Don't Tell a Soul

by M. William Phelps

  And Kim had meant it, Forrest would soon learn.

  * * *

  Sometime after Forrest began divorce proceedings, his older son’s mother showed up for a scheduled visit with the child. She seemed different, though. Something was wrong. Forrest’s ex-wife asked the child to pack his things.

  Forrest wanted an explanation. “What in the name of . . . ?”

  She handed Forrest a subpoena. The ex-wife now had custody of their child.

  It was devastating. No warning. Just bang! She had been granted custody. Whatever the ex had proven to a judge must be disturbing enough to warrant immediate custody.

  She left with the boy, on her way to Dallas, and Forrest stewed back at his mother’s, trying to figure out what was happening. Is this real? Did she just take my child from me? Forrest needed to know what was going on.

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” the boy’s mother said over the phone after Forrest pleaded with her. “I know everything about you, Forrest! Kim called me. She told me everything. You’re a drug addict. You’re an alcoholic. You’re never going to see your child again.”

  Click.

  Forrest hired an attorney. Kim had stopped calling during this period, but once he hired the lawyer, she started “calling and calling and calling.” In one message she said, “Listen to me. If you’ll do . . . If you listen to me and do what I say, you know, and not press charges on me hitting [your son] in the face, I’ll get [the boy] back for you.”

  The master manipulator at work.

  The con artist.

  The spiteful deviant working her twisted way of thinking.

  The sociopath, unconcerned for anyone but her own needs.

  Forrest’s lawyer advised him to go get a drug and alcohol test. He did. Everything came back negative. He spoke to his ex-wife, convincing her that Kim was a lunatic and she’d made it all up. Somewhat hesitant, the ex slowly began to understand what was going on. Then Forrest started a dialogue with Kim, turning the tables.

  He was now playing her.

  “Well,” Kim said after Forrest spent some time charming her, “I’ll go to your lawyer’s office and sign an affidavit and say I lied about everything.”

  Could it be true? Or was this another one of Kim’s controlling lies?

  To his utter shock and amazement Kim did as she said she would.

  “I’m sorry,” Forrest’s ex told him after it was all done. “I know what you’re dealing with now, as far as Kim is concerned.” She brought the boy back to his father. Forrest had had the boy since he was one. The ex was crying. “I’m so sorry for taking him away.”

  The police did not want to press charges against Kim, Forrest later said, for what she did to his child. He had called them. “They never called me back . . . ,” Forrest insisted.

  For Forrest, the problem with leaving Kim was with her boys. He hated to see them subjected to her torment and violent tendencies with nobody around to protect and stick up for them. Above that, his son missed his stepbrothers. Forrest, however, knew the only way he could survive, and raise his son away from Kim’s emotional and physical abuse, was to remove himself and the boy from the situation. Kim was on a fast track of imploding somewhere down the line, Forrest knew. Sooner or later her anger was going to get the best of her and she was going to do something she could not come back from.

  Timmy, his son with Kim, was growing and Forrest was scared for his well-being—but there would come a time, sooner rather than later, when Forrest saw an opening, had the means available and could take Kim to court to get Timmy out of that horrible situation. Until then, he’d have to do what Matt Robinson was doing: monitor the child from afar and keep an eye on what was going on in Kim’s world. The problems with Kim weren’t over for Forrest—and, in many ways, were just beginning.

  44

  FORREST COULD NOT AFFORD A high-end apartment. Still, he wanted to be as close to his boy Timmy as he possibly could be. There would come a day when Forrest set out to fight Kim for custody. She was not going to be raising Timmy. First, though, Forrest needed to get himself and his son from his previous marriage settled into a new apartment. Then he needed to somehow convince Kim to give him back his belongings—which she had been holding on to and was unwilling to return since he walked out on her and began divorce proceedings.

  Since the split Forrest had watched the kids for Kim once at her house. She’d called and asked. He said okay, realizing the alternative—Kim leaving them home alone—was a situation he wanted to avoid.

  Before she left, Kim stopped and visually scanned the house, saying, “Forrest, listen to me. I know where everything that’s yours is in this house. If when I come back I find out you took one thing of yours, just one, I’ll burn your mother and your son up in that house where you are staying. You understand me?” She turned, did not wait for a response and walked out.

  “I knew not to touch anything,” Forrest said later. She had taught him already that when he wasn’t around, things he owned caught fire and burned.

  “I’m going to start being nice to you,” Kim told Forrest sometime later.

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Really,” she insisted. “I promise.”

  Forrest knew there had to be something in it for Kim, but he went along with her new attitude.

  At this time Forrest was still driving back and forth to San Antonio for his job as much as he could, so he had limited time to search for an apartment. There were only so many options available in and around Tyler that he could afford.

  “I’ll find you an apartment,” Kim suggested.

  Forrest was reluctant: “But I thought, well, if she’s going to be nice enough to help me look for a place . . .” He figured, why not?

  * * *

  As a manipulative sociopath, Kim could zero in on a man’s weaknesses and use them to her advantage, to control him, to maintain that balance of power she so much preferred. She knew Forrest was a forgiving man. He would always err on the side of caution, but once she was able to charm him, he would come around and believe what she said. She broke him down, using her influence to create a situation that was ultimately designed to benefit her.

  Kim found several apartment complexes. Among them was the Citadel, where Cherry Walker would, in the years to come, move into the studio apartment directly below Forrest (without him ever knowing she was watching Timmy).

  “It was real inexpensive,” Forrest explained, “and so I decided on that place.”

  It was also not far from the house Kim lived in.

  After settling in, Forrest approached Kim about his belongings. He needed his things in order to build a home with his son. He didn’t have the money to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe. Why was Kim keeping them?

  “If you allow me and [Timmy] to come over and visit you, I’ll give you your belongings back.”

  One of Kim’s many ultimatums.

  Yet, Kim meant not all at once. With each visit she would bring over certain items. If Forrest played nice, then sooner or later he would have everything back.

  Forrest said okay. (What else could he do?) Kim would show up with a pair of jeans and a shirt, walk in, get herself comfortable and sometimes demand to stay the night.

  “She would piecemeal it all to me.”

  * * *

  There was no gray area with Kim Cargill, Forrest knew. During one trip he took to San Antonio, Kim called him 180 times. He was not even gone an entire day. He was asked years later if that was an exaggerated number.

  Check my phone bill, Forrest responded.

  Forrest didn’t want to deal with Kim that night. When he returned home from work, he turned off the lights in his car and crept into the parking lot. If by chance Kim was waiting for him to come home, he wouldn’t be seen. After driving into the lot without seeing her, he got out of his car, slipped into his apartment, got into bed, rolled over and tried falling asleep.

  It was as though Kim had watched his every move. No sooner had Forrest got
ten comfy in bed than Kim started banging on the door.

  “Let me in, damn it! Let me in!”

  I’m not answering it . . . I’m not dealing with her.

  Forrest ignored the banging. He wanted to slip under the covers and disappear. Kim was like a persistent ulcer, constantly causing pain and discomfort.

  It got quiet. Then he heard a key slip into the lock, the lock unlatch and the door pop open.

  “I had made it a point not to give her a key,” Forrest later recalled. “She must have had a key made when she was looking for those apartments for me.”

  Perhaps one of the reasons why she was so eager to help him?

  Forrest had often wondered how Kim had known so much about his new life away from her. When she called and left crazy messages, she would mention his mail, things he was involved in, stuff inside his apartment that she could not have seen or known about without snooping around.

  “I could never figure out how she would know stuff like that. . . .”

  Forrest realized that whenever he went away to San Antonio, Kim would slip into his apartment, search through the place, then slip out before he got home.

  By this point he was “scared” of Kim and what she was capable of. He’d never had a feeling like this about anyone else, he said.

  Forrest couldn’t just go over to where Kim lived and get his stuff one day while she was out, or the kids were left alone. You’d think perhaps he could work his way into the house while the kids were alone, collect his belongings and then be on his way. But with Kim, nothing was ever that simple.

  “She had put locks all over—like big, huge master locks on garages and everything,” Forrest said. Plus, he stayed away from that house where Kim lived as much as possible. Showing up at Kim’s without calling would only mean friction and arguing.

  * * *

  One night, having not been to Kim’s in quite a while, Forrest was passing by and decided to stop in, unannounced. He felt perhaps he and Kim could chat, and maybe he might be able to talk her into handing over some more of his belongings. It seemed good, too, to let Kim know that he could pop in anytime, regardless of how she felt about it. He brought Martin with him. They parked, approached the front door.

  Standing on the porch, however, Forrest hesitated before knocking. He could hear what he later described as sounding like a “barroom brawl” going on inside the house. Kim was screaming and yelling, as usual. All of it, Forrest overheard, was directed toward the kids.

  “All you could hear was ‘sons of bitches’ and ‘motherfuckers,’ and I mean it was bad.”

  Forrest looked at Martin. “You get into the van and wait for Daddy there.”

  Martin did as he was told.

  Forrest banged on the door. He needed to make sure Kim wasn’t beating the kids. Timmy was also there, just months old. Forrest felt he had a right to be curious about what was going on.

  Kim opened the door in a rage. “Don’t you ever fucking come to my house without letting me know you’re on your way!”

  Forrest took one look at her face and knew she was a breath away from stepping out onto the porch and taking a swing.

  It was the last time he ever went over there, and the last time he would ever put his boy in a position to be close to her.

  * * *

  About five months into the process of Forrest getting his belongings back a piece at a time, Forrest and Martin were at home watching television. He’d cut Kim off nearly entirely, keeping contact with her to a minimum. She had been too argumentative and loud and obnoxious, not to mention violent. It was too much. Forrest had, in a way, given Kim a second chance to make amends and try to have a normal relationship, only because they had made a child together. But she couldn’t do it. Kim couldn’t contain her anger, her outbursts, her controlling methods of threatening and her acting out.

  On this night, however, Kim decided she was visiting Forrest. Nothing was going to stop her. Nobody was going to tell Kim Cargill she could not walk into Forrest’s apartment.

  As Forrest and Martin sat and watched television, they were startled by a crashing, loud noise.

  Ka-boom!

  Kim had kicked the door in, right off the hinges, as Forrest and Martin were in the living room nearby. She had placed Timmy on the ground in the hallway, out of the way, backed up and had kicked Forrest’s apartment door as hard as she could. The strength of this woman in a fury was undeniably barbaric, as though she was in a steroid-induced rage.

  “She actually broke the door in half,” Forrest later said.

  The dead bolt fell off and onto the floor. Splinters scattered everywhere. The noise shook the entire wall, knocking things down inside Forrest’s apartment.

  Forrest was able to get Kim out of the apartment building after calming her down.

  “I had to call the police on multiple occasions,” he said.

  * * *

  After their divorce was final, Kim seemed to accept it was over and calmed down—somewhat. She must have known by then that they were completely through and her way of raising a white flag was to contain her rage. She’d stop by unannounced (apparently, this was okay for Kim) and want to chat about Matt Robinson, Mike West, James Cargill or any one of her old boyfriends. It was beyond bizarre, Forrest thought, but he felt like he had to listen—or else. Their divorce, in some strange way, allowed Kim to open up to Forrest, asking him his opinion about certain “problems” in her life.

  “I wish you would have beaten his ass,” she said one night, referring to Matt.

  “I wish, I wish, I wish”—it was a favorite phrase of Kim’s.

  It was around this same time that Matt had begun proceedings to take his son, Brian, out of the situation he was living in with Kim. Matt was photographing the bruises and wounds he’d witness on his child whenever Brian visited. He was building a solid case, with evidence, for getting custody.

  The walls were closing in on Kim and she was feeling stressed by the pressure.

  After Kim would bring up an old boyfriend, she’d tell Forrest, “I wish you would kill him.” Forrest never asked her sick reasoning behind such wicked drivel.

  Then, one day, as they sat and talked, Kim said, “Forrest, would you think I was a bad person if I had Matt murdered?”

  Forrest thought that perhaps she was saying this same thing about him to others. Or was she saying this about Matt to scare Forrest?

  As the winter of 2006 merged with summer and fall, the intimidating calls to Forrest started up again: “If you don’t call me back, something bad is going to happen.” Over and over, she’d call and make threats, even though he wouldn’t answer.

  * * *

  Cops showed up one night at Forrest’s apartment. He had no clue they were looking for him.

  They had handcuffs. An arrest warrant.

  “For what?” Forrest asked.

  “Kim Cargill, your ex-wife, claims you beat her up.”

  Forrest was taken to jail. Locked up. No questions asked.

  Turned out Kim had gotten into a car accident in front of the kids’ school, got a little bit banged up and used those injuries to claim Forrest had beaten her.

  Forrest bonded himself out.

  A week later cops were at his door again.

  “Wait a minute, what’s happening?” Forrest pleaded. They had another arrest warrant on another felony charge.

  “Wait, though,” Forrest said, thinking the police were confusing his cases, “I just bonded out on that charge a week ago. . . .”

  “Oh, Mr. Garner, no, sorry, but this is for an incident that happened months ago!”

  Months ago? How could it be?

  The police explained that this latest arrest was on a felony charge: “You hit your ex-wife while she was holding your son.”

  The incident Kim had told the cops about had supposedly happened many months back. It was an argument. At the time, she said, they were working on their marriage, had gotten into a fight and Forrest hit her while she was holding Ti
mmy. She did not want to file charges, back then, predivorce. But postdivorce, of course, things had changed.

  “Now I want to file charges,” she had told cops after going back to the police station and demanding they arrest Forrest.

  He fought it and worked it all out, but it cost him money he did not have. All for something he had never done to begin with.

  * * *

  Forrest was washing his laundry one afternoon down the block near Houston and Vine. It was a little place near Citadel that many local renters went to. Cherry would also use this same Laundromat when she later moved into the building. Forrest could not recollect the exact date, but he recalled Timmy being in a “car carrier” and several months old, so it was during that turbulent period in 2006 when he was dealing with Kim’s craziness almost daily.

  While loading the washer, Forrest looked up and there was Kim, stomping in through the front door. She was in a rage.

  “There were so many arguments,” Forrest said later, “you never knew what set the argument off.”

  Kim Cargill didn’t need a reason—just a target.

  On this day Forrest recalled that Kim was yelling about him not being home to watch Timmy when he said he would. She had an appointment and she was going to miss it, and it was all Forrest’s fault. He was going to pay and she was not putting up with this nonsense.

  Kim “threw” Timmy “up on a washer,” next to where Forrest was doing his clothes. She said nothing more and stormed out of the Laundromat.

  Forrest stared at his boy, the angelic child with his fist balled up in his mouth, eyes looking all around. He was so innocent and caught in the madness of a mother constantly going off the rails, not knowing what in the world was happening.

  A few minutes later, however, as Forrest was playing with the boy inside the Laundromat, Kim came back—with a vengeance. Here she was again, ripping and roaring her way through the dryers toward Forrest.

  Without a word Kim grabbed the child from Forrest, turned around and walked back out. Forrest was scared she was going to hurt the boy so he—and just about everyone else inside the Laundromat looking on—followed. Kim hurried out to her car and (what everyone believed was purposely because she knew Forrest was following) banged the car seat carrier with Timmy inside against her bumper, startling the poor little baby. Then she opened the back door of her car and actually hurled the child, while in his car seat, into the back and slammed the door shut, without buckling him up. She jumped into the driver’s seat and screeched out of the parking lot, the car’s tires spitting up bits of gravel and sand.