Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir Page 18

  "Nah," he said. "She checked out OK. She's got some experience. If she can't handle it, we'll pull her off and reassign it."

  Then, one Saturday after a bottle of wine with shrimp scampi, she ran out of things to say. Candles danced in the darkened dining room of Mike's house, and she sat quietly as if considering the moment. She reached across the table and took my hands.

  "Gary, I want you to listen to me. What if I were to tell you that I did kill George?"

  "Huh?"

  "What if I told you that we had a meeting that night to talk about our divorce case? We were talking in his garage, and I was making him angry. He was vicious when he got angry. He was a dangerous, little man."

  She paused, looked down at the table, and then returned my stare.

  "What if I told you he started to make threats, and he doubled up his fists. And I couldn't take another beating from that man. I was not going to take another beating. So, I looked around for a weapon, and I saw the leg of a bar stool against the wall. He came for me, but I was too quick. I jumped out of his way, and I grabbed that chair leg, and I hit him in the head. When he fell, I hit him again and again and again. I couldn't stop. I kept beating him until I was exhausted, and then he was dead. What would you say if I told you that?"

  She left me speechless. I shook my head and tried to guess her intention with this confession—if that was what it had been. She stared, awaiting an answer.

  "I don't know what to say. What do you expect me to say?"

  Catherine laughed then and said, "I just wanted to see the look on your face."

  "How did I look?"

  "I think I scared you."

  It could have been a performance. If it was, I thought, she should get an award. I would have sworn from the tone in her voice and glint in her eyes that she had been there.

  As shocking as that confession had been, it couldn't top another comment from Catherine in those days as our relationship approached the Thanksgiving holiday mark. She drew my undivided attention one evening when she mumbled and tossed off another riveting remark:

  "I think my period is late."

  THIRTY-TWO

  November 1979

  Already troubled in my mind, our relationship began its full transition into a war zone on the Sunday night of November 11 when Catherine and I returned to her house after a weekend trip to Austin in her car. We arrived about eight to find her roommate Mike waiting to have a chat. He took her aside to speak privately for only a few minutes while I relaxed in Catherine's bedroom. Then he climbed in his car and left while she joined me wearing a serious look on her face.

  "We've been evicted," she said with a giggle.

  "We?"

  "Well, I am evicted now because of you. He said either you go, or we both go. You know what I told him?"

  "I'm afraid to guess."

  "Ha! I told him, 'I'll never give him up, even if I have to sleep in the gutter.' Ha! He said he can't stand your car parked in front of his house all the time."

  "I can park it down the street."

  "He also doesn't like the noise all night long."

  For a moment, I saw this development as perhaps an opportunity to accomplish the inevitable and put some distance between us. She had grown too possessive, and I had spotted a few danger signals. But she wouldn't have it.

  "Maybe we should cool things for a while," I said. "I'm over at Strong's now, and you're back in business. We can…"

  "Wait a minute," she cut me off. "You're not dumping me over this. You don't dump me."

  "Well, you can dump me. I'll tell everybody it was your idea," I said, thinking, as if anyone could care.

  "I can't stay here after this. I've told Mike to fuck off because we're leaving. We'll be out in a week. And you better find me a place to stay. There has to be room at Strong's. We don't take up much space, and that stooge is out running around all night anyway, isn't he? No, you got the pussy, and now you have to make this right. Nothing is free."

  I should have been offended, I guess, by that tirade, but instead I found it amusing, and I realized I wasn't quite ready to break away. She had played the guilt card, blaming me for her eviction. Although I did not agree with her contention, I let it slide without an argument. I checked with Strong, and he immediately agreed to let her bunk with me for a while until she could find a more permanent solution, mumbling something about being a little lonely over there and looking forward to the excitement Catherine might introduce to his life. It would take him only eleven more days to adopt a dramatically different attitude. By then, however, we would have passed a point of no return, with Strong poised to experience more excitement than he ever could have imagined.

  I tried to move Catherine in drips and drabs, using the cars. Like me, she had no large pieces of furniture. Besides the two pistols, her prized possession was a Sony color television set I figured had come from a burglary client as payment for a bond. But I didn't ask specifics. She mostly had clothes she did not want wrinkled. Left alone, I would have tossed her whole closet in my Vega and sorted it out later. But she demanded more respect for her clothes and threatened to serve me with a dry cleaning bill for any wrinkles. For a woman who allegedly had the power to mobilize an army of felons for burglaries on a moment's notice, Catherine really had trouble finding anyone to help her move. So the burden fell on me. But, as she reminded me several times during the week, "Nothing is free."

  As it turned out, however, she was not the only one in my life who was moving. I had gotten Catherine well resettled into Strong's house and prepared to have a meal at home on the evening of Monday, November 19, when the phone rang and she answered. Cindy, on the other end, asked for me. Catherine handed me the receiver then perched nearby, hanging on every word she could hear.

  "I called to tell you I have moved out of the house," Cindy said.

  "That doesn't make much sense," I replied. "We're still making house payments so somebody should be living there. Now I'm paying rent here, and you're paying rent wherever you are. Where are you anyway? What's the address?"

  "I can't give it to you."

  "What's going on?"

  "I just can't give you this address. Al doesn't want you to have it."

  Uncle Al again, I thought. I looked at Catherine and popped my eyeballs out to make her laugh. She didn't. I figured that Al now had persuaded Cindy to join him in a new love nest somewhere that wouldn't have the smell of me in the walls. And I was willing to bet they had used a moving company to handle my furniture. But I got a little upset about Cindy's reaction to my request for the address. So I offered a compromise.

  "Well," I said, "why don't you tell me the new address for my children? Al can't object to that, can he? I think the lawyers would order you to do it."

  Cindy chuckled at that and, for a moment, sounded conciliatory. She said, "It's a little house in West University Place…"

  Then, suddenly, I heard a pop, and the telephone line went dead. I stared at the receiver in my hand, looked at Catherine with a shrug of my shoulders, and hung it up.

  "I heard a strange sound and now the phone is dead," I told her.

  "I can't sit still about this any longer," she said. "Cindy has moved out of your house and won't tell you where she lives? It is time now for you to hire a real lawyer and go after that bitch."

  Although I wanted to tell her to mind her own business, I found myself warming to her rant. Cindy had angered me with everything from her unexpected relocation to her obstinate attitude on the new address. I agreed that Catherine had a point and decided to listen. But, of course, she instantly pushed her wise counsel beyond the limits of reason.

  "And, I think it is time to unleash the clients," she said, sounding like a gang leader with a mob at her disposal. "Cindy needs a good beating. Nothing drastic but just something to get her attention."

  Before I could respond, the phone rang again and I answered.

  "Gary," Cindy began, her voice shaking for some as yet unknown reason. "Do not t
ry to find us. I will try to straighten this out as soon as possible. But if you come over here somehow, there could be trouble. Something is going wrong. And you already have enough trouble with your new girlfriend."

  "Oops," I told her, "I think you just stepped in a bucket of shit with that remark. I can tell you, she's the last person on earth you want in your face right now."

  "Be patient, that's all I can say." And she hung up.

  "Bucket of shit?" Catherine asked.

  "Yeah, she told me I have enough trouble with you without biting off some more at her house."

  I could feel the steam pouring out of Catherine's ears.

  "Now I am going to call the clients—"

  "No, you aren't doing anything. It's not your fight. Stay out of it."

  She sat quietly for a moment, gathering her thoughts, then made a fist and pointed a finger at me.

  "You know what I think now? I think you are going to give me a share of your house when it sells. I think I deserve it for all the bullshit I have had to suffer."

  I couldn't help myself and started to laugh.

  "You think this is funny?" she asked. "I'm serious. You owe me."

  Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, I thought, tuning her out. I had reached a point where I could not really tell how serious her threats might be. Are you for real? I wanted to ask. But I didn't want to spend any time on that debate, as dangerous as it might be to underestimate her potential for havoc. Instead, I focused on Cindy and my daughters. Something suddenly seemed twisted on that side of my life, and I felt concerned. I figured I would hear more soon enough, but I could not help but be anxious.

  "Please give me a break," I finally told Catherine in an effort to shut her up. "I'm getting confused here, and I need to think about all this before I make any moves. You can lay off for a couple of days, can't you?"

  She scowled but nodded and let it drop.

  THIRTY-THREE

  November 21, 1979

  It took Cindy just two days to elaborate on her mysterious phone call, and, when she did, it brought the stew of my relationship with Catherine into its first hard, dangerous boil. Shortly after noon on the day before Thanksgiving, Cindy popped her head through the press room door and motioned for me to take a walk. Strong saw me leave our shared office but said nothing. The courthouse was deadly slow that day before the holiday, with many of the courts in recess. Cindy asked to go someplace private, so I took her to a vacant courtroom where we talked in the dark. She was quaking like a little dog that had just been caught messing the floor. She was terrified, and this was the first time I ever had seen her this way.

  "I want off this treadmill," she said, trembling as we sat along one of the attorney tables in the dim light. "Al is crazy."

  "What are you saying? Now you don't want the divorce?"

  "I can't take any more of this. You don't know how crazy he is. He wants to control everything I do."

  "You want us back together?"

  She nodded, looked at me, and said, "He shot the telephone."

  I didn't quite grasp her remark and tried to envision that in my head. I squinted with my eyes, then stared in an expression of disbelief.

  "He did that, Gary! He shot the telephone while I was talking to you. That's why it went dead. That's why I didn't want you coming anywhere near the house. There is a hole in the phone. You can see it if you want to."

  Although I genuinely felt sorry for her, realizing that her dream love affair had turned into a nightmare, I started to laugh at the image in my mind of a doctor pulling a pistol from his white coat and drilling a telephone while Cindy had the receiver up to her ear. I had never even seen Uncle Al so I had to improvise for his face. But Cindy I could conjure. I imagined her eyes popping out and her feet jumping off the floor when the gun discharged.

  "Sorry," I said when she scowled at my involuntary reaction. "I don't know what to say. Where were the girls?"

  "They were in bed, but they must have heard the gunshot. I can't stand this any more. He has me so frightened."

  Jeez, I thought. Have we exchanged our marriage for a season pass to theatre of the absurd?

  I started to grow angry at the thought of my girls exposed to danger. If Uncle Al could shoot a plastic telephone because I was on the other end of the line, I wondered what he must feel every time he saw Little E or Shannon, knowing my blood and genetic material coursed through their veins.

  "We have to fix this," I said. "You can't allow him near the girls."

  "I know it, I know," she started to cry. "He's gone. I told him to leave. But I'm so confused. I don't know what to do. Have we gone too far? Is there any going back?"

  I took her hands and said, "Of course. Is that what you really want?"

  In the weeks since we had split up, I had thought a lot about what I really wanted. I had decided I could live without Cindy, and I could live as a visiting parent. I could live with the divorce. But I also decided that the girls would be better served with a reconciliation, even if our marital relationship could never be the same. Our home had not been wracked by fighting or become any hellish place to live, as happens in many cases where couples drift apart making existence unbearable for the children. In fact, we were still having fun as a couple when she had shocked me with her decision to separate. Just as unexpected had been this day's attempt to make up. But I realized I could not hesitate, believing I would figure a way to fix that, too, if we reconciled. What I did not understand, however, was the secret hold of Uncle Al on Cindy—ammunition he carried in his prescription pad. It would be nearly a year before I unraveled the true extent of those powers. On this day before Thanksgiving, however, I was ready to do whatever she wanted if it would ensure the safety of our kids. I thought maybe she had decided she preferred a dedicated partner to a romantic lunatic. Her dilemma sounded familiar, and I knew we had one more dangling problem to discuss.

  "You know," I said, "I'm in a bit of situation, too."

  "Mehaffey?"

  I nodded and said, "This won't be easy. She's already shown some warning signs, and I've about had my fill of her."

  "I'm really depressed."

  She looked it, too. I realized Cindy was on the edge. I could understand if she felt guilty about the way our marriage had disintegrated and the impact of her decisions on our girls. I wondered if she might be suicidal. So I offered to call my former therapist and see if he could talk with her that night. He had invited us both to come see him, so I didn't see a conflict. And I felt he would already have the background on our situation to allow for a quick consultation. She agreed, I called from the courtroom, and he told me to have her swing by that evening about six.

  "Can you pick up the girls from day care and take them to the house?" she asked. "I'll come back after the session."

  "Sure. But you'll have to give me the address."

  Cindy grinned. Then she took out a pen and wrote the address on a piece of scrap paper there. I folded it up and put it in my shirt pocket as she got up and left.

  "Thank you," she whispered as she opened the double doors and walked into the courthouse hallway.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  November 21, 1979

  Catherine and Strong caught me as I left the courtroom after giving Cindy enough time to flee unseen. They had been walking down the hallway checking all the rooms.

  "What's up?" joked Strong. "We heard you had a meeting with Cindy somewhere and wanted to make sure you were safe."

  Catherine scowled and said nothing.