Profile of Evil (5 page)

"Where are Amanda's parents? Will I be able to speak with them?"

"Amanda's mom and dad died two years ago in a car accident. That's when Amanda moved in with me," Ellen Jenkins began. "She never quite adjusted to her parents' death or her new school."

"I imagine it's not easy for a preteen to change schools," Brody offered.

"Amanda loved school. She made good grades and liked her teachers. Things were fine until a group of boys decided to pick on her. They wouldn't leave her alone, especially that boy, Troy Woods, in her English class. He seemed to make it his purpose in life to make Amanda miserable. Troy would follow her home from school, teasing her, pulling her hair and shoving her. He pushed her so hard she fell, bloodying her mouth and scraping her elbows and knees."

"I see," Brody said as he jotted down the boy's name in his notepad.

"I visited the school principal, who didn't sound like she could help much because the bullying took place outside school grounds. So I filed a harassment complaint against Troy with the police," Ellen confided.

"Did it help?"

"Troy stopped trying to hurt her physically, but his verbal attacks hurt just as much. There were only few days when Amanda returned home from school and she wasn't crying."

"Who were her friends? I'd like to talk to them."

"That was another reason why Amanda was unhappy here. She hadn't made any friends."

"I understand," Brody said. "May I see Amanda's room?"

Mrs. Jenkins nodded, and led Brody to a small bedroom at the back of the house. The walls were covered with a faded wall covering, and crisp white ruffled curtains crisscrossed the single window. On a square corkboard was a photo of singer Justin Bieber that had been clipped from a magazine. Otherwise, the walls were bare. A white twin bed with a matching dresser and desk completed the room. A photo with a smiling man and woman who were probably Amanda's parents graced the desk, along with some school tablets and textbooks. Brody picked up a photo of Amanda. She was a cute freckled-faced girl with braces on her teeth. Looking put out that she had to be photographed, her smile was forced.

"May I have a copy of this photograph?" Brody asked.

"Yes, take that one. I have another."

"I don't see a computer. I know Amanda had a phone, but no computer?" Brody asked.

"Oh, she had one. I just bought her a laptop, and she'd gotten an iPhone for Christmas. I haven't been able to find the laptop anywhere, so I imagine she took it with her when she ran away."

Brody made a mental note to try tracking Amanda's phone through GPS again when he returned to Morel. The last time he tried, he met a dead end when he discovered the last ping was to a cell tower not far from Amanda's home in Terre Haute, then nothing. The cell phone had been turned off or the battery had been removed. It wouldn't hurt to try again.

"Did Amanda receive many phone calls?" asked Brody.

"Now that you mention it, she didn't receive a lot of calls, but she started getting what she called "instant messages" a month or so before she left. Typical teen, I guess, she never read the message in my presence. Always went to her room and closed the door."

"Did you ever check her iPhone or her laptop to find out who she was communicating with?"

Mrs. Jenkins shrugged her shoulders. "Both were way too technical for someone like me. I never tried to do anything like that."

"What else did she take with her?"

Mrs. Jenkins opened a closet door filled with clothes. "She only took as much as she could cram into a duffle bag and her backpack."

"One more question. Did Amanda ever mention Sophia Bradford?"

"I've never heard the name."

"Are you sure Amanda never mentioned her?"

"I'm positive. I wanted Amanda to have friends. I would remember."

<><><>

Cameron Chase pulled his unmarked SUV in front of a red brick apartment complex called Lakeshore Dunes. Finding building number four, he parked and searched for apartment 4D.

As he approached the building, he noticed an attractive woman in her forties standing outside the building, smoking a cigarette. "Are you the cop from Shawnee County?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm Detective Cameron Chase. You must be Tillie Bradford."

She nodded as she ground out her cigarette with the toe of her shoe. "You said you had some questions for me about Sophia. Let's go upstairs and talk."

Once upstairs, she led him into her apartment and into a cozy, yellow kitchen, where a pot of coffee was brewing. Tillie motioned for Cameron to sit down at the kitchen table. After she filled two mugs with hot coffee, she joined him.

Before he had a chance to ask her a question, Tillie began talking. "I worked late that night. I was so tired when I got home that I went straight to bed. I always check on my girls before I go to bed, but not that night. Maybe if I'd checked on Sophia, I could have called the police sooner and she wouldn't have had such a head start." She paused for a second and crossed her arms across herself as if she were cold. "I got up the next morning, and Olivia, my oldest daughter, was making scrambled eggs with shredded cheese, just the way Sophia likes them. So I opened her bedroom door to tell her that breakfast was almost ready. That's when I saw her bed had not been slept in, and that some of her clothes were missing, along with her laptop and cell phone. I ran downstairs to the parking lot. Olivia's red Toyota was gone. I had this horrible feeling I'd never see Sophia again. I was right."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bradford." Cameron loved every aspect of his job, except this one. Talking to a parent who had just lost a child was the toughest thing he had to do. It was one of the few times he felt utterly helpless. What could one say to make a parent feel better? Nothing.

"Ask me your questions, Detective Chase. Ask them and leave. I have a funeral to prepare for."

"Why did Sophia run away?"

"I don't know. We were making a new start. I'd just divorced her no-good father and things were getting better. I had a new job. I thought, as a family, we'd be much happier. But Sophia wasn't happy, and she wouldn't tell me why." Tillie got up, grabbed the coffee pot, and refilled their mugs.

"Was Sophia upset about the divorce? Did she miss her father?" Cameron asked.

"No, I don't think Sophia missed her father
or
the frequent beatings he delivered to all three of us whenever he got drunk."

"What was Sophia doing that led you to believe she wasn't happy?" Cameron asked.

"She stopped talking to her sister and me. Until a couple of months before she disappeared, Sophia was a chatterbox. That girl could talk and giggle and talk some more. You couldn't shut her up. Sophia was pretty and always had a lot of friends. Then, suddenly, she became quiet and withdrawn. She stopped getting calls on her cell. Sophia dropped her after-school activities, clubs, and friends, and came straight home to her laptop. She'd be in her bedroom on that thing for hours."

"Do you know what sites she was visiting on her laptop?”

"No, I give my kids privacy. I don't pry. One night, I walked into her bedroom unannounced and Sophia quickly folded her laptop shut so I couldn't see. Maybe I should have asked, but I gave Sophia her space."

"Do you think she was communicating to someone?"

"I think so, but I don't know for sure. There was one thing odd that happened though. I brought in the mail one day and there was a package for Sophia. She grabbed it from my hand, ran to her bedroom and locked the door."

"What was in the package?"

"I found out later it was a web cam. Sophia could never afford to buy something like that, but I never found out who sent it to her."

<><><>

With her ear against her bedroom door, Alison listened for any sounds in the hallway that indicated her mother and stepfather were awake. It was four o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. No one in their right minds would be up that early. Certainly not her mother, who liked to sleep late on weekends. Moving quietly back to her bed, she checked her suitcase one more time. Satisfied she had everything packed that she'd need, she carefully put her HP laptop inside and zipped the suitcase closed.

Alison strapped on her cross-body purse, opening it one more time to make sure she'd put money in her wallet. She'd saved her weekly allowance for two full months, and if that wasn't enough, she'd emptied her stepfather's wallet. He owed her that much, if not more, for the way he treated her. Alison slipped the bus ticket Anthony had sent her into a zippered compartment, and then closed her purse. Everything was in order. It was time.

Slowly opening the door, Alison crept down the hallway with the heavy suitcase and down the stairs. At the front door, she paused momentarily. She was eager to leave her school bullies and pervert stepfather, but leaving her mom was another thing. Maybe someday, Alison and Anthony would come back to visit and her mother would be so happy to see her that she'd forgive her for running away.

Alison locked the front door and began the ten-block walk to the bus station.

<><><>

By the time Brody reached Mollie's Cafe where he'd promised to meet Cameron, it was six o'clock and the dinner crowd had descended upon the small restaurant. All tables and booths were filled, so as he waited for an opening, he gazed out the window.

Mollie's Cafe had the best comfort food in town, not that Brody needed comforting, and certainly not by Mollie. He turned and spotted her back by the kitchen door and thought of a time long ago when he couldn't wait to see her.

Mollie was Cameron's best friend and a frequent guest at their home. She was a bubbly, red-haired knockout, and Brody couldn't believe his luck when she said yes to their first date. They'd dated all through his senior year. Most people thought they'd marry after high school, as did he. But then things changed.

Brody was nineteen-years-old when his mother died suddenly. As if the shock of losing her weren’t enough, the child welfare people threatened to put his brothers into foster homes. With help from family friends, Brody convinced them he could care for his brothers. So they all stayed in the family home, and Brody became a stand-in mom and dad, working a full-time job and attending the police academy at night.

Brody remembered how the mountain of responsibility became heavy on his young shoulders, and time was a precious commodity he never had enough of. Soon he told Mollie he couldn't see her anymore. Who had time for movies, ball games and dances, when he had two brothers to raise? Brody knew he'd broken her heart, and suspected she'd never forgiven him.

A few years later, Mollie turned eighteen and learned she was pregnant after her high school graduation party. Cameron told Brody she was devastated. She had a college scholarship and had just been accepted at Purdue. A pregnancy didn't enter into her plans.

She married Will Destin and gave birth to a baby girl she named Hailey. Six months later, Mollie became a widow when Will's truck was hit by a freight train speeding to Chicago. She'd never remarried, and every time he saw her, Brody felt guilty that the feelings he once had for her were gone.

A light punch to his arm let him know his younger brother had arrived.

"What are you thinking about, Brody?" Cameron asked. "You look like you're in the
Twilight Zone.
"

"I'm back now," Brody said with a grin.

Mollie approached them with two menus tucked under her arm. "If it isn't the handsome Chase brothers. I've got a booth over here with your names on it."

She led them to a booth and handed them each a menu. "The special tonight is meatloaf with mashed potatoes, if you're interested."

"My favorite. Sign me up," said Cameron as he returned Mollie's smile.

"Me, too," Brody agreed.

As soon as she returned to the kitchen, Brody related what he'd learned in Terre Haute. "Amanda Jenkins' grandmother, Ellen, said that the girl was having a tough time just before she ran away. Amanda had lost her parents in a traffic accident and had to move in with her grandmother and change schools. She was being bullied at school, and Ellen didn't think she'd made any friends."

"Did you ask her if Amanda had mentioned Sophia Bradford?" asked Cameron.

"Yes. Her grandmother didn't recognize the name. But that doesn't mean there isn't a connection between the two girls. We just haven't found it."

"Right. Were you able to get Amanda's computer equipment? We can learn a lot by studying where she went on the web."

Brody shook his head, "No luck. It seems she took her laptop with her, as well as her iPhone, when she left."

"I didn't have any luck with that either," Cameron added. "Sophia took her laptop with her, too."

"Damn it. I was counting on getting those laptops." Brody expelled a long, tired breath.

"I'm not sure how much good we would have gained getting the laptops. Since Kent Fillion left, we don't have anyone certified in forensic computer technology to examine them," said Cameron.