by Kerri Rawson
The agent didn’t have a kit, wasn’t prepared. Standing in the living room, the three of us talked through this perplexity for a bit. My mind latched on to this solid problem—something tangible I could do and think about that wasn’t Dad.
I finally said, “I can grab a couple of cotton swabs and resealable sandwich bags, and you can swab my mouth?”
Shaking, I went and got the items we needed while the agent called our local police department. He was thinking we might need to head down to their headquarters for collection.
We settled on taking the samples ourselves, standing in the kitchen in front of the Bundt cake. I swabbed the inside of my cheek with the cotton swab and dropped it into the bag. I repeated the process, at some point, joking, “This is how they do it on CSI.”
All reality was lost.
The agent handed me his business card with his phone numbers. (I carried his card in my purse for years, but today, I can’t remember his name.)
“The FBI recommends you don’t talk to the media. It can make things worse.”
Why would the media be trying to talk to us? Make what worse?
He picked the bags up from the counter, bid us farewell, and left. We never saw him again.
I walked down our hallway, gently lifted the picture of my dad and mom off the wall, and set it in my closet, facing the wall. That was the last picture of my dad I’d ever have. I’d never put his picture on display again. He’d soon be on the front of all the newspapers and on TV anyway.
CHAPTER 23
All Reality Can Sometimes Be Lost
2:30 P.M.
FEBRUARY 25, 2005
On the way home, I thought the FBI was at the apartment because I’d accidentally downloaded something I wasn’t supposed to.”
If only that was it.
Darian ran his hand through his hair, letting it rest there for a few moments, like he was stunned motionless.
There is a man . . . FBI . . . your dad is . . . Dad can’t be.
“I need to call my parents, my brother . . .” Darian was pacing, occasionally walking over to his desk, jotting a note to himself. We had placed his computer desk in the corner of our living room so I could be near him, lounging on the couch, reading, or watching TV, while he sometimes worked late.
Dad can’t be. Dad is. A man. FBI.
My mind wandered again; I hadn’t heard him.
“Kerri? We need to go tell my boss. Okay? And Kerri, can you cancel any teaching assignments you have for the next few weeks?” Darian’s voice was fading in and out, out and in.
Cancel work.
I stared for some seconds and came back to Darian talking. He was looking at me, concerned, his eyes searching mine. “Kerri? Never mind. Don’t move, stay on the couch. I’m going to pull down our family website. It might be a few weeks before the cache clears, though—and make a few phone calls, okay? Kerri, have you had lunch?”
Huh? Website? Cache?
“Lunch. No. Not hungry.”
“You need to eat. We’ll go pick something up. Let me call my dad first. Okay?”
Okay.
The neighbor lady had gone missing. She was murdered. Dad wasn’t home.
I was wearing a sleeveless light-blue nightgown with tiny white flowers, I was sweaty—it got hot in the house when we lost power after a storm.
They found her in the country.
What if Dad . . . ? No. Dad had an alibi—he was camping . . .
I lay down on the couch and rolled up into the fetal position.
I broke my arm at church. I was six. Mom told me, twenty minutes before, “Get down out of those pine trees before you fall and break your arm.”
My elbow came out of my skin. They called it a compound fracture.
Maybe if I lie here real still, I will stop shaking and the world will stop spinning and buzzing like it’s white-hot on fire.
Dad slid a tray decorated with pink flowers under my deformed arm and wrapped it in dish towels.
Dad carried me out of church, placing me in the back of our silver Oldsmobile station wagon. Mom rode in the back with me, gently stroking my hair and face. Dad drove to Wesley, going over the train tracks as slowly as he could as I let out screams with each bump.
Maybe if I lie here real still . . .
I was put on a gurney out in the emergency drive-up.
They did X-rays. I got Cinderella stickers for cooperating.
They took me to surgery a few hours later.
I kept arguing with the nurses in the freezing room, as I was falling asleep, that my name was Nancy.
Maybe if I lie here real still . . .
I wasn’t able to finish first grade.
We couldn’t go to Padre Island in June.
Dad wasn’t pleased our trip was canceled—all ’cause of me and my broken arm with the three metal pins sticking out that had to be wiped with stinky brown iodine every day.
I disappointed him. He wanted to go away on vacation.
Our neighbor lady had gone missing. Then I broke my arm at church.
I was six.
Maybe if I lie here real still . . .
I don’t remember Darian coaxing me from the couch to our car that cold, empty afternoon. Although I can bet I was walking in a slow shuffle, holding on to walls and the porch railing. It wasn’t just my body that was shaking; my brain was too. My mind was trying to fight off a total implosion. In self-preservation, it was trying to quiet down—to begin fixing itself—and my body was slowing, trying to follow.
I don’t remember the drive-through at Arby’s, but I do recall trying to choke down a roast beef and cheddar sandwich riding in the car to Darian’s office. (It will be a long time before I have another one of those.)
I don’t remember walking into the office, shaking, tears rolling down my face, but I do remember the kindness his boss showed us. His eyes looking into mine, concerned, saying he’d do anything to help us.
I do remember Darian standing up for his new boss, eighteen months ago, when my dad made some off-the-wall, sideways comment about the type of people who hired Darian. And I remember Darian saying, firmly and proudly, “My new boss, out of everyone in this country, has given me a job, taken a chance on me—on us,” gesturing to me.
Dad’s comment stung, and I was in awe of my new husband, but I’m sure I stayed silent like a coward, knowing it would cost me if I spoke up against Dad.
I don’t remember driving home, except for trying to keep my lunch down as we rounded a couple of Michigan lefts. I don’t remember the rest of that first awful afternoon after my dad was arrested, except for finally reaching my mom on the phone sometime long past when I should have been able to.
The FBI, the police back home—they should have let us talk to each other. We didn’t know anything. It was cruel, and it scared me.
I don’t remember who called whom.
Our voices echoed each other, overlapping, the same torn, distraught sounds, both overwhelmed with shock and grief, both falling into our own pit of hell, sixteen hours away from each other. “I kept telling the police they’ve made a terrible mistake. They won’t listen to me.”
“Me too, Mama. Me too.”
“I’ve been worried sick about you, about Brian. Have you talked to him? I can’t reach him.” Mom was being kept in the dark like me.
Then she spoke in a rapid, frightened tone. “When I was leaving work to drive home for lunch, I saw a helicopter fly overhead toward Park City. I wondered, who were they going after now? I’d seen unmarked cars parked on our street this past week. I figured it had to do with a drug house.
“While I was sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch, waiting for your father to come home, I heard a knock on the door. Police said I had to leave right then, needed to go with them. I asked for my purse, I needed my medicine—my inhalers. They went back in and got them.
“I was taken downtown to be questioned. Soon I heard your grandma Dorothea’s voice, and your uncles, then more family. Th
ey had all been picked up and brought in. We all told the police, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ like they had in December. They aren’t listening to me. They are in the house now. I don’t know when they will leave. I’m staying with family . . .”
Mom was getting more upset, her voice fading in and out, stopping midsentence. I was having a hard time following. “Mom, I’m so sorry this is happening. I love you. Is Uncle Bob there, or someone else I can talk to?”
Dad was arrested, Mom was picked up, and my brother and I were notified halfway across the country all at the same time. A calculated coordination planned by the Wichita police, the FBI, and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI). The badges got their man, the world was breaking under my family’s feet, and nothing would ever be the same again.
8:00 P.M.
“Your father is confessing.”
“To what? What is he confessing to?”
“Murders. BTK’s.”
Oh.
“We also found evidence in your parents’ house linking your dad to BTK, to the murders.” An FBI agent was on the phone Friday evening. I don’t remember if it was the agent who’d notified us of Dad’s arrest or another one. I don’t remember if I called them or they called me.
In my house?
“In my house? What was in my house?”
“Evidence from the murders, found under a false-bottom space in your parents’ hallway, under a drawer. Your father told us where to look.”
Oh. Evidence. Murders. He told them where to look.
We’d walked down that hallway umpteen times a day; it connected our three bedrooms. We kept linens in the top cabinet. A catch-all in the middle, a drawer with old towels and socks in the bottom—cleaning rags.
We rode out umpteen tornado warnings in that hallway, with all the bedroom doors shut, listening to KFDI over the battery-operated radio, hunkered down with blankets, pillows, and our emergency tornado box. Dad would stand watch on the front porch and get scolded by Mom for not being in the hallway with us.
I had hugged Dad goodbye in that hallway two months ago.
“The media is going to start showing up tomorrow or Sunday. Your family is going to need to be careful. Start making some decisions now—where you will be staying, with whom, if you are going to talk to anyone or not, what you’re going to say.”
“Uh . . . right now, we’re having a very hard time believing it’s true, that Dad could be . . .” My voice faded. I was getting upset again or was still upset. I didn’t really know.
“Yes, we understand. You have our number—call us if anyone gives you problems.”
I hung up. “Darian? Dad is confessing. The FBI says . . .”
Maybe if I say it out loud, it will make it true.
At some point that evening, Darian and I went to our nearby grocery store. I don’t think that was our normal for a Friday night. Neither of us was hungry and I don’t think we bought much. My brother called while I was standing in the frozen food aisle contemplating cardboard pizzas. We started debriefing, but Darian interrupted. “Shh . . . others will hear you.”
I kept talking, wandering aimlessly around the tables piled with baked goods, sitting on a bench near the magazine section, waiting for Darian to finish shopping and check out. I kept talking while we drove home and went inside. I was back in our apartment, standing near our fancy folding table, when Brian choked up, his voice tearing apart.
“We’re going to be okay.” My voice ached in the same way as my brother’s, and I didn’t know how I was going to survive the night. But my brother needed encouragement, and maybe hearing it said out loud would make it true.
“Darian won’t leave my side for nothing, and Mom is with family. We’re going to be okay, all right?”
Dad was destroying us—his family. My family.
CHAPTER 24
Don’t Google for an Alibi
10:00 P.M.
FEBRUARY 25, 2005
Late Friday evening—when I still thought Dad could be innocent, thought I could alibi him, thought I could help the man I loved—I googled “BTK.”
It was the worst mistake I’ve ever made.
With every click, scroll, and news article, I tumbled into an abyss of despair and terror. I was assaulted by names and faces of victims, graphic crime scene photos, horrific details of violent murders. I didn’t know which were cases my dad was accused of, what was internet myth, and what was fact.
I didn’t know how many murders my dad had been accused of committing. I searched for the national news articles I’d read over the past summer after BTK began communicating with police again, searched for articles on the Eagle website.
Eight.
He was wanted for eight murders, including two children.
Children.
I wanted to vomit.
Eight murders.
That didn’t include our neighbor, Mrs. Hedge. Had I given the FBI another murder of Dad’s? Nine?
I couldn’t look away from the screen. I didn’t tell Darian. I just sat there, continuing to expose myself to what would haunt me for a very long time to come.
I came across two suspect sketches from the 1974 cases. I don’t think I’d ever seen the sketches before. I could vaguely make out my dad in the picture from April 1974—the recessed way the man’s dark eyes sat in the sketch. I also came across an audio recording of a 911 call placed in December 1977 after a murder. I hadn’t known of its existence even though it was released in 1979.
“You will find a homicide at 843 . . . That is correct.”1
Through the static, in seizing fear, I recognized my dad’s voice—younger, but him. I picked up on the clipped, curt, official way he could speak, especially if speaking to uniforms: police officers, park rangers, fish and game wardens. Dad could shift not just his voice but his posture; he could hold himself straighter, taller—tighten himself, hold back emotion, mimic them.
He’s making a report. Calling in a homicide—like a badge.
Everything I’d ever known, loved, believed was falling down around me. My whole life was a lie—from before I was born.
I somehow made it out of my chair and staggered into the kitchen. Holding on to the kitchen cabinets to get to the refrigerator, I reached up and grabbed a bottle of vodka left over from Darian’s office Christmas party. I poured myself a shot in a white coffee mug with red hearts on it and attempted to down it. I’d only ever drunk liquor mixed, and that had only been a few times.
“What are you doing?” Darian had come out to the kitchen to see what was happening with his falling-apart wife.
“Drinking. It’s what they do in the movies. Ya know, when bad things happen.”
“Is it helping?” he asked gently.
“No. It burns and tastes like fire.”
He took the mug from me and poured the rest down the sink. “I think we better get you to bed.”
“I don’t wanna sleep. I’m going to have some cake.” And I proceeded to cut myself a sizable chunk of chocolate Bundt cake, even though I wanted to heave. I’d regret that swig of fire and piece of cake—which sat in my stomach like a rock—for a long time.
MIDNIGHT
I don’t know how I’m going to survive this. I think I am dead—feel dead.
Nothing. Feel nothing.
Am nothing. Dead.
The worst day of my life spilled over into the next. Numb yet shaking, sometimes uncontrollably, I was falling more and more apart—disintegrating.
Darian coaxed me to bed, but now I was too frightened to turn off my bedside lamp. I picked up my Bible from where it sat on a lower shelf on my nightstand. But I didn’t have the strength to open it. I let it fall to the ground.
Where are you, God?
Michelle’s photo in the light-blue frame caught my eye. The night we lost Michelle was terrible. I didn’t know how any of us would ever recover. Her photo sat next to my wooden angel whose twisted wings had now rusted.
Growing up, my cousins had a brown lop-eared b
unny I adored. I’d giggle when it twitched its little black nose. When I stood up with Andrea six years ago for her wedding, she had given me a ceramic topiary bunny that held dangly emerald earrings as a bridesmaid’s gift. Now the bunny sat next to my picture of Michelle and my wooden angel.
We had changed, though we still missed Michelle acutely; we survived, even with gaping holes still scarring over. Falling in love, graduating from college, getting married.
Dad walked me down the aisle, nervous and proud, trying to hold back tears.
Love never fails.
Life had continued forward.
God was continuously bringing forth new life.
Psalm 23 began running through my head: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”
“I need the light on tonight.” I curled up next to Darian, putting my head on his chest. Darian was solid, tangible, in a world gone mad.
“I will fear no evil . . .”
“That’s okay. I’m not sure I can sleep.” He wrapped his arms tight around me.
“. . . for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
“Me either.”
I felt like I was going on watch, waiting for more harm to arrive at our door. On alert. No one to tell us we can stand down.
I sat up, frustrated. Angry. Done. “To heck with it! I can’t sleep here!”
“Wanna sleep on the couch? I can take the floor or something.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed our heavy brown comforter and my pillow, dragging them to the living room.
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul . . .”
The rest of the night passed with the two of us taking shifts to sleep, one on the couch, one on the floor watching over the other one. I’d wake up in the night, foggy-hazy, and see Darian on the computer; he was standing watch over us there too.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”2
When early morning hit, I was on the floor anchored tight in the comforter, and Darian was on the couch, wrapped in a sea-green blanket that had been a wedding gift.
