Too Young to Kill

by M. William Phelps

  Adrianne didn’t need problems at home on top of the problems she had at school.

  “Yes, let’s do it,” Adrianne said again.

  Jo said they would go that night.

  Upon returning to the station house, EMPD Officer Allen called Sarah Kolb. A woman answered and told the cop to hold on. As soon as they started asking around, looking for Adrianne, the EMPD had heard that the last two people with Adrianne were Sarah Kolb and Cory Gregory.

  “Is this Sarah?” Officer Allen asked after a young female voice got on the line.

  “Yes.”

  After a few introductory words, Allen said, “Are you friends with Adrianne Reynolds?”

  “To be honest, no!”

  “Okay, but you had contact with her earlier today?”

  “Yes, I did,” Sarah said.

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, in between twelve thirty and one.” Sarah sounded calm. Maybe even a bit concerned for someone she had no trouble saying was as a former friend.

  “Were you and Cory Gregory giving her a ride somewhere?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sarah told Officer Allen that Adrianne did not want to be dropped off at home. So they let her out at the McDonald’s near her house. “Because,” Sarah added, “she said that she didn’t want her parents to see that she was in the car with a boy. And before, when I had hung out with her one time, she told her parents that Cory was my brother, and he’s not.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Allen said, beckoning Sarah to continue.

  “So I dropped her off at McDonald’s, which is, like, you know, right across the street from her house.”

  “Right.”

  “And that was the last time I saw her.”

  At one point, Sarah said Adrianne was wearing an “orange hoodie and blue jeans,” when she and Cory last saw her. Sarah gave Allen a few names of friends who might have seen Adrianne after they dropped her off. People the cops should be checking in with to see if Adrianne was with them.

  “You haven’t heard from her since then?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Sarah said before suggesting Adrianne had probably run away. “If you do hear anything,” Sarah added before they hung up, “I would appreciate it if you would call me and let me know.”

  6

  As the nine o’clock hour came to pass on Friday night, January 21, 2005, the light snow that had started to fall earlier began to come down more steadily. Standing in his living room, looking out onto Seventh Street, watching the snowflakes collect on the grass, Tony Reynolds shook his head and wondered about his daughter. She was just a tiny thing: five feet four inches, 107 pounds. Her brown hair matched the color of her eyes. Tony kept seeing Adrianne’s smile. Hearing her voice. Seeing her walk through the front door into the living room.

  “It’s okay,” Jo told him, walking up and consoling her husband. “We’ll find her, Tony.”

  During that counseling session, which took place the Friday before Adrianne disappeared, Jo and Adrianne had had a breakthrough. Through tears and honesty, Adrianne admitted, being the intelligent young person (maybe beyond her years) she was, that by her “defying” Tony and Jo, she had been wrong. There was no room in their lives for insubordination, disobedience, and immature behavior, Jo contended. Adrianne was smarter than that. More grown-up. Jo and Tony had not asked for a lot from Adrianne, and she finally seemed to realize this. During the session Adrianne was asked how the problems she had been causing in school and at home affected her life.

  “I cannot be trusted,” she answered. It was a terse, direct response, which told the counselor that Adrianne understood the ramifications of her behavior.

  A major step forward.

  Later, during the same session, Adrianne added that she had done “nothing” to resolve those problems and wanted more than anything “to be able to tell the truth . . . and to know that I have earned back [that trust] I have broken.”

  “I brought all of this on myself,” Adrianne said, taking full responsibility for her life.

  She was on her way toward healing.

  Jo couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but then again, she knew Adrianne was a smart kid, with a big heart, who just needed to understand and feel that she was being loved.

  By the end of the session, they had made plans to go back in two weeks.

  But Adrianne was nowhere to be found, and the time for the second session had come and gone.

  Shortly after the nine o’clock hour, Jo found Sarah Kolb’s phone number and called her.

  “Hey,” Jo said, explaining who she was, “have you seen Adrianne? We can’t find her.” Jo sounded more worried than scared. More concerned than snappy.

  Flies with honey . . . and that whole thing.

  There was concern and sincerity in Sarah’s voice, Jo recalled. Sarah said she wanted to help. She had seen Adrianne earlier that day and dropped her off, just as Cory had explained to his dad, at the McDonald’s. But she had no idea where she went after that.

  “I dropped her off at the McDonald’s,” Sarah explained, “because she didn’t want you guys to know that there were boys in the car.”

  “What happened? When?”

  “Oh, there was an argument in the car . . . ,” Sarah offered, but didn’t say between whom. Jo assumed it was between Sarah and Adrianne; she had been given some of the details from Adrianne about her on-again, off-again relationship/friendship with Sarah. “Adrianne wanted to go home. She told me McDonald’s because of the boys in the car, and she didn’t want to get into trouble.”

  Jo thought this was odd for Adrianne to be concerned about someone being home at noon.

  Tony and I are both at work then....

  Not a chance of anyone being around.

  Why would she care about that?

  On the other hand, Adrianne felt Jo and Tony were always on her back, asking her who she was “running around with.” They would certainly have a few questions about Cory Gregory being in the car with Adrianne. Tony didn’t like him, the way he dressed, his attitude, or that look in his eye. Tony knew the type of people Cory hung around with and judged them. Tony wanted and encouraged Adrianne to do better. Cory looked like trouble.

  “That’s it?” Jo asked Sarah. Now that she thought about it, perhaps Adrianne was worried a neighbor would see Sarah and Cory drop her off and then blab to Tony.

  “Yeah, I haven’t seen or heard from her since then.”

  “Call me if you do, okay?”

  “Sure,” Sarah said.

  On a questionnaire Adrianne answered during a return trip to the psychologist back in 2003, she said she had no religion. Her hobbies, she listed, were singing, drawing, and dance. She said growing up was “hard,” the drugs she watched people do around her, she claimed, made life “hard.” She said the two things she liked best about school were “friends and lunch.” She listed the two most important people in her life as a “deceased uncle” and “two friends, also deceased.” She claimed to be only ten years old when she started dating, and fourteen when she lost her virginity. One of the questions Adrianne was asked on that day seemed to draw the most jarring answer.

  What do you read?

  Murder.

  Sleep was not going to come with smiling sheep jumping through their dreams, singing “Kumbaya,” offering Tony and Jo beautiful thoughts on this night. Tony’s daughter was out there . . . somewhere.

  In trouble.

  He could feel it in his bones.

  Yet, Tony and Jo needed to try to find some rest if they were going to be any good to Adrianne.

  Jo and Tony’s bedroom was in the basement of their ranch-style home. Adrianne’s room was directly above them on ground level. Jo’s twins, Joshua and Justin, also had rooms on the same floor as Adrianne.

  Before heading downstairs to bed, Jo and Tony discussed what they should do.

  Tony had an idea. They’d done it before.

  He and Jo placed several empty cans on the top of Adrianne’s door, so if she tried t
o sneak in during the middle of the night, the cans would fall, make a racket on the floor, and wake them up below.

  A booby trap.

  If nothing else, it helped them to cope. Gave them hope. Maybe a false sense that Adrianne was out and about, perhaps drunk, high, or finding trouble with a boy, and she would be coming home eventually when the bender was over.

  Optimism. In this situation, you grasp on to any thread you can.

  “Typical of Adrianne,” Jo remarked later, “because she loved to talk so much, we honestly believed at that time that she had maybe gone over a friend’s house, got to talking, and lost track of time.”

  Tossing and turning, every time a car drove by the house and the headlights bounced off the top of the wall in Tony’s bedroom, or an engine roared, maybe footsteps outside, he opened his eyes and looked up. A few times, he even got out of bed as a shadow passed by the head-level basement windows, because he thought someone was walking into the house.

  Adrianne?

  Nope, just the trees blowing in the wind. Kids out on the street messing around.

  Nestled back in bed, Tony considered tomorrow to be another day. If she didn’t come home tonight, they’d find her in the morning. It was a good bet Adrianne hightailed it back to Texas, and her mother was covering for her, allowing Tony time to blow off some steam. Adrianne was probably fed up with all those kids at school she called friends and decided she was better off in Texas.

  This thought, if nothing else, was enough to cradle Tony to sleep.

  7

  Early the next morning, Saturday, January 22, Jo and Tony got up, had their morning coffee, showered, and hit the road. It was slow going, because the overnight snow had turned back into freezing drizzle, which put a slippery glaze over everything.

  There had been no word from Adrianne throughout the night.

  Something was wrong. Tony knew it.

  They drove out to Port Byron, a twenty-minute ride northeast, snaking along the bank of the Mississippi. Adrianne had a friend there. She had sometimes gone over to his house to hang out.

  “Nope. Haven’t seen her,” her friend said.

  They drove over to the Black Hawk College Outreach Center, Adrianne’s high school. Parked. Got out. Began searching around the premises, like detectives.

  “We were actually looking through the bushes at this point,” Jo recalled. “We knew there was a fight in the car”—something Sarah Kolb had told them the previous night—“and now our imaginations got the best of us and we were searching on our hands and knees through the bushes.”

  Looking for what?

  “Adrianne’s body,” Jo said.

  Anxiety now dictated their actions. So many different scenarios ran through their minds. Tony and Jo had a hard time keeping reality on track. They allowed their emotions to control their thoughts and what they did. There had been no indication that Adrianne was in trouble, other than her not calling and not coming home. Yet, they expected the worst.

  Then they didn’t.

  That roller-coaster ride had begun: one minute, things were fine and they presumed Adrianne was going to be home when they pulled in the driveway. The next, they were burying her, writing a eulogy.

  “Adrianne,” Jo said, “had never gone twenty-four hours without contacting us.”

  They were closing in on that hour.

  With no luck at the school, they drove home. Throughout this time, Tony and Jo had called the EMPD to see if the cops had uncovered any news of Adrianne’s whereabouts.

  The EMPD said they did not have any new leads, but they were working on the case.

  Jo called Sarah Kolb again to see if Sarah had heard from Adrianne throughout the night. If she was in trouble, Adrianne would likely call her friends first. She did not have a cell phone—so Jo and Tony could not track her down that way.

  “No, I have not heard from her.” Jo could tell Sarah was with someone. She heard voices in the background. “Here,” Sarah said, “talk to Cory. He might know what’s going on.”

  Jo waited.

  “Yup?” Cory Gregory said.

  “Have you seen or heard from Adrianne? We’re really worried about her.”

  Cory had a noticeable Midwestern drawl, with a heavy Southern effect. A cocky attitude.

  “We done let her off at McDonald’s,” Cory said. Then explained why, giving Jo the same answer Sarah had already given them.

  Jo and Tony did not know Cory that well, other than what Adrianne had said about him. They had seen him one time, and he was sitting inside a car. They had heard about Cory enough from Adrianne, but even Adrianne was guarded regarding what she shared. No doubt she wanted to protect his image because she wanted to hang around Cory without Jo and Tony worrying about her. There was something between Cory and Adrianne—that much was no secret. The one time Jo and Tony had seen Cory, Sarah had shown up at the house to pick up Adrianne for a party. It was the previous year, 2004, a few weeks before Christmas.

  “Who’s that?” Tony asked about the boy sitting in Sarah’s car.

  “Sarah’s brother,” Adrianne lied.

  “Yeah,” Sarah added, backing her up. Cory gave the old man a wave and smile.

  “It’s Sarah’s brother. He’s cool, Dad. Don’t worry.”

  Yes, she said those often regrettable two words mothers and fathers hear repeatedly: “Don’t worry.”

  Everything is going to be just fine.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Adrianne was missing. And Sarah and Cory, supposedly the last two people to have seen her, had not heard from Adrianne, so they claimed, and had no idea where she might have run off to. It was as if Adrianne Reynolds, a sixteen-year-old girl who never had direction in life, to begin with, had turned into dust and had blown away with the wind.

  8

  Fox Pointe Apartments on Seventh Street in East Moline, a two-lane road with a snow-covered grass divider between, was a place Tony and Jo knew Adrianne had hung out at, once in a while. Near Wiman Park, Fox Pointe was not one of those places Tony would have chosen for his baby girl to be running off to, if it was up to him. But what was a father to do? Adrianne was going to go where she wanted. As much as he would have liked to do it, Tony couldn’t lock his little girl up in the house. She was sixteen going on thirty. Giving her that freedom and space to be her own person, to come and go as she pleased (with restrictions), even though she had messed up in the past, was something Tony had wrestled with, but decided Adrianne needed it. After all, he and Jo wanted Adrianne to understand that they trusted her to make the right choices.

  Jo and Tony drove to Fox Pointe. Trolling slowly through the parking lot, Jo looking at cars, Tony staring toward the front doors of the apartments, they hoped to recognize a car or maybe even bump into one of those boys Adrianne was coming to visit. They didn’t know why Adrianne came here. All she had said was that she had “friends at Fox Pointe.” Tony, more than Jo, knew what her “friends” looked like, who they were by face, but not name.

  After a careful drive through the parking lot, once again they met a dead end.

  From there, they drove to the EMPD. Tony wanted to pass on to the cops a few names and addresses and see what was going on, if they had uncovered anything new.

  “We wanted to give them the Fox Pointe address, mainly,” Jo said. “Maybe they could find out more than we did.”

  A strange thing happened as Tony and Jo stood inside the EMPD. On the desk of the officer they were giving the Fox Pointe address to were several photos of those “friends” Adrianne had visited at Fox Pointe. Tony recognized them.

  Jo felt Tony bump her with an elbow; then he nodded in the direction of the photos.

  “Is this the people who live there?” the cop asked.

  “Yeah,” Tony said.

  Come to find out, these were friends of Sarah Kolb’s. She had introduced them to Adrianne.

  More Juggalos.

  The cops said they were looking into it. And it appeared they had a bead on someo
ne. There was nothing Tony and Jo could do standing inside the police station, asking questions the police could not answer.

  Go home. Wait for her to call. Continue to contact Adrianne’s friends. Let us do our jobs, they were told.

  She’s going to turn up somewhere, Tony told himself as he and Jo left the station house.

  Soon.

  Leaving the EMPD, Tony and Jo took the same route they had the previous night, going back out to Port Byron to see Adrianne’s friend.

  He wasn’t home.

  Next, they trekked back to the school to conduct a more thorough search of the grounds.

  Déjà vu.

  “Let’s try McDonald’s,” Jo suggested. They hadn’t been there.

  The snow continued to fall as the wipers on Tony’s vehicle knocked back and forth against the sides of the windshield; fear and worry swelled inside the car like a stink.

  Silence became the enemy.

  “I am going to beat her ass when I find her!” Tony said to Jo at one point.

  “No, you’re not. You better not.”

  It turned into an argument.

  At McDonald’s, they found nothing. Not one sign of Adrianne. They showed photos of Adrianne to patrons and employees. No one seemed to recognize her. Or could think of anything they had seen out of the ordinary recently.

  They were back at square one.

  The sad and sobering statistics regarding runaways and missing children in the United States suggest a bit of confusion and misinterpretation on the public’s part—that is, if crime television, the media in general, and the Internet are the places you get your data. Watching television, one might think that child abductions happen every hour of the day. And yet, breaking the data down, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the truth of the matter doesn’t quite add up to the frenzy of fear and worry we have shown in recent years. One in seven kids between the ages of ten and eighteen will run away from home at some point in his or her life. Shockingly, there are 1 to 3 million runaway/homeless kids living on the streets in the United States. Of these children, 797,500 (younger than eighteen) were reported missing in a one-year period of time, which equates to an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.