Chapter 15
The next morning when we arrived at Chief Harris office, he wasn’t alone. We were introduced to Special Agent Dan Willcrow of the FBI, a short man with rimless glasses and acne. He looked to be in his mid-forties. He shook hands with me and my father and we sat down around a table. Agent Willcrow took out a thick manila folder from a bag and put it on the table. Then he took off his glasses and began to polish them for almost a minute, which made me feel a bit nervous. When he finished polishing them, he put them on, and looked at me.
‘John, I understand that you have become very close to a girl you know as Brooke. Is that true?
‘Yes.’
‘You have known her for a little over a week?’
‘Yes.’
‘How would you describe your relationship? Are you friends, lovers?
‘Boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘Are you happy with Brooke?’
‘Up until now, very much so.’
‘Wonderful, it’s so nice to see young people in love. In this case though, you picked the wrong girl to fall in love with, John.’
‘Yeah, I kind of understand that now.’
‘Brooke, or her real name, Amanda Richards, has allegedly killed at least six people that we are aware of. There is a strong possibility that she has also killed your two friends, Mike and Tom.’
‘Now wait a minute Mr. Willcrow. Why would she kill my friends, they haven’t done anything to her.’
‘That’s exactly why, they were your friends. In her mind, you are hers, and she doesn’t share. She killed her mother and father because they wouldn’t let her continue abusing her little brother Johnny. Then she killed Johnny so no one else could be with him either. The same happened to James Richards and his family. Brooke had her eyes set on Mia, the daughter, she prefers boys but she likes girls too.’
My father asked, ‘How did she become like this?’
Agent Willcrow took off his glasses and polishes them again while speaking.
‘We believe that Brooke was abused by her father from a very early age. The mother was an alcoholic and substance abuser. She would often leave her children alone with the father while she went out looking for drugs, or drinking with friends. The older sister Lauren Richards was most likely the first to be abused, but when the father’s interest turned to Brooke, she saw the chance to escape.’
My father scratched his head.
‘OK, I follow the abuse line, but how come Brooke began abusing her little brother. It doesn’t make sense, if she herself was a victim.’
‘There you are wrong. Many times a victim of child abuse will become an abuser when he or she grows up. In this case it just started earlier while the abuser was still a teenager. From what we know from the examination and interviews with Brook at the hospital from where she later escaped, she told the doctors that she felt alone, and not loved. She had suicidal thoughts from the age of nine. She continued saying that her little brother would come to her when she was crying, and snuggle up to her. She thought this was a show of affection, which it was, but, here she loses it; she felt that she should also have the right to do to him what was done to her. So she begins to groom the brother, touching him, hugging him, playing little games like “I show you mine, if you show me yours”. At the time, the brother, who witnessed the abuse of his sister by their father, believed it to be normal, and therefore goes along with it.’
‘But didn’t the school or neighbours notice anything?’ I asked.
‘Where did Brooke tell you she grew up?
‘In a small town, north of LA.’
‘The closest town to where she lived is Townsville, and that’s about five miles away. She grew up in an isolated house until she was fifteen, by then she was already so mentally damaged and controlled by the father she would never speak about what happened at home to anyone. She was tutored at home by her father who was a very intellectual man, but tragically, a child molester.’
I sat quiet, thinking about Brooke and what she has gone through in her short life to make her what she was. I felt sorry for her, and I didn’t want her to be locked up. I hated her for what she has supposedly done to Mike and Tom, but as I sat there I realized my love for her overcame whatever she has done. To me, she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. She taught me love; she taught me how to make love, and how to care about someone. I asked Agent Willcrow,
‘What happens now?’
‘Nothing from you John, we will find her and arrest her.’
My dad said,‘That should be easy. John told me where she lives and when he was there last night, he saw an altar which appeared to be dedicated to Brooke’s brother.’
‘Yes. We found something similar in the ruins of her uncle’s house in Nevada. Even though she was abusing Mia, the altar was for her brother.’ Turning to me, he said,
‘You look very much like Johnny Richards, you could be his twin. I can understand why Brooke went after you with such determination. When she saw you, she must have felt a physical and emotional need to be with you. In her mind, you are soul mates, you represent what she has been missing since she killed her brother, and it must be an overpowering feeling.’
My dad looked at me with a smile and said, ‘I knew you would be a girl magnet one day, but not for this kind of girl.’
I smiled back, but in my heart I thought Agent Willcrow was wrong. I felt the same way about Brook because she was my soul mate.
Agent Willcrow began to pack his bag, and my father and I stood up to go. Chief Harris looked sternly at me. ‘John, listen to me carefully. Do not, under any circumstances meet or talk to Brooke. She is very dangerous and unstable right now. I want you to give me her address and then let the Police and FBI take care of this. For you this entire thing is over. Do you understand me, John?’
‘Yes Chief, I do,’ I said while I wrote down the address and gave it to him.
It was only 11.30am so my dad dropped me off at school. A couple of kids from my class came over and asked me how I was doing and if the police had any news about the murders of Tom or Mike. I told them there was no news yet and walked to class. I didn’t feel like talking. I needed to think about how to get to Brooke before the police or the FBI.
I asked a Senior if he had seen her, but he said no so I took out my cell phone and sent her a text message.
“Stay away from home, see you behind Jimmy’s at 4.30pm. Bring your car.’
The rest of the day crawled by, I hoped Brooke got my message before the police got to her, she hadn’t answered me, and it worried me.
At 4.30pm I walked through Jimmy’s parking lot, aiming for the dumpsters behind the restaurant. I couldn’t see Brooke’s car in the parking lot and I became concerned. I wondered if she had been caught, or had she left town when I heard a whistle. I looked around, and I see Brooke’s head sticking out from behind a dumpster. When I reached we embrace and she kissed me softly on the lips. When she pulled away she put a hand on my cheek and said, ‘Thanks honey, I was in the car when I got the text so I left it and took a bus across town, where I hid in an abandoned building until now.’
She was dirty, her hair tangled, her eyes red from lack of sleep, and there were smudges on her clothes. She was still beautiful to me, but I could see she must have been under a lot of emotional stress.
‘Listen, Brooke, let’s go to the river where we can talk.’
‘OK. I had to change car, it’s over there.’
I looked where she was pointing and saw a new white Toyota Corolla. She had probably stolen it, but at this point I didn’t care. We got in and she drove calmly through town, like if everything was fine.
We were sitting, facing each other at our favourite spot by the river. It was a lot colder now, even though just over a week has passed since we were first there.
‘I know about you and your family in California and I saw the room with the photos of your brother, Brooke.’ I said calmly
She got up, and walked over to
the river bank. She looked out over the water floating by, and then knelt down and washed her face with water from the river. She stood up and came back to where I was sitting. She looked down at me, and said,
‘You don’t know anything John. You think the police, or the FBI knows me, they don’t know shit. They don’t know how it is to be abused year in and year out by your own father, and have a junkie for a mother who didn’t care. The only one who ever cared about me was Johnny, he loved me and I loved him. We were soul mates, just like you and me John. When they wanted to take Johnny away from me, I had to stop them.’
I interrupted her with a question that has haunted me since I read about Lauren Richards.
‘What about your sister Lauren?’ I asked, wondering why Brooke had never mentioned her, not even now.
Her face went dark, her green eyes were burning, she was clenching her fists, and the tick in her eyebrow came back. She opened her mouth to say something, and then had second thoughts. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again everything came out in a tirade.
‘That fucking slut sold me! She sold me to our father so she could leave. She promised him she would never say a word about what he had done to her, only if he gave her some money and let her go. She even went so far as to spend six months grooming me with him before I was eleven years old. She showed me how to fuck my dad!’
She fell down to the ground and her body was shaking as she sobbed uncontrollably. I put my arms around her and held her as hard and close as I could. I don’t remember how long we sat there, but eventually she lifted her head and took a deep breath. She looked at me with those beautiful eyes, and said,
‘I didn’t kill my parents or Johnny, it was Lauren. She also killed my uncle, blaming it on me and I think she killed your friends too. I know she was the one who got me out of the mental hospital pretending to be a nurse, and fixed the paperwork. Lauren is behind all this. I swear, I am guilty of only one thing, and that is for loving my little brother in the wrong way, and I know it’s wrong. But I haven’t killed anyone.’
‘Have you seen Lauren around here?’
‘No, I haven’t. But I am sure she is around somewhere, hiding and watching us.’
‘Why did Lauren kill your parents and Johnny if she had made a deal with your dad? You just said she had made a deal with your dad to leave, and why put the blame on you?’
‘I am not sure. I remember when we were small, my father had always been after Lauren, she was the oldest and the more developed. When we moved from the house into town I was hoping I would be able to tell someone. I knew what I did was wrong, and I hated myself for it, I tried to commit suicide, but I always chickened out at the end. My father was never really interested in me sexually, until Lauren made her deal with him. I wasn’t his type.
Brooke sobbed a little and looked out over the river, and then continued,
‘He liked dark haired girls. One time he had forgotten to turn off his computer and I began to look around it, he had thousands of photos of girls between the ages of ten and fifteen, all brunettes, not a single blonde. Lauren looks very much like me, only she has dark brown, almost black hair. I think she came back to kill my father for what he’d done to her, and our junkie mother for not protecting us. I have no idea why she shot Johnny, maybe it was an accident. To put the blame on me would be typical of her. I remember, when we were small she always blamed me for everything.’
Hearing all this I realized how lucky I was, having a caring family and living in a normal home. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Brooke and her siblings had gone through. I had heard about child molesters and child abuse, we talked about it in school and it was common to hear about it on TV. But I had never met anyone who had been a victim of it. It really rocked my entire faith in humankind, and especially with parents. If you couldn’t trust your parents, who could you trust?
‘John, I can’t live like this anymore. I think it’s best if we find someone who can help me, I really need to talk to someone. Coming to this town and meeting you, has changed the way I think. Today, before I came here, I tore down all the pictures of my brother. I cleaned the entire house, I felt like I was cleaning out my old life, to let a new life in.’
‘I have one last question. What happened at your uncle’s place?’
‘Lauren happened. I had been living there for a couple of months, things were going OK. I was feeling better, getting over the worst from the murders of my family.’
‘The FBI told me that you tried to molest your cousin Mia.’
‘Not true! I am the one who cared for Mia, we spent a lot of time together playing. Then one day Lauren shows up. My Uncle and his family were happy to see her. They hadn’t seen her in years. I was very suspicious because the last time I saw Lauren was when she got me out of the hospital. The first few days were fine, nothing happened.’
I could see that Brook was very upset, the tick was back, and she was fiddling with her fingers and hands, like twisting and turning them. She took a deep breath and continued, ‘Then on the fifth day, I walked in to Mia’s room in the morning to wake her up. Laura was there, in Mia’s bed, naked. I asked her what she was doing. She jumped from the bed and attacked me, we fought, and my uncle, woken up by the noise, came running in. When I told him what I had seen, he went to grab Lauren but she got away and drove off in her car. The same night I went down to a bar in town, to get away from the house. That’s when she came back and burned it down. When I came back, there was nothing I could do. The fire brigade was there and the police. I took my uncle's car which he had given me and I drove all night until I was so tired and I couldn’t stay awake any longer. That’s how I ended up here.’
‘So, you were lying, when you told me earlier that your uncle molested you.’
‘I am sorry, John, it was the easiest way to get you to stop looking for more information. I just wasn’t ready to tell you the entire truth at that time.’
‘It’s OK. Let’s get out of here and find Chief Harris and Agent Willcrow. They can help you. You need to talk to them first.’