Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  The thought of the children brought a bittersweet smile.

  “There's no doubt in my mind that Steve loves all of them. I think he was probably the most perfect father you could get. He doted over those kids and was proud of them,” Joe said.

  Chapter 36

  NONE COULD HAVE prepared for the emotions that the letter from the Highline School District would bring when children from Shorewood brought home word from the superintendent regarding allegations against Mary Letourneau. While many kids were teary and confused about what was going on, it was the reaction of the parents that brought the greatest wave of emotions. Lyle Mattson stood apart from many classmates. He was nonplussed about the whole thing. He merely had an apology for his mother when he handed her the envelope. He quietly announced it was about Mrs. Letourneau and Vili Fualaau.

  “I should have told you sooner,” he said. “It was kind of disgusting, so I didn't want to say anything.”

  Tandy Mattson studied the contents of the letter.

  “Did she ever do anything to you?” she finally asked her son, who had transferred into room 39 after Christmas.

  “No.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  The age difference between Mary Letourneau and Vili Fualaau did indeed disturb Tandy Mattson, but she had a hard time seeing what happened between teacher and student as a terrible crime. It wasn't as though such things hadn't happened before. Tandy had known of teacher-and-student flings from her own days as a teenager. It wasn't out there in the open, but it was known.

  “When I was in high school I knew plenty of girls messing with the football coach,” she reminded her husband.

  Nick Mattson had a different take. He didn't buy that kind of thirty-something justification. He also refused to see what had transpired as a love story or a “mistake,” and because of their stubborn positions he and Tandy went round and round about it.

  “It's child rape,” Nick said as his wife reached over to hit the “mute” button on their giant television set. “The boy is a child. I don't care if it was a woman molesting a boy or an older guy molesting young girls. She's a sick woman.”

  Tandy didn't feel that way at all. She thought that it was within the realm of possibility, maybe even probability, that Mary and Vili loved each other.

  “But,” she conceded while her husband held to his hard line, “it may be puppy love, though. And I can't say it was his first time. I heard he's in a gang.”

  Danelle Johnson's twins were among those who just couldn't see that anything that happened between Mary Letourneau and Vili Fualaau was wrong. Vili was a gentle soul, an artist. Mary was the beautiful and wise love of his life. For Danelle, there was no getting through to her son and daughter. It was a love affair, not a crime.

  “Whatever illness she's got, she's got a pretty good illness,” she said later. “She actually convinced him, and them too, that she was in love with him. Then when they got in her way of using him—even though I don't think she thought she was using him—then she started turning on them, trying to get rid of them so they wouldn't be in her way.”

  Drew told his mother that she was wrong. He knew that Vili was in love, but Danelle dismissed the idea.

  “He's too young to decide what he wants. And she's of an age where she should know that even if she did want it she should wait.”

  Not everyone was mortified, disgusted, or outraged when word went beyond Shorewood school grounds that Mary Letourneau and her former sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau had been having sexual relations.

  Katie Hogden nearly jumped out of her skin with joy when the first layers of secrecy began to peel away. The dark-haired teen with braces, the budding writer, the girl who never had a cross word for anyone, responded with euphoria.

  Oh, my gosh! she thought. Two of my closest friends have found each other. That's so cool.

  The idea that there might be dire consequences didn't hit her,

  “The age thing didn't click,” she said later. “When you hear that your friends are starting a relationship and they have liked each other for so long… they are just perfect for each other.”

  To Katie, it was beautiful, right, and romantic. It wasn't until she saw the news reports that cast it as a crime that she could acknowledge that it might have been wrong.

  It had been a year and a half since Kate Stewart had seen Mary Kay Letourneau. The break in their face-to-face contact had been the longest since their friendship started at Arizona State in 1982, but it was not an estrangement. Both chalked up the lapse to marriages, careers, but mostly to the responsibilities of running households with small children. Mary Kay and Steve had four children, and Kate and her doctor husband were right behind them with a son and two daughters.

  When a friend considered moving to Seattle, Kate suggested looking up Mary Kay for the scoop on the city's neighborhoods and schools. When the woman returned to Chicago, she told Kate that she had better call Mary Kay. There was urgency to her suggestion.

  “Your friend is in trouble,” she said. “She's about to break.”

  Kate suspected marital problems and, frankly, wasn't all that concerned if that was the cause. Mary Kay could get past that, and, Kate thought, it was certainly high time for a divorce.

  “How are you?” she asked over the phone.

  “We-ell.” Mary Kay hesitated, drawing out the one-syllable word to two. “There's a lot going on.”

  “What's going on? You're getting divorced?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, so.”

  We've all been waiting for this, Kate thought, without saying it. Is there someone? I hope there is someone! Now maybe you can love someone.

  “Yes, there is someone,” Mary Kay said softly.

  “That's great”

  “And I'm pregnant,” she said.

  “Well, you said there was someone. So what!”

  Kate learned nothing about the other someone, though she understood he was a wonderful person, and younger than Mary Kay. But as she had when she first told Michelle about it, Mary Kay did not let on just how much younger her beau was.

  Kate, of course, would learn more in the weeks and months to come and she would consider why Mary Kay couldn't come out and tell her friends what had been going on and with whom.

  “It was too much for her,” she said later. “I think there was a shame factor there—religion hassles, which I don't think she's come to terms with. She's got this divider, one side, she's devout and believes in God, wants to do the right thing. The other side of her says, 'There's nothing wrong with having fun. God wants me to have fun. God wants me to live life, and damn it, I've embraced that.' “

  The police had been by to make sure no other children had been molested by their favorite teacher; the school made offers of crisis counseling for those who needed it. And, of course, the media was sniffing around. As for Vili Fualaau, he was still in class at Cascade Middle School. Shorewood music teacher Beth Adair wrote a note to Mary Kay describing how Vili was: “spaced out and subdued.”

  Chapter 37

  HANGING OUT AT a friend's house in Kent on a rainy Friday evening, February 28, 1997, Amber Fish answered an urgent page from her older sister, Lisa.

  “Amber, did you hear the news?”

  “What news?”

  “Get a hold of Angie quick!”

  “What news?”

  Lisa didn't want to say and instructed her sister to call their mother and she would fill her in. Amber hung up and dialed. Joy Fish answered and told her that a teacher had been arrested for molesting a student.

  “On Channel Four they're saying it's Mary Kay.”

  Amber got into her car and drove to another friend's house where Angie was visiting. The twins and their friend watched the news report on the local late news. In shock and full of disbelief, Amber and Angie realized there was only one thing to do: they drove to Normandy Park to see Mary Kay. They knew it was late and that all hell had broken out, but Mary Kay was their friend and they w
anted to support her.

  Something's not right here. There has to be a mistake, Angie thought.

  Amber said it out loud.

  “It's just allegations. It was some kid just making this up. Mary Kay? I'm just sure.”

  Angie agreed.

  “Not Mary Kay.”

  Just as the Fish twins, then just nineteen, turned into the driveway, the Letourneaus' '94 Plymouth Voyager pulled in ahead of them. The driver didn't get out right away and just sat there. The girls thought it was Mary Kay and got out and approached the driver's side.

  Mary Kay kept facing straight ahead, until Amber got her attention, and in an instant a look of surprise and exaggerated delight washed over her face.

  “Girls!” she said, getting out of the car and hugging them, first Amber, then Angie, who lingered a bit behind her sister.

  “Look, you guys,” Mary Kay said, gesturing to her pregnant belly. “I'm six months! Can you believe it's number five?”

  Amber and Angie were breathless. Though they hadn't seen Mary since July, they had talked on the phone at Christmas and there had been no mention of a pregnancy.

  Mary Kay kept rambling.

  “Oh, I missed your birthday,” she said. “I'm really sorry!”

  The sisters said that was all right. They had come to see her because they had heard some things on the television news about “some allegations.”

  The smile vanished. “Great,” Mary Kay said, “this will probably be in the newspapers tomorrow.”

  Then she started to cry and slumped back into the driver's seat and fiddled with the keys, still in the ignition. Amber and Angie moved closer and stood next to her; the rain fell hard, but it didn't matter much to them.

  Mary Kay admitted that she had stayed in the van in the driveway without getting out because she thought some reporters might have followed her.

  And then she talked for the next hour or two, and though the former neighbors and favorite baby-sitters knew nothing about what Mary Kay Letourneau was saying, they didn't ask any questions to fill in the gaps. In fact, neither said very much at all. They didn't know what to say. They didn't know if she was confessing to a crime or telling them the whole thing was some big mistake.

  Mary talked in a stream-of-consciousness manner that was almost incoherent and then stopped to cry. Her tears seemed to fuel her and she would talk some more.

  Amber and Angie started to cry, too.

  Mary Kay said she had just returned from “a meeting with the boy's mom.” They were trying to work things out. The boy's mother was very upset; she had just found out. It was a mess that she was trying to sort out.

  “They say I can't see him until he is eighteen,” she said.

  “That's a long time,” Amber said, offering the kind of remark used to soothe.

  “Don't tell me that's a long time,” she said, almost as a wish that it wouldn't be so. Tears convulsed her once more. Mary Kay was coming undone and the Fish sisters didn't know how to make her feel better.

  At one point, she turned around and said, “Steven actually asked me if I loved the boy more than I loved him. Can you believe that he would say that?”

  “What did you say to him?” one asked.

  “I explained to him, no, I just love you in different ways.”

  Both sisters were sobbing at the thought of Steven and his brother and sisters dealing with the terrible allegation against their mother.

  “Amber,” Mary said, almost teasingly. “I've never seen this side of Angie, this is so odd.”

  The comment hurt. Angie had never been the “emotional” one, but she had always loved Mary Kay and her family. As much as her sister, though she didn't always show it. As the time flew by, the girls noticed that Steve Letourneau was home, peering out the window every so often. One asked if they could go inside. Mary Kay shook her head.

  “Steve's really upset about this,” she said. “I don't want to bring any of this inside. He found some letters that say how I feel about the boy.”

  “… sometimes I feel your kisses, but you're not there. I miss the sounds we make together. I want your arms around me holding me forever… ”

  A couple of hours went by and Amber and Angie still felt as though they didn't know what had really happened. It was late, well past one A.M. They hugged Mary Kay good-bye and she asked them to keep in touch. She especially wanted to be informed on what the media was saying about her. The sisters agreed.

  “I'll call you soon,” she said.

  On their way back to Carriage Row, the sisters decompressed. They were confused and in shock. They believed the allegations were not true. Mary Kay hadn't come out and said there had been any inappropriate contact. If there hadn't been any inappropriate contact, then the whole thing would blow over.

  “I don't think she touched him,” Angie said.

  Amber wasn't so sure.

  “No, they kissed, she said.”

  “No way,” Angie said.

  “Yeah, Mary Kay said they kissed.”

  Angie disagreed. “I didn't hear her say that.”

  “She did. She might have said it under her breath… 'All it was was a kiss… ' “

  Mary Kay mentioned a “meeting with the boy's mom” that had taken place before the twins met her in her driveway, but she didn't elaborate on what had transpired. In fact, it had not gone well. As most would expect, Soona Fualaau was not a happy womaa How could she be? Her son's teacher, only three years younger than herself, was pregnant by her son Vili. Soona was overwhelmed and angry. She had seen her son go off with Mary, she had seen a closeness develop between the pair. But this? This was too much. She brought the director of the Boys and Girls Club at White Center to keep her from decking Mary Letourneau when they met at the Des Moines marina in front of Anthony's Homeport restaurant. Mary gave Vili's mother a letter explaining her feelings.

  Soona recalled the encounter later: “She kept saying the sex was wrong, but I do not believe that she fully understands that she had crossed the boundary that should never have been crossed… She never said 'I'm really sorry.' And it goes back to that I think she's crazy.”

  A caring woman who was smarter than her resume, Soona Fualaau was charitable toward the teacher carrying her grandchild.

  “She really needs help because I think she's living in fantasy land.”

  Chapter 38

  IT SIMPLY COULDN'T be true. Normandy Park neighbor Tina Bernstein had hoped that whatever was unfolding at the Letourneau place next door was the result of a disgruntled student, an enemy, maybe even an off-the-wall mistake. She also considered the possibility that Mary Kay might have been framed, maybe even by Vili Fualaau. Tina struggled with what she'd gleaned from early news reports, because she had little recent firsthand knowledge of what Mary and Steve had been up to. She hadn't seen Mary much over the course of the past few months—not much since the summer when school closure meant the neighborhood was the center of activity for all moms and kids.

  As she ran through the scenarios of what had happened—what she had allowed herself to take in—Tina felt there had to be an explanation for it.

  Maybe whatever happened, only happened once, she thought. Yes, I'll bet it only happened once.

  Tina was at a loss for what to do and she thought of flowers. Mary loved flowers. She drove to the QFC grocery store that sits at the bottom of the neighborhood hill and bought a mixed bouquet from the in-store florist. She wanted Mary to know that she still cared about her and what was happening, and in the end, she'd be there for her if Mary needed her.

  She parked at her house next door and walked up the Letourneaus' sidewalk to the front door and knocked.

  Mary timidly poked her head from the doorway.

  Tina could already feel the tears coming on.

  “You need a little sunshine around here,” she said, handing over the flowers and reaching out to hug her neighbor.

  Tina Bernstein would never forget that day. Seldom had she seen such trouble in someone's
eyes.

  “She was very hesitant to say anything and I didn't want to pry. It was very personal. We didn't have that type of relationship, but yet I felt if you've been wrongly accused here, maybe there was something she wanted to say… we started talking. I asked if I could come in. She looked like she needed someone to talk to. She was pretty hysterical. She had a hard time stopping crying. Steve was gone. Out for a run or something.”

  Inside, when her composure came, Mary focused her anger on Steve and their marriage.

  “If you haven't noticed,” she said, “our marriage hasn't been that good.”

  Her tears drying on her cheeks, Mary went on to tell Tina how indifferent Steve had been to her father's bout with prostate cancer. When she'd learned of the dire prognosis more than a year before, Steve had offered no comfort. The clock was ticking on a great man's life—a wonderful father, a brilliant legislator, a candidate for the presidency—and Steve Letourneau was nothing short of impassive about it. It hurt her. At a time when she needed him most, Mary said, her husband turned his back on her.

  Tina knew there were two sides to every story; every broken marriage had distinct versions of why everything went down in flames. Mary blamed Steve and Tina didn't defend him.

  “Steve did have an attitude,” Tina Bernstein said a couple of years later. “He had possibly a chip on his shoulder. Yes, there were times when he could be really nice, very pleasant to talk to. Treated the kids well. There were times when he… ” Tina hesitated. “Let's say I could see what Mary was saying about certain attitudes he would have toward people. I understood what she was saying… I don't want to give examples, though.”

  Tina didn't ask about the potential charges, other than to see if Mary had legal representation. Mary said she had talked with a lawyer in Bellevue, but wasn't sure.

  “Let's talk to Dave Gehrke and see what he says. He might know someone,” Tina offered.