Small Sacrifices - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ann Rule wrote thirty-five New York Times bestsellers. Her first bestseller was The Stranger Beside Me, about her personal relationship with infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. A former Seattle police officer, she used her firsthand expertise in all her books. For more than three decades, she was a powerful advocate for victims of violent crime. She lived near Seattle and passed away in 2015.

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CHAPTER 1

May 19, 1983

It had been, if not a quiet night, at least a normal night for the Springfield Police Department. Cops know that hot weather encourages impromptu parties and triggers family beefs. The SPD log for that twenty-four-hour period lists the expected ration of trouble between a quarter after ten and twenty minutes to eleven Thursday night.

An anonymous caller complained at 10:16 p.m. about a party on North First Street. "RP [reporting party] called to report a loud party in the above area. Unit dispatched. Responsibles contacted. Noise abated. Subjects to depart the area."

"Suspicious conditions" were reported-again anonymously-at 10:22 p.m. "RP reported hearing a small child crying. Unit dispatched. Involved parties contacted, found to be a dispute between children. No crime involved."

At 10:32 the call was a bit more serious. "RP called to report a male/female verbal dispute in the apartment complex on North Seventeenth. Male half reported to be carrying rifle. Units dispatched. Charged with menacing. Lodged Lane County Jail."

At the headquarters of the Lane County Sheriff's Office in Eugene, Sheriff Dave Burks's officers were also pulling a fairly quiet shift. Rob Rutherford was the graveyard shift sergeant; Detective Lieutenant Louis Hince would be on call for anything that might require his detectives; thirty-one-year-old Doug Welch was at home in Springfield with his wife, Tamara, and two young sons. Richard Blaine Tracy (of course, "Dick Tracy") was a year away from retirement after twenty-six years as a cop, and he would be just as happy if nothing heavy came down before he left. Divorced, Tracy was getting ready for bed alone in his Eugene apartment. Kurt Wuest was away at a training seminar that Thursday night. Roy Pond was working days.

Assistant DA Fred Hugi, radio and television turned off, was reveling in the quiet of a perfect spring evening at his lodgelike home set far back in the forest along the McKenzie River. It was a different life out there in the woods, and he was a different man. He wore frayed jeans and battered logging boots as he planted seedlings to thicken even more the forest outside his windows.

Joanne Hugi, co-director of the computer center at the University of Oregon, was lost in concentration in her computer room. It made her husband smile; he, who had degrees in forestry, finance, and law, had been baffled by the single computer course he'd attempted, and he'd challenged Joanne to try it. She had proved to be a natural, understanding terms and concepts that eluded him. Hugi gave up on computers, but Joanne flew with them, higher and higher. He was extremely proud of her. She'd worked her way up at the university from an entrance level job to the top.

The sun set long before 10 p.m., and Hugi paused to look at the filigree of tree branches silhouetted against the last bit of sky before he took his dirt-caked boots off and went inside. The Hugis' two cats sat on the deck, alert, staring at the glowing eyes of something-probably a deer or raccoon-out there in the woods.

The Hugis had come to this perfect spot along the McKenzie after years of living in the kind of apartments students could afford in the city. It was well worth the half-hour commute into Eugene. Sometimes, they could hear logging trucks zooming by far away on the road, but usually they heard only the wind in the trees, or rain, or the cry of a nighthawk.

The bad call came into the Springfield Police Department at 10:40 p.m.: ÒEmployee of McKenzie-Willamette Hospital advises of gunshot victims at that location. Officers dispatched. Arrived 10:48 p.m.Ó

Rosie Martin, RN; Shelby Day, LPN; Judy Patterson, the night receptionist; and Dr. John Mackey, physician in charge, comprised the evening shift in the emergency room at the McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield.

The McKenzie-Willamette ER as it existed in the late spring of 1983 was a little cramped, a little out of date. Paint on walls and baseboards had been scrubbed dull and drab; the waiting room furniture was chrome and peeling vinyl.

Facing the two sets of doors that led to the circular driveway off Mohawk Boulevard, the three treatment rooms were to the right: Day Surgery nearest the street, Minor Treatment in the middle, and the Trauma Room at the back. On the left, Judy Patterson's desk was just behind a small waiting area near the street doors. Five feet or so behind her desk there was a small bathroom and beyond that a larger waiting room.

The floors were hospital-waxed shiny-the forest-green-and-white-swirl asphalt tile popular in the 1950s, patched here and there with odd squares. The rooms smelled old. Old wax, old dust, old disinfectant. Old sorrows, it would seem, with the sharpness of immediate grief dulled by time. The old ER had known decades of pain.

That velvet black spring night Dr. Mackey and his staff, working in an almost obsolete ER, would be the first to encounter what was unthinkable for Springfield, what would be unthinkable for even a big city. None of them would have much time to think during the hours they fought to save the injured, their white shoes sliding on floors slick with fresh blood. Only later would terrible musings rush in to destroy all hope of sleep.

Shelby Day is a slender, soft-spoken woman near forty, with six yearsÕ experience in the McKenzie-Willamette ER. She wears white slacks and pastel, patterned smocks. When she remembers the night of May 19, 1983, tears well unbidden in her eyes.

"We were working the 4 p.m. to midnight shift. We had the usual kind of 'nice day' injuries-lacerations, bumped heads, sprains, and broken bones. We were busy steadily, but there were no real emergencies. Dr. Mackey was finishing up with a patient at a quarter after ten, and Rosie and I were in that little back room doing paperwork. There's always paperwork to catch up with. Judy was out at her desk in the corridor . . ."

Judy Patterson, a smiling strawberry blonde, works two jobs to support her son Brandon, who was nine in 1983. She is the receptionist in Pediatrics at Eugene's Sacred Heart Hospital on the day shift; after five, she puts in another five or six hours as the ER receptionist at McKenzie-Willamette.

Rosie Martin was pregnant in the spring of 1983, into her second trimester. Already her belly had begun to get in her way as she moved swiftly to care for patients. She was tired, but she didn't complain to her co-workers. She and Shelby worked together quietly in the back room.

When Dr. John Austin Mackey had a full beard, his nurses wondered if he ever smiled. When he shaved it off, they saw that he had been smiling all along behind his hirsute facade. Tall, balding, and broad-shouldered, a bear of a man, Mackey inspires confidence. The perfect emergency room doctor; his assessment of patients' needs is deft. In his late thirties, married, and the father of young children, he had worked full-time in the ER for eight years.

Because they were winding down, the others told Judy she could go home a few minutes early. She was scheduled to leave anyway at 10:30, but she grinned gratefully and grabbed her sweater and purse. As she walked toward the ambulance doors, a woman in the hall, a relative waiting for a patient, called to her.

"There's someone out there honking their horn and yelling for help. You'd better check."

Judy whirled and walked back to where Shelby Day and Rosie Martin were shuffling paperwork.

"Someone needs...