Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (14 page)

For starters, she decided we needed
a more valuable, bigger house. Once again I resisted only to relent
after learning we could double our money again thanks to
appreciation of values in the Houston Heights and the sweat equity
generated with renovations. So we sold out and bought another old
house nearby. But this time we bought a two-story that needed no
serious repairs. It also included a garage with an apartment on a
second floor. Suddenly we were landlords with two tenants—one in a
beach house in Galveston and another at the end of our driveway. In
less than four years we had parlayed a fifteen-hundred-dollar
investment for a fifteen-thousand-dollar bungalow into a two-story
home worth seventy thousand dollars with extra income from
apartment rental.

We had moved Little E into a
Montessori school that also had a nursery so the infant Shannon
could go there, too. The price tag was steep, but the educational
results worth the money. Little E continued to blossom both
socially and intellectually in the Montessori environment designed
to promote an early appreciation for the concept of learning. Cindy
had responsibility for taking them to the campus and picking them
up after work because my schedule usually kept me at the courthouse
later in the day.

But I would have had trouble
carrying them around anyway, since an oversight by her had limited
my transportation options to that little Honda motorcycle I had
bought in St. Louis and ridden through Arkansas to get back home.
While driving my car one day, she had failed to notice the heat
lamp burning on the dashboard. By the time she returned to the
house, a leaking radiator had warped my engine. I left the hunk of
junk parked on the curb for six months until some guy came along
and offered a hundred dollars to drag it away. I rode the
motorcycle exclusively in Houston for a year but never really
enjoyed it like some others might. I never felt comfortable enough
with speed to be a safe motorcycle rider. I could not employ
velocity to enhance my balance and always risked collisions from
behind by moving too slowly. I never chanced riding that bike on
Houston's freeways. But I still cultivated the image of a renegade,
parking it outside the courthouse each morning after riding
downtown wearing a jacket and tie. I finally managed to upgrade in
early 1979, when I bought another reporter's beat-up old 1973 Chevy
Vega for two hundred dollars.

By 1978 Cindy had been promoted to
one of child welfare's most stressful but crucial posts as the
primary caseworker at Houston's largest public hospital, Ben Taub.
She literally worked at ground zero for child abuse and neglect
investigations with responsibility for reviewing the circumstances
of any child posting to the emergency room. She worked closely with
the physicians as well as the cops and daily saw the worst that
Houston had to offer in brutality to children. Often her work
dovetailed into mine, as I covered many of those cases in court.
Sometimes she tipped me to stories as we discussed our day's
experiences over dinner. More often, however, our discussions
deteriorated into a depressing game of "Top It" as I shared the
latest gore from a murder trial only to be trumped by her account
of some kid beaten half to death. I was extremely proud of the work
she did and still consider that job to be among the most important
anywhere in the country.

But she wanted more. First she
enrolled in graduate school at night hoping for a Master's of
Social Work that could propel her into administrative or executive
contention. She dropped out quickly in 1978, however, after finding
the demands on her time too daunting. I couldn't retrieve the girls
after school, and she couldn't get to class. By summer of 1979, she
was determined to try again. This time she enrolled in night law
school. We made arrangements for a babysitter and tried to juggle
our schedules, but I knew my late hours would remain an issue. I
couldn't know an even bigger issue sat boiling toward a climax.
Besides trying to balance law school with work and motherhood,
Cindy had launched another secret project vying for even more of
her time.

"So, how was your weekend?" I
naively asked Little E when I arrived home one Sunday night in
August after a trip to Fort Worth.

"Terrible," she snorted. "Uncle Al
was here all weekend."

"Uncle Al?" I asked, looking at
Cindy for an explanation. She just shook her head and tried to look
firm. I sensed another one of those inevitable turning points in
the air.

"We need to talk," she said,
confirming my suspicion. After ushering Little E to her bedroom, I
learned that Cindy had been working a little too closely with one
of those physicians at the hospital. She had been close enough to
have quietly sustained an extramarital affair for the past
year.

"A year?" I asked in shock. I
wondered how I could have missed it. Then I realized her tension
and her scramble for improved status through law school or grad
school had all been designed as part of a grander plan for an image
more suitable to a doctor's wife. For a moment I thought maybe she
had brought him to our house that weekend as a final gesture before
ending it and confessing to me, so we could start anew. Then I
learned this final gesture had been for my benefit. I was being
replaced. The realization left me too stunned for anger, and she
stood resolute.

We were finished. We just needed to separately
reassemble the pieces of our lives in the most civilized way
possible. Unfortunately, Catherine Mehaffey would enter our lives
soon to help, and the result would prove anything but
civil.

TWENTY

1960s

"We need a man."

A dark-haired young woman had written that
plea with her finger on the car window in the frost. It was a cold
December night in 1964, and I spotted her note as soon as I had
backed my 1954 Ford sedan into the space beside her at
Chuck-A-Burger in St. Louis. Some guy and another girl sat in the
front seat of her car while I had two of my high school pals in the
front seat with me.

"Am I man enough?" I asked, rolling
down the window.

"Let's take a look," she said, as
her message disappeared with her window.

I hopped out and gave her one. She
opened her door and said, "You'll do."

I climbed in beside her, and we had a chat. I
learned she had been stood up that night, and they had been
cruising the drive-in restaurants for adventure. She looked cute
enough and appeared to be two or three years older than me. They
had driven all the way from the town of St. Charles, about thirty
miles away on the other side of the Missouri River. After about
five minutes, they invited me to ride back to St. Charles with them
for a little party.

"Hey," I told my pals after
excusing myself to secure my car, "I need you to find another ride
out of here and park this thing on the street over there with the
keys under the mat so I can find it fast if I need it."

"Taylor, you are fucking nuts," one
of them quickly advised. "How do you know where they're going to
take you? And why do you need to go with them? Just follow them in
your car."

"I don't know," I said. "It just
feels OK. The guy said he'll bring me back here. If I get in
trouble, I'll figure something out."

My friend should have been right.
But I was seventeen and invincible. She was cute and wanted me in
the back seat of that car. So off we drove. As an event in my life,
it had little consequence. I didn't even get laid. We spent most of
that night in the living room of some house in St. Charles with her
mother asleep in a bedroom and the other couple making out on the
couch beside us. I'm sure I could have turned that meeting into my
first sexual experience if I hadn't been so shy about it. But her
most aggressive move of the night occurred when she scrawled that
note on the window. Mine came when I hopped into her car. The guy
drove me back to Chuck-A-Burger about three in the morning. I found
my car and went home.

Nevertheless, I recall that
incident often as a harbinger of things to come when I try to
analyze my third personality as the charming rogue—the one destined
to keep me poised on the edge of trouble for most of my life. I've
never been embarrassed to admit the things I've done and actually
consider the Rogue to be a pretty interesting guy. He's usually
been smart enough to cooperate with the professional, recognizing
the truce as essential for survival. In my mind I've taken
calculated risks more often than not, based on an unexplainable
belief that if I do get into trouble, I'll figure something out. It
explains why I could not feel too much self pity when Cindy
unceremoniously ended our partnership in August of 1979. And it
explains why I was the kind of guy willing to tempt the devil in a
relationship with an obvious threat like Catherine Mehaffey. It's
because I am the kind of guy who will climb into the back seat of a
car with a complete stranger and take off for St. Charles, certain
only of the fact I believe I'll get home one way or
another.

I believe we each
have a rogue. Some just keep theirs bottled better than others.
Introducing mine—and letting him confess his sins—should prevent
the uninitiated from feeling too much sympathy for the domestic
Gary who got side-swiped by Uncle Al. After meeting my rogue,
others may even shake their heads and whistle about my later
adventures with Catherine: "He had it coming." I'll admit I had
something coming. But I also would stop to remind those more
judgmental souls to consider the words of that cinematic
philosopher-king, Clint Eastwood, in his classic western,
Unforgiven
: "We all got it
comin'."

Likely born from a combination of
boredom and over-active imagination and, of course, my own
narcissistic flaw to routinely become the center of attention, my
rogue emerged most prominently about our junior year in high
school. Anyone looking only at the academic side of my high school
record would find an ambitious, hard-working stiff focused only on
scholarship. At the same time, anyone looking only at the other
side of that ledger likely would ask: "How come he's never been in
jail?" With several of my pals I pulled so many pranks, I ask that
question often myself. I rarely missed a week in high school
without hitting some stranger with an egg or a water balloon. We
operated like hunters on weekends and evenings, seeking prey among
the unsuspecting masses arrogant enough to believe they could move
around town unmolested. One night while cruising for victims, I
pulled alongside a car that was waiting to turn left at a light. In
the front seat sat a man and his wife dressed in evening clothes,
obviously headed out on the town. When my light turned green so I
could go straight, the rogue took one of our loaded water balloons
and popped it through the open passenger side window of their car.
The image returns to me in slow motion, when I close my eyes, and
again I can see that plump balloon sliding across the dashboard. I
see the looks of horror over their shoulders as it slams into the
window and breaks unleashing a wall of water, and drenching them
just as I drive away.

"Jesus," the rogue told my
sidekick, as we raced through the intersection and away from the
scene of the crime. "That looked like a wave from the ocean. I had
no idea those things held that much water. I hope they don't have a
wreck."

Another time, the rogue got me suspended for
two weeks from riding the school bus because he clobbered the local
police chief in the head with a snowball from inside the bus while
the chief directed traffic at a busy intersection. Enraged, the
chief chased down the bus, curbed it, and ordered all the kids
outside.

"I could have been killed out
there, do you understand?" he roared to a line of teens, each
fighting hard to stop giggling. "I am going to find out who threw
that snowball, and he's going to be sorry."

In an early example of the rogue's
ability to cooperate with the professional, we realized the chief
probably was correct. Somebody would snitch. So we derailed the
investigation by visiting the police station that night, admitting
our role, and apologizing. By then, the chief had cooled off and
had a little laugh about it himself. Because I had come forward, my
principal decided on leniency. Instead of suspending me from
school, he simply suspended me from riding the bus, which had been
required by the distance of my house from the school. That should
have effectively prevented my attendance and triggered failing
grades. But then, for some unfathomable reason, he said I could
drive my car to school and park it in the lot during the
suspension.

The punishment made no sense, but
it underscored my confidence in the power of a balanced life. That
snowball shot stands as the only time I ever confessed to any
transgression, and then I only did it as a strategy for survival.
It became the foundation for my philosophy on secrets we take to
our graves. Everyone should have some of those. I know I have
plenty, and I have managed to elude exposure on many aspects of my
secret life because my professional and domestic images cover my
tracks. I also knew where to draw the line between malicious
shenanigans and serious criminal behavior. I had little trouble
making good grades, and I earned my own money to pay for my car. My
parents could never believe some of the things I would do behind
their backs. Every drug dealer has a mother who loves him. So, why
wouldn't mine turn a deaf ear to the monkey shines of the rogue
they had spawned? More important—I never asked for
money.