Don't Tell a Soul

by M. William Phelps

  “I’m so sorry, Kim.”

  “I need you there, Angela.” Not to testify, Kim implied, but for “moral support.”

  “I can’t, Kim. Sorry.”

  Angela said she had a baseball game to attend and she needed to get off the phone.

  They said their good-byes.

  Kim left work at 7:30 P.M. Within her twelve-hour shift she had made upward of seventy phone calls on this day—despite the protocol and policy for all nurses that they were not to make any phone calls during working hours.

  52

  CHANDLER, TEXAS, POLICE OFFICER ARTHUR McKenzie was sitting in his familiar Friday night spot near the west end of town on June 18, 2010. It was just before eight o’clock when McKenzie spotted a white Mitsubishi Montero—maybe a 1999 or so—driving by him faster than most of the other traffic. McKenzie was parked by a Dollar General, just down the road from McCain Park on State Highway 31. The posted speed limit was fairly liberal there at fifty miles per hour. But this white vehicle was going about “sixty-one or greater,” and so McKenzie hit his lights, took off into traffic and got behind the car.

  After he pulled her over, McKenzie approached the woman and asked if she knew how fast she was going.

  Kim Cargill explained that she was a nurse and had just left work. “Everybody’s told me to slow down between [these two streets],” West Main and North Broad.

  “Is there a reason why you’re speeding?” McKenzie asked. “Is there any type of emergency going on?”

  “No, Officer,” Kim said.

  McKenzie went back to his cruiser and keyed Kim’s name into the system. He found no outstanding warrants, no other trouble associated with Kim’s driver’s license number. Yes, she’d had some issues with the law, but nothing outstanding. So, staring at the back of her vehicle from behind the wheel of his cruiser, McKenzie thought, Well, she’s a nurse.... She wasn’t driving crazy. Why not give her a break.

  McKenzie peeled off a warning ticket from his pad and handed it to Kim. “I’m going to give you a warning,” he explained. “I need you to slow down, ma’am.”

  Kim took the ticket. She was in a hurry.

  When he was done, McKenzie tipped his hat, reminded Kim once more to slow down and went back to his vehicle. Kim backed up just a little bit, took a look in both directions, pulled back onto State Highway 31 and off she went.

  Kim’s car was clean. Not a spot or smudge of black soot could be seen in the video accompanying McKenzie’s stop and issuance of the speed warning. Within two minutes of receiving that summons from Officer McKenzie, Kim Cargill was on the phone with Cherry Walker, asking Cherry if she wanted to go out to eat, telling Cherry she had some things she needed to discuss with her right away.

  It was 8:02 P.M.

  53

  HE HAD SEEN HER AROUND the Citadel and run into her a few times in the hallway and in the parking lot, but Forrest Garner had no idea that Cherry Walker, his neighbor, had been watching his youngest son, Timmy. At this moment she was locked in a conversation with his ex-wife, Kim Cargill, over the subpoena Cherry received that morning to testify on the following Wednesday in a custody case generated by Forrest. Forrest walked on eggshells himself because of the chaos his ex—a woman he would later describe as “the Devil incarnate”—had caused him.

  Kim scared Forrest. He believed she had set his apartment on fire. If she was capable of that type of retaliation, what else would she do if she felt someone, such as Cherry Walker or Forrest, had truly wronged her?

  Friday nights at the Citadel, Forrest later explained, were an especially stressful time for him. A lot of “younger people,” Forrest said, lived at Citadel. On Fridays it was always hard to find a parking spot in the lot because it was filled with young people and cars. Tenants grilled out there on Friday nights, had beers and, of course, played music loudly. As Forrest left his apartment on Friday, June 18, 2010, he weaved in and out of this scene, noting there were people everywhere.

  As Kim Cargill was talking to Cherry Walker, trying to convince Cherry to go out to eat, Forrest took off with a few friends to go hang out at a local bar. He returned home about 9:45 P.M. to the same throng of people in the parking lot, all of them now drunker and louder. Cherry lived directly underneath Forrest. He did not see Cherry or Kim on that night, nor had he heard from Kim. As far as Forrest knew, Kim was at home or working, and Timmy was with Kim’s mother.

  Forrest unlocked the dead bolt into his apartment, closed the door behind him, making sure to lock it, tossed his keys on the counter, had a glass of water and headed off to bed.

  54

  BETWEEN THE TIME SHE WAS stopped for speeding (8:02 P.M.) and 12:30 A.M., Kim Cargill was unreachable. No one else could account for where she had gone or what she had done. Kim did not call anyone during this period, nor did she pick up her phone if someone called her. Kim’s boss at ETMC had, in fact, been trying to reach Kim all night long (ever since Kim left work) about a patient. Kim had left work in such a frenzied, hurried state that her boss didn’t have the opportunity to talk to her then. It wasn’t until just after twelve-thirty, a half hour past midnight, that Kim returned the call to her boss, telling her she had been sleeping ever since returning home from her shift.

  Her claim that she had been sleeping this entire time was a lie, according to Kim Cargill’s account of the hours after she got off work and before the death of Cherry Walker.

  Not long after she spoke to Cherry, Kim later claimed, she showed up at Cherry’s apartment. It was 8:25 or 8:30 P.M., Kim later said. Cherry was ironing clothes. (Incidentally, Kim just missed bumping into Forrest, her ex-husband, who had left to go out shortly before then.)

  “I’ll wait for you in the car,” Kim claimed she told Cherry.

  It took Cherry five minutes, Kim insisted, but she came out and got into Kim’s car.

  Kim drove with Cherry to her Waterton Circle residence in Whitehouse “because I had left text messages.... I was trying to juggle several things at the same time . . . and I had left a text message and called a friend of mine who [mows] my yard.”

  That would have been Michael Darwin.

  Kim claimed she told Michael she’d be home on that Friday night by eight-thirty and she wanted to talk to him. She wanted to wish him a happy Father’s Day because they were heading into Father’s Day weekend. She could not have done this with her cell phone, Kim explained, because the battery had died—quite conveniently—on the way to Cherry’s.

  “Cherry, give me a minute,” Kim said when they arrived at Kim’s house. It was 8:45, maybe 8:50 P.M., according to Kim’s recollection.

  Kim went into the house while Cherry waited in the car.

  Inside, Kim placed her phone on the charger and used the bathroom. She then rifled through her pocketbook and a few drawers to see “how much cash” she had in order to take Cherry out to dinner, as promised.

  It turned out she didn’t have enough money at home.

  Kim got back into her car ten minutes (at most) later and decided to head out to a local gas station. She was planning on taking Cherry to Posados, on East Fifth Street in Tyler, closer to where Cherry lived.

  According to Kim’s account, Cherry “was nervous about the situation . . . but happy to be going to dinner.” The situation, one might guess, being the subpoena.

  Kim said she stopped at the Exxon station on Troup Highway and Loop 323 in Tyler (which would be confirmed later). She needed gas and also to check on her bank balance so she could pull out some money for dinner.

  After buying $5 worth of fuel for her car (she claimed), Kim withdrew $35 in cash from the ATM for dinner.

  They arrived at Posados around nine-thirty, Kim claimed. It was a Friday night; the place was jam-packed with patrons.

  Dinner was inconsequential, Kim said. She and Cherry talked. They ate. They left.

  During her entire narrative of this crucial time period, Kim spoke as if she and her best friend had gone out on a Friday night to have dinner.

 
; There’s only one problem with this blissful picture Kim later painted: every person Kim had spoken to that day—including her boss, who saw her perhaps last before she picked up Cherry—described Kim in a far different state of mind. Everyone said she was angry and full of rage. Moreover, no one in the Citadel parking lot could recall seeing her. Kim never mentioned how many people were partying there that night.

  While she later explained the night to her attorney, Kim defined the beginning of it, especially during dinner, as “pleasant.”

  Imagine: “pleasant.”

  Kim claimed Cherry asked her for a ride “somewhere,” but that Kim “didn’t feel comfortable taking her there. . . .”

  Instead, Kim drove Cherry back to the Citadel.

  Along the way, Kim explained, Cherry “was fine until she realized” Kim was refusing to take her where she wanted to go. After Cherry understood Kim wasn’t driving her to a certain place Kim never named, Cherry “got upset.”

  Cherry became increasingly angry because Kim would not take her where she wanted to go, Kim said. So much so that, as Kim turned onto Beckham in order to make the turn left onto Houston, Cherry’s street, Kim alleged, Cherry “started to have a seizure.”

  It had been years since she’d had a seizure. But according to Kim Cargill, as Cherry had a seizure beside her inside her vehicle, things spiraled out of control quickly. They were just one block away from the Citadel, merely blocks away from a hospital, and Cherry, if one is to believe what Kim Cargill later said about this night, was “banging against the glass and the door,” thrashing inside Kim’s car, having a grand mal seizure.

  55

  CHERRY WALKER, ACCORDING TO KIM, began to whip herself against the glass and the door inside Kim’s car.

  Seeing this, Kim claimed, she decided to stop the car. They were just a few feet away from the Citadel parking lot, and so Kim decided to pull in there.

  From the time the seizure started until she pulled into the parking lot was “maybe a couple of minutes,” Kim said.

  A few blocks away, just up the street, was a hospital, but Kim claimed there was far too much traffic to take Cherry to it. That was okay, though, because there were several medical clinic options available all around the Citadel. Still, Cherry was perhaps lucky, because Kim Cargill was a nurse. She had been trained to deal with seizures. She could administer care. She could call 911. She could ask any one of the dozens of people in the parking lot to help.

  Inside the Citadel parking lot, which, just an hour before, had been akin to the tailgating section of a sporting complex before a football game, Kim claimed there was now nobody around. She said later that the parking lot was dark and empty.

  Kim parked, got out of the car and ran to Cherry’s side of the vehicle. She did not call 911: “I left my phone at home,” Kim said—a phone she had placed on a charger when she arrived so she could have it for the night. That’s not to mention that Cherry Walker never went anywhere without her phone.

  Kim said she opened the door, and when she did, Cherry fell out and onto the pavement and must have smashed her head.

  “The seizure stopped within a few seconds of her hitting the ground,” Kim later testified.

  Staring at Cherry Walker lying there on the ground, motionless, Kim claimed that she then “ran to [Cherry’s] apartment to see if it was locked”—this from a woman who knew that Cherry had OCD issues and would absolutely never leave her apartment unlocked.

  “I was looking for a phone,” Kim said.

  With the gated area of the apartment entrance locked, a fact Kim knew, having been to this apartment complex dozens of times over the past several years, she claimed she went looking for the neighbor, Marcie Fulton, who had introduced her to Cherry—the same woman who used to watch Timmy before Cherry.

  “Her [vehicle] wasn’t there, but I still tried,” Kim said of her alleged frantic search.

  When that idea failed, she took a look around and could not find anyone to help her. She had no phone. There was not a soul to be seen: a Friday night, downtown; an ex-husband living in the same building; Cherry, with her own phone in her purse; scores of businesses and doors to knock on nearby. Kim claimed not to have been able to find one person to help her with this seizure situation.

  At face value alone this was unbelievable.

  Running back to the car, where Kim claimed Cherry lay on the ground outside the passenger-side door, Kim said Cherry was “still in the same position.” Kim said she “realized that [Cherry] was unconscious.”

  Not moving.

  Kim bent down to check for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  She checked it again, to make sure.

  Nothing.

  She listened to see if Cherry was breathing.

  Nothing again.

  She felt Cherry’s chest for a beating heart.

  Nothing.

  “So I flipped her on her back and I started CPR,” Kim said.

  Here was a nurse supposedly giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to a 250-pound woman in the middle of a parking lot on a Friday night in a downtown section of the city, but not one person saw any of it.

  After Kim drew the conclusion that the CPR failed to work, she decided, “I had to get her some help.”

  Kim needed to get Cherry into the car and to the hospital, she thought. There was a chance, Kim said she knew then, that Cherry Walker was dead.

  “I don’t know when I realized [she was dead],” Kim insisted later, speaking to her lawyer during direct questioning. “I know no one was coming.... I couldn’t keep doing compressions.... No one heard me. No one even heard me . . . [and] no one was around. . . .”

  Kim said she decided to put Cherry in the car and drive her to the hospital. A woman who was five-three, about 120 pounds then, had supposedly picked up a dead, 250-pound woman and placed her into her car.

  Impossible.

  As Kim approached the hospital parking lot, she had second thoughts: “I glanced at the clock and realized that she had been nonresponsive for around ten minutes.... I couldn’t bring myself to take her [to the hospital]. I couldn’t. I could not make myself do the right thing. I didn’t do the right thing.”

  The hospital was now directly in front of Kim as she drove. Kim, however, passed by the entrance and turned right, maneuvering her vehicle past the hospital “while trying to figure out what to do” next. Her major concern, she said, adding that it was indeed a selfish one, became how worried she was about “how it would look.” She then made the claim that there were “so many people”—including her “family attorney, friends, Cherry’s neighbors and friends”—that had supposedly known she “was coming to take her out for dinner.”

  That was an exaggeration, at best. In fact, Kim might have told her “family attorney,” a conversation that would have been protected under attorney-client privilege. Truthfully, no one save for maybe Paula Wheeler and Kim’s other friend, Angela, knew that Kim had even suggested dinner to Cherry on that Friday night. Cherry had told Wheeler she did not want to go out with Kim.

  Still, in Kim’s “mind,” she said, “I thought that me opening the door of the . . . [car and] her falling out and hitting her head, I didn’t know if that caused her death. . . .”

  So a nurse did not know whether a fall from the front seat of a car out the door and onto the pavement could have caused death?

  This comment did not make sense.

  Kim said she felt it was her “fault” because she did not stop Cherry from falling out of the vehicle.

  Regardless, Kim claimed she drove around town for “maybe thirty, maybe forty-five minutes,” all while thinking about what to do. She had a dead woman, apparently, sitting next to her the entire time—a dead woman who had been her babysitter and was a witness in an upcoming hearing.

  Thus, she said, “I ended up on that country road.”

  56

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, JUNE 19, Kim Cargill walked into the Whitehouse Police Department. Dispatcher Ryan Smit
h was at the desk. Kim had just had a conversation with her neighbor before heading over to the WPD, and then spent the rest of the morning washing and detailing her car. Just hours before, she later claimed, she was in a terrible state of panic, having been in the presence of Cherry Walker as she had a seizure, fell out of her car and died.

  Cherry Walker’s body had not yet been found. But here was Kim, inside the WPD, speaking to the dispatcher. Kim sounded calm and nonchalant, behaving like it was just another ordinary Saturday.

  Soon word would hit the WPD that a body had been discovered out at the CR 2191 and responding officers would head out, their pulses thumping with adrenaline as they made their way toward the crime scene. And here was the woman who had put that body there.

  “Well, hello . . . ,” Kim said to Ryan Smith after walking through the front door, her every move recorded by the fish-eyed lenses all over the room. “Anything going on today?”

  Imagine, out of all the days in her life, here was Kim Cargill inside the WPD, wondering how busy they were.

  “Sorry, ma’am?” the dispatcher asked.

  “Have y’all been busy today? Are there many police out on the roads? I know tomorrow is Father’s Day weekend.”

  This wasn’t actually that odd to Ryan Smith as he understood Kim’s query. People walked into police stations all the time and the first thing out of their mouths was usually how busy police were on a particular day.

  Still, did Kim Cargill just want to chat with a police dispatcher?

  Of course not. Kim even admitted later that she was fishing for information.

  Before leaving the WPD, Kim asked the dispatcher another question: “I wanted to see—I wanted to check one more time if anyone has turned in or if you know about a dog that has been missing?” She then described the family pet.

  So the woman had lost her dog and was checking all the nearby police stations to see if it had turned up. This made more sense to the officer.