Finding Amy

by Joseph K. Loughlin

  But the situation has changed. Technically, it's now an MSP case and new people have access. It's no longer just our small working group. I'm doing a precarious and difficult balancing act, trying to keep everyone together. It means a lot of stroking egos. A lot of follow-up calls. A lot of diplomacy. Tonight my diplomacy's wearing kind of thin.

  “Can't we talk Scott into getting on this fly?” I ask.

  Matt is confused now, trying to calm me down for once, his face returning to its normal color. “No,” he says, “he won't go.”

  I'm pacing now, nearly as jerky as Tommy. Nothing is easy with this thing. We've had a week of wild breaks and now this. “Ahh, shit, Matt. Go get those guys, please.”

  Matt leaves. I start on my messages to occupy me while I wait, knowing it will only aggravate me. “Yes, so, Lieutenant Loughlin, I have a problem. You people made an illegal entry into a dwelling … your detective had no probable cause to …” Beeep. A somber, low voice. “Lieutenant Loughlin, my brother committed suicide last Wednesday and I need his personal effects, can you …” I get through four messages before Scott and Dan are shadowing the doorway as the message voice continues, “and I can't believe that the medical examiner never, never called my brother about …”

  I push the “off” button, frustrated. There's so much to do and these are people's lives. I must attend to them.

  “Scott, stop biting your nails!” Scott's athletic figure leans in the doorway. It doesn't match his behavior. I've been biting my nails as well. Finding Amy has brought intense focus back on us. The press is full of the question, Why no arrest? Of course everyone is tense. Right now, we have to put that out of our minds and deal with the business before us.

  Danny starts in. “Lieutenant, we can do this, I know it. If we leave at 0430, we can make it. If Scott doesn't go, I'm not going.”

  Oh, man! Now it's both of them digging their heels in. Dan is treading carefully, though. He is very respectful of the chain of command. Does Danny want to drive, too? Is that what I'm getting? One thing I'm sure I'm getting. These guys are crazy. It's over a thousand miles to Alabama.

  Tension is high. I'm impatient. I want to argue but I stifle myself. Trying to be like Deputy Chief Tim Burton, to listen, absorb, and not judge. Yet.

  “Lieutenant,” Scott chimes in, “I am not being disrespectful, but I cannot get on that plane, and I'm with Danny. If you guys break us up this will go downhill … just the learning curve alone …”

  It continues and I listen to both of them go on. “Lieutenant, I know we can do it. We want to do it. We can talk the case all the way down. It will be a good thing.”

  Finally, I'm out of patience. “Scott, damn it, stop biting! Let me talk to Scott alone.” Everyone leaves. “Scott, you sure you can't fly? It doesn't make sense to me, based on what I know about you.”

  “Lieutenant, I'm not flying. I have two kids, and ever since my last MSP fly and 9/11, I just can't, sir. I just can't.”1

  “Okay, Scott.” Matt Stewart returns to my office and gives me this bewildered look. “They're staying together,” I tell him. “Give me Brian's number again.” Lieutenant Brian McDonough is my counterpart in the MSP food chain. A good man. A gentle, graying Irishman with a good sense of humor.

  I dial. “Brian? Yeah? It's Joe Loughlin. What the fuck! We've got a situation.”

  Matt throws his arms up in disbelief at what I just said and starts turning red again. I'm talking to his boss. But I know Brian and believe we can work together on this.

  McDonough and I start in. “Look, Brian. I know it doesn't make sense, but we absolutely cannot separate these two.” I'm convinced that's the heart of the matter— the critical thing is keeping Danny and Scott together. I'm willing to fight for them to go. “Let ’em go,” I tell him. It gets a bit heated and I tread water for a few because now this is technically an MSP case.

  “My bosses don't care at this point and will send someone else,” he says.

  “Shit, Brian,” I tell him, “your bosses didn't know squat ’til now. They haven't been doing this since 21 October either, damn it.” I am frazzled and mad. “Gimme Chick's number [Captain Chick Love is next up the MSP food chain]. I'll call him next. Right now. The clock's running. If these guys are going, they've got prep to do.”

  I give it a beat, then go on, trying to convince him. “Brian, if they stay together, they can and will do it. Pull ’em apart and Danny will shut down and then what? I won't even tell Tommy at this point. Brian, I appeal to your investigative sense. You know what I'm talking about.”

  “Joe, Joe, I agree,” he says. “Hang on. Let me make some calls. Give me thirty and I'll call you back.”

  Matt's got that stare again. “What?” I ask him. “Go tell those guys to plan, but hang on, Matt.”

  Forty minutes later my pager goes off. I call Brian. “Joe,” he says, “they go.”

  I breathe a heavy sigh of relief even as my headache sings. “Thank you, Brian. I'll keep you up on this. Tell you what. I'll keep Chitwood away from the news.” We laugh and hang up.

  Dan and Scott block my doorway, looking like hopeful kids, Matt's head behind them. “Get your shit and go, guys. I still think you're crazy, but go. And don't screw me up on this.”

  I'm about to punch my message button again when Danny says, “We won't let you down, Lieutenant. We won't let Amy down.”

  On Thursday morning, embarking on a crazy journey that typified Young's unstoppable, tanklike nature and Harakles's tireless enthusiasm, the two primary detectives climbed into Harakles's unmarked cruiser and left for Alabama. Everyone else might have thought it was crazy, but they really preferred to drive, welcoming the opportunity to thoroughly discuss the case and plan their approach to Gorman. As the miles flew past, however, Scott Harakles was feeling very lonely. It felt strange and wrong to be heading away from his family so close to Christmas.

  He learned something interesting about his partner on the trip. Danny Young might be a fine detective, but he had a lousy sense of direction. Twice on the way down, while Harakles was dozing, Danny got lost.

  As they got closer to Alabama, Harakles began to get excited. Unlike Young, he had never met Gorman. He'd only seen Gorman on video, observing Gorman's arrogance and disrespect. This would be Gorman's first custodial interrogation, as opposed to the voluntary interviews at the Portland Police Department. What they, and the attorney general's office, wanted was to lock Gorman into his initial story about dropping Amy off. Both detectives knew that a lot was hanging in the balance. They needed to manipulate Gorman into repeating the story and not let him see that it would be to his advantage to change it.

  Like the day of the search for Amy's body with a snowstorm coming, this turned out to be another race against the clock. They wanted to get to Troy in time to interview Gorman before the Probation and Parole officers returned him to Maine. When they left, they thought they'd have a day with Gorman. As it happened, they arrived at 11:00 a.m. on Friday to find that the probation officers were scheduled to leave Troy an hour later.

  Their primary reason for going to Alabama right away was their interest in interviewing Gorman one more time while he was still on home ground, but shaken from his encounter with police. Once he was back in a Maine jail, even though the only crime he was accused of was probation violation, they knew he would lawyer up, and no one would be able to talk with him about Amy St. Laurent.

  Part of their strategy as well was the element of surprise. If Gorman wasn't expecting to have to deal with them until he was back in Maine, he might be shocked by their sudden appearance. This, in turn, could throw him off balance, and he might inadvertently say things he normally wouldn't.

  They were also eager to test Gorman's reactions to some of their newly discovered information, now that they knew many things that only he, or he and their witnesses, could know. In particular, now that the detectives knew about the Westbrook traffic stop, they wanted to see which version of the story he would give about the night Amy d
isappeared. Would Gorman stick to his earlier story that he dropped Amy off at the Pavilion, was back in twenty minutes, and stayed in for the rest of the night, or would he give them the same story he'd been giving his friends and relatives about Sharma and Cook having left with Amy while he stayed home?

  Given Gorman's demonstrated familiarity with the criminal justice system and the police interrogation process, and based on his prior behavior, they also believed he would be interested in speaking with them to test their knowledge of things. It was a common practice with experienced criminals. With sociopaths. Gorman had engaged in various forms of testing and disinformation throughout the investigation. It would be, the detectives expected, a battle of wits in which their job was to be more clever.

  Driving like teenagers on a road trip, they left Maine around 9:30 on Thursday morning, reaching South Carolina early Friday morning, at 2:00 a.m. They slept for four hours, leaving around 6:00 a.m. with about four more hours to drive.

  They fought their way through the morning snarl of Atlanta traffic and reached Troy with only an hour to spare—an hour they got only because Troy is in another time zone. Troy is a quiet southern town of about fifteen thousand, located about fifty miles from Montgomery, which is home to Troy State University.

  Although they had had a telephone relationship with the Troy Police Department (primarily with Detective Sergeant Calista Everage) since the initial request for Gorman's records, Young and Harakles had no idea what kind of a reception they would receive. Scott Harakles said that when you go into a situation where you have to lean on other agencies, you never know what you'll get—often there is a coldness or hesitation. But the reception and support they got in Troy were exceptional.

  Because time was short, they were quickly provided with an interview room and taping capability. They immediately began taping an interview with Gorman, putting into play their plan to use Harakles as the interviewer. As expected, Gorman didn't want to deal with Danny Young. From the first, he'd known that Young didn't believe him. He tried to get rid of Young and speak with Scott Harakles alone, probably thinking he'd have a better shot at manipulating the younger detective. He couldn't split them up, and the interview proceeded with both detectives, Harakles sitting directly in front of Gorman with Young sitting behind Harakles.

  Gorman began the interview as his usual cocky and arrogant self, projecting the attitude he'd exhibited all along—oh, yeah, you cops don't know anything. Harakles asked Gorman to tell them again about the night he dropped Amy off, and he responded, “I already told you all about that.”

  Harakles said, “Yeah, well, I haven't heard it, so just humor me and tell me what happened.”

  Gorman responded, “You know … I dropped her off and came straight home …” and went over the story again. As Gorman talked, Harakles felt the last uneasiness about leaving his family vanish, replaced by excitement.

  Once they'd gotten him to repeat his story, and had seen that it was unchanged and that they had him on tape, locked into his lie, in Harakles's words, they took off their gloves and went at him with what they now knew—asking, Okay, so what about this, and what about that? Challenging his timeline, his lies, his accusations against Jason and Kush. The detectives wanted to see him dance, and they got what they wanted.

  Suddenly Gorman the cocky loudmouth, the born manipulator, the slick liar, began to come apart. When Harakles asked what Gorman had to say about telling Jamie that his roommates had killed Amy, Gorman's eyes widened, and he abandoned his arrogant slouch. Looking like he'd seen a ghost, he told the investigators, “I think I need an attorney.”

  Since it was now legally a case with custody and interrogation, the investigators had to stop asking questions, but Harakles told Gorman, “No more questions, okay, but I'm going to talk and you're going to listen.” Then he laid out what they had and told Gorman he was going down.

  When they left that interview room, they could have gone straight home. They'd gotten what they came for. But they were there, so they went on working.

  Their next interview was with Sean Littlefield, who had gone to Alabama with Gorman. The investigators had high hopes that Gorman would have told him something, since Littlefield was a good enough friend to have gone to Alabama with him and had been on the scene as Gorman was unraveling, but Littlefield didn't have much to offer. Littlefield told them that he and Gorman left for Alabama in Littlefield's car a week before Thanksgiving, driving pretty much straight through with Gorman doing most of the driving because Littlefield was sick. He said that Gorman's mother called frequently, reporting in one of her earliest calls that Gorman's driver's license was being suspended or revoked.

  Littlefield described an occasion before they left Maine when Gorman stopped at the Pavilion nightclub, leaving Sean in the car, and went in to ask if they had cameras so he could prove that his car had been there the night he said he'd dropped Amy off. Gorman also checked out the presence of cameras at the Stein Gallery across the street. Littlefield told them that, in the beginning, Gorman maintained his story that he'd dropped Amy off and that all he'd done that night was kiss Amy.

  Later, Littlefield said, after the Portland paper reported that police investigation showed Gorman hadn't dropped her at the Pavilion, Gorman's story changed. Littlefield overheard Gorman on the phone, telling a local friend that Kush and Jason had killed her, that he had told them about the spot behind his mother's house and they had put her there and gone back later to bury her. Littlefield said that Russ did tell him that Amy had been shot in the head, but that Jason and Kush had done it. At that point, no one outside the investigation except the killer knew that Amy had been shot in the head.

  Littlefield also told them that his former girlfriend, Tiffany, had talked a lot about Gorman and his connection to the case. Tiffany had told people at her school that she knew what had happened and who did it, and that she could get a lot of money from him (Russ) but she wouldn't, because she thought he was cute.2

  Littlefield also told them that the first week they were in Alabama, Gorman got a gun, a .25. That he got a second, similar gun just before the standoff and would sit around and play with the guns. Littlefield told them that when Gorman had to leave his grandmother's house because his uncle was getting out of prison, they were invited to stay with Erika Walker, a family friend.

  When Young and Harakles finished taping their interview with Littlefield, they turned to the local police department for advice about who else it would be wise to speak with, including local people the two detectives had learned about in their interview with Littlefield. Having let Gorman run, hoping that he'd talk, they now wanted to find the people he might have talked with—friends, relatives, people he'd hung out with, and girls he'd slept with.

  The cooperation of the Troy Police Department was amazing—another gift in the case. Detective Sergeant Calista Everage seemed to be on a first-name basis with everyone in town. As Scott Harakles put it, the Everages were a police family but they were also members of the community, and they knew their people. Calista Everage just asked the two visiting detectives who they wanted, took down a list of those people, secured their cooperation, brought them to the station, and marched them, one by one, into the interview room. For Young and Harakles, that generous assistance was another example of the unprecedented bond between police agencies that Amy's case had forged.

  The next person they interviewed after Littlefield was a long-distance truck driver in her late thirties named Erika Walker, a longtime friend of the family known to Gorman and others as “Mamma E.” Walker was a rough-edged, tough-talking woman who had her own history with the Troy police, a history revolving around substances like mushrooms and crystal meth. She was an emotional woman, very volatile and unstable. In Harakles's words, “sketchy, bouncy, all over the place.” She also had a good and valuable story to tell.

  Walker was another of the witnesses in the case who was deeply pained by the conflict between their belief that they had to tell what they k
new—Walker was the mother of a daughter herself—and their sense that in speaking with the police, they were betraying a close friend or relative, in Walker's case this kid that she'd known for most of his life. At first, she was reluctant to talk, expressing concern that either Gorman might come after her or someone who knew him might retaliate against her if she told the detectives what she knew.

  After Young and Harakles reassured her that Gorman was going to stay in jail, and played on her evident desire to cooperate and clear her conscience of what was obviously troubling information, she quickly gave up her reluctance.3 Danny Young just told her, very directly, “Come on … you know you want to tell us.” And Young had a way about him that made people trust him.

  After that, Walker relaxed and agreed to talk. About a week after he had arrived in Troy, Walker told them, Russ was visiting, and he said to her, “Mamma E, I need to clear my conscience about something.” She poured him a cup of coffee and said, “Well, go ahead and talk.”

  He took a deep breath and said, “I did kill that girl up there. We went for a walk and I was tripping and all of a sudden she said something to me that kinda slapped my face and I just went off on her and after I got done with her, I shot her in the head.”

  As Mrs. Walker was talking, Danny Young was thinking, “Boy, I sure hope the tape is working.” With all his experience, he still listened with a sense of disbelief at what he was hearing. Even for seasoned detectives, getting information like this is exciting. Their training in interviewing and interrogation really comes into play when they're getting great stuff, and they have to control their emotions, their body language, and their facial expressions so their elation doesn't show. When a breakthrough moment happens, even as the information is coming in, detectives will check and recheck to be sure they're following protocol and that all the equipment is working, always fearful that this vital evidence will somehow be lost. Luckily, everything was working fine for Young and Harakles, and they recorded a second, more detailed version of Gorman's confession than the one he had made to his mother.