Bloodsworth (10 page)

In the afternoon he was sitting out front of Rose Carson's, buzzed on some redbud that he'd gotten from Tommy Tyler earlier that morning, wondering what to do next. Kirk had used the little money he had to buy a quarter ounce of the pot from Tommy. He'd smoked a joint, then stuffed the redbud, rolled up in a small cellophane bag, down into his tennis shoe. Kirk was stretched out in a shady spot, stoned, watching the occasional car go by, trying to stay cool. Detective Mark Cottom of the Cambridge Police Department rode by, recognized Kirk, and pulled his squad car over to the curb. Cottom and Kirk knew one another slightly. Cottom said hello. Cottom thought Kirk seemed jittery, which he was, considering the pot in his shoe. Cottom told Kirk that his wife had filed a missing persons report about him in Baltimore County and that the police there were looking for him. Kirk seemed to relax some after hearing this. “I don't want Wanda knowing where I'm at,” he told Cottam. “Least not just yet. I gotta' find some work. Get myself straight first.”

Kirk wrote out a short note to Wanda on Cottam's pad and asked Cottam if he'd pass it along. Cottom wanted to know where Kirk would be staying, and Kirk gave him Rose's address, 319 Henry Street. Cottom said good-bye, then immediately reported to the Baltimore homicide detectives that he'd made contact with Bloodsworth and that Bloodsworth had acted nervous. When Capel and Ramsey got word, they arranged to meet Cottom the next day.

W
EDNESDAY
, A
UGUST
8 was another scorcher. The sun rose large and pulsing over the town of Cambridge and quickly baked hot the black macadam asphalt of the streets. There was no
breeze, and the flat river simmered in the heat. The air was thick and sultry.

Kirk had hooked back up with Tommy Tyler the previous night, and the two stayed up late smoking pot, drinking beer, and listening to music. He slept till noon and was still groggy when he fixed himself a sandwich in Rose's kitchen. His clothes were disheveled, and he soaked his shirt through with sweat before he finished eating. In the kitchen, he rolled a joint, stuffed the redbud back in his sneaker, got stoned, then went outside for a look around. He was more than surprised when Detective Cottom pulled up again, this time accompanied by a heavyset detective he'd never seen before.

Robert Capel introduced himself. He told Kirk that he wanted to talk to him about a missing persons report his wife had filed. Capel was polite. He seemed nice enough. He then said he also wanted to ask Kirk about the murder of a little girl at Fontana Village, near Baltimore. And he said he'd like to take a Polaroid of Kirk.

Kirk realized for the first time that they might be thinking that he had something to do with that murder in Baltimore. He'd heard about it, as had everybody. He'd also seen the composite and knew it favored him some. But this . . . Shit, he thought to himself. He gulped down some air.

Kirk said to Capel that he'd read about the murder in the
Times
and seen something about it on TV. This didn't seem to help. Capel just nodded, studying him.

Kirk was uncertain what to do. He was also nervous about the reefer in his shoe.

Capel asked him again if he could talk to him and take a picture, down at the Cambridge station. It wouldn't take too long, he promised. Kirk thought about it. He figured why not. He nodded, okay; sure, he'd talk to them and they could take a picture, but he asked if he could change his shirt first. He also wanted Capel to promise that they wouldn't make him go back to his wife in Baltimore. Kirk
hoped he could get rid of the pot when he changed his shirt. Capel agreed to what Kirk asked but stayed with him while he went inside to change. There was just no chance to ditch the pot.

Back outside, Capel escorted Kirk to an unmarked police car. Before Kirk really understood what was happening, he was being whisked away. He noticed that other police cars had pulled up and that officers were going into Rose Carson's house and starting to search it. Sitting in the back of the unmarked cruiser, he wondered how he'd gotten tangled in this one. He mostly worried about the pot, though. When the detectives seemed preoccupied, he tried to push the rolled-up plastic bag of redbud further down into his shoe.

Before arriving at the Cambridge Police Station, Ramsey and Capel had stopped off at the local Kmart and purchased a pair of little girl's panties and a pair of dark blue shorts matching those Dawn was wearing on the day she was killed. Ramsey had also picked up a piece of loose concrete from the parking lot. This was their gambit. According to agents at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, Dawn Hamilton's killer would have a strong reaction if confronted with these items. An innocent person would have no reaction. Ramsey placed the panties, shorts, and rock on the center of a wooden table inside the police interview room before Kirk arrived. When Kirk was brought into the small room, he displayed no reaction to the items on the table. Ramsey then picked the items up and placed them in a corner, out of Kirk's sight.

Kirk saw the items clearly and immediately assumed that the rock must be the murder weapon. What else could it be? He was curious, though, why they were all taken off the table so quickly and then never mentioned by the detectives. What kind of game were they playing?

Capel began asking him questions. He was courteous, though firm. He asked Kirk where he was on the day of the murder.

“I ain't sure, exactly,” Kirk said. “I was probably at home on South Randolph Road, because I think that was my day off.” He thought he'd hung around in the morning that day, he told Capel, then gone over to Wayne Palmer's house for the afternoon. Kirk said there were others in the house that day who might remember if he was at home.

Capel flipped a picture of Dawn Hamilton down on the table and asked Kirk if he knew her, and Kirk told him no. Capel asked him if he'd ever met her, and Kirk said absolutely not. He asked Kirk whether he'd been by a pond or seen two boys fishing that day, and Kirk answered, “No sir.” He asked if he knew anything about the murder, and Kirk told him only what he'd seen on television and read in the paper.

Standing the entire time at “parade's rest” and staring him down was Detective Ramsey. Ramsey wasn't as tall as Capel but seemed more intense. He wore a short-sleeve white shirt decorated with a nondescript tie and a plastic pocket protector containing several pens. His graying hair was gummed back against his head. His eyes bore into Kirk's, and Kirk recalled later that he had never felt so small as he did in that room. Ramsey asked Kirk what his shoe size was, and Kirk answered size 10½. Ramsey then ordered him to hold up his shoe for them to see. Kirk's brow was slick with sweat. He lifted his shoe—the one without the pot. Ramsey told him to lift it higher so they could see what the underside of the sole looked like. He did. The sole was not in a herringbone pattern. Ramsey then snapped several pictures of Kirk. Capel promised Kirk he'd return the photographs to him once he was cleared. Capel asked Kirk where he'd be staying and Kirk told him. He told Kirk there was nothing to worry about but asked him not to leave town until this was resolved.

Kirk thought that was the end of it, that it would be over. His picture, he figured, would clear him. But still, the interview had
upset him. Ramsey had made him feel awful. And to think they really thought he might be involved in the murder of a little girl. It made him sick. And what was with the panties and the rock? Driving through town, he couldn't wait to get out of Capel's car. At that instant, he mostly wanted to get stoned again. He asked Capel to drop him off back on Henry Street. Outside, it was still stifling hot.

When Kirk got to Rose Carson's, she was washing dishes. She was spitting mad. She cursed at him because the cops had found a marijuana roach in one of her ashtrays. Still, she let him in. Rose's sister, Thelma Stultz, was there. Thelma had also known Kirk for a number of years. Both women could see that Kirk was upset, agitated. They'd heard about the murder from the officers who'd searched Rose's house, but they were curious and wanted to hear from Kirk what happened at the station. They peppered him with questions. Kirk began rolling a joint on the kitchen counter. He was still sweating. His hands were unsteady.

“Do you know what they wanted?” he said. “I can't believe this. Jesus. I can't believe it.”

“No,” Rose answered, “What?”

“I'm a suspect in the rape of a little girl. Freakin' crazy.” He licked two of the rolling papers so they would stick together. “And do you know which one?” he went on.

Rose again answered, “No.”

“The one that's dead. That got murdered up in Essex. That's the one.” His body gave up a shiver. “I'm really freakin' out. I just can't believe this.”

Rose had heard enough. She was already mad at Kirk over the pot and anxious over so many police coming around. And now she was scared. She started ranting about how much trouble Kirk was causing. She told Kirk not to smoke any more dope in her house. Then she said he'd just have to leave. Kirk shrugged. He'd finished rolling the joint. Thelma, who was pregnant at the time, said, “Well,
you going to get me high too?” Kirk said sure. Something he didn't know was that Thelma was friendly with Detective Cottom. She had promised him, after Kirk had been taken to the police station, that she'd report back anything Kirk said about the little girl. Kirk and Thelma walked outside and started up toward the elementary school. Kirk lit the joint, and the two shared it. According to what Thelma later told Cottom, Kirk couldn't stop talking about what had happened at the station. He rambled, talked excitedly, acted strange. Kirk told her the police had put the girl's shorts and a rock on the table. He told her that by putting the girl's underwear on the table, the cops had gotten him upset, but that he wouldn't ever let them see him cry. He also said he felt guilty about what had happened to the little girl.

Kirk was, in fact, distraught. The whole experience had unnerved him. And too, he felt the need to explain what had occurred so that his friends wouldn't think he'd gotten busted for having weed and agreed to become a snitch. The two walked back toward Rose's house with Kirk still talking about the little girl, ranting some, and muttering to himself.

Near Rose Carson's house, Kirk ran into some guys he knew who needed help lifting a broken motorcycle into the back of a pickup truck. Kirk offered his assistance. There were two girls with them, Tina Christopher and Tina Furbush. Thelma said good-bye and went back into Rose's. With Kirk's help, the guys heaved the bike into the pickup and then took it over to Tina Furbush's garage. Kirk knew Tina Furbush but had never met Tina Christopher. Tina Furbush was nineteen and Tina Christopher was just eighteen. Tina Christopher, it turned out, had dropped out of high school after tenth grade. After the guys left, the two Tinas invited Kirk into the house. He rolled another joint and they all smoked it. They all got seriously ripped. Kirk started talking about a little girl and being accused of killing her. About how it had happened in Baltimore. He
mentioned two boys, a pond, and a rock. One of them asked him if the rock was the murder weapon, if it had blood on it. They talked about whether it was a bloody rock. Kirk kept rehashing what the cops had said to him. He seemed obsessed, went on about the clothes, the rock. His words, at least the ones Tina Christopher claimed to hear, would become the darts that would later be hurled against him.

Tina Christopher, when questioned two days later by the cops, was vague about what Kirk had said. But she thought he'd talked about the clothes the little girl wore and a rock that was supposed to have been bloody. He mentioned a pond and two boys, she recalled. And she thought she heard Kirk say that the girl went off into the woods with a guy that Kirk was with. She described it as a lot of rambling nonsense. The police typed up a statement and had her sign it. Over the ensuing months, she would often contradict herself to investigators about exactly what it was she'd heard.

Kirk, after his arrest, said she'd either misheard or misunderstood him. He admitted that he might have told her that the rock was the murder weapon and he agreed he probably told her what he'd read in the newspaper about the pond and the two boys, but he denied ever saying that the rock was bloody or that he was with the man who went into the woods with the little girl. And he never told anyone, ever, that he was involved with the crime.

Thelma Stultz, back at Rose Carson's, called Detective Cottom and repeated what Kirk had said to her about a rock and about being upset and feeling guilty when he saw the girl's clothes. Cottom thought Bloodsworth's remarks were damning. He filled in Capel and Ramsey on what Kirk was saying. Bloodsworth knows things only the murderer would know, Capel and Ramsey concluded. And by then they had an identification. They had, they believed, found Dawn's killer.

Kirk Bloodsworth, unaware of his increasing jeopardy, went over
and visited with his parents, who had returned from the beach. His mother cooked fried chicken and cobbler. His parents were both quiet. It was obvious they were waiting for him to tell them what was going on.

First he told them about leaving Wanda. This was welcome news. Then he mentioned being questioned concerning a little girl's murder. His mother was sitting at the table quietly. When she heard this she began rocking back and forth moaning, “Oh, God . . . Oh my God . . .”

“It's gonna' be all right, Mom,” Kirk told her. He put an arm around her.

“You didn't have nothing to do with that?” she moaned with her lips pursed and her eyes shut.

“No, Mom,” Kirk answered.

“What the hell've you gone and done?” Curtis wanted to know. He had grown worried, impatient. “People's been calling here . . .”

“Nothing, Dad,” Kirk answered. “See, I ain't done nothing. Believe me, they questioned me, and it's over with.”

“Well, just don't try and get into something to see if you can get out of it,” his mother chimed in. It was a favorite saying of hers.