Love You Madly

by Michael Fleeman

  Rachelle mumbled, “I know.”

  “Listen to me: Do you want us to do that?” asked Habib. “Do you want a jury to hear that? Do you want a judge to hear that? Or do you want us to stand up and say: ‘This kid screwed up.’ Or ‘She at least stepped up to the plate and was honest with us?’ Which one? Those are your two choices.”

  “The first one,” she said in a tiny voice.

  “Then you need to start doing it!” said Habib. “We’re not dumb. That man is not dumb. You’re giving him a little piece here, trying to appease us. I’m sitting over there shaking my head, watching you lie. And it’s not helping you any. It’s not helping you at all. He’s pissed. He’s ready to just go for it: Let’s do it. You’re a kid. It’s time to act like an adult.

  “Do you want to talk to him again and be straight with him? If you’re straight with that man, I will stand up, he will stand up, and the DA will stand up and say, ‘She cooperated.’ It’s your choice. That’s where we’re at, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Just show the man a little respect.”

  On cue, McPherron walked back in the room.

  “Hello again,” he said.

  It was a different Rachelle Waterman, the talk from Habib having had the same effect on her as it had on Jason. Gone was the argumentative teen with the smart mouth.

  “First of all,” she told McPherron, “I’d like to apologize for being a smart-ass.”

  “OK,” said McPherron.

  “A lot of times I speak before I think.”

  “OK.”

  “I know you deserve a lot more respect than I’ve been showing you. Sorry.”

  “I can understand that,” said McPherron, “appreciate that. Thank you. The ball’s in your court. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  “The beginning,” Rachelle said, “was where I came forth with my situation. Murder wasn’t the first thing we came to. I was talking about being emancipated and different things like that.”

  “OK,” said McPherron.

  “Then they discussed murder,” she said. “And I didn’t do a lot of talking. I did a lot of listening because I didn’t know what to do. So, like I said, it was discussed and I said, ‘Well, let’s do it.’”

  McPherron asked, “‘Let’s do it.’ For which?”

  “For the murder,” said Rachelle.

  She described a plot that ebbed and flowed. Rachelle didn’t come up with the ideas, but she wasn’t out of the loop, either.

  “I wanted to know what was going on,” she said.

  “Before it happened?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And so time sort of passed, and things started getting a little better, and I thought they had kind of forgotten about it and it started to fade. Then another incident happened and they start talking about it again, about just ‘it’ in general. I mean, I didn’t know of a certain plot or anything.”

  When her mother abused her again, she told Jason but didn’t want him to hurt her mother. When he asked, “What about our plan?” she told him, “You know what? I don’t know. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Rachelle told the detectives, “So I guess he talked to Brian.”

  “When was this?”

  “This was before the shooting one,” she said. “And I was talking to him and he said, ‘Do you want us?’ He told me about the plan, pretty much.”

  “The shooting plan?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And, like I said, and I will stand by this to the grave, I told them no. I don’t know if that’s why they called it off. I don’t know if he got to Brian in time because he said, ‘I don’t know if I can.’ I said, ‘Please call it off.’”

  After she was abused again around October, she told Jason. He started talking about the murder plot.

  “This time, I wasn’t so sure,” she said. “I kind of—I don’t know—I was, like, it was appealing in the only sense that I wouldn’t be abused, but then I was, like, ‘This is my mother. I love her.’ So we talked about it, and they knew about the window because I had snuck out before. I just told them, ‘Yeah, it’s easy to sneak out of my house.”

  “Or sneak in, conversely,” said McPherron.

  “I guess,” said Rachelle. “It’s right on the ground floor, missing a screen, it’s hardly ever locked. And, well, they probably knew about that before.”

  “OK, continue, please.”

  “And before state [tournament], she had gotten angry at me, and another incident occurred, and I told them about it, and they were coming up with this plot.”

  “What did she get mad at you about?”

  “A lot of my black [clothing]. I had also gotten a C in math. And just normal stuff, you know.”

  “OK.”

  “‘We don’t like black,’” she said, quoting her mother. “And so it had just come up in conversation, you know: ‘Yeah, my dad’s going to be gone this weekend.’”

  She quoted “them” as then saying, “So if we were going to do something, this would be an opportune time.”

  “And I’m kind of, like, ‘Well, yeah, suppose,’” she said. “And then, well, that’s when I didn’t know if we were going to go to state or not because, of course, I only found out about regionals. After I found out I was going to state, I told them, ‘Yeah, I’m going to state! Our team made it. Wee-hee, hoo-hoo.’ And I really didn’t say anything about a plan. I guess I was euphoric about winning regionals. And then before I left, they said, ‘We might do the plan this weekend.’”

  “I’m sorry, who said it would be a good time?” asked McPherron.

  “Brian—or Jason,” she said. “And I was, like, ‘Well, yeah, I suppose.’ And I didn’t know if he was—they were—if it was, like, for sure or not. I was just kind of, like, I don’t know. It was just bouncing around in my head. Over the weekend I got worried, and I thought of how, since the last incident, how things have actually gone so much above what they’ve been in the last year. We were both happy about regionals and honor choir, and we had gotten to spend time on my honor choir trip to Haines.”

  “Together with your mom?”

  “Yes, because she was a chaperone for that trip. And we had got to spend time together there. And so on this call I talked to him about it, and—”

  Habib interrupted, “Rachelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to stop you there. Remember our discussion?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Evidence, and your total honesty,” said Habib.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “So I called him Friday and, honestly, we didn’t even talk about it. I wasn’t even—well, at least not that I remember. I told him about my trip. I told him how things were going with the team. And I really don’t remember much of that conversation. I wish I did.”

  “There was nothing about the murder plot?”

  “Not that I remember,” she said. “I mean, you’ll have to forgive my memory.”

  “Come on, it’s a week ago.”

  Habib chided her, mispronouncing her name. “Rachel, Rachel.”

  “Rachelle,” she corrected.

  “Rachelle, rather,” Habib said. “I’m sorry, I’ve interviewed so many people this week.”

  “I know, I’m seriously trying to remember.”

  “On that phone call,” said Habib, “you did not tell him to stop?”

  “No,” she said, “I didn’t tell him to stop. I didn’t even know it was going to happen.”

  She said she “suspected” it might happen but didn’t tell anybody about it. “I didn’t know how to. I mean, I didn’t know to go to my coach and say, ‘Coach, I need to talk to the police.’”

  When she got home, she talked to Jason and was stunned to find out they had killed her mother.

  “You knew this was going to happen while you were away at tournament, yes?” asked Habib.

  “Well,” said Rachelle, “I suspected.”

  “You knew this was going to happen when you were away at t
ournament? Yes or no?” Habib demanded.

  “Know for a fact?” said Rachelle.

  “You were pretty darn confident that it was going to happen,” said Habib.

  “Yes, I was pretty—” Rachelle stumbled.

  “Don’t split hairs,” McPherron jumped in.

  “Pretty sure,” acknowledged Rachelle.

  Habib said, “You didn’t tell him: ‘Don’t do it. I’ve changed my mind’?”

  “I didn’t,” admitted Rachelle.

  “Well, thank you for that,” said McPherron. “I’m sorry that took two and a half hours of talking to get to.”

  There was little left for her to say. The detectives pressed her one last time on her claims her mother abused her. She said she never reported it to police because she didn’t think they would believe her.

  She was right. McPherron and Habib weren’t buying it.

  “I’ve talked to you enough to know that you have a tendency to embellish things and dramatize things a little bit,” McPherron said. “I don’t doubt for a minute that there was discord between your mother and you. And I don’t doubt for a minute that things may have even gotten physical. But I have a real problem with baseball bats and knives and stuff like that. I think that was more talk than it was fact.”

  When she again said her mom had hit her with a baseball bat, Habib said, “The baseball bat never happened.”

  “Yes, it did,” said Rachelle.

  “No,” said Habib. “I can’t believe it.”

  “You see how things get exaggerated and blown out of proportion if you’re not careful,” said McPherron. “A little overacting here can have dire consequences.”

  Asked if she ever thought she was going to die at her mother’s hands, Rachelle said, “Not at the moment.”

  And that ended the interview. McPherron asked if there was anything else Rachelle wanted to tell them, and she mumbled no. He told that he had to “contact some people to find out what they want done” with Rachelle.

  “Am I going to go to jail?” she asked.

  “We’re going to take you home,” said McPherron. “Once we get there, I’m going to have to fill your father in on what happened.”

  “I’m scared he’s going to be so angry,” she said.

  “I don’t doubt that he will be,” said McPherron. “I’m going to take your father aside. I’m not going to have you stand there while I explain to him, OK? That sound reasonable?”

  “He’s going to hate me,” said Rachelle.

  “I can’t control what his feelings are. But if we can salvage anything, we can tell him, ‘At least your daughter had enough courage, in the end, to stand up and take the responsibility for her actions.’”

  “I don’t think I can stand the thought of my dad hating me.”

  “I know that’s a difficult concept to accept.”

  “I already had one parent that hated me. I don’t want another.”

  “I don’t think your mother hated you,” said McPherron. “I think your mother hated a lot of the things you did.”

  “She told me she hated me,” said Rachelle. “I think she did.”

  Habib said, “I think that may have been out of frustration dealing with a teenager. I’ve dealt with two teenagers. Thank God they’re grown up now.”

  Rachelle asked if they would “tell this to the press.”

  McPherron said she’d be identified in court papers by her initials, RW, but in a small town like Craig everybody was going to know who it is.

  “Can you just say ‘somebody’?” she asked. “I really want to live.”

  “We’ll do what we can for you,” McPherron. “And by all means, we’ll tell everybody who wants to hear that Rachelle finally did tell us the truth.”

  “That’s not going to matter.”

  “It might in the long run,” offered McPherron.

  Habib added, “You’d be surprised.”

  “I doubt it,” said Rachelle. “I don’t think my dad’s going to want to see me.”

  The investigators told her she would have to remain at the police station until they could handle procedural matters.

  “My family’s going to hate me,” she said. “My whole family’s going to hate me. I’m going to be, like, tossed out on my butt.”

  It was now seven p.m. The remainder of the night would be torturous for Rachelle as she was left alone in the interview room several times while the detectives left to meet to discuss her case. Rachelle had never so much as gone to the principal’s office before; the worst trouble she had ever faced was being grounded twice by her parents.

  For the next seven minutes, Rachelle sat in the room alone, crying, while the video camera continued to run.

  When McPherron returned, she asked, “Do I have to go home?”

  “We’re looking into that,” he said.

  “Can I just go straight to a friend’s house?”

  “We’ll see,” the detective said as Rachelle continued to weep. Then he left again.

  She was left in the room alone for another fifteen minutes.

  When McPherron returned, he told her he still didn’t know what they were going to do with her. She asked if she was going to jail, and he said he still didn’t know, then left her alone again, this time for a half hour.

  The pressure mounted. When he returned, Rachelle told him she was having an asthma attack and asked for water.

  “I’m having trouble breathing,” she said.

  She again asked what was going to happen, and again McPherron said he didn’t know.

  “I don’t suppose,” Rachelle asked, “you could stay and keep me company?”

  The question caught the detective off guard. “I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

  “I don’t suppose you could keep me company?” she repeated.

  “I’m trying to help them get this—” he said, stumbling through an answer. “The more I help the, the less I can—the sooner we can get done, OK?”

  “Does it look like I’m going to be in jail?” asked Rachelle yet again.

  “We don’t know yet, OK?” said McPherron.

  Again she was left in the room, this time for seven minutes.

  When McPherron and Habib returned, they said they still couldn’t say what was going to happen. They left her there again, now for another eighteen minutes.

  She poked her head out the door and saw a policeman stationed there.

  “Are you, like, my guard?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the officer said.

  “OK, just wondering,” she said, and closed the door and sat back down in the room, where she sat alone.

  After another eight minutes the policeman entered. He said, “You need to come with me, young lady.”

  Rachelle Waterman was not going home to a friend, not going home to face her father.

  Rachelle was escorted to the back of the police station, where she was booked into the Craig city jail. She posed for a mug shot and was fingerprinted and processed. She handed over to her female jailer the few personal possessions she had brought with her that night.

  “Do I get to keep my sweatshirt?” Rachelle asked.

  “No,” said the jailer. “I’ll give you jail issues.”

  “Do I have to get into some jail clothes?”

  “Yeah,” the jailer said.

  Rachelle handed over her jewelry, three silver earrings, which were put in an envelope, and underwent the formal processing into the Alaska state criminal justice system, the dehumanizing transformation from free citizen to inmate.

  She answered a series of questions about her health, saying her only problem was sports-induced asthma, for which she used an inhaler, and a sprained ankle from an injury the week before. Otherwise, she said she was free of diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy, drug addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, venereal disease, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and allergies. She said she didn’t use IV drugs and was on no other medication than Albuterol for the asthma and, she admitted reluctantly, birt
h control pills.

  “I never told anyone,” she said.

  The jailer said that somebody would bring her an inhaler, underwear, and the contraceptive pills.

  “If there’s a jail emergency, who would we call?” asked the jailer.

  “My father,” said Rachelle.

  Rachelle then answered more questions, confirming that she’d never been divorced, lost a job, suffered a financial loss, or attempted suicide, though did say she had once considered killing herself.

  “When?” asked the jailer.

  “A month and a half ago,” she said.

  “Is there anything that will make you depressed while you are in jail,” the jailer asked, adding “aside from being in jail?”

  “No,” said Rachelle.

  The jailer asked if Rachelle became “seriously depressed,” would she be willing to talk to somebody?

  “One of you people?” asked Rachelle. “Or a friend?”

  “Probably would be a mental health counselor type of person.”

  “No,” said Rachelle. “They creep me out.”

  Rachelle signed an inventory of her seized belongings and was walked down past a row of cells, some containing male inmates, to her private cell.

  She got one last courtesy. The jailers made all the inmates stand and face the wall while she walked by.

  At age sixteen, Rachelle Waterman was formally under arrest in the murder of her mother.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  On Saturday, November 20, Craig, Alaska, ached as only a small, proud town could. One of their best had been murdered, two of their own had been arrested, and a third—one of the island’s brightest stars, with college and career and unlimited possibilities in her future—stood before a magistrate to face charges of conspiring to kill her own mother. Rachelle Waterman’s father sat a dozen feet away from his daughter. It was an unthinkable crisis: his wife was brutally murdered in a months-long plot instigated and orchestrated by their own daughter.

  Just the week before, Rachelle was giddily shopping with her girlfriends in Anchorage, buying “incredibly awesome boots,” as she wrote on her blog. Now she wept as she listened to Magistrate Kay Clark read the charges contained in a criminal complaint: conspiracy and murder.