Of Guilt and Innocence (20 page)

“We? We, Bedard? What is this ‘we' shit?” Jim asked as he looked at the printout.

“Come on, I found this one, at least include me in the interview.”

“Since I'm feeling nice today,” Jim looked up abruptly at Dan and interrupted himself, “I took the kid with me today, by the way.”

“Oh yeah? How'd he do?” Dan asked. Jim just shook his head in response.

“Since I'm feeling nice today, taking the kid out and all, I'll let you tag along on our trip to Davie. But you are not speaking with Lisa Wooten. The woman has been through enough, she doesn't need to be paraded in front of a million different detectives. Especially ones who seem giddy about their part of the investigation into her daughter's murder.” Jim paused for a minute and looked hard at the sex offender registry flyer Paul had given him.

“Bradford . . . that name sounds familiar. He ever been arrested up here before?” Jim asked in a more cordial tone than he had initially started with.

“Nope, only arrest was for the sex offense in Davie.”

“Huh, I feel like I've heard that name before.” Jim said as he strained to search the recesses of his memory bank.

 

Night was falling on the Wooten home, and family and friends were leaving. It had been the hardest few days of all of their lives, from cousins to friends, and, of course, for Tom and Lisa. The burden of making funeral arrangements fell to Tom, with assistance from Mark and some other family members. Lisa had been inconsolable since learning her daughter had been murdered. After being called by Tom, the dentist from the office she worked at came over and provided her with a prescription for oxycodone, which Tom filled and had given her. No other family members knew of this, except for Mark, and Tom had just told the others she had taken a few sleeping pills. She had, in fact, taken a sleeping pill as well as the oxycodone and the combination had pretty much knocked her out for the entire day, allowing her to get some rest for the first time since Friday evening.

After the initial pain and chaos had washed over her, she began feeling something just as strong as grief. Guilt. Though she had just started to question herself and what she could have done differently before she was put in her current, almost coma like state, the guilt was the most intense feeling she had ever experienced. The combination of grief and guilt made it almost impossible for her to think, eat, or sleep on her own.

Tom felt his own guilt as well though it wasn't as consuming as Lisa's. He worried that he may have been responsible for Ashley's disappearance. What if he had just told the detectives right away about Angela? Could Ashley have been saved? He had hoped his infidelities could continue to be a secret, despite the intrusive police investigation. When he had learned of his daughter's disappearance he thought there was a chance one of his mistresses could have been involved, Angela specifically, but he made the decision to remain quiet about their existence. Now he dealt with another emotion that Lisa had yet to contend with. Shame. He knew eventually everything would come to light and be out in the open. His philandering, his withholding information from the police, everything. He knew Lisa couldn't take that kind of admission from him right now. She was barely hanging on. He knew he should tell her, at least about Angela, but it would have to wait for now.  

The house was almost empty. Only Mark remained, and he was already asleep on the living room couch, his makeshift bedroom. Tom sat alone at the dining room table, the same table he had sat at only two days before, watching Ashley chase the dog and run in the yard. As hard as he tried to suppress them, memories of Ashley flooded his thoughts. He remembered when she was born and how he wasn't sure if he was ready to be a father, or if he would even be a good one. But then he held her for the first time and all his doubts slipped away.

He remembered the trips they had all taken. Seeing her happy and excited was the most enjoyable thing he had ever done. And he remembered that last hug he had gotten from her, as she ran to him from across the living room right before he left Saturday morning. He wished he had squeezed her tighter. He wished he had lingered just a little bit longer. He wished he had never left.

As the tears trickled down his cheeks he also thought of the future and how nothing would ever be the same. No trips to plan with her in mind. No more hugs. Nothing would ever be as enjoyable. He realized his life was now going to be separated into two categories: a before and an after, at least that's how he would forever view it. No matter what occurred from now until his own death, he would forever view his memories as before and after the death of his daughter, as if a line had been drawn in his life. He knew others would only see the after; nothing he had ever done before would matter. They would see him and immediately think of a tragic incident, nothing more. He would never get over her death and knew he could never escape it. It was who he was now. A tragic figure.

 

 

CHAPTER 14

 

 

As morning coaxed him out of his slumber, Louis opened his eyes and gradually pulled himself out of bed. He struggled to focus and gain his bearings as he stumbled through the small apartment and into the bathroom. The apartment was just as he had left it before being hauled into an interrogation room the day before. He was certain the police would have searched it while he was away and found some type of evidence of his crimes, but when he returned he was relieved to find out that wasn't the case. Nothing was displaced, nothing was missing that he was aware of. However, as he brushed his teeth and looked at himself in the small, dingy mirror he knew his time was running out. He knew that his luck was bound to change, and probably sooner rather than later now that he was an official police suspect.

He was a suspect in the murder of his mother, and the murders of the seven other women that comprised the South Florida Strangler's death toll. Though he was a serial killer himself, he never thought of himself as such. He had taken the lives of eight little girls, but he saw the murders as collateral damage of sorts. He hadn't wanted to kill any of them. He derived no enjoyment out of it. He found it to be a necessary evil; he couldn't simply release the girls after what he had done, and he saw it as his only option. He felt he had nothing in common with a man that simply wanted to murder.

He knew there would be no evidence linking him to the South Florida Strangler cases, but he also knew that as the police tried to dig some up they would eventually uncover other evidence to the crimes he had committed. He was at a crossroads. He knew he had to flee. Still, he felt conflicted about leaving the only sanctuary he had ever known. About leaving his mother. As long as he remained in that apartment and on that property he could hang on to her. He would still be able to feel her presence.  

Louis made his way down the ladder and through the garage. He opened the door and stood facing the street. The glare from the sun temporarily blinded him. He felt its warmth on his skin. The morning air filled his nostrils. He only heard a soft breeze blowing. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. As his sight came back into focus he saw a yellow streamer flapping in the breeze at the corner of the property near the sidewalk. As the streamer flapped he could read in black bold print the words DO NOT CRO on it. Suddenly, the surreal moment he was having with Mother Nature was gone, he was once again reminded of the predicament he was in, and he closed the garage door and made his way to the house.

Police had still been there when he returned last night, still searching his mother's house. He paid them no attention and hid away in his apartment. He wasn't sure what time they had left or if they would be back.

He let himself into the kitchen and almost instinctively looked at the breakfast table. It was empty, as it had been the day before when he glanced at it. His mind flashed back to a time when it was full of foods he loved, specially made just for him. It wasn't so long ago, just three days in fact, that he had enjoyed dinner at that table with his mother. Though he had complained about the food as he often did, he still enjoyed it. He still remembered the smell of her meat sauce as clearly as if it were simmering on the stove at that moment. He could see her there, cooking for him. He felt like she had just been there, with him in this place, only moments before, but he knew she was gone now, never to be there again. He glanced toward the living room, the place of his gruesome discovery, and the nostalgic images faded from his mind.  

He walked a little farther and stopped. His mother no longer lay on the floor as she had when he found her. Large portions of the carpeting had been cut and removed. The room was dark, at least darker than it usually was at this time of the morning. Louis looked around the room as if drinking it all in one last time. He looked down at his mother's final resting place. Despite the irony, he could not put together his mother's demise with the lives he had taken. He wasn't a killer, he had always told himself that, and thus he never felt remorse for killing. But this, to kill an elderly woman for no reason, was incomprehensible to him.

Up to this point, he had kept his mother's murder separated from his feelings. Emotions had overtaken him at one point while being interrogated by the police, however, he quickly was able to suppress them in order to save his own skin and focus on evading any admissions of guilt. But since that point it was as if his brain knew his mother was dead, but it kept that information from the emotions that should have come with that knowledge. Until now.

As he looked at the place his mother had been savagely attacked and laid for him to discover, the tears began to flow. He felt alone. He once again longed for her companionship. She had supported him, both financially and emotionally. As much as he had always tried to rationalize the monster he had become, he knew in that moment that he was one, and that she probably knew it all along. But she had loved him and supported him anyway. She had never expected anything from him; she let him do what he wanted and be who he wanted. And this was who he had wanted to be. A stalker. A pedophile. A killer.  

As the emotions came, he now understood there was no distinction between the lives he took and the lives his mother's killer had taken. He finally felt what his victims' families felt. Shame overwhelmed him for the first time. He felt guilt. He felt remorse.   

As he stood examining the room, he noticed motion outside the house through the sheer curtains of the front window. He moved closer to it, stepping over the place where his mother had laid as if she was still there. He pulled back the curtain and observed a dark blue sedan with dark tinted windows parked on the street across from the driveway. The car was running and there was a spot on the pavement next to the driver's side front door as if someone had dumped something out the window. He knew it was the police, and he knew he was being watched.

 

As it turned out, Louis was correct, it was a police officer in the car and that police officer's job was to, in fact, watch him so he didn't flee. The South Florida Strangler taskforce was in pursuit of Louis, working as hard as they could to somehow at least link him to his mother's slaying. The taskforce had a briefing earlier that morning where Jorge told them of the recent developments, including the announcement of a suspect, Louis Bradford. Despite the promising new leads, Lieutenant Greer did not pull every available unit off of their current assignments to assist Jorge, John, and Kristin. Instead, he maintained that the Broward County trio should conduct this investigation and if they needed assistance it would be provided to them at that time. Feeling that time was of the essence, the trio did not physically attend the morning briefing in Miami, instead they relayed their information via teleconference from their headquarters in Broward County.  

Not all things were looking up, however. A devastating blow had already been delivered to the investigation. While Jorge and Kristin briefed the task force of the most recent killing via teleconference, John had written and delivered a search warrant request for Louis's apartment and the car he shared with his mother. But to the group's surprise and disgust, the search warrant had not been granted, at least not in its entirety.

The judge did allow for a search of the garage itself, however, he would not allow for a search of the apartment above it, or the vehicle. He had reasoned that the apartment, despite its close proximity to the home in which the killing took place, should be deemed a separate residence even though there was no lease agreement. He further stated that no evidence existed to search this separate residence for any evidence of the crime of murder thus far.

He deemed that the vehicle, due to the fact that the registration was in both Louis and Anne's name, belonged to both of them equally and both needed to give consent. Since Anne was no longer capable of giving it, the vehicle was now the sole possession of Louis and his consent would be needed to search. He also again stated that no evidence was presented to suggest the vehicle or its owner were involved in the crime of murder. Nor had Anne even driven the car within a reasonable amount of time before her death that evidence could be obtained from it.

Lastly, the lone victory for the team, the judge did allow for a search of the garage to be completed only on the bottom floor based on the fact that it should be considered part of the main house, even though it was not attached, and that it consisted of “common area” and not a residence. Initially there had been some confusion on if Louis's apartment encompassed the entire garage or just an upstairs portion, which was the reason it was not included in the original search warrant of the main house.  However, if they wanted to get in to the apartment and car, the group would have to come up with some type of hard evidence suggesting Louis was involved in this or any other crime before they would be allowed to search them.