Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (47 page)

The night before had been a slow one for news.
I had been counting the minutes until my evening shift on the city
desk would end at ten. Cindy had interrupted the boredom about
nine-thirty with a call to me there.

"Help us," she said when I answered
the call. "Al is going crazy, and we are stuck at his place. My car
is in the shop. Can you come and get us?"

I got the directions and told the
night editor I needed to check out a little early for yet another
personal emergency. In the months since Catherine's conviction,
Cindy and I had barely spoken. Around the time of Catherine's
second trial, Uncle Al had wooed Cindy back from our brief
reconciliation at the start of the year. She had announced she was
going to try fidelity for a change and told me to stay away. By
then, I had settled into a semi-serious relationship with Barbara
anyway, so I obeyed. Visitation with the girls grew difficult, but
I hadn't decided on any strategy to do something about it. In those
weeks after Catherine's conviction, the days just seemed to drift
along. Then Barbara and I fought over something unmemorable, and we
just quit talking. I was considering the options for the rest of my
life, even thinking about traveling the world or joining the
Houston Police Department for a new adventure. I had hoped that
Uncle Al was behaving—that his telephone-shooting days of rage were
behind him—but I didn't know for sure. I figured that, sooner or
later, I'd find out, one way or the other, and, sure enough, I
received my update that night.

When I arrived in Uncle Al's condo
complex, I spotted my three girls walking like refugees in the
street. Little E strode barefoot, dragging a blanket and toting a
little bag. Cindy had Shannon in one arm with another bag in the
other hand. A wave of despair swept across my brain. Then, as it
retreated, a second wave of anger came crashing down.

"Uncle Al hit mommy," Little E told
me as they climbed into my Bronco. I gave Cindy a look of
disgust.

"This is what you wanted for our
daughters?" I asked.

"Just take us home, please. I don't
want to talk about it."

"You don't want to talk about it?
Just call me to pick up the pieces, collect our children from the
street, and get on with your life? I'm the one who needs to talk
about it."

But she didn't respond, sitting
stoically on the fifteen-minute drive to her rent house. Little E
started crying. I'm sure Shannon didn't know what she was supposed
to do, so she said nothing. I realized they didn't need any more
displays of anger or rabid shouting, but it was hard to control.
When we reached the house, I helped them carry their things to the
door, and Cindy offered to give me a can of beer. But she wouldn't
let me inside the house. I stood on the porch while the girls
vanished into their bedrooms.

"What are you going to do about
this?" I asked. "Is this finally it for this guy?"

She just stared at me, looking as if this had
been none of my business. Before I had time to think about my
response, I had done it—throwing beer from that can straight into
her face. She wiped the suds from her eyes and looked into the
distance.

"Maybe we'd all be better off if I
wasn't around anymore."

And then, again, before I had taken
time to think about my response, I blurted out the first thing that
flashed through my brain: "Maybe we would." I returned to my car
and drove back to Strong's where I received that wake-up call from
her the next morning. I showered, dressed, and drove back to her
house, where she let me inside. The girls were watching television
in the living room, and Cindy had their bags packed with enough
clothes for a few nights.

"You can get the rest of their
stuff later," she said in a frightening, disconnected tone of voice
that sounded almost as if she were reading a script that left her
bored. I noted a blank look in her eyes and realized she had
reached a new low. I had thought maybe she'd decided to run and
would be leaving town. But suddenly I knew that flight would have
been a best-case scenario. I had never known anyone who attempted
suicide, but I had given the concept a lot of thought over the
years just as a subject of curiosity. I had even read a book about
suicide and recognized her display of the classic signs. She had
been cleaning the house. She was taking care of all the last minute
details and tying up loose ends, like making sure I could take the
girls. I began to wonder about my own role in this ultimate
decision, worried that my rough response the night before had
pushed her past the edge.

"What are you planning to do?" I
asked.

"Don't worry about it."

"I didn't mean what I said last
night. I'm sorry. I was angry."

"It doesn't matter."

I knew I needed to proceed with
caution, but I also realized I didn't know what events had pushed
her this far. I concluded my thoughtless reaction of the night
before could not have been anything more than an excuse, if that. I
would never blame myself if she actually did attempt a suicide, but
I also did not want her to succeed. My daughters needed their
mother, even if she seemed troubled. Perhaps that could be fixed, I
thought. But I knew I would do whatever I could to derail her plan,
if that was what she had in mind. Then she gave me a tool to
help.

"Here's your child support check,"
she said, endorsing the $465 document back to me. "It came in the
mail yesterday. I won't be needing it."

"Please let me help
you."

"Nobody can help me
anymore."

I recognized debate as a lost
cause. I always believed that people often must sink all the way to
the bottom of the pool before they can bounce back to the top.
Maybe it was Cindy's time for that. But I wanted to make sure she
had a bottom from which to bounce. I took the check, grabbed the
bags, and drove the girls to their Montessori school. Little E had
just been accepted for a gifted students program in the Houston
Independent School District and would be starting an advanced
kindergarten class in just a few weeks. Until then, however, they
both still attended the same pre-school.

After dropping
them off, I drove quickly to
The
Post
, where I was scheduled to report for a
day shift by ten. I had no intention of working. Arriving a bit
early, I went to my desk and tried to recall the name of a
psychiatrist who had been treating Cindy. She had mentioned the
female doctor in a couple of conversations, and I managed to locate
the name on a list in the phone book. So I called, identified
myself to the receptionist, and said I needed to talk about
Cindy.

"The doctor won't talk with you
about a patient," the receptionist said.

"I think Cindy needs help. She's
done some things that worry me."

"Like what?"

"She told me to come get our kids.
She packed their bags. She cleaned her house. And—" I paused,
inviting the receptionist to demand my clinching piece of
evidence.

"And what?"

"And, she endorsed her last child
support check back to me."

"I'm getting the
doctor."

The line went dead for only about a minute
until I heard the doctor herself.

"You're not making this up, are
you?"

"Nope. I'm really worried and will
do whatever you want to help."

"She gave you the
check?"

"Yes. I haven't been in close
contact with her for a while so I'm making assumptions in the dark.
Am I jumping to the wrong conclusion?"

"No. I can't go into the details,
but here's what you have to do. Go to the sheriff's department
immediately and sign a commitment affidavit. You'll have to write
down some of things you just told my secretary. I'll call and sign
the order. Then they will arrest her and put her in a
hospital."

Jeez
, I wanted to say,
if I had known it was this easy to arrange a
commitment I would have called you months ago about somebody
else.

Instead, I just said, "Thanks" and
headed for my car.

SIXTY-SEVEN

July 31, 1980

As I drove toward
the sheriff's office determined to have my ex-wife locked in the
nuthouse, I really had only a foggy idea about the twisted chain of
events that had left her so vulnerable. Despite the torment she had
caused for me in the last year with her on-and-off-again attention,
I wasn't angry. I considered myself a big boy, and, frankly, I
admitted, the sexual reconciliations had always been worth the
splits. I realized I did still love her, but in a way very
different from the volatile concoction of lust and respect that
first had brought us together. We had made beautiful children. We
had a future of some kind built on that foundation. I never would
do anything to hurt her. I wanted to help her live. But, I also
wondered:
What the hell has been going
on?

Later I would learn more about that
chain of events, where I fit in the chain, and even how to
technically identify the affliction that apparently had pushed her
to the edge of suicide. The headshrinkers would call it "adult
situation reaction."

Wow
, I grinned, upon first hearing the
diagnosis later.
That sounds like a phrase
some doctor invented to make a bad day sound like something that
needs a prescription. I'd swear I could have argued I suffer adult
situation reactions all the time.

But I did find some literature on
the subject. Therapists used it to describe situations of
potentially unbearable but short-lived anxiety. The reaction occurs
when someone has piled on so many varying stress factors that she
can't carry any of the load. I imagined a woman gathering firewood
for a campsite and carrying it up a hill. Each stick by itself
might not matter. But, at some point, she could load up one stick
too many and then go tumbling back down the hill, scattering all
the wood, and busting her head. An adult situation reaction patient
would have a list of stress sticks that, when added together,
created the image of a life too burdensome to continue.

Cindy had a list, and my name was
on it. I had created one of her stress sticks because I hadn't been
involved in her life enough to help with the girls, she would say.
But I was just one of many stress factors. Once I learned about her
list, I was able to divide it into factors I considered serious or
negligible. I placed my transgression in the negligible section
after I reviewed her diary of activities for the previous few
weeks. Clearly, there would have been no time for me anyway—unless
I had quit work to serve as a full-time babysitter while she and
Uncle Al juggled scuba lessons with a variety of other equally
high-brow outings. So I placed myself on Cindy's list of lesser
woes alongside other temporary, but repairable, irritants such as
"car trouble."

More serious on Cindy's list,
however, were fundamental complaints like "crazy boyfriend" and
"feelings of worthlessness." I imagined that life with her "crazy
boyfriend" could be every bit as stressful as my time with
Catherine Mehaffey, and I knew Uncle Al boasted similar potential
after seeing his bullet hole in Cindy's telephone. There was no
way, however, that Cindy should ever have felt worthless. She had
always just impatiently crowded too many personal goals together,
positioning herself for failure. She was a walking confrontation of
classic clichés: Reach for the stars but don't bite off more than
you can chew.

I respected and loved her for her
personal ambition, a characteristic that can't be acquired. But she
still punished herself for dropping out of law school, destroying
her self-esteem eight months later. She refused to face the reality
that she would have been unable to blend that course work with a
stressful full-time job, child-rearing, and the hectic recreational
life demanded by Uncle Al. As a result, she was suffering a
traumatic overload of unfulfilled desire mired in a bog of guilt
from the damage she feared she might have caused every one in her
life, particularly the girls.

If asked about me, Cindy would
credit me for always encouraging her to reach for the stars and
pursue her dreams. But she also would blame me for being the one to
say when she had bitten more than she could chew. She would
describe me both as a lover and a father figure, a man who helped
her get a start in life but then restrained her by warning of the
hurdles. Instead of serving as a necessary counterweight to her
impulsive behavior, she would insist I tried to dominate her by
denying her the impossible. As a result, I could never win. She
needed my discipline to help organize her plans but resented it
when confronted with the reality she did not have the time to do
all that she wanted.

Asked about Uncle Al, Cindy would
have admitted she had fallen star-struck with the idea of becoming
a doctor's wife and adding the material trappings of that life. She
would rationalize that eventually this change would pay off for her
daughters by giving them access to things they would never have in
our financially-strapped, middle class home. I could see where the
attraction likely began. Uncle Al probably loomed as some sort of
emergency room hero at Ben Taub Hospital, where Cindy also worked
long, serious hours helping abused and neglected children. He had
been married when they met and promised to divorce that wife to
offer Cindy something she would say she had never had in her life:
"fidelity."