Little Lost Angel (12 page)

“Let’s go to McDonald’s,” Laurie said with a smile. “I’m hungry.”

*  *  *

Taking care to back the car into a parking space so that no one could see the blood stains on the trunk, Laurie strutted inside the restaurant and ordered a full breakfast. While Hope and Melinda were deciding what they wanted, Toni slipped away to a pay phone.

“Where’s Toni?” Laurie growled as they sat at a table.

“She said she had to call Mikel Pommerehn,” Hope said. “Her mom still thinks she spent the night there. She wants to make sure her mom hasn’t called.”

“That better be who she’s calling,” Laurie said. Then she stuck a fork in her sausage patty and showed it to Melinda and Hope. “It looks like Shanda.”

Looking nervously back at the table, Toni whispered into the phone, “Something really bad has happened.”

“You didn’t get in a wreck, did you?” Mikel asked.

“No. Worse than that. Something terrible.”

“Well, what?” Mikel was getting impatient.

“Laurie and her friend Melinda, they killed a little girl.”

There was a pause at the other end. “You’re kidding,” Mikel said finally. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? I don’t think it’s funny, Toni.”

“No,” Toni said sharply, then turned to see if Laurie and the others were looking at her. They were. She lowered her voice and pleaded with Mikel to believe her. “They beat her with a crowbar and took her out and burned her. Me and Hope watched it.”

Mikel was too stunned to say anything.

“Listen, I can’t talk anymore,” Toni said. “They’re getting suspicious. Call my mom and tell her I’m on my way home but don’t say a thing about this. Come up to Arby’s and meet me in an hour.”

When she walked back to the table, Laurie eyed her distrustfully. “Who were you talking to?” Laurie asked.

“Just Mikel,” Toni said coolly. “I wanted to see if my mom called. She didn’t.”

Satisfied, Laurie finished her food and the girls drove Toni to her house. Before she got out, Laurie and Melinda
reminded her again that everyone had to stick together. Everybody had to keep quiet. Toni said she understood, then ran into her home.

“Hi, Toni,” Clifton Lawrence said as his daughter came through the door. “Did you have a good time at Mikel’s last night?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Toni said, rushing to her room. “Can’t talk. I’ve got to get ready for work.”

Later, as Clifton Lawrence drove his daughter to Arby’s, where she worked as a cashier, he noticed that she had little to say. He figured she and Mikel had just stayed up late. She’s probably just tired, he thought.

7

S
teve Sharer awoke to the sound of the television in the living room. The clock at his bedside said four in the morning.

Damn. Shanda must have left it on. He rolled out of bed, stumbled into the living room, and switched off the late-night movie. The house felt drafty. Then he saw why: The kitchen door was slightly ajar. Probably the work of his stepson, Larry Dale, Steve thought. He had probably come in late and forgotten to close it. He would have to talk to that boy in the morning. Steve shut and locked the door. On the way back to his bedroom he glanced in Shanda’s bedroom but didn’t see her. He assumed she’d gone to sleep on the bed downstairs, didn’t think any more about it, and went back to sleep.

Three hours later the alarm clock started ringing. Seven o’clock. Time to get up. Steve’s father and Sharon’s stepfather would be arriving soon, ready to start on the remodeling job. Steve slipped out of bed and Sharon followed. As Steve started a pot of coffee, Sharon went downstairs to check on Shanda. Seconds later she came running back up to the kitchen.

“Steve! Shanda’s not down there.”

“What do you mean she’s not down there?”

“She’s not there and neither is Larry Dale,” Sharon said. “I don’t think Larry Dale even came home last night. His bed hasn’t been slept in.”

“My God, I bet she got up to let the dog out and I locked her out last night,” Steve shouted as he ran out the back door. He checked the cars. He checked the garage. Then he noticed Sparky, the family dog, limping up the driveway. She was whimpering and dragging her hindquarters.

“What the hell is going on?” Steve wondered out loud.

If Steve had locked the door on Shanda while she was putting Sparky outside, surely she’d have banged on the door or come around and knocked on her parents’ bedroom window. They would have heard her.

“It was freezing out and her coat and purse were still on the kitchen table,” Steve recalled. “I figured that if she was locked out she’d have gone over to one of the neighbors. I went to all their houses but she wasn’t there.”

Sharon called Michele’s house. Michele hadn’t seen Shanda since the night before. Sharon started calling all of Shanda’s friends. Just then Steve’s father, Bill Sharer, pulled up in the driveway. It was Shanda’s grandfather who first uttered the unspeakable: “Maybe somebody grabbed her when she let the dog out.”

Steve and his father got in Steve’s truck and drove around the neighborhood, then to some woods not far away.

“Dad said we needed to check the woods, so we got out and combed the area,” Steve said. “I felt like I was in a nightmare. I was going crazy with worry.”

*  *  *

Sixty miles away, near the small town of Canaan, a man who would play a pivotal role in this drama was just waking up.

Donn Foley was roused from sleep by the sound of his hounds rustling in their chainlink pens outside his trailer.

The bird dogs were restless because it was Saturday, the day their master took them quail hunting. The hounds knew it was Saturday because the sun had crept over the treetops
and Donn’s truck was still parked beside the barn. Had it been a weekday, the pickup would be gone by now and Donn would be at work, digging up and dismantling unexploded mortar shells at the firing range at Jefferson Proving Grounds, an Army artillery-testing installation a few miles west of his small farm. It was dangerous and exhausting work and Donn, a hard-muscled, forty-nine-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War, enjoyed sleeping late on Saturdays.

He lingered in the warmth of his blankets, in no hurry to start the day. Then he remembered something that made him almost as eager as the dogs: This was the day he’d be taking his youngest pointer pup on her first hunt.

Donn pulled his aching body out of bed and quickly slipped on his overalls, sweatshirt, boots, and hunting vest. He shuffled into his kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, then pulled a worn baseball cap over his balding head and stepped out into the brisk morning air. As he walked toward the barn to feed his ponies and mules, he saw the anxious dogs spinning in crazy circles in their pens, yapping in frenzied excitement. After completing his morning chores, he returned to the warmth of his kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. He lit a cigarette, then sat down at the kitchen table to wait for his older brother, Ralph, to arrive.

As he looked out the kitchen window, Donn saw his son Greg’s truck approaching on the gravel road that ran by the front of the farm. But Greg’s truck breezed by without stopping. The next vehicle down the road was Ralph Foley’s truck. As it pulled up the driveway, Donn Foley stuck his head out the trailer door. “Want a cup of coffee?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess I will,” Ralph said. “No point in hurrying. It’s still pretty cold.”

The brothers knew that quail were slow to move from their coveys on cold mornings. The birds would huddle for warmth with their tail ends together until the temperature rose to a comfortable degree. The quail would not become targets for hunters until they spread out into fields to feed on scattered grain.

Donn and Ralph finished the pot of coffee, then, deciding they’d waited long enough, they loaded the dogs into the
traveling cages in the back of Ralph’s truck and headed toward the Jefferson Proving Grounds, where Donn had hunting privileges on the hundreds of acres that weren’t used for testing.

The Foleys had traveled less than a mile when they turned onto Lemon Road. As they drove along slowly, Donn gazed out his window at the stubble of a harvested soybean crop. Donn knew that the owner of the field didn’t allow hunting on his property, but a few weeks earlier Donn had spotted quail in the field and he and Ralph had turned the dogs loose and bagged a few.

Dense woods filled Ralph’s side of the road, so he left the bird-watching to his brother. It wasn’t until the woods on the left opened into another barren soybean field that Ralph looked out his window. Almost immediately he spotted something strange—a horrible sight that still burns in his memory.

“Goddamn, did you see that?” Ralph said. He lifted his foot off the gas pedal and the truck eased to a stop. “That looked like a body.”

Donn studied the curious expression on his brother’s face and laughed nervously. “Ah, bullshit.” Then he turned and looked through the back window and saw what had startled his brother. “What the hell is that?” Donn asked.

Ralph put the truck in reverse and backed up slowly, stopping alongside a dark figure that was lying on the edge of the road in a dirt path used by tractors and combines.

“That ain’t no body,” Donn said. “Somebody’s playing a prank. That’s one of them mannequins.”

The brothers got out of the truck and stepped closer. The figure was that of a young woman. It was nude except for a pair of ripped blue panties. It lay on its back, its head pointed toward the road. It was charred black from waist to head. Its pale white legs were spread open and bent at the knees. Both arms seemed frozen in motion, stiffly reaching up to the gray winter sky with fists tightly clenched around what appeared to be fragments of cloth. Specks of long, wavy, honey-blond hair could be seen beneath a matted gray filmy substance. The face had been blackened by fire and
smoke. The eyes were cloudy and without color. The mouth was open, teeth clenched. The figure’s breasts, scorched by the fire, didn’t appear to have nipples.

“You know what this is?” Donn Foley said. “It’s one of them rubber dolls that guys have sex with. Somebody burned it as a joke.”

“I don’t know,” Ralph said. “It looks real.”

“But it doesn’t smell.” One of Donn Foley’s comrades in Vietnam had been killed by napalm and he’d never forgotten the stench. “If it was human it would smell.”

Donn knelt beside the figure. He could see toenails and body hair. With a trembling finger, he scratched the foot. It was cold but it was soft and fleshy.

“Goddamn, I think it’s real,” he gasped. “We better call the police.”

The brothers hopped in the truck and Ralph started to pull off the road to turn around when Donn ordered him to stop. “Wait a minute,” he said, pointing to the dirt path where the body lay. “There’s some tire tracks right there. You don’t want to mess them up. Maybe you better back out of here.”

Ralph saw where the icy gully beside the road had been broken by tire tracks. The tracks were fresh, and the water hadn’t frozen back over. Ralph put the truck in reverse and backed away until he was far enough up the road to turn around.

Back at the trailer, Donn called the Jefferson County sheriff’s office in Madison. Chief Deputy Randy Spry, an acquaintance of Donn’s, answered the phone. It was 10:55
A.M
.

“Randy, this is Donn Foley.”

“Yeah, Donn. How are you doing?”

“Not so good. I think we’ve found a body.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure.” Donn hesitated a few seconds. “There is a doubt in my mind. It may be a mannequin or one of them rubber dolls, but I’m almost positive it’s a body. It’s been burned.”

After Donn gave him directions, Spry told the Foleys to wait for him at the corner of Lemon and Jefferson Church
roads. Knowing that it would take Spry twenty minutes to drive from downtown Madison, Donn fixed two cups of coffee and joined Ralph at the kitchen table. The dogs, still in their traveling boxes in the back of the truck, were raising a ruckus, hungry for the scent of quail and howling because they’d been cheated of their fun. The Foleys paid them no mind. They drank their coffee and smoked two cigarettes apiece. Once they’d killed enough time they drove back to Lemon Road to wait.

*  *  *

There hadn’t been a murder in Jefferson County, Indiana, in three years, and Chief Deputy Randy Spry had his doubts when he left Madison to go meet the Foleys. But he knew Donn Foley as a hard-working, practical man; not the type to call police unless it was a serious matter. Spry turned east at the Jefferson Proving Grounds and drove along a narrow road that winded past farmhouses, crop fields laid bare for the winter, and woods thick with tall timber.

“I remember thinking that if someone wanted to dump a body, those woods were the place, not in a barren soybean field,” Spry said later.

The Foleys were waiting where Spry had told them. They waved for him to follow, then led him a quarter of a mile down Lemon Road and stopped. Spry pulled his car up beside the brothers’ truck and looked where they pointed. He too thought it looked like a burned mannequin.

“I was thinking I’d get out of the car and make sure it was a mannequin and then I’d go eat lunch,” Spry recalled. But his uncertainty grew as he drew closer. It was too lifelike to be a mannequin, but it didn’t look like any burn victim he’d ever seen. He turned to the Foleys and told them he could see where they were confused because he didn’t know if it was a body either. Returning to his car, Spry called the dispatcher on his radio and told him to send the sheriff to the scene. He purposely didn’t mention what the Foleys had found, knowing that if he did every radio buff with a police scanner would be making tracks to Lemon Road.