Too Young to Kill (11 page)

“Was Adrianne in good physical condition when she left your vehicle?”

“Yes,” Sarah said.

“Would you consent to a polygraph?”

Sarah and her mother waited a beat.

Then they shook their heads.

“No,” Sarah and her mother said at the same time.

18

Jo and Tony had no choice but to go to bed on Monday night without knowing where Adrianne was, or what might have happened to her.

“At this point, we’re back to thinking she’s a runaway,” Jo explained.

The Natalee Holloway syndrome: She’s alive. She’s dead.

Alive.

Dead.

Adrianne’s parents had no idea how they were feeling anymore because they were numb. Each hour that passed brought with it another theory or thought. An impulse. An
aha
moment. Then more questions. Confusion. Finally . . . pain.

It was maddening.

On Tuesday morning, a day anyone connected to the case would not soon forget, Tony got up and went to work. Jo had Tuesdays off, as a normal course of her workweek.

Not long after Tony left, the EMPD called the house.

“Can you bring your computer down here?” an investigator asked Jo.

Now they were getting somewhere. There was obviously a break.

Jo got that sick feeling back in her stomach as the investigator explained how they needed to go through the computer and find out if there was any communication between Adrianne and Sarah at all over the past week, month, or before Christmas the previous year.

Jo packaged the computer and drove it down to the police station. She and Tony had been “very strict” with Adrianne regarding use of the computer. “I didn’t allow her on the computer unless I was home.”

Adrianne herself talked about this to her psychologist, saying she was watched so closely on the family PC, it got to the point where it wasn’t worth using it anymore. That said, however, as any parent knows, unless you stand over the shoulder of your child and watch every mouse click and tap of the keyboard, you could be standing in the same room while she “chats” with someone you don’t want her to be.

Sarah Kolb, though, was not on that list of people Tony and Jo did not want Adrianne communicating with via the computer.

“I didn’t allow her in the chat rooms,” Jo recalled.

While she was down at the EMPD, Jo found out that the ISP had been called into the investigation on a more hands-on basis. This, of course, worried her. Things were damn serious if the state police were involved.

“Can [the state police] go out and search Adrianne’s room?” a cop asked Jo. Two ISP detectives were ready to drive out to the house right away.

Jo said, “Yes, of course.” She had that
what’s going on?
look about her face.

“Ma’am, we’re looking for any connection or communication between Adrianne and Sarah.”

Jo understood, but she wondered why.

“We want you to know that Sarah and Cory are refusing to take a polygraph test.”

The EMPD had reached out to Cory and asked him the same set of questions as they had Sarah—and they got, basically, the same answers.

A lump developed in Jo’s throat.
What is going on here?
One of the questions that kept popping up in Jo’s mind as she heard that lie detector tests were being offered and refused became:
Why aren’t they asking me and Tony to take a test? My boys? Neighbors? Known pedophiles?

Must mean they know something they’re not telling.

Jo got herself together and called Tony, but she gave him only certain details. Why worry the guy when he was two hundred miles from home. It would only cause unneeded stress.

Smart move.

With information coming in gradually, Jo felt Adrianne might not be coming home. Such a seesaw of emotions. Such a litany of situations to consider.

Alive. Dead.

To Jo, it still didn’t feel as if Adrianne was
not
ever going to come home. It was just that she was, well, gone. Like they had dropped her off at the airport and she had gotten on a plane and traveled. But had not reached her destination yet.

Limbo.

This was the beginning of that “closure” everyone involved in these types of situations will eventually talk about.

Answers become imperative to one’s sanity. Without them, a parent is left in a state of perpetual grief and mourning. It’s like leaving a movie ten minutes before it’s over: You will wonder. You will ask yourself questions. You ultimately will write your own ending.

The two detectives doing most of the footwork, Sergeants Timothy “Tim” Steines and Mike Britt, went over to interview Cory Gregory’s neighbor Clair O’Brien (pseudonym) on January 25, 2005, at 11:34
A.M.
They figured Clair knew a lot more about the case than they had thought previously.

While they were driving up to Clair’s house, who came walking out the door?

None other than Cory Gregory himself.

He was carrying a CD.

“Cory,” one of the cops said, nodding. “How are you?”

Cory appeared very nervous at the sight of both detectives as they greeted him, a report detailed.

As Cory walked home, the detectives found Clair and she let them into her home. As they got settled inside the house, Clair’s doorbell rang.

Was it Cory?

Clair said, “Yeah?”

“Are they cops, [Clair]?”

“Yes.”

Cory didn’t say anything more. He turned and walked back toward his house.

Clair recalled exactly what she had told the other cops the previous night, adding that Sean McKittrick “had lived with Cory and was basically a homeless kid otherwise.”

Which begged the question: was Sean more involved than he had let on?

One of the things Sean had told Clair, which she explained in great detail to Steines and Britt, was that Sarah had become upset at Adrianne because she found out that Cory and Adrianne were “passing love notes.” Another piece of information Clair relayed—that had not been known until then—was that Cory’s father, Bert Gregory, had advised Cory not to have any additional contact with Sarah.

They asked about Cory and what he was doing at her house before they arrived.

“Strange,” Clair said. “He came over here to use my phone to call Sarah. Then he took it and went upstairs to talk privately.”

“Why is that odd?”

“He’s never done it before. They’ve never hid their conversations from me. I tried to ask him about what happened Friday . . . but he only told me the same story.”

The fight . . . McDonald’s . . . the last time they saw Adrianne.

Near lunchtime, ISP special agent Chad Brodersen, along with Special Agent Chris Endress, caught up with Brian Engle, Sarah Kolb’s grandfather, at the Treasure Hunt Antique Shop in Aledo, Illinois. Aledo is about an hour south of East Moline on Route 67. It’s a quiet ride through the country: farms, dirt roads, roadside diners, and vegetable stands. That sort of thing.

Brian and his wife, Mary, owned a farm with some land in the same general region, and Sarah, along with her mother, made the drive out to visit them from time to time. In fact, Brian Engle said, Sarah was out at the farm on Friday night, January 21. But not with her mother. This time, she was with Cory Gregory, he said. But that was not the first time Brian had seen his granddaughter that day.

It was somewhere between 4:50 and 5:00
P.M.
, Brian recalled, when he first ran into Sarah.

“She was driving her red Geo Prizm.” Brian spotted Sarah at the intersection of Millersburg Road and Route 17. He was heading to his farm; Sarah was driving in the opposite direction, toward Aledo.

“I just assumed she must have been coming from my house,” he said, “after visiting with her grandmother.” (The Engle house and farm are not on the same property.)

It was Mary’s birthday. Why wouldn’t her granddaughter be out there saying hello?

“Did you see her anywhere else on that night?” one of the agents asked.

Brian hesitated, a report of the conversation noted, as if he didn’t want to answer the question.

“What is it?” the agent asked.

Brian looked down at the ground. Then: “I saw her parked on the back side of the farm, later on that night.”

“Explain. . . .”

Brian said it was strange because a person had to leave the road to get out to that section of the farm where he saw Sarah’s car. Off-road driving in a Geo Prizm was not recommended by the manufacturer—that’s for sure.

“Would you know of any legitimate reason why Sarah would be driving her car off the road onto the back of the farm?” one of the agents asked.

“I do not know what she was doing out there,” Brian answered.

“Could we have your consent to search the farm?” Brodersen asked. The implication was implicit in the agent’s tone: they could do this easily, without any trouble, or go through a judge.

But a search was going to be conducted, one way or another.

“I have a nephew . . . who is a former police officer,” Brian said. “He checked out that area already.”

“We’re talking about a detailed search, Mr. Engle, of the
entire
property.”

“I have over one hundred sixty acres, sir. It would be impossible for you to conduct a detailed search alone.”

“We could bring whatever resources were necessary, Mr. Engle. We need your permission first, however.”

Brian thought about it. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of allowing the Illinois State Police to go through his entire farm, acre by acre, but he said he’d sign the waiver.

Special Agent Brodersen explained that they’d be heading out there at once. It would help if Engle followed.

Brian Engle said he’d meet them. He had a few more things he wanted to share, now that he had thought about it, regarding what had happened that night.

19

Jo was at home on Monday afternoon. Alone. Waiting for any news that might come in. She had Adrianne’s favorite teddy bear braced against her chest, hugging it tightly, as the ISP searched Adrianne’s room behind her. It was clear they knew a hell of a lot more than they were sharing.

Jo was cool with that. A tragedy coming in little by little was okay.

Good news all at once; bad news in spurts.

It helped numb the pain.

Cushion the blow.

Cops don’t drop painful bombshells on family members as a case is unfolding, even if they know the ultimate outcome. Police give them time to take things in, bits and pieces, gradually.

After a time, the detectives searching Adrianne’s room came out with several items. Papers, mainly. Notes. Letters. Address book.

One of the cops sat down next to Jo. He must have picked up on what she was going through, how she was feeling.

Was there any other way to put this?

“Listen,” he said as Jo stared at him, “sometimes . . . you know, sometimes they don’t come home alive.”

Jo was floored by this comment. What was he trying to say?
Spit it out, man. Tell me.

“Yeah . . . I guess” was all Jo could manage. She wanted to run, she said. Scream. Curl up in a ball. Roll away.

“We’re hoping to have this case wrapped up real soon.”

Jo shook her head and looked at both detectives.

One of them said, “Somebody’s likely going to be going to prison for a long time.”

“Is someone hiding her out?” Jo still wasn’t sold on the idea that Adrianne was dead. “Could they go to prison for a long time for that?”

“Sure, they could.” There wasn’t much left to say. “We’ll be in touch soon, okay, Mrs. Reynolds,” one of the detectives said as they left.

Still believing Adrianne was alive and hiding out somewhere, Jo called Adrianne’s work and told her boss, “If someone comes down there to pick her check up, do not give it to them. Call the police.”

“Will do.”

Somewhat panicked, not knowing what to think, Jo called the EMPD and told the officer in charge, “If you find Adrianne’s body,
please
don’t call Tony. Allow him to come home first.” She didn’t want Tony to have to drive all the way home from his shift with the burden of death on his shoulders.

This damn roller-coaster ride. Jo hated it. Wished it would stop.

Tony made it home a few hours later. They sat together and waited—hoping like heck Adrianne was going to call and say she had run away. Or maybe she’d even walk through the door. It’s a funny thing how hope has a way of always hovering there in the background, even when one’s gut says it’s over. It was hope keeping Tony in check, stopping him from driving over to Sarah’s or Cory’s and grabbing those kids by the neck and shaking them until they coughed up where the hell his daughter was being hidden. Hope kept Tony from a breakdown. Hope stopped Tony from driving down to the EMPD and demanding to know what the hell was going on. It was there in that possibility—small as it was—that Adrianne could walk through the door and Tony could erupt into
Where the
hell
have you been?

Hope, indeed, is what keeps most people from acting irrationally at times when the situation calls for it.

Hope keeps emotions teetering on the balance between sanity and insanity.

Hope allows people to go forward in the face of tragedy.

Jo called some friends and family and explained the latest developments.

Tony said he was driving down to those apartments nearby to have a look around again.

“Someone’s got her! I know it.”

It was all he could do not to knock on every single door.

20

Special Agent Chad Brodersen was escorted around Brian and Mary Engle’s farm by Brian Engle and a family member who had shown up at the family’s antique shop while Brian was answering questions. It was late afternoon now, January 25, Tuesday, the sun tucking itself behind the countryside, an orange ball of fuzzy fire getting ready to disappear for another night.

Agent Brodersen wanted to begin the search at the spot where Brian had seen Sarah. There would be a team of investigators and crime scene techs coming out to the farm, but for now, Brodersen, Brian, and Brian’s nephew were the only ones out there.