by Trace Conger
"No."
"Then don't shit on this until you've checked it out. I've seen the ATM image and it's a close hit to the age-progression photo. This isn't an exact science, but it’s damn close. The fact his face matches the key markers from the photo and that he's in the same area as your other mark... Like you said, it can't be a coincidence."
"Fingers crossed."
"I'll email you his banking information from the system. You can take it from there."
I thanked Cricket, clicked off my phone and headed back to the hotel.
Twenty Four
TEXAS WAS THE LAST PLACE I expected to find Raymond Turner. I initially thought the DOJ would relocate the two as far away from one another as possible, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Flower Mound and Dallas were thirty miles apart. That doesn't seem that far, but considering the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington region was the fourth most populated metro area in the country, the odds of Vance and Turner bumping into each other was statistically improbable.
Aside from the number of cowboy boots around, there was another benefit to keeping them in the same area. My gut told me that my new friend at the US Marshals was responsible for both Vance and Turner, and what better way to stay on top of them than by checking in with them in person. Keeping them at arm's length made Valerie's job easier. It made my job easier too.
Before I went after Turner, I had to confirm he and Ray Asher indeed shared a heartbeat. My first attempt at finding Turner through the DMV database was a bust, but that was when I only had a digital doppelgänger to work with. Now I had something more solid. The bank account information that Cricket sent included Ray Asher's social security number, which I traced. It didn't take long to discover the Social Security Administration assigned Ray Asher his digits the same month and year as Jake Polling, the same time they left Pleasant Hill. The discrepancy in his birthdate was also consistent with Polling's womb emancipation day—exactly one month later than those of their real birthdates. I had my guy.
I ran an employment search, which revealed Ray Asher led an aptly named charity, The Raymond Asher Foundation. A quick Internet search took me to the organization's homepage. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I didn't expect that Ray Asher, formerly Raymond Turner, ran a charity helping missing and exploited children in Texas.
You've got to be shitting me.
By my own estimation Jacob Vance was a piece of shit, and not just because he customized the inside of my Navigator with a baseball bat. Given his past, I didn't like the idea of Vance having daily contact with children at his childcare center. Turner, on the other hand, actively helped missing and abused children. At least that's what his organization's glossy website told me. Was Turner helping disadvantaged children in an attempt to atone for what he did to Josh Baker? I wasn't a firm believer that people changed, especially people who murder children, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.
The bank account information Cricket sent included the mailing address Turner used to open his account, but the only way to confirm whether it was current was to pay him a visit. I scribbled down his home and business addresses in my notepad, grabbed my messenger bag and the only suit I brought with me and walked to the hotel parking lot.
I could make it to Dallas by 8 a.m.
DESPITE MY BEST EFFORTS TO seal up my shattered passenger window with the tarp, my SUV whistled the forty miles from Flower Mound to Turner's home in Dallas. I considered renting a vehicle for the remainder of my time in Texas, but I couldn't rent a car under an alias since I didn't have an insurance card for anyone other than Finn Harding. And even though Valerie could place me in Flower Mound, I didn't want a paper trail to back up her account. So that meant suffering with the wailing Navigator until I made it back to a Cincinnati body shop.
The GPS took me across SH 114 east to I-35E and then to Turner's home on Molly Court, which was about ten miles south of Dallas. It was a nice place for a child killer. Red brick with black shutters, a side garage and a better view than Josh's burial vault. It was a federal style with a flat front and lots of windows. It was the kind of home you wanted to live next to. The kind that drives up everyone's home values in the neighborhood. Apparently Turner's federal aid package paid higher than Vance's did.
I had only been there twenty minutes when a black minivan pulled out of the garage and onto the street. I got a quick glance before it made a right turn away from me, but it was long enough to see a male, who I assumed was Turner, in the driver's seat. I gave him some distance and then pulled out behind him.
Fifteen minutes after leaving his home Turner pulled the minivan into a parking lot and stopped in front of the Adelle Lee Elementary School. I parked on the street and watched as a tall thin brunette stepped out of the passenger side of the vehicle, slid open the side door and escorted two young girls into the building, waving to a parking lot attendant as she passed. Five minutes later she climbed back into the SUV and they pulled onto the street. I did the same.
After another fifteen minutes Turner pulled into a building complex. I checked my notepad. The address wasn't Turner's foundation. The minivan parked in front of a large, modern, gray building with enough glass windows to reduce the city's bird population by at least fifty percent. The woman stepped out of the minivan again, this time with a briefcase in her hand. She walked around to the driver's door and kissed Turner though the open window. Turner waited for her to walk inside the building before pulling away.
I continued the routine and followed the minivan until it pulled into a strip mall. Turner parked, walked across the lot and stepped through a glass door with a black and white sign over it. The Raymond Asher Foundation. The office was small and had probably once been a Radio Shack. It sat wedged between a tobacco store and a tax preparer's office.
Thanks to my unorthodox career I rarely wore suits. When I was a licensed PI I often had to take the witness stand in court, and that meant slapping on a shirt that was too tight around my neck and a tie that I never knotted exactly right. Of all the things I missed from being a legitimate PI, wrapping my six-foot-one frame in a suit wasn't one of them. But I had to suit up for my conversation with Turner. Otherwise, he'd never believe I was telling the truth when I lied to his face.
There was a gas station across the street from Turner's strip mall. I left the parking lot, stopped in front of the gas station, grabbed my suit and stepped inside. I traded my jeans and button-up blue shirt for a charcoal gray suit inside the bathroom, ordered a to-go cup of coffee and left the college-aged attendant scratching her head as to why I changed into a suit in her bathroom. Not a common practice.
I retuned to the strip mall parking lot, found a spot at the far end of the lot, checked my crooked tie in the rearview mirror, took the leather portfolio I kept stashed in the backseat and went to see Turner.
An electronic sensor chimed like a kid's toy with a dying battery as I walked into the building. Inside, the Raymond Asher Foundation resembled a local upstart politician's campaign headquarters. The building was divided into two sections. The front section contained a large table surrounded by six cubicles, only three of which were occupied. One wall held a large map of Texas. It looked like something you'd find at an interstate welcome center. The other wall had a white board that hung over a lateral file cabinet. Next to that stood a wooden rack of brochures. There was an office in the rear of the building that was separated from the front room by a large glass partition. Inside was a man, who I assumed was Ray Turner, in a white button-up shirt leaning over a desk. There was a door to the right of his desk that, given its placement in the room, I guessed led out to the rear parking lot.
Before I could get too far inside the building, a young man approached and asked how he could help.
"I'd like to speak with Ray Asher," I said. "Is he available?"
He looked over his shoulder toward the office. "Just a second. Let me see if he's off the phone." The young man walked to the rear office, knocked on the partition an
d said something to Asher. A moment later both men returned.
"I'm Raymond Asher."
There was no mistaking that Raymond Asher was the man in the age-progression photo Cricket sent me. I stood eye-to-eye with Ray Turner. Aside from the way he styled his hair—slicked back and parted over to the side like a Wall Street banker—he looked identical to his younger, child-murdering self.
"Hello. I'm Roger Mathers," I said. "Is there some place we can talk?"
"Sure," said Turner. "Is everything all right?"
"Everything is great and it might get better."
Turner arched his brow and flashed a nervous smile. "Okay. We can talk in my office."
I could feel the staff watching us as he led me to the office. Once inside, he took a chair from next to a small table and slid it to the center of the room. I sat down and he took a seat behind his desk.
"What can I do for you?" he asked.
I crossed my legs and set the leather portfolio on my lap.
"I represent a gentleman who is interested in making a large donation to your organization and I'm here on his behalf to assess your operation and advise him whether that's a good idea or not."
"What kind of donation?"
"The six-figure kind."
He leaned forward in his swivel chair. "Can you tell me who it is?"
"No. He'd like to remain anonymous. But he does have an interest in what you do and would like to see you do even more."
"We'll, we're a small operation. We should probably do more outreach for donations, but to be honest, I'm not comfortable asking people for money. We operate mostly on a grant from the state and from donations from a few individuals. I can count them on one hand, so we'd be very appreciative of anything your friend could donate. Is there anything specific I can share?"
"My associate likes to back people who are passionate about what they do and that's really why I'm here. We've already vetted your organization as a whole, but I'm more interested in learning more about you. Why you're here, why you do this. The kind of information you can't get from an annual report."
"Well I started this organization about twenty years ago because I want to help kids. It's cliché, but I wanted to help people who can't help themselves. Adults usually end up in bad situations because of their own decisions, but children are different. Most of the things that happen to them aren't a consequence of their own actions, but rather someone else's."
"Why didn't you just go work for one of the bigger charities that helps children? You'd have more money to work with. Why go out on your own?"
"There are a lot of good organizations out there that do what we do on a grander scale, but only a small chunk of their budget goes to actual programs. Those organizations are still doing good, but I didn't want a third of my budget going to operations. I want to reinvest everything I can into programs." He pointed to the front of the building. "That's why we're in this space. Sure I could rent space in a nice office complex, but that's more money, money that could be going to help get kids off the street, or help reunite a lost child with their family, or helping educate teens about online predators. For me, it's all about the programs. All about doing something that really makes an impact."
I leaned forward. "How did you get here Mr. Asher? It's my experience that people in this type of work have a personal connection to it. Something that ignited their passion. Did you have a personal connection to a case or something? Maybe your own personal tragedy?"
Turner stared at me. He took a drink from a green plastic water bottle on his desk and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I can't point to one specific thing that led me down this path. Just a desire to help people."
I waited for him to say something else, but he didn't.
"You have a family?" I said.
"Yes, I'm married with two daughters. Twins. They're seven."
"And you're the one who runs the organization? You call the shots?"
"I have a board of advisors, but I'm the only executive. I develop all the programming and handle staffing. We have a small staff, but only one is salaried. Besides myself. The others are all volunteers. I'm not the only one passionate about helping children around here."
"Tell me about the passion. What are you most proud of?"
"It sounds mundane, but we run a 24-hour help line where teens can call if they need to talk to someone. About anything. We've had a lot of success there because a lot of kids are too afraid to talk to their parents and we give them an outlet. Recently we've been focused on educating parents and children about Internet safety. We've seen a significant increase in the number of teens assaulted by people they've met online. Given the sexual nature of the crimes, it's almost exclusively young girls. We do a lot of speaking at schools throughout the state, talking about how students can protect themselves online and letting them know we're here to help."
I tapped the portfolio on my lap. "I can see why you're passionate about that. I have a young daughter myself and I don't know what I'd do if someone hurt her. I'm sure that's a feeling every father faces. What to do with someone who hurts their kid."
Turner nodded and took another drink. "I suppose so."
"What about missing children?"
He stared at me and then stood up.
"Come on," he said. "I want to show you something."
Turner led me out of the office to the front of the building. He opened the top drawer of the lateral file cabinet, reached in and tossed a folder onto the table in the middle of the room.
"These are some of the people we've helped over the years," he said, opening the folder and spreading photos across the table.
I stood behind Turner as he plucked one at random from the pile. "This boy here. His name is Kevin. He was living with his father not too far from here. His mother kidnapped him a year ago last June. She abducted him because she lost custody in the courts. We hired a private investigator, who tracked her to a crack house in Cleveland. We worked with Cleveland police, who went in and got him, and we reunited Kevin with his father. He's an honor student now. And he has a real future."
He tossed the photo back on the pile and picked up another.
"This is Tara. She was a runaway. We found her living under a bridge in Garland, eating scraps she found in garbage cans. I went to visit her twice a week for three months. Brought her clothes and food. And I talked to her. She refused to go home because she was afraid of her father, but I convinced her to let me drive her to a homeless shelter here in Dallas. She lived there for two years, got back on her feet, and even got a job. Now she lives in an apartment with a friend. She's living in a safe environment, she's healthy and she's self-sufficient. She also volunteers at high schools around the area talking about her experience."
He lobbed the photo on top of the others.
"These kids are thriving today because of our efforts. I'm not trying to sound high-and-mighty, but sometimes these kids fall through the cracks and we're doing everything we can to keep that from happening. One kid at a time."
I looked up to find three employees standing next to a cubicle wall watching Turner. Their expressions—tight lips and wide eyes—told me they respected him and that they'd follow him into battle, no matter where he asked them to go or what he asked them to do.
Turner shook his head. "Whenever I get too stressed out or on those nights that I'm so busy that I sleep on the floor in my office, that's when I open this folder. This is what it's all about. These are the tangible results of what we're doing." He pushed the photos back into the folder and placed the folder back into the file cabinet. "This is what really matters. Every one of these kids has a story, and I like to think it's a better story because of us."
He turned around and his staff darted back into their cubicles.
"It seems like you're doing a lot of good work here, Mr. Asher."
"Thank you." He slipped his wallet out of his rear pants pocket, opened it and handed me a business card. "That's my direct
line. Let me know if there is anything else I can tell you. Or your associate. I'm not like a politician and I don't really know how to ask for money, but we do have some wonderful programs and any donation would help us expand on the good we're already doing."
I shook Turner's hand and walked out of the building.
Karma is bullshit. The idea that it all evens out in the end is crap, a fairy tale we tell ourselves to help cope with all the bad shit people get away with. Turner seemed committed to helping people. I guess that's good for something. I wasn't sure if he believed his organization's efforts made up for crushing a four-year-old's skull with rocks, but unlike Vance, Turner seemed to be making an attempt to right his past wrongs.
I walked across the parking lot and climbed into my Navigator more conflicted than I was thirty minutes ago. I opened the folder on my passenger seat and snatched a photo. It wasn't an image of a runaway or some kid living in a crack house. It was Turner. Taken a few days after he murdered Josh Baker. He held a small whiteboard with his name and booking date and he stared at the camera with a dazed, lost expression, a far cry from the confident and determined face he wore when he regaled me with stories of the kids he'd saved.
When I walked into Turner's office I was determined to sign his death warrant. Now, I wasn't sure I should.
I PLACED TURNER'S PHOTO BACK into the folder and slipped it inside my messenger bag underneath my .45. I reached for my keys in the console cup holder. That's when someone in the backseat slipped a clear plastic bag over my head and jerked me backward, pinning me against the driver's seat. I was usually aware of my surroundings, and glancing into the backseat was the first thing I did before I climbed into my car. I must have gotten complacent once I crossed the Texas state line and I hoped it didn't get me killed. I made a deal with myself that if I survived this, I wouldn't let it slip again.
My instinct took over and I swatted widely at the thick forearm trying to break his grip on the bag, but he only clenched tighter. I had just taken a breath before I saw the bag and figured I had about thirty-seconds before the lights went out. I drove my right elbow backward and connected with something, but he didn't loosen his grip on the bag. As I kept striking backward with my right elbow, I opened my mouth wide and tried to gouge a hole in the bag with my left thumb but I couldn't tear through the thick lining. Whoever was in the back seat reached around and slammed a fist into my stomach and I immediately exhaled what was left in my lungs. I felt the warm air on my face as my breath escaped my lips and fogged up the inside of the bag. I slid my right hand down to the console and found my keys in the cup holder. I opened my mouth wide and stabbed a key through the bag, tasting the metal key on my tongue. I gasped. My chest expanded and fresh air rushed in.