Deadly Little Secrets Part 14

At that, Linda decided that to ease her granddaughter's distress, she had to let it go. "Then I'm fine with it," Linda said. "I just want you and Gracie to be happy."

Linda talked to Kensi for half an hour, and at the end, they both emerged from the bedroom laughing. But early the next morning, Matt sent Linda an e-mail accusing her of interrogating Kensi, even saying that Linda had physically pulled her granddaughter to the bedroom, hurting her. "Kensi mentioned the context and the manner in which you pursued her even after she attempted to walk away. I was shocked to hear what she had to say."

Linda e-mailed Matt back: "I told Kensi that I was not going to e-mail you again because I didn't want to take a chance that my direct communication style could be misconstrued. However, I did want to take one final time to rea.s.sure you how much we love you and the girls. We want nothing but for all of you to be happy."

Yet, when Matt responded, he sounded even angrier: "I noticed that you did not mention anything about grabbing Kensi's arm to make her continue talking to you or asking probing questions about Vanessa or the Bulls family . . . I know that you have always been the 'nosey-in-law'-and I do not say that as a compliment. I will inform you and Jim of events/dates/happenings that you need to be made aware of, but other things will stay in my house where they belong."

By mid-May, there was no doubt that the good relationship the Dulins had with Matt was cratering. So many things simply didn't seem right, including that Matt had never ordered a headstone for Kari's grave. The church had given him money to pay for one, but Matt hadn't followed through. Jim talked to him about the situation, but to no avail. When Matt said he was deciding on the inscription, Linda e-mailed suggestions. That Kari's grave remained unmarked bothered Jim so much that he wanted to buy a headstone. Linda wouldn't hear of it. "Matt needs to do something for Kari," she said.

In the end, Matt ordered one with Kari's name and dates and the phrase: "Always in our hearts."

It would turn out that Mother's Day was the final time Matt voluntarily allowed the girls to spend time with Jim and Linda. From that point on, he kept them apart, to the extent that he even left the girls with others while he was at Crossroads on Sunday mornings, ensuring that the girls didn't see their grandparents during services. Meanwhile, more reports came in from friends and family who said they saw Matt with Vanessa and that they'd heard Matt say unflattering things about Kari.

Despite her reluctance even to consider that her sisters could be right, that her son-in-law could have murdered her daughter, one afternoon Linda thought about just that as she walked out to the mailbox and found her AT&T bill. On her way back to the house, she thought about Matt and Kari, and remembered how she'd agreed to have them on her cell-phone account. "I'm just so mad, I think I'll cancel Matt's account," Linda told Lindsey on the phone.

"No, don't do that," Lindsey said. "Get the records. Look at his phone calls."

Angry and hurt, Linda called AT&T. When she had a service rep on the line, she asked, "May I get copies of all the phone calls made on this account, for all the phones?"

"It's your account, so yes you can," the man said. "I'll have them sent out to you. But you can also access them on the Internet."

After she ordered copies of three months' billing, Linda logged onto her AT&T account on the Web. Once there, she paused, afraid. "Okay, G.o.d," she prayed. "Help me. If there's something I should know, give me some kind of sign."

At that, she pulled up Matt's cell records and looked at the numbers he called in the days following Kari's death. Quickly, Linda noticed one particular number in Troy, one Matt called often, including the morning of Kari's death and the evening after the funeral. When she Googled it, Linda discovered that the number belonged to the Bulls family. It was then that Linda pulled up Matt's previous bills and saw that the calls to the Bulls residence had begun months before Kari died.

Finally, Linda scanned Matt's most recent statements, covering the month since Kari's death. What she saw confused her at first: Matt was calling his dead wife's cell phone. From April 17 through 26 alone, Matt had called Kari's number 181 times for a total of 1,610 minutes. During the following ten days, Matt made 384 calls to Kari's phone and talked for a total of 2.19 hours.

Whom is he talking to? Linda wondered. And then she realized what he must have done. Only one thing made sense; Matt had given Kari's cell phone to someone. Could it have been Vanessa?

Based on the evidence she had before her, Linda could only surmise that Matt's relationship with Vanessa had started months before Kari's death. And since Kari's death, Matt had called nearly nonstop, starting as soon as he dropped the girls off at school in the mornings.

Saving the phone records on her computer, Linda called Lindsey. When Lindsey heard about the calls to the Bulls's household months before Kari died, she was furious. "I'm going to whomp that woman," she said.

Linda calmed her down. "I need your help," she said. "Let's find out what's going on here. Research these phone numbers for me. Find out who else Matt's calling."

Once Lindsey agreed, they hung up, and Linda ran another search, this one on Unisom caplets, scanning the information she could find on the computer on overdoses. She'd done a cursory search right after Kari died, but now Linda pored over medical journals and perused medical Web sites. "What I found was that it would take an awful lot of Unisom to kill someone," she says.

That night, Linda talked to Jim, who was at summer camp for the National Guard. After she told him about the phone bills, she said, "Jim, there's something wrong here."

Chapter 31.

"Kari loved life. In her deepest sorrow, she loved life," Linda would say years later. "I just kept trying to convince myself that she committed suicide. I didn't want Matt to be a murderer. But once I saw those phone bills, I had to know what had really happened."

When Todd visited Matt that spring, Matt complained about Kari's family. "Maybe I'll move the girls to a different district," Matt said. "I'd like distance from the Dulins."

Perhaps he realized Linda was questioning. That wouldn't have been a reach after AT&T mistakenly sent the records Linda requested to Matt's address. Later, he'd say that he immediately realized that his mother-in-law was looking at his phone bills. Not long after, Linda received a call from a friend who saw Matt and Vanessa at a fast-food restaurant and another who saw them shopping for cell phones.

Meanwhile, still struggling with what to believe, Linda met with Jo Ann Bristol, to hear in person what Kari had told her. As she had to others since that day, Bristol carefully laid out her final session with Kari, talking of how excited Kari was about the prospect of the new job and finding a way to work with parents who'd lost children. When Bristol turned to the conversation about Matt, however, Linda felt her heart sinking. As the therapist relayed Kari's fears, for the first time Linda had a glimpse into why Kari suffered from anxiety in the final weeks of her life. "Kari was trying to make sense of it all, but still not trusting her instincts," Linda would say later. "Listening to Jo Ann, I hurt for my child. I wished I had known. I wanted to hold Kari. But I couldn't. My daughter was dead."

Afterward, Linda talked with Jim, relaying all she'd learned. With little discussion, they agreed Kari's death needed to be investigated. From what her sisters and niece had said, however, they concluded that Hewitt PD wasn't interested in looking into a death they'd already written off as suicide. Yet Linda wasn't without help. Nancy, Kay, and Lindsey were as eager as she was to uncover the truth.

In the days that followed, e-mails and phone calls flew back and forth among the women, Linda divvying up tasks, issuing orders about who should do what. Before long, the women had renamed themselves. Linda was Charlie, the leader, and began even signing her e-mails that way, and Nancy, Kay, and Lindsey were the angels. Their task, the one they'd gladly accepted, was to look into the strange circ.u.mstances surrounding Kari Lynn Dulin Baker's death.

One Friday afternoon, Matt's day off, Lindsey drove to Crested b.u.t.te hoping to see Vanessa arrive or leave. She sat there for hours, wondering whether or not Vanessa's car was inside the garage. On the street were piles of garbage. She thought about searching through it but worried that Matt would see her. She had to fight the urge to walk up to the door and tell him what she thought of him. She left that afternoon without ever seeing either Matt or Vanessa.

Another day, Lindsey received an early-morning call. "Your a.s.signment is to call more of the numbers on Matt's phone bill," Linda said. "Let's find out what he's up to."

"Yes, Charlie," Lindsey said. "Will do!"

What Lindsey discovered was Matt was calling Realtors in Lorena, near Crossroads. Matt and Vanessa, it appeared, had been out shopping not just for an engagement ring but a house. Not long after, Linda heard from someone at church that her son-in-law was also looking at homes in Troy, near the Bulls's home.

Meanwhile, in the moments stolen between teaching cla.s.ses, Linda did more investigating on the Net, much of it about Unisom. What she found were cases of children who took three times more of the drug than prescribed and didn't die. When someone did overdose, it appeared that the result was a slow death, which didn't seem to fit Matt's story. After all, he'd told Linda and Jim that Kari had been awake when he left and that he was only gone forty-five minutes. "That meant that she had to ingest the drugs and die all before he returned," says Linda. "I'm not an expert, but that doesn't make sense."

At other times, instructions went out to Linda's sisters, like the morning Linda e-mailed Nancy asking her to go to Hollywood Video to find out if Matt had done what he said he had the night of Kari's death. The e-mail was signed, "Charlie."

The next day, Nancy drove to the Hollywood Video on Hewitt Drive. Inside the store, she spoke with an a.s.sistant manager, a woman, explaining she was there to find out what time Matt was in the store and to get the surveillance tape from that night. Standing in the store with racks of DVDs fanning out around them, the manager said she couldn't give Nancy the surveillance video from the store cameras. "If the police need them, they can come in and get them."

"Okay," Nancy said. "But can you pull them for that night and keep them safe, so that nothing happens to them?"

That the a.s.sistant manager agreed to, along with reviewing the records and giving Nancy the time Matt checked out the Meg Ryan movie When a Man Loves a Woman: 11:48 P.M.

Then, as their efforts continued, there was another tragedy in Hewitt-one of Kay's friends lost a son to suicide. When Kay heard that Billy Martin had ordered an autopsy for the boy, she called Martin. "I just want to understand why there was no autopsy in my niece's death," Kay said.

"My understanding was that there was a handwritten suicide note," Martin responded.

"No, it was typed, and there was no signature," Kay said. She then detailed what they'd uncovered so far, including Kari's haunting words to Bristol. Stressing that they weren't saying they had proof Matt had killed Kari, Kay said, "We want someone to look into this."

"It definitely needs to be looked into," Martin said. "I'll call Hewitt PD today."

After relaying the conversation to Linda and the others, it was agreed that they would wait one day, giving Martin time to follow through.

The next day, Kay called Sergeant Cooper. He wasn't in and didn't return her call. The following morning, after still not hearing from Cooper, Kay asked to speak to the sergeant's boss, Captain Tuck Saunders. On the phone, she explained what had transpired with Martin. After listening, Saunders said Kari's death was Cooper's case and that the sergeant would call her back.

Meanwhile, that same afternoon, Lindsey and her sister, Ami, arrived at the house on Crested b.u.t.te. Lindsey had e-mailed voicing support, hoping Matt would talk to her. In one e-mail, he offered to let her look at what remained of Kari's things, to find a remembrance. Yet when she tried to set a time, he didn't respond. So Lindsey and Ami simply showed up.

At the house, all the drapes and blinds were down. Although it was bright sunshine outside, inside it was pitch-dark. Most of what Kari owned was gone, but Matt showed Lindsey a memory box he'd put together for the girls, including wedding photos and his wedding ring. Kari's diamond engagement ring wasn't there. Kensi and Grace were quiet that afternoon, as they had been often since their mother's death. Like Jenny and Todd before her, Lindsey noticed that all the photos of Kari were gone and saw the one with the girls and Vanessa on the refrigerator.

"I'm just looking for something to remember Kari by," Lindsey said, flipping through the box. "I still miss her so much. I want the memories of her to help me move on."

"Well, some people aren't able to move on, are they, Kensi?" Matt asked his oldest, who sat nearby. "Who isn't able to move on in this family?"

At first, Kensi didn't answer, but Matt asked again. The girls had always called their grandmother Grammy, but Kensi finally said, "Linda can't move on."

Hearing Kensi call her grandmother by her first name hit Lindsey hard. "It was just so strange," she says. "That wasn't Kensi."

Nothing of Kari's beyond the memory box remained in the house. In the garage, looking through a few things Matt stored there, Lindsey talked about a movie she wanted to see. Saying he'd wanted to see the movie as well, Matt categorized it as a date movie. Not wanting to interject what she knew about Vanessa Bulls, Lindsey said, "Well, maybe someday that will happen."

"According to you know who, I already have a date, right Kensi?" Matt said. When Kensi didn't answer, Matt said again, "Right Kensi? Grammy thinks I've been dating."

The next day, May 18, Cooper finally called Kay. Grateful to have the sergeant's ear, Kay filled him in on her conversation with Judge Martin and again stressed all that Kari had told Bristol. In response, Cooper asked for the therapist's number. Kay gave it to him, but when Kay talked to Bristol the next day, Cooper hadn't contacted her. With Sergeant Cooper continuing to act disinterested in the case, Linda talked the situation over with Jim, who decided it was time for a personal meeting with the sergeant.

The following morning was a Friday, and Kay and Jim walked together through the doors into the small entry of Hewitt PD's modest offices. The receptionist notified Cooper, who escorted them to an office.

On the desk, Jim laid out paperwork he'd brought, including copies of the bills doc.u.menting that Matt was talking with Vanessa Bulls months before Kari's death. Going through the records, Jim showed the sergeant that Matt had even called Vanessa the morning of Kari's death and the evening after the funeral. "It appears this relationship has been going on for quite some time," Jim said.

"Why wasn't an autopsy done?" Kay asked yet again. "I've talked to people who know about these things, and they tell me it's standard procedure in a suicide case where the victim is young and healthy and leaves a typed suicide note."

"That was Judge Martin's decision," Cooper said, sounding defensive.

"How do we get the body exhumed then?" Kay demanded. "We need an autopsy!"

"You need to talk to the judge," Cooper said. "I can't issue that kind of an order."

As they talked, Kay's cell phone rang, and she walked from the room.

"Jo Ann Bristol's testimony will be important in this case," Cooper told Jim, while they were alone. "And we are going to need that autopsy."

When Kay returned, she pressed Cooper again about the autopsy, wanting to know why one wasn't ordered the night of Kari's death. "I could tell he was getting irritated with me," she'd say later. "He didn't like that question."

When Kay explained that Bristol was leaving in just days and would be out of the country for weeks, she suggested that the therapist come in that same afternoon to give a statement, but Cooper, to her dismay, said that wasn't necessary. "I'll tell her to come in today," Kay said, leaving no room for argument.

Bristol arrived at Hewitt PD a few hours later, bringing with her seven pages of notes she'd made on Kari's last session. After again recounting Kari's concerns about Matt, Bristol told the sergeant to call if he needed more. Cooper never called.

That same day, Linda received an e-mail from Matt, one in which he told her that the girls wouldn't be staying with them the coming Sunday afternoon, while he conducted chapel at WCY. A friend's mother had offered to take them shopping.

Tension was building, and Linda e-mailed Matt, inquiring about the upcoming fourth-grade talent show, in which Kensi would be performing. Linda had asked repeatedly when it was without a response, and this time she wrote. "I will get the info . . . the choice is yours. You just need to be on notice that you will NOT keep Jim and me from our granddaughters. No matter how much you are trying to poison them against us."

When he responded, Matt acted like the wronged party: "I am asking for the final time-STOP! Stop accusing me. Stop blaming me. Stop cursing my name. Stop trying to make it appear that I don't care for my girls properly. Stop! Please stop before it causes a rift too deep . . . I have been praying for my family and you and Jim every day."

"Enough of this-I will not be bullied by you," Linda responded. "Do not threaten me in e-mails or anywhere else."

Matt e-mailed again, this time telling Linda she wasn't dealing "properly" with Kari's death and saying that hurt the girls. "I can and will have to keep Kensi and Grace at a distance from you. Stop blaming me . . . Love, Kensi & Grace's FATHER, Matt Baker."

Through it all, Linda could feel her oldest granddaughter being pulled away. In some ways the area around Hewitt is a small town, and when Linda happened by chance upon Matt and the girls at Target, Grace ran to her, but Kensi hung back. "I love you!" Linda said, noticing that Kensi looked up warily at her father, who quickly shuffled the girls away.

It would turn out that Jim and Linda weren't in the audience at Kensi's talent show that month. Matt hadn't notified them of the day. Later, Linda heard that Vanessa was there, however, holding her infant, Lilly. Many of the teachers noticed them, whispering afterward about how strange it was with Kari dead not even two months.

Three days after Jim and Kay met with Cooper, Linda composed a letter for Jim to take to Hewitt PD. She'd thought of some things she believed the sergeant would like to know. "I wanted to write down a couple of events that Matt Baker described to me regarding the death of my daughter, Kari Baker . . . I just want to be sure you have as much information as possible to help you with this case," she said.

At that, she recounted the events as Matt had told them to her and Jim, everything from the trip to the video store to finding Kari. "I wanted you to have this information, so that you can use this time frame of events when you check the video rental time at Hollywood Video in Hewitt." Not wanting to outright tell the sergeant what to do, she then suggested he could inquire at the video store about the possibility of a surveillance video from the night of Kari's death.

Whether or not Cooper was interested in investigating, Linda was intent on making sure that he understood there were ways he could look into Matt's account of that night, including checking bank records. "Matt and Kari always used a debit card for fuel; you could get information regarding the fuel from the debit card. A toxicology report and autopsy will answer other questions about what she ingested," she pointed out.

The second area Linda wanted to clarify involved Bristol and the pills in Matt's suitcase. She recounted for Cooper how she approached Matt, asking him to "help me understand" where the pills had come from. He'd specifically said that he later reported the breach of security, the pills in his briefcase, to WCY security.

Already certain that Matt had never reported the pills, Linda suggested Cooper inquire with the facility's security. "How would a youth in the WCY facility have access to a bottle of pills?" she asked in her letter. "If pills were being stashed in Matt's briefcase, were other employees notified via e-mail or other means to be aware of such activities?"

Suspecting that the detective wouldn't be happy to hear from her, Linda then tried to a.s.suage his ego, telling Cooper that she appreciated his work on the case and that she knew he'd do everything possible "to ensure that the facts are uncovered so that we can know for certain what happened surrounding our daughter's death on April 8.

"I know you are a very qualified and competent officer. I don't mean to sound like I am telling you how to do your job in this letter. I just don't want to leave any stone unturned. My husband said you have two daughters. I know you can empathize with what we are going through."

When Jim dropped off the letter, Cooper a.s.sured him that the case was a priority, but Linda soon doubted the sergeant's sincerity. "He never even contacted me to ask any questions," she'd say later. "It was as if he'd never received it."

Unbeknownst to Linda and Jim, three days earlier Sergeant Cooper did take some action on the case, going to Waco Center for Youth and talking with Eddie Greenfield, the director, asking about the pills in Matt's briefcase.

"Did Matt report this to you?" Cooper asked.

"No. I have no record of any report like that," Greenfield said.

Perhaps that information, backing up what Kari's family had told him, might have spurred on the investigation. Yet, when Nancy checked back with Hollywood Video, the manager told her that the police still hadn't picked up the surveillance tape. "Release it to me then," she asked, but the manager said she couldn't.

Linda and Jim were in the audience at Grace's kindergarten graduation. When Jenny arrived, she sat with them, and a short time later, Matt entered with Vanessa, pushing Lilly in a stroller. Kensi walked in but didn't rush to Linda and Jim as she would have in the past, instead going directly to Matt on the other side of the room. When Jenny averted her eyes from Matt and Vanessa, Linda leaned over, and said, "You know?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jenny said.

"We'll talk afterward," Linda said, as they watched Grace queue up with the other kindergarteners in her gown and mortarboard.

Later, in the parking lot, Jenny described what she'd seen at Kensi's birthday party, including Vanessa's head on Matt's lap. "I didn't want to tell you. You had just lost your daughter," Jenny said.

"I don't blame you," Linda said. "I wouldn't have wanted to hear it." At that, she looked up and saw the hurt in Jim's eyes.

"Do you think Kari could have killed herself?" Linda asked.

"No." Jenny answered. After they parted, Jenny wrote out an account of everything she remembered about Kensi's birthday party. When she got it, Linda placed Jenny's notes in a growing stack of paperwork she was collecting in what was becoming her personal investigation into her daughter's death.

For Jim, the anger was building inside of him. He didn't like that. He was a military man, a man who took action. Sitting back and waiting for others to do something was an untenable situation. Linda was still at times unable to believe that Matt had truly murdered Kari, but Jim knew it with his heart, which ached. He felt the guilt of a father who was unable to protect a daughter.

Looking for an outlet, Jim went to a T-shirt shop at the mall, clutching a photo of Kerry with Kensi and Grace. The following Sunday when Matt stood at the Crossroads' pulpit, Linda and Jim sat in the front row, and Jim stared up at him, his eyes burning but a smile on his face, wearing a new T-shirt, one with the photograph of Kari with her beloved daughters front and center.

"Oh, I like your T-shirt," Matt said sarcastically afterward.

Jim just smiled.

The church seemed to be taking up little of Matt's attention that May. He repeatedly canceled Sunday evening services to spend time with Vanessa. He'd sold both his car and Kari's and bought a new four-door pickup, and he took a photo of Vanessa, her blond hair falling about her shoulders, a smile on her pretty face, behind the wheel. When the church flooded in a spring deluge, Matt walked through the sanctuary and said h.e.l.lo to those cleaning it up but didn't offer to help. Instead, he kept walking. He was on his way to Troy to visit Vanessa.

As May drew to a close, the Dulins became increasingly frustrated with Hewitt PD in general and Sergeant Cooper in particular. They continued to funnel him information as they uncovered it. Unaware of the actions he had taken, they saw no evidence that he was conducting any kind of investigation. Kay delivered information from the director of the Family Y regarding Matt's activities while he was there, the s.e.xual hara.s.sment of young girls that resulted in his firing. But when she checked, Kay was told that Cooper never called the woman at the Y to follow up. When Kay visited Billy Martin to ask him about exhuming the body for an autopsy, Martin said he hadn't heard from anyone at Hewitt requesting one.

Meanwhile, Linda called experts who told her that every day an autopsy was postponed and Kari's body lay in the grave meant more evidence was lost. Searching for help, Linda consulted with a friend who suggested she contact the Texas Rangers. Linda did and talked with a veteran ranger named Matt Cawthon.

Tall and fit, Cawthon had steel blue eyes and a studied gaze that could cut to the quick. He'd started at DPS as a trooper in 1982, fulfilling a childhood dream. Seven years later, Cawthon was promoted to criminal intelligence and from there to the state's elite law-enforcement group, the Texas Rangers. Over the years, he'd worked on vice, homicide, theft, gambling, and corruption cases. One murder-for-hire case took him to Honduras, where he uncovered a child-p.o.r.nography ring. For that, he was honored as a policeman of the year, and Janet Reno, then the attorney general, gave him an award.