05.A.Descent.Into.Hell.2008 (12 page)

Yet more often that not, she voiced a growing frustration with him. One night in particular, Jennifer returned from Colton’s upset. “I can’t fix him,” she said, crying. “I try, but I can’t.”

“Jennifer, you can’t fix anyone but yourself,” Katrina, older than her years, replied. “Just concentrate on you.”

If she tried, Jennifer never found a way to turn her concern for Colton off.

One evening, she stopped at Colton’s with a foil-covered plate of food she’d made for him, on her way to listen to music with friends on Sixth Street. Off and on, she cut hair for people, a knack she’d developed in high school. Whenever Colton asked her to, Jennifer stopped at the Orange Tree with her scissors and a comb, to cut his.

That winter 2004 was unusually cold, and one night during Christmas break, Amy, Jennifer, and Colton were at his apartment in the Orange Tree, snorting cocaine and smoking pot, watching television and talking. Temperatures had been near freezing at night for weeks. “It’s fucking cold out,” Colton said, looking out the windows. “Come on. Let’s jump in the pool.”

Colton tore his clothes off and sprinted naked through the door into the frigid courtyard toward the swimming pool. Laughing hysterically, the others followed, discarding their clothes on the way, jumping into the icy water. “It was wild,” Amy says. “A supreme college moment.”

When he went home to Little Rock, Colton ran into his old high school friends, Ben Smith and Louis Petit. “He was out of it,” Ben would say later. “It didn’t matter if it was ten in the morning, Colton was high.”

“He wasn’t the Colton I knew,” says Petit. “Colton had definitely changed.”

The hearing that would determine if the evidence found in Colton’s apartment could be used against him in court came up that December. As important as it was, he didn’t show up. Colton’s attorney, David Hughes, went to the Orange Tree, but Colton didn’t answer the door to unit 88. The Pitonyaks instructed Hughes to go in through a window, if necessary, to get their son and take him to court. As instructed, Hughes pried open the unlocked window and began to climb in, just as Colton, asleep on the couch directly below the window, woke up and rolled onto the floor.

On the trip to the courthouse, Colton had little to say.

Before Judge Flowers that day, Hughes argued that the evidence, namely the drugs found in Colton’s apartment, should not be admissible. The drugs, the pills, and the statements Colton made should all be excluded because it was the poisoned product of an illegal search. Police had no right to enter unit 88, Hughes argued, and their actions violated the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

Judge Flowers denied the motion, and Colton Pitonyak faced a trial and, if he lost, up to two years in prison.

When she drove to Corpus that Christmas, Jennifer dropped in at the high school in Sinton to see Clayton. She arrived during his journalism class. Afterward, all his friends asked about her, calling her pretty and smart. Clayton was filled with pride.

Yet that winter, the entire Cave-Sedwick family had exhausted all patience with Jennifer. None of them knew what to do. Hailey wondered if Jennifer was pulling away from the family simply to continue partying. But when Hailey talked to Jennifer, she came away with the opinion that Jennifer’s troubles ran deeper. “Jennifer didn’t think she had what it took to make something of herself,” says Hailey. “She kept saying, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it.’ Failure was a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“You can do it, Jennifer,” Hailey argued. “We all know you can.”

There were few illusions when it came to Jennifer and drugs. The whole family knew she was using them, something she admitted but couldn’t seem to fix. “Don’t do it, Clayton,” she warned when her brother said someone had given him pot. “It was a bad choice I made, and now I don’t know how to stop.”

The holidays were emotional and difficult. At one point, Jennifer said to Sharon, “It’s hard, Mom.”

“What’s hard?”

“Being with all of you, because you’re just condemning me,” she said.

Sharon took her middle daughter by the arm and escorted her into the bathroom, then stood with her in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself, Jennifer. Really take a good look,” Sharon said. “This is what the world sees. This is who you are. You’re pretty and you’re smart. You’re kind and good inside. You have so much potential.”

“I don’t feel like I can. It’s just too hard,” Jennifer said.

“You have to pull your life together. That’s where it’s at, kiddo,” Sharon said. “And you’re the only one who can do it. It’s only going to get harder if you don’t turn yourself around.”

Sharon again brought up a drug rehab program.

“Colton went to rehab. It didn’t do him any good,” Jennifer said. “He’s using more drugs than when he went in. I don’t know why he went in the first place.”

That winter, Sharon considered keeping Jennifer at home in Corpus, but decided it wouldn’t help unless she committed to change. Of them all, Lauren said little. Jennifer was important to her, an almost twin, and she wanted her back in her life, even if to do that, “I had to erase what I thought she was doing.”

With all the strife over that Christmas break, there were the happy times. Jennifer played with her eight-year-old cousin, Hannah, and Sharon loved to watch. Jennifer had always been so good with children, and the little girl loved her. Jennifer connected easily with the little girl and had endless patience, pulling out crayons and paper and glue and scissors, sleeping together on an air mattress.

Snow fell on Corpus Christi that Christmas Eve, a minor miracle since snow so rarely falls in South Texas. Afterward, the family gathered outside the house, and Jim used a timer to snap a photo. In it, Jennifer had a wide smile on her face, and no one looking at the photo who didn’t know better could have imagined the uproar in her young life.

Outside on the patio, eating pie and smoking after Christmas dinner, Jim and Jennifer talked. “I’m going to do better, Jim,” Jennifer said. “I really am.”

“Jen, don’t do this to me,” he told her, hurt by all the frustration he and Sharon both felt with her. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me you’re going to go to school when you’re not. Be straight with me. You need to be careful about the path you’re on. It’s not good for you.”

“I’ll straighten out,” she said. “You’ll see.”

A week or so later, after New Year’s, Jennifer called Sharon. Jennifer had lost her cell phone, and Sharon, still determined to do the tough love approach, refused to replace it.

“Where are you calling from?” Sharon asked.

“Scott’s apartment,” Jennifer said. “I’ve moved in.”

Sharon had never heard Scott’s name before. She wasn’t sure who he was. “Who’s Scott?” she asked.

“A guy I met. I really like him,” Jennifer answered.

“Is that a good idea?” Sharon asked. “Should you be moving in with him so quickly?”

“I think it is,” Jennifer said. “I really do.”

This time, Jennifer was right. Scott Engle gave her an opportunity to become the person she said she wanted to be, one her family could be proud of. For the brief time they were together, Jennifer had a family of her own, experiencing the joy of raising a child and the devotion of a man she loved.

Ten

Their paths had crossed the previous November at a party. Scott Engle met Jennifer at a mutual friend’s apartment. That afternoon, Jennifer was on a casual date with Scott’s friend Shaggy, nicknamed after the
Scooby Doo
character. Shaggy hid Jen’s car keys to prevent her from leaving, and she needed a ride. Scott offered her one, but instead they spent the evening talking. The Christmas holidays were busy, Scott traveling to Kansas to see family, and somehow he didn’t see her again. But he didn’t stop thinking about her. He told Katrina about the pretty redhead he’d met. Then, in January, Scott went to Katrina’s duplex for a party, looked across the room, and Jennifer smiled back at him.

“That’s the girl. That’s Jennifer,” Scott told Katrina. “The one I told you about.”

“That’s
your
Jennifer?” Katrina said. “She’s my friend. She’s been staying with me.”

From that moment on, Scott and Jennifer were inseparable. “We just had that fire between us,” he says.

In ways Scott, four years older than Jennifer, looked a little like Colton, dark-haired and not overly tall, yet Colton was drug-thin and scruffy. Scott was muscular, strong, with playful brown eyes under bushy dark brows. He had the body and the puffy face of a fighter, but a warm manner. “Scott likes people. Really likes them,” says Katrina. “That’s one of the first things you notice about him, that he’s genuine and that he cares.”

“I’m the person my friends call to talk to when they have a problem,” says Scott. “I’ve been there.”

In her own way, Jennifer was like that, too. On the outside, she was flinty and determined, if underneath the self-doubts gnawed at her. She gave advice to others, and then didn’t follow it herself. Perhaps she saw in Scott someone who could help her become the woman she wanted to be, independent and strong.

A single dad raising a four-year-old, Madyson, Scott worked evenings as a waiter in an upscale, downtown Austin restaurant, but dreamed of playing a synthesizer in a band. Instead, he sang karaoke at a bar not far from his north Austin apartment, his favorite song: Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line.” On his arms were tattoos representing the Chinese symbols for father, love, eternity, and daughter, along with a celestial cross.

Born in Wichita, Kansas, Scott migrated to Texas along with his parents when he was nineteen. Madyson was born the following year to a girlfriend. Since he was the solid one with a job, he took the baby to care for. His biological father had never been part of his life, and he wanted to be there for his little girl. At twenty-five, Scott Engle was a combination of rebel and concerned father, party boy and dedicated dad.

It wasn’t a fluke that he dropped in at Katrina’s party that night. They’d been close friends for more than a year. At one time, their relationship had been intimate, but they’d moved beyond that, building a bond that Katrina describes as more like “a brother and sister.” When Scott and Jennifer got together, she pulled away from Katrina. “It was awkward. I think Jen wanted Scott to herself. That Scott and I were close bothered her,” says Katrina. “Jennifer was crazy about Scott. They drew each other in like magnets.”

“I want you to meet Scott,” Jennifer told a friend in early 2005. “He’s amazing, and we’re really kindred spirits.”

It was clear to see that for the first time since her split with Mark, Jennifer was truly in love. The same week their paths crossed at Katrina’s party, Jennifer began staying at Scott’s two-bedroom apartment, and soon she moved in her clothes and few possessions from Katrina’s. During the day, Jennifer cooked and cleaned and played with the little girl, caring for her while Scott worked, teaching her the alphabet and her numbers, how to write her name. Jennifer read to Madyson, a brown-haired sprite with enormous round eyes. Before long, Jennifer and Scott talked about building a life together, one where Jennifer would raise Madyson as her own, and the cute little girl with the turned-up nose began calling Jennifer Mom.

The apartment, in a large complex called Brook Meadow Village, in north Austin, was far from the university. Working people, including young families and empty nesters, lived in the gray cedar and tan brick three-story complex, with its open stairways. The developer built around the trees, and old oaks and pines graced the well-kept grounds, where Scott, Jennifer, and Madyson shared their second-floor apartment, number 633, with a mother cat and her five kittens.

“With her red hair, Jennifer stood out in a crowd. But her blue eyes really caught my attention,” Scott says. “She was all girl, feminine, and beautiful. And when she smiled, it just felt like sunshine. Once people met her, they felt like they’d known her forever.”

Scott knew about Jennifer’s drug use, and he understood. As a teenager, he’d had experiences of his own, an LSD and cocaine habit that escalated shortly after he got to Austin. One night, he’d snorted so many lines of coke on top of LSD that when he came down off the high, he realized he could have died. That night, he’d had an out-of-body experience, and saw himself lying in a coffin. “Wild stuff,” Scott says, shaking his head. “After that, I was more careful.”

From that day forward, Scott eased off the drugs, using only rarely and then small amounts, but he believed the acid had changed him, expanded his mind. He studied sixties’ guru Timothy Leary and his turn-on, tune-in, drop-out theories on LSD and expanding consciousness, and believed that he, too, had connected with the universe.

Drugs had made Scott Engle a spiritual man.

Scott talked to Jennifer about being herself, not the person others wanted her to be, and about the importance of living her life doing what she said she would do, not making promises and then backing away. “Scott was a dad, and he acted more like one to Jen,” says a friend. “He was steady, and he was there for her.”

With Scott, Jennifer changed. With his encouragement and support, she eased off the drugs, including the meth. “I didn’t want drugs in the house, around Madyson,” Scott says. For someone who’d professed the inability to quit in the past, Jennifer appeared to let go rather easily. She told friends one way she stopped was to cool her close ties with Colton. “Our relationship was all about drugs,” she said. “It’s all I do with him, so I have to be careful.”

Living with Scott, Jennifer gained fifteen pounds, filling out and looking healthy for the first time in more than a year. And she seemed content. “She was a different person. She hung out with Madyson all the time, and she had better things to do than party,” says Michaela. “With Scott and Madyson, Jennifer was settled. I think that maybe for the first time, she felt safe.”

Jennifer called Sharon and talked about going back to school. She wanted to go into advertising, like her mother, and Scott was encouraging her to do that, looking for ways he could help her. “Sharon was understandably dubious,” says Scott. “She needed Jennifer to show her she was pulling herself out of it. That put pressure on Jennifer, and they argued.”