Don't Tell a Soul

by M. William Phelps

  A maniac on a mission.

  Forrest wanted to call the police, but he had second thoughts, adding, “It had gotten to the point where they wouldn’t even, you know . . . What are they going to do? They wouldn’t do anything. That’s the way I felt.”

  He hadn’t said this without speaking from experience. A cop had come over to the apartment one day. Forrest and his sister stood on the balcony with the officer. Forrest had called the police on Kim because she had been in the hallway of his apartment, yelling, screaming, ranting and raving. It was not long after he had first been arrested. Forrest felt trapped. If he pressed charges, nothing would be done and she’d retaliate. It would just continue along this mess of a maze where there seemed to be no way out of.

  “What do I do?” Forrest pleaded with the cop. “What. Do. I. Do.”

  The cop looked down at an extension cord Forrest had on his balcony. “I guess if I was you, I’d take that extension cord there and wrap it around my neck and jump, because there ain’t nothing you can do, sir.”

  Forrest would file a report. Nothing would be done. He’d even had cops at his house when Kim phoned and threatened him, or kicked at the door, yelled and flailed. Still, nothing was ever done about it. On the other hand, it seemed to Forrest that all Kim had to do was go running down to the police station and complain of him hitting her and he was in cuffs, owing his lawyer several thousand dollars more.

  45

  ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2006, James Cargill was granted a temporary restraining order against his ex-wife. James’s greatest concern was for his child, Blake. He knew that Blake was being treated like a captive, beaten and abused and screamed at and locked inside his room. James had been secretly gathering evidence to take Kim to court and sue her for full custody. None of the boys’ fathers, for that matter, had ever given up on their children.

  It was hard to get a court to listen to a father—judges tended to want to see children stay with their mothers. James was not lying down, however. He started photographing Blake and his injuries. The photos are shocking, alarming, disturbing and painfully sad. Despite what she would later dispute about her involvement in Cherry Walker’s death, these photos depict Kim’s handiwork, showing what she was capable of when she made the choice to abuse her children.

  Still, a temporary restraining order and custody were two very different matters. James was in for the fight of his life. What would Kim do once she realized James was not backing down?

  Asked to “characterize” that eighteen-month period he had been married to Kim, James Cargill later said, “It was the worst time of my life.”

  It was a sentiment many other men in Kim’s life would ultimately agree with.

  James, an architect by trade, kept a detailed account of the calls he and Blake received from Kim. The phone was one of Kim’s weapons. The relentless, threatening nature of her voice would send shivers down the spine of whoever was on the receiving end. Just her number on the caller ID screen was enough to cause anxiety.

  James and Kim had dated three months. Kim told James she couldn’t get pregnant. Then, all of a sudden, Kim was carrying a child and James was set on doing the right thing for the kid by marrying her. Kim would get loud, hurl things at James, cuss out and bully the kids in front of him. James had kids from a previous marriage. He had not planned to marry again.

  “Dishes, vases, whatever was just near,” James explained, looking back through the time he spent married to Kim Cargill. These were items Kim would choose to throw at him. One night, James said, she took a hammer and flung it at his head. He ducked and the hammer, luckily, whizzed by and lodged itself into the wall.

  James took photos of the damage.

  Asked what had brought Kim to a point of rage whereby she felt tossing a hammer at her husband was justified, James explained, “I don’t know. They (the incidents) kind of just all run together.” Kim went from “zero to a hundred miles an hour for unpredictable reasons.”

  Kim would later complain of suffering from Crohn’s disease, an intestinal disorder that slows people down, immobilizes them and affects their entire daily life. Kim, though, never seemed the least bit hampered by it. In fact, one of the things that usually set Kim off was not complications of the Crohn’s but “her appearance,” James remarked. Kim was obsessively “concerned” about the way she looked. She needed everything to be perfect. And if she thought for a second that someone was looking at her strangely, judging her, sizing her up, she’d go off on a tear.

  “She was extremely sensitive to criticism,” James added.

  James had taken blows to the jaw from Kim’s closed fist more than once or twice, he later said. She hit “pretty hard,” repeating what others had always said: Kim “hit like a man.”

  * * *

  One Christmas, James was required by their divorce decree to bring Blake back on the twenty-sixth, or the day after the holiday. Blake “was maybe three at the time,” James remembered. The boy was tired from the holiday. James cradled the boy in his arms as he walked up to Kim’s door and rang her bell. James had his arms and hands full. The child was sound asleep.

  Kim came to the door. She must have realized that James was defenseless, so she decided to take a shot while he wasn’t able to protect himself. Without any warning sign she cocked her fist back and hit him square in the face, grabbed the child out of his arms, took Blake inside and slammed the door shut.

  Merry Christmas!

  * * *

  Blake was a one-year-old when they divorced. James had unsupervised visitation. In 2006 ( James could not recall an exact date), he picked Blake up for a visit. The boy seemed to be favoring one side of his arm as though in terrible pain.

  James asked what was going on.

  Blake lifted his shirtsleeve up.

  Bite marks. Blake explained that his mother had bit him. The boy was beyond upset. He didn’t know what to do anymore. She was constantly, Blake felt, treating the other kids better than him, hitting and biting him more and more. He was always the one to take the weight of Kim’s anger. The boy was torn. In some ways Blake felt he needed to protect the other kids by making himself available in this way. A martyr, if you will.

  The bite marks were enough to send James to a lawyer to begin his quest for permanent custody. It was Blake’s only chance. Blake was bound to wind up in the hospital, and James wouldn’t be able to live with himself, had he not tried. So he filed an affidavit. He explained the situation and included those photos of the bruises and bite marks and other injuries. The evidence was all there. James made sure to keep detailed records of all that had happened between him and Kim. He was building a case.

  One Friday in September (2006), Kim called James ten times. Generally, it was for nothing—just more of her spiteful and angry virulence. James would not answer all the calls, but whenever he picked up the phone, all she did was rant about whatever wrong thing Blake, or the other kids, had done to her.

  “Look, if he wants to go and live with you, okay!” Kim raged at one point. “He can live with you.” Yet, as the conversation went on, Kim rethought her position and felt the need to berate James, call him names, threaten him and spew off-the-wall comments, which, at one point, forced James to hang up on her.

  She called back—several times.

  The next day Blake had a doctor’s appointment. James took him. While they were gone, Kim called incessantly, both to James’s cell and home phones. When they got back home, James allowed Blake to speak with Kim. When the boy got off the phone, he was upset about something she had said.

  “What’s wrong?” James asked his son.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine.” The kid was tough. He could take a lot.

  Kim called back several times. Finally, after a call at 7:15 P.M., where she left one of her typical threatening, scathing voice messages, James called her back. He wanted to discuss “something the doctor had said [at Blake’s] checkup.” He thought Kim should know about it. Kim changed the subject—apparently uninter
ested in the child’s health. She broke into a soliloquy about an “order” James had filed of late, with which she had just been served. Kim claimed it was “invalid,” before getting down to the business of why she was really pissed off, adding, “He should not be enrolled in school.”

  James was planning on keeping the boy as soon as the judge signed off on his petition. Sensing the court would side with him, he had gone ahead and enrolled Blake in the school system.

  Kim was livid. This was a direct violation of her order. She hadn’t okayed this.

  Over the next several days she called and called and called: “You cannot enroll him in school.” She swore and insulted James and Blake. She might have thought that if she stated it one hundred times or more, that it would somehow become a fact—because that’s all James heard for the next week.

  “You cannot enroll him in school!”

  Click.

  “You cannot enroll him in school!”

  Over and over and over.

  On October 3, 2006, James was at work. Kim called.

  “Don’t call me here,” he said. She knew this.

  “You do not have the right to enroll him in school.”

  “Do not call here. This, I consider, to be harassment, Kim. Stop it.”

  “Fuck you. You do not have the right to enroll him in school.”

  “You can contact my attorney if you wish to address any matters before the court.”

  James hung up. He gripped his forehead. A headache—no, a migraine—was on its way, knocking on his skull somewhere in the back of his head.

  * * *

  That same night James took Blake out to dinner at a local Chili’s. They met James’s sister, brother-in-law and mother. Blake was around people who loved him and treated him with kindness, respect and sincerity. It should have been a normal night.

  James’s cell rang several times as they sat and ordered and ate. James would pick up his cell, turn it over, stare at the screen, shake his head and put it facedown.

  It was Kim.

  “Is that Mom?” Blake asked after one of the calls.

  “Yes. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “No!” Blake said.

  A “minute” went by and Blake changed his mind. “You know what, can you call her back—I do want to speak with her.”

  “Can you wait?” James wanted to finish eating.

  “No, I want to speak with her now.”

  James handed his son the phone. Blake took it and walked over to another table while the rest of them ate, not wanting to disturb the family.

  As they ate, James kept looking at his watch. The boy was taking a long time. Five minutes had passed. He still wasn’t back. Kim was likely giving it to Blake, blaming him for whatever problem she had.

  “Excuse me,” James said to his mother, sister and brother-in-law.

  He found Blake sitting at a nearby table, crying.

  “Come on, it’s time to get off the phone,” James told his son.

  “No,” Blake said. (Angrily, James wrote later in his notes.)

  About a minute later, Blake handed his father the phone. Wiping tears from his eyes, he then took off, running into the men’s room.

  James ran after him.

  Blake locked himself in a stall. He sat on the floor, crying.

  “What’s up, buddy?” James said, encouraging his son to talk about it. What had Kim done now? What had she said to upset the child? James had not put it past her to manipulate her son, who was just about to turn twelve. He was so young. Why didn’t she see she was hurting the child with her manipulating and lying and yelling?

  “I have to go back to Tyler,” Blake said through tears. “My friends miss me.”

  Kim had plied the kid with guilt.

  He was upset for at least an hour, and subdued and withdrawn at least until the next afternoon, James wrote later.

  The following afternoon, October 4, Kim started calling for Blake; and, once again, she never stopped. She knew she had the boy on the ropes. One more solid shot and she had him back on her side. She needed to work on Blake some more. She called James at work again the following day—all morning and afternoon long.

  “Stop calling me at work, Kim.”

  She never stopped. In fact, James said, Kim had called his office, on average, twenty-five times in a day when she was in the mood to make trouble. One day, he added, she had called the office sixty times.

  “It wouldn’t be uncommon for her to call ten to fifteen times during a day,” James recalled.

  On Friday, October 6, Kim called fifteen times, James documented.

  Again the next day, ten more calls. Kim even called Blake’s friends and got them to call Blake to tell him to come home. They missed him. They needed him.

  James told Blake not to talk to his mother anymore. Not right now. Kim needed to settle down and stop harassing them before Blake could carry on again with her.

  * * *

  Over the next few days James began discussing custody with Kim. There was no doubt that he was going to be granted custody, his lawyer had told him and Kim. James wanted Kim to “make an offer” regarding child support. She was going to have to start paying—another new situation that was going to drive everyone involved crazy.

  James had given her his offer.

  “That’s an insult,” she said.

  “Well, make me a counteroffer, then, Kim. And stop calling me at work. It’s harassment.”

  She hung up.

  Then she called back.

  “Stop calling me here, Kim.”

  James stopped talking to Kim Cargill altogether after that. He decided he wasn’t going to allow Blake to speak with her, either. Enough was enough.

  Kim began calling Blake’s friends once again.

  46

  THE COURT GRANTED BLAKE PERMANENT residence with his father. After it was official, James gave Kim yet another chance to try and “establish a healthy relationship” with her son for the boy’s sake. Blake was still able to visit his mother. Yet, as those visits commenced, James was getting reports back from Blake that she was still abusing him both physically and emotionally. Nothing changed with Kim.

  Unfortunately, James wrote in his affidavit seeking a restraining order against Kim on Blake’s behalf, I continue to fear for my child’s safety and life.

  Blake’s dad wanted to be in a position to make the call whether the boy went with his mom or not. If James felt Kim was not able to behave herself for a visit, he wanted to be able to deny her.

  So Kim used the one weapon of hers she’d always turned to when she wanted to make her ex’s life miserable.

  James listened one night on the other end of the line and realized what Kim was still trying to do to her child.

  “I really hate that the new school you’re in is so damn easy,” Kim said. Blake had always been smart and attended a science and math magnet school back in Tyler. “The coaches are wondering where you are? Victoria wants you to come back right away for the school dance. Everyone misses you. Please change your mind about coming home, please. Your dad is like Hitler telling me what we can and cannot talk about.... You need to set up an e-mail address that your father does not have access to.”

  Blake listened and responded, “Yeah, okay . . . ,” but he sounded confused and conflicted.

  The next day Kim called Blake back. She asked him if he had called his friends yet.

  “I’m happy living where I am,” Blake said.

  “Hey, buddy,” James said later on when they discussed the phone call. “You handled that really well. The only reason I am listening is because I need to protect you, son.”

  “She’s not going to talk me into anything, Dad. I’ve made my decision—I’m staying here with you.”

  * * *

  Weeks later, when it was Blake’s time to go see his mother for a court-ordered visit, he said he did not want to go.

  “You have to, though,” James said.

  Blake would not budge.<
br />
  “I had to drag him, literally,” James said later, “into the car over my shoulder.”

  There was therapy and missed school days and incidents of Blake causing trouble in school and running out of class and being suspended. Total dysfunctional chaos.

  All Kim’s fault.

  During one visit, no sooner had Blake and Kim arrived back at her house than she snapped, broke into a rage and said (among other disparaging things), “Clean this fucking house, you piece of shit.”

  Blake knew that when he was forced to clean, all she did was “sit around on her butt,” he said later.

  Kim once locked Blake inside her porch (it was around 40 degrees) so he couldn’t get out. “Me and the other kids are going to the mall—you stay in there!” This was part of a pattern that whenever Blake was over for a visit, Kim would take off, often leaving him to watch the other kids. It would not be for work or an appointment, but mostly for her own pleasure.

  “I’m going to the tanning salon, watch them!”

  She’d be gone for hours.

  “Your son is a monster,” Kim would call James and say. “You’ve created this. He comes over, he refuses to do anything, help me at all.”

  Kim made Blake sleep on the couch because his bed—in his old room—was piled high with garbage and clothes and other things.

  Blake would phone his father to come and get him. Blake would be sitting on the curb outside the house, the house locked, nobody home.

  47

  AS THE SUMMER OF 2008 progressed, after a year-and-a-half of James dealing with Kim and her drama and emotional abuse, Kim brought the violence to another level. It was an early evening in June. Blake was with his mother. James had given the boy a cell phone of his own, telling him to call anytime there was an issue, or if Blake ever felt he needed to get out of the situation and come home. For James and Blake, the cell phone was Blake’s lifeline alert.