A Knife in the Heart. Michael Benson

      PINNACLE BOOKS

       Kensington Publishing Corp.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Many of my sources for this book have asked to remain anonymous, and so I can only thank them privately. The others I would like to acknowledge here, for without them the writing of this book would have been impossible: Cecilia Barreda, spokesperson for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO); Connie Y. Brookes, legal assistant with the Hebert Law Group; the eagle-eyed production editor Robin Cook; Lane DeGregory, at the St. Petersburg Times; Stephanie Finnegan; Laura Forti, at Turner Broadcasting; Lisa Lafrance; Detective/Corporal Michael Lynch, of the Pinellas Park Police Department (PPPD); counselor/therapist Kathy A. Morelli; Jamie Severino; Erin Slothower; and Jan Zagorski, senior administrative clerk, Pinellas Park Police; and Rachel Wade. Thanks to Anne Darrigan for the emergency (and marathon) use of her computer.

      Also, special thanks to my agent, Jake Elwell, at Harold Ober Associates, to my super editor and “Man of Ideas,” Gary Goldstein, and as always to my wife, Lisa Grasso.

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      Although this is a true story, some names will be changed to protect the privacy of the innocent. Pseudonyms will be noted upon their first usage. When possible, the spoken word has been quoted verbatim. However, when that is not possible, conversations have been reconstructed as closely as possible to reality, based on the recollections of those who spoke and heard the words. In places, there has been a slight editing of spoken words, but only to improve readability. The denotations and connotations of the words remain unaltered. In some cases, witnesses are credited with verbal quotes that in reality only occurred in written form.

      FOREWORD

      This is youth’s sub-rosa culture, an MTV world of shallow who-did-whom lives, a tinderbox world—one spark: senseless violence. Pinellas Park, Florida, had long stopped being a Norman Rockwell world, replaced by a new generation of tender savages, unsupervised, enflamed by sex and drugs, running wild in the streets.

      Regarding a teenaged girl’s violent death, a writer asked an early investigator: “Was this a love triangle?”

      “More like a love hexagon,” the overworked peace officer replied. Promiscuity-plus. Made you feel like you had to spit the bad taste from your mouth. How did it turn so tragic?

      It all boiled down to Rachel Marie Wade. She was the catalyst. It wasn’t her lust, although there was plenty of that. Under any analysis, the driving force wasn’t the diminutive blonde’s humming libido as much as her nineteen-year-old mind, her feverish mind, stuck in self-centered over-drive.

      She’d known many boys, and it always ended bad. Ex-boyfriends had been known to piss on her mom and dad’s front door!

      Now there was Joshua Camacho, who was not just her boyfriend again, but hers, her possession. If other girls didn’t get that, if they wouldn’t listen to the truth, drastic measures would need to be taken.

      There was a spot between Rachel’s eyes that went supernova when she thought of her rival: eighteen-year-old Sarah Ludemann, who was decidedly not diminutive, who thought she was all that when she was with Joshua.

      All that! Ha!

      Sarah was nothing, Rachel thought: she was less than zero, just an opening act, a fat body to warm up Rachel’s man so Rachel could get the real loving.

      Sarah had to use her parents’ car. Rachel had her own car.

      Sarah still lived at home. Rachel had her own place.

      Sarah had a curfew. Rachel could give her man what he wanted at any hour. She could offer him anything, any day of the week, 24/7—just as long as she wasn’t waitressing at Applebee’s.

      After months of trying to talk sense, Rachel was through talking. Finally the two were going to have it out. Leaning tough-girl-style against the snout of her car, Rachel heard the racing minivan before she saw it. A 2000 green-over-gold Villager, it tore around the corner, almost on two wheels, like in that movie Tokyo Drift. It screeched to a halt only a few feet in front of her.

      The moment was upon her. This was for Joshua, so good at making her feel special, so good at mind games. Um, when he screwed with a little girl’s mind, it stayed sca-rewed.

      Rachel tried to act cool, but everyone knew the number Joshua had done on Rachel. She said he’d held a gun to her head. “You’ll never leave me. You’ll never leave me,” he’d said, repeating it like a mantra. She got the picture: Joshua gave the orders. Rachel obeyed. In the bedroom. Outside the bedroom. Wherever.

      Some of Rachel’s girlfriends had told her to get away from Joshua. They said that the slave master hold he had on her wasn’t healthy, and he wasn’t worth it.

      Rachel didn’t listen. Those girls, Rachel thought, didn’t know what they were talking about; they had never been alone with Joshua. They hadn’t felt his complete and utter tautness. They didn’t know how he could make Rachel feel. He made her melt down like a nuclear reactor.

      Rachel said he’d told her: “If you love me enough, you’ll fight for me.” Well, bring it on—Rachel was ready. Rachel Wade did not make idle threats, and Rachel Wade did not back down. In her sweaty right hand, she tightly gripped the handle of a kitchen knife….

      Sarah Ludemann’s world consisted of home, with her mom and dad, three big people in a little house, doing stuff with Joshua Camacho, and the halls of Pinellas Park High School (PPHS), where Sarah was a recent transfer student and a senior.

      She had almost finished a veterinary program at another high school, but she dropped it and transferred to Pinellas Park High so she could be with Joshua. Her family and friends asked her, how could Sarah have switched schools over a boy? Wasn’t there part of her that realized what a loser move that was?

      As an only child, Sarah Ludemann had been a daddy’s girl. She and her father did nearly everything together. She took karate lessons, loved to sing and dance. Then she met Joshua—a bad egg, Dad thought—and, snap, just like that, she wasn’t her daddy’s girl anymore.

      Like many late bloomers, Sarah lengthened her stride in an effort to catch up. Maybe she’d moved too fast. Most of the time these days, she was nursing a bruise from getting hit or in tears over what an asshole Joshua could be.

      She knew Joshua was seeing other girls, at least two. She’d already fought Erin, the mother of Joshua’s baby. Now it was big mouth Rachel’s turn. Sarah would prove she was Joshua’s number one. Sarah hit the minivan’s brakes and opened the driver’s door in one fluid motion….

      It happened so fast, five seconds tops, silence brittle to the crackling curses of angry young women, a residential street now a stage, a stormy sea of hair and flailing arms—then a glint of metal, and a razor-sharp flash of violence tearing open the peaceful night, tearing open Sarah Ludemann’s heart while breaking the hearts of those who loved her.

      At twelve forty-five, on a warm spring night in Pinellas Park, Florida, in front of a home on Fifty-second Street North, under a clear sky and a bright quarter moon, Sarah Rose Ludemann was stabbed twice in the chest with a kitchen knife.

      Sarah summoned up her will as things started swirling pretty fast. She found her way to the driver’s seat of her vehicle and she called Joshua. By the time he answered, all she could say was “It hurts.” She fell out of the vehicle to the pavement, where she lay motionless.

      Chaos erupted, and young people continued to shout and push and shove. Rachel was beaten, dragged by her hair across a sandy lawn. Fearing