Of Guilt and Innocence (4 page)

Louis walked down the different corridors, looking more at the other mall patrons rather than the various stores. After completing one full revolution, he sat down on one of the benches and continued to watch. This routine had been perfected many times over. He was always discrete; he never leered or stared but just spanned his gaze and sat contently.

The mall was busy that day, too busy for his liking, so he walked to the exit he had parked closest to. Instead of leaving, he found a bench that faced the entranceway and continued his people watching from there. Finally, after a half hour of intently gazing at the herds of people entering the mall, two females caught his eye. An attractive woman with blonde hair hurried inside with a small, strawberry blonde girl at her side. Louis noticed how the blonde woman, although she was aware of where her little girl was, walked at a hurried pace and appeared to have her mind on things other than the child with her. Louis casually watched them as they passed and he began to follow at a distance.

The mother and child appeared to be oblivious that they were being stalked and they began to shop. The wheels in Louis's head were turning; he attempted to devise a plan unique to this situation, as he always had a general one in place. This was the reason for his trip on that particular day, the reason for all his trips, and so he always had a standard plan of action in his head, his modus operandi.

Louis observed the pair entering a shoe store. He positioned himself just outside the store's entrance and pretended to read and respond to a message on his cell phone. When the woman and her daughter exited the store, he noticed the small girl had on a new pair of shoes that were consuming her attention. He also realized her mother had not discovered this as quickly as he had. As the woman passed by him without the small girl by her side, Louis slid himself into the girl's path while she looked down at her shoes. The girl's head struck his large stomach and she fell to the ground. Louis quickly whipped his head around to observe the girl's mother and her reaction or if she had even noticed. When he observed the woman turn and begin walking toward her daughter, he quickly looked back at the girl who was staring back at him with fear and surprise. “I am so sorry,” the woman said as she helped her daughter up off the floor.

“Oh it's no problem at all. I shouldn't have been standing looking at my cell phone on a busy day like today.” He leaned down so he was eye level with the girl and asked in the kindest tone he could muster, “Are you OK, sweetheart?”  

“Yes, sir, I'm sorry.”

“It's OK, I'm sorry, too.” He smiled at her and stood back up. A sense of satisfaction and excitement washed over him. “Well, have a nice afternoon,” he said as he walked to sit down on a bench that had just become available. He was close; he could feel it building inside him.  He watched the two as they walked away, hand in hand.  He noticed how the woman began swiveling her head from store to store again, as if she had already forgotten the incident had occurred, or did not think much of it happening at all. Then he saw the little girl turn back and look at him. At first he saw a look of puzzlement, then, just before she turned her head away, he saw a look of calm, of trust. He had his mark.

With his target now determined, Louis continued to stalk his prey. For hours he would watch at a distance, calculating and recalculating his plan on how he would separate the woman from her daughter, or how he could strike if they became separated for any reason. But he soon realized a crowded mall was not the place to take action, and so he continued to just watch. He had become very patient over the years. He had been observing them for over two hours and felt strongly that their shopping day was almost over. He felt confident if he left right now they would soon follow, however, he hoped he would have enough time to get in his car and prepare for their departure without losing them.

He quickly exited the mall and did just that. From his parking space he had a clear view of the exit from which he knew his mark would come. Now, he would just wait.  Fifteen minutes passed as he stared at the doors, hoping he had not been too slow. Finally, in a flash, a blonde woman holding the hand of a little girl darted out and very sharply walked to a blue Ford Expedition. Both were quickly inside the SUV and rapidly pulling out of their parking space, heading toward the parking lot exit. Louis backed out of his spot and put his car into drive.

 

 

CHAPTER 3

 

 

In yet another part of the Sunshine State that same morning, just a little farther south in the upscale city of Coral Gables, Carlos Hernandez was just settling down on a stool at his kitchen counter after his morning jog. As he sipped from a bottle of fruit punch sports drink, he spread out the day's edition of the
Miami Herald
on the granite countertop before him. The kitchen that surrounded him was lavish and gourmet. Not an expense was spared, despite the fact that neither he nor his wife cooked or entertained often enough to justify the opulence. It went well, however, with the rest of the gorgeous home nestled in the highly sought after Las Islas gated community. He began reading the
Herald
as he drank to replenish the electrolytes shed during his workout. After skimming its pages, he folded it up and set it back on the counter, replacing it with the
Palm Beach Post
. As he began reading the front page headlines, his wife, Julia, slowly emerged down the stairs.    

“Did I wake you? I am sorry, I tried to be quiet.”

“No, no, I woke up on my own,” she said as she passed by him to the refrigerator.  

“It says here that the South Florida Strangler is no more, left town, never to return,” Carlos said with a large smile, exaggerating the real story. Being born in Cuba, he generally spoke with a slight Hispanic accent, but at times like this he brought it out on his own to make things sound more fantastic and emphatic.

“Good, that man is a sicko, killing helpless old ladies.”  Julia responded, not a trace of her Hispanic heritage to be found in her voice.

“How do you know it's a man? I have seen you very upset and can imagine you doing such things.” Carlos looked back down at the paper as he spoke, he no longer had a smile, but it was clear he was joking. Words seemed to glide off his tongue whenever he spoke. People enjoyed listening to him talk, with his smooth Spanish accent and passionate way of describing a situation.  

“I won't be home later. I have to check on a patient at the hospital and look at a few files. It may be a late night,” he said, continuing to skim the newspaper.

Julia didn't respond to Carlos's advisement of his evenings plans. She had grown used to him not being around a lot.

As the morning progressed, Carlos retreated to his home office, somewhere he spent a lot of time over the years. It was a small room he liked to go in to think. He kept the lighting dim and had no television or distractions in it. The majority of the time he was in the office he would have the door shut so he had total privacy. It was a room all his own. It was his sanctuary.  

He sat at a large dark oak desk and stared at an open medical file. Although his eyes did not focus on the words on the pages, nor did his mind process what the file said, he was thinking about this particular patient whose file lay before him, but in the abstract. He was picturing his encounter with her just the day before. An elderly woman, she had been coming to the office to see Dr. Morris for years, although Carlos had never seen her before he spoke with her yesterday.

She was having problems with her hip, which had been surgically replaced twelve years ago. He had consulted with her about it briefly, then gave her a ride home, which he found to be located in a very rough part of town. She seemed very matter of fact, very honest, however, her eyes told him a different story. He saw a look of guilt and a look of sadness in her eyes. After getting to know her a little bit he knew he shouldn't take this kind of interest in one of his own patients, but he couldn't help it; she was consuming him, what was in her eyes was consuming him, and he felt sorry for her. He knew what had to be done, he had done it many times before, but he wanted to be certain to make this one perfect.  

And so he began to read, to study her file. He sat in his office for hours, reading it cover to cover, thinking, bulletproofing what he would do and how he would do it. As he thought and studied, slowly, a picture started forming in his head, a game plan. Piece by piece it came together, it developed like an orchestra slowly building, slowly adding more instruments, until finally, the crescendo. He seemed pleased with what he had formulated; he felt it would work. It would be perfect for her and her situation.  

Carlos opened a locked desk drawer, the bottom one on his left hand side. He lifted a box of cigars up and placed it on the top of the desk. He then reached back down into the drawer and slowly opened the lid to another cigar box. He pulled an empty orange pill bottle out and closed his grip around it, staring blankly forward. After a few seconds his grip loosened and he read the name on the pill bottle, Elsa McMillian. He closed his eyes for an instant, as if to initiate the memory that came with reading the name. He smiled to himself, then slowly placed it back in the cigar box, alongside six other empty orange pill bottles. He shut the lid, put the box of cigars from the top of his desk back on top of the cigar box containing the empty pill bottles, and locked the drawer.  

Carlos had a bit more studying to do to ensure the plan he had just developed would work. Perhaps there was still a minor detail or two that would require a tweak here or there. He opened a laptop computer that sat on the corner of his desk and pulled up the Broward County bus schedule. He found a starting location bus stop, an end location bus stop, a departure time after sunset, and a return time that he felt would work. If his plan was to be like that finely tuned orchestra producing a masterpiece he would have to do some reconnaissance work. After all, there was no margin for error; everything had to work perfectly. What Carlos was planning so methodically was not a hip surgery—he was planning to pick up where he had left off six months ago.

His first occurred by accident really; it was not his intention to have things end up that way and to get started down this path. It was back before he took his current position with a private practice medical office. He was working at Ft. Lauderdale Hospital as a general surgeon then and was asked by one of the oncologists there to speak with a woman who was having fears about having a benign growth removed. She was a woman in her early sixties who was having a hard time accepting that the growth being benign was a good thing. She had just heard the word surgery and became upset. She had requested to speak with a surgeon, and thus Carlos was brought in to ease her worries. Carlos used his smooth talking skills to set the woman at ease. He explained how a minor procedure like that was no big deal, he told a few jokes, smiled at her, and the woman felt comforted. She had already finished her appointment at that point, and so she walked out of the office with Carlos, who was also on his way home for the day. As the two walked and made small talk, she got her cell phone out of her purse and began to call for a taxi to pick her up. After some pleading, Carlos convinced her to let him drive her home. The two got into his car and drove to her residence, a modest apartment complex not far from the hospital. She lived alone, she explained, and though she did not drive, she tried to keep some of her independence, which was why she lived in a regular apartment complex and not a senior citizen community.  

She thanked Carlos for the ride and offered him a cup of tea before he left, which he accepted. She sat next to Carlos at her kitchen table in the small apartment and asked him to describe the surgery in detail. He began to explain the intricacies of the surgery to her, looking in to her eyes as he spoke. He could see her vulnerability. A rush suddenly came over him and he looked away as he continued. His mouth was on auto-pilot, describing a procedure he had done many times before, but his mind was racing. He felt her helplessness and as he described the procedure he couldn't help but feel God-like. He felt like this poor woman needed him to keep her alive, that she was totally at his mercy, and that gave him a sudden rush of adrenaline and notions of power. The feeling of invincibility ran over him and he began feeling a strong sense of sexual arousal. It had never happened to him before, with a patient like that, but he did not have time to really acknowledge it. He was too overwhelmed by this sudden rush. It was not an attraction to the woman he was speaking to, but a feeling of power and control that had sparked his arousal.

Without thinking, he quickly placed his left hand on the woman's right thigh and squeezed, still looking away but no longer talking. He sharply looked at her as his hand continued to pulse.

The woman recoiled in surprise, quickly sliding away from him in her chair. “What are you doing?”  She asked, surprised and scared. He sat there looking at her; his breathing and pulse had quickened, his veins still pulsing with adrenaline. His mind tried to process what had just happened, and he started to feel an anger wash over him. This was an old woman. He was a young, handsome doctor, and she was rejecting his advance? An advance he never would have made had he not been caught up in this sudden rush of power.

He could control his anger no longer and he lunged out of his chair, attempting to grab her. She managed to slip away and run to her bedroom with Carlos in pursuit carrying a large knife he had grabbed from a knife block that sat on the kitchen counter. Unable to shut the door in time, she dove across her bed and reached for the phone, but she never got there. As her fingers touched the top of the black handset that sat face down in its charger, the cold blade of her own kitchen knife slid into her back. She gasped as she lay there, still face down. Blood poured out of her wound and saturated her white blouse, then engulfed the floral bedspread on which she lay.