Bringing Adam Home (38 page)

He tucked the photographs into a folder and hurried out of his office with a distracted wave for Mary. Once in his car, he paused to dial his old friend Pat Franklin, also a former Miami Beach detective and now a private investigator with his own firm. The two of them often met at a cigar bar far north on Biscayne Boulevard for a smoke and a coffee on the way home from their respective offices, but Joe was an hour or more ahead of the usual curve.

“Something wrong?” Franklin asked when he picked up. He’d recognized who it was from the caller ID. Neither one of them bothered with unnecessary pleasantries anymore.

“You gotta meet me right now,” he told Franklin.

“It’s a little early,” Franklin said.

“I’m not kidding,” Matthews said. “I need you to see something.”

There was a pause, and some rustling of papers. “Give me fifteen minutes,” Franklin said.

When he caught sight of his still-trim friend entering the bar, Matthews felt the urgency rising in him again. He hadn’t dared to look at the photograph since he’d left his office.

“Take a look at this,” he said, thrusting the folder at Franklin.

Franklin smiled at him quizzically. “Good to see you, too,” he said, opening the folder. He glanced at the photo, then looked back at Matthews. “The light’s for shit in here.” He stepped closer to the window in the front of the place and Matthews tagged along after him.

Franklin studied the photo for a moment and Matthews watched his face. Franklin was well aware of what he was working on, and knew the last detail of every roadblock and frustration he’d encountered over all the years. Finally Franklin closed the folder and handed it back. They’d both learned how to play poker as cops. If Franklin didn’t want you to know what he was thinking, you could beat your brains out wondering.

“You weren’t going to ask me what I see there, were you?”

Matthews gave him something like a shrug. “I wasn’t sure, that’s all.”

Franklin nodded. He might have smiled, except for the horror of what they’d been looking at.

“The hell of it is, I have to show the Walshes,” Matthews said. “But right now, let’s have us a cigar.”

T
hroughout the course of his two-year reinvestigation of the case, Joe Matthews met regularly with John and Revé Walsh to update them on his progress, but despite Revé’s insistence that he share
everything
with her, he hesitated about showing her and John the images from the machete and the floorboards of Toole’s Cadillac. Still, he could scarcely keep such a discovery from them. Furthermore, he needed their corroboration of the results.

Accordingly, he arranged for a meeting in the law offices of Kelly Hancock, John and Revé’s attorney and longtime friend. Hancock, a former Broward County prosecutor, had already spoken to Matthews and knew what to expect, but he, too, understood how tough it would be for any parents to view what Matthews had uncovered. While Matthews explained the luminol process and tried to prepare John and Revé for what he was about to show them, Revé cut in. “Let me see the photographs, Joe,” she said, her face set.

Matthews hesitated, but finally handed over the packet. Revé studied the photos for a moment—first those of Toole’s machete, then his glowing footprints, and then the stunning image taken from the rear floorboards. With her eyes welling, she turned and handed them to John.

John took his own hard look at the photos, lingering over the last, then glanced up at Matthews and nodded briefly. Finally, he turned and wordlessly embraced his anguished wife.

Twenty-seven years of not knowing, Matthews thought, looking on. And now they finally did.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida—July 14, 2006

A
s Matthews left Kelly Hancock’s law offices that day, he knew well that he had settled the first of the items on the investigation’s agenda. If there had ever been a doubt in the minds of John and Revé Walsh as to what had happened to their son, not a shred now remained.

But still before him was the matter of presenting an investigative file that would convince the Hollywood police to name Ottis Toole as the person responsible. Until the killer was charged—and never mind that he was dead, and no matter how many other slayings he had been convicted of—John and Revé Walsh could never rest.

Especially not after what they’d seen that day. As a law officer and a father of four himself, Matthews understood well the importance of the task that remained. One last bit of business, and then, just maybe, he could rest.

T
here were several items Matthews wanted to bolster in his report, but one of the first things he did was to place a call to Reaves Roofing in Jacksonville, seeking information on the employment records of Bobby Lee Jones, the man who said he had put the dent in Ottis Toole’s bumper and who had told Broward County State Attorney’s Office investigator Philip Mundy in 1996 that Toole had confessed the crime to him as early as 1982. When Matthews finally reached family member Alan Reaves at the company offices, Reaves explained that John Reaves Jr. had recently died of cancer. Alan Reaves said that he’d be happy to help, but that no records prior to 1986 were any longer in existence. They had been eaten by termites while in storage, Reaves explained.

Matthews briefly contemplated the fact that even insects seemed to have conspired against him in his pursuit of the investigation, but it was not in his nature to dwell upon disappointment. He simply shook his head and moved on, intent upon building a body of evidence that would compel any law enforcement agency to conclude that a certain individual had committed this crime and that a successful prosecution could be carried out.

Still, events around him were a constant reminder that time had its own way of imposing a statute of limitations on a case. In July 2007, former Hollywood police chief Dick Witt, who had ordered Matthews off the cold case investigation back in 1996, died in Ormand Beach, where he had retired. And in early November, current Hollywood chief James Scarberry, the man who had authorized opening his department’s files to Matthews, retired, hounded by accusations that he had tipped off his command staff that several corrupt Hollywood detectives had been targeted by an FBI sting operation.

Scarberry’s departure was no great disappointment to Matthews, for while the chief had posed no impediment to his investigation, he was clearly not greatly interested in the matter either. In fact, as Matthews reviewed the files that had been turned over to him, it became clear that even though every tip that had come to
America’s Most Wanted
over the years since the airing of the Adam episode in 1996 had been passed along—leads that Matthews had pursued all the way from Florida to Colorado and points in between—
not one
had ever been pursued by Hollywood PD.

Still, he reminded himself, that was all water under the bridge. The more pressing issue now was the inclination of Scarberry’s successor, Chad Wagner, who’d risen through the ranks at Hollywood PD, beginning as a patrolman in 1983 to become assistant chief under Scarberry.

Would Wagner prove to be another in a long line of administrators who would rather the matter were simply buried once and for all, or would he throw the roadblocks up once again? The answer was not long in coming.

In December, Mark Smith of the Hollywood PD, now a captain of detectives at Hollywood PD, called Matthews. By this time Matthews had come across the “ulterior motives” memo Smith had written years before, but Matthews said nothing. Smith was either going to be a help or a hindrance, and bringing up the matter would accomplish nothing.

Smith explained that he was calling on behalf of the newly appointed Chief Wagner, who wondered whether or not Matthews might be able to provide him with an address for John Walsh. Wagner wanted to introduce himself, Smith said, and he also wanted to extend his personal condolences to the Walsh family. Matthews held the phone away from his ear to stare at it for a moment, not sure he had heard correctly.

He gave Smith the address, then went back to work, wondering if he might have imagined the incident. A few days later, however, he got a call from John Walsh, who began by saying, “You’re not going to believe this letter I just received . . .” Matthews said nothing, just listened quietly as John Walsh described the contents of the first unsolicited communication that had ever passed from the Hollywood PD to him and his family in more than twenty-six years. Matthews could hear it in Walsh’s voice—how much that gesture meant to a still-grieving family.

Then, in late January of the following year, at a reception following a Broward County Police Academy graduation, Dick Brickman, the president of the Broward County Police Benevolent Association, took Matthews by the arm and introduced him to Chief Wagner. Matthews let Wagner know how much his letter meant to the Walsh family, surprising the chief when he mentioned the fact that it was the first such gesture they had ever received from his agency.

Matthews also told Wagner that he was well along on a cold case investigation of the murder of Adam Walsh that had been authorized by Chief Scarberry. Matthews explained that his progress had been delayed by the fact that his ninety-four-year-old mother was now confined to the hospital, where he sometimes took parts of the Walsh case file to work on at her bedside. Still, he looked forward to presenting his report to Chief Wagner soon.

For his part, Wagner seemed glad to hear the news. “I’ll read every page,” he assured Matthews. They were heartening words, and Wagner seemed sincere enough, Matthews thought, but he had heard a lot of promises in his day.

Still, he continued with work on his report, obsessed with checking every fact, tying up every loose end, reducing his findings to their essence. He prepared a meticulous timeline of the case drawn from the myriad agency reports and supplemental memos, for the first time placing the events and discoveries in order from first to last, and providing a context from which patterns of cause and effect might be discerned.

As an investigator, Matthews was most concerned with the assemblage of evidence. But he also understood that unless he was able to convey those facts in a compelling way, all his hard work was likely to go for naught. He had a natural gift for storytelling and was entirely at ease in front of an audience or a camera, but laying a story out on paper, he soon discovered, was another matter altogether.

On the most basic level, he’d never been the greatest at grammar, and when his mother, Margaret, who’d had a long career as a librarian and was still keen and vibrant despite her years, offered to proofread for him as he went, Matthews was glad to have her help. She had always been interested in the stories he brought home from work, and this was the story of them all.

From time to time, she’d glance up from the pages to offer advice that went beyond matters of the comma splice: “Are you sure you’re not being too tough on this fellow here, Joey?” she might ask. And usually, she was right.

One day in March, Matthews arrived at the hospital to find one of his mother’s doctors waiting to speak with him outside her room. His mother had a lot of life left, the doctor agreed, but her heartbeat was acting up. She needed a pacemaker implanted, a relatively minor procedure, if any operation could be called minor when the patient was ninety-four.

“You can blame it on my son,” Matthews’s mother told the doctor when the pair came into the room to discuss the matter with her. “If you were reading what I’ve been reading, your heart would be racing, too.”

That might be, the doctor allowed, but there was no question in his mind that the operation would make her much more comfortable. They talked it over with Matthews’s brother Peter and younger sister Mariann once they arrived, and in the end, the procedure was agreed to.

At first, word from surgery was positive. The operation proceeded without a hitch. Then, suddenly, there were complications. And just as suddenly, on March 18, 2006, his mother was dead, stunning everyone. Michelina Militana “Margaret” Matthews, the daughter of Sicilian immigrants, had led a long and loving life, but if anything, all those years had only suggested to Matthews that somehow she always would be with him.

A few days after the funeral, Matthews forced himself back to his office, where his still-unfinished report lay on his desk. How many people had died in the quarter-century-plus he’d worked on this case? Matthews asked himself. Now even his mother had gone to her grave, with her sticky notes still attached to the pages in front of him.

Another victim of the case, you might call her, he found himself thinking. And when you came right down to it, how much time did he have left? If he croaked, what the hell would happen to all this work then?

With such thoughts in mind, he pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and his thumb, closed his eyes briefly, then took a deep breath and went back to his report.

Hollywood, Florida—April 30, 2008

O
n a bright spring afternoon late in April 2008, Joe Matthews appeared at the office of Hollywood police chief Chad Wagner with a thick bound sheaf tucked under his arm. He wished with all his heart that his mother could have looked over his shoulder just once more before he handed the document over, but he had assembled the evidence to the best of his ability, given the writing all he had, and it was time to put up or shut up.