Part 18 (2/2)

That evening, at the Bulls's home, Matt suggested that he and Vanessa could take the girls out together for dinners. It was the girls, she said, who drew her to agree. ”He really wasn't my type. He's shorter than I am,” she said, smacking on a piece of gum she chewed steadily throughout the interview. ”But I really loved Kensi and Grace.”

After that, they took the girls to McDonald's and the movies. It was a surprise, she said, when her father told her about a month after Kari's death that Matt had come to him and asked if he could begin dating Vanessa. ”I just thought all we were doing was taking the kids out,” Vanessa said.

”And what did your parents say?” Toombs asked.

”At that point, they thought he was just a great person who had just suffered so much in his life,” she said, gesturing with her hands. ”From what he had started to tell us about Jim and Linda and some other people at Crossroads being out to get him, we all felt sorry for him. . . .”

”How did you feel about his asking your father that?” Toombs asked.

”I was upset about it that he didn't talk to me first,” she answered. But ”it was good to have a friend. I'd be lying if I didn't say that it would be nice . . .” Bulls began crying again, as she mentioned her daughter, ”to have someone who had two daughters and who would possibly be the dad to my child . . . I loved his kids more than him.”

Their dating, she said, had been more than sanitary, chaperoned at all times by their three children. ”It was never a one-on-one thing,” she stressed.

Even that, she insisted, had been short-lived. Her parents began telling her that much of what Matt said didn't make sense and that they were hearing conflicting stories from people at Crossroads, including that the police were investigating Kari's death.

At first, Bulls said she hadn't wanted to hear it. With the breakup of her marriage, she said, ”I didn't care about the rumors. I was going to stand by him with those two girls. He made me believe he was totally great, and everyone was out to get him. Another part of me just didn't want my parents to be right about another guy.”

Her parents, she said, asked her to stop seeing Matt, but she'd initially refused.

From the beginning, much of what she said tracked closely what Matt had told Cooper. And it often appeared that Vanessa wanted to control the interviewing, telling the officers only what she wanted them to know. When one asked a question, she cut him off, then smiled. Despite initially supporting Matt, she said she began to see that he wasn't being honest. She heard from others about his sordid past. ”My parents told me some of the stuff, and it made me want to throw up,” she said, grabbing a tissue.

When she broke it off, Matt was angry but ”didn't rage violent or anything.” How had it affected her? Bulls shrugged again. ”I've been fine since. I haven't lost any sleep.”

Throughout the interview, Bulls tugged off and on at her T-s.h.i.+rt's round neck, as if she felt constrained by it. When it was evident that her recounting had ended, Toombs said, ”Let's go back to where he started calling you.”

”Okay,” she said, nodding.

More details came out as Toombs asked questions about what Matt had said. ”He told me that Kari had attempted suicide once before.” That time, as well, it had been with sleeping pills, and Matt insisted that the Dulins knew about all that had transpired.

Bulls said she hadn't noticed any changes in Matt in the weeks before or the weeks after Kari's death. At the Dulins' home the day after Kari's death, Vanessa, like so many others, had noticed how calm Matt looked. ”He told me he was that way when Ka.s.sidy pa.s.sed away, too,” she said. ”So I thought that different people just act differently.”

Bulls never mentioned the Christmas potluck where Matt cornered her and suggested they date. Instead, she insisted that Matt had never come on to her. Theirs, she said, had not been a s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p. But there were strange things, like the day he told people at church, soon after Kari's death, that five-year-old Grace already ”knows who she wants her new mommy to be.”

”You didn't believe that?” Toombs asked.

”It didn't sound like something a five-year-old would say.”

There were things that, in hindsight, she found odd, including the way Matt talked to his daughters: asking them a question, listening to their answers, then asking them another question. ”It was like he kept asking until he got them to say what he wanted,” she said. ”I didn't think about it at the time, but it was manipulative.”

When Toombs asked Vanessa if it was possible that Matt was upset with Kari because he wanted to be with her, Bulls covered her mouth with her hand, as if aghast. ”Well, that didn't cross my mind until a couple of weeks ago,” Bulls said. ”I was like, that can't be . . . I've seen too many Lifetime movies.”

Rather than be upset on Kari's behalf, that Matt might have killed his wife, Bulls seemed to take the suggestion more as a personal insult: ”If he did that . . . if he thought that I just got divorced . . . he was . . . going to slide me into their lives . . . That's wrong.”

Then Toombs asked the question: Did she believe Matt murdered his wife?

She grimaced, then said: ”Nothing is out of possibility after I found out about the stuff he lied to me about. I think he might have done it.”

”Did you and Matt have any kind of romantic relations.h.i.+p before Kari died?”

”No,” Bulls said, shaking her head. ”No!”

”Did you have any kind of relations.h.i.+p anyone else could perceive as romantic?”

”Obviously, other people have perceived it, which to a point offends me,” Bulls said, rather indignantly. When asked, she insisted that Matt had never said anything to her she interpreted as wis.h.i.+ng Kari was dead. All he'd said, she repeated, was that Kari was depressed and hard to live with at times.

When asked to, Vanessa, long bare legs crossed and the water bottle close at hand, recounted what Matt had told her about the night Kari died, everything from running to the store and gas station to unlocking the door and finding Kari dead, her lips blue and cold. The story matched what Matt had told Sergeant Cooper the night of Kari's death, including that he'd been gone about forty-five minutes.

Then Toombs asked something that appeared to take Bulls by surprise. ”Did Matt ever mention that Kari found medication in his briefcase?”

”She found medicine in his briefcase?” Vanessa repeated. ”No.”

Before long, Vanessa was talking more about what she'd heard, including that the church had found records of Matt's calling the Bulls's house when her parents weren't home. At times, it would be obvious how uncomfortable Toombs was at his close involvement, knowing Vanessa and her parents. As the interview progressed, it would seem ever more apparent that many of those on the edges of the case had been talking and comparing notes. Vanessa even pointed out that Ben's mother had a.s.sured hers that Vanessa wouldn't be questioned.

When Toombs and Spear stood up and said they wanted to talk a bit, and they'd be back, she asked if she could call her mother. ”She'll be worried,” Vanessa said.

”Sure,” Toombs told her.

Alone in the room, the camera rolling, Vanessa stared at her cell phone, then punched in a number. ”Hey, I just wanted to call and let you know it's going to be a little while longer before I'm home. Ben Toombs asked me if I'd come talk to him.”

Although only one side of the conversation was recorded, it was apparent that Vanessa's mother was concerned. ”I just answered some questions,” Vanessa said. ”I'm being truthful.”

Again, she repeated, ”It's okay. I'm just answering questions.”

The one piece of new information she quickly imparted was what she'd just heard from Toombs, that Kari found pills in Matt's briefcase. Hunched over, her elbows on her knees, Vanessa talked. ”I was surprised they hadn't questioned me before since we dated a little bit afterward,” she said. ”It's good we're getting this over with now . . . It was scary at first. It was like whoa, why didn't you just call me and ask me to come in . . . Basically everything I told y'all . . . I stopped talking to him when I found out things were facts . . . I'm nervous, too, Mom. I hate that I ever even showed up at Crossroads and chose to let Matt into our lives once Kari pa.s.sed away.”

Apparently to still her mother's fears, Vanessa then said, ”I didn't hide anything, so you don't have to worry. I really think I'm okay because I don't have anything to hide.”

Moments later, Toombs and Spear returned, and a few minutes later, two more men entered, one a Secret Service agent who happened to be at Hewitt PD and offered help. Vanessa looked concerned but didn't miss a beat, answering the questions Toombs asked but turning her chair to look more toward the new arrivals. With that, the visiting Secret Service agent took over, and Vanessa, without protesting, answered again, giving the same description of the events as they'd unfolded.

”Do you think he had anything to do with her death?” the man asked.

”After I found out about his lying, I think anything is possible now,” she answered.

”Was there anything that you found suspicious?”

That was when Vanessa went into more detail about what Matt had told her about Ka.s.sidy's death. In that conversation, he'd said that when he found Ka.s.sidy not breathing, he'd had to replace her trach tube. That it wasn't attached as it should have been seemed odd, and Vanessa later discussed it with a friend, who told her that if someone has a tracheotomy, the tube is left in, not removed. ”I began to worry if he did something to his daughter,” she said.

Again she repeated, this time for the two new arrivals, that the relations.h.i.+p with Matt had never become ”inappropriate” and that it didn't begin until after Kari's death.

<script>