Don’t Look Behind You

Hansen left nothing at all; she might as well have been abducted by aliens and whisked away in a spacecraft.
    Although local gossip said that Bob had murdered Joann and hidden her body, he would have had to have done a clever job at that. No shred of her showed up.
    There was never a real police investigation, only a haphazard missing complaint from a husband who didn’t seem that disturbed that his wife might be in danger.
    Although Bob had law enforcement acquaintances, he wasn’t close enough for any of them to pull back on investigating him. Some of them liked him well enough and even felt sorry for the troubles he had. Still, most of his male friends were cautious around Bob and didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. His temper was legendary. He could do a lot of damage when he was blind with rage.
    To the outside world, he was the guy whose wife had run off and left him to take care of three little kids alone.
    And that, of course, was the image he wanted to portray.

Chapter Nine
COLLATERAL DAMAGES
    For every victim of violent crime, there are almost always several more people who suffer from the fallout of the tragedy. No one can accurately predict what will happen to children who lose a parent, or who suffer from childhood abuse. Some can override their sadness and loss and become well-adjusted adults; others are traumatized forever after.
    When Joann Hansen went out of her children’s lives, they lost the key person who had always made them feel loved and safe. Nick, Kandy Kay, and Ty were only four, three, and two, and Bob had to hire babysitters. He didn’t soften his answers to their questions about “Where’s Mommy?” Rather, he cruelly told them that their mother didn’t care about them—that she had run away from them and wouldn’t be back.
    Nick Hansen was the oldest, nearly five, and he probably missed his mother the most. Although he had precious few memories of her, at least he had a few; his younger siblings had none at all.
    “I
can
remember being in a car with my mother, and she was crying. Another time, she was taking me to the ocean. But that’s all that I recall—other than the feeling of being safe and warm in her arms—and her taking care of me.
    “I recall asking my father where my mommy was—can see him clearly in my mind, sitting in his recliner chair. He didn’t want to talk about her at all. He just said, ‘She’s gone.’”
    Strangely, Nick’s very earliest memory is not about his mother. Rather, Nick recalls an odd incident that he believes happened to one of the multitude of babysitters Bob Hansen hired.
    “I don’t remember how it happened, but she accidentally cut her wrist and she must have sliced into an artery because I saw blood spurting all over the kitchen.”
    What he really saw is a matter of conjecture. It’s quite possible that Nick is remembering his mother’s murder—but his mind would not allow him to recall Joann bleeding profusely.
    After intensive therapy, Nick Hansen believes that his response to having his mother suddenly disappear from his life was to turn to “infantilism.” He didn’t want to be a big boy any longer; he wanted to wear diapers and eat baby food like Kandy Kay and Ty did.
    He could not cope with his life as the oldest child in a home without a mother.
    Kandy Kay and Ty felt the loss of Joann, too, but it was more diffuse. They were sometimes overwhelmingly sad, but they could not explain why. They were simply tooyoung. When pressed, Bob Hansen told all three of his children that their mother had gone away and left them.
    And they believed him. They had no other choice. With Joann out of their young lives, they no longer saw Patricia Martin either. Patricia had been like an aunt, even a second mother, but Bob would have nothing to do with her. All his children knew was that Bob was there; he cooked breakfast and supper. They still had Christmases, and their father sometimes took them on vacation trips. As always, he took dozens of photographs of himself and his children. It certainly looked as though they were a happy family—even though they didn’t have a mother.
    That wasn’t remotely true.
    It was almost as if Bob Hansen lived two lives. One was what happened inside the walls of his house—a life where he was cruel and abusive to his children—and the other was the world in the photographs he took, the pictures that showed a perfect little family.
    After seven years passed, Joann Ellen Hansen was