and rent for an apartment. I told her, ‘If it doesn’t work out, don’t come to me. Don’t ever come back.’”
He had virtually supported Liz and her kids for almost two and a half years and was now investing his time and money to help her get a new place, but she continued to behave like a victim. “She went running to Dirk to tell him I was kicking her out.” Liz found an apartment in Persia, Iowa, a tiny town in Harrison County about thirty miles northeast of Council Bluffs. Surrounded by farmland, Persia has a population under 400, so it’s understandable that the businesses in town didn’t appear to be thriving. At least one storefront was boarded up, but most of the homes in the area were lovingly cared for. Liz’s apartment was on the second floor of a somewhat creepy 1912 brick building, originally the town’s mortuary. Erected after the 1905 fire that destroyed many of Persia’s buildings, it was built to last and was a landmark on Main Street, a long, straight road on a gradual uphill slope.
In early January of 2016, Garret helped Liz move mattresses to her new place, loading them into a pickup truck she’d rented and lugging them up the steps, into the new apartment. They managed to fit most of her other possessions into the U-Haul, and Garret breathed a sigh of relief when he dropped off the last load. She couldn’t take her pets to the apartment, and that was fine with him. They were used to his place, and he’d grown fond of them.
Cherokee, apparently unaware that Garret, too, assisted Liz in the move, remembers that they packed Shanna’s stuff into a small caravan of two SUVs, and “I moved her to her new place in Persia and stayed the night.” Shanna was still hurting from her gunshot injury, so Cherokee did most of the heavy lifting. Afterward, “We drank, and watched TV,” Cherokee recalls, adding that she felt bad for her friend and tried to help her as much as possible.
Liz briefly talked with Detective Doty a couple of times over the next weeks and forwarded him more incriminating emails from Amy. Liz was frustrated that it was taking so long for the idiots to get off their butts and arrest Amy. She’d practically delivered “Amy’s” confessions to Doty on a silver platter. What more did the guy want?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LIZ WAS A MASTER MANIPULATOR, but she had met her match. The investigators were now pulling her strings, and she was their obedient puppet, dancing toward her doom, oblivious to the fact she was performing exactly as the “dumb cops” had planned. Dave Kroupa, too, was about to be manipulated and would unwittingly share her stage as detectives choregraphed his next move.
Investigators needed Liz to share more details about the murder. The best way to accomplish that was to push their suspect to the brink of despair. What did Liz want more than anything? Dave. Who did Liz hate the most? Amy. What possible scenario would stir Liz up into the frenzy of all frenzies? Dave and Amy, together again!
When Doty deceived Liz, he’d made a show of taking her into his confidence and told her, “I hope this information does not leave this room,” but he knew that asking Liz not to tell Dave that Amy was a murder suspect was like asking a fish not to swim. As anxious as she was to tell Dave, she was likely showing restraint because she wanted him to learn about it after Amy was arrested, so Amy would be caught off guard. But it was taking way too long for the cops to get around to that, and Liz could wait no longer to tell him the marvelous secret. The mother of his children was a killer! Finally, he would see that he must cut ties with the greedy woman who took all his money and forced him to spend holidays with her!
In late January, the detectives received the call they’d been waiting for. Dave sounded shell-shocked as he asked about the secrets Liz had been so eager to share. Detective Avis grimly advised, “I’d be damned moved in with Amy, if I were you.” Avis gave the impression he was doing Dave a favor, sharing confidential information because he, too, had a family. Man to man, father to father, Avis’s tone implied that Liz was dangerous as he stressed, “Since Liz did come and tell you this, I would