Never See Them Again Read Online Free Page B

little girl, Rach.

    After George received the e-mail, he was driving down Clear Lake City Boulevard, heading home on his Harley from a day’s work. He happened to look to his left and spied Rachael, who was sitting in the passenger seat of Tiffany Rowell’s pickup. Seeing George, Tiffany drove up next to him in the left lane. George looked over. He was wearing dark shades and, in his words, “trying to be cool by giving them a head nod and slight smile.” Inside, he later admitted, he was screaming: “Honey, please come home!” Rachael smiled and waved. Tiffany blew George an exaggerated kiss with her right hand. They sped away from each other.
    â€œI watched my little girl drive off,” George said later. “I felt sad, but I knew she needed me and her Mom and sisters back in her life. I knew we would be reunited soon.”
    George never saw his daughter alive again.
    Ann and George had raised a smart child, loving and caring. Both Tiffany and Rachael had graduated—not two months before—from Clear Lake High School.
    They were kids.
    Both had their entire lives ahead of them.

    THE TWO OTHER victims found inside the house were Adelbert Nicholas Sánchez and Marcus Ray Precella, Tiffany’s boyfriend. “D,” as they called Adelbert, was Marcus’s cousin. According to the medical examiner (ME), he had been killed by “multiple gunshot wounds,” one of which pierced the middle of his forehead. Another round entered Adelbert’s neck. A third hit his left arm. Two rounds had been pumped into his torso, another into his left shoulder. Adelbert was sitting on the couch opposite his cousin’s girlfriend, Tiffany. He wore blue shorts, a T-shirt, and white sweat socks. Lying there, his head leaning slightly on the soft contoured headrest of the couch to his right, D looked as though he was sleeping. With the exception of a large bloodstain halo in the back cushion of the couch outlining his upper body, and D’s eyes closed, a person would expect the boy to wake any minute. He looked so peaceful. Yet, as the forensic evidence would soon prove, a hail of gunfire had killed this twenty-one-year-old, who had recently gotten his high-school diploma from W. T. Hall night school.
    Nineteen-year-old Marcus Precella, dressed in plaid boxer shorts, a white cotton undershirt, white sweat socks, had been shot in the head, stomach, right forearm, and right shoulder. There was also a graze wound running across his chest. It appeared that Marcus had been beaten, too. He ended up with what the coroner referred to as “blunt-force head injuries.” There was a cluster of patterned abrasions on his right temple and five lacerations found on the back of Marcus’s head. There was also a star-shaped pattern of blowback, the remnants of gunpowder from Marcus’s killer walking up to him, holding the barrel of the weapon on his head, and firing, likely to make certain he was dead. Marcus was lying on the carpet on his side, almost directly in back of Adelbert, his chest and stomach up against the side of the couch.
    This was significant to police as they went through and studied this incredible crime scene. It was an indication, maybe, that they were looking at four execution-style slayings.
    Rachael had been beaten the worst, considering how many lacerations, abrasions, and blows her skull had endured; but she had also been shot in the lower abdomen, directly in the vagina (could this be a clue?), five rounds into her right thigh, three to her left shin, one to her right foot. There was even a gunshot wound in Rachael’s left buttock, no doubt fired as she tried desperately to run away from her assailant. Rachael was found facedown on the floor at the foot of the television. She had bruises police believed had likely been sustained from a fall to the ground. Rachael wore a pink top, part of which had been pulled up her back, blue jeans, and white (with gray