Of Guilt and Innocence (9 page)

Once inside it didn't take long for his true intentions to show through. Elsa, being more or less immobile due to her injury, was easily overcome and strangled with a pair of pantyhose Carlos had taken from his own wife's closet.  The weapon of choice meant nothing to him; he chose pantyhose so they would not immediately puncture the skin significantly when he tightened them around her neck. He was almost gentle when he did it. He simply wrapped the pantyhose around her neck and tightened slowly.   

He left Elsa on her living room floor and prepared for his exit. He donned a ball cap, which had been in his back pocket and out of Elsa's view until it was too late. He also put on a pair of sunglasses and a fake mustache, which had been in his shirt pocket. Carlos locked the front door, carefully folded up the pantyhose and placed them in his pants pocket, and then he went to the master bedroom.

He knew he wanted something, some type of visual reminder that he had been there, he just didn't know what. He assumed there would be some trinket in the bedroom that would catch his eye, but to his dismay nothing seemed to do that. He entered the master bathroom, but again nothing seemed to jump out to him--until he opened the medicine cabinet. He smiled when he saw the various pill bottles with her name and address on them. He saw several that had been prescribed by Dr. Tran, but then he saw one that had been prescribed by a doctor he didn't know. He grabbed it and placed it in his pocket. He closed the medicine cabinet, then quickly exited the house from the back.  

He was unable to lock the back door as he fled, but he was not awfully concerned about it. He wanted her to be found; he wanted someone to be able to access the home easily. He walked around to the front of the house, fairly confident he had been undetected. He had learned the neighborhood during his reconnaissance missions there. He knew that the neighbors on either side of Elsa, as well as across from her, would be gone to work during the day. The neighborhood was mostly older married couples with grown or no children, however, none appeared old enough for retirement and seemed to go to work each day.   

He would do this routine, or a variation of it, again and again, six other times in total. The key to his survival was his preparation and methodical attention to detail. He knew the importance of it and never did anything half-assed. He was not a creature of impulse; he was patient.  He did not fear getting caught; his narcissism allowed him to truly believe it was impossible. Even when he transferred to working in private practice he maintained ties to the hospital and was still able to draw from his pool of victims, yet another obstacle he felt very proud of himself for overcoming.

 

With his confidence in adding to his body count at a high, he pulled into his driveway. He entered an empty, dark house, as he had done many times before. He walked through the foyer, down the hall, and into the kitchen. He picked up a note from the counter:

 

Went out in Lauderdale with Vikki

Probably staying at her place

See you tomorrow

Love ya, Jules

 

He smiled and placed the note back down. He felt at peace; he was pleased that his wife was able to go out and have fun and not be resentful of the attention he was not showing her. It eased his guilt for having left her alone yet again.  

 

 

CHAPTER 7

 

 

The annoying chirp of an alarm clock sounded loudly and abruptly. A massive paw quickly slapped it and brought silence back to the dark room. Almost just as quickly, the same hand snapped up a black cell phone that sat next to the alarm on the nightstand. A panicked Jim Brekenridge struggled to focus on the cell phone's tiny screen. The panic was momentarily eased, then replaced with a sense of worry and disappointment. He had no missed calls or messages--the phone only read five a.m.  

He set the phone back on the nightstand and sat his large frame upright on the edge of the bed. He leaned his shirtless torso forward as he tried to compose his thoughts and plans for that day. He felt a soft touch on his back and he quickly turned his head around. “Still nothing?” His wife, Jill, asked in a raspy, early morning tone, one eye shut, the other squinting.

“Nope. I thought maybe I missed a call while I slept, but nothing,” Jim said as he turned his head away from his wife and looked down at his rotund gut. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“No, it's OK, I didn't sleep much either. I don't like seeing you so upset.”

“I'm fine. Go back to sleep,” he reassured her softly, then stood up and went about preparing for his day.  

After dressing in his usual plain white dress shirt, blue tie and tan pants, he kissed Jill on the forehead, grabbed his cell phone, and made his way through the second floor hallway. While he tried to maneuver down the short dark corridor as quietly as possibly, he had the strong urge to glance at his two daughters before he left. Both girls had their doors left open a crack and he peered into one of the rooms and saw his daughter, Lindsay, who always slept on top of the covers no matter what the temperature was in the house. Lindsay was his first born and had recently turned thirteen, a day Jim had been dreading. He smiled, then quietly walked one door to the right and peeked in. His baby was hard to see, but she was in the tiny bed, covered up to her chin. His youngest, Amy, was six and bore a loose resemblance to Ashley Wooten--at least he thought so.

He turned away from his children's rooms and made his way down the stairs, past the array of photos in frames that lined the wall all the way down. There were various family photos of him, Jill, and the two girls throughout different stages of their lives. Even an old photo of Jim dressed in a University of Miami football uniform, his helmet in his left hand by the facemask, his hair dampened by sweat, his right arm around a very young looking Jill.

The morning commute to work was generally a short one and this morning it seemed particularly short as he was very anxious to get back. He didn't make his usual convenience store stop for coffee and a muffin; instead he decided to settle for the homebrew made in the office to give himself some extra time to run down leads. He generally didn't work Sundays, only a few of the detectives did, though they would all be coming in today.

He was almost certain something would have happened overnight. A tip would come in, a relative would come forward with Ashley and say it was all a misunderstanding. Or worse, a body would be recovered. But there was nothing. He sat down at his desk and pulled out the list of sex offenders Dan had printed for him. Jim would be alone in the office for at least another half hour and he wanted to have some ideas he could kick around with his partner as soon as Dan arrived. So far they had nothing, no real leads, no vehicle descriptions, no suspect descriptions, only the possibility that whoever had taken Ashley had gone south on State Road 441.

The interview he and Dan had with Joe Jackson was fruitless in his opinion, although it didn't officially exclude him as a suspect. They had gone to the address Jackson had listed on his driver's license to find that he no longer lived there, but his mother did. Hesitant at first, Jackson's mother finally gave the detectives his current address, which was an apartment in neighboring Boynton Beach that he shared with his girlfriend and their infant daughter. Jackson was hung over when the detectives arrived and was uneager to indulge their requests for an interview. At first, he refused to let the detectives in and only spoke to them through the door, which, of course, angered Jim.

“Look, Joe, I'm going to be honest with you,” he said from the hallway, leaning up against Jackson's door, in the softest, gentlest tone he could bring himself to convey. “We really need you to let us in so we can talk to you. It's up to you if you let us or not, but I can tell you this,” his voice began to grow louder and more forceful until he was yelling. “If you don't let us in to talk to you we are going to wait here all day until your baby momma gets home so we can tell her how last weekend you were harassing young girls at the Boca mall!” The sound of the door chain unlocking could be heard, and the door quickly opened, yielding a shirtless, skinny Joe Jackson standing there with one eye shut and one half open.

“Damn man, why you gotta be like that? Come on in I guess.” Jim and Dan walked into the apartment, which was small, reeked of cigarette smoke, and had clothes strewn all over the cigarette burn-covered furniture and floor. The entry way opened up into the living room, and Jackson turned his back on the detectives and made his way to a futon. He leaned forward and grabbed a cigarette out of a pack that lay on the coffee table in front of him, lit it, and took a long drag. “Go ahead, sit down, make yourselves comfortable,” he said sarcastically.

“I'd rather not,” Jim said, his head constantly on a swivel as he approached the coffee table that separated himself and Dan from Jackson.  From the living room Jim could see the majority of the kitchen and down a small dark hallway that had three shut doors. “Where were you yesterday?” Jim said turning his attention to Jackson.

“I was here, with my girl.”

“All day?”

“All day.”

“Here's the thing, Joe. A little girl was taken yesterday. The guy who took her was stalking her at the mall. We know you like to stalk young girls at that very same mall. We know your history. We know you've been escalating. If you did something stupid while you were drunk, now is the time to get in front while you still can.”

Jackson's eyes opened wide for the first time since the detectives' arrival. He put the cigarette down in the cut off bottom of a soda can that sat on the coffee table.

“You serious? You think I took a little girl? I
have
a little girl. I ain't down with that shit. There is no way in hell you're gonna pin a kidnapping or some sick shit with a kid on me.” Jackson picked up his cigarette, took a drag, then leaned back on the futon shaking his head no.

“All right then, let us look around so we can be sure she's not here.”

“Yeah, OK,” Jackson said in that same sarcastic tone. “Matter of fact, why don't y'all get the hell out of here anyway. Come in my home and accuse me of taking a little girl.”

“Look, genius,” Jim said, leaning forward, looking deep into Jackson's eyes. “I don't give a shit about anything else you have going on. I don't give a shit about the bong I see on your kitchen counter. I don't give a shit about the living conditions in this shithole being unfit for a child. I really don't care. I only care about the little girl who was taken. If you don't let me look for her, then I'm going to start caring about all those things and everything else I manage to find in the next few minutes.” Jim looked around the living room in an exaggerated fashion.  

“All right!” Joe said nervously. “I knew I shouldn't have let you mother fuckers in! Go ahead look around I guess, but I have your word you ain't gonna take me on some stupid drug charge? All you want is to see if the little girl is here?”

“Yeah, sure.” Jim walked through the apartment, looking in every room, under every bed, in every closet for any sign of Ashley or that she had at one time been there. He found nothing. “All right, write down who can vouch for your whereabouts yesterday, every second of it.” He threw down a small notebook and pen on to the coffee table in front of Jackson. “So help me God, if your alibi doesn't pan out I'm going to be less kind to you next time we speak.”

Jim and Dan left the apartment under the same impression they had going in to it, that Joe Jackson had nothing to do with Ashley's disappearance. Dan seemed concerned as they left, however, but it wasn't about his lack of participation in the interview. “You really don't care that two junkies are raising a child in there?” Dan said to Jim as they walked to their car, again calling in to question Jim's tactics in the young investigation.

“Of course I do. We should be able to clear Jackson as a suspect fairly quickly, then I'll contact family services and let them know. If we can't clear him though I want to be able to use that as leverage.”  

  

While still waiting for Dan to come in for the morning, Jim sat down and began viewing the mall surveillance video. He tried to focus in on anyone matching Joe Jackson's description, but found no one. He then reviewed the department store surveillance videos and parking lot surveillance videos, and again was unable to match anyone in the vicinity of Lisa and Ashley to Joe Jackson. He officially concluded what he felt he already knew: Joe Jackson did not commit this crime. By this time everyone was coming in to start their day and Dan took a seat at his desk. His desk was pushed up against Jim's in one of the many small clusters that filled the open space of the detective bureau.

“Jackson didn't do it. He's not on any of the security tapes.”

Dan turned and looked at his partner's back. “What time did you get here?” he asked, seeming surprised by the amount of work Jim had already done.

“Not too long ago. You got any ideas?”

“Nah, we pretty much knew he wasn't involved. Anything else come up on those videos?”

“Don't know. I just specifically viewed them to look for him. I gotta go back through them or have someone else do it. We need to run down some of these sex offenders, too. In fact, I'll get Bedard to look at these videos; he's got nothing going on. Let's go shake some trees.”

 

Detective Bedard had just walked into the bureau when he heard his name being bellowed out. Paul Bedard very much disliked Jim Brekenridge, but would never admit to it. He had been a detective for five years and had partnered with Jim on a few cases in that time. He was a very non-confrontational, well liked member of the police department, and just went with the flow most of the time. He did not care for Jim's loud, obnoxious, and pushy personality and avoided him at all costs. But he did respect Jim as a detective and had learned a lot from him over the years. Paul took a deep breath and set his car keys gently on his desk, then unenthusiastically walked across the room to Jim's desk.