Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (48 page)

I would have to chuckle upon
hearing that complaint a few months later. This desire for fidelity
was coming from a woman who had ended two marriages with her own
adultery. What's more, the promise of fidelity she so suddenly
cherished also had come from a married man. On top of that, she had
cheated on him multiple times with me, her ex-husband? I detected
several personality quirks in that track record but an obsessive
search for fidelity did not seem like one of them. Cindy would say
she so desperately wanted this marriage to a doctor that she was
determined to cure his alcoholic-induced anger management issues.
But then, what is new about that scenario: Woman finds ideal man
and immediately starts working to improve him?

At the same time, however, she knew she had to
keep him separated from our daughters until he could become a more
model step-parent. Just as I had worked to keep the kids isolated
from Catherine, Cindy was working to keep them away from Uncle Al.
In her case, I understood, the challenge had been dramatically more
difficult since the girls lived with her. Later on, I would hear
chilling tales about how Shannon could never get to sleep because
she feared if she did, her mom would bring in a babysitter and
sneak out with Uncle Al. While Cindy worked hard to keep things
together, she had to have known in the back of her head it was
never going to work. Had Uncle Al been more of a psychopath, Cindy
might have dumped him as quickly as I had decided with Catherine.
But it took her longer with him to face it. And it was her final
recognition of that reality the night they fled his condo that
prompted her decision to end her own life.

In the weeks before that night,
they had even been attending couples therapy to help Uncle Al
behave. And they had been planning a trip to the mountains that
would require leaving the girls with a babysitter for ten days.
Cindy had reluctantly agreed to the trip but also was growing
exhausted with the hyper activity level of her prospective mate. He
simply was beginning to wear her out. And his drinking didn't help.
When she nagged him about it again, he lashed back and pushed her
around. She called me for help and fled with the girls into the
street.

After I took them home and threw
beer in her face, Cindy put the girls to bed and then climbed into
the shower. The water felt so refreshing and her life outside so
hopeless, she did not want to return. So, she decided she would
take pills in the morning, after arranging for the girls by calling
me. A feeling of resolution arrived with a rush and calmed her
nerves. Yes, she decided, we'd all be better off without her and
her selfish, rationalizing ways. She had awakened in the morning
even more convinced it had to be done.

I didn't know all these details at
the time. All I knew was that she had fallen under the spell of
something dangerous for all of us. And that's why I had come to the
sheriff's office, where I watched a deputy process Cindy's
paperwork as if it was another delivery of junk mail—just another
part of his day.

"We can't get anyone over there
until later this afternoon," said the sergeant, handing a copy of
the commitment order to me. "Can you go sit with her a while and
make sure she's all right?"

SIXTY-EIGHT

July 31, 1980

Although I hadn't used it in weeks,
the extra key I kept for Cindy's house came in handy. She had given
me a copy earlier in the year during one of our reconciliations and
then never retrieved it when she and Uncle Al took their vows of
fidelity.

But the key alone did not get me through the
door when I returned to the house in the early afternoon. Besides
locking the door, Cindy had jammed a kitchen fork into the woodwork
at the base, perhaps anticipating someone might try to interfere.
But the fork sprung quickly when I kicked on the wood, and the door
flew open without much of a fight.

I strode quickly through the living room and
back to the main bedroom, where I figured I would find
her.

"Cindy," I yelled, more than a
little concern that Uncle Al had arrived before me and was waiting
inside with his gun. But no one answered, and I reached the bedroom
doorway without trouble. I saw Cindy lying on the bed and tried to
wake her, but she was genuinely unconscious. I could barely hear
her breathing, and I noted an open bottle of pills on the table
beside the bed. I picked up the phone and called for an ambulance
that arrived in a matter of minutes with a West University Place
police car right on its tail. The paramedics confirmed her weak
life signs and carried her outside where they said they would take
her straight to Ben Taub. What a rendezvous point that place had
been in the last year! It was where Cindy worked with Uncle Al,
where I had gone after Catherine shot me, and where Catherine had
gone from court after faking her suicide attempt. It might be
embarrassing for Cindy to show up there on a death-watch, but the
"Tub," as reporters lovingly called it, still ranked as one of the
nation's most effective trauma centers. I wasn't going to tell them
to take her anywhere else.

"Sorry, Cin," I whispered as they
slid her gurney through the doors. "But I think you need the
Tub."

I ignored the handful of neighbors who had
gathered in the street and walked back inside the house, where two
cops from this jurisdiction were looking around.

"Look at this medicine cabinet," I
heard one of them say. "She has a pharmacy in here."

Intrigued, I wandered into the
bathroom and took a peek for myself. I noticed a couple of shelves
of pill bottles, many of them identifying Uncle Al as the
prescribing physician. It looked like the doctor had used more than
his natural charm to weave his spell. While the cop in the bathroom
was dumping the bottles into an evidence bag, I heard the other cop
shout, "What the hell is this?" back in the bedroom. I rounded the
corner to see him holding Cindy's telephone in the air and pointing
at the bullet hole left from Uncle Al's November temper
tantrum.

"That's a bullet wound," I said.
"Her boyfriend shot at it last year."

The cop raised his eyebrows and
placed the phone back on the table. I showed him the paperwork I
had brought from the sheriff's office and answered questions for
his report. I showed him my key and told him I would need access to
the house to help gather the rest of my daughters' clothes, and he
accepted that explanation. Both cops offered apologies for the
situation and wished me well. After they left, I looked around a
bit to see if I could find anything else to help me understand. I
thumbed through a date book that had become a diary for Cindy's
activities of the last few months but found nothing more shocking
than the sheer volume of different events. It was clear that Uncle
Al was the kind of guy who had to be doing something all the time
and likely suffered from adult attention deficit disorder or had
cultivated an extensive speed habit. I'd heard those ER docs needed
that stuff to stay awake for long periods of time, and, from
Cindy's party and hobby schedule alone, it looked like he fit the
profile.

I called the hospital and learned
she had survived but was not yet available for visitors. So, I
decided to get some help for that night with the girls. I knew I
faced some life-changing decisions, and I planned to take no more
time than necessary. I drove over to the girls' Montessori school
about ten minutes away and talked with one of their teachers who
was well-acquainted with the soap opera that had engulfed their
lives. Without any judgmental remarks, she agreed to take them to
her house that night while I sorted out the final details of life
as I had known it. And, as I looked around her school, I quickly
reached a crucial decision about my daughters. A sense of relief
engulfed me as I could see the place had been an oasis of stability
in their lives throughout the turmoil of the past year. And, why
not? They had lived here eight hours each day, just like me going
to my job. This school was their life. Whatever I did, I decided,
one thing was clear. My daughters would not lose this place until
they grew out of it.

At the same time, I contrasted
their school with the room I still rented from Strong. I laughed,
trying to imagine the three of us shut in there on weekends,
watching television. It was time to get out of there, and, I
decided, this weekend would be a perfect time for the three of us
to go apartment hunting. I'd have to cash in some of my share from
the sale of our house for furniture, but it still sounded like
fun.

Thinking about the future reminded me of a
need to call my lawyer and see what legal maneuvers we would have
to perform after this latest development. I could feel Fred Dailey
sitting with his own Wile E. Coyote face on the other end of the
line while I told him about Cindy and the formerly closed divorce
case he now would have to reopen.

"OK," he said. "Let's think this
through. She's in Ben Taub and probably going to be locked away for
a while. She will recover while in therapy and come out of the
hospital looking for her kids. My advice is to get an emergency
temporary custody order tomorrow, if we can find a judge who will
hear it. He'll tell you she's eventually going to blame it all on
you, but he'll have to sign it because we probably can't even serve
her where she's going. So there'll be no one to object."

"Then what?"

"Then we should file for an
immediate jury trial on permanent custody and hope we can pull that
off before she's released. Your costs should be minimal. But if you
wait for her release, it could get expensive, and there's a better
chance you'll lose after she gets sorted out. Courts hate to take
girls from their mothers."

"Let's get the temporary order like
you said. I don't know about moving so fast on the permanent order.
I don't really want to cause her any more harm than I have
to…"

He cut me off and asked
sarcastically, "Are you going to go ahead and send flowers to
Mehaffey, too, since you're feeling like such a nice, generous guy
today?"

"I just can't let Cindy feel like I
went behind her back and completely destroyed her life. Can't the
temporary order be written to last until she gets the court to
change it back?"

"Don't bring Mehaffey to court
again with you this time. I'll call you when I get something ready.
And good luck with this latest situation. I knew I shouldn't have
stuck that file in the storeroom."

It had been a hectic day with my
body in fight-or-flight mode again since the moment Cindy shocked
me with her wake-up call. I was checking off the items on my mental
to-do list rapidly but still had a couple of important things left.
As evening arrived, I headed for the "Tub" to visit my ex-wife, and
I found her in no good mood at all.

"Maybe I'm not pleased with what
you did," she said, still sounding too groggy for serious
conversation. I ignored her whining and tried to redirect her mind
to more uplifting subjects.

"The girls are doing fine. All I'm
going to tell them is that you've gotten sick, and they need to
live with me. Don't worry about them. You know I can handle
it."

"Why did you send me
here?"

Her attitude both worried and disappointed me.
I had hoped she would revive from her stupor grateful to be alive.
Instead, she seemed agitated and abrupt, sounding like she might
want to try again.

"C'mon," I said. "You know why you
came here. If you get hurt in Houston, you go to Ben Taub. We all
go to Ben Taub."

Darkness had
fallen by the time I left her there, pouting and still goofy from
whatever drugs remained in her system. But I managed to quickly put
her out of my mind as I focused on the last item from my list—the
one that would be the hardest. I had been working at
The Houston Post
for
nearly ten years, and it had become my oasis of stability. It had
seen me through two marriages and the birth of my children. It had
been more than just a place I could work. It had been the anchor
for the most important facet of life—my career. It had been in the
back of my mind all day.

Earlier, when
Cindy's therapist had steered me to the sheriff, I had taken Johnny
B aside and asked to take a couple of vacation days to handle this
latest abruption. He bit his tongue, but I could tell from the roll
of his eyes that he was getting fed up with my soap opera. At first
I found his reaction an irritant but didn't have the time for an
argument. As I thought about
The
Post
and my changing future throughout the
day, however, I began to sympathize with him. He had simply given
me time off for both of the Mehaffey trials without a word. All
this ruckus had not been fair to him, and now it looked like I had
only scratched the surface. As a single dad, I would be hobbled for
years to come, unable to work the kind of haphazard schedule
required to do the newspaper job with the focus it
deserved.

More importantly,
I could not let that job distract me from the more important work
of fatherhood. The girls needed a full-time parent—something they
had not had in at least a year. I would no longer make them compete
with anything else. I was sure Johnny B and Logan could have found
some kind of place for me at
The
Post
with a schedule that could accommodate
my new lifestyle, once I had things organized. I knew I would miss
the newspaper life more than I had missed anything else that had
ever been taken away. And I also knew I would need the income
stream that life had provided.