05.A.Descent.Into.Hell.2008 (22 page)

Sharon wanted more information, maybe where Colton and Jennifer had gone or when Eddie had last heard from Colton, but from that point on, Eddie Pitonyak wanted to talk to Sharon about only one thing: He wanted her to stay away from his family. One parent might be expected to feel compelled or at least drawn to help another find a lost child, but that didn’t appear to be the case with Pitonyak, who chastised Sharon for calling his brother’s home and talking to his sister-in-law.

Jim returned, and Sharon was still on the telephone. She appeared upset, and she mouthed, “Eddie Pitonyak.”

“My daughter is missing, and we’re just asking your help to find her,” Sharon said. But that didn’t seem to imprint on Eddie, who ordered her not to call his family again. Was it possible that Eddie didn’t know? Had Bridget failed to tell her husband that trouble was again brewing in Colton’s life, and that their younger son had fled Austin hurriedly in the night?

“Here,” Sharon said, handing Jim the phone. “You talk to him. I don’t want to talk to him anymore.”

Frowning, Jim took the telephone and introduced himself. As Sharon had, he explained to Colton’s father that all they hoped for was a little help; they were searching for Jennifer, and Colton was the last person she’d been with. “We’d appreciate anything you can tell us,” Jim said.

Ignoring Jim’s plea, Eddie Pitonyak replied, “My wife tells me that when she met Jennifer down there, that she thinks Jennifer is really the whole problem on this deal.”

Dumbfounded, Jim simply couldn’t talk to the man anymore. It was obvious that Eddie Pitonyak wasn’t at all inclined to help them find Jennifer. Quickly Jim broke off the conversation and hung up the telephone.

In the hotel room, Jim thought again about the situation unfolding around him. What if their worst fears were playing out? What if they disrupted evidence by moving Jennifer’s car? “I think we need to take Jennifer’s car back where we found it,” he said. Sharon agreed, and she called Vanessa to say they were headed back to the apartment.

At 7:30 that evening, Sharon parked the black Saturn Ion in the same spot where they’d found it, and she and Jim walked warily up the steps to unit 88, where Vanessa and Aaron waited. Again, Jim pounded on Colton Pitonyak’s door. Again, no one answered. Again, in the background, the UT clock tower marked time.

“What do we do?” Sharon said.

“Let’s take another look at the car in the garage,” Jim suggested.

They walked back down the stairs to the first floor and into the parking garage. There the white Toyota sat, just as before. They looked inside, but saw nothing unusual. Finally, Sharon called Scott.

“Do you know what kind of car Colton has?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But if I saw it I would recognize it.”

“Is it a white Toyota with Arkansas plates?” she asked.

“That’s the car,” he said. “What’s going on?”

Sharon told him about Jennifer’s car outside and Colton’s in the parking garage. For the first time, Scott began to worry. “Listen Sharon,” he said. “Colton’s bad news. Really bad news.”

After Sharon repeated Scott’s warning, Jim decided to bring Sid Smith up to speed on all that had happened: “We’re back over at the apartment, and we’re positive this is Colton’s car, based on information from one of Jennifer’s friends.”

“You need to call the police again. This is not a good thing,” the private investigator said, his concern growing. “If they’d gone somewhere, one of the cars would be gone.”

As soon as he hung up, Jim dialed 911.

The officer dispatched to the scene arrived minutes later and listened patiently as Jim explained Jennifer’s disappearance and their suspicions that Colton Pitonyak was involved.

“We have to get inside,” Jim said. “This apartment is our only clue to finding Jennifer.”

Looking dubious, the officer called his sergeant, who told him to find the building manager to ask permission to enter. The officer left, but he returned a short time later. As Detective Hector had before him, the officer had found out that the Orange Tree consisted of privately owned condos. Without probable cause, no one but the condo owner or the tenant, Colton Pitonyak, could authorize police to enter unit 88.

“You don’t understand,” Sharon pleaded with the officer. “We have to get inside. Jennifer could be in there hurt or dying.”

Again, he called his sergeant. This time, when the patrol officer hung up, he informed Jim and Sharon that he’d been ordered to leave.

“What if I get a locksmith, so we don’t have to break in?” Jim offered. “We wouldn’t damage anything that way. We’ll just take a look around and see if she’s in there.”

The officer seemed to consider that. He called his sergeant again, seeking advice, but the outcome was the same. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go inside,” he said. “We don’t have probable cause to get a search warrant.”

As the patrol cop walked away, Jim said, “I’m going to get a locksmith.”

“I’m leaving,” the officer responded. “And you should, too.”

Not sure what to do, Sharon, Jim, Vanessa, and Aaron all bunched around the door, again banging and knocking, over and over. College students who lived in nearby units stopped and stared, but none of those gathered to find Jennifer cared who watched. They wanted only one thing: to get inside Colton Pitonyak’s apartment.

The heat was oppressive early that evening, even as the sun dropped in the sky. On the Orange Tree’s second floor, long shadows cast by third-floor staircases and balconies offered shade, including the balcony over Colton Pitonyak’s front door.

“We have to get inside,” Sharon said. “Jennifer’s in there. I know it.”

“Then let’s call a locksmith,” Jim said, dialing information on his cell phone. It took more than an hour to find one willing to send someone out quickly, and then they waited half an hour for the man’s arrival. A man in coveralls showed up carrying a tool chest and spent another half an hour picking at the lock. Finally, he said to Jim, “This has a high-security lock. I can’t get inside.”

Night had arrived, by the time Jim paid the locksmith. Once he had his money, the man turned and left. More hours wasted, and nothing accomplished.

A man and a woman resembling college students walked up, out of the darkness, to Colton’s apartment and looked at the small group gathered there. “Hey, is he in?” the young man asked.

Vanessa knew immediately that they were there to buy drugs. When she questioned them, asking if they knew where Colton was, they answered that they’d left some “stuff” at his place for safekeeping, and were just dropping by to pick it up. But to her, they looked “cracked up.”

“Do you know Jennifer Cave?” Jim asked.

“No,” one of them said. “But we really need our stuff.”

“Well, then you’d better beat it and get out of here,” Jim ordered. They looked at Jim, questioning, then turned and left.

At 9:45 in the evening, the small group had been at the door marked 88 for much of the past six hours, without progress. “How are we going to get in?” Sharon asked Jim for what felt like the hundredth time.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

They stared at the door, then the windows, and Sharon told Vanessa to go to Jim’s car and retrieve the black
Sports Illustrated
blanket they kept in the backseat. “I’ll wrap it around my leg and kick the window in,” she said.

“No, you’ll cut yourself,” Jim cautioned. “There’s got to be another way.”

Holding back tears, Sharon looked at the condo, searching the front of the building, sizing up the door, thinking about how to get inside. Her head ached. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but she wasn’t hungry. Earlier she’d noticed a circular crack, the kind made from a BB gun, in the third window on the right facing the door. Now she went back and looked at it again. It was directly above the window lock.
If I can just…
she thought. She took a pen out of her purse and removed the cartridge, then used it to start tapping on the section of damaged glass, pushing at it, nudging it, trying to get it to snap. Finally, it splintered and popped out.

The hole wasn’t large enough to stick a finger through, so Sharon took the pen and tried to push open the lock. The pen slid off, rolled off, and wouldn’t work. “Wait,” Vanessa said, then turned and left. Minutes later, she returned with an earpiece off a broken pair of sunglasses and handed it to her mother.

“Try this,” she said.

On the first try, the curved earpiece easily caught the latch and pushed the window lock open. Now they looked at one another, as if trying to decide what to do. No one talked, as Jim pulled the window open.

“I’ll go inside,” Sharon said.

“No. I’m going,” Jim said. “It’s not up for discussion.”

“She’s my daughter,” Sharon argued.

“She’s mine, too,” Jim said.

Sharon was quiet for just a moment. She knew Jennifer was inside. She could feel it. There had to be some reason she couldn’t get to the door to let them in. Then that nagging feeling came back, the one that said Jennifer was dead. Sharon pushed back such dark thoughts, reassuring herself that there were other explanations. Colton could have Jennifer tied up. What if he’d beaten Jennifer and left her for dead, but she was alive and needed help? Her heart pounding, all Sharon felt certain of was that Jennifer was inside that condo.

“Be careful,” Sharon told Jim.

Jim reached in and pushed up the blinds, then pulled the curtain to the side. Sharon moved in quickly, grabbing both and holding them out of the way. Inside, the condo was cloaked in darkness. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Jim turned on the flashlight he’d brought from his car and projected a funnel of light into the apartment. The place was a wreck, and Jim wondered if there’d been some kind of struggle. He put one long leg through the window, then the other, until he stood on a dark-colored sofa positioned directly below the window.

“Okay, here I go,” he said.

“Jimmy, be careful,” Sharon said, her voice small and frightened. “Please be careful.”

“Is anyone inside?” Jim shouted. “Don’t shoot. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re just looking for Jennifer.”

As Jim entered the condo, Sharon’s phone rang. It was Scott. He was home with Madyson, and he had a strange sensation, the feeling that something was about to happen.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Jim’s going inside the apartment,” Sharon said. “We’ll call you later.”

Although she thought she had, Sharon didn’t hang up, and Scott heard their voices, Jim in the apartment, Sharon calling out to him to be careful. Then everything grew quiet for a moment, and Jim said to Sharon, “I don’t think anyone’s here.” Still, he wasn’t certain. They could be hiding. Carefully, Jim walked farther into the condo. Standing outside, next to her mother and Aaron, Vanessa saw Jim pick his way through the tiny efficiency. The living room was in chaos with clothing, books, papers, debris strewn about. The kitchen was bare, the only orderly room in the house. On the wall was a poster, Al Pacino in
Scarface
. Underneath Pacino’s photo, it read: “Make way for the bad guy.”

From her perch in the window, Sharon relaxed a little, reassuring herself that everything was all right. Jim hadn’t found Jennifer. Maybe she wasn’t even in the apartment. Maybe Sharon’s intuition was wrong. Perhaps they’d find Jennifer alive and well, and the fear that ached Sharon’s chest would go away.

Finding nothing tied to Jennifer, Jim turned from the kitchen and walked into the bedroom nook, where the bed, too, was covered in clothes. He finally found a light switch and flicked it on. The place lit up, but no one was there. Silence.

Slowly and deliberately, Jim opened a door to the right of the bed and peered down a short hallway, just as he noticed a heavy, rancid odor. Jim had grown up deer hunting in South Texas, and this was an odor he recognized: something dead.

Another door waited at his left. Hesitantly, he opened it, this time staring into a closet. He fanned the flashlight beam through the closet, saw clothes and shoes and books, but no one hiding, nothing wrong. The odor grew more pungent as Jim walked farther into the hallway. On his right was a vanity, a sink scattered with toiletries and rubble. Jim turned to the left and faced yet another door.

As soon as he opened the bathroom door, the odor assaulted Jim, full force. Almost instantly, at the window, Sharon smelled it, too. Her stomach tightened, but she didn’t yet consider what it could mean.

Sensing that he didn’t want to see what waited inside, Jim felt for the bathroom light switch and turned it on. The light flashed on, and the bathroom lit up, bright. At first, Jim couldn’t comprehend the horror of what was in front of him. An accountant who liked his world orderly, a man who wouldn’t read Stephen King novels or go to horror movies, Jim Sedwick simply couldn’t grasp what he saw.

“Oh, God,” he whispered, as he finally accepted what his eyes told him. Panicking, Jim rushed from the bathroom screaming, “Call 911. Call 911. I’ve got a body.”

In his apartment, Scott heard Jim yell for someone to call 911, and then his cell phone disconnected. What happened? he wondered. What did they find? Alone, he stood holding the cell phone, suddenly feeling queasy. He thought Sharon would call back. He waited, and the phone didn’t ring. Perhaps it didn’t have to. Without being told, Scott knew:
Jennifer’s dead
, he thought.
They found her, and she’s dead.

After he hung up the telephone, Scott started to cry. He thought of his conversation with Jen the night before she disappeared, when she admitted she was dating Eli and using meth again. It was the drugs. It had to be. Furious, Scott called Eli. When Eli didn’t answer, Scott left a message: “Good job, Eli,” he said. “You put everything bad back in Jen’s life that I worked to take away.”

Wanting to help, Vanessa’s hands fluttered over her cell phone, as she tried to push 911. She thought she did, but her call didn’t go through. When someone did answer, Vanessa thought she was talking, but they didn’t seem to understand her. Only later would she realize she was screaming hysterically, shrieking a painful wail that started deep inside her. She thought she was saying the address, and she couldn’t understand why the operator kept asking her to calm down and repeat it again.