“Is yours as big as the one I’m wearing?” Monica had also found a bill from a jewelry store for a smaller ruby heart like the one she wore.
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about,” Anita answered calmly.
She did, of course. Paul had given Anita a gift of a small ruby heart on a gold chain.
“How can you live with yourself being with another woman’s husband?” Monica screeched, not mincing words.
“I’m not with him. I’m not seeing him anymore,” Anita replied softly.
It was true, but Anita could tell that Monica didn’t believe her. Suddenly Monica stopped and looked around at the craned necks and fascinated faces. She seemed to have no more questions. She had already achieved her aim of creating a scene.
“I think you should talk to your husband,” Anita said quietly.
Just then a heavyset woman came out of another office. She had no idea what was going on at Anita’s desk, but her face brightened when she recognized Monica. She came over and said hello.
Monica gushed, “Oh, hello. It’s so good to see you, Nancy.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, I have to go now. Bye!”
With that, Monica and her friends strode out of the bank.
Relief spread throughout Anita’s tensed body as she slowly lowered herself to her chair. As she thought about it through the day and the entire scene sunk in, anger overtook her. She snatched up the telephone and called Municipal Court, asking to speak to Monica Dunn. She walked into my world; I can call her in her world, Anita fumed silently.
Monica was upset at the call and asked how Anita got the number, as if it were unlisted.
Anita spoke her piece. “I don’t have any designs on Paul. I’m not the reason he’s leaving you.”
The phone call was short and to the point. Monica was out-raged.
Afterward, though, Anita felt humbled, because she knew Monica was right. She had absolutely no business being with another woman’s husband.
Later, after Anita found out that Monica had had an affair while married to Paul, gotten pregnant and had an abortion, she fumed. “The monumental gall of that woman to come down on me.”
When Paul returned home that night, Monica confronted him and told him to leave. As always, he did as she said.
If Monica felt emotional turmoil, she masked it when she visited attorney Victor Titus, Paul’s friend. Soon after, she and Paul separated. She announced she was going to be seeking a divorce and contacting another lawyer who was not so close. She never made any claims of spousal abuse to Titus nor did she say anything about his affair or her own.
A few days later, Monica went to visit handsome Farmington Police officer Lawrence “Dusty” Downs. “She came into my office in the detective division and asked if she could talk to me about something,” Downs said, explaining it had to do with Paul. “Monica had a bruise on the right side of her face,” Downs said. “When I noticed the bruise on her face, that was the first time I had physically seen her. It had been common knowledge throughout the department, throughout the building I should say, that she and Paul were having marital difficulties. When she walked in the room, it was an assumption on my part the bruise may have been partially related to that.”
Her sister’s boyfriend accompanied Monica. On the occasion, Downs said Monica spoke for the first time of having suffered abuse at her husband’s hands and confided she thought he was taking steroids. Downs took photographs of her and gave her a domestic violence packet.
Downs said after Monica’s disclosures that he was concerned for her safety and her well-being. Monica hadn’t bothered to mention to Downs that the a few days before she had found in Paul’s truck a letter proclaiming his love for Anita.
But Monica was not always so upbeat. Her best friend, Vicki Maestas, who knew Paul because Vicki’s husband and Paul were casual acquaintances, said that Monica often came to work with tears in her eyes or eyes reddened from crying. Vicki worked with Monica for eight years and had been close to her during the time they were court clerks and even during Monica’s brief stint working for a bail bondsman. Monica told Vicki Paul constantly came over to the house to talk to her after she told him to move out and that he “harassed” her at home and work by calling or stopping by unannounced. “He was driving by, trying to find out where she was all the time and just constantly bothering her.”
Paul’s actions angered Monica. Maestas didn’t describe fear in Monica’s demeanor. Monica told Maestas she had snooped in Paul’s truck and found a letter Paul wrote to Anita. That they had had an affair was obvious. Maestas described Monica’s fury at finding out about the affair. Monica told her she’d made copies of the letter, keeping one and giving the other copy to her father.
One day at work, Monica seemed especially sad to Maestas. She and another co-worker decided to visit Monica at home after work. Paul showed up at the front door while the two clerks were inside. Paul and Monica spoke at the front door. Soon, Monica’s co-workers heard the two former lovers arguing over a document Paul needed. Maestas intervened, offering to get the document for Monica. In a moment, Maestas returned to the front door with the document. Maestas stepped outside and after handing the document to Paul, told him he needed to tell Monica once and for all if he wanted out of the relationship or not. Paul said he loved Monica, but he didn’t think he was in love with her anymore. Before Paul could say anything else, Monica came out of the house and told Paul to leave. He left.
As that stormy March spun by, a troubled Paul devoted himself to his children. He went to his and Monica’s house every Monday and Tuesday to see the girls. Just as he had done when he lived there, he did the laundry, cooking and bought groceries, which seemed to please Monica, who also went off one weekend to Las Vegas. And she seemed to have a good time when she went with Paul to a movie on Monday, March 29 and met him at a neighborhood pub on March 30.
Paul went to see Maestas and asked her who Monica had gone to Las Vegas with a few weeks earlier. Maestas said she didn’t know. Paul persisted.
“Am I going to have to look at this person every day? Do I work with him?” Paul asked.
Maestas repeated she didn’t know who Monica went to Las Vegas with. In that conversation, Paul also made reference to divorce and said he wasn’t going to “get screwed over” as he did in his first marriage. He didn’t get custody of April when he divorced his first wife. This time he would fight to get custody of Diane and Racquel.
On April 1, after filing divorce papers, Monica went out to lunch with Dusty Downs. That Friday, Paul stopped at Monica’s office and told her he’d pick up the girls Monday morning. He also planned to cut the grass, clean out the hot tub and go grocery shopping for Monica.
Monica’s mood darkened and became explosive on the night when she and her daughter, Amanda, followed Paul to Anita’s house. Perhaps she had been expecting that an obviously suffering husband would want to return home to her and his children.
Late in the day on April 3, Monica’s family had a barbecue at which Monica saw her friend Paula Jacquez, a nurse in Farmington whom she and her sister had known from their school days.
Paula and Monica had much in common as Paula explained. “I was kind of distraught over my husband. He and I had been separated for six months and my oldest son had gone out with a friend and had been away for a couple of hours. When Monica showed up at her uncle’s barbecue, she could tell I was worried. I explained to her how it was hard to gain control of a teenage boy whose dad isn’t around, and Monica and I got to talking and got to crying. We went off into the bedroom, and we spent probably two or three hours just, you know, discussing what breaking up is like after being married for so long. There was a lot of heartache and a lot of understanding between us.”
Paula went on: “There was a lot of time we were crying, and there were a few times we