Charmin' Billy

Unfortunately, he wanted a piece of equipment that her store didn't carry, so she referred him to another outfitter some distance away. Bill had already left the store when she got the notion to offer him a ride to her competitor's place during her lunch break. She hurried outside, didn't see Bill, but drove to the other store anyway. He wasn't there. Disappointed, she sat in the parking lot for a few minutes -- and then saw him getting off a bus, toting his backpack. I was going to give you a ride, she said, explaining her presence.

"I told him to take care, and when he came back, to stop in and say hey -- and maybe we could do a canoe trip or something," she says. "There was no kiss, no talk of love...but I was smitten. And there I was, thinking, 'Gosh, I'm never going to see him again. He'll go do the trail, and that will be the end of it.'"

But it wasn't. The next day, Karen arrived at work to find Bill waiting in the store wearing a sharp three-piece suit and sporting a new haircut. He'd skipped his trip, he said, so that he could take her to lunch. And although she usually had only a half-hour break, he'd already talked her boss into giving her an hour.

At lunchtime, Bill escorted Karen to a nice, four-wheel drive Subaru and drove her to a country estate owned by an older couple he knew. There, beneath 200-year-old white pines, a picnic was spread out. They ate lunch and talked, and then there was a surprise waiting in the bottom of the picnic basket: a silver necklace. But not just any necklace. Somehow he'd found a jeweler who overnight had created a pendant in silver that matched the Hudson Bay Outfitters logo she'd worn on her shirt the day before. A wolf howling at the moon.

"He had me hook, line and sinker," she recalls. "There had still been no kiss, but I'm like, 'You're freaking me out...I'm in love.' That's how good he was. Eighteen years ago he could have had any woman he wanted with a 'hi' and a smile. But he put the target on me."

At the time, Karen was already involved -- but the man in that relationship was abusive. Bill talked her into moving back in with her parents, who were now living in Virginia, and seeing him instead. Her parents liked Bill initially, at least in part because he discouraged Karen's use of alcohol and marijuana and he seemed to treat her well. In fact, he enjoyed treating them all to dinner at the finest D.C. restaurants, where he would always know everyone from the pianist to the matre'd, who would point them to the best tables while other patrons waited in line.

He was charming, always a gentleman and fond of surprising her. And in those days, also in fantastic shape. Although at 5'8", Bill was only a little taller than Karen, he was quick and strong, with a washboard abdomen and well-muscled arms and legs. "The neighbors in his old neighborhood used to think he was crazy because he'd put on his backpack and pick a canoe up over his head and run around the neighborhood," she remembers and laughs.

Karen and Bill dated off and on for the next three years. Off and on, because he'd disappear for months at a time "while I'd wait for him to come back," she says. He broke her heart every time he left, but she couldn't help herself -- she always welcomed his return. He seemed so perfect.

Smart: He could quote Thoreau, for God's sake, and read anything he could get his hands on.

Heroic: He said he'd been a member of the Green Berets and also the Alaskan Mountain Rescue Team and showed her photographs of himself on snowshoes, crossing crevasses.

Ambitious: He said he'd owned Neal Tech, which sold alarm systems -- including some installed in the White House -- and was confident he'd be successful at whatever he put his hand to next.

Sensitive: He was devoted to his mother and was moved to tears describing how his father had suffered a heart attack in the family car and died in his arms.

And sexy: He spared no expense on romancing her, whether it was covering their bed with rose petals, filling a bath with special lotions and bubbles, or buying extravagant dinners, all followed by dreamy massages.

"He could fit into any crowd...walk into anywhere and be whatever he wanted to be," she recalls. He was as at home in the woods as at a fancy gathering, wearing an expensive suit and a $60 haircut. She never knew where he got all the money. She didn't think it was her business to ask, figuring it might have something to do with his mysterious disappearances, which he never really explained. Or perhaps he had generous benefactors.