Free In the Still of the Night by Ann Rule Page A

herself, Dave had probably been the last person to talk with Ronda. During their first phone call after Ronda's death, Barb had found Dave as shocked as she was. Maybe they could talk out some of their worries and preliminary conclusions as they drove south on I-5 toward where Ronda had lived. . . . and died.

B ARB T HOMPSON STOOD ALONE
on the curb outside the luggage area on the lower level of the SeaTac Airport. It had just begun to get light, and the wind cut through her like icy knives. The airport was decorated with evergreen trees, red, green, gold, and silver ornaments and displays, and she found herself wondering why. It didn't seem like Christmas. It had taken everything she had to get on the plane in Spokane and the sick feeling in her stomach hadn't lessened at all. She didn't care how she looked. When she couldn't bring herself to curl or fix her hair, she'd slapped on an old gray baseball cap that read "Classic Rope" on the bill. Some company must have given it to her when she bought horse training equipment. Her eyes were red and swollen and she tried to hide them with sunglasses.
    "Still," she recalled, "I was afraid everyone who looked at me could see right through them--and me. They couldsurely tell that I was just an empty shell, a dead woman walking, going through the motions."
    She knew that if anyone said a word to her, she would break down and start crying hysterically again. Did anyone scurrying around her know how close she was to losing it? And how she berated herself for thinking she had the right to break down?
    Barb glanced around anxiously for Dave's green Dodge truck. He was always punctual. She dreaded facing him because she knew in her heart that he was in pain, too. She repeated a silent mantra, "I can do this, I
must
do this," for what seemed like a million times. But her watch said she'd been waiting for only three minutes. Finally, she spotted his familiar truck.
    Dave grabbed her bags and loaded them in his truck and then gave her a quick hug. They had to move away from the curb and make room for other cars that were picking up arriving passengers.
    They drove in silence for minutes as Dave turned left on 188th, the street bordering the south end of the huge airport, headed east, and then south, entering the on-ramp to I-5. They both knew they had to talk about what had happened, but neither was ready yet. Oddly, Barb had always thought of Dave as more of a son-in-law than either of Ronda's husbands. He was a compassionate man, and an honest cop. If she could talk to anyone, it would be Dave, but her questions stuck in her throat.
    The drive south along the freeway was familiar to them both, and it would become much more so to Barb in the years ahead. They cleared the edges of Tacoma, passed the Fort Lewis army base and McChord Field, then Olympia, and headed toward Centralia and Lewis County, trying very hard to ignore the ubiquitous Christmas decorations.
    Dave Bell began to tell Barb about the hours he'd spent with Ronda two days before--the last day of her life. Neither he nor Ronda had had any inkling then of what was to come. Or, if Ronda did, she didn't say it out loud.
    Dave said he had helped Ronda pack many of her possessions and carry them to her Suzuki Tracker. David recalled that Ronda had said she might stay with a woman friend when she returned from her trip to Spokane. He thought it was Cheryl Gilbert.
    "She was never again going to live in the house she shared with Ron," Dave told Barb Thompson. "She promised to give me a wake-up call on Wednesday so I could drive down and take her to the airport."
    But there had been no call from Ronda. Dave said he'd driven to her house anyway. He had called her on the way down and been surprised when Ron Reynolds answered.
    "I asked to speak to Ronda," Dave Bell told her mother. "But Ron came on the line."
    Bell took a deep breath before he related that Ron had been "almost nonchalant" when he broke the news that Ronda had committed