initiated a secret game of treasure hunt in the office, where they left hidden gifts for each other, then sent directions by e-mail to find them.
On June 12, Michael e-mailed Kristin to thank her for the card she’d hidden in his office. It reminded him of a game his grandparents played throughout their marriage of more than fifty years, in between stealing kisses, flirting, holding hands, and finishing each other’s sentences. Their game, he explained, consisted of taking turns scribbling the word “shmily” in unexpected places for the other one to find—in the steam on the bathroom mirror, in the ashes in the fireplace, in the sugar and flour containers, and in the dew on the windows overlooking the patio, where his grandmother fed them “warm homemade pudding with blue food coloring.” Once, his grandmother even managed to write the word on the last sheet of a roll of toilet paper. After she developed breast cancer, his grandfather continued to display affection for his one true love by painting her bedroom yellow and taking her to church until she was too weak to get out of bed. He played the game until the very end, writing “shmily” on the pink ribbons of her funeral bouquet.
“Although I couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of their love,” Michael wrote, “I had been privileged to witness its unmatched beauty.
S-See
H-How
M-Much
I-I
L-Love
Y-You.”
On June 14, Michael directed Kristin to look under his desk for a box with a folded newspaper and a sheet of paper on top.
“Remove the sheet of paper (I need it) and remove the newspaper. The contents are just for you just because!” Michael wrote.
Kristin replied, “It seems as if you know me so well and can anticipate my feelings without fail…. Everything I ever imagined in a lifelong companion, husband, best friend is present in you.”
On June 20, Dr. Blackbourne asked Michael to meet with him and a police detective, Terry Torgeson, about a case the Medical Examiner’s Office had handled five years earlier. The office had determined the cause of death to be Versed, a sedative in the benzodiazepine family, but Torgeson had recently gotten a tip that fentanyl was the true cause of the woman’s death. So, another investigation was conducted. Michael sent the woman’s blood samples to National Medical Services, his former employer, and it came back positive for Versed and a significant amount of fentanyl. The Medical Examiner’s Office had missed the fentanyl because its toxicology lab didn’t test for it.
Even while Kristin was engulfed by emotion for Michael, she also seemed to need the same level of affection from Greg. She continued to tell her husband she loved him and seemed to get frustrated and upset when he pulled away. At the same time, she was also trying to please Michael, constantly reminding him that he was the most important person in her life.
On June 5, her first wedding anniversary with Greg, she sent Michael a hug and kiss through cyberspace. “I LOVE YOU!!!” she wrote. “See you in my dreams.”
In an e-mail on June 20, Kristin wrote to Greg, “What? No ‘I love you’??? You must be busy.”
Greg apologized by e-mail nine minutes later and told her the words she wanted to hear.
On June 26, Kristin e-mailed Greg to tell him that Michael had an extra ticket to the Natalie Merchant concert for the following night. She said his wife ended up not being able to go and suggested he take a coworker. She said they had a raffle, and she won. She’d like to go if he didn’t mind.
“Let me know what you think so that he can give it to the runner-up if you don’t want me to go, okay?” she wrote.
There was no such raffle.
That same day Michael and Kristin had lunch together. After lunch he asked Kristin if she was up for submitting a paper to the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and presenting it at a conference in Milwaukee in October. He’d been sending her copies of e-mails he’d sent to a toxicologist from SOFT, discussing the possibility of presenting a strychnine case the San Diego lab had worked on. He’d finally gotten the go-ahead.
It was a huge career opportunity for Kristin, and Michael wanted to help her with it. Later that day, before they both left the office to go home to their respective spouses, he e-mailed her to say how beautiful she looked reading at her desk.
Kristin obviously felt torn and confused by her two relationships. The next day she messaged Greg twice, trying to connect with him. She said he looked “really tired” that morning, and she was wondering how he was feeling. “I guess you must be pretty busy,” she wrote. “You never seem to have time to respond to my e-mails.”
She tried messaging him again the day after that, first thing. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to make you happier,” she wrote. “I feel so lousy and empty inside, very alone.” She said she missed him and had for a long time. They should use an upcoming trip to Mammoth “as a chance to escape and reconnect,” she said, and asked him what he thought of her idea.
He agreed, asking her what time she’d gotten to the lab. Apparently, they’d had an emotional conversation that morning, and she’d left the apartment upset. She replied that she stopped at Starbucks on her way to work, taking time to let the tears pass and to compose herself. She asked how he was feeling, but he didn’t answer. Two hours later, her tone grew more insistent. She found it difficult to concentrate at work with so much on her mind. Why wasn’t he answering her?
“Are we going to be alright? I miss our closeness. I miss you,” she wrote, urging him to respond.
“I’m okay, I guess,” he replied finally, saying they could talk when they got home.
Kristin e-mailed him again that afternoon, telling him she loved him and that she hoped he’d enjoyed his lunch. She said she was thinking of him, signing off by using her pet nickname “Wifey.”
The couple did go on the de Villers brothers’ annual summer camping trip to Mammoth over the Fourth of July holiday. Jerome’s girlfriend, Jacinta Jarrell, known as J.J., went along, too. Greg’s brothers thought Kristin seemed more needy than usual on that trip. Jerome and Greg went off hiking for two and a half hours, and when they came back, the brothers said Kristin was upset and crying because he’d been gone for so long.
Meanwhile, back in San Diego, Michael was having a difficult time dealing with the thought of Kristin vacationing with Greg. It was most difficult at night, when he wondered what she was doing, what she was thinking. So, he wrote her e-mails every day to tell her that she was on his mind. He reread the notes she’d written to him, perfumed with her scent, and replayed memories of their time together. He missed her like crazy and was counting the days until her return.
On July 4, she’d been gone for five days and just as many long nights. He was rereading some of her e-mails, trying to warm his heart, when the phone rang. It was Kristin. Her call raised his spirits so much that he wrote to her about it afterwards: “A well-tuned orchestra playing a waltz could never sound so wonderful, the voice that induces the growth of a smile, the feelings of love, of warmth, and of so many” other feelings he couldn’t even describe.
Greg found one of Michael’s love letters in the apartment in June or July. Furious, he made Kristin give him Michael’s home phone number and called him around 9 or 10 that night.
Michael
