THE STORY YOU ARE about to read was adapted from my days as a news reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
Sadly, the characters in this story are real. In most cases, the dialogue and events are real. Some scenes have been re-created to better tell the story. Always, the chapters were difficult to write, a very real look at the darker side of life.
Missy’s Murder is the first of four true-crime books I wrote at the beginning of my career as an author. It allowed me to be home with my daughter, Kelsey, who was just an infant when I covered the trial involving the murder you will learn about in these pages.
I wrote three more, Final Vows, Deadly Pretender, and Snake and the Spider. After that, I decided I couldn’t write another. I’d explored enough of the dark side.
All of my novels since then contain characters with serious trials and troubles, but they are written in context of the faith, light, and hope that I believe exists for us all—including the characters in this book. God Bless!
Karen Kingsbury
P.S. You can learn more about my other titles at KarenKingsbury.com or by following me on Facebook and Twitter.
The People You’re About to Meet
MISSY AVILA-
An appealing and irresistible
young beauty, she was a popular
teen with a secret enemy…
KAREN SEVERSON-
Overweight, emotional, Missy’s
lifelong best friend, she spearheaded
the hunt for the killer…
CINDY SILVERIO-
She had seen too much. Tormented
by what she knew and scared for her
life, she kept a terrifying secret.
LAURA DOYLE-
Angry and tough, a child of a
troubled home, she screamed
that she’d kill Missy for stealing
her boyfriend…
VIC AMAYA-
Missy’s loyal friend, he
nearly killed the wrong person
in revenge.
IRENE AVILA-
Missy’s grieving, desperate,
very pretty mother, she would
unknowingly invite a murderer
into her own home…
CATHERINE SCOTT-
The dedicated homicide detective
who carried a lock of Missy’s hair
as a reminder of a crime that had
become personal—a crime she had
to solve.
THE EVENTS DESCRIBED IN this book are taken directly from court transcripts and other public records and numerous interviews with many people involved. However, in many instances, in order to better communicate the story and the atmosphere surrounding the events, incidents and dialogue were dramatically re-created based on court testimony and other public records, and interviews with various participants or other knowledgeable individuals.
Except for Missy Avila, Karen Severson, Laura Doyle, Irene Avila, Ernie Avila, Sr., Mark Avila, Shavaun Avila, Chris Avila, Ernie Avila, Jr., Judge Jack Tso, prosecutor Tamia Hope, Victor Amaya, and a few other minor characters, the author has chosen to change the names and disguise the identities of the people involved in this story. This has been done to preserve privacy. Any similarity between the fictitious names used and those of living persons is, of course, entirely coincidental.
“I LOOK AT THE PICTURE OF MISSY
AND I CAN’T HELP BUT THINK
ABOUT HOW SHE MUST HAVE STRUGGLED.”
—Irene Avila, Missy’s mom
Homicide detective Catherine Scott made a note of the scratches and bruises around the girl’s face and eyes. She’d been beaten up pretty badly before she was drowned. The coroner touched the cold, gray skin of the girl’s face and arms. It slid grotesquely from her bones.
“We have skin slippage,” he said. “Make a note of it. She’s probably been dead a couple of days.”
It was then Catherine noticed the hair.
Clumps of dark brown hair lay on a boulder. Catherine walked closer and saw more hair on the ground. “It looks like someone cut her hair before they drowned her,” she said.
Quietly, Catherine picked up a small, shiny, dark lock of Missy’s hair. She placed it on a piece of paper, folded it into a tiny square, and tucked it inside her pants pocket.
She would never forget this girl. Never give up on solving her murder. And for the next three years, wherever she went and whatever she did, Catherine Scott carried that lock of Missy’s hair.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the people who made this project possible. First, my thanks goes to Arthur Pine, an incredibly persistent man whose talent, knowledge, and encouragement made a difference. I would also like to thank Irene Avila, Mark Avila, Tamia Hope, and the others who helpfully provided accurate information throughout the writing of this book.
Finally, I want to thank Leslie Schnur for being the most patient editor in the world. I also thank Mercer Warriner for her editorial expertise and Jill Lamar for creative assistance. (1991)
DEDICATED
TO
My loving husband,
who has been my best friend ever since we met.
Thank you for changing my life
and being proud of me.
My dad,
who encouraged me
and believed I would accomplish
my dreams.
My mom,
whose excitement and enthusiasm
has kept me going throughout
this project.
My precious daughter,
who inspired me to pursue
the impossible.
And especially my Heavenly Father:
Thank you for answered prayers.
(1991)
THE SANTA ANA WINDS started blowing in the San Fernando Valley on October 1, 1985. Usually, the winds came much later in the month and sometimes not until November. Most people liked the Santa Anas because they were soothing after the stagnant summer. Gentle and warm, they blew the smog, leaving behind a rare blue in the southern California skies.
On a particular Tuesday afternoon Missy Avila sauntered from the gates of Mission High School and started looking for Bobby’s car. Missy loved this kind of weather. It was invigorating and infused her entire day with joy.
Even the school day had been a good one. Missy thought back over it as she stood outside the campus waiting for her ride. She had finished her math homework earlier than usual and her English teacher had read one of Missy’s poems aloud as a fine example of descriptive writing.
With the warm air swirling around her, Missy, at seventeen, felt that the world promised endless possibilities. Her future plans to finish school and work as a physical therapist seemed as sharply focused as the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance. The gentle peaks, covered with bare shrub trees and wild brown grass brittle from the dry summer, formed a ridge that was usually hidden under a veil of smog. That afternoon the sky was so clear, Missy thought she could see each pine tree at the summit. She wanted to hike there, find the perfect rock, and sit for hours writing poetry about her youth and the love of her life.
But the gorgeous sky and gentle wind were not the only causes of Missy’s buoyant mood. Bobby Miller, the tall boy with the sandy-brown hair and heart-melting grin, had been dating Missy for three months, and there were times when Missy wondered what it would be like to marry him. She believed in the possibility of love.
Missy smiled as she saw Bobby drive around the corner in his beat-up Mustang and screech to a stop at the curb where she was waiting.
“Wait a minute,” he yelled, jumping out of the car and running around to open the passenger door. “You must allow me, my princess!”
Missy tossed her head, her long shiny dark hair spilling down past her waist, and laughed as only a teenager in love can laugh. A few of Missy’s friends walked by and grinned when they saw Bobby bowing graciously to her. She climbed in the car, he shut her door, and then ran back to the driver’s seat.
“Let’s say we spend the rest of the day together!” He turned to Missy, pulling her close. “We could make a picnic lunch and take it to the park, find a quiet place, just you and me. What do you say, Missy? Can I talk you into it?”
She frowned and looked out the window. It would have been a perfect day to spend with Bobby.
“I can’t, Bobby. I promised Laura I’d see her this afternoon.”
“Yeah, but you can get out of that. You can be with her anytime. How often do we have to spend an afternoon like this together? Come on, Missy!”
For a few seconds she considered changing her plans, but Laura had recently broken up with her boyfriend, Vic, and she needed Missy’s sympathetic counsel.
“I just can’t do it. Laura’s counting on me.” Missy leaned closer to Bobby, and the look in her green eyes made his heart melt. He understood. After all, he valued Missy’s loyalty. He couldn’t remember her ever standing up a date. If Missy had made a promise to Laura, then she’d stick to it.
They pulled up in front of Missy’s house and Bobby leaned over to kiss her.
“Okay. You win. If I can’t be with you, then at least have a good time without me.”
Missy smiled and kissed him quickly.
“When Laura gets here, we’ll probably go out and do something. But I’ll be home this evening.” She climbed out of the car and waved. “I’ll call you!” Bobby nodded, flashing his handsome grin, before he drove off.
It was one o’clock when Missy walked in the front door of the house she’d lived in all her life.
“Hi, Mom!”
Irene Avila looked up from the square kitchen table where she had been arranging flowers for the past two hours. She rubbed her eyes and smiled at her only daughter.
Irene and Ernie Avila had been separated for some time, but the divorce had become final earlier that year. Irene’s sole comfort during those weary afternoons and lonely nights had been her love for Missy. The boys were wonderful, too, of course; Ernie Jr., Mark, and Chris, who was years younger than the rest. In fact, her two oldest sons both had good jobs and Irene was proud of them. But Missy was special.
Irene knew it wasn’t right to treasure one child more than others. She even worried that she tempted the fates by doing so. But she couldn’t help her feelings. Seventeen-year-old Missy was closest to her heart and always would be.
Irene sometimes speculated on the reasons for the intensity of her love. Perhaps the girl reminded her of her younger self: Missy’s loving spirit and happy, care-free heart were so like Irene’s before she married Ernie.
And surely their late-night talks strengthened the bond. For the past few years Missy and her brother had ended the days together whispering in the darkness of Irene’s room before turning in for the night. Irene treasured those moments.
Of course, Irene wasn’t always pleased by Missy’s confessions; her first sexual experience, for example, or the time she tried marijuana with some friends. But Irene was careful not to disapprove too much of her daughter’s experiments. She had done similar things when she was young. And Irene sensed that strict mothers didn’t have late-night talks with their daughters. They had fights. In her loneliness since the divorce, Irene needed Missy too badly to risk losing her friendship.
So Missy got away with an unusually late curfew and more privileges than most of her peers. This freedom, combined with Missy’s looks and her personality, made her the envy of nearly everyone at Mission High School. If Missy’s perfectly formed body—which, at four feet eleven and ninety pounds, had filled out in all the right places—her beautiful brown hair, her flashing green eyes, and her popularity weren’t sufficient causes for jealousy, then her friends could be a little resentful of Missy’s friendship with her mother. Seeming advantageous, this permissiveness may have worked against her.
That October, Irene wasn’t worried about her permissiveness. Missy was her best friend and all she cared about was maintaining that closeness even if she had to compromise her parental authority. As for Missy, she loved Irene and felt closer to her than most teenage girls felt toward their mothers. Even so, Missy never intended to share all her secrets.
If Irene had considered Missy’s lifestyle, the kind of people who befriended her and the boys she like to date, she would have easily seen that Missy wasn’t telling her everything. But it was so much nicer to believe that one’s daughter had nothing to hide, so Irene never probed too far.
That Tuesday morning had been particularly trying for Irene, and as she kicked off her tennis shoes, she felt a headache coming on. That wasn’t unusual. She spent several hours a day arranging dried flowers on her dining room table to bring in extra money. Irene never regretted working from home to make ends meet, but she found it exhausting.
Years earlier, when she was still preparing tax forms for a handful of clients, she noticed her eyesight weakening. And not long afterward the headaches started. In March 1985, doctors operated on Irene’s wrists because of tendon problems. After recovery, Irene found the forms were simply too painful for her weak hands to prepare and she finally quit. Irene considered rejoining the work force, but she decided that her kids needed her too much. Rather than taking an office job Irene began making dried floral arrangements.
At forty-four she was still a beautiful woman, with chestnut-brown hair and deep brown eyes. No matter how busy, she always took time to do her hair and nails and to dress nicely. The years of scrutinizing numbers and equations, and now the strain of arranging dried flowers, were, it is true, beginning to leave a network of lines across her face; still, Irene never complained—working at home was preferable to an office job. Irene’s two greatest concerns were that her children should have someone waiting for them when they got home and that the family should have enough money to put food on the table. In that order.
Although it had been a long day for Irene, she liked seeing Missy so happy. For months after her parents’ separation, Missy had moped about the house and then disappeared for hours without saying where she was going. These days Missy was her old self, so Irene forgot the calluses on her fingers and the tired feeling in her eyes.
Irene stood up, pulled a sandwich from the refrigerator, and poured her daughter a tall glass of milk.
“How was school?” She walked over to Missy and hugged her tight, handing her the sandwich.
“Great! Couldn’t be better.” Missy sat down and started eating. “But I have to hurry. Laura’s coming over to pick me up, and I want to wash my hair before she gets here.”
“Laura Doyle?” Irene looked confused. “I thought she was upset with you.”
“Yeah, but we worked everything out yesterday,” Missy said.
Irene shrugged. “I’ll never understand you girls.”
Just a week or so earlier Laura hadn’t been speaking to Missy because she thought Missy had instigated the breakup between Laura and Vic. The truth was, even though they had dated a few times before Laura started seeing him, Missy and Vic were merely close friends. In fact, Missy wanted nothing more than to help Laura get over the breakup and maybe even help the two get back together.
Missy had a way of ignoring the bad feelings if a friend lost her temper because of something she had done. If she found one of her friends upset with her, well, then maybe the friend had been through a tough time at home lately or had had a bad day or had broken up with her boyfriend. Any of a hundred excuses might do. But Missy had a difficult time believing anyone would be angry with her out of dislike. In fact, were her brothers to compile a list of their sister’s faults, at the top would have been this statement: Missy is too trusting.
She wanted everyone to like her, and at Mission High School, despite the jealousies, nearly everyone did. Missy was happy, vivacious, and easy to like. Even better, she attracted the boys. That would probably have been reason enough for Laura Doyle to come back looking for Missy’s friendship.
Missy had taken her shower and was drying off when the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” Missy shouted from the bathroom as she grabbed a towel and ran dripping wet into the kitchen.
“Hello?” A small puddle began forming where Missy stood. “Oh, hi. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, I’ll be ready.”
As Missy spoke, Irene thought how very beautiful she was, shivering and laughing and fresh from the shower. Missy had been blessed with a lovely complexion and, unlike most of her friends, had never suffered from teenage acne. Now, with the bath towel wrapped loosely around her daughter, Irene could see neither bruise nor blemish; Missy’s skin was perfectly clear.
Irene sipped her coffee and leaned back in her chair as the warm liquid made its way through her body. She took a long drag from her cigarette and thought about her plans for the afternoon. She was finished with the day’s paperwork, and the boys had already taken off with their friends. It was going to be a beautiful afternoon—blue skies, a warm breeze, and the house all to herself.
“That was Laura,” Missy said as she darted back toward her bedroom to get ready, her wet hair flying. “We’re going to the park. She’ll be here at three.”
Irene had washed the dishes and was drying her hands when she heard Laura’s Volkswagen pull up out front. It was exactly three o’clock.
Irene knew Missy cared about Laura’s friendship and she was glad the girls were spending an afternoon together. Irene didn’t know that the girls were driving to Stonehurst Park to do a few lines of cocaine. Like her friends, Missy was never very serious about doing drugs but an occasional experiment was generally accepted by the group. In the summer of 1985, the drug of choice was cocaine. They didn’t use it often or in large quantities because it was expensive. But that afternoon before Laura arrived, Missy had called her friend Christy Crawford and told her about their plans for the afternoon.
“We got some coke and we’re going to do a few lines,” she had said. Cocaine was something different and new, and teenagers had no idea back then of the ravages the drug would bring in years to come because of those early experiments. Laura had been far more interested than Missy. But that afternoon, the cocaine lines would be free, and Missy was as willing to be included as any of her friends.
Laura ran lightly up the front walkway to the Avila house. She was skinny and angular, not petite like Missy, and her white complexion never fared well against her long red hair. She was a child of a troubled home, and Missy sometimes felt sorry for her. Ever since the girls had been in high school, Missy had taken Laura under her wing and the redheaded girl had begun calling Irene “Mom” whenever she was at Missy’s house. Those who knew Laura Doyle described her as something of a loner, always on the outskirts of Missy’s popular circle. Years earlier Laura’s mother had enrolled her in a modeling course to teach her the social graces she so apparently lacked.
Laura never completed the course. Her mother blamed the failure on lack of funds and Laura’s friends blamed it on Laura. The way they saw it, Laura took the course only at her mother’s prodding and never had any desire to spend her life smiling for a camera. Laura was perhaps more realistic than her mother when it came to her looks. Her unattractive mouth and skinny body made it difficult for her to attract boys.
“Missy, come on,” Laura yelled as she walked into the house. Then she spotted Irene. “Hi, Mom. Is Missy almost ready?”
Irene smiled. “She’ll be right out.”
Laura and Irene heard a door slam from down the hall and turned to see Missy enter the room. She was stunning, even in her tan sweatshirt and faded blue jeans. Laura grinned at her and grabbed her wrist. “Come on, let’s go.”
Missy turned toward her mother as she made her way toward the door. “We’ll be at Stonehurst Park. I don’t think we’re going anywhere else, and I’ll be home by six. Don’t worry, I’ll call if I’m going to be late.” She stopped to kiss her mother and flashed her a grin.
“Hey, you have the house all to yourself,” she said. “Enjoy it.”
Irene smiled as the girls left. Then suddenly, almost as if she’d forgotten something important, Missy turned around and ran back to Irene, waiting on the porch. She looked at her mother intently and smiled, her green eyes warm and sparkling. “Mom, I love you. I just wanted to tell you. I really love you a lot.” Missy leaned over and hugged her mother.
This was unusual behavior. Irene and Missy were closer than many mothers and teenage daughters, but Missy wasn’t prone to dramatic displays of affection. Still, Irene felt touched that her daughter had been thoughtful enough to share her feelings.
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” Irene said. “Have fun.”
Irene watched until they had climbed into Laura’s red Volkswagen bug and driven away down the street. She stood on the porch for a moment, letting the warm wind blow over her skin.
For the next several hours Irene abandoned all thought of work and sat outside in a folding chair with a glass of iced tea.
She was still there, enjoying the peace and quiet, when the phone rang. It was six o’clock, and Irene thought the caller would be Missy wanting to spend the night at Laura’s. She grabbed her iced tea, ran into the house, and answered the phone on the third ring. “Hello.”
“Hi, Mom. This is Laura. Is Missy there?”
Irene felt her heart skip a beat.
“Of course not, Laura. She’s with you.”
Laura cleared her throat. “No, she’s not.” Irene felt the color begin to drain from her face. There was silence for several seconds before Laura finally continued. “When we left your house we went by Stonehurst Park. Missy saw three guys she knew in a blue Camaro, so I dropped her off to talk to them. Then I went to get gas for the car. When I came back, Missy was gone and so were the boys in the Camaro.” Laura paused. “I thought she might be home by now.” Laura waited. “Mom?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Irene forced herself to think. “Did she say anything else, Laura? Do you have any idea where she went?”
“No. She knew I was going to be right back, but I figured she must have decided to go with them.”
“Well, who were the boys? Just give me their names, and I’ll see if I can call and find Missy.”
“Umm, I don’t know. I didn’t know them. Missy said they were friends of hers.” Laura cleared her voice again and Irene could hear traffic in the background. “Well, have her call me when she gets home, okay?” Irene nodded silently and hung up the phone. Her sons were not due home for three hours, and it was already getting dark. Irene’s eyes glazed over as she made her way mechanically to the living room and opened the front door. Slowly she backed up and sat on the edge of the sofa, her back stiff. Her mind began racing.
Even as she reassured herself, an oppressive fog settled over her mind, making it difficult to think. Logically, Missy probably had had a very good reason for leaving with the boys in the Camaro and an unequally good reason for not calling. But something about the situation bothered Irene and she stared hypnotically out the front door, remembering Missy’s words. “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll be home by six; I’ll call if I’m going to be late.”
Irene focused on the clock that hung over the kitchen table. Soon it was seven and still there was no word from Missy. The minutes ticked away one at a time. Eight o’clock. Nine. Ten.
The boys weren’t home, either, and Irene knew she should go to bed. There wasn’t anything she could do by waiting and worrying. She closed her eyes and listened to the wind. It was stronger now, howling through the trees and nearby mountains. Occasionally an angry gust would shake Irene’s screen door and front windows, but she continued to stare outside, having no reason to dread the worst but no way to stop the thoughts that were crowding her mind.
Sometime around eleven o’clock, while she sat and waited and imagined all sorts of terrible things that might have happened to her daughter, Irene Avila began to cry.
IRENE VALDEZ WAS TWELVE years old when her family moved from downtown Los Angeles to Pacoima, a community situated in the eastern San Fernando Valley. It was 1952 and the Valley was a series of quiet communities separated by acres of orange and walnut groves, far away from the dirty streets and fast paced life the Valdez family had lived in Los Angeles.
In those days the San Fernando Valley was just thirty-five minutes from downtown Los Angeles, and developers were getting rich overnight building housing tracts across the Valley floor as quickly as families arrived. This was before the days when smog and gang warfare would invade eastern sections of the Valley, making it a less desirable place to live. Back then, the Valley, even the eastern parts like Pacoima, was the ideal home for commuters like Irene’s father.
The day the Valdez family moved into their three-bedroom house, Irene noticed a boy her age who lived next door. Ernie Avila hooted and yelled and raced his bicycle up and down the street, trying to attract the new girl’s attention. Irene wasn’t impressed. Boys her age bored her, and she promised herself she would never date Ernie Avila.
Irene’s father quickly enrolled his children in a local private school where they were forced to wear uniforms. After all, he hadn’t moved his family to a nice suburban neighborhood to have them go to school with just any children.
Walking to the bus stop each morning, clad in her plaid skirt and white bobby socks, Irene learned to shrug off the constant teasing from her public-school peers. But soon she became friends with several of the girls in her neighborhood. Irene was easy to like. She was petite with beautiful hair the color of mahogany and had a contagious laugh. Each day she walked home with her new friends after school, always avoiding Ernie Avila’s house. Ernie never quite knew what he had done to offend the new girl, but they attended different schools and by the time he was fifteen, he had given up trying to win Irene Valdez’s attention.
That year Irene brought home a friend, Carol White, who attended San Fernando High School. The two girls were sitting outside talking when Ernie came home, parked his bicycle, and went inside his house.
“Hey, that’s Ernie Avila!” Carol whispered, and a blush spread across her cheeks. “You didn’t tell me you lived next door to him. Every girl in the school has the hots for him.”
Irene shrugged her shoulders. “He’s nothing special,” she said.
“Are you kidding me? Hey, maybe if I come over here more often he’ll notice me and ask me out.” The girl glanced toward Ernie’s house, and for the rest of the afternoon Irene never felt she had Carol’s full attention.
With every girl at San Fernando High interested in him, Ernie Avila’s value rose considerably in Irene’s eyes. She began walking home at the same time as he did, making a point to pass his house—slowly. Two months later they were an item.
Although smaller than the other girls in her class, Irene grew to be very beautiful, and the romance flourished. Soon, Irene and Ernie had little time for their friends and spent nearly every evening together studying or necking.
Sometimes Irene would spend a night with her girlfriends and the group would go to neighborhood parties. Typically the parties would dissolve when gang kids from Pacoima and San Fernando grew rough. At the peak of a confrontation, kids would typically throw beer bottles or bricks at each other’s cars.
Sometimes a kid would even pull out a knife. It wasn’t a weapon for killing; usually just a switchblade, something to scare off rivals.
The turf wars had grown more frequent in the late 1950s when the kids from Pacoima and San Fernando began forming gangs. Pacoima and San Fernando were two communities separated by the 118 Freeway, which ran along the north side of the San Fernando Valley and hooked up with Interstate 5 at the valley’s far eastern end. The freeways created man-made barriers that gave the teenagers a reason to divide the community. Pacoima boys were on the south side of the 118, San Fernando boys on the north side. At that time Interstate 5 ran along the west side of San Fernando and through the middle of Pacoima, with houses that were a few hundred square feet larger and lawns that were more neatly kept. This area changed its name to Arleta in the sixties. It bordered both San Fernando and Pacoima, but it was wedged along the west side of Interstate 5. In those days Interstate 5 was enough to keep most of the tough kids out of Arleta. No one cruised there on weekends; it had no hangouts where kids could compare cars and smoke cigarettes.
Arleta was a perfectly planned community of middle-class houses lined up in perfectly planned rows. From the sky it had the geometric look of a well-planted farm; but instead of crops there were houses.
In Arleta one could feel safe and separated—at least until the late 1970s, when gangs began using handguns and the kids realized a simple cement freeway couldn’t stop them from invading an area.
The community leaders hadn’t foreseen that the Arleta kids would be bored by their planned neighborhoods. The high school was in San Fernando and they liked the faster life east of Interstate 5.
Before she met Ernie Avila, Irene had enjoyed the fast life too. At one point during her freshman year she even ran with some girls who considered themselves part of a gang. Eventually she found their values immature, and she decided to stop seeing them. At that point she was spending all her spare time with Ernie.
When Irene and Ernie were nineteen, she walked up the aisle of the local Catholic church and promised to love, honor, and obey Ernie Avila until death.
They had been married nearly two years when Irene began getting headaches and constant waves of nausea. A doctor confirmed what Ernie Avila already suspected—Irene was pregnant. The couple was delighted; together they spent hours working on the baby’s nursery. When they weren’t painting the walls and hanging curtains, they were busy reading Dr. Spock’s baby-care book. Finally, there was nothing to do but wait.
Then one day Irene was folding laundry and humming lullabies when she doubled over in pain. Ernie rushed her to the hospital, but it was too late. The baby Irene and Ernie had planned and prepared for was dead.
In the weeks that followed, Irene grew depressed and lost weight. The solution was simple to Ernie – they must try again – but it wasn’t that easy for Irene, who dreamed at night about her first child.
“Ernie, you’ll never understand what it’s like to have a child living inside you,” she told him one day. “That child was a part of me. I may never have held him, but I will never forget him as long as I live.”
Ernie tried to be more compassionate, and two years later Irene was thrilled when the doctor told her she was again pregnant. This time the pregnancy was flawless, and Irene and Ernie pulled out the pieces of the nursery they had put away in storage.
Several months later Ernie Avila, Jr., came into the world with a healthy, angry cry. When Ernie was nearly three years old, Irene gave birth to another son named Mark.
“We are blessed, my tiny son,” Irene whispered, looking down at the six-week-old Mark while Ernie Jr. played nearby. “You are so beautiful.”
Ernie Sr. agreed. “Our second son looks just like you,” he said.
Irene shook her head, and when Ernie looked up he noticed tears in her eyes. “No, Ernie. Mark is our third son. He will always be my third son.”
Ernie Jr. and Mark grew to be healthy, chubby toddlers who loved playing with mud, bugs, and anything that made a mess. No matter what Irene did, they rarely looked clean and hardly ever sat still. She began to pray that her next child would be a girl. She would be tiny and feminine and Irene would dress her in pink, frilly outfits. Unlike her boys, Irene’s daughter would enjoy sitting still, looking at picture books and savoring her mother’s company.
Irene was twenty-six when she got pregnant again.
This time the nausea and headaches were worse than before, and because of her miscarriage, doctors ordered strict bed rest from the seventh month on. Although Irene worried about losing this child, she had a feeling that if she could get through the eighth month the baby would survive.
“It’s a girl, Ernie, I know it,” Irene said one day as she lay on the living-room sofa.
Ernie smiled. “Irene, don’t get your hopes up. A boy wouldn’t be so bad, now would it?”
“Not at all,” Irene said, her voice soft. “But I just know this baby is a girl.”
Two months later, on February 8, 1968, Irene looked up at Ernie from hospital bed as she held her newborn baby. “See. I knew this was my little girl.”
It had been a very complicated delivery and doctors had feared they would lose both mother and child. Finally, the tiny girl had been born and the danger passed. They named her Michelle Yvette Avila, but from the beginning they called her Missy.
She had a shock of dark hair that framed her perfect features, and as Irene held her for the first time, she knew her prayers had been answered. When Missy was four months old, the doctor told Irene to increase her feedings because the child was so tiny. By the time she was eight months old, it was clear to Irene that her daughter would forever be smaller than her peers. Missy was a strong baby, despite her size, and from the moment Irene and Ernie brought her home she was the constant object of her brothers’ attention.
Meanwhile, Irene started preparing income-tax forms and doing accounting for a handful of clients. It was tedious work, especially with three active children to take care of, but it allowed her the privilege of being home.
Much to Irene’s dismay Missy learned to crawl, boy-fashion, a toy truck in hand. And she learned to walk outdoors, while playing with her brothers in the mud. Still, there were moments when Missy was all little girl, just as Irene had dreamed. During those times, Missy would smile coyly at her brothers, tilting her head and flirting.
“She’s going to be a real heartbreaker when she grows up,” Irene’s brother warned her one day. “You can see it in her eyes. You’re going to have your hands full.”
Irene laughed, happy to be the mother of three such healthy children and especially proud of her tiny daughter. “That’s a long time from now, Ron. She’s got a lot of growing up to do before she’s out there breaking hearts.”
It occurred to Irene that one day Missy really would grow up. She’d fall in love, have a beautiful wedding, and leave home. On that day, Irene knew, hers would be the broken heart. Irene prayed that day wouldn’t come too soon.
Life was hectic in the Avila house. Missy toddled about and Ernie junior and Mark were more active than ever. Irene wondered sometimes how she managed to handle them all as well as she did.
One day in mid-July 1969, when Missy was eighteen months old, Irene was working on a major house cleaning project when she heard choking sounds coming from the kitchen. She ran to Missy and found her writhing on the floor, an empty bottle of bathroom cleaner sitting nearby.
She swooped up her daughter, grabbed her car keys, and drove to Arleta Community Hospital in five minutes. Missy was rushed into emergency and doctors hurriedly pumped her stomach. Nearly an hour passed before one of the physicians came out in the hallway to talk to Irene.
“Mrs. Avila, it looks like everything is going to be okay,” the doctor told her. “Her lungs were partially collapsed and she was getting very little oxygen when you brought her in. But we cleared the poison from her system and gave her an antihistamine for the swelling in her throat. We’re going to keep her overnight for observation, but you can go in and see her if you’d like.”
Irene thanked the doctor and rushed to the payphone. She had to call Ernie and let him know everything was all right. Her hands shook as she dialed his work number.
“Ernie, she’s going to be fine, I just talked to the doctors,” Irene said, tears streaming down her face.
“It was my fault, Ernie. We almost lost her because of my carelessness.”
Ernie calmly reassured Irene that it couldn’t possibly have been her fault. Five minutes later, when Irene hung up the phone, her sobbing had subsided.
Slowly, Irene made her way to the room where her daughter lay sleeping soundly on a hospital bed.
Irene leaned over and nestled her head next to Missy’s. “Oh, Missy, I’m so glad you’re okay,” Irene whispered. “You could have died and I would never have forgiven myself. I couldn’t live if anything ever happened to you.”
Irene closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. The nurse found her there an hour later, tightly clutching Missy’s hand. Later the nurse would tell her husband about the little girl and her mother.
“It was strange, Frank,” she said as they sat down to dinner. “She seemed afraid to let go of that little girl’s hand, as though something would happen if she didn’t hold on.”
IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when Mark and Chris Avila parked in front of their house on Ottoman Street that October first. An afternoon of Frisbee and softball had blended into an evening of chatting with friends over a barbecue. They hadn’t planned to be this late, and Mark, being the older of the two brothers, felt guilty bringing Chris home at such an hour. After all, it was a school night and Chris was just twelve. Despite nearly eight years that separated them, the two boys were very close, and Chris loved spending time with his older brother.
As they strode up the sidewalk, Mark suddenly noticed that the front door was wide open and the house lights were on. That was strange. Arleta wasn’t as safe as it had once been, and some of the neighbors had even taken to putting bars over their windows.
They walked lightly up the walkway and opened the screen door quietly so as not to wake their mother. The boys found her asleep on the sofa and Mark laid a blanket over her. The brothers tiptoed off to bed, thankful she hadn’t noticed their late arrival.
Hours later Irene sat straight up and threw the blanket off her shoulders. She stood up slowly, eyes wide open, and walked down the hall. She could hear the boys snoring as she made her way to Missy’s room. It was empty. Missy’s alarm clock glowed in the dark, and Irene felt a wave of panic building as she looked at the time.
Three A.M.
Suddenly anger swept her anxiety away, anger at Missy. The least she could have done was call.
As Irene stood there, watching the minutes on Missy’s alarm clock change from 3:01 to 3:12 and then to 3:26, she tried to convince herself that Missy probably had too much to drink and fallen asleep somewhere. After all, to believe Missy had intentionally avoided calling her was to believe Missy wasn’t telling the truth about everything else.
By four that morning, Irene was frustrated and more than a little frightened. She considered returning to her bedroom, but more than four years after she and Ernie had divorced, the room still seemed lonely. Especially tonight, with Missy out. She turned off the hall light, walked back out to the couch, and lay down, spreading the blanket neatly.
Sleep would not come and Irene’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. She could just make out the oil painting that hung above her. It was a portrait of her children: Mark and his fiancée, Shavaun, Ernie, Chris, and Missy. The picture had been taken three months earlier, and Irene had paid the studio to frame it for the living room. As Irene stared at the picture, her eyes settled on Missy.
“Oh, Missy,” Irene whispered. “Just call me and tell me you’re okay.”
The panic began creeping up again, and Irene felt her heart pounding inside her chest. She sighed. It was useless to think of sleep until Missy got home. She walked to the front window, glancing up and down the street. She was still standing there when Mark woke up three hours later. A recent high school graduate, he was used to rising early, though on Wednesdays he didn’t work until the afternoon.
“Been up long, Mom?” he asked her as he walked into the kitchen and poured himself some cereal.
Irene turned her head, suddenly aware of her son’s presence. In the back bedroom she could hear Chris getting ready for school. She stared at Mark for a moment and when she finally spoke, her voice was flat. “Missy isn’t home yet.”
Mark seemed confused by his mother’s response. “Home from where? Missy never goes anywhere this early.”
Irene tried to respond, but a lump had lodged itself in her throat. She collapsed slowly in their overstuffed chair and began to sob.
“Mom?” Mark stood up and knelt by his mother. “What is it? What’s wrong? Where’s Missy?”
Irene struggled to explain herself. “She went to the park yesterday with Laura Doyle and she said she’d be home by six or else call.” Irene let her head drop into her hands. “I don’t know where she is. Oh, Mark, do you think something happened to her?”
Mark offered his mother a tissue and patted her on the back. He didn’t like the fact that Missy hadn’t called to let their mother know she’d gone overnight, but it wasn’t the first time she had been so inconsiderate. He knew she was running with a faster crowd these days, which didn’t make him happy. He had tried to talk some sense into her on several occasions, but Missy had always brushed him off. She had probably partied too hard the day before and crashed at one of her friends’ houses. He didn’t want to say that to his mother, but he wanted to assure her that Missy would be fine.
“Mom, you know Missy. She probably stayed up late talking to one of her friends and she didn’t want to wake you. I’m sure she’ll be home any time now.” He gently helped her up. “Come on, now. Have something to eat and don’t worry so much.”
Irene nodded, forcing herself to smile at her middle son. As she followed Mark into the kitchen to make breakfast, she tried to believe that he was right.
For the next three hours Irene refused to let herself think about Missy. She saw Chris off to school and kept herself busy doing housework and paying bills. Finally, at 10:30 that morning, she could no longer concentrate. She called Bobby, Missy’s boyfriend. But his mother said he was out with the guys and had come home early the night before. Missy hadn’t been with him.
Irene began to cry and found Mark in the living room.
“Mark, we have to do something,” she said. “This isn’t like Missy to disappear and not even call us.”
Mark nodded in agreement but forced his voice to sound calm.
“Why don’t you call Christy and see if she knows where Missy is?” he said. “If she isn’t there, Christy will know where she is.”
“You’re right. I’ll go over to Christy’s.”
Faithful Christy Crawford. She and Missy had become close friends at Byrd Junior High, but Christy had moved to Long Beach with her parents before high school. She often came back to Arleta and stayed with her grandmother. During those visits, she and Missy were always together.
Thinking about Christy made Irene remember something else. Missy had called Christy just before Laura picked her up yesterday. Irene hadn’t heard their entire conversation. She didn’t hear Missy tell Christy about doing a few lines of cocaine at the park, but she had heard Missy say something about getting together that evening.
Irene pulled a sweater over her shoulders and quickly headed outside down the street to Christy’s grandmother’s house. All Missy’s friends lived in the neighborhood. Laura Doyle. Karen Severson. Christy Crawford. Irene had always felt comforted knowing that Missy was usually in the neighborhood, and now she fully expected to find her at Christy’s.
Five minutes later she stood on the Crawford porch and knocked. Christy opened the door and smiled when she saw Irene, but before the teenager could speak, Irene blurted the reason for her visit.
“Christy, is Missy here?” Irene stared into Christy’s eyes.
“No.” Christy looked concerned. “Is she supposed to be?”
It was nearly eighty degrees outside, but Irene was suddenly cold. She began to shiver and pulled the sweater tight around her body.
“She left yesterday afternoon to go to the park with Laura Doyle. She was supposed to come home by six but she never did. And she didn’t call.” Irene gazed down the street, still expecting to see Missy drive up. “I thought she might be with you.”
Christy didn’t like the sound of Irene’s story. She knew Missy sometimes stayed out late, but she never would have let her mother worry this long about her whereabouts. Christy prided herself on being Missy’s closest friend. She hadn’t known her as long as Karen Severson, but she and Missy were always there for each other. Christy fought back a wild thought. She was sure Irene didn’t know about Missy’s experiments with cocaine. What if Missy had taken too much cocaine and overdosed? What if something had happened to her?
“Have you asked Laura? She must know where Missy is if they left together.”
Irene told Christy how Laura had dropped Missy off to talk to three guys in a blue Camaro.
“I have a few ideas, Mrs. Avila,” Christy said, grabbing her car keys from inside the house. “Let’ go talk to some people and see if we can find out where she is.”
Irene followed Christy to her car. She would have rather visited the police station and filed a missing person’s report, but the police had told her they wouldn’t take any information until twenty-four hours after a disappearance. It was 11:25 A.M., which meant that for the next three hours Christy was Irene’s only hope.
The two women spent the next several hours calling on Missy’s friends, but no one knew where Missy was or which boys might own a blue Camaro. At each house they visited, Irene called Mark. Maybe Missy had called. Maybe she was home.
At 3:00 P.M. Irene asked Christy to take her to the Foothill Police Station.
An officer behind the counter was filing paperwork when Irene burst in and asked for a missing person’s report.
“My daughter is gone. She’s been gone for twenty-four hours and no one knows where she is. I think something might have happened to her. Can you help me?” Irene sounded frantic.
The officer looked annoyed. Another hysterical mother, he thought. They’re all the same. Daughters and sons who haven’t learned how to be responsible and parents who haven’t learned to let go. He sounded bored when he finally answered Irene.
“How old is your daughter?”
Irene detected his lack of interest and tried to sound calmer as she answered him. “Seventeen. She’s seventeen.”
“Look, lady, if she’s seventeen she’s probably just spending a little time at her boyfriend’s house. You two getting along or did you have a fight yesterday?” He had returned to filing papers and Irene was beginning to loose her temper.
“We haven’t had any fights and she would have called me if she were at her boyfriend’s house. Don’t you people care about what’s happening out there?” Irene was screaming now. “I have a seventeen-year-old daughter who hasn’t been heard from in twenty-four hours and you act like I’m reporting a missing wallet.”
The officer looked at Irene and handed her a form. “Here. Fill this out and we’ll see what we can do.”
Irene took the form and began writing as tears streamed down her cheeks. She blinked hard.
The form was routine. Missing person’s name. Birth date, eye and hair color. Weight and height. Date and time last seen. Person last seen with.
Then the questions got harder.