Of Guilt and Innocence (6 page)

Mike had looked at maps of the immediate area and determined the most likely places a child who wandered off might end up. That was the assumption the search was being conducted under: that Ashley had wandered off. It was too early to predict body dump sites and search them. The problem he faced was that there were no open or wooded areas that a child could get lost in near the gated community the Wootens called home. It was mainly businesses on one side and residences on the other. There weren't a lot of places for her to wander where she would not have already been found and reported, but they pressed on anyway in hopes that they may get lucky.

Based on the police dog's indications of Ashley's direction of travel, Mike organized a modest group of officers, volunteers, and recruits from a current police academy class to search southbound along State Road 441. The road was a major, six-lane roadway that spanned numerous counties and had high volumes of traffic the majority of the time. Mike split his search party into two groups and had one checking the hedges on one side and the second team searching dumpsters, parking lots, stores, and alleyways on the other.

While Mike was organizing and leading his search party, Jim and Dan were back at their desks trying to work on leads or possibilities of who may have taken Ashley.  Jim had begun researching the individual who the mall security supervisor had told him was harassing two women the week before Ashley disappeared. His name was Joe Jackson.  

On that particular day, the officers who responded to assist mall security with Jackson's departure noted that he smelled and acted as if he had been drinking. The officers spoke with the two women who had reported his harassing behavior, and both said he had followed them for at least a half hour before they reported it. They said he just stared at them without saying anything, but when Jackson was approached by security, merely to ask him if he was all right and if he would stop bothering the two women, he began ranting and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade on the women from afar.

Jim was unfamiliar with Joe Jackson so he began digging into his background for information. Based on his driver's license photo, Joe was a white, possibly Hispanic, man who looked to be clean cut. However, as Jim progressed into unearthing Joe's past, he learned he was anything but.  

He had an extensive criminal record dating back to when he was fifteen. Most of the crimes Joe committed at a young age were thefts, but when he turned eighteen they became more violent. Joe had been arrested twice in Fort Lauderdale for robbing and beating two college students who were there on spring break. The charges each time were ultimately dropped for one reason or another. His crimes also progressed to public drunkenness, driving drunk, various drug offenses, and harassment. The one glaring omission from Joe's resume was any type of sex crime or sex offender status, which made him slightly less appealing as a suspect, but wasn't reason to exclude him either.   

Unfortunately, the physical evidence that the detectives had to work with at that point was next to nothing. They had no leads other than Jackson, who was iffy at best. They had no vehicle description and only a general direction of travel. There had been no police reports filed in the Wootens' community that would be of any help. Dan printed out a list of sex offenders within a twenty mile radius of the mall and the Wooten home, but unfortunately that list consisted of some two hundred people. The DVDs they had received from mall security would take hours, if not days, to comb through thoroughly.

Word had just gotten back to Jim and Dan that Mike's search party had unearthed nothing of value, which was yet another early blow to their already challenging task. With the odds strongly against them finding Ashley soon, or safe, and with only a limited amount of daylight left, Jim and Dan left their desks and headed out to speak with Joe Jackson.

 

Tom and Lisa were still out conducting their own search, though they knew in their hearts it was going to be a fruitless endeavor. They, of course, had no idea of where or how to go about looking for Ashley and were simply driving around aimlessly and desperately. Less than eight hours ago the Wooten family was, by all accounts, a typical happy family. Tom ran his computer business, which he had developed eleven years ago. He started out small, purchasing computers in bulk by traveling to estate sales or auctions. Occasionally, in the early goings, Lisa would travel with him and they would make mini-vacations out of the trips, but she had stopped going when Ashley was born. In those early days his business was run from home and the computers he purchased he would repair if needed and resell online. Eventually Tom was able to move his business in to a strip mall in the heart of Boca Raton and he began repairing personal computers as well. He gave customers the option of dropping their computer at his shop or he could come to their homes and fix them there. Even now that he had two full-time employees under him he was still the one to make the house calls to repair computers for customers.  

He had always been perceived to be a very nice man, charming, too. He was thought by most to be very handsome and clean cut; an image he enjoyed and worked to maintain.  

Tom and Lisa had been together since their freshmen year at Florida Atlantic University. They married shortly after graduation but did not have Ashley until some time after that. After college, Lisa took a job at a local dentist's office as a hygienist; a position she still occupied thirteen years later. She made good money working there and enjoyed her job. It was not as much as Tom brought in, but it was enough to contribute to the Wootens' lifestyle of living comfortably in a beautiful home and a nice community.

Like Tom, Lisa had also aged gracefully throughout the years. Her blonde hair was always done as if she had just walked out of a salon. Her deep blue eyes still sparkled and her smile, which she flashed quite a bit, lit up her face.     

And then there was Ashley. Ashley was an only child by choice. They had discussed having another child, possibly more than just one other. But, ultimately they decided one was all they needed to make their family complete.

To those who knew them, the Wootens were the picture of the All-American Family. But now it seemed that picture had been torn to shreds. The portrait of who they were just a short time ago—successful, picturesque, happy, complete—was now gone. They just hoped, as they continued searching down street after street, it wasn't too late to get it back.

 

 

CHAPTER 5

 

 

Louis was halfway home from his trip to Boca Raton, meandering down back road after back road, going exactly the speed limit. Louis had learned a lot of things while in prison, the utmost prevailing lesson being to limit his interactions with the police. He knew people were after him now: people he had never met or would meet.  People he had never wronged or would wrong. He was sure they would look for ways to hurt him, rather than help him, because of what he stood for, because of the title he carried due to his conviction. Sexual Offender. And so he did everything cautiously—including driving.

Prison life was very difficult on Louis. Aside from being an introvert all his life, Louis was branded a pedophile and thus had a target on his back from day one. He was beaten regularly; each time he offered no resistance, just tried to cover his face. He was preyed upon time and time again, just as he had preyed upon his victim. No one had sympathy for him, no one intervened. The only people he could talk to or associate with were other inmates who had been incarcerated for the very same sort of crimes. Never having friends, or even desiring them in his entire life, even that was difficult at first.

When he first went to prison, Louis wasn't sure which way his life would go. He was at a crossroads of sorts. He thought he would eventually get out, although being murdered while serving his time was a real possibility, and at times he thought for sure it was imminent. But still, he wondered what type of life he would have if he did make it through his incarceration. He did not desire the “American Dream” of a wife, kids, or the house with the picket fence. It didn't appeal to him in the least. He had no desire to even leave the safety of his garage apartment he longed so desperately for. What he didn't know was if he would continue down the destructive path that had landed him in his current predicament or if he would work to get past his urges and desires by any means possible. He struggled with this decision for months, until finally he succumbed to the realization that this was who he was. Who he would always be. His urges were a part of him. He wouldn't fight them.

He never felt remorse for what he had done; to the contrary, he felt even stronger now about preying on those who could not defend themselves. He realized that prison would not serve to rehabilitate him as he had been told it would. Prison would serve to sharpen his predatory skills by learning from the mistakes and advice of others.  

So over the course of his two years in prison Louis crafted his criminal blueprint. The abuse he took at the hands of those stronger than him only served to make his desire for control more insatiable. When he got out of prison he bided his time. One of the many lessons he learned, and probably the most important, was to be patient. A year passed as he scanned gathering places, learned exit strategies, tested stalking techniques, and honed his chameleon-like appearance. Finally, it was time for him to put his plan into action, and to his surprise it worked perfectly. He would orchestrate it time and again, tweaking it just slightly each time, but never deviating from its core. He was methodical in the completion of his schemes, at times it seemed he was almost on cruise control, but he savored every moment.

 

Finally, he was back at home from his trip to the mall, having been gone about five hours. He parked the blue Le Sabre as close as he could get to the garage while still being able to swing the door open. He discretely glanced down the driveway to see if anyone was on the street, but noticed no one. He opened the passenger side door, reached inside and scooped up a large quilt from the floorboard. He began to perspire from this brief but strenuous physical activity. He held it in both arms directly in front of his body and leaned his face downward toward the bundle he held tight, his eyes still peering out toward the street. “Don't you say a word,” he whispered.

He left the car door ajar as he quickly but calmly entered the garage. Two small white patent leather shoes peeked out from under one end of the quilt and in a flash Louis placed his cargo, still covered with the quilt, upright and standing behind a stack of boxes. Heavy breathing and whimpers of fear came from under the quilt but Louis paid them no attention.

With his package concealed to any passersby, he calmly walked back to the open car door, reached in and grabbed his police scanner radio off the passenger seat, then shut the door. As he listened during the course of his ride, he was relieved at a noticeable absence in the conversations between police officers and dispatchers. No reference to him, the blue Le Sabre, or his victim had been made once during his trip. However, he knew it had only been forty minutes since he had made his pickup and he needed to get into his apartment quickly to plug the radio back in and ensure the transmission of utmost importance to him was not missed. He pulled the door to the garage shut from the inside and was instantly closed off from the outside world, his captive secured. Just like that.

To anyone who had observed this it would appear as if a man was simply carrying a bundle of clothing. It was so casual. There was no sense of urgency or panic on Louis's part. No sounds were coming from under the patchwork quilt that would have been audible to anyone outside the garage. And now it was over. If anyone had seen it they had already gone on their way not giving it a second thought.  

Louis certainly didn't think twice. He never considered his victims' feelings or emotions, and even if he had it wouldn't have mattered much. He had crossed over long ago from simply being numb to being pure evil, with no sense of compassion, only a sense of self. He had blocked out the muffled cries on the trip from Boca Raton to his driveway. They made him feel nothing anyway; transporting was a part of the process, but the end game was the control he felt when he had his victim in his apartment, trapped and looking at him with scared, pleading eyes. As Ashley, no longer cloaked in the patchwork quilt, climbed the ladder to the apartment above with Louis close behind, that feeling finally started building. He was no longer on cruise control.

The transporting, of course, wasn't just a meaningless necessity to Louis. Far from it. It was part of the overall plan, it was a ritual. There was the initial adrenaline rush he got from the actual kidnap itself. That rush came whether or not he was able to obtain his mark, which on many occasions he could not. The patience he learned in prison had been key to his survival thus far, and many times he had to abort his missions because the chance of getting caught was too great. An adrenaline rush with no payoff was very hard for Louis to come down from. Once he crossed over into madness it took a long time for him to come back. Sometimes the rush to abduct his mark was so great that he struggled with the decision to call it off. It was rare that he would be so overcome with his impulses that he acted recklessly and forgot the lessons he learned and rules he had set for himself. Fortunately for Louis, the mistakes he made since his release from prison hadn't been blatant enough to send him back.

Indeed, he had caught a lot of breaks throughout his crime spree; even thinking back to his one and only arrest he had been lucky. He knew he could have served twenty years or more for what he had originally been arrested on, and had his victim and her family not absconded out of fear they would be discovered as illegals and deported, he would have. Of course he didn't know they had fled Davie when he took the plea deal, but he still realized he was fortunate to get such a minimal sentence.  He knew that longevity as a criminal of that magnitude didn't come without some luck. He had heard his fellow inmates brag about their successes as well as condemn their failures. Not every crime they committed had been discovered. He knew the tales of Dahmer and Gacy and how they flirted with being uncovered for years prior to their actual arrests. And he also knew some day his luck would run out, just as theirs had.