Chapter 6
Upon entering the Braden’s home the
detectives noticed an immediate difference from their visit the previous day:
noise. The sound of the television could be heard coming from the family room
and the dishwasher droned in the kitchen.
“I hope we didn’t stop by too early,” Green
commented as Braden ushered them in.
“You didn’t. My boys are both early risers,
so sleeping late in this house is next to impossible.” Braden looked slightly
more rested than he had the day before as he regarded them. “My wife says she
wants to do anything she can to help, but before you speak with her, I want you
know that she’s still pretty shaky. I don’t know how she’s going to hold up.”
Briscoe nodded sympathetically. “Believe me, we
understand. We’ll keep it as brief as possible.”
“I’ll let her know you’re here.”
As the detectives settled on the couch,
Briscoe’s attention was caught by a framed family portrait sitting on an end
table. He quickly looked away and focused on Braden, who was returning with his
wife. Braden’s arm protectively encircled her as he guided her toward a chair
across from the detectives.
“Mrs. Braden, we’re sorry to disturb you at
such a stressful time, but we find that it’s best to speak with people when
things are fresh in their minds,” Green explained. “We’ve already asked your
husband these questions, but we’re hoping you’ll remember something in addition
to what he told us. Is there anything that happened in the days before Corinna
disappeared that might shed some light on where she was going Tuesday?”
Holly Braden looked at him vacantly for a
moment, then seemed to focus as she frowned in concentration. “I can’t remember
anything specific. She didn’t really say or do anything that would have explained
her leaving.”
“Did you see anyone out of the ordinary
hanging around, or maybe get phone calls from strangers, even ones where the
caller hung up?”
“No, there was nothing like that. I would’ve
noticed.”
“So there was nothing unusual about her mood
or behavior lately?”
She shrugged sadly. “She was fifteen. At that
age, kids work at being unusual. Corinna could be difficult. Lately, she wanted
more independence and fewer restrictions. We had some arguments, but afterwards
she would settle down and be her old self again.”
Her husband quickly amended the
characterization by saying, “She wasn’t really difficult. She was just going
through some growing pains, like all kids do.”
“I’m not saying that Corinna was turning into
a delinquent,” his wife explained, “but she did sometimes seem to enjoy pushing
me in particular. I know all teenagers go through a period of rebellion and she
was no exception. She thought we were too strict with her. But like I said,
we’d have a disagreement and then things would go back to normal for a while.”
“What about Monday evening? Did you have an
argument then?” Briscoe asked.
“No. We had a very quiet evening.”
“Can you tell us how Corinna seemed, whether
she was nervous or upset about something?”
“She seemed a little quieter than normal at
dinner, but otherwise she was fine. Kayla called her around
Briscoe leaned forward slightly. “Kayla
Guitierrez called her Monday night?”
She nodded. “When they weren’t here or at the
Gutierrez’s working on homework together, they talked on the phone almost every
day after school. Kayla knows our rule about not allowing the kids to accept
phone calls during or after dinner, but I knew she wouldn’t call that late
unless it was important.”
“Your husband said you went to bed around
“No, I didn’t. I thought she was still asleep
the next morning when I looked in on her before I left for work, but she had
arranged her bed to make it look like she was still there. I don’t know what
time she left.”
“What about your sons?” Green suggested.
“Maybe they saw or heard something.”
“I think they would’ve said something by now
if they had,” Braden interjected. “We’ve asked them about it.”
“Do you mind if we ask them?”
He considered for a moment, then left the
room and returned with the two little boys in tow.
“Oliver, Nicholas, these men are police
detectives. They’re going to ask you some questions and I want you to answer
them truthfully. Understand?”
At the boys’ nods, Green smiled slightly and
said, “We just wanted to know if either of you heard your sister leave your
house Monday night or if you saw her anytime after everyone went to bed.”
The oldest shook his head. “I didn’t know she
was gone until I tried to wake her up for school the next day and she wasn’t in
her bed.”
Green looked at the younger boy. “What about
you? Did you hear or see your sister when you knew she should be in bed?”
The boy eyed him silently.
Braden frowned and knelt beside him. “Nicky?
Did you see Corinna leave?”
He shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly.
“Tell us what you know, Nicholas,” his father
demanded. “It’s important.”
“You’re not in any trouble,” Green assured
him. “We just want to find out where your sister was going.”
“She wouldn’t tell me where she was going,”
the boy responded.
Braden took his son firmly by the shoulders.
“What did she say?”
In response to his father’s intensity, he
answered timidly, “She told me not to tell or we would be in trouble.”
Closing his eyes, Braden took in a deep
breath and then let it out slowly. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “It’s
okay to tell now. Corinna would want you to. She would be proud of you for
telling the truth.”
He glanced at his mother and she nodded her
agreement. “I was thirsty. I saw Rina go by my room so I went downstairs and
she got me a drink of water. I think she was going outside because she was
wearing her coat and she had her backpack. She put orange milk and crackers in
it.”
Briscoe spoke quietly. “This is very
important, Nicholas. Do you have any idea what time that was?”
He shook his head.
“Wait a minute,” Braden interrupted
thoughtfully. “He had a nightmare that night. I got up with him.”
The little boy’s eyes widened. “Sponge-Bob
had big teeth. He was going to bite me.”
His father nodded impatiently. “I know,
Nicky. But did Corinna give you a drink before or after you had the bad dream?”
“After,” he replied quickly. “She gave me
some candy, too.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “I’m sure.”
Turning to the detectives, Braden said, “I
looked at the clock when I got back in bed. It was
As Green pulled out a notepad and jotted the
information down, Briscoe smiled at the little boy. “Thank you, Nicholas.
That’s going to be a big help.”
He regarded Briscoe curiously. “Are you going
to help us find Rina?”
Braden glanced at his wife, who had
immediately begun to cry. Turning back to the boy, he suggested, “Why don’t you
and Oliver go play for a while? We’ll talk about this later.”
After the boys had left the room, Braden
moved to put his arm around his wife.
“What kind of person could do such a thing?”
she asked between sobs. “How could anyone do this to our child, to our family?”
As Braden tried to comfort her, he explained
in an unsteady voice, “Nicholas is having trouble understanding that his sister
isn’t going to come home. They were very close.”
“I’m sure that’s a difficult thing for the
whole family to understand,” Green offered compassionately. “Is there anything
else you can remember about Monday night?”
Braden looked at his wife. She shook her
head, and he answered for them both, “Not that we can think of.”
“Would you happen to have Kayla’s phone
number?” Briscoe asked. “We’re going to need to make arrangements to speak with
her again.”
“Sure. I’ll get it for you,” Braden replied.
While he left to do so, Briscoe turned to the
woman, who was dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “I know we’ve
already said this, Mrs. Braden, but we’re really sorry for your loss. We’re
going to do everything we can to find the person who did this and put him where
he can’t hurt anyone else. We left a card with your husband yesterday, so if
there’s anything else you think of later that might help with the
investigation, please let us know.”
Braden returned and handed him a slip of
paper. “I know she’s home today. Her mother called this morning before she left
for work and said Kayla wasn’t feeling up to going back to school yet, but if
we needed to leave the boys with someone while we made arrangements, Kayla
could watch them.”
The detectives stood up and Green offered his
hand to Braden. “Thank you for your help. Feel free to call the number we left
with you anytime and we’ll let you know how the investigation is going.”
“And we’ll call if we think of anything else
that might help,” Braden promised as he saw them out.
As soon as the door was closed and they had
descended the front steps, Green noted, “I don’t have to ask where we’re
heading now.”
“She lied to us,” Briscoe observed irately.
“She sat there and told us that the last time she spoke with Corinna was on the
way home from school Monday afternoon.”
“Like you said, Lennie, what kid is going to
rat out a friend with a parent sitting beside them?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like being lied to. It’s
time for Ms. Guitierrez to tell us what she knows.”
***Briscoe
rapped on the front door for the third time, rattling it with the force of his
knock. When there was still no response, he pulled his cell phone and the note
Braden had given him from his pocket, muttering, “I knew there had to be a good
reason to carry this thing around. Maybe we can get her to answer the phone.”
After waiting briefly, he nodded to Green,
“Answering machine.” He waited a second more, then spoke into the phone.
“Kayla, this is Detective Briscoe from yesterday. My partner and I want to ask
you some more questions. We’re at the front door. We’d like you to open it.”
After another pause, he added, “Come on, Kayla. We just came from talking with
the Bradens and we know you’re in there. We can either have this conversation
now, or we can wait until your mother gets home and tell her how you lied to us
yesterday.”
Seconds later, they heard the rattle of the
safety chain and the door opened a crack. “I didn’t lie to you. I don’t know
anything about what happened to Corinna.”
Pocketing the phone, Briscoe suggested
amiably, “Why don’t we go inside and talk about it?”
The girl reluctantly opened the door to allow
them entrance.
Once inside, Briscoe’s affable attitude
vanished as he turned to confront her. “You told us you didn’t speak with
Corinna after you got home from school on Monday, but Mrs. Braden said you
called their house that night. Why did you lie?” he demanded.
“I didn’t lie. I just forgot,” she answered
defensively.
“You don’t forget something like that,” he
argued. “You didn’t want us to know.”
She walked past them to the kitchen and took
a soda from the refrigerator, with the detectives close behind.
“What are you hiding?” Briscoe pressed.
She whirled around to face him. “I’m not
hiding anything. Why can’t you believe me when I tell you I don’t know
anything?”
“Because years of dealing with good liars has
made me an expert at spotting an amateur,” Briscoe retorted.
Green stepped between them and motioned to
the table. “Look, why don’t we all sit down and try to straighten this out?”
After regarding them indecisively for a
second, she moved to comply. When she had done so, the detectives sat across
from her.
“What did you and Corinna talk about when you
called her Monday night?” Green asked patiently.
“I called her about a homework assignment,
that’s all.”
“Stop jerking us around, Kayla,” Briscoe
snapped. “Lying to the police when they’re investigating a crime is called
‘obstruction of justice’. We already have enough evidence of that to take you
to the police station. Don’t give us any more reason.”
She looked at him fearfully. “I didn’t do
anything wrong.”
Before Briscoe could respond, Green leaned
forward and spoke quietly. “It’s important for us to know what Corinna told
you. We have to know where she was going so we can find the person who killed
her. If she really was your best friend, you owe her your help.”
At his words, her defiance slowly disappeared
and her eyes filled with tears. “I tried to stop her. I told her it wasn’t a
good idea to go alone, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“Go where, Kayla?” he asked firmly.
She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her
turtleneck and said, “I don’t know exactly where, but she was going to meet someone.
He sent her a message at school with the time and place.”
“Who did?”
“A guy named Josh Lewis.”
“How did she know him?” Briscoe asked.
She hesitated, then haltingly admitted, “We
met him online, in a chat room.”
Briscoe stared disbelievingly. “Are you
telling us that Corinna made arrangements to meet alone with someone she only
knew through some computer conversation?”
She nodded slightly.
He huffed out a breath. “You can’t be
serious! The two of you were old enough to realize how dangerous that could
be!”
Some of her defensiveness returned as she
declared, “Our friend Angela met a guy that way, and they’ve been dating for
three months. He’s really great.”
“Look,” Green interrupted, “we need to know
how you first came into contact with Josh.”
With a resigned sigh, she answered, “About
two months ago Corinna and I went online and looked up a local band that we
liked. They played at our school one time for an assembly. There were only two
websites about them, but one had a chat room that was pretty active, so we
started joining in the conversations. There were three other girls who posted
there and about six guys. Josh was one of them.”
“Why would you tell a bunch of strangers how
they could find you?” Briscoe asked incredulously.
“We didn’t. We were careful,” she insisted.
“We used made up names and we didn’t give out any personal information.”
“Then how did Josh find out what school the
two of you attended?” Green asked.
The girl stared at her hands, interlacing her
fingers nervously. “After a week or so, a couple of the guys started asking
stuff, like how old we were and if we had boyfriends. We told them we were
eighteen and weren’t going with anyone then, so a guy named Steve asked if I
wanted to go out. I told him I wasn’t sure. Then Josh said that there was
something important he wanted to tell me. He gave his e-mail address and said I
should contact him. At first we were just going to blow him off, thinking he
was trying to make a move. But we were curious so I sent him a message. He sent
one back that said if I decided to meet with Steve, I should be careful. He
said I should set up the meeting at a place I knew where there were other
people around, and be there to check the guy out before we actually met, so if
he looked weird or anything I could leave without him knowing who I was.”
“Did he suggest that you meet with him
instead?”
“No, that’s all he said. And it was good
advice. I told Steve to meet me at a pizza place near the arcade the next
Saturday. Corinna and I got there thirty minutes early to wait for him. When he
showed up, he wasn’t anything like he had said. He was a total dork. We left
without saying anything to him.”
“And you figured that since this Josh had
given you such good advice, he must be all right,” Briscoe concluded.
She shrugged. “Corinna said it was really
nice of him. I e-mailed him and told him what had happened and thanked him for
his advice. Then Corinna sent him a message under her name and thanked him,
too. That’s how they started e-mailing and chatting with each other.”
“Did she ever tell him how old she really
was?” Green asked.
“Yeah. After about two weeks of chatting with
each other every day, she told him her real first name and the truth about her
age. He said he didn’t care, and that he had only graduated high school the
year before, so he wasn’t much older.”
“What else did he tell her about himself?”
Briscoe questioned.
“He said he was going to
“Did he say where he lived?”
“In a dorm near the University.”
“What else did he say?”
“I don’t know, just stuff, like different
places he had been and things he liked to do. He and Corinna had a lot in
common. They liked the same kind of music and Josh said his parents had been
really strict with him, too. Corinna told me she didn’t know any other guy who
understood her and was so easy to talk to.”
“Did his questions start getting more personal
as time went on?” Green asked.
“Not really. He mostly just answered
questions she asked him and told her about himself. After she got to know him,
she told him a few things, but never where she lived or anything. She didn’t
even tell him what school she went to until they had been chatting for several
weeks. And it was her idea for them to finally meet. She wanted to set
something up for a Saturday but he said he worked on the weekends, and that
since he went to school all day, the only time he could get together was at
night.”
Green exchanged a knowing look with Briscoe,
then asked, “Where did he e-mail Corinna?”
“The Bradens don’t have a computer at home so
we always used mine.”
“Did she erase the e-mails or keep them?”
“She kept them. She liked to go back and read
them when she wasn’t online with him. But she had her own sign-on name and
password, so no one else could read her stuff but me.”
Green turned in his chair toward Briscoe and
reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. “I’ll call the computer science
lab and have them send someone over to pick it up.”
The girl looked from one to the other in
alarm. “What do you mean?”
As Green stood up, he explained, “We need
your computer to trace the location Josh’s e-mails were sent from.”
“You can’t take my computer. I already told
you that Corinna and I weren’t allowed to date. If my Mother finds out what we
were doing, she’ll have a stroke. I won’t let you take it,” she insisted.
“You don’t have a choice,” Briscoe informed
her bluntly. “Your computer contains evidence related to a crime. And I would
think that you’d be willing to do whatever you could to help us track down the
guy who killed your best friend.”
“Josh didn’t do it. It had to be someone
else. Corinna must have gotten into trouble on the way to meet with him or when
she was going back home. He cared about her. He wouldn’t have hurt her,” she
protested.
As Green walked from the room to place the
call, Briscoe asked pointedly, “Tell me something: Has Josh sent any e-mails
here since Corinna disappeared?”
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment
before answering, “No.”
Briscoe sighed sadly. “That’s because he
knows there’s no reason to.”
As the realization of his words sunk in, she
sat back and looked as though she had been physically slapped.
Feeling a little sympathy, he said more
kindly, “Look, if the two of you wanted to go out, why didn’t you make
arrangements to meet someone that you knew? I’m sure you got asked out by boys
from school.”
She rolled her eyes. “You have no idea how
lame the guys at school are. If they aren’t coming up behind you in the
hallways and popping your bra strap, they’re making disgusting noises to gross
you out while you’re eating lunch. We weren’t interested in going out with
boys. We wanted to find someone older who knew how to treat us.”
Briscoe studied the girl in confusion. He was
bewildered not only by her about-face in mood, but by her self-absorption and
nominal remorse over her friend’s death.
“Someone from the lab should be here in about
twenty minutes,” Green informed them as he returned and sat down. “Did Josh say
where he worked or what he did?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What did Corinna say to you when you spoke
with her Monday night? Did she tell you where she was going to meet him?”
“No, she wouldn’t tell me. All she said was
that she was going to meet him in a public place. I guess she thought I might
tell our parents and try to stop her if I knew the details. I kept telling her
we should set things up like we had with Steve so we could check him out first,
but she said it was different with Josh. She said she already knew and trusted
him.”
“So why didn’t
you tell your parents or hers?” Briscoe asked. “If you were concerned, why
didn’t you do more to stop her?”
She looked away and shrugged. “I didn’t want
to get her in trouble. Her parents are even stricter than mine. I thought she’d
be okay. She was only going to meet with him for an hour or two.”
“So she was supposed to sneak out to meet
him, then get back before her parents found out?” Green asked.
“That’s what she told me.”
“And you have no idea where she was going or
what time they were supposed to meet?”
“No. All I know is that she knew what time her
dad was leaving for work and said she had to be back before then.”
“What about the message she received at
school? How did it get to her?”
“One of the student office assistants brought
it to her in Literature class. Corinna didn’t show it to me. She just told me
it was from Josh and that they were going to meet that night.”
“Why don’t you show us your computer,” Green
suggested. “We’ll need to know Corinna’s sign-on name and password.”
“Isn’t there any way you can get what you
need off of it without taking it? When my Mother finds out, she’s going to be
furious.”
“No, there isn’t,” Green insisted. “The
technicians are going to have to back-track to find the source of Josh’s
e-mails. They’ll need to take your computer to the lab in order to do that.”
“And maybe your mother needs to find out,”
Briscoe added. “Maybe she can talk some sense into you and make you realize the
danger of the game you and Corinna were playing.”
Kayla shook her head. “She’s going to kill
me.”
Briscoe looked at her sharply. “Oh, I think
you’ll survive. Too bad we can’t say the same for your friend, Corinna.”
***Van
Buren met them at their desks as they were removing their jackets. “What did
you find out?”
“We spoke to several people who were working
in the school front office about the time Kayla said the note for Corinna was
delivered. No one remembers seeing anyone bring it in. It just sort of
magically appeared on the front desk in an envelope marked ‘message for Corinna
Braden’,” Briscoe explained. “But we were there around lunch time, which is
also when the note supposedly came in, and the place was a zoo. It wouldn’t
have been difficult for someone to slip in unnoticed and leave it lying on the
counter.”
“Any security cameras you can check?”
“No. It seems that not all the schools have
been updated with those yet. It’s not in the budget,” Briscoe pointed out with
annoyance.
“We also checked the register at
“Keep me posted,” Van Buren advised. “Let’s
hope he wasn’t too careful and left us something to go on. This is one we don’t
want to see slip through our fingers.”
***Leading
the way to a console filled with an array of cords and screens, the technician
nodded in begrudging appreciation. “The guy is good. Every one of his e-mails
was sent from various coffee shops, libraries, or other places that have public
Internet access. His favorite is a little string of franchise coffee bars
called Smokin’ Java. About seventy-five percent of his messages came from four
of their locations. So even though we know where they came from, it isn’t going
to help much unless someone remembers seeing him at the correct location,
terminal, and precise time the messages were received by this P.C.”
“That could present a small problem since we
don’t have any idea what he looks like,” observed Briscoe sarcastically.
“What about his e-mail account?” Green asked.
“Is there any way to track him that way?”
“He used one of the few free services still
available, so that was a dead end, too. Like I said, he’s good. He thought of
everything, right down to the chat room where he first came into contact with
the girls. He chose a local band so all the other participants would also be
local, and would most likely be kids, considering the type of music. I checked
the archived logs on the band’s website. Lewis first logged on six months ago
and stopped visiting a few days before the girl was killed. He knew what he was
looking for and spent some time waiting for it to come along.”
“So now, not only do we have to worry about
the guy hanging out at the playground, we’ve also got Cyber Chicken Hawk
stalking kids right in their own bedrooms,” Briscoe observed.
The technician nodded. “A lot parents are
clueless about the dangers the Internet holds for their children unless they
work with computers themselves.”
“What happened to teaching your kids not to
talk to strangers?” Briscoe asked. “That rule should apply doubly to people
they meet online.”
“When I was in school we received information
about the dangers of drugs and S.T.D.’s,” Green added. “Maybe there needs to be
some warnings now about the Internet, too, not only for the students, but for
their parents as well.”
“Not a bad idea,” the technician agreed. He
waved his hand around the room. “We’re kind of backed up down here so give me
the weekend to work on it and I’ll have a transcript of the e-mail
conversations between Lewis and the victim ready for you first thing Monday
morning. Maybe you can find something in them to help you identify this guy.”