Wasted (26 page)
“I’m doing my best,” said Kim. “It’s kind of fuzzy, but I’m trying to remember everything as best as I can.”
“Doing your best for yourself or for the truth, ma’am?”
LeBlanc was getting tired. “I’m doing the best I can because I’m really nervous and they told me just to tell the truth.”
“In the belief it would set you free?”
Sawyer pressed more. “And you mentioned the man who helped conceive you. Did you ever know your father?”
“Yes, I did.”
“For how long did you know him?”
“I’ve known him for twenty years now.”
“Is he the man you told the jury was the sick fella the other day, yesterday?”
“No, sir,” replied Kim. “That is my stepfather.”
“And in what way is your stepfather sick?”
Kim paused for a very long time. Finally, she got the words out. “My stepfather has a fetish for teenage women.”
“Are you one of them?” said Sawyer.
“Yes,” answered Kim, “I am.”
“And when did you first have sexual experience with your stepfather?”
Again, she took a very long pause. “When I was fourteen.”
“And did he rape you on that occasion?”
An eternity seemed to pass in that summer courtroom before she spoke. “Yes, um, he did.”
“How long did that experience with your stepfather go on?”
“For about four years.” Kim began to cry. Her voice weakened so that she sounded like a very frightened, little girl. “This is really not,” she choked. “I don’t understand why this is being asked. I’m sorry. I don’t understand why this has anything to do with this,” she wept.
“When did you leave home?”
Kim composed herself. “I believe I was eighteen.” Her voice returned to her mature-beyond-her-years sound.
“And,” said Sawyer, “had you reported this relationship between you and your stepfather to law-enforcement authorities by the time that you left?”
“No, not to any law-enforcement authorities.”
“You just told your mother.”
“No,” LeBlanc said, as though that was the most ridiculous idea in the world, “I didn’t tell my mother.”
“You didn’t tell anybody?” said Sawyer.
“Oh, no, I did tell people.”
“Friends?”
“Yes, close friends.” She emphasized the word close.
“Your friend Tim, for example?”
“Yes, my friend Tim, for example.”
“Did you have sex outside of that relationship with your stepfather?”
Cox motioned firmly with his pen. “I’m going to object to relevance at this point.”
“Sex,” said Sawyer, “is relevant in this case whether we like it or not. It’s going to be unpleasant, I’m sorry, but I’m going to keep asking.”
“Well, maybe,” drawled Judge Fuller, a bit bored. He’d heard too many sex stories.
“If the Court says no,” said Sawyer, “I’m going to stop. You run this court, Judge, but I don’t care if the State likes it or not.”
“And the Court is not happy, of course, with these kinds of trials, but I think that’s really true.” Judge Fuller had presided over many trials of child sexual abuse. “The whole ... the jury must decide in this case.... I just ... the jury’s got to make this decision on truth-telling, and what weight, credibility. And unfortunately, reluctantly, but the Court’s going to allow it.”
Sawyer didn’t show his grin. “Outside of that relationship, when did you begin having sex?”
“It was not a relationship,” stated Kim, “and I began having sex when I was about, I believe, fourteen or fifteen.”
“So by the time you left home you had learned at least some of the advantages of sex, that is, it influences affection and what people might do for you.”
Kim’s old high-school newspaper was covering the trial.
“That is what my father taught me.”
“Not only your father. I’m sure you must have learned that with your boyfriend. That you find them affectionate and reinforcing and you need to get sex in return instead of just verbal affection.”
“I thought that was all I was good for, yes.”
“Certainly,” said Sawyer, “one thing you thought you were good for was sex. By the time you were eighteen, that was certainly fixed in your constellation of thoughts, wasn’t it?”
Kim LeBlanc had met Regina Hartwell in that gay bar six weeks after her eighteenth birthday.
“The subject of sex?”
“The subject of sex and the fact that it was one way you could affirm yourself,” said Sawyer.
“Yes.”
“Had you had sex with a woman prior to the time that you went to the Club 404 and met Regina?”
“While under the influence of Ecstasy I did experiment once with a close friend of mine.”
“And did you find that to be a pleasurable experimentation while you were under the influence of Ecstasy?”
“I found anything to be a pleasurable experience under the influence of Ecstasy.”
“So, by the the time you’re eighteen, it didn’t really much matter if it were a man or a woman in terms of being able to achieve a sense of sexual pleasure, at least while you were under the influence of drugs.”
“True,” she said a bit weepily.
“Now, you had been . . . how old were you when you met Regina?”
“Eighteen.”
“And you had not been able to that point to get away from your stepfather. You were still having to live at home.”
“That’s true.”
“And the reason for that is you simply didn’t have the money, the means to get away.”
“That is correct.”
“And for whatever your own personal reasons might have been, you hadn’t gone and reported it to the police so he could be yanked out of the house.”
LeBlanc glanced at her mother. “That is correct.”
“And that’s a state of affairs in your state of mind when you met this woman at the 404 with your friend Tim. Isn’t that true?”
Kim looked down. “That is true.”
“Now, it became readily apparent to you immediately after meeting Regina that she was attracted to you.”
“No, I didn’t think she liked me that first night, but she was nice.”
“One of the things that you are sensitive to is whether or not someone is attracted to you. Would you agree that’s a fair statement?”
“When I was using, yes, that would be a fair statement.”
“Is it true when you’re sober, you know when a man or a woman is attracted to you?”
“I don’t find power in that today.” Her voice was calm, detached, mature.
“I’m not asking about the power. I’m asking about the perception.”
“No.”
“You don’t know,” said Sawyer incredulously. “But when you’re under the influence of drugs you do know.”
“When I’m under the influence of drugs that was what I was concerned about, what I was like on the outside.”
“The word you used just a moment ago was power. Sex was power, wasn’t it?”
“People finding me attractive gave me some power.”
“And using sex only reinforced that power, didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did.”
“Do you remember if it was about two weeks [after you met Regina] before money began going from her hands to yours?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Kim.
“Now, one thing you told this jury yesterday—I want to revisit with you to make sure I understood you—is that in that year that this woman gave you money and established a trust fund for you and gave you rings, one of which you described as an engagement-type ring, in all of that time, ... you never had sex with her?”
“Is that a question?” asked LeBlanc.
“Yes.”
“No,” she answered.
“No, you never did. Never even experimented while you are under the influence of Ecstasy.”
“After we had broken up, I believe it was probably a week and a half before she was murdered, she and I were in her room doing a lot of cocaine and we experimented.”
Sawyer leaned in. “Realizing the delicate nature of it, how far did the experimentation go?”
“We were both naked, and at this time I thought she had HIV. And so she told me that, you know, make sure that I didn’t touch her.”
“Bodily fluids,” said Sawyer.
“Yeah,” said LeBlanc. “And so, she had, like, a vibrator, and I used that on her.”
“But this was the very first time in all of these gifts and transactions that you even came close to sex with her.”
“That’s true.”
CHAPTER 23
Carla Reid sat in the courtroom taking notes, every day. And every day, she wept for Regina Hartwell.
Justin Thomas sat alert, his head up, watching, listening. He didn’t look afraid.
Jim Sawyer watched Kim LeBlanc. “If we were to compare the arguments you had with Regina in the spring of 1995 to the arguments that you had in the fall of 1994, were they the same or were they getting worse?”
“Well, the fall of ’94, Regina and I’s [sic] arguments were mainly about if her friends liked me and if I was flirting or looking at somebody too long. And in the spring of ’95, they were pretty much the same, and they were also about money.”
Sawyer smiled to himself. “Money, in fact, became almost the central issue in the arguments that you began having with Regina during the spring and early summer of 1995. She was growing tired of the amount of money and the amounts of money that you were taking. Isn’t that true?”
“No.”
“It is true, is it not, ma’am?” Sawyer sounded like he were straight from television.
“No,” Kim repeated.
“Were you spending the same or more money, in the spring of ’95 than the fall of ’94?”
“I believe in the spring of ’95 I had a job,” Kim answered.
“Were you spending more of her money or less of her money?”
“More because she was paying my rent.”
“She was paying your rent,” he repeated for the jury. “She was giving you gifts. When did you get the engagement ring?”
“Valentine’s Day.”
“So Valentine’s of ’95, that early spring of ’95, she gives you the ring. Nice ring?”
“Yes, it is a nice ring.”
“When did she put the tires on your Jeep?”
“I believe it was before my birthday.”
“When is your birthday?” he asked.
“My birthday is May 17th.”
“Nice tires on that Jeep?”
“Yeah,” answered the country girl from Dripping Springs. “Thirty-one by 10.50s.”
“If I understood your testimony from this morning and yesterday, you were increasing the amount of drugs you were doing—greater intensity of usage—late spring, early summer, of 1995.”
“Yes, my drug use was increasing.”
“She was paying for those drugs.”
“Yes, she was.”
“Money became at least a feature in your arguments?”
“Yes, they were [sic].”
“Do you remember late May, early June 1995, any discussion about a fifteen thousand dollar withdrawal from her bank accounts?”
“I remember she came over to Tim and I’s [sic] apartment and said that somebody had taken a lot of money out of one of her accounts.”
“Well,” Sawyer drawled, “let’s narrow the range of suspects. There are only a number of people that could take money out of her accounts, right?”
“That’s true,” answered LeBlanc.
“She was one of the them.”
“That’s true.”
“And she was claiming she didn’t do it.”
“That’s true.”
“Who were the others?”
“Who were the others?” Kim repeated.
“Yes,” answered Sawyer. “Who were the others?”
“To my knowledge, Regina is the only one, or I’m sure her trust officer could.”
“What about you?” He looked LeBlanc straight in the eyes.
“I’m not Regina Hartwell,” she said.
“No, no, no. When did you acquire the capacity to take money out of her accounts?”
“When she handed me her Pulse card.”
“When did you get that Pulse card.”
“Probably before, gosh, probably only took her like a month to let me use it. She would give it to me and told me I could go to Diamond Shamrock and Pulse out such and such amount.”
“Regardless of what authority she gave you, you had the Pulse card before the time that the fifteen thousand dollars came up missing, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Kim LeBlanc, “I did.”
“And, in fact, she thought you were one of the people who might have taken the money, and she confronted you about that, didn’t she?”
“No, she did not.”
“She never accused you at all?” said Sawyer, with a huge look of questioning on his face.
“Never accused me of that,” said Kim.
“There was never any argument about that money.”
“No.”
“Just the other money?” he added, as he stared seriously at Kim.
“What other money?” she asked.
“Just the money that you argued about.”
“Yes, but it’s not the way that you’re making it sound.”
“I don’t want to make it sound,” he replied, innocently. “I want you to tell the jury.” He motioned toward the jurors. “What money was it that you argued about?” He looked at LeBlanc for an answer.
“I argued about, we argued, one of our biggest arguments was the fact I wanted to sell my CD player to go get an eight ball of coke, and she told me that she was going to pay for it, and that if I sold my CD player, she would get really pissed off at me.”
“Did she get pissed off at you on a regular basis during the early spring, early summer?”
“She was kind of moody,” Kim understated.
“Trip to Cancun wasn’t exactly a roaring success was it?”
“No, it was not.”
“In fact,” said Sawyer, “if you were to put it on a scale from zero to ten, it was about a minus one, wasn’t it?”
“Depending on your scale,” answered LeBlanc.
“Well, depending on your continued beneficence from her, it certainly wasn’t a good trip as far as the two of you went in terms of your relationship, was it?”
“No,” said Kim. “I thought she was dying.”
“Thought she,” and he emphasized she, “was dying?”
“Yeah.”
“In a sense she was, wasn’t she? She was very close to being dead, wasn’t she?”
“Of AIDS, I thought she was dying.” Kim said the word dying strongly and tersely.
“Was she emaciated?” said Sawyer.
“Was she what?”
“Emaciated. Was she losing a great amount of weight?”
“She lost some weight, a lot of bruising.”
“A lot of bruising.”
“Yeah.”
“Where was the bruising coming from?”
“Her legs,” answered Kim. “It was on her arms.”
“Spontaneous bruising?”
“She didn’t say she ever knocked into anything.”
“Big bruises. You told the jury yesterday that you lost upwards of thirty pounds and that she lost about fifteen pounds during that last run beginning mid-spring of ’95 to the day that she got killed. Remember that?”
“I remember that, but I did not lose thirty pounds. At the time I probably weighed 105. I weigh more now than I ever have.”
“In the two weeks prior to the trip to Cancun, you worked up a pretty intense relationship with Justin, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“It’s pretty fair to say that his feeling on his part was that he had fallen into a bed of roses where you were concerned. Isn’t that true?”
“Fallen into a bed of roses?” questioned LeBlanc.
“Fallen into a bed of roses,” the attorney repeated. “He was pretty crazy about you, wasn’t he?”
“He seemed to like me, yes.”
“Pretty enthusiastic in his response and approach to you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Certainly always there for you physically, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” she answered softly.
“Concerned about you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Protective of you.”
“Jealous, yes,” she said.
“Jealous. Insanely jealous?”
“No,” Kim replied, “I would not say insanely jealous.”
“Possessively jealous.”
“Yes.”
“Able to control his jealousy enough to stay at the apartment and let y’all go off to Cancun.”
“Yes.”
“You came back from Cancun, things were fairly low ebb between you and Regina now, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“I mean really low ebb. Something is about to happen to you, isn’t it? If you lose her and her money, you’re almost back to where you started, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Except for one big difference. You are now a full-blown cocaine addict, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I mean, it’s pretty safe to say that what you are is obsessive, about June of 1995, about the need at damn near any cost to have cocaine.”
“Yes.”
“And the tab,” he continued, “the money to buy that cocaine is in danger now of being shut off, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Sawyer looked toward Gregg Cox. “You told Mr. Cox—he was asking you if you had an argument the night before the murder with Regina. Remember that?”
“Yes.”
“That argument was really the last argument you were ever going to have with Regina, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“You told Mr. Cox that you went back to your apartment, you went to sleep with Justin, and that it was Justin who was saying, ‘She has got to be killed, and I’m going to kill her,’ right?”
“That’s what he said the day before, yes.”
“And the truth of the matter is, it was because he thought, according to you, that he was going to be turned in for drug-dealing. Is that right?”
“No, I didn’t tell him that.”
“So he was just going to kill her because he was protective of you?”
“No.”
“He was going to kill her because he was half nuts from doing drugs and just thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to go over there and I’ll do her in.’” Sawyer innocently glanced over at his sometimes sweet-faced client. “Is that what it was?”
“No,” said Kim.
“He was going to kill her to try to stop her from doing something?”
“Yes.”
“And he brooded on that that night, I presume, when you all were asleep.”
“I don’t know what he said when we were asleep. I was taking Valium,” said LeBlanc.
“Never had any part in his drug-dealing, did you?”
“In his drug-dealing?”
“Yeah. That’s something he really carried on by himself or with Regina, but not involving you. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“I was there, but I’m not—I don’t have a very good mind for drug-dealing.”
“One thing we know you could do, according to everything you told Mr. Cox, regardless the time of day or night, you knew how to drive that Jeep if it was there to get where you need to go. That is the truth, isn’t it?”
“That is the truth.”
“That’s what you did sometime that night, isn’t it? You left your apartment,” his voice grew in flamboyance, “you went over, and you, not anyone else, you, went over, went in that apartment where you knew you could go and you killed Regina. You killed her sometime early that morning, didn’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“You knew that she died of a stab wound, didn’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“You knew she died of a stab wound, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“The truth begins, doesn’t it, when you got him, when you got him and told him that you had killed her. That is when the rest of your story starts to become true, doesn’t it.”
“No.”
“Have you ever met Jim Thomas, for example? Have you ever met his father?”
“Yes, I have.”
“I want you to look at the jury now and tell me if it is your testimony to them under oath, in the light of our Lord, that that man does drugs and did them with you.”
Jim Thomas was not in the courtroom.
“Jim Thomas,” answered LeBlanc, “in the light of the Lord, did drugs with Justin Thomas and I.”
“Did they also list themselves in this cause as helping you get rid of the body? Did they know there was a body there on the property?” asked Sawyer.
“I don’t know that they knew about the body,” answered LeBlanc, in contrast to Cox’s opening statement.
“You think there’s a chance they could have known there was a body?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Did you tell them there was a body?”
“No, I did not.”
“If the jury is to believe you, here’s what happens. You wake up, and here’s Justin saying, ‘Look, man,’” and Sawyer whistled in the courtroom, “‘I did it. Ha-ha, she’s dead,’ and you went right along with it.”
“I did not stop it.”
“Not only didn’t stop it, [if] the jury is to believe you, [a] couple of days after the murder, you,” and he emphasized you, “not Justin, you proceed on your own in your Jeep—you’re the mobile person—and go over to Regina’s apartment.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re there for the purpose of examining what you think is going to be this slaughter den—as you told them, blood, everywhere—and you said you didn’t see any, remember that?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“When Jeremy [Barnes] came in while you were industriously scrubbing away on the sink board, remember that?”
“Yes.”
“And you said to him, ‘I’m cleaning up blood. I’m cleaning up blood.’ You remember saying that?”
“I do not remember.”
“You don’t remember saying that?”
“No,” said LeBlanc, “I don’t remember anything after Jeremy came in.”
“Because you were so freaked out,” said Sawyer.
“Probably,” she answered.
“And because of all that cocaine in you?”
“Probably.”
“Knowing there was going to be a [a missing-person] report filed, why were you there cleaning up evidence of a crime somebody else committed?”
“Probably because I was trying to protect Justin.”
“Because you loved him.”
“Yes,” answered Kim, “I did.”
“Love him more than you loved Regina?”
Kim LeBlanc took a very long pause. “I don’t know,” she said.
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