Little Lost Angel (16 page)

Spry said that when he couldn’t locate the white-and-brown sedan outside the Tackett home, he went to the front door. Laurie’s parents, George and Peggy Tackett, seemed startled to find a policeman at their door. George, whose early scrapes with the law had left him resentful of police, was particularly uneasy, and Peggy was full of questions.

Spry played it cool. He told the Tacketts nothing of the murder but asked about Laurie’s whereabouts. The Tacketts said their daughter was spending the night in New Albany with a girl named Melinda. They didn’t know Melinda’s last name.

Peggy said that Laurie and Melinda had left around noon for New Albany in Laurie’s 1984 Chevrolet Celebrity.

After Spry had given his report to Henry and Shipley, Curtis Wells announced that Melinda’s last name was no longer a mystery.

Wells had called Virgil Seay, the chief probation officer in Floyd County, where New Albany was the county seat. It seemed that several months earlier, a man named Jerry Heavrin had brought Seay a stack of letters written to Heavrin’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Amanda, by a classmate named Melinda Loveless.

The father had been bothered by the sexual nature of the letters and had felt that Melinda Loveless was trying to
seduce his daughter into a lesbian relationship. Seay told Wells that he had contacted Melinda Loveless and told her to stay away from Amanda Heavrin.

Wells got Melinda’s address in New Albany from Seay and had already arranged for the state police in Sellersburg to send two troopers there to see if they could find Laurie Tackett’s car. They would be reporting back at any minute.

Loveless! Henry thought the name rich in irony if Toni Lawrence’s story of Melinda’s jealous rage was true.

“Anything on the dead girl, Shanda?” Henry asked.

Wells answered solemnly. “Shanda Sharer, a twelve-year-old, was reported missing by her parents at one
P.M
. today. Clark County police took the report. Her parents are divorced. She lives in New Albany but was staying the night at her father’s home in Jeffersonville. The address checks out with the one Toni Lawrence gave us.”

Wells told them that Shanda’s father had last seen her when he’d gone to bed around eleven-thirty Friday night and discovered her missing the next morning. He and others had spent the morning searching for Shanda before calling police.

“The description fits,” Wells said. “Blond hair. Five feet tall. Around a hundred pounds.”

“Twelve years old,” Shipley said. “She must have been physically mature for her age. She looked older than that.”

The phone rang. It was Steve Henry’s older brother, Howard, calling from the state police post in Sellersburg. Detective Howard Henry had been following the progress of the case by phone and radio since coming on duty late that afternoon. He told his younger brother that the state troopers had found Laurie Tackett’s car parked behind the Loveless residence. They were watching from a distance. The house seemed quiet, and the troopers were waiting for instructions.

“Just tell them to keep an eye on things,” the younger brother said. “We’ll be down as soon as we get warrants to arrest the girls and search the car.”

Steve Henry told his brother that they’d identified the victim. “She’s a New Albany girl, but I think both her parents are at her father’s home in Jeffersonville.”

Jeffersonville was only ten minutes from the Sellersburg post. Howard Henry volunteered for the difficult job of telling Shanda’s parents that their daughter had been murdered.

“I’ll go tell them,” he said. “I get off at midnight. When I get through there I’ll meet you at the Loveless house.”

Steve Henry hung up the phone, and with the help of Donald Currie, the Jefferson County deputy prosecutor, he filled out warrants for the arrest of Melinda and Laurie on charges of murder. Henry and Currie then drove to the home of Jefferson circuit judge Ted Todd in Hanover, just outside Madison. With Todd’s signature on the warrants, Henry, Shipley, and two deputies made the forty-five-minute drive through the night to New Albany.

*  *  *

“We were frantic all day,” Steve remembers. “Sometimes Jacque would get upset and start crying and sometimes I would. There were so many people in the house I couldn’t think straight. I still don’t remember much of that day. It was all so crazy.”

“The day just kept dragging on with no word,” Jacque said. “I can’t tell you how I felt. I can’t tell you all the things that went through my mind. I knew that something bad must have happened. I knew that Shanda would call if she could.”

At about ten o’clock that night, Steve called a boy whose phone number he had found among Shanda’s things.

“Steve was just losing it at that point,” Sharon said. “He was yelling at the guy, ‘Have you seen my daughter?’ When Steve got off the phone he started to cry and said, ‘My daughter’s gone,’ I said, ‘No she’s not.’ I still couldn’t believe that anything bad had happened.”

By eleven-thirty everyone was emotionally exhausted. Paije, who had come over to the house that evening, persuaded Jacque to go home with her and get some rest.

Steve looked into his ex-wife’s reddened eyes. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll call you if we hear anything.”

Jacque had been gone less than half an hour when two Indiana State Police officers knocked on Steve’s door. One
of them introduced himself as Detective Howard Henry. When Henry learned that Shanda’s mother wasn’t there, he asked Steve to call Jacque and have her come back over.

“What’s the matter?” Steve asked. “Have you found Shanda?”

Henry avoided answering Steve’s questions and asked him once again to call Jacque. As Sharon made the call for her husband, Henry and the other officer busied themselves in Shanda’s bedroom, looking through her things.

“They went back there and looked through her stuff,” Sharon said. “They were asking us things like what jewelry she had on and if we had her dental records. Shanda had just gotten braces two weeks before Christmas and they asked what the dentist’s name was. They kept us so busy I guess it just didn’t sink in. But my stepdad was sitting there in the living room, shaking his head. I think he knew.”

Jacque and Paije had been home less than five minutes when they got the phone call from Sharon.

“The state police are here,” Sharon said. “They want you to come back. They won’t talk until you get here.”

Thinking that Shanda had been found injured, Jacque and Paije ran outside and jumped into their car. As they sped along the highway, the speedometer raced to eighty, then ninety, and a hundred.

“Mom, slow down,” Paije cautioned. “The police will pull you over.”

“Nobody’s pulling me over,” Jacque said. “They may end up behind me, but I’m not pulling over until I get to Steve’s.”

When Jacque walked through the door, Howard Henry led her and Steve into the kitchen and sat down at the table with them. The veteran detective looked across the table and said softly, “Your daughter is gone.”

Jacque stared back blankly. “What?”

“Someone has taken your daughter’s life,” Henry said.

Jacque looked into Howard Henry’s eyes and knew that it was true. “No!” she screamed. She ran from the kitchen to the front door and crumbled down in front of it. “No! No! Oh God, it’s not happening.”

Sharon, who’d been in the living room, ran to Jacque’s side and hugged her. “What’s wrong? What is it?” Sharon asked.

Steve remained seated in the kitchen. He’d heard the detective’s words, but his mind would not accept them. He yelled at Jacque to be quiet, then turned back to Henry. “What are you trying to say?” he asked.

“Your daughter is deceased,” Howard Henry said. “She’s been murdered.”

10

I
t was nearly two o’clock on Sunday morning when Steve Henry and Buck Shipley pulled up outside the Loveless residence.

State police officers were stationed at each side of the darkened house, watching the doors and windows. Howard Henry was there, having just arrived from breaking the sad news to Shanda’s parents.

Steve Henry, Sheriff Shipley, and a state trooper walked up to the door and knocked several times. At last a light came on and the door opened a crack. A woman’s voice asked who it was.

“Police, can we come in please?” Henry asked.

A gaunt, dark-haired woman opened the door and moved aside to let them pass. The woman’s bewildered eyes darted from Henry to Shipley to the trooper.

“Are you Mrs. Loveless?” Henry asked.

“Yes—I mean no. I was,” the woman stammered. “I remarried. It’s Donahue now, Margie Donahue.”

“Is Melinda your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

“Upstairs asleep. What’s this about?”

A man came around a corner, wiping sleep from his eyes. It was Melinda’s stepfather, Mike Donahue. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“We have a warrant for the arrest of your daughter,” Steve Henry said. “Is Laurie Tackett with her?”

“Yes,” Margie answered. “They’re upstairs asleep.”

The trooper remained with the Donahues as Henry and Shipley walked slowly up the steps and pushed open a bedroom door. Two girls lay under the covers. Henry switched on the light and the girls stirred slightly. He couldn’t tell whether they were in deep sleep or just pretending.

“Melinda. Laurie. Get out of bed,” he said. “I’m Detective Henry of the Indiana State Police. This is Sheriff Shipley. We have warrants for your arrest.”

The girls roused slowly and wordlessly. They’d been sleeping in their clothes.

“It was a lucky thing we got there when we did,” Henry said later. “They were dressed as if they were ready to leave when they woke up.”

Henry and Shipley led the girls downstairs, where the others had been joined by Melinda’s older sister Melissa, who had been awakened by the commotion.

Henry looked into the tired eyes of Melinda and Laurie. “I have warrants to arrest you both on charges of murder,” he said.

Melinda said nothing, but Laurie asked smugly, “Are we on ‘Candid Camera’?”

Murder? The word registered slowly in Margie’s mind. She turned to Melinda and asked, “What have you done to Amanda?”

Henry noted the remark and thought she must have meant Amanda Heavrin, whom Toni Lawrence had mentioned as Melinda’s girlfriend. But why had Melinda’s mother assumed that Amanda Heavrin was the victim?

As the family watched in disbelief, the two teenage girls were led out of the house in handcuffs. Melinda’s mother grabbed Steve Henry as he was leaving.

“Please, watch my baby,” she pleaded. “She might be suicidal.”

On the drive back to Madison, Melinda rode with two of
Shipley’s deputies. Laurie sat beside Henry in the front seat of his car, with Shipley in the back. Laurie said nothing, but from time to time she would turn and look menacingly at Henry. “It was the kind of stare that makes the hair on the back of your neck tingle,” he said later.

It was nearly four o’clock in the morning when they arrived back at the police station and jail. A paring knife was taken from the pocket of Laurie’s jacket, then the girls were fingerprinted and fitted in jail uniforms. Laurie called her parents and coolly told them that she’d been arrested for murder. Melinda slumped against a wall and appeared ready to faint.

“Are you all right?” Henry asked.

“Can I please call my mother?” she whispered hoarsely.

Henry led Melinda to a private office and dialed the number for her. He stood a short distance away as Melinda tearfully told her mother that the police had treated her well and that she was okay.

“It was a little girl from my school named Shanda,” Melinda said into the phone. “I just meant to beat her up, but someone had a knife and it went too far.”

Melinda was still sniffling as she and Laurie were put in separate cells. Laurie had not yet shed a tear. Not when she was handcuffed. Not when she told her parents of her arrest. Not even after the metal bars of her cell door slammed shut.

After the girls had been taken away, Henry and Shipley sat for a while to collect their thoughts. Everything had fallen into place within a matter of hours of leaving the burn site. They were pleased with the quickness with which they’d tracked down Melinda and Laurie. Both veteran lawmen were convinced that the two girls would have fled the state in Laurie’s car the next morning.

But the officers’ self-satisfaction was tempered by the knowledge that their work was just beginning and that many questions remained unanswered. It seemed unfathomable that teenage girls could commit such a heinous crime. Perhaps a male was involved. And what about the other two girls? Toni Lawrence had claimed that she was an innocent bystander, but parts of her story didn’t ring true. And Hope Rippey’s involvement remained a mystery. Was she there
when Shanda Sharer was set on fire? Did she assist Loveless and Tackett in the murder?

Henry and Shipley talked until exhaustion slowly persuaded both of them to call it a night.

It was nearly dawn when Henry pulled up the gravel driveway to his farmhouse on the outskirts of Deputy, a small farming community about twenty miles northwest of Madison. He often thought it ironic that he and his brother had grown up in a place called Deputy. It was as if Fate had dictated that they become police officers. Steve Henry had never regretted his choice of profession, but there were times when he wondered whether it was worth the worry and strain. This was one of those times.