The cop remained at the Wade house until Rachel did come home. Rachel explained that she’d been out with friends at a pool hall in Seminole.
With the cop still present, Janet noticed a red welt on Rachel’s leg. She asked what had happened. Rachel said she got burned when she accidentally put her leg on a motorcycle’s exhaust pipe.
Janet affirmed that she intended to do what she could to stop Jose. The officer reminded the Wades that the police were not in existence to play games with a fifteen-year-old girl every time she ran off. Then the officers said to be sure and call if there were future problems.
On November 22, 2005, Rachel and her mother argued anew. Janet told Rachel that from then on every time she left the house without permission, or failed to come home when she was supposed to, the cops would be called.
Rachel didn’t like that. At first, Rachel punched inanimate things: the wall, a door. Then she fixed her hostility on her mom. The fight became physical. Rachel attacked her mother and threw objects at her.
Janet called 911.
“What objects did she throw?” the dispatch operator asked.
“Well, a hairbrush, for one thing. Hit me. Hit me in the lower thigh.”
After that, Rachel, a little hellion now, ran into the kitchen and threw open cabinet doors. She found the place where the good knives were kept. She quickly chose one knife, which she liked; it was a knife sheathed in a white Pampered Chef knife carrier. Rachel slid the knife from its sheath and threw it at her mother, bouncing it off Janet’s abdomen. Rachel scooped up the knife, quick like a cat, and locked herself in the bathroom.
Janet told 911 that Rachel had blades on her mind. There were “shaving razors” in that bathroom, and she didn’t trust Rachel not to hurt herself.
Officer Shaun Grantham reported to the Wades’ home and found Janet Wade waiting in front of the house. Grantham asked if Rachel was still around. Janet shook her head no.
Janet explained that right after she hung up with the operator, she screamed into the bathroom that Rachel better get out and give up the knife. Soon thereafter, Rachel exited the bathroom, put the knife back in its sheath and into its cabinet, hurriedly packed a bag of things, and stormed out the door, announcing that this time no one was ever going to find her! She disappeared into the night. Janet came outside, but she couldn’t even tell which direction Rachel was headed.
The officer later noted that this was not his first time visiting the Wades’ home, and a lot of fellow officers were familiar with the Wades and their problems as well. It had become a regular pattern for Rachel: run away from home in the evening, stay out all night, and return the following afternoon. For a while, she had been packing up her things and taking them with her at night, like she thought she was moving out on the sly.
Theft entered the mix. Janet caught Rachel in her purse, looking for something, probably money. When Janet tried to call 911, Rachel attacked and tried to wrestle the cell phone away from her mother. In the process, Rachel dug her nails into Janet’s forearm.
“Has Rachel been suicidal before?” the cop asked.
“Yes,” Janet Wade said, exhibiting long-suffering eyes.
Grantham checked out the bathroom, the one that Rachel had locked herself in, and found nothing suspicious, no evidence she had done anything to hurt herself.
He radioed in that he needed a search team, and a canine unit was assigned to the case. A police search dog named Dax was given a sniff of a piece of Rachel’s unlaundered apparel. The dog was then sent out to find Rachel.
A photographer reported to the scene and took photos of the knife, its sheath, and the fingernail wounds on Janet Wade’s forearm.
Grantham wanted to confiscate the hairbrush that Rachel threw at her mother, but the hairbrush could not be located.
The canine search was unsuccessful. It got off to a bad start when Officer M. Turner, the human half of the canine team, reported to the wrong address. Even after communications were repaired, conditions for tracking were less than desirable. There was a cool, strong wind from the northwest—and the search bore no fruit. Dax sniffed around the residential streets for eight minutes and gave up. Dax perked up for a time on one stretch of nearby street—then, nothing. Rachel might not have gone far on foot before she got into a car.
Rachel returned home at ten-thirty, the following night. Asked where she’d been, Rachel explained that she had been upset. She ended up sleeping on a chaise longue next to the Plantation Gardens Apartments pool. When she woke up in the morning, she just walked around before returning home.
On February 2, 2006, Barry Wade called cops to report his runaway daughter. The next day, Rachel was located at her friend Heather’s house. Rachel said she spent the night with Heather, sitting outside the house and talking.
Ten days later, Barry called again, but this time the paperwork for a missing juvenile was still being filled out—“four earrings in right ear, five earrings in left ear, no tattoos”—when Rachel returned home.
On March 13, Barry called again, and Rachel came home on March 14, telling cops that she had spent the night with her friend Brittany. She didn’t know her address, and didn’t attend school that day because she feared she would be arrested for being a runaway.
Rachel left behind a note on March 23 when she split, wrote that she would be with friends and back in the morning. The cops were called, nonetheless. Barry Wade reiterated that his insistence on the documentation of each of Rachel’s escapes was to create a paper trail in support of future court action that would, in turn, enable him to “help Rachel.”
When Rachel returned, as she always did, she told her father and a cop that she’d been with her friend Sierra. She didn’t know the last name. She went to St. Pete Beach, and slept in an unknown male’s car.
Four days later, Rachel took off again. This time Rachel put on music in her room, just before sneaking out the window. It was mother Janet’s turn to call police. Janet said that Rachel had no access to money. She didn’t think Rachel’s welfare was endangered, and she didn’t think she had a substance abuse problem—but she did think Rachel was spending the night with a man.
On June 11, the police responded to reports of a fight at the Wades’ place, Rachel and her father. She’d been away without leave, and to punish her, Barry took her cell phone away. Barry told the cop he was planning to seek the help of “mental-health physicians” for Rachel in the near future.
The next 911 call came in six days later, with Rachel returning right on schedule. A week after that, Rachel didn’t come home from work. Barry verified that she’d been at work that day, but she just didn’t come home afterward.
Rachel’s attitude when answering grown-up questions grew increasingly belligerent. When Rachel came back now, she didn’t care enough to make up a lie.
She told cops she didn’t remember what she did or whom she was with.
One cop gave her a steady gaze and determined she was in good health. Uninjured, he wrote. More paperwork for Barry Wade’s pile.
When they told her she should get a job and focus her attention on something constructive, she said she had a job. She had a telemarketing job at Vici Financial, located in the Winn-Dixie Shopping Mall.
Rachel was now in possession of her learner’s permit to drive a car. Rachel’s runaway problem intensified a notch during the weekend of July 22 and 23. She called home a few times to say she was with friends. She didn’t have her cell phone with her and the Wades’ caller ID failed to determine from which number she was calling.
“She must have done something to block the number,” Barry said to the cop.
Then, disturbingly, Rachel did something she hadn’t done before. She called and said she was on her way home—and then failed to