s, which was a cop hangout, and not a place we’d ordinarily frequent. It was the nearest watering hole, though, and we ran across the street from J.P.’s office in a blinding rain.
The place was nearly empty, but while we were sitting at a table out of sight of the bar, four of the five cops who had raped Lonnie Mae piled in. I knew who they were by this time, because their photos had been emblazoned across the front page of that day’s Seattle Times. A complaint had been filed against them for rape, the caption read. The following story said the cops had issued a statement to the press denying all guilt and claiming that the prostitute in question had been out to get revenge for her arrest.
I felt a small sense of satisfaction that I’d been the one to leak the story to the Times in the first place. At least it was out in the open now. One step forward—and maybe, I thought, it would get Ivy off her ass. The papers had dubbed the cops the “Seattle Five,” and the rest of the media had begun to follow suit. The scandal would take on a life of its own. It would not simply “blow over.”
The four cops who had just come into McCoy’s didn’t see us, and we had an opportunity to eavesdrop. At first, they were relatively silent—gearing down from their day’s work, it seemed. Then, as the drinks flowed, they became louder and louder. There was much backslapping, and I heard Mike Murty, the suspected head honcho of the Five, brag that there probably wouldn’t even be a trial, now that the “black bitch whore” was dead.
They continued in that vein, while J.P. and I stared at each other, growing more and more outraged. Though we didn’t hear it in so many words, there came a moment when we were both certain the Five had set that fire and murdered Lonnie Mae—not to mention the others who had died along with her.
It was then that we rose as one and strode around the divider that separated us from the bar. The bartender saw us coming, and moved away as if sensing trouble. There were no other patrons in McCoy’s at that time, and maybe it should have occurred to me to be afraid. But I wasn’t accustomed to drinking much, and I’d had two glasses of wine.
I grabbed Mike Murty by the arm and swung him around. “You son of a bitch!” I said. “You sick, worthless piece of crap!”