Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (14 page)

As they did every year on their birthday, that evening they all drove to meet David’s parents. Belinda had chosen Los Cucos, her favorite Mexican restaurant, a short drive from the house. In the noisy restaurant, they sat around the table and talked, and for the first time, Brenda heard of David’s plans for the next day, New Year’s Eve.

“I’m going hunting,” he told his parents, saying he was leaving the following afternoon and would be gone for two nights, returning on Saturday.

Belinda looked surprised, and Brenda wondered why her brother-in-law was hunting on a holiday, especially when his wife could have a baby at any moment.

“Have you got a warm jacket?” his father asked. David insisted he did.

From the restaurant, they drove to the Temples’ home on Katy Hockley Road, the one that backed up to the rice fields where David had hunted birds as a boy. Maureen had a chocolate cake for Belinda and Brenda, and they lit the candles and sang “Happy Birthday,” and then blew out the candles.

Belinda’s excitement spilled out as she talked about the baby’s approaching birth. She told the excited grandparents that her doctor had said she could be early, and she was beginning to feel ready. That evening, Evan entertained them all, singing his favorite songs, including “You are My Sunshine.” Although a quiet little boy, he appeared as excited as his mother was about Erin. Belinda had taught him to write his name, and she’d shown him that both his name and Erin’s started with an E and ended with an N. All he had to do, she explained, was change out the V and the A for an R and I to write
Erin
.

As the others talked, Ken retrieved a jacket of his for David to wear hunting, insisting his son needed something warm. But when David put it on, the jacket wouldn’t close around his muscular body, and they all laughed at how silly it looked straining to cover his shoulders. David again assured his father that he had everything he needed, and before long, David, Belinda, Brenda and Evan were on their way home.

The next morning, New Year’s Eve day, Brenda helped Belinda take down the Christmas decorations, while David sat on the den couch, transfixed by a football game. Brenda watched him, staring at the television, not offering to help. Afterward, Brenda and Belinda carried the boxes of decorations upstairs to the master bedroom and into the large walk-in closet, where they piled them on the floor. The attic access was in the closet ceiling, and Belinda wanted to pull down the stairs and carry the boxes up.

“Let David do that,” Brenda insisted, disgusted at her brother-in-law’s unwillingness to help. “He can do some of this.”

After lunch, David put Evan in bed for his nap. When David returned, dressed and ready to leave for his hunting trip, Brenda and Belinda were in the den. Belinda looked wary as her husband kissed her good-bye. He then turned to Brenda, reminding her that she would be gone by the time he returned. “So this is good-bye,” he said.

They hugged, and he was gone.

Cell phones weren’t common in Katy in 1998, and Belinda had the only one in the family, a large, bulky black model. David took it with him, and for the coming days that phone was the only way his eight-months-pregnant wife could reach him. Brenda never heard David tell Belinda where he was going hunting or whom he’d be with. He didn’t even say if he’d be hunting deer or birds. After David left, Belinda looked sad, and Brenda thought that her sister couldn’t go on this way, having to carry the load with the house and the children. “You have to put your foot down with him,” she advised Belinda. “He’s going out too much. He has a wife, a three-year-old and a baby on the way. He should be home. He doesn’t need to be going out all the time.”

Belinda looked upset but said nothing.

Instead of sitting at home depressed, Belinda announced they were going to Walmart and the Home Depot, to buy some things for the house. The sisters returned hours later with blinds for the living room, and Brenda feared the worst when her sister, with her round, pregnant belly, climbed a ladder to hang the blinds herself, saying that she knew David would never get around to it.

That evening, a warm night, Belinda brought Brenda and Evan to the Nissleys to welcome in the New Year. Stacy and her husband grilled and the women sat in lawn chairs in the backyard and lit fireworks, as Belinda talked about how disappointed she was that David would leave her to go hunting on the holiday. “I can’t believe he went, but what can I do?” she asked. When Brenda wasn’t around, Belinda confided in Stacy again, saying she feared her marriage was ending. “I know we agreed we’d be careful with money, with the baby coming, not buy anything big, but David didn’t even get me a small Christmas gift.”

Perhaps wanting to comfort his mother, Evan rubbed Belinda’s belly and talked to his sister, calling, “Erin. Erin.”

“He was such a sweet child,” says Brenda.

When Brenda and Belinda arrived home shortly after midnight, they put Evan to bed, and then checked messages. Maureen had called and left a frantic message saying she and Ken were worried about Belinda, wondering where she was so late. Kenny, Maureen said, was on his way over to check on them. A short time later, David’s father stood on the front porch ringing the doorbell. When Belinda answered, Brenda noticed the older man looked worried.

“Where did David go hunting?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Belinda said. “I don’t know who he’s with or where he is.”

Brenda thought Kenny looked upset, but he said little more and quickly left.

The planning for the New Year’s Eve party at Heather and Tara’s town house had gone on for a couple of weeks. That afternoon, the two women cooked and decorated, and the guest list included friends from both their schools. As they prepared, Heather talked to Tara off and on, worried that her coworkers would sense that she and David were a couple. Perhaps she didn’t understand that many on the staff already knew. The anxiety appeared to take a toll on her, and she began drinking early.

When David arrived, they stood around eating and drinking and talking to the others at the party. He laughed, telling the other guests how he’d pulled one over on Belinda, that he’d lied and told her that he’d gone hunting. “I have my guns and my hunting gear in the truck,” Tara heard him say. “My wife’s not stupid.”

The guests had a good time, but by 10:30, her early start had taken a toll on Heather. Not feeling well, she retreated to her bedroom. For the rest of the evening she was in bed, and Tara and David took turns checking on her.

Late that night, David drove Tara’s boyfriend, Pete, home. On the way, David repeated again what he’d said earlier, that he had his guns and hunting gear in the truck, so Belinda wouldn’t catch him in his lie. Afterward, he returned to Heather and Tara’s town house, where he spent the night in Heather’s bedroom.

New Year’s Day can be cathartic, the sweeping out of the old year with its frustrations, replaced by resolutions not to make the same mistakes in the year ahead. In hindsight, Belinda must have viewed 1998 as a disappointment, a year filled with tension, including those weeks when she and David lived like strangers. Even her characteristic optimism might not have been enough to assure her that the coming year would improve her marriage. Belinda woke up New Year’s morning alone in the spindle-framed bed. She didn’t know where her husband was or who he was with, but she must have realized even more acutely that her marriage was in trouble. With only a month until Erin’s birth, perhaps Belinda thought she could wait out the storm in her marriage, and that once the baby came, 1999 might bring peace along with the happy family she prayed for.

The first day of that nascent year fell on a Friday. Brenda had an early flight to Kansas, where she had to report to work the following Monday. The sisters rose at 6
A.M
., and Belinda didn’t look well. She seemed weary and depressed and Brenda suspected her sister hadn’t slept. At the airport, Belinda parked the car and then walked Brenda and Evan inside the vast and already busy terminal. A bit of a worrier, Brenda didn’t care for flying, and this flight was on a small plane, a commuter jet. All morning she’d had a strange feeling, as if something awful lay ahead. All she could think of was that there might be something wrong with the flight.

As they waited for boarding, Brenda looked at Belinda and thought again about how worn out she looked. Without saying anything about her own building anxiety—the unsettling feeling that all wasn’t well—Brenda said, “You should go home, Belinda. Take Evan and go home, try to get some rest. I’ll be fine here.”

Although in the past Belinda would have insisted on waiting with Brenda, on this morning Belinda didn’t argue. The sisters hugged good-bye, and Belinda turned to leave, leading Evan by the hand. As Brenda watched her sister and the toddler walk down the long, austere hallway that led to the main lobby and the parking garage, Brenda had the unmistakable impression that she’d never see Belinda again.

Chastising herself to be reasonable and not to worry needlessly, Brenda boarded the airplane. Still she couldn’t shake the premonition, and as she waited for liftoff she wondered if the plane would crash. It never occurred to Brenda that she wasn’t the one in danger. Belinda was.

When Brenda arrived safely in Kansas City a few hours later, after a smooth ride through calm blue skies, she shook off her misgivings. Relieved, she dismissed her fears as senseless worry. She could never have imagined the horror that was now only days away.

That New Year’s Day, Belinda drove home from the airport with Evan and, undoubtedly, spent the rest of the day working in the house, caring for her son and worrying about her husband’s absence. Late in the pregnancy, Belinda’s feet were swelling, and she complained to friends that she felt uncomfortable and achy, carrying so much extra weight. But the most upsetting aspect must have been her worsening relationship with David, the uncertainty and the fear that her marriage might not survive.

Meanwhile, fifteen minutes away by car, Heather and David made love and lounged on the town-house couch, watching football. Perhaps Heather never thought about Belinda at home, eight months pregnant, alone on the holiday with David’s three-year-old son. Or perhaps Heather was so delighted to have David to herself that she simply didn’t care. It obviously didn’t worry David that his wife could deliver their daughter at any time. Later, cell phone records would show that he called Belinda only once during his three days with Heather, on Sunday afternoon, when he was on his way home.

Did David and Belinda argue when he arrived home? Was Belinda angry?

That Sunday evening, about 6
P.M
., Bill Norwood, one of the other Hastings coaches, and his wife, Marianne, were at Los Cucos, when they noticed Belinda and David with Evan at a table across the dining room. From the moment she saw her, Marianne thought Belinda looked upset. It seemed odd that David and Belinda sat silently across from each other, not talking. When they finished dinner, Belinda took Evan to the restroom, and David walked across the restaurant to say hello to the Norwoods.

A few minutes later, Belinda returned from the restroom and joined them, holding Evan by the hand. “I’m still teaching,” she told Marianne. “I’m trying to save all my sick days to use when the baby comes.” While she talked about Erin, Belinda rubbed her belly, as if caressing her unborn child. Minutes later, after the Temples left, Marianne remarked to her husband that Belinda Temple had looked incredibly sad.

“I wonder if something’s wrong,” she said.

At Hastings that first week of school in 1999, a rumor floated around. As some heard it, David Temple had told people that his wife, Belinda, was the schoolteacher who reported the infringement of the rules and caused the Katy football team to be disqualified from the state championship. That wasn’t true. Later, some would wonder why David wanted the teachers to think it was Belinda. “Football was everything in Katy, and the team had to forfeit a championship game,” says a teacher. “People were saying that David said a lot of people in Katy were really mad at Belinda.”

At Katy High, the teachers later strained to remember if anything odd happened that first week of school, but Belinda appeared well, if tired. The following weekend, on Saturday, Belinda was still trying to finish Erin’s nursery, and the sticking point was the shelf she’d tried unsuccessfully to get David to hang. He had worked around the house over the holiday. For Christmas, Maureen and Kenny had given David and Belinda the materials to build a small pond next to the back door. Perhaps David had mentioned wanting one. Quinton had just built one in his backyard a few weeks earlier, and David was not one to be outdone. However it happened, the pond was finished, but the nursery shelf Belinda had been begging for remained undone.

Frustrated, Belinda had a handyman give her an estimate on putting up the shelf early that week, but she told a friend the price the man quoted was high, and she’d decided to do it on her own. By then, one of the teachers had given Belinda a shelf that wasn’t being used. Later, it would appear that Belinda didn’t care for the brackets it came with, because on that Sunday, January 10, Belinda drove to the Home Depot on I-10, about eleven minutes from their house, and purchased a set of replacement brackets.

That same Sunday afternoon, Natalie Scott saw Belinda in the garage, working on the shelves she’d been installing in the nursery closet. Amazed that at such an advanced stage of pregnancy Belinda was still doing physical labor, Natalie walked across the street to talk about the baby shower she’d offered to host for Belinda. Over the two years they’d lived nearby, Belinda and Natalie had become friends. Her own baby had arrived two months earlier, and Natalie had already brought her maternity clothes to Belinda to wear. That afternoon the women talked, and Belinda invited Natalie inside to see what she’d done to the nursery.

When they walked through the den, Natalie saw David sprawled out on the couch, watching television. When they got upstairs, Belinda confided in her neighbor that David had done little to get ready for the baby’s arrival. As if to illustrate that point, the wall shelf with the old brackets lay on the nursery floor. Yet, despite her frustration, as Belinda talked about Erin’s arrival, saying it might now be only days or weeks away, “she looked really happy,” says Natalie. “She was so excited about having a baby girl.”