Love Me To Death. Steve Jackson

      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