Wasted (20 page)

Thomas grabbed eighty pounds of concrete. He and LeBlanc asked an old man with blond hair about chain. They measured out twelve feet of chain and snipped it off. They reached for three tumbler padlocks and a thirty-pound trash can made in Great Britain. They wheeled their goods toward the rear side of the store and checked out in the nursery. The total came to $37.83. They paid for it with $40 cash—Regina’s money that they had just “pulsed” from the dead woman’s account.

Moments later, Thomas and LeBlanc were headed back to Garfield and Justin’s father’s home. His father, aunt, and cousin all should have been home by then, back from working hard, sawing wood, making cabinets.

Thomas placed his new purchases in the garage. LeBlanc went upstairs to do more drugs. Justin counted the cash in her Jeep, then grabbed an axe, took off his shirt, and started whacking old tree stumps. But soon, he got nervous and went inside.

“Got to wait until dark to do it,” he told Kim. “Don’t want anybody to see me.” He seemed shaky. “I think somebody saw me.” Cocaine and crystal meth make a user paranoid. “Over there. From that house over there.” He grabbed the phone and called Cellota again.

He hung up. “Robbye can’t get rid of her car. Says it’s too short notice. Fuck,” said Thomas. “Just fuck it.” He glanced out the window. It was dark. He looked toward the house from which he thought someone had been watching him. He couldn’t see through the darkness to make sure no one was there.

“Fuck the garbage can. Fuck the chain. Fuck the concrete. You know what I’m saying? I’ll just blow up the whole fuckin’ thing. Regina. The Jeep. Everything.”

 

 

Justin Thomas grabbed a five-gallon gas can from his father’s carport and walked down to the shed that hid Hartwell’s Jeep. “Follow me,” he yelled as he got in. “We’re going to the gas station up the road.” Then he turned Regina’s stereo up really loud and swerved onto the pavement.

Kim got into her Jeep. She followed Thomas back onto Highway 71. He turned east, towards Bastrop, away from Austin. They passed a Fina station, then a Phillips 66 station. Thomas didn’t pull in either. He made a quick left onto County Road 1209. Kim followed. They came to a stop sign where the road split into a T, and Thomas gunned Hartwell’s Jeep into the weeds. By then, he was shaking. He couldn’t drive anymore.

LeBlanc drove into the weeds, too.

“You stupid ... What are you doing?” yelled Thomas.

“Following you, like you told me to.”

“You weren’t supposed to follow me all the way into the weeds.” He climbed into Kim’s car.

She reversed, went back down the county road to the highway, and pulled into the Phillips 66 station.

“Go in and pay for the gas,” Thomas ordered. “I’ll fill the car and the gas can.”

LeBlanc followed the former infantryman’s commands. She paid for the $12 worth of gas with cash from Regina’s account, got in her Jeep that Regina had matched with her twenty-fifth birthday purchase just four months earlier, and drove back down County Road 1209.

That time, LeBlanc stopped near the stop sign. She wasn’t about to pull off into the weeds and be berated again.

Thomas got out and disappeared behind some trees. Two minutes later, an explosion fired the wet, night sky. The leap of flames singed the brows over Thomas’s hazel-green eyes. He ran. “Go. Go,” he yelled as he jumped into Kim’s Jeep. “Let’s get the hell out of here! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

Kim slammed the car into reverse and raced backwards, halfway to the highway. Finally, she spun the car into drive and nearly wrecked it.

Their hearts beat faster than any cocaine or crystal meth could ever cause. But Justin Thomas, he didn’t feel anything, nothing, nada. Except disbelief.
This stuff,
he whispered in his head,
it can’t be going on again.

“There.” Justin Thomas pointed to a convenience store.

Kim LeBlanc pulled her muddy Jeep into the parking lot and jumped out. It was still drizzling.

Thomas waited in the car with the music playing loudly.

LeBlanc came running back to the car. She handed the $200 she had gotten from the store’s ATM to Thomas.

He took it and wrapped it in a rubberband. He stared at the cut on his hand. It was oozing blood. “Shit,” he said. “Let’s get someplace fast so we can take care of this.” He wiped blood from his hand. “I could use some pot to calm my nerves. You know what I’m saying?”

“I need some coke,” said Kim.

 

 

Her hands shook hard on the steering wheel. They shook so hard as she raced her Jeep up Interstate 35 North that it felt like her wheels weren’t simply out of alignment, but that they had been knocked out of whack in a major wreck. Kim LeBlanc zoned out to try to forget how badly she needed a line, to forget how her body was shimmying and shaking, to forget that she’d just helped burn Regina to a crisp.

She drove past a Motel 6, she crossed Town Lake, passed a Holiday Inn, the state capitol, the University of Texas, the LBJ Library, Robert Mueller Airport, a Ramada Inn, another Motel 6, a Super 8 Motel. She was oblivious to it all. She was almost out of Austin—Justin Thomas wanted out of Texas—when she swerved to the right and pulled in to the Heritage Inn.

“You go on and check in,” Thomas said. Again, he was going to make sure he wasn’t on any videotape. “I’ll go make the phone calls.” He peeled a few twenties off of his rubberbanded roll and handed them to her.

It was 10:39 p.m. when Kim LeBlanc signed her name to the signature card, guest number 26901. She used a fake Kentucky driver’s license for identification. The name on the license was Kim Derrick, the name she had used for seventeen years of her life. The photograph on the driver’s license was of Kim Derrick with chin-length, blonde hair combed straight back, dark, unplucked eyebrows, and no lipstick.

Her real driver’s license featured a photo of Kim LeBlanc with short, brown hair, big, brown eyes, perfectly plucked eyebrows, and bright, red lipstick.

 

 

Thomas was in the Jeep when she returned.

“Checked in,” she said.

“Everything’s cool,” he said. “I’ve got some coke and pot lined up.”

She and Thomas went up to their room for a moment, a double that cost $45 a night, then left to pick up the drugs and run by the grocery store. They bought black hair dye and little, bitty rubberbands. Back at the motel, LeBlanc shaved off Thomas’s shaggy, wavy, light brown hair so that only a Mohawk was left.

“Lots of people in California want a Mohawk,” he said.

She dyed the Mohawk black.

‘Wait here in Austin for me,” Thomas said. “Pulse out as much money as you can from Regina’s account and send it to me.”

“Where?” she said.

“Probably California. I want to see my kids. I miss them. Shit, it’s a fuckin’ crime we can’t get more than $300 a day out of her account. You know what I’m saying?”

 

 

Liz Brickman, a party friend of Regina Hartwell’s, phoned Regina and left a message. “I thought we were going out tonight. What’s happened?”

 

 

Kim LeBlanc and Justin Thomas spent the night doing drugs.

 

 

Anita Morales paged Regina. There was no reply. She tried again. Regina was supposed to help her move into her new apartment.

 

 

“I want to go home,” said Justin.

Kim rolled over on the bed and did another line.

“Let’s go to Garfield. We can stop and get some cash on the way,” he said.

Justin Thomas and Kim LeBlanc left behind a room full of bloody towels and sheets.

 

 

At 12:02 p.m., Kim LeBlanc withdrew $200 from Regina Hartwell’s checking account. She withdrew the money while standing at an HEB grocery store.

 

 

Justin Thomas’s body relaxed as LeBlanc drove up to the ramshackle house on stilts by the Colorado River. It was home. It was family. He stared at the boots and shoes that lined the outside wall, placed very neatly there so that no one could track dirt and mud into the house. Jim Thomas, with his gray hair and beer belly, was a tidy man. Justin smiled down at his dad’s shoes. And there were aunt Bonnie’s—Momma B’s. There were J. R.’s. He was always a good wrestling partner.

Justin slipped off his shoes and walked upstairs.

Kim followed behind him and headed straight for the bedroom, straight to do another line of coke.

 

 

Jim Thomas stared. He’d never seen his handsome son bald with an irregular line of a skunk’s tail of hair down his head. He’d never seen his son with hair dyed black instead of its natural, beautiful, light brown color. He’d never seen his son with eyes so sunken, cheeks so hollow.

He looked at Kim as she closed the bedroom door behind her. Her body was too skinny. Her eyes were black with circles of exhaustion. She hadn’t eaten anything but ice cream in God-knows-when. Those girls were just no good for his boy.

Bonnie walked in from the kitchen. She held a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “You look like you’ve been ’round hell and back,” she said.

Justin walked over and kissed her on the cheek. “That’s what I love about you, Momma B, you’re always honest with me. Where’re my cigarettes?” Justin followed Kim into the bedroom. He shut the door and locked it behind him. He sat on the bed and counted their money. There were two pounds of drugs in her Jeep.

Bonnie stared at Jim. He got up and got a beer.

 

 

Sunday, July 2, was warm and sunny, just like a Texas Fourth of July weekend should be. A breeze shimmied in and out of the trees that lined the banks of the Colorado River and the Thomas property.

Jim Thomas and his family sat out on their second-story deck, drinking, smoking, and looking at that translucent, blue Colorado River. If only everything could be that clear. The summer wind was soft on their handsome, suntanned faces.

“I want to do some shooting.” Justin stood by the deck railing.

Everybody just listened to the wind. Jim thought there was no better place on Earth than that little piece of property on the banks of the Colorado.

“I want to shoot from up here,” said Justin.

“No,” answered Jim. The slowly rustling leaves seemed to whisper to each other.

“Come on, Dad. I want to shoot from up here.”

Jim cherished the serenity of his property. “Well, you’re not gonna do it from up here.”

“Well, whatever,” said Justin, and he walked inside, banging the screen door behind himself, and brushed past his aunt Bonnie.

 

 

Jim Thomas tried to ignore his son’s anger. He lit a cigarette and sipped on his beer.

 

 

Justin packed up three guns and walked out the door.

Bonnie watched her nephew climb over a barbed-wire fence. “Where’s he going?”

Jim took another swallow of beer. “Across the river.”

She watched Justin wade the Colorado. He carefully balanced his loaded guns above the water, then disappeared in the trees on the other side.

 

 

Twenty or thirty minutes later, Justin returned. Blood dripped from the gash in his right hand.

“Shit, how’d you do that?” said Bonnie, concerned.

The white tissue and red meat of his hand shined in the sunlight. “Snagged it when I jumped the fence.” Justin pinched the cut together with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

“You need stitches. Let’s get you to the doctor.” Bonnie headed inside to get her truck keys.

“Nah,” said Justin.

Jim told Justin he needed stitches. J. R. told him he needed stitches. Everyone told him he needed stitches.

Justin was adamant in his no.

So he and Bonnie went into the bathroom. She washed out the gash with peroxide and alcohol. She coated it with bag balm, an antiseptic farmers use to sooth the chapped udders of milk cows, then butterfly-bandaged the gash. That still didn’t stop the bleeding.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc went to buy drugs and max out Regina’s ATM card. She did that everyday after Regina was stabbed to death, sometimes standing at the ATM machine just at midnight, poking the card in and out of the slot, waiting for the stroke of the day to end so she could press the buttons one more time and get another day’s worth of money and drugs.

 

 

Jim Thomas grabbed Justin as he walked by. He just couldn’t stand it anymore. “Son, we gotta talk.” He couldn’t believe he was saying that. In fact, it took every ounce of gumption in Jim Thomas to say it.

He inhaled deeply so that he drew himself up to his entire six feet. He reached for a beer. Jim Thomas wasn’t much at communicating—not orally, not any which way. He drank down half his beer. It had always been one of his limitations—keeping things all bottled up. But he also knew he just couldn’t live like that anymore. “It’s time you go. I want you out of here.”

“But, Dad—”

“No, arguing. I’m sick of your comings and goings.” Jim’s insides tore up as he spoke.

“But, Dad—”

“I’m sick of your bullshit. I want you out of here.”

“Dad?”

But Justin Thomas knew there was no arguing, just like he knew there was no arguing about shooting his guns from the deck.

 

 

Justin pulled Kim aside and told her. They started pulling out their clothes, piling them in the middle of the floor of Jim’s bedroom, readying them for the washer and escape. Justin counted the money again.

 

 

At 5:31 p.m. on Monday, July 3, Kim LeBlanc withdrew $200 from Regina Hartwell’s account. She did so at a Bank One ATM machine on Ben White Boulevard, the road between her apartment and Justin Thomas’s home in Garfield.

 

 

Twenty-four hours later, on Tuesday, the Fourth of July, LeBlanc went to Hartwell’s apartment and helped file the missing-person report on her dead friend.

“What happened?” Justin Thomas demanded, on her return to Garfield.

She looked like hell. “It went fairly well,” she said.

But Justin looked rather hellish himself, with his Mohawk growing smaller and smaller by the day, as he worryingly chipped away on it.

“We filed a missing-person’s report. Anita was really understanding and everything.” Kim lit a cigarette. “But Anita said you’d probably come up as a suspect, you know, since you’re in my life and the new person in my life.” She puffed.

Thomas peeled off a few bills from his rubberbanded roll of dough, enough for two eight balls of cocaine, and handed the dollars to Kim, and LeBlanc left again for Austin and a drug run. While she was gone, he counted the money again. He’d probably counted it twenty or thirty times over the past few days.

 

 

On Wednesday, July 5, the heat of the day was just winding down as APD Detective Hunt and Bastrop County Sheriff Deputy Nelson drove onto the Thomas property in search of Kim LeBlanc. Minutes later, Justin Thomas walked into the yard, handcuffed, and trailed by deputies.

Bonnie Thomas stared in shock through the windshield of her white Dodge Ram truck. She, too, had just driven through the Thomas gate and into the yard, Jim Thomas with her. “What’s going on?” they shouted, tired from work and confused by the chaos and cop cars.

“He’s agreed to go with us for questioning.”

It was the last time Bonnie and Jim saw Justin for days. It was the last time they saw him free, ever.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc’s bones vibrated in her as Detective Hunt drove down the winding road from Whirlaway. Her arms felt like an out-of-whack tuning fork that couldn’t stop being struck. “I have way too much coke in me, and I need some serious help,” she said.

“I don’t really care what you’ve been doing,” he replied.

She gripped her arms trying to stop their ringing. LeBlanc wanted her mother there to take care of her, to hold her ’til she was quiet. She closed her eyes and she vaguely remembered she was supposed to meet her mother at the Circle K. Her pager went off.

“Would you call and answer it?” she said to Detective Hunt. “I think it’s my mother.”

She gave the detective the number, a pay-phone number, and Hunt dialed it on his police cellphone. Kim’s mother answered. “I have your daughter,” he said. “She’s going with me to the police station to talk with me about Regina Hartwell, who is missing.” He turned north onto Interstate 35.

“We found ’em,” said Hunt to Carter over his cell phone. “We’re escorting them in to Homicide.”

Kim closed her eyes again; it was better that way.

 

 

Detective Hunt exited the interstate and drove up to Austin Police Department headquarters. The University of Texas football stadium was just blocks away, the school Kim should have been attending, cheering the Longhorns to victory.

She didn’t know where she’d be spending football season. At 6:41 p.m., she was placed in a small, gray, cramped, windowless APD interview room. It was claustrophobic, awfully claustrophobic for a coked-out, sexually abused child. In the ceiling, hidden in a vent, was a video camera. Kim didn’t know it. Detective Hunt turned on the camera.

Kim was exhausted, weak, red-eyed, red-nosed, and frail like a newborn fawn. She’d been up for days.

 

 

“You do the interview,” said Sergeant Reveles to Detective Hunt.

At 6:48 p.m., seven minutes after LeBlanc was placed in interview room two, Detective Hunt walked into the cramped cubicle. Detective Carter sat in. “This is Detective Carter,” said Hunt.