Never See Them Again Read Online Free Page A

that’s my daughter.”
    By now there were close to fifty people gathered. George fell back into the crowd, understanding that getting into trouble was not going to help the situation. His wife, Ann, arrived.
    George, Lelah and Ann stood, waiting, their hearts thumping.

CHAPTER 3
    T O THE RIGHT of the front door heading into the Rowell house (the same area where Brittney Vikko had entered) was a spacious two-car garage. A formal dining room, attached to a half bath and a large kitchen, just beyond that. Walking into the house from the front door, the sunken living room greeted you just beyond the foyer. Tiffany Rowell lived in the house with her boyfriend, Marcus Precella. Tiffany’s mother had died years back from that dreaded middle-age serial killer, cancer. Sally and Chester Rowell had adopted Tiffany as a young child. Sally’s death crushed Tiffany. Sally had never smoked a cigarette in her life, yet had developed lung cancer. (Go figure.) The diagnosis was the strangest thing. There was such a connection between mother and daughter that a few days before Sally died, Tiffany felt peculiar all morning in school. She had what she later described as “a feeling.” It was so profound that Tiffany went to the nurse’s office and asked to go home. “I knew she was going to die,” Tiffany later said of that moment. “I could feel it.” Sally couldn’t even move by that point; the cancer spreading like spilled liquid throughout her body, stripping all her senses and emotion. But on that day, to Tiffany’s great comfort and surprise, Sally rolled over in bed and smiled at her daughter.
    She died two days later.
    Chester Rowell owned the Clear Lake house. Chester was a musician. He had remarried and lived with his new wife on a farm in Manvel, a forty-minute ride from Clear Lake.
    Eighteen-year-old Rachael Koloroutis was Tiffany’s best friend. Rachael had been staying at the house with Tiffany and Marcus since Rachael had left home weeks earlier after she and her parents had a blowup over a cell phone bill. The problems at home had started for Rachael almost a year earlier, when Rachael had a major blowout with her mother over a few personal issues.
    â€œShe turned eighteen,” George Koloroutis later said, “and we got the feeling that she was saying, ‘Screw it, I am going to go and do what I want.’ ”
    Kids . . . when you’re eighteen, nineteen, even into your early twenties, life is about the moment—you think you have all the answers. What can a parent do but allow his or her child to go out into the world and learn for himself or herself.
    Technically, you couldn’t say Rachael had run away from her Noble Oak Trail home, slightly more than a two-mile, six-minute ride on the Clear Lake/Friendswood town line. Legally, Rachael was an adult. Still, to her family, Rachael had left abruptly and maybe even bitterly. She might have felt she couldn’t cope and decided to run. Yet, on July 16, 2003, two days before she was found dead, Rachael had been in the mood to reconcile things. She had left her mother a voice message: “Mom, I really just want to talk to you. I want to talk to [my little sister]. I’ve got to go, but I’ll call you again later. Love ya!”
    Earlier that same day Rachael had sent George an e-mail, expressing how happy it made her that they were all going to sit down and talk, make amends:

    I’m looking forward to getting together . . . and all that good stuff. . . . I will consider everything you said. I can see the truth in it. I will try to call you. . . . It is hard. I am afraid to see [Lelah] or even Mom. . . . I feel bad. . . . I do not know when I can face y’all. I don’t know exactly what to do. There are many times I want to pick up the phone but just am not able to. I love you all and will try to get up the courage to call.

    She signed the e-mail as she generally did:

    Always your