Meg O'Brien - Gathering Lies

J.P. flashed me a warning. I saw it in her eyes, just before I saw the threat in Mike Murty’s. J.P. grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “C’mon, Sarah. You’ve had too much to drink. Let’s go.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, slurring the words a bit. “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Anyway, I need a shower, to wash the filth away.”

We had to get our coats, and when we rounded the room divider again to go out the front door, I saw that the Five were having a serious conclave at the bar. They weren’t laughing anymore.

I should have felt a small sense of victory. But even without J.P.’s warning, I knew I’d said far too much.

Late that night, I tried to throw a net of protection around myself by calling Mike Murty at home. I told him I did, in fact, have evidence that he and the others had raped Lonnie Mae. I said the evidence was safe with someone unknown to him, and that if anything happened to me, it would go directly to someone in authority outside the Seattle PD. I told him that agency would nail them for the rape, Lonnie’s murder, and my death, as well. Then I closed with the argument that the Five’s best chance was to throw themselves on the mercy of the court—and that they’d better make sure I stayed alive to see them there.

I thought this would stop them. At the very least, I hoped it might buy me some time.

But that’s when the Seattle Five came after me.

Let me be clear. Most Seattle cops are good people, doing jobs they love and are proud of. Early in my career as a public defender, however, I’d acquired a reputation with even the good ones. To put as nice a slant as possible on it, they loathed me. I was the one who got people off after the cops worked their asses off tracking them down, taking them in, filling out paperwork, testifying in court. I didn’t mind their griping about me. It got me on the nightly news, and if that could in some way help a client, I was all for it. I dressed in snappy clothes for court, and to draw even more attention, I deliberately wore my thick blond hair in a loose, flowing style I was told was sexy.

Actually, Ian’s the one who told me my hair was sexy, even to the point of using it in our foreplay. One Fourth of July night we lay naked on my bed, I and Seattle’s top-ranking police detective, and watched the Space Needle fireworks from my window. Almost absentmindedly, Ian stroked my hair against himself, over and over till he was fully aroused, reaching climax just as the final burst of fireworks spilled from Seattle’s best-known phallic symbol. I recall getting into the spirit of things, though I never told him, during or after, how uncomfortable the position had been. In those days I’d have done anything for Ian, put myself in discomfort, even danger. I loved him with nearly my entire heart, leaving no room for anything else but the law.

Ironically, it was the law that came between us. Ian was a dedicated Seattle cop who spent long days putting evidence together to bring my clients into court. He had a hard time accepting that I had a job to do, and that I took pride in doing it.

It didn’t help matters that some of the accused I managed to get off weren’t innocent. That’s the thing about DNA—it can be used, if one knows how to present it in court, to free the guilty as well. And a lawyer’s job is to defend her client, innocent or not.

Law, I learned, has a way of wearing one’s purity down.

So Ian and I would argue about my work, and at first it was fun—something we did as part of foreplay, to get us excited. Later, it became something I dreaded.

“If the jury doesn’t understand DNA when the prosecutor rams it down their throats, over and over for hours till they become benumbed, it’s not my fault!” I’d argue, my voice shaking because I wanted more than anything to get the argument over with and get back to where we were “one.”

“You keep it going!” he would shout back. “You know exactly what you’re doing, and if the jury gets bored and doesn’t even listen, it’s your fault, not the prosecutor’s. You plan it that way. You weave a damned spell in the courtroom, and no one can see beyond it.”

He once went so far as to say that if I loved him, I would go do something else for a living—like mow lawns.

I couldn’t believe he was serious, and perhaps he was not. Ian, a linebacker type with red hair and an Irish temper, had a way of flying off the handle and saying things he didn’t mean. Later, he’d apologize, and things would go back to the way they had been. Until next time.

One night last January, however—two nights after I’d called Mike Murty and threatened him with Lonnie Mae’s evidence—Ian didn’t show for dinner. When I finally reached him late that night, he said he’d been busy. He didn’t know when he’d have time to see me again.

The next day, three uniform cops raided my apartment while I was out. A judge I barely knew had given them a warrant based on a flimsy tip the cops said they had received. They “found” crack cocaine and miscellaneous drug paraphernalia in my bedroom closet.

I do not use drugs, and never have.

I was arrested coming out of a courtroom, a moment I’ll never forget if I live to be older than sin. The charge was possession of illegal drugs with intent to sell, a felony, and after the usual delays and continuances, I didn’t expect my trial to go forward until early December. I walked through all these procedures like a zombie, in fear and disbelief.

The next day I made bail but lost my job, and for a brief time I fell into a depression. My only comfort was that they hadn’t found Lonnie Mae’s evidence when they planted those drugs. I’d taken it from my trunk, after we left McCoy’s, and had given it to J.P. to put in a safe place.

I was too afraid now, though, to hand it over to anyone—even Ivy O’Day. It was the DA’s office, after all, that had pressed charges against me. Had Ivy told someone about my visit to her? The wrong someone? Had the cops, in fact, been searching for the evidence at the same time they planted those drugs?

Depression mingled with fear. Then, one day I woke up angry. From that morning on, my days were consumed with thoughts of how best to destroy the Seattle Five.

The next day, I walked over to Seattle Mystery Bookshop. Between talking with Bill Farley and looking through volumes on the shelves, I formulated a plan to write a book blasting the justice system in general, and crooked police in particular. Bill was all for it.

“It’s a bestseller in the making,” he told me, his white hair gleaming under the store’s light. “Especially with you being a lawyer. It’ll put you on talk shows, maybe even Larry King Live. You can get your story out that way.”

I wanted my story out, not just for myself, but for Lonnie Mae Brown. I still hadn’t heard from Ivy O’Day, and no charges had been filed against the Seattle Five. Lonnie Mae’s stockings remained in their plastic bag in a safe in the office of J.P.’s accountant, where she’d put them the night I handed them to her. After the confrontation with the Five in McCoy’s, she was afraid they’d search her office, and she hid the stockings in a brown envelope with old tax forms she gave to her accountant for storage.

As for me, as the weeks went by I was growing more and more frustrated and less and less willing to depend on justice taking its course. Lonnie Mae might still have been alive if the system put monsters like those cops in jail, instead of either ignoring the complaints against them, or letting them out on bail. And Lonnie was by no means an isolated case. Time after time, over the years, I’d seen it happen—rapists, murderers, child molesters given light sentences, only to be released from prison and kill, rape and molest again.