Wages of Sin (6 page)

Chris Hatton returned to the ship on January 3, 1994, and was placed on restricted status pending “an administrative separation.” Bill Hatton wrote Chris’s commander regarding his “adopted son.”

On January 11, 1994, the commander replied, “. . . as a result of [Chris Hatton’s] multiple violations, apparent attitude of indifference, and lack of remorse, I have lost confidence in his trustworthiness and believe he lacks potential for future service.” He said Chris would be discharged toward the end of January.

“I am truly sorry to inform you of this situation, but I believe your adopted son is getting exactly what he wants—an early separation because he simply wants to take the easy way out.”

Seaman Recruit Christopher Michael Hatton was booted out of the Navy on February 11, 1994. Lisa Pace was about to graduate from high school. It was a huge defeat coupled with a huge victory.

Hatton moved back in with Pace and her mother, Hazel Franzetti. He was unemployed and drove Hazel nuts, as she came home for lunch only to find Hatton still in bed, snoozing. “This is not working,” she told Lisa. “He needs to get out. He’s a man. He needs to get a job.” He’d been home for one week.

Lisa rustled Chris from his sleep. “Are you gonna have a paycheck soon?” she said in her little girl voice.

 

 

Chris Hatton stared at the envelope in his hands. The return address read U.S. Navy. Slowly he opened the package and pulled out a roll of microfiche—his discharge “papers.” He and Lisa drove to the local library to read it. The papers pronounced “less than honorable discharge” for “misconduct—commission of serious military or civilian offense.”

As he printed out a copy of the discharge, Hatton talked as though being kicked out of the Navy was no big deal. Then he whited out the “less than” and “misconduct . . .” and altered his discharge papers to read that he had been honorably discharged. He photocopied the altered papers and placed them with his job applications.

 

 

Chris Hatton got a job with Royal Vans of Texas, a company that customized vans and was within walking distance of the Pace home. Sometimes Chris walked the half mile to work, sometimes Lisa dropped him off. On February 21, 1994, he bought a $270 bike to ride to work.

He and Lisa began to pay her mother rent. They helped buy the groceries and did chores around the house.

A box arrived addressed to Chris Hatton from the U.S. Navy. Lisa opened the box and unpacked the possessions he’d left behind after his discharge. She sorted through letters from herself, from Holly, from Brian, and letters with an Oregon postmark. Lisa slipped out one of the letters and read.

“Thanks for the flowers,” a girl had written, “you’re so sweet, hope to see you soon.”

Lisa grabbed the phone and punched out the girl’s number. “Did you have sex with Chris Hatton?”

“No,” she replied. “We just kissed.”

Lisa’s memory raced as she tried to calm down.
Back in October, he totally blew up at me,
she recalled. She heard her apartment door open and looked up from the phone to see Chris walking through the door. She confronted him.

“No,” he protested. “Lis, I was in Portland, and it was adopt-a-sailor day. I spent the day with her entire family, not just her.”

How much deeper is this going to get?
thought Lisa.

Nothing seemed to be working out. Hatton hated his job with Royal Vans, just as he had hated the Navy. He hated the sweaty, hard work in a facility without air-conditioning. He hated the glue on his hands, the glue on his pants. He hated the fact that he was on his knees for so long every day that they became scrubbed raw and then callused.

The young lovers wanted privacy, while Lisa’s mother appeared to want someone to watch TV with her. Hatton went to Aunt Holly for help. She found her nephew and Lisa an apartment in her own complex, with Bill living nearby.

Chris and Lisa needed to furnish their new place, so they bought a couch and bedding from Montgomery Wards. Half of the cost was put on Chris’s credit card. Half of it, Lisa paid for with cash.

They put $2,500 down on a 1994 Dodge Dakota Sport truck. The dealership told them that it would be easier to get their credit application approved if they were Mr. and Mrs. Hatton. Chris seemed apprehensive. Away from the sales staff, Lisa told him, “This is your decision.”

They put Mr. and Mrs. on the title.

At Wal-Mart they bought a TV and VCR. At Levitz they purchased more furniture, all from the discounted section in the back of the store. Again they paid half with Lisa’s cash, half on Chris’s credit card.

By April 8, 1994, Hatton’s credit cards were carrying $2,500, and Pace’s savings were wiped out.

Lisa started shopping for a wedding dress.

 

 

In May 1994, Lisa Pace graduated from Round Rock High School. Less than two weeks later, she left town for four months of Texas Army National Guard training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. She asked Hatton to drive her the two hours down I-35 to San Antonio. He said he couldn’t.

Hatton had switched jobs and was working for Capitol Beverage, where he was paid $1,400 a month. He didn’t want to blow the job, he said. With their own place and with Holly and Bill no longer living together, he wanted custody of his brother, Brian.

Hatton was drinking a lot and regularly, unknown to anyone in his family. Out of the Navy and back in Texas, with his honky-tonking friends, he became known for his affinity for Coors Light.

Hatton also became resentful. He resented that his Navy career was over because he’d gone AWOL over Lisa, while Lisa’s National Guard career was going great guns.

His future, at least in terms of career and money-making potential, seemed bleak. In the past, he’d talked about becoming an architect—he did love to draw. But he believed he wasn’t good at school and studying; he believed he wasn’t university material. He’d rather order a pizza and watch a movie. And maybe have a beer.

In the summer of 1994, Chris Hatton began spending more and more time with Glenn Conway and his family. He grew close to Glenn’s sister, Cathy, and especially close to Glenn’s mother, June, who became a second mom to him.

Chris and Lisa began arguing regularly.

“Lisa, you need to pick up these shoes. You can’t leave things all around the house. You’ve got to pick up these clothes.”

“Whatever,” she’d reply.

Like his uncle, Chris wanted a clean house. Saturday afternoon was dedicated to cleaning house. Saturday morning was dedicated to sleep, after staying up all night watching TV.

“I’m tired of everybody telling me what to do and running my life. Bill and Holly. The Navy. And now you. I’m not going to let you tell me what to do and control my life,” he’d complain.

From Fort Sam, Lisa Pace direct-deposited her National Guard paychecks and sent Chris money orders or wired him cash when he was broke. “What are you doing that you need so much money all the time? I don’t understand,” she said to him.

He began lying to her. He even lied to her about who drank the last Dr Pepper or whether he’d been to Hardee’s, even though she stared at the Hardee’s cup. It drove Lisa crazy.

“If it’s affecting us financially and we’re not going to be able to pay the rent, of course I’m going to tell you you can’t buy those jeans and you can’t buy a two-hundred-dollar cowboy hat,” she said.

“You think you’re so smart.”

“Well, I am so smart. So what’s your point?”

“You can’t just boss people around all the time.”

“Well . . . why not? Sometimes people don’t know what they want, so you have to tell them. Or, you have to help them decide what they want.”

Chris Hatton gained weight. His color was bad. Whenever Lisa Pace touched her fingers to his hair, it fell out like so much burned brown straw.

She phoned their apartment time and again from Fort Sam only to get a busy signal or the answering machine. She left message after message. Her calls went unreturned.

Pace phoned one of their neighbors and asked him to call Hatton while she listened on three-way calling. When Hatton heard their friend’s voice on the answering machine, Hatton picked up the phone.

“Yeah, I’m just watching TV and drinking a beer,” he said.

They hung up. Pace immediately phoned back. This time Hatton answered. “I just walked in,” he lied to her.

 

 

In July, Lisa Pace found a Yellow Rose stripper-bar T-shirt in Hatton’s drawer. “What’s this?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing. A guy at work gave that to me. He stocks the Rose.”

She only partially believed him.

On July 19, 1994, Chris Hatton walked into Kay Jewelers and purchased $413.91 worth of jewelry, including a ruby pendant. He paid $90 via check; the balance he financed.

Labor Day weekend, a bus was scheduled to go from Fort Sam to Laredo, and the price was dirt cheap—$5. Lisa Pace wanted to take it. Chris Hatton didn’t want her to go.

“Whatever. Fine. Okay.” Her one-word sentences were like one-word period punctuations. “I’ll just come home, then.”

Days later, Pace received a card from Hatton that he’d made on a computer at H-E-B grocery store. The card was postmarked August 24, 1994. On the outside of the card was a big heart, with Lisa’s initials in the middle, and the words “I love you, Lisa. I really do.” It was signed with several more “I love you”s.

When Lisa called home that week, some days Chris’s telephone worked; some days, it didn’t.

Just before Labor Day weekend, Chris Hatton sat with Lisa Pace, Glenn Conway, and some friends in a neighboring apartment drinking beer and watching a movie. Lisa wanted to go home, but Chris wanted to watch the movie. She left. After the movie ended, Chris stayed and horsed around with the guys. Lisa phoned wanting to know when he was coming home.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. But he wasn’t. She called time and time again, and finally Hatton put her on speakerphone. “I’ll be home when I’ll be home,” said Hatton, with his buddies laughing in the background.

Pace didn’t like that.

According to Glenn Conway, Lisa Pace stomped over to the apartment, threw open the door, and walked in—without knocking—strode over to Hatton, and in front of everyone, slapped him hard across the face. “Get your ass home.”

Right then and there, Hatton decided he was going to do everything he could to make Pace’s life hell.

On August 31, 1994, he drove to Kay Jewelers and returned all of the jewelry he’d purchased the previous month.

Over Labor Day weekend, Lisa Pace and a male National Guard buddy drove up to the apartment she shared with Chris Hatton.

Pace glanced at the door and her stomach sank. Her glance froze into a frightened linger. A page of newspaper was closed in the door.
Why would newspaper be on the floor?
They didn’t even take the newspaper.

She waved good-bye to her friend and rushed up to the apartment.
Something’s not right.
She swung open the door to find the living room completely empty. The cherry wood dining table was gone. The sofa. The cocktail tables. Everything.

There was a note: “I packed for you. You’re welcome. I’m leaving and no one knows of this. I let the truck get repoed, and I’m getting something for myself.” Myself was underlined many times. “Have a nice life. Bye.”

She walked into the bedroom. Chris’s clothes were gone; hers were on the bed. Her bedroom suite from her mother’s home was left. The housewares, which came from Pace’s deceased father’s home, were packed in boxes on the floor. The phone was disconnected.

She raced out of the apartment, rounded the fence that separated apartment buildings, and beat on the door of Glenn Conway, who lived within walking distance.

Glenn opened the door.

Lisa’s face, scarlet with hysterical tears, greeted him.

“What’s the matter?”

“Where is Chris?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s at work. What’s the matter?”

Lisa was full of fear and anxiety. She thought Chris might be in Glenn’s apartment. She looked around, hoping he was there. She tried to spot some of his clothes, Coors beer caps, anything.

“Lis, I don’t know where he’s at.”

“You’re lying. I know you know where he’s at. You’re his best friend. Goddamn it, don’t lie to me!” She wept hard, heavy tears as her thoughts swirled at tornado speed.

“Lisa, please calm down.”

She pushed him. “I don’t wanna calm down. I wanna know where Chris is.”

Conway grabbed Pace by the shoulders. “Calm . . . down. You need to calm down. I don’t know where Chris is.” His words were slow. “I don’t know.”

Pace ran to her mother’s house, fear and adrenaline pushing her heart and legs so well that she was barely winded when she completed the four-mile run.

She wept to her mother, “He’s gone. He left, and he took everything.”

“What the fuck—that asshole,” replied her mother.

Lisa’s words were unintelligible as they were sandwiched between hysterical tears.

“Calm down,” said her mother.

“I need to get my stuff out of there right away.” She worried that Hatton might return to the apartment that night and take the rest of her things.
I hate him. I love him. I want to beat him up. I want to hug and kiss him.
There were too many emotions. Lisa Pace took a deep breath as a wagon train of family members in pickup trucks drove to the apartment.

She just wanted to be alone as they unloaded her possessions back at her mother’s house. But she paged the love of her life twenty times.

In between pages, she noticed her ATM card was missing.

Lisa Pace thought back. The last time she remembered seeing it, the card had been lying on the counter in their apartment, and Chris Hatton knew her PIN number. She phoned her bank.

“Great,” Lisa muttered as she heard her account balance. It was 10¢. Just the day before, she’d been paid. Chris Hatton had taken her money, too.

 

 

Finally Hatton answered her repetitive pages.

“What d’ya need?” he griped.

“What do I need?” said Pace. “I need you. I need to know where you are. I need to know if you’re okay. I need to know what the hell’s going on? That’s what I need.”

“Well, I left you a note,” he said. “I left. I moved.”

She begged and pleaded with him.

“I just need some time on my own,” he responded.

“You have a place to stay?”

He told her the furniture was in a friend’s garage.

She told him that he didn’t have to tell her where he was living, what was going on, or give her his phone number, but he did need to return her pages.

“Okay.”

Lisa Pace went back to her regimented life at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, with a pledge to Chris Hatton that she wouldn’t try to call him, write him, see him, or contact him in any shape, form, or manner until she was graduated from National Guard school in one month.

Chris Hatton went to Levitz Furniture and purchased one more piece of furniture, one he picked out on his own. He went to the liquor store and bought Hot Damn cinnamon schnapps, Jim Beam, Everclear, Guinness, Keystone Light, and Coors Light.

Hatton, Glenn Conway, and Conway’s girlfriend, Marlena Broyles, sat in Hatton’s new Aubry Hills apartment and drank. The men chugged Jim Beam and Coca-Cola. Broyles drank beer. They peppered their livers with shots of cinnamon schnapps, followed by beer shooters.

An hour and a half and a fifth of liquor later, the three fell into Conway’s pickup truck and wove their way down Interstate-35 to south Austin and the Dance Across Texas dance hall, a warehouse-size country-music bar with a flowing Texas flag painted across its wide side.

Hatton and Conway wobbled into the building, Broyles with them. The boys stopped and rocked on their rolling heels. “He’s a Navy SEAL,” said Hatton, pointing to Conway, as they made their way through the bouncers. “He’s going through training right now. I’m in the military, too.”

The bouncers motioned for the club manager. He walked out, then yelled over the music. Hatton and Conway tried to focus. They couldn’t. He handed the boys a piece of paper. They bent down to write, but still they couldn’t focus. They handed the paper to the bouncers, who slowly listened and slowly completed the job applications for Hatton and Conway. Right on the drunken spot, the manager wanted to hire Chris Hatton and Glenn Conway, the Navy SEALS, as bouncers.

Through their bleary eyes, Hatton, Conway, and Broyles saw maybe ten to fifteen people in Dance Across Texas, and one of them, a young lady, Chris Hatton thought was pretty. Since he was drunk, he was able to muster the courage to ask her to dance.

She accepted, but her sister jerked her away from Hatton. “You don’t need to be talking to that kind of trash!”

Country music blared from every crevice in the bar. Hatton needed to sit down. He walked toward a table. The pretty girl followed and started chatting him up.

Again her sister yanked her by the arm, swirled her around, and screamed, “You don’t need to be talking to that white trash!”

With that, Marlena Broyles taunted, “You wanna come?” She was ready to fight. “Let’s go!” She pointed to the exit.

The sisters mouthed off. Their guys joined in.

“Shut up!” Hatton yelled. “Y’all need to leave!”

They didn’t.

Hatton grabbed an eight-foot-long folding table, chunked it across the room, and jumped toward the guys, the table bouncing to the rhythm of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.”

Glenn Conway flew across another table, while Broyles dived for the girls. Chairs flew through the air. The three flew out the door, with the bouncers’ help.

They ran for their truck, spotted the guys and gals who had gotten them kicked out of the club, jumped in Conway’s vehicle, and chased the culprits around the parking lot. Hatton hung out the window and cussed and laughed the whole time.

Chris Hatton had finally begun the life he dreamed—where no one told him what to do.

 

 

When Lisa Pace’s bank statement arrived the following month and detailed her ATM withdrawals for August, the month for which Chris Hatton still knew her PIN number, she discovered addresses she didn’t recognize.

She tracked down the addresses. They matched those of Sugar’s and the Yellow Rose, Austin’s two most popular stripper bars. Time and again, Chris Hatton had told Lisa Pace that he hated topless dancers. “Fun to look at,” he said, “not fun to take home.”

On September 28, 1994, Lisa Pace graduated from National Guard school, her pledge to stay away from Chris Hatton was completed, and she phoned her ex-fiancé.

“It’s been a month, so I thought I’d call and see where we’re at and how things are going. Do you have a roommate, or do you live by yourself?” she asked.

“No, I have a roommate,” Hatton answered.

“Is it anybody I know?”

“It’s just this guy.”

“Is it Glenn?”

Hatton never answered her.

Soon he knocked on her door. Ten minutes later, Chris Hatton and Lisa Pace were in her bedroom having sex.

Lisa’s mom came home. “Open this door!” she screamed, pounding her fists on the bedroom door. “You son of a bitch, I hate you. I’m going to call the police! You did my daughter shitty, and I want you out.”

Chris and Lisa escaped to Old Settler’s Park, where they’d sat many times in high school and talked about how much they had loved each other.

“We can work on things,” she said.

“I just need some space. I need some time.”

“What about all of my stuff?”

“What about your stuff?”

They argued about money and possessions. He called her a “money-hungry bitch.” She denied the accusation. Pace said, “You can just take me home. This conversation is not going anywhere.”

 

 

Days later, Lisa Pace pulled on a short, tight dress, stockings, and high heels. She put up her hair, circled on the lipstick, and drove to the H-E-B grocery store. It was time for Chris Hatton to be there checking the beer shelves for Capitol Beverage. It wasn’t the first time Pace had hit the H-E-B, hoping to run into Hatton.

She got a basket, stuck a couple of items in it, and strolled up the beer aisle. “Hey,” she said casually, “how’s it going?”

Chris Hatton’s mouth almost hit the floor. “Wow, you look really great. You look awesome.”

She damn well knew she looked great. She was 38-28-38 due to her National Guard training.

“Thanks, I just had a job interview this morning,” she lied nonchalantly. “I’m on my way home. I just had to stop and get a couple of things.” She waited to see what he would do.

He didn’t do anything.

She wanted to touch, hug, and kiss him.

He acted as though he didn’t want to talk to her.

Still, in Pace’s mind, it had been a successful mission. She’d wanted to leave a hot, sexy imprint on his brain so that he wouldn’t stop thinking about her for at least another week. She thought she had left that message.

Not many nights later, Lisa Pace again pulled into the H-E-B parking lot. This time she was with a male friend from Fort Sam, when she looked up and spotted her Dodge Dakota truck in the grocery store parking lot. “I bet Glenn’s driving it,” she railed and ran into the store, scouring the aisles for Glenn Conway.

“Where is Chris?” Lisa demanded when she located Conway.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“If I had had the key to the truck, I would have taken it. Chris is lucky that he has both of the keys. Glenn, you tell him that I don’t have a way to get around, and I don’t have a way to look for a job.”

The very next morning, Hatton phoned and asked Pace who her new boyfriend was. She denied having a new beau.

“Oh, yeah. Who’s this blond guy with this teal truck?”

She told him it was a platonic friend from Fort Sam.

“You are such a slut. The whole time you were at Fort Sam, you were fucking around.”

She hung up.

He phoned back and ripped her with more profane accusations.

 

 

The following week Chris Hatton picked up Lisa Pace in their Dodge Dakota truck, ready to turn it over to her.

“Are you sure,” said Lisa, “that you want me to take you home?” Purposely she was trying to rile him. “I can just drop you off at the corner or at a bus stop or something. I don’t have to know where you live.”

He rolled his eyes at her.

They went to the Aubry Hills Apartments.

“Do you mind if I come up and see the apartment?” she said.

“I guess.”

She walked up the stairs to the apartment and saw the couch, TV, VCR, lamps, and vacuum cleaner she and Chris had bought.
I paid for this stuff, too. And he’s got this roommate, and they’re enjoying
my
couch and
my
TV.
“Can I use your bathroom?”

He obliged, and she sifted through his things to see if there were any signs of a girlfriend. There weren’t. But there were a few porn magazines.

“Interesting literature in there,” she said, as she returned to the living room.

“You’re a fucking snoop. You always have to look through everything.”

She denied it. He denied that the magazines were his.

She didn’t buy it. She remembered that a subscription renewal to
Penthouse
had arrived at their home after he was booted from the Navy. They continued to argue until their battling fell into silence, then into sex, as it almost always did.

Around 4:30 or 5
P.M
., Pace crawled out of the bed to take a shower. She was in Hatton’s bathroom for only five minutes when she came out and discovered that Chris had left, in the truck he was supposed to be turning over to her.

Without bothering to dress, Pace swiftly continued her investigation of the premises. She checked his nightstand—papers, books, magazines, watches. Hatton had always loved watches, to take broken ones and mix them with more broken ones to make them working ones.

She adjusted the towel on her head, the towel around her body, checked his closet, checked more drawers. By then, Pace was looking just for the sake of looking. She walked into the second bedroom, the master bedroom and bath. Again she found only men’s items, a rifle on the bed, men’s colognes in the bath. She picked up the colognes and read their labels.