12.Deadly.Little.Secrets.2012 (19 page)

Chapter 28

E
-mails expressing sympathy arrived for Matt from others within Waco’s Baptist pastoral community in the weeks following Kari’s death. Some of those who contacted him offered to help if he needed anyone to talk to about his grief. Nearly all said they were praying for Matt and the girls.

At Linda and Jim’s house, all thoughts were on their granddaughters. When Matt mused that without Kari’s salary he wouldn’t be able to afford the rent on the Crested Butte house, Jim and Linda said he and the girls could stay with them for a while until he decided what to do. At first, Matt sounded as if he might agree. And when the girls heard, Kensi, smiling and excited, went through the house, picking out which bedroom would be hers and which would be Grace’s. Despite Kensi’s enthusiasm, Linda knew her granddaughters were hurting. When alone with Matt, she urged him to take them for grief counseling. They were young, they’d lost their mother, and Linda judged that they needed help. Matt, on the other hand, insisted both the girls were coping and saw no need.

Still feeling as if she were in shock, that first week would be a fog for Linda. One thing she would later remember was how many times she called Kari’s cell phone to hear her dead daughter’s voice. Todd and Jenny did the same. They were all surprised when within a week, Matt had deleted Kari’s message and put up his own.

It was that Wednesday, the twelfth, just five days after Kari’s death, when Matt returned to the Waco Center for Youth. When he walked in the door, his coworkers were shocked to see him, assuming that he’d need more time off. They were even more surprised when they offered their condolences. Instead of simply saying thank you, Matt complained bitterly about his ex-wife. “I’m fine. It wasn’t a marriage anyway,” he said. “Kari was depressed, so we were just coexisting.”

As he talked, he recounted how he’d found both his infant daughter and his wife not breathing in bed, that he’d put both on the floor and administered CPR. It seemed such an eerie similarity when he mentioned that Kassidy and Kari had even died at the same time of night. “When Kassidy died, I felt her spirit go through me,” he told one woman. “It was like she put a small hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘Hey, Dad, I’m all right.’ ”

On his other shoulder, Matt said he’d felt a heavier hand. “It was God, and he was saying, ‘It’s okay. She’s with me now.’ ”

From that day on, others would have similar conversations with Matt, during which he’d talk resentfully of Kari, branding her a bad mother and wife, saying their marriage had ended years earlier. He even described her as a dark cloud that had hovered over the house and said that now that she was gone, the girls were happier. “Kari was never satisfied,” Matt told one woman. “She always wanted more.”

That wasn’t all that was odd; Matt soon even looked different. It seemed as if overnight he’d changed his hair, gelled it up and spiked it, and replaced his khakis and button-down shirts with new, hipper clothes.

Although he’d initially agreed with the Dulins’ offer to move into their home, Matt and the girls remained in the house on Crested Butte. That first Friday evening, they drove to the Bulls’s house in Troy, where Vanessa’s parents served dinner and had an Easter egg hunt. At the table, Matt again talked about Kari’s depression.

That same day, Good Friday, a friend of Kari’s called Linda. During the conversation, the friend mentioned that she’d been at the grocery store shopping when she saw Matt with a pretty young woman and a baby, a little girl with blond hair. At that point, Linda had no idea who it could have been.

That Sunday, Matt Baker stood before the congregation at Crossroads officiating over Easter services. “People are surprised that I’m here,” he acknowledged. “I’m still your pastor, and I still have a job to do. I’m here because God wants me here.”

Some would accept him at his word, including Kari’s friend Kimberly. Only later would she look back on Matt’s quick return to the pulpit as strange. During his talk, he compared Kari to Jesus, predicting that his dead wife had made a “triumphant entry into heaven . . . Death could not control her.”

While Matt remained dry-eyed, Linda and Jim wept. Although she didn’t question that it was true, Linda couldn’t understand how she’d failed to anticipate her daughter’s suicide. One thing she never considered was that Matt could be responsible. “In the eleven years he’d been a part of our family, we’d never even had a cross word,” Linda would say later. “We really believed that for reasons we would never understand, Kari had decided she could no longer go on.”

After services, Matt and the girls joined Linda and Jim at Nancy’s father-in-law’s ranch for a barbecue. Kensi and Grace were quieter than usual. “They appeared to be trying to make the most of it,” Nancy says. “They were sad, but they were little girls, and they were trying to have a good time.”

Nancy noticed that Matt ate well, going back for seconds. “It looks like Kari’s dying didn’t hurt his appetite,” she noted.

D
uring the following week, the phone calls were frequent and long between Nancy, Kay, Jennifer, and Lindsey. The more they talked, the more certain they became that Matt had murdered Kari. They made lists of the reasons they believed he’d done it, a list that kept growing and included all they’d noticed over the years, including Matt’s attitude toward women. They noted the way Matt kept talking about Kari’s being depressed when none of them saw that in her. Would a sick Kari, as Matt described her, ask him to pick up a movie at 11:15? They didn’t believe it. And Kari would not have been in the bed nude; that they all agreed. It wasn’t in her nature. At times they talked about the Unisom bottle. All of them knew Kari bought generic brands. Farther down on the list they added the things Kari had told Bristol, the typed, unsigned suicide note, and the note itself, the way it praised Matt and didn’t even mention Kari’s brother.

There were reasons, they agreed, but still they wondered, were they being fair? “We talked about how none of us liked Matt,” says Nancy. “He was boorish, said the wrong things, and we didn’t like the way he talked to women. But we didn’t want the police to go after him. We just wanted them to investigate what happened to Kari.”

Meanwhile, Linda and Jim, even in their grief, continued to try to support Kari’s family. Although Adam had never particularly liked Matt, Kari’s brother wrote his brother-in-law a note. In it, Adam told Matt that he cared for him and the girls, and that he hoped that he’d be able to continue to be a part of all their lives.

The week after Easter, Matt dropped in on Linda and Jim. The young widower said he’d been thinking and that he could now see that Kari had been suicidal “for a long time.” The woman he described was one who returned from work to spend an hour or more in her bedroom unable to cope.

“What’re you talking about?” Linda asked, perplexed. “Kari went to her bedroom to watch
Oprah.
She recorded the shows and watched them when she got home. After that, she went to the girls’ events, like Kensi’s swimming.”

“No,” Matt said. “Kari had really stopped taking care of the girls a long time ago. I was the one giving them their baths, fixing their hair, cooking the meals.”

“Why are you saying these things?” Linda asked. “They’re not true.”

Despite her protests, Matt insisted, even insinuating that Linda, who talked to her daughter daily, didn’t really know Kari. When Linda again brought up the subject of counseling for the girls, she was shocked by her son-in-law’s reaction.

“Grace has already moved on,” he said. “She’s looking for a new mother.”

“Are you crazy, Matt?” Linda asked. “This is a child who just lost her mother and doesn’t know how to express her grief. What Grace and Kensi need is counseling.”

Not bending, Matt insisted that the girls were adjusting well. Linda was horrified when he then said, “Grace told me, ‘Now I can jump on the bed and Mommy can’t get mad because she’s dead.’ ”

After he left, Linda thought about what Matt had said, and she knew it wasn’t true. She considered how different he looked, how eager he was to go on with his life. She thought about the woman who’d seen him in the grocery store with another woman. And Linda thought about Kari, trying to understand how she could have taken her own life.

Since their daughter’s death, Jim had hovered protectively over Linda, and now she asked him a favor. She’d seen the suicide note that night, but couldn’t even recall what it said. What she did remember was that Adam wasn’t mentioned and that it was unusually short for her talkative daughter. “Go to the police department,” she said. “Look at it, and tell me if it sounds like Kari wrote it.”

Jim did, talking to Sergeant Cooper, who retrieved the note to show him. Jim read it, nodded, and said, “Thanks. We’re satisfied.”

At home, Linda asked Jim, “Did Kari write the note?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

“Okay then,” Linda said with a nod. Later, she’d think about that day, and say, “We were trying to make ourselves believe that Kari had done this. We wanted to believe it.”

A
round April 13, Jenny Monsey called Matt and offered to help with the party Kari had been planning for Kensi’s tenth birthday, scheduled for the twenty-first.

“Do you know who Vanessa Bulls is?” Matt asked.

“The music minister’s daughter,” Jenny answered.

“Yes,” Matt said. “She’s going to help, too.”

“Okay,” Jenny said, thinking it wasn’t anything unusual.

That Friday, Jenny arrived at the house and found Vanessa and Matt decorating. Matt had already filled Jenny in on the plans. He had a limo to pick up the girls and Kensi’s friends at school. Then they would drop Grace off with Linda and Jim and drive to the house for a slumber party. Jenny was supposed to stay overnight to help with the girls and be with them while he and Vanessa ran out to pick up breakfast the next morning.

When they finished decorating, Matt told Jenny, “Vanessa and I are going to pick up the girls in the limo.”

Once Vanessa and Matt left, Jenny looked around the living room. All the photos of Kari were gone. She looked through the rest of the house and saw none. She peeked in Kari’s closet and saw it had already been emptied. Then, on the refrigerator, she saw a photo of Vanessa with her daughter, Lilly, Kensi, and Grace. Jenny dialed her brother’s number. Todd was coming over later to help with the party, but on the phone, Jenny filled him in, and said, “Something isn’t right here.”

“Well, maybe it’s too hard on Matt to see them all the time,” Todd said.

Jenny thought about that. “Well, maybe.”

At the elementary school, the teachers had heard that a limo was arriving to whisk Kensi and the partygoers away. Many stood outside after school, waiting when it pulled up. The first one out of the limo was Matt; then a woman’s leg emerged, followed by a beautiful young blonde wearing a long brown skirt with a tight white T-shirt, capped by a hot pink shrug that tied just under her breasts. Excited, Kensi and Grace ran to their father, followed by three of Kensi’s friends invited to the sleepover. With a flourish, Matt pulled out a birthday tiara and placed it on Kensi, then handed out vinyl leis to all the girls. Someone snapped photos as they bunched together in front of the sparkling white limo. In the pictures, Kensi smiled broadly, showing where she was still missing two of her front teeth.

After they left, the teachers at Spring Valley looked at each other, wondering. Kari had been dead for not quite two weeks, and Matt had shown up with a woman to pick up the girls, a young, beautiful woman, one he put his arm around when they took the photos. “What the heck?” one of the teachers said. “This is just inappropriate.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Linda thought when Vanessa got out of the limo at the house. Matt had mentioned that the music minister’s daughter had offered to help with the party, but as soon as she saw the young blonde with Matt, Linda sensed that the relationship wasn’t platonic. Grace ran to her grandmother, and Linda turned to Jim, and said, “Matt’s going to marry that girl.”

That evening, Linda again wondered what it all meant but then chastised herself. Matt, after all, was still alive. He had to go on. Despite the pain it caused her, she was determined to keep that in mind and accept whatever happened. To Jim she said, “As long as that girl loves Kensi and Grace, if she’s a good mother, it’s okay.” Yet she feared, what if Matt cut them out of Kensi’s and Grace’s lives?

That evening at the Crested Butte house, the girls played, and Matt took more photos, including of Vanessa clowning with Kensi and her friends in their pajamas, batting a balloon, and playing a spirited game of keep-away. Strewn with crepe paper and banners, pillows scattered around the floor, it didn’t look like a house in mourning.

Todd arrived, and Matt introduced Vanessa as someone from church. “I wondered why he didn’t ask Linda to help,” Todd would say later. Like his sister, Todd then looked around the house and noticed that every trace of Kari had been wiped away and that Vanessa’s photo was on the refrigerator. It was as if Matt had excised Kari from their lives and replaced her.

“Where are Kari’s things?” Todd asked.

“I thought it was best for the girls if we put them away,” Matt answered.

Later, it would turn out that Matt kept a few items of Kari’s that he had a purpose for. That night, the girls dressed Matt and Todd in Kari’s dresses and made them up with her cosmetics. “I don’t remember whose idea it was,” Todd said later. The girls decided they wanted to bake cookies, so a trip to the store was planned. “And then they said we had to go to Walmart.”

A first-year teacher, Todd worried about being seen in the store wearing women’s clothing but decided he had no options. “Kensi had just lost her mom. I figured that it was the least I could do for her.” Matt, despite his position as a pastor of a church, didn’t seem at all concerned. They were at the store for only minutes when a woman from church saw them. Todd felt embarrassed, but Matt just smiled.

Back at the house, confused by all that was happening, Todd put his own clothes back on. He’d planned to spend the night but instead left about midnight. Jenny stayed, playing with the girls and watching Matt and Vanessa. At one point, she saw them go into the bedroom. Jenny called Todd, asking what to do. “If you don’t feel comfortable, leave,” he said.