LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 16

Sunday, June 25^th to Friday, July 7^th 1989

A TIME TO KILL, AND A TIME TO HEAL (Ecclesiastes 3:3)

            Cat was healing nicely two days after being stabbed twice in her abdomen, and having the side of her neck sliced. Thirteen stitches it took to close up the wound just below her head. Thankfully it wasn’t quite deep enough to do internal damage.

            That Sunday morning was the first since her emergency surgery that she was able to speak coherently. Becky and I waited outside her room while two detectives finished talking to her. We both thought her conversation with them would tax her too much to say very much to us. But not for the first time, I underestimated Cat.

            “Hi, guys,” she said happily with a wince. Then she asked, “How’s Naomi?”

            “She’s just fine with your grandmother.” Becky smiled warmly. “How are you?”

            “Oh, I can’t complain. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Kickypoo.”

            My eyebrows raised. Both for her using her old term of affection for me in front of my wife, and also crediting me for her being alive. I looked at her I.V. and realized there had to be morphine or some other narcotic that quelled her pain, but also made her loopy. She explained the second thing that made my eyebrows raise when I asked, “How am I the reason you’re alive?”

            “The self-defense you taught me when we were an item.”

            “Really? How?”

            “When my attacker attacked me,” she said. Then she giggled, coughed, choked, winced, and drew a deep breath.

            “Cat, maybe we better leave you to rest,” Becky offered.

            “No, no, no, don’t go,” she whined, childlike. “I’m okay.”

            “You’re sure?” I asked.

            “Yes… Now like I was saying. When this masked creep grabbed me, my first instinct was to resist. That’s what got me stabbed in the gut. Then he tackled me and tried to slit my throat. I turned my head, and that’s when I calmed some and went with the flow. So when he went to slash my throat…”

            Cat groaned, closed her eyes, and clutched her bed sheet. As much as I wanted to hear what she had to say, I felt like she needed to rest and be quiet. I was about to say as much when a nurse walked briskly into the room. She said, “Oh, I see you have visitors. I’m Jenny.”

            “I’m Becky,” Becky said. Then I said, “I’m Loyd.”

            She didn’t recognize me as only a mildly famous punter in the NFL. But unfortunately, she thought she knew who Becky was.

            “You must be Catalina’s mother,” Jenny said cheerily. Then her face fell when Becky said no rather tightly. The nurse stammered. “I, um, I mean, Catalina told me just this morning that her only sister was, um, deceased.  And, well, you two look so much alike. Cousin maybe?”

            “Coincidence,” I said, and the two loves of my life looked at me skeptically. I don’t think I lied, but it did occur to me after my statement that the similarities between Becky and Cat were no coincidence. For I was first drawn to Cat because she resembled Becky, and both women knew it.

            The nurse quietly went about her duties taking Cat’s vitals. I felt bad that the mishap took the wind out of her sails of cheeriness. When she left, Cat continued the play by play of her attack.

            “Even though he had stabbed me in the stomach when he grabbed me and tackled me, shock and adrenaline must have kept the pain at bay. I was on my back, and he was on top. He came straight at my throat with this huge knife. Using his own momentum, which you taught me, Kickypoo, I knocked him to the side. And although the knife sliced the side of my throat, it didn’t go directly through my Adam’s apple. All the commotion got the attention of Riley.”

            “Who’s Riley?” I asked.

            “The retired police officer that was camping in her yard,” Becky answered.

            “Riley!” Cat croaked, then began to whimper.

            “Riley walked right into the killer’s knife,” Becky whispered. “Sliced right from the stomach into the chest. DOA at the hospital. The creep got away.”

            A big problem was Riley’s killer and Cat’s attempted killer was still at large, and it wasn’t her stalker, who was the obvious suspect. For he had as fool proof of an alibi as you can get. For the fool was in the county jail at the time of Cat’s assault.

            Since Cat had no other known enemies, it was a head scratcher for the detectives. But it turned out that the killer had the wrong woman. His deceitful heart that was desperately wicked was filled with jealousy, rage, and lust. Two types of lust, blood and sexual.

            Cat wiggled and squirmed in her hospital bed, anxious to be released. Both Cat’s and Becky’s daughters, who were both my daughters, were being watched by Cat’s grandmother. A third child of mine was in growing in Becky’s womb. We had yet to tell Cat, but now that she was doing so well, we broke the news.

            “That’s wonderful!” Cat responded enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, for she winced in pain right after her face lit up with delight.

            “Easy, girlfriend,” Becky soothed, touching her leg. “I better call your grandmother and make sure our girls aren’t giving her too much trouble.”

            Becky turned to exit the room and go to the lobby for a pay phone. This was still many years before cell phones, and Cat’s room didn’t have a phone in it. Before Becky went through the door, she turned, took a few steps toward me, and gave me a quick peck on the lips. Then she mouthed, “I love you.”

            Feeling uncomfortable with this display of affection in front of Cat, I responded by simply tapping my heart. She squeezed my hand in understanding as we smiled at each other.

            “Be back in a few,” Becky said cheerfully as she briskly walked out of the room.

            But that was the last time I ever saw her alive.

            Remember Bruce?

            I’ll keep this short and sour, because it is anything but sweet. Bruce was deranged. He kidnapped Becky as she was talking to Cat’s grandmother on a pay phone. He did a poor job of hiding the gun he tried to conceal under Becky’s right arm. Yet he did a good enough job that he managed to leave the hospital before the security could stop him.

            Although security were able to give the police a description of his car, they failed to get his license number. So when the authorities finally discovered his vehicle at a secluded park, they also found Becky’s mutilated body in the back seat. He had raped and stabbed her multiple times.

            His corpse sat in the front seat. With a gun in his hand, a bullet in his forehead had exploded out the back of his head. Although he was right handed, the gun was in his left because Cat had broken it during their scuffle, when he apparently thought she was Becky.

            It turned out that he had been staying in an apartment across from ours in the Chicago suburb where we lived. He had been stalking Becky. When she went to stay with Cat for a few days, ironically because Cat had a stalker, it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to satisfy his depraved heart.

            Sadly, my wife’s brutal murder made me a household name. I was only a mildly famous football player. Yet it was this crime against Becky, rather than my athletic prowess, that garnered me fifteen minutes of worldwide, unwanted fame.

            I didn’t know that grief could make you physically ill. It especially tore me up when our daughter called for “Mama.” Thankfully, little Debbie had become very familiar with Cat. She stepped up to the plate big time and began mothering my motherless daughter. She also made me the most generous offer of my lifetime.

            It happened right after the funeral no less. The ceremony signifying the ultimate end to this carnal existence.  We were riding in the limo directly behind the hearse, taking Becky to the spot where she would be risen during the resurrection. With my mind weary with grief, fear and anger, Cat looked at me with her lovely green eyes bloodshot from weeping. She declared, “I’m gonna come stay with you in Chicago.”

            “Huh?” was all my dumbfounded tongue could respond.

            “I’m gonna be Debbie’s nanny,” she told me, rather than asking.

            “For how long?”

            She shrugged. “As long as it takes. Debbie needs a mother.”

            I stupidly thought she meant until I found someone to remarry. “That could take a long time. Right now I can’t even fathom getting married again.”

            She snorted a non-humorous laugh. “That’s not what I meant, Loyd.”

            She paused, put a hand on my knee, and fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “Don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t mean this romantically. But I love you very much, Loyd. You’re a special guy, and the father of my daughter. I don’t want you to be alone in this. And I want to be a mother figure for little Debbie. I love her with all my heart, and she’s my daughter’s sister as well.”

            Cat put her face in her hands and sobbed and groaned. Her sobs were for emotional pain. The groan for her physical. My own eyes were blurry with tears as I rubbed her back. I didn’t know how her generous offer was going to work out. But it was the first instance of healing the gaping wound on my heart. At that time I not only was taking life one day at a time, but one minute at a time. Just breathe.

            I became angry with God for quite a while. Nothing made sense. Unlike Job, I blamed God foolishly. But God’s compassion never fails, and His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22, 23). I eventually saw the light.

            In hindsight I can see how God’s generous Spirit was working in Cat to help and comfort me. For it was her influence that opened my blind eyes, seeing that God was the only hope in a fallen world.

            I took comfort, just like the scripture says, knowing that the next thing Becky would realize as she now rested in peace, was the second coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when the righteous dead will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and from that point on, to always be with Him. What a wonderful promise! (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)

            I also marveled, later in reflection, that something with such a painful ending, spawned a new beginning.