Worth More Dead

6, when, as Denise knew, Carolyn planned to ask Bob for a divorce.
     
    Although he had to know his marriage was moribund, Bob Durall’s friends and coworkers saw no sign of stress in him. He had always had unexplained absences from work, but since he was a supervisor he didn’t have to explain where he was. Of course, his job demanded that he be extremely proficient with computers, and he had access to the most complex and up-to-date ones available at the King County Housing Authority. He had an office with a door he could shut, and those who worked for him were used to finding him hunched over in front of a screen, tracking information vital to the department’s records. He was the one who checked on other employees at the Housing Authority to be sure their computer skills were up to par and that they were performing well. He made sure that no one spent too much time on their personal interests on the department’s computers.
    But there was nobody who checked Bob Durall’s computer.
    On Thursday, August 6, 1998, Carolyn’s friends at work could tell that she was distracted and a little depressed. She finally confided in several friends and told them what Denise already knew. She had made a decision: she was definitely going to ask Bob for a divorce that evening. She wasn’t sure how he would respond, but she would never expose their children to an emotional scene. At the very least, there was bound to be an argument. This was the best time to do it.
    “I’m going to tell him tonight,” she told several coworkers who were her closest friends.
    “Oh, Carolyn,” one of the women cried, alarmed. “No! You mustn’t be alone when you tell him. We’ll all go out to dinner with you. You can tell him, but at least we’ll be close by.”
    She shook her head. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I can handle it.” She said that her neighbors weren’t that far away and, besides, Bob wasn’t physically violent. He was suspicious and jealous—even obsessive about some things—and he always had to have his own way, but she didn’t fear him. “He’d never hurt me,” she said firmly. “He may cry, but I know he wouldn’t hurt me.”
    Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to him to have an audience when she broke the news to him. Divorce wasn’t a spectator sport.
    As Carolyn left her office that night, she was wearing a periwinkle-blue silk pants suit.
    “She walked past my desk,” one woman recalled, “smiling her beautiful smile. She said to me, ‘Wish me luck. Tonight’s the night.’ I told her I would keep her in my prayers, and then I said good-bye to her. It was the last time I ever saw her…”
    When several of her friends asked her to reconsider facing Bob alone, Carolyn turned back to them, trying to reassure them. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    Before she reached the parking lot and her 1990 maroon Ford Aerostar van, she turned around a second time and went back to calm her coworkers’ fears. They will never forget what she said.
    “If I’m not here tomorrow morning,” Carolyn said quietly, “just remember that my whole life is in my desk.”
    Her van was barely out of the parking lot when the phone rang. It was Denise, calling from Lake Chelan. She had been worried about Carolyn all week. “When I talked to her on Monday,” Denise said, “I said, ‘Keep your chin up and you can do it. You’ll be fine, and it’s going to work out okay.’ It was a good conversation. She told me twice, ‘Have a good vacation.’
    “It was seven minutes after three when I called the office on Thursday afternoon, and Kim Arriza answered. She said Carolyn had just left, that she was very nervous and worried.”
    Kim told Denise that Carolyn intended to go ahead with her plan that night and was going to talk to Bob Durall as soon as she got home. Again, Denise felt that she should be there, close enough for Carolyn to come to the Jannusches’ after she told Bob.
    “We had given her our security code, though,” Denise said, “so she could go to our house if she needed to.
    “But Thursday night I had a bad dream about Carolyn, and I woke up needing to talk to her. It was a nightmare full of blood and she was in danger.”
     
    Carolyn was never late to work, never. She was due at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter at 8:30 Friday morning, August 7. After a mostly sleepless night, Denise called at 8:37 to talk to Carolyn, but she wasn’t in the office yet. “I thought, ‘No