Every Crooked Path

Book 9: The Bowers Files

by Steven James

Genres: Crime Fiction; Suspense; High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers

Synopsis

Who is the Piper?

Special Agent Patrick Bowers returns in an electrifying prequel to the Bowers Chess series from critically acclaimed, national bestselling novelist Steven James.

A mysterious suicide and a series of abductions draw Patrick into a web of intrigue involving an international conspiracy where no one is who they appear to be and the stakes have never been higher. Soon, Patrick discovers that the secret to stopping the Piper's current crime spree lies in unlocking answers from an eight-year-old cold case -- and the only way to do that is by entering the terrifying world of the conspirators himself.

Dark, probing, and chilling, Every Crooked Path takes an unflinching look at the world of today's cybercrimes and delves into a parent's worst nightmare as it launches a new chapter of Patrick Bowers thrillers.

Release date: December 1, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 544

Sample

Praise

The Bowers Files

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Author’s Note

PART I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

PART II

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

PART III

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

PART IV

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Acknowledgments

Dear readers,

This is a work of fiction, and yet, in a very real sense, it also tells the truth about our world today. While the characters and situations in this story are made up, the nature of the crimes is not.

Online predators are real.

As a parent, I found this book particularly difficult to write, since it involved research into crimes against children. However, because of the impact of this issue on modern culture, I felt it was an important story for me to tell—perhaps my most important one so far.

Finding out what’s really out there lurking online was a wake-up call to me. Rather than describe any exploitative images in this book, I chose to show the reactions of the characters to seeing them. I’ll trust your imagination to fill in the rest.

During my research, I came across an organization called the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It’s dedicated to rescuing children and catching those who target them. NCMEC is a nonprofit organization that depends on private donations, so please consider supporting their work. For more information, go to www.missingkids.com.

Together we can make a difference in protecting the next generation from those who would steal their innocence from them.

—Steven James

Autumn 2015

PART I

Masks

1

Wednesday, June 13

New York City

9:37 p.m.

I clicked on my Mini Maglite as I slit the police tape crisscrossing the apartment’s front door, swung it open, and stepped into the darkened living room.

Jodie and I would reseal the door after I was done in here.

I pocketed my automatic knife.

The NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit had finished up this morning so the scene had been processed, but I put on a pair of latex gloves just in case I did find anything.

At thirty-four years old, I’d been with the Bureau for eight years, after leaving the Milwaukee Police Department, and I’d worked with evidence recovery teams and analysts from all around the country. The CSU here in New York City was sharp, so I wasn’t necessarily looking for forensic evidence they might have missed; I doubted I would find any of that. I was here to look at context.

Though this would normally have been an NYPD case, because of my work with the joint task force, the Bureau was involved. Assistant Director-in-Charge DeYoung had asked me to take a look around.

I’d been consulting on another investigation earlier today, so this was my first time at the actual scene, which worked out well since it was the same time of day as when the crime occurred. Similarity brings perspective. I’d taught that at the FBI Academy. Now was my chance to put it into practice.

Almost exactly twenty-four hours ago, the man who rented this apartment was stabbed to death in the room just past the kitchen.

Orienting myself to the lighting, the sounds, in this location at the time of day of the crime was crucial. It’s always about the intersection of an offender being in a specific place at a specific time. Start there. Motives you can try to decipher later—if you venture in that direction at all. Most investigators go about things completely backward.

My partner, Special Agent Jodie Fleming, would be up in a few minutes. She was on the phone down by the car talking over a personal matter with Dell, the woman she was living with. Their relationship had hit a rough spot lately—actually, things had been going downhill for a while and I wasn’t sure they were going to weather this storm.

The lights had been off in the apartment when the responding officers arrived, so, to get a better understanding of how the room had looked at the time of the crime, I kept them off as I closed the door, swept the flashlight beam before me, and studied the room.

Well-worn, mismatched furniture. A couch. An easy chair. Two floor lamps. The glass end table was still overturned from the struggle. A wide-screen television looked out across the room from its mount on a swiveling arm on the wall. From studying the files, I knew that the windows on the south side of the room overlooked a park—even though it wasn’t visible from where I stood.

The television was angled so that the screen was visible from the reclining chair, rather than the couch that lay perpendicular to it.

Two remote controls sat on the arm of the recliner. I checked them—one matched the VCR player, one the DVD player. A wireless keyboard for surfing on the TV’s Internet browser rested nearby on the footstool. The television remote lay tossed haphazardly out of reach on the couch.

Clicking off my flashlight, I noted how the residual light from the city found its way into the room through the windows.

The struggle that started in here had ended in the master bedroom.

My specialty wasn’t blood spatter analysis, but I’d looked over the initial reports, and now, Maglite on again, I could picture the struggle playing out.

At a crime scene, blood can tell the story.

The progression of the attack, the location and responses of the individuals involved—did they duck? Try to run? Fight back? If there was a struggle, the blood spatter could show who struck first, where he was standing, where and how quickly he moved while he was trying to escape. It was a study in microcosm of geospatial interactions.

And that was my specialty.

I watched the tale unfold.

According to what we’d been able to piece together, the offender had accessed the apartment through the front door, apparently, based on the tool marks, picking the lock. The victim, a forty-two-year-old African-American man named Jamaal Stewart, had been seated in the recliner facing the television.

At some point the intruder must have startled him, because the blood spatter indicated that Jamaal was most likely rising from the chair when his arm was sliced.

Low-energy stains are created simply by the force of gravity and are circular. Impact spatter is more distinctive and happens when blood forcefully impacts a surface, so perhaps, from someone swinging his cut arm. The void patterns, that is, the absence of blood spatter where you would expect it, showed where the offender was standing during the struggle.

When studying blood spatter that’s not just a gravity drop, you analyze the length and width, and take into account the concentration of the blood in the different parts of the spatter to identify the point of origin.

For an unknown reason, Jamaal fled to the master bedroom rather than the front door.

I studied the droplets, following them down the hall. Based on the size, shape, and directionality of the spatter, he was moving rapidly.

Since he had defensive wounds, we knew he’d struggled with his attacker. The orientation of the capillary and arterial bleeding showed that the fatal stab wound was to the right side of the neck, which might have indicated a left-handed assailant, or a right-handed one, depending on how he—or she—held the knife.

Jamaal bled out sprawled facedown on the covers of his neatly made bed.

Often, evidence isn’t so much finding what is present, but what isn’t present that should be—like the voids in the blood spatter. Emptiness where you wouldn’t expect it speaks to you.

The CSU found a computer cord in the apartment, but no laptop. There was a cell phone charger here, but no cell phone. Also there were two Xbox controllers but no console and a VHS player and a DVD player, but no videocassettes or DVDs.

By all appearances, someone had taken all of Jamaal’s computers and recorded media storage devices. When we followed up to see if the computer, phone, or gaming system had remote location services turned on, none of them showed up.

If our premise was correct that the intruder was looking for something, I wondered if he’d found it.

And of course, what it was.

A neighbor had heard the struggle, called 911, and two NYPD officers responded, only to find that Mr. Stewart was already deceased. There was no sign of his attacker.

I checked the bedroom, under the bed, in the closet, but didn’t find anything noteworthy.

The French doors opened to a balcony four meters long and two meters wide that overlooked Manhattan.

I snapped the flashlight off, pocketed it, and then stepped outside. Twelve stories up. Directly below me, at the entrance to a dance club, twenty-two people stood on the sidewalk, waiting to be admitted inside.

A storm earlier in the evening had left the smell of damp concrete lingering in the air, a musty scent of summer rain.

A few horns honked in the distance. Someone flagged down a taxi at the end of the block. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I was thinking of the missing electronics and recorded media, the location of the remotes, the television screen’s angle, the fact that the unit was off when the responding officers got here.

Off.

But—

I heard footsteps behind me in the bedroom.

“Hey, Jodie, I’m out here.”

No, the television was off. So—

Jodie didn’t respond. The footsteps came closer.

And it wasn’t her gait.

Because it wasn’t Jodie.

2

The man came at me lightning fast, swiping the blade across my left forearm. My shirtsleeve offered little protection and the knife left a streak of red behind.

I threw my other hand up to grab his wrist and disarm him, but he knew how to block the move and easily knocked my hand away. I pivoted backward to keep him from driving the blade into my chest. When I turned, it drew him with me, onto the balcony.

Four inches taller than me, six foot seven. A beast.

There wasn’t much room out here for a fight.

He held the Bowie knife military-style, with the blade angled back parallel to his wrist. A lot harder to disarm. This man knew what he was doing. He’d been trained.

I was not going to fare well.

It didn’t scare me.

Motivated me, though.

I would have gone for my gun, but I needed both hands to stop him from slicing me open. I tried to sweep his leg, but it was like trying to knock a tree trunk out of the way.

Normally, I could hold my own in a fight, but this guy was better than I was and I wasn’t going to be able to keep him at bay for long.

Get some distance. Shoot him if you need to.

I head-butted him, slamming my forehead brutally against his nose.

It took him by surprise and he staggered back two paces. Before he could come at me again, I whipped out my gun and leveled it at his chest.

“Federal agent. Drop the knife.”

Immediately, he stopped. He stood his ground but didn’t come at me. “You’re a federal agent?”

“FBI. Now get rid of the knife or I will put you down.”

He took a step backward and tossed the blade over the railing of the balcony. I just hoped it wouldn’t hit anyone on the sidewalk below us.

“Hands up,” I said. “Get on your knees.”

He didn’t comply. “Do you have the file?”

“What?”

“You said you’re with the Bureau. Did you find it? Do you have the file?”

I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of trying to cuff this guy by myself. I had a feeling that he would be able to get my gun from me and overpower me before I could stop him even if he was lying facedown when I approached him. But now that he’d gotten rid of his knife, I wasn’t about to shoot him either.

Jodie was on her way. Once she got here we could take him down. Until then we were in a bit of a standoff.

“What file?” I asked.

“Aurora’s birthday.”

I was aware that my sleeve was soaked with blood from my injured arm, but I didn’t feel any pain—adrenaline will do that to you.

But the adrenaline would go away.

The pain would come.

He didn’t kneel, didn’t look afraid, and I didn’t know if he had another weapon. Seemed likely to me that he would be packing, though.

Keeping my gun on him, I tugged out my phone, speed-dialed Jodie, and told her to call NYPD for backup and to get up here ASAP. Then I slid my phone into my pocket. “If you make a move, if you come at me, I’m going to put you down.”

“I understand.” Then, “It wasn’t on the computer or the phone.”

“What wasn’t?”

“The file.”

“Aurora’s birthday.”

“Yes.”

“Were you here last night?” I asked. “Did you kill Jamaal Stewart?”

“They won’t let this happen.” He eased back half a step.

“Stay where you are. Who? Who won’t let this happen?”

He took another step. He was at the railing.

“Do not move!”

“They know things. They can find out things. It’ll never stop.”

He glanced down at the street, then looked in my direction again.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

There are people down there.

He’s not the only one in danger here. They are too.

“You can’t stop me,” he said.

“I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect those people down there. Now get on your knees.”

Slowly, he turned away from me, perhaps guessing that I wasn’t going to shoot him in the back.

You can’t let him jump, Pat.

“Step away from the railing!”

Thoughts raced through my mind, thoughts of the people outside the club twelve stories below us, of what might happen if this man did throw himself over the edge.

I shouted again for him to stop, but he just lifted one leg to the railing to climb over it.

I considered his state of mind, the danger he posed to those people—

He tossed the knife. He might not be armed.

You can’t kill him.

But he’s posing an immediate threat to innocent life.

I stared down the barrel.

Made my decision.

Avoid the femur.

Fired.

The leg that was supporting his weight buckled and he collapsed onto the balcony.

“Do not move.” I took a step forward.

“You’re not sending me to prison.” In obvious pain, he grimaced as he pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not going to prison. I’m dead already.”

“We can protect you.”

He scoffed. “Like you protected Ted?”

I had no idea who he was talking about. “That wasn’t our fault.” I was making this up as I went along. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of that. You can help us. Now just—”

Jodie called my name from the other room.

“Out here!” I hollered.

“You have no idea how far this goes,” he said to me, “what they’re going to do if . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Tell me.”

But instead of replying, he made the sign of the cross in front of his chest and then, in one swift and desperate motion, grabbed the railing and heaved himself over it and disappeared from sight.

I rushed forward and got there while he was still in the air on his way down.

He didn’t cry out. He didn’t scream. He just fell silently toward the sidewalk, where he collided with the ground within a meter of one of the women waiting outside the club.

The sound of impact followed, rising through the night, a thick, sickening thud.

Then the screams of the people in front of the club began.

And they didn’t stop.

3

“Jodie, I’m heading down.” I was back in the bedroom and she had turned on the light. “I want you to stay up here, make sure no one else comes in, and get the CSU over here.”

“First of all.” She indicated my bloody sleeve. “Are you okay?” Though her father was Caucasian, her mother was Persian and Jodie shared her dark hair and rich-toned skin. Small-framed but tough. I’d seen her take down guys my size.

“It’s fine.” Using my left sock, I wrapped the wound and tied it off to create a rudimentary dressing to quiet the bleeding. “Listen, the TV was off when the officers arrived. The chair was angled toward it, the DVD remote next to it.”

“So, he was watching TV,” she surmised.

“But the remote for that was out of reach.”

She caught on. “Who turned off the television?”

“Right.” We walked into the living room. “Also”—I pointed—“that wireless keyboard is for surfing through the TV’s cable Internet connection.”

“Prints?”

“Possibly.”

I went to the television. “The jumper told me the file wasn’t on the computer or the phone. All the DVDs and videocassettes were taken. So there might be . . .” The television was directed toward the chair. I angled the arm it was attached to over to the other side so I could access the back of it.

Oh yes.

“Right there.” I directed her attention to two USB input devices inserted into the data ports on the back of the unit. “One has the same insignia as the keyboard. That’s probably its wireless input. But the other one—”

“Is a flash drive.”

“It sure looks like it. We need to find out if there’s a file on it called ‘Aurora’s birthday.’ It might hold the key to figuring out who murdered Stewart, and why this guy tonight just killed himself. He warned me about the people who are behind this. Whoever they are, it sounds like they do not play nicely with others, so tell the computer forensics guys to be careful.”

On the way to the elevator I texted Christie Ellis, the woman I was seeing.

Earlier, I’d canceled dinner with her tonight, then later, canceled drinks afterward as well, all because of my work. I’d told her I would swing by her place on my way home, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen now either.

She texted back almost immediately that she was still open to me coming by, just to let her know.

I replied that I would be in touch.

++++

By the time I arrived at the front of the building, nearly everyone in the crowd had their cell phones out and was filming the rather grisly scene. I wondered how many times it’d already been uploaded to YouTube or tweeted.

I drew out my creds and held them up as I approached the body. “FBI. Everybody stand back.”

The man had landed on his back and the posterior of his skull was crushed. One of his legs was bent profusely to the side. The end of a fractured bone punctured his pants leg.

I heard sirens.

NYPD.

Based on the extent of this man’s injuries, I didn’t think there was any chance that he was still alive, but perhaps for my sake, perhaps for the crowd’s, I gently placed two fingers on his throat to check for a pulse.

Nothing.

The woman who’d been closest to the jumper when he hit the sidewalk was sitting on the curb nearby. Blood, along with gray matter from the dead man’s brain, had splattered onto the hem of her skirt. She wasn’t shaking. Wasn’t crying. She just sat staring blankly across the street. Shock.

“Ma’am?” I said. “Are you injured?”

She didn’t move.

I knelt beside her. “Are you hurt, ma’am?”

This time she shook her head. “No.”

I visually assessed her but saw no injuries. “You’re going to be alright,” I said, though I wasn’t sure that was going to be the case, not after having this happen to her. A body crashing to the pavement within arm’s reach of you? That’s the stuff of nightmares. Not everybody would be able to shake off something that traumatic.

Rising, I returned to the body and inspected his pockets.

No phone. No wallet. No ID.

But there was a folded-up envelope labeled OPEN ONLY IN THE CASE OF MY DEATH.

Whether he’d been planning to take his life or afraid someone might take it from him, I didn’t know.

Using my knife as a letter opener, I cut along the edge of the envelope and removed the single sheet of paper inside.

Dear Billy,

I’m sorry it came to this, but it’s the only thing I know to do. Whatever you want to believe about me, whatever anyone says, you need to know that I never did the things she’s claiming I did. I’m sorry I let you down.

—Randy

Okay, a clue, but also another mystery—who was Billy?

At least the names in the note might help us identify the jumper.

In his pockets I found some loose change, a subway MetroCard, and a single key. Earlier, I’d seen the key to the apartment we’d just been in, and this one didn’t match it.

Well, we would run his prints and DNA. If he was in the system, we would identify him. At least we had a first name to work with. The rather crudely drawn tattoo of a shamrock on the back of his right hand might help if we could find a studio that had done it for someone named “Randy.”

I stood and eyed the crowd, took note of posture, stance, body language, but no one was acting in a suspicious or aggressive manner. They were still filming and now a number of them directed their phones at me.

Assistant Director DeYoung had told us not to instruct people to put their phones away when we’re at a scene, since it ended up manifesting resentment toward the Bureau, especially after the people invariably wouldn’t listen and would eventually post those videos of us telling them to turn off their phones anyway. “People will wonder, ‘What are they trying to hide?’” DeYoung had explained. “Or, ‘What don’t they want me to see?’”

The problem was getting worse year by year. It bothered me when people treated death like a spectator sport. From what I’d seen in the past, these videos would be watched by tens of thousands of people, especially if the media picked up any of them or, for whatever reason, they went viral. Then you could be talking about hundreds of thousands of views. Or more.

All to satisfy the macabre curiosity of the masses.

No, we really haven’t come all that far since the days of the Colosseum.

An NYPD cruiser arrived.

I explained who I was, briefed the officers, and mentioned that, based on the jumper’s comments to me, he was a person of interest for the homicide the night before.

One of the officers went to string up some police tape. The other said to me, “So you really think this is our doer from last night?”

Doer, perp, UNSUB, I’m not a fan of any of those terms. “It’s possible, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He noted the shamrock tattoo. “That’s an Aryan Brotherhood symbol. Prison tats? An ex-con?”

“He might just be Irish. And I’m guessing he’s never been to prison.”

“Why’s that?”

“On the balcony he said to me, ‘You’re not sending me to prison,’ rather than ‘you’re not sending me back to prison.’ I’ve never known anyone who’s been locked up who would have phrased it like he did. You serve time, you don’t want to be sent back. It’s how you’d typically put it.”

“Good point.” He was looking at the makeshift bandage on my left forearm. “You alright?”

“I’m alright.”

I stared at the body.

I’m guessing that most people who take their own life don’t think about what has to happen afterward, about what their choice is going to require other people to do.

Someone will have to clean up the mess, replace the carpet, paint over the bloodstain, remove the empty bottle of pills from your rigid, clinging hand, or, in this case, wash off the sidewalk.

It was so tragic.

Cleaning up the dead is a messy business.

And there was no reason this man needed to die tonight.

An ambulance rolled to a stop near the edge of the police tape.

I directed one paramedic to assist the woman who was seated on the curb, the one who’d been so close to where the jumper impacted the ground.

The other EMT snipped off the sleeve of my shirt, cleaned the laceration on my arm, and tried to convince me that I needed stitches. I avoid those whenever possible since needles are part of the deal. I’ve never had an affinity for those things.

Facing a psychotic killer on the street, yeah, I’m good with that.

Facing a grinning nurse with a needle, not so much.

It took some convincing, but she finally gave in and agreed to just bandage it up.

While she worked on that, I dictated my incident report into my phone. The latest voice-recognition software was accurate enough to cut down almost by half the amount of time we spent on filling out paperwork, and you weren’t going to find me complaining about that.

In the morning I could review the report, proofread it, and then submit it to DeYoung before heading to the Field Office.

Eventually, another ambulance rolled in, loaded up the body, and left for the morgue at Presbyterian Central Hospital. One by one, the people filming things dispersed, busily posting, texting, and tweeting what had just happened.

After I was done with my dictation, I called Christie to tell her that I’d see her tomorrow, but she explained that she had chicken Parmesan waiting. “I’ll warm it up when you get here. Come on over, it’d be nice to see you.”

I’d missed dinner earlier and it was nearly ten thirty. “You’re sure it’s not too late?”

“I’m certain.”

“Alright, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

After the Crime Scene Unit left with the USB drive and remote-control devices along with the items I’d found on the victim’s body, I took off for Christie’s place.

4

“Hey, you,” I said.

I stepped into her fourth-story apartment and closed the door behind me.

Her gaze went immediately to the snipped-off shirtsleeve and my bandaged arm. “How many?”

“How many?”

“Stitches.”

“I just had the paramedic bandage it.”

“Is it serious?”

“No.”

“How did it happen?”

“A knife.” I gave her a kiss. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

She said nothing.

The two-bedroom, cramped, and ridiculously overpriced apartment had a typical New York City floor plan: a breakfast nook opened up to t