The idea that Liz was plotting against him with the guy she was cheating with was both insulting and hurtful.
The interview with the detectives lasted about an hour, and halfway through Garret got a text from “Cari.” “If I remember right, it was something as simple as, ‘Hi. How was your day?’” She also had a new phone number, and she texted that to him. He immediately relayed the information to the investigators. Whatever “Cari’s” reasons for her bizarre behavior, she was a human being, and Garret felt, “She needed help—which is why I agreed to keep texting her and talking to her, to help the investigators try to find her, so that they could know it was actually her, and she was okay.” He agreed immediately when the detectives asked to download his phone. It was new, with virtually no history. Most of his communication with “Cari” had been on his old phone, and he promised to bring it in the next day.
He left the interview in a fog. The scenario the investigators had painted was so different from the reality Garret knew. In this new twisted version of his world, Liz’s good pal, “Cari,” was threatening to kill her, both women were sleeping with some guy named Dave Kroupa, and his own girlfriend was involved in a devious plot to set him up with the nut who’d been terrorizing her. Liz was indignant when Garret confronted her. The cops had it wrong. Dave was a guy she’d dated years ago. Sure, they were friends. They saw each other when their kids played together. How dare Garret suggest she was cheating? It wasn’t her fault that Cari had flipped out. Of course, she knew Cari was gaga over Dave. But there was nothing romantic between Liz and Dave. If Garret believed that, he was as delusional as “Crazy Cari!”
“Essentially, Liz said she was kind of caught up in the deal, just because she was friends with Dave, and Cari was someone he’d dated. They broke up, and Cari wasn’t happy about it.” As for labeling his photo “fat ass,” Liz was insulted that he would accuse her of such a thing. And the idea that she was trying to dump her stalker on him was ludicrous. Hadn’t she just got done telling him at lunch that there was a problem with someone bothering her? It was Cari. She sounded surprised that he hadn’t realized that, when she thought she’d made that fact perfectly clear. Garret really needed to listen better.
As Liz spun her words around him, he felt almost foolish for doubting her. He told himself he’d overreacted. None of it was Liz’s fault. If anything, she was more distressed than he was by the whole mess. If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have gone to the police. This Cari person was obviously a basket case if she was freaked out because Liz had dated Dave a lifetime ago. If Garret allowed himself to be jealous of their bygone relationship, then he was just as unreasonable as the nut who was causing all the trouble.
It crossed his mind that the cops could have deliberately misled him about the situation to throw him off balance. Maybe they thought he was hiding something and wanted to rattle him. It was kind of a low blow to falsely claim his girlfriend was cheating on him and that she’d captioned his photo “fat ass.” But Liz sounded genuinely offended by those accusations. Garret wasn’t sure what to think about the baffling situation.
He was just beginning to see tiny, blurred fragments of a tragic mystery that he now played a part in. He did his best to make sense of it, but he knew only what police and Liz had told him. The detectives knew a lot more than Garret did, and Liz knew more than all of them put together, though she had managed to make everyone believe she was as mystified as they were.
If Garret had seen the email Liz had received six days earlier, he would have been even more bewildered:
Hey, Cari and I would like Dave and you to come out to dinner Friday night. It’s on me. I would like to meet him.
Plus, it will be a good chance for me to sort out if they have feelings for each other. Cari says she doesn’t have feelings for him, but that he still has feelings for her. So, I would like to see for myself if she is telling