Every Crooked Path Read online

  “James writes smart, taut, high-octane thrillers. But be warned—his books are not for the timid. The endings blow me away every time.”

  —Mitch Galin, producer of Stephen King’s The Stand and Frank Herbert’s Dune

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF STEVEN JAMES

  Checkmate

  “High tension all the way. James writes with precision and incisiveness. Fast, sharp, and believable. Put it at the top of your list.”

  —John Lutz, Edgar Award–winning author of Single White Female and Frenzy

  “Steven James pens another fast-paced thriller chock-full of great characters, head-snapping plot twists, impeccable research, and a truly fun ride. Highly recommended. Not to be missed.”

  —D. P. Lyle, award-winning author of the Dub Walker and Samantha Cody thriller series

  The King

  “His tightly woven, adrenaline-laced plots leave readers breathless.”

  —The Suspense Zone

  “Steven James offers yet another slam-dunk in the Bowers Files series!”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “Highly engaging with consuming tension and solid storytelling.”

  —TitleTrakk.com

  “If you love edgy, intense, on-the-edge-of-horrifying coupled with great writing, then click and order this one now.”

  —Novel Reviews

  Opening Moves

  “A mesmerizing read. From the first chapter, it sets its hook deep and drags you through a darkly gripping story with relentless power. My conclusion: I need to read more of Steven James.”

  —Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Room

  “Steven James has created a fast-moving thriller with psychological depth and gripping action. Opening Moves is a smart, taut, intense novel of suspense that reads like a cross between Michael Connelly and Thomas Harris . . . a blisteringly fast and riveting read.”

  —Mark Greaney, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Eye

  “[A] high-octane thriller.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  The Bishop

  “The novel moves swiftly, with punchy dialogue but gruesome scenes. Readers must be ready to stomach the darkest side of humanity and get into the minds of serial killers to enjoy this master storyteller at the peak of his game.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This novel is fresh and exciting.”

  —Booklist

  “Absolutely brilliant.”

  —Jeff Buick, bestselling author of One Child

  “Steven James locks you in a thrill ride with no brakes. He sets the new standard in suspense writing.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  THE BOWERS FILES

  Opening Moves

  The Pawn

  The Rook

  The Knight

  The Bishop

  The Queen

  The King

  Checkmate

  SIGNET SELECT

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright © Steven James, 2015

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Signet Select and the Signet Select colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  ISBN 978-0-698-14021-9

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  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

  To the National Center for Missing & Exploited Chi
ldren

  “Society prepares the crime: the criminal commits it.”

  —Found in a fortune cookie next to two smiley faces

  Author’s Note

  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, w
hat 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.