Wasted (12 page)

With a big grin on his face, Justin walked in to meet Dawn. Like a little boy thrilled to be pulling two huge catfish out of his pockets, Justin Thomas pulled two pints of vodka out of his pants.

But Dawn wasn’t thrilled.

“Oh, no. Oh, no,” she said. Dawn remembered too well what Thomas had done at the party, the fight he had gotten into. “I’m not going out with you if you drink.”

“All right,” said Justin. After all, he lusted after her. He thought he loved her. He’d do anything in the world for her, fly to the moon and back. Justin handed Dawn the two pints.

She threw them away so hard that they both broke on the ground. The smell of vodka permeated the air. Dawn and Justin and two of their friends then went to a movie and to Taco Bell, Dawn’s favorite restaurant.

“Can you and me go out?” said Justin. He bit into his taco and seemed a bit shy.

“Yeah,” said Dawn. She smiled.

In fact, Dawn wasn’t ready to go home just then. She and Justin drove around town, just the two of them, to talk, to get to know each other. His curfew arrived, and he had to go home. They sat in the drive of his grandparents’ house.

Justin was nervous, like a little boy. “Uh, is it cool that we can go out again, just me and you without the other two?”

“Yeah.” Dawn leaned over and kissed Justin on the neck, the left side.

Justin Thomas was a goner, smitten. Nearly ten years later, at the memory of that tenderness, he still softly touched his neck where Dawn had first kissed him.

 

 

That kiss on the neck, however, eventually led to pregnancy. It seemed that Justin Thomas was more like his parents than he might have dreamed. Like his mother, he liked money. Like his father, he liked drugs. Like his mother and father had once been, Justin Thomas was young, unmarried, and had a child on the way.

“You can either have a wedding in Hawaii or a big wedding here,” said Dawn’s mother and stepfather. “What’ll it be?”

Dawn’s parents and Justin’s grandparents had old-world values. So, like Justin’s mother and father, there seemed nothing to be but married. Justin and Dawn chose the big wedding in California—a $30,000 wedding.

Like his mother and father, Justin had a little boy, Prestin. From the beginning, Prestin was a daredevil and a show-off who craved the attention and spotlight, like his father, Justin.

Like his mother, Jim Thomas, wasn’t an everyday drinker. But when he did drink, he drank to get obliterated. He was depressed and had been so for decades. Jim was so distraught that his hair fell out. It didn’t merely fall out of his head; it also fell out of his arms, his legs, everywhere.

Jim went to a general practitioner, who told him the hair loss was caused by nerves. But the doctor didn’t give Jim anything to remedy the situation, so Jim went to a dermatologist. The dermatologist gave Jim a prescription, and the hair started growing back.

But Jim Thomas decided he didn’t need a doctor—he could do his own prescribing. He ran down to Mexico and got pills on his own. He did that regularly and also began drinking, a lot, regularly, to the point of obliteration.

 

 

After Prestin arrived in November, the college football recruiters departed—USC, San Diego State, Cal Berkeley, UTEP, Texas A&M, Rice, Northwestern, Washington, Oregon State, and Hawaii. Justin Thomas was left with one fewer dream.

 

 

But Justin loved Dawn. It was either love or anger, the only two emotions he knew. At eighteen, he was in love—to the moon and back for Dawn.

A friend of Justin’s uncle Andy got Justin Thomas a job in construction, and Justin played the good boy. But that split life was ever present. He dealt enough drugs to have a nice, little, extra amount of money, and he screwed around on Dawn. He thought it was normal for a man to cheat on his wife. He thought every man was allowed to do that.

To Dawn, he hid his lying, cheating ways. In Justin Thomas’s eyes, if he didn’t flaunt his philandering, that meant he was being respectful to Dawn, that meant he was being loving to her.

That worked for the first year of their marriage. Then Justin got that first-year itch—he thought he was missing out on something in life. He was frustrated in his job. He felt he was doing the work of a foreman, but not getting the pay or the title. His boss refused to give the young man the pay or the title.

On top of that, his drug-dealing “family” was tugging and pulling on his emotional shirt sleeve. “Come go to work for us. Come go to work for us, and look what all you can have.” It was as if the devil had Jesus by the sleeve, flying him over the universe, saying, “Just follow me and all of this too can be yours.”

Justin Thomas had too many good avenues of distribution to turn down the devil. He accepted. He raked in maybe $200,000 in drug profits, and he spent maybe $200,000 in drug profits—on parties at beach condos, on limo trips to Vegas, on drugs, cars, jewelry for this girl and that. He and Dawn split, then got back together several times.

When they split, he got tighter with his drug family. Hard headed, he called it. But he also always had to have what he didn’t have. If he had the drugs, but no Dawn, he decided he had to have Dawn. If he didn’t have the drugs, but he had Dawn, he decided he had to have the drugs.

“Please, please, come back to me,” he begged and pleaded with Dawn, like his mother had begged and pleaded with his father fifteen years earlier. “Please stay with me. I have nothing without you. If I have you, my life will be all right. All this other stuff won’t be important no more.”

And Justin was right. He did have nothing without Dawn, only the pull of the drugs, the attraction of the money, the power behind those things. They clutched at him like the gnarled fingers of Satan.

“I’ll leave it alone. I won’t do none of that if I’m with you.” But Dawn knew Justin didn’t speak the truth. He was too far gone, too spun out on crystal meth. He’d dropped from 250 pounds to 195 pounds. And he paid for his drug abuse with his career as a drug dealer. He missed phone calls. He missed meetings. His drug-dealing family began to question Justin Thomas’s loyalty. The money he turned in to them was short. He’d messed up with these people, and they went looking for him. It was time for Justin Thomas to pay his debt to them.

There was a part of Justin Thomas that didn’t consider Dorothy Brown good enough to be his girlfriend. She was ugly, she was fat, and she was too old. She was about eight or nine years older than twenty-year-old Justin, only a few years older than the sitter he claims had sex with him by the swimming pool when he was thirteen years old.

But age or no age, Dorothy Brown was a good meth dealer. She and Thomas met through mutual friends in the early summer of 1992. Justin had methamphetamine connections, and Dorothy needed a supplier for her own drug-dealing business.

Quickly, she became a “major distribution avenue” for him in one of the nine cities in which he did business. Justin Thomas thought he was on his way to being king of an empire, but he let his emotions and a woman tie him up and distract him from business.

 

 

Brown and Thomas saw each other every other day throughout the summer. On those visits to Brown’s little Moreno Valley home, three or four times a week, Thomas used her phone to make his own drug connections. He spoke Spanish on the phone, like a native, like his Hispanic mother.

Then he and Brown exchanged drugs and money. Generally, he fronted her drugs, and she paid for the product after she’d sold it. He told others that Brown was his girlfriend. She thought he loved her, but she thought he loved her like a mother or a sister.

One day around dusk, Brown rode with Thomas a little ways outside of town to a working chicken ranch, in an area known as The Hills. Justin’s uncle Andy ran the ranch, and Dorothy met the uncle there. She also met a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old named Josh. But that was at another time and another place.

That day, she went there to do a drug deal. The police had long suspected that that was what went on at the chicken ranch. Thomas kept his drugs there because it was quiet, and it was a great hiding place, camouflaged by the terrain and the chickens.

That was one of the few times Dorothy Brown went to the chicken ranch, but she never, ever went with Thomas to meet his suppliers . . . until the wee, dark hours of a September morning in 1992.

 

 

In Thomas’s eyes, he was betrayed by love on that September morning. In his eyes, Dorothy Brown set him up to get jacked, to get rolled that September morning. Drugs that no longer existed without any cash behind them was something he couldn’t explain away to his people. Considering the amount of meth he snorted, they wouldn’t believe he hadn’t done the drugs himself. His integrity was already being questioned by his drug family.

Whenever he got into trouble because of drugs, Justin Thomas always ran to the safety of his Thomas family. He couldn’t go to his mother or maternal grandmother. They knew something was wrong—he was skinny, hollow-cheeked, and had smudged, black circles around his hazel-green eyes.

They knew he was doing weird things like staying up ten to fifteen days at a time. But his blood family in California didn’t know why. They didn’t know it was because of crystal methamphetamine. And he didn’t want them to know.

Justin Thomas went to Texas to sober up. He thought he’d get to know his father, too. There was just one thing wrong with that plan. From Justin’s point of view, like a lover’s triangle, drugs were always involved with his father and him. Justin Thomas could think of nothing cooler than to sit down and party with his old man.

Justin Thomas had a good amount of pot and a good amount of methamphetamine on him when he crossed the Texas border sometime around the middle of September of 1992.

 

 

On September 14, 1992, the landlady for Rafael Noriega called the cops in Riverside County, California. Rafael Noriega was a supplier for Justin Thomas. Rafael Noriega was missing, she told the authorities, and she filed a missing person’s report.

On September 18, 1992, Justin Thomas was handed a traffic citation in Texas.

About the time Thomas was receiving his traffic ticket in Texas, Noriega’ s abandoned pickup truck was found just east of Riverside, in the golden foothills of Southern California.

 

 

Justin’s dad was no longer messing with drugs ... until his son got into town. Then Justin and Jim partied until the drugs ran out.

On October 17, 1992 Noriega’s decomposing body was discovered in a gully, half a mile from the working chicken ranch that was managed by Justin’s uncle Andy, under some wooden pallets and a bit of dirt, his corpse partially burned, a few ounces of methamphetamines tucked into his clothes.

The story hit the Riverside papers. When Brown saw it she called Thomas. “They found him,” she said.

“Don’t say nothing on the phone, baby.”

She didn’t.

 

 

But with the drugs gone, Thomas had to start to think and cope with life again. He missed the hell out of Dawn and Prestin, but he knew he’d screwed up his chances for a normal life in California. He knew he couldn’t go back to his drug family.

Dawn wasn’t going to leave California, and Justin couldn’t live without her. Justin Thomas returned to California.

He tried to get back his old construction job. It wasn’t available. Even though friends were keeping an eye out for him, telling him where it was safe to go and not to go, it just wasn’t smart for him to stay in California. It was just too dangerous.

Justin got an idea. Like his dad, he’d join the Army. The recruiter made it enticing—Thomas could learn, work, travel, tote a gun, play with guns, blow things up, play war—something that fascinated him, something that he loved. And, in the Army, he thought, he’d be protected from his drug family.

Justin Thomas joined the Army.

He got a deferred entry.

 

 

On November 15, 1992, twelve days after Thomas turned twenty-one, at approximately 8:16 in the morning, he drove north on Perris Boulevard in Moreno Valley, California, the same area where he had spent his years with his mother and grandparents.

As he approached Ironwood Avenue, two cars in front of him stopped for a red light. Thomas bent down to get a cassette tape off of the floorboard. He crashed the new red Toyota Paseo he was driving, into the new brown Ford Ranger truck in front of him. The Ranger then crashed into the new maroon Toyota Corolla in front of it.

“I was upset because I found a phone number in the vehicle I’m driving,” he told the police officer on the scene. “The car’s my wife’s.”

Justin then walked to his house, got Dawn, and the two of them walked back to the accident scene.

“The vehicle’s not insured,” he told the officer.

The cop cited Thomas for having no proof of financial responsibility and requested that the accident report be submitted to the district attorney’s office for follow-up on violation of Section 22350CVC—unsafe speed for prevailing conditions.

 

 

The following spring, Dorothy Brown got a call from Justin. “Mail me some pot,” he said.

She did. She mailed it to Gonzales, Texas.

 

 

“Dad, how come you weren’t never around when I was a kid?” Justin Thomas looked up at Jim Thomas. “We never got to play cars and trucks or nothing.”

Jim Thomas got up and left. He went to the store. A little while later, he walked back in the door, his arms full of cars and trucks.

He and Justin got down on the floor, lay on their bellies and played cars and trucks for hours and hours.

 

 

Dorothy Brown stared up at the clock on the wall. She had a legal problem, and it was more than a traffic citation. Just a month after Justin Thomas had phoned her about the pot, someone had phoned the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department about Brown. They had tipped them off about her meth business. It was March 1993 and the Sheriff’s department had raided her home.

Dorothy Brown sat in the Moreno Valley sheriff’s station. She was scared, she was crying, and she was frantically trying to figure a way out of the mess.

“Do you know anything about the murder of Rafael Noriega?”

Brown sniffed and cried. Justin Thomas and Rafael Noriega might be her way out. The cops had found Justin’s name and Texas address in her house.

“Yes,” said Dorothy Lee Brown. “Justin Thomas did it.” Detective Daniel Wilson moved in closer to listen. He had been on Noriega’s unsolved murder since September, when Noriega’s landlady had filed the missing-person’s report.

Detective Wilson weighed Brown’s words against her woes. She was a thirty-year-old woman with a drug problem. And she had legal problems.

She sniffed again.

“I’m listening,” said Detective Wilson to Brown. But his eyes revealed neither belief or disbelief in her words. He flipped on his tape recorder.

Brown continued to cry. She was scared to death of Justin Heith Thomas. She swore to herself to tell the truth, but not the whole truth. She started talking.

 

 

On that cool September night, at a dark hour when only coyotes, drug dealers and users are hunting, Thomas had gone over to Brown’s house. Everything had seemed to be as usual. Brown had given Thomas some money she had owed him for drugs. He had gotten on the phone and spoken in Spanish. He had argued, then he had gotten angry.

He had hung up and yelled, “That son of a bitch Rafa.” Rafa was Rafael Noriega, Justin’s supplier, and thus a member of Justin’s beloved drug family. Justin Thomas owed Noriega money and Noriega had just demanded payment.

Thomas had turned to Dorothy. “Come with me. I wanta make sure I ain’t ambushed out there in the middle of nowhere.” He had picked up his car keys. “Take your own vehicle.”

Brown had gotten into her Toyota truck, the one she had stolen earlier that night.

Thomas and a seventeen- or eighteen-year old, male friend had gotten into Thomas’s truck, a light silver-blue Nissan. Brown had seen the young man around the neighborhood, but she hadn’t paid him much mind. She wasn’t interested in him. She had followed them alone in the Toyota.

Deep into the foothills she had followed until Justin had pulled off to the side of the road, stuck his arm out the window, and motioned for her to park on a trail.

“Wait here,” he had ordered.

A ways down the road were a few houses and the chicken ranch.

“Signal, if anyone comes,” Thomas had ordered.

He and his young, male friend had driven around a bend and deeper into the foothills. Brown had waited with her drugs and her radio in her stolen truck. She had been scared and nervous and high.

“You shouldn’t be out here.”

She had jumped. It was around 3 a.m.

“It’s dangerous.”

She had turned to find an old couple staring into her car window. “I’m . . . uh . . .” She hadn’t signaled. “I’m . . . uh . . . I’m with my boyfriend. He went to use the bathroom. We’ll be leaving soon.”

As soon as the couple had gone, a shaking Brown had jumped out of her truck and high-tailed it down the trail. Two car lengths from Thomas, she had slammed to a halt. Thomas hadn’t been able to see her, but she had been able to see him, clearly. He had been sitting in the light of his open truck door with its headlights beaming.

He had gotten out of his truck. “Rafa,” he had yelled.
“Mi compadre.”

Rafael had hustled out of his small, silver-blue car, moved to the back of the vehicle, and opened the trunk. Brown had seen a weird green colored duffel bag in the trunk.

Thomas had stayed by his truck. He had reached into it and gotten a gun from the seat. He had opened fire—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight shots—automatic gunfire.

Rafael had fallen to the ground.

The night air had fallen silent.

Brown had run back to her truck, jumped inside, and turned on the radio, loud. She had been so scared that she had been sure she was glowing white, like the moon.