Don't Tell a Soul

by M. William Phelps

  By 3:30 A.M. on June 21, early Monday morning, still without a warrant for Joe’s house, investigators from the SCSO decided to “regroup,” as Detective James Riggle explained in his report of the night, and would rendezvous the following morning at eight o’clock, after securing the necessary paperwork to have a look around Joe’s house and speak with him.

  Paula Wheeler was providing a litany of facts for Riggle and his investigative team, giving them a clear indication of Cherry’s comings and goings.

  “She called before eight P.M.,” Wheeler explained to Riggle. Cherry phoned, as she had promised, to tell her that her father had driven her home from the salon. It was near four o’clock in the afternoon on Friday when Cherry had first called Wheeler.

  “My daddy brought me home,” Cherry told her.

  “She was so excited that her daddy had brought her home,” Wheeler recalled.

  It seemed that the day’s events had been forgotten and Cherry was getting back to her old self. The simple things in life, those routine occurrences throughout most people’s days that felt mundane, were high points for Cherry. She appreciated the interaction with family and friends. Calling her aide to explain that her father had driven her home brought Cherry comfort.

  “Right before eight P.M.,” Wheeler explained to Riggle further, “she called me again.” Cherry was different this time. Not the same relaxed, happy woman who had been phoning earlier. Something had happened between the two calls.

  “What was that?” Riggle asked.

  Wheeler explained.

  “I’m nervous . . . ,” Cherry had said.

  “Why, what’s wrong, Cherry?”

  Cherry expressed how upset she was, adding, “Kim called me.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She said she’s coming over to take me out to eat. . . .”

  “When?”

  “Tonight . . . tonight,” Cherry said. Her anxiety grew as they spoke. Wheeler needed to keep Cherry talking, keep her calm by allowing her to explain herself, while making her understand that it was going to be okay. Everything would work out. Cherry just needed to relax, take deep breaths.

  “Don’t go,” the caseworker said. “You take your medicine . . . and you do her like you do me. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t answer the door. You take your medicine and you go to bed. You understand, Cherry?”

  Cherry said yes.

  “And, oh yeah . . . Miss Paula . . . she said something else, too.”

  “What else did Kim tell you, Cherry?”

  “She said she would pay me a lot of money to come over and clean her house.”

  Wheeler worried about this because she knew that “Cherry had the mind of a child and could be easily misled” and manipulated by an emotionally stronger person. Cleaning and eating were two of Cherry’s favorite things—Kim knew this. Was Kim trying to use two of Cherry’s passions to control her?

  “I don’t want to go out with Kim, Miss Paula,” Cherry said.

  “You do not have to, Cherry. Do what I told you. Don’t answer the door or the telephone.”

  Cherry mentioned that she didn’t feel good. “I’m nervous.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Cherry.”

  “I just ate my dinner,” Cherry said.

  The situation bothered Wheeler. “Cherry loved to eat,” she said. Everyone knew that. So when she said she didn’t want to go out with Kim to eat that night, that she was nervous and wanted to stay home, Wheeler knew Cherry was serious.

  As the aide explained that last conversation with Cherry to James Riggle, she expressed how concerned she grew after phoning Cherry later that night, the next day (several times) and all day Sunday, but not getting any response.

  Riggle asked if he could get a copy of Cherry’s file—including the subpoena—from Community Access. Wheeler said she’d check with her supervisor, but didn’t see why not.

  Detective Riggle now considered Kim Cargill a strong “person of interest,” since she had been one of the last people to have spoken (or maybe even seen) Cherry Walker.

  Still, could Kim, a petite woman (at five-three) compared to Cherry’s size, commit the crime, hoist Cherry’s body into her vehicle and then dump her out on the CR 2191?

  It didn’t seem possible.

  11

  DETECTIVE JAMES RIGGLE WAS INFORMED that the search warrant for Joe Mayo’s 2000 Buick Century and place of residence had come in, and several detectives and uniformed officers were in the process of serving the warrant.

  Riggle headed over to interview Joe himself.

  By now—early morning, Monday, June 21, 2010—Cherry had been positively identified. There was no more wondering for the Walkers: Their child was dead, likely murdered. Her body had been set on fire, postmortem, according to the ME. If there was a silver lining within the evidence they had uncovered thus far, it was that a mentally retarded woman had not been set on fire while alive.

  Joe lived with two friends. He said, “Yes, I borrowed a DVD”—not a CD—“from Cherry and she called me about bringing it back. It took me a month or so to return it.” Cherry had called Joe, over and over, asking for her copy of Paranormal Activity. “She blew up my phone,” he recalled.

  Joe told Cherry he had been busy. He was responsible for taking care of his eighty-five-year-old grandmother and equally old grandfather. The grandfather was on oxygen, struggling with emphysema. The grandmother had fallen. Joe said he had his hands full and he’d get her the DVD when he had a chance. Cherry could be relentless, Joe seemed to suggest. Within the past month, Joe explained, he had seen Cherry only once. It wasn’t as if they were going out every weekend, hanging out every night. They had been good friends. Joe took Cherry out to eat once in a while.

  That was it.

  As they spoke, other investigators talked to Joe’s roommates, a friend of Joe’s and the friend’s girlfriend. Joe had given an alibi that these two could back up or shoot down. The SCSO was looking for someone who had a window of opportunity—from 8:00 P.M. on Friday to just before 3:00 P.M. on that Saturday.

  Joe talked about his car and how excited Cherry was that he had purchased the new vehicle some months back.

  “This is nice,” Cherry said while sitting in it one day with him. “It’s better than that piece of crap you had before.”

  You could always depend on Cherry to be honest and tell you exactly how she felt.

  The car he owned before that, Joe explained, was a clunker. He’d taken Cherry out one night. They broke down. “This thing, you cannot take us anywhere in it,” Cherry complained. They were on the side of the roadway. “Really?” Joe had said aloud to himself; he couldn’t believe the car had broken down while on a date. Cherry went on, “You mean, I am going to have to sit here . . . because [the] car broke down, and you ain’t got no jumper cables to help us!” Joe thought about it later, the memory a bit funnier now in hindsight, and had wondered to himself that night: Could this be more awkward than anything? He recalled this event because it was the night he had returned Cherry’s DVD of Paranormal Activity, which the SCSO knew was sitting beside Cherry’s television.

  Riggle asked Joe to talk about that previous Friday, June 18, where he was, what he had done that day, if he had seen or spoken to Cherry.

  “A friend came into town,” Joe said. “It was like three o’clock in the afternoon.... Later that day,” Joe added, he had to go and pick up his roommate’s girlfriend from work. It was around five o’clock. His other roommate, the girl’s boyfriend, got out of work at nine that same night, returned home, and Joe said he was there with his friend and the girl at the apartment. Joe was heading out to go sing. Later, when asked about this, he became perturbed when the question insinuated that he was merely heading out for a night of “doing karaoke” at a local bar, not necessarily fulfilling an obligation to perform. Joe considered himself an entertainer. He wasn’t some hack who showed up at the local bars to belt out familiar tunes after a few beers, messing up the lyrics and singing
out of key.

  All four went to the local Carreta’s and Joe sang that night. He had not spoken to Cherry, he insisted.

  His roommates backed up his alibi when they spoke to Riggle’s colleagues.

  Riggle asked about Cherry. Joe said he could talk about Cherry all day long. She was a lovely human being, one of those people who could bring joy to others.

  “She liked to clean?” Riggle asked.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Joe answered. “She was a neat freak. I mean, you could not go into her apartment without it being just absolutely spotless. If I left a glass on the table, she’d say, ‘Uh-uh! You know what to do. You better put that in that dishwasher, boy.’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, ma’am, I will.’”

  Years later, as Joe Mayo talked about Cherry, he became overcome by emotion. It was hard to talk about her in the past tense. She was such a sweet person, so generous and forgiving, someone who touched your soul. He recalled that Cherry would sometimes come out to see him sing. Seeing her there in the audience had always given him courage and confidence.

  “I need to tell you something, Joseph,” Cherry said one night. They were alone. Cherry had watched Joe sing earlier that night. “Joseph, I am so very proud of you for doing . . . for pursuing your dream.” Joe Mayo had appreciated this so much: “After all the people in my family telling me, ‘You’re not good enough. Your daddy didn’t make it, so what makes you think you are going to make it,’ I mean . . . she believed in me.”

  The SCSO would still have to tear into Joe’s life, search through his vehicle and ask some uncomfortable questions, but Detective Riggle could tell: Joe Mayo had no more killed Cherry Walker than he had won American Idol.

  The SCSO confiscated Joe Mayo’s Buick; they needed to run it through forensics. Policy and procedure dictated protocol in this situation.

  “We’ll need your cell phone, too,” Riggle said.

  Joe had consented to the search of his residence and his car. He put up no resistance. He had nothing to hide, he said. In the back of his mind, however, as cops went through his things, took his cell phone and prepared his car for towing to the forensic lab, Joe didn’t feel he had any choice in the matter.

  “Well, if you don’t do that, you’re going to jail—you’re going to be handcuffed,” Joe later said he had thought as he spoke to Riggle and realized he was a suspect in Cherry’s murder—a fact the SCSO had not yet related to him. Nobody had ever said, “Cherry was murdered and we need to speak with you about it.”

  Joe would have been relieved to know that after Riggle had spoken to him at length, and his colleagues had interviewed his roommates, Riggle wrote in his report, We were able to exclude Joseph Mayo as a suspect in the death of Cherry Walker.

  There was one other person on the SCSO’s list they needed to speak with, a woman who had some hard questions to answer.

  Kim Cargill.

  12

  LATE MONDAY MORNING, JAMES RIGGLE went through Paula Wheeler’s file on Cherry Walker, while other members of the SCSO’s investigative team devised a plan to track down and speak with Kim Cargill. Autopsy results were still pending. Who knew if the ME would determine homicide as a manner of death?

  Paula Wheeler had kept meticulous records of her visits to see Cherry, including those times when Cherry had babysat Timmy and when Cherry had interacted, from Wheeler’s perspective, with Kim Cargill.

  Wheeler’s first notation of seeing Timmy at Cherry’s went as far back as November and December 2009. On December 14, she ran into Timmy at Cherry’s apartment. Cherry had moved in several weeks before. The following morning, December 15, Wheeler went back to pick Cherry up for an appointment and saw Timmy there again. She found out he’d never left.

  “She was getting ready to fix his breakfast,” Wheeler later explained.

  Timmy had spent the night. As the caseworker would soon learn, this was not unusual. Timmy had been spending many nights at Cherry’s.

  The following morning Wheeler arrived to take Cherry out shopping and to a few appointments. When she walked in, there was Timmy, sitting on the floor in the living room, watching cartoons. Timmy had been at Cherry’s for three days.

  “I need to go out to the store,” Cherry said. The implication was that she’d had Timmy too long. Cherry said she had a difficult time getting hold of Kim.

  Wheeler told Cherry it was not a good idea to take Timmy with them to the store. They could wait and go shopping another day. As for Cherry’s appointments, she’d have to reschedule.

  The next morning Wheeler showed up at her usual time—between eight-thirty and nine. There was Timmy, once again, parked in front of the television, watching cartoons as Cherry made him breakfast in her little efficiency kitchen.

  Four days in a row. No Kim.

  “I need to do laundry,” Cherry said. It was piling up.

  “We can’t take [Timmy] with us, Cherry,” Wheeler explained again.

  The next time the aide saw Timmy at Cherry’s was December 21, a few days later.

  “He was in bed,” having slept over again. It was unclear if Kim had ever come to pick Timmy up since December 14, when Wheeler had first seen him. “Cherry was ironing his clothes.” The two of them were like brother and sister.

  Timmy was there the following day, December 22. Wheeler noticed Cherry was “upset” because of a conversation she’d recently had with Kim, not going into detail about what had been said.

  “She was a little shaky . . . ,” Wheeler reported.

  On December 23, two days before Christmas, Wheeler arrived to find Timmy and Cherry at the table, eating breakfast together. It seemed by now that Cherry had taken care of Timmy for half the month of December.

  As James Riggle read through the file on Cherry Walker, he could see that Kim Cargill was not going to win any Parent of the Year awards. But did her behavior point to a motive to want to kill Cherry and savagely burn her body? If anything, Kim should have put Cherry up on a pedestal. Moreover, it seemed that Kim depended on Cherry. She needed her.

  On the morning of Christmas Eve, Wheeler walked in to see Timmy and Cherry again eating breakfast together at Cherry’s small table in front of her bed. The boy loved to eat with Cherry. Kim had still not come by to pick up her son, or see him, or even call to check in on him.

  “I’m giving him water,” Cherry told her caseworker. It seemed like an odd statement. But as Wheeler later explained, “[Cherry] said his mom didn’t bring him any food.” Because of that, Cherry felt the need to explain that she was not only feeding the child, but also was providing him with fresh water.

  One had to wonder: Could a mother be any more neglectful? Wheeler and Cherry only knew the half of it.

  December was not the only time Wheeler reported seeing Timmy with Cherry for an extended period of time. It seemed that whenever Kim dropped the child off, she would not pick him up until days later. He was always hungry when he arrived; he wore dirty clothes and appeared to be upset. He never came with extra clothes, toothbrush or anything for an overnight stay. Cherry would feed him instant oatmeal and box cereal. The kid would scarf it up as though he had been starving.

  One morning Wheeler showed up and found Timmy eating his oatmeal while Cherry was sitting nearby playing with one of her dolls on the floor. It was as though two children had been left by themselves. When Timmy finished his breakfast, he picked up one of his toy cars and joined Cherry on the floor. The caseworker watched them play together as though they’d met on a playground.

  It became a regular occurrence, once every few weeks or sometimes in the span of a few days, for Wheeler to stop by to pick Cherry up and see that Timmy had spent the night.

  The first time Wheeler met Kim was when the aide had shown up to take Cherry for a doctor’s appointment. Cherry was fixing bacon and eggs for her and the boy. Kim arrived to fetch Timmy, and Wheeler said hello. Kim looked at her, snatched her child and left. She must have known the outsider had posed a threat to her situation.

  “Can I have so
mething to eat?” Timmy asked Cherry one night when Wheeler was there. He had just arrived.

  “His mom should have fed him,” Cherry told Wheeler. Cherry was upset that Kim wasn’t feeding the child. It was something Cherry said she dealt with constantly.

  January and February 2010 came and Wheeler routinely ran into Timmy at Cherry’s apartment. Cherry was always feeding him, cleaning and ironing his clothes. She played with her toys as the boy played with his. She bathed him. When he was sick, Cherry nursed him.

  By late February, Wheeler decided it was time to speak with one of Cherry’s doctors and tell him that Cherry was taking just about complete care of the child.

  Cherry Walker was in no position—emotionally or otherwise—to take care of a child. She had a hard enough time taking care of herself.

  The doctor spoke to Cherry about watching Timmy. It wasn’t healthy for her, he explained. Nor was it the right thing for the boy. Cherry didn’t need any extra stress in her life. There had been times when Kim dropped Timmy off and the child was ill, with a runny nose, cough and fever. Cherry didn’t need to be watching someone’s sick child. She had enough to deal with on her own. Cherry had several quirks that some of Timmy’s behavior aggravated. If Timmy took a bath, for example, Cherry would make the boy stay inside the tub until all the water drained and then he would have to be completely dry before stepping on her floor because Cherry did not want one drop of water to land on the floor of her bathroom.

  But well into March and April, Cherry was still watching Kim’s child. She did not know how to say no and Kim was very schooled by then in the art of manipulating and controlling Cherry.

  It became a common sight for Wheeler to show up and see Cherry ironing Timmy’s clothes, with Timmy standing by her side, saying, “I’m hungry.... Can I have something to eat?”