05.A.Descent.Into.Hell.2008 (17 page)

That month, Laura also called Said Aziz, a UT friend who’d moved back to the East Coast for the summer. When he heard the telephone ring and saw that it was Laura Hall, Aziz hesitated to answer. Laura called him often, usually to talk about Colton. Said couldn’t understand why she stayed with Pitonyak, what Laura Hall got out of the relationship, and Aziz had grown weary of the phone calls. He figured this call was about another nonsensical problem, and it was.

“I think Colton is cheating on me,” Laura complained.

“Yeah? And you’re surprised at that because?” Said responded. It was no secret that Colton Pitonyak loved to flirt and that he was far from monogamous.

“I think Colton slept with a stripper,” Laura said.

Another day, Laura asked Said if she should lend Colton $700. “Do you think I’ll get it back?” she asked.

“I would consider a loan to Colton money spent,” Said advised.

The next time Laura called, however, she’d made the loan, and Colton, as Aziz predicted, hadn’t paid her back. “I need the money for rent,” she said.

“Laura, I told you not to date the guy. I told you not to loan him money. I don’t know what the hell else you want me to do,” Said replied.

Said couldn’t help but wish that Laura Hall and Colton Pitonyak would disappear from his radar, but that didn’t happen. Instead, in early August, a new series of phone calls began. This time, Laura said Colton was in debt to some dangerous men, drug dealers, and needed cash, fast. Would their friend help him? Aziz was noncommittal, but days later, when Laura called again, she rattled off instructions on where to wire the money.

“You know, if the situation is so dire, if the guy’s going to lose his life if he doesn’t have the money, why don’t you have Colton call me himself?” Said responded, exasperated.

“I can’t do that,” Laura said, crying. “I promised Colton you’d fix it.”

Laura also called Andrea Jiles off and on that summer, talking about Colton.

In early August, Laura called her high school friend to tell her that Colton was so high he’d shot a gun off inside his apartment, while Laura was there. “She acted like it was no big deal,” says Jiles. “But I was worried. Guns kill. It was a big deal.”

Another afternoon, the subject was Colton’s drug debt and a group of “Asian” drug dealers Colton owed money to. Andrea couldn’t understand if Laura was trying to tell her that Colton had given them a gun as partial payment or if he’d asked her to find one for him. Either way, it didn’t sit well.

Andrea was worried. Laura sounded strung out and talked constantly of guns and drugs. “Listening to her talk about her day-to-day life, it was like there was all this weirdness going on,” says Jiles. “It was like, expect anything.”

Still, Jiles didn’t foresee what happened next, the day Laura called to say, “Colton burned me while we were fucked up.” Then, to Jiles’s astonishment, Laura Hall laughed.

“Burned you? Was he mad at you?” Jiles asked.

“No, he’s all right,” Laura said. Not sounding at all upset, she explained that he’d burned her arm with a cigarette while they were both high.

“Laura, it’s not right that he took your money and didn’t pay you back. It’s not right that he’s hurting you. This isn’t all right,” Jiles insisted.

“It’s fun. I’m having fun,” Laura said. “It’s all okay.”

Jason Mack didn’t see what was happening as fun. He considered Colton Pitonyak a good friend. He spent much of his time at the Orange Tree, often staying at Pitonyak’s apartment. He rarely saw him sleep. Instead, Colton inhaled amazing amounts of meth, and then stayed up for days at a time, becoming increasingly more tightly wound, more paranoid. The situation only worsened when Pitonyak was high and forgot to lock his door. Someone stole five hundred ecstasy tablets, and Pitonyak, who owed $3 apiece for them, was another $1,500 in debt. Upset about the theft, Colton kept two guns in the apartment.

As for Laura, Mack felt sorry for her. She loved Pitonyak so much, she’d do anything for him, including the day he sent her with a box to deliver. Mack assumed Pitonyak had a gun inside, one he was selling. Hall delivered the box and returned to the Orange Tree with $300 she gave to Colton.

Then there was the time Mack was at Pitonyak’s apartment with Hall. Pitonyak hadn’t slept in days, and he looked more wired than Mack had ever seen him. On edge, everything annoyed Pitonyak, especially Hall. He swore at her, and she asked him why he treated her so badly. “I’ve given you money and I haven’t even asked for it back,” she said. “Why are you talking to me like that? Why are you treating me like this?”

Colton physically threw Laura out of the apartment, into the courtyard. She sat there on a step, crying. Inside the apartment, Colton brought Mack back to the vanity area, in the hallway outside the bathroom. He pulled a pistol out of a drawer. “Should I shoot her? I should just shoot her,” Pitonyak said. “She’s driving me fucking crazy. I ought to just kill the bitch.”

Mack reasoned with Pitonyak, urging him to put the gun away. Finally, he did. Outside, Mack collected Laura and took her to a friend’s apartment, warning her to stay away from Colton. “He’s too fucked up,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I love Colton,” Laura replied.

Before long, Laura was back at the Orange Tree, as if nothing had happened.

That August, Eli began to worry that the Brook Meadow Village apartment complex, where he, Scott, Jennifer, and Denise lived, had bad karma. Just looking around the complex, he felt odd, like something hung over all of them. Scott was moving into a rented house Labor Day weekend. Eager to get out as well, Eli started looking at town homes.

On August 12, a Friday, Nora Sullivan, a wispy blond UT communications major from California who’d been a friend of Colton’s for a little more than a year, ran into him at the Orange Tree. She’d just moved into a condo six doors down from his a few days earlier, to get ready for the fall semester.

“Can’t talk,” he said. “I’ve got an exam tomorrow morning. I’ve got to study.”

The following morning, Colton called Sullivan and woke her up. He’d overslept and hadn’t made it to his biology final. If he drove, he’d have to find a place to park the car, and it was on the far side of campus, so it would take too long to walk. Frantic and upset, Colton wanted a ride, and Sullivan agreed to take him. They met downstairs in the complex parking lot, and she drove him and waited outside the building as he rushed in. A little while later, he walked out. The exam was over, and Colton couldn’t find the professor to ask about a makeup. He was furious.

That evening, Eli and Jennifer went to a party at the home of Michael Rodriguez, a DJ she’d bumped into off and on that summer at parties with first Scott, then Eli. Rodriguez layered tracks, playing one record on top another, matching the beats, the way they did in Jennifer’s favorite clubs, blending tracks into a highly rhythmic dance beat. That night, Eli and Jennifer argued, and he left early. Jennifer stayed and spent much of the night talking to Melissa Kuhl, a dark-haired girl with a half smile. They’d never met before, but as she did with many, Jennifer bonded quickly to Melissa. They spent the night telling each other their life histories. Jennifer admitted she’d used drugs.

Melissa’s birthday was the following week, and someone had given her a small bag of cocaine. She didn’t use drugs and didn’t know what to do with it. “Do you want it?” she offered.

“No,” Jennifer said. “I need to get my life together.”

Off and on that night, in between sets, Jennifer flirted with the DJ, a bulkily built twentysomething-year-old with sleepy dark eyes. In addition to playing his music, Michael Rodriguez sold insurance at Progressive and worked as a bouncer at Maggie Mae’s, a long-time Sixth Street club.

Attracted to her since their first meeting, Rodriguez was interested when he heard that Scott and Jen were no longer a couple. He was pleased when she handed him her cell number and said, “Give me a call.” Rodriguez reciprocated with his cell phone number. While he mixed tracks, Jennifer danced, her hands in the air, looking happy and free.

The party wound down in the early morning hours, and Jennifer and Michael left in her car to meet up with a group at another friend’s house. There they talked more, the flirting escalating. “I liked you the first time I saw you,” she said.

“I thought we’d hit it off,” Michael agreed.

They kissed and wrestled on the couch, and Rodriguez, although twice her size, let Jennifer pretend to beat him up, begging for mercy.

“You’re not that strong,” she said, laughing.

Later, the talk turned serious. “I’ve had some issues,” Jennifer said, not explaining any further. “But I’m going back to school, and I’ve got an interview for a great job next week.”

Rodriguez liked Jennifer. He watched her with his friends and saw her trying to make them comfortable, offering little things, like getting them a glass of water. Jennifer reminded him of his sisters and his mother, the way the women in his family cared about other people. “We need to get together,” he said, when she dropped him back at his house.

“Definitely,” she said. “I like you.”

“Why?” he asked.

“You’re kind of a big guy,” she said. “You make me feel safe.”

Fourteen

After he’d blown his biology exam on Saturday, Colton Pitonyak went on a binge, drinking vodka, popping Xanax, and inhaling the fumes from burning shards of meth. Then more bad news; Colton had lent his white Toyota Avalon to Jason Mack. While driving the car, Mack was pulled over and taken in for failing to appear at a hearing on a misdemeanor charge he had pending. Mack’s mother called to tell Colton his car was towed to a lot in Cedar Park, north of Austin. That was all Colton needed. Colton’s unpaid drug bills approached $5,000, money he didn’t have. His parents were bound to be upset about his biology grade, and now he had to call his mother to get his car out of hock. It must have felt as if everything were falling apart around him.

Sunday after Lauren finished working at the University of Oklahoma campus TV station, the youngest Cave sister called Jennifer in Austin. Being on television as a reporter was a dream for Lauren, a career she’d wanted since childhood, and what she heard in her sister’s reaction wasn’t jealousy but pride. “You’re so brave,” Jen said.

Meanwhile in Houston, Andrea Jiles stewed over her conversation with Laura Hall, the one in which Hall confided that Colton burned her. Jiles feared Hall’s relationship with Pitonyak was spinning ever more wildly out of control. When Jiles’s boyfriend said he was driving to Austin for a couple of days, she decided to go along. When they got there, her boyfriend met Laura briefly but then took off, and Jiles got in the green Cadillac Concours with Laura, who rattled on as she drove about Colton and the money he hadn’t paid her back. Jiles noticed a deep, dime-size wound in her friend’s arm.

“Is that where Colton burned you?” she asked.

“Yeah, but it was no big thing,” Laura said, with a shrug. “We were both fucked up.”

“That’s not all right,” Jiles said, but Laura just shrugged.

The whole time, Laura talked as if everything were wonderful. But her eyes were dark and sunken, and she’d lost weight. “She looked like a drug addict,” says Jiles. “I was furious with Colton Pitonyak. He’d changed Laura. He’d done this to her.”

When Laura got Colton on the telephone, Jiles wanted to meet with him, to take him to task for the way he was treating Laura, but Colton was in a funk over his final and his car, and in no mood to meet Jiles.

Andrea Jiles never did talk to Colton that day. On the drive home to Houston, Jiles’s boyfriend commented, “Your friend looks crazy.”

“Yeah,” Jiles said. “I guess she is.”

On Monday, August 15, Colton had to sober up and get straight. He needed to call his parents, somehow explain what happened with the car, and get a credit card to reclaim it. He also needed a copy of the car title, which was in their names. Colton had been out of jail for only six weeks, and Eddie and Bridget couldn’t have been happy.

While Colton’s life crumbled around him, Jennifer pushed to improve hers. She’d offered to work in her mother’s sales booth at a Houston convention the next weekend, selling Sharon’s line of promotional items. Then, that Monday, something remarkable happened. Jen went for a job interview at a small law firm, Grissom & Thompson. In an old, converted house near the county court complex, the firm had two attorneys, an office manager, a full-time administrative assistant, and a part-time receptionist/file clerk. At that time, the firm had two openings to fill, both the admin assistant and the receptionist. The position she applied for was the part-time slot, and the office manager who interviewed her was impressed enough to ask her to come in the following morning, Tuesday, to meet with the lawyers. Thrilled, Jennifer agreed.

That afternoon, Jennifer called Sharon, telling her all about the law firm, how well it had gone, and discussing what she planned to wear for the follow-up interview. Sharon was happy for Jennifer but wasn’t having a good day since a woman she’d hired for her promotional goods business had quit.

“Mom, please don’t worry,” Jennifer said. “Don’t be so upset.”

“Jennifer, it’s hard to be an employer,” she said.

“I know,” Jennifer said. They talked about the coming weekend and the convention.

“Are you still planning to come?” Sharon asked.

“Unless I have a job,” Jennifer told her, and Sharon knew from the sound of Jennifer’s voice how excited she was about the possibility.

At 4:30
A.M
. the following morning, Tuesday, August 16, one of Colton Pitonyak’s old frat brothers loaded his belongings into a truck in the parking garage at the Orange Tree. Finished with classes, he was moving out and needed to rush to meet friends on a fishing trip. Colton, looking drugged, dazed, and disheveled, walked up in the dark and surprised him.

“Hey, Colton,” the frat brother said.

Colton barely glanced at him, then shuffled past, incoherent, and appearing not to recognize him.

The following morning, Jennifer dressed for her second interview, putting on a gray skirt with a white shirt and a pair of small glasses. Bright and early that morning, she met with Bill Thompson, one of the firm’s two partners. Jennifer looked professional, she was smart, and Thompson thought she’d be a good fit for the small office. “You’re hired,” he said. “Just one thing: Can you start today?”