Patrick Bowers 08 - Every Crooked Path

by Steven James

  She was the woman who’d been living with him at the time of his arrest. Evidently, she’d stayed close to him over the years, visiting him every other Saturday like clockwork.

  Flipping a few pages forward, I noted that Lloyd was currently in solitary confinement for having a shiv made out of a screwdriver found in his cell.

  We arrived, parked, and went to the security checkpoint.

  +++

  Normally, prison guards wouldn’t allow anyone to take in a phone or a laptop when interviewing an inmate, but thankfully that didn’t apply to federal agents or law enforcement officers, so we were in the clear.

  However, we both did have to leave our weapons with the guards there at the checkpoint.

  In most federal and state penitentiaries in the United States, even though tower guards are armed with high-powered rifles, the prison staff who have daily contact with the inmates don’t carry firearms—after all, it would be far too easy for prisoners to overpower someone, take his weapon, and use it against him or against other prisoners.

  When someone is sent to prison for the crimes Lloyd had committed, the warden’s office screens all their mail. They don’t want to enable the prisoners, facilitate their fantasies, or give them a chance to relive their crimes. So, no pictures of children are allowed. No correspondence with minors.

  Also, there’s no Internet access for people like Lloyd, even though some advocacy groups claim that access to the Internet is “a basic human right.”

  Thankfully, the courts have rejected that argument.

  At least so far they have.

  Labeling Internet access as a basic human right would pave the way to requiring prisons to provide it to inmates, and that would have incalculable negative effects in contributing to criminal enterprises worldwide.

  Unintended consequences.

  But real, nonetheless.

  As a result, Lloyd hadn’t been online in three years.

  Technology is advancing exponentially every year, so I wasn’t sure he’d be able to get us the information we needed, but he’d been an expert at finding his way around the Dark Web in the past and I figured there was at least a fifty/fifty chance that he was going to be able to help us find the Final Territory.

  +++

  We were led to a visiting room usually reserved for inmates to use when speaking with their lawyers.

  The exchanges in these rooms were confidential, of course, but were filmed so that guards could monitor the conversations to make sure that nothing was passed from one person to another.

  However, there was no audio recording of the rooms, and the lawyer was situated in such a way that his or her face wouldn’t be visible to the camera so lip readers wouldn’t be able to tell what he was saying to his client.

  After we’d taken our seats on one side of the wide steel table that’d been bolted to the floor, two guards led Hal Lloyd into the room.

  On the drive up here I’d seen his photo, but those pictures had all been taken during the trial or at his intake into this facility, and I could see that the last few years of prison life had not been kind to him.

  He’d lost a lot of weight, fifty pounds at least, and his narrow face looked decidedly gaunt and bloodless. His nose had obviously been broken at least once while he was in here and it hadn’t healed properly. A jagged scar that hadn’t been present before his conviction trailed across his right cheek and down to his neck. The upper half of his left ear was missing. From the case files I knew it’d been bitten off.

  They say that child molesters do not have an easy time of it in prison. Lloyd’s injuries bore that out, and that wasn’t even considering the other kinds of abuse he might have suffered in here.

  Prison is hard enough on anyone.

  But the last thing you’d want in here was ending up at the bottom of the totem pole.

  Hal’s hands were cuffed in front of him, standard-issue cuffs that both Tobin and I could have freed him from. When the guards positioned him in the chair across from us, they secured the center link of the handcuff chain to the table before exiting the room and leaving the three of us alone.

  “Mr. Lloyd,” I said, “I’m Special Agent Patrick Bowers with the FBI. This is Detective Cavanaugh.”

  Lloyd scrutinized me, then asked Tobin, “Who are you with?”

  “NYPD.”

  “Neither of you two were at the trial, were you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Where’s Ferguson?”

  Donald Ferguson had been the agent in charge of the investigation that led to Hal’s arrest. Donald had drowned in a boating accident last year.

  “Agent Ferguson is no longer with the Bureau,” I told him.

  “Uh-huh.” Lloyd’s gaze shifted to the camera mounted in the corner of the room behind us. “And so, what is it that brings you gentlemen in here today?”

  “We’re currently investigating a website that provides footage of children under the age of twelve being molested.” We weren’t exactly sure what all the Final Territory provided, but I figured that phrasing things like that would get Lloyd’s attention.

  “And so you decided to come talk to me.”

  “Considering your background, we felt you might be able to offer us some assistance.”

  “Assistance.”

  “Yes.”

  “With what, exactly?”

  Tobin answered, “With tracking down some people who deserve to be in solitary confinement even more than you do.”

  “I see. And what possible reason could I have for helping you? Wait, let me guess: The chance to see justice done? To do the right thing? Or maybe to protect some innocent little lambs from the big bad wolves? What’s on the table here?”

  “Detective Cavanaugh, can you go have them turn off the video cameras to this room?” I’d waited to make the request so Lloyd would know we weren’t going to be filmed for the rest of our conversation.

  “My pleasure.”

  Lloyd eyed Tobin as he left, then his somewhat wary gaze shifted to me again.

  I said, “There’s a site on the Dark Web we’re trying to gain access to.”

  “Right, well, let’s say I was to help you. What are you willing to offer me in exchange? You know how these things work. Tit for tat. How’re you gonna scratch my back if I scratch yours?”

  “I can put in a request to get you out of solitary confinement.”

  He turned his head to show me what was left of his chewed-off ear. “And what makes you think I would want that? Nobody eats me while I’m living alone.”

  “Right now you’re stuck in a twenty-three forty-five and you don’t want that long term. Take it from me. I’ve seen what it can do to people.”

  In prison lingo a “twenty-three forty-five” means that you’re in solitary confinement for twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes in your cell—they would call it your “six by nine”—alone, and then you have fifteen minutes to shower.

  Some prisons provide you an hour of exercise in a caged-in area outside. This one did not.

  “Okay,” he said, “here’s what I want: I help you, I get my sentence reduced.”

  Deals like that are made all the time. For the right testimony or information regarding a case, sentences are shortened or commuted, people get parole, probation, time served. But I didn’t cut deals like that.

  I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Ferguson would’ve swung it for me. Without a reduced sentence, I have nothing more to say to you.”

  “As I said, that’s not—”

  “What happened to Ferguson, by the way?”

  Tobin returned. “Video is off. It’s just the three of us.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  I told Lloyd, “We know about Jewel Vernett.”

  He worked his j
aw back and forth slightly but didn’t respond.

  “I see from your visitors list that you two have stayed close.”

  Lloyd still didn’t answer, but I could tell I definitely had his attention.

  “It isn’t what’s in it for you,” I said to him, “it’s what’s in it for her. At the trial she said she had no knowledge of your online activity. She made that claim while she was under oath.”

  “And?”

  “And Detective Cavanaugh and I have reason to believe that the prosecution didn’t dig as deeply as they could have into verifying certain aspects of her testimony. What if I told you we have recently come upon some evidence that contradicts her claim?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Four years ago on November thirteenth at eleven fifty-two p.m. when you took pictures of your genitals to email to the eleven-year-old girl you were grooming for sex, there was a window behind you, but it was dark outside.”

  “So?”

  “The glass acted as a reflective surface, Hal, and guess whose reflection appears next to you in the background of the shot?”

  He was quiet.

  “Jewel was there with you when you were chatting with the children you abused, wasn’t she? How involved was she in setting up your meetings with them? It was never clear who drove you to the—”

  “Okay. That’s enough.”

  “That photograph alone is enough to get her perjury, and if she’s convicted of conspiring with you or taking you to the meets she’ll get at least—”

  “I said that’s enough! What exactly do you want from me?”

  “I want you to get me an invitation and access code to a site called the Final Territory.”

  He scoffed. “You’re entering a world you know nothing about.” He tapped his forehead. “There’s no delete key up here, Agent Bowers. You can’t unsee what you see. Once the images are in there, you’ll never be able to shut them out.”

  Tobin leaned forward. “On the drive here I looked over the record of your visits to the infirmary. You and the doctors in there must be on a first-name basis by now, huh?”

  Lloyd said nothing.

  “Do you know Carlton Lyota? Over in cellblock four?” Tobin studied Lloyd’s face. “Yeah, I thought so. Everyone knows Carlton. We go way back, Carl and I. Did you know I’m the one who put him in here? I saw in your prison files that you’ve had a few run-ins with Mr. Lyota over the years. Do you know how easy it would be to let word get around that you were visiting with us? That you were helping the Feds and the NYPD with a case? You know what happens to prison snitches. When Carlton hears about that, how long do you think it’ll be before you’re—”

  “They would never allow me access to a computer anyway, so I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.” I pulled out my laptop. “But I would.”

  He gazed at it intently. His tongue licked across his upper lip. I wasn’t sure if he was consciously doing it or not.

  “The video camera in here is turned off,” I reminded him. “It’s just the three of us. There’s no one watching.”

  “And you’ll leave Jewel out of it?”

  “I give you my word.”

  “Uncuff me so I can type.”

  “Make do.”

  58

  There wasn’t any Wi-Fi in here, but I was able to use my phone as a hotspot to get online.

  “Do you have The Tor Browser?” Lloyd asked as he positioned the computer in front of him.

  It was quite a name: The The Onion Router Browser. Didn’t quite roll off the tongue as well as Safari, Firefox, or Chrome.

  “It’s on there but I haven’t used it yet.”

  “Well, let’s see how much things have changed over the last couple years.”

  He used the browser while also pulling up a script box at the bottom of the screen in which he started to enter code. Most of it was indecipherable to me.

  The browser window didn’t look too much different from a typical web browser for navigating the Surface Web, but the script box didn’t look like anything I’d seen before. I wasn’t sure if it came with the browser or if it was something he’d downloaded to help him find what he was looking for.

  To make sure he didn’t access any images of children, I stood over his shoulder monitoring every page he went to.

  Lloyd muttered to himself as he typed, mentioning some of the things Tobin had covered in the briefing earlier, “You gotta know how to navigate through this world. You don’t use the right terms, the right lingo, the right phrases, they’ll sniff you out in an instant.”

  That’s why we were here. Because Lloyd didn’t smell any different than they did.

  After about twenty minutes, he nodded. “Okay, now comes the tricky part. They’ve changed things around a bit. They’re going to try to vet me, see if I’m law enforcement.”

  “Be honest. Tell them you’re not.”

  “Yeah, I will, but as far as the Final Territory, I still haven’t found anything specific. I might know of someone, though, who can help you. Name’s Blake.”

  “Blake?” Tobin said. “What do you know about him?”

  “Not much. Just that he’s been around for a while. Used to be based out in Los Angeles. I don’t even know if that’s his real name. If he’s not in prison these days, he might be the best guy in the area to help you out.”

  Lloyd studied the screen thoughtfully. “I had an online identity that I never told Ferguson about. Obviously, it hasn’t been used in a while, but let’s see if it still holds any currency.”

  He skillfully navigated past a series of firewalls and screening questions meant to identify people in law enforcement.

  “And here we go.”

  “Did you find the Final Territory?”

  “Something called Flute. Watch this.”

  He hit the spacebar and the word “flute” morphed into Final Territory, with the f and the l turning into the first and last letters of “Final.” The u disappeared, and the te formed the first two letters of “Territory.”

  Flute.

  Just like the Pied Piper.

  “If you want me to keep going,” Lloyd said, “I’m just letting you know—from here on out there are going to be images coming up. Pictures you’re probably not gonna want to see.”

  “Even before we access the site?” I asked.

  “Think of it as allowing people to window-shop. The pictures are there to keep you clicking.”

  Manacled hearts. Here it was, right in front of me, a system that championed freedom of expression but that ended up only adding to people’s chains.

  Tobin was more used to this kind of material than I was, and he turned the screen so Lloyd couldn’t see it, then took over at the keyboard. “We move forward, but I’ll take care of it.”

  He went through the questions, replying to them by using the phrases and jargon Lloyd told him to use.

  As Tobin typed, I studied the stoic look on his face and wondered what was going through his mind.

  He worked these kinds of investigations on a weekly basis, but still, it had to be tough, and I wondered what effect seeing those images might have on him, what effect it might have on anyone.

  Maybe he’d found a way to shut it out. Some people do.

  Others get jaded.

  But based on the depth of love he still had for Misty and Adrienne, I didn’t think that was the case with him.

  No, he wasn’t jaded.

  Tobin was focused.

  Finally, he finished with the data entry and Lloyd asked, “Is the screen clear? I mean, of pictures?”

  “Yes,” Tobin told him.

  “Let me see it one more time.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to type in an access code.”

  “Tell
it to me.”

  “This one I’ll need to do. Agent Bowers can watch me, but I can’t let you enter these codes.”

  “And why is that exactly?”

  “Let’s just say it’s for personal reasons.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “It’s gonna have to be.”

  Tobin debated things for a moment, then dialed the screen in Lloyd’s direction and I made sure no images came up as he entered the alphanumeric password.

  “There.” He slid the laptop toward me. “It’s done.”

  “Now what?” Tobin asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  “How long?”

  “They’ll get back to you when they get back to you. If this worked—and that’s a big if—and if you’re accepted—and that’s an even bigger one—well, if all that happens, they’ll send access credentials to that email address I gave you. Then you’ll need to come up with a way to pay that matches my online identity. But I’m telling you, these are people you do not want to mess with.”

  “I think I’ll be alright,” I said.

  “Well, at least I gave them what they wanted. They’ll be happy about that.”

  “What do you mean? What does that mean you gave them what they wanted?”

  “They require fifteen thousand images for membership. I sent them a link to my archives. There’s more than enough to get you in. Now—”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “It’s done, Agent Bowers. I knew you wouldn’t say yes to it. But it’s the only way you’re going to—”

  I spun the laptop around to face him again. “Undo it.”

  “It’s not undoable. The request was sent in. They have access to the pictures. Now, though, at least you’ll be able to report them to the ICSC. Without coming here today you never would have found ’em or been able to report ’em, so you should actually be thanking me. It won’t do any good to tell these people, ‘Oh, hey, you know what? I changed my mind. Please don’t look at those photos after all.’ You’re in this for keeps now, Agent Bowers.”

  Before doing anything else, I emailed the link to Francis Edlemore at the ICSC so he could analyze the images, but just the thought that Lloyd had used my computer to send a link to over fifteen thousand files of child porn made me physically ill.