Every Move You Make. M. William Phelps
Near the end of the letter, Evans told Lisa not to worry: I’m on my toes. Kicked into survival mode. The word “survival” was underlined. Bigtime. My life depends on no mistakes.
Evans had, basically, two different sides to his personality: One included characteristics of a happy-go-lucky weight lifter who liked to string along as many women as he could and impress them with stolen jewelry and exotic trips paid for by a life of crime. The other was a professional, sociopath mastermind criminal who would take off into the wilderness if he thought the cops were on his trail and live like a U.S. Navy SEAL, gearing up for what he believed was an approaching war.
During this particular trip out west, Horton would later learn, Evans ran into several problems, which would ultimately force him back east, mainly logistical problems and financial constraints. He was running low on cash. Despite having displayed a “wad” of money to the clerk at Mail Boxes, Etc., in California when he mailed Lisa her package, Evans admitted later he was having a problem finding antique stores to rob. New England, specifically, is a haven for antique shops and barns filled with valuable artifacts. People come from all over the world to travel around New England “antiquing,” as they call it. On top of that, Evans had several locations in the Northeast where he could fence stolen property. Out west, he was on his own.
The “jobs” he was pulling out west consisted of breaking into cars, boats and shoplifting small items from department stores. But these were considered “high exposure” crimes that offered little return. A smart criminal like Evans could get caught a hell of a lot easier breaking into a parked car than if he took the time and planned an antique shop burglary, where he was in his element. He simply couldn’t find, as he later noted, that “one big score” out west that could have set him up for a few months financially. Moreover, the West was as foreign to Evans as red meat and alcohol; he was out of his league. There were even times when he had become so obsessed with the notion of being caught, he swore in his mind that Horton was stalking him.
“His paranoia snowballed,” Horton said, “and he had no escape or release from it—even in his mind. He told me later he mostly camped while out west. He would have crazy dreams at night and wake up in a cold sweat, thinking we were surrounding him. Add to that what he had already told [Lisa]—that he wasn’t going to be taken alive and couldn’t bear the thought of spending twenty-five years locked up like a ‘caged animal’—and you have a desperate sociopath, literally losing his mind, prepared to do anything to survive.”
Indeed, Evans’s psychological meltdown would never be more evident than when Horton found out what he had done to Tim Rysedorph.
Besides giving an explanation of how scared he was of being caught, and dissing the cops, seemingly, in every other sentence in his letter to Lisa, Evans made a point to say he was concerned about the welfare of Lisa and Christina: I wonder about you guys all the time. He encouraged Lisa to date a man she had seen in the past: For security, even if it’s not what you want in your heart. Do the smart thing…. My life is fucked.
The most important section of the letter for Horton was a section where Evans had given Lisa dates when he was going to contact her next: I am going to try to contact you [at Jessica Stone’s]…on the 13th, 14th or 15th. I’m traveling on those days.
Then came the words Horton wanted to hear more than anything else: I miss you very much and think I can see you somehow. It’ll take some doing.”
When Horton read those words, he wanted to pump his fist in the air. We’ve got him. Because if there was one part of Evans’s character Horton could count on, it was his stringent practice of keeping his word to his women. He’d lie, of course, where it suited his needs; but when it came to females, Evans meant what he said.
In addition, what drove Evans’s desire to reunite with Lisa perhaps more than anything else was his hearty appetite for sex.
Hey, hound dog, Evans wrote at the end of the letter, I’m super horny. I need your sweet ass for some “marathon sex” like we did so nicely.
Horton laughed as he finished reading the letter, thinking that Evans was prepared to travel three thousand miles across the country for a piece of ass.
Or, did Evans know Horton was going to ultimately read the letter? Was the entire event scripted by Evans himself—a setup?
A cautious, if not stealthy, plan had to be put into effect immediately in order to try to trap Evans when, as he had promised, he made contact with Lisa. A phone tap had to be placed on Jessica Stone’s and Maxie’s, the two bars Horton knew Evans would call. Placing a tap on the line would take time, though, which Horton didn’t have.
To think that Evans was just going to hand himself over to Horton seemed too simple. It was more likely he was playing one of his games, strategizing and planning a way to slip into town to meet up with Lisa, turn over a “big score” and zip back out of town without being detected.
Sully found out from the Sacramento Police Department (SPD) that on May 7 a man identifying himself as Jack Flynn had entered a Mail Boxes, Etc. in Sacramento. Pulling a $50 bill out of a “large wad of money,” the man paid $44.32 to send four packages to various cities around the country: Voorheesville, New York; Gainesville, Florida; Hoosick, New York; and, as they already knew, Latham, New York. The clerk at Mail Boxes, Etc., described the man as “stocky…[carrying] a large army-type duffel bag.” When Sacramento police showed the clerk a photo of Evans, he confirmed it was him.
The Florida address turned out to be that of Evans’s half sister, Robbie. She had lived in Florida since the early ’80s. The Hoosick and Voorheesville, New York, addresses belonged to former friends. Evans had sent them, like he had his sister, worthless books and jewelry. The Latham address was, of course, Jessica Stone’s.
It was clear Evans was unloading all of his material possessions so he could travel lightly en route back to the Northeast. Besides the letter to Lisa, the notes he sent along with the packages to his half-sister and friends were insignificant except for a stark and direct message of desperation and finality, as if he were never going to see any of them again.
CHAPTER 22
Lisa began stopping at Jessica Stone’s whenever she had a chance to see if Evans had tried to make contact again. For the past ten days, she hadn’t heard a peep: no phone calls, packages, letters. It was as if Evans had abandoned his entire plan—a possibility Horton had worried about all along.
Then, on Wednesday, May 27, after nearly two weeks of silence, Lisa walked into Jessica Stone’s and…
The bartender, a man who knew Evans because of his affection for Jessica’s French fries and the fact that he had been in the bar several times with Lisa, said he had taken a call earlier that day from a guy named Louis Murray. “It was Gary,” the bartender said, a smirk on his face, as if Lisa and Evans were trying to pull one over on him. “I recognized his voice, Lisa.”
“What did he say?”
“He said to be here at five o’clock tonight; he was going to call back.”
Lisa was, by this point, torn in many different directions. She still loved Evans and was beginning to feel as if she had let him down by “giving him up” to Horton. Nevertheless, she also had an understanding Evans had been responsible for the disappearance of her former boyfriend Damien Cuomo, the father of her child. Running on pure emotional adrenaline, medicating any anxiety she felt with booze and marijuana, Lisa began to turn to Horton for support. There was even a thought that Lisa was becoming attracted to Horton in a sexual manner because they had spent so much time together. Horton, of course, always kept the relationship professional, ignoring her advances, writing them off as a by-product of the rapport he had spent months building. Yet, anything could set Lisa off at this point in the game. Horton had to be careful. The stakes were as high as they were going to get—especially since Evans had called and given a specific time when he was going to call back. Everything had to synchronize perfectly. If one part of the plan went wrong, it would fail. If Evans was back in town doing countersurveillance on Lisa, he knew Horton was sniffing around,