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  Nancy had named Adam, so she bowed to her husband’s choice for their daughter. “I wanted her to be a Kelly,” she admits. “I let him spell it, too, otherwise it would have been Carrie.” The uncommon spelling was occasionally frustrating for Cari. When she was a young girl, she was somewhat “upset when she couldn’t find her name on a barrette or a bracelet in a store. When she started working and had to wear a nametag, her name always looked like Carl, because it would be spelled out in caps. She even got a letter once addressed to Carl Farvere! She really wasn’t pleased with that!” Despite the unusual spelling, Cari liked being named after a famous singer. The singing Carrie was from Des Moines, Iowa, the same city where the young Farver family lived for a while before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska.

  Denny would eventually earn a good living as an insurance actuary, but finances were tight early on. “Dennis worked two jobs, and I went back to work when Cari was nine months old.” Nancy was an excellent secretary, detail oriented, efficient, and always cheerful. Denny was a little old-fashioned and didn’t like the fact his wife worked, but she enjoyed her job, and they needed her income. “Otherwise we couldn’t make ends meet.”

  With the shine of the romance worn off, they realized that they had little in common, and neither was happy in the marriage. Adam was almost four, and Cari eighteen months old when their parents divorced in the spring of 1976. Though it wasn’t always easy because sometimes they lived in different cities, Denny and Nancy worked together to make sure their kids felt loved and spent quality time with each of them. Little Adam craved time with his father, and Nancy missed her son terribly during the long periods she lived apart from him, but it was only fair that Denny, a dedicated dad, got an equal role as a parent. Cari was so young when her parents split that she naturally gravitated more toward her mother, but when she got older, she visited her father often, and they formed a strong bond. Nancy was glad about that. “Denny was a very good father,” she remarks. “He was great with kids, and his kids looked up to him. He always had time for them.”

  By the summer of 1979, Nancy had been a single mother for three years, and it had been almost a decade since she and Mark had split up. When they discovered they had both been invited to a friend’s wedding in Macedonia, they were excited about seeing each other. Though Mark had had his share of girlfriends, he’d never forgotten his first love and was pleased to learn she was unattached. Nancy took extra care getting ready for the wedding and looked stunning in a white skirt with a sleeveless brown blouse. “It was August, so I had a good tan,” she remembers, adding that both she and Cari had always tanned easily. When Nancy’s gaze locked with Mark’s at the reception, it was immediately clear the attraction was still strong. He asked her out, and the next evening they went to the quarry. It was a hot night, with a bright moon reflected in the calm, black lake. The water was deliciously cool after a scorching day, and they slipped in for a swim. It was romantic and also fun. The first friends and first loves were thrilled to be back together, and it felt right. Mark could still make Nancy laugh, and he was even funnier than she remembered.

  Neither of their mothers, however, was enthusiastic about their reunion. Nancy suspects that Betty felt she was too shy for her gregarious son. As for Luanne, she was worried that her divorced daughter was moving too fast. Both mothers were glad to be proven wrong when they saw how happy their kids were. Nancy and Mark were married in a magical outdoor ceremony in the quarry in 1981, at the tail end of the “hippie” era. Cari made an adorable flower girl, in a summer dress trimmed with gingham. Nancy was lovely in a gauzy, off-white ensemble with a flowing skirt as she and Mark faced each other and exchanged vows. Nearly forty years have passed since that summer swim in the moonlight, and they have been together ever since.

  Mark was a teacher and good with kids, and Nancy’s children took to him instantly. He taught drama and art but realized that his days in that field were numbered when the school lost its funding for their art programs. He ended up working as a salesman for thirty years, selling filters for the engines of diesel trucks, and he was so likeable that he thrived at that job, too. Even as he pedaled filters, the artist in him could not be squelched, and Nancy loved the way he doodled elaborate masterpieces on the paper tablecloths whenever they had to attend boring banquets.

  Nothing delighted Mark more than seeing kids happy, and he was so excited about the Barbie House that he got Cari for her ninth Christmas that he roused her hours before she was ready to wake up. She was eleven when she started serving as his chauffeur—but only when it wasn’t a school night! He played on a volleyball team, and after the games, the teammates got together at a local bar. Cari often went along, and while the kids ran around playing, their parents drank beer and played cards. “Mark likes his beer,” Nancy notes. But he was not about to drink and drive, so Cari drove home. The roads in their little town were long and lonesome and surrounded by cornfields. Very rarely did they encounter another vehicle on the two-mile drive. Cari was a good driver, even as a child, and she got them home safe.

  The girl was fearless, always up for any challenge. That didn’t change when she grew up, and she didn’t hesitate when one of her boyfriends invited her to go skydiving. She bravely leapt from the plane and found the experience thrilling. As is often the case with intelligent people, she grew restless without variety in her life. When she was a teen, she had many boys interested in her, and they would “go together” until she broke up with them. She was always the one who did the breaking up and tended to tire of them quickly, but “she always managed to stay friends with them.”

  Cari met Max’s father, Frank, at the University of Kansas, and while it was at first romantic and wonderful, the relationship fizzled when the excitement did. Cari discovered she was pregnant just as they were breaking up, so they attempted to stay together. Despite their best efforts, it didn’t work out. Nancy was worried about how her young daughter would cope with single motherhood. At the time, Cari was working as a secretary, and Nancy advised her to find something more lucrative. “She’d always had a good aptitude for computers” and had a chance to take a special, six-month course but didn’t have the five-thousand-dollar tuition. Grandpa Max and Grandma Luanne stepped up and paid for it. Cari gave birth in December 1997, and about ten weeks later, she graduated and “got a tremendous job because of that computer course.”

  Cari announced that she planned to name her baby after her Grandpa. While Max Bisbee appreciated the sentiment, he was not so certain it was the best thing for the boy. With only three letters, it sounded more like a nickname, and he admitted he had never really liked his own name.

  “How do you feel about Maxwell?” Cari asked him.

  “Dad was okay with that,” says Nancy. “He is so very proud of Maxwell, and now he tells people he is his namesake.”

  The baby was officially Maxwell but also called Max. When Cari and Maxwell moved in with the Raneys, he became more like a son than a grandson to Mark, who had never had his own biological children. Maxwell’s father lived too far away to play an active role in his life, but there was no lack of love and attention from father-figures. His Great-Grandpa Max, Grandpa Denny and Grandpa Mark were thrilled to welcome a new baby, and Cari was pleased her son had a trio of positive male role models.

  The instant Cari held her son for the first time it was obvious she would protect him with the ferocity of a lioness guarding her cub. Any qualms Nancy had about how twenty-three-year-old Cari would cope instantly vanished when she watched her with Maxwell. He was her number one concern, and motherhood made her stronger. There were still struggles ahead, but now Cari had a sense of purpose that would never waiver. Over the next years, she would marry and divorce twice, and change occupations several times. When Maxwell was very young, he and Cari moved to Topeka for a couple years, and “It broke our hearts,” Nancy remembers. But they moved back to Macedonia, and life finally seemed to be going well for Cari in the months before she disappeared. Her position at Wes
t Corp had been a good fit, but some of her earlier choices had baffled her mother. Once, Cari had accepted a job doing office work for a construction company, and Nancy was certain she’d be bored. She was right, and Cari did not stay long there.

  At one point, she studied to become a surgical nurse. She got through the classes “with flying colors.” Cari had a strong stomach and had never been one to get weak in the knees at the sight of blood. Her training required her to be present during surgeries, and she didn’t flinch when the surgeon’s scalpel cut into flesh. But there was a problem. Whenever the surgeon cauterized flesh, Cari fainted.

  Nancy remembers Cari’s bewilderment as she confided, “Mom, I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m not squeamish. That smell just made me pass out. All of the sudden I was waking up on the floor.” It was not a one-time thing. Four times Cari fainted when she smelled burning flesh. The last time she woke up on the operating-room floor, she looked up into the worried face of her supervisor who was peering down at her. The woman gently suggested, “This might not be the right career for you.”

  She was right, but Cari was annoyed. Her plans were thwarted by her own inexplicable and peculiar reaction. After she got past her irritation over the wasted hours studying for a profession that could never be, she found humor in the situation and poked fun at herself. Everyone who heard the story laughed along with her. It crossed no one’s mind that there was a dark reason for her reaction. Had Cari had a premonition—one she sensed on a visceral level? We’ll never know for certain, but considering what came to be, the fainting spells could have been a harbinger of the tragedy to come.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN THEY RECEIVED A MESSAGE from the maniacal texter telling them the car was missing, the Raneys reported it stolen. The 2005 Ford Explorer was in their names, and they also paid for the insurance. “If it was in an accident, we’d be liable,” Nancy explains. That, of course, was the least of their concerns. The car could lead them to Cari. Maybe the police would find it, rolling along the highway with their daughter at the wheel. On Monday, December 3, 2012, they filed a stolen car report. Dave, too, was looking for the Explorer. From his perspective, it was his stalker’s car, and if he could find it, he could confront the crazy person who was making his life so miserable. He regularly cruised the neighborhood on the lookout for the black SUV but saw no sign of Cari or her car. If he’d known her better, he’d realize that it was completely out of character for her to turn her back on those she loved, especially at such a crucial time. Her father was nearing the end.

  Nancy couldn’t bring herself to tell Denny that their daughter was missing. She knew she’d see the pain in her own eyes reflected back at her in his. How would a father, ravaged with cancer, deal with the news his daughter was missing? No one wanted to add another burden to the man’s thinning shoulders, but Cari’s absence was devastatingly apparent. Denny knew his daughter would never purposely abandon him when he was so ill. He would know something was wrong. He had to be told. Another family member broke the news to him as gently as they could.

  On December 7, 2012, Dennis Farver slipped away. Three days later, Maxwell turned fifteen. His birthday passed with no word from his mom. With both his mother and his grandfather gone, it was a time of great loss for him. How could so much have changed in a year? Only twelve months earlier he had celebrated his fourteenth birthday. His family had been complete then—happy and healthy and excited about the holidays.

  Services for Dennis were held on December 12 at the Lutheran Church in Newton, Iowa. Mourners gathered at 1 P.M. Many took their seats, only to find themselves glancing anxiously at the entryway, hopeful that Cari would appear. She did not. It was a horrendous December for Cari’s relatives. While most of the families around them were caught up in the spirit of the season, enjoying the holiday lights and cheery Christmas music, it seemed hollow and pointless to Nancy. How could they celebrate without Cari? Nancy and Mark pushed through for Max. They put on brave faces for their grandson, and he did the same for them. They bought Christmas presents for each other and some for Cari, too. They prayed she would be home to open them.

  On December 20, the skies opened, releasing an avalanche of white over the Midwest in a snowstorm so powerful that one CNN news reporter wryly noted that the timing was right for the anticipated eve of destruction. December 21, 2012, was the predicted Mayan doomsday, the writer pointed out, and while the furious storm was not exactly the end of the world, it zapped the electricity in nearly half a million homes in thirteen states. Some areas got over a foot of snow, and thousands of holiday travelers found themselves grounded when flights were delayed or cancelled. Iowa’s Interstate 35 suffered a thirty-vehicle pileup with fatalities, near Fort Dodge, about a hundred miles north of Des Moines. Drivers’ vision was obscured by the blizzard, and they had little control on the icy road, creating a snarled nightmare of crunched metal and human suffering for the Iowa State Patrol to sort out.

  In her Macedonia home, Nancy stood at the window, staring out at what might have been a wondrous, white world under different circumstances. Now she worried about the fact that Cari had left her winter coat behind, and she thought, She could be out there. Is she freezing? It was hard for Nancy to enjoy the feeling of wrapping her hands around a hot mug of coffee or snuggling under a warm blanket. How could she take pleasure in the warmth when she didn’t know if her daughter could do the same?

  Dave Kroupa was hunkered down in his apartment. He didn’t worry about whether or not Cari was cold. She seemed to be doing just dandy from where he was standing. The snow hadn’t slowed his stalker down. He continued to receive dozens of antagonistic emails and texts each day, all from someone claiming to be Cari. What had he done to make her hate him so much? In the space of a couple of hours, she had gone from being what seemed like the perfect woman to a spiteful fouled-mouthed nut. The behavior was so outrageous that Dave surely could not have expected a logical explanation. And yet, he asked for one. Maybe he was hoping that the wonderful woman he had known would shed the craziness and become herself again—if only for a moment—and explain why she had thrown everything away. Dave texted: Why did you start acting that way? It frankly blows my mind. It all came out of leftfield.

  But there were no explanations, only more ugly words.

  It didn’t help to block the calls. They came from multiple untraceable numbers. Someone had also gone to a lot of trouble to create numerous email accounts, most with addresses that were variations of Cari’s name, some with Dave’s name mixed in. The addresses registered with Google included DavesgirlCari, KroupaCari76, JustCari29, and leakroupa. Many times, Dave deleted the emails without opening them. Changing his phone number didn’t help. His stalker managed to almost magically find his new number, though he gave it to a short list of people. Liz and Amy told him that they were having the same problem.

  It was as if the tormentor were invisible, peering over his shoulder as she obsessed over his every move. Liz dubbed her “Crazy Cari,” and they often vented to each other. “We’d both become victims,” Dave stresses. “We had something in common that we didn’t have with anyone else. We knew each other, and it was easy to talk to each other about the situation.” Some of the messages were more disturbing than others. In late December, an email, allegedly from Cari, was sent to Dave. I really am pregnant. I’m seeing Dr. Michael Woods. I love you, and we need to figure things out for this baby, so please talk to me.

  If Cari were pregnant, he was not responsible. “I got fixed a long time ago,” he confides. Cari had had a hysterectomy before she met Dave, so the claim was ludicrous, clearly a fantasy of someone out of touch with reality. Liz complained that she, too, had been dragged into the baby drama. She showed Dave an email exchange that started with a message, apparently from Cari: Dave and I want to provide a happy home for this baby, so I am kindly asking you to please back off and leave Dave alone.

  Liz had responded with a desperate plea: Listen. Just leave me alone. If you want David that
bad, have him. I am so sick of all this drama. I don’t want to be in the middle of it anymore. You are terrorizing me, and I don’t need it. I like David, but this is way too much. Just leave me alone. Please, I am asking, go away. If seeing David is the problem, then I will stop. I just want you and your craziness to go away. I can’t take it anymore. Liz’s email made it clear that “David” was not worth the terror she was forced to endure. Even so, she stuck by him, and he had to give her credit for that. She was proving to be a loyal friend.

  * * *

  Not long after Cari’s father passed away, Nancy dreamed of him. Her ex-husband no longer appeared sick. Denny stood before her, strong and vibrant. “Nancy, she’s with me,” he said gently. She both heard and felt his words, spoken with such intensity that she was yanked from her slumber. Mark was asleep next to her, and she listened to the steady rhythm of his breathing as she realized something wondrous had happened. She had seen Denny, and though he had appeared in a dream, it was more than a dream. “It was very vivid,” too vivid to be a story her subconscious had created. It was as real as anything she had ever seen or heard in her waking hours. The ache in her heart was soothed by a sudden certainty that Cari was okay. Not here among the living, but in the Afterlife. Heaven.

  Cari was with her father and Grandma Luanne, her great-grandparents Bret and Mabel Bisbee, and all of those she loved who were no longer here. They were taking care of her, and she could never be harmed again. The “dream” was a gift—not an outright cure for her grief, but a balm that numbed the edges of horror. In many a quiet moment, when she allowed herself to relax, Nancy recalled the love in Denny’s voice and again felt that certainty that Cari’s soul had survived whatever evil had been done to her.