At the Hands of a Stranger (4 page)

But the police were gathering valuable information, especially with the consistency of witnesses who spotted the “creepy” bearded man, with his weathered skin and red dog. Emerson's friends had identified the dog leash, Eddie Bauer water bottles, and dog treats, which had been turned in by an as-yet-unidentified man on Blood Mountain late on New Year's Day, as belonging to Emerson. The hiker had found a collapsible police-type baton in the same area as the other evidence. The witnesses who described seeing the unidentified man had all said that he carried a baton of that type.

It was clear now that Emerson had been kidnapped. Her status was upgraded from “Missing Person” to “Kidnapped and Endangered.” By sundown it was becoming too dangerous to continue a mass search. Walking on mountain trails under the best conditions requires careful attention to where you put your feet: when there is ice and snow and no light, it is easy to slip on something and go tumbling down a stony ravine. Except for some professional woodsmen familiar with the trails, the search was suspended for the night.

There were still a lot of people to be interviewed to try and establish a timeline that would help the police track Emerson and her abductor's path. The only thing they could do was continue to interview, search, investigate, and work backward to establish a path and perhaps determine where the abductor might be heading. With hard police work and a little luck, the police might find Emerson well and safe.

The police needed to find as many witnesses as possible and interview them. The man who had found the bottles, dog leash, and baton could have seen other things that had not seemed significant to him at the time. Under careful police questioning, the witness might mention other things he saw that he didn't realize had evidentiary value.

Apparently, several other witnesses had seen Emerson and Hilton on New Year's Day. They had to be found and questioned. There were no photographs and little information to release to the media, except to describe Meredith Emerson and ask the public for help if they had seen Emerson and her abductor. A sketch artist was preparing a drawing of the man described by the witnesses who had seen him on New Year's Day. When a photograph of Meredith was available, it would be televised, printed in newspapers, and sent to hundreds of sites on the Internet that are dedicated to finding missing persons. There would be a national “army” trying to find her and her abductor.

The police knew nothing about the suspect except what they had heard: he looked weird, acted strangely, had blue eyes, was weathered, and had an Irish setter, which one witness had heard him call Dandy. The two water bottles and brown leash were photographed by CSI and bagged for forensic testing.

The day had been bitterly cold and there was a light dusting of snow on the ground. The police were truly surprised at the large number of volunteers who had come to help look for the missing young woman. Although darkness made it too treacherous to continue searching the mountain, the investigative pace continued at full pace throughout the night.

Hoarfrost covered the inside of the Astro van's windows at first light on the morning of Wednesday, January 2. It was bitterly cold and the thermometer showed that it was eleven degrees outside, tying a record low for that date. In the dim early light Hilton looked at Emerson and noticed that she was not bleeding, although there were scabs around her mouth and face from where he had beaten her with his fists and a club. Her eyes were black and puffy, and her nose was bruised so badly that he believed it was probably broken. Hilton asked Emerson if she was in pain and she asked for aspirin. Hilton gave her two aspirin and water to take it. He asked whether or not she had passed out during the night and if there was any ringing in her ears. No. Any double vision? She told him no, but said that she had a headache.

Hilton had given Emerson aspirin every time she asked for it and believed that he was being “very solicitous” of her health. He gave her water whenever she asked for it. That morning Hilton was exhausted, or “flagged out,” as he thought of it, from the running around he had done trying to get cash from one of Emerson's ATM cards. He hardly remembered how he got to where he had made camp. It came to him that he had driven through the town of Dahlonega, and he wasn't sure why.

Now, starting the second day of holding Emerson captive, Hilton was no better off than when he had started this venture to get some fast money. He was still broke, needed gas, and he had at least three broken fingers. He looked at Emerson over a campfire.

“You had me running all over last night, hon,” he said. “You didn't just try to convince me, you
did
convince me.” He laughed. “Hell, I'm not even going to ask you why.”

Hilton continued with a rambling monologue on how stupid people were, and how he knew so much more than almost anyone. People, even his criminal lawyers, were always commenting on his superior intelligence, his depth of knowledge in numerous areas, and his exceptional education. He loved it when people said,
You certainly are well-read. How many degrees do you have?

They were both hungry, but Hilton had nothing for them to eat except two small cans of stew. He had water and dried food for both dogs. As Hilton pondered his next move, he decided that they would go to Canton later on in the day because he knew someone in that area who might be willing to give him some money. From Canton, he could drive on up to Cartersville after he telephoned Brenda Ayers (pseudonym), the woman who might give him money.

At least that was what he hoped. Like everyone else Hilton had known, Ayers wanted nothing more to do with him and had refused to talk to him on the telephone for more than three months. However, Ayers had known him for twenty years; in Hilton's mind Brenda was a longtime girlfriend. And then there was John Tabor, in Atlanta, for whom Hilton had done telemarketing, off and on, for more than ten years. They were far from being on the best of terms, and in his mind, Hilton figured that Tabor owed him $250,000 from past sales commissions. Hilton had physically threatened Tabor more than once.

It was just after sunrise when Hilton decided to try Emerson's ATM cards a few more times and buy a cup of coffee and some bananas from his dwindling assets, which had shrunk to less than eight dollars. Hilton felt a familiar malaise coming over him—one that sometimes made him tremble and shake, or turned him into a limp blob of boneless protoplasm without the strength to move.

When he did not have those feelings, the emotion that dominated him was unbridled rage. Besides being a mean sociopath, which he thought made him superior, Hilton blamed these feelings of malaise on multiple sclerosis (MS)—a diagnosis he had made for himself—and for which he had convinced a doctor to write him a prescription for Ritalin.

According to the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), which is a part of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Ritalin is a name for the generic drug methylphenidate, a central nervous system stimulant that is more powerful than caffeine and less potent than amphetamine. The doctor who wrote the prescription for Ritalin noted on Hilton's chart that the patient was more likely to be “schizophrenic” than to have multiple sclerosis, but that the patient had shown him a faded paper from a different doctor who offered the diagnosis of MS.

Ritalin is usually prescribed for children and teenagers to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and is supposed to be monitored carefully for side effects. These can include insomnia, euphoria, increased focus and attentiveness, psychotic episodes, cardiovascular complications, and severe psychological addiction, according to the NDIC.

Hilton took other drugs at random, depending on their availability—uppers, downers, LSD, marijuana—but he rarely drank alcohol or smoked, except for a beer and a cigarette now and then. Hilton was glad that he had “trained” Emerson to help set up and break camp. She helped pack up without being told and he was pleased at how compliant she had become. Although he may not have realized it, Hilton always thought in the plural sense.
They always became compliant,
he thought—not
she
always became compliant.

Hilton felt desperate. His range of activity was limited and he was being hemmed in because the vehicle was running low on gasoline. One of Emerson's ATM cards and PINs
had
to work. He was also anxious to look at a newspaper to see if his photograph was in it or if he had in any way been associated with a missing hiker. Once the van was packed, Emerson was tied and chained inside and Hilton drove to Regions Bank on Marietta Highway, south of Canton. He pulled up near a building on what he thought was Moose Lodge Road.

“One of these better work,” he told Emerson, gazing at her with his cold blue eyes. Then he laughed. “You're making a believer out of me.”

Emerson gave him a PIN number and Hilton walked at what he believed was an inconspicuous pace toward the ATM. He inserted the debit card and punched in the PIN that Emerson had given to him. All the while he held a towel to obscure his face. No money came out of the ATM, so he went back to the van.

“It didn't work, bitch,” he said. “Give me the right PIN.”

Emerson gave him another PIN, but Hilton knew she was lying. What's more, he could tell that Emerson
knew
that
he knew
she was lying. But he ran back and forth four different times on fruitless trips to get the ATMs to stop rejecting the card and start spitting out money. He gave up on getting money but walked inside a Huddle House restaurant across the street and asked if he could use the telephone. The waitress thought he looked creepy and dirty, as if he had been sleeping in his clothing.

The waitress walked to the other end of the restaurant, where another waitress stood, while Hilton talked for a while on the telephone, seemingly getting more and more agitated. He had picked up a copy of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
where he had seen a one-column story about a missing hiker and a short story with a photo of Emerson. There was no mention of him. He breathed a sigh of relief: he still wasn't famous yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Hilton finished his telephone conversation and ordered a cup of coffee to go and smiled as he paid the waitress.

“Things are looking up,” he said cheerfully.

With that, he hurried to the van and drove back to the remote area of Dawson Forest where he had made camp the night before. He had at least another day to hold his victim because he wanted to ask her for different PIN numbers and try to find different banks to try each of her three different cards. Failing that, he had to rely on his acquaintances to give him money. In the daylight Hilton saw again what a good job he had done of picking a remote camping area. It was a great hiding place, several miles north on Shoal Creek Road, not far from Deer Creek Road, which had no designated camping areas. It was hidden away in the forest and far from any hiking trails. Hilton drove off into the woods, where the van couldn't be seen from any clearings, and set up camp.

The temperature was still just eleven degrees, and Hilton lit a gas cooking stove inside the van to help keep them warm. He ran the van's engine sparingly so he could also run the van's heater, but he was worried about burning too much gasoline. Hilton had expected a blitzkrieg: kidnap, get money, kill hostage, and flee. He had not counted on Emerson running him ragged any more by giving him incorrect PIN numbers. He was tired, cold, and hungry. It was about time to finish playing this string of cards.

Exercise might help him with his jitters, he thought, and ordered Emerson to put on a warmer jacket. After he was dressed in his warmest coat and hat, they headed into the woods for a hike. On a cold day like this, meeting someone else out hiking would be like finding a needle in a haystack. The exercise felt good to him as he, Emerson, and the two dogs hiked along Shoal Creek.

Hilton could tell that Emerson was having a good time because she kept chatting. It didn't occur to him that she might be talking because she was nervous, afraid, hungry, in pain, cold, and that she had just been beaten and raped hours earlier. No, she was not having a bad time—even though she had been kidnapped. He wouldn't say she was really
happy
about the situation, but consistent with his perception on her situation of being beaten up and kidnapped, he believed she was enjoying herself.

Of course, he had laid down the law before they started out on the hike. He wanted to make it perfectly clear that he was the professional, that he had the upper hand, and that she had no chance to escape.

“There's nowhere for you to go, honey,” he said. “So remember two things. Number one, if you bust out running on me through the woods, I'll shoot your ass down.”

He showed her a gun, which looked like a Colt Combat Commander, and she said, “No, no. Don't show me the gun. I don't want to see the gun.”

“Just remember two things,” he said. “If you bust out through the woods, the pursuer has the advantage. If you bust out running down the road or anywhere else, I'll shoot you down—and I'm a good shot, left-or right-handed.” Hilton wasn't lying about that: he had earned expert sharpshooter medals when he was a paratrooper in the U.S. Army.

“If we come upon someone, don't do anything, or I'm gonna start shooting everybody,” Hilton told Emerson. “Unless it's law enforcement. I won't shoot it out with law enforcement 'cause I won't win. But if it's anyone else,
everybody
is gonna get killed.”

They started the hike, with Emerson walking ahead of Hilton. She was not wearing any restraints.
Where is she going to go?
he asked himself.
Nowhere,
he answered. There was absolutely nowhere Meredith Emerson could go from here.

He mocked the way the cops shot their guns when he watched them on TV, and he thought about this and many other things during his hours alone in the woods. The cops came out facing their opponent, holding the gun in front of themselves with both hands, giving the other shooter a wide target. The Western gunfighters stood face on, too, but used a single-handed grip. He, among all men, knew how brain-dead this was: you stood sideways, making yourself a small target, while taking steady aim with one hand. That was the way the pros, like himself, did it—not like the dumb-ass actor cops on television.

As he contemplated his situation, Hilton continued to believe that Emerson was having a good time and was in no mental distress. She commented time and again on how beautiful it was. So far as Hilton was concerned, she was a happy camper.

In fact, Meredith Emerson was cold and scared. Her abductor had stopped somewhere in Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area to camp for the night, and she had spent the night without sleep. Emerson had intended to hike on Blood Mountain with her dog, Ella, for just a few hours and had brought no heavy clothing and had carried only a few necessities in a fanny pack.

She was bloody and sore as she shivered inside the ratty sleeping bag, which her abductor had provided for her. It was colder than usual. The temperature that time of year was usually fairly mild, but it had turned bitterly cold, dropping to eleven degrees, equaling a record low set there in 1940.

So far, Emerson had done everything she had been taught to fight against being abducted and how to behave if she was abducted. Getting into an abductor's vehicle increased the odds that things would end badly for the victim, and she had resisted as hard and as long as she could, using everything she had learned about self-defense in her judo and karate classes. She kept fighting, even when she thought she had no strength left, because getting under the abductor's control was the last thing she wanted.

But she had failed. He was too big and too strong and the blow to her head from a tree limb sent waves of pain and shock through her so that she could no longer resist. Then she had been chained and tied inside the abductor's dirty van and made to lie or sit on hard, lumpy cargo bags. She had been forced to listen to his manic voice and his vulgar and obscene railing against anything and everything, and she felt the lash of the vile names he called her.

Emerson was trying to stay alive because people would be looking for her. Before she left to go hiking on New Year's morning, she had left a note on the chalkboard, where she and her roommate, Julia Karrenbauer, used to leave messages for one another. Emerson had written a note telling Karrenbauer that she was taking Ella for a hike, and she tacked on a personal note about the New Year's Eve party Julia had attended:
Hope you had a good time.

Karrenbauer would be expecting her to return during the evening of New Year's Day. Her friend would not wait long to get word out that Emerson was missing, and then a search would soon be under way. People might already be looking for her. Emerson was doing her best to buy time, to give searchers a chance to find her. She had given her abductor false PIN numbers. When no cash came out, she convinced him that he had not entered the correct number. After several failed attempts to get cash, Emerson started telling her abductor that certain cards only worked at designated ATMs.