by Gary Taylor
"The beating?"
She rubbed the side of her face, and I saw she would probably raise a bruise. So, I made another vow to myself. Never again would I touch her physically unless backed into an absolute corner. A neighbor had called the cops, and I had told them I would leave the house if I could get dressed and find my car keys—even though I was the one living there. I insisted they stay until I was gone. Before I could dress, however, they had left, and Catherine intercepted me with a new attitude of restraint.
"Don't leave," she sighed. "I am starting to agree with you that this will never work. I can't have this kind of bullshit in my life. I have to get control. Why don't we talk about this in the morning? At least, we'll spend Thanksgiving together and have dinner with my mother. Then we'll see what we want to do."
She seemed like a completely different person from the Catherine of earlier in the day and into the night. I wondered if the visit from the cops had made her more reasonable. I was exhausted and had no place else to go. I believed if she honestly wanted a peaceful end to our relationship, I'd be better off in the long run. So I agreed to stay. But I didn't sleep much that night until I heard Strong return from wherever his night ride had taken him. I figured she would never do anything with a witness in the house.
Despite his late night, Strong awakened early on Thanksgiving morning—early enough to catch me carrying the morning paper in from the driveway. He took me aside and stood three inches from my face.
"Taylor, I want that bitch out of here," he said through clenched teeth that made me wonder what his night with her had been like before I arrived with Cindy. "If you have to pay her rent somewhere else, I will loan you the money. But get her out of here."
"She's going, Jim, she's going," I said. "But it might not be as easy as wishing it done."
THIRTY-SIX
Thanksgiving Weekend, 1979
Our battlefield truce held through Thanksgiving Day without any further outbursts. Catherine and I didn't talk much, but we took her mother to dinner later in the day. I knew I would have to take the initiative and act decisively to accomplish our split without incident, so I rose early on Friday and started checking the classified ads for an apartment for her. I found about half a dozen places in good locations close to downtown, where she maintained an office about three blocks from the courthouse. When I showed her the ads I had circled, she just stared.
"You know you need to live closer to your office and your work," I said, hoping to win her cooperation with logic focused on her ambitions. "You should get that law practice up by living where it's convenient. Don't forget, you have your first murder case to handle, and I want to make sure you do a good job. I'll make some calls and take you around to look at a couple of these places in the Montrose neighborhood.
"I lived in Montrose before," she said, sounding at least a little interested. The neighborhood was Houston's version of a Bohemian community. The houses dated from the 1930s and 1940s, with rental properties catering to an upscale target market of young professionals. Rents were reasonable, and I felt they certainly should have been within the range for someone in Catherine's position. Individual investors predominated as landlords, hoping to launch their real estate empires by subdividing old brick houses into small apartment buildings and duplexes.
Catherine remained uncharacteristically silent during our tour of several potential new homes for her. I hoped she simply wanted to reconcile her paranoia about rejection with the obvious reality of our incompatibility, but I couldn't be sure. I only knew we were making progress. When she seemed impressed with a one-bedroom duplex for four hundred dollars per month at 1723 Kipling Avenue, I talked her into it on the spot. The landlord lived in the older house next door. He wanted the first and last month's rent as a security deposit. Catherine stunned me by taking eight one-hundred-dollars bills from her purse and handing them to him. It was vacant, freshly painted, and ready for a tenant.
"We can start moving stuff tomorrow," I said, as we walked to her car across the lawn.
"I think you should pay half of that," Catherine replied without looking up.
"I'll see what I can do," I said, eager to leave before she had a chance to throw a fit or back out of the deal.
"I know I'm missing a period," she said, but I ignored her.
I had hoped Strong might be around to help move things, since he was so eager to have her out of his house. But he had vanished without a trace, off on some unknown quest, leaving me to cope with her on my own. Some of her belongings still remained at Mike's house in far west Houston, and the rest were at the house of Strong. She also said she had some furniture in storage. We tried moving everything we could fit into my car, but it seemed to take forever. I suspected Catherine was trying to stall, but I remained industrious. At one point on Saturday I even managed to sneak out and visit Cindy at her new house. She showed me the bullet-riddled telephone base and asked me if her rent house was "OK." She insisted she had chased Uncle Al out of her life and was just taking it easy in her new place, waiting for me. Between Cindy and Catherine, that weekend left me dazed, uncertain, and more than a little depressed.
Although Catherine had paid quickly to reserve the duplex at 1723 Kipling, she began dragging her feet on the move. And her solitude made me suspicious. We didn't talk about the future that weekend. I didn't want to set her off. Of course, every now and then she would mumble a subtle threat.
"You remember the court bailiff, don't you?" she asked me. "All he owed was about $250. Now he's lost everything."
I silently reviewed her secret agenda of reasons for wanting a relationship and decided to add another troublesome item: her fear of exposure on a wide range of activities ranging from her abuse of Bar rules on the bail bond certificate to her late night pseudo-confession on the Tedesco murder. I knew that none of it provided the sort of strong evidence that could cause her serious trouble. But I also realized her twisted mind might turn that fear into a rationalization for an irrational act, such as assault or even murder. If she truly had been involved in the Tedesco killing, I reasoned, she indeed would be a dangerous predator—one who likely took pride in the accomplishment of a kill. She had joked about Tedesco and other victims like the bailiff, incorporating them into her resume of fear and wearing their mysterious destruction like a badge of honor. I allowed my imagination to wander and realized: What a trophy I would make if she could add a notch for me to her gunbelt after just a few weeks together and get away with it. I wondered: Am I just paranoid?
Then I felt ashamed and ridiculous. Here I was at six feet tall, athletic and a relatively strong thirty-two years old living in fear of a five-foot-three-inch female. Of course, she had bragged about unleashing the clients, and, if that threat were true, they would level the field immediately. I also had to sleep some time. I couldn't lie awake to defend myself in case she decided to bash out my brains. I recalled medical examiner testimony about a murder victim assaulted like Tedesco:
His head resembled what you would expect of an egg dropped from a ten-story building and onto the concrete.
Nope, I decided, unpredictability reigned as her source of power, and it would be formidable. I had to stay alert.
Then my paranoia hit a new plateau on Monday night, November 26, when I fielded a call from Strong at our house. I had not seen that guy all weekend. He obviously had skipped out, waiting for her to move. He had returned to work at the courthouse that day, and I had gone back to his house, where Catherine told me she didn't think she could complete the move until the next weekend. Before I could figure my next step, I answered the phone.
"What's going on?" asked Strong.
"What do you mean? I'm trying to get her moved."
"No, there's something else I need to tell you. She called me today and asked me to check on her tonight. She said she is in fear of you."
"She's in fear of me?"
"She said you beat her once, and you might beat her again. She said you've been acting weird, and she ma
y need my help."
"Ahhh, shit," I whispered, while Catherine puttered in the kitchen out of earshot. "That's bullshit, man. I am trying to get her out of here, but she is just not going very easily."
"I believe you," he said. "But I thought you should know, in case she's laying the groundwork for a self-defense story of some kind."
"Can you believe we are having this discussion? It sounds like something from a bad movie."
"What else can I say? You saw the suitcase. You saw the umbrella. She tried to get Cindy over here for God knows what. I think she is capable of incredible violence, and you need to watch your back."
I didn't sleep that night. I lay awake in the bed beside her, watching as she tossed and turned. At one point she woke up sweating and screaming. She told me she had dreamed of hell and wanted a priest. By morning I had decided on a new plan for extracting her from my life. We got up, then drove in separate cars to a little diner where we ate a quiet breakfast. I told her I would see her later and drove off. Instead of going to my office in the fourth floor press room of the criminal courts building, however, I walked across the street to the building where Harris County District Attorney John Holmes had his offices. I took the elevator to the sixth floor where the lawyers of his Special Crimes Bureau kept their desks and files. I asked the receptionist for Don Stricklin, the chief of Special Crimes.
"I need to talk about Catherine Mehaffey," I told Stricklin when he emerged from his office with a curious look on his face. "Would you like to listen?"
Stricklin nodded, ushered me into his office, and closed the door.
THIRTY-SEVEN
November 27, 1979
My decision to enlist Special Crimes in this soap opera would mark a significant turning point in both of our lives. To me, it was a stroke of genius that likely kept me alive. Many others saw it as the desperate act of a fool who had bitten off more than he could chew. Catherine later would say melodramatically that, from the moment I walked through Don Stricklin's doorway, I had entered "the arena of death." I became the Judas in her personal passion play and just the sort of betrayer every underdog heroine needs to justify her future actions. Her own attorneys later would joke about the decision, describing Stricklin as my "father confessor" and asking jurors with a sneer: "Should everyone who has a fight with his girlfriend now report it to Special Crimes?"
The answer, of course, was, "No." But that was precisely the point. Had my girlfriend been anyone but Catherine Mehaffey, I would have expected a horse laugh from Don with a look of, "Who are you kidding? Do I look like a psychotherapist?" Indeed, even though his assistant, Chuck Rosenthal, had personally warned me about her, I remained unsure how Stricklin would receive my visit that morning. I learned a great deal when he hustled me into his office as fast as possible and then asked if Jerry Carpenter could join us. Employed then as a district attorney's investigator for Special Crimes, Carpenter boasted an illustrious background as one of the Houston Police Department's legendary homicide detectives. I had known him when I covered the police beat in 1972. If Stricklin had assigned Carpenter as the bureau's Mehaffey expert, I realized she indeed represented a serious target for Houston's law enforcement community.
Carpenter only added emphasis to that realization when he told me that morning he considered Mehaffey the most dangerous individual he had ever tracked, male or female.
I expected nothing more than a symbiotic relationship with Special Crimes. Although I'm sure Stricklin and Carpenter legitimately wanted to help me, I also figured they primarily wanted to use me to get her. But just as Catherine had viewed me as a buffer between them, I believed I could use Special Crimes as a unique lever in my effort to shed her from my life. I suspected also that they felt a twinge of guilt about Tedesco, a man who futilely had begged the Houston police for help only to be ignored for nearly a year before having his brains scrambled on the floor of his garage. I saw myself as the living embodiment of déjà vu, a Tedesco encore in which they might draft a new ending. In that regard, my knowledge of the system proved crucial. Poor Tedesco just sought help from the street cops at the Beechnut Substation, where they laughed at him and told him to grow a pair of balls big enough to handle his girlfriend. I knew enough to bypass the lower echelon of law enforcement and take my story straight to the top. And the guys at the top proved more than eager to listen.
"I know I got myself into this, and I will have to get myself out," I began with Stricklin seated behind his polished and uncluttered desk and Carpenter lounging to my right in a chair. "That's going to happen, and I expect trouble. But I hoped you would be interested in taking a statement from me before I end up wearing a toe tag, something that might be used in a later investigation or trial—like the victim speaking from the grave. I also want to make sure I haven't inadvertently become involved as an accomplice in some sort of criminal activity she might have under way."
"We're listening," said Stricklin. "Do you mind if I record this?"
I nodded, and he reached into a drawer for a tape recorder. Stricklin and I were about the same age. A dapper, button-down guy, he looked like he might show up if central casting in Hollywood needed a stereotypical FBI agent. He had risen rapidly in the district attorney's office during his six years there and then, as chief of Special Crimes, held what was arguably the third or fourth most powerful job. Later he would win election as a state district court judge. I appreciated his reaction to my tale. He didn't lecture or remind me, "I told you so." He just sat and listened while I spun it out.
And I told it all, starting with my separation from Cindy and my first meeting with Catherine. I told them about the beach and the diamond ring. I told them about her questionable late night confession to the Tedesco murder. I told them about Uncle Al and the telephone. I told them about Cindy's change of plans and the busted umbrella. I told them about the smashed suitcase and how I had hit her when trying to flee the house. And I told them about the last couple of days trying to move her into the duplex.
"She kept saying she wanted a baby and then talked about her abortions and how they affected her outlook on life," I said. "She repeatedly said she did not kill Tedesco. She'd just bring it up out of the blue. She said she refused a lie detector test, but she agreed to answer four questions: Did you kill him? Did you have him killed? Do you know who killed him? And one other I can't recall. But she did not want to answer other questions so the police refused, she said."
Stricklin and Carpenter traded glances and grinned. Stricklin said, "We don't care about a lie detector test with her. It wouldn't mean a thing."
I continued: "She said she sent some clients to take art objects from Tedesco's house because she felt Tedesco owed it to her."
"Did she ever mention a client named Tommy Bell?" Stricklin asked.
"No," I grinned, "that name doesn't ring anything with me."
It was the first time I'd heard Bell's name in all of this. But it wouldn't be the last.
I told them how I'd become depressed the last couple of days and tried to exaggerate that to my advantage by growing nearly catatonic. I told them about the night before: "I'm Mr. Zombie. I lay down in the bed like a corpse." The recollection made me laugh, and I told Stricklin, "Can you imagine playing this tape at a trial where I am exhibit one?"
He didn't laugh, so I continued on: "She's rambling, 'I'm so frightened, I need a priest. I should go to confession.' I say, 'Why, have you done something wrong?' She says, 'So many things.' So I ask, 'Can you get a priest this time of night?' She says, 'No.' So I tell her, 'Maybe we can do that tomorrow.'"
I told them she had given me an ultimatum. She wanted to date through Christmas while I helped her make a lot of money in December using my influence to land indigent defense court appointments. If I did that, I told them, she said she would let it go.
"But now I've decided there will be no payment of money, no weaning, just nothing more," I told Stricklin and Carpenter. "Any contact from this point on will be forced by her."
&nb
sp; "You're going to have contact with her," said Stricklin. "Either telephone or personally."
Carpenter added: "If you talk on the phone, you ought to record it."
Then Stricklin advised, "You have no liability to her. But that money is primary to her. If anything, she will look for revenge on you."