To the Bridge Read online

  The moans and sniffling were loud enough that the girl needed to speak up. “I have just one more thing to say. Our Father, who art in heaven . . .”

  The room recited the prayer with her.

  Four hours had been allocated, but few others chose to speak. At ten fifteen, it was Hadley’s turn. He spoke of Cook’s willingness to confess, perhaps more than any client Hadley had seen in his many years of practice. If Hadley’s heart was in what he was saying, I did not hear it, or maybe I did not want to hear it. Amanda’s case, how she got to the bridge and what would befall her for doing so, was on my mind nearly all of the time. I did not think of her as something to be dispatched, and I did not think Hadley did, either. I thought about what Steve Krasik said, how the capital defense attorney needs to get inside the heads of deeply disturbed individuals. I did not see Hadley getting inside Cook’s head. I saw him doing his job under rough conditions, working to cast butchery and showboating in a sympathetic light. It was ugly to watch. Not that it mattered—Hadley had already saved his client’s life. But I expected him to do more for Amanda, and I expected him to as much out of concern for her as for the rest of us. I thought we deserved answers and not just results.

  “At least we got a new police boat out of it,” District Attorney Josh Marquis had mentioned to me the month before with regard to Amanda’s case. One of Oregon’s more vocal proponents of capital punishment, Marquis had been referring to a plan recently approved by the Portland City Council. It was a hopeful idea: that a high-speed fire-rescue boat might have saved Eldon’s life. Who could be against it? Council member Dan Saltzman for one. Though he had told the press conference I attended on June 3, “the city council feel[s], and I think every citizen in Portland feels, the profound sense of grief over the tragic drowning of Eldon Smith,” he had nevertheless voted against the rescue boat, claiming the city did not have the funds and should not dip into reserves “based on an emotional reaction to one incident.” But what else but emotion attended every aspect of a child’s murder? Was there anything with as much fuel? We hitched ourselves to it, and we made policy; we debated laws that said we value this life but this other one not so much. But even the meth addict who kills is someone’s child. Edith Mitts would not attend her son’s sentencing, she told me, because she did not think she could physically take it.

  The judge today asked if Cook had anything to say. Cook nodded. He was asked to stand and did. He did not speak for a good twenty seconds. The judge asked Cook if he wanted Hadley to read his statement. Again, Cook said nothing. Then, “No, I have to be able to do this.”

  He turned to the room. “I don’t blame you guys at all for how you feel about it,” he said, his eyes lingering on one face, then another. He had been “so ashamed” after the killings that he drove to Seattle and bought “really strong heroin” and shot a lot of it “in order to die,” but he didn’t die. “It was not,” he said, “God’s desire.”

  “I’d give my life right now to bring your family back,” he continued. But it wasn’t him that killed, he said. “It was me under the influence of meth.”

  Cook rambled on in this vein, enjoying the sound of his own voice, an actor unaware he has lost the audience. “I will cry every day until I die an old man in prison,” he concluded, and sat down. The judge sentenced Cook to three life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus fifteen years. The room broke into applause. As Cook was led away, the broad-shouldered man beside me, who had not altered his posture during the proceedings, got to his feet and shouted, “Rot in hell!”

  I stood at the counselor’s table with Hadley and the DA after the courtroom emptied. What no one could figure out, the DA said, was how Cook had the power to make two grown men dig their own graves. Cook’s version painted them as docile, with Cook saying a prayer for men who must have been begging for their lives. The DA thought the whole prayer thing sounded dubious. Who would believe it?

  I mentioned I had met the night before with Mitts.

  “She was a terrible alcoholic who didn’t stop drinking until last year,” Hadley said. Did I know her other kids testified she had had a sexual relationship with Cook, starting when he was a teenager? The DA nodded and pointed to his binder; he had their transcripts in there.

  A mother and her child live on the border of protection and destruction. This border, theirs alone, is not axiomatically fraught. Mothering came easily to me, and I had an easy daughter. But I had seen the conjuring a child can do: the child who does not feel she gets attention for being good and so is very bad; the child who feeds the mother lies until the mother determines any fault is the fault of others. This was what I sensed Mitts was doing, what Christine Duncan had historically done, what Kathy Stott by her silence about Amanda was doing now.

  I had just driven into Portland when my phone rang. Mitts was calling, wanting me to tell her what happened in court. She was “just feeling sick about it.”

  I pulled to the curb. What could I say to her? That from what I saw, everyone hated her son? That he seemed wholly untrustworthy? In the months to come, Mitts would encourage me several times to visit Cook, including a short plea made from stuck-together Post-it notes, again giving me his address, his inmate number. The envelope the note arrived in was decorated with stickers of roses.

  17

  July 4, 2007, Portland, Oregon

  Sara had heard about Jason ever since she and Ryan got together earlier in the year. His best friend, he said, had been living in Oahu, running mail rooms for Ricoh over there. But Jason was coming back; the company had arranged to put him and his family up in a swank high-rise in Portland’s West Hills, near downtown.

  Sara was excited to meet Jason and his wife, Amanda, whom Ryan had not said very nice things about; he mentioned something about her drinking. Sara worked as an early-childhood development specialist, mostly with young children with special needs. She did family and parent training and had many times seen parents not at their best. If Ryan was concerned Sara might be critical of Amanda’s parenting style, Sara was fairly sure that she could handle what problems there might be.

  Jason invited Ryan and Sara over for the Fourth of July. The condo had an enormous patio with a bang-on view of the river; they could watch the fireworks from there. Sara brought a salad, a pie, and, as a hostess gift, a plant. She knew how important Jason was to Ryan and wanted to make a good impression.

  The apartment was open and modern. The family had just moved in. Things were a bit of a jumble, and there was a big, big turtle Jason had brought back from Hawaii. Jason was very nice and welcoming to Sara. He’d laid out some expensive cheeses and was playing host on the patio. Still, the turtle was a little weird, and the two younger kids were running around unsupervised.

  Amanda floated between the living room and the kitchen. Her “hello” had a slow quality that made Sara think Amanda might already be tipsy. Sara saw a big piece of raw meat on the counter. Amanda did not seem to be making moves to do anything with it. Sara brought the salad fixings and pie into the kitchen.

  I want salad! I want salad!

  This was Eldon, at Sara’s hip. What two-year-old, she wondered, clamored for salad? But she also noticed his language skills were advanced; he was a well-spoken child. Sara fed him crackers as she mixed the salad. She asked Amanda if it was okay to give Eldon some before the rest of the meal was ready. Amanda said to give him whatever he wanted and refilled her glass from a plastic half gallon of vodka.

  Sara gave Eldon a big bowl of salad. He mowed through it and wanted more. It was odd to see a little kid scarfing down salad, and the educator in Sara knew something was off here, that little kids are not usually this hungry for vegetables.

  Amanda announced she was going to the store because she needed some ingredient. She had her car keys in her hand, and Sara thought there is no way she should be driving.

  “I’ll drive,” Sara said.

  No, no, I’m driving, said Amanda, and she told Eldon and Trinity they were coming with h
er. Sara was dumbfounded. She went to the patio and told Jason that Amanda was leaving and that it might really be a better idea if she, Sara, drove them all to the store.

  Good luck with that, he told her; Amanda did this all the time.

  Sara caught up with Amanda and repeated her offer to drive. Amanda kept saying no. Sara was just over five feet tall, a head smaller than Amanda. She did not think she could get the keys from Amanda’s hand, and how insane was it to be contemplating this at all? Not knowing what else to do, she got in the passenger seat, telling herself she could grab the steering wheel and have some control over this car if she needed to.

  Sara kept her eyes on Amanda as she drove through downtown. The pi-pi-pop! of firecrackers and the whistle of bottle rockets did not make Sara any calmer. She had met the kids less than an hour before and somehow felt charged with keeping them alive.

  Amanda pulled up to the Safeway supermarket near the Portland State campus, a store that attracted the homeless and crazies in the area and was nicknamed Psycho Safeway. Amanda did not help the kids out of the car. Sara would have helped Eldon, but he seemed to have no trouble getting out himself.

  The supermarket was huge and bright inside, and for some reason almost empty. Maybe everybody had already bought what beer and hot dog buns they needed. Sara had no idea what Amanda needed. The kids followed their mother as she brushed around the aisles. They seemed content, stopping to touch eye-level items, Eldon especially, who struck Sara as a very bright boy.

  Eldon, get over here! Amanda yelled. Her voice was sharp in the empty store, and Sara thought, I just want to give her a little advice. Was that inappropriate? What could she do, standing in the middle of Psycho Safeway with a woman who seemed half-unhinged?

  “You seem like you’re having a hard time with Eldon,” Sara said to Amanda. “I’d be happy to offer some advice, if that’s something you’d be interested in.”

  Amanda stopped near the end of the aisle. Her demeanor changed instantly. Her face softened and bloomed, and she said to Sara, that’s so nice of you.

  It seemed to Sara that Amanda had become fascinated with her, had gone from screaming to Zen and mellow, super-tuned-in.

  Sara said she had a book called Positive Discipline. She would bring it to Amanda, and the next time they met after that, they could talk about it.

  I would love that, Amanda said. Eldon could be a really hard kid sometimes, she said; she tried so hard, and she knew she was a good mom; all Sara had to do was look at how great Trinity was.

  When they got back to the apartment, Sara saw Ryan and Jason were on the patio with Gavin. Gavin seemed like a quiet boy, polite, and devoted to his brother and sister. Trinity, especially, stayed close to him. If anyone aside from Sara noticed Amanda was now drinking directly from the bottle, no one brought it up. Sara looked to Jason to gauge his concern. He rolled his eyes and said this is what she does every once in a while.

  The fireworks started at dusk. They all went up to the rooftop deck. The kids gathered at the edge of the deck as the cityscape lit up. Barges on the Willamette River pumped the sky full of reds, whites, and blues. Embers rained down and were extinguished by the river. Sara saw little of it. She was watching the children; they were so close to the railing. She saw Ryan watching the children, too. He would later tell her he’d been doing this for years, and tonight they gave each other secret looks that said, You on this? Yes, I’m on it. Sara was reassured by how close Trinity stuck to Gavin; it meant Sara could keep an eye on Eldon. He would turn three in a month. As the night became darker and the hour a child his age might be getting ready for bed approached, Sara took Eldon downstairs and read to him in his room.

  Amanda appeared in the doorway. Despite consuming what seemed like a god-awful amount of vodka, she did not look a mess. She was stunning, really beautiful, if made up sort of crazily, with bright blue, green, and lavender eye shadows.

  Come with me, Amanda said, and had Sara follow her into the bathroom. Amanda showed Sara her very fancy makeup, tiny shiny bottles of lotions and potions and powders, none of which Sara had much interest in, despite Amanda urging her to try some, to fancy herself up, too. Sara told Amanda she was not really into all that stuff, and she and Ryan left soon after, Sara with the feeling of being scared to death for the children.

  Sara saw the Smith family many times over the summer. The scene was sometimes the same, with Sara keeping one eye on Amanda, one eye on the kids. It was like double babysitting. Amanda accepted the parenting book, which included lesson plans. Sara could not be sure whether Amanda followed the plans, but they did talk about them and she seemed genuinely grateful, at one point telling Sara, God, I just love you, and it’s so nice that you care so much.

  Sara felt as though she was exerting some good influence, and also, maybe, that she was developing a positive relationship with Amanda herself. Sara wanted this to be the case. Jason was Ryan’s best friend, and the kids were essentially Ryan’s godchildren. It wasn’t as though Amanda was always terrible. She could be affectionate with the children and they with her, Trinity especially. She was a buoyant little girl, demonstrative, goofy. Eldon was more sensitive, fragile even; he followed Jason around like a puppy, waiting for his father to pay attention to him. So, yes, there was love in the family, between Amanda and the kids, but there was also dangerous neglect.

  Sara saw less and less of the attentive mom as the summer wore on. She tried to court that part of Amanda. She invited her and the kids over to Ryan’s apartment one day. There was a pool, and they could all keep cool. Amanda arrived wearing a bikini that revealed everything. The kids swam as Amanda sunned herself on a chaise. She chattered away to Sara, sipping from a bottle of water, which, as the afternoon wore on, Sara became convinced was not water. Amanda became increasingly hard to understand and not once, so far as Sara could see, did she look the kids’ way. Eldon was not yet three years old, and as Sara stayed near him in the pool, she thought, regarding Amanda, I basically just met you, and I am solely responsible for your child?

  Sara called social services. She called more than once that summer. There never seemed to be enough tangible evidence for them to move forward. One time, she called after she and Ryan had found Amanda passed out in the hall. The kids had been taking care of themselves and told Sara they had not eaten that day. She and Ryan began to bring prepared food each time they went to the condo. Jason did not seem to grasp the situation. It would be six o’clock with no dinner in sight, and Sara would ask, “Have these kids eaten?” And he’d say, well, Amanda was home with them all day, so I assume so.

  Sara was at a loss over what to make of Jason. He and Ryan worked together, went camping together, and except for the pot smoking—Sara had never seen Jason or Ryan with any drugs other than pot—Jason seemed stable. He had a good job and was supporting his family. But the relationship with Amanda was not good, not at all. The couples sometimes dined at Lemongrass, a Thai restaurant they all liked. Jason always insisted on ordering everything on the menu there. Ryan would say, “We don’t need leftovers for three weeks. There’s no reason to spend hundreds of dollars.” Amanda would be telling Jason she wanted everything with hot chiles, the kind where if you eat half of one, you’re choking and sweating. Amanda would eat them by the dozen because she thought they burned calories. As soon as they ordered, Jason would start to put down Amanda. The restaurant was tiny, on the parlor floor of an old house; everyone could hear him say, Wife, do this! Wife, do that! Wife, shut your mouth! He seemed incapable of addressing Amanda any other way in public, and any affection Sara saw pass between them seemed faked, as though someone had given them a script. It was like a teenage relationship where they broke up every ten minutes and got back together.

  If the food at Lemongrass was outstanding, the dinners usually ended on a gross note, with Amanda in the bathroom barfing up what she’d just eaten. Sara did not think it possible that Jason did not realize his wife was bulimic, or if he did know, he did not seem to care.

>   Sara found it hard to tell what Jason cared about. He would insist one thing was true while his actions spoke the opposite, like the time he explained to Sara that when he met Amanda, she was pregnant by a man who had just killed himself. This man, Jason said, had been very bad to Amanda; he had torn her down until her self-esteem was horrible and she didn’t believe in herself. Jason told Sara that Amanda was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He just fell so in love with her so hard. Right away she was his queen, and he set about building her up, building her up.

  And Sara thought, yes, so you can tear her back down.

  18

  Why are you always writing about dead children?” my mother asked. I told her it seemed important.

  In truth, it was not Eldon’s murder, nor Trinity’s survival, that preoccupied me at the time. In January 2010, the work, as yet, was about keeping an eye on their mother. The idea that I was looking out for Amanda might have been seen as private delusion, perhaps despicable. Nothing I did would affect her fate, not that I wanted to. I felt more like a sentry, as though I had to stay at my post or else.

  Or else what? What was it that I was trying to understand? What could I pass on to others about something so painful? I had almost been flip with my mother, had almost said, “Well, Mom, there are enough people writing about Paris Hilton’s panties.” Later on, I thought that staying on the story was about sitting with a certain despair. We have all seen the interviews about the loss that cannot be gotten over: the mother explaining how her daughter had been right there in the street, riding her bike, the mother had looked away for a terrible moment, and that was twelve years ago.

  To not know where your child is, to lose her, did not seem to me survivable. I once lost track of my eight-year-old for less than ten minutes at an outdoor flea market. As I ran through the kiosks, screaming her name, the floor of my world dropped out; the free fall did not stop until I found her. I might have told my mother that I thought we needed to bear witness to the loss when it happened, to recognize it, whether it was one murder or a thousand murders, the child ripped from her mother’s arms at the death camp, the child thrown from the bridge.