Texted Lies, Whispered Truths: Jason Collier's Story by Terri Browning (great novels to read .TXT) 📗

14

I met Candie in person for the second time the following day, Monday, January 18, 2021. Normally, that would have been the time I would have needed to attend the city council meeting, but something came up with one of the council members, and it was rescheduled for later in the week.

While I was meeting up with Candie in Amarillo, O thought I was at the council meeting. Candie snapped a picture of us together and wanted to get it printed, so she sent it to CVS from her phone while we had dinner. Afterward, we picked it up, and she gave me a copy to put on my desk at work.

Once dinner was over, I was ready to head home, but she invited me over to meet her kids and her parents. As with Linda, I felt pressured to meet both, but I reluctantly agreed because I wanted to have sex with her. It was at that point that Candie started bringing up how it would be easier for everyone if I just moved in with her and her kids in Amarillo.

That freaked me out more than a little, but I still played along. This was only the second time we had met in person, and that was within twenty-four hours. But I was still in the game, and the prize for me was sex. Laughing it off, I agreed to her plans for us to go to Taos, New Mexico, together the next weekend—something she had brought up before we had even officially met in person.

On January 19, Candie started sending me pictures from O’s Facebook, questioning about us being married. She and O had a mutual friend, and this friend had recognized me when Candie had made a Facebook post. I’d denied that I was married to O, but I figured she would try to contact O in some way, and I quickly talked to my wife about it.

I explained to her that I had an informant who had discovered that I was married, and it could make the case blow up if she didn’t help me out. If this informant happened to contact her, she needed to tell them that we’d had our marriage annulled, to protect the case I was working on.

When Candie called later that day, she didn’t speak to me or anyone I worked with, or even someone I paid to take the call and pretend to be O.

She spoke directly to my wife.

I sent Candie a message on Marco Polo, apologizing for all the confusion regarding my supposed marriage, and she seemed satisfied after speaking to O.

On January 20, I realized O was starting to get suspicious. She kept asking me to put Life360 on my phone so she could track me. After arguing about it for a while, I simply agreed, knowing there was no way around it without causing a fight between us.

That day, I drove down to Candie’s house, which happened to be near a Taco Villa. O was tracking me the whole time because she would send me texts, asking why I had stopped at certain places throughout the day. At first, she thought I stopped at Taco Villa.

The entire time I was at Candie’s house, O kept texting me, and I knew I needed to get back. But Candie pushed me onto her bed and tried to get me to have sex with her for the first time. I was tempted, but I knew I was already in trouble, because O continued to text me.

The next day, Candie started questioning me about O again.

Candie called me as she was on her way to the police station because she said she wanted to do a ride-along, but really, her stopping by was to test me about my wife. I, of course, panicked. Everyone at the station knew I was married and who O was. Unsure how to get out of this particular situation, I snuck her into the station through the back, but I happened to get caught by the city secretary.

When I didn’t introduce Candie to the secretary or a few other people, she got angry.

I took her into my office, and she produced a frame for the picture we had taken and gotten copies of back on January 18. Earlier in the week, I’d taken a picture of that same photo on my desk, and in the background, my Police Officer’s Prayer and even a picture of my two children were showing. When she saw that our picture was just taped there, she decided to bring me a frame for it. But when she saw that the picture was no longer where it had been in the photo I’d sent to her, she got even more upset.

Candie wanted to do the ride-along, so I took her for a drive around Stinnett. From what I can remember, we didn’t even talk about O again that day, so I assumed we were okay and still going to Taos.

15

Things appeared to be smoothed out, and I picked her up on January 22 for our weekend in Taos. If she still had suspicions at the time, she didn’t mention them, so I thought we were good.

We explored some of the tourist spots as soon as we got to Taos, and we started kissing. Things became heated, and we barely made it back to the hotel, where we had sex for the first time.

It was around that time that Stephanie started liking things I was tagged in on the Stinnett Police Facebook page. My assistant chief of police saw that she was liking the pictures I was in and commented jokingly, “Who is this? New girlfriend?” on the posts. To which, some of Stephanie’s friends started gushing to her that we were making it Facebook official. I hadn’t seen her since the weekend before, but we were still texting, although I was trying to distance myself more and more in hopes she would get the message.

While Candie was