Powerfall

In October of that year, police were called to the Edwardses' Palm Beach Gardens home, responding to a domestic violence report. Shawna was just out of rehab again. David had found her with a crack pipe in the laundry room. She stabbed him with the pipe, he told police. She kicked him in the chest, he said, and he fell to the floor, numb, unable to walk.

David crawled out of the house and yelled for help.

David tried to curtail his own drug use, friends say, but Shawna led him back to it.

The rocket was falling.

In September 2005, police were called to the Edwards residence in Palm Beach Gardens, this time for a child welfare complaint. In addition to Tiffani Edwards, David and Shawna had custody of the youngest of Shawna's three sons, 7-year-old Matthew.

Officer Jennifer Prendergast described a creepy scene in the Edwardses' master bedroom, with used syringes everywhere. The officers also found 3.7 grams of cocaine.

Shawna began chattering about her drug problem and David's. The pair would frequently lock themselves in the bedroom to shoot up, she told Prendergast. And now they had hepatitis.

Glider, the detox physician, visited them at home, Shawna said, and prescribed drugs for them. Two bottles of OxyContin prescribed by Glider were in the bedroom. (New Times was unable to locate Glider for comment.)

The children weren't enrolled in school. Each could describe the parents' drug use in detail. They were placed in foster care for nine months. Tiffani eventually returned to her mother's home in Kentucky.

Shawna and David pleaded guilty to drug-possession charges and avoided jail.

That same month, the BallenIsles Community Association placed a lien on their Palm Beach Gardens house because David owed $2,599.81 in maintenance fees and interest.

In December, Bank of America sued David to recover $170,787.74 that he owed on his Visa card.

In April 2006, the community association forced the Edwards house into foreclosure; by now, David owed the association $8,642.75.

In May, high-end real-estate investors Gerti Kleicamp and Alfons Schmitt bought the Edwards home for $900,000, plus the late maintenance fees. When Kleicamp took possession of the house in early June, David was still in it.

She had him physically removed.

The rocket was falling faster.

It didn't take long for business owners at the warehouse complex in Riviera Beach to notice that Shawna and David Lee Edwards were living in Unit 4.

Before he lost his home, David used the warehouse space to store furniture and cars. Rent was $2,624.16 a month. David was often late with it, and garnered eviction notices on several occasions before he paid up.

The couple was liquidating assets, but the fresh income never seemed to last more than a few days.

Although he was no longer David's financial adviser, James Gibbs continued to help him, he says, sometimes by lending David money, and sometimes by selling his belongings for him. With frustration in his voice, Gibbs recalls what happened last year after he helped David unload a directional drill from the by-now-defunct fiber-optics company. He says he wired Edwards $20,000 from the sale on a Friday, and the money was gone the following Tuesday.

"If they get more money, then they spend it like they still have millions of dollars," Gibbs says.

After they lost their Palm Beach Gardens home, David and Shawna began to spend weeks at a time in the warehouse, sometimes without electricity.

Used hypodermic needles littered the parking lot near their unit. Shawna borrowed phones from neighboring businesses to make calls. David would hit up the neighbors for 20 bucks now and then. Sometimes the couple would fling open the rolling metal doors of their unit for all to see the mess inside.

"It didn't look like a good scene over there," says Andrew Goodyear, owner of Movin' on Mobility in Unit 5.

On July 31, 2006, Shawna was pulled over while driving their brown Chevy van on Okeechobee Boulevard. Officer Sean McMichael found two pieces of crack in her purse. Booked for drug possession, she was jailed for a month.

On August 2, David was stopped for a traffic violation while driving a U-Haul truck.

Officer Robert Wilson of the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department saw clothing, furniture, and boxes in the truck. Edwards said it was the contents of his house. Officer Wilson also discovered 1.3 grams of crack in David's possession, plus a crack pipe, two hypodermic needles, and half a gram of heroin.

"I ran out of my medication," David told the officer, "and I needed something for the pain."

He was booked for drug possession. On the arrest report, he's described as homeless.

Later that month, Kleicamp discovered that David owed Palm Beach County $50,849.63 in back property taxes for 2004 and 2005. She tried to get that money from him but couldn't. (Kleicamp later flipped the house for $2 million.)

Warehouse living didn't do much for David Lee Edwards' health. Friends say that he doesn't have health insurance and that area hospitals were tiring of him.

At the beginning of 2007, Shawna drove David to Orlando in their brown van and checked him into a hospital. He could barely walk.

Not long after that, David's ex-wife, Gail Blanton, and her husband, Jimmy, drove David back to Kentucky.