Cruel Death (15 page)

“Stop it.”

After being talked into it, perhaps just to get Todd off her back, Karen agreed to make the drive down to Ocean City from her home in Delaware, which took about a half hour. Todd had said something about being stuck on the side of the road with his new friends and not being able to change a flat tire. All of them were so drunk, he stammered, that they had no idea what to do. In fact, BJ was out there at one point trying to get the Jeep lifted up on a jack, and Erika was, of course, taking photographs, documenting the little mishap.

Erika later said BJ knew how to do it, but he was just “too damn lazy.” This does not mesh with the photograph of BJ sitting on his ass on the concrete, trying to get the Jeep off the ground after taking the tire off it. Apparently, it had fallen off the jack.

When Karen made it to the outskirts of Ocean City, she pulled over and answered her ringing cell phone. She had first called Todd to ask him where they were. He wasn’t sure, when she had spoken to him last, but he said he’d find out and call her back.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We left one bar . . . You’re not going to believe what happened. I’ve been hanging out with this couple all night. We got a flat tire.”

As Karen now understood it, they were too drunk to change the tire. They had been sitting off to the side of the road, waiting, trying to decide what to do next. The guy Todd was with—meaning BJ—had gotten the tire off the Jeep, but couldn’t get the spare on.

“Name off a few streets around where you’re at,” Karen told him, “and I’ll come and find you.” She couldn’t believe what was happening. Why in the world was she getting involved with this mess?

Karen and Todd finally agreed on meeting at Phillips Crab House, a decades-old establishment on Philadelphia Avenue in Ocean City.

Karen was right down the street. “I’ll be there soon.”

Describing her friend Todd Wright, Karen later said, when he got into the car, he was “incapacitated,” drunk beyond anything she had ever seen. “Cross-eyed and stumbling.”

When she and Todd arrived at the Jeep, where Erika and BJ were waiting, two blocks south, Karen got down on the ground herself and changed the tire. BJ had removed the flat tire, but he couldn’t manage to get the spare onto the rim and attach the screws. He and Erika were laughing and stumbling all over the place like two junior-high kids drunk for the first time.

When Karen was done, BJ and Erika walked over and thanked her.

“Can we buy you . . . a drink for helping us out?” BJ asked.

It was strange how he and Erika seemed so out of it one moment and OK the next. Not quite sober, but coherent enough to communicate. How could they not figure out how to change a flat tire?

Karen felt “uneasy about the whole situation,” she later said in court. Something about the couple wasn’t right. It was her intuition, telling her to stay the heck away. Not only were they drunk, but Karen saw a bit of craziness in their eyes.

“I’d rather not,” she told BJ.

Todd stumbled over. “Let’s go get another . . . drink . . . ,” he tried to say. “Come on, Karen.”

“You really don’t need another drink,” she told her friend. “Let’s just go home.”

Erika said, “Oh, come on, just one,
please
?” She held up a finger. “Just
one
drink.”

“Let’s just go with them,” Todd pleaded. BJ and Erika were pressuring him to get Karen to take them up on the offer. “Come on, just one drink.”

“All right,” Karen said reluctantly. “Just one.”

It was late. Well after midnight now. So they drove to Fish Tales, only a few blocks away from Phillips. Karen was going on a trip in a few days. It had been planned for some time. The last thing she wanted to do was stay out all night.

One drink and I’m out of there.

After entering Fish Tales, as was her normal course, Erika took out her camera and started snapping photos of everyone.

“Come on, Karen, get in there with Todd and BJ, so I can take your photo.”

Karen balked.

“Just do it.”

She did. At no time did Karen ever notice BJ insisting that Erika take photographs. It seemed to Karen that Erika was doing it all on her own, directing everyone and truly eager to document the night.

At one point, Karen noticed that BJ had a bloody lip, bloodstains on his lower teeth, and some swelling near his chin.

“What happened to you?”

“Ah,” he said, “I hit my mouth on the steering wheel when we hit a curb and got that flat tire.” He was so drunk, he explained to Karen, he couldn’t see where he was driving.

Karen had Hawaii on her mind. She was flying out of town in two days. She needed to phone a friend who was already there, she told Todd, and give the girl her flight information. So she excused herself from the bar, where they were all sitting, and went outside to make the call.

When she returned a few minutes later, Todd had spilled his drink, drank the drink Karen had ordered (but hadn’t touched), ordered her another, and drank half of that.

Whatever was left over, Karen dumped out.

I’m out of here.

Indeed, it was time to leave. Karen needed to get home. She told Erika, “You guys should probably call a taxi. You’re in no shape to drive.”

“Come with us,” Erika said. “You drive us.”

“No, no, no. You guys should really go. Call a taxi.”

The Rainbow wasn’t far: a straight shot, south on the Coastal Highway for about five miles. Erika and BJ could take a taxi home, then get a ride back in the morning to pick up the Jeep.

“Please, can you just follow us back to our condo?” Erika pleaded. She sounded desperate.

“I don’t know.... Let me go talk to BJ,” Karen said. She wanted to see if BJ was in any shape whatsoever to drive. Maybe he could drive and she’d stay close behind. Once they got to the Rainbow safely, Karen could take off with Todd and call it a night. Get away from this crazy drunken couple.

But after taking one look at BJ, Karen could tell he was in no shape to get behind the wheel of his Jeep.

“Trashed,” Karen later said. “Intoxicated beyond belief.”

Erika, whom Karen was already calling “Lainey,” after Erika insisted that she be called by her nickname, was in far better shape. She seemed up and more alert.

“I cannot control Erika,” BJ said to Karen as they talked.

“What?” Karen said. It made no sense. “What are you talking about, BJ?” Erika was in far better shape than he was, Karen thought, to drive a vehicle.

But that’s not what BJ meant.

“Erika, my wife,” BJ continued. “I can’t control that girl. If she wants to drive and . . . and . . . she gets pulled over, my girl packs heat.” BJ slapped himself on the side where he kept his gun in his shoulder holster. “Heat, I said. She’ll kill a cop.”

Karen realized at that moment that she was entirely out of her element. She couldn’t believe what she was involved in. Or what she was hearing. It was clear that one of them—either BJ or Erika—was going to drive back to the condo. And there was nothing she could do to stop them. So the best thing she could do for the situation was to follow them and make sure they made it back without killing themselves or someone else. How, in fact, she was going to do that was another question entirely.

“Follow us, Karen, please?” Erika pleaded. She was begging again.

“Well, listen,” Karen said, “if you guys are going to drive, I might as well follow you.”

And so they left. BJ and Erika in their Jeep, and Todd and Karen in her vehicle.

Karen kept her distance. BJ was driving, or, rather, trying: swerving in and out of lanes, slowing down, speeding up, riding the brake, and just bouncing the Jeep all over the road.

Todd was sitting next to Karen. He was totally out of it. “His eyes were rolling back in his head,” Karen said of Todd.

When they pulled into the parking lot of the Rainbow about eight minutes after leaving Fish Tales, BJ ran up to Karen’s driver’s-side window. He looked like he wanted her for something, and didn’t want her to leave.

“Hey,” he said, “I need your help. Lainey is
totally
out of it. Can you help me carry her upstairs?” Erika and BJ were staying in the penthouse, the top floor of the Rainbow, he explained to Karen. If she could just help get Erika into the stair well and into the elevator, he would greatly appreciate it.

“Let me go talk to her and at least say good-bye and see how she is,” Karen said, putting her car in park and shutting it off. The last thing she wanted to do was extend the night.

When Karen got out of the car, Todd came to and fell out of the passenger-side door and onto the pavement. The three of them then walked over to BJ’s Jeep, and BJ opened the door and grabbed Erika, who appeared to be unconscious. When BJ tried picking her up, she slipped from his grip and hit her head on the Jeep door.

“Hey, you guys need to be careful,” Karen said. “This is your wife, man. You’re tossing her around like a rag doll.” It seemed that BJ didn’t really care about Erika’s well-being, or he was too drunk himself to notice what he was doing. Either way, it seemed he was struggling to hold Erika up, making it appear as if there was no way he could manage getting her into the elevator and up to the condo by himself.

Perhaps it was part of BJ and Erika’s plan all along: to get Karen and Todd upstairs. All things considered, BJ was a powerfully built man compared to Erika’s deteriorating frame of approximately one hundred pounds. If he had wanted, BJ could have picked her up with one arm, Karen with the other, and carried both of them to the elevator himself, drunk out of his mind or not.

Inside the lobby, BJ talked Karen into helping him get Erika upstairs. Todd was right behind them, stumbling along, mumbling to himself.

When they got to the door on the top floor, Erika suddenly came out of her drunken stupor and started rummaging through her purse, looking for her keys, as if she had been alert the entire night. She grabbed her keys out of her purse and opened the door on the first try. No problem.

It was strange how she had just snapped to attention. Quite a bit different from just moments ago when she was deadweight and seemingly unconscious.

As they walked into the penthouse, Erika placed her purse on the table and went straight for the laundry room, where she noticed that the washing machine wasn’t working. She’d apparently put some wash in before she and BJ had left earlier that night, and the clothes were still soaking wet.

“You need to
fix
this, Beej,” she yelled into the other room, where BJ and Todd were waiting, “so we can
finish
the laundry.” Little did Erika know then that Geney and Joshua’s hair had clogged up the machine; they had washed some of the clothes that had been lying on the bathroom floor at the time BJ cut up the bodies.

Once inside the condo, Erika took Karen by the arm and led her into the living room.

“How ’bout a tour?” Karen asked. She was amazed by the size and splendor of the penthouse. She had never seen anything like it before.

Erika smiled. “Sure, come on.”

As they walked around, Erika began to talk about the building itself. “My dad built this building and made this penthouse
just
for me,” Erika bragged. She seemed completely sober now. It was strange. Just a moment ago, Erika was passed out in the Jeep. Now she was playing Martha Stewart with Karen, showing her around the penthouse as if she owned it.

“Really? No kidding.” Karen was impressed. What a place.

“Yes.”

“I run a [clothing business],” Karen said.

“Well, let me show you some of my bathing suits and blouses.”

By this time, BJ and Todd had grabbed a few beers and were sitting at the kitchen table drinking. Erika came out of another room with all sorts of different shirts and blouses and bathing suits. She and Karen then walked into another room, where they started going through the clothes and talking about their favorite pieces of jewelry.

Girl stuff. It was the first time that night that Karen had felt a connection with Erika. They had something in common.

“I have this ring my grandmother gave me,” Erika explained. “It’s in my purse.”

Erika then started searching around the room for her purse, but she couldn’t seem to find it.

Karen was curious. She thought Erika had put it on the table when they walked in. But, then, maybe Erika had put it in her bedroom upstairs?

“Look, we really need to find this purse,” Erika said. She was becoming quickly unraveled. Anxiety settled on her like bad news. “It’s
very
important that we find this purse,” she said again. And then a third time. “My grandmother’s ring is inside it.”

There were other items inside that purse Erika was worried about: Joshua and Geney’s IDs, for starters.

By now, BJ and Todd were part of the conversation. “What’s going on?” BJ wondered, taking a pull of his beer. Todd was still drunk, falling in and out of it.

Erika was now completely animated and disheveled. “Beej, we
need
to find my purse....
Those
people, their IDs are in my purse.”

Those people?
Karen wondered. What did Erika mean by “those people”? Yet, she could tell the phrase had some sort of dark, important meaning to Erika and BJ that they both understood by the mere mention of it.

“We need to find that purse,” BJ said.

“Let’s spread out,” Karen suggested.

They began looking around the main floor of the condo, overturning pillows from the couch and cushions, underneath the kitchen table, in the kitchen, wherever they had been after they walked into the condo. Karen thought maybe someone was being funny and decided to toss the purse over the balcony, so she walked outside and looked down.

She couldn’t see anything but a long, shadowy drop to the beach; she heard the subtle sound of the ocean waves crashing into the sand and the constant swoosh of the wind.

After hunting through the main floor, to no avail, Karen and Erika went upstairs and started looking around. When Karen came to the bathroom, where the hot tub was located, she noticed that the bathroom door had been taken off its hinges and placed there next to the door frame.