A Silence of Mockingbirds Read online

  Love, Missy

  We never did speak much after that. I’ve seen Missy and Chuck only one other time since then, and I’ve only known Hillary from afar, in photos others shared, in the stories others told.

  Hillary has Sarah’s dark eyes and the same caramel complexion, but she’s more petite and fine-boned than Sarah. She sings, writes lyrics, and possesses the passionate heart of a poet who cares about issues of social justice, especially when it comes to children.

  When she was younger, Hillary would spend time in Pendleton with Gene and Carol, but that all changed when Karly died. That year, Chuck and Missy packed up and moved to Mexico, where they worked in missions for a short time. They moved back to Oregon for Hillary’s high school years. At the time of Karly’s death, Hillary was told her sister was dead, but not that Karly was murdered. I don’t know if she has ever been told the real story.

  I’m not sure anyone but Shawn, Sarah and Karly know the real story.

  Chapter Eight

  Expect hell to freeze first. That’s the gist of the reply I received from Shawn Field after sending him a letter, week after week, for a year. Only the date has changed.

  Shawn Wesley Field

  Inmate ID: 16002306

  EOCI

  Mr. Field:

  I am at work on a book about the murder of Karly Sheehan. I am interested in hearing your side of the story. But in order to do that I will have to be added to your list of approved visitors. If you will add me to your list, I will make an appointment to visit with you.

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Karen Spears Zacharias

  Detective Wells also attempted to interview Shawn Field. Field turned down the detective, too. Wells is the father of three daughters. His oldest daughter was only four years old when he was working the Karly case. Having a daughter so close to Karly’s age made this case more personal than others. Wells could easily imagine David’s grief, but the detective could not understand the systematic senselessness, or the vile sickness behind the murder. Like me, Wells remains haunted by unanswered questions. Who is Shawn Field? Why did he kill Karly? What role did Sarah play in all of this?

  I’ve been warned more than once that I ought to give up trying to get an interview with Shawn. “Short of a Grade B miracle, you will not get the chance to sit down with Shawn. That door is closed and he has no intention of opening it.”

  That warning came to me via an e-mail from a man in my community— Jack, I’ll call him. Jack’s in-laws are close friends of Hugh and Ann Field, Shawn Field’s parents. Jack meets with Shawn on a regular basis as part of a prison ministry and he sends me intermittent e-mails, informing me of all the ways in which God is working in Shawn’s life.

  “God never ceases to amaze me with how he works through the grimmest situations,” Jack writes. “Only God can change lives and I remain confident that he is doing that in Shawn’s life. I pray that Sarah might come face to face with God here on Earth while she has a chance to receive his gift.”

  It’s hard for me, when I receive notes like this, not to be put off. I’ve read thousands of pages of documents, police interrogations, evidence, and autopsy reports. I’ve studied the reports filed with the Oregon Department of Human Services Child Welfare Division in the months leading up to Karly’s death. I’ve seen the photographs Shawn took in the moments before Karly died and the glossy color autopsy photos that caused me to flee the office of the Oregon Court of Appeals building so that I could cry unnoticed within the confines of my car.

  I want to sit Jack down and walk him through all the evidence I’ve plowed through. I want him to study the photos of Karly’s battered body that caused doctors and nurses alike to break down in tears. Yes, I’m disturbed and defensive over Jack’s suggestion that Shawn is on some holy path that Sarah seems to have missed.

  I wrote back to Jack and told him it’s a good thing I believe in the God of Grade A miracles because I have every intention of continuing to pursue an interview with Shawn. And oh, by the way, I added, “I think if you were to ask Sarah she would tell you she is washed in the blood of the Lamb…or was at one time.”

  A week later, I received another e-mail, this one a little sterner in tone than all the previous exchanges:

  Karen,

  Shawn said you contacted him again. He also tells me his stance hasn’t changed. The door is closed and locked to you. No matter how many times you contact him he will not answer any of your letters or add you as a visitor. I assume he isn’t kidding.

  Have a nice day.

  Jack

  I’m sure Jack believes it was his Christian duty to write me that e-mail, to persuade me to back off my pursuit of an interview. I am confident Jack means well, but we are at crosshairs on this issue. I don’t know if I will ever get an interview with Inmate 16002306 but I will continue trying no matter how many testy e-mails I receive.

  Chapter Nine

  I didn’t know about Karly’s murder or the three-year-old’s desperate prayers for deliverance when Tim and I made the trek upriver to Bend, Oregon, in March 2007 to visit two of our four kids. Stephan, our eldest, worked at the High Desert Museum, one of the region’s most popular tourist attractions. Our youngest daughter, Konnie, had just moved to town.

  We’d spent the night at Konnie’s new digs. I slipped out of bed at 7:45 a.m. Tim, who was wedged between the edge of the twin mattress and the wall, didn’t flinch. Prying a peephole in the aged blinds, I glanced across the parking lot of the Boys & Girls Club. Half a dozen pines stood motionless, like trees in a picture book. Blue sky. No wind.

  We didn’t have big plans. After Tim got out of bed and got dressed, he and I grabbed a cup of coffee at the joint down the street, read the paper, poked around town a bit. Later that afternoon, Stephan gave us the town tour.

  “What’s The Source?” I asked, as he turned left past a brick building with a sign bearing that title.

  “A newspaper,” he replied. Parking the car in front of the saltbox house Konnie was renting, Stephan walked to the end of the block and grabbed a paper. He flipped through the weekly arts and entertainment guide while we huddled around a space heater in the living room.

  Stephan opened the paper and leaned over to show something of interest to his father.

  “What?” I asked.

  Stephan turned to me and leaned in. “Isn’t that Sarah?” he asked.

  “It sure is,” I said.

  There she was holding up a dollar bill, wearing what was obviously her St. Paddy’s Day t-shirt, the one with the four-leaf clovers that read, FEELING LUCKY.

  “Does it say anything about her?”

  “Nope,” Stephan replied. “It doesn’t even give her name.”

  It was a blip about some women who’d gone to a restaurant with an open fire pit. Their money had gone up in smoke after being blown into the pit by an unexpected wind. Sarah was holding up a dollar with burnt edges. She had that same engaging smile, the one that had slain dozens of men, and charmed nearly as many women.

  “You think she lives here?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Stephan said with a shrug.

  The day after Stephan discovered Sarah’s photo, I cranked the shower to a hot-as-I-can-stand-it setting and let it rain down over me.

  “Please, God,” I prayed, “if Sarah lives here, let me run into her today.” Sometimes I have my best talks with God in the shower.

  It was the morning of March 28, 2007.

  At 5:30 p.m., Konnie burst through the door, ran to her bedroom, and changed into running clothes.

  “Meet me at the bridge down by REI at the Old Mill,” she instructed, as she grabbed her iPod and jogged off.

  Tim and I walked down to the Old Mill shops and stood at the end of the bridge, watching for our daughter as brightly colored flags snapped overhead. I saw Konnie waving to us from across the Deschutes River.

  We walked back, past the Old Mill and through the parking lot at Strictly Organic Coffee. At the top of the
incline, we approached a man and a woman talking outside a small bungalow, their backs to us. The woman wore red shoes with three-inch heels, unusual in a town where flat, rubber-soled shoes are the most common footwear. Konnie strode a few steps ahead of us. When she got to the other side of the couple, she turned, cupped one hand over her face, pointed at the girl, and mouthed “Sarah!” to me.

  I turned toward the couple.

  “Sarah?”

  It was the first time I had spoken to her since that nasty phone call in February 2003 when she told me she was divorcing David.

  Sarah’s jaw went slack. “Excuse me,” she said to the man next to her. “These people are like my family and I haven’t seen them in a very long time.”

  We embraced warmly.

  “Do you live here?” she asked. Her dark-roasted eyes scanned the three of us, searching for some sign we were part of the Bend community.

  “Konnie does,” I answered. “She just moved here.”

  “Yeah, I live up the street,” Konnie added. “Why don’t you come up?”

  The man shifted his feet anxiously. We had interrupted.

  “Let me finish up here,” Sarah said. “Then I’ll come up.”

  Konnie gave her the address.

  “How bizarre is that?” our daughter asked as we turned to leave.

  “Pretty bizarre,” her father said.

  “Not bizarre at all,” I said. They didn’t know about the power of a shower prayer.

  We’d barely walked in the front door before Sarah drove up. I met her on the stoop.

  “I knew you were in town,” I said, hugging her again.

  “How?” she asked, laughing. I’d missed Sarah’s easy laughter.

  “I saw your picture in The Source. I wasn’t sure if you lived here or were visiting but I had a strong feeling we’d run into each other.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty random,” Sarah said.

  “Not random at all,” I said.

  Then Sarah laughed again, but in a tense way people do when they are trying to appear confident but are anything but. I chalked it up to the normal anxiety that can exist between two people whose last conversation was an exchange of harsh words. I couldn’t have been more wrong about the nature of Sarah’s unease.

  “How long have you lived here?” Tim asked from the corner of the sofa where he was sitting. A heater was pulled up next to him. Tim is a lean athlete who doesn’t tolerate chill very well.

  “Two years.”

  “Do you work?” I asked as I took a seat on the U-shaped footstool nearest the chair where Sarah sat.

  “I manage the restaurant for one of the hotels in town,” she said.

  Sarah pulled a strand of her dark hair through her fingers. I recognized the nervous gesture. I’d witnessed it a thousand times back when she lived with us. Our daughter Shelby has the same habit.

  “Do you keep in touch with anyone from Pendleton?” I asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Are your parents still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s Hillary? What is she, like, ten now?”

  “Thirteen,” Sarah replied.

  I looked at Tim. “Has it been that long? God, I feel old.”

  “You are old,” Tim said. Everyone laughed.

  “Chuck and Missy moved to Mexico,” Sarah added.

  “Really? When?”

  “Three years ago.”

  “So you haven’t seen Hillary in all that time?”

  “No.”

  “Do they write? Send photos?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And what about Karly? Is she with David?”

  Sarah had been in the house for nearly half an hour and hadn’t mentioned Karly once. I wasn’t sure how the custody issues had been ironed out. When we’d last spoken, Sarah said she and David would share custody of Karly. But with her living in Bend, and him in Corvallis, I didn’t see how that would work. Karly would’ve turned five in January. She’d be old enough to attend preschool, at least. I assumed Karly was with her daddy.

  A bad pause followed. That’s how Tim described it later.

  “If it had been good news, it would’ve come rushing out. But there was that bad pause,” he said.

  Tim swears he knew then, in that moment of silence, that Karly was dead. But I had no clue anything could be so wrong.

  I watched as Sarah fumbled around with different phrasings before answering. I figured she was trying to find the best possible way to tell us she didn’t have custody of her daughter.

  “She has—” Sarah started, stopped, then started again, blurting it out in one breath. “Karly passed away. That’s why I’m in Bend. But I’m having a very bad day so I don’t want to talk about it. We’ll have that conversation on another day.” Sarah’s eyes begged for grace.

  My mind scattered like birds, startled. I’d spent the better part of the past two years on the road advocating for war widows and the children of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. If a war widow said to me that she didn’t want to talk about something, I backed off. I knew she’d talk, eventually, when she was ready. I did as Sarah asked—I dropped it. Let it go.

  Over dinner we talked about Sarah’s current boyfriend—how she loved the boyfriend’s family, but him, not so much. We talked about the job market in Bend, skiing, snowboarding, and the upcoming play at Second Street Theatre, where Stephan had the lead role.

  “We’ll be back next week to see Stephan in the play,” I said, as we hugged goodbye.

  “You can stay at my place, if you like,” Sarah said. “I’ve got an extra bedroom.”

  “I’ll call you before I leave in the morning,” I said.

  “Okay,” Sarah said. Then she made sure I had her new phone number.

  I called her first thing the next morning, as promised.

  “Hey, Sarah. I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “You heading out?” she asked in her sleepy voice.

  “In a bit. Listen, I’m sorry about that last phone call. I never meant for us to lose touch with each other that way.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “I quit my job, went to Vietnam, moved away from Pendleton. Life got crazy.” Then I said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you lost Karly.”

  Silence. There was no explanation from Sarah.

  “Well, don’t be a stranger, okay?”

  “Okay,” Sarah said.

  Tim spent the night at Stephan’s place, while I stayed with Konnie. He came by early the next morning and we loaded up the car.

  “Can we go by Starbucks on the way out?” I asked, yanking on my seatbelt. I hardly looked at Tim as I began to chatter. “Konnie thinks maybe Karly died from a car wreck. Maybe Sarah was driving and that’s why she can’t talk about it, ’cause did you see how nervous she was? It’s obvious she feels guilty. I don’t think it was cancer.”

  There was that bad pause again.

  “It wasn’t a car wreck,” Tim said.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Stephan looked it up online when we got home last night.”

  “Looked up what? Karly’s obit? What did it say?”

  “I don’t want to tell you,” he said, clenching his square jaw. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Well you might as well tell me because you know I’m going to look it up myself as soon as I get home.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Sarah’s boyfriend tortured and murdered Karly.”

  My stomach fell to the floorboard. I wanted to vomit. I felt faint. My hands were sweaty, my heart racing. I couldn’t breathe. I could only mumble: Oh, dear God. Dearest. God.

  Chapter Ten

  Sarah sent me a Mother’s Day card the year Karly was born. In those early days, after I bumped into Sarah in Bend, that card fell out of a notebook I kept stashed in my office. The card is inscribed: Our friendship is such a special part of my life. I’ll always be
thankful for that— and for you. Happy Mother’s Day.

  In her own flourishing script, Sarah wrote me the following message:

  Karen –

  Here’s hoping you have a wonderful Mother’s Day. Although you’re not old enough to be my mother, you were always the kind of mother I wished that I had, and now the kind of mother I hope to be to Karly. Thank you for always being there to talk, to listen, or just to hang out with. I love you & I love your family. Thank you for being wonderful you! Love ya! S–

  I sat on the floor of my office and bawled as I read Sarah’s words and recalled the laughter that had filled our home during the year Sarah lived with us. She was such an easy girl to love.

  Sarah would get so unnerved when I cooked supper for seven. I’d invariably pull all the kitchen cupboard doors open during the course of the preparations and Sarah, who couldn’t stand to leave a cupboard door open, would follow behind me, slamming them all.

  In the mornings, after I’d gotten the kids off to school, I’d make my way through the maze of the unfinished basement we called the Dungeon and curl up under a white down comforter beside Sarah.

  “Good morning, Sunshine. What are you reading now?”

  Sarah loved to linger in bed and read. She liked to write, too. She kept a journal and talked of writing a book herself one day.

  After moving in with us, Sarah signed up for classes at the local community college, and went in search of a part-time job. She was called back for an interview at a local bank, and afterwards, we sat in the kitchen rehashing the questions they’d posed.

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  “Good, I think.”