Читать книгу Love Me To Death - Steve Jackson - Страница 7

Two

Summer 1981, Washington, D.C.

Karen Wilson was smitten almost as soon as the good-looking stranger had walked into the Washington, D.C., Hudson Bay Outfitters store that she managed and had opened his mouth. He wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail and needed some equipment as he was leaving that very afternoon.

She had already hiked the trail, and they spent the next hour discussing what he could expect. Many years later, she would hear unflattering physical descriptions of William Lee Neal and would say there must have been a transformation, “a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” change. Those descriptions did not fit the “Bill” she had met when he chose to approach her, rather than one of the male employees.

It wasn’t that he was dressed to kill or anything, or even his long, wavy blond hair, piercing blue eyes, or engaging smile. There was just something about him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Sweet, yes, and bubbly, like her. He was also into the outdoors, just like her. She could have talked to him all day; he was that . . . that charming.

The reaction surprised her. She wasn’t the sort to be so easily swept off her feet by a man, even a good-looking one. A lovely twenty-two-year-old woman with waist-length strawberry blond hair, she had been born in upstate New York in 1959 to upper-middle-class parents and had attended college for two years, studying English and horticulture before the call of the wild lured her away from school. An accomplished outdoorswoman, rock climber, and cave explorer, she was the first female manager ever hired for the top-of-the-line outdoor-equipment store. She also taught kayaking and twice tried to make the U.S. Olympic canoe team, narrowly missing out by coming in second both times. She was independent, financially self-sufficient, and as tough as the wilderness treks she led as a guide. Then he walked in.

Unfortunately, there was a piece of equipment he wanted that her store didn’t carry, so she referred him to another outfitter some distance away. He had already walked out of the store when she suddenly got the notion to offer him a ride to her competitor’s place on her lunch break. She hurried outside into the sweltering heat, but he was nowhere to be seen. She drove to the other store anyway. He wasn’t there. Disappointed, she sat in the parking lot for a few minutes and was about to leave, when he got off the bus in front of the store, toting his backpack.

“I was going to give you a ride,” she explained lamely. He just stood there, smiling, so she told him to take care on his trip. “And when you get back, stop in and say, ‘Hey,’ maybe we could do a canoe trip or something.” Wilson got back in her car feeling foolish. She realized she was head over heels and ruefully thought, I’m never going to see him again. He’ll go do the trail and that will be the end of it.

She was delighted when she arrived at work the next day and found him in the store, wearing a sharp three-piece suit and sporting a new haircut. She usually only had a half hour for lunch, but he’d already talked her boss into giving her an hour. He’d decided not to go on his trip, he said, so he could take her to lunch.

When lunchtime arrived, he escorted her to a brand-new four-wheel-drive Subaru and drove her out to a country estate owned by an old couple. There, beneath two-hundred-year-old white pines, was a picnic basket already made up. They ate lunch and talked, and then there was “a surprise” waiting for her in the bottom of the basket. A silver necklace. But not just any necklace—somehow he’d found a jeweler to create a silver pendant overnight that matched the Hudson Bay Outfitters logo she’d worn on her shirt the day before. A wolf howling at the moon. He had her at that moment . . . hook, line, and sinker. My God, she thought, I’m in love.

The only problem for Wilson was that she was in an abusive relationship at the time and didn’t know how to get out of it. But Neal talked her into moving back in with her parents, who were now living in Virginia, to get away from the other man so she could see him instead. Her parents loved Neal, in part because he discouraged their daughter’s use of alcohol and marijuana, and he certainly seemed to treat her well. In fact, he enjoyed taking them all to dinner at the finest restaurants in the metro-Washington, D.C., area, where he seemed to know everyone from the pianist to the maître’d, who escorted them to the best table while other patrons waited in line.

Neal was charming, always a gentleman, and fond of surprises and practical jokes. Once he hid a piece of string in Wilson’s spaghetti when they were visiting one of his sisters for dinner. Gagging, Wilson had spat the string out on the floor and the dog had made off with it, sending Neal into spasms of laughter. He was also in fantastic shape. Although only a little taller than Wilson, he was quick and strong, with a washboard abdomen and well-muscled arms and legs. He told her that when he was a teenager the neighbors thought he was crazy because he’d put on his backpack and, holding a canoe over his head, run around the neighborhood.

Wilson and Neal dated off and on for three years. Off and on, only because he’d disappear for months at a time, while she pined for him to return. He broke her heart every time he left, but she couldn’t help herself. He seemed so perfect: smart, he could quote Thoreau, for God’s sake, and read everything he could get his hands on; heroic, he let it slip that he’d been a member of the U.S. Army’s Green Berets and the Alaskan Mountain Rescue Team, showing her photographs of himself on snowshoes, crossing crevasses; and ambitious, he said he owned Neal Tech, which sold alarm systems, including some he claimed to have installed in the White House. He was confident he’d be successful at whatever he put his hand to next.

His attributes seemed endless. He was also sensitive and devoted to his mother. He heartbrokenly told Wilson how his father had suffered a heart attack while driving the family car and had died in his arms. He’d been married once but left, he said, when he caught his wife in bed with another man. She couldn’t imagine what that other woman had been thinking, because she thought Neal was the sexiest man she’d ever met—sparing no expense on romancing her, whether it was rose petals to cover their bed, special lotions and bubble baths, or extravagant dinners, all followed by dreamy massages.

Neal seemed able to fit into any crowd. . . . He could walk into any place and be whatever he wanted to be. He was at home in the woods and could talk the talk of “river people” and wilderness guides. He was just as at ease in expensive suits and $60 haircuts at fancy gatherings, the sophisticate who wooed her with his class and style. She had always dreamed of spending her life traveling, seeing new places . . . and he was, of course, the world traveler, the man of adventure.

He tossed around money like he made it in his basement. She never could figure out where he got it all. Once he told her he was a loan officer, but she’d seen him in a security-company truck. She didn’t think it was her business to ask, believing that the money might have something to do with his mysterious disappearances, which he never really explained. Or perhaps he had generous benefactors as he seemed to know rich people everywhere.

Once they were hiking and came upon a gorgeous log home deep in the woods, whose owners he just happened to know. The couple invited them to dinner and treated him like a long-lost son.

Looking back many years later, she could finally see that there were signs from the very beginning that her perfect man was far from perfect. When they met, he told her he was living with another woman, but that it was a “purely platonic” relationship. She believed him because she was in love, even after they went over to the apartment one afternoon, and he told her to duck when he saw the woman coming out of the complex. He apparently hadn’t counted on her being there. After the coast was clear, he took her up to the apartment and she noticed that there was only a single king-sized bed to sleep on. That’s some platonic relationship, she thought, but he told her again that there was nothing more to it. She wanted to believe him, so she did.

There was one quirk of his that bothered her. They’d be walking down the sidewalk, or in a mall or restaurant, and he’d see a woman in a short skirt or low-cut sweater and would mutter, “Slut.” Or a pretty woman would smile at him and he’d sneer after she passed and say something like, “She’s a whore.” The comments were always made under his breath, so only Wilson could hear, but it embarrassed her and she’d ask him to stop. He’d just walk on as if he’d never said a word. But the next time another woman passed, whether it was that afternoon or a week later, he’d be back to muttering, “Slut. Whore.”

As a lover, he was imaginative and into experimentation. He wanted to know her fantasies. Had she ever thought about sex with another woman? What about with two men? Wilson told him, “Sure, I’ve thought about it; everyone has fantasies.” But that’s all they were to her, fantasies that she would never have acted on.

However, there came a time when he took her to a lodge in the mountains for a romantic getaway. He didn’t do drugs but knew that she liked marijuana and brought some, along with a little cocaine that he lined out. He had her slip into a negligee and opened a bottle of champagne. She was getting all warm and fuzzy, anticipating the rest of the evening, when the telephone rang.

“Who was that?” she asked after he spoke quickly into the receiver and hung up. She didn’t know that anyone even knew where they were.

Neal explained that he was trying to help her fulfill a fantasy, making love to two men. He reminded her that she’d admitted thinking about it. In fact, he’d asked her what sort of fantasy man she’d want and since he was blond and blue-eyed, she’d told him, “Maybe someone with dark hair and green eyes.” But it had been a joke.

Apparently not to Neal. The person on the telephone was a friend of his, “Jesse,” he said, green-eyed, dark-haired, and waiting in the room next to theirs.

“My God, what are you doing?” she sputtered. She didn’t want two men in her bed, only one, him. She was so angry that she started putting on her clothes, getting ready to leave. Then the telephone rang again. He picked it up and simply said, “No,” and hung up.

Later he told her that she’d passed a test. “If you had said yes, our relationship would have been over,” he said. “We’d have had a good time first, but it would have been over.” I passed, she thought, and I didn’t even know I was being tested.

There would be many more tests over the next two years, many she wouldn’t do as well on. But first he talked her into moving to Houston, Texas, with him in 1984. He said that he had a good job waiting and that’s where his mother lived.

It wasn’t long before the red warning flags were at full staff and flapping in the breeze. When they arrived in Houston, he had her lease their apartment in her name. He said he didn’t want the woman at the rental office “knowing we’re having relations.” There wasn’t a job waiting for him, but he made sure that she got one as soon as possible as the assistant manager at an import store.

Still, she ignored the little voice in her head, especially when, ten days after they arrived, he took her to a justice of the peace and they got married. In her mind, she was marrying her fantasy man. But she failed a second test on her wedding night, and this time she met a side of Neal she didn’t know existed.

They were in their room when he said he wanted to play a game of sharing deepest, darkest secrets. He went first, admitting that he’d had sexual relations with other men. Then he asked her a question. Had she ever slept with a married man? “Yes, once,” she said. “It was a mistake, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

Suddenly the game turned violent. He knocked her to the ground and was quickly on top of her with his hands around her throat. “Liar,” he screamed in her face. “You whore!”

Wilson was terrified. Why is he doing this? she thought as she fought to remove his hands. This isn’t Bill. She’d never seen him violent before. He’d talked about getting into fights with other men, but only when he had been in the right. He’d also told her that he had a black belt in karate, even had the uniform and a samurai sword, and was pretty good with his nunchakus. But he’d never exhibited a temper around her; he’d always been as sweet as pie.

Neal finally let her up. He didn’t apologize; she’d done a bad thing and that’s the way he saw it. He made her call the wife of the man and confess what had happened.

Under his tutelage, she soon had herself convinced that it was her fault that he’d attacked her. She’d done something wrong and that’s what provoked him. She’d have to be more careful.

Life went back to normal, and Neal was his old sweet self. A few days later, he announced they were going on their “honeymoon” to a place called Canyon Lake. He’d found a romantic little cabin in the hills where they could see the lake from the front porch. She was excited that they would be spending a whole ten days he’d somehow arranged, despite their lack of money, which seemed to have dried up when they left Washington, D.C.

The night they got to the cabin, though, he wanted to play the questions game again. He asked her another question about her sexual history. A small matter really, but she should have known better than to answer him honestly. Except that’s the way she’d been raised, and he’d said that for their relationship to work, they needed to always be honest with each other. So she answered truthfully, and this time found herself pinned against the wall with his hands around her throat before he pulled her to the ground and continued to throttle her. She got loose and ran from the bedroom into the living room where she hid behind the couch in a little ball. She heard him come out of the bedroom.

“Where is she?” a deep, angry voice asked. It was Neal, but a Neal she had never heard before. She quaked in fear. Not seeing her, Neal went out onto the porch and smoked a cigarette as he paced back and forth. She was obediently waiting for him, hoping he’d calmed down, when he came back in. Indeed, he acted like nothing had happened as far as what he’d done to her. It was all her fault; she had gotten what she deserved and would have to deal with the consequences.

Most of what she suffered through was emotional abuse. If she was five minutes late coming home from work, he’d want to know “who you’ve been fucking.” If she went to the swimming pool and a man stopped to talk to her, he’d somehow know and accuse her of having an affair. He was constantly testing her, but also setting her up to fail the tests. Sometimes he wanted her to doll up when they went out for a night on the town dancing. But if another man so much as said, “Hi,” and she responded, Neal would grab her by the arm, hard enough to bruise, and escort her out. “See how you are?” he’d sneer.

He’d cuss her for the smallest infractions, but it wasn’t always just talk when he got angry. He’d slap her with an open hand or shove her roughly. He couldn’t trust her, he’d say. But he had a quotation, something he’d read: No matter what she had done wrong, or how far she had gone down the wrong road, she could always turn back. “Turn back,” he’d tell her after she’d been punished for some new transgression.

Life with Neal would always have its ups and downs. Most of the time, so long as she did what he said and followed his rules, he was sweet Bill. But break his rules and there’d be hell to pay. The way he controlled all aspects of her life was insidious. He told her how he wanted her to dress. How to wear her hair. What to cook and when to cook it. He moved her like a puppet, but blinded by love, she took it as concern for her well-being.

Of course, none of the same rules applied to him. He came and went as he pleased, and once he got settled in, always seemed to have plenty of cash, though his only job was as the apartment complex’s maintenance man. That job seemed to take him out of the apartment at all sorts of strange hours. He’d get a call and say that he had to go fix some woman’s toilet. Later he’d come back, snickering about how the tenant met him in a negligee. “She just wanted to get in my pants.” She never asked if he had let her; she always trusted him. But as far as he was concerned, she couldn’t be trusted, even though she was never unfaithful to him.

Then there was the day an envelope arrived at their home with a pair of panties and the photograph of a beautiful woman tucked inside. “I used to get that kind of shit all the time.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything.” Wilson wondered how the woman got their address, unless he told her.

She should have left him, but she was too close, too much in love, to understand how he was breaking down the tough, independent young woman she was when they had first met. He’d taken her away from an environment where she was secure—away from her parents, away from her job, away from her friends. She was dependent on him for everything. She had no family nearby, and he wouldn’t let her have friends. She was rarely allowed to go anywhere—except to work—without him. He demeaned her every chance he got, until her self-esteem had tumbled. She couldn’t leave, not when she thought that she was the one who had done wrong. If he was unhappy, then she was the one who was making him unhappy. She had to stay and make things right. It’s what you do when you really love someone, she told herself.

Wilson couldn’t figure out where Neal got his mean streak or his obsessive jealousy. His mother was as good as gold, a wonderful woman, beautiful inside and out. Mrs. Neal thought of her son as her golden child; he could do no wrong. She was the one who taught him how to act around a lady, how to be a gentleman and open doors, send flowers, write love poems.

While his mother doted on him, not everyone was fooled. Wilson’s mother had changed her original opinion of Neal. She told her daughter that there was something wrong with him. “I can’t put my finger on it,” she said. Maybe he was just too nice, too good to be true. Her parents’ misgivings were strong enough that they changed their will so that in the event of their deaths, and if their daughter split up from their son-in-law, he’d have a tough time getting his hands on her inheritance.

Even Wilson was beginning to realize that he was a natural con artist. Not just the way he could insinuate himself into any conversation, be whatever someone wanted him to be at the moment, but in little everyday ways, too. For instance, if he was hungry and lacked cash, he’d go into a McDonald’s and complain that a cheeseburger had been left out of his order and get one for free. But these were idiosyncrasies, she told herself, not something to get alarmed at.

One day one of her rings was missing when she went to look for it. The ring was a family heirloom, and she asked him repeatedly about it. Finally, he admitted that he’d taken it to a jeweler “to have it cleaned.” He got it back but the initials had been ground off. The jeweler had “overcleaned” it, he said. It was obvious that the jeweler had been planning on selling the ring, but still she didn’t want to admit to herself that her husband was conning her, too.

As that first year of marriage passed, the “other” William Neal was revealing himself more and more often. The comments that he made about other women in passing had continued and, if anything, were more vehement, louder, until she was worried that the women might hear. But he wouldn’t stop, and if she wasn’t careful, the comments were directed at her as well.

The sex began to change, too. When they were dating, their lovemaking was always pleasurable and mutually satisfying. He was always into experiments, such as body painting and photographs, but after they got to Texas, it started getting kinkier, more aggressive. Then it was “pain is good,” and “it hurts when it’s good.” It wasn’t lovemaking anymore. It was hard, angry, absentminded, almost as if she weren’t a participant, or it didn’t matter who was there as his partner. They had sex when he wanted, and how he wanted it. At times he would cuss her for being “a slut,” slap her around, and then want to go to bed to “make up.”

After a year, he decided they were going to leave Texas, which was fine with her. Neither of them liked the weather or the surroundings. They talked about using the money that they’d saved, mostly from her job, to travel up and down the East Coast looking for the next place to live.

Wilson was excited, not only for the adventure, but because she thought it might be what she and Neal needed to get their marriage back on track. Maybe if their life weren’t so ordinary and stressful, they could recapture the magic. However, she should have known that nothing was going to change when he insisted before they left Texas that she be rebaptized “to cleanse your soul.”

They drove a van to visit relatives and look for a place to settle down again. They stayed in Hohenwald, Tennessee, for several weeks, then moved on to New York, Vermont, and Virginia. They finally settled on Antioch, Tennessee, about fifteen minutes from Nashville. She loved it there; it was like a dream come true. Once before, when she was seventeen, she’d taken a trip down a river near Antioch; when she’d returned home, she’d told a friend that someday she’d return to Tennessee and live in a log cabin.

However, Wilson and Neal settled into a low-rent apartment, not a cabin. Then the tests and accusations resumed. They’d only been there a couple of months when Neal said that his mother had decided to move out of her home and into an apartment. He said that he had to go down and help her fix up her place to sell. He figured that he’d be gone about three weeks.

Three weeks turned into ten, and then into three months. Wilson had to take a second job and then a third to keep their place without any financial help from her husband. Neal had all kinds of excuses for why he didn’t come home: his mom’s place needed more work than he’d expected; then his mom’s new place needed even more work. When he called, he sounded distant. She’d talk to his mother and ask her if he was all right. “Oh, honey, don’t you worry about Bill, he’s just fine” was the standard reply.

Wilson had no idea what could be taking him so long, but he sure seemed aware of her every move. He knew if she came home late from work. He knew if she had a bottle of beer in her hand when she answered the door. No sooner would she walk in than the telephone would ring. It would be him wanting to know where she’d been and with whom. It was eight months before he came back to Tennessee. That lasted about two weeks. Then he left a seven-page letter, front and back, listing her faults-—the number one being that she couldn’t be trusted. He thought that she was perfect when he married her, but she wasn’t and he was sorry but he couldn’t deal with it. He asked for a divorce.

She was stunned and heartbroken. Marriage was supposed to be forever, like her parents’. The next day, she was talking to the couple across the hallway when they made a startling admission. She’d just told the woman that Neal had left her when the other woman said that she’d thought Neal was a little weird. But that hadn’t prevented her or her husband from keeping a journal, at his request, of Wilson’s comings and goings. The woman even showed it to her—a steno pad with notations about the company she kept, her comings and goings, even what she had in her hands as she stood out in the hallway.

Wilson asked why they’d done this. The couple shrugged. Neal had befriended them but mentioned that she couldn’t be trusted. So they’d agreed to spy when he asked them to keep tabs on her for him.

Two weeks after he left, he was back. He said that he loved her and wanted to make it work. She agreed. After all, she was a young woman desperately trying to salvage her marriage. She had wed for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, “till death do us part.” She believed in those vows and was willing to try again.

Neal had a new plan for them. She came home one day in October 1985 to find that he’d sold all of their belongings, most of which were hers. He’d gotten rid of her climbing gear and camping equipment—thousands of dollars’ worth of hightech gear—for a fraction of what it was worth. He’d sold all of her pots and pans for $7, had gotten rid of several antiques given to her by her mother, and had given away a lot of what he couldn’t sell. All she had left were a few clothes, a fifteen-inch television, and the backpack and tent she kept in her car. It was all part of a grand idea, he told her as she walked around the empty apartment in disbelief. They were going to start fresh, live in their van for a few months to save money, and then head to Colorado.

Wilson perked up at that; they’d talked about living in Colorado practically ever since they’d started going out. It was the dream. She didn’t care about all her stuff—not much anyway—she could always get more. She cared about being with Neal, especially if they were going to Colorado. But they never left.

For the rest of October and November, they lived in the van, parked in a friend’s driveway. He forbade her to go into the friend’s house, except to use the rest room. She was working as a secretary and had to get herself looking presentable every morning in the cramped quarters of the van so she could go to work while he did nothing all day.

On December 1, he announced that there was a change in plans. He said that it wasn’t working out. She had until January 1 to get out of the van. That’s how she learned that he was divorcing her. She panicked. She had a good job, but she was going to have to find a place to live without Neal, her once-perfect man.

At the time, she couldn’t understand the timing. It was only later that she realized that selling her possessions, and pocketing the money, was his way of trying to strip her of every last thing financially and emotionally. He thought that he’d force her out of Tennessee and back home to her parents. It became clear when she received the divorce papers and saw that he’d filed them before they even moved into the van that this had been his plan all along. He had never intended to go to Colorado, or anywhere else, with her.

His plan to destroy her might have worked following their first year of marriage. But there was one thing his being gone for eight months had done for her. Almost without realizing it, she had begun to take back control of her life. She was self-sufficient, paying the bills, going out with friends. Now she resolved to stay put, finding an apartment and moving in with her few possessions.

The divorce was final a few days after Christmas, 1985. The last time that she ever saw him, he found her in a girlfriend’s apartment across the hall from where she lived. He demanded that the other woman leave so he could talk to his ex-wife. The other woman told him what he could do with such an order, so Wilson led him back to her place.

Even though they were divorced, he was still the same accusatory Neal. He saw that she had purchased a water bed and wanted to know why she needed it. She told him that she needed a place to sleep, “and what business is it of yours?” Finally, he got down to the business that he’d come to discuss: he wanted her to leave town; she was cramping his style.

Wilson refused; she had little else, but she had herself back. She said that she wasn’t budging. If anyone was leaving, it would have to be him. He stormed out, parting with one chilling prediction: “I’m going to fuck over every woman in my path. You all ain’t nothing but a bunch of whores.”

She didn’t hear from him again until March. He called her from Texas and, more shocking than anything he’d done to date, apologized. All that time he was in Texas, he said, he’d been living with another woman . . . apparently the same woman she could now hear yelling at him in the background. “The divorce wasn’t your fault,” he said. But the apology was only halfhearted and it was clear he really did blame her. “You know I put you on a pedestal. . . . You were my perfect little bird,” he said. “Then when I found out you weren’t perfect, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t trust you.”

So, she thought, the first test I failed on our wedding night destroyed my marriage. She had never given him a reason not to trust her, had never been unfaithful. All she had done was fail tests she had been set up to fail. He’d said that he was sorry, but she’d always wonder what his real motive was. Was it because he really did love her at one time, or at least thought he did? Or did he call her to apologize as a way to hurt the woman who was yelling at him in Texas?

For three years, Wilson mourned the loss of her marriage. There were times when she wished he’d come back, not knowing if she’d have the strength to turn him away if he did. At the same time, whenever someone inquired about her past and she told them, she’d add, “If you ever run into a man named William Lee Neal, turn and walk the other way.”

It was a long time before she would trust another man enough to let him get close to her. She had a friend, Fred, who gradually let her know that he cared for her. He wasn’t overly romantic, nor did he live life on the edge. He was soft and gentle, shy and yet strong, a man who didn’t need to beat his chest. With him she felt safe and loved. They got married and had a daughter in 1989.

However, just because she was through with Bill Neal, it didn’t mean that he was through with her. Every now and then, there’d be a telephone call from him. Even if she moved, he found her. She got unlisted telephone numbers, changed them seven times over the next nine years, but still the phone would ring and it would be him. Finally, she quit trying to hide. He was going to find her if he wanted. More frightening, he seemed to know as much about her as ever. She’d get a new car and he’d call and tell her that he liked her choice. He was letting her know that he was still keeping tabs on her, still in control.

Meanwhile, Neal seemed to be going through some pretty rough times. He often sounded drunk when he called. He had a bad cough that never seemed to get better. She stayed close to his family, who kept her updated on what they knew of his whereabouts and activities, though he was secretive with them, too. His mother told her that she had scolded him “for losing the best thing you ever had,” and she continued to treat Wilson like a daughter.

Through them, Wilson learned that he’d married again, to another Karen—Karen Boxer. He’d apparently taken her, too, for her money, prompting calls to Wilson from police investigators looking for Neal. He’d divorced a third time and then married a fourth, this time a young stripper named Jennifer Tate.

Apparently, he was hanging out in Denver, Colorado, bars a lot, acting like something out of a Wild West show. He told her that he’d even legally changed his name to William “Cody” Neal, but that he was known in the bars and strip joints as Wild Bill Cody. She had to laugh at this latest reincarnation; he’d never been a cowboy, not a real one.

The calls stopped for a time. Then her parents died, first her dad and then her mother, and he called soon afterward. He was well aware that she stood to inherit a considerable amount of money, and now he wanted some of it. But her parents had put the money in a trust, and while she received lump sums from it on a regular basis—a fact he seemed to know—it was tough to put her hands on the kind of money he asked for. Otherwise, she would have still found it difficult to stand up to Neal and his stories. He’d try different tactics to get money out of her. Once it was that the Mafia was after him; he said that he owed the mob money and if he didn’t pay it back, a hit man was going to take him out. She was racked with guilt. God, if I don’t give him the money, he might die. But she didn’t give him the money, and he managed to stay alive. It didn’t stop him from trying a different story though.

Only once did she hear again from the man she had loved and married. His mother died in October 1995, and he called distraught and needing a sympathetic shoulder. He told Wilson that he loved her, that he had always loved her. She had to admit she felt the old twinge when he said that. No matter what he’d done to her, there was always that one last shred of some memory that he could use to make her cry.

She expressed her sympathy for his loss. She had truly loved his mom like her own. It was nice to be talking to plain old Bill, not some stranger who called himself Cody. But there was no going back, she told him. Maybe someday, when they were both sixty, she said, they’d meet again and talk about old times. Until then, she wished him the best of luck.

The last time she heard from Neal, he called out of the blue asking for money again. He said that he needed it so he could divorce his fourth wife, Jennifer. Once he had the divorce, he’d be free and hinted that maybe they should hook up again. She didn’t give him the money.

When she called one of his sisters, she learned that he had already divorced Jennifer Tate. He was just trying to con her again. This time Wilson pulled a con of her own. She told her new husband, Fred, that William Neal had died. She didn’t want to have to explain the real reason why a telephone call would put her in a bad mood. For her, Neal had told her his last lie and really was dead, at least to her heart.