I could feel his eyes on me as I smiled and chatted with the couple. He wasn’t too bright, but he was bright enough to see that my demeanor changed when I wasn’t talking to him.

And there was San Orcanita’s new, temporary police chief: Angry. Passively aggressive. Jacked up on himself.

He was a threat to my mother and aunts, no doubt about it.

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Betsy Baturra
Multnomah County Courthouse
Portland, Oregon
1976

Betsy Baturra and Johnny Kandinsky’s trial began. Betsy and Johnny at the defense table, their four attorneys crowded around. Their attorneys were competent. They actually cared. They all seemed exhausted, rather pale.

The prosecutor, Alfred Morningside, made his opening statement. He was a prissy man, in a pin-striped custom tailored suit, a white kerchief in his pocket, his fingernails buffed. He painted Peter, Johnny’s father, to be a saint. He listed how Peter worked hard at his company where he sold used cars, how his wife had left him with two children for a lover and had had no contact with the family for over three years. “He was a dedicated family man, a single father, who loved his children, Johnny and Tilly. . . . ” He droned on and on, sanctimonious, arrogant.

Alfred pontificated about how Johnny and Betsy were at Johnny’s house and how Peter had been knifed in the chest “in cold blood,” for nothing other than “the money that Johnny would inherit.” Then Alfred, who had a second major in drama and loved how the courtroom had become his personal stage, said in a deep voice, “Betsy Baturra and Johnny Kandinsky planned and executed the murder of Peter Kandinsky.”

Shaylee Jefferson, Betsy’s attorney, stood to address the jury when Alfred was finally done droning on and on, loving all of the attention. Peter, born Pyotr, was not a saint, she said. He had made many enemies in Portland, he had been sued on multiple occasions by people to whom he sold a car that broke down the first day, if not right off the lot. He owed money to many people and had declared bankruptcy in Idaho, where he previously lived, and in Portland. He had been in an altercation at his car lot with a homeless man, whom he had beaten senseless but who had left the area, could not be found, so could not testify. Peter also was in a screaming match with a woman in the parking lot of a grocery store over a parking space and had rammed her car with his, totaling it.

He had been, at best, a neglectful father. He had beaten Johnny and Tilly. He had beaten his wife, Gabriella, though she had been too afraid to go to the police, according to Johnny.

Betsy grabbed a knife to defend Johnny, his father hitting Johnny in the face twice, Shaylee said. “She thought he was going to kill Johnny.”