I said a quick prayer to God, if He was even still listening to me, that my bail would be set at a reasonable rate and I wouldn’t be forced to spend the time preparing for trial behind steel bars. But my mind quickly wandered to the last thing Dave had told me before I walked into this hellhole. Ryan was having an affair. With Lindsey Unser, whoever that was. Some dumb young slut, no doubt. Some cunt with perky tits and a perfect ass who was acrobatic in the sack. Men rarely cheat with nice, normal women with careers and ambition. No, it’s usually the ditzy bimbo who truly believes one day he will leave his wife for her.
And what had Ryan told “Lindsey” about me? Probably a bunch of lies, or at least embellishments. He probably told her I was fat, boring, and never wanted to have sex with him. Really, it was the other way around, and knowing about the whore explained quite a bit in that department. Perhaps he was trying to be “faithful” to her. Or maybe his cup runneth over with crazy, uninhibited sex and he had no room for what I was offering.
But why? That’s the part I couldn’t understand. Our marriage had been nearly perfect the first five years or so. Sex was never an issue and it only became an issue when he—not I—started pulling away over a year ago. That must have been when it started. So what drove him into the arms of some slut bag? Was it truly just about sex? Or was there more to it? Was he in love with her? What was she like? Was she prettier than me?
All of these questions were swirling around my head, making me dizzy, when I was startled by a corrections officer calling my name.
“Carter!” she repeated. “Time for your arraignment. Up and at ’em.”
“Sorry,” I said as I climbed down from the top bunk and stood at attention in front of her. She was shorter than I was, but that did nothing to make me less intimidated.
“Save your sorries for the judge,” she said in a serious monotone. “This way.”
***
The arraignment was conducted via satellite. The prisoners—including myself—at the JCDC were ushered up one at a time to the podium for their hearings. When it was my turn, I could see, via the split-screen monitor, Dave in the courtroom with the judge. The bailiff called my case about ten minutes into the proceedings. I walked forward as proudly as I could in my orange jumpsuit and tan rubber slippers until I reached the podium. The judge put her thin-rimmed glasses on her nose and picked up a thin blue folder.
“Case number 15-F-2410…Commonwealth of Kentucky versus Elizabeth Barrett Carter. Charge is one count of murder in the first degree. Defendant is here for arraignment. I see here you are represented by Dave Rogers. Is that correct, Mr. Rogers?”
Dave stood from behind the wooden table on the right of the courtroom. “That is correct, Your Honor.”
“Do I have the charges correct, Mr. Gaines?”
The man who was apparently the Commonwealth’s Attorney stood from behind his table on the left. He was tall, skinny and very bald. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“All right then, what says the prosecution on bail?”
“The Commonwealth requests that bail be set at one million dollars.”
One million dollars? A low murmur of surprise spread across the room I was standing in. Apparently, no one had ever heard such a high bail request before, including the seasoned veterans.
Even the judge seemed taken aback by the big ask. “One million dollars is pretty steep, Mr. Gaines.”
“Your Honor, if I may…the defendant stands accused of the cold-blooded and premeditated murder of her husband. She used a large-caliber handgun to blow a hole through his head as he lay in bed asleep. He never saw it coming. We ask that bail be set at one million dollars to show the defendant we take murder very seriously here in Kentucky.”
The judge took off her glasses and set them down in front of her. “What about you, Mr. Rogers? I’m sure you have an objection to the amount of bail?”
“Absolutely, Your Honor. My client, Libby Carter, is not only innocent, but she has no history of violent crimes. She has deep ties to the community and is by no one’s definition a flight risk. We ask that the defendant be released ROR.”
“Dave, I’m not going to release your client on her own recognizance. She’s being prosecuted for first-degree murder. But I do agree that, with no real criminal history, save for a Theft by Unlawful Taking when she was eighteen, and the fact that she does not pose a real flight risk, I will set bail at one hundred thousand dollars. Ten percent cash or bond.”
She banged the gavel, and just like that, my arraignment was over. Ten thousand dollars. Just what Dave had hoped for. I was ushered back to the dormitory by the short female guard. Dom was waiting for me at our bunk.
“How’d it go, yo?”
“Hundred thousand.”
“Not bad for first degree murder. You got that kinda money? You look like you got that kinda money.”
“I don’t,” I responded timidly. “But my mom’s going to help.”
“Your lawyer will call your mom and get the bail money, then. Most likely, you’ll be out of here before lights out. Lucky bitch.” She said it with a smile, though.
***
She was right. Two hours later, I was advised that bond had been posted and I was free to go. I never even had to spend the night in jail. It wasn’t lost on me how lucky I was, given everything else that was happening. I could have been hit with a million-dollar bail and no hope of ever getting out.
After going through the check-out procedures, I was allowed to walk out of the Jessamine County Detention Center a free—for now—woman. Mom was waiting just outside the front door with her arms open wide. I literally ran into them and let her envelop me in a tight embrace. Though I had spent less than five hours in jail, I didn’t want her to ever let go.
She did eventually. “Thank you so much, Mom.” Those words didn’t seem sufficient for what she had done for me. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money, and that didn’t include the retainer she’d already paid for Dave to represent me. I promised her I’d cash out my 401(k) first thing Monday and pay her back as much as I could.
“Just hold onto it,” she said with a wave of her hand. “You might need it to get back on your feet once this whole thing is over.”
***
On the ride back to Mom’s, I told her about Ryan’s affair.
“I know,” she admitted. “I heard it on the news this afternoon. I’m so sorry, honey.”
“It’s okay,” I said, even though it really wasn’t.
“Do you know who this girl is?”
“No, but I intend to find out.”
“Honey, if I were you, I’d let sleeping dogs lie. No good can come from looking into this woman.”
“Whore, you mean.”
“Well, whatever you want to call her, what’s done is done. It’ll probably all come out in the trial. I want you to stay clear of this girl, do you hear me?”
I nodded my head and looked out the car window. I had no intention of listening to my mother on this account, either. The woman who had been screwing my husband was out there somewhere and now I was free, at least until the trial, to track the bitch down and see just what Ryan found so goddamn appealing.
Chapter 8
The first thing I did when we got home was run upstairs with the laptop. I sat down on the edge of my daybed, turned the laptop on, and went to Facebook. I usually checked Facebook on my phone, but Dave had given it over to Dorne when I turned myself in that morning. It was now evidence in my prosecution.
I logged on to my account and checked my notifications. None. That didn’t surprise me. Even though I had over one hundred “friends” on Facebook, none of them were actually close friends of mine. Dani was the only true friend I knew I could rely on.
I sat with the cursor blinking in the search bar, afraid of what I would see once I found her account. What if she was prettier than me? Skinnier? More fun?
But I just had to see the face of the woman who had been screwing my husband behind my back. I typed in “Lindsey
Unser,” and after a few seconds of waiting, thanks to Mom’s spotty Wi-Fi connection, up came her profile. Not at all what I expected. Not only was she not pretty, she was downright gross-looking. Her hair was shaved all around the bottom, and the top of her hair was blonde and spiky à la Miley Cyrus 2014. Her head was big, in my opinion, too big for her body. I wasn’t sure if I felt relief at her ugliness or if I was disappointed in Ryan’s choice of a piece on the side. He could have done much better than that! Even with my twenty extra pounds I had her beat, hands down. So then what was the appeal?
It had to be the sex. She looked downright crazy, and crazy girls are good in bed…the lyrics to Buck Cherry’s “Crazy Bitch” came to mind. I clicked on her photos folder, and in nearly every picture she was sticking out her tongue and holding up her forefinger and pinky the way people do at rock concerts. There was also a picture of her kissing some semi-attractive girl. So she had the quasi-lesbian thing going for her too—she was probably one of those girls who makes out with other girls just to show the fellas how down she really is.
I scrolled through her posts, and my heart stopped when I got to the third one on the list, posted last Friday at 7:35 p.m. It was a selfie of the whore and my husband with a caption that read:
Me and my man.
Friday night…when he was supposedly working late at the brewery fixing a broken boiler. I wanted to throw up and almost did, but I steeled myself and kept flipping through the posts. The next one, which was taken the day before, again when Ryan was supposed to be working late, showed her holding up a fish by the mouth. The picture was obviously taken by Ryan. The caption read:
Real life angler, mothafuckas!
Fishing. Of course he took her fishing. It was Ryan’s favorite pastime. Only, he had told me he hadn’t had time to go lately what with his crazy overtime hours. He was working late for “us.” I never enjoyed fishing, but obviously he’d found someone to share his favorite sport with.
I kept scrolling. The pictures with Ryan, or presumably taken by Ryan, went back over a year. That must have been when they met. She never tagged him in any of the pictures, though, which would explain why I never saw them. That, and the fact I was never much of a Facebooker. I thought back to last April, and it made sense, in a way. That was about the time things had started to go stale in our marriage. But I couldn’t help but wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg. Or in this case, the whore or the broken marriage.
I scrolled back up to the top and noticed she hadn’t posted anything since Ryan’s death. The very last post was one of her in a ridiculous outfit, again with her tongue stuck out, holding up tickets to a Miley Cyrus concert—nailed that one. I remembered hearing about the damn Miley Cyrus concert and even commenting to Ryan that any grown woman who would go see her in concert was as demented as she was. The former Hannah Montana star had taken a nosedive in sanity ever since her infamous twerking incident at the MTV Music Awards. I specifically remembered Ryan saying something along the lines of “don’t judge a book by its cover.” I thought it was odd then, but now it made sense. I had inadvertently made fun of his lover, and he was standing up for her the best he could without blowing his cover.
I had to know more. I needed to actually see her in the flesh; see if she was as ugly in person as she was in Facebook pictures. I didn’t know why and had no idea what I planned on doing if I actually did find her. I just had to know where she was. So I minimized the Facebook page, opened a new Google Chrome search page, and typed in“white pages.” When WhitePages.com came up, I typed“Lindsey Unser” in the search bar. There were five results in Kentucky. Only one in Nicholasville. Someone named“Lindsey Unser,” aged between twenty-five and twenty-nine, lived with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Unser at 1519 Tulip Lane. I committed the address to memory. Soon as I got the chance, I would borrow Mom’s minivan and drive by 1519 Tulip Lane…just to see.
The phone rang. I looked for my cell phone without thinking until I remembered my cell phone was now in police custody. It was Mom’s landline, but she wasn’t answering. She must be out in the garden, I realized, so I ran down the stairs and picked up the cordless phone sitting on the side table next to the couch.
“Barrett residence,” I said with fake enthusiasm into the phone.
“You have a collect call from an inmate at Big Sandy Federal Penitentiary. Will you accept the charges?”
A huge lump formed in my throat. It could only be one person—my father, Randall Terrance McLanahan, the man the media had dubbed the “I-75 Strangler.” I knew he called her from time to time and that she spoke with him out of some sense of obligation or maybe even residual love for the man, and I didn’t begrudge her that, but I hadn’t spoken with him once since he was arrested. I did not want to start now. But if I didn’t accept the call and go get Mom, she might be disappointed, and I would probably have to listen to another lecture about how he’s still my father, he loves me, blah, blah, blah.
“Yes, I accept the charges.”
“Kaye? Is that you? Thanks for accepting my call again.” My father’s voice was different than I remembered it. Rougher around the edges. Deeper even. I wouldn’t have recognized it under other circumstances.
I drew in a deep breath, let it out, and said, “No, Randy. It’s Elizabeth. I’ll go get Mom.”
“No, no, wait! Libs! It’s me. It’s your father!”
“I know who this is. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Just hear me out, Libs.”
“Don’t call me that. My name is Elizabeth.” My father had always called me Libs when I was little but hearing that pet name now made my skin crawl.
“All right, Elizabeth. Give me five minutes. That’s all I get anyway. Can you give me five minutes?”
I really didn’t want to. I don’t know why I agreed. Perhaps, despite my deep and abiding hatred of the man who used to be my daddy, there was a part of me who missed him. Or at least, the him he used to be. Whatever the reason, I agreed to listen.
“Listen, Libs…I mean Elizabeth. I heard about what happened to your husband. Ryan, right? Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” was all I could bring myself to say.
“And I…well, I heard they arrested you for his murder. I am so sorry this is happening to you. It’s no walk in the park, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, let alone my little girl.”
“I’m not your little girl, and I don’t need your sympathy.”
“If it means anything to you, I want you to know your old man believes you’re innocent. In fact, I know you’re innocent. I’ll do anything I can to help you. You know that, right?”
“Help me?” I laughed out loud. “How on earth are you going to help me? You’re in prison! And for good reason, Randy. You murdered at least nine women!”
“I have my ways. We’ll just leave it at that. But as to the women, Libs, I have repented, and I’ve been saved by the Lord our God. I’ve been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. I’m a new man.”
“I know Mom believes you’re a changed man, but I don’t believe it. I never will. No sane person would murder anyone in cold blood, let alone multiple times over dozens of years. You may have fooled her, but you’re not fooling me.”
He sighed deeply on the other end when a loud BEEP advised us we had only one minute left on the call. “Libs…Elizabeth…just please know…I’ve never given up on you, and I never will. Just because I’m behind bars doesn’t mean I’m not watching after you. I’d do anything for you. Libs, I love…”
The phone line went dead. A recorded voice advised me that the prisoner’s time was up.
I decided not to tell Mom I had spoken with Randy. It would lead to a long conversation I just wasn’t in the mood for. Instead, I leaned out the back door and asked Mom if I could borrow the keys to the minivan. She just nodded and waved from her crouched position in the garden where she was pruning her roses.
***
It was starting to
get dark by the time I climbed behind the wheel, but even though I had been through hell and spent most of the day in jail, I was no longer tired. I had found my husband’s whore and now I had her address. Darkness would suit my purpose. I just wanted to drive by and see where she lived. See if I could catch a glimpse of her. It was stupid, I knew, but I felt a deep burning desire to find her.
It only took half an hour to get from Richmond to my hometown of Nicholasville. I wasn’t sure exactly how to get to Tulip Lane, but I used Mom’s Garmin to enter the exact address. I found her street in a nice little suburban neighborhood near the center of town. Even though Nicholasville was a small town, new subdivisions were springing up at a rate of two or three per year, and the population had nearly doubled in the past five years.
Lindsey’s house—actually, her parents’ house—was at the end of a cul-de-sac, which would not make it easy for me to drive by. I had no choice but to pull all the way down and make a turn right in front of her parents’ house. As I slowly crept by, I looked at the two-story Tudor style grey house with white shutters and a white front door. Very quaint. But what kind of twenty-nine-year-old lived at home with Mommy and Daddy?
There were three cars in the driveway—a maroon Toyota Avalon, a black Dodge Durango, and an older beige Maxima with bumper stickers and peeling paint. This had to be her car. The bumper stickers said ‘Twerk it, Miley!’ and ‘Coexist.’ Of course they did. Someone peeked out the window blinds, and I got nervous and sped away.
So far, I knew Lindsey Unser loved Miley Cyrus, twerking, fishing—at least with my husband—and I now knew what her car looked like. What I planned on doing with this information, I had no idea, but I just had to know everything there was to know about the woman my husband had been seeing for over a year.
Like Father Like Daughter Page 7