Read She Survived for Free Online Page B

place in Florida, under the watchful eye of her father, something was happening back in Indiana that would change everything eventually.

CHAPTER 15
    LUCKY TO BE ALIVE
    Becky Buttram had been with the MCSD for over a dozen years by the time Melissa’s case came in. For Buttram, the case was personal. She’d been involved with the sex crimes division of the department for years and had seen the worst of the worst with regard to sex crimes. Yet, with Melissa’s case, it was such a rare thing to happen in this part of Indianapolis. Buttram was understandably concerned about the possible serial nature to it all. Someone who was that brazen to go in through a sliding glass door, not knowing what was beyond the door—if he didn’t know, that is—meant the guy had definitely done it before and was going to do it again. There was no doubt about this in Buttram’s mind. And it scared the detective.
    When Becky Buttram walked into Melissa’s apartment a few days after the crime, she was overwhelmed by the amount of blood inside the place.
    “I thought, ‘She’s lucky to be alive,’ ” the detective said later. “There was so much evidence left over there inside her apartment. I think because Melissa said to him, ‘Excuse me, I’m bleeding very badly,’ that [it] startled him. He didn’t expect that. It scared him.”
    Buttram ran a laser light around the apartment with a colleague to see if they could find any additional evidence, but nothing turned up. It was okay. They didn’t really need it, anyway. They had so much blood, fingerprints, and a few palm prints. There was enough to get started.
    “We believe Melissa actually hit him and caused him to bleed, so we believed we had his blood.”
    Problem was, that sort of evidence was only as good as something to match it up to.
    One of the other immediate observations Becky Buttram made as she walked around the apartment was how certain she now was that the crime had not been a random act of violence. He didn’t just begin to break into females’ homes and slash them up; and it was pretty clear to Buttram that he knew Melissa. He didn’t choose her on that night. There was no way.
    Another thought had occurred to Buttram as she stood looking at all the blood and mess that the scuffle had produced: I hope to God it doesn’t happen again.
    “Melissa’s attack was potentially going to be a homicide,” Buttram said later.
    The possibility of it happening again worried Buttram the most. In fact, the detective became so concerned after seeing Melissa’s crime scene and reviewing her case that at night she would drive the apartment complex and others nearby, hoping to spot a suspicious character.
    She never did.
    He hid himself well—at least then.
    Because, at that moment, just as Becky Buttram suspected and knew in her gut, the man who had attacked Melissa was planning several more home invasions.
    The detective was right: He was not going to stop. The question was: Would he escalate to murder, now that he knew Melissa was alive and talking?

CHAPTER 16
    ANDREW
    There was another monster knocking on Melissa’s door as she stayed with family in Florida. This one started off as a tropical depression along the coast of Africa around August 14, 1992, and turned into one of the most devastating hurricanes on record: Andrew. By the time Andrew hit the Florida coast near South Florida during the week of August 20, with winds well over 175 miles per hour, he was a Category 5 monstrous storm capable of wreaking havoc anywhere he decided to spin. When Andrew was finished, he had caused $26.5 billion worth of destruction and dozens of deaths.
    With forecasts of Andrew preparing to hit the Florida coastline near Melissa’s home, her father said, “You need to leave.”
    The man, like any father, was scared for his daughter, who had been through so much already. Melissa did not need to confront a hurricane, on top of everything she had been through already. Of course, she