Of Guilt and Innocence by John Scanlan Read Free Book Online Page A

woman who lived in the same building as Rebecca, stated she saw Mika get out of a black car and walk toward Rebecca’s apartment. Her motives for fabricating her story were unknown to Carlos, but he was obviously glad to have her onboard. The apartment complex’s manager also testified he received a call the day after the murder from a man inquiring about security cameras on the property. The prosecution then provided phone records to indicate the call had originated from Ft. Lauderdale Hospital, specifically the phone line in the maintenance office. They produced witnesses who testified that Mika was at the hospital during the time the call was placed, and the defense was unable to find anyone who could account for his whereabouts at that moment. The jury took little time convicting Mika of murder, but spared him the death penalty.
    Carlos was seen as a hero by the hospital staff. Even people who Mika considered to be friends at the hospital just assumed he had gotten back into drugs and had done it. No one suspected otherwise, least of all that Carlos could have actually been involved somehow, and so the whole thing just went away with Mika’s conviction. Everyone eventually forgot about it, except Carlos. Every day since he had committed the murder he would think about it, retracing his steps in his mind. He remembered Rebecca’s last moments, her last breaths. He didn’t feel remorse or guilt; however, he derived a sense of power from these thoughts. The fact that he had gotten away with it added to his sense of invincibility, his ever growing ego, and the idea that he had superior intelligence. Reliving the murder and cover up in his mind gradually became insufficient, and he knew he wanted desperately to do it again. This time he would be better prepared. This time he would choose someone who could not be traced back to him so easily. And more importantly for him, this time he would take something, a souvenir that would help him to relive his crime over and over again. He would take seven other lives throughout the years. Now he had his ninth victim in sight, and he had no plans on making it his last.

 
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    CHAPTER 4  
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    With daylight hours dwindling, a group search for Ashley had commenced, led by Sergeant Stokes. Mike Stokes had been a police officer for twenty years and, at age forty-five, he believed he was about five years from retirement, though he hadn’t set an official date. Throughout the years Mike had taken part in several high profile cases and had worn many hats with the department. Cases were always different when they involved children, and this one was already affecting him in ways the others hadn’t. Mike had three children of his own: two boys and a girl. Though all his children were older than Ashley, his daughter was his youngest; she was his baby.
    He tried to keep himself from making this case personal and putting himself in Tom Wooten’s position, but at times he couldn’t help it. He thought about how it would change him, as a person and police officer, if this turned out to be a kidnapping. To know that a kind of evil like that existed so close to home was hard for him to swallow. But he was getting ahead of himself. He still couldn’t completely kick the feeling she had just wandered off or had gone with a friend or relative and this was just a misunderstanding. As time passed, however, that feeling diminished little by little.
    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