Part 11 (1/2)

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.