Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (34 page)

"No," I said. "I can't see her
hurting your dogs. You've done the right thing here. I'm the only
dog she wants to hurt."

"Good luck," she said again, then
turned to leave for good—or, at least for that night.

FORTY-SEVEN

January 13, 1980

I finally realized that, for the
first time in my life, I had engaged with true insanity. And the
recognition had an enlightening impact on me, an epiphany of
tremendous proportions. Catherine's behavior had become so
foolishly cross-twisted that, despite the dangers, it made me
laugh. I knew I never would suffer from jealousy or obsession
myself again just from watching her deterioration. I was like the
kid who became a cautious driver after a weekend viewing those gory
old Highway Patrol car wreck films or the guy who quit smoking
after a counselor forced him to eat cigarette butts. Watching
Catherine disintegrate had become my version of a scared-straight,
tough-love antidote for jealousy and obsession.

As for her sanity, I wondered if it reflects
the outlook of a sane mind to fight the humiliation of rejection
with the greater humiliation of desperation. Was it less
embarrassing to make a public spectacle of obsession by begging for
my attention in front of other people instead of suffering in
silence? Although I had experienced jealous feelings in the past,
particularly at the end of my marriages, I never had fallen so low
as to beg in public for reconciliation, much less launch a campaign
of threats against potential rivals. I concluded no relationship
could ever be worth that investment of time and dignity. From that
day on, I have stifled laughs when observing the smallest outbursts
in public—the loud voice of a woman after noticing her date ogle a
stranger or the interrogation of a woman late to a party by her
husband. But I have winced at the annual news stories about men so
consumed with jealousy they slaughter their wives and children
before killing themselves in one final dramatic display of
depression. All those incidents remind me of Catherine and the
lesson I learned that week.

And it is all
about control
, I whispered to myself,
recognizing that Catherine's behavior had nothing to do with love
or even physical attraction.
She's
terrified about the loss of control and is struggling any way she
can to recover it.

As foolish as her
behavior had become, however, I still had to appreciate the threat
it posed. Because, after all, I realized the ultimate expression of
control could potentially be murder. So, I also began to appreciate
the dangers I posed to my friends, with Barbara's chilling visit
from Catherine just one example of the responsibility I had to
assume for others in my life. I could chuckle at Barbara's concern
for her dogs, but then I stopped to wonder how far Catherine really
might go. What if Strong's house caught fire, and we both died?
What if a car ran over me and my daughter while walking across a
street? I weighed those fears in my mind while Don Stricklin's
words from my November visit to Special Crimes kept ringing in my
ears:
We think she stalked
Tedesco
. And after my
experience with Barbara, I had evidence Catherine had begun
stalking me. But anti-stalking laws remained at least a decade away
in 1980. I realized I would have to face this all by myself. "Grow
some balls," the cops had advised Tedesco when he sought help about
her. They wouldn't have to tell me. I thought I already had a
pretty large pair, anyhow.

While I had failed
to adequately conceal plans for my date with Barbara on Thursday, I
had managed to keep everyone in the dark about a trip I took to
Austin the next day. I had been approached by someone at the
Austin American-Statesman
about a job in the newspaper's capitol bureau. The paper
planned expansion for coverage of Texas state government, and I had
always seen that kind of assignment as my ultimate goal. So I flew
up for an interview, hung around town all weekend, and came back on
Sunday. Besides fulfilling my professional ambitions, I felt that a
new job in another town also would place a crucial geographic
hurdle between me and all the problems in
Houston.

I also had made plans for another
date for Sunday night, January 13, in an effort to test my
post-Catherine options. This time I had turned to Denise, the young
girl from my ill-fated canoeing class the week before I had
connected with Catherine. I wasn't very excited about that evening,
but I also was eager to flex my independence. By coincidence,
Denise actually had called me during the week wanting to get
together, completely out of the blue. So I called her when I
returned from Austin and invited her to a movie. She picked me up
in her car at Strong's. After the movie, we had a meal at a Mexican
restaurant, and she wanted to go swinging in the dark on a
playground in a nearby park. I felt secure from Catherine,
believing she had no way to know about this outing. As I talked
with Denise at the park, however, both of us realized our age
differences left us little in common. We agreed to go our separate
ways, and I was in bed by eleven after she dropped me at the house
of Strong.

I had been asleep about an hour, however, when
a nightmare began unfolding in real life around me in the bedroom.
The lights went on, and I popped up, rubbing my eyes, to see Strong
standing in the doorway and Catherine beside my bed. I bolted up in
the bed and stared at them both.

"You let her in?" I asked Jim,
ignoring her.

"She insisted," he said. "She
pushed open the door. I couldn't stop her. What's going
on?"

"Get out," I barked at her, still
fighting to come fully awake.

"I watched you tonight, and I'm not
putting up with this!" she shouted. "I'm going to stay here
tonight. You're my whore!"

So, I thought, she followed me
tonight. I began weighing the danger she posed with my need for
more information about her deteriorating state of mind. I also
feared the result of any physical confrontation required to remove
her from the house, once Strong had let her in. But more than that,
I felt weary and burned out. I was half asleep. I didn't think she
would do anything with Strong in the house as a witness. And I
wanted to give her a message as bizarre as the one she'd just
delivered to me.

"Fuck you," I said. Without
seriously considering it further I acted on instinct. I scrunched
back down in the small single bed where I slept and rolled over,
speaking without looking at her face. "I'm going back to sleep. You
can do whatever you want. As far as I'm concerned, you are not
here."

Then I drifted back to my dreams wondering if
I would wake up in the morning.

FORTY-EIGHT

January 14, 1980

I awoke unharmed with Catherine
still there, sleeping in that small bed beside me. I yawned, rubbed
my eyes, and climbed around her to get a shower, thinking all the
way to the bathroom about how I must be going crazy, too. After all
that concern about her potential for violence, I had just gone back
to sleep instead of running her out of the house and locking the
doors. Then I realized a more vigorous response might have gotten
us firebombed. But I concluded our dance of disengagement could not
continue. All debts, whatever those might be, would have to be paid
with the devil faced like a man might take his wife: for better or
worse. As I scrubbed myself clean and prepared for a new week at
the courthouse, I couldn't help wondering what could possibly come
next.

I returned to the
bedroom to find Catherine wide awake, standing up, and going
through the top drawer of a dresser I used for my underwear. I
looked around this room I rented from Strong and took stock.
Besides the underwear in the dresser and a collection of outer
clothes hanging in the closet, I couldn't think of much else in
there worth stealing. I had a cheap stereo with a built-in
turntable sitting on a nightstand. And I decided she could have
that if she wanted it. I ignored her and pulled clothes from the
closet with a plan to just get dressed and leave her standing
there. Strong was about to leave and when he did, his belongings in
the other bedroom might be vulnerable. But, I rationalized, he had
let her come into the house, so he would have to accept the
consequences. And I was determined to avoid any physical contact
with her at all costs. I wondered:
Won't
she sooner or later just grow tired of being invisible and go
away?

When I was dressed and ready to leave,
however, I reached on the top of the dresser for my keys and found
them gone.

"Not the keys again," I muttered.
She had taken a seat on the bed to watch so I turned and said, "I
need my keys, Catherine."

"Tomorrow is our anniversary," she
said. Catherine considered the 15th of each month to be our
anniversary date, commemorating that first outing on October 15 to
collect the rent on my beach house. She said, "Something special
might happen."

"Catherine, I don't come to your
house any more. Why did you come to mine? Please leave."

Just then, we heard Strong exit the front
door, and I realized I was alone with her in the house.

"No," she said. "We are going to
get some things settled this morning. And you can't leave until we
do because I have your keys."

"What do you want?"

"Someone told me that you did
something else to me, something so horrible that if I found out
what it was, I would lose control. What do you think that could
be?"

"And you think you are under
control now? I don't know what the fuck you are talking
about."

"I want you to go into the
courthouse this morning and tell Special Crimes you were crazy when
you made that tape and that you want to take it all
back."

"If I do that, I can have my keys
back?"

"Yes."

I acted as if I were thinking about
it, and then I said, "Ah, I can get another set of keys somewhere.
It's not important, and I really don't have anything you can take
that is important enough to make me do that."

"You don't?"

Before I could confirm my position,
however, I had another thought: This is about the silliest
negotiation I could imagine. My statement about her can never go
back into my mouth, even if I tell Don Stricklin I'm crazy. If I
turn up dead, they're still looking at her.

So instead of resisting her demand, I changed
course and relented with a sigh.

"OK, Catherine, why don't you get
one of them on the phone, and I'll tell them all that. But then I
get my keys, right?"

"Right," she said, already picking
up a phone and dialing the district attorney's office number from
memory. I heard her get through to Henry Oncken, who served at that
time as the first assistant, a position above Stricklin. She
identified herself and then handed the phone to me, after telling
Oncken I needed to speak with him. I knew he had been briefed on my
situation, so I took the phone and said hello.

"Henry, I just wanted to call and
tell you I am crazy, and I take it all back."

"Gary, are you are in danger?" he
asked.

"No," I said, realizing this all
had started sounding even more bizarre than I had imagined. "I'm
just trying to get my keys so I can drive in to work. Catherine
wanted me to tell you I'm crazy first."

"OK," he said. "I got it. You are
crazy and you take it all back. And you are with her
now?"

"That's correct. I'll stop by your
office when I get to the courthouse."

"Make sure you do. Thanks for the
call."

I hung up the phone, looked at
Catherine, extended an arm with palm up, and demanded with one
word: "Keys."

When she started shaking her head
and saying, "No," I realized I had reached my limit and decided to
drop my non-contact pledge. I snatched her purse from the bed and
pushed her down on the mattress. I looked through the purse but
couldn't find the keys. So I offered it in exchange for the keys,
and she agreed. When I told her to leave, however, she refused. I
grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the house until she
agreed to leave the house as well.

But, I had no sooner settled in
behind my desk at the courthouse when she made an encore appearance
there. I tried to ignore her again as I watched from the corner of
my eye her efforts to conduct private meetings with my colleagues
in the room. When one of them returned from a trip with her down
the hall, I leaned over and asked, "What does she want?"

"She's asking
about that
Exorcist Tape
and whether it was played for us in the press
room," said Tom Moran, the courthouse reporter for the
Chronicle
who would later
become a Houston attorney. "She thinks she has a case for slander
or something."

"You do remember that it was Strong
who actually played a small part of it, don't you? That's his voice
on that tape with her, not me."

Tom waved me away and said, "Sure,
sure, she's grabbing straws."

Just then she re-entered the room, approached
my desk, and crossed her arms on her chest. She checked to make
sure she had an audience among the other reporters, and I checked
to make sure they were enjoying the show.