Every Crooked Path Read online

  “Is it far? Because I’ll need to get back to—”

  “It’s not far.” He put his hand on hers and it seemed to her like a gentle and familiar gesture, as if he were used to her being by his side, as if they were a couple rather than complete strangers.

  “I’ll make it worth your time.” He pulled away from the curb. “I promise.”

  21

  He took her to an upscale apartment building on the Upper West Side, and when they drove up to the valet parking attendant she knew that she’d definitely asked too little for her services tonight.

  Wait, for her companionship.

  Well, maybe she could throw in some extras.

  A few added amenities.

  First class.

  After dropping off the car, Shane took Lily’s arm in the crook of his own and led her toward the building’s front door.

  “So, how long have you lived here?” she asked as they ascended the steps.

  “Actually, it’s a friend’s place. I just come here sometimes when I’m on business.”

  He opened the door for her.

  “Thank you, Shane.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “So business brought you to the city?”

  “In a sense.”

  At first she thought he said innocence, but then she realized what he’d really said.

  He showed a key card to a disinterested doorman, who nodded them toward the elevator.

  Once the doors had closed, Shane inserted the card into the penthouse-level access slot. It was accepted and he tapped the button, then pocketed the key card.

  She laid her hand lightly on his shoulder.

  He faced her, then slid aside a strand of her hair that had draped across her face. “You’d look good in a ponytail.”

  “I do,” she said.

  A slight pause. “I may want you to stay longer than we first discussed.”

  “I’m sure we can work something out.”

  The elevator doors opened on the twenty-fourth floor, and he led her down the exquisitely decorated hallway to room 2406.

  He opened the door and gestured for her to enter.

  Typically, Lily tried to take careful note of her surroundings and this place had a rustic and yet somehow sophisticated look, with two-toned trim and wainscoting that matched the handmade cherry furniture. The walls tended toward an eggshell white that accentuated the simple and distinctive forms and lines of the furniture.

  The place was breathtaking in its simplicity and elegance.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think I could be persuaded to stay all night. If you want me to.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having. Seriously, this place is amazing.”

  “I’ll let the owner know you said so.”

  She trailed a finger along the wall and took everything in. He put some music on. A flute player.

  “What is this?”

  “Ian Anderson. It’s his seven-minute-and-ten-second flute solo in Tampa. July thirty-first. 1976.”

  “Who’s Ian Anderson?”

  “Have you ever heard of Jethro Tull?”

  “Of course,” she said, but hoped he wouldn’t ask her too much about the group, since she only recognized the name but didn’t know anything about them. She glided to the bedroom door. “I’m not super familiar with their music, though.”

  “Ian merged the sound of a modern minstrel with 1960s and seventies rock and roll. He once heard Eric Clapton play the guitar and was intimidated, thinking that he would never be that good. He wanted to be the best in the world at something. He opted for the flute. Some people say he achieved that goal.”

  She peered into the darkened bedroom.

  Flipped on the lights.

  A tripod stood in the corner with a video camera aimed directly at the bed.

  She was well aware that with cameras as small and discreet as they were these days, a good number of the men she was with probably did record themselves with her somehow, but she’d never seen anything as blatant as this.

  A camera on a tripod?

  For real?

  “No filming, Shane. That’s not how these things work.”

  Silence from the other room.

  “Shane?” She turned and he seemed to appear out of nowhere, startling her.

  “Your drink.” He held out a shot glass to her.

  She accepted it. “I was saying, you can’t film us.”

  “I’ll pay you extra.”

  Well, then.

  Amenities.

  First class?

  She threw out a number, an outrageous number, and without any debate he opened the dresser drawer and dug out a roll of Franklins.

  “I get paid up front.”

  “Of course.”

  She watched him peel them off and lay them out, one at a time, on the bed.

  He reached the number she’d quoted and kept going.

  “That’s more than I said.”

  “I might have some special requests.”

  A quiver of uneasiness scampered through her. That little alarm went off in her head, that “something’s not right here” alarm that had served her well twice in the past when her clients were starting to get rough and she’d needed to use the pepper spray she kept in her purse.

  Just find out what he has in mind. Don’t commit to anything yet.

  “What kind of requests?” she asked.

  “Nothing too discomfiting.”

  He walked to the camera and turned it on.

  “You’re not so new at this after all, are you?” she said.

  “I guess you’re onto me.” Then, “Well?”

  “You still haven’t told me what you have in mind.”

  He went into the closet and pulled out a cheerleader outfit and laid it on the bed.

  “You want me to wear that?”

  “I told you that you could pass for sixteen. I think it’ll look good on you.”

  Well, that wasn’t so bad. She’d been asked to do a lot kinkier stuff than dress up like a cheerleader.

  She glanced at the camera, then at the money, then back at him.

  “I accept your offer, Shane.” She downed her drink and began to unbutton her shirt to change clothes, but he gestured toward the bathroom. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Ooookay.” She slid the money into her purse, collected the cheerleader outfit, and went into the bathroom. She didn’t have a hair scrunchie with her, but she did have a decorative hair clip. She pulled her hair back. Pinned it in place.

  Pigtails would have made her look even younger. Some men were into that, but she had the sense that it might insult Shane if she went that far. Besides, she didn’t have bands to hold the braids and he’d requested the ponytail, so that’s what she went with.

  She laced on the athletic shoes he had for her. They were a little big, but she could make do.

  She didn’t figure she would have to wear them for long.

  When she’d finished, she returned to the bedroom and found him seated on the bed, still clothed. He looked up from his phone where he’d been texting someone. She set her purse on the dresser.

  “Well?” She twirled flirtatiously. “How do I look?”

  “Serviceable.”

  “What did you just say?”

  He reached behind him and picked up a plain white mask, then slipped it on.

  Okay, well, whatever people were into.

  Then he came at her as the video camera just a few feet away captured everything.

  PART II

  Ashes

  22

  Friday, June 15

  After half an hour of push-ups and max sets of pull-ups on the hangboard—which were hampered by
the injury in my arm where Randy McReynolds had cut me—I drove to work and arrived at just after seven to get an early start on the day.

  I liked the office at this time. Quiet. Still. No distractions.

  Last night I’d fallen asleep reading Stewart’s investment advice on his site. I’d picked up a lot about the importance of how to find the right fixer-upper, but hadn’t learned anything that seemed relevant to the case.

  Now, settling in at my desk, I checked the online case files to see if anything had been added since last night.

  The computer forensics team had gone back to Stewart’s apartment, somehow wired up a computer to the television, and they were able to download the data from the flash drive. From what I could tell, they were going to be analyzing it this morning and would likely have some preliminary results sometime later today.

  I hoped so. I was anxious to know if it had a file named “Aurora’s birthday.”

  Yesterday, Harrington, my friend at the DOJ, had agreed to send up Wooford’s key by courier. We were expecting it this morning and would be able to compare it to the ones found on McReynolds and Stewart to determine if all three were a match.

  I laid out a plan for the day.

  (1) Figure out what those keys opened.

  (2) Learn what Randy Quentin McReynolds had been up to since he left his West Virginia apartment in January.

  (3) Work with Tobin to analyze the case files from the four missing children and see if the geoprofile overlapped with the known activity nodes and travel routes for either Stewart or Wooford.

  Randy McReynolds’s autopsy was scheduled for this morning. Hopefully, that would clear up the question of whether or not he had any drugs in his system when he leapt from that balcony.

  I found an email from Harrington in my in-box.

  He wrote that he’d passed along the search for the Final Territory to the Department of Homeland Security. “Last I heard the Child Exploitation Investigations Unit from their Cyber Crimes Center was looking into it.”

  Homeland often works closely with the Bureau and local law enforcement in joint investigations, so I emailed the agent in charge of Wooford’s case, requesting him to give me a call.

  At the bottom of Harrington’s email, he’d included a link to a cache of Ted Wooford’s chat logs. Clicking on it, I pulled up a chat that had begun a few months before he was arrested.

  It was obvious by Wooford’s and the girl’s choice of screen names that they were both being sexually provocative and flirty. They used a popular social networking site called Krazle. It was also clear that they weren’t using any kind of autocorrect function on their keyboards.

  (Tuesday, March 20th. All Times Are EST.)

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:05:14 PM):

  love ur profile pic. hot!!

  yngnrdyblond (8:05:20 PM):

  relally? u think im pretty?

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:05:30 PM):

  um yah

  yngnrdyblond (8:05:37 PM):

  aww

  yngnrdyblond (8:05:45 PM):

  what’r u doin?

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:06:02 PM):

  hangin out

  yngnrdyblond (8:06:08 PM):

  cool

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:06:012 PM):

  u?

  yngnrdyblond (8:06:16 PM):

  chatting!

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:06:20 PM):

  lol

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:06:32 PM):

  so how old r u?

  yngnrdyblond (8:06:36 PM):

  13/f

  yngnrdyblond (8:06:39 PM):

  u?

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:07:01 PM):

  a litle older

  yngnrdyblond (8:07:12 PM):

  how old?

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:07:20 PM):

  34 m

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:07:24 PM):

  is that wierd?

  yngnrdyblond (8:07:34 PM):

  what?

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:08:01 PM):

  that im that much older than u?

  yngnrdyblond (8:08:18 PM):

  no i don know not if ur nice 2 me

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:08:40 PM):

  im nice but u can emet some sick peoole on the internet u know?u hear about it all the time

  yngnrdyblond (8:08:59 PM):

  yah

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:09:06 PM):

  im not like that. i just liek chating

  yngnrdyblond (8:09:21 PM):

  kewl

  mrplesuregiver56ga (8:09:42 PM):

  cool cus some girls don like it

  yngnrdyblond (8:09:49 PM):

  i don mind

  Often, online predators lie about their age at first, and then slowly reveal that they’re older than they first claimed to be. Wooford, however, just laid it out there right at the start that he was twenty-one years older than she was.

  And she didn’t even hesitate, which, taking into account her screen name, made me wonder if this might be the very thing she was looking for.

  I scrolled down. They chatted about the TV shows they liked and then shared a series of links to prank and epic fail videos on YouTube.

  Over the next two days yngnrdyblond complained about some of her classmates being mean to her and Wooford sympathized about how hard it is to deal with other kids sometimes, and how important it is to say no to peer pressure and not to lash out at them.

  Then he played the role of helpful mentor, telling her to stay in school and to stay away from drugs.

  Even though I didn’t specialize in cases like this, I’d seen this type of thing before. These tactics are seemingly innocuous ways that sexual predators use when grooming their targets in order to build their trust and to justify, in their own minds, their behavior: I was just trying to help. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  The next day things turned the corner, quickly becoming intimate and deeply personal.

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:16:35 PM):

  i really like chatin wih u

  yngnrdyblond (10:16:41 PM):

  me 2.

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:16:51 PM):

  thx

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:17:03 PM):

  u live with ur parent?s

  yngnrdyblond (10:17:12 PM):

  jst my mom thdy got divorced

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:17:18 PM):

  sorry

  yngnrdyblond (10:17:25 PM):

  no its kewl he was a jerk anywau

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:17:29 PM):

  o

  yngnrdyblond (10:17:35 PM):

 
he used to do stuff 2 me

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:17:45 PM):

  what stuf?

  yngnrdyblond (10:17:56 PM):

  make me touch him

  yngnrdyblond (10:18:01 PM):

  then when i didnt hed hidt me

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:18:05 PM):

  hard?

  yngnrdyblond (10:18:08 PM):

  yah.

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:18:12 PM):

  did you like it?

  yngnrdyblond (10:18:18 PM):

  no!! course not. it hurt!

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:18:25 PM):

  yah

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:18:37 PM):

  did he make u go all the way?

  yngnrdyblond (10:18:45 PM):

  no!

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:18:52 PM):

  that sucks. i mean that he hit u

  yngnrdyblond (10:19:08 PM):

  no kding

  mrplesuregiver56ga (10:19:15 PM):

  im glag hes not with u anymroe thne

  yngnrdyblond (10:19:24 PM):

  me to

  I scanned the chats over the next couple of weeks.

  Slowly, systematically, Wooford delved deeper into the topics of the girl’s sexual interest and experience. One night he asked her what her bra size was and if she had a webcam and could film herself, but she told him no, that it was broken.