Rachael seemed happy.

Like most teenagers, Rachael led two lives-the one at home (the churchgoer, family person, responsible young adult getting ready to go off to college) and the one out in the social world of high school and "Teen Land," where you were judged on everything you did. Not that Rachael was two different people, consciously splitting her personality to satisfy both sides. George pointed out that that was "not at all what" he meant by agreeing his daughter led two separate lives. Rachael was like any other teen who acted one way around friends, another way around family. It's part of growing up. A rite of passage into the adult world through that sieve of teen intercession. Maybe even a survival mechanism for kids in a tough world today of bullying and being constantly judged by what you wear, the music you listen to, and the people with whom you hang around.

This problematic period of her life began when Rachael entered those final years of high school. Part of it had to do with a bad acne problem Rachael developed during those years, George was convinced, and the fact that Rachael began taking a popular prescription drug for that skin problem. Her "behavioral problems" and going on that drug coincided with each other. George was certain of the connection.

"We had at first attributed the problems to me and Rachael's mother being overprotective of our girls. We didn't let them go out and do a bunch of stuff, and you could have called us 'very strict.' "

So when Rachael began to get into things, especially after high school, when she expressed a desire to move in with Tiffany in Clear Lake City, George believed part of it was due to Rachael wanting to "go wild a little bit and enjoy some freedom" from her overbearing parents. Many kids do this. That first year out of high school, if the kid doesn't head directly off to college, becomes a transitional year; it's a time to think about the road ahead, and what life was going to offer.

When Rachael went on that acne drug, she was prescribed forty-five milligrams a day. It was early in the life of the drug.

"Today," George said, "you can't get over twenty milligrams, and only one out of every ten dermatologists will put a kid on the stuff because of all the class-action lawsuits related to [it]."

The side effects most associated with this particular drug include mood swings, an increased rate of suicide, colitis, Crohn's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, severe depression, liver damage, and so on.

"We wonder when we look back over that last two years of her life, if some of her acting out was related to taking that drug."

George wasn't blaming the drug for his daughter's risky behavior. But as many of the witnesses coming forward had explained to Tom Ladd and Phil Yochum, Tiffany and Rachael were exceptionally nave to their surroundings and the people they hung around with in Houston. Casual drug use-picking up some cocaine on a Friday night and having a party with friends at the house, snorting a couple lines, having some beers, talking all that gibberish about saving the world people high on coke often do-was certainly one thing. Dealing grams and "eight balls" (an eighth of an ounce) was quite another.

CHAPTER 11.

RACHAEL KOLOROUTIS MET Tiffany Rowell at Clear Lake High School in 1999. They became best friends almost immediately. If Clear Lake High sounds familiar in the realm of crime circles, it is probably because during a period between September and October 1984 the school was thrust into the national spotlight when six students supposedly made what some claimed was a "suicide pact" and killed themselves. The story drew the New York Times and other major media outlets.

This idea that students had all agreed to commit suicide together, however, turned out to be something of an urban legend.

"Rumors of a pact in which 20 to 30 students swore to commit suicide within six weeks," a Times article written in late 1984 noted, "were generated by a student who, according to the students and counseling staff, circulated the story 'as a lark.' "

Prank or not, the school had quite the reputation before it was tarnished by this dark cloud. If not for that one instance of gossip getting out of control, Clear Lake High was celebrated for producing some of the more engaging star athletes in professional sports: Major League Baseball relief pitcher Jon Switzer, National Football League players Craig Veasey, Jeff Novak, and Seth and Steve McKinney, and even Ultimate Fighting Championship tough man Mike Swick. Besides, could you ask for anything more American than having your school colors as red, white, and blue? In addition, Clear Lake High School catered to a majority of kids whose parents were oil company execs and NASA employees, and so the hierarchy had a bar set fairly high for a good portion of the students. Many came from money. And according to one news report, within that social pyramid: "Rachael Koloroutis and Tiffany Rowell stood on top."

Like any high school, Clear Lake was no different when it came to cliques and various groups of kids chastising one another for reasons we know all too well. Tiffany and Rachael, though, were never like that. They were more of the celebrity type: the pretty girls walking through the halls whom every boy wanted to date, but wouldn't dream of asking for fear of being rejected. And even that would be a misconception, a judgment; because Tiffany and Rachael were, by far, more approachable, according to former students and friends, than most other girls in the school. They were well liked, and kind to everyone, regardless of his or her status. Didn't matter who you were, where you were from, how much money your parents had. They were in total accord with helping out whomever they could.

Tiffany had dreams of going into social work. Some said she was a very "talented actress."

Rachael and her sister Lelah, a senior when Rachael and Tiffany were juniors, met Tiffany together, but it was Rachael who became closer to Tiffany Rowell. Tiffany's mother had died not long after Rachael and Lelah had befriended her. Tiffany had hit a rough patch in her young life, having just lost the only woman she had ever known as a mother (Tiffany was adopted at a young age). Her life had been overwhelmed with grief at a time when it should have been filled with wonder and anticipation of what was around the corner. In this respect Rachael filled an important role in Tiffany's life, and Tiffany understood and appreciated it greatly.

Rachael and George had talked about Rachael joining the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). Undecided on which branch of the military she wanted to go into, the ROTC could fill that desire Rachael had expressed for law enforcement. Every division of the military had a criminal investigation unit of some sort. The ROTC was a good place to begin that career path. Rachael would learn discipline and routine and possibly earn a scholarship. She'd be taught leadership skills, something her father had already given her in genes. She could step into military life as an officer, essentially. Nothing would make George and Ann Koloroutis happier than to see Rachael get involved with the ROTC program.

Rachael was supposed to join her sister at college after what her father described as Rachael's one "wild and crazy summer," which now included Rachael moving into Tiffany's house. Rachael had a plan-she just wasn't following it immediately after graduation, and this greatly frustrated her mother and father.

Lelah had been enrolled at the University of North Texas in Denton, and Rachael was planning on doing the same. UNT was where Rachael could enter into that ROTC program. From there she could do whatever she wanted.

"Because there were some behavioral issues there during that last year or so of her life," George said later, "I thought the structure of the air force (which Rachael had finally decided on) would be good for her. She did, too. She agreed with the plan."

George was all about helping his kids organize and plan their lives. He had sat down with Rachael more than once and talked about what she was going to do. Yet Rachael, George pointed out with a laugh, "had become a staunch liberal by the time she was a junior in high school." Being a GOP man himself, George admitted this caused some friction; and they butted heads over those differences more than once.

"When she got an idea in her mind," George said, "there was no changing it. That was it."

That stubbornness on Rachael's part, however, would help her in life, George knew. When she put her mind to something, Rachael generally did it.

Ann Koloroutis saw this side of Rachael, too-more so during Rachael's senior year at Clear Lake High School. Rachael and her mother were not on good terms when Rachael left the house to go live with Tiffany. There had been an issue between her mother and father, and Rachael had no choice but to side with her dad. Still, Rachael had confided in her mother about a girl in school who had been picked on and laughed at by many of her classmates. Rachael said she and Tiffany had stepped in and befriended the girl, who was a year behind them. They both felt sorry for her.

Her name was Christine Paolilla. Christine was a short, somewhat cheery, not too overly confident transplant to suburban Houston (the town of Friendswood, just over the Clear Lake city limit). Christine suffered from a rare condition that made her hair fall out: alopecia (defined simply as "loss of hair"). It's a debilitating disease for women-the pain being more cosmetic than necessarily physical. Because it is such an obvious condition when a breakout occurs, it can turn quickly into psychological trauma because of the stigma attached.

Christine lost her father when she was two years old (he died in a tragic construction accident, she said, but would add later that "he was also a heroin addict"). She'd had alopecia for as long as she could recall. She wore wigs and painted on her eyebrows, always trying to do the best she could with what she had.

"But it made her look like a clown at times," remarked one source.

And this only added to the peer punishment she endured at school.

There was also the pockmark Christine had of having a mother who, at one time, had some rather well-known problems with drugs herself.

Rachael and her mom pulled up to the school one morning and there was Christine waiting by the door.

"That's her, Mom," Rachael said, pointing.

Ann looked. It wasn't hard to tell who her daughter was referring to. Christine looked homely and out of place.

"People make fun of her," Rachael said.

Rachael and Tiffany didn't much like the idea that students razzed Christine. It wasn't Christine's fault she was born with the affliction. Rachael and Tiffany had reached out to Christine not long after Christine had moved into town. They helped her pick out better wigs, more trendy and modern. They consulted with her on makeup.

From the time she showed up on the Clear Lake scene, until she met Tiffany and Rachael, Christine was unattractive and shabby. You could tell by looking at her that there was something not right about her appearance. That clown reference was also made by more than one person-and it wasn't always meant in a bad way. It was mainly the best description of how she wore her eyebrows, the way she overdid the rouge and makeup, and wore gaudy wigs seemingly to make up for and take the focus off the hair loss.

But not long after hooking up with Tiffany and Rachael, things changed for Christine. She started to look better. You really had to look closely to figure out there was something different about her-something missing. In fact, Christine was so grateful and became such good friends with Rachael, especially, that Rachael kept a photo Christine had given her in one of her pocketbooks. Christine was open about how she felt. On one side of the standard class photo was a smiling Christine, wearing a long-haired reddish wig, a bright and boastful smile, maybe too much lipstick, a garish, bulky chain around her neck, and a white blouse. Still, she looked good. Even happy. She wore that broad smile proudly, it appeared. Damn, Christine wrote on the back of the photo, we've had some crazy memories. She mentioned how she and Rachael had always been there for one another. There was even some illusion to a romantic tryst they might have been involved in together; both girls were obviously experimenting-if only jokingly-with their sexuality. Christine mentioned how she would never forget their " 'special' friendship." Christine even wrote I love you with text symbols before signing her name.

And what a year 2003 turned out to be for Christine Paolilla at Clear Lake High-after Rachael and Tiffany had taken her under their wing and mentored her. Because of all the work Rachael and Tiffany had put into helping Christine's appearance, the homely-looking girl who wore the bulky Halloween-like wigs had "transformed herself," ABC News later reported, "from an awkward misfit into a high-school Cinderella."

Yes, indeed. Christine was even voted "Miss Irresistible" at Clear Lake High that same year.

"They did it because they felt that she was the person who they just loved," Christine's mother, Lori Paolilla, told ABC's 20/20, "because of the way she was, the person she was."

After Tiffany and Rachael graduated, they somewhat lost touch with Christine, who still had a year of school left, and was rumored to have taken off somewhere with a boy. No one had really seen Christine around much. The girls knew that Christine, who had turned seventeen on March 31, 2003, was going to come into a truckload of money on her eighteenth birthday, a year away. On the day she turned eighteen, Christine could draw on a trust established for her after her father's accidental-death insurance paid off.

Christine was slated to receive what one report claimed was a whopping $360,000, a lot of money for anyone, but especially for an eighteen-year-old kid.

Yet, that friendship that Rachael had had with Christine, and the way she reached out to her and helped the girl through a tough time, proved to family members that Rachael's life at Tiffany's house was an ample reflection of the person she had never been. Rachael was a giver, not a taker. It was now the beginning of August 2003 and HPD could not tell the Koloroutis family, or any of the other families, that they were closer to solving the case.

On balance, justice was about all the families had left. Mercy, too, would come later, when the perpetrator was behind bars and true healing could begin. But right now it was about HPD catching a break.

Just one solid lead.

CHAPTER 12.

TOM LADD SAT down and looked at this case on some days and became frustrated for the lack of manpower helping him. Ladd would stomp his feet, say a few words to his captain, then hit the brick, find a witness who brightened his spirits a little, and remind himself that the case was solvable. With enough luck, on top of some shoe-leather police work, the case could be closed.

A friend of JU's came forward one afternoon with a theory that seemed credible. If for nothing else, this new information put Ladd and the HPD deeper into the ominous drug culture that Marcus was getting himself more deeply involved in as each day of the 2003 summer came to pass.

Talking to the kid, Ladd felt right away he was onto something. For one, the kid had no trouble saying that JU, who was still recuperating from that violent thrashing he took to the head with a bat/pipe, was into selling all sorts of drugs: cocaine, Ecstasy (X), marijuana, Xanax (he called them Z-Bars), you name it. But JU also sold codeine syrup and something called "wet" and "hydro," embalming fluiddipped marijuana joints, which gave the user an entirely different angel dustlike high. You could even dip a cigarette in the fluid and get off. Embalming fluid used in this manner is powerful stuff, toxic and highly dangerous to the nervous system. You start smoking wet joints/cigarettes and you might as well pack it in, because you're now on a treacherous path. There is no turning back. The side effects from this stuff alone range from convulsions to muscular rigidity to coma and, of course, death.

By the time the kid finished naming off all the drugs JU sold, Ladd wondered if there was a drug JU hadn't pushed. Add to that the idea that Marcus had reportedly owed JU $10,000, something the HPD was beginning to hear from several witnesses, and Ladd could not, with any seriousness, scratch JU off what was a short list of suspects. If anything, it was time to put JU on the top of the list.

Listening to the kid talk, essentially dropping a dime on someone he described as a "good friend," Ladd could almost hear George Koloroutis in his ear on the day he explained the Marcus-JU connection: "It's got to be Jason U. It's got to be."

A DAY LATER things became even more interesting. Tom Ladd's sergeant, G. J. Novak, handed the detective a fax he had received earlier that day. It was from Ladd's new best friend, George Koloroutis.

Ladd took the fax pages, walked back to his desk, sat down, then flipped the cover page over and read.

George had done some online sleuthing. He had discovered what he felt might be useful information. While surfing on a few Internet comment chat boards-those public forum spaces on news sites underneath an article, where anyone who has a PC or, nowadays, a cell phone can pop in and comment about anything-George noticed some chatter about the case.

In the fax cover letter, George spelled out the access codes and website addresses for Ladd, so the detective could go to the source himself. He also included several pages of posts within the body of the fax.

The ones that concerned George most had been posted by someone online calling him- or herself "Faith1581."

Each post was signed as "Someone Who Knows."

George was firm in his instructions to the Homicide Division: Don't know if this person really "knows" or not-but this has to be looked at.

The first comment George pointed to was rather cryptic and unhelpful in and of itself. Back on July 21, at 10:42 P.M., Someone Who Knows said too many people who didn't know a damn thing were talking "smack" about the case and what actually happened inside the house. There was some mention of "the MEDIA," which, by all rights, is almost always wrong where some of its early reporting comes into play on any high-profile murder case.

Someone Who Knows wrote to a previous commenter on the news article in question: All you know are what people are telling you. . . .

Then Someone Who Knows went on to say how the truth hurts: So does it hurt much?

Within ten minutes of the first comment, Someone Who Knows had posted two additional comments. The second was as mysterious as the first, but George was convinced the "poster," as he called the commenter, "more than subtly" suggested that "he/she 'knows' things." It was the final sentence in the comment that George was most interested in. Someone Who Knows seemed to be angered by the fact that people were taking what the media had to say as gospel, concluding: You will never know the things I know.

Three minutes later, Someone Who Knows was talking about the four victims having been at the wrong place, at the wrong time, telling the comment board how "far" away "from knowing the truth" they all were.

Ladd thought about this. To say that two people who lived in a house "were at the wrong place" was ignorant and a shot in the dark, at best. George believed it would all have to be checked into further. Yet, in the scope of what had been written, it appeared Someone Who Knows knew about as much as anybody else.

Which was, at this point, just about nothing.

CHAPTER 13.

THE CONVERSATION TOOK place a few days after the Clear Lake murders. Tom Ladd and Phil Yochum were just learning about it, though, on August 4, 2003, when a tip to go interview a known Houston drug dealer spending some time in Montgomery County Jail for failure to appear on an aggravated robbery charge came in. It seemed to be the first concrete lead to a potential suspect-someone they had on radar already-HPD had gotten thus far.

There had been a vigil held by victims' friends and family on Millbridge Drive in front of the house a few days after the murders. People were beside themselves, not knowing what to do. You could only put so many Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus candles, flowers, photos, roadside crosses, and other trinkets in front of the house as memorial remembrances. In light of how many people were struggling to cope, candles in hand, some words of inspiration and grace could go an awfully long way toward finding a road that would lead them toward the process of understanding and mending. One didn't heal from a loss of this nature; one simply accepted it and moved forward with life.

The Montgomery County Jail confidential informant (CI) told Ladd that a friend of his girlfriend's had seen someone she knew on television walking with the vigil group. So the CI called the kid to see what he knew about the murders. The CI gave Ladd and Yochum the kid's name, Billy (pseudonym).

"I specifically asked him if he had sent his brother to do the killings," the CI explained to Ladd.

"Nope," Billy responded during that phone call with the CI. "I sent my homeboy. . . . He did the job!"

"Who's that?"

Billy wouldn't say.

"But I know," the CI told Ladd, "who he is. . . ." He gave the name to the detective, referring to the "homeboy" as "a Mexican dude."

DETECTIVE SERGEANT TOM Ladd had been thinking about retiring. On some days the thought was a peaceful one. Now would be the best time to squeak out a good twenty years of life without having to spend his days looking for thugs. On the other hand, detectives do not like to walk away from the job with cases left unsolved. But what could Ladd do? He had several unsolved murder cases and not enough manpower to work them. This Clear Lake case had turned into one witness after the next coming in to give up a new name. It took lots of man-hours to track down witnesses and potential suspects and interview each one.

As August passed and September settled in, Ladd realized that, as much information as they had been collecting, none of it was bringing him closer to an end result. Everyone was willing to come in and drop a name, but each time HPD checked it out, it led to a "maybe" or a "possibly." Nothing definitive. JU's name kept coming up in conversation. On paper JU was a prime suspect. George Koloroutis believed JU was their man, as did other family members. And George and the others were not waning when it came to keeping the Clear Lake case in front of the media and their faces in front of HPD.

"George was the spark," Ladd said later. "Basically, it was George who kept the interest up in the newspapers and in the department. Koloroutis is a good guy. He always wanted to know this and know that. I spent more time talking to George than I did my own lieutenant on this case!"

Still, there comes a time in a person's life, Ladd said, when "you just have to stop. You cannot keep going on, investigating murders until you're ninety years old."

With that, Ladd knew that by the end of spring, the following year, 2004, he was going to be spending his days with his grandkids and his family. Watching television all day, or whatever the heck he wanted to do with his time. But no more murder. No more bureaucratic PC nonsense. No more BS.

There was a young detective in the squad room who had been with HPD for eight years. He poked his nose around the Clear Lake case every so often, adding two cents where he could, making his theories known to Ladd and Yochum, even helping out once in a while.

Ladd understood this case needed to be solved and, more important, it was a solvable case. Some aren't. Some murders you take a look at after they run cold and you know that without a suspect coming forward, or an admission somewhere, they'll never be resolved. But the Clear Lake case didn't have that feel.

As September met October, Ladd became involved in a major homicide case within the department, a cop-involved shooting. The lieutenant wanted Ladd to handle the case because he had some experience with these types of delicate investigations. It was going to cause some trouble for everyone involved and had to be handled with care. The right person was Tom Ladd-that is, if you ask brass. To Ladd, a cop-involved shooting was not the type of case he wanted to go out on. But he had no choice, essentially.

Detective Brian Harris was that young, fiery investigator, passionate about his work, a certified expert in interrogation, who could take over the Clear Lake case and look at it with a fresh set of eyes. Harris was the man Ladd looked to when it appeared Ladd could not devote the time and attention he wanted to it anymore.

"I got Harris involved because I needed help. He was young, full of piss and vinegar, and just a good, good kid."

Lots of mutual respect there between these men.

The Clear Lake case and the days ahead were going to take a tough, tenacious cop-someone who could overlook all the nonsense and move forward in spite of the obvious obstacles.

Harris had the desire; Ladd knew this from speaking to him and watching him work on other cases.

"I knew Harris would work this case."

Important word there: work. Harris would put in the effort-and more.

"Hey, Brian," Ladd said one day. "You want this?"