Every Move You Make. M. William Phelps
Lisa, then a thirty-two-year-old single mother, said she couldn’t get enough of it as she began to fall in love with Evans.
During the week of October 15, Sully and Ed Moore took one more stab at interviewing Caroline Parker. They needed Caroline to sit down and write out a formal statement. Tim’s photo had been all over the television news lately and missing person posters had been hung around the Capital Region. His siblings were pleading for his return. Caroline and Sean, devastated, had given interviews to local reporters, hoping, naturally, it would help.
Ed Moore, Sully and other members of the Bureau felt different, though. They knew if Evans was involved with Tim, it wasn’t going to be good news. Keep the faith and hope for the best, but understand it may not turn out so pleasant at the end of the day.
When Moore and Sully first arrived at Caroline’s apartment, they explained how Tim had been involved in the trafficking of stolen property. They needed Caroline to fess up to what she knew about Tim’s criminal behavior. It had been weeks now. No more bullshit. It was time to talk truth.
Caroline was taken aback by their candor. “I know of no criminal activity that Tim was involved in and do not believe he would do anything illegal like that,” she said with stern assertion.
After a bit more prodding, however, she finally admitted that she and Tim’s relationship hadn’t been as trouble-free as she might have first let on. Tim had left in 1996 for a period of time, she explained. They fought. They had financial problems. But Tim, she insisted, was a family man all the way. “I believe our lifestyle does not reflect Tim having a lot of money from illegal activity….”
Moore and Sully looked at each other: You are so full of shit.
About a week prior to his disappearance, Caroline recalled, Tim had taken a day off from work. Moore and Sully knew—but didn’t share it with her—that on that particular day Tim was south of Albany with Evans selling stolen merchandise to an antique shop that the two of them had been doing business with for years. The owner of the shop had picked Tim and Evans out of a photo lineup. The Bureau had three checks in the neighborhood of $10,000 written out from the shop owner to Tim Rysedorph.
Caroline continued to talk about Tim’s mood around the house during the last few weeks, relating how he was an incredibly private person, especially when it came to whom he was speaking to over the telephone.
“Do you recall any strange calls the past few weeks?” Sully asked.
“I cannot remember any unusual calls except for one. About two months ago, I answered a telephone call from a person I thought was my uncle Gary Ashton. ‘Hello, is Tim there?’ the caller asked when I answered. I said, ‘Hi, Gar, what’s the matter?’ The caller replied, ‘Just let me talk to Tim.’ He sounded mad.”
Caroline said she realized later it wasn’t her uncle Gary, but it was Gary Evans. Everyone in their old Troy neighborhood, where Michael Falco, Evans, Damien Cuomo and Tim had all grown up, she said, believed Evans had murdered Falco.
The last time, Caroline said, she saw or heard from Evans had been when Sean was born. Evans brought over a card and gave them an air conditioner because he was concerned that the temperature in the apartment was too hot for Caroline and the newborn. As the years passed, Caroline said she would mention Evans’s name around Tim, but he would always get upset.
“Don’t ever mention that name again,” Tim would snap angrily at Caroline at the mere mention of Evans. There was obviously some tension and resentment between the two men, but Caroline continued to maintain she had no idea why.
“Anything else you can recall about your husband and Gary Evans,” Moore prodded, “would be of great help to us.” He knew she had more information.
“Well, I remember Tim telling me that if anything ever happened to him, or if he ever became missing, ‘like Mike Falco,’ that I was not to say anything to the police about Gary Evans…. He is dangerous.”
Moore and Sully wondered why she hadn’t offered the information weeks ago.
Continuing, she said, “Tim said that if anything ever happened to him, I should change our last name and move away.”
Considering what had happened the past few weeks, Caroline perhaps realized for the first time that Evans had likely had a hand in her husband’s disappearance. She said she now believed it was Evans, using the alias “Lou,” who had called her the weekend Tim disappeared. Tim was scared of Evans, she added, and had probably gone with him reluctantly because Evans had threatened Tim with Sean’s safety.
It was one of the last conversations she’d had with Tim that really scared her, she admitted. The night before Tim disappeared, a Thursday, she said they had a fight and talked about getting a divorce. “‘I love you…but if you want a divorce,’” she said Tim wrote in a note to her that night, “‘I will give you money for the divorce.’”
Later in the note, after he apologized for being “moody” lately and even “mean” at times, as if he had a premonition of what was to come, Tim wrote of his concern for Caroline and Sean’s safety, should he ever not return home. He speculated that Evans would harm her and Sean and was worried about not being around to protect them.
CHAPTER 10
Lisa Morris lived a life of solitude in a modest apartment that was, by sheer luck, only about two miles from Jim Horton’s home in Latham. Stopping by Lisa’s apartment and badgering her, Horton knew, was going to be the conduit to making contact with Evans.
The first few times Horton popped in, Lisa was passive, unfriendly, and perhaps a little scared. During a Bureau briefing one morning after Lisa’s name had been discovered, Horton told his investigators he had recognized her name as someone Evans had mentioned to him from time to time.
“Gary told me more than once that, in his words, Lisa was simply ‘someone he stopped by to fuck’ every once in a while. I had no reason not to believe him. Gary had a lot of those women in his life.”
The first thing Horton noticed when he knocked on Lisa’s door on October 15 was how homely her apartment, from the outside, looked. It wasn’t run-down, but, as Horton peered through the window, he could tell she hadn’t kept it up perhaps the way she could have. A cop is always studying people and places: body language, vocal characteristics, clothes, how someone walks, eye movement, the appearance of a home, car. Lisa spoke with a smoker’s raspy voice. She wore plain clothes and little makeup. She hadn’t really held down a full-time job, but would work occasionally as a process server, delivering subpoenas to people in civil cases.
It was obvious to Horton by just looking at her that first time that she liked to drink—a lot. She had bags under both eyes and loose, pale skin. She appeared lethargic, as if it had taken all of her energy just to answer the door.
“Paperboy,” Horton said as Lisa opened the door. He was holding a day-old newspaper he’d picked up on her front steps.
Without Horton saying anything more, the initial look Lisa held told him she knew exactly who he was and why he was there. Although Horton never openly wore a shield or flipped it out like television cops, he had a look about him that screamed law enforcement. It was something most cops couldn’t hide. They looked the part. What was more, he kept his handcuffs hanging not from his waist, but from the emergency brake lever in his cruiser, and hardly ever carried his weapon.
“I never wore those stupid tie tags—like a miniature silver or gold set of handcuffs, announcing that I was a cop,” Horton said later. “But it was written all over my face…and, of course, the blue suit. I certainly wasn’t a vacuum cleaner salesman.”
As Lisa invited Horton in and began to talk, he realized the connection she’d had with Evans ran deep and, most important, recent. There was no doubt she had seen Evans within the past few weeks.
“He’s talked about you,” Lisa said, adding, “I’ve heard your name before.”
“I need to know some things, Lisa.”