Murder in the Heartland

by M. William Phelps

  “You can pick the kids up at 7am on Christmas morning,” wrote Lisa.

  She wanted the children home by eight o’clock on Christmas night, she then demanded. On top of that, Lisa didn’t want her mother, Judy Shaughnessy, to see the children. She was adamant: “They are not to go out to [her] house.”

  Carl Boman had never intended to stop by his ex-mother-in-law’s. The stipulation was, he said, just one more way for Lisa to wield some sort of control over the situation, as she, reluctantly, handed the kids over to him.

  Throughout the e-mail, Lisa ranted and raved about the children’s wants and needs, what Carl could and could not do. Looking at the e-mail later that night, it occurred to Carl that Lisa was doing the same thing she had done for the past ten years: manipulating and controlling the situation. In his opinion, all she had ever done was “spread hate and lies,” said Carl, “and cause problems by making up stories.” About him. Her current husband. The kids. Her mothers. Sisters.

  Even herself.

  Lately, she had been fabricating a story about her being pregnant. She had been telling people she was carrying twins, but had lost one child the previous month. The second child, she claimed, was healthy and due on December 13. To prove it, she had an ultrasound photograph and a nursery set up in her house. She’d gone to doctor appointments. Bought the child clothing and toys.

  What Lisa didn’t know then, however, was two days before receiving her e-mail, Carl had filed for permanent custody of the children. Lisa would be summoned into court on January 15, 2005, where her lies—“every single one of them”—would then be exposed. There had been four other instances in recent years when Lisa claimed to be pregnant, yet she had not produced a child. There was always an excuse, followed by another set of lies. Carl had known her for twenty years. They’d had four children together. There was no way she could be pregnant; medically speaking, it was impossible. Carl was there the day she’d had her tubal ligation surgery. They’d talked about it beforehand, and both had agreed it was the best thing for the family.

  “She was actually relieved after the procedure,” he said. “We didn’t want any more children.”

  In court, Carl was going to prove Lisa was a fraud. He was planning on providing evidence of how she had perjured herself recently during a custody hearing over her nephew. During the hearing, Lisa said she’d given birth to a baby in her doctor’s office, but it was stillborn. Because it had died, she told the court, she donated it to science.

  The story was a total invention. Carl was going to produce an affidavit detailing the truth. In turn, he was sure the court would award him permanent custody of their children. Lisa’s new husband, mother, sisters, the children, not to mention the town where she lived, would soon know she had been lying about being pregnant all along. Those five pregnancies—including the current tale of losing one of her twins—existed only in her mind.

  “There was no way out of it for Lisa,” said Carl. “She was being backed into a corner.”

  “I think she was in desperation,” added Lisa’s mother, Judy, “to get a baby one way or another—she ran out of options.”

  What nobody knew, as Carl sat there absorbing Lisa’s latest e-mail tirade, shaking his head in disgust, was that she was making plans of her own.

  When Lisa found out a day later Carl had filed an injunction seeking permanent custody of two of their four children, she had one of the kids call him.

  “Mom wants to know what you have planned, Dad,” his son asked while she sat by the phone, staring at him.

  “How are you, son?” Carl asked. His children mattered more than anything to Carl at that point. His son had just turned fifteen.

  With Lisa by his side, Carl’s son continued speaking for her. “She says she’s considering allowing me to live with you but wants to know if you’re taking me out of school.” Then, after a moment of whispering in the background, “She’s very upset, you know, that you filed those papers with the court.”

  “Put her on the phone.”

  “You have no chance of getting the kids,” said Lisa as soon as she put the receiver to her mouth. “I’m going to prove you are the liar, Carl.”

  …impulses may be from below,

  not from above…

  but if I am the Devil’s child,

  I will live then from the Devil.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  I

  THE RUSE

  1

  It was five days before the winter solstice. December 16, 2004, started off a bit abnormal—although, upon waking up to what was a magnificent sunrise, few would have guessed. The wind was blowing in across the Nebraska plains from the west at a steady pace of twelve miles per hour, which, by itself, was not so unusual. Yet the temperature capped out at around fifty degrees by midday, making it feel like a chilly evening in late September, or maybe a pleasant early-October morning: brusque, cool, effervescent.

  In town, many of the women took advantage of the un-seasonable weather. Wearing red-and-white aprons, some felt inspired to take out muddy throw rugs and floormats, hang them from clotheslines, and beat the dirt out of them with brooms. Others opened windows and aired things out a bit—the cool, fresh air casting a sparkle on everything it touched. Some men, unimpressed by such a scant spike in the mercury, donned customary black-and-red plaid flannel shirts, coveralls, leather gloves, and winter caps with earflaps. They were seen making repairs to property-line fences and timber corral posts, while others stood sipping coffee and “shootin’ the breeze” near the center of town, framed by the cottonwoods, oaks, and maples, leafless and brittle, that stood in perfect rows along the gullies of Highway 113.

  Before that Thursday afternoon, the town of Skidmore was but a black dot on the map of America’s heartland. To say it was a small farming parish would understate how rural the countryside actually was. Skidmore, according to the green-and-white “city limit” sign on the edge of town, is home to a mere 342—“give’r take a few,” noted one native—nestled in the northwestern corner of Missouri, a state named after a Siouan Native American tribe, which, translated, means “canoe.”

  To an outsider, the town resembles an eighteenth-century landscape painting hanging on a velvet saloon wall somewhere farther west, dusty and ignored, a bucolic setting, innocent of technology, infrastructure, big-city bureaucrats, and mundane problems.

  But to townsfolk, Skidmore is Eden, a comfortable, intimate place to live and die. “Everybody knows everybody” is a reliable cliché there, evident in the way people greet each other with a nod and wave. In Missouri, where the state license plates proclaim “Show Me State,” red, white, and blue are more than simply colors; and rolls of hay, coiled up like massive cinnamon buns as tall as street signs, dot the thousands of acres of gently sloping farmland.

  In many ways, time has stood still in Skidmore. An old railroad line that carried cattle and grain a century ago marks a decomposing path through the countryside, subtly reminding folks that nothing ever truly goes away. All over town are remnants of another day and age: memories verifying how life, regardless of how it is elsewhere, moves at a slower pace, and how people still take the time to stop and shake hands, pat one another on the shoulder, ask about the kids, quote a passage from the Bible, or maybe just share a bottle of “pop” while sitting on a porch swing.

  In their hearts, any one of them will gladly admit, with a snap of their suspenders, Skidmorians care about the place where they live and the people who make up their community. They don’t bother anyone, and, in return, expect the same treatment from others.

  “People there, well, it’s a different sorta place,” said one outsider. To which an acquaintance added, “If you don’t belong in Skidmore, ya betta jus stay the hell outta there.”

  2

  Nearly two hundred miles south, in eastern-central Kansas, the day hadn’t started out so warm and inviting. When she awoke, a cold snap lingered in the house.

  Getting dressed, she put on one of her
oversized bulky sweaters, a pair of baggy blue jeans, sneakers, and glasses. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail. Her heavy winter coat was downstairs on a kitchen chair. She could grab it on the way out.

  As usual, she sat by herself at the dining table, forgoing coffee for what many later agreed was an “addiction to Pepsi.” Then, staring out the window, she lit a Marlboro, because she knew her husband had left for work already. Like a lot of things in her life, she’d been hiding her affair with nicotine from him.

  Her two daughters and son slept upstairs. She had told her husband the night before she was “getting up early to go shopping” in Topeka, but the kids had no idea she was awake. It was close to five in the morning. If she wasn’t working one of her three part-time jobs, there wasn’t a chance she’d be up so early.

  After stubbing out her cigarette, she walked upstairs into her oldest daughter’s room and sat on the edge of the bed, as she did on most mornings. She and Rebecca* were close, like best friends. They talked about things she wouldn’t consider sharing with her other children, and unquestionably not her husband.

  “What are you doing today, Mom?” asked Rebecca. She was muzzy and worn-out, having just awakened. Seventeen-year-old Rebecca and her mother had gone shopping for baby clothes several times over the past few months. Her mother was “excited” about being pregnant and wanted to share the experience with her oldest. “You’ll have children of your own one day,” she told Rebecca more than once as they browsed through racks of clothes, baby rattles, and toys.

  Sitting quietly, she brushed Rebecca’s hair away from her eyes with her right hand and stared at her for a brief time. In almost a whisper, “I’m going shopping in Topeka,” she responded.

  Everyone in the family was under the impression her due date had passed the previous Monday, December 13, and she was going to have the child any day now.

  “Shopping might get things going,” she continued when Rebecca didn’t respond. “I need to pick up something for Kayla, anyway.”

  Kayla was the baby of the family. She didn’t live at the house anymore. She was staying with a friend in Georgia.

  At fourteen years old, Kayla was pretty much the free thinker of the four kids. She wasn’t a submissive conformist, like so many children her own age, ready to accept anything anybody told her. Nor was she one of those kids that fell into, say, the “Goth” movement at school because it was the latest fad. Kayla thought about things thoroughly and made her own decisions. Her independent way of thinking had landed Kayla in Georgia, hundreds of miles away from her mother, stepfather, and siblings.

  On August 25, 2004, exactly one week after her birthday, she bid farewell to everyone. First she went to Texas to stay with a fellow rat-terrier breeder for a couple days so she could attend a dog show there before traveling on.

  Kayla referred to the woman she moved in with in Georgia as “Auntie,” she said, out of “Southern respect,” but Mary Timmeny, “Auntie M,” as Kayla and others referred to her, was a friend of the family, and had introduced Kayla to her passion: raising, breeding, and showing rat terriers. Mary had invited Kayla to spend a few weeks with her in Georgia during the summer of 2004 so she could teach her how to train her dogs and ready them for the dog show circuit. Kayla’s father, Carl Boman, was amazed his ex-wife had agreed to it. As Carl viewed the situation, Mary was a stranger, someone Kayla’s mother had met only a few times. Carl was beside himself with anger that his ex-wife had allowed Kayla to spend part of her summer with someone so far away.

  Kayla’s mother had custody, though. Carl couldn’t do much about it, even if he wanted.

  “So, in July,” said Kayla, “I went out there for three weeks and got to go to two dog shows and showed dogs in both of those shows.”

  Kayla met her mother at a Lexington, Kentucky, dog show after the three-week sabbatical was over and went back home to Kansas.

  A while later, Auntie Mary called. “I miss you,” she said.

  “I miss you, too.”

  “Would you like to come back and spend a few months with me here in Georgia?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” replied Kayla. She was “really excited” about it. It was all she had thought about since leaving.

  “Don’t tell your sisters, though, Kayla. Okay?” said Auntie Mary. She didn’t want Kayla’s mother to hear about it until she had a chance to talk to her herself.

  “I won’t,” said Kayla.

  “I’ll talk to your mom soon about it. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  The plan was for Kayla to spend part of the school year with Mary in Georgia. She and Mary had hit it off during the three weeks that summer. Mary noticed a drive in Kayla and a natural reserve around the dogs she believed could be beneficial to Kayla on the dog show circuit, if only she had someone to keep her focused on the dynamics of training, which her mother, Kayla said, wanted no part of.

  Kayla and Mary missed each other. Their feelings went beyond a mutual interest in the dogs to include love, affection, friendship. Kayla and Mary had bonded. For Kayla, it was like starting over. Her life had been filled with turmoil for a long time, what with the problems between her mother and father and between her mother and stepfather. Living in the structure of a solid family would allow her some much-deserved space and tranquillity. She wouldn’t have to listen to her mother talk bad about her father. Or scream at her new husband when he failed to do what she wanted. Nor would she have to suffer when she felt torn between siblings siding with Mom or Dad. Not to mention Mom’s obsession lately with having another child.

  “You’re going to miss Mom having her baby,” one of Kayla’s siblings said to her after hearing Kayla was leaving.

  “I’ll be back for it,” promised Kayla.

  Kayla was looking forward to the calming effect living with Mary would provide—something that had never existed in her short life.

  At first, Kayla’s mother didn’t think it was a good idea for her to leave.

  “Can I go, Mom?”

  “I’ll think about it,” said her mother.

  “When will you let me know?”

  “You should probably forget it.”

  “Come on, Mom. Please?”

  “I’ll think about it, Kayla.”

  Then Rebecca stepped in, and “after much persuasion by her,” recalled Kayla, “Mom finally agreed to it.”

  So, based on Rebecca’s recommendation, shortly after the conversation, Kayla was sitting in her mom’s car on her way to Georgia. Staying for “part of the school year,” as Mary had suggested, turned into Kayla’s spending the entire first quarter. But it was okay with Kayla; she was at ease with her new life. She enjoyed not being around the dysfunction and disorder back home. She was, one could say, her own person.

  As Rebecca stretched, trying to pay attention, her mother got up off the bed and walked toward the door. Before opening it, she turned. “I want to get Kayla something special this Christmas. She’s been gone so long. I miss her. Do you know what she wants?”

  “No, not really, Mom,” answered Rebecca.

  “Okay, then. You go back to sleep. I’ll call you later.”

  She took one last look at Rebecca and closed the door.

  3

  Outside the window where the woman who called herself Darlene Fischer* lived, the temperature had dropped the previous night in Kansas. The prairie just beyond the driveway and the gray-shingled red-barn roof in the yard were dusted with frost; the windowpanes of the farmhouse down the road were fogged over; a rusted Ford pickup truck carcass sat on concrete blocks in the wheat field nearby and appeared as if someone had spray-painted the windshield white; and a shadow of smoke, rising from a woodstove chimney, coiled upward into a corkscrew, dancing in the sky.

  Darlene had decided long ago, if this plan of hers was going to work, it would need to be set in motion today. Her husband had taken the following day, a Friday, off from work so he could go with her to her doctor’s office and find out what was going on with the baby.
He, along with her children and several people in town, were expecting her to go into labor any moment. She had been talking about having another baby for years—all the while, she claimed, contending with four miscarriages.

  Part of her plan meant driving into Lyndon, just outside the town where she lived, and first stopping at Casey’s General Store, where she worked part-time. It was her day off, but Nancy, a coworker, would be there.

  She figured she’d walk in, tell Nancy what was happening, and word would soon spread throughout town she was in labor.

  Before leaving the house, she took a paring knife from a kitchen drawer and put it in her pocket. She rarely carried a purse, or, for that matter, a knife. She needed rope, too. But she could purchase it later or pick up a bundle elsewhere. She had plenty of time.

  At about 5:15 A.M., she pulled into Casey’s parking lot. From the look of things, it was just Nancy sitting there behind the counter. She was probably half asleep, filing her nails, drinking coffee, maybe reading the morning paper. Her boss, the store manager, was there as well, a friend said later; but she was likely in the back office doing paperwork, getting ready for the day.

  Leaning on the counter, Darlene looked at Nancy, put her hands around the bottom of her belly, and lunged her stomach forward to make it appear larger.

  “My water’s going to break today,” she told Nancy, speaking “really quiet and softly,” recalled a relative.

  “I can feel it,” she continued, looking at Nancy. “I’m having labor pains.”

  Nancy didn’t believe her. She was one of several people in town starting to question her pregnancies. At the same time, a majority of the people in her close circle—all four of her kids and her husband—believed it was for real: she was going to have a baby.