Free Who Killed Chrissy?: The True Crime Memoir of a Pittsburgh girl's Unsolved Murder in Las Vegas by Beverly Simcic

thoughts and feelings to strangers in the grocery
store on a daily basis. There was nothing to hide in Pittsburgh, only for the
secretive clans that operated beneath the radar of everyone else’s momentum.
These types were far and few between in Pittsburgh. 
    I
knew things wouldn’t get any better, and I believed that from this point on we
would become acquaintances only.  There was never a friendship between us. 
Chris was en-grossed in whatever it was she was planning, and she wasn’t
telling me her plans. I got only bits and pieces of stories and I knew that
there was never a real friendship with her. I must have made it up in my mind,
for the Chris that I wanted to be friends with was the one who tickled my son
and played with him like a small child would.
    I
didn’t like the feeling of offering up my sincere emotions and being stepped on
for doing so. I didn’t like her constant state of anger, and I didn’t like
Marty, even though I had never met him. There was so much I didn’t like at this
point that I turned off everything in my brain, and once I turn myself off, I
was done feeding the monster. 
    Even
if a person stops feeding the monsters, they will still come looking for you.
There is no guarantee in life that not feeding them releases you from their
attention. They seek you out, they mark you for their prey and they devour you.
    Being
the victim of a monster has nothing to do with whether or not you seemingly set
yourself up to be victimized, or whether you’re naïve or worldly, or whether
you’re an innocent bystander. Monsters are monsters. They look for their
victims in different ways, smell them out with senses that regular people never
think about. 
    Monsters
were closing in on their prey.
     
     

FIVE: THE PRIZE FIGHTER
     
“Some choices we live not only once but a
thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.”
–Richard Bach
     
    I wake up early out of habit. Being a single mom has
many disadvantages, and one of them is that there is no one else to share the
wakeup call in the morning with your child.
    You
are it. It becomes habit.
    Chris,
on the other hand, is a late sleeper. So I’m quiet while making my coffee this
morning, because I sense she’s not getting up early—but I’m wrong.
    She
is already in the bathroom having a shower as I come back in from the patio
with my coffee, and then she’s getting dressed. She’s putting on the white
professional masseuse outfit that she purchased, and she’s packing up lotions
and oils in a case that looks like something masseuses might use in their
trade. I had completely forgotten about the tickets from the fight promoters.
    She’s
ready to leave and the sight of her in all white with her hair slicked back in
a tight bun was a shock to me.  Once she put on her glasses she looked exactly
like someone who would be working in a health club with a professional
clientele, and I’m impressed.
    She
heads for the door with her carrying case and mumbles on the way out, “I might
see you later on at the pool.”
    Yesterday’s
craziness is forgotten. I’m going to do some laundry and then Larry and Kathy
are picking me up to go to some different casinos to hit the slot machines.
It’s all starting to become mundane to me, and I’m feeling somewhat bored—like
maybe it’s time to go home. There is only so much you can do in Vegas if you
don’t have money for shows, dinners and tourism.  I am not the tourist type in
any sense of the word.
    During
lunch Chris explodes through the front door of the apartment and she is all
smiles. Looking up from my tuna sandwich, I felt happy for her already, “Hey,
how’d it go over there?”
    She
starts throwing off her uniform and unpacking the masseuse case and talking at
the same time, “Oh, it was wonderful.  In fact, it was fabulous. Steve is the
epitome of polite gentleman with class, and funny, too—so funny—so funny! He
was impressed with my knowledge of deep tissue