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  It hadn’t been Anita’s intention to fall asleep. After Michelle had called the second time, saying she was finally on her way home, Anita, exhausted and having to work the next day, stretched out across her bed. I’ll just close my eyes and rest until she gets here, she thought, but exhaustion overpowered her intention; Anita drifted into sleep.

  Now, some hours later in the dark dawn of the morning, she was awake, confused, a little worried, possibly annoyed, but not alarmed. Not yet. Michelle was no doubt at a friend’s house, but for her not to call her mother regarding the change in plans was far from acceptable, and Anita would set her straight.

  Anita phoned Michelle’s best friend, Marci, who’d been at the house with Michelle the previous evening, but had declined to go out with her and some others to a party.

  “Michelle didn’t come home?” Marci said sleepily, Anita’s call having pulled her out of bed.

  Anita told her about Michelle’s phone call, but then falling asleep and waking to discover that Michelle was not there.

  “I haven’t heard from her,” Marci said, growing concerned, “but I’ll call a few people.”

  Marci arrived at Anita’s house soon after. She and Michelle were scheduled to visit Marci’s younger brother, Tommy, at Taft Youth Development Center in Pikeville, something the two did each month. Anita had to leave for work but she called back to the house frequently to check in with Marci, who was calling everyone she could think of—with no luck. No one knew where her best friend was. Finally, she went into Doug’s room. Throughout the morning’s commotion, he had remained asleep. Now Marci shook him awake. “Michelle didn’t come home last night,” she said. Doug climbed out of bed and got ready to track down his little sister. He knew who he needed to talk to first.

  With his Goth dress and his dark curls hanging over his eyes, Doug Anderson had adopted an air of defiance and mystery during this phase of his adolescence. At age eighteen, he was a bit of a wild child: partying, hanging out, no sense of where he was headed. Yet Doug had actually tried to prevent his younger sister from leaving with the group the night before. They’d had a heated exchange over it. Michelle’s changing behavior concerned him, although in some ways, it seemed, she was following in his footsteps.

  An olive-skinned beauty with dark, dancing eyes and wavy, mahogany-colored hair, Michelle Denise Anderson was going through a rebellious phase. “Choosing all the wrong friends,” her mother later observed, though Anita didn’t know the reasons. Parenting had seemed so much simpler when the children were small. Michelle had always been such a loving, compassionate kid, a reader, and, like her father and older brother, creative. In Ohio, where the family had lived when she was younger, Michelle played the flute and danced, and she liked to draw and paint.

  After the move back to her mother’s hometown of Knoxville, eleven-year-old Michelle earned a headline in the Knoxville News Sentinel: “Whittle Springs Student Wins Second Grand Prize in N-S Coloring Contest.” As her prize, Michelle won tickets for the whole family to the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, with unlimited rides in the FunFair area and a river cruise on the Becky Thatcher.

  Like her brother, she could be kind of shy. Anita’s parents put in a pool the year Michelle turned thirteen. She loved to swim but was self-conscious about her body, so she’d cover up with a T-shirt and socks to hide her budding breasts and short toes. “Pretty little short toes,” her mother said, “in a family dominated by long toes.” In Michelle’s self-conscious, pre-pubescent mind, her toes looked oddly different.

  In recent months, however, since Michelle turned fifteen, she’d begun pushing against the rules, garnering increased scrutiny and interference from her mother. Sometimes she skipped school and had friends over while Anita was at work. Whatever the variables were in the equation of Michelle’s changing teenage behaviors, the mild-mannered Anita was trying to determine how to regain control. She was working on a plan that included counseling, scheduled to begin later that month.

  Despite Michelle’s newfound rebelliousness, she had signed an attendance contract at school and brought up her grades. She’d also been saying she wanted to get back into soccer, a sport she’d played in Ohio when she was younger.

  Between Michelle and Doug, Anita had her hands full, and she wasn’t feeling all that strong herself, truth be told. For the past three years, since she and Doug Sr. divorced, Anita had been a single parent. After the split, he’d returned to his hometown, Miami, Florida, and Anita and the kids moved into a comfortable brick house closer to her parents in North Knoxville. They lived on a quiet, curvy, tree-lined street that winds to an end at Redwood Park on Redwood Avenue, behind a branch of the local library. It was a nice neighborhood, Anita thought, a good place for her kids, even if she didn’t always approve of who they hung out with.

  Anita felt guilty. On the previous evening, she herself had gone out for a few hours. The understanding when she left was that Michelle would stay at the house with Marci and Marci’s boyfriend, Mike. But new plans evolved after Anita’s departure. Eighteen-year-old Chas, a friend of Michelle’s brother since tenth grade—and now Michelle’s bad-boy boyfriend of a month or so—had also stopped by, as had Michelle’s hard-partying friend Becka and a few others. Anita didn’t approve of Becka, a particularly troubled and out-of-control young girl who was home on a weekend pass from her adolescent alcohol and drug treatment program. Anita had told Michelle that she preferred Becka not come around.

  The assembled kids pooled their cash to buy alcohol and got someone of age to purchase it. As the evening moved on and the booze ran low, some of the teens wanted to keep the party going. Becka called a friend who had his own apartment. Sure, he was open to the group moving over to his place. They wanted a lift in Mike’s car, but he refused and he and Marci stayed behind. Marci remembered that Michelle was also reluctant at first, but Becka pleaded with her and she eventually gave in. Marci, Mike and Doug wanted her to stay put, but Michelle said she wouldn’t be gone long. She changed into a pair of blue jeans and Marci’s yellow and white striped sweatshirt and left with the group in a cab.

  Doug went to bed and Marci and Mike remained at the house to update Anita when she arrived home, which was just a short time later. They told her about the kids dropping by and everyone going to Becka’s friend’s house, minus some details about the drinking that had gone on. Not long after that, Michelle called to check in. She told her mom that she would be home shortly. Anita offered to come pick her up, but Michelle said she had a ride.

  Anita later acknowledged that if she erred in any of her parental persuasions, it was that she was too naïve and trusting, too laid back and lenient, too easy. It is in her nature to be easy. She sat at home and waited. Over an hour passed and Michelle called again, saying she was finally on her way. “Come on, young lady,” Anita said firmly. “Now!”

  Michelle’s boyfriend, Chas, and his younger brother, Bobby, lived with their grandparents in a 1920’s-style bungalow on Jefferson Street, off Cherry, in a section of East Knoxville that had once been comfortably middle class, but had since begun the descent into something less. Tall and rangy, Chas wore his curly brown hair long and tousled like the rock stars on MTV. His face was rugged and narrow, with a wicked, healed-over break in the bridge of his prominent nose. He’d considered Michelle his girlfriend for about a month, but he’d known her for years. His grandparents didn’t have a phone, so when he wanted to call Michelle, he had to walk to a pay phone at the convenience store on Cherry Street.

  That Saturday morning, while Anita was at work, she phoned a friend, Len, and asked him to pick up Doug and drive over to Chas’s house to see what he knew about Michelle’s whereabouts. Chas’s grandfather answered the door. He let Doug in and woke his grandson. A groggy Chas, face swollen by alcohol and sleep, expressed surprise and confusion when told that Michelle never made it home. He filled Doug in on having met a guy who’d helped them buy more beer at a convenience store, then going back to his apartment with Michelle and
Becka. Not long after, Becka left and Chas got into an argument with Michelle, so the guy took Chas home first, then drove off alone with Michelle, claiming he would take her home next. When pressed for details, Chas remembered that the guy had a yellow truck. “And his name was Larry Lee,” Chas said. “Larry Lee Smith.”

  Chas climbed into Len’s van with Doug and directed them to Larry Lee’s place, located in the Western Heights public housing project west of Broadway. It was a plain brick unit, connected on both sides to ones just like it, a scaled-down, bare-bones version of connected townhouses. Although the place looked different in daylight, Chas was sure this was it. He got out, walked up to the building, and knocked on the doors and windows. No one answered, and the yellow truck was nowhere in sight.

  They called Anita from a nearby pay phone. She agreed to meet them back at Larry Lee’s apartment. She remembers the next events as a blur. As panic set in and her heart rate soared, Anita didn’t trust herself to drive, so a coworker chauffeured her to the site.

  Len, Doug and Chas returned to Larry Lee’s place to find the yellow truck now parked out front. They pulled up near it. When Anita and her coworker arrived, the guys were sitting in Len’s van waiting for them. While they debated how to handle the situation, Larry Lee came bolting out of the apartment and made a beeline for his truck. He was barefoot, in January, with temperatures below freezing. He jumped into his truck, fired it up and tore off down the street.

  The shocked group sprang back into their vehicles. Len shifted his van into gear and followed in close pursuit. As Len zoomed in close to Larry Lee’s bumper, the guys could see him eyeing them in his rear-view mirror.

  At a stoplight Larry Lee opened his truck door and cautiously stepped halfway out, one bare foot on the icy blacktop. He twisted around to look at the guys spilling out of the van behind him. “Why are you following me?” he called out, his anxious words giving rise to steam in the cold. He had a look of bewilderment on his face.

  “What did you do with Michelle?!” Chas yelled, running at Larry Lee.

  “I dropped her back near your house.”

  Chas lunged. There was a scuffle, but Larry Lee broke free, dove back inside his truck and gunned it. As the pursuit continued, Anita and her coworker honked their horn, signaling Len, Doug and Chas that they were pulling into a convenience store on the corner of Keith and Western to call the police. The guys pulled in behind them. “Why was he running like that?” Anita asked in alarm, an uneasy feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. From a pay phone she called the Knoxville Police Department (KPD).

  In the meantime, Larry Lee flagged down a police car of his own to report that he was being chased by some guys, but he didn’t know why or what they were accusing him of. Those officers followed his truck into the same convenience store parking lot. When the second set of officers arrived in response to Anita’s call, the two groups were separated into the two police cars while the officers took down their respective stories. Anita was assured that the report would be passed on, and that the KPD would look for Michelle. They told her to go to the station on Monday and fill out a missing person’s report. To her shock, the officers then told everyone to go home. No more car chases tonight, they instructed. They let Larry Lee go without any further questioning.

  It was now past five o’clock, dark, and beginning to snow again. Another inch of the white powder would fall on the city that night. Anita’s party caravanned back to her house on Tacoma Trail. She called her parents, Charles and Marie, who lived just a few blocks away in the home where Anita and her two younger sisters grew up. They came over. Anita made a pot of coffee. Her panic was evolving into full-blown terror. Her mind began to explore every gruesome possibility.

  While Michelle’s family and friends talked over what they knew and offered each other moral support, some silently wondered about Chas. He was Michelle’s boyfriend, after all, and the last person to see her other than—according to him—Larry Lee Smith. Anita asked him to walk her through the night’s events one more time.

  He recounted that he and two of the other kids walked from the party to the store for more beer, but they were underage and the clerk refused to sell it to them. Larry Lee was in the store at the time and had witnessed this interaction. He approached the teens and offered to buy the beer. As thanks, the kids offered to give him a few, but he invited himself to the party instead.

  As the party wound down, Larry Lee told Chas, Michelle and Becka that he’d give them a ride home. Anita now realized that when Michelle had called and said she had a ride, that ride was with Larry Lee. After they had all piled into Larry Lee’s truck, he suggested that he could get some more pot and alcohol and keep the party going. Chas could tell that twenty-six-year-old Larry Lee was hoping for some action with fifteen-year-old Becka. At the apartment, she began to feel uncomfortable with his leering and suggestive comments, so she asked to leave. Larry Lee agreed to take her home and Chas and Michelle rode along.

  Once they’d dropped off Becka, Larry Lee invited Chas and Michelle back to his apartment. They said it was too late, almost two in the morning. “He insisted we had a bottle of champagne to finish,” Chas claimed. “He said it was getting warm, and he needed help drinking it.” So they returned with him. “We’d already had too much to drink,” Chas then admitted.

  The family mostly trusted him, but at this point, Chas’s story became increasingly confusing to them.

  Back at the apartment Michelle passed out, and Larry Lee took her upstairs and laid her down on one of the beds. Chas followed behind and was sitting on the edge of the bed. When he got up and walked to the stairs, Chas said, Larry Lee shooed him back into the bedroom again.

  At that point, Michelle began to call for “Mike.” Chas didn’t know who Mike was, and in his intoxicated state he got angry. He admitted that he shook Michelle, “But only to awaken her,” he said. Michelle, now fully conscious and extremely upset, pulled herself up from the bed and stumbled down the stairs and out of the apartment. Chas followed her outside where they got into a big argument. Larry Lee came out and said he needed to take them home. Michelle climbed into the cab of the truck, but when Chas went to get in beside her, Larry Lee yelled at him to sit in the back. Chas did as he was told and settled uncomfortably onto the cold metal bed of the truck in the subfreezing weather.

  “Take us to her house,” he called out to Larry Lee.

  “No. She doesn’t want you at her house,” Larry Lee barked back. “I’m taking you home.”

  Chas shivered as they drove east on I-40 to the Cherry Street exit. He sat with his back against the cab, head folded down, knees drawn in as close to his chest as possible, arms wrapped tightly around his torso with each hand tucked into the cuff of the opposite sleeve. When he twisted around to look inside the cab, he could see Larry Lee and Michelle talking.

  On the two-lane southbound side of Cherry Street, Larry Lee pulled his truck next to the median. This positioned the passenger side of the vehicle alongside the street, rather than next to the sidewalk. As Chas climbed out and walked toward the front, Michelle opened her door and stepped out onto the street to face him. She ripped Chas’s crucifix from around her neck and hurled it at him. They yelled a few more accusations at one another before Chas picked up the broken necklace and threw it back at Michelle. She climbed back into the truck, slammed the door shut, and Larry Lee sped off. That was the last time Chas saw her. He walked to his grandparents’ house and got something to eat.

  Anita paced the floor, trying to process Chas’s story amidst her growing fears. And that’s when Larry Lee called the Anderson home.

  Doug answered the phone. Larry Lee told him that he wanted to speak with his mother. Doug stretched the receiver across the kitchen table to Anita.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Yeah,” a nervous voice responded. “This is Larry Lee Smith. Listen, I don’t want you to think I was running away because I did something, because I didn’t. I was scared. Can you come back
to my apartment? I want to explain what happened.”

  Anita was silent. She didn’t know how to respond.

  “But don’t bring Chas or that other guy who got out of the van. They’re crazy!”

  “Just a minute.” Anita pressed her hand tightly over the mouthpiece and told the others in a low voice what Larry Lee was requesting.

  “I’ll go with you,” Doug said. “Did he say anything about me?”

  “Well, I know I’m driving you there,” Len said.

  Anita removed her hand and spoke into the receiver: “I’m going to bring my son with me. He’s the one with the dark, curly hair.”

  Larry Lee hesitated. “Okay. But that’s all.”

  Anita hung up the phone and walked back to the kitchen table. Taking one last gulp of her barely warm coffee, she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Then resting it on an ashtray, she closed her eyes and rubbed her fingertips over her temples as she anticipated the next scene in this surreal nightmare. “I just wonder what this guy is going to say,” she said aloud to no one in particular.

  While Anita had been talking to Larry Lee, Doug had a realization: that was not the first time he’d heard Larry Lee’s voice. It was distinct: nasally, with an odd accent, not truly Southern but undefinable. Then it hit him. Larry Lee had called the house before.

  There had been some kind of adolescent drama the previous summer. Michelle was visiting Marci while Marci’s parents were away. Marci’s brother Tommy was there, too. Tommy, however, had a crazy ex-girlfriend who was still in love with him. She also believed—rightly so—that Michelle had a crush on Tommy. When she found out that Michelle was at Tommy’s house, she flew into a rage and asked her neighbor to give her a ride over to Tommy’s so she could fight Michelle.

  Her neighbor, Larry Lee Smith, didn’t think that was such a hot idea, so he concocted a less violent scheme. More of a prank, really. He called Michelle’s house. When Doug answered, Larry Lee told him that Michelle was at Tommy’s house and Tommy was “having his way” with her. Doug at once told his mother, who drove straight over and picked up Michelle.