Never See Them Again by M. William Phelps Page A

claimed, “unknown suspects” came up and “struck [JU] with a baseball bat.” The attack took place, HPD was certain, inside the parking lot of the Bayridge Apartments, in League City, just south of Clear Lake.
    A League City patrol officer had interviewed JU’s sister at the hospital.
    â€œHe’s in critical condition,” she said. The girl was a mess. Crying. Shaking. Unsure of whether her brother was going to pull through. The brain can only take so many shots without sustaining irreversible damage. If JU made it through, was he going to be in a vegetative state?
    â€œAny idea what happened?” the officer asked.
    â€œNone . . . but I’m concerned about a possible tie to what happened in Clear Lake because Jason was a friend of . . . Marcus’s.”
    â€œThey knew each other well?”
    â€œJason had seen Marcus two hours before the murders!” she said, impassioned by this piece of information. The girl also mentioned how she was under the impression that the cases were related because she had heard that one of the victims in Clear Lake had received similar injuries.
    This was true, Ladd knew.
    JU’s friend had taken him to the hospital. An officer contacted the friend and interviewed him in another section of the hospital, where he sat with JU’s brother. Word had since come down that there was a good chance JU would pull through the operation, but there was no telling how he would be afterward, or how long it would be before he was alert enough to speak.
    â€œWe just don’t know,” the doctor said.
    JU’s buddy explained what happened at Bayridge that night. He knew because he was there and had seen it. The story HPD had gotten earlier (JU heading out to his car to get some clothes) was wrong.
    There was a party, the kid explained. He had also passed out, same as JU and JU’s girlfriend, who had woken the friend up at about four in the morning and told him that JU was hurt badly, bleeding all over the place, out in the parking lot.
    â€œI walked out,” he explained, “and saw that Jason was bleeding from lacerations to the left side of the head.”
    â€œWas Jason awake then?”
    â€œYeah . . . yeah . . . he was conscious and aware of his surroundings.”
    â€œDid you two talk?”
    â€œI offered to take him to the hospital, but he declined.”
    But then came a different story from what JU’s girlfriend had given police. As JU’s friend explained, JU didn’t head outside to his car to grab a change of clothes. He and another guy at the party, Brad Carroll (pseudonym), asked JU to go out into the parking lot at about 3:00 or 3:30 A.M. “to look at a new ‘system’ in his car,” a stereo with subwoofers and enough power to shake the windows of the car next to it at a stoplight.
    â€œWhat happened when they got out there?”
    The friend had asked JU that very question before JU passed out and was taken away to the hospital. “[JU] told me that when he went to go look inside the car, he was attacked from behind with a metal tube or baseball bat.”
    â€œDid he see any of his attackers?”
    â€œYeah, yeah. . . . He said he turned around to block the attack and saw that it was Taz Herald (pseudonym) striking him. He also said he believed it was Brad who lured him outside to facilitate the attack and that Taz was waiting for him outside in the bushes. He saw them both running away from the scene after the attack. They left in Taz’s vehicle, because Brad left his car there.”
    â€œWhat type of car was it they left in?”
    â€œAh . . . um, a green Plymouth or Dodge. Brad’s car is a blue Cadillac with paper plates.”
    Names, car models, times. This was the type of information investigators wanted.
    It wasn’t until an hour after the attack, when JU began to sweat and vomit, that they decided to take him to the hospital. JU didn’t want to go.