Deadly Little Secrets Part 11

Chapter 25.

At 1:34 A.M., just an hour and a half after the 911 call, a hea.r.s.e pulled up in front of the house on Crested b.u.t.te. Kari's body was placed in the back to be transported to a mortuary to be embalmed. By then, Lindsey had left, not knowing it was a funeral home, not the medical examiner, picking up her cousin's body. "I couldn't be there when they did that," she'd say. "I just couldn't."

Afterward, Matt, Linda, and Jim were alone. With the police gone, Matt repeated his account of the night saying that when they returned home from swimming, Kari hadn't felt well. At 11:15, she asked him to go to the video store to rent the movie and fill up the SUV for the next day. When he returned, the bedroom door was locked. Using a screwdriver to open it, he found Kari naked and unresponsive. He called 911, dressed her, and followed the dispatcher's orders, putting her on the floor and administering CPR.

"I knew Kari was dead because she'd urinated on herself," Matt said.

At one point, Linda noticed the DVD Matt rented on the kitchen counter. In the bedroom, Linda and Jim looked around at the place where their daughter had died. How could Kari have taken her own life? "None of it made any sense, but what else could we believe?" Linda would say later.

As he talked, Matt suggested that Kari bought the Unisom at Walmart that afternoon, on her way home from her job interview. Linda thought briefly that it seemed odd. Kari had been taking a Unisom-type sleeping aid since shortly after Ka.s.sidy died; that was true. Kari had made no secret of it, calling them her sleepy-time pills. Yet she always bought the generic brands, cheaper forms of the drug.

"What's this?" Linda asked, pointing at a small amount of something glistening on the floor. She leaned down and touched it, and found it to be sticky.

"That came out of Kari's mouth," Matt said.

Looking around the room, they saw nothing else, no puddles of urine or vomit as Matt had described to the 911 dispatcher. Linda saw nothing on the disheveled bed, and the rumpled sheets didn't appear wet. Perhaps Matt saw his mother-in-law looking about the room, wondering. "I cleaned up where she vomited," Matt said.

That struck Linda as odd. When did he have the time? The police had just left, and Matt obviously hadn't done it while they were there. Still. Why would Matt lie?

Later, it would all seem such a blur.

At that, Matt and Kari's parents discussed what was to be done next. Should they wake the girls? They decided to let them sleep. There would be time enough in the morning to tell them the horrible news. For that night, Kensi and Grace had peace.

In the living room, Linda and Jim sat in chairs while Matt lay on the couch. That night, the girls never stirred. They'd slept through two ambulances arriving, the unsuccessful efforts to save their mother, at least three squad cars pulling up, and officers rus.h.i.+ng inside the house. Kensi's bedroom was toward the front of the house, but the nine-year-old didn't even awaken when Lindsey arrived screaming. The police and EMTs had talked directly outside Kensi's window, and she never got up and walked into the living room to investigate. Later Linda and Jim would both wonder why.

Before long, Matt fell asleep, while Linda and Jim sat in the chairs, wide-awake, watching their son-in-law's even, untroubled breathing. How could he sleep after all that had happened? Kari was dead, and Matt hadn't even shed a tear. How was that possible?

But on this night, the night their daughter died, it wasn't yet time for the Dulins to question. Instead, they quietly contemplated the horror unfolding around them. "We don't have a daughter. Our daughter is gone. How am I still breathing?" Linda wondered. "How is it that I can talk and stand?" She saw herself outside her body, watching herself sitting silently in the chair. "Why am I not prostrate on the floor, screaming?"

Chapter 26.

Near sunrise the next morning, Lindsey called the local poison-control phone number and asked about dying from an overdose of Unisom. "The woman didn't think it was possible," Lindsey would say later. By then Nancy had called to tell her what she'd heard from Kay and Bristol: Kari was afraid of Matt, wondering if he could be trying to kill her.

"I wasn't at all surprised," says Lindsey. "In my heart, I already knew. What we were all waiting on was the autopsy."

At 6:00 A.M., Matt called Barbara and Oscar to tell them that their daughter-in-law was dead. "He said it looked like she'd taken sleeping pills," says Barbara, who'd later say she wasn't at all taken aback by the news. "I knew she took them every night."

At 7:45, Kensi finally awoke and found her grandparents in the living room, her father sleeping on the couch. When they told the nine-year-old, she threw herself on the floor sobbing. Grace, too, cried, although Linda wondered if at five she truly understood what Matt meant when he told her that her mommy had gone to heaven to be with G.o.d and wouldn't be with them anymore.

By then, the news was beginning to spread to Kari's friends.

Todd Monsey, who'd high-fived Kari at the middle school the afternoon before, ran into a friend who was crying. She told him Kari had committed suicide the night before. "There's no way," Todd insisted. Certain it was all a mistake, he called Kari's cell phone, but there was no answer. He left a message, "Kari, you need to call me back. Why aren't you answering your phone?" Off and on all morning, even after he'd heard from more friends that it was true, Todd kept calling, partly not believing and partly simply wanting to hear her voice.

When Todd called Matt, he said, "Kari took her own life. She pa.s.sed away."

At that, Todd went to his sister's apartment to deliver the bad news to Jenny in person. "She didn't kill herself," Jenny insisted. "She would have said good-bye."

"Check your e-mail," Todd said. Jenny did, but found nothing.

By then, the girls, Matt, Linda, and Jim were all at the Dulins' house. Not long after arriving, Linda was alone for the first time since learning of her daughter's death. Falling to her knees, Linda prayed. Seven years earlier when Ka.s.sidy had died, Linda had been angry with G.o.d. This time, her reaction was different. "I knew I couldn't take one more step without Him. He would have to lead me," she says. "I cried out for help."

Afterward, Linda joined Jim and Matt. There were plans to make. It was then that Matt announced that he wanted the funeral the next day, on Sunday. At first, Linda couldn't grasp what he was saying. Kari had only died that morning. She thought about family and friends, the time it would take to make sure everyone knew. "Jim and I literally begged Matt to wait until at least Monday," she'd say later. "I had my sister Jennifer in Florida, who wouldn't be able to even get to a funeral by Sunday."

Matt at first resisted, but then reluctantly agreed.

At that, it was decided that Matt and Linda, along with Linda's mother and father, would go to the funeral home to make arrangements, while Jim stayed with Kensi and Grace. Heartbroken, Linda and Jim offered to pay for the funeral, which Matt accepted. In the car on the way to the funeral home, Matt turned to Linda, his blue eyes earnest, reaching out to hold her hand. "You know, I love my parents, but you and Jim have been my real family."

At the Oakcrest Funeral Home on Bosque Boulevard, Matt parked in the lot and walked with Linda and her parents under the porte cochere, through the gla.s.s doors, and into the lobby. The building was across the street from the Heart of Texas Fair Grounds, where Kari had once worn a banner as one of the fair's sweethearts.

Decorated with silk flowers, the conference room was dominated by a Chippendale table and chairs. They all gathered around it as Matt told the saleswoman that they wanted to move quickly and have the funeral on Monday. With what appeared to be little debate, he picked out flowers, a guest book, and thank-you notes; and then they were escorted into the casket room. Matt looked around matter-of-factly, pointed and said, "We'll take that one." The casket was a baby blue twenty-gauge steel, medium-priced model called "The Lord's Supper." On the four corners were angel figurines.

While Matt appeared not emotionally invested in what they had to do, the import was not lost on Linda. Oh, my gosh, she thought. I'm shopping for my daughter's casket. She began crying, and while Matt continued calmly making plans with the salesperson, Linda's parents put their arms around their daughter to comfort her. Once the order was completed, Linda wrote a check for a down payment, and they left.

That morning, the phone tree at Spring Valley Elementary sprang into action, the staff and teachers spreading the news to faculty and parents. A group of Kari's friends heard while on the breast cancer walk. "We were all talking about it, trying to figure out how it could be true," says one. "We talked every day, and Kari was upset about problems with Matt, but making plans, talking about taking cla.s.ses in the summer, hoping for the new job in the fall. We didn't understand what could have happened."

When Shae heard from another teacher that Kari was dead and that it was suicide, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed. All she could think of was what Kari had told her just days earlier: that she worried Matt was planning to kill her. "I knew he went through with it," Shae said. "I knew that Matt killed her."

Meanwhile, Linda and the others returned from the funeral home to find the house filling with family and friends. Kay and Nancy were already there when their parents and sister arrived. Jenny Monsey was at the Dulins' house, too, eager to offer her condolences. While she'd waited, she sat with the girls, who colored at the kitchen table. They both seemed quiet, especially Grace. Jenny noticed Matt's eyes when he walked into the room. He didn't appear to have been crying. "I'm so sorry you're having to go through this," Jenny said, giving him a hug.

"Thank you. I'm sorry you're having to deal with it, too," Matt said, without emotion.

A short time later, Lindsey walked in. Nancy was standing off to the side, when she saw Matt smile at her daughter and make the adolescent gesture he often did when Lindsey entered a room, holding out his hands as if he were going to squeeze her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as he had repeatedly done for years. Disgusted but thinking it wasn't the time to object, "We just kind of brushed it off," says Nancy.

Others began arriving, some bringing ca.s.seroles and baked goods for the family, to tide them through the difficult days ahead. For the most part, little was said about suicide, but when one couple offered Nancy their sympathies, Linda's sister didn't mince words. "There's no way Kari would have done this," Nancy said. "Absolutely no way."

The couple looked surprised and walked away.

Both the girls were still coloring at their grandparents' kitchen table when Barbara arrived from Kerrville. Matt's mother put her hands on Kensi's shoulders. "You don't have to worry about the girls," Nancy told her. "We'll all be there for them." At that, Barbara sat in the rocking chair. Before long, the girls found her. Kensi was crying. "What do I tell the kids at school?" Kari's oldest asked.

A pragmatic woman, Barbara thought that through. "By the time you return to school, the other children will know. You won't have to tell your friends."

More people arrived, including teachers who worked with Kari, and then in midafternoon, a car pulled up in front of the Dulins' house, and Vanessa and her parents got out. Once inside the house, Vanessa stood calmly next to her father as her parents offered Matt and Kari's family their sympathies. When Vanessa saw Matt, she gave him a hug. Later, Vanessa would say that when they drove away, Matt winked at her.

That afternoon, Barbara and Matt drove to Crested b.u.t.te. Once there, Matt asked Barbara to help clean the master bedroom, scrubbing the wood floor, was.h.i.+ng the sheets, erasing all indication of what had transpired there the night before. That done, Matt decided to move the furniture, and, again, Barbara pitched in. "Things were out of control, and this was something Matt could control," she explains. "Matt and I are both like that. We try to do something we can do, not worry about what we can't."

The bedroom sparkling, they then packed suitcases to take to the Dulins', where they were staying through the funeral.

That evening, Steve Sadler, a round-faced man with a fringe of light brown hair, arrived at the Dulins' house. A Baylor religion lecturer, Sadler had been the pastor at Crossroads before Matt, and Linda had suggested that he would be a good choice to conduct the funeral. At first, Sadler conferred privately with Matt.

Meanwhile, Linda's family collected around the patio table overlooking the backyard, talking about Kari. At one point, they began laughing at funny stories from her thirty-one years with them. When Sadler finished talking to Matt, they joined the others outside, and Linda's family told the stories they loved to the minister who would conduct Kari's funeral. They wanted him to know about the woman he'd be eulogizing, that she was smart and funny, and that she had a deep faith.

Afterward, Sadler left with Kari's green leather Bible. Later, he would say that he found something odd inside, the note Kari had written near Galatians just six days earlier: . . . Lord, I am asking you to protect me from harm. I am not sure what is going on with Matt, but Lord help me find peace with him.

Sadler read that note in which Kari asked for G.o.d's protection but apparently failed to see it as something that should be immediately turned over to the police. He did, however, view it as troubling enough to make a copy.

Meanwhile, the doubt within Linda's family kept growing. When Jennifer arrived, she told her sisters, "Kari wouldn't have done this."

"We know," Nancy answered. When the women discussed what they had to do, they concluded that they had no evidence beyond what Kari had told Bristol. The wisest course, they again agreed, was to wait for the autopsy before voicing their suspicions to Linda and the police.

The visitation took place the day after Kari's death, that Sunday evening, from three to five at the funeral home. Kari's cousin and aunts watched Matt, wondering if at any moment the police would show up armed with the autopsy report, handcuffs ready. Once the results came in, they felt certain there would be scientific evidence to back up their fears. Then the unimaginable happened. Not long after Kay arrived, she heard from Linda that there'd been no autopsy; the justice of the peace hadn't ordered one. "We never considered that a young woman could die, and they wouldn't order an autopsy," says Nancy. "We didn't even think that was possible."

Kay wasn't sure what to do. Regretting that she'd kept Bristol from going to the police, Kay talked with Nancy and Lindsey. Kari's body had already been embalmed. Watching Linda and Jim, seeing the pain they were in, Nancy and Kay decided that they couldn't hurt them any more, not without proof. All they had were suspicions.

As the visitation officially began, a line snaked through the funeral home, family and friends, students and their parents, Kari's fellow teachers. Some had heard that Kari had taken her own life, but others were left wondering if she'd been ill. In the receiving line, some asked Linda, "Did Kari have cancer?" "Was she in an accident?"

Adding to the questions was the fact that the casket was closed. At one point, Linda put both hands on it, as if trying to connect with her daughter one last time.

When Jill arrived, she hugged Matt. Like many who attended, she marveled at how emotionless he was. Lindsey watched, too, thinking that Kari's widower looked pleased with the attention, remembering that Matt had acted the same way at Ka.s.sidy's funeral.

"How could this have happened?" Jill asked Linda.

"I don't know," Linda said, feeling trapped in a nightmare.

When Kari's friend Kim hugged Matt, she asked how he was and said she was there to help if he needed anything. When she looked again into his face, he was smiling. As they walked away, Kim's mother said to her, "He doesn't seem like a grieving husband."

A DVD played with photos of Kari from her baby years through growing up, and as a college student and a young mother. Jenny laughed when one popped up of the two of them clowning around with balloons under their s.h.i.+rts in the church kitchen. The time pa.s.sed, and Bristol arrived and stood in line. When she finally reached Matt, she gave him a slight hug. "I didn't see this coming," he said. Then he asked, "Did Kari tell you she thought I was having an affair?"

"Yes," Bristol said, nodding. "She did."

"Did she tell you she found pills in my briefcase?"

"Yes, she told me."

"Did she say she thought I was trying to kill her?"

"Yes, she did."

"That movie Kari asked me to rent, When a Man Loves a Woman," he said. "That was the first movie we saw together."

At that, Bristol left Matt standing with others around him. Kay had watched him through much of the gathering, and she saw his face darken as Bristol made her way to Jim and Linda. Taking a seat next to Linda, the counselor held her hand and talked quietly with her. But the close proximity felt stifling, and Linda felt as if the therapist was sucking up all the air.

"Was there anything in Kari that makes you believe she'd do this?" Bristol asked.

"No," Linda said. "But what are the options?"

"Linda," Bristol said, more insistently. "Was there anything?"

"No," Linda said again. She had the overwhelming feeling that Bristol wanted her to say something, but she didn't understand what.

A letter went out to Spring Valley's parents the following morning, Monday: The SV Elementary Community has suffered a tragic loss in the death of third grade teacher Kari Baker.

Meanwhile at the house, Matt showed Linda and Jennifer the Bible Steve Sadler had returned to him, Kari's Quest Bible, pointing out places where Kari had written Ka.s.sidy's name, the phrases she'd jotted down including, "Ka.s.sidy, I want to be with her."

Understanding, Linda nodded, but in the back of her mind she wondered, why now? Many of the writings Matt showed them were dated six or more years ago, many not long after Ka.s.sidy died. Yet it seemed a pointless question. After all, Kari was dead, and the only explanation Linda had was that her daughter had committed suicide.

The expected crowd was too big for Crossroads, so Kari's services began at three that afternoon in the funeral home's large chapel, a room with a soaring ceiling. Despite the substantial accommodations, more chairs had to be brought in. Once the seats filled, mourners stood against the wall and spilled out into the entryway.

Matt cut a sympathetic figure as a widower with two young children abandoned by a wife who'd committed suicide over the death of a child. In his dark suit, he milled through the crowd shaking hands. By then, the church members at Crossroads had voted to donate funds to pay for Kari's funeral and burial. They also gave him a check to help with his rent on the house for the coming months.

As the crowd arrived, Matt stood at the funeral home's podium with the girls, greeting those who came through the door. As Crossroads members entered, he a.s.sured them he'd be at church the following week, Easter Sunday. Although they insisted he didn't have to, Matt stressed that he would be there. "I worked right after Ka.s.sidy died. I'll do the same thing this time," he told one church member. "G.o.d has not abandoned me. He will give me the strength to carry on."

Among those attending were Vanessa Bulls and her parents.

As the service began, Matt and the girls joined Linda and Jim, sitting with Barbara and Oscar in the front row. When he hugged her, Linda said, "I love you."

Much later, someone would tell her that as he turned away, Matt murmured, "I don't love you."

"It was a funeral, nothing stands out that much," Barbara would say later in her dour way. That day many noticed that like Matt, she expressed little if any sorrow. Like him, she didn't cry. Later, Barbara would say: "I saw Matt reacting like I'd react. We're not the type to break down and cry. Crying and screaming and wringing our hands is not who we are. If people judged on how he reacted, I can't do anything about that."

Jennifer's husband, a Florida music minister, had prepared the music. Behind the lectern, photographs of Kari flashed on a screen. As they looked up at the photos of their mother, Grace and Kensi cried softly.

In front of the crowd, Steve Sadler began the service. Later, Kari's family would say that Sadler said little about Kari. From her Bible, Sadler read underlined pa.s.sages, many of them about G.o.d's love. Yet his words focused on the living. He asked those gathered to watch over Kensi and Grace, and then talked at length about Matt, about all the help he would need not in just the days but months and years to come. Sadler asked them all to pray for Matt, who sat with his head bowed in his hands. "You need to call him, not just today but in the future, and ask what you can do to help him," Sadler said. "Clean his house. Clean his toilets. Be there for him and the girls."

Crying, Linda listened, understanding that Matt would need help with the girls, but disappointed that Sadler hadn't used the dear stories her family had told him about Kari. Then Sadler suggested that the mourners give their condolences to the family, but he urged them not to dawdle, to shake hands and move quickly through the line.

The burial was private, immediate family and close friends only, at the same cemetery where seven years earlier Ka.s.sidy's body had been laid to rest. As she watched with the crowd, Nancy prayed, but not as Sadler had suggested during the eulogy for Matt, but it wasn't actually against him either. "I never prayed G.o.d would get Matt," she'd say later. "I prayed G.o.d would get the truth out."

Chapter 27.

The evening after his wife's funeral, Matt Baker called the Bulls's household. Vanessa would later say that he talked first with her, then with her parents, confiding in Larry and Cheryl that Kari had been deeply depressed, detailing all he said he'd suffered with his dead wife. After listening, Cheryl invited Matt and the girls for dinner the following Friday, Good Friday. Over the next three days, Matt called the Bulls's house eight times and talked for a total of 105 minutes.

That same week at Spring Valley Elementary, two teachers cleaned Kari's room, pulling together her personal belongings for Matt to pick up. The teachers found photos of Matt and the girls and the e-mail Matt had sent Kari, the one where he accused her of being responsible for Ka.s.sidy's death. "This is what she was so upset about," one said.

Meanwhile, Linda's sisters faced a quandary. Suspecting that Matt had murdered Kari, they now realized that they'd been wrong to stay silent and a.s.sume that the Hewitt police would investigate. Talking it over, they worried about the consequences, including that the scene had been scrubbed and cleaned, and Kari's body embalmed and buried. Eager to rectify the situation, they talked about the best way to approach the police. Their decision was that Bristol should talk to Sergeant Cooper, the investigator in charge of the case.

Housed on Chama Drive next to the public library in a modest brick building painted white with blue trim, Hewitt PD was a small operation with twenty-two officers, a department without a considerable amount of resources. The man in charge, Chief James Barton, was a thick-necked, jowly man, with a mustache, graying hair, and wire-rimmed aviator gla.s.ses. Over his then-twenty-six years in law enforcement, Barton had worked for a variety of small departments, from the Nueces County constable to the Alice, Texas, police department. He'd hired on in Hewitt in 1983 and worked his way up to the top spot.