1
There were a lot of things on Jeffrey Wright's mind that Texas afternoon, but dying wasn't one of them.
It was the first week of January, with memories of New Year's Eve still fresh, and temperatures along the Gulf of Mexico had soared clear into the 70s. But over the weekend, winter bit back hard. Houston had plunged nearly to the freezing point, barely eking out a high of 40 degrees on Sunday.
Now, on Monday, January 13, 2003, that unusual burst of Arctic air had passed, and as Jeffrey Wright drove his large blue pickup truck home, Houston was beginning to heat back up.
Jeff was beginning to heat back up too. Returning to work on Mondays was always a drag, but as a successful salesman, Jeff knew enough to take things as they came. He'd dealt with retailers and wholesalers, moving carpet and tile orders all day long. But on Monday afternoons following work, he had a method for releasing the stress of the week's first workday. Before he returned home to his pretty young wife, his little boy, and his baby daughter, he took out all the day's tensions at boxing lessons.
That was the idea, anyway. The problem with the boxing-lessons theory of relaxation was that the lessons weren't all Jeff was taking. He'd also managed to score several lines' worth of cocaine on his way to the boxing ring. Jeff was a big guy, 6? 3? and 220 pounds. He could hold up his end in the ring, but he was also 34 years old now and an amateur. There were several younger, fitter guys at the gym who could slam like a mule, so Jeff liked the sharp edge that the coke gave him when it was his turn to slug it out. In fact, there was a lot about that little edge that he'd discovered he liked . . . and now it was becoming clear that lately he'd been liking it a bit too much.
The coke Jeff had been snorting his way through wasn't free. But each time he had a chance to score some, he'd reached into his wallet and handed over a wad of cash. Jeff had been doing well enough financially, but he certainly wasn't the richest guy on the block and this was an expensive habit that he really couldn't afford.
On paper Jeff's life looked solidly middle-class. He had a wife, two kids, two cars, and a clean little house on a quiet side street in one of the newer neighborhoods on Houston's northwestern fringe. But there were a lot of bills, a lot of the usual suburban pressures—and in the seemingly pedestrian world of marketing carpet and tile, there were plenty of other up-and-coming young salespeople who wouldn't mind carving a slice out of Jeff's clientele to further their own middle-class American dreams.
Jeff could be a hard worker, when he wanted to be, but he could also slip on his party animal hat. That tendency, along with the cocaine, was taking him on some pricey binges that were now coming home to roost.
The drugs were a vestige of Jeff's years as a young single guy working his way up in the business, first in Austin and then Houston. Over the years, in a series of legendary blowouts, Jeff and his buddies would get together and go for days on end without sleep taking partying into the realm of extreme sport. Anything went. Alcohol. Drugs. Hookers. Two hookers at a time. The point was to create another crazed scene to remember through a haze of hangovers and knowing inside jokes with lifelong pals.
But Jeff had grown up, a bit anyway. He was making increasingly good money for a guy who was just then pushing thirty. In his quieter moments he'd begun to see himself settling down one day and making a real life for himself. Then one day in 1997 he found her by accident.
She was among a group of friends on a sundrenched ribbon of sand on the Gulf of Mexico. Susan Lucille Wyche was a striking 21-year-old blonde, pretty enough to have posed for the tourist poster of Galveston Beach that afternoon.
Jeff had struck up a gregarious conversation with the husband of one of Susan's best friends. Susan had checked Jeff out but, still a bit on the shy side around older men, hadn't spoken to him. Later, getting back to her car in the parking area, Susan found Jeff's business card tucked under her windshield wiper. She called him and invited him to dinner.
Jeff was quickly smitten with Susan, and she loved the attention. She'd had a sheltered upbringing thirty miles outside of Houston in the rural railroad junction town of Tomball. She'd done all the usual Norman Rockwell small-town America things a good girl should do from Brownies to church youth groups. At Jersey Village High School she'd steered clear of the sports teams and the teen hang-out scene, preferring instead to curl up at home and watch movies with her mom. But as soon as she was old enough to move she'd wanted to get out of the house and get closer to the bright lights of America's fourth largest city just over the horizon.
At first, the bright lights got a little too intense as Susan quickly found the casting call is always open for perky blonde 18-year-olds at Houston's strip clubs. Every Saturday for eight weeks Susan, the recent high-school graduate, strode onto the bar under the strobe lights in nothing but a G-string as eager guys of all ages passed her bills. The dare over, money in hand, Susan decided she didn't like topless dancing and signed up for classes at a community college looking to eventually become a nurse.
A job at a hair salon followed, but school was proving expensive and time-consuming. Eventually Susan quit for awhile and found more lucrative work as a waitress. Then, one day at the beach, Jeff left his card on her windshield.
Susan liked going out with Jeff. He was actually quite sweet when she got him away from his marauding pack of drinking buddies. He'd had a lot of experience, he knew all the restaurants, he was worldly and went to elaborate efforts to take her nice places. Jeff was also funny and above all with Susan he was charming. He called her every day, wanting to see her as often as possible. Privately he told his friends who he'd been bingeing his way across Houston's bayous with that this time he'd met "the one"—the woman he wanted to marry, the woman he wanted to settle down with and have kids. It was a domestic vision of Jeff that his pals had a hard time taking seriously at first but he was increasingly saying that he wanted to make it happen.
Something did happen in short order that threw the future into even sharper focus—Susan discovered she was pregnant. She'd had doubts about whether Jeff was really too old for her. Jeff had doubts about whether he was really ready to change course and settle down. It took some soul-searching on both their parts but late in the game, with Susan sitting next to him in his pickup truck, obviously eight months pregnant, in the fall of 1998, Jeff had leaned over and handed her a ring. "Will you marry me?" he asked. Susan, tears welling, had said yes. Jeff would later tell his friends that Susan's acceptance of his offer and his decision to step back from the party scene had probably saved his life.
Two weeks later in a small ceremony with a few close family members and friends outside of Houston they had made it official. Any elaborate honeymoon would have to wait, there was so much to get in order ahead of the baby, so that night the pair celebrated their wedding with a dinner at the Outback Steakhouse in Magnolia. It wasn't every girl's dream of the ultimate romantic venue, but the whole idea of being a wife and mother was actually Susan's dream and that night she was firmly on her way to realizing it.
Baby Bradley arrived and the Wrights moved into a small brick three-bedroom house in the White Oak Bend subdivision within the Cypress–Fairbanks section of Houston. "Cy-Fair" was known as a good area to live and to a lesser extent White Oak Bend was considered an okay neighborhood. Built in the 1980s with a half-dozen curving streets carving up a square parcel of land, 200 homes, many, like the Wrights', surrounded by little brick walls, had been stacked in so tightly next to each other that from the air it looked kind of like a tree-filled corporate office that had been cubicled. But it was the kind of subdivision where young couples bought their first homes, and that's what Jeff and Susan were there to do.
Jeff liked being a husband and a father. He even bragged about his wife and his kids at work. He liked the image and the aura of stability that doing all the right kinds of family-guy things gave him. That image didn't hurt him when it came to doing business. But neither did his more selfish side.
If people were prepared to admire Jeff's regularguy earnestness, then he could put that forward with pride. But if friends or clients liked to party, talk sports, maybe stop in for an hour at one of Houston's many, many topless bars and check out the eye candy, then Jeff could effortlessly switch gears.
In that regard Jeff seemed to reflect some of the inherent schizophrenia of his adopted home town. Houston can be a bastion of moral conservatism, the buckle on the Bible Belt, where residents can talk about their personal relationships with Jesus in public with a straight face seldom seen outside places like Salt Lake City. But at the same time, Houston has more strip clubs and topless bars, and consequently more strippers and strip club patrons, than any other city in the country—at least double the number of similar establishments in Las Vegas.
Like the city itself, Jeff thought he was adequately juggling those two sides of his own life. If the more puritanical were impressed by family values, then Jeff had those in abundance. He could trot out the wife and kids in suburbia as proof. If the audience was more interested in the wild side of things, well then, Jeff could slyly mention that in years past his hot little wife used to be a topless dancer.
These days it was Susan, the former topless dancer turned suburban housewife, who was putting the most pressure on Jeff to rein it all in and get his act together.
Susan came across great in public. She actually made Jeff look good, especially when he got together with his family and friends. But in private Susan could turn on him, and the vices she objected to were all the ones he really enjoyed and would have the hardest time giving up.
He had no intention of changing any of his habits anytime soon. He was an adult. He was his own man. He was a respectable enough guy, and if he liked to smoke a joint once in a while to relax, that was really nobody's business but his. He liked the euphoric high that came with the coke. He enjoyed slipping into the padded leather seats of the strip clubs and watching this year's crop of nubile talents teeter past in skyscraper-high platform heels and very little else. He could stuff a lot of singles into a well slung G-string and, despite the hypothetical existence of the city of Houston's "three-foot rule," he knew that with a big enough wad of cash and a well-phrased whisper into the ear of the cutie writhing in his lap, there were times he could end up in a much more private setting spending some real quality time with the Miss Texas–wannabe of the moment.
Lately Jeff had spent too much money on the partying, especially on the cocaine, but he figured some of that came with the holiday season. He'd actually gotten overextended by several thousand dollars—but that could happen to anybody, and it irritated the hell out of him to hear about it from Susan. Being a salesman was like that. You could have booms and busts and you had to ride it out. Something would come up—but in the meantime you had to stay in the game, keep up with your co-workers, and Jeff didn't need any aggravation about it at home when he had enough on his mind during the workday. He could handle all this. He would handle it. And right now, on his way home after slugging it out in the boxing ring, still buzzing along on the coke, he felt so good—so downright punch-drunkenly great—that he knew, he just freaking knew, that all this would work itself out. It was days like these, it was times like these, that were exactly the reason he liked cocaine in the first place.
The winter sun had set just before 6 P.M. and Jeff pulled his pickup truck into the short driveway that led to his carport, off Berry Tree Drive. He'd made it in time to head inside for dinner with Susan and the kids.
Their single-story light green house with its contrasting dark green trim was by no means large, but it was cozy, and Susan kept it neat, and kept flowers growing in the walled-in front and back yards. The street had a number of tall trees, including several on the Wright property, and Jeff had been undertaking little projects all around the house to make it look better. He'd added lights along the front walkway leading up to the door and he'd just dug out a section of patio on the screened-in porch where he was going to install a fountain.
Jeff liked the whole "Daddy's home!" part of the day, and stepping in from the illuminated pathway that ran across the small front lawn into the bright house with its familiar smells and hubbub was always fun.
Bradley, his 4-year-old son, was constantly impressed with his dad's adventures, and Jeff liked to tell him about boxing. Jeff got a quick kiss and a "How was your day?" from Susan coming in the door, but he also caught a disapproving glance mixed in with the greeting. She knew about the dope, she knew about the cocaine, and although Jeff didn't like to believe it, much less hear about it, Susan seemed to have a knack for spotting the difference in his mood when he was on either. It didn't matter to Jeff. He felt great and he didn't care. If Susan was going to be a sullen bitch about it, then it was her problem. Jeff gave his baby daughter Kaily a kiss and then he went into the other room for a moment to see what Bradley was up to—see if he wanted to mix it up mano a mano with Dad for a moment and do a little playful sparring.
Bradley liked to put up his dukes and play-box with his dad. It got him all worked up, and Jeff thought it was a riot. He'd zap the little guy right back, squirrel around with him, get him laughing. But tonight Bradley was in a petulant mood. Jeff was distracted, and frankly, Bradley wasn't up for the game. Halfheartedly, Bradley punched his dad's open hands as Jeff playfully weaved in front of him. Jeff shot back a right hook and tapped Bradley on the face. Bradley started to snivel and Jeff apologized—but inside it made him mad, because in the tiny house, Susan was going to hear Bradley whine and in a heartbeat be on his case. Susan claimed the cocaine made Jeff too aggressive with the kids. She'd nagged at him in the past about not playing with Bradley when he was high because he played too rough. Now, at the end of a perfectly decent afternoon, Jeff was going to get stuck with another lecture because he'd accidentally connected with Brad in the face.
Jeff was a bit surprised as the moment passed and Susan didn't seem to pick up on it, even though Bradley had worked his way into the kitchen and was grousing to her about how Daddy had punched him. Relaxing on the couch in the front room as the minutes ticked past, Jeff shrugged to himself. If Susan had decided to pass up this opportunity to chew him out, then, after four years of marriage, he must finally be getting through to her.
Sitting in the momentary tranquillity of his home, Jeff didn't realize that Susan had a new strategy for dealing with him being a jerk. She was going to bypass such petty confrontations—and murder him instead.
It was still early evening, but this time of year it was pitch-dark outside and the kids were young enough that they'd already been put to bed.
Thus far, Jeffrey Wright had been having a so-so day and it looked like it was about to wind down as unremarkably as it had begun. Jeff watched a little television and Susan bustled around the kitchen and the bedroom.
Earlier Bradley had been on Jeff's nerves a bit, but he was little and that was no big deal. Jeff really couldn't figure out what Susan was thinking. He was still skating along a bit on the cocaine and not looking forward to coming all the way down off it. In the meantime, Susan seemed almost unusually calm this evening and the thought occurred to him again that maybe they'd turned a corner in their relationship; maybe she was mellowing out a bit and letting him just be himself when he wanted to do his thing and get a little high. He didn't think it needed to be any big deal, and if Susan was prepared to grow up a bit and drop it . . . Jeff looked up and blinked. He'd sort of subconsciously realized that Susan had gone into their small bedroom for a few minutes, but now he was aware that she'd come back. She'd been standing a short distance away looking at him for the past few moments. Her blonde hair was no longer back, it was brushed down over her shoulders and she was leaning languidly against the wall looking at Jeff.
It was too early to be calling it a night, but Susan was wearing a silk bathrobe and even though the sash was knotted in front, it was draped loosely enough that Jeff could tell she had very little on underneath it. Susan had been a stripper when she was 18, and eight years later she still knew how to look stunning with just a glance and a well-placed hand on her hip. Jeff couldn't help grinning. He knew exactly what that particular glance meant, and his pretty wife was looking pretty good.
Jeff punched off the TV remote and stood up from the davenport. Susan knew that he'd been hooked like a fish, and with a smirk she turned and, letting one hand run slowly along the wall, she sidled back through the open door of the bedroom, giving Jeff a slow, smoldering glance as she disappeared through it.
Still grinning, Jeff followed her into their small, neat bedroom. The lights were off and red candles were softly burning on the dressers and the end tables. Music was playing gently in the background. As the door clicked shut behind him, Susan stepped from the shadows, melted into his arms, and began to kiss him passionately, pausing to undo his shirt, and, more significantly, his belt buckle. He managed to work open the front of her robe and soon he was running his hands along her smooth sides, her soft breasts, her tight rear, smelling her hair and tasting her as they kissed.
Suddenly Susan stopped at the edge of their woodframed bed. In a playful whisper she suggested that Jeff lay down on their bed.
Jeff was loving this. The coke still buzzing through his system was making it hard to concentrate on deep thoughts, but he'd never been much of a deep thinker anyway, and this was clearly going to be a very good night.
Susan reached into a bedside drawer and came up with a couple of Jeff's neckties. Leaning over to kiss him again, she took Jeff's outstretched left hand off her breast and expertly looped the necktie around his wrist. With a giggle she quickly fastened the other end of the tie around one of the vertical wooden slats on the headboard of the king-sized bed. Jeff's right hand was working overtime tracing its way around her body, but Susan soon had the other necktie lariated around that wrist as well, and up it went to the opposite corner of the headboard until Jeff's arms were stretched out above him. His attention was entirely focused on Susan at this point; he watched her seductively shrug the robe off her smooth shoulders and let it fall onto the floor. She bent over like the dancer she had been and picked the bathrobe sash up off the floor in one smooth move, giving Jeff a heart-stopping view of her candlelit body in the process. Deftly she tied the sash around his left ankle and once again secured it to the corner post of the bed. Jeff chuckled to himself. This was great! Susan was smiling wickedly at him as she finished attaching another sash to his right ankle and tugging it home into position on the fourth corner of the bed frame.
As Jeff watched his hot little wife sidle her nude body over to the edge of their bed and sling one leg up and over to straddle him, as she sat her nude self confidently down on his naked lap, running her hands up and down his chest, as the candles picked out the blonde highlights in her hair, it occurred again to Jeff that maybe Susan was finally beginning to get the message about who was in charge around here and how he expected to be treated.
He couldn't have been more wrong.