by Trace Conger
"That's fucked up."
"Of course it is," said Cricket. "Did you examine the photo? Find out who this fucktard is?"
I reluctantly reopened the photo. "I'm looking at it again now."
"Did you see it?" asked Cricket.
"The newspaper? Yeah, I saw it. It gives me a city, but not much else."
"There's more."
I could sense the ridicule in Cricket's voice and I quickly scanned the photo again to see what I’d overlooked that was so obvious. Nothing jumped out at me. "What did I miss?"
"The bookshelf. Right side, third row down. There's a book. Dracula by Bram Stoker."
"I know who wrote Dracula. What's so special about it?"
"In addition to being a history buff, I'm also a fan of rare books, and that book is as rare as a three-dicked turtle. With that edition... There's maybe five in the world, and in the right circles it's a goddamn badge of honor. Someone will know who owns it."
"Dracula? I've got a copy on my bookshelf. From college. How rare can it be?"
"No, you have a shitty paperback. Probably packaged with Frankenstein and The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When Dracula was published in 1897 the first editions were released with a yellow cloth cover. The one in the photo is still a first edition, but it has the black leather cover with gold lettering."
"I don't know what any of that means," I said.
"It means it's rare. Like worth-sixty-grand rare."
"So someone at a rare books store in Memphis would probably know where to find one."
"Now you're thinking."
I nodded and smiled. "Thanks, Cricket. I'd have never figured that out."
"Of course not. That's why you've got me. Now go get that piece of shit and have some fun doing it."
"I will. And Cricket?"
"Yeah?"
"My copy of Dracula did come with Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde."
"Of course it did, Finn. Of course it did." He hung up.
Cricket had always been full of surprises, but I was still shocked to learn the person I'd once paid to hack into a cell phone to get a bank president's sexting photos was also a rare book scholar.
I closed the photo on my laptop hoping I'd never have to see it again. Then I turned to my cell and searched for a rare books store in Memphis. A few seconds later a man named Anthony at the Rare Book Room answered my call.
"Hi, Anthony. Long shot here, but I'm looking for a first edition of Dracula. The black leather edition. You happen to have one?"
"I wish. I've got the yellow cloth, but no black edition. I think Bob Billings has one." He spoke to me like I was part of some inner circle of rare book collectors. "I don't think he's looking to sell, but you can give him a call. Want his number?"
"He local?"
"He is."
"Then, yeah, I'll take that number."
He gave me Billings's phone number and I hung up. Thanks to a literature lesson from a jack-of-all-trades criminal, the politeness of a book dealer, and a reverse phone search, I had my pedophile.
Twenty Seven
I RAN A TENNESSEE DMV search and pulled up driver’s license information for every Bob Billings and Robert Billings in Memphis. The searches returned nine hits. I weeded out most of the individuals from their appearance or age. That left two potential men. I opened the image I lifted from Vance and compared the driver’s license photo to the Devil's Den image. Even though I only had a profile to work with on Vance's image, it was easy to make a match with the license photo. I found my mark, and thanks to the address on the license I knew where he lived.
I ran a second DMV search on Billings's address and didn't get any hits, which meant there were no other registered drivers in Memphis living at that address. I also ran his address through an online public record aggregator, which scans public sources like voter registration records, utilities information and mortgage documents and didn't find any other names linked to that address. It wasn't perfect, but I had more information telling me Billings lived alone than telling me he didn't.
I was so close to wrapping up the Vance and Tuner case, and I didn't want to get sidetracked by taking a trip to Memphis, but then a realization hit me. Killing Vance was an easy way out. Willie Baker wanted Vance to suffer, and he probably thought the only way to make that happen was to crush his skull with a hammer. But now there was another way. Cricket said the Devil's Den was a closed network, and since Vance had that photo on his laptop he was involved somehow. If I could link him to the Devil's Den and build a case against him, I could turn the evidence over to the FBI and send him to prison, potentially for the rest of his life. And if he went to prison, it was likely his new and real identities would unravel and Willie could expose him as Josh Baker's murderer, which to me felt more like justice than simply removing him from the gene pool.
The more I thought about it, the more I looked forward to the drive to Memphis. I grabbed my .45, a to-go coffee from the Travelodge cafe and headed for the Volunteer State.
IT TOOK ME SEVEN HOURS and a new application of duct tape to drive from Flower Mound to Memphis. I arrived at 5711 East Tall Oaks a little after 9 p.m. and parked across the street. Billings's McMansion made Turner's high-class pad look like a fixer upper. Everything about the place screamed money, and I was no longer surprised at the idea of him having a book valued at over sixty-grand on his bookcase. Billings lived in the type of neighborhood where you wouldn't find a smashed-to-shit Lincoln Navigator parked on the side of the road. I stuck out like a dick at a funeral and could be only minutes away from some nosy neighbor calling in a suspicious vehicle.
I didn't have a lot of time, so I grabbed my .45, tucked it into my waistband and approached the house. Two panes of glass flanked the walnut front door and I could see Billings sitting on a leather sofa with a laptop across his knees. He looked like any typical fifty-year-old man with money. He was slightly balding, but had a tan that told me he'd recently been someplace sunny. He wore an ivory turtleneck and gray slacks. He didn't look like someone who made a living exploiting children, rather he looked like everyone's jolly uncle. The Devil's Den photo told me otherwise.
Billings was a monster who preyed on children who couldn't protect themselves. There's a special place in hell for people like him and I was half tempted to initiate the journey, but first I needed information. I wanted to know how Vance got the photos and what role he played in the Devil's Den operation. Since Billings was starring in his own photo shoot, which somehow found its way to Vance, I'd push him to explain the process and the players.
I hoped to temper my disgust and my fist long enough to get the information I needed, but I didn't have high hopes. I gripped my .45 in my right hand, took a step backward and drove the heel of my boot into the door just next to the brushed nickel doorknob. A perfectly aimed shot knocked the front door wide open and sent scraps of wood trim sliding across the living room floor. With the door open, I walked in with my .45 raised directly at Billings's sternum. Discretion didn't follow me into the house; it waited in the car.
As soon as I was in the foyer, Billings slammed the laptop shut and tossed it aside.
"It's encrypted, you'll never be able to access it."
When presented with a handgun to the face, most people shut down. The sight of looking down that dark tunnel tends to render most people a blabbering sack of useless shit. But it was as if Billings didn't even notice the weapon pointed at him. He was less concerned about eating a bullet and more concerned with whatever he had on that laptop. He probably thought I was law enforcement and that I was looking for evidence. That was his first mistake.
"What did you say?"
"I said it's encrypted and you can't open it. No one can. It doesn't matter if you get a warrant or not."
"I don't give two fucks about your encryption."
"No one can access it," he said. "No one."
"You can."
His forehead dripped like a fat man at a gym. "But I won't."
> I closed his front door as far as I could on account of the broken doorjamb and then turned back toward him. "The error you've made is that you think I'm some sort of law enforcement officer. Your mistake should be evident by now, because if I were a cop I wouldn't be alone. There'd be a half-dozen men with me and they'd already be rifling through your shit looking for something. And you'd be facedown on the ground with your hands zip-tied behind your back. That'd probably give you a hard on."
He squinted at me.
"But I'm not here to arrest you, and as far as that laptop goes, if I want you to unlock it you will. Or I'll remove your fingers with a steak knife so the only way you'll be able to jerk off to kiddie porn again is by using your elbows."
He eyeballed the laptop but didn't say anything.
I stepped forward, rested my boot on his coffee table and leaned over toward him. "You're going to tell me about the Devil's Den. I want to know how you're involved and I want to know how Jake Polling is involved."
"I don't know who that is."
I raised my boot and slammed it into the top edge of the coffee table, sending it crashing into his shins and pinning him to the sofa. He opened his mouth to scream and I shoved the barrel of the .45 past his front teeth, knocking two of them out in the process. He clamped his bloody mouth around the barrel as tears streamed down his face.
"I'll ask again. Do you know how Jake Polling is involved?"
He slowly shook his head from side to side. His lower jaw chattered against my weapon. I withdrew it and replaced my boot on the table, keeping the sharp pressure on his shins.
"Tell me about the Devil's Den."
"It's a website. With kids on it. But I don't know who that guy is. The one you mentioned."
"How are you involved in the site?"
"I'm... just a member. That's all."
"What kind of member?"
"I pay a fee and send them pictures. And I get to see other people's photos."
I didn't say anything.
"Every member has to upload five images a month to the site," he said, wiping the blood from his mouth. "Everyone does. In addition to the monthly fee. If you don't upload the images, they cancel your membership."
"So they're crowdsourcing kiddie porn? That's sick."
He didn't respond.
I pressed harder on the table and he started to scream but I shoved the .45 back in his face. He covered his mouth with both hands, his eyes still watering.
"What else do you know about it? Who runs it?"
He removed his hands from his mouth. "I don't remember his name."
"You sure it's not Jake Polling? Think real hard."
He shook his head. "No. Not Polling. I don't know who that is. It's... Vincent... Vince..."
It hadn't dawned on me until then that maybe Vance wasn't going by Polling while working with the Devil's Den. He'd want to protect the Jake Polling identity. Keep it clean. Maybe he used his real name to distance himself from the operation. His real identity would be scrubbed clean and there was no link to Jake Polling. Few people outside of Parkersburg, West Virginia, would know who Jacob Vance was, so it made sense.
"You mean Vance? Jacob Vance?"
Billings snapped his head up as if something clicked inside. "Yes, Vance. But no... wait, not Jacob." He wiped his face. "Thomas Vance. Yeah, Tom Vance."
"Thomas Vance?"
He nodded his head.
That was a name I hadn't expected to hear. But now Nell's theory about Thomas using his government connections to weasel his son into federal protection started looking like a solid bet. Cricket mentioned the Feds taking down a child pornography network, but weren't able to snare the operator. Could Thomas be using his connections to stay one step ahead? To stay insulated and protected? It fit, but I wanted to know more about the operation.
"How do you upload your photos?" I asked. "Where do you send them?"
"I have a thumb drive." He pointed to the laptop next to him. There was a yellow thumb drive with the Devil's Den logo plugged into the laptop's USB port. "I upload them and someone on the other ends stamps a watermark on it and then uploads it to the site for everyone to see."
I thought back to what Cricket said about a secure means to upload images.
"Give me the thumb drive," I said.
"I can't do that."
I grabbed Billings's turtleneck and yanked him forward. His legs were still wedged between the sofa and the hard edges of the coffee table. As I jerked him forward, he placed his hands on the coffee table to brace himself. That's when I slammed the butt of my .45 down on his left index and middle fingers. The bones shattered between my weapon and the wooden table. It sounded like I'd just stepped on a dozen cockroaches. He screamed and I slammed the butt into the side of his open jaw, which knocked him sideways on the sofa, but his pinned legs held his bottom half upright.
Hitting Billings felt good, almost too good. The kind of good that if you don't pull back you could go too far.
"Sure you can," I said.
Billings's face looked like a car window in a thunderstorm. He righted himself and plucked the thumb drive from the laptop with his good hand. My eyes wandered to his left hand. His fingers had already begun to swell, and while there was no other visible trauma I knew I'd turned the bones to peanut brittle. He handed the thumb drive to me and began gasping for air, his mouth open wide.
"I can't breathe," he said.
"Yes you can. You're just hyperventilating."
"No, I can't breathe."
"You're talking, so you're breathing. Slow your breaths, because I need you conscious."
Billings stared up at me like an animal in a snare. His expression looked familiar. Like the one the little girl wore in the photo I'd found on Vance's computer.
"What about the girl in your photo?"
"Which photo?"
It didn't hit me until then that there were more. Probably a lot more. Too many for him to know whom I was talking about. "The one with the girl sitting on a desk. She couldn't have been more than five. There was a bookcase in the background. A real big one. That clear it up?"
He thought for a moment. "That was a long time ago. I don't remember her name."
My fingers tightened around my .45 and I had to stop myself from hitting him again. It wasn't an easy decision to make.
"Here's what's going to happen," I said, slipping the thumb drive into my pocket. "The Devil's Den is going to get shit-canned, and so is Thomas Vance."
He nodded.
"And sometime soon, the police are going to come knocking on your door. They'll arrest you and you're going to tell them everything you know about the operation. Then they'll charge you and you'll plead guilty. There won't be a trial and you'll probably spend the rest of your life in prison."
He buried his face in his hands again.
"I'll be looking in on you, Bob. And if it goes down any other way, I'll come back here and torture you, and then I'll murder you. And I promise you won't see me coming."
He rolled over onto his side, still gasping for air.
I tucked the .45 into my waistband, returned to my car and drove back to Texas.
Twenty Eight
I RETURNED TO MY HOTEL in Flower Mound close to five in the morning. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. Josh Baker visited me again that night in my dreams. This time he brought my daughter, Becca. The lush green field was gone. Instead Josh ran across a playground with my daughter chasing him, her arms open wide in an exaggerated attempt to catch him. The playground looked like the place where I first met Willie Baker in Parkersburg weeks ago. I watched as Becca chased Josh up the slide and then across to the swings. When she finally caught him she wrapped her outstretched arms around him, lifted him off the ground and twirled him around. She set him down and turned to me, as if she had just realized I was there.
She ran toward me, her arms open wide again. I knelt down and opened my own arms to catch her, but she stopped before she reached me. She turned to
see someone else walking out of the woods that bordered the back of the playground. It was Jacob Vance. I yelled to her to come to me, but she didn't hear me. She walked toward Vance, who stood at the tree line beckoning her forward. I wanted to run to her and grab her, but I couldn't move. Only watch as she stepped closer and closer to him. A moment later Josh Baker was next to her. He took hold of her right hand with his left and they walked toward the woods together. I screamed for them to stop, to get away from Vance, but they ignored me. All I could do was watch as they reached him. He stepped aside and ushered them into the woods before turning to nod at me, and then disappeared into the tree line behind them.
I woke up pounding the sheets. It was 8:30 in the morning.
I didn't want Vance dead. I wanted him to rot in prison. That meant collecting all the evidence I could and turning it over to the FBI to shut him down. According to Cricket, the Feds had already killed the website's previous incarnation and they'd jump at the chance to try again. I had the thumb drive, but I needed Vance's laptop to bring down the Devil's Den and Jacob and Thomas Vance with it.
I rolled out of bed, headed for the parking lot and made it to Vance's home by nine. His SUV wasn't in the driveway and he should be at the childcare center. I parked in the same spot I’d parked two days earlier and went to work.
Sycamore Street was deserted except for a silver sedan and SUV and a black pickup truck. Seeing the SUV made me think about the one that followed me near my hotel. I convinced myself that it was a coincidence and that if I looked hard enough I'd see silver SUVs everywhere. I shook off the paranoia and moved on.
I slipped on my gloves and entered Vance's home through the cellar door. I moved through the kitchen and into the living room. That's where I nearly tripped over him. There, in the middle of the floor, was Jacob Vance. He was lying in a pool of blood that still seeped from a fist-sized hole in the side of his head. Next to him on the floor was a claw hammer.
The overturned coffee table and shattered wall mirror told me that Vance didn't go down quietly, and with the houses so close together it was likely a neighbor heard the struggle and called the police. I couldn't take a chance on being there when they showed up. As I turned to leave the room, I saw the laptop on the carpet propped up against the sofa.