To the Bridge
Page 15
Coburg was also, I would later confirm, where Amanda found out the provenance of Eldon’s name. In early 2009, Amanda had driven to Coburg looking for Keli Townsend, whom she suspected of being romantically involved with Jason. Jason had denied this. Jason’s mother also told Amanda she was wrong, that Jason and Keli had been friends since high school and that was all it was. Amanda did not think that was all it was. She knew Jason had been spending time with Keli. Eldon had come home with stories about going to the park with her; Trinity had talked about playing with Keli’s dogs.
Believing that Keli lived in Coburg, Amanda had gone to Coburg City Hall, where she asked for Keli’s address. Amanda was told that information was not available, but the person working had just seen Keli’s father, Eldon, up the street; maybe Amanda could catch him. Amanda might have asked this worker to repeat the information she was learning for the first time: that her son had been named after the father of the woman she suspected her husband was having an affair with. Or maybe she didn’t ask again.
Molly drove us back toward Eugene. There was a gold haze in the air.
“Grass seed,” she said, and asked if it was true that Amanda had not been allowed in her mother-in-law’s home after she was caught trying to impersonate Christine Duncan on the phone “to gain access,” Molly said, “to the money.” I wondered where she got this information, but, tit for tat, she would not say.
Molly dropped me at my car and pointed toward a scenic way out of town.
“Don’t hit any cows,” she said.
I drove past sheep shorn for summer and trucks coming in from the fields. It was seventy-two degrees and a good hour from sunset. It was the kind of evening where you roll down the car window and let the wind hit the cup of your hand. I turned on the radio. An oldies station was playing songs from when I was young: “Loves Me Like a Rock,” and “Hello It’s Me,” and “Oh What a Night,” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?” The songs made me feel nostalgic, and I thought about how Eldon would never feel nostalgia. He would never sing along to songs from when he was thirteen, or learn to drive, or fall in love, or creep into middle age. I continued north, passing the prison in Wilsonville, where the woman who extinguished his life would spend the next thirty-five years of hers.
22
September 18–21, 2008, Tualatin, Oregon
Summer 2008 had gotten out of control. Ryan Barron had been okay initially with Jason staying with him and Sara. But his friend had become spooky and gross. Sara would look under the bed in Jason’s room and find thousands of crumpled-up napkins or a bowl of vomit with a T-shirt stuck in it. She’d had it by September and asked Ryan, “What is going on with your friend?”
Ryan knew about Jason’s drug history. Ryan should; he had been hanging out with the guy nearly every day for seven years. Jason had been using OxyContin back in 2001, though not in crazy amounts; he had been heavy, heavy into weed back then. Ryan had gone over to Jason’s apartment the first day they met. Amanda was there, and she had just made some pot cookies. Ryan didn’t know how to make these and was told that you sauté the pot in butter and use the butter in the cookie recipe. Ryan ate a cookie, went outside, lay on the grass, and stared at the clouds for two hours.
That seemed funny now, innocent. It seemed a long way from when Jason showed up at Ryan’s this past June with welts on his back and shoulders, saying he’d been asleep on his couch and woke up to Amanda beating him with a coat hanger. Ryan took pictures and told Jason that there was no way he was going back to that house; it wasn’t safe. “Plus,” Sara said, “what if Amanda beat herself up and called the cops and said that Jason did it?”
This kind of violence, and his long history with Jason, made Ryan willing to put up with Jason’s drug use in the house. Jason would chew Vicodin like candy every five minutes. They had no effect. He was taking up to twenty-five or thirty OxyContin pills a day, and he was doing Dilantin. He tried phenol patches and MS Contin. He would sit in front of the television in a daze and pass out. Sara saw all this. It became impossible for Ryan to explain away, to pretend his friend was not in their guest room snorting anything he could get his hands on.
Ryan tried to reason with Jason. He told him, “Dude, you’ve got to knock it off. You cannot mix cocaine and Xanax.”
But Jason was too far gone. He looked like shit and like he didn’t care. Ryan was sympathetic to the guy’s problems, but still, Jason was taking serious advantage of the situation; he was staying with Ryan and Sara for free, not paying any bills, making probably eighty grand a year for a job he was phoning in, constantly broke, and stealing, including trying to make off with one of Ryan’s guns. It was too much, and Ryan finally told Jason he couldn’t stay with them anymore. Jason asked Ryan what he was supposed to do. Then he called his mom.
Ryan knew Jason had no easy place to land: his mother would have her own set of demands, Amanda would have hers, and the kids needed food, needed attention. Jason was in no condition to provide what anyone needed. Any environment he walked into these days, everyone else paid. Maybe it had always been this way. Ryan had lost his job during the time he was partying with Jason. Ryan didn’t want to pay anymore. And Jason would find a way to skate through; he always seemed to. He knew how to hustle.
When Ryan was still partying with Jason, they would sometimes score along Northeast Eighty-Second Avenue, a miles-long strip of cheap motels, tire stores, and Asian steam-tray restaurants. There was a lot of drug activity and hookers, especially on payday or when people got their relief checks. Ryan and Jason would head over in the afternoons, sit at different cheap-ass bars with about fifteen other people, everyone drinking lite beers and waiting for the dealer to show up and then going single file into the bathroom with the dealer to get their eight ball or whatever. Jason had been going there for years. He was tight with this woman named Shannon, whom Ryan met a bunch of times. She was a former prostitute and slept on the floor of someone else’s trailer. She told Ryan she had a stage-four brain tumor. She did not need to tell him she was a raging alcoholic. Jason would give Shannon money, give her rides, buy her lunch. Maybe it got sexual; Ryan had no idea. Shannon had tons of pain pills, and sometimes Jason shared those. He was kind of her caretaker, the way he had been with Brian Burr. Ryan had gone over to Burr’s a few times with Jason, had watched Jason help Burr in and out of bed with a sling, watched Jason cut up lines of coke for the guy. It was sad all around, but it gave Jason access to what he wanted. Shannon did, too, and she had something to offer in addition to her meds: an ex-boyfriend who was getting shipments of cocaine in quantity. Befriending people with access to drugs was a way to get closer to the source, and that, Ryan knew, was something Jason always tried to do.
At 1:30 a.m. on September 18, Ryan woke to the sound of his front door busting in. He pushed Sara out of bed and to the floor. He grabbed his .357 and yelled out. No answer. Moving through the bedroom with the hammer of the revolver pulled back, Ryan was ready to shoot whoever was out there, and then the hall light went on.
What’s going on? Jason said, so out of it he didn’t seem to register that Ryan was pointing a gun at his face. Jason practically knee-walked to his room, saying only, sorry, man; so sorry, before going inside and locking the door.
It was two in the morning when Ryan called Jason’s boss at Ricoh. Part of him felt like a shit-heel for doing so, but he had to. He laid out Jason’s problems for Fred Smith. It took forty-five minutes. Ryan also told Fred that Jason had been using a company credit card to buy things and then returning them at other stores for cash. Fred, who had fired Ryan the year before, told him he had done the right thing by calling, that this was what a real friend does.
Ryan was not sure he could call Jason a friend anymore. The guy had been testing their friendship for years, and though Ryan would not put it this way that day, he would come to think of Jason as the classic profile of the man that puts on a strong front but who needs everyone’s admiration and can take zero criticism. Ryan had always known Jason as the guy who co
nstantly handed out his business cards, the guy who tried to be impressive because he needed an identity to hang on to, and that inside, Jason was empty. Sara, who had a master’s degree in psychology, would later tell Ryan that the entire time she knew Jason, she never saw him express any emotion but anger, and that nothing seemed to affect him.
It was three in the morning when Ryan got off the phone. He felt guilty about turning Jason in and knew Jason would be pissed if he found out. Ryan also thought he should have done it sooner.
Jason called Ryan two days later to say he was going to rehab. He made it sound as though it was his idea, when Ryan knew Fred Smith had told Jason, go to rehab or get fired. Ryan did not call Jason on this, said only it was a good idea, if not that he had been the one to call their boss.
Jason showed up at Ryan’s house later that night. He was driving a pickup truck he had rented with a company credit card. Eldon was with him. Jason was visibly impaired, very high on something. Ryan asked Jason what the hell he was doing. Jason said, dude, I have no money. I don’t know. I’m going to rehab tomorrow.
Ryan did not want him in the house, but he also did not want Jason driving. Ryan got in the truck and drove Jason and Eldon to a nearby Motel 6. He took off Eldon’s shoes and got him in bed. Eldon, who had just turned four, went right to sleep. Ryan told Jason he had to chill, to get some rest. Jason instead pulled out a bag of coke and said, I can’t take this with me. I’m just going to cook it down.
Jason went into the bathroom. He broke a light bulb in half. He put the coke and some baking soda and a little water in the top of the broken bulb. He heated it with a lighter and rolled a penny in the hot liquid. The liquid bonded to the penny and dried to a rock that could be smoked.
Ryan watched Jason make the crack cocaine. He could not stop him. He also could not leave. He called Sara and told her, “He’s smoking crack in the bathroom right now.” He said he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Call the cops? Grab Eldon and run? Sara told him he could not leave Eldon, which of course Ryan would not do. He stayed as Jason smoked the entire eight ball, until he was nodding out and asking Ryan to drive him to Eugene. Ryan told Jason to sleep it off and that he needed to call him first thing in the morning, that Ryan would need to know that he and Eldon were okay.
Jason did not call Ryan in the morning. Instead he got behind the wheel of the rented Ford F-150 and smashed into the back of a Dodge van parked four blocks from his and Amanda’s house in Tualatin. He drove away from the accident. Several people witnessed the hit-and-run and called the police.
By the time Officer Chris Kish caught up with Jason, he was parked on the corner of the house he had not been living in all summer. There was significant damage to the front end of the F-150, primarily on the passenger’s side. Officer Kish asked Jason what happened. Jason said that an early 1990s four-door blue Volkswagen had turned into his path and caused the accident. Jason said he chased the Volkswagen for several minutes before he lost sight of it. He further explained that a passenger had jumped out of the vehicle and took off running; he chased the passenger but lost him. Another officer had spoken with witnesses, who said there had been no Volkswagen and no runner, only the F-150 smashing into the van. Its owner had heard the crash from inside his house and, seeing his rear bumper smashed in, followed a trail of debris and leaking fluid to the parked F-150.
Learning this information, Officer Kish asked Jason if he wanted to amend his story. Jason said no and again told him about the blue Volkswagen sideswiping him. Kish inspected the white F-150 and saw no traces of blue paint. He also noted that, according to Jason’s story, the damage should have been on the driver’s side, whereas all the impact was on the passenger’s side. He told Jason the damage to his vehicle did not match the story he was telling. He said there had been a witness to Jason smashing into the parked van. Kish again gave Jason the opportunity to change his story. Jason did not. He said, “I swear on my life and my family that I did not crash into a vehicle.”
Officer Kish wrote down that Jason was acting “twitchy” and “became agitated several times” during the conversation. He asked Jason directly why he was not telling the truth. Jason said he was not lying and that another vehicle had crashed into his. At 3:16 p.m. on Sunday, September 21, Jason Smith was arrested for failure to perform the duties of a driver and issued a citation to appear in court.
After not receiving a call in the morning, Ryan started dialing Jason. He finally reached him around six at night. Jason said he was not in rehab yet because something had happened. He told Ryan, dude, I fucking fell asleep at the wheel, and I fucking crashed into a telephone pole, and I wrecked the truck.
Ryan asked about Eldon.
Eldon was fine, Jason said.
Ryan asked whether Jason had been high at the time of the accident.
Jason said, no, I fell asleep.
Ryan told him, “I don’t believe you.”
23
In August 2010, I was falling asleep when a text message came through on my phone. Someone was saying he had seen abuse in the Smith household. I took my phone from the nightstand and typed that I’d heard things were pretty fraught.
“Amanda’s parents taught her to obey her husband,” came the reply. “They claimed it was the Christian thing to do.”
My husband rolled over and looked at me with one eye. “Who are you texting with?”
I took my phone to the next room and let the texter know we could talk if he wanted to. He called immediately.
“The first thing I thought when this happened was ‘Jason contributed,’” said Isaac LaGrone. “I want to say he’s a psychopath.”
Isaac’s voice sounded thick in his throat, as if he was either coming off a cold, or from emotion. I asked Isaac if he meant Jason’s behavior was like that of a sociopath.
“Sociopath, yeah,” he said. “You have a best friend for ten years, you spend time with his kids, this happens, and you realize you don’t know the guy at all.”
That someone would call at nine thirty at night to say Jason was a psychopath or sociopath—each condition is on the antisocial personality disorder spectrum, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably; I tend to use sociopath—surprised me less than it might have a year earlier, when I did not appreciate that everyone who spoke about the story brought their own considerations, whether personal, ethical, or theological. Some of these people had avoided reporters. In Isaac’s case, it was because he expected there would be a trial, at which he assumed he would be legally compelled to testify to what he had seen.
“I was looking forward to a trial,” he said. “I wanted all this stuff about him to come out. I’m thinking, ‘Don’t settle!’ But they did.”
Isaac told me he first met Jason in late 2001, when he hired him at Ricoh for a two-week temp position. Jason moved up quickly, from mail room to account manager.
“He was good!” Isaac said. “He could sell ice to an Eskimo. He could sell you the dream.”
At the time, Amanda was working as a receptionist in downtown Portland, not far from where Jason and Isaac worked. The three sometimes met for lunch near the waterfront; they were all young people with entry-level jobs at big companies.
“He hadn’t been working when I [hired him]. She was the breadwinner,” Isaac said. “But he made her quit her job, because he was jealous. He was jealous of everyone! She smoked clove cigarettes, and if she’d go outside their house with Ryan [Barron] to smoke one, Jason would say, ‘I’m not letting you out there with her!’ and he’d go out and stand with them.”
Isaac had known Trinity and Eldon since they were born. He loved both kids and, as a bachelor, was happy to eat dinner with the Smith family as often as several nights a week. When Trinity saw him at Eldon’s funeral, she ran into his arms.
Isaac said, “She’s shouting, ‘It’s my Uncle Isaac!’ and these people are thinking, ‘She’s got a black uncle?’”
He laughed, the only time he did during this phone call. He ha
d been trying to reach Jason since the funeral, to find out how he was doing, how Trinity was doing. Jason never called back. Isaac at first attributed the cold shoulder to stress. Later, he saw it as another sign that a near-decade-long friendship was a sham, a game Isaac had not known he was playing.
“I’m telling you, the guy is good. He will knock your socks off,” he said. “He’s like a pimp.”
Like a pimp?
Isaac repeated, “He’s like a pimp.”
I thought Isaac was using the terms “pimp” and “psychopath” synonymously to indicate a person who could make you believe what he wanted you to believe, who could “sell you the dream,” when really you were fulfilling his dreams, his needs.
Soon after Isaac called, I went to a Volkswagen dealership to buy a new car. After choosing a model, I walked into the office of the man who would arrange the financing. Mario was tall, with strong features in a large face. He sat behind his desk, tapping at his computer and speaking to me in an engaged and relaxed manner. He occasionally directed a comment to my husband, seated farther away by the office door. Soon after he asked what I did for a living, Mario admitted to being a newshound himself, to reading The Economist online every morning in German. I was impressed and turned to nod at my husband, whose expression was less enthusiastic. As Mario typed up my lease, we spoke in friendly ways about books and our shared lineage—he mentioned that he, too, was part Greek. After he offered tips about his favorite happy-hour spots and told me he was deeply interested in reading an interview I’d done with serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Mario said I could come back tomorrow to grab a copy of the paperwork, which I had signed.
“Wasn’t he an interesting guy?” I commented to my husband as we walked to my new car. Din had no particular reply.
Before I went to the dealership the next day, I rummaged around the basement for a hard copy of the Gacy article. I could have brought Mario the text-only, which I had on a file on my computer, but I wanted him to see the images. I only had two copies but decided to give him one; I could always get it back later.