Little Lost Angel (14 page)

“No telling where she’s from,” Shipley said, hoping she wasn’t a local woman. “Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis. She could have been brought here from anywhere.”

Every so often Steve Henry would walk over to the body and talk to it in a gentle tone.

“Help us find who did this to you,” Henry would say, squatting beside Shanda’s charred figure. “Are we missing anything that will tell us who killed you?” He’d lean closer and whisper, “Help us find this monster.”

*  *  *

It was early afternoon when Melinda and Laurie arrived at Melinda’s house. Laurie camped out on the couch and watched television while Melinda made a phone call to her friend Crystal Wathen.

Melinda and fifteen-year-old Crystal had been best friends since kindergarten. Crystal was tall, slim, and pretty, with flowing sandy-blond hair. She went to Jeffersonville High School and generally ran with a different crowd than Melinda, but they remained very close. Crystal was heterosexual and had tried to fix Melinda up with boys in the past, but she understood when Melinda told her she was in love with Amanda.

“Melinda called me and asked if I would come over,” Crystal remembered. “She was crying. She was very upset. She said, ‘Shanda’s dead and I need to talk to you.’ I told her to sit tight and I’d have my mom bring me over to her house.”

Melinda had just hung up when the phone rang. It was one of her longtime friends from Hazelwood, Leslie Jacoby. Leslie knew that Melinda had planned to go to the concert with Laurie the previous night and wanted to know about the evening.

“I remember asking if they’d had any alcohol,” Leslie said later. “Melinda said no, she said they’d just gone to the slam dance and drove around. She sounded like she’d just woke up. Sort of dazed. She kept crying. She was really upset. She said, ‘I’ve done something really bad and I can’t tell you what it is.’ I tried to persuade her to tell me. Finally she said, ‘What would you do if I told you I killed somebody?’ I didn’t know what to say. She said, ‘I can’t tell you who I killed. I want to tell you but I can’t.’ She said she had done something bad and that she was going to hell. She said it was all Laurie’s fault and that Laurie was into all that devil-worshiping stuff.”

After begging Leslie not to tell anyone what had happened, Melinda heard a knock on the door. It was Crystal. Melinda ushered her friend into the living room, where Crystal had her first meeting with Laurie, who was sitting on the sofa with the covers pulled around her. Melinda started crying, but Laurie’s disposition was stonelike as the two girls began to tell Crystal about Shanda’s murder. Hours earlier, Laurie had cautioned Hope and Toni to keep their mouths shut, but she didn’t follow her own advice. She saw Crystal as someone to impress, so she spared none of the gruesome details. At first Crystal didn’t believe her own ears, but as the tale continued she began to realize that she was hearing the truth.

“Laurie started laughing,” Crystal remembered. “I asked her what she was laughing about, and she said she did not feel bad anymore about killing Shanda.”

Melinda’s mother and her sister Melissa were home, but
both were unaware of the horrifying conversation taking place in the living room.

Melinda decided to call Amanda but learned that she wasn’t home. Amanda’s father was not pleased to hear from Melinda, since he thought he’d put an end to her and his daughter. “She’s not here,” he said bluntly. “She went to River City Mall with Jeffrey Stettenbenz.”

Melinda called the mall office and, saying it was an emergency, had Amanda paged. When Amanda picked up the mall phone, Melinda told her that something terrible had happened and she was on the way to the mall to pick her up.

Jeffrey Stettenbenz was the boy whom Amanda had pawned off on her father as her boyfriend. Actually, Jeffrey would have liked nothing better. He had a crush on Amanda, but she’d made it clear to him a long time earlier that they were just friends.

Now a sad-faced Jeffrey was left behind at the mall as Amanda climbed in the backseat of Laurie’s car next to Melinda. Crystal was in the front with Laurie. As they drove off, Melinda hugged Amanda and told her that Shanda was dead. At first Amanda thought Melinda was playing a joke, but her friend’s tears convinced her that something awful had happened. When they arrived at Melinda’s house, Melinda led Amanda upstairs to her bedroom. She hugged and kissed Amanda and told her she was sorry that Shanda was dead.

“I just wanted to beat her up,” Melinda said, desperate to explain herself. “But Laurie went crazy and killed her.”

Amanda returned the hug and stared into Melinda’s eyes. Melinda had told her several times before that she wished Shanda were dead, but Amanda never thought her friend was actually capable of murder.

“I guess I was in shock,” Amanda said later. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

Fearing the worst but still thinking it might be some kind of sick joke, a dazed Amanda followed Melinda back downstairs where Laurie was waiting, eager to show Amanda and Crystal proof of the terrible deed.

It was with macabre pride that Laurie led the group out to her car and opened the trunk. “Now do you believe?” Laurie asked, pointing to the blood stains that she and Melinda had been unable to clean off. Amanda saw a blood-stained sock lying in the trunk. She felt a sick feeling in her stomach as she recognized it as the type Shanda wore.

“I don’t want to see any more,” Amanda said, all her final doubts erased. All she could think about was leaving and getting away from this nightmare. It was her love affair with Shanda that had incurred Melinda’s wrath. If she hadn’t drawn Shanda into a relationship none of this would have happened. But if she felt any regret for her role in setting the stage for Shanda’s murder, she held it inside. Even at that moment, when she knew in her heart that Shanda was indeed dead, she spoke no words of sorrow—at least none that anyone could remember later.

“I want to go home,” was all Amanda said. “Please, just take me home.”

Before they left, Laurie pulled Melinda aside and asked, “Is she going to talk? I’m afraid she’s going to talk.”

“Don’t worry about my friends,” Melinda replied sharply. “They would never tell on me.”

Amanda was skittish as she climbed into the backseat of the car—the same car she now knew that had carried Shanda to her death.

Melinda got in beside Amanda and consoled her lover while all four girls drove away.

The winter sun was going down and the afternoon shadows were growing longer as the car pulled to a stop in front of Amanda’s ramshackle house. A light in the living room told the girls that Amanda’s father was home. Melinda knew that he had no use for her. She would have to say her goodbyes to Amanda at the curb. Amanda was anxious to leave and started out of the car quickly, but Melinda was right behind her and she touched her shoulder, signaling her to stop.

“Poo?” Melinda said softly. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? You can’t tell anyone. I’m in this too deep.”

“I won’t,” Amanda stuttered.

“You know I love you,” Melinda said, running her fingers lovingly across Amanda’s frightened face.

“I know,” Amanda replied. “I love you too.”

Melinda kissed the girl she’d killed for, once lightly on the lips, then she climbed back into the car, where Laurie and Crystal were waiting. As the car pulled away, Amanda slowly walked inside her house, then into her bedroom. Alone at last in the solitude of her room, Amanda sat on her bed and read, one by one, the many letters that Shanda had written her. Then, and only then, did the fourteen-year-old begin to cry.

*  *  *

It was nearly dark by the time Laurie, Melinda, and Crystal arrived at the Taco Bell in Clarksville. They parked the car and went inside to eat. When they returned to the automobile, Laurie’s boombox was blaring. It was playing one of the rock songs she’d sung the night before while she was tormenting Shanda.

“I turned it off before we went in,” Laurie exclaimed, her voice filled with awe. “It’s Shanda’s spirit. She’s coming back to haunt us. Let’s have a séance and try to talk to her.”

Melinda and Crystal looked at her strangely before climbing into the car, Melinda in back, Crystal next to Laurie. Laurie reached into the front-door pocket and pulled out the tire iron. She began waving it, and Crystal moved as far away as possible.

“I can remember how it felt when it was going into her head,” Laurie said, her eyes glazed over. “When I was hitting her it was really taking hunks out of her head.”

“Stop it!” Melinda yelled. “This is sick. I can’t take it anymore. I just want to forget it.”

But Laurie was just getting started. She thumped the metal bar against the dashboard. “This is how I did it,” she boasted to Crystal. She stuck the tire iron near Crystal’s face. “Here, smell this.”

Crystal and Melinda tried to ignore Laurie, but she continued ranting. “Shadows keep jumping at me,” she said. “They’re coming to get me.”

Melinda grabbed Crystal’s arm. “Do you think God will forgive me?” she asked.

“I don’t believe in God,” Laurie crowed. “I believe in black magic.”

When they got back to Melinda’s house, Laurie went to the bathroom, leaving Melinda and Crystal alone.

“Laurie’s planning to spend the night,” Melinda said. “Please, stay here with me tonight. She’s crazy. I’m scared of her.”

But Crystal had seen enough, and she didn’t want to spend another minute with Laurie Tackett. She told Melinda she had to go home.

*  *  *

Toni couldn’t escape the horror. The image of Shanda’s burning body was scorched into her consciousness. She stood behind the cash register at Arby’s, casting nervous glances at the customers. She was certain that at any moment Laurie and Melinda would march through the door. She was afraid that they had sensed her weakness and had decided to kill her too.

Toni’s friend Mikel Pommerehn had stopped by Arby’s earlier, and Toni had told her everything. Mikel told Toni that she knew a lawyer and had promised to have him call Toni later that day. Toni was trying to hang on but her fear was overwhelming. She went through the motions of her job, but she was in a daze.

“What’s wrong with you today?” her supervisor asked.

Toni didn’t answer. She just stared off into space.

“You better go on home,” the supervisor said. “You look sick.”

Toni acknowledged that she didn’t feel well and tried to call her parents to pick her up. When they didn’t answer the phone, she called Hope. “Just stay where you are,” Hope said. “My mom will come and get you.”

But Toni didn’t feel any safer at Hope’s house. She began crying when she heard a car go by with a noisy muffler. She thought it was Laurie coming for her. The two girls decided they needed to go somewhere where they could think clearly. They decided to go to the pool hall at the Anderson
Bowling Alley. They had a lot of friends there, and guys who could protect them if Laurie and Melinda came looking for them.

As soon as they walked into the pool hall they saw two friends from school, Shawn Pyles and Chris Alcorn. Toni and Hope fell into the boys’ arms and began crying. At first they resisted the boys’ questions about what was wrong, but eventually they opened up and told all. The boys listened in disbelief as Toni and Hope related the grisly details of Shanda’s murder.

“You’ve got to go to the police,” Shawn said. “You’ve got to tell them. It’s the only way.”

Toni and Hope assured the boys that they would, but instead the exhausted girls went back to Hope’s house and fell asleep in front of the television. But they didn’t sleep long before a nightmare descended on Toni. She awoke with a scream, shaking and covered in sweat. It had been the ring of the phone that had awakened her. Mikel Pommerehn was on the other end of the line. She told Toni that she’d talked to the lawyer, a friend of her family named Darryl Auxier, and he wanted to talk to Toni and Hope. Auxier called a few minutes later and told Hope that she and Toni would have to tell their parents what had happened. Auxier said their parents should call him if they needed advice on what to do next.

*  *  *

Glenda Lawrence and Toni’s older sister, Tina, were spending a typical Saturday evening at home watching television in their living room when Toni walked through the front door, followed by Hope and her parents, Carl and Gloria Rippey.

Toni ran into her mother’s arms and crawled up on her lap, quivering and moaning. Toni’s father, Clifton Lawrence, who was in the basement, heard the anxious voices and hurried up the steps. Toni stumbled toward him and put her arms around his neck.

“I’m sorry, Dad, but I didn’t stay at Mikel’s last night,” she said. “I went to Louisville.”

Clifton Lawrence was livid. He removed Toni’s arms from
his shoulders and looked deep into her reddened eyes. She turned away from his glare and cried, “Forgive me. Please, forgive me!”

Toni’s father would say later that he thought his daughter was pregnant. “I guess that’s the worst thing a father can think his daughter will tell him, especially a fifteen-year-old daughter.”

He couldn’t make sense of Toni’s babbling. He sent his daughter to her room, then turned to the Rippeys for an explanation. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Carl Rippey spoke up, repeating the story the girls had told him: that they had witnessed two girls murder another girl. Rippey said he was sketchy on the details, but he believed what the girls had told him was true. A young girl was dead, and Toni and Hope knew the murderers.

The words tore Clifton Lawrence’s quiet, stable world apart. He asked the Rippeys to go with him to the police but they refused. Carl and Gloria told the Lawrences that they had already talked to their attorney, Darryl Auxier, and had been advised not to talk to the police. They decided to take Hope to a motel until the next day. Carl suggested that Toni’s father do the same. But Clifton would have none of it. He showed the Rippeys the door, then walked stiffly into Toni’s room, knowing what had to be done. His daughter was on the bed, sobbing and shivering.

“I told Toni we had to go to the police,” Clifton said later. “I didn’t know what happened to the little girl she said was murdered, but if there was a chance she was alive she needed every minute that we could give her.”