"It wasn't taking off as fast as she wanted, but she was busy all the time," Kosnar says. "A lot of her Breckenridge people were coming in. It was hard for us to even pencil in coffee time, because she'd say she was tattooing until midnight."
Ausan declined comment for this article. Through his public defender, Keenu also declined to be interviewed. But a blog he was posting erratically on his MySpace page last summer provides a glimpse into his depression following the breakup. He complains of not being able to sleep, of not being able to "break the groggy sluggish mood I've been in." Mostly, the blog is about the loneliness of doing nothing:
Tara Schinn, who had several tattoo sessions with Kauri, says her friend "did not want to die like this."
Kim Kosnar, who had "girl talks" with Kauri weeks before her death, says her friend gave no hint of being suicidal.
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August 19, 2008: well finally in denver, its been a long process but well its kind of over...hum well this was my first day here and aside from cutting my finger nothing really happened, just unpacking and getting settled in i'm probably going to take it easy for one more day but then i got to get serious...
August 20: its funny i had plans and stuff but well I just don't feel up to doing anything...
August 21: just have no energy...must have been under more stress then i realized...
August 22: walk around were I live today and discovered nothing of shocking interest or even minor interest...was suppose to do some piercing today too but since they were friends, and talk to sir groggy at his worst well nope on that...
September 7: it's been a nice calm sunday nothing major has happened...
September 16: crap i have no train of thought today i'm just babbiling...
Keenu expected to be working soon at Kauri's new shop, to be called Transposed Fusion. On his MySpace page he described himself as "a body modification artist who does everything from basic piercing to scarification and implants" and Transposed Fusion as "an all encompassing art exposé that also includes tattooing and live shows."
An unfinished website for Transposed Fusion devotes a single page to the piercing services that would be available. It states simply, "Keenu's bed side manner is a comfort to all."
From the moment she first met Kauri Tiyme at Charlie Brown's last August, Cora Reed thought the artist had a kind of beauty, internal and external, that she wanted to try to capture with a camera.
"She had about her a real intensity," Reed says. "When she met people, she'd give her tattoo-girl spiel, which was very concise: 'I've been tattooing for nineteen years, I've been on CNN, I'm working with the state of New York on their tattoo rules.'
"And I said, 'Okay, and who are you really?' Her guard came down entirely, and we were able to talk as people."
By the end of the evening, Tiyme had agreed to let Reed photograph her. The session took place a few weeks later and stretched over six hours. Kauri talked about her ex-husbands and various disaster scenarios that might be around the corner: bird flu epidemics, nukes, who knows.
"We spent a long time talking about what we would do if the Apocalypse came," Reed says. "We decided we would need communities that would hang together and have certain skills that would make the world work."
In early October, Kauri and Ausan went to Sedona for several days to relax. Kauri loved to bike the desert, especially at night, under the naked stars. She may have had other agendas for the trip; she told Kosnar that she hoped to have a heart-to-heart with Ausan about where the relationship was going. But Ausan told Kosnar after the trip that no "we have to talk" moment ever occurred.
The couple returned to town on Saturday, October 11. The next day, Kauri received a call from Keenu, who told her that his grandmother had died. Kauri left in her car, saying she had to help Keenu deal with the situation.
On Monday, October 13, Kauri called Ausan to talk about plumbing problems at the warehouse. She gave the impression that the business with Keenu might take a few days.
"That was the last we heard from her," Kosnar says.
Some of her friends believe that Keenu must have tricked Kauri, then gone berserk. The many injuries she suffered don't suggest the painless death Keenu claims he was trying to give her; they seem more in keeping with a rage killing by a spurned ex. The friends are also skeptical of Keenu's claims of trying to commit suicide himself. They doubt he would have been in any condition to drive to New Mexico if he'd been sampling rat poison and Drano, as his notes claim. As for the notes found in Kauri's handwriting, "who knows how old those notes are?" Conant asks.
Aside from a few excerpts in an arrest-warrant affidavit, the police have not released the notes. But sources familiar with certain aspects of the investigation say there are several details that indicate Kauri was an active participant in her own death. Some notes, for example, have references to Ausan and other people she'd met recently, people she wanted to have her iPod and other personal items. And the autopsy report lists an astonishing amount of diphenhydramine — the chief ingredient of Benadryl — in her system, more than sixty times the normal dose. Although the drug wasn't the cause of death, it's strong evidence of suicidal intent, of a plan to numb out and not return.
