by Gregg Olsen
"I'll stay with you until then," he said.
"How can I, Bill, knowing that you're getting ready to hurt me like that again?" she answered.
"Lynda, I just feel like I need to be alone," he replied. That Christmas he visited his parents in Center, Texas, without her, and in January he moved into an apartment.
The morning after moving out, Bill walked up to Laura's desk and announced his new status. Bill had been talking to Laura about his marriage since October. He was dissatisfied; things weren't going well. She listened intently and offered reassurance. She knew about marriages that went sour.
Looking back, Laura would later say that Bill Fleming appealed to her in a way that Hurley never had. At five feet ten inches and just over 200 pounds, with dark hair and an easy athletic manner, he had the gift of being able to listen so intently that Laura felt pulled to him. Hurley's illnesses made him seem older than his 47 years. At 36, Bill was closer to her age and had a tenderness and a need for romance that she had never experienced.
In mid-February Bill went to see Voytek. A month earlier he had informed Voytek about his separation, and asked him not to tell Hurley, because Bill suspected that Hurley and Laura had once had an affair. Now Bill confided that he and Laura were dating, and wanted Voytek to head off any rumors about his new relationship. Bill said that he couldn't work for Hurley in the coming year; he still felt Hurley had tried to tie him to the missing school money. Voytek said that he understood, and that he would keep him in mind if they had an opening at the high school. It was about this same time that Bill hired an attorney to file for a divorce from Lynda.
In the meantime, Laura and Bill's affair intensified. There were long picnics under shade trees and evenings together in Bill's apartment. One of Bill's favorite pastimes was sitting on the porch visiting with Laura's father, while Laura and her mother fussed over the cornbread and got dinner on the table.
Yet behind the scenes, all wasn’t as tranquil as it seemed.
Now that she and Bill were dating, Laura tried to break off her affair with Hurley. They were riding in Hurley's pickup when she eased into it gradually, reminding him that their relationship hadn't really been close for some time. "Hurley, can't we just go back to being friends?"
At first he sat quietly, listening, seeming to understand and accept. Then his mood changed; he acted resentful, and warned her not to let people in the school know about her new relationship.
"People talk, you know, Laura. People talk," he said.
On Valentine's Day, Laura and Bill went to a party with friends. By the end of the evening, Bill was pointing to Laura and hollering, "I'm gonna marry that girl. I want everyone here to know that I'm gonna marry that girl." The Valentine card he gave her read: "I'm love sick over you!" Underneath it he wrote "No Cure-Ever."
BY THE END OF FEBRUARY there was a pervasive tension within the junior school. Teachers came to Voytek with complaints that Hurley was noticeably irritable. He moved teachers and classes from one room to another with little explanation. When Voytek called Hurley into his office to discuss the matter, Hurley answered only that he was unaware that he had acted either angry or upset. Voytek wrote the episode off as tension caused by the pending investigation of the missing money.
Meanwhile, Bill and Lynda continued to be friends. Twice during their separation he came to her house and asked her to make love. She agreed, but later felt used. Even so, Lynda still sensed a connection between them, telling herself that Bill had always come home before. She didn’t yet know about Laura.
Then on February 28, Lynda pulled an envelope from her mailbox. Inside was a half-sheet of notebook paper with a typed letter reading, "The reason for the breakup of your marriage is Laura Nugent. If you received this letter, let me know by wearing a red dress to the junior school's open house." That same night, Hurley came to Laura's house and threw a copy of a similar letter at her. "See what came in the mail. See what people are saying."
Laura stood firm. "It doesn't matter. We aren't doing anything wrong. Bill has filed for a divorce."
The next morning, Lynda Fleming went to Bill's apartment with the letter. He angrily accused her of writing it. "Bill, you know me better than that," she said.
“Yeah, you're right, Lynda. I'm sorry," he replied. "It's just that things seem to be crazy lately. I don't know what to think. Sometimes I just feel like coming home, but I know that if I do I'll never grow up." Before they parted that day, Bill said that he was going to end it with Laura and asked Lynda to make an appointment with a marriage counselor they had used before. Lynda did, but when the appointed date and hour arrived, Bill didn't show up.
Looking back, the strain continued to build, much of it at the school. In early March, Laura, Hurley, and another secretary were asked to take a polygraph test about the missing money. As the designated time approached, their anxiety grew. The two women walked into Voytek’s office on March 6 and said they had decided not to take it; they were visibly shaken. And when Voytek called Hurley to confirm his appointment, Hurley also refused, saying that his ulcer was acting up.
Not long after, Lynda Fleming found a second letter in her mailbox. This time it read: "You weren't at the open house and neither was I. If you didn't receive the letter, here is more information along with dates and times that they were together."
Again Lynda brought it to Bill.
"Who could be doing this?" he asked.
"I don't know," Lynda said. "But you've got someone mighty sick after you."
At school the next day, Hurley walked up to Laura's desk and showed her his own copy of the letter. She looked at him and said, "Whoever is doing this doesn't even sign their name. It's got to be some kind of sick person."
Through it all, Hurley appeared unwilling to break off his relationship with her. A few days later he went so far as to open a small velvet box and place a diamond ring in Laura's open hand. "I can't believe you're doing this," she said.
"I don't believe that you and Bill are really all that crazy about one another," he replied. "I don't think you'll really get married. You take the ring and think about it. You're gonna change your mind and want it."
"The ring is real pretty, Hurley, but I don't want it," she said, putting it back in his hand.
JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON March 9, Bill and Laura pulled into a TraveLodge between Houston and home. They were returning from a long-running Trivial Pursuit game with friends in Channelview. Tired, they decided not to drive the additional hour to Bill's apartment.
A few days later a man walked into the TraveLodge and asked the desk clerk for a copy of Bill's receipt. To explain why, he told her that his friend Bill had lost his copy and had asked him to pick one up. The desk clerk pulled out the receipt with Bill's signature and handed it to him. The motel didn't have a copy machine, so the man took the receipt and returned it a short time later, saying he’d made a copy.
The third letter Lynda received was typed on a copy of Bill and Laura's receipt from the TraveLodge. It read, in part: "We think this has gone far enough and something must be done immediately. It does not do any good to tell Mr. Fontenot anything about their affair because he will not do anything."
This time Bill felt there was something he could do.
That same day, Bill and Laura took his pickup to the TraveLodge. While Laura waited outside, Bill questioned the woman behind the counter. "How could someone have gotten a copy of my receipt?" Bill asked. The clerk would later say she was afraid she’d done the wrong thing by giving it to the man who’d asked for it, so instead of admitting her mistake, the desk clerk denied knowing how anyone could have obtained the receipt.
"Someone came in here and got a copy," Bill told her. "Who was it?" But the woman repeated that she didn't know.
"I know that girl's lying to me," Bill told Laura, once he was back in the truck. The next day, he called the TraveLodge headquarters and made another trip to the motel, but it was no use. The clerk wasn't talking.
That Sunday,
Bill sat on a log in the park telling Laura about the dark times in his life. He talked about the year he was in the carpet business just east of Houston with an old friend who had become heavily involved in drugs. The company's bills mounted and the business had started to fail when one night, the place went up in smoke. A year later, Bill's friend disappeared, and although Bill had looked for him on and off over the past two years, he had been unable to find him.
"You don't have to tell me things like that, Bill," Laura said. "There have been lots of things in my life that have gone wrong." As soon as she’d said it, she stopped talking, stared at him and shuddered slightly.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"It was like I just looked ahead into the future, and I saw that there wasn't a future for you and me," she answered.
THE FINAL LETTER WAS DATED March 15; this time it was addressed to Voytek. "My main reason for writing this letter to you is because I have had no results with this embarrassing and unmoral situation that exists at the junior school from the principal, Mr. Fontenot. He has received three letters and two phone calls concerning this matter and has done nothing to correct the situation. . . What I am referring to is the love affair that has existed between Coach Fleming and Laura Nugent."
Voytek called Hurley in for a conference.
That day, Hurley sat in the chair across from Voytek’s massive oak desk and said that he had received "several other letters, but did not want to bother you with such minor details." Voytek instructed him to produce the other letters and Hurley balked, saying that he thought one was lost. Later Hurley brought in the letters he had, and Voytek made copies for the upcoming March 19 school board meeting, at which teachers' contracts were to be considered.
That night in a heated discussion in the executive session, the board voted to renew all contracts for teachers, with the exception of Billy Mac Fleming. There was a motion made to table the renewal of Bill's contract, but no one would second it. It was then that Hurley Fontenot suddenly pleaded Bill's case, saying that he would resign if the coach's contract wasn't renewed. They voted again and this time the motion to extend Bill's contract passed.
After the meeting, Hurley went to Bill's apartment and found him there. Hurley told Bill how he had defended him. He had changed his mind, he said, and was happy that Bill and Laura had found each other. He wanted to be their friend. "There's no reason now that we can't be friends is there?" he asked. Bill agreed, but he was skeptical and, when he later told Laura, she felt uncomfortable with Hurley's sudden change of heart.
Two nights later, Lynda Fleming's phone rang. A woman who identified herself as a concerned parent began talking about Bill and Laura. Lynda didn’t have caller ID, and the woman didn’t give her name, but the caller said that the parents she represented would not stand for such lurid behavior. Lynda asked, "What do you want me to do? He's a grown man, and he's left me."
The woman hung up.
On Sunday morning the same anonymous woman phoned Lynda again, this time apologizing for frightening her. "I just want you to know that we are friends and that we plan to take this to the school board. We're going to expose those two." Bill came over later that day to help Lynda move and when she told him about the calls, "he looked like he was about to cry." She held him for a minute and then he left.
IT WAS ONLY DAYS LATER THAT BILL, apparently leery of Hurley's erratic behavior, walked into Voytek's office and repeated what he’d said earlier; accompanied by a racial slur, Bill Fleming announced that he would not be able to work for Hurley the next year. "Things at the school are impossible. I can't believe that he's taking a personal thing and blowing it up on the whole school like this." He hesitated. "And you know, I think he's the one that's sending all those crazy letters."
Later Voytek would relate how he calmed Bill down by suggesting that Hurley was tense about the missing money. Yet the situation seemed to be building, and the superintendent decided he had to take some action. To break up the tension at the junior school, in late March, Voytek transferred Laura to the high school. When he heard, Hurley was furious, complaining bitterly to Voyek, saying that he depended on her.
Voytek stood firm.
Then as Hurley's 48th birthday approached on April 2, he reminded Laura of a promise she had made months earlier to spend it with him. She refused. He pleaded, saying that there was no reason that they couldn’t continue to see each other as friends. Laura again turned Hurley down, later saying that by then she felt afraid to be alone with him.
As she saw it, she had no idea what he was capable of doing next.
Just days before the Easter break, as Laura was straightening up before going home, the phone on her desk at the high school rang. Excited, Bill told her that Hurley had bought them an early wedding gift – a microwave oven. As Bill described it, Hurley had convinced him to ride along to the store to pick up athletic equipment for the junior school, but when they arrived, a microwave was loaded onto the back of Hurley's pickup. "He wants it to be a surprise for you, so don't tell him I called," Bill cautioned.
Perplexed, Laura slowly hung up.
The Monday after Easter, Hurley continued his campaign to convince Laura and Bill that he was their friend. This time he knocked on Bill's apartment door. Laura was inside, and Bill invited his boss in. That afternoon, they talked, and Hurley said repeatedly how happy he was for both of them. A similar message was on the Easter card from Hurley that waited for Laura at her parents’ house. At the bottom, Hurley had written: "Laura, I'm glad you found Bill. You're a wonderful friend, and God bless you two."
NOTHING SEEMED UNUSUAL WHEN THREE DAYS before Bill disappeared, Hurley asked Voytek if he could use the school camper top, which fit on the bed of a pickup truck. When making the request, Hurley explained that he was planning to help his 26-year-old daughter, Vanessa, move furniture over the weekend. Giving it little thought, Voytek agreed. Once that matter was settled, Hurley went on to say that he would be leaving work early that Friday afternoon, at two, to pick Vanessa up at the airport in Houston. His daughter, he said, was flying in from Austin to help pack up the furniture and drive it back with him. Again Voytek said that would be no problem.
The following Thursday afternoon, Bill and Jack Young, head of athletics for the district, were in the press box overlooking the high school's football stadium, five miles from the junior school, getting ready for a district track meet. A closeness had developed in the two years the men had worked together, and Young felt obligated to talk some sense into Bill.
"I can't understand why you feel you've got to marry the woman right away, Bill."
"I know what I want, and Laura's it," Bill insisted.
Young asked how much Bill really knew about her.
"I know all I need to," Bill replied. "I'm no virgin either, and I don't care who she's slept with."
Then Bill related a "wild story" Hurley had told him recently. "He says the board's going to fire Voytek and make him the new superintendent. My God, Jack, Hurley as superintendent?"
Young was concerned. The politics within the school board had been more volatile than usual and, although he doubted Hurley's story, Young felt that Voytek should know. "It can't be true, but you stay here and handle the track meet. I'll let Mr. Voytek know." Young left and walked to Voytek's office next to the high school.
When Young finished telling Bill's story, Voytek told him not to worry and to go back to the meet. "I'll see you at the track later," Voytek said.
Accustomed to Hurley's political maneuvering, Voytek doubted the story's truth, but he made a few phone calls to check his standing with some of the members of the board just the same. Convinced that there was no truth to the gossip, he decided to talk to Bill.
When Voytek arrived at the track meet, Bill was on the field directing the action. Voytek waited for a break before walking out to him. Voytek then repeated what Young had told him and asked if it were true. "Yeah, that's it. And I want you to know that I won't work for that man next year,” B
ill said.
For the time being, Voytek told him to try to forget it, suggesting that they talk about it later. But then, as he turned to leave, the superintendent looked up at the press box. Hurley had always boasted to Voytek that he could read his face and know what he was thinking. Now Hurley stared down at them from the perch where he was watching the meet, and Voytek felt certain that Hurley knew that they were talking about him. As he left the field, Voytek felt that he had Hurley; it was rare that he was able to catch the principal in a lie.
When Bill finished with the meet late that afternoon, he made plans to see Young at the high school at 3:30 the following day, Friday. When they made the arrangements, Bill explained that he wanted to talk; he was afraid that Hurley would retaliate for having told Voytek by trying to hurt his career. Then he went home to his apartment, where Laura had dinner waiting. Later they crawled into bed together. "With Bill and me, it was like he wanted all of me all the time," Laura says. "It was like it had never been with anyone else."
The next morning, Friday, they stopped at Laura’s house and had coffee with her parents. When the time came, Laura kissed Bill goodbye, not knowing that it would be the last time she would see him alive. Bill then left for the junior school, and Laura drove to her new position at the high school. At 1:45 that afternoon Laura's office phone rang. "Just wanted to remind you that I promised Jack Young I would see him at the high school about 3:30," Bill said. "I should be at your parents’ house no later than 4:30."
Forty-five minutes later, at 2:30, Voytek opened the door to his office and saw Hurley standing outside. "Hurley, I thought you were leaving at two today. Don't you have to pick up your daughter in Houston at the airport?"
"Just running a little late. I have to get the junior school's mail and money," he said.
Voytek was surprised; although this was one of Hurley's regular duties, it was rare in the five years he had known Hurley for him to work late.
