Part 23 (1/2)

The hours wore on, Matt looking increasingly agitated. He told of that afternoon at the Y. Kari had left the middle school hours earlier on a high, yet she arrived at the Family Y angry and sad. Something had clearly happened in the few hours between the interview and swim practice, but what? He seemed unable to explain.

As the questioning continued, Johnston nailed down details. Matt said Kari threw up shortly after they arrived at the Y. Johnston wanted to know if once she sat down in the hallway, had Kari ever left the black leather couch. Matt said no. The importance was that Kari hadn't slipped away to the bathroom to ingest anything.

Then Johnston led Matt through his account of the last hours of Kari's life, from the time they left the Y until he called 911 at just after midnight: On the drive home, they decided to forgo pizza for Happy Meals for the girls. Not feeling well, this time Matt said Kari ate a single french fry. As soon as they arrived at the house, she threw up for a second time that evening. By eight that evening Kari was in the bathtub, soaking. Afterward, she lay in bed watching television, drifting in and out of sleep. By nine or nine thirty, Matt said he'd joined her in the bedroom, taken a shower in the adjoining master bath, then watched TV and talked.

”What did you talk about?” Johnston asked.

”There wasn't a lot of talking,” Matt said, dismissively. ”She was asleep, awake, asleep, awake. That's basically how she was. She asked me to run some errands.”

Was she so tired, so out of it, that he worried she'd be unable to care for the girls?

”No,” he said. ” . . . They were sleeping, and I'd left them with her before.”

At ten forty-five, when he said Kari asked him to fill the gas tank in her SUV and rent a movie, pick up a soda and M&Ms, how was she then? ”It was still kind of that half-awake talking, still really drowsy,” Matt said.

”Were you worried she couldn't take care of herself at that point?”

”No, I just thought she was tired.”

Again and again, Matt said that Kari was awake if tired when he left at what he pegged as approximately eleven fifteen. ”I knew I'd only be gone an hour or so,” he said. ”I walked over to her in bed and told her that I was leaving.”

”How did she respond?” Johnston asked.

”She said, 'Okay.' ”

”You weren't concerned at that point?”

”I knew she wasn't feeling well, very lethargic, tired, drowsy, eyes are droopy.”

”But she wasn't mentally unclear?” Johnston asked.

”She was slower,” the former preacher contended.

”You didn't have a concern that if you left her in that condition, she was so out of it she couldn't take care of the kids?” Johnston asked yet again. This was an important point. If Kari had already taken the pills, if she was unconscious, that set the clock back, gave her body more time to develop lividity and cool, explaining the condition her corpse was in when the first EMTs arrived. But if she was alive, talking and lucid? Then how did she die, cool, and develop lividity in forty-five minutes?

”Correct,” Baker said with a nod.

As for his foray to run errands, that the ex-pastor described in much the same terms as he had to Cooper: the stop at the closed convenience store near the house, the gas station that sold only diesel, the stop to fill up the tank, then the run through Hollywood Video, where he rented the video, When a Man Loves a Woman.

So much of what Matt had described about Kari's death resonated with those who remembered Ka.s.sidy's final night. From finding them both in fetal positions, on their sides, to the time of night, just after midnight. Now, Matt drew the parallel, saying that after he walked into the room, Kari's stillness, the paleness of her body, her lips a faint blue, reminded him of their dead daughter. ”That was a familiar look,” he said. ”Kari was not responsive and not breathing. I'm trained in CPR. I looked for her heart rate and blood pressure, any of that. Didn't find any signs of breathing.”

”What did you do next?” Johnston asked, moving on to a subject he wanted to etch into stone: Matt's depiction of his actions once he entered the bedroom.

”I reached for the phone and I called 911,” he said.

”And then what happened?”

As he reached for the phone, he said he saw the note on the table but didn't take time to read it. Instead, as he cupped the cordless phone between his ear and his shoulder, he got to work. Kari was naked, and instead of immediately beginning CPR, he took the time to dress her, putting her silky panties on while she was still on the bed, then pulling her off onto the floor to start compressions, yet first dressing her in the Snoopy Santa T-s.h.i.+rt she'd had on earlier that evening, threading her limp arms through the sleeves and pulling it down behind her back.

”How long did it take to dress her?” Johnston asked, his voice bland, giving away none of the importance of the question.

”Seconds,” Matt said. ”It was a loose s.h.i.+rt and panties, very easy to put on.”

Just dressing a dead body could be an arduous task, the experts had told Johnston, but the way Matt was describing it was that he did it at the same time he balanced a phone against his ear, talked to the 911 dispatcher, and pulled Kari from the bed. He'd accomplished all of this in less than a minute. At that point, he gave her CPR for one minute, then rushed to the door and got there just in time to open it before the EMTs rang the bell and woke the children.

In his description, it seemed that Matt was everywhere at once, doing everything perfectly, not just attempting to breathe life back into his wife but protecting her modesty.

When questioned, Matt said he saw no abrasion on Kari's nose although Bevel had noted one in the photos. But then Matt hadn't noticed the lividity either, writing off what Johnston pointed out in the photos as ”shadows.” And instead of cold to the touch, the way the first EMT on the scene described the body, Matt said Kari felt ”clammy.”

”How hard was it to move her?” Johnston asked.

”I didn't think about that at the time,” Matt said, yet he agreed that he'd actually had to drag Kari's body off the bed and claimed that at one point he'd dropped her and her head had hit the floor. At Johnston's request, Matt drew a diagram of the bedroom, placing the furniture and Kari's body both in the bed and on the floor. Always appearing to be more than helpful, he asked, ”Do you want me to time and date it?”

Johnston declined the offer.

”How much did you receive in death benefits?” Johnston asked. The answer from Matt was somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000. People in Kerrville had donated about $20,000 that Matt said had gone to pay his lawyers. Why had they opened their wallets? Staring down Johnston, Matt said, ”Because they believe in my innocence, believe in the attack mode that's been against me.”

”When did you meet Vanessa Bulls?” Johnston asked.

Here, too, Matt deviated only slightly from the description of the relations.h.i.+p he'd given Sergeant Cooper. As the ex-pastor had in the past, he talked as if Vanessa had initially been Kari's friend, and that they only became close after his wife's death. He admitted calling her, but said he was talking to Vanessa as a counselor might. Their relations.h.i.+p didn't change until midsummer 2006, and only because his children were the ones who wanted to spend time with her. ”She was nice to my family,” he said.

He had asked her father for permission to date Vanessa, that he admitted, but it was in the summer. They'd only kissed twice, he said. In fact, Matt insisted that he'd had no s.e.xual relations with a woman since Kari's death. No, he said, he hadn't gone shopping for engagement rings with Vanessa just weeks after Kari's funeral. Instead, he said they'd been in Kay Jewelers looking at earrings for Grace. In Matt's version, the only time Vanessa had stayed over was the night of the slumber party. That, too, was the only time she had her car parked at his house. ”I don't believe it was in the garage.”

Again Johnston asked, ”Did you have s.e.xual relations with any woman in the year prior to Kari's death other than Kari?”

”No,” Matt said.

”Do you have a conclusion as to what caused Kari's death?” Johnston asked.

”I believe she took too many sleeping pills in combination with the alcohol, and that she stopped breathing,” Matt said.

”Where did she get Ambien?” Johnston asked.

”I don't know,” Matt said. ”Unless she borrowed some from her mom.”

When it came to the searches on his WCY computer, scouring pharmacies and drug information, Matt insisted it was merely out of concern for Kari, his fear that she was taking too many sleeping pills. ”So you raised that concern with the doctor?” Johnston asked, pointedly.

”I did not,” Baker admitted.

”It was such a concern that you had you felt like you should do Internet research . . . But you didn't mention it at all to the doctor?”

”No,” he said again. ”I did not.”

”Did you ever order anything off the Internet?”

”Not a drug . . . a s.e.xual stimulant,” Matt said. ”A liquid we were supposed to drink, and it was supposed to stimulate you.”