Every Crooked Path

by Steven James

  However, there was some truth to what he’d said. Without this visit today, those images would have remained hidden deep on Tor and we wouldn’t have been able to sort them, record their hash values, and search the web for other instances where they might have appeared. If we could identify offenders related to the images, we might end up saving children from molestation. Maybe some exploited children would be helped by this in the end.

  “Okay,” Lloyd said. “I did my part. Now you leave Jewel alone.”

  “No one will be contacting her,” Tobin replied. “And no one will know you were here talking with us today. Not Carlton, not anyone.”

  “What about solitary confinement?” I asked Lloyd. “Do you want in or out?”

  “I’ll get out when I get out.” He cocked his head at me. “You never answered my question, Agent Bowers. How was Ferguson killed?”

  “What makes you think he was killed?”

  Lloyd scoffed. “You really have no idea who they are, do you? What you’re getting into here?”

  “I never know what I’m getting into. Goes with the job.”

  “Yeah, and how far are you willing to follow this?”

  “All the way to the kids who’ve been hurt. All the way down the rabbit hole.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, it’s gonna take you places you won’t want to go.”

  I’ve already been places I don’t want to go, I thought.

  Tobin spoke up, “Did you ever hear of a girl taken in New Jersey eight years ago?”

  “There are a lot of girls taken.”

  “She was five. Caucasian. Blond hair.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Whoever took her kept her alive for a year and a half before killing her. Her name was Adrienne.”

  “Aha.” A slight grin. “She was yours, wasn’t she, Detective?”

  Tobin leaned forward. “She was.”

  “I see.” Lloyd’s gaze went to the camera behind us, the one Tobin had told the guards to turn off.

  “Do you know anything about her abductors?” Tobin asked him.

  “Nothing pops to mind.”

  “Get the guards, Agent Bowers,” Tobin said. “Tell them we’re done in here.”

  “Are you sure you’re—”

  “Go on, Patrick.” His eyes were glued on Lloyd.

  I left them alone. As the door was closing behind me I heard Tobin asking Lloyd about Adrienne.

  It took me a few minutes to locate the guards, who were playing cards in a room down the hall. As I approached the door, one of them said, “I heard five billion a year.”

  “But how do they know that?” the other guy replied. “It’s not like the child porn industry reports its income or pays taxes. And if so many videos and images are free, where’s the money coming from?”

  I knocked on the door, which was already ajar. “Excuse me. We’re finished with Lloyd.”

  A blank video screen on the desk gave testimony to the fact that Tobin had convinced them to shut off the camera in the room.

  “Okay,” the stouter guard said to me, then answered his friend, “Downloads, access to hidden content.” He punched in some security codes and then a password in order to bring up the video. “Members-only areas, DVDs, phone sex, and pay-per-view and personalized videos.”

  “Personalized?” The slim guard set his cards facedown on the table and stood.

  Okay, this was quite a conversation I’d interrupted here.

  “‘Customized’ might be a better term for it.” The video monitor was taking a moment to wake up. “You basically choose from a drop-down menu what you want the models—well, porn stars—to do, and then they’ll film the scene for you. They’ll even add your name in there if you want.”

  Man, I was glad I didn’t have this job.

  Or Tobin’s.

  When the monitor’s screen finally came on, it showed Tobin standing over Lloyd, who’d been uncuffed and lay crumpled and motionless on the floor.

  “What the hell?” the guard beside me exclaimed.

  We raced down the hall and back to the interview room.

  I arrived first and wedged myself between Tobin and Lloyd to separate them while the guards knelt to assist Lloyd, who was groaning.

  “You better check the floor,” Tobin said to the guards, his voice cool, impassive. “It’s a little too polished. There’s a slick spot over there.”

  When I put a hand on Tobin’s shoulder he roughly shrugged it off.

  “Lemme guess,” the thin guard responded. “He slipped when you uncuffed him to get him ready for the transfer back to his cell.”

  “Precisely.”

  Lloyd was licking at his bloodied lip.

  “That what happened?” the other guard asked Lloyd.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I slipped, just like the good detective said.”

  +++

  Tobin was quiet as we exited the prison and crossed the parking lot to the car.

  I hit the unlock button on the key fob. “You alright?”

  “I’m alright.”

  I took the driver’s side as we climbed in. “What happened in there, Tobin?”

  “After you left, he started telling me what he would do to a five-year-old girl if he had ‘access’ to her for a year and a half.”

  “And you lost it.”

  “No. If I’d lost it, he never would’ve gotten up from the floor again.”

  “Did you ask him about the Piper?”

  “Yeah. I asked if he’d ever heard of him and he just looked me in the eye and said, ‘What do you think?’ That was all.”

  “Did he know anything about who might’ve taken Adrienne?”

  “No. I asked him a couple different ways and he said no each time. That was it. Then you guys arrived.”

  I pulled out of the parking lot and drove in silence. I wasn’t about to judge Tobin for taking his anger out on Lloyd. There was a time early in my career when my fist had found the jaw of a serial killer who was mocking the death of one of his victims. I broke that guy’s jaw and I’ve never regretted it.

  No, I couldn’t condone what Tobin had done. But neither could I condemn him for doing it.

  When we were merging onto the highway I said, “Why would Lloyd have asked about how Ferguson was killed? His death was listed as accidental. We need to find out the circumstances surrounding it, if there was ever any suspicion of foul play.”

  “We’ll look into it. Was any of that true, by the way? What you said in there? About Jewel’s reflection in the window of the chat? I saw the same photos you did on the way over here. I didn’t even notice it.”

  “The darkened window was true.”

  “But not the image of Jewel?”

  “No.”

  “So you made that up?”

  “I speculated.”

  “But what if you’d been wrong?”

  “I would have speculated something else.”

  “On the spot?”

  “Sometimes it’s the best place to do it,” I replied. “What about you? What you said about Carlton Lyota?”

  “Never heard of him before today. On the drive up here I saw his name on the warden’s reports.”

  “Yeah.” I remembered that report. “He was the guy who chewed off half of Lloyd’s ear.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you didn’t put him away?”

  “No.”

  “So you made that up?”

  “I speculated that Lloyd wouldn’t want another run-in with him.”

  “I like the way you think, Tobin.”

  “The feeling’s mutual, my friend.”

  59

  On the drive back to the city, we touched base with Jodie and found out that she and Descartes had met with Ivan Romanoff’s boss and learned that Romanoff
had remotely logged in to his computer over the weekend to delete his files.

  “I’m having Cyber look into it,” she informed us.

  “Still no word on his whereabouts?”

  “No. And as far as seasonal jobs for Higgs, Hinchcliffe is still checking.”

  I dropped Tobin off at NYPD headquarters, where he’d left his car. Then, since it was already after office hours, I grabbed a quick bite at one of my favorite street vendors that sold chicken ranch bacon wraps and drove to Christie’s place.

  When I walked in, I got the impression that she and Tessa might have patched things up a bit because they were playing Exo-Skel IV with each other.

  So.

  Good.

  A little mutual destruction to let off some steam.

  I greeted them, then asked Tessa how her exams had gone.

  “Fine. Whatever.” She didn’t look away from the screen, where she was engaged in a firefight with some hostiles. “They were stupid. Easy and stupid.”

  I put my things away.

  Both Christie and Tessa seemed engrossed in the game, and since I’d been sitting around all day in meetings or in the car, I needed to stretch out and get some exercise in, and I knew just the place to do it.

  At the climbing gym where I was a member.

  The Hangout.

  +++

  Despite the sting in my arm that was recovering from the knife wound and the minor injury in my side, it felt good to climb again, to enter that delicate dance of balance and strength, to disappear into the mental space of being one with the rock, even though, here, it was only artificial. Pulling plastic, they say.

  After an hour or so I returned to the apartment. Christie was sitting by herself on the couch, quietly reading.

  She was into the Christian mystics and had even started to get me interested in them. Tonight she had one of her old volumes in front of her. When she closed it up and set it aside, I asked what she was reading.

  “Some of the works of Hildegard of Bingen.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Actually, Hildegard is one of my heroines. I can’t believe I haven’t told you about her. She was a composer, a writer, an artist, a healer. She’s the first composer we have biographical information on.”

  “What—the first composer ever?”

  “Yes. She was an abbess in Germany, collected books about medicine and herbs, and wrote music for the nuns to sing.”

  Admittedly, I hadn’t read too much of the mystics’ work so far, but from what I had read, I liked how they taught that the pathway to God was through love, not through theology; through an active faith lived out in the world, not a sterile faith that had no roots in relationships or in serving other people.

  “Love without hands and feet to help a hurting world isn’t love at all,” one of them had said. I agreed.

  “Tessa’s in her room, writing in her journal,” Christie explained.

  “How’d the game go?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. We killed a lot of terrorists.”

  “That’s always a good thing. So, how are things between you two?”

  “Could be worse,” she said, defaulting to a common saying from her native Minnesota. “How was the climbing gym?”

  “Not as good as the real thing, but close enough to get me through until I can get to the crags again. At least it gave me a chance to think.”

  “About your case?”

  “About us, actually.”

  “Ah. Us.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how about that? I’ve been thinking about us too.”

  “What did you come up with?”

  “You first.”

  I took a breath. “Well, I think raising a daughter as a single mom here in the city must be terribly difficult. I think that if it was just a money issue, we could maybe live together—in the same apartment, I mean, share the space, the costs, just to save money . . . You’d still need to land another job, but maybe there’d be something you could find here that would help you—us—get by.”

  “So you’re saying you think it would be best for me to stay?”

  This was not going to be easy. “Honestly? No, I don’t. I think it would be best for me if you stayed—but for Tessa, for you? When you’re thinking about the long term of what’s best for your family, if the money is right and the benefits and everything, it would probably be best for you to take this job in Omaha. Tessa has two more years of high school, so it’s a good time to move if you need to. What’s keeping you here, really? You don’t have family in the city, you just work here. This isn’t your life.”

  “She is.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are.”

  “Well, I’m here, yes, but . . .”

  “But?”

  We’re not a “we” yet, Christie, I thought, but I was worried how it would sound if I put it like that. “But we’re not . . .” I was struggling here. “Being together is something we’ve both thought about, it may even be something we both want, but—”

  “No, no, I understand.”

  Tell her you love her.

  Do it, Pat. Say the words.

  But are they true?

  It wouldn’t have been enough to just say that I liked her, but I didn’t want to say that I loved her either because those words carried a promise that I wasn’t sure I was ready to make.

  I didn’t want to deceive her or pressure her to commit to something she wasn’t ready to commit to, so I kept my feelings to myself.

  “Okay,” I said. “Your turn.”

  “Tessa is my main concern, but I would never want you to think I’m involved with you just because I want what’s best for her.”

  “I don’t think that at all.”

  “Good. I will say, however, just out of honesty, that she’s never had a father figure, a positive male role model—at least none that have stuck around for more than a month or two. I know she only has a couple years left being at home, but that’s one of the reasons I want her to have a positive influence from a man now, before she moves out and goes to college, or decides to live on her own. That’s not by any means the main reason I want to be with you, but it is something that’s important to me.”

  “I would want that for her too,” I said, “if I were you—I mean, I do want that.”

  A small smile. “I know what you mean.”

  “Right.”

  “As far as sharing a place, you remember what we talked about yesterday—temptation. I’m afraid moving in together might put pressure on our relationship, might bring up temptations that, well . . .”

  “I hear you. I get that.”

  “I should tell you, Pat, they’re flying me out on Sunday, the firm in Omaha is. I have some meetings on Monday.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Tessa will be staying with a friend.”

  I wasn’t aware that Tessa had any, but Christie might have been talking about one of her own friends. I didn’t ask her to specify.

  She went on, “It doesn’t mean I’ve decided, it just means I’m keeping the option open. Just to see if there’s the right kind of chemistry there for me to work with them.”

  “Yes, that makes sense,” I said agreeably, but that feeling hit me again—the one of the ground under me quaking. I needed my footing, wasn’t sure how to regain it.

  “Listen, Pat, I know it’s a lot to think about. I don’t want this to get between us. I want it to be something we can sort out together.”

  “I want to help sort things out, I do, but right now I can’t see myself moving out to Nebraska.”

  There it was.

  I’d said it.

  “Of course,” she replied, “and it wasn’t right of me to even bring that up.”

  “No more apologizing
for trying to find a way for me to remain a part of your life.”

  “Agreed.” Then she took my hand. “Come here.”

  I drew her into my arms. She held me tight, as if she were afraid I might slip from her life forever if she let go of me right now.

  Then we kissed and it felt right and comfortable and the way things were supposed to be.

  But they might not be this way for long if she decides to move.

  I pushed that thought aside.

  The longer I held her and the longer we kissed, the more I wanted to keep going. At last I said softly, “You remember when we were talking about temptation?”

  “Uh-huh.” She was breathing deeply, as deeply as I was.

  “This would be one of those times.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If we keep this up I’m not going to want to stop.”

  She closed her eyes, took a long breath, then opened them again. “Yeah. Me too.”

  We continued looking deeply into each other’s eyes for that fraction of a second that spoke volumes.

  And then a little longer than that.

  Neither of us pulled away.

  “Okay, then,” I said.

  “Right.”

  We eased back from each other, even though it was clearly something neither of us wanted to do.

  Yeah, it would be tough living with her if all we were doing was sharing finances. That was just not going to work.

  Even though it wasn’t late, she told me that she should probably be getting to bed and then went to take a bath first.

  Oh man.

  I felt like I could have used a cold shower.

  There was a lot on my mind and I didn’t expect that I would be able to get to sleep for a while, so, hoping it would help me relax, I grabbed a glass of wine. Then I went online and looked into Ferguson’s death.

  According to the official report, he was alone when he died. He’d been canoeing. When he didn’t return home, a search team went looking for him and found his canoe overturned and his body floating in an eddy in the river.

  What exactly happened was never established. The medical examiner’s report listed drowning as the cause of death and labeled it accidental, but just like so many of the aspects of this case, it seemed like an all-too-convenient explanation.