12.Deadly.Little.Secrets.2012 (8 page)

In hindsight, it would seem that the only place Matt showed any emotion about his daughter’s death was at the pulpit during his sermons. It was then that he sometimes choked up. “I thought Matt was so great, that he was being so strong,” says Todd.

It had been months since Kari had written to Kassidy when Kari opened a journal on August 25 of that year, 1999. After addressing the entry to Kassidy, Kari informed her daughter that she had returned to Baylor that day, picking up her classes to finish her education degree. It would be a milestone, turning the corner toward moving on. Yet Kari admitted, “I don’t really want to go. I’m doing it for you. I want you to be proud of me . . . I wish the pain would go away. I wish you would come back.”

There was more news to share with her dead daughter. Members of Williams Creek were building a memorial for Kassidy, a small prayer garden in front of the church. On that same day, they’d begun digging to make the beds for shrubs and flowers. And in her journal, Kari again pondered why Kassidy had died. “Why can’t I just die?” she asked, pouring out her grief on the journal pages. Finally, she wrote an entreaty to God: “Please help me. I need you so much.”

Kari Baker had lost a child, and the grief consumed her private moments. It was with her always, the loss, the slice Kassidy’s death had cut through her heart. There were days that would always be reminders. One of the first was in November. As the day that would have been Kassidy’s second birthday approached, Kari wrote in her Bible, still lamenting her daughter’s death. Yet in counseling, Bristol gave Kari ideas, ways to work through her grief.

That Thanksgiving, Linda’s family congregated at her parents’ home. They were a large family, about twenty-five in all, and they had gathered in the kitchen when Kari stood with a candle in her hand. “My counselor suggested that as part of the grieving process, I mark holidays by remembering Kassidy,” she said. “I’m going to light a candle. Then I’d like you all to say what you remember about her.”

With that, Kari struck a match and lit the candle. While the others talked, Linda and Kari began to cry, as Matt stood off by himself, his face rock cold. He leaned against a wall without a tear in his eye as the family surrounding him told anecdotes from the brief life of his dead daughter.

When the ceremony finished, Kari ran sobbing from the room. Matt didn’t hurry after her. Instead, it was Linda who followed her daughter to the bedroom, where she held and tried to comfort her.

Chapter 12

T
hat month, November 1999, the congregation at Williams Creek gathered in front of the church for the dedication of Kassidy’s memorial prayer garden. They’d fashioned it with stone and mortar in the shape of a Christian fish, the head pointing at the cross on the front of the church. Along the outside stood tall bushes. Inside the border was a lush ground cover. From the street, passersby first noticed a concrete bench and a melancholy cherub on a stone platform, its wings hugging its small body.

Off to the side stood a second concrete angel, its wings unfurled, dressed in Colonial garb and carrying a cross. At its feet lay a slab of granite that read:
KASSIDY’S PRAYER GARDEN
, and the dates of her brief life, November 20, 1997 through March 22, 1999. Another stone marker tucked into the garden read:
MIRACLES GROW WHERE YOU PLANT THEM
.

From that day forward, many saw Kari sitting on the lone bench with Kensi. “Kassidy was in that church and in that garden,” Janelle would say. At other times, Kari stood alone at the edge of the garden, hands over her face, weeping.

Yet for the most part, those melancholy moments didn’t fill Kari’s days. She and Matt were both back at Baylor, studying and working toward their degrees, picking up where their lives had taken such a sharp turn a year earlier, when Kassidy first became ill.

It was after the dedication that Matt and Kari made an announcement. Kari was pregnant with another girl. At first, Janelle would say her friend was wary of having another child. Having lost one, Kari worried about exposing herself to more pain. But before long, Kari talked excitedly of the pregnancy. “She said that the new baby was a gift from God,” says a friend. “And that they would name her Grace, because the baby was by the grace of God.”

In her Bible, Kari had underlined a sentence:
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfect in weakness
.

Yet all wasn’t going well for Matt at Williams Creek that fall. He was grumbling even more loudly and more often about the church members. Linda said nothing, but she didn’t like it when Kari echoed his complaints. She understood that Kari was loyal to Matt, but it wasn’t something Kari would have done before their marriage.

It was late that year when Janelle’s water stopped working in her apartment, and she called asking Kari if she could take a shower at the parsonage. Kari quickly agreed, but said she wouldn’t be home. When Janelle arrived, Matt let her in. She hurried into the bathroom, in a rush to get to classes. Then while Janelle was in the shower, she suddenly heard the bathroom door close, as if someone had been in the room with her and left. Knowing she and Matt were alone in the house, Janelle knew immediately who it must have been.

Not wanting to upset Kari, Janelle said nothing to either her or Matt about what had happened, but less than a week later Matt approached Janelle at church and fired her. “He told me that I didn’t have the calling to be the music minister,” says Janelle. “I’d thought that I was fulfilling a service, but Matt said I wasn’t needed.”

Afterward, Janelle heard Matt had told others, including Kari, that Janelle had quit. Fearing that being truthful could ruin her friendship with Kari, knowing that she would back her husband, Janelle remained silent. “I knew things weren’t right with Matt,” Janelle said later. “But I loved Kari, and I overlooked it. I didn’t tell her that Matt fired me, or what happened in the house that day. If I had, I didn’t think she would have believed me.”

A
s the pregnancy progressed, many around Kari understood how worried she was about the baby she carried. “She watched everything she ate, everything she did,” says a friend.

“Kari was afraid that Grace would have a tumor like Kassidy,” says Barbara. “She was scared.”

At the same time, the new baby appeared to have eased so much of the sadness. “Kari had that joy again,” says Janelle. “Being pregnant with Grace brought her back.”

It wasn’t that Kari forgot Kassidy. She talked of her often. And there were those times, like the first anniversary of the baby’s death, when she, Matt, and Kensi went to Kassidy’s grave. Afterward, they held a small ceremony at the prayer garden, releasing pink balloons to fly up to the clouds. That would become a ritual for them, a way to remember their lost daughter. At times, when the sadness was too great, Kari stayed in bed for a day, watching a video of Kassidy crawling across the floor. One day in a Bible study, the instructor talked about “the baggage of death,” and Kari left, crying.

But they were brief interludes in an otherwise busy life. “As time went on, she got better,” says Jenny. “You could see it.”

It was that May that Kari received her diploma. She was eight months pregnant the afternoon she graduated from Baylor with her education degree. She and Janelle had completed student training in a small country school outside Waco.

Meanwhile, Linda was teaching at the community college full-time and working on her doctorate part-time. In all, it would take eight years to get her Ph.D. She’d passed on that desire for an education to both Kari and Adam, and after Kari finished her degree, she immediately talked of graduate school.

With so much going right in her life, a little more than a year after Kassidy’s death, Kari told Jo Ann Bristol that she wanted to discontinue her counseling. “For five minutes yesterday, I didn’t think about Kassidy’s death,” Kari told her counselor. “You know, I think I’m okay.” Bristol had noticed that Kari was less emotional during the sessions and smiling more, that she sounded excited about her future with Matt, Kensi, and the new baby.

As chance would have it, that same month, Kari ran into her old friend from Tech, Melody, at their obstetrician’s office. They renewed their friendship, and Melody was surprised at how much Kari had changed. In Lubbock, there’d been nights out at clubs and parties, but Kari explained that she’d married a preacher, that they had a little girl, and that they’d lost a daughter. “She’d settled down. She was calmer and more focused. Where Kari was loud at times in college, she was quieter.”

Over the coming months, the two women talked on the telephone, Melody confiding that she was having some problems. “I’ll pray for you,” Kari told her, then admitting, “You know, I do have my own challenges.”

At first, Kari said little about Matt, but then one day she said, “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one hurting from Kassidy’s death. We can’t connect on that level. But life truly is beautiful, and I’m so blessed for what I have.”

On July 18, 2000, a year and four months after Kassidy’s death, Kari went to the hospital in Waco to deliver a third child. Round and blond, Grace was born, and Kari appeared anxious until the pediatrician examined her new daughter. When the doctor pronounced Grace healthy, Kari cried with joy.

T
hat fall, Matt resigned from Williams Creek Baptist Church. Barbara would say that it was Kari who wanted Matt to find another position, that she no longer wanted to live in the parsonage, refusing to put Grace’s crib in the room where she’d lost one daughter. Jenny would agree: “Kari said she just needed a fresh start. She said people at Williams Creek looked at her like ‘you’re the one who lost your child.’ ”

Yet there were also indications that not everyone at Williams Creek was sorry to see Matt Baker leave. Some were complaining about his sermons. The very thing that made him popular with the young people in the church worked against him with the more senior members. And at Williams Creek, like many of the churches, the majority of the members were middle-aged and older. “They were saying they wanted to hear more from the Bible. They didn’t like his lifestyle sermons,” says one former member. Matt’s response was on the order of, “I preach what God tells me to preach.”

That November 2000, a year after the prayer garden was dedicated, Matt became pastor of yet another small church, First Baptist in Riesel. A tiny burg with a population that hovered near a thousand, Riesel was located on Highway 6, half an hour southeast of Waco. The church itself was a rectangular building with metal sides and a brick front, all painted white. Inside, red-upholstered pews lined up toward an aging oak pulpit. Behind it stood the spalike baptistery visible through a window from the main church. A small communion table was carved with the words
IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME
. And a banner on the right-hand side read:
A WOMAN WHO FEARS THE LORD DESERVES TO BE PRAISED
.

A sidewalk ran along the side of the church and behind it, to a long, low-slung building shaded by an ancient oak tree with branches that splayed out over the roof, housing meeting areas and classrooms. Behind that building, on the street that ran along the back of the church, was a small, one-story white frame house: the parsonage. It had a broad porch covered by a roof, and the garage had been enclosed, leaving the gravel driveway as the only parking.

The sign in front of the church was white with red lettering, and it included the times of services. A small plaque hung below it, one that read:
PASTOR: MATTHEW BAKER
.

Chapter 13

“M
att hired me as the children’s minister,” says Todd Monsey. “It was a great experience for my first job. Matt and Kari worked together like they did at Williams Creek, building the youth program. Before long, we had close to fifty kids every Wednesday night, and Kari joked that what made it so much fun was that we all got to be kids again with them. She was happy.”

Still, Kassidy’s loss continued to haunt Kari, perhaps not during the day but when she tried to close her eyes at night. In November, Kari called her doctor asking for a sleep aid. The reason noted in her chart was that she was having difficulty sleeping “due to the loss of a child.” The doctor prescribed 10 mg of Ambien, a powerful sleeping pill.

In the end, the Ambien wasn’t to Kari’s liking. She never called for more of the pills, complaining that Ambien made her sleep too soundly. She worried that she wouldn’t be able to hear Kensi and Grace if they woke in the middle of the night. From that point on, Kari began a nightly ritual, routinely taking a Unisom-type pill, an over-the-counter sleep aid, mild drugs that induced drowsiness. She called them her sleepy-time pills, and habitually bought a less expensive generic brand.

O
n the second anniversary of Kassidy’s death, Grace went with her sister and parents to the grave, releasing four pink balloons into the sky. Todd would remember that for that one day, Kari wanted to be alone with her family, remembering the little girl they’d lost. It was during that time that Kari and Todd had a long conversation. “We talked about Kassidy whenever she needed to,” says Todd.

Todd would later recall something Kari said that day, when he tried to put in order all that lay ahead: “I miss Kassidy, and I want to be with her, but I never want to leave my life with Matt, Kensi, and Grace. I love them all.”

In May, Kari wrote the Jabez Prayer in her Bible, in which Jabez called on God to bless him, to enlarge his territory, and protect him from evil. “So God granted him what he requested.” Chronicles 4:10.

That spring, a minister with whom Matt had worked in the past attended a Sunday service in Riesel, after which Matt gave him a tour of the facility. Matt’s friend would leave thinking that the young pastor had changed. “I never did see the warmth, the touch he’d had before his child died,” says the man. “I watched him with the church members, and Matt appeared autocratic, telling them what to do instead of involving them in the church. He wasn’t inviting them to attend classes and meetings, but ordering them. He wasn’t the same pastor . . . I saw the warmth diminish in Matt.”

It was also that May that Matt graduated from the seminary with a Master’s of Divinity in Christian Education and Administration. Shortly after, he was ordained as a minister at Pecan Grove, the historic church so closely tied to Baylor where he’d once worked.

That day, Barbara, Oscar, Linda, most of both families watched the ceremony, including Linda’s uncle Kenneth from Palestine, who gave Matt books on faith. With Kensi beside her, Kari, holding ten-month-old Grace, smiled proudly. Afterward, there was a celebration, and Kari’s family gave Matt an expensive set of golf clubs, something he said he’d been wanting. In the months that followed, Linda asked Kari why Matt never went golfing. “He doesn’t have any friends to play with,” Kari said.

A
s May 2001 drew to a close, Kari returned to the journals she had written in off and on since Kassidy’s death. She still struggled with her loss, yet the emphasis had changed. A little more than two years after her daughter’s death, Kari missed Kassidy, yet she voiced the belief that her daughter was happy in heaven. It was her relationship with God that Kari was exploring. One day, she wrote:

Dear Lord, Please help me learn to let go of some of the anger . . . Lord, please give me some peace. My heart hurts, and I want to try to be as happy as I can. Lord, I want to serve you, but I need your help again. Thank you for loving me. Amen.

Over a series of days, Kari beseeched:

The reason it is so hard to ask for blessings is because truly I don’t know how to ask. I guess I feel that I am not worthy of such a gift. Also, since Kassidy, I feel my life can’t be truly blessed. Today Lord, I want to ask you to bless me . . . I feel I can make a difference. I’m just not sure what it is you want me to do . . . Lord, I want people to see you through me . . . Lord, help me be a better Christian.

At one point, she wrote in her Bible:
I love you God, even if you took my Kassidy
.

Money problems were on Kari’s mind on June 11, when she asked God to help her and Matt “
be better with our money
,” then the next day, “
Lord bless my life and give me the blessings you have for me. Bless me in all my endeavors. Lord, I love you. Amen
.”

Late that spring, Kari talked with her old friend, Melody. She encouraged her to reach out to God, telling her that if they tried, they could both be better people. “I have to have my faith,” Kari said.

Why was Kari having such a difficult time that first summer in Riesel? Perhaps part of it involved a drama going on behind the scenes. Kari called Linda one day, upset. “Mom, someone stole our debit card and charged phone sex and porn on the Internet.” She’d discovered the charges when she looked at the account, trying to figure out why it was overdrawn. When she told Matt that their bank account had been emptied out by phone sex and porn charges, he claimed someone had stolen his debit card and that the thief must have used it on the Internet. Kari, as always, believed him.

That day, distraught and indignant, Kari stormed into the bank. Once there, she introduced herself to the manager, explaining that the charges were fraudulent. She hadn’t bought porn, and her husband, a Baptist minister, certainly hadn’t. The bank manager didn’t argue and quickly refunded the money. “Kari was persuasive because she believed what she was saying,” says Linda. “Matt was smart. He let her argue for him because she was the stronger one of the two of them.”

The furor ended quickly with the return of the money.

M
att’s stop in Riesel would again be a short one. A little more than a year after he earned his master’s, the tension was rising. That August of 2002, during a church meeting, an argument erupted. Angry, Kari stormed out. “There wasn’t criticism of me,” says Matt. “But that ended my ministry there. A minister who can’t control his wife isn’t looked well at.”

Jenny and Todd would remember it differently.

They heard rumors that the deacons, a council of five men who oversaw the running of the church, were disappointed in Matt, and that meetings were being held behind closed doors. However it happened, when Matt announced that he had secured a position in Dallas, it seemed that First Baptist in Riesel was ready for him to move on. “The church as a whole didn’t seem upset at their leaving,” says Todd. “I heard that people were beginning to question the direction Matt was leading the church.”

Kari, always Matt’s biggest supporter, didn’t hide that she was ready to leave. “She said Matt deserved bigger and better and that he wasn’t being appreciated,” says a friend.

T
he church in Dallas was Northlake Baptist, northeast of downtown and inside the 635 Loop, not far from White Rock Lake. The largest church Matt had pastored in his still-burgeoning career, it was set into an elongated corner. Beige brick with a soaring front, a cross surging upward over the front doors, the sanctuary had blue and green block windows framed in white. Built for a congregation of four hundred or more, its membership had dwindled over the years, until at the time Matt was hired, attendance at Sunday services hovered around seventy. In its mission statement, Northlake called itself “a small church with a big vision,” and said it hoped “to see people transformed by the power of God.”

If Kari’s sometime brashness, the high emotion that led her to walk out of the meeting in Riesel, had been a negative in that small town, at Northlake, she was one of the reasons Matt was hired. “We liked Kari, that she was young and modern, a career educator,” says one who attended the church. “She was one of the reasons we hired Matt. We interviewed both of them, and we were impressed with her spunk, that she spoke her mind. We wanted not only a pastor but a pastor’s wife who’d mesh well.”

The neighborhood surrounding the church was comprised of streets lined with modest thirty-year-old, one-story houses, where children played in well-manicured yards. The church offered a mothers’ day out program, and as they had at the other churches, Matt and Kari expanded the youth programs. Soon after arriving, Kari began working with the music minister, introducing more modern offerings to the programs.

At first, Kari appeared homesick, but she and Matt quickly made friends among the church members, including Jill and Stephen Hotz. A redheaded mom, Jill taught and coached drama in one of Dallas’s tougher schools. Not long after arriving, Matt and Kari also bonded with Aubrey Harbor, a petite young woman with long dark blond hair, and her fiancé, Joe Blodgett, who had plans that included becoming a minister.

In Dallas, Kari appeared happy. At Northlake, she organized and ran the volunteers who staffed the Vacation Bible School. That year, she worked with the children’s ministry and youth group to raise money for programs in impoverished countries and taught Bible studies. “Her enthusiasm was contagious,” says Jill.

Settling in, Matt and Kari purchased a house in Mesquite, a suburb half an hour west of the church. Linda visited and bought them curtains. At home, Matt and Kari had reversed roles. He did the cooking, and Kari was the one who mowed the yard. He talked often about how he was the one who gave the girls their baths, sounding proud of it. “Matt was more domestic than Kari,” says a friend. “He liked to cook, and she didn’t.”

On weekends, Kari and Matt and Jill Hotz and her family combined efforts on dinners. When Kari cooked, she most often made canned chili and hot dogs. And when the Hotzes cooked and Kari offered to bring a dish, she always brought the same one, cheese grits with jalapenos. “It goes with everything,” she told Jill during one dinner.

“Not when Stephen is making stir-fry,” Jill answered with a laugh.

When a second-grade slot opened at Lake Highlands Elementary, where Kensi attended kindergarten, Kari applied and was hired. The Bakers’ two girls flourished as well. That summer, Kari signed Kensi up for horseback riding and swim team, and Kari and Matt were in the stands, cheering her on. “After what happened to Kassidy, Kari wouldn’t trust a lot of people taking care of the girls,” says Jill. “She was protective.”

As Kari got to know Jill better, she confided in her. At times, Kari made fun of a woman at the church, one who seemed to spend a lot of time following Matt, often at odd hours. “That woman really likes Matt,” Kari said, with a laugh. “I wonder how she comes on to him?” Since Kari didn’t appear to take the woman seriously, Jill thought little of it.

Over time, Jill got used to picking up the phone and hearing Kari rattle on about one thing or another without ever taking a breath or bothering to say hello. “It was like the conversation had never stopped from the previous call,” says Jill. “Kari just kept talking.”

Most of all, they had fun together. “It was hard not to around Kari,” Jill says. Even in church, things happened that made Kari laugh. One Sunday, for instance, Kari sat in a chair and turned around to grab Jill’s hand in the pew behind her. Instead, Kari latched on to the flip-flopped foot of the man seated beside Jill. “Right in church, Kari started laughing,” says Jill. “She laughed so hard, she couldn’t control herself.”

There were things Jill instinctively knew about Kari. Jill saw her as spontaneous and outspoken and loyal. “When Kari loved someone, she really loved them. She was a really good friend, the kind who’s there for you,” she says. “No matter what happened, she had your back.”

For example, there was the day Jill had car trouble, and Kari wanted to pull Matt out of Bible study to help. “Don’t do that,” Jill said.

“I’m worried about you,” Kari said.

As Jill and her husband saw it, Kari and Matt were well matched, and the Hotz family grew to love him as well. Matt taught their son to tie his shoes, and Matt could be a tease, as he was one afternoon when Kari, Matt, and the girls were visiting. Jill cooked, but had to repeatedly stop to answer the phone. When she did, no one spoke. Without caller ID, Jill didn’t know who was calling until she saw Matt holding his cell phone and laughing.

At other times, Matt grew serious, talking about his family and growing up. His parents rarely visited in Dallas, which seemed to disappoint Kari more than Matt. Once he talked to the Hotzes about the foster home his parents ran, saying, “The saddest day in my life was the day I realized the Bakers were my real parents.”

Yet when Barbara and Oscar did visit, they appeared proud of Matt. At a skating party for one of the girl’s birthdays, Oscar repeatedly asked those gathered if they
really
attended “Matt’s church where he preaches.”

He asked so often that Jill mentioned it to Matt, who shrugged, and said, “Yeah, my dad’s a little different.”

While the Bakers rarely came, Kari’s family visited often. From what Jill saw, it appeared they had a good relationship with their son-in-law, something Matt confirmed one day when he said, “I think of the Dulins as my parents. They’re closer to me than my own parents.”

That spring, March 2003, when the anniversary of Kassidy’s death approached, Jill saw another side of Kari, watching as she spent the day remembering the child she’d lost. As they had in Riesel, Matt and Kari stayed home that day, and Kari watched videos of Kassidy. They released balloons in her memory. “My sweet little girl. I really do miss her,” Kari told Jill. But the sadness passed quickly.

“It was a day, and Kari was up and around again,” says Jill.

In her Bible that spring, Kari highlighted in pink the passage that read, “Wives submit to the husband as to the Lord.” Then there was the day Kari articulated how she saw her role as a minister’s wife. Aubrey and Joe, who was studying to be a minister, were getting ready to marry, and Kari described to the bride-to-be the special stresses faced by a pastor’s wife. At times, Kari said, people wouldn’t like what Joe was doing. No matter how well-intentioned, there were those who would think they knew better how to run the church. “No matter what, you have to defend your husband,” Kari told her. “No matter what.”