Reel to Real (26 page)

David told him he recently had his picture in the paper because he was being sued by the parents of a couple of teen-agers who had tried to steal his car.

“Oh,” Bruce said, raising an eyebrow. His beefy hand slammed the stapler down on another flyer set.

“Yeah, what happened was, I was up in my apartment, minding my own business when I heard  the sound of glass breaking down in the parking lot.” David leaned into the counter and spoke in a low and confidential tone. “I said to myself, someone’s breaking into my damn car, so I immediately jump up and call the cops. Meanwhile, while I’m waiting for them, I go down there. I wanna try and stop whoever it was from messing with my car. I brought a crowbar with me, just in case. You know, in case I needed protection. Well, when I get down there, I see two kids standing next to my car. One’s got a hammer and the other one’s got a screwdriver and they’ve already done a bunch of damage. The window on the passenger’s side is completely busted out.

“I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I just fucking can’t believe it.” David glanced sideways at Bruce, checking for a reaction. Bruce looked concerned. David nodded and continued. “So I scream at ’em to stop, and they don’t stop. Not even when they see me standing right there in front of ’em, staring at ’em. That’s when I seen that not only had they broke my window, they had also taken their screwdriver and gouged out a giant scrape on the hood. That’s when I went ape-shit. I couldn’t help myself. I took off and I ran right at ’em with my crowbar. I guess I was swingin’ it in a circle over my head or something because when I finally got to where they were standing, somehow the crowbar accidentally smacked ’em. Smacked ’em both hard.”

David paused for a moment while he wiped saliva from his mouth with his middle finger. “It was because I was so pissed off that I even swung at ’em. I mean who can blame me, right?” He looked at Bruce again. Bruce had stopped stapling, and his eyes were now riveted on David.

“Well, turned out, I broke one of the kid’s shoulders and hit the other one across the head to where he was bleeding pretty hard. I didn’t mean to hurt ’em that bad, but I was just so upset about my car, I guess I lost control. Anyways, when their parents found out about the whole thing, that’s when they wanted to sue me.”

David shrugged his shoulders.

He told Bruce he was being sued for $3,000. He also walked Bruce out to his Fiero and showed him the specific area where the car was damaged. Bruce had no way of knowing that the scratch on the hood had happened many months prior while the car was parked in a 7/11 parking lot. He also had no way of knowing that the story he had just heard was a complete fabrication and had been told to him by the most wanted man in New Mexico.

David, aka Shane, ended up paying $251.24 in cash. On the information form, he scratched in the address of 6321 Lake Drive, Albuquerque, NM, 87126. That street number — 6321 Lake Drive — was the address of John Lausell in Pueblo, CO.

When Shane signed the invoice, he signed it as David Harris, forgetting that he had initially given the name of David Paris when he arrived. Bruce did not check Shane’s ID because he paid in cash. The tire crew guys put the old tires inside the Fiero for Shane; two in the trunk and two in the front seat. Bruce estimated that the old tires had less than 10,000 miles on them when they were removed.

After Shane left, Bruce told a couple of co-workers Shane's story about his violent run-in with the teenagers. They were just as flabbergasted as Bruce was.

“No Sleep – No Dreams”

K
OREAN
P
ROVERB

Shelly drove a 1984 two-tone Nissan pickup truck, two-toned in the sense that the bed was a faded version of the original red and the cab was a rusty primer gray. The truck had recently developed an unsettling knocking noise, and Shelly's greatest wish tonight was to just make it home.

Her job was wearing her down. Standing at the register all day was bad enough, but listening to rich people bitch night and day was agony. All she wanted to do was grab a cold beer, put her feet up on something soft, and hang out with her little girl for a few sweet minutes. Of course, she knew her boyfriend would be rocketing out the door the second she walked in, but that was fine.

As she made her way toward the front of the building, she noticed Shane’s Fiero parked on the other side of the street. He usually parked in the parking lot, but tonight he hadn’t. It looked as if he had recently put four new tires on his car.

“Hm-mmm?”

Shelly stopped on the sidewalk and stared. Blue chalk marks and spiky rubber things were visible.

As she contemplated the Fiero, Shane popped out from behind a bush and said, “Hi! Like my new tires?”

Friday, March 8, 1996

Shane got up early and dropped Jason off at the airport. He was taking a weeklong trip to Mexico.

The night before, Jason and Shane had gone to the Isleta Bingo Hall in Las Lunas, New Mexico. The hardest thing they had to drink was soda. That was all the place served; no alcohol was allowed.

Shane had brought $400 to the casino. He played a few games of bingo and ended up winning about as much as he lost. As Jason would say later, Shane didn’t seem any different that particular night than he ever did.

8 AM

John had a hard night again. He slept, but it was fitful, filled with bad dreams.

In one of the dreams, John was walking home from high school. The sun shone brightly but clouds darkened the pavement. He was casual, upbeat, strolling at a leisurely pace on a concrete overpass, but as he neared the middle of the bridge he was startled by a loud popping sound and turned to witness two people falling from an adjacent overpass. He ran as fast as he could down the stairs to tell someone what happened. But no matter how fast he ran, he never reached the bottom of the stairs.

Then his dream changed, he was even younger, only nine years old. He was watching TV with his eleven year old sister at his aunt’s house when an ear-splitting boom shook the house. He heard crying, yelling, pleading. He and his sister jumped up and ran to the noise. The door was stuck, blocked with something heavy. Finally, they were able to push aside what turned out to be a chair, and got in. Their parents lay moaning in their bed, covered in blood. John and his sister ran up to them, screaming. His dad mumbled something that he didn’t understand and his sister ran out of the room. John watched his mom bleed to death while he waited for the ambulance that never came.

***

The City of Albuquerque was frantic to catch the Hollywood Video killers. To that end, Teri Cole of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce had 4,000 posters printed up with the suspects' composites. They were posted everywhere. She hoped this tactic would bring in new leads.

The descriptions were the same as had been previously released: White male with rugged complexion wearing a black jacket. Possibly with a white heavyset female, 5’4”, about 155 lbs.

Because the killers had not been caught, officials continued to issue daily bulletins.

“The situation remains fluid,” one official said. “The pressure is still on.”

12 noon

Shane came over to Esther’s apartment again, and she let him in without saying a word. He walked over to the kitchen counter and glared at her.

She sat on the couch staring at her feet.

“What?” she said, not looking up.

“Have you told anyone?” he asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“What about John? What’d you tell him?”

“Nothing.”

“If I find out you told anyone, you’ll be sorry. I can’t keep any motherfucking talkers around,” he said, his face looking creased and tired.

“You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

He put his elbow on the counter and took a ragged breath. “Did I tell you Jowanda was praying right before I shot her?  Did I tell you that?”

Esther stared at him. His shirt was wrinkled and covered with food stains. He was twitchy, thinner.

“What are you gonna do when I put the gun to your fucking head and you know that this is it?”

“I’m sure I’ll be praying too,” Esther said, mouth set.

“I’ll bet you will. I’ll bet you will.” He stood up and began to pace, occasionally stopping to face Esther. “Did I tell you that the other one, the manager, the bitch, kept giving me shit? She would not stop giving me shit. Didn’t cooperate. At all. I asked her to open the safe. She didn’t wanna do it. Did not want to do it. I told her to open the safe three times, and finally, I said, 'I’m gonna walk in there and shoot your friends in front of you right now if you don’t do what I say.’

“Stupid bitch. Oh, she opened the safe all right, but she still kept giving me shit. Still kept giving me shit. Told me they would catch me, make me pay. I told her ’shut the fuck up,’ but she wouldn’t. She would not do it. So I made her shut up. I made that bitch shut up. Just like I’m going to make sure you shut up. One more dead bitch doesn’t bother me one way or the other. Does not bother me at all. Got that, Esther?”

“Yeah.”

“I gotta make sure you do. I can’t take any chances. That night when it happened, it was like boom, boom, boom. All three. Boom, boom, boom. First I shot the boy, then I shot the bitch and then I shot Jowanda. There was fucking blood everywhere. I couldn’t look up or down without seeing dripping blood. It was fucking on the floor, fucking running down the walls. Fucking brains and blood everywhere.”

1 PM

The police repeatedly warned the public that the suspected murderers were armed and dangerous.

Victoria Saiz, who resided down the street from Hollywood Video, said, "We’ve lived here for years and we’ve never had anything like this happen. And for it to happen so close to home is very, very scary."

“This used to be a safe area,” another local said. “I hope they catch whoever did this. It makes me sick.”

“What happened will not be tolerated,” Police Chief Joseph Polisar said at a Wednesday morning news conference, adding that the suspects would be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

***

It was getting harder and harder for Esther to act normal. She went to work every day like she was supposed to, but now she was having problems there, too: Edginess problems and shortness of temper problems. She was getting into small tiffs with the customers; mixing up orders, arguing about it, losing her cool, and stuff like that. And a lot of it was because of the newspapers. The goddamned fucking newspapers.

Every day there was a new story in the paper about the video store murders, and every day the suspects' police composites appeared on or near the front page.

Occasionally, one of the customers would turn to Esther and make a noisy comment about the so-called Hollywood Video killers. That person would inevitably say something about what he or she would do if one of the suspects crossed his or her path. Esther tried to keep an even facial expression, to hide her growing anxiety, but that feat grew more difficult by the day.

Esther grew to realize she had a lot of problems. One, John left town; two, the publicity surrounding the murders had become deafening; and three, she was being stalked by Shane. If he wasn’t threatening her over the phone, he was threatening her in person. The quantity and ferocity of his intimidations was not subsiding. If anything, he had stepped it up.

Esther tried not to fixate on the composites. She did not think the drawings looked anything like her or Shane. She didn’t understand how anyone could spend any amount of time looking at a person and come up with such a poor likeness. The composite didn't even show the fact that she wore glasses.

Taking charge of her own destiny, she grabbed her car keys and purse and headed to Walgreens. It finally hit her that now was the time for change; a time to discard the past and transform herself into a new woman; a woman that was going places.

The first thing she wanted to change was her looks. It was extremely unlikely that a connection might be made from the posted composites or descriptions, but Esther wanted to decrease the odds even further. She didn’t want anything spoiling her future plans of going to Mexico and getting married. And she
was
getting married because John had said so. Not in so many words, of course, but he implied as much.

When John finally did call for her, she would have to violate her parole and leave town immediately. Once she left, she did not want to be found. To her, that meant changing her hair.

She browsed Walgreen’s hair product aisle and found a nice shade of red she thought would do the trick. Just to be sure, she also purchased a hair straightener and some makeup. Last but not least, she vowed to lose a bunch of weight.

If she did all that, she felt sure that even her own mother would not recognize her.

Saturday, March 9 1996

During the Larry Aarons show on radio station KKOB, Mayor Martin Chavez asked the citizens of Albuquerque to dig deep and donate as much money as they could for a reward fund to help capture the Hollywood Video killers.

Over $50,000 was donated the first day. The phone rang off the hook with citizens wanting to help. Hollywood Video itself got the ball rolling with a $10,000 donation. Sunwest Bank, Bank of America, and the Albuquerque Journal all added another $5,000 each.

It was also at this point that the FBI behaviorists came on board to join the manhunt.

***

Esther was home alone when the phone rang. Some how she knew it was Shane.

She didn’t want to answer, but she knew he would just come over if she didn't. Which was even worse. She braced herself and picked up the phone.

“You didn’t tell anyone did you?”

“No.”

“Remember what I said. The blood was everywhere. It could happen to you.”

“I know.”

“Don’t fucking tell anyone. Not your boyfriend. Not no one. Or you’re dead.”

He hung up.

“I know,” Esther said to the dial tone.

***

It had been six days since the murder, and all the police had were five bodies and lots of publicity. The pressure for the killers to be found was enormous, and yet the killers had not been found. Albuquerque citizens remained on edge. The Crime Stoppers tip line rang incessantly.