Читать книгу Every Move You Make - M. William Phelps - Страница 27

Cops are constantly put in the position of making moral decisions. Most are compelled, generally by their nature, to do the right thing. Yet the right thing doesn’t always produce the results they need—especially when it comes to catching murderers.

A few people would argue later that Horton put Christina and Lisa Morris in serious danger by not telling Lisa he believed Evans had murdered several people, especially Christina’s father, Damien Cuomo. Effectively, Horton allowed Lisa to think Evans was nothing more than a burglar, others claimed, when he had every reason to believe Evans was a vicious—and possibly desperate—serial killer who was on the loose.

Did Horton, simply to “get his man,” use Lisa and Christina as pawns in what amounted to a human game of chess he had been playing with Evans for well over a decade? In the process, did Horton knowingly endanger their lives by putting them in harm’s way in order to flush out Evans from wherever he was hiding?

In order to get Lisa finally to give a statement, on December 4, 1997, Horton later admitted, he had to “drive a wedge” between her and Evans, and make her understand that Evans had possibly killed Damien Cuomo. He did this, he claimed, so Lisa would trust him and begin to push Evans away.

One day shortly before Lisa ended up giving Horton and Sully a formal statement, Horton stopped by her apartment and explained that he honestly believed Damien Cuomo hadn’t come home because he couldn’t.

“I have a daughter, Lisa. You know that,” Horton said. “I don’t care who you are, a bad guy or a good guy, it doesn’t matter. You are going to try to reach out to your daughter—even if you’re on the run. Look at what Gary has done to you! He probably did something to Damien and, on top of that, moved in on you once Damien was out of the picture. He’s convinced you that Damien is a terrible father, telling you he took off on you without a word when there’s a good chance he killed him. Now Christina has no father. And you, you’re sticking up for him?”

They were rough words, and perhaps Horton had crossed a line by making a personal plea to Lisa. But he felt he had to do whatever it took to find Evans.

Crying, Lisa seemed to understand for the first time that Evans had been fooling her for the past eight years.

With Lisa in a vulnerable state, Horton took it a step further just to send his point home.

“We think he’s killed Timmy Rysedorph, too, Lisa.”

A week later, prepared to talk about everything she knew, Lisa agreed to give a statement.

“Timing was not only crucial, but a huge gamble,” Horton said later, referring to the reason why he waited so long to tell Lisa he had a pretty good idea Evans had killed Damien and Tim.

“If I told her too much too soon, I could have blown the entire case. I needed to gain her confidence. She needed to trust me. If she had talked to Gary and he asked if I was coming around mentioning Falco and Tim, he would have had Scotty beam him up…. We would have never seen him again, ever. I was sure of that. Throughout the years, he had made me well aware of what would make him disappear forever. And I surely wasn’t worried about him coming back and doing something to endanger Lisa or Christina. He was not coming back to the area. Period.”

Part of Horton’s job was to read people and tweak his style according to the situation.

“I taught ‘Interview and Interrogation’ in several police academies,” he said, “the state police, FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I had time on my side, so I was able to play Lisa with whatever I wanted. Did I use her? Absolutely. Did I use Christina? In a way, I guess I did. I was very attentive to her when I had the chance—i.e., asking her about school, boys, hobbies—without sounding like a parent. I wanted her to like and trust me so Lisa would, too. People won’t tell you anything if they don’t like you.”

How did Horton figure out Lisa knew more than she was saying?

“Gary trusted her enough for him to go there in the first place with Tim. Why wouldn’t he trust her with more intimate knowledge? We were beginning to make a circumstantial case against Gary regarding Tim, even though we had no body. Lisa, as far as we could tell, was one of the last locals not only to see and talk to Gary, but she was sleeping with him and living in between Dunkin’ Donuts and the Spare Room Two. Because of what we saw as pillow talk, not to mention the logistics, we felt she had to know more.”

And she certainly did.

After Evans washed himself off and returned to Lisa’s apartment on Saturday, she said, he sat down on her couch with a bag of chocolate-chip cookies and a glass of milk. As he snacked, she asked him how long he was going to be around.

“I have a lot of things to do,” Evans responded.

A moment later, after finishing his cookies, he left.

At about 10:30 that same night, he called.

“I can’t stay at my apartment,” he said in a whisper, as if someone were listening in on the call. “I feel like I am going to be ambushed any moment. Can I come back and stay there?”

Lisa not only said yes, but encouraged it.

When Evans returned, he had a box of Freihofer’s chocolate-chip cookies—his favorite brand—and a gallon of milk.

“He was clean when he came back; he looked like himself,” Lisa explained. “He apologized for having to leave so abruptly earlier that night, and said he was sorry for being in trouble. He wanted to relax. So we watched a movie. True Romance.”

The next morning, she got up early, about 4:30, and made coffee. Evans, waking up to the smell of the brewing coffee, ran out of her bedroom and yelled at her for stinking the place up. Then he poured the pot of coffee down the drain and sat down on the couch.

Minutes later, after getting dressed, he ran down to T.J. Maxx. On his way out the door, he said, “I have to make a call.” When he returned ten minutes later, he seemed fine, more relaxed.

But fifteen minutes after that, he got up and went back to T.J. Maxx to make what he said was “a second call.” When he returned this time, however, he was “pale, panicked…and visibly shaken. The conversation had gotten him very upset.”

“They’re already looking for my partner,” Evans said, pacing back and forth in Lisa’s living room. “I’ve got to go do something.” It is almost certain to assume that the calls Evans made were to Caroline Parker.

An hour later, he returned with a duffel bag and a bag of dirty clothes. His shoes and pants were filthy, Lisa said. “There was dirt and mud in his shoes and on his pants.”

Evans then gave Lisa two cell phones and told her to throw them in the Dumpster when he was gone. Then he said he wanted her to drive his truck—“with gloves on”—to a local VFW bar around the corner, leave it and take a cab home.

Before walking out the door, he handed her $300 in twenties. “That’s pocket money for you,” he said. “I love you. I’ll keep in touch with you as much as I can for the next few days. I’m gone for good now.” Hesitating, his voice cracked. “You won’t see me for a few years.”

Taking off down the steps that led up to Lisa’s apartment, walking toward Tim’s blue Pontiac Sunbird, Evans turned and yelled out for Lisa to come to the balcony.

“Throw me some spray cleaner,” he said.

With that, he got into Tim’s Sunbird with the spray cleaner and a roll of paper towels and drove off.

Throughout the month of December 1997 and into January 1998, the Bureau followed up on whichever lead it could regarding all the new information Lisa had provided. To no one’s surprise, much of what Lisa had said turned out to be 100 percent true.

The one thing that bothered Horton most, despite all the information Lisa had given him, was the fact that Evans hadn’t contacted her yet. Evans had said “years,” but Horton thought for sure he would have surfaced by the end of January or February. But thus far, at least according to Lisa, she hadn’t heard from him.

Because Evans was officially running from the law and considered armed and dangerous, Horton began showing up at Lisa’s apartment more frequently and stationed a cruiser nearby whenever the state police could spare one. During some weeks, he’d pop in three, four, even five times, at various intervals throughout the day.

“I knew we had gotten everything we were going to get out of Lisa by that point,” Horton later said. “However, I needed to stay in her face and keep reminding her that I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to believe Gary was going to call her sooner or later and emerge from wherever he had been hiding. I could feel it. I knew Gary. He wouldn’t disappear entirely without first rubbing it in my face.”