On the day before her son’s funeral, Margaret Bilodeau, mourning deeply, internally, was trying, successfully, to be strong for those around her.
For one difficult hour this morning, sitting in front of Camarillo home, Mrs. Bilodeau kept flashing back to hundreds of joyous scenes.
All of them starred her uncommonly devoted 45-year-old son Paul, who was mysteriously shot to death in the loneliest imaginable setting last Friday night in Fox Hills.
The chokingly emotional rush of a sudden, violent ending may have stained her memories.
But the unusual happiness that a singularly devoted son brought to his parents almost every single day throughout his adult life, drowned out the negatives.
In one breath, the 77-year-old Mrs. Bilodeau said she was not sure whether she and her 79-year-old husband, Conrad, could remain in their home of the last 20 years.
“So much of Paul is here,” she told the newspaper.
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Mr. Bilodeau, with his parents Conrad and Margaret.
A Time to Share
In another breath, vivid recollections of her beloved Paul briefly softened, or distracted, the unimaginable pain that may recede but never leave.
The newness of this permanent tragedy would leap toward her, then retreat.
As if she were standing at the foot of a mountain when an unfathomable amount of snow began to rain down, a veritable avalanche of utterly liquid memories — all glowing in gleaming gold — rushed toward her.
Should she throw up her defenses and ward off thousands of comforting thoughts or talk them out?
Talking them out felt better.
Sometimes in bursts.
Other times, like a mellow, slow-flowing creek so clear you can see the misshapen rocks on the bottom.
They Never Knew Him
Hardly anyone in Culver City, from City Hall to the Fire Station construction site on Bristol Parkway where he was working as a city-hired project manager, acknowledged knowing more about Paul Bilodeau than his slim but admirable work habits.
The profile that associates drew held that he was the quintessential straight-arrow, strictly business all of the time, a thoroughgoing professional.
Kept to himself, fastidiously.
The most private person some of them ever had met.
Basically, they hardly knew more about Mr. Bilodeau than his name.
They deduced he was single, but they had no idea whether he was a loner outside of the job or was ubiquitously surrounded by family and pals.
At the Beginning
About two years ago, City Hall was getting ready to vacate Fire Station No. 3’s cozy, overcrowded quarters on a residential street in Sunkist Park.
They would build a modern, new building on much roomier grounds along wide-open Bristol Parkway.
City Hall’s quest for a project manager who would be their conscientious, hands-on representative at the site every day to make sure the builders did not deviate from Culver City’s intentions, led them to Rollins Consulting Inc., out in Thousand Oaks.
Owner Nick Rollins nominated a man City Hall since has concluded was his premier consultant, Mr. Bilodeau.
For the next two years, said Public Works Director Charles Herbertson, Mr. Bilodeau carried out his duties flawlessly.
It was, he said, as if Mr. Herbertson himself were reporting to the trailer at the site every morning, closely reviewing the records, poring intensely over every single piece of data in the voluminous files, and walking the grounds as carefully as if he were searching for a penny in a one-square mile area.
No Exceptions
Mr. Bilodeau did not talk Dodgers or politics, just Fire Station No. 3. He may as well have donned blinders. The project was all that was happening in his world, associates said. Some of them know more about a new hire who started three days ago than about Mr. Bilodeau.
He was not, however, robotic.
The enigmatic consultant may have been a private person, but he was not the least bashful about expressing his city-supported views when the builder seemed to wander away from the plan and travel a detour route.
There were voice-raising interludes, spawned by disputes with the contractor over the way the builder wanted to proceed.
The builder’s way, according to Mr. Bilodeau, periodically deviated from the precise plans that the city had drawn. Those plans were Mr. Bilodeau’s bible. Line by line, he hewed to them meticulously.
Mr. Herbertson, the Public Works chief, figured out early that his overseer at the site was not going to allow for creativity, that City Hall would get back exactly what it ordered.
For different reasons, then, City Hall and Paul Bilodeau’s mother reached identical conclusions. Neither could find grounds to criticize his performance.
Murder Scenario
Until a week ago tonight when everything changed.
Close to 7:30, Mr. Bilodeau went to dinner with his 80-year-old Uncle Larry.
Not unusual.
The devoted nephew has been living on the same property with his widowed uncle, for two reasons:
To help assuage his uncle’s loneliness, now that he is by himself, and to ease his own long commute to the Westside.
Mr. Bilodeau told his uncle that later Friday night, he was going to drive out to Camarillo to the home of his parents, probably to spend the weekend, as he routinely did.
Only this time, Margaret and Conrad Bilodeau did not know he was coming.
Not unusual, either.
But first, the job-dedicated Mr. Bilodeau said he had to return to the construction site, no small commitment because that meant he would be undertaking the long drive late in the evening after an already lengthy workday.
Not unusual, either, according to his mother.
“Twelve-hour days were common to Paul,” she said. “He never, never was an eight-hour person.”
Curiously, this seems only to have been known within the murder victim’s family.
No one at the job site, people who had known him for going on two years, seemed to realize that with a measure of regularity, he would be toiling in the trailer hours after the whole crew had departed.
Only last Friday night, Mr. Bilodeau never left the trailer, and his mother said that she was glad, for once, she did not know he was coming to their house.
The next morning, a construction worker entered the grounds at 6:45 and headed toward the trailer at the south end of the property. He noticed the door on the city’s half of the long trailer was wide open, and Mr. Bilodeau’s arm was in the doorway.
He had been shot at least four times.
According to a report, an additional bullet was found later that Culver City police had missed on their first search.
That final bullet may offer a clue to what went on in the final minute of Paul Bilodeau’s tragic ending.
The Services
Mr. Bilodeau’s funeral will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday at Conejo Mountain Memorial Park, 2052 Howard Rd., accessible by the Lewis Road off-ramp on the 101.
Next: Margaret Bilodeau’s portrait of her son.
