Authors: Lis Wiehl,April Henry
At the trial, they said that parts of the fire had reached a thousand degrees. His mother, stepdad, and his half brother had not died from the flames but from breathing superheated air that destroyed their lungs. When they found his stepdad, his body was wrapped around his son. The fire had melted their clothes onto their skin.
T
he juvenile judge sentenced him to the Spurling Institute. The first person Joey saw when he was driven through the barbed-wire-topped gate at Spurling was a guy wearing a five-foot-tall dunce cap. Around his neck were three or four homemade cardboard signs. The top one said in block letters W
ELCOME
M
AT
, and Joey’s first confused thought was that some guy named Mat was coming.
Like Joey, half the students had a criminal conviction, referred by state juvenile corrections systems with no place to put them. For the rest, Spurling was the end of a line that had begun with an exclusive boarding school, then devolved through a series of less-choosy schools, and finally a military academy or two. Most had exhibited bad behavior of some sort—taking drugs, stealing, vandalizing. Some were violent. A few had mental illnesses that either hadn’t been diagnosed or that didn’t respond to medications. But for everyone, Spurling was the school of last resort.
In fact, there was very little school going on at the school. During the day, the students provided much of the labor that kept Spurling running, as well as attended group therapy sessions and individual counseling. School was held for just a few hours after dinner, and it was easy enough to cheat. Spurling liked to brag that its students had a B average or better, but administrators never revealed that the tests were all open book.
At Spurling, Joey was told that he was a delinquent, irresponsible, oppositional, lacking judgment, and had poor interpersonal skills.
According to the lesson plan the school filed with the state, at Spurling Joey was supposed to develop self-esteem, insight, and self-awareness. He was supposed to learn how to express anger “in an appropriate and verbal manner.”
None of that was as beguiling as the sound of a Zippo.
Joey was not allowed to have lighters, matches, cigarettes, or magnifying glasses. He could not “accumulate combustibles.”
He was searched, as was his room, every day. But it was like they thought he had no imagination. A single piece of paper, held against a lightbulb long enough, would catch on fire. A fire that had to be carefully shielded until it could be applied to something else.
And then there was Sissy, one of his few friends at Spurling. Which was far better than having her as an enemy. They were the same age, but by the time Joey was sentenced to Spurling, Sissy had already been there for a year. She liked being held up by the administrators as a success story, an example of how even someone who had committed the most terrible offenses could be rehabilitated. So at Spurling she was careful to cover her tracks. But she had a million sneaky ways of getting back at someone she didn’t like.
And a few ways of helping you, if that’s what she felt like. So sometimes Sissy would bring Joey a match. A single match, but he would do whatever she wanted for that match. Give extra food to her, do her chores, plant contraband in the room of an enemy. He knew she lied to him sometimes, but it didn’t matter. Not when she was willing to be his friend. Not when she acted like she couldn’t see the scars on his face and hand.
Once he got caught with a match in his room. But Joey never admitted where the match had come from, not even when he was forced to stand out in the stifling August sun for two days straight wearing shorts, no shirt, no sunscreen, and a sign that read B
URN
B
ABY
B
URN
.
Sissy left Spurling six months before Joey. He got used to being alone, which was good, because it wasn’t any different on the outside. People took one look at his patchwork face and then looked away. Even his dad winced when he looked at Joey’s hand. Once he was in line for a slice of pizza, and a kid told him the workers should just put the toppings on his face. Younger kids would sometimes ask what had happened, but more than once before he could even answer, a mom would drag the child away, warning the kid not to talk to “those people.”
Whenever things got to be too much, when someone yelled “Freak!” at Joey from a passing car, or he lost another job, well, there was always fire.
He stuck to small brush fires, out in the woods, along the edges of old highways. Sometimes an abandoned barn or house, falling in on itself. But never anyplace where people lived.
Then Sissy paid him to go one step further. It woke something in him, the desire to burn something bigger and better. Which was why Joey was standing with his gas can outside a half-constructed home in unincorporated Washington County, some McMansion that would sit in solitary splendor on five acres.
The phone rang in his pocket. Joey nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Hello?”
Sissy said, “I need to see you again.”
“Why?” He liked the
idea
of Sissy, but the reality of her made him nervous. “That lady’s house was a total loss, just like you wanted.”
“Yeah, but that’s just her house. Meanwhile, she’s probably raking in thousands in insurance money. I ended up doing her a favor. Instead of messing up her life, I made it better.”
Joey didn’t like the way this was going. A nervous jolt went through him when he heard her next words.
“I’ve been thinking. You need to help me find a way to stop her. Permanently.”
Channel Four
C
hannel Four,” Jenna Banks said into the headset while underlining a passage in
Cash In: How to Make More Money and Get the Promotion You Deserve
. It was ridiculous that Channel Four’s management still insisted she give the receptionist her lunch breaks. Jenna had been at the station for nine weeks now, finishing her degree in broadcasting and mass communications. Marcy, the receptionist, had been at the station for twenty-five years—longer than Jenna had been alive! It was clear that Marcy wasn’t going anywhere. But Jenna? Jenna was destined to be a star.
“I need to talk to a reporter about a murder,” a man’s voice said. “A murder that might be committed.”
Dropping her book, Jenna grabbed a piece of scratch paper. “I’m a reporter.”
Multnomah County Courthouse
Twenty years earlier
M
r. D—Sissy had taken to calling her lawyer, Mr. Dowell, that— said they got lucky when Judge Irvine was assigned to her trial. He said that the judge would be fair.
Even though Sissy wanted to dress in a way that showed off her figure, she regretfully decided that her best move was to appear younger than she was. Even though she was now thirteen—a teenager, nearly an adult—she put on a loose cardigan over a dress that hid her curves, wore no makeup, and pulled her hair into pigtails. She worried that the pigtails might be over the top, but a quick look in the mirror reassured her that they were the perfect touch.
She had thought the courtroom would be full, but instead there were just a handful of people. Mr. D whispered to her that, for her own good, the court was keeping the event from being a spectacle.
Sissy had dreamed of flashbulbs and shouted questions.
She quickly grew bored with the proceedings. When they were talking about her, it was interesting. When they were droning on about the law, it was totally
not
interesting.
“This is a child,” Mr. D told the judge.
That was what Sissy had decided was her best move after he had leapt out of his chair when she touched his thigh, sputtering, eager to get away from her. She had begun to act younger and slower, sometimes even lapsing into baby talk or calling him “Mithter D.”
“Elizabeth was easily led by investigators to agree with whatever they said. In fact, this girl has learned in her short, sad life that the safest thing to do is to please the adults around her.”
When the witnesses testified, Sissy grew tired of their tears.
She
was the real victim. The best part was when she got to speak directly to the judge. Sissy could cry on demand. She was good at crying. Very good. She could say the right words and do the right things. And she was sure that all of it would add up to her going free.
She watched the smallest changes in the judge’s expression, when his pupils constricted or dilated, or his nostrils flared, and adjusted her story accordingly. She made the tears fall from her eyes. But not too many. She didn’t want her nose to run and ruin how pretty she looked. How dramatic.
She was so sure that the judge liked her that when he found her guilty it came as a horrible shock. The floor felt like it was falling away from beneath her. She put her head on the table.
That afternoon, Mr. D told her that everything was not lost. As part of sentencing, he would explain to the judge that there were mitigating circumstances and she deserved leniency. Sissy grasped at the idea and held on for dear life. She had already been in custody for weeks and weeks. That should be enough.
When they gathered again in front of the judge five weeks later, Mr. D said, “Judge Irvine, while we didn’t plead ‘not guilty by reason of insanity,’ there are clearly mitigating circumstances. Not only does this child lack the intellectual or moral capacity to understand the consequences of her actions, but the records show that she has also been horribly damaged. The state failed to care for her, failed to protect her. Instead, it let her go from one terrible situation to the next. Even before she was born, Elizabeth was unwanted. Her parents married only under duress when her mother was six months pregnant. The marriage was so volatile and violent that her mother repeatedly abandoned Elizabeth at her grandmother’s when she was a child. Her father beat her with a belt as well as his fists. She may well have brain damage. And then when Elizabeth was seven, she saw something no one should ever see, especially not a child. She saw her father kill her mother and then turn the gun on himself.”
He paused to let the weight of his words settle in. Elizabeth wished she could stuff her fingers in her ears, close her eyes, and not have the images replay behind her lids.
“Then she was forced to live with her grandmother, who made it clear she saw Elizabeth as a burden. As a result, this girl was brought up in a toxic environment, one where lashing out before you yourself could be hurt was the norm. The court should not compound the wrongs the state has perpetuated against this girl by punishing her for acts that to this day she does not understand. She bears the burden of a tragic past and present—help her find the bright future she so deserves. If any child deserves leniency, Your Honor, it would be Elizabeth.”
Next, the psychiatrist said that Sissy had not been able to tell right from wrong when the bad things happened, that she had been incapable of knowing the nature of her actions. Listening to him, Sissy felt a surge of pride. She had done a good job of letting him think that.
She could not—would not—be labeled crazy, any more than she would embrace being called retarded. But pleading temporary insanity seemed like the best of both worlds. Basically, it would prove that it wasn’t her fault.
Mr. Whitlock, the prosecutor, seemed personally insulted by the psychiatrist’s words. When he looked at Sissy, his upper lip curled. “We need to think of all the would-be Miss Hewsoms out there. Harsh sentencing acts as a deterrent to teens who are considering committing crimes. Light sentences don’t teach teens the lesson they need to learn: if you commit a terrible crime, you will spend a considerable part of your life in jail. I’m confident that as the court looks at all of the facts and circumstances, Miss Hewsom will be held responsible for her actions.
“Judge Irvine,” Mr. Whitlock continued, “in this state, we have a strict legal standard required to prove insanity at the time of the crime. Was Miss Hewsom unable, at the time of her crimes, to distinguish between right and wrong? No. The defense has not presented clear and convincing evidence to prove insanity was a mitigating circumstance. In fact, Miss Hewsom was capable of lying and covering up evidence of her crimes directly after committing them.”
Judge Irvine steepled his fingers. “I have listened to the arguments. Mitigating circumstances were already taken into account in my initial ruling that Elizabeth Hewsom should be tried as a juvenile instead of as an adult. It is clear, however, that Miss Hewsom requires specialized care. She is a deeply, deeply troubled individual. But rehabilitation could give her a second chance to overcome both the wrongs that were done to her and the grievous wrongs she herself has done. In view of that, the court has decided to send Miss Hewsom to the Spurling Institute, a private institution that has had great success in treating people who lack values and morals to guide them.”
It took a few seconds for the truth to settle in. Sissy had thought the trial would end with her going free. But instead she would be locked up for years. She realized she had made a mistake. Mr. D hadn’t wanted to help her get free. He wanted to get her away from him.
Which wasn’t the same thing.
Channel Four
C
assidy looked into the camera. “Tonight, Channel Four offers you an exclusive interview with the accused Want Ad Killer, Colton Foley. And his fiancée, Zoe Barrett, opens up about her ordeal.
“Colton Foley is being held without bail in the Multnomah County Jail. Foley is twenty-three and a medical student at Oregon Health Sciences University. He is charged with robbing and killing three women who variously described themselves in want ads as masseuses, exotic dancers, or strippers. Two other women who were robbed, but not killed, have also come forward.
“He allegedly contacted women through the ‘Meetings sought’ section of the local alternative weekly.” Cassidy held up a section of newsprint. “Here’s how one ad he answered read:
If you’d like to spend some time with a sweet blonde, give me a call
.”