During the weeks Rick stayed at the Cromacks’, they noticed odd habits that they’d not seen in the past. Rick did not seem to have a biological time clock. He often was up all night and asleep all day. Many mornings they’d rise and, noticing the glow of the overhead fluorescent lights in the room, they’d check up on Rick. More often than not, they found him fully dressed but sound asleep sprawled across the top of the linens on the bed.
Sue sent her husband a letter of encouragement. She told him that she and the boys were behind him—believed in him. She knew, she wrote, that he would be a big success in San Antonio. Before long, Sue secured a job as an industry market revenue analyst with responsibility for balance sheet, budget and plan preparation in the San Antonio office of Southwestern Bell.
With 1-year-old Timmy perched on her hip, Sue supervised the relocation of the household. The moving van picked up the furniture and all of the big boxes.
Ann and Kirsten were at the house helping Sue pull together all the small stuff to load in the car for the trip down. Throughout this process, Sue handed off items to Ann to deliver to others in the area.
Everything was packed up. Everyone was ready to go. Unfortunately, the car Ann came in was locked. And the keys were in the ignition.
After a call to AAA, Sue went to her freezer and emerged with a pitcher of frozen margaritas—a concoction she learned to love during the time she worked in Texas. The other women were impressed—all packed up and still Sue had what she needed to put together an impromptu party.
The women sat on the porch sipping their drinks. Two hours later, after sharing a margarita with the AAA guy, the car was unlocked, the keys retrieved and Sue’s merry little band of boys was on its way to San Antonio—a city with a reputation for using any and every excuse to throw a party.
1 The names of Susan McFarland’s children have been changed to protect their privacy.
7
The McFarlands chose a home with an open floor plan and a natural circular flow perfect for entertaining—the right match for a woman who loved to throw parties. It was situated in Terrell Hills, a suburban community just off Austin Highway in Central Bexar County. Five miles northeast of downtown San Antonio, Terrell Hills was a 1.2-square-mile island in the ocean of a major metropolitan area.
The town adopted a home rule charter in 1957 to keep from being annexed and washed into the multicultural sea of the larger city, where more than 55 percent of the population was Hispanic. Terrell Hills—87 percent Anglo—was, like neighboring Alamo Heights, an enclave of yuppie sensibilities that cherished its separate identity. The two towns also shared a prestigious zip code—78209—and the residents labeled as 09’ers. If you lived there, you carried that badge with pride. If you didn’t, calling someone as 09’er was an insult whose intensity varied from speaker to speaker, from comic condescension to disdainful loathing.
It was a leafy green community of good schools, chi-chi boutiques and extravagant grocery stores. It was a great place to drive an SUV and raise a family.
In this comfortable middle-class backdrop of normalcy, the McFarland family settled into their new home at 351 Arcadia Place. From the first day, though, it was apparent to neighbors that for this family, normal was only a façade.
The weekend of the move, the family in the house behind them—Carrie and Steve Miller and their three children, Billy, Stephanie and Wesley—were away at Lake LBJ for the weekend. When they returned home, Steve looked in the backyard. He recognized change at first, but not the source of it. Then his eyes zeroed in on the fresh stump sticking out of the ground where a hackberry tree used to be. He went outside for a closer examination. His first thought was that an engineer had ordered it cut because it interfered with the power lines. But when he called the government offices of Terrell Hills, they denied responsibility.
Puzzled, he looked out the window again. On the other side of the fence, he saw his new neighbor, Rick McFarland, holding his youngest son, Timmy. He went back out and introduced himself over the fence. After they shared a few pleasantries, Steve asked, “Rick, did you see our tree? It was here on Friday.”
Rick shrugged.
“Did you see it walk off?”
“No,” Rick said.
Steve was amazed—Rick answered the question as if Steve had serious concerns that the tree had grown legs and moved on to another yard. Did the man have any sense of humor? Steve took a more direct approach. “Did you see anyone come into my yard and cut down my tree?”
“No.”
“Rick, did you cut down my tree?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Rick, why?”
“The tree was dropping too many leaves in my yard.”
Dumbfounded, Steve looked in the McFarland yard and saw that the only leaves that fell from his tree landed in the graveled dog run along the fence. “That was my tree. It was in my yard. I know you’re a Yankee, but down here you come on somebody’s property and you’re lucky to make it to the property line alive. What were you thinking?”
“I’ll make it up to you,” Rick said.
“How?”
“Do you have a website?”
“No.”
“I’ll design a website for you.”
Steve thought the offer was odd—and Rick was odder still. He didn’t think about it again until a couple of weeks later when he heard back from Rick. “I’m almost finished with the website design. It’ll cost you twenty-five hundred dollars.”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars? I thought you were doing it for free. I thought you did it in exchange for cutting down my tree. Twenty-five hundred dollars? Forget it.”
“I can’t. I already registered the domain name.”
“Shove it, Rick.”
Not exactly an auspicious beginning for building new neighborly relations.
Steve told a friend the story of the hackberry tree and the website a while later. His friend said, “That’s bizarre. What’s that guy’s name?”
“Rick McFarland.”
“Rick McFarland? That crook? He came by my office to sell me advertising to go on the side of a VIA bus. We went back and forth about it and McFarland didn’t want to take no for an answer. But the bottom line was, I didn’t need advertising on the side of a bus and I told him so. A few days later, I get a call from McFarland’s boss. He called to personally thank me for the major contract I had signed. I told him, ‘I didn’t sign a contract with anybody. If you have a contract with my signature on it, it is a forgery.’ ”
So much for Rick’s first job in San Antonio, selling bus advertising for Transportation Display. Rick then spent seven months with Clear Blue Media in Internet advertising sales. After June 2000, he was occupied in dubious self-employment schemes and caring for his boys.
8
The hackberry tree was not the only bone of contention the Millers had with their new neighbors. There was also the matter of Sally, the McFarlands’ dog. Typically, Sally stayed by the back fence in a small graveled dog run—Rick called it a “corral”—except when the boys played with her in the open yard.
Sally barked all the time, day and night. It was driving Steve nuts and keeping him awake at night. One fall day, he was walking around the block. As he passed the McFarland front yard, he spotted Rick. They shared some small talk, then Steve asked, “Do you ever hear dogs barking at night?”
“No.”
“I know it’s in the neighborhood. It sounds like it’s coming from here on Arcadia. Have you heard it?” Steve asked again.
“No. No.”
Steve was stunned that Rick was denying this, and tried to push his buttons a bit more. “If I find that dog, I’ll give him some alum water.”
“What does that do?” Rick asked.
“It closes up your throat.”
“How does it work?”
“I don’t know, but we used to do it as a fraternity prank in college.”
“Really.” Rick said. “And they couldn’t talk? Where can you get i
t?”
“I don’t know—that was a long time ago. A drug store or someplace like that.”
Rick continued on with this line of questioning about the alum—demonstrating what Steve thought a rather curious and disturbing interest.
Next door to the McFarlands, Charlene Schooling was also concerned about Sally. A devoted dog lover—and owner of seven of them—Charlene was more bothered by Sally being left outside all the time than she was by the barking. She asked Rick why he never allowed the dog in.
“Because she chewed on a rug and Susan wasn’t happy.”
“Why don’t you give her rawhide to chew on?”
“I’m afraid if I give her a bone to chew on it will teach her to chew, and she’ll chew up everything in the house.”
Despite Rick’s casting of blame on his wife, Charlene soon noticed that whenever Rick was out of town, Sally was inside. She slept on the floor of Sue’s bedroom every one of those nights. Sue loved that dog. In fact, she was the one who’d named her Sally. Sue wanted a little girl whom she could name Sarah and call Sally. Instead she had three boys, but found a way to put the name to good use.
Sue also named the gray-and-white family cat they’d brought with them from St. Louis—he was called Marvin. When Charlene asked about the unusual appellation for a cat, Sue said it was her husband’s middle name. “I had to name the cat that to make sure I would not have to name one of our kids Marvin.”
Sue worked a lot and was not around much, but, eventually, the Millers met her, too. Their boys brought them together. Carrie thought the McFarland kids were so cute and diminutive—they reminded her of characters from Whoville. At first, she was put off by Sue’s abrasive Midwestern mannerisms, but in time she was able to see past that non-Southern façade and learn that Sue was friendly, personable and easy to be around.
Carrie’s son Wesley played with William a lot. He loved to go over to the McFarlands’ and jump on their trampoline. Carrie never felt comfortable, though, with her son being over there when Susan was not home. Something about Rick gave her a mild case of the creeps, though she didn’t understand why. She did know that when the McFarland boys were around Rick, they screamed, ran wild and demonstrated no manners at all. When they were with Susan alone, they were still boisterous boys, but much more calm, at ease and polite.
Wesley Miller went to James’ sixth birthday party in September 1999. His dad. Steve, was at home watching a Dallas Cowboys football game. When the phone rang, he let the answering machine pick up. “Steve, this is Rick McFarland. Could you come over here and see if Wesley will play nicer with other children?”
Steve ignored the message. He put up with Rick’s kids climbing over his fence and acting up in his home. It was pay-back for Rick, Steve thought.
The phone rang again. “Steve, this is Rick McFarland again. I was wondering if you could come over and pick Wesley up? He’s not playing well with other children.”
Rick’s own kids didn’t play well around Rick, Steve thought, why should Wesley be any different?
Again, the phone rang. “Steve, this is Rick McFarland again. The party is almost over . . .”
The football game was, too. Steve walked around to the McFarlands’ and retrieved Wesley.
The Millers were not the only ones to notice Rick’s problems with the boys. Melissa St. John, William’s swim coach in the summer of 2000, observed that Rick did not seem to have control over his sons’ behavior. When they acted out, he was incapable of normalizing the situation.
Although only William was on the Wave swim team that year, Rick brought along Timmy and James. In and of itself, their presence was not an uncommon practice. However, unlike other parents who brought their children along, Rick seemed unaware of his responsibility to keep his children under control. Staff spoke to him about the need for constant supervision on more than one occasion.
At swim meets, the coaching staff soon learned that Rick was not a good volunteer judge, either. His failure to respond to situations in the pool in a timely manner caused other parents to complain. The coaches tried to place him in a remote spot where problems were less likely to arise.
Rick tried hard to fit in, but despite his best efforts, his lack of social skills always seemed to leave him looking in from the outside. After spending an evening at a Town Club party at the San Antonio Country Club with Bill and Molly Matthews, Rick longed to be a member of the exclusive organization. He felt that belonging to this group would bolster his image in the community and boost his own sense of self-worth.
Rick bugged Bill to put him and Susan up for membership. It was not a simple matter of submitting a request. Bill would have had to mount an aggressive campaign to find other members willing to write letters of sponsorship as well. Bill told his wife it would be a waste of time—everybody already knew how weird Rick was.
Rick was determined. He called several times wanting a copy of the membership directory to launch an appeal on his own. Bill was reluctant to cooperate. But one night, while Molly visited with Sue, Rick went over to the Matthewses’ home. He sat down with Bill and looked through the list of names. His effort was stillborn since Bill did not devote any energy to it, and Rick was devastated by the disappointment. Sue, on the other hand was indifferent. She just shrugged and said, “It’s more Rick’s kind of thing than mine.”
One day, Harriet and Ned Wells would play a pivotal role in the unfolding McFarland mystery. Their initial contacts with their across-the-street neighbors, however, were odd, but unremarkable. The first family member they met was 8-year-old William. One Sunday afternoon, he crossed the street and walked into their home without knocking.
He offered to sweep their sidewalk for one dollar. Harriet agreed and three minutes later, the doorbell rang. William said that he had finished the job. Harriet could see that there was still a lot of debris on the walk, but he was just a little kid, so she gave him a couple of bucks and sent him on his way.
Next, the Wellses met Sue in her front yard and thought she was absolutely delightful. Ned and Harriet invited her over for lunch. When Sue left, she still had their wineglass in her hand. She returned a few minutes later full of smiles and apologies—that glass now has a place of honor in the Wellses’ new home.
It was not unusual to see William mowing the family’s yard at a time when Harriet thought he was too small to operate the machinery. She also saw him in the Wells’ front yard playing entrepreneur. The first time she saw him she asked him why.
“I want to buy a Palm Pilot.”
Harriet thought that was an odd desire for an 8-year-old.
The Wellses never understood why William always set up the table on their side of the street, but assumed it was at Rick’s instigation. Time and again, they watched this scenario with a combination of annoyance and curiosity.
Then one weekend, Harriet and Ned returned from an out-of-town trip to discover Rick and William sitting at a card table in the Wellses’ front yard selling something to people in the passing cars. They already had concluded that Rick was weird, and decided to ignore him rather than create a scene.
After dark that evening, William was out there alone. When Harriet noticed he was running out in the street to stop cars, she knew she had to intervene. She told William it was time to go home. That was the last time their front yard was used for a makeshift store.
Harriet and Ned would have liked to have more contact with Sue, but they could not tolerate Rick, and avoided building a closer relationship. For the life of them, they could not figure out why the two were together.
They also wondered if Rick was capable of speaking to his boys in a normal tone of voice. The sound of his screaming drifted across Arcadia Place day after day.
At work, Sue received another promotion into the Southwestern Bell Telephone finance operations group. She did not work out of the location most people in San Antonio associate with the company. That elegant structure with its sweeping broad stairway that slid down to a lush, green, serene s
ection of the famed Riverwalk was the corporate headquarters.
Her office was in the plain tan building at the corner of St. Mary’s and McCullough. It was on the river but not a scenic section of it. A walk across the parking lot led to a fence that overlooked the water. Below, the river was brown and sluggish. Its borders blighted with scraggly weeds and abandoned concrete ramps. It offered no sidewalks or any other enticement to exploration for any but the most intrepid urban naturalist.
Sue reached her office by ascending to the eleventh floor and wending her way through a rabbit warren of endless monotonous cubicles to a corner work area with one tall, narrow window. The drab atmosphere was brightened by pictures of William, James and Timmy at school or at Disney World and with Mother’s Day gifts crafted by the three biggest loves of her life.
From this unassuming space, Sue oversaw the general ledger accounting for this division of the corporation. Her staff included three managers and five administrative support staff.
Their monthly routine was rigid and repetitive. The first week of every month was the time when the heat under the pressure cooker was set on high. Everyone worked longer hours to close out the books for the preceding month. Then they prepared financial reports for the corporate office. Sue was key in this process.
This week was grueling every month, but in April, July, October and January the intensity was even higher as quarterly report requirements added to the workload.
Sue was responsible for making adjustments and reconciling hundreds of accounts in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma. She pored over them looking for any odd entry and investigating its origin and the appropriateness of its classification. No detail, no entry was too small.
The last week of the month resembled what most people would regard as a normal work week. Sue followed up on the reconciliation and did as much advance work as possible for the closing week ahead.
Gone Forever Page 4