Part 11 (2/2)

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.

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