would know about Dad? Fine, I will call you sometime. I just wanted you to know I’m okay. I am happy. I may not be the greatest person in the world right now, but I am talking. Fine, I will call you, but I’m done after that. You have Max, and I am grateful, but after the cop stuff from before, I am done. I am not ten years old, Mom. I can leave him and move on with someone new.
Move on with someone new? It was an odd way for a mother to speak of her son, and Nancy felt sure that her daughter had not written the message. “I don’t care what man is out there.” Nancy shakes her head. “She would have never left Max!” A startling post soon popped up on the new page. It was a photo of a hand with a sparkling engagement ring, and the caption read: Dave and I got engaged.
“It was absolutely not my daughter’s hand.” Nancy emphasizes that Cari’s fingers were long and slender, and the photograph depicted a squat hand with short fingers. This new Facebook page in Cari’s name was obviously the work of an impostor. Impostor or not, the owner of the new page had managed to friend a few people associated with Cari’s original page. Some who did not know her well assumed that the posts were genuine, and they clicked “like” and commented enthusiastically over the news of her engagement.
Nancy alerted Deputy Phyllips, and he contacted Dave, who was still single and intended to stay that way. He was certainly not anyone’s fiancé, but he had something even more bizarre than a fake engagement to share. At 12:30 A.M. on January 6, Dave had received an unsettling email from someone claiming to be Cari. You will do exactly as I say, and then I will let her go, the letter began. The attached photo showed a woman in a car trunk with duct tape covering her mouth, her hands tied behind her back. The email stated that the victim was Liz, but her face was turned at such an angle her features were not discernable. She looked a bit like Liz, but she could have just as easily been some other dark-haired woman.
The instructions were clear and to the point: You will dump Liz, and you will start seeing me again. He was to call Liz and break up with her via voice mail. Kidnapped Liz would then play that message for her abductor to verify that he had followed orders. If he did not comply, Liz would die, locked in a trunk where no one could find her. In a phrase that sounded like it was plucked straight from a low-budget late-night TV movie, the stalker added: So, tick tock.
Tick tock? The implication was that Dave had better hurry or he would never see Liz again! If the email was meant to frighten him, it didn’t work. “I called B.S. on it right away.” More words popped up: I am sick of her getting what belongs to me. You can’t play with my feelings, understand? Do it, or say good-bye to her.
Though Dave doubted that Cari had kidnapped Liz, he had to admit that the woman in the photo certainly looked like Liz. Just to be sure, he texted her. “She’s potentially in a trunk, tied up. It was the least I could do.” But Liz didn’t respond.
It was late, and she was probably sound asleep. It would be ridiculous to take this seriously, Dave told himself. She texted him the next morning and asked why he had been trying to reach her in the middle of the night.
He tapped out a reply: Psycho was playing games. Was just checking on you. Pleased that he cared enough to be concerned, Liz texted: So sweet. What’s up today, handsome?
The stalker was especially active that second week of January, and Dave was drawn into numerous text conversations. When a female friend, Lisa, left his apartment after visiting on January 7, the tormentor immediately sent him a message threatening to follow her, but nothing came of that. Apparently, she realized that Lisa was not her competition. Dave and Lisa weren’t dating, and he received no more warnings about her.
In another text, “Cari” claimed she’d moved into his apartment complex. She toyed with him, first suggesting they meet, then backtracking when he agreed. He pretended to flirt, hoping to lure her out of the shadows, so the cops