Wasted (19 page)

 

 

Regina Hartwell sat with Jeremy Barnes. They were in his bedroom, on the floor, music playing, lights low. It was their ritual. They had watched TV for a bit, and then they talked.

“Kim and I had a big fight,” said Regina. “She and I had sex, and then she went home and had sex with Justin.” She only looked at the floor. “I’m tired of Justin, and I want to get him out of the way. I want to turn the sonofabitch in to the cops. I’m going to talk to Anita about it. I’ve already talked to her some, but we’re going to talk about it more tomorrow.” She took a drag from her cigarette. “I want to change my life. I want to go back to school.”

“Oh, Reg,” smiled Jeremy, “remember when you were in school? You were so happy then.”

“I want to get off of drugs. I want to get right with my family. My dad. My stepmom. I need to totally change my life.”

Barnes talked about his life, too—changes he wanted to make, his dysfunctional family. Hartwell talked about her own dysfunctional family. He knew he came from one; she felt that maybe she came from one, too.

Their emotions roller-coastered. They laughed, and they cried.

“I would die for her,” said Regina. “I would die for Kim. I really would.”

“I don’t like her, Reg. She’s just a user. But I respect your feelings for her. I know what it’s like to love somebody everybody hates. I won’t do that to you.”

They held hands and talked to God. “Jesus, give us the wisdom and the knowledge to know what to do and the strength to be able to follow through with it,” Jeremy prayed for Regina.

“Help me to be with my parents and that everything will work out and that I won’t have to lose Kim, that we can be friends later on,” Regina prayed.

Barnes had seen his dear Reg happy in the past; he had seen her down in the present. He believed she was about to turn herself and her life around. He cried for joy.

Their prayer together was an answer to his prayers. Barnes knew that, in Hartwell’s mind, her hope of being a couple with LeBlanc would never end. Hartwell was too obsessed. But if they could just get Justin Thomas out of Regina’s life, that would be great. It would be a start. It would help.

Regina Hartwell laughed some more, she wept again, and two hours after sitting down with Jeremy, she went back to her apartment.

Jeremy Barnes tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. He tossed, and he turned. He wondered if he should phone his parents to see if they could help get Regina some help. He wondered if Regina’s words and prayer were sincere or if she’d been bullshitting him, again.

The front of his mind was sure. Regina’s words were sincere.

 

 

Barnes tossed and turned more. He thought about his belief that life on Earth is a pathway, that you have to be careful to walk on that pathway or if you don’t, you fall into the cactus and get thorns in your butt. Kim and Justin, he knew, were thorns in Regina’s butt, and she was trying to pull the thorns out and get back on the pathway—that’s what Jeremy believed.

Regina’s heart was so true to him that night that Jeremy knew she was really and truly sick and tired of it all. She was sick of people using her. She was sick of all of her money being dwindled. She was scared that she wasn’t going to have enough money to do the things that she wanted to do.

Jeremy prayed some more.

 

 

But the next morning, it wasn’t like Kim LeBlanc had said. It wasn’t much different. It was still raining off and on. It was still humid. It was still hot. Justin Thomas was still hot. And Regina Hartwell was still lonely. She dreamed of how it felt to have her hands around Kim’s waist. Of the touch of Kim’s skin against her own.

 

 

Kim rolled over to see Justin get out of bed, quickly. She watched through slowly blinking eyes as he threw on a purple T-shirt and blue, denim pants. Then she rolled back over and fell back asleep. She had had way too much Valium.

It’s hard always loving someone you can’t have. Your mother. Your father. Your lover.

 

 

Justin Thomas shut the door to Kim LeBlanc’s apartment and walked over to his cousin Josh Mollet’s house.

Intermittent thunderstorms steadied the temperature near eighty degrees. Ninety percent humidity, however, provoked an easy, morning sweat. Inside, Justin Thomas was a firestorm. Antsy, unable to sleep, full of rage fueled by drugs and revenge, he walked quickly.

Thomas was on a mission. His adrenaline was ready. He and Kim had talked about it. He’d planned it through the rainy night before, toyed with it through his crystal meth mind. Another noontime drizzle and drop in humidity did nothing to cool him. He was ready to carry it out, a good soldier.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc woke and went into her usual routine—get up, snort cocaine, lose conception of time, history, reality.

It was Thursday, June 29, 1995.

Regina Hartwell rolled over on the faux-leather couch she’d bought with Jeremy Barnes and stared at her coffee table. She was crazy about that coffee table. She knew it was ugly. Jeremy had told her that enough times, almost every time they’d played cards at that table, but she still loved it.

She and Trey Lyons had decorated it together. They’d covered it in tacky black-and-white shelf paper. It’d been fun. They’d laughed a lot that night, drunk a few beers, smoked a few cigarettes. She’d done her infamous French inhale. They’d done a little coke.

Coke. She reached under her couch to see what was left of her stash. Not enough. She stared at her posters of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn would understand. She knew what it was like to be alone. Regina looked at her photographs of Kim. She and Kim had had a good time together at that coffee table too—doing a few lines together.

There was just something bonding about getting out the razor blade, the mirror, tapping the amber-colored vial against the glass. They’d always grin at each as the pearlescent white crystals poured out. Then getting the razor blade and chopping the crystals into fine powder, listening to the scrape of the razor blade over the mirror, God, there was something wonderfully bonding about that. It was as good as being in love.

It made Regina Hartwell feel strong and not so alone in the world. She patted the couch for Spirit to jump into her arms. She held him tight. She wanted right then to get up and go look at the photographs of her mother and her father on their wedding day, holding each other tight. That, too, made her feel not so alone.

But the rich, white, blood-money, trailer-trash girl from Pasadena, who knew how to paint a perfect red bow across her lips and make them smile, just didn’t have the energy. Pulling on her Garfield boxer shorts was about all the energy she could muster that morning after.

She reached for her cordless phone and knocked over a few empty beer bottles as she did. A last sip of beer dribbled into the green, marble ashtray. She thought about wiping it up with her purple T-shirt. But, nah, it didn’t matter. Jeremy would clean it up for her. Marlboro butts swam, then sank in the yellow liquid.

Ebenezer walked by and sniffed at the old beer. He rubbed his bare-haired tail against Regina’s white leg. She scratched at the tattoo on her ankle. In the past, the tattoo had been a broken, pink triangle. But she didn’t like that, so she’d gotten another design cut on top of it. Now, the tattoo just looked smudged.

She scratched again and dialed Anita Morales’s pager number. She pressed in her number but didn’t sign the page with 911, as she always did. It was something that would haunt Anita.

Regina Hartwell drifted back to sleep, in and out of consciousness. The leftover pain from drugs was much easier than the leftover pain from love. Your mother. Your father. Your lover. She didn’t know how she’d live without Kim. But Regina would take care of it. She’d get Kim back ... some way. Regina was strong, she told herself. She was in control, she told herself. She could be tough, she told herself. She could do it, she convinced herself. She could do anything by herself. She’d show ’em.

She opened her hazel eyes. They widened in fear. She’d show ’em. She was tough. She could do anything. “What up, Jay?” she said calmly.

The knife blade flashed. She glanced at the photo of Kim. God, it hurt when someone betrayed you. Justin Heith Thomas stabbed Regina Stephanie Hartwell deep, until the blood gurgled through her lungs and filled them to overflowing.

 

 

It took Regina Hartwell less than twenty seconds for every year of her life to die.

It took Justin Thomas less than thirty minutes to kill her in her purple T-shirt and Garfield shorts with “Eat Your Heart Out” stamped on the material, carry her body to the bathroom leaving a thin trail of blood in the hallway, dump her body in the bathtub, and turn on the shower. He would never forget her short, dark, wet hair and her open eyes as they stared face-up at him.

He drained her body of blood like a mortician, cleaned himself up, and moved the black recliner he’d given her over the pool of dark, red blood spilled on the pale, gray living room carpet. Thomas tossed her 110 pounds into a maroon comforter and hauled her corpse to her Jeep like a sack of dirty sheets.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc was ready for another line of coke, but Thomas was knocking on her door. He wore a bloodied, purple T-shirt and bloodied, blue, denim pants. He stood silent in the doorway, then dropped Hartwell’s wallet onto the floor.

“It’s done,” he said.

Kim fell to the ground and cried. She wanted to ask him if he had an eight ball of coke.

“I stabbed her. The bitch wouldn’t die.” He pointed toward the parking lot. “I’ve got her Jeep. She’s in it. Get me some salt.” Justin strode toward the bathroom.

LeBlanc went into the kitchen, got the salt, and followed her boyfriend into the bathroom. “Why do you want salt?”

“She cut me.”

Kim looked down and saw a slash in the webbing of Justin’s right hand, between his thumb and forefinger.

“Did the bitch really have AIDS?” he said, and motioned for her to pour the salt onto his bleeding hand.

“I don’t know,” she answered, and poured the salt on his wound.

“I walked in the front door, and she said, ‘What up, Jay?’ You know what I’m saying? Stupid bitch. I said, ‘Hi, Regina,’ and I went and sat down by her couch. And when I looked in her eyes, she knew what was coming, you know what I’m saying? She knew she was gonna die. Then, I stabbed her.”

He shook the blood from his hand into the sink. “It took the bitch a lot longer to die than I expected. That little cunt was a lot stronger than I thought. Then I dragged her into the bathroom and picked her up and put her in the tub.”

Kim felt herself easing out of her body. Separating. Floating to the ceiling. Hanging there like a helium balloon. This didn’t seem real. She wondered if it was. “How did you carry her body down the stairs and get her into the Jeep without anybody seeing?”

“Adrenaline. A lot of adrenaline pumping, you know what I’m saying? And I killed her and wrapped her in the comforter from her own bed. The fucking bitch was a lot heavier than I expected. And the apartment, goddamn, it was bloody. Blood on the walls. Blood on the carpet. Blood on the sink.” He didn’t notice the blood on Kim’s sink. “Get me a garbage bag.” He pulled off his clothes and stepped into the shower. “Put my clothes in the bag.”

LeBlanc crammed his bloody clothes into the garbage bag. She also tossed in Hartwell’s wallet.

 

 

Regina’s machine answered the phone. “Call me,” said Anita Morales, finally responding to Regina’s page of almost four hours earlier. Anita had been on a police investigation, and it was now close to 3 p.m.

 

 

Close to that same moment, Jeremy Barnes checked his messages and found a call from Hartwell. “I’m throwing a little get-together. Can you clean my house by the end of the weekend?” She sounded very happy. “Everything’s going to be all right. I’m going to look for a job and go back to school. I’m glad we can talk and be together. I’m really glad that I have you as my big brother. I love you.”

 

 

Thomas climbed into Hartwell’s Jeep. LeBlanc climbed into her own matching Jeep. Thomas drove south toward Ben White Boulevard, then onto Highway 71 East. Kim followed. She was close behind as he spotted the small, gray water tower with “Garfield” painted on its tank in big, black, block letters. He was almost home.

At the Rainbow Cafe & Grocery, they turned onto Caldwell Lane, drove a ways, took a right onto Whirlaway Drive, and then a left onto Justin’s father’s property. Trees were thick and green, their undergrowth, in places, ten feet tall.

Thomas drove beneath the trees, then made a quick U-turn and parked under a metal shed of a carport, a distance from the house, obscured by the gentle rolls of the terrain.

He got out of Hartwell’s car and walked around to the passenger door. LeBlanc got out of her car and watched Thomas shove something in the backseat. She watched it flop down to the floor. It was Regina’s dead body, wrapped in the maroon comforter from her bed.

 

 

Pam Carson phoned Regina Hartwell. What she really wanted to do was run to Regina and be hugged and say, “You were right.” Marion Casey had broken up with her, and Pam needed Reg. No one understood like Regina did. In terrible, rotten, lonely times, no one could comfort away the hurt the way Regina did. The phone rang and rang. Only the machine answered.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc needed coke.

She searched the side pockets of her Jeep and found one of her hidden stashes, a quarter bag. She did that for herself—hid her drugs. That way, she wouldn’t do them all at once and they would be there when she really needed them. She really needed them then. It was 3:30, maybe four o’clock, a pleasant mid-seventies temperature. But the heat was rising, and Kim felt it.

She climbed back into her Jeep and jammed it into gear. She drove the few yards on up to the Thomases’ three-story home. There, Kim could sneak a taste of drugs before anyone got home or Justin found out.

The drugs brought out the chatterbox in LeBlanc, and she started asking questions. “How’d you get over to Regina’s?” she asked Justin as he climbed the stairs into the living room.

“Josh. And his friend Carlos. They took me.”

“What are you going to do with the body?”

“Chop it up. Put it in a garbage can. Fill it full of concrete. Sink it in the river.”

Kim sneaked another hit.

Thomas picked up the phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling Robbye.” He meant Robbye Cellota, their former boss at World Gym.

Drugs. Kim didn’t feel like sharing. She went to another room.

“Want to buy a Jeep?” Justin asked Cellota. “Know anyone who wants to buy a Jeep?” Moments later Thomas hung up. “Robbye said he’d check around and call back. We need to buy concrete, a trash can, a lock, and chain. You know what I’m saying?”

“Wal-Mart,” said LeBlanc, “they should have concrete.” She tried to brush the grains of cocaine from her nose blistered red from too many rails of speed.

A half-hour later, LeBlanc and Thomas sped back onto Highway 71 East and headed to the town of Bastrop and Wal-Mart.

 

 

As Anita Morales got off from work, something told her to stop at Hartwell’s apartment. Everyday she passed Regina’s apartment as she drove home from work.
You’d better stop. You’d better stop. You’d better stop,
said the voice inside her.

No, I’ll just call her when I get home,
Anita decided. She stared at the Château as she drove by its high, concrete wall.

It’s a decision Anita Morales would always regret. She didn’t stop.

 

 

Kim LeBlanc and Justin Thomas stopped at a convenience store. Kim got out. Justin stayed in the Jeep. He always did. Justin Thomas wasn’t about to let his face appear on any video surveillance tape. Kim LeBlanc walked in, used Regina Hartwell’s ATM card to get some cash, then walked back to her car and handed Thomas the wad of twenties. He wrapped them around his stash of cash and curled them all tight with a rubberband. Kim LeBlanc wasn’t allowed by Justin Thomas to ever hold Regina Hartwell’s money.

He thought about the thousands of dollars that were hidden in Kim’s Jeep.

 

 

But Wal-Mart didn’t have concrete.

So LeBlanc circled her green Jeep Sahara around and headed back west on Highway 71 to Austin and the Builders Square. It was relatively new, and bright and shiny. It would have anything and everything.

Thirty to forty-five minutes later, she swung into a parking space in the Builders Square concrete sea of a parking lot, a lot that was rarely full and radiated summer heat almost as well as the sun. But the sun was sinking, just like Thomas planned to soon sink Hartwell’s dead body. Time was growing short. It was almost eight p.m.