A Tangled Web

by Leslie Rule

  When Dave looks back on those dark days, he remembers two inexplicable events, so peculiar that he wasn’t sure what to make of them. He had shrugged them off at the time, and it’s only in retrospect that he realizes that he should have been paying closer attention. The first occurred in the springtime, though he can’t remember exactly when. “It was still cold out. I was coming home from the bar. It was rather late—I would guess about 11:00 or midnight.” On foot because he’d been drinking, he was walking across the dimly lit lot toward his unit when something caught his attention. “I heard rustling.” He peered into the shadows and witnessed a startling sight. “I saw Liz crawling!” Confused, he watched her “army crawling” with “butt down,” in the same fashion that he’d been trained to do when he was in the National Guard. She crept between a car and the building, and she seemed to be hiding. “I was fairly inebriated. I hollered at her a couple of times. She didn’t come out, and she didn’t answer me.” He couldn’t figure out what kind of weird game she was playing. Annoyed and too cold to pursue it, he went inside and shut the door. “Then my phone started blowing up. It was Liz. She was calling and texting me. She said, ‘I’m sorry! I’m drunk! I was over across the street at the bar with my friends. I don’t know what I’m doing.’” Too drunk to realize she had been crawling like a crab across dirty pavement on a freezing night, she had managed to sober up at a record pace and leave Dave a coherent message.

  The second event also involved a figure in the shadows. Dave didn’t see it, but his daughter did when his kids were staying with him. One night when Calista had stayed up very late, she was certain she had a ghost sighting. “She saw someone creeping down the hallway, and she threw her shoe at it and shouted, ‘Go away, ghost!’ She was about twelve at the time.” The preteen was fascinated with the paranormal, and she assumed that the phantom-like being that had retreated into the darkness was a restless spirit. Did she manage to hit it with her shoe? She didn’t know. She was too spooked to investigate.

  Dave had dismissed Calista’s story at the time. He didn’t believe in ghosts, and he figured it was a simple case of a tired kid with an active imagination. But he now realizes that there very well could have been someone sneaking into his apartment, someone who knew he was a deep sleeper but did not realize his daughter was awake. He wishes that he had taken her “ghost sighting,” more seriously. Maybe he could have set a trap and caught “the phantom” in action.

  Dave was so exhausted by the never-ending deluge of hate that his thinking was uncharacteristically jumbled. If he could have gotten a break from the stalking and been able to live free of the anxiety that comes with knowing that someone with ill intent is constantly watching, he might have been able to see the situation with more clarity. If only he had had a week or two to clear his mind, he might have suspected the truth. But Dave’s tormentor relentlessly tortured him and never allowed him a moment of peace. Thousands of texts and emails continued to inundate him that July 2013, including one at 6:40 A.M. on the third day of the month, targeting Sally: I will ruin your loser life everyday if you do not break up with your ugly whore . . . I have a key to the building. I will just go in then. I will figure out how to get inside, kill the whore in your apartment, get you arrested.

  On July 5, in a 10:30 P.M. email, the bully warned: I am going to fuck the whore up when she comes out. A few hours later, Dave received an email focused on Liz. It arrived with an attached photo of Liz’s Honda Civic: Found the slutty whore who took everything from me. I hate her so much . . .

  Shortly after, another email popped up, this time with complaints about Amy who had had a heated email exchange with someone claiming to be Cari: I am going to the cops for harassment from your kids’mom. I am done with you, sick of her running her whore mouth to me. I feel like stabbing someone.”

  Liz. Sally. Amy. The stalker seemed to detest them equally, although Liz was a favorite target. It was a big, tangled mess, and Dave had grown wary of trying to explain it to friends, family, coworkers and the various law officers he called upon to report his tormentor’s crimes. Detective Paul Prencer from the Omaha Police Department got involved that July, and Dave once again found himself reciting the long and complex horror story that had become his life.

  Prencer had worked for OPD since 1999, and after a decade there, he was assigned to the Special Victims Unit. He mostly investigated crimes against children and vulnerable adults, domestic violence, and sexual assaults. Prencer frequently investigated domestic violence, crimes that include destruction of property, vandalism, harassment, assaults and sometimes burglaries. While initial reports are taken by uniformed officers, they are later assigned to detectives for follow up. Detective Prencer met with Dave that July to follow up on the report of the broken window. There was no question in Dave’s mind who had smashed the window. The vandal had contacted him, jubilantly taking credit, just as she always did.

  “The victim, Mr. Kroupa, identified a photo of Cari,” recounts Detective Prencer, who was eager to talk to the alleged troublemaker. He applied for a misdemeanor warrant for the arrest of Cari Lea Farver. By the end of July 2013, the warrant was active. Now, if an officer pulled her over for speeding or some other traffic infraction, they could see the warrant in their database. Cari Farver was still listed in the NCIC as a missing person, but not a single officer had encountered her in the eight months she had supposedly been running amok, recklessly destroying property, terrifying innocent people, and sometimes flaunting her actions in full view of the public—though no witnesses had actually seen her.

  Cari Farver, missing person, had not been found. Cari Farver, alleged criminal, was equally elusive. The warrant for her arrest would never be executed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IN THE SUMMER OF 2013, two things were bothering Dave. There was the stalker, of course. And Liz. Her jealousy was becoming a huge problem. She would not let go of her suspicion that he was sleeping with Amy. While Liz was wildly jealous of her, she had no reason to be. Amy had plenty of interest from men, and she, too, was dating. Dave had become like a pal to her. “I always tell him he is one of my best friends. A lot of people think our friendship is weird, because he comes over here and hangs out with the kids. I don’t see anything wrong with it. We chat about the kids or our significant others.”

  Amy remembers when he met Cari. “Dave talked about her once or twice in the beginning before all of the craziness started. He said, ‘I’m dating a girl named Cari.’ I said, ‘Oh, what does she look like?’ I was just curious because if this person was going to be in my kids’ life, I wanted to know about her. Dave was at the store where I work one day when he came in to pick up something for the kids, and he showed me her picture.”

  Amy glanced at the smiling image of Cari and said, “Oh, she’s cute!” She’d been relieved to know he had met someone nice. “All I wanted was for him to find someone good for him—someone who wanted the same things he wanted. He talked kindly about her, and I was happy for him. Cari sounded like a good person who would be good to my kids if they got serious.”

  While Amy had at one time been disappointed that Dave didn’t share her desire for commitment, she’d long since gotten over that. Now, she was just grateful that he was such a wonderful father to their children. “Anyone who knows me, knows my kids come first,” Amy stresses. She was determined to make her kids happy because, “My own childhood was kind of traumatic.”

  When Amy was thirteen, her family was split up because her mom had some issues that made it difficult to keep her children with her. Amy and her sister went to live with their aunt, but the aunt had kids of her own, and the place soon felt crowded. “With four teenaged girls in one house, my aunt couldn’t really handle it, so we ended up going to a place called Children’s Square. It’s a home for kids who don’t have parents. They either get adopted or go to foster homes.”

  The sisters made a pact. They would never let anyone separate them. A kind woman was impressed with Amy and invited the quiet
, studious teen to live with her. But there was a problem. “She wasn’t going to take my sister. I said, ‘You can either have us both, or not at all.’” But the lady was unable to accommodate both sisters. “We couldn’t let anyone split us up. All we had was each other.” The girls had some rough years, but Amy was strong and determined. By the time she was seventeen, she was living on her own and working two jobs to support herself. She never forgot how shattered she’d felt when her family fell apart, and she vowed that when she had kids, they would never go through that. She hoped for a solid marriage and a traditional family where the kids felt loved.

  When she and Dave worked together at the truck stop, she admits she didn’t exactly imagine him as the father of her future children. At first glance, “I thought he was dorky.” But he seemed very nice, so she agreed to go out with him, and they had a lot of fun. Before long, Amy was lost in his intense blue eyes and was surprised to discover she was very attracted to him. Dave’s commitment issues soon became apparent, but he didn’t bail when she got pregnant. They lived together and were, for all practical purposes, married. It bothered her that it wasn’t official, but she was ecstatic when their daughter was born. Moments after Calista entered the world, Amy was so overcome with emotion, she looked Dave in the eye and said, “I love you.” Now, when she remembers his response, she laughs, but it stung at the time. “He said, ‘Thank you.’” She tried to be understanding. She knew he’d been hurt badly when, “his high school girlfriend cheated on him.” By the time their second child was born, Amy thought Dave should be ready to put a ring on her finger. But it was not to be.

  The break-up was hard at first, but Amy set a wonderful example for her kids when she welcomed their father back into her life as her friend. Unfortunately, the fact that they got along so well irked Liz. She sent Amy emails and texts, insinuating that Amy was still sleeping with Dave. Amy politely explained to her that they were simply co-parenting their children and that she had no interest in getting back with Dave. The jealous messages from Liz confirmed Amy’s initial impression of her. “I always had a weird feeling about Liz from day one. From the first time I met her.”

  When Dave met Liz, Amy, too, was seeing someone new. Dave and Amy agreed to get to know the people spending time with their kids. One Sunday night, Amy’s boyfriend took her to pick up the kids from Dave’s place. Amy phoned from the car to say she was on the way, and when Dave mentioned that Liz was there, “I said, ‘Perfect! We can all meet each other!’ Dave and my boyfriend hit it off real well.” As Dave and Amy’s boyfriend made small talk, she reached out to shake Liz’s hand, smiling as she said, “Hi, I’m Amy. Nice to meet you.”

  “Liz wouldn’t even shake my hand. She just sat there. She just glared. I asked my boyfriend later, ‘Is it just me, or did you get a bad vibe from her?’ He said she was not nice at all. She didn’t really say anything to him, and he introduced himself to her, too. She was rude to him. Later I told Dave, ‘She’s not very friendly.’ He said, ‘Oh, well, it was probably an odd situation for her.’”

  Amy didn’t think that was a good enough reason to be rude. “I didn’t want to say much about her, and how negative she was, because that upset Dave. There was something off about her, but I tried to keep those comments to myself.”

  The kids didn’t like Liz, and they reported that fact to their mother. “She’s your dad’s girlfriend,” Amy told them. “I want you to treat her with respect.”

  Amy continued to be polite whenever their paths crossed, and Liz continued to be cold and unfriendly. Amy dreaded seeing her, and she did her best to avoid her. She was not the first person to feel uncomfortable around her. A decade earlier, Melissa Strom was encountering Liz for the first time, and she, too, had experienced a prickling anxiety in her presence. While Amy had met Liz because of Dave, Melissa, too, had met Liz because of a man. But in Melissa’s case, Liz had been the ex—a very jealous ex, determined to get her man back. Amy, of course, didn’t want Dave back. “I just wanted him to be happy,” she stresses. But that didn’t seem to matter. Liz was convinced that Amy was her enemy. David Kroupa was the prize, just as Dirk Rhodes had been Liz’s prize a decade earlier.

  If not for a memory lapse, Melissa would never have met Dirk. She wasn’t old and forgetful. She was a sharp twenty-two-year-old who worked as a pharmacy technician. On a March night in 2003, she and a friend went out to Omaha’s Pheasant Bar and Grill. It was not until the next morning that she realized her mistake. “I accidentally forgot to pay the tab, and they had my credit card!” She went back to the bar to pay her bill and retrieve her credit card. Lovely, with a trim figure and shiny blond hair that fell halfway down her back, she was accustomed to the stares of men, and she barely noticed Dirk seated at the bar, watching her.

  As the bartender teased Melissa about her slipup with the bill, she chuckled along with him. “Dirk overheard me and the bartender joking about my forgetting to pay the tab, and he made a silly comment that made me laugh.” Melissa and Dirk began chatting. “I remember thinking that his hair was overly bleached, and I wasn’t sure if he was my type. But he had really nice blue eyes and a funny sense of humor.”

  She said yes when Dirk asked her out, and soon they were seeing each other exclusively. Dirk worked at a prison, but his passion was art. He created amazing artwork and also wrote poems. Melissa was impressed and found herself drawn to his creativity. He was single, he assured her, but he had a child. That was fine with Melissa. She loved kids, and she didn’t mind helping him care for two-year-old Peter. The little boy was adorable, but Melissa was not prepared for Peter’s mother.

  Dirk shared custody of Peter with Liz Golyar, but he knew her as Shanna. Their breakup was so new that they hadn’t yet hammered out the details. He explained to Melissa that he had broken up with his son’s mother because of her over-the-top jealousy. When he had met Shanna, she was a single mother of a little girl, Trina, about two years old. Shortly after he began dating Shanna, she got pregnant, and they had stayed together for the baby. After Peter was born, Shanna’s jealousy intensified, and she constantly accused Dirk of cheating on her when he had been nothing but loyal to her. He put up with it for as long as he could, but he felt suffocated by her possessiveness.

  He met Melissa on the rebound, barely two weeks after he had moved out of Shanna’s place. He had not planned for his new girlfriend to meet his ex so soon, but Melissa was visiting him on one of his days with Peter when Shanna popped in. “Dirk was supposed to drop Peter off at her place,” Melissa explains. “That was the usual arrangement. But she had gotten the idea that Dirk was seeing somebody, and she showed up at the door.”

  Shanna made no attempt to hide her displeasure when she saw Melissa. The angry mother marched into the apartment and scooped up her child. Dirk tried to make polite introductions, but Shanna was not interested in meeting his gorgeous new girlfriend. Shanna left abruptly.

  Melissa couldn’t blame her. “The breakup was very, very fresh. I understood that Shanna was hurting.” But Melissa had not been the cause of the breakup, and Shanna’s hostile energy had left her shaken. “When Shanna got home, she called Dirk. He didn’t pick up, so Shanna left a message on his answering machine and said something like, ‘I’m not sure I’m comfortable sharing custody of Peter if she is going to be around. I want Peter to know that I’m his mom.’”

  Melissa had no intention of taking her place as Peter’s mother, but she had made an enemy of her simply by dating the man who had broken her heart. Melissa cringed when she heard the hostile messages that Shanna continued to leave for Dirk. Shanna was not happy that Melissa was in his life, and she made her feelings clear. Shanna was such a complete opposite of her that Melissa wondered how in the world Dirk had been attracted to them both. Melissa was a hard worker, but Shanna didn’t have a job. Melissa was bubbly and optimistic, while Shanna always seemed angry. Even their hairstyles were about as different as they could be. Shanna’s black hair was cropped short, while Melissa’s long, st
raight hair was blond.

  Shortly after she began seeing Dirk, Melissa was at his second-floor apartment one day while he was at work. “I was watching TV in the living room when I started to hear noises. It sounded like someone was banging on the wall outside of the apartment.” At first, she was more curious than concerned. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. I thought, ‘Oh, someone’s moving.’ ”

  But it was not as if someone carrying furniture occasionally bumped against the outside wall. It was an intense racket, and it seemed deliberate. She got up and moved toward the door, hoping Dirk had remembered to lock it when he left. Suddenly she saw the doorknob wiggling and realized that someone was trying to open the door! “I was terrified!” But the door was locked, and whoever was outside gave up on trying to get in. Melissa crept to the door and peered out the peephole. “I saw items in the hallway, but I couldn’t really make out what they were. I wasn’t going out there to see! After a minute I heard the banging again.”

  Through the peephole, she saw Shanna come into view with an armload of stuff. “She just threw it all down and then left, banging away. Shanna knew my car, and I’m sure she saw that I was there. About two or three minutes later, she came back with more stuff! I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was stuff that Dirk had left at her place. She was going crazy with it, throwing it against the door. It was like someone was literally banging down the door.”

  Trembling, Melissa wondered when it was going to stop. Shanna continued to make trip after trip. Nearly half an hour later, the noises ceased. Had she left, or was she waiting out there for Melissa to open the door? There was no use looking through the peephole because something was blocking her view. “I didn’t know what she was capable of at this point. I felt she was so unstable, and I thought, Who knows what she’ll do? I called my friend, Valerie Ness. I said, ‘Valerie, I don’t know what to do! I think Shanna is going crazy! She piled a bunch of stuff outside! I can’t even see out into the hallway anymore!’”