Broken Doll Read Online Free Page B

Feller, Kathleen’s mom, for a while after that. After that, he moved into the house of his mother’s best friend.”
    Although there was always an open door for him with Aunt Carol, Richard Clark remained disconnected and disenchanted. His teenage years were dissipated, bouncing back and forth between a hodgepodge of particularly unimpressive associates who shared his fascination with intoxication. Moments of semiclarity only accompanied the occasional respite with compassionate relatives, none of whom could replace his tragically taken mother. He simply could not bond with any of them.
    From that point on, Richard Clark’s primary passion was conspicuous consumption of alcohol; his highest educational attainment was seventh or eighth grade. His sadly predictable life-trajectory of emotional distancing and personal boundary violation via burglaries and car thefts escalated in 1988.
    At the age of twenty, his inappropriate behavior reached an apparent peak when he locked four-year-old Feather Rahier in Aunt Carol’s garage, tied her with socks, and touched her in ways that made her perpetually uncomfortable. He was still under thirty in 1995 when released from the Snohomish County Jail for unpaid traffic tickets. Clark devoted his postincarceration lifestyle to drinking, drugging, and other self-destructive activities classified as “partying.”
    â€œI met Richard Clark at a party,” recalled Roxanne’s father, Tim Iffrig. “It was just a casual acquaintance. Two years before he murdered my daughter, I attended a party hosted by Clark’s aunt, Vicki Smith.”
    Anyone who met Tim Iffrig came away with the same impression—immediately likable. Good-natured, outgoing, and adept at overlooking the faults of others, Tim Iffrig was the guy you can’t help but like because, as one person said, “he is so darn affable.”
    Gail Doll, with her cherubic face that manifested good upbringing and essential innocence, was never a “party person.” Unlike many of her generation, she never crossed the line of light social drinking, nor did she trespass beyond typical teenage experimentation with pot. “In fact, when they took me out for my twenty-first birthday, I didn’t order a drink because I was still nursing Roxanne,” she said.
    â€œPeople thought Tim and I were a real mismatch,” said Gail. “When I told my best friend, Kim Hammond, that I was getting married, she asked me who in the world I was marrying. She just couldn’t picture Tim and I together.”
    â€œI was so upset at first about Tim and she getting married,” confessed Hammond. “I actually called Ricki Lake and tried to get on TV. They were having a show, ‘Do you have a friend who you want to keep from making the biggest mistake of his or her life?’ Well, I called Ricki Lake three times trying to get on that show to keep Tim and Gail from getting married. But as I told Gail, if she does marry Tim, I’ll be supportive of her decision, and supportive of their marriage.”
    â€œI had a problem with Tim’s drinking,” said Gail, “but he was never abusive nor mean. In fact, quite the opposite. He’s one of those guys who starts out in a good mood and just gets in a better mood. Drinking and such were just something he grew up with, whereas I didn’t. He has always been the most wonderful and attentive of fathers.”
    â€œAs for Richard Clark,” said Gail Doll, “the man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered our daughter, I never liked him from the minute we met. I told Tim that Richard made me uncomfortable. There was something icky about him, and I would never, ever leave him alone with my kids. Maybe it was mother’s intuition or something, but Tim couldn’t see it. To him, I guess, Richard was just a sometime drinking buddy. And because the house is just as much Tim’s as it is mine, I felt Tim was entitled