Chapter 9

It’s More Than Just a Mere Detail

DESPITE LIVING UNDER armed guard, the other responsibilities in my household had not stopped. Mine is a busy, blended family. I have two sons, Jacob and Brad, from a previous marriage, whom Aaron and I are raising together. We both also have busy, high-stress legal jobs.

But I never fully appreciated how busy our lives were until those agents shone a spotlight on us. They made me realize that our lifestyle was more than busy—it was nonstop.

In fact, because of the way that I lived, my detail had already given me a nickname: “Traveler.” I think I earned that moniker after I inadvertently lost the country’s finest as they followed me to work one morning.

To explain, getting up and getting to work in 2013 started with driving my youngest son, a high school sophomore, to Bishop Dunne Catholic School in Dallas. That drive was forty minutes from my house and about an hour back to Kaufman.

He had to be dropped off by eight in the morning. That meant I had to leave my house by a certain time to miss the school buses in my neighborhood and the heavy traffic of commuters that were travelling from the suburbs. I wouldn’t say I was always speeding, but driving aggressively was part of the route negotiation.

I took the “country cut-through” to avoid a longer roadway. A “country cut-through” is a road that isn’t usually on a mapped route, but the locals know it and save time by utilizing it.

However, the guys in the detail didn’t have the roadway on their mapped route to Bishop Dunne. I had no idea until I arrived at Dunne that I might have lost my detail and they were not just hanging back on the drive over.

After that little snafu, I was encouraged not to drive my car.

My detail decided that in order to protect me, I had to be in their car. I still think that they were a little embarrassed that they lost me. I thought it was humorous and no harm done.

They did not. Their sense of humor was different than mine. This was their job and I was their responsibility. They took the implied threats against the elected officials in Kaufman County seriously and no one wanted to lose a potential target on their shift.

What they did not fully appreciate was that my life at the time of the shooting was more than my job as a Kaufman County Judge. In fact, the detail would have preferred it if that had been the extent of my responsibilities. I think they breathed a sigh of relief between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., hours when I wasn’t on the move. However, my real work began before nine and ended well after five.

They couldn’t believe my schedule.

After getting Jacob to school, I would double back to Kaufman County in time for the 9 a.m. court docket. During work, the detail got a break. Occasionally I had lunch plans away from the courthouse, but during those twenty-one days of the detail, usually lunch was brought in. If I was inside the courthouse safe, it gave the guys on the detail an opportunity to check on other work assignments that they had been pulled off of to protect our county during this crisis.

My staff usually informed the detail when I was leaving. Sometimes I had to pick up Jacob after school, but that responsibility was shared and Aaron usually picked up Jacob, and if Aaron couldn’t do it, Jacob’s older brother, Brad, did.

After work, we had to keep going—both the detail and I. They accompanied me everywhere: to the grocery store, to drop off dry cleaning, to doctor’s appointments, to the baseball field at Bishop Lynch.

I spent my days running between dockets and meetings all day. Then I had the kids’ extracurricular activities and community and board meetings in the evenings. The task of checking on my elderly father and aunt, who both lived near me, fell to me. I also worked as an adjunct professor at a local university one night of the week.

My detail knew they had a busy target.

As the youngest of the countywide elected officials at that time, and a woman to boot, busy seemed part of my job description. Like my male colleagues, I had a mountain of responsibilities at work. Unlike them, I did not have a wife to handle all the fine details and minutiae of my personal life. In my case, I was the wife. As such, both the mountain and the minutiae were in my purview.

A conversation with my husband brought that home.

After hiding out in my room, away from the security detail, and finishing the unsettling phone conversation with Kim, I lay back on the chaise and dozed off. I awoke to the sound of Aaron’s voice and the door to our bedroom opening.

“The guys on the detail said you were back in the bedroom and you hadn’t come out for a while after you were on the phone,” he said. “I called a few times, you didn’t answer, but I wasn’t worried. That’s the great thing about this detail: if you don’t answer, I’m not worried. I know you are covered.”

He was grinning.

“Also, would you talk to the kids about keeping a schedule with the detail?” he said.

“Well, it’s not funny,” I said. “I have to lock myself in my bedroom to have a private conversation. Where were you? I tried calling you before I left today. There is something I want to talk to you about.” I was trying my best to answer his questions, but the issue of DA was the topic uppermost on my mind that I wanted to discuss with him.

“They need to know what our schedules are,” he continued, ignoring what I said. “They are supposed to know who is coming in and out of the house. That includes the kids.”

Then he answered my question.

“I was in court all day today,” he said. “I’ve got duty this week. You know how hectic that can be.”

“Duty” at the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District, where Aaron worked, meant that an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) took calls, worked citizen walk-ins, and made court appearances for other attorneys, if the assigned attorney had a conflict. It was an additional rotated assignment on top of regular caseloads, but it was a good system—unless you were the one who was on duty.

Without coming right out and saying it, Aaron was saying he didn’t want to confront the kids. He did not want any hassles or conflict during this stressful time. Sometimes being the stepdad meant knowing what issues to handle and which ones to pass off to Mom.

Later on in the evening, the kids returned home from school. Brad had picked his brother up from school, and I talked to them both about the importance of a schedule, without incident. The kids knew how deadly serious the situation was, even if we tried to downplay it. They had armed federal agents in their dining room and patrolling our property.

We ate dinner and offered the agents food. But except for a bite of peach cobbler that I insisted on one of them trying, no one ever ate on duty. They were strictly professional.

After dinner, but before bed, we usually watched television in our den, but it was too awkward with all the extra guests looking on. We headed back to our bedroom. Jacob went upstairs to do his homework after dinner. I could hear him overhead, rocking back on the back legs of the chair as he studied. Brad had been at baseball practice and doing “stuff,” whatever that entailed for a high school senior. That was his explanation for why he and Jacob were late getting home for dinner. After gulping his dinner, he assured us he had no homework, but that he had to go back to school to emcee a girls’ softball game.

In our previous life, I usually heard the door chime when the kids came home, but the agents had turned the chime off at night, so as not to wake us, since they moved in and out of our residence as they took turns on patrol.

The detail worked in three shifts: from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., and 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. The evening surveillance differed from the day detail, perhaps because danger seems to be harder to elude at night. The agents used different types of weapons, with additional firepower. They took post outside and during the night they walked the perimeter on a schedule. They seemed more serious as a whole on the evening shift. If someone wanted to harm us, night would be an opportune time and the assailant would have the cover of darkness.

This is why they were so very serious about knowing the family’s schedules, especially after sunset, when it was dark. They wanted to know what time to expect people coming in and out of the residence.

Brad was usually vague about what time the softball game was ending and what time he would be returning home when I asked him. I told him he had to also inform the agents of his schedule.

But when Dean, the lead agent, asked him about his schedule, he gave his usual nonchalant answer, “I’m in around 10 during the weekdays.”

“It’s non-negotiable,” said Dean. “For everyone’s safety, I need to know your plans. This isn’t your mom asking.” Dean was one of my favorite agents. He was friendly, but professional. He needed to know daily what the planned activities of our household were, when we were coming and going from the house, and what scheduled guests were planned on coming to our home.

I think Dean was also “backing my play” as a parent because Brad had no idea that they had put trackers in all of our cars and knew where we were at all times anyway. After learning about the trackers, Brad clarified his schedule with the agents, in a hurry.

That evening I heard the garage door going up and glanced at my watch. It was 9:55. Brad had made it home, with five minutes to spare. Agents were good for safety, but they also helped with wary teenagers.

IN SPITE OF having to lock myself in the bedroom to talk to my friend, the next day was a little easier than the first couple of days and nights with a security detail.

On the first day, we didn’t have federal agents. We had sheriff’s deputies. They were parked in the cul-de-sac in a marked car alongside our house. It gave the sheriff’s deputies a view of individuals coming into the neighborhood, as well as visibility into our house. Later, I learned from the federal agents a that sitting in a car was not the safest approach to protecting a target, nor was it for the agents who were sitting ducks in the car. So, when the federal agents began their detail, they set up the staging area for their security inside our home in our dining room.

I saw firsthand how the federal security approach worked better. When the deputies were first at our home, it was Easter Sunday. I had to prepare Sunday dinner and I had my family coming to my home. Deputies milled around outside as my family arrived.

Then, something the deputies did not expect happened: FBI agents came to the house to get a search warrant signed. Signing a search warrant is a typical responsibility of a judge. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for them to come to my home after hours or on a weekend. The murders had happened in my community of Forney, and at the time the other judges were also out of the county. I don’t know if the federal agents knew that the deputies were on our detail that Sunday.

Long story short, we almost had a shootout on the front lawn.

As the federal agents barreled into the neighborhood and parked in the driveway, they either didn’t notice the deputies’ squad cars or weren’t aware the car was there for our protection. They hopped out of their unmarked vehicle, moving quickly to our front door.

The problem was that the deputies initially didn’t know who the federal agents were. The agents coming to the door were in plainclothes and simply looked like two men with handguns under their shirts.

By the time I answered my front door, the sheriff’s deputy was making his way to the front door, hand on his gun, safety off. In that instant, he must have thought that we might be the next family to be killed by the unknown assailants hunting down prosecutors.

After a few tense moments, everyone calmed down and identified themselves. Meanwhile, my brother was parking his car as this melodrama unfolded in the front yard. He bore witness to it all. I ushered the agents through the front door and into the house to review the affidavit and warrant. The deputies were again at ease; as they took their post back outside. My brother, Homer, who was coming in through the open garage door from the rear of the house, had to retell the near shoot-out during our Easter dinner.

That incident aside, we all settled into our new normal. Our house started to feel like home again, even with a security detail in tow.

The agents used our dining room as the command center and staging area. Because it housed a table and chairs, the guards were able to sit around the table if they weren’t outside walking post. The dining room also provided the best view of all the entries into the house.

Most importantly, it gave the detail quick access to my family and me. They had even determined a place we should go in the event of a threat at the house: our safe room.

I no longer jumped or was uneasy in the evening when the surveillance team set up for the late shifts. I no longer resented my armed companions as I walked the dog around at night with someone from the detail—even in my own backyard.

Bottom line? I knew that if anything happened, I was safer with them here than not. It was starting to become more familiar and certainly more comforting.