Little Lost Angel (10 page)

Entering the main room of the old stone house, Laurie and Melinda sat Shanda down on a stone bench and tied her wrists and ankles with two pieces of rope.

“Doesn’t she have pretty hair?” Melinda taunted. “I wonder how pretty she’d look if we cut it off.”

“No,” Shanda stammered. “Please, don’t. Please, let me go. I’ll stay away from Amanda, I promise.”

Hope, who’d been given the knife while Melinda tied Shanda’s wrists, moved closer to Shanda and waved the knife in front of her. “I like that watch,” Hope said, pointing to the Mickey Mouse watch Shanda had gotten for Christmas. She handed the knife back to Melinda and took the watch from Shanda’s wrist. She pressed a button and a Disney tune began to play. “Ooo, I love this,” Hope said.

Melinda pulled several rings from Shanda’s fingers, giving a couple to Toni and putting the others on herself.

Laurie was bored with these childish pranks and decided it was time for a real scare. She stood in front of Shanda and pointed to the pitch-black cellar.

“That’s a dungeon,” she said creepily. “There’s human bones down there.” She stared ominously at Shanda. “Yours could be next.”

Shanda’s eyes were wide with fright and she drew quick, deep breaths. “Don’t hurt me,” she moaned.

“It’s too damn cold and dark in here,” Laurie declared, then abruptly bolted down the hill to her car. She returned with a black T-shirt.

“I love this shirt,” Laurie said, holding it up for the others to see. It had a smiling yellow face on it, but the face had a bullet hole painted on its forehead and blood was running from it.

But this was a special occasion, so Laurie showed no hesitancy in dousing the shirt with the remaining contents
of a whiskey bottle she’d found in her trunk, then setting it on fire. But once the fire started, Laurie was struck with the fear that someone in a passing car might spot the flames and stop to investigate.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I know where we can take her. There’s a place near my house where nobody will see us.”

Melinda and Laurie untied Shanda, then grabbed her roughly by the arms and marched her back to the car. When they discovered that they were low on gas, they made Shanda lie down on the backseat and covered her with a blanket before they pulled into a gas station. As Laurie walked inside to ask the attendant for directions, Toni told the others that she needed to call a boy she knew in Louisville.

Toni would say later that she’d felt a compelling urge to talk to someone—not to tell them what was happening, but just to hear a familiar voice. She didn’t intend to tell Mike about Shanda’s abduction, and she didn’t. She and Mike talked for several minutes. It was just chitchat. She told him about her trip to the hardcore concert and said she hoped to see him the next time she went to Louisville. Despite all that had happened, Toni’s interest was only in her own well-being. She had called Mike so that she would feel more at ease and it had worked. After exchanging final pleasantries with the boy, Toni hung up and returned to the car in which Shanda remained captive.

Toni had passed up the perfect opportunity to call the police and put an end to this wretched affair, since the others were too far away to hear what she was saying. Instead, she rejoined the others and the car pulled away.

But in a few minutes they were lost again and had to pull into another gas station. This time Hope and Toni spotted a couple of boys in another car and got out to talk to them.

“I told them I wanted to go with them but I said it in a joking way,” Toni said later. “They said they didn’t want to go all the way to Madison, but they followed us for a little while before they turned around.”

Once again an opportunity to bring the vile affair to an end was passed up.

As they continued on the fifty-mile drive to Madison, Shanda pleaded constantly with Melinda to take her home. When that failed, she tried threats.

“I’m going to get in trouble for being out so late,” she whimpered. “My stepbrother is going to be mad and come looking for me.”

“Ooo, I’m so scared,” Laurie said with a laugh.

Melinda was enjoying this too. She forced Shanda to slip off her bra, then handed it over the front seat to Hope. Joining in the fun, Hope squirmed out of her own bra and put Shanda’s on—all the while still steering the car. Melinda and Laurie laughed at this while Toni stared out the window, saying nothing.

Caught up in the thrill of the moment, Laurie turned up the boombox that was sitting on her lap and started singing along to a strange song that Toni would later say sounded like an opera. After a while, Laurie started mimicking Shanda and acted like she was crying. Then she started laughing.

It was a weird, maniacal laugh. Hope and Toni had heard it before. Laurie called it her Devil Laugh.

6

T
hey drove through Madison, then headed north to the rural countryside where Laurie lived. Passing farms and forests, they turned down Laurie’s road, sped by her house, and swung up a dirt road. The car bumped along the rugged path a quarter of a mile and stopped at the edge of some woods.

The girls stepped out into the cold night air, Melinda and Laurie pulling Shanda from the car.

“I gave Shanda a hug,” Toni said later. “She begged Melinda not to hurt her. I told Melinda to take her home but Melinda told me to shut up. She said we couldn’t take her back because she knew all of our names. That’s when Melinda told her to take her clothes off. Melinda said she wanted them as a souvenir. I got back in the car. It was cold out there.”

Hope joined Toni in the car and the two of them watched through the windows as Shanda stripped down to her panties and T-shirt, while Melinda held the knife threateningly in front of her. Suddenly Laurie grabbed Shanda and held her arms behind her back. “Do it now,” she shouted. “Hit her.”

Melinda punched Shanda in the stomach, and the girl
crumbled to the ground. “Please stop,” Shanda cried. “I have asthma. Please stop. I can’t breathe.”

Melinda grabbed Shanda’s head and smashed her knee into her rival’s face. The force of the blow drove Shanda’s lips into her braces and blood flowed from her mouth.

Next Melinda and Laurie were both on top of Shanda, trying to cut her throat with the knife. They managed to stick the point of the knife into the back of Shanda’s neck, but she squirmed loose before it could be driven deeper.

Hope suddenly bolted out of the car and joined in the fray. It looked to Toni as though Hope was trying to help Melinda and Laurie. Then just as quickly, Hope rejoined Toni in the car.

“Why are you helping them?” Toni asked.

“I wasn’t,” Hope said. “I was trying to pull Shanda away.”

Shanda managed to wrestle away from the knife, but Melinda and Laurie pinned her to the ground again. Melinda wrapped her arms around Shanda’s legs as Laurie pulled a rope from her pocket, slipped it around Shanda’s neck, and twisted it tightly.

Inside the car, Hope and Toni cranked up the radio so they wouldn’t hear Shanda’s screams. “I was about as freaked out as I could get,” Hope said later. “I was flipping. I wasn’t crying. I was too scared to cry. Toni was holding my hand because I was shaking so bad.”

Shanda’s frantic movements finally ceased.

“Do you think she’s dead?” Melinda asked.

“I don’t know,” Laurie answered.

They hoisted Shanda’s limp body from the ground and tossed her into the car trunk. Then the two girls hopped in the front seat beside Hope, who was behind the steering wheel. Toni sat alone in the back. Hope revved the engine and spun the car around, heading down the gravel road at top speed.

In the darkness, the car careened off the path and ran over a log, dislodging the muffler. The car’s tailpipe roared as Hope drove to the road, then swung up Laurie’s driveway and parked behind the Tackett house, where Laurie’s parents
were in bed asleep. Leaving Shanda in the trunk, the four girls slipped quietly into the house through the back door.

Laurie was extremely cool in the aftermath of the violence. After she and Melinda went to the bathroom to wash off Shanda’s blood, Laurie strolled to the kitchen to fix them all soft drinks, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. But she could tell that the others were losing their composure. Back in Laurie’s room, Melinda and Hope were talking nervously while Toni sat silently on the bed with the frightened look of a small animal caught in a car’s headlights.

Laurie’s room had always been her one hideaway, and she had decorated it with artifacts of her strange beliefs. She’d converted an old preacher’s pulpit that she’d found into an occult altar, filled with books on witchcraft. One of the books had come with a small cloth pouch of smooth colored stones, each marked with a mystic symbol.

Sensing that she had to do something to calm the others, Laurie dumped the stones on her bed and began to read the signs.

“These tell your fortune, Melinda,” she said softly, careful not to wake her sleeping parents. “Everything is going to be all right.”

At that moment the girls heard Laurie’s dog barking outside her window. They listened closer and could hear the muffled screams of Shanda in the trunk.

“I’ll take care of this,” Laurie said.

She went to the kitchen and grabbed a paring knife, then stuck her head back in the room and showed it to the others. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

A few long minutes passed before Laurie came back inside. She went back to the bathroom to wash off more of Shanda’s blood, and the other girls noticed that the screaming had stopped and the dog was quiet.

When she returned to the room, Laurie announced, “We need to go country cruising. Come on, let’s go before my folks wake up.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Toni insisted. “I’m staying here.”

Laurie was disgusted with Toni’s backtalk, but there was no time to argue. “Hope?” she asked.

“I’m staying with Toni,” Hope said.

Laurie turned to Melinda, giving her a look that would accept no more shows of cowardice, and said, “Let’s go, Melinda.”

If Melinda wanted to stay she said nothing. She followed Laurie out the door.

“Is she dead?” Melinda asked as they climbed into the car.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what did you do to her when you went out?”

Laurie didn’t answer. Instead, she suggested that they dump Shanda somewhere in the country.

Melinda suddenly remembered what her friend Crystal Wathen had told her about disposing of a body. “Let’s burn her,” she said.

Nodding her head in approval, Laurie drove the car some fifty yards from the house to a burn pile that the Tacketts used to incinerate trash. Leaving the engine running, she and Melinda got out and searched the site for something to start a fire with. Suddenly Laurie noticed a light on in the trailer on the adjoining property. She could see the shadow of a man at the window. He was looking at them.

Ace Newman and Michael Starkey, both in their late teens, had just gotten home from their jobs at a pizza shop in Madison. They were too keyed up to turn in, so they had started to repair a leaky sink in their bathroom. Newman would remember later that it was two-thirty when he and Starkey heard the sound of Laurie’s noisy muffler out by the burn pile. Newman looked out the window and could see two bodies moving about.

Thinking fast, Laurie scampered up to the trailer and knocked on the door.

Laurie had talked to Newman and Starkey only a few times in the past, when she had dropped by to get soft drinks out of the Coke machine they kept on their porch. This was the story Laurie fed Newman when he opened the door.

“Hi,” she said, with all the casualness she could muster. “Can I have change for the Coke machine?”

“Sure,” Newman replied, fishing a few quarters out of his pocket. “Say, what are you all doing out there?”

“My muffler’s broken.”

“Need any help?” Newman offered.

“No, I can fix it,” Laurie said, anxious to end the conversation. “Thanks anyway. See ya.”

Back at the car, Laurie told Melinda that they should make tracks. “We’ll just drive around and let her die slowly,” she said.

With the muffler growling, the girls drove away, staying on the side roads, traveling by darkened farmhouses and through deep woods. Every so often a car would pass in the other direction and Laurie would ease up on the gas pedal so as not to draw attention to the noisy muffler.

After a while, a pair of headlights appeared behind them and for long, nervous minutes they watched the rear-view mirror as the headlights gradually drew closer. Then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the headlights vanished as the car turned into a driveway. Laurie and Melinda continued on their way, searching the roadside for a place to dump the body.

As they approached a long bridge over a valley, Laurie eased the car to a stop.

“I know this place,” she said. “There’s a creek down there. Let’s throw her in.”

Melinda argued against it, saying that the body would float and be found by someone. Then she again raised the possibility of burning Shanda.

“Let’s see if she’s dead yet,” Laurie said, grabbing a tire iron she kept under her seat.