The staff in the Austin Police Department's Victims Services joke a lot when there are no crime victims around. Mary Lieberman, a victims' advocate, asks her visitor if he wants a cup of coffee, and one of her co-workers, Jerry Usher, who arrived before Mary, says, "Hey, I've been asking for coffee for half an hour."
"Well, you can get your own," Mary says. "Bill's writing a book. On interesting work women do. Sorry, Jerry."
Mary, 41, a short, wiry, dark-haired woman, says there won't be much going on today. She'll be at her desk in her cubicle office doing follow-up calls to some of the families she's tracking.
The first family's son, 19, was just killed during a card game. Mary gets the father on the phone. She asks how they are doing. The father's answer takes several minutes.
"People say the most awful things," Mary tells him. "They don't mean to. They are so horrified by the pain you and Kathy are going through that they don't want to be near it. They sympathize, but they're scared."
The husband talks about Kathy, his wife.
"Yeah," Mary says. "That happens. That's normal. Whatever people do when something like this happens is pretty normal, because this itself isn't normal. One reason I'm calling is that you're going through legitimate grief also. You say that Kathy's taking it out on you -- and that's O.K. But I wonder who's going to take care of you?"
As she talks, Mary makes notes.
"Losing a life over a game of cards -- just senseless," she agrees.
The father talks, again at length.
"Sounds like he had a lot of charm," Mary says. "And the cockiness of youth. Sounds like he was . . . very bull-headed."
She leans to the left and bends her legs beside her on her chair.
"The knife was legal," she says. "Less than six inches in the blade. . . . It really was an outrage; you're so right."
The killer got out on bail without spending a night in jail. He is now in Dallas.
"The anger you and Kathy feel can be put to good use. You know about the support groups, For the Love of Christie and Parents of Murdered Children. They're both very good. There's also P-A-V-C, People Against Violent Crime, and they can help you and us in the fight for justice. Can I give you their number? . . . 458-2501."
The father talks.
"Justice isn't vengeance: justice is justice," Mary says. "Even if you do get satisfaction from the justice system, you're going to have to fight for it. PAVC can help."
The father talks. Mary draws intersecting boxes on a piece of scrap paper.
"When that happens, we just flood the parole board with letters. This didn't mean much until Colleen Reed's murder, but it counts heavy now."
Colleen Reed was a young woman abducted from an Austin carwash on December 29, 1991. For two months her fate wasn't known, and Central Texas TV stations played re-enactments of her abduction, and hundreds of posters with a happy picture of her sought news of her whereabouts. In March 1992, a drifter named Alva Hank Worley came forward and said that he had helped abduct Colleen Reed and been with her shortly before she was killed. Her killer, he said, was Kenneth McDuff, a paroled death row inmate convicted of killing three teenagers in 1969. Reed's body has never been found but is assumed to be buried, as was the body of a woman McDuff killed in January 1992, in a ditch alongside some rural Texas road.
"You and Kathy and Bobby's brother are going to have to make Bobby real to the judge and jury," Mary says. "I'm ready to help you and the prosecutors any way I can."
The father talks.
"That's such a guy thing," Mary says. "I don't care if you're 6'4" and weigh 250 pounds. I want you to cut out thinking you can handle this by yourself. I want you to call me. I've got lots of Kleenex and big shoulders."
The conversation over, Mary turns to her visitor. "His wife is so angry he can't dump his feelings on her, so he dumps them on me. Which is great -- just what we're here for."
Mary got into her peculiar line of work, she now realizes, because she was raped 15 years ago. "The officers who comforted me, well, I hope they've been promoted right to the top. Because they made me feel like a person again, you know, not a thing that had been trashed.
"I couldn't have done this job then. I was too hurt and scared. Later, when I was doing office work -- I'd been an English major in college and loved it without being bright enough to do anything with it -- my boss said I could do something better. And I thought of working with people and went back and got my social work degree."
Mary calls her next client. "Ginny, now that the trial's over and this slob's in jail where he's going to stay, I was wondering how you felt."
Ginny, whom Mary calls "a Supermom," was raising a family and working as a bank teller. She opened the bank at seven each morning. One day a man wearing a Richard Nixon rubber mask jumped her, put a gun to her head, and ordered her to give him the money, without setting off the alarms and without putting "the rat" in the bag. (The rat is a microchip that emits a sound audible to police radios.)
The man was so brutal and so well informed that Ginny was sure he was going to kill her. So she put the rat in the bag. He bound her with duct tape, including her mouth and nose.
An hour after the robbery, the man's house was surrounded with police cars and he was under arrest. An hour later, Ginny and the money were in Victims Services when her supervisor arrived and, without a word to Ginny, began counting the money.
Ginny was so traumatized by the robbery that she has found it difficult to leave her house. She is getting psychological counseling paid for by the State of Texas, which, under a recent law, supports crime victims in this way.
"You're doing so much better now than in the first days and weeks," Mary says. "Are you thinking about going back to work? Not necessarily at the bank -- anywhere?"
Mary nods at what Ginny says. "I couldn't believe it," Mary says. "I would have thought he'd have more . . . maturity than just to sit there counting the money. But it's very good that it was more than $60,000, because that can bring in the federal government, as it did in this case. As I told you, state jail time is one-third to one-half of the sentence; federal time is 90 percent.
"Now, for the sentencing, we get to submit a Victim Impact Statement. This is very important in cases like yours where there's violence -- implicitly, lethal violence. When someone does to you what this son-of-a-bitch did, your mind goes bananas. It's like really dying because you think you're going to die. You wonder stuff not only like who's going to bring up your children but who's going to tell them."
Ginny talks for several minutes.
"That's exactly the sort of stuff we want," Mary tells her. "You write it out just that way. Or, if it's easier, come by the station and I'll bang it out while you talk it."
Ginny talks.
"Well," Mary says, "we sure never stop thinking about you over here. You know that."
After getting her social work degree, Mary ran a shelter for battered women in Killeen, Texas, serving four rural counties. "It was quite a laugh having a short Jewish woman from Detroit mixing it up with these big country Texans. I was there for three years, and liked it. Then one day a director came to me and said, 'We're going to miss you, but we've found your next job.' Which was this job here, with the Austin police. And right away I knew this was what I wanted to do. People say, 'How can you do that -- ugh! It's so depressing.' Not to me."
Before her next call, Mary glances over her notes. Then she says, "You learn stuff about people that you're just sure no one else knows."
"Hello, Paula, it's Mary. How are things?" she says. "You sound great."
Paula talks, and Mary exchanges pleasantries. Then: "Last time I saw you up here at the station you were getting ready to turn your husband in."
Paula talks.
"So are you concerned about the mortgage or anything? You love that house."
Paula talks.
"Don't give that car to anybody," Mary says. "Don't loan it. It's so hard to prove auto theft if you give permission to someone to use it. But at $60 per month, even if you can't pay the balloon, it's a great deal, because you can't rent a car for $60 a month."
Paula says something.
"You're paying on it and you can't drive it?" Mary says. "Forget it!"
Paula talks for several minutes, Mary inserting un-huhs and hmms to keep her talking.
"So you're saying he's done this in the past?" Mary says. "He exposed himself and fondled her in the past -- before this assault? Oh, lady!"
Paula talks.
"Shock and denial," Mary says. "That's perfectly normal. Bless her heart. When kids see something like that, or even us as adults, we go into shock. That doesn't mean you're naive, Paula. When you're married to someone . . ."
Paula interrupts.
"You're a very good mother," Mary says. "You've bonded with Kimmy and heard what she said. That's the most important thing you can do. How is Kim? . . . She is? . . . Oh, yah, spring vacation.
"Hi, Kimmy, it's Mary. Are you pleased to be on vacation? . . . Yah, it's O.K. here, but I don't get a vacation. What're you doing? . . . The Greatest Story Ever Told -- wow.
"You sure have been through a lot lately. How are you doing in school? . . . Just one Incomplete? Kimmy, I'm so proud of you! Are you the smartest girl in your class? Be honest."
Kim says a few words.
"I thought so," Mary says. "Well, things have changed a lot. How do you feel about that?"
Kim talks.
"You bet it's tough at 13. It's tough anytime, but especially at 13. You're a wonderful daughter. Your mom tells me it began a long time ago with him exposing himself."
Kim says a few words.
"You're a very brave girl. You know we know it, and you know how proud we are of you. You're doing just the right thing."
They exchange goodbyes, and the mother comes back on.
"What a kid!" Mary says. "If I'd have known I could have one like that, I'd have had one."
When Paula and Mary finish their conversation, Mary tells her visitor the father in the case is actually a stepfather, which in some ways makes it harder on the mother.
There is a stir and babble in the next cubicle, and Mary stands on her chair to look over the partition wall. Three tired young children are roaming around in a small space that has a sofa, chairs, toys, and stuffed animals.
The children belong to a young woman who appears, holding a crying baby, at the entrance to Mary's office. The woman is a SIDS -- Sudden Infant Death Syndrome -- volunteer come to announce Bozo the Clown's Red Nose Day USA, Friday April 2, 1993, which will call attention to SIDS.
The woman brings with her posters and flyers and red plastic noses ($2.00) and pins that say "I didn't have the courage to wear a red nose" ($2.50). Two of the four children are hers; the other two she babysits 12 hours a day.
"SIDS kills more infants between two and nine months than anything else," she says. "Seven thousand a year in America: one every 75 minutes." Three years ago, she lost a baby to SIDS.
She and Mary discuss current thinking on what may cause SIDS. "They don't know," the woman says, "but there's some statistical evidence that it happens after the infant has had a slight cold. It happens more often to boys."
The woman's children are restless, and she wants a cigarette. "I know this place has become all non-smoking," she says.
"Well, not quite," Mary says. "In Homicide, if you confess, maybe they'll let you have a cigarette." She laughs. "Anyway, that's what they'll tell you."
When the SIDS woman has gone, Mary turns to her visitor and says, "Yah . . . I'd forgotten. That's the toughest part of the job -- dealing with parents whose infants have died. You're totally powerless. I hate it.
"The first day I was on the job, it was the first thing I had to do. A woman was drunk and her child, sleeping with her, got tangled in the sheets and smothered. I thought, 'Why am I here?' I wanted to quit.’”
Mary's next call is to a woman who is being harassed by her estranged husband. "So he's out of jail," she says. "He hasn't gone after your boyfriend, has he? . . . . And you're still waiting to see if your tires are slashed, yeah."
The woman talks.
"Good girl," Mary says. "You're just one of the best. Lots of times people will say 'I want to be friends. We were married -- why can't we be friends?' But, you see, you can't be. He's not behaving rationally. Maybe he will someday, but not now. You can't make him behave rationally. You can't protect his feelings. You have to protect yourself.
"So if he calls you again, would you please call me and I'll shepherd a complaint through the system?"
The call over, Mary says to her visitor, "Assault. . . . There are a lot, a lot, a lot of false assault charges -- I don't care what they say. But there's also a tremendous amount of violence against women. And I'm here to help women recognize danger and avoid it before a conflict moves to a higher level of torment."
Mary's final call before lunch is to the family of one of four teenage girls murdered on December 3, 1991 in an Austin "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt" store. "Austin had 37 murders last year -- mainly family arguments and drug deals gone wrong and bar fights," Mary says. "But what people remember is Colleen Reed and the yogurt shop murders."
"Hi, Lisa! This is Mary." Mary's tone is upbeat and obviously sincere. She has been the Austin police department's contact with this family since the crime happened.
The women chat about the spring weather and their good moods. After several minutes, Mary says, "Say, I wanted you to know that we'll all be there for the dedicating of the memorial on March 28."
A man has put up a monument to the murdered girls outside the yogurt shop, now abandoned.
Lisa says something.
"You didn't even know him beforehand?" Mary says. "Well, that's something! People come in here all the time -- people you don't know -- and they ask how you are.
"Shawn still like school? . . . Does he still have the same girlfriend? . . . Well, tell him hi for me. And say I'm learning to say rodeoin', dropping the 'g' so I don't sound Jewish." She laughs.
