8 | The End of the Imagination

00:00:02
Speaker 1: The Red Weather is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events reflects the adaptation of real, publicly available materials for creative and legal reasons. The content of this podcast is the sole responsibility of Red Weather, LLC and does not reflect the views of responsibilities of iHeartMedia or its affiliates. Previously on The Red Weather.

00:00:22
Speaker 2: I found that tape in my car when Anna left it with a bunch of her books.

00:00:25
Speaker 1: And when I heard it, that's when I knew she was banging some older guy.

00:00:29
Speaker 3: It also can't be true the age of the matter, which, by the way.

00:00:32
Speaker 4: You think all the time, all of a sudden she's missing school, late nights, taking the car out.

00:00:37
Speaker 1: He wore down. That's a little bit wore down.

00:00:39
Speaker 5: Jesus.

00:00:40
Speaker 1: Do you remember Jacob Wyman, the English teacher.

00:00:42
Speaker 6: Wyman landed in hot water last semester when several parents noticed he had included the novel Dammage by Josephine Hart on his fall reading list.

00:00:51
Speaker 1: I needed to see that book.

00:00:53
Speaker 7: So the Sheriff's department is here.

00:00:55
Speaker 8: What?

00:01:02
Speaker 2: Yeah? Because I don't care if you are some little ship that is serious.

00:01:06
Speaker 1: There are parts of my conversation with Mick Bowden that I didn't include earlier. It didn't seem relevant. Who actually came at you with the bat?

00:01:13
Speaker 2: I remember the Phantom of the Opera or whatever. That's that's why I took him out. And that kid went down hard. He took it. He wasn't getting back up.

00:01:21
Speaker 1: We were talking about the night Ana Tranner disappeared.

00:01:24
Speaker 9: No way, no fucking way.

00:01:26
Speaker 1: Kristen Zia quite the same took me out.

00:01:29
Speaker 5: I think I remember that.

00:01:30
Speaker 1: Anyway, Mick and I were going back and forth, and at one point he said this, I.

00:01:34
Speaker 2: Was just lucky I didn't have a gun.

00:01:37
Speaker 1: That's a weird thing to say.

00:01:39
Speaker 2: I'm making a point.

00:01:40
Speaker 1: Okay, if you can with a back, if I had a gun?

00:01:46
Speaker 7: Did you have a gun?

00:01:48
Speaker 2: Like in your car? Do you have a gun? No?

00:01:51
Speaker 1: What about your house?

00:01:53
Speaker 2: No? Did you no?

00:01:56
Speaker 1: Obviously not?

00:01:57
Speaker 2: What do you mean obviously not? Okay? No, but hold on, you didn't have a gun at your house?

00:02:02
Speaker 5: In your house when you grew up? Yeah, my dad, I mean we had hunting rifles.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: Okay, multiple guns.

00:02:08
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just can we just calm down and take a step back.

00:02:12
Speaker 5: Whine getting off track.

00:02:13
Speaker 2: You're not off track.

00:02:14
Speaker 5: You put a finger of me.

00:02:15
Speaker 2: I'm just pointing it right back at you.

00:02:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mick had recorded our conversation the same time I did.

00:02:20
Speaker 7: They're searching the house.

00:02:21
Speaker 5: They're going through all the closets and outside.

00:02:24
Speaker 1: The Sonoma County Sheriff's office had shown up at my parents' house with a search warrant. My brother Shiloh called me while I was still in Colorado. I thought mixed recording was all about intimidation, a power move, a bluff to keep me honest.

00:02:37
Speaker 5: What are they looking for?

00:02:38
Speaker 7: Guns?

00:02:39
Speaker 1: But obviously it was more than that. I am actor and filmmaker Rider Strong. This is the red weather. I mean I have to go because you know, my parents are freaking out. Instead of flying back to l A, I needed to get to northern California. But that would mean my wife Alex would miss out on an acting job.

00:03:51
Speaker 8: It's it's the one day guest star I can live about.

00:03:54
Speaker 1: It is.

00:03:55
Speaker 8: You should come home and stop recording. Call a lawyer.

00:03:58
Speaker 1: Why why that's bullshit? No, this whole thing, it's.

00:04:02
Speaker 8: They have a warrant, they have a reason to be there. They have a legal document. You have nothing. You have just your podcast, Like, what are you not telling me nothing.

00:04:14
Speaker 1: What do you mean are you seriously asking me that one? I'm not trying to hide. I'm not hiding anything from you.

00:04:21
Speaker 8: What I mean you left out the abortion you helped your ex get.

00:04:25
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can't believe you're bringing that up again. It's I hope that you're joking.

00:04:30
Speaker 8: I'm not joking. I know you told you said you told me that. I really do not remember, and I feel like that's something I would remember.

00:04:36
Speaker 5: It's pretty bad.

00:04:37
Speaker 1: Man, My buddy Connor didn't hold back.

00:04:39
Speaker 7: Well.

00:04:39
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what she's mad about is that I've been gone for so long, you know, or she's mad about exactly what she's telling you.

00:04:48
Speaker 5: She's mad about.

00:04:49
Speaker 9: You know, when you said you were doing this podcast, I thought Willow was like a.

00:04:53
Speaker 8: Friend when you were kids, and then I find out more, you know, That's that's.

00:04:59
Speaker 1: When we were t It got a little complicated.

00:05:01
Speaker 5: Do you remember the night we wrote that song.

00:05:03
Speaker 1: Connor was talking about one of the first times he met Alex.

00:05:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, it's very similar. It's the same thing.

00:05:10
Speaker 1: Connor had flown into La to visit, and the three of us went out for a big dinner, had a fun night and When we got back to the house, Alex went to bed, Connor and I stayed up. Before he became an academic, Connor was a musician. We used to do shows together and that night we stayed up until sunrise, playing guitar and writing a song.

00:05:29
Speaker 10: We were very intoxicated and we were not quiet, writing a song that was dealing with like love and loss, and it was quite a yes, a dramatic.

00:05:44
Speaker 5: Right, so we were wowed and you were singing at the top of your lungs, and she did come in and tell us to shut up several times.

00:05:51
Speaker 1: Alex was trying to sleep, which was problem number one. But then when she came out to tell us to be quiet, she heard the lyrics to what we were writing and found out we were writing a song about an ex girlfriend of mine.

00:06:03
Speaker 5: You've got to be totally upfront with her, like an open book.

00:06:07
Speaker 1: When I called from the airport, I got Alex's voice, Man, hey, look, I know you're upset, and I understand, but I also you know I want you to be able to have the whole picture. So I sent you a link. If that's gonna send you to a dropbox where you can download all seven of the episodes so far that I have edited the rough cuts, and you listen to them, you'll see that Willow is such a small part of this. It's really it's not about her. It really is about Anna. Anyway, give me a call later and we can talk, all right.

00:06:48
Speaker 7: I love you.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: Hi, guys, Yeah, how are you? You never got me freaked out?

00:07:01
Speaker 2: I know, I know.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: It took me all day to get to my parents. The Sheriff's department was long gone.

00:07:06
Speaker 11: Yeah, So I was in the backhouse and I looked up and I just happened to see him. They had the lights on, and they came down and then they pile out and everybody comes in here, and then they grab mom and dad and bring them outside. And so I walked down and then there they saw me, and I was like, you know, what the fuck? Take me put it's a little area. And then they start taking each of us individually interviewing, but we couldn't talk to each other.

00:07:29
Speaker 1: And they're just asking about guns. They're just saying like where, Yeah, they had a search warm they gave me.

00:07:34
Speaker 7: Let me see that.

00:07:34
Speaker 1: Let me he says, they're searching for what's listed in attachment B and god, Okay, So attachment. Bee says one firearms of any make or model. The gun thing might seem a little out of character, but for all my parents' bohemian tendencies, my dad was raised in rural Pennsylvania, where he grew up hunting. He was in the Marines, so he made sure to teach us how to shoot. I got my friend rifle when I was six, and I'm not talking a BB gun. It was a twenty two. I'm actually very anti gun these days, or at least very pro gun control, but my dad still had all of his. He has them locked and stored these days. But when we were kids, there was just a closet off of my parents' room that had all of them, including but not limited to rifles and handguns chambered in two fifty seven Roberts caliber or any other caliber consistent with ballistic evidence of So how many guns did they take? They took all of them, everyone I had.

00:08:31
Speaker 8: Yeah, because they're looking for a match.

00:08:33
Speaker 1: Monica was talking about the bullets and evidence recovered from a tree. No, that's not what this is. This is this is publicity. This is just retaliation. You know, Mick sends them on a witch hunt, and they know that it's a witch hunt, but they still do it because they're pissed off for what you and I did.

00:08:47
Speaker 8: Well, I mean it does make sense. I mean she disappeared within a mile and there's what, there's guns at your property.

00:08:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so I did it. I'm literally making up cast where I'm trying to solve the case.

00:09:02
Speaker 8: Oh, this is not news.

00:09:03
Speaker 6: Zodiac killer sent letters to the San Francisco Conna and there was BTK.

00:09:07
Speaker 8: He haunted the press for years. So don't question your parents. Do they ever lock their doors?

00:09:14
Speaker 1: No, it's about I mean they're out in the middle of nowhere.

00:09:16
Speaker 6: Never exactly, so somebody actually could walk into their house, they could find a gun and then.

00:09:21
Speaker 1: But they would have to know, they would have to know that there are guns there.

00:09:26
Speaker 7: That's the point.

00:09:28
Speaker 1: You were in the woods, you Willow and Chris Connor, Ryan, Yeah, we were all together.

00:09:36
Speaker 8: But you didn't stay at your house.

00:09:39
Speaker 1: No, we walked to Connor that you that Why what do.

00:09:42
Speaker 8: You mean why didn't you stay at your house?

00:09:45
Speaker 1: You were right there because we had it was.

00:09:49
Speaker 8: Your whole family. No one from your family was home.

00:09:53
Speaker 1: Ah No, I mean yeah, my parents weren't Tahoe. They were staying at a friend's cabin and your brother, Hey, great, where did you go after Heather's party? My brother was outside cleaning up the Sheriff's department had left a mess. Relax. My parents don't have trash service, so they have to bring it to the dump themselves every few months, and the Sheriff's office had emptied it all out onto the grass. It was a month's worth of trash and complete disarray. I'm just trying to figure out how it all went. So you were you were at the party, and then, uh, where did you go? H was with Aaron? We went downtown Okay? And did you come back to the house. Noss. This is what I'm trying to Why were none of us here, like the parents were in tall in October? Oh because the septic I had forgotten about this. When they built the house. My parents had to put in their own septic tank, and that month, in nineteen ninety five, it had failed. Oh well, the guy came in here.

00:10:59
Speaker 12: You get the pumped every three four years. And the guy that came in and pumped it the last time looked at it. He said, oh, you know, this little septi cank is no good anyway, you got to replace this.

00:11:09
Speaker 7: So why he said, looking here, you're looking.

00:11:10
Speaker 1: You see there's.

00:11:12
Speaker 12: Moss or something growing inside from the roots. He goes, yeah, the trees are getting into it.

00:11:16
Speaker 1: You gotta replace this. My dad was originally going to do it himself, but it turned out to be a really big job. It was a full on excavation. There was a cement tank about ten feet by ten feet with leech lines, so we were all staying at other people's houses while a crew came in with baccos. They dug up the old tank and put the new one in.

00:11:35
Speaker 11: Yeah, so the whole back hillside was torn up and you couldn't use the bathrooms.

00:11:39
Speaker 4: Why the hell?

00:11:44
Speaker 1: Oh, there was a box among the junk. What the hell?

00:11:46
Speaker 7: This is the pager.

00:11:48
Speaker 1: It was a box that we had packed up with a pager we'd found on the property. There was a chance that it was annas, so we had meant to send it off to Lyle Rinkin, who was a specialist in older technology, but the package had never made it to ups. Hey, it's right or strong. I'm Christavecchia's friend. I called Rinkin as it started to rain. Uh oh, listen, I know why you never got that pager. It was actually never mailed off. It just got lost in the shuffle. I'm so sorry about that. Well, if it's all right, can I overnight it to you?

00:12:21
Speaker 7: Is that okay?

00:12:23
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm gonna I'll send it off today. Great, Thank you so much. Does you really think you can get something off it? I mean, might as well try, right, Chila and I walked back to the house to get out of the rain. Who is your pager code? Because it's shy upside. I feel like everybody had six sixty six, yeah, or sixty nine. Well that's why Chris was ninety six, because it was He called it the anti sixty nine, like two people facing away from each other. He called he was the married couple.

00:12:59
Speaker 5: I see it.

00:13:01
Speaker 7: Did they search the garage? No, I don't think so, because.

00:13:05
Speaker 2: Dad keeps that one done in that really.

00:13:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, a few years back there was a mountain lion in the area. My dad was rebuilding a fence at the time and he wanted to have a rifle nearby. It was still in the garage. Yeah, no, they missed it.

00:13:23
Speaker 7: Well, what do we do?

00:13:25
Speaker 1: We'll turn it in. Well, hold on let's just let's think about this for a second. Think about what.

00:13:34
Speaker 7: Writer think about what.

00:13:49
Speaker 1: I want to believe that truth wins out, that if you're a good person, or at least an innocent person, you don't have anything to worry about. It's their fault that they didn't find it right, So why should I help well to solve the case? That's what you want, is yes? But do I want them to solve the case? This is exactly the situation where people get completely screwed, isn't it. They You know, I think they're helping and they answer all the questions, they don't get a lawyer, and then they end up in jail for the rest of their life. You didn't do anything, Yes, I know that, But you know, suddenly my fingerprints end up on a bullet Why would your fingerprints end up you know what I mean? They plant something, they make it. They've already overstepped, Like, do you think you can trust them?

00:14:31
Speaker 13: Do you trust cops?

00:14:32
Speaker 2: Well, I mean to a certain extent. No, Okay, this is why you have law.

00:14:35
Speaker 11: You get to a point and you say, okay, whatever, hand it off to them.

00:14:38
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean I think at this point, I don't think they need, they deserve any of my help. That's that's honestly the way I feel.

00:14:46
Speaker 7: You're just being paranoid.

00:14:47
Speaker 1: But was I I mean, here was a sheriff's department raiding my parents' house, while all the evidence that I had been gathering was pointing in a new, promising direction I had come to think of as the mister Wrong theory. I pieced together that Anna was in a secret, inappropriate relationship with an older guy and they had a plan to run away. It was seeming more and more likely that she could have met up with him on the night that she disappeared, and I had a theory on who that might be. A teacher named Jacob Wyman.

00:15:19
Speaker 14: He was really young, and I think maybe that's part of it that he seemed kind of you know, like there was that simultaneous like, you know, him almost trying to be our friends, and then at the same time, you.

00:15:29
Speaker 5: Know, like, no, you've got to do this essay, you got to get in on time, whatever.

00:15:33
Speaker 13: So like he.

00:15:34
Speaker 14: Seemed more you know, like ernest and really you know, wanting to connect with people and communicate an ethos of life.

00:15:41
Speaker 1: I needed to see a book that was in evidence at the Sheriff's department a copy of Damage by Josephine Hart. If it had handwritten notes that matched the other books both Anna and Willow had, then it would point decisively towards mister Wrong and by extension, Jacob Wyman. I wanted nothing more than to tell Sheriff Maldonado. I thought, since he was retired, maybe he would be open to helping me. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. But he still wasn't taking my calls.

00:16:12
Speaker 7: Oh screw those guys. Yes, that's what I'm saying.

00:16:16
Speaker 1: And and Shiloh thinks I'm crazy.

00:16:19
Speaker 7: No, he's crazy, You're fine.

00:16:21
Speaker 1: Oh hey, I'm on burnside right now. I'm like literally passing where we were, where we were that morning? Hell yeah, turn on and it stoned me playing.

00:16:32
Speaker 7: That and imagine it's Orion singing. No, you mean Shadow Days. Wait that was a Shallow Day.

00:16:39
Speaker 1: Yes, of course, it was like the epic Shallow Days performance. Well, just come back to La and let the thing blow over.

00:16:46
Speaker 7: They have nothing, man, they've got less than nothing.

00:16:49
Speaker 1: I knew Chris was right. I needed to get home, not only to lay low, but also to try and smooth things over with Alex. But then on the way to drop the pager off at UPS, I drove past Little Seed, the fruit stand that Maldonado had taken me to, and I saw that Andreas was working. Hey, Andreas Rider. Oh yeah, hey, been for some sebst berries. It's cool, I'm recording. I wasn't hungry, though, I was hoping you could help me reach Maldonado. Hey, listen, have you seen Robert lately?

00:17:31
Speaker 7: Have you seen Maldonado? No?

00:17:33
Speaker 1: Really, I mean maybe last Sunday. Okay, yeah, I'm just trying to get a hold of him. You guys are friends, right.

00:17:43
Speaker 9: I wouldn't say friends, but yeah, I'll tell you this though.

00:17:49
Speaker 1: I never charged him. When I asked why, Andrea's told me how in nineteen ninety his family's life was upended when his grandfather died. The county treated the inheritance as a transfer and reassessed their whole farm at market rates. Suddenly their taxes doubled. They were going to lose the property.

00:18:06
Speaker 7: Yeah, right, and you had a lot of families around here with deep pockets. That wasn't us. You know, we were broke, Plus we didn't have.

00:18:13
Speaker 1: The right last name. What do you mean well, if.

00:18:17
Speaker 4: You had something that sounded Italian or Irish, you know, you were great, you had no problem.

00:18:24
Speaker 1: Maldonado didn't know onder his family, not personally, but he heard about what was happening, and he told them about the Williamson Act, a way to lock the land into agricultural status and avoid the reassessment. But they still had to get through county bureaucracy, and he fought for us.

00:18:40
Speaker 4: He pissed off some people good and you know, there's a couple of council members.

00:18:43
Speaker 1: And all that shit, and they just kind of walked out.

00:18:46
Speaker 7: But he didn't know us.

00:18:48
Speaker 1: And the guy he still tries to pay me every time he stops by.

00:18:53
Speaker 7: Well, anyways, that was a long story. I bug.

00:18:56
Speaker 1: You listen, if you talk to him, if you see maldonadoak, can you tell him something for me.

00:19:07
Speaker 7: Here?

00:19:07
Speaker 1: Say this, tell him that I don't like the story, but I'm gonna I'm letting the evidence tell it. I got back in my car and went back to my parents and then I drove to the Sheriff's department. I'm not gonna lie. It was awkward. Hi, Hi, I have something that I need to get to Grace Lachlan or Thomas Greer. But I can't really, I'm not sure how to bring it in.

00:19:40
Speaker 13: I'm sorry.

00:19:40
Speaker 1: Well, it's evidence for a case, and it's a gun. A deputy came out to my car and got it. The next morning, before I left for LA, I got an email from Alex. She hadn't written anything. She just forwarded an old email that I had sent to her in twenty ten. It took a moment for me to know what I was reading. It was an email where I told her about getting my first short story published. It's the same story that I talked about last episode, the one that was inspired by my road trip with Willow. Alex had obviously listened to the episode because in the email from twenty ten, I told her that I had written the story about her, about us.

00:20:22
Speaker 5: So it was about Alex or was it about Willow? Well, that's the thing both. I mean, I wrote it when I was thirty, when you were already with Alex.

00:20:32
Speaker 1: Yes, But I was looking back at this time and I was combining things, you know.

00:20:37
Speaker 5: Thing of people, you mean people, all right.

00:20:39
Speaker 1: But the story was about getting serious with Alex, you know, it was about commitment. So it was about Alex at its Core. I mean, you know, thematically.

00:20:50
Speaker 10: Thematically about you is not a great thing to tell your wife.

00:20:53
Speaker 1: This was an even worse version of keeping her up all night with our song.

00:21:06
Speaker 4: Home.

00:21:08
Speaker 1: When I got home, Alex wouldn't let me record. Our son, Indy was there, and we put on a good front. We didn't talk about it. But later Indy had gymnastics. I dropped them off and I came home. Alex and I finally had a chance to talk. Part Way through the conversation, I began to record on my friend.

00:21:28
Speaker 13: Right now, I just is whatever is happening here is making me wonder how you feel about me?

00:21:35
Speaker 15: Okay, Like, oh, you're just gonna question fifteen years of marriage, I guess because you're chasing Anna Willo.

00:21:43
Speaker 13: Do you even care about them as people?

00:21:45
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yes, that's the whole point of this thing.

00:21:48
Speaker 13: Let me think about it.

00:21:50
Speaker 2: All I'm doing is.

00:21:51
Speaker 15: Thinking about them, is people trying to get to know them. I'm doing all these interviews and asking all these people like I'm trying to get.

00:21:59
Speaker 1: Them, know them better, to understand them more.

00:22:02
Speaker 13: Have you interviewed any women?

00:22:05
Speaker 1: What are you talking about?

00:22:06
Speaker 15: Of course, the sheriff is a woman, like the person I've been talking to.

00:22:12
Speaker 1: The most is Monica, the journalists.

00:22:14
Speaker 13: No, I mean from Anna's life, from your life. Have you interviewed any girls that you grew up with?

00:22:21
Speaker 1: I hadn't.

00:22:24
Speaker 13: I talked to her mom. This is insane. Why you are trying to understand a girl who might have been killed or run away, but you never talked to any of the women who knew her, just the dudes who knew not one. I just don't see.

00:22:43
Speaker 15: It's not that No, I don't see like the point of course, of course that well, of course there's no point to it that that's not the point of this, right, because it's about you and.

00:22:52
Speaker 16: Your guy friends making yourselves feel better about what just ignoring girls back then because if they didn't date you, didn't fuck you, they didn't.

00:23:01
Speaker 13: They didn't really count.

00:23:02
Speaker 15: Okay, you're upset, but you don't have to trash this whole project because I'm questioning why.

00:23:09
Speaker 5: Okay, you're right, you're right. Maybe are you recording this, Alex?

00:23:15
Speaker 13: Oh my god, you know to get into the into the project. Look you, I asked you to talk to me.

00:23:24
Speaker 5: I am to come.

00:23:24
Speaker 11: Home to talk to me, to really talk to me, And I am you are secretly recording me it's my god, Oh my god.

00:23:33
Speaker 13: Please no, please, Alex.

00:23:37
Speaker 1: She didn't want me at the house, and I didn't blame her. Hi, Chris, let me stay with him. He and his wife Fiona met me at the door.

00:23:53
Speaker 17: God, you forgot the cardinal rule, buddy, happy wife, happy life.

00:23:57
Speaker 1: I hate that same, but it's true.

00:24:00
Speaker 5: I mean, this is why Delvi want nothing.

00:24:01
Speaker 1: What were the expectations.

00:24:03
Speaker 13: Yeah, he's joking, but also not joking.

00:24:05
Speaker 17: Women are complex emotional creatures, which is why it will never be president Chris. It's true, though, I'm kidding, But seriously, it's probably her time of the month.

00:24:14
Speaker 13: All right, good night, good night to you.

00:24:16
Speaker 2: I know too much. I know, God forbid give her a time.

00:24:20
Speaker 17: Time heals all wounds, especially if you're a creature who bleeds a few days a month and doesn't die from Thank you.

00:24:29
Speaker 1: Kris didn't have a guest room, which meant I was sleeping on the couch in his living room.

00:24:33
Speaker 2: I mean, I just think that this whole dang, this whole project has been driven by guilt. Are you confessing right now?

00:24:42
Speaker 7: No?

00:24:42
Speaker 2: One confessing to something.

00:24:46
Speaker 1: A lot more boring than murder. It's that Alex is right, like I.

00:24:55
Speaker 7: Weeks doing this recording.

00:24:57
Speaker 1: I didn't interview a single girl from our teens whatever.

00:25:03
Speaker 2: You would have interviewed will if she hadn't, I don't.

00:25:06
Speaker 1: Would I have. I mean, she inspired this thing, you know. Do you remember in two thousand and four or five or whatever, when I found the pictures of her online? I was talking about a time when I was in college in New York, somewhat early in the days of internet porn, and in a crazy coincidence, I came across photos of Willow naked.

00:25:26
Speaker 10: Yeah, you found photos of her, the kind of like amateur porn photos of her online in a kitchen maybe. I just remember being really kind of saddened by that, Yeah, because that was when I really fully appreciated how desperate she was for attention and also possibly money.

00:25:46
Speaker 5: It was a real DIY kind of job.

00:25:48
Speaker 1: They weren't professional, but also not private. The worst part she was wearing her same old fairy wings and nothing else. Well, I see them, I find them, and then what do I do. I immediately download them, put them in an email I'll send to you.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: And Connor and I don't even know who else.

00:26:09
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh my god, Luke what I just found. Yeah, because there's crazy, of course, he says, if I would have found him out to send him to you and Connor to do the same exact thing. Okay, yes, it's crazy, but my reaction wasn't Oh god, I should maybe reach out to Willow and tell her that this is up on the internet.

00:26:25
Speaker 13: Maybe be sex positive.

00:26:28
Speaker 1: She may have wanted them out there, she may have wanted to do that.

00:26:32
Speaker 17: You could have been like, good for her, she's living her best.

00:26:34
Speaker 1: But I never I never thought that. Instead, I mean, I was just like, oh my god, look what Willow's doing. I can't wait to show the guys. So so, if you think about it, I only found the photos because I was actually looking for porn.

00:26:50
Speaker 2: Like I'm the target guy.

00:26:51
Speaker 1: That's why those photos are up there in the first place.

00:26:54
Speaker 2: Right, So what's up with me?

00:26:56
Speaker 3: Right?

00:26:56
Speaker 1: How can I be like, oh, I want to naked chicks on one hand and then also be like, oh shit, my friend's naked online. How pathetic or funny or awful?

00:27:10
Speaker 7: We're all three, all three?

00:27:12
Speaker 1: Right? Then I got a call.

00:27:15
Speaker 7: Oh I gotta take this, Okay.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: I recognized Maldonado's number. After checking with him, I called him back so I could record. All right, Yeah, I got it recording now.

00:27:27
Speaker 7: So, uh I heard from Andres. I appreciate that.

00:27:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, thanks for calling. I've been you know, I'm piecing together a lot here. Uh and mostly I've been zeroing on this teacher. He's this guy named Jacob Wyman. I don't know if he ever came in.

00:27:41
Speaker 7: Listen, it was good to you turn that Renflent.

00:27:44
Speaker 1: Well, of course, no, I've I've gotten nothing to hide, you know, I don't. I don't know what Nick is telling you or them them.

00:27:53
Speaker 7: Look, look, uh, I want to be clear here. I'm not in the department, got it.

00:28:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm retired, right, Yeah, No, I know.

00:28:04
Speaker 4: Okay, So this is a citizen just calling another citizen who appreciates the honesty.

00:28:12
Speaker 7: So I'm gonna be honest with you as a citizen. Okay.

00:28:17
Speaker 4: That rifle that you gave Laughlin, that's a two fifty seven Rogers. That's a very rare caliber. Oh okay, what do you mean, Well, there might be one hundred and fifty sevens in the whole county, and if one of them sits ten minutes from where we pulled.

00:28:33
Speaker 7: Those slugs out of the tree, I'd be surprised.

00:28:35
Speaker 4: If it's not a match, they're gonna run ballistics because that's standard.

00:28:42
Speaker 7: They're already. I can tell you right now, it doesn't look good the man.

00:28:53
Speaker 1: If Maldonado was right about the gun, then Jacob Wyman didn't make any sense. It had to be someone who knew there were guns in my parents' house, and he says, it doesn't look good, my man. Like what me. I called Monica to fill her in, Like you have to. You have to believe that I went crazy, walked into my parents' house, got a gun, and then came back out and just randomly found Anna.

00:29:16
Speaker 8: On the look, it's not It's not random or crazy if you are in a relationship with her.

00:29:21
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, I'm gonna I never even talked to Anna, but sure fine, I'm in a relationship with her, and I'm the guy. Uh And I planned to meet up with her, and I shot her, and then I what I just I magically made her body disappear, buried it. Sure, I buried it. And what I didn't say anything to Monica, but right then something did occur to me. The septic work, the reason my parents were gone, the reason Shiloh and I were staying at friends. There had been a giant, rashly dug hole right in my backyard. A person could easily dig up right next to the tank, drop a body in, and no one would ever think to look. Do you need like a tooth pressure or something you brought that?

00:30:16
Speaker 7: Do you need toothpaste?

00:30:17
Speaker 5: No?

00:30:18
Speaker 2: Yes, I will need I'll day somehow great.

00:30:21
Speaker 13: Yeah, okay, we're off.

00:30:28
Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep that night. I was on Chris's couch just staring at the ceiling, and sometime around three am I checked my email. Okay, I'm rolling because I just open up my computer and rink in order to go back to us. I actually think it might have been in his pager. I wanna go wake up Chris right now. This is insane, all right.

00:30:54
Speaker 16: Rinklin says, Hi, Christ and rider. Quite a journey with the motor roller today. Powering it up with a bench supply was easier than I expected. It chirped the old two killer her its tone. Hollywood fakes that all the time, so hearing it for real, it's pretty sweet.

00:31:08
Speaker 1: I have no idea what this means. Okay, the LCD was a nightmare, receding the zebra strip.

00:31:13
Speaker 7: Oh I think that's Chris upstairs.

00:31:17
Speaker 1: He must have seen the email.

00:31:19
Speaker 18: Okay, checked the hacks, found some packed BCD, ran a little script of Jesus Christ and okay, dumping the e prom actually worked. I recovered the last twelve numbers see attached. It's it's a text file. Yes, yes, eight two three A two nine. Those are definitely from Sebastopol hank of a skippering notes.

00:31:47
Speaker 1: All right, yeah, I think Chris is coming down. Okay, that's I can see. That's the Juniper payphone number.

00:31:56
Speaker 7: Uh.

00:31:57
Speaker 1: And that's it's actually it's mixed phone number twice. This is Anna.

00:32:04
Speaker 18: And then there's the last four pages.

00:32:06
Speaker 1: It's the same one for in a row. It's not a phone number, it's.

00:32:10
Speaker 18: It's code nine.

00:32:12
Speaker 1: That was the standard code for this is an emergency, or at least this is important Dash two four two O four. The street address of the tender Hearts property two O four was same, meet me there and nine six Chris, that's Chris's code.

00:32:34
Speaker 18: Wait nine one two four dash nine six four times.

00:32:40
Speaker 1: But that that's Chris. What was Chris doing?

00:32:46
Speaker 7: She's er er.

00:33:02
Speaker 17: It's seriously in a way, nothing is just don't worry about it.

00:33:10
Speaker 5: Babe, just go back inside if you want.

00:33:12
Speaker 1: To go back in sord Just I've got this.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: Freaking my life out rider. Where the funk are you?

00:33:20
Speaker 1: Man?

00:33:21
Speaker 17: Rider?

00:33:22
Speaker 2: Can we please fucking talk?

00:33:23
Speaker 1: Can we?

00:33:24
Speaker 2: Can we please just fucking talk?

00:33:28
Speaker 17: Come talk to me.

00:33:33
Speaker 19: Come on, man, you want to ask me something, you want to accuse me of something, Come on out. Man up for once in your life, be a man and talk to me, face to face.

00:33:52
Speaker 5: Come out, Come on, Come on?

00:33:55
Speaker 2: You got an email.

00:33:58
Speaker 7: Writer?

00:34:05
Speaker 2: Hey?

00:34:05
Speaker 1: Can I tell you the story? Does it involved Johnny applesfieve? It was three months since I managed to get away from Chris's house. That night, I was doing a follow up interview with Maldonado and he said he wanted to make me feel better. I assumed he meant feel better about the fact that I never suspected my best friend was a murderer.

00:34:23
Speaker 7: My old man, my dad.

00:34:24
Speaker 4: He died when I was fifteen, and when I was when I was sixteen seventeen, my mom started.

00:34:30
Speaker 7: Dating this guy, Louise. She and Louise ended up getting married.

00:34:37
Speaker 4: He moves in and I moved out, and I was paint houseless, mainly down in a marine. I didn't get back home that much. But every month is so my mom's at the doctor or or in the hospital. Something's broken, or my mom twisted her ankle again. Sometimes like they're shit, yeah, yeah, oh yeah. But I was busy, you know, nineteen it was all about me. I was making good dough, painting houses. But then finally, and then it happens, I get that that call that my mom's in the hospital again, except this time it's serious, and this time, well, this time it's undeniable. They got Louise with scratches all over, they scraped up knuckles, and that bastardly.

00:35:23
Speaker 7: Tried to run, so he was he was hitting there the whole time, the whole time, from day one.

00:35:29
Speaker 1: She okay, I mean did she Yeah, she was fine.

00:35:34
Speaker 7: She came through the police, got two years.

00:35:37
Speaker 5: That's it.

00:35:38
Speaker 7: Yeah, well it was it was the eighties, man, we would expect. But that day when I came.

00:35:44
Speaker 4: Back to find my mom in the hospital like that, knowing that this guy had done that and had been doing that, kept doing that, well that's the day that I quit painting houses and I enrolled in the police academy.

00:35:58
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out where this was going, how this could possibly make me feel better. So you became a cop because Louise was there in your life, your own stepdad, and you had no idea.

00:36:14
Speaker 4: Of course, not exact opposite. I became a cop because I always knew that some of a bitch was coming. I told my mom every chance I got.

00:36:24
Speaker 7: That's right, I've got the nose man, the radar. You see.

00:36:28
Speaker 4: I think the worst of every person every time. You know the old saying about assume.

00:36:37
Speaker 1: You mean, if you assume it makes an ass of you and an ass of me.

00:36:41
Speaker 4: Nope, it's don't assume it makes an assent of you and a cop, And I mean, yeah, it's a curse writer. So just be glad you don't have it. Oh and hey, don't quit your day job.

00:36:58
Speaker 1: Eighteen days ago, Crystal Veatchio charged with the murder of Anna Trainor. He's awaiting trial without bail. Anna's body was found in the backyard of my childhood home, twenty feet from my bedroom window. It was a slope, grassy hill my brother and I used to roll down as kids play laser tag on. Once we set up a projector screen there and I watched Coco with my son. No clue what was right below the grass After thirty years, what remained of Anna was skeletal.

00:37:29
Speaker 5: But tell him you want the gory details, don't you.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: The Sheriff's office liaison Thomas Greer filled me in. No, no, I'm you know. I'm just hoping that if I could interview somebody.

00:37:39
Speaker 8: You're a showbiz guy.

00:37:41
Speaker 9: You play it cool, but you're a song and dance man.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: A minute, fine, admit it, So you'll let me talk to the forensic pathologist.

00:37:50
Speaker 9: Oh hell no, this case is ongoing, but I'll get you a summary of findings.

00:37:56
Speaker 5: It still blows my mind.

00:37:57
Speaker 1: We had all lied to the cops about where we were in order to protect Willow, so it never occurred to us that Chris might have been lying to us too.

00:38:06
Speaker 5: He was definitely at my house in the morning. He was there.

00:38:08
Speaker 1: Here's what Connor, Orion and I have been able to piece together. After the fire started, we ran, We scattered, Orian and I eventually found Connor on the road, and later Willow caught up with us. But even then we split up throughout the night to hide from the cars the fire trucks, sometimes in pairs, sometimes alone, And when we thought back, we all assumed that Chris was with us. Had been with one of us at any given point, but he wasn't. He wasn't there for sure until sunrise at Connor's house when we made the Pinky Square, which leads Chris unaccounted for from ten pm until almost seven am, and in the days that followed. Like me, Chris was questioned twice by the cops. Like me, he lied. Other than those meetings, there's no official record of his whereabouts. Plenty of time to move in his car, catch a bus home, even join the search party. Okay, do you do you mind reading it?

00:39:10
Speaker 7: Oh you're the actor, go bra.

00:39:13
Speaker 1: I don't need you to act, just read.

00:39:16
Speaker 5: Okay, pressures on?

00:39:19
Speaker 7: All right, all right.

00:39:22
Speaker 9: Skeletal remains were zoomed from approximately sixty seven inches below grade. Associated artifacts included degraded denim, fabric, pants, shoe fragments, and metallic jewelry. Now my mounts is dry.

00:39:37
Speaker 1: No, you're doing great. It sounds good.

00:39:39
Speaker 7: Hey.

00:39:39
Speaker 9: How many times did you say anti mortem on Boy Meets World?

00:39:41
Speaker 7: Huh?

00:39:43
Speaker 1: Okay, well, now you know how actors on CSI feel.

00:39:46
Speaker 9: Cranial trauma. Left parietal bone exhibits a depress fracture measuring approximately four point one centimeters in diameter.

00:39:54
Speaker 1: In other words, Anna was struck in the head, but that didn't kill her.

00:39:58
Speaker 9: Right fourth and fifth ribs both display complete perforation by a projectile.

00:40:04
Speaker 1: The bullet killed her. Now, to be clear, everything up until this is the extent of public information. The district attorney isn't redealing more about their case. So let me state, because my lawyers have insisted that I say this. Anything more is speculation, my speculation. But here's what I think.

00:40:24
Speaker 7: Happened that night.

00:40:26
Speaker 2: That's why I took him out. And as that kid went down hard, he took it out. He wasn't getting back up. Okay.

00:40:30
Speaker 1: Chris is hurt by Mick physically, of course, But when Mick knocks him down, something snaps. Years of being picked on, rage, humiliation.

00:40:40
Speaker 13: He's the mass of delaccia constantly.

00:40:42
Speaker 2: Really, oh dude, he lost his shit.

00:40:45
Speaker 1: But it's not just that, it's who this is, Mick, Anna's ex boyfriend, maybe still her boyfriend, knocking him down. That's the worst thing in the world for Chris because he's in love with Anna. He is by then in a relationship with her.

00:41:03
Speaker 3: I think you just like needed to be true that like you like me, and that I like you. But it's not okay. It like isn't okay for society. That's what I'm saying.

00:41:15
Speaker 1: When I heard about an age difference on the mix, my imagination only went in one direction. Older. I never thought it might mean younger. Chris began as Anna Stalker, the son of a bitch who, according to Laney, wore her down and became her secret, inappropriate boyfriend. She was older, and she was the coolest, but you were in love with her. We all had a massive crush on her, and I barely even talked to her. But whatever I was in Thember anything with a pulse and booth. Chris was a scrawny fifteen year old one of her sister's weirdo friends, the guy a dressed us Phantom of the Coffee Shop, Eah, the guy everyone still called fancy pants to watch him wig out. She also obviously must have liked him a lot, but I can imagine she was torn. She made tapes, he gave her books. They had fantasies of running off like Bonnie and Clyde. But did she take it seriously? I don't know, but I think Chris did, and that night he tried to confront Mick. It's actually possible. Likely he orchestrated the whole plan our Tom Shannigan's as a way to confront Mick. It would have been easy to tell Willow and each one of us what we needed to hear to get us out there.

00:42:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Chris and I were on the road too.

00:42:35
Speaker 7: Oh really, you guys.

00:42:36
Speaker 5: I thought you guys were still in the woods.

00:42:37
Speaker 1: No, we met back up with you guys. Walk back and we watched sunrise at Connors.

00:42:42
Speaker 2: Who did Yeah.

00:42:43
Speaker 1: Chris brings a baseball bat and then after Mick knocks him down, he goes and gets a gun. I don't think to kill Mick, but to scare him. But by the time he gets back, Mick and Travis are gone. He finds Willow in the barn and then the fire starts. Chris runs to my parents' house. He pages Anna. He's thinking Operation Van Go, it's time. Anna meets him at the driveway, but something goes wrong. The wounds describe an escalation, So what does it say is the official cause of that?

00:43:19
Speaker 9: It's a twofer combined blunt force, cranial trauma and gunshot.

00:43:23
Speaker 5: Went to the chest.

00:43:25
Speaker 1: Anna won'tco They argue, they fight, It gets physical. He hits her, maybe intentionally with the butt of the rifle. Maybe she falls either way, Now she's hurt, bleeding. Anna runs, Chris panics, chases her. He shoots four times, at least the three rounds that hit the tree and the shot to the chest that kills Anna trainer. And now, wait, I just want to be sure the way she was shot, where the bullet went in. She was definitely shot from the front.

00:43:58
Speaker 9: Yeah, see, you knew your audience.

00:44:02
Speaker 1: This is a gory detail. I do want to consider because it makes what Chris did more intentional, more brutal. It means Anna wasn't running. She had fallen or stopped and turned around. Maybe she was on her back, maybe sitting hands in the air, maybe she was pleaning. No matter what, she was facing Chris when he shot her, No matter what, he was looking right out her when he pulled the trigger.

00:44:28
Speaker 8: I mean, he didn't see nervous or honestly even concerned.

00:44:32
Speaker 1: Chris's arraignment was a few days ago. Monica was there. Was he wearing an orange jumpsuit?

00:44:38
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:44:39
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I was joking. Was the joke, Well, I don't know, maybe maybe not a joke. No, not a joke. I guess it's just a it's bizarre, the you know, the reality that this is actually happening, that Chris is you know.

00:44:58
Speaker 6: I mean there were thirty two arraignment hearings in the morning session alone, right, right, so thirty two jumpsuits. Uh huh, your friend discharged with murder. So was it bizarre that he looks like the other defendants?

00:45:14
Speaker 7: Yeah?

00:45:16
Speaker 1: Do you remember when we first talked? Yeah, back in ninety five. No, I'm talking about the when we first did our zoom for this and you said that you had seen me when I was doing the graduate in my twenties, and I said I didn't remember you, right, Yeah, Yeah, that wasn't true. I saw you that night right when I walked in. It was that party at the hotel lobby breaking near the current the Warwick.

00:45:45
Speaker 8: Yeah.

00:45:45
Speaker 1: I avoided you all night. I was totally terrified. I kept thinking that you were going to remember me. Well I did, right, of course. I was scared that if I talked to you, I was gonna crack and just tell.

00:46:02
Speaker 8: You the truth about the fire, you know, just that.

00:46:06
Speaker 1: I had lied to you back when I was a kid, because I remembered talking to you when I was fifteen and lying to you, and just how hard that was. So it was so awful to see you now in my twenties. I just I avoided you. I mean like I even left the party early. Now talking to anyone else, I might have been more direct. I might have just come out and said something like you're a good journalist, Monica. But something told me I didn't have to. Well, thank you, thanks well, thank you for everything, and keep in touch.

00:46:50
Speaker 8: We'll do.

00:46:52
Speaker 1: You might wonder why I wasn't at the arrangement myself, and maybe I should have been. But I'm in Bocus del Toro, Panama, where Willow wrote the letter that started all of us.

00:47:03
Speaker 2: The How did we get that we didn't want that money?

00:47:16
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly why I came here, except I guess I wanted the place to be real. To be honest, I hate the beach, but I brought my family and we've had a good time. I haven't heard from Laney. I understand why. For every reason she might thank me, there's a reason to condemn me. Lying back in nineteen ninety five, keeping Anna's murderer close while pushing Willow away, I may have eventually helped to solve the case. But for thirty years I neglected, and for two months running around with a microphone, I misdirected. I complicated everything. I also haven't heard back from Fiona, Chris's wife. She's refused to speak to press. According to public records, she's filed for divorce, but then she appeared in court at his arraignment, which means I guess that she has complicated feelings. I have complicated feelings. Of course, there's this righteous, vengeful part of me that is just so angry that hopes he suffers, can't wait to see him locked up for the rest of his life. Then there's another part of me maybe I shouldn't admit to that's just sad. I still can't believe he could do this, did do this. And the weirdest part is I catch myself wanting to share that disbelief with my best friend, which means almost every day I want to talk about how crazy it is that Chris did this with Chris. Looking back, it's obvious that Chris joined me in the podcast in order to throw me off, insisting that talking to the cops was a bad idea, throwing away the pager for all I know, he paid Sparks to feed me conspiracy theories and then vanish because Monica, and more importantly, the district attorney never found evidence about campaign contributions. I was blind in so many ways. Maybe I should have always seen the signs, but it's hard when the memories are actually good, Like I remember sitting in a restaurant with Chris when he just grabbed the check and ran. When we were twelve, Chris talked our way into an R rated movie, demanding to see the manager, and then cracking the guy up so much that he just had to let us in. I remember afternoons wandering six Flags, so scared to talk to girls, but Chris would talk to anyone everyone, so by the time our moms picked us up, we'd have phone numbers and pen pals. There's this thing that guys used to say, not anymore, not in my circles, at least bros before Hose, and I know that's cringe these days, like Maldonado using the old F word, and rightfully so. But it's also true that in nineteen ninety five I might have flinched at those words, but not at the sentiment. I was a love sick teenager always heartbroken, always wanting a relationship or a mourning one. Having a friend, a guy who was there for you was kind of a matter of survival. He'd tell you it's okay you don't fit in, it's okay you can't play sports, or that people treat you differently because you're an actor on a kid's show. A friend who tell you she's psycho you're better off without her, or even just chicks man. That was a friend that I thought I needed. Sometimes I'm sure I was that friend for someone else. Even now, when I think about Willow in nineteen ninety eight, I can see she was honoring a bro code by not telling me that Chris was mister Wrong, the one who got her pregnant. She was protecting my friendship with Chris, protecting me knowing that I was in love with her, that it would hurt me to find out that the two of them were seeing each other behind my back. I called this show the Red Weather because I thought there was something reckless and potentially damaging in the nonconformity of my parents' generation. How Like the drunken sailor with a dream, they broke from consensus ran off into the woods. Walked around naked, worshiped trees, did drugs. But now I think they didn't go far enough because for all the unique parts of my town, my friends, in the end, Anna's murder was a pretty pretty story. There's a tendency to look back at history and think we get smarter, more sophisticated. That people used to be gullible, naive products of their time starting communes, using lead gasoline, or you know, believing slavery was tenable, and we like to think of ourselves as past that we've gotten better, we see more clearly now we've somehow escaped the bubble. But I didn't even know my own friends. And I'm not talking about Chris, I mean Anna and Willow. It pains me to think how they have figured in this podcast. At various times victim muse enigma prop even with the best intentions, I built stories around them, eclipsing them. It's not really that different from the way Chris once had a fantasy of hopping in a car with the girl of his dreams. She would fix it, she would make it better, which is why I think I wanted to come to Panama. So this place wasn't some abstract thing in my head, not an idea whose meaning only grows in relationship to my life, to stories that I tell myself. But real Sam, real Water working a little here too, finishing up that script. Finally, Alex is glad I'm back to fiction, to made up monsters. We were walking down the road last night, along the main drag here and I saw something a bakery that Willow had mentioned in her letter. She had this crazy story about an argument and if she got into with this ex pat who was trying to bring cronuts to Bocus del Toro. I started recording a voice memo on my phone because I realized it could make a great ending to this podcast. It would bookend these episodes with Willow's letter, and it would offer the opposite from where I started, something fun, lighthearted from her life. But then I thought about how Willow wrote a letter to me, labeled it, stamped it, sealed it, and I shut my phone over. The Red Weather was written and directed by Ryder Strong, sound engineering, editing and mixing by Bo Milkus, produced by Tess Bartholomew. Executive producers of iHeartRadio, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. Associate producer Bo milkis original score composed and performed by Kyle Morton and featuring the sound of Body Makes by Kyle and Ben Morton. The Red Weather Stars me Rider Strong with Alexander Barretto and Indy king Lynn and Shiloh Strong as themselves. Chris Wilde was Chris Delveccio, Lenisa Frederick was Monica Tremblaine. John Wertis was Sheriff Maldonado. Rachel Marsh was Anna Trainor. Heidi Soulzman was Laney Trainer. Chris Lemke was l Rick Lyte, Kelley low Dennis was Sheriff Grace Lachlan Travis Schultz was Thomas Greer. Leif Gantford was Mick Bowden, al Vicente was Andres. Adam Stillwell was Sparks. Adam Bush was Howard Tripp. Lindsay Phoenix was Julie Tess. Bartholomew was Fiona and Logan Bartholomew was Ury Donnenfeld. Ashley Platts was the Pine Cone waitress. Henry Dittman was the news announcer. Sarah mcgeligate was the news anchor. Thelma Sugui was the protest news anchor. Zane Reuben was front desk woman. Jessica Da Vaughnville was front desk attendant, Sheila June Azeem was Lachlan's assistant, and Eric Luminarius was the bodyguard. In Kent, the Police Officer Special thanks to Ocean Green, Sean Fox, Nathan Sackett, Aaron Grayle, Toby Lawless, Amy Sugarman, Danielle Fischer, Chris Levetus, Joshua Malkin, Paul Gandersmith, John Flynn, Yorke, Todd Goldberg and Elaine and Andrew of Cathay eighty six in Eagle Rock, and a very special thanks to all my friends and family who lent their time, their voices and their stores. Thank you for listening.

00:57:05
Speaker 7: We hope you enjoyed the show.