Every Crooked Path

by Steven James

  It infuriated me to hear the way the narrator was phrasing things: “continuing the romance” and keeping children from “shying away” and using “enhanced persuasion,” pretending that the situation was meant to protect the child, when that was precisely who it was harming.

  “Appeal to what they want most. For girls it’s often an emotional connection rather than a physical one. Most girls desire affirmation. They want to be told that they’re special, that they’re pretty. Gifts work wonders—stuffed animals, jewelry, flowers, love notes. It’s helpful to use things that will act as constant reminders of you.”

  As the voice-over continued, the video showed more laughing, happy children and I wondered what their parents would do if they found out what video their kids were appearing in.

  Then the narrator described what to say to younger children: “Try, ‘This is our secret. We can’t tell anyone what happened. You do know how to keep a secret, don’t you?’ Again, you must know your child, her needs, her wants, her desires. It comes with experience, with spending time with them.”

  As the video played, Cavanaugh interjected, “Every second, more than thirty thousand people are watching porn online, and twenty percent of that involves children. If you count how many people are sexting, the number might be double that.”

  “And now enhanced persuasion. This is a last resort, but sometimes it becomes necessary in order to keep the relationship intact. ‘It’s your fault that this happened. I wouldn’t have done anything if you didn’t wear those kinds of clothes.’ Or, ‘You’re dirty now. You’ve done things you shouldn’t have. If you tell what happened, everybody is going to find out. You’ll be in trouble and no one will like you anymore,’ or, ‘If you tell anyone, I’m going to have to hurt your pet kitty. You love her, don’t you? You wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, would you?’ Of course you would never harm the child’s pet, that’s only said to protect the integrity of the relationship.”

  The video showed a group of young teens standing around watching a soccer game. They looked maybe thirteen or fourteen years old.

  Clearly, they had no idea they were being filmed.

  “When chatting with teenagers, emphasize how you share something special with them. For example, ‘I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. You can feel it too, can’t you? I know it sounds a little weird to say it, but there’s a chemistry, right?’ ‘I can be honest with you like I can’t be honest with anyone else.’ Bring up things that you have in common, study the music that they like and comment on it, then write, ‘I just like how we can share stuff that’s important to us, stuff that matters, you know?’”

  I thought of Tessa, of how I would feel if she were ever targeted in this way. Even though I wasn’t her dad, not related to her in any way, I found myself feeling protective of her.

  “The age issue will inevitably come up, and when it does, remind the child that all throughout history it was common for older men—and women—to have loving relationships with boys and girls. Still today, in some countries, the age of consent is as low as nine years old. In two countries, there are no age of consent laws at all.”

  Cavanaugh pressed the spacebar and added, “Recently, a number of lawsuits have been brought by hebephiles who claim that since movie theaters, amusement parks, restaurants, and so on all charge an adult fare for children over twelve, our courts should officially recognize them as adults in the matter of consent laws as well.”

  “You’re kidding me,” an officer near the front exclaimed disgustedly.

  “Not at all. The adult/child sex advocates argue that if society as a whole regards those over twelve years old as adults, why shouldn’t we allow them to make adult decisions about what they do with their bodies?”

  He looked at the screen, seemed lost in thought for a moment, then said, “That’s probably enough for right now. I don’t know about you, but I can only take so much of this. I’ll make the rest available for you to watch and we’ll discuss it during Monday’s briefing.”

  He gave them the encrypted link to the grooming training video on the Federal Digital Database, took some time to hand out specific assignments related to current cases, and then dismissed his team.

  Agent Descartes and Chip Hinchcliffe, the officer who’d been shocked by the mention of the lawsuit, walked past me, talking about finding the perverts who did this sort of thing.

  I waited for the room to clear, and then, as Tobin unplugged his computer from the projector, I went up to introduce myself.

  14

  “I’m Patrick Bowers.” I extended my hand. “Assistant Director DeYoung sent me over.”

  “Tobin Cavanaugh.” He shook my hand. A steely grip. “So you’re the guy I keep hearing about.”

  “I might be.”

  “The FBI agent who refuses to look for means, motive, and opportunity.” Before I could ask where he’d heard that, he said, “Grapevine.”

  I wasn’t sure we were getting off on the right foot here or not.

  “I just don’t start with those three things. I believe the key is in understanding the context of a crime—patterns, choices, cues. What decision led this criminal to this location at this time? What cues did he take from his victim and his environment to decide that this was an opportune time to commit the offense? Understanding these factors leads to an understanding of means, motive, and opportunity, but the reverse isn’t true. You don’t start with the conclusion and then try to make the facts fit. You start with the facts and follow wherever they lead you.”

  Cavanaugh gathered his things. “And geospatial patterns? Talk me through that. I haven’t had a chance yet to read your books.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was throwing me an attitude or just being direct.

  I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “First, we need to establish which cases are linked. Offenders don’t act randomly or choose the locations of crimes randomly. Just like all of us, they have intentions in their travel routes—often to save time and money—and certain places and times hold significance to them. The relationships of the locations to each other show us movement patterns of the offender and reveal sites that he feels comfortable enough in to commit his crimes undisturbed. So, in a series of offenses, the relationship of the timing, location, and progression of the crimes gives us important data regarding the offender’s understanding of, and familiarity with, the region.”

  Cavanaugh looked deep in thought.

  Glancing around, I found a dry erase marker and turned to the whiteboard, then drew half a dozen circles as I spoke.

  “Most crimes occur at the locations where offenders spend the majority of their time—we refer to them as activity nodes—or along the pathways between these places. However, it’s not just proportionate to the amount of time they spend there, but related to how safe and confident they feel there.”

  I labeled the circles work, home, store, friend’s house, park, and restaurant, then drew a web of interconnected lines, delineating travel routes.

  “The decision-making process is shaped by environmental cues as offenders evaluate, among other factors, risk versus potential payoff, the availability of and desirability of targets in that specific place at that specific time and so on.”

  Cavanaugh watched me intently. Whether it was an inquisitive or judgmental gaze, I wasn’t sure.

  “So, after establishing which crimes are linked,” he said, “what then?”

  “If possible, I visit the scenes and view entrance and exit routes, study the lighting, the geospatial relationships, site usage patterns, and traffic flow in the surrounding areas. I’m looking for clues as to why the killer chose this location—Seclusion? Convenience? Expediency?”

  “And the chronological and temporal aspects of the case—when did things happen and in what order.”

  “Yes. Then, taking cognitive mapping researc
h into consideration, I work backward trying to identify the most likely home base for the offender to try and help us cut back on the time and resources it takes to complete the investigation. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “And you wrote two books on that?”

  “Well, I went a little more in-depth.”

  “I see.”

  I still couldn’t read him, so I said, “DeYoung told me that you wanted my help with a case, seeing if it might be linked to the two deaths at Brilington Towers over the last few nights?”

  “I hear you shot the guy.”

  “Detective Cavanaugh, I—”

  “Tobin.”

  “Tobin. What can you tell me about the case you’re working on? How can I help you here?”

  “We’re looking at a series of missing children that we think might be linked to what happened at that apartment in Manhattan.”

  “Go on.”

  “Let’s head to the computer forensics lab. They’re looking over the USB flash drive right now. I’ll explain on the way.”

  15

  As we left the suite, Tobin said, “We’re looking at four nonfamily abductions since the first of the year that we think might be linked. You may have heard of them: Maggie Rivers, age eleven; Andre Martin, age ten; D’Nesh Mujeeb Agarwai, nine; and LeAnne Cordett, four.”

  “Yes. Maggie was taken from a mall, Andre from a state park in New Jersey, D’Nesh when he was on his way home from school, and LeAnne from a day care center at a church.”

  That last one was when her teacher was helping another child in the lavatory. When they came out, LeAnne was gone. It was incredibly audacious to abduct a child under those circumstances, but it wasn’t the first time I’d heard of something like that happening. Day care center abductions happen at least once a year somewhere in the U.S.

  Tobin looked at me quizzically. “Did DeYoung fill you in?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know those details?”

  “I follow the news.”

  “And you just happened to remember all that off the top of your head?”

  “Yes.”

  He blinked. “Okay.”

  “And all four are still missing—correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But these children all disappeared under remarkably different circumstances. What makes you think the abductions might be related to each other or to the deaths this week at the Brilington Towers?”

  “Jamaal Stewart ran a website on real estate investment techniques. All of the children’s parents subscribed to his weekly email newsletter.”

  Okay.

  I didn’t believe in coincidences. And even if I did, I couldn’t imagine that this was one staring at me right now.

  “How did you come across that?”

  “I dig into things.”

  “We should have Cyber analyze that mailing list.”

  “Done. I have some officers cross-checking the names against other missing children or known sex offenders.”

  Yeah. I could get used to working with this guy.

  I liked him already.

  We arrived at the computer forensics lab and one of the technicians, a young officer who looked barely old enough to drive, told us, “Well, as you know, one of the USB devices was just for the wireless keyboard. There was nothing for us there. I’ve been working on the other one, the flash drive. Whoever set it up did not want the contents to be made public. Not at all.”

  “Were you able to pull anything off it?” Tobin inquired.

  “It was programmed to reformat itself if it was inserted into a device that wasn’t prefigured to accept it. So that wasn’t good. Thank God we were able to identify that before there was a complete wipe. We’re seeing if we can recover any data from it. It’s going to take some digging, but I’m reasonably confident we’ll be able to figure out at least some of what was on there.”

  “Did you try the TV?” I asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The one in Stewart’s apartment. The flash drive was in the television’s USB port when I found it, so doesn’t it make sense to start there? The television would have likely been set up to accept the drive. If you reinsert it—”

  The light went on. “We should be able to view the files—especially if they are video or audio files.”

  “Then just download them. Yes.”

  “Nice.”

  “Okay, get to it.” Tobin did not sound thrilled that they didn’t have anything for us yet.

  As we left for his desk, I asked if he’d ever heard of the Final Territory or of Ted Wooford.

  “Not Wooford, no, but I have heard of the Final Territory. Just rumors mostly, nothing solid. I always took it as sort of an urban legend in the field.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Live molestation on webcams. Other members send in requests while they watch. I’ve heard conjecture that it’s located in Denmark, where the laws are a lot more lax—but who knows. It could be based here in the States. Was Wooford a part of this?”

  “It looks like it, yes. But he’s dead—apparent suicide.”

  “Apparent?”

  “The timing and circumstances make it a little suspect. What about ‘Aurora’s birthday?’ Have you heard of that?”

  He shook his head. “What is it?”

  “The jumper from last night mentioned it. It’s a file he was looking for. He told me it wasn’t on the computer or the phone, asked if we’d found it.”

  “We can contact the ICSC, see if they have a record of it.”

  I’d heard of the International Child Safety Consortium but hadn’t worked with them before.

  When we reached Tobin’s office, he put in a call to the ICSC and spoke with someone named Claire Nolan. While he was on the line, I phoned Jodie to touch base. She told me the press release had gone out with the suicide note’s contents.

  “DeYoung released a photo of it,” she told me.

  I found that a little curious. “Not just the contents?”

  “He thought having the handwriting out there might help. Oh, and I’m going to analyze Stewart’s mailing list to see if anyone on it is named Randy, Billy, or Ted, or any variant of those names.”

  “Good call.”

  After Tobin and I were both off the phone, I spent some time reviewing to him what I knew about the homicides on Tuesday night and what had happened last night at the apartment complex.

  Then he read through the case files while I studied his notes on the missing children and began to input the locations we knew about into the algorithms I use to analyze the aggregate data to develop a preliminary geographic profile.

  16

  At two o’clock, Francis tried his insurance company again and this time he was at least able to reach a real person who pointed him to an online form that he could fill out to resubmit the request for them to cover his psychologist visits. “But,” the woman said frankly, “they almost never reverse their decisions. I wouldn’t bother unless there’s a lawsuit or something.”

  Discouraged, Francis left the ICSC just like he did every day for his afternoon coffee at the Mystorium, an independent coffeehouse and used bookstore that specialized in crime books, thrillers, and mysteries.

  As Dr. Perrior had told him once, “Habits can center a person. Habits can help him stay balanced when life seems to be spinning out of control.”

  So this was a habit he had developed to help himself stay balanced.

  Every day.

  Two o’clock.

  The Mystorium.

  If you were looking for the latest self-help book, you’d best go somewhere else, but if you were in the market for a first-edition signed copy of an Elmore Leonard or P. D. James novel, it would make sense to try the Mystorium first.

  When Francis ent
ered, a studious-looking woman who was typing on her laptop at a corner table near the Jeffery Deaver novels looked his way, then, embarrassed, quickly directed her attention back to the computer screen.

  Red hair. Pretty. Looked a little like Scully from the early days of The X-Files. She was about Francis’s age. He’d seen her in here before, had even almost talked to her once.

  The barista, a college student named Rebekah Brown who liked to wear big loopy earrings and always changed the store’s music to Muse or Arctic Monkeys when her boss wasn’t looking, knew Francis by name and smiled as he approached.

  “How are you today, Mr. Edlemore?”

  “I’m good. How are you, Rebekah?”

  “Excellent.” She gave him a sly smile. “I think you have an admirer.”

  “An admirer?”

  She put one hand up to hide the other hand, then pointed through her blocking hand in the direction of the woman. “She’s had her eye out for you.” Rebekah spoke in a whisper just loud enough for Francis to hear. “Yesterday too. You should talk to her.”

  “Oh, she couldn’t have been waiting for me.”

  “Oh, I think she was.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m a girl. Trust me.”

  “Woman.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a woman. You’re over eighteen.”

  “Oh. Right, well, just trust me here. Go talk to her.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go, on. Just say hi.”

  “I’ll just take the coffee for today.” He handed her his credit card and his nearly full frequent coffee buyer punch card. “The mild. Small. Thank you.”

  “Mr. Edlemore,” Rebekah sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”

  She ran the purchase.

  Punched his card.

  Poured him his drink.

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Rebekah.” She nodded once more toward the woman in the corner, but he just did his best to smile and told her, “Maybe some other time.”