Chapter 9 - The Liquidation of Maple Street
Justice in the State of Oregon does not move quickly, but when it is greased by four minutes of uncompressed 4K video, it moves with the terrifying momentum of an iron freight train on a downhill grade.
The criminal trial never happened.
Faced with the forensic audio analysis, the wiretap transcripts of Eleanor discussing how to "distribute the household items" after my anticipated demise, and the testimony of Marcus Vance—the veteran who had pulled me from the ledge—the defense attorneys folded within ninety days.
Thomas Mercer pleaded guilty to Attempted Murder with a Deadly Weapon (his boot being classified as an instrument of aggravated force under the state's enhanced sentencing guidelines).
He received twenty-two years at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.
Because of his age and the mandatory minimums under Measure 11, he will be ninety years old before he is eligible to see a parole board. He will die in the infirmary ward on Center Street, looking at a concrete wall painted state-property gray.
Eleanor Mercer pleaded guilty to Conspiracy to Commit Murder for Financial Gain.
She received fifteen years at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville.
Her church friends did not write letters. Her bridge club did not send flowers. The ceramic geese on her porch were stolen by neighborhood teenagers within forty-eight hours of her mugshot appearing on the front page of the Oregonian.
Kaye Mercer fought the charges for five months.
Her fiancé’s family—the Montgomerys of Eugene—retained a high-priced private attorney who spent thirty thousand dollars trying to suppress the video on the grounds that Kaye had an "expectation of privacy" while operating her personal cellular device on public land.
Judge Albright denied the motion in a seven-page memorandum opinion that legal scholars in the Pacific Northwest still cite as a masterclass in judicial scorn:
"The defendant cannot claim a constitutional shelter of privacy over a recording she created to document the attempted slaughter of her sister for the amusement of her social media followers."
The fiancé broke the engagement seventy-two hours later.
He didn't do it in person. He sent his brother with a rented U-Haul to collect his furniture from their shared apartment, changed his phone number, and moved to Denver.
Kaye finally took a plea deal on the eve of jury selection: seven years for Tampering with Physical Evidence and Criminal Facilitation of a Class A Felony.
She is currently inmate #1948201 at Coffee Creek.
She works in the laundry facility, sorting soiled institutional linens six hours a day for forty-four cents an hour.
Her nails are not painted.
The house on Maple Street was seized under the state’s civil asset forfeiture statutes and the civil wrongful-injury lawsuit Sergeant Soto’s private colleagues filed on my behalf.
I was there the day the auction sign went up.
It was a wet Tuesday in April. The sweetgum trees on Maple Street were putting out their first sticky green buds, and the grass in the front yard was eight inches high, wild and ragged where Thomas had once trimmed it with hand shears.
Marcus Vance met me at the curb.
He was driving his old Ford F-250, the one with the lumber rack and the toolboxes in the bed.
"You want to go inside?" Marcus asked, leaning his heavy forearms on the steering wheel, his engine idling with a steady, rhythmic diesel clatter.
I looked at the blue wood siding.
I looked at the front window where the television had flickered.
I remembered the smell of the fried pork chops.
I remembered kneeling in the hallway with the vinegar bucket while three people calculated how much my broken hands were worth in botanical garden rentals.
"No," I said.
"Good girl," Marcus said. "Nothing in there but old ghosts and bad grease."
He reached into the passenger seat and pulled out a heavy manila envelope, passing it through the open truck window.
"The clerk's office processed the title conveyance this morning," Marcus said. "The house sold to an investment group from Portland for three hundred and ten thousand dollars. After the state liens and the back taxes were cleared, the balance hit the trust account at nine-thirty."
I opened the flap.
The settlement statement was inside.
Net Proceeds to Beneficiary (June Mercer): $244,180.42
It wasn't eighty-four thousand dollars from a fake municipal risk pool.
It was every single cent of equity Thomas and Eleanor Mercer had spent forty years accumulating.
Every Saturday Thomas had spent pressure-washing the driveway; every Sunday Eleanor had spent pinching pennies from the grocery money to buy department-store clothes; every dollar they had denied me while telling me I was garbage.
It was mine.
"Where to now, June?" Marcus asked.
I turned around.
Ethan was sitting in the back seat of Marcus's truck, holding a brand-new, hardcover encyclopedia of prehistoric life on his lap. He had a red apple in one hand, taking small, crisp bites, his eyes bright behind a pair of blue-framed reading glasses we had bought him two weeks ago.
May you like
"The coast," I said.
Marcus smiled through his gray beard. He dropped the truck into gear, and the heavy tires rolled through the dandelion weeds on the edge of the asphalt, turning away from Maple Street for the last time.
