Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir Page 11

  We were finished. We just needed to separately reassemble the pieces of our lives in the most civilized way possible. Unfortunately, Catherine Mehaffey would enter our lives soon to help, and the result would prove anything but civil.

  TWENTY

  1960s

  "We need a man."

  A dark-haired young woman had written that plea with her finger on the car window in the frost. It was a cold December night in 1964, and I spotted her note as soon as I had backed my 1954 Ford sedan into the space beside her at Chuck-A-Burger in St. Louis. Some guy and another girl sat in the front seat of her car while I had two of my high school pals in the front seat with me.

  "Am I man enough?" I asked, rolling down the window.

  "Let's take a look," she said, as her message disappeared with her window.

  I hopped out and gave her one. She opened her door and said, "You'll do."

  I climbed in beside her, and we had a chat. I learned she had been stood up that night, and they had been cruising the drive-in restaurants for adventure. She looked cute enough and appeared to be two or three years older than me. They had driven all the way from the town of St. Charles, about thirty miles away on the other side of the Missouri River. After about five minutes, they invited me to ride back to St. Charles with them for a little party.

  "Hey," I told my pals after excusing myself to secure my car, "I need you to find another ride out of here and park this thing on the street over there with the keys under the mat so I can find it fast if I need it."

  "Taylor, you are fucking nuts," one of them quickly advised. "How do you know where they're going to take you? And why do you need to go with them? Just follow them in your car."

  "I don't know," I said. "It just feels OK. The guy said he'll bring me back here. If I get in trouble, I'll figure something out."

  My friend should have been right. But I was seventeen and invincible. She was cute and wanted me in the back seat of that car. So off we drove. As an event in my life, it had little consequence. I didn't even get laid. We spent most of that night in the living room of some house in St. Charles with her mother asleep in a bedroom and the other couple making out on the couch beside us. I'm sure I could have turned that meeting into my first sexual experience if I hadn't been so shy about it. But her most aggressive move of the night occurred when she scrawled that note on the window. Mine came when I hopped into her car. The guy drove me back to Chuck-A-Burger about three in the morning. I found my car and went home.

  Nevertheless, I recall that incident often as a harbinger of things to come when I try to analyze my third personality as the charming rogue—the one destined to keep me poised on the edge of trouble for most of my life. I've never been embarrassed to admit the things I've done and actually consider the Rogue to be a pretty interesting guy. He's usually been smart enough to cooperate with the professional, recognizing the truce as essential for survival. In my mind I've taken calculated risks more often than not, based on an unexplainable belief that if I do get into trouble, I'll figure something out. It explains why I could not feel too much self pity when Cindy unceremoniously ended our partnership in August of 1979. And it explains why I was the kind of guy willing to tempt the devil in a relationship with an obvious threat like Catherine Mehaffey. It's because I am the kind of guy who will climb into the back seat of a car with a complete stranger and take off for St. Charles, certain only of the fact I believe I'll get home one way or another.

  I believe we each have a rogue. Some just keep theirs bottled better than others. Introducing mine—and letting him confess his sins—should prevent the uninitiated from feeling too much sympathy for the domestic Gary who got side-swiped by Uncle Al. After meeting my rogue, others may even shake their heads and whistle about my later adventures with Catherine: "He had it coming." I'll admit I had something coming. But I also would stop to remind those more judgmental souls to consider the words of that cinematic philosopher-king, Clint Eastwood, in his classic western, Unforgiven: "We all got it comin'."

  Likely born from a combination of boredom and over-active imagination and, of course, my own narcissistic flaw to routinely become the center of attention, my rogue emerged most prominently about our junior year in high school. Anyone looking only at the academic side of my high school record would find an ambitious, hard-working stiff focused only on scholarship. At the same time, anyone looking only at the other side of that ledger likely would ask: "How come he's never been in jail?" With several of my pals I pulled so many pranks, I ask that question often myself. I rarely missed a week in high school without hitting some stranger with an egg or a water balloon. We operated like hunters on weekends and evenings, seeking prey among the unsuspecting masses arrogant enough to believe they could move around town unmolested. One night while cruising for victims, I pulled alongside a car that was waiting to turn left at a light. In the front seat sat a man and his wife dressed in evening clothes, obviously headed out on the town. When my light turned green so I could go straight, the rogue took one of our loaded water balloons and popped it through the open passenger side window of their car. The image returns to me in slow motion, when I close my eyes, and again I can see that plump balloon sliding across the dashboard. I see the looks of horror over their shoulders as it slams into the window and breaks unleashing a wall of water, and drenching them just as I drive away.

  "Jesus," the rogue told my sidekick, as we raced through the intersection and away from the scene of the crime. "That looked like a wave from the ocean. I had no idea those things held that much water. I hope they don't have a wreck."

  Another time, the rogue got me suspended for two weeks from riding the school bus because he clobbered the local police chief in the head with a snowball from inside the bus while the chief directed traffic at a busy intersection. Enraged, the chief chased down the bus, curbed it, and ordered all the kids outside.

  "I could have been killed out there, do you understand?" he roared to a line of teens, each fighting hard to stop giggling. "I am going to find out who threw that snowball, and he's going to be sorry."

  In an early example of the rogue's ability to cooperate with the professional, we realized the chief probably was correct. Somebody would snitch. So we derailed the investigation by visiting the police station that night, admitting our role, and apologizing. By then, the chief had cooled off and had a little laugh about it himself. Because I had come forward, my principal decided on leniency. Instead of suspending me from school, he simply suspended me from riding the bus, which had been required by the distance of my house from the school. That should have effectively prevented my attendance and triggered failing grades. But then, for some unfathomable reason, he said I could drive my car to school and park it in the lot during the suspension.

  The punishment made no sense, but it underscored my confidence in the power of a balanced life. That snowball shot stands as the only time I ever confessed to any transgression, and then I only did it as a strategy for survival. It became the foundation for my philosophy on secrets we take to our graves. Everyone should have some of those. I know I have plenty, and I have managed to elude exposure on many aspects of my secret life because my professional and domestic images cover my tracks. I also knew where to draw the line between malicious shenanigans and serious criminal behavior. I had little trouble making good grades, and I earned my own money to pay for my car. My parents could never believe some of the things I would do behind their backs. Every drug dealer has a mother who loves him. So, why wouldn't mine turn a deaf ear to the monkey shines of the rogue they had spawned? More important—I never asked for money.

  One of my pranks did result in the only failing grade of my high school days. But, even that episode reinforced my view that a balanced Renaissance Man can always enjoy a secret life as a hooligan. On this occasion—in the last semester of my senior year—I took advantage of a substitute teacher for our math analysis class. An unsuspecting, over-eager rookie, he played right into the hands of me an
d one of my cohorts named Ken. Over the years, Ken and I had carefully honed a fake-fighting routine so well known in the school that classmates had learned to ignore it. We could have been stunt performers in the movies. This sub had been in our class about ten minutes and was writing furiously on the blackboard, when Ken started the action.

  "Hey, Taylor, I'm not taking any more," he yelled, standing up beside his desk at the back of the room.

  "That's what you think," I shouted, lunging in his direction. By this time the sub was spinning around at the blackboard and knocking chalk to the floor. I got to Ken and ran my left hand across his cheek, meeting that palm with my right to produce an echoing Thwack with the illusion of a sweeping slap across the face. Ken's role involved a pratfall backward over his desk and into the wall of the room. The sub froze at his desk, and I'm sure he couldn't understand why the whole class started clapping. But they had seen all this before. Ken got up and took a bow. I did the same and returned to my desk. The episode was far from complete. Our teacher returned from his sick day enraged. He ordered us to move our desks into the hall and said we could not return to class until we had copied the trigonometry tables.

  "I'm not doing that," the rogue spoke right up, adding, "I'll sit in the hall and read a book if you want but I'm not copying those tables."

  "You have an A in this class right now. But I can make it an F."

  "Go ahead, make it an F. But I'm not copying the trig tables."

  So I sat in the hall reading several books during his class for the rest of the year. The rogue's recreational reading list for that period included paperback classics like Candy and Tobacco Road. Ken sat there, too, for a while—until he finished copying the trig tables. Then he left me alone. I wasn't concerned. My grades had always been so strong that one F wouldn't hurt my final standing. Already accepted at Mizzou, I didn't need anything from that teacher or his class. Even he had said I had learned math analysis well enough to post a grade of A. Surely, I thought, the knowledge itself is basically what we need.

  That teacher approached at graduation with a serious smile across his face as I stood reviewing my final report card. He extended a hand.

  "No hard feelings," he said. "I just hope you learned something from this."

  "Yes sir," said the rogue, suppressing a laugh. "Yes, I certainly did."

  TWENTY-ONE

  The 1960s

  The rogue's Tom Foolery only escalated in college where I became the central focus in a legendary incident known as the Francis House Feces Case of 1966. That adventure forced me to wrestle deeply with the concept of honesty and became the foundation for another personal philosophy establishing what I call my law of ultimate resolutions. That law seeks to answer the dilemma: When can you lie? Using that law as our guide, the rogue determined I can lie whenever the punishment for telling the truth would realistically threaten our survival, and as long as we are sure the lie will succeed.

  To those who would call that an excuse to do whatever you want, the rogue responds that he has found he only rarely has again encountered those circumstances, as long as he is honest in his assessment of survival. Few confrontations in life truly threaten your survival. It also is more difficult than many might think to lie successfully about anything for very long. Sooner or later, you always get caught, and usually you are better off when exposure comes sooner before the first lie creates an impenetrable web of confusion. So, for me to lie, I must be certain my life is on the line and believe my lie is solid enough to save it.

  I won't lie to get ahead. Only in self-defense.

  The Francis House incident began innocently enough one Saturday night in October when I was sitting around my dormitory room with three pals discussing our lack of plans for that night. My high school sidekick Ken had become my roommate, and we were joined in our discussion by two fellow residents of Francis House who called themselves Surf and Doeda. We were feeling liberated because all authority figures from the dorm had left for the weekend. That list included our official personnel assistant or P.A. as we called them. These student-employees received complementary room and board to live amongst us in the public housing facilities and function much like dormitory cops, keeping the peace and snitching off delinquents to the housing dean. Also missing that weekend were all other elected Francis House leaders, except for me. And I only served as the house jock chairman, running its intramural athletic programs because I had been the quarterback on our flag football squad. So the rogue was feeling like The Authority in Francis House that night.

  From somewhere in the dark recesses of his troubled mind, Ken suddenly suggested he would like to take a shit down the four-story stairwell of the dorm. He had some disagreements with a couple of freshmen who had rooms in the basement, or what we called the Francis House Grotto. He said he wanted to shit on them. Several minutes later, Ken sat parked with his ass over the rail on the fourth floor grunting like a pig. I stood in the stairs, watching from below, while Surf and Doeda stood guard left and right. We literally had all exits covered. But Ken couldn't do the job. After a couple of minutes he surrendered, jumped off the rail, and kneeled panting with exhaustion.

  "Oh, hell," the rogue suddenly said, seizing control and moving up the stairs. "Watch down here, and I'll do it."

  I recall the shrill whistling sound of the rogue's turd as it sailed down the well and then Splat as it hit the tile floor in the basement. We hustled back to the room and sat around on our beds to see what would happen. What occurred was the most amazing transformation of a building I could ever imagine. It resembled the change that occurs between the minutes before a department store's doors open and the minutes after, on the day of a sale. One second you could hear yourself breathe. The next, all you heard was a roar. I was shocked that such a tiny bit of shit could trigger such chaos.

  Of course, the guys from the Grotto found me quickly. After all, I was The Authority that night, and they needed help. They were at my door whining about shit in their hall. I started to feel a little guilty.

  "I'd better go have a look," I said, and we all went down stairs.

  "Yes," I said, "I think that is a pile of shit."

  "What are you going to do about it?" one of them asked.

  "Clean it up."

  Then I went to the janitor's closet to get a broom and dust pan. I cleaned it up and went back to my room as the dorm grew quiet again. But the solitude didn't last. About fifteen minutes later, the uproar began anew. When we heard someone yell, "We got him, we got him," the four of us blew out of that room as fast as we could. In the stairwell I saw a P.A. from another dorm holding an impressionable freshman named Johnnie by the arm with a lynch mob from the grotto gathering along the wall. I quickly learned that, in the excitement over delivery of the first bomb, Johnnie decided to get involved. He had run into a bathroom, filled a pizza box with turds, and tossed its contents over the rail, where they rained down upon the visiting P.A. as he headed up the steps to investigate the earlier altercation. I knew Johnnie as a country boy, just off the farm, but I still couldn't fathom his thought process. I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders as the P.A. led him away.

  The next evening I was summoned to the room of the Francis House P.A.—a large, humorless senior named Chuck. He was fuming and wanted to know what happened. I told him somebody shit down the stairwell, and then they caught Johnnie throwing shit over the rail after I cleaned up the first load.

  "You know Johnnie will be lucky to stay in school," Chuck said, starting to play me like some cop on a cheesy TV show. "But he's remorseful and admitted what he did."

  "It would be pretty hard for him to deny it."

  "But he says he didn't start it. He says it was you."

  My brain started to compute the options. I knew only my three pals had seen it. I also knew exposure might mean expulsion. I concluded my life was literally on the line. Chuck obviously expected me to break down, fall to my knees, and beg for his mercy. In an instant, I decided to call his bluff. If he wa
nted my life, I decided, he was going to work harder for it than this. And I knew I could not waiver in my response.

  "Nope, Chuck. It wasn't me. I don't know where you'd get that."

  He looked startled, and then he grew angry.

  "I'm going to prove you did it. I don't feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for that little freshman who has to live with this on his record just because he wanted to be like you."

  I just stared at him like I thought he was crazy. Then I walked away with an empty spot in the pit of my stomach. According to dormitory rules, I had the right to a trial before a jury of fellow residents known as a judicial board. But judicial board proceedings were extremely rare as disputes between P.A.s and residents usually settled without trial. And a judicial board's ruling did not necessarily mean resolution. Ultimately, any verdict went to the dean of housing for a final decision. I knew I had to prepare for a full-blown case, and I knew it would involve lying under oath. I had confidence in just about every aspect of this showdown except for one thing: How would they describe this incident in the indictment?