Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir

by Gary Taylor

  I'm sure he never met Catherine. But, Baumeister did describe a familiar stereotype he dubbed the "badass" and identified that type as someone who "gains considerable power over other people by getting them to perceive him as irrationally violent."

  In addition, Baumeister said, the badass employs another crucial tactic associated with evil—the stimulation of chaos. He wrote: "By refusing to be rational, he forces other people to think irrationally and adjust themselves to him. The fear of unreasoning chaos is almost as deeply rooted in human nature as the fear of harm, and the badass plays on both fears."

  Baumeister also cites the flaw of egotism as another factor, calling it "an overlooked motivation for evil and violence." He wrote: "Villains, bullies, criminals, killers, and other evildoers have high self-esteem, contrary to the comfortable fiction that has recently spread through American culture. Violence results when a person's favorable image of self is questioned or impugned by someone else."

  So that would be the academic response to what might loom as the crucial quandary in the story of my ill-fated relationship with Catherine. I preferred to boil down my response to something more basic.

  No such thing as pure evil, I usually say. She just had her own agenda.

  Nevertheless, it would have been interesting to know more about her background and the factors that had created her psyche. But I realized all I could ever learn would have to come from her lips. And anything she said would have been suspect. Psychological literature likely would speculate that, at some point in her early childhood, a parent had demanded perfection, and she had responded by forging a value system in which the ends would always justify the means. In her view, the motto "Never quit" actually translated into "Never get caught." Without an accurate dossier, however, no one could ever know for sure. All we would know is what she had become that week in the courtroom when a jury of twelve Houston citizens dubbed her guilty of attempted murder and ordered her to spend the next decade in a cage.

  Bert and I just walked quietly from the courtroom, possibly musing on all these deep metaphysical insights but keeping our mental ramblings on karma and universal justice strictly to ourselves. We planned a few celebratory beers and had war stories to share.

  "She really pissed them off," I just said, shaking my head.

  "Yes," Bert agreed. "She certainly did."

  SIXTY-SIX

  July 31, 1980

  "Come and get these kids. They're yours."

  I usually preferred my wake-up calls limited to "Good Morning, the time is seven forty-five." But Cindy's simple message at about the same time that morning had a much more profound effect, launching the most pivotal day of my life. In the past year, Catherine had tried to change my life with a pistol. But Cindy would accomplish the same goal with that phone call. I really wasn't surprised to pick up the ringing phone and hear her voice after the events of the night before. But it was hard to take her seriously.

  The night before had been a slow one for news. I had been counting the minutes until my evening shift on the city desk would end at ten. Cindy had interrupted the boredom about nine-thirty with a call to me there.

  "Help us," she said when I answered the call. "Al is going crazy, and we are stuck at his place. My car is in the shop. Can you come and get us?"

  I got the directions and told the night editor I needed to check out a little early for yet another personal emergency. In the months since Catherine's conviction, Cindy and I had barely spoken. Around the time of Catherine's second trial, Uncle Al had wooed Cindy back from our brief reconciliation at the start of the year. She had announced she was going to try fidelity for a change and told me to stay away. By then, I had settled into a semi-serious relationship with Barbara anyway, so I obeyed. Visitation with the girls grew difficult, but I hadn't decided on any strategy to do something about it. In those weeks after Catherine's conviction, the days just seemed to drift along. Then Barbara and I fought over something unmemorable, and we just quit talking. I was considering the options for the rest of my life, even thinking about traveling the world or joining the Houston Police Department for a new adventure. I had hoped that Uncle Al was behaving—that his telephone-shooting days of rage were behind him—but I didn't know for sure. I figured that, sooner or later, I'd find out, one way or the other, and, sure enough, I received my update that night.

  When I arrived in Uncle Al's condo complex, I spotted my three girls walking like refugees in the street. Little E strode barefoot, dragging a blanket and toting a little bag. Cindy had Shannon in one arm with another bag in the other hand. A wave of despair swept across my brain. Then, as it retreated, a second wave of anger came crashing down.

  "Uncle Al hit mommy," Little E told me as they climbed into my Bronco. I gave Cindy a look of disgust.

  "This is what you wanted for our daughters?" I asked.

  "Just take us home, please. I don't want to talk about it."

  "You don't want to talk about it? Just call me to pick up the pieces, collect our children from the street, and get on with your life? I'm the one who needs to talk about it."

  But she didn't respond, sitting stoically on the fifteen-minute drive to her rent house. Little E started crying. I'm sure Shannon didn't know what she was supposed to do, so she said nothing. I realized they didn't need any more displays of anger or rabid shouting, but it was hard to control. When we reached the house, I helped them carry their things to the door, and Cindy offered to give me a can of beer. But she wouldn't let me inside the house. I stood on the porch while the girls vanished into their bedrooms.

  "What are you going to do about this?" I asked. "Is this finally it for this guy?"

  She just stared at me, looking as if this had been none of my business. Before I had time to think about my response, I had done it—throwing beer from that can straight into her face. She wiped the suds from her eyes and looked into the distance.

  "Maybe we'd all be better off if I wasn't around anymore."

  And then, again, before I had taken time to think about my response, I blurted out the first thing that flashed through my brain: "Maybe we would." I returned to my car and drove back to Strong's where I received that wake-up call from her the next morning. I showered, dressed, and drove back to her house, where she let me inside. The girls were watching television in the living room, and Cindy had their bags packed with enough clothes for a few nights.

  "You can get the rest of their stuff later," she said in a frightening, disconnected tone of voice that sounded almost as if she were reading a script that left her bored. I noted a blank look in her eyes and realized she had reached a new low. I had thought maybe she'd decided to run and would be leaving town. But suddenly I knew that flight would have been a best-case scenario. I had never known anyone who attempted suicide, but I had given the concept a lot of thought over the years just as a subject of curiosity. I had even read a book about suicide and recognized her display of the classic signs. She had been cleaning the house. She was taking care of all the last minute details and tying up loose ends, like making sure I could take the girls. I began to wonder about my own role in this ultimate decision, worried that my rough response the night before had pushed her past the edge.

  "What are you planning to do?" I asked.

  "Don't worry about it."

  "I didn't mean what I said last night. I'm sorry. I was angry."

  "It doesn't matter."

  I knew I needed to proceed with caution, but I also realized I didn't know what events had pushed her this far. I concluded my thoughtless reaction of the night before could not have been anything more than an excuse, if that. I would never blame myself if she actually did attempt a suicide, but I also did not want her to succeed. My daughters needed their mother, even if she seemed troubled. Perhaps that could be fixed, I thought. But I knew I would do whatever I could to derail her plan, if that was what she had in mind. Then she gave me a tool to help.

  "Here's your child support check," she said, endorsing the $465
document back to me. "It came in the mail yesterday. I won't be needing it."

  "Please let me help you."

  "Nobody can help me anymore."

  I recognized debate as a lost cause. I always believed that people often must sink all the way to the bottom of the pool before they can bounce back to the top. Maybe it was Cindy's time for that. But I wanted to make sure she had a bottom from which to bounce. I took the check, grabbed the bags, and drove the girls to their Montessori school. Little E had just been accepted for a gifted students program in the Houston Independent School District and would be starting an advanced kindergarten class in just a few weeks. Until then, however, they both still attended the same pre-school.

  After dropping them off, I drove quickly to The Post, where I was scheduled to report for a day shift by ten. I had no intention of working. Arriving a bit early, I went to my desk and tried to recall the name of a psychiatrist who had been treating Cindy. She had mentioned the female doctor in a couple of conversations, and I managed to locate the name on a list in the phone book. So I called, identified myself to the receptionist, and said I needed to talk about Cindy.

  "The doctor won't talk with you about a patient," the receptionist said.

  "I think Cindy needs help. She's done some things that worry me."

  "Like what?"

  "She told me to come get our kids. She packed their bags. She cleaned her house. And—" I paused, inviting the receptionist to demand my clinching piece of evidence.

  "And what?"

  "And, she endorsed her last child support check back to me."

  "I'm getting the doctor."

  The line went dead for only about a minute until I heard the doctor herself.

  "You're not making this up, are you?"

  "Nope. I'm really worried and will do whatever you want to help."

  "She gave you the check?"

  "Yes. I haven't been in close contact with her for a while so I'm making assumptions in the dark. Am I jumping to the wrong conclusion?"

  "No. I can't go into the details, but here's what you have to do. Go to the sheriff's department immediately and sign a commitment affidavit. You'll have to write down some of things you just told my secretary. I'll call and sign the order. Then they will arrest her and put her in a hospital."

  Jeez, I wanted to say, if I had known it was this easy to arrange a commitment I would have called you months ago about somebody else.

  Instead, I just said, "Thanks" and headed for my car.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  July 31, 1980

  As I drove toward the sheriff's office determined to have my ex-wife locked in the nuthouse, I really had only a foggy idea about the twisted chain of events that had left her so vulnerable. Despite the torment she had caused for me in the last year with her on-and-off-again attention, I wasn't angry. I considered myself a big boy, and, frankly, I admitted, the sexual reconciliations had always been worth the splits. I realized I did still love her, but in a way very different from the volatile concoction of lust and respect that first had brought us together. We had made beautiful children. We had a future of some kind built on that foundation. I never would do anything to hurt her. I wanted to help her live. But, I also wondered: What the hell has been going on?

  Later I would learn more about that chain of events, where I fit in the chain, and even how to technically identify the affliction that apparently had pushed her to the edge of suicide. The headshrinkers would call it "adult situation reaction."

  Wow, I grinned, upon first hearing the diagnosis later. That sounds like a phrase some doctor invented to make a bad day sound like something that needs a prescription. I'd swear I could have argued I suffer adult situation reactions all the time.

  But I did find some literature on the subject. Therapists used it to describe situations of potentially unbearable but short-lived anxiety. The reaction occurs when someone has piled on so many varying stress factors that she can't carry any of the load. I imagined a woman gathering firewood for a campsite and carrying it up a hill. Each stick by itself might not matter. But, at some point, she could load up one stick too many and then go tumbling back down the hill, scattering all the wood, and busting her head. An adult situation reaction patient would have a list of stress sticks that, when added together, created the image of a life too burdensome to continue.

  Cindy had a list, and my name was on it. I had created one of her stress sticks because I hadn't been involved in her life enough to help with the girls, she would say. But I was just one of many stress factors. Once I learned about her list, I was able to divide it into factors I considered serious or negligible. I placed my transgression in the negligible section after I reviewed her diary of activities for the previous few weeks. Clearly, there would have been no time for me anyway—unless I had quit work to serve as a full-time babysitter while she and Uncle Al juggled scuba lessons with a variety of other equally high-brow outings. So I placed myself on Cindy's list of lesser woes alongside other temporary, but repairable, irritants such as "car trouble."

  More serious on Cindy's list, however, were fundamental complaints like "crazy boyfriend" and "feelings of worthlessness." I imagined that life with her "crazy boyfriend" could be every bit as stressful as my time with Catherine Mehaffey, and I knew Uncle Al boasted similar potential after seeing his bullet hole in Cindy's telephone. There was no way, however, that Cindy should ever have felt worthless. She had always just impatiently crowded too many personal goals together, positioning herself for failure. She was a walking confrontation of classic clichés: Reach for the stars but don't bite off more than you can chew.

  I respected and loved her for her personal ambition, a characteristic that can't be acquired. But she still punished herself for dropping out of law school, destroying her self-esteem eight months later. She refused to face the reality that she would have been unable to blend that course work with a stressful full-time job, child-rearing, and the hectic recreational life demanded by Uncle Al. As a result, she was suffering a traumatic overload of unfulfilled desire mired in a bog of guilt from the damage she feared she might have caused every one in her life, particularly the girls.

  If asked about me, Cindy would credit me for always encouraging her to reach for the stars and pursue her dreams. But she also would blame me for being the one to say when she had bitten more than she could chew. She would describe me both as a lover and a father figure, a man who helped her get a start in life but then restrained her by warning of the hurdles. Instead of serving as a necessary counterweight to her impulsive behavior, she would insist I tried to dominate her by denying her the impossible. As a result, I could never win. She needed my discipline to help organize her plans but resented it when confronted with the reality she did not have the time to do all that she wanted.

  Asked about Uncle Al, Cindy would have admitted she had fallen star-struck with the idea of becoming a doctor's wife and adding the material trappings of that life. She would rationalize that eventually this change would pay off for her daughters by giving them access to things they would never have in our financially-strapped, middle class home. I could see where the attraction likely began. Uncle Al probably loomed as some sort of emergency room hero at Ben Taub Hospital, where Cindy also worked long, serious hours helping abused and neglected children. He had been married when they met and promised to divorce that wife to offer Cindy something she would say she had never had in her life: "fidelity."

  I would have to chuckle upon hearing that complaint a few months later. This desire for fidelity was coming from a woman who had ended two marriages with her own adultery. What's more, the promise of fidelity she so suddenly cherished also had come from a married man. On top of that, she had cheated on him multiple times with me, her ex-husband? I detected several personality quirks in that track record but an obsessive search for fidelity did not seem like one of them. Cindy would say she so desperately wanted this marriage to a doctor that she was determined to cure his alcoholic-induc
ed anger management issues. But then, what is new about that scenario: Woman finds ideal man and immediately starts working to improve him?