I'd Kill for You

by M. William Phelps

  “Her name’s Sara.” Kyle didn’t share a last name.

  CHAPTER 46

  THE ENTRY IS undated, but it was recovered from a pile of journals Clara kept during her latter years of high school. It was during Clara’s “dark” period, when the Underworld was beginning to consume her thoughts. What’s significant about this particular entry is how Clara viewed herself. As she was preparing to leave high school and enter JMU (one might argue: from adolescence to responsibility and the beginning of adulthood), Clara felt “no one” understood her, which was not so much a watershed moment in the life and times of Clara Schwartz. Yet, after making that rather pedestrian entry, Clara mentioned how no one grasped her “mind-set.” She saw friends as “black, gray, and white.”

  Why?

  B/C I am a sociopath in mind and nature, she wrote.

  “A sociopath”—an interesting explanation of herself.

  From there, Clara then talked about how she would not “stop hurting” a person because “they” wanted her to, if it ever came down to it. She gave no context for this comment; it was a simple—however telling—thought, a fleeting glimpse into a feeling she’d had for some time. In contrast, the only way she would stop hurting someone, Clara further clarified, was [if my] friendship with them has progressed beyond that or I don’t give a fuck.

  Clara was firm about her conviction that none of her friends or family could change the way she was. Clara was comfortable in her own skin—though, she would later tell police, her father despised her.

  “I was afraid that he would hurt me, kill me, because I’m not ... I’m not a very liked ... My dad didn’t like me very much,” Clara said during one interview with police. “I got the impression that he really hated me, because, you know, he wanted me to be like [my sister], or he wanted me to be popular, be normal, and I just ... I don’t want to be normal. Normal is rather boring.” In total contrast with what she wrote in her diary, Clara added: “I . . . liked my friends at school.” Then: “I liked dressing in dark colors, listening to dark [music], and he didn’t want that.”

  In Clara’s view, people needed to step up and understand that she would never change because someone wanted it—especially the OG. She dissed just about all of her friends, calling each by a name: “bitch,” “witch,” “slut,” “whore,” or “asshole.” These were all names she used for friends at one point or another. She would hang out with them, she said, but she would never feel any type of intimate connection to them personally. She could not have cared less about their well-being, in other words, beyond what she could use them for.

  A true sociopath, indeed.

  Clara felt many of her peers believed they were “better than” her and perhaps even smarter. This bothered Clara, no doubt about it. But still, she didn’t feel the need to do anything to gain their companionship, get to know them, or even try to get closer. Everything that Clara felt, she kept inside. Betrayal was one thing Clara worried about among her friends. She was concerned that one of her friends would one day betray her trust. She never said how, though.

  Ending this entry, Clara made a profound statement. She warned her so-called “friends” that they had better watch out. She was devious and sneaky; and “no matter how strong” they thought they might be, she was stronger. Not physically, of course, but mentally and emotionally.

  I am deadly and dangerous . . . , Clara wrote. I am very capable and know how to murder and get away with it....

  CHAPTER 47

  KYLE WAS POSITIONED in between the seats. He was sticking his head up into the front of the car, staring out the front windshield, as Mike drove. Katie was sitting in the passenger seat by Mike’s side. It was extremely muddy as they made their way down the dirt road leading toward the Schwartz home and Mount Gilead. It was raining mildly. December 8, 2001, had been a fairly insignificant Saturday by winter’s standards. The temp had hovered around forty-six degrees Fahrenheit most of the day, which caused a lot of melting coming down off Mount Gilead, thus saturating the roads. Mike passed the trees on the right and left, the tires of his car splashing through pools of roadside water. It was a bumpy, wet ride.

  “Right there,” Kyle said, pointing. “Stop the car!”

  Why Sara? Why would Kyle lie to Mike and Katie about whom he was going to see and what he was going to do? Why not just tell Mike and Katie that he was going to confront the OG about the allegations Clara had been making?

  “I think, looking back, I did that because I didn’t want Mike and Katie involved in anything I was going to do in any way,” Kyle told me later. “Mike was my friend. He was like a brother to me. I make bonds with people and they mean something. This is why I told Mike to stop the car up the driveway away from the house. I didn’t know what was going to happen inside that house. I was going up there to confront this guy—and that’s all I knew.”

  It was just after dark now, somewhere between 6:10 and 6:30 P.M., depending on which document and which person you asked.

  Mike put on the brakes and slowed down.

  “Yeah, this is good,” Kyle said. “Right here ... stop the car. Let me out.”

  EARLIER THAT AFTERNOON, Kyle’s girlfriend, Brandy, and her sister were at home, where Kyle sometimes lived. Brandy’s sister was walking by the phone when it rang.

  “Is Brandy home?” a voice said.

  “Sure, who’s calling?” Brandy’s sister asked.

  A moment of silence. Then: “A friend.”

  Brandy’s sister recognized this voice. It was the same person who had been calling the house all week long and in the weeks prior. In fact, since December 3, Clara had called Brandy’s residence looking for Kyle seven times, according to phone records. Brandy and her sister had answered the phone on several of those occasions. She never once said, “Hello, how are you? I’m Kyle’s friend, Clara.” It was always: “Is Kyle home?” No emotion. Nothing personal.

  Still, why was Clara Schwartz, Brandy’s sister wondered, trying to hide who she was now? And why was she asking for Brandy? Clara knew Kyle wasn’t home—he had told her he was out with Mike and Katie.

  On the other end of that line, Clara sat in her dingy, messy, unkempt dorm room at JMU. It was 4:49 P.M., about an hour before Kyle and Mike and Katie had made it to the Mount Gilead area. Clara had the phone cradled up to her ear, calling Brandy’s house, now demanding to speak to Brandy for what was the first time.

  Brandy’s sister gave the phone to Brandy and said, “It’s . . . Clara Schwartz. She wants to talk to you.”

  This was strange, Brandy thought. Not only did Clara never ask for her, but when Brandy had answered the phone when Clara called for Kyle, Clara never even said “hello.” She was always direct. Very terse. Very stoic.

  “Hello . . . ,” Brandy said reservedly after taking the phone from her sister. The call was so random and unexpected. Kyle wasn’t home. What did Clara want?

  “Hi,” Clara said as if they were old friends.

  “Uh, hello . . . what can I do for you?”

  Clara started off talking about “college courses, her mother dying, and her father,” Brandy later explained. Then, out of the blue, Clara blurted out: “At six-thirty, I have to get off the phone.” Brandy looked at the clock. It was just after five. Clara rambled on and on as Brandy listened. Brandy soon realized Clara was purging. She had called to vent all of her secrets. Among them: “I hate my father,” Clara said at one point. “He’s abused me sexually—and he’s trying to kill me.”

  “That’s horrible,” Brandy responded. She didn’t know what else to say to the girl.

  As Clara talked about the OG, she mentioned to Brandy that if he died, she was going to receive a rather large inheritance.

  Brandy wondered why she was sharing this. All of it was so random. What was Clara up to?

  “Really?” Brandy said.

  “Yeah, about four hundred thousand!” Clara explained.

  Clara talked and Brandy listened for the next hour and fifteen minutes. When it got to
be six-thirty, Clara abruptly said, “I have to go! It’s six-thirty. Bye.”

  Brandy said bye and they hung up.

  During the time that Brandy and Clara were on the telephone, Clara talked about things that Brandy had no idea how to respond to. She uncomfortably listened to this girl, whom she did not know, divulge family secrets that were probably better off said inside the confines of a psychiatrist’s office or a police station. All the while, during this phone call, Robert Schwartz was about to meet up with a very high-strung, very anxious Kyle Hulbert, who was fighting with the voices inside his head that were trying to dictate his behavior.

  CHAPTER 48

  KYLE PUSHED HIS way out of Mike’s car. He was in a hurry. There was that little thing of the “job” he had to get on with, he told Mike and Katie. Kyle had his twenty-seven-inch sword strapped to his side inside his scarab, and a second weapon, a knife, also in his possession. As he stepped out of Mike’s car, his black boots splashed into the mud and rainwater. Kyle wore a black trench coat (which Mike had given him weeks ago as an early Christmas present), jeans, and a blue T-shirt.

  “I have a bad feeling about what’s going to happen,” Kyle heard echo inside his head. It was Nicodemus, Kyle recognized right away, one of his six voices—those so-called “gods” of his. They comforted Kyle at times of absolute duress and stress.

  “I remember that Nicodemus, especially, was extremely uncomfortable about everything that was about to go down. I mean, think about it. I am about to go into a guy’s house, who, I believe, has been molesting his daughter and is trying to kill her. This is what I believe. And I am about to go in there and tell him that I know what the hell he is up to and what he has been doing.”

  “Not now,” Kyle said to Nicodemus in a near whisper. To himself, Kyle said: There’s a chance I am not walking out of this alive. . . .

  “Don’t go up there,” Nicodemus urged.

  The Schwartz home was about a five-minute walk from where Kyle stood near a fork in the dirt road, one way going to a neighbor’s home, the other to the Stone House.

  By his recollection, it was unequivocally dark out, so much so that he couldn’t really see in front him. “But I have excellent night vision,” Kyle said.

  “I have to do this. I have to protect Clara,” Kyle said to the voice. “I have to let him (the OG) know that I know what he is up to and what he is planning.”

  I need to tell him that if anything happens to Clara, I will let people know about what I know, Kyle said to himself as he began to walk.

  Mike said, “You saying something, Kyle?”

  Kyle stifled Nicodemus. To Mike, he said: “You guys wait here for me. It won’t take long.” Mike and Katie were sitting inside Mike’s car. Kyle was now prepared to walk up the driveway and approach the Stone House door. He could see the faint glimmer of the light on the Schwartz family’s front door as he began his trek.

  “I’ll be back!” Kyle said, looking directly at Mike. “Don’t fucking leave. You got it?”

  As Kyle walked out of sight, Mike decided to turn the car around. Katie stared out the window at Kyle as he went up the driveway.

  “As he was disappearing around the corner,” Katie later said in court, “[his sword] was just barely light enough for me to see a glint off of it when he pulled it out.”

  The way Katie made it sound was as if Kyle brandished his sword as he walked up the driveway, holding it out in front of himself like a Game of Thrones character, and made his way toward his enemy.

  That statement Katie later gave to police, in which she described Kyle walking away with his sword being pulled from its scabbard, Kyle said, “is totally untrue. That’s Katie making things up later on to get herself out of things.”

  It also, however, says (if true) that Katie realized at that moment what Kyle was going to do. And if this was so, why wouldn’t she try to stop him or call someone?

  Yet, in reality, it made no sense for Kyle Hulbert to garnish his sword to make a five-minute walk toward the house he was trying to get into in order to confront Clara’s father. Would Dr. Schwartz allow a sword-wielding goth friend of his daughter’s into his home?

  CHAPTER 49

  ROBERT SCHWARTZ WAS nationally known in the field of biometrics and DNA. He’d been at the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT ) since the company had started, beginning there in 1986. Schwartz was a good-looking man in a Leslie Nielsen sort of way, in somewhat good physical condition, with a bit of middle-aged weight around his belly. He had a Colgate smile and a demeanor that very rarely changed—the guy was serious about life and work.

  “We called—our family called Bob Schwartz [by a nickname and he] was my oldest brother,” Mary Schwartz said of him. “And he was the oldest of seven of us, in ranges of age from one to twenty—and in that role he was quite a remarkable older brother.”

  Robert Schwartz had taught his sister Mary how to ride a bicycle and how to punch a bag to protect herself. They played tennis together. What’s more, Schwartz was an “involved member” of his family, and was “conscious of our needs . . . and helped my parents,” Mary added. He was the type of child who studied especially hard in school so he could get a scholarship in order to relieve some of the financial burden his parents faced with so many children. He was “a kind person.” One thing about Robert Schwartz that struck Mary was how he would “bring” her some of the “. . . lab rats and lab bunnies” that were being treated poorly “by their co-bunnies and rats” in the lab. He was concerned about the welfare of the animals. “He always had a gentle touch.” Mary could not recall a time that her brother “was ever mean” to her.

  This was in total contrast to how Clara had described her father to just about everyone she knew and inside the pages of her diaries and journals. Schwartz had been hard on Clara—there is no denying this—but he had pointed out to his other children that the parental iron fist he made in that regard was for Clara’s own damn good. He did not like where her life was headed as he witnessed it from a concerned father’s point of view. Those years after her mother died, when the other kids stepped up, Clara bowed down. He did not appreciate that she hadn’t yet grown out of her “goth” period to become an adult, like his other two children, who were, by and large, thriving in school and life. On top of that, what perhaps bothered Robert Schwartz more than anything else was that Clara wasn’t applying herself. He knew she could do better. He expected her to do better. Fifty-seven-year-old Robert Schwartz was one of CIT’s trusted, highly intellectual, gifted, and motivated employees. The Washington Post called Schwartz “one of the leading researchers on DNA sequencing analysis.” Beyond his work at CIT, Schwartz was a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association, whose catchy motto of “Discovery is in our DNA” meant something to a guy like Schwartz. He expected his children to follow in his footsteps and learn by the example he set: Hard work pays off !

  Clara, however, showed her father nothing but hatred and disdain; it seemed to Robert Schwartz that she had given up on life. She had taken the intelligence God had given her and had tossed it all away. This upset the man greatly.

  CHAPTER 50

  DR. SCHWARTZ WAS in his kitchen on the evening of December 8, 2001, cooking dinner (“I think it might have been fajitas or pork,” Kyle said), when he heard a knock at his front door. After drying his hands, Schwartz walked to the front of the house and opened the door to see a kid dressed in a black trench coat, with an angry look on his face. Schwartz had surely recognized Kyle Hulbert as not only one of Clara’s friends, but someone he had seen before.

  If what Katie later said was true, Kyle had placed his sword back in its proper place on his hip by then and hid it underneath his coat. According to Kyle, he had never taken it out. Regardless, that sword was right on Kyle’s hip—there for him to grab anytime he needed it.

  “Yes?” Dr. Schwartz asked.

  “Is Clara home?”

  “No. She’s at JMU.” Kyle explained that Dr. Schwartz said this in a
way that made him feel as if he should have known. (“He had an attitude like, ‘What the hell are you doing here—again? ’ ”)

  Kyle had thought about what to say in order to get inside the Schwartz home. He knew no one else was there at the time.

  “Do you have her phone number so I can call her?” Kyle asked.

  Dr. Schwartz thought about this comment. “Sure,” he said after a pause. “Come in and I’ll get it for you.”

  When you walk into the Schwartz house, there is a bathroom to your right. Walking forward from the doorway, you find the stove, where Schwartz had been standing, cooking his dinner, on the left side; while a “U-shaped counter” began from there and crawled around the backside of the wall. To the left is a rather large open area leading into the living room under an archway.

  Kyle followed Dr. Schwartz. As they walked toward a computer area inside the dining area near the kitchen, Kyle noticed as he took a look around that there was a desk attached to the wall.

  It felt right—Kyle being in here. This was what Clara wanted—there was never any doubt in Kyle’s mind that Clara wanted him to confront the OG about the abuse, about his attitude, about everything he had done to Clara, especially the fact that he was trying to kill her and had plans to take Clara and her siblings to the Virgin Islands and murder Clara while there. Kyle was certain Clara was behind whatever went down inside this house from this point on.

  “This is bad,” Nicodemus said. “You should not be here.”

  “Can I use your bathroom?” Kyle asked.

  Dr. Schwartz, who had sat down at his computer desk with his back to Kyle, turned around and pointed in the direction of the toilet and told Kyle to go ahead.

  When Kyle came back from the restroom, Clara’s father was writing something on a piece of paper. Kyle guessed the phone number he’d asked for.

  Kyle stood in back of Robert Schwartz. Quite casually he said: “So, how have you and Clara been getting along?”