Despite the horror of that memory, Brandon came to fear Krystle more than Todd.
“I feel like Todd’s ceiling is Krystle’s floor,” he said. “That is why I feel like she is more dangerous. I feel like she was able to consume everything Todd had, then pushed him out of the way and continued going.”
Had he been conscious, Brandon would have been stunned to know that Skinner took time off to visit the same DEA office where Krystle and Brandon had ratted him out three weeks earlier. While Brandon lay trussed up and drooling back at the DoubleTree, Todd and his lawyer demanded to know why the DEA was investigating him.
Skinner’s visit to the Tulsa office prompted a call to the US Attorney which, in turn, prompted a call from AUSA Allen Litchfield to his counterpart in Topeka: AUSA Greg Hough. Litchfield told him that Todd had “popped up and walked into DEA claiming all kinds of immunity. Frankly, he sounds a little spooky.”
Hough referred Litchfield to Karl Nichols, but Nichols said he’d washed his hands of his star witness once Leonard Pickard’s trial was over. As a matter of fact, Nichols put out an APB that summer to all DEA offices across America: never use Gordon Todd Skinner as a snitch.
Brandon had only PTSD memory of the second week of July. When Hauck, Skinner, and Krystle loaded him in a box and wheeled him across the DoubleTree lobby, he went blank. He barely remembered being tossed in the back of his Sonata.
Driving six-and-half hours south to Galveston, Hauck remembered a zombie babbling from the backseat: “My dick hurts. . . . Todd shot me . . . why did Todd do that . . . Todd told me that you was going to kill me.”
Mercifully, he slept most of the way.
Hauck met up with Todd and Krystle in Texas City. The plan was to dispose of Brandon far from home, but not until Todd “scrambled his brain.” In a motel room at the edge of town, he picked up where he’d left off in Tulsa, injecting Brandon with brown goo, then force-feeding him vitamins to “heal up the needle marks.” While Todd tortured, Hauck assisted. Krystle went to the motel pool to relax.
Shortly after sundown on July 10, Hauck loaded Brandon back in the Sonata. Todd ordered Krystle to follow in Skinner’s brand-new silver Porsche convertible and bring Hauck back once he’d dumped the body.
Hauck drove around until he found a remote spot off County Road 1573. He parked beneath a tree one hundred yards from the pavement and arranged Green’s body on a blanket along with two bottles of water and a candy bar at his side, should he ever come to.
After leaving the keys in the Sonata, Hauck walked back to the highway, where Krystle picked him up and drove back to the motel.
Todd bought the morning paper, scanning for obits. He never wanted to kill the kid, “just mess him up,” he told Hauck.
Krystle phoned Brandon’s cousin to feign concern over his whereabouts. He was in intensive care at a Houston hospital, she was told. He’d been found wandering naked down some country road near Galveston.
All three piled into Todd’s Porsche and returned to the dump spot. While Hauck and Krystle searched for the Sonata, Skinner loitered near a farmhouse. A black guy materialized and told him an ambulance recently hauled off some buck-naked white kid.
That was enough for Todd. He paid off Hauck, told him to get home on his own, then headed north. He and Krystle planned to lay low for a couple weeks.
A week later, Hauck sat nervously in the same DEA office in downtown Tulsa, where Brandon and Krystle first described for agents Todd Skinner’s limitless appetite for destruction.
Before he spoke, Hauck wanted a guarantee. Todd once asked him to kill a Columbian coke dealer. He had little doubt Skinner would do the same to Hauck if he knew he was talking. He would do so only in confidence.
On July 27, Todd Skinner tied the knot for the third time. In a brief ceremony at Katherine Magrini’s house, Krystle Cole became Mrs. Todd Skinner. She professed to have been as out of it in her own way as Brandon Green was during his recent ordeal, but at least she wasn’t comatose.
Over the remainder of the summer, the investigation of Brandon Green’s strange and vicious kidnapping evolved into a solid case. One by one, Skinner’s street recruits followed Hauck’s lead, relating stories of overdose, ER visits, high living in low places. As he regained strength, Green himself became the prosecution’s chief witness, as well as Exhibit No. 1.
Skinner remained oblivious. Following his brief panic in Texas City, he settled comfortably back into his routine of unbridled hedonism.
Karl Nichols might believe he was broke, but that showed how little Karl Nichols knew about his own snitch. In all, Skinner figured he’d stolen 1.2 million untaxed dollars from Leonard Pickard.
“I’ve never reported income in my life, from the day I was born to this day,” Skinner boasted during trial.
By contrast, Leonard couldn’t even pay his student loans.
“I still owe $50,000,” he said recently. “I made minimum monthly payments from 1997 until my arrest. The loan currently is frozen, no payments are demanded, but interest still accrues. It must be $70,000 or more by now. Wouldn’t you think I’d have paid it off long ago if we were earning $24 million a year making LSD?”
XXII.
TODD SKINNER’S LUCK RAN OUT one hundred miles north of Reno on the last night of August in 2003.
After Krystle left him alone in their rented RV with $2,400 in cash and 25,000 hits of MDMA, an agent from the US Department of Interior swooped in
