Every Crooked Path Read online

  He walked to the subway station, but he didn’t head to the ICSC building.

  Before going to work today, he had a session with Dr. Perrior.

  His supervisor, Claire Nolan, had given him a few hours off to see the psychologist.

  She was good about that sort of thing, and it made sense that she would be, considering what Francis did for a living.

  7

  FBI Field Office

  26 Federal Plaza

  New York City

  Jodie was waiting for me in the lobby, holding two cups of coffee from Blessed Nirvana Roasters. She handed one to me, and even though I’d already had some java at Christie’s, since this was from Blessed Nirvana I figured I could force myself to have another cup.

  Besides, I wouldn’t have wanted it to go to waste.

  The lengths I go to sometimes.

  Here on this corner, two federal buildings lie across the street from each other: 290 Broadway and 26 Federal Plaza. The Bureau has offices in both of them, and depending on the department or unit you’re working with, you might be going back and forth between them all day.

  A shining example of government efficiency at work.

  Jodie wore the same outfit as yesterday. There were bags under her bloodshot eyes and it looked like she’d tried to cover them with makeup, which she didn’t usually use. It hadn’t worked.

  She must have noticed me noticing her. “Spent the night at a hotel,” she explained. “Dell kicked me out.”

  “Jodie, I’m sorry.”

  “I should have seen it coming. Things have been going downhill for a while.” She sighed. “There’s this guy from work she’s been spending a lot of time with. Apparently, I’m not as interesting as he is. Said she’s exploring her horizons, reexamining her sexual identity. Is it me, Pat? Or is it this job?”

  “This job makes it hard for anyone who’s trying to be in a serious relationship.”

  There was no doubt about that.

  Jodie had been with Dell for six months, but had told me once that she’d never made it past two years with anyone. So maybe it was her. Hard to say. Probably both factored in there to some degree.

  “Listen,” I said, “if you need a place to stay, you could crash at my apartment. I can always move over to Christie’s for a week or two until you get things sorted out. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “I just might take you up on that. I’ll let you know.”

  After passing through security, we crossed the lobby to the elevator bay, our footsteps echoing through the nearly vacant hallway.

  “I checked the online case file just before you got here,” she said.

  “Any word on the jumper’s identity?”

  “No. Nothing on AFIS.”

  Well, if his prints weren’t in the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, he’d never been arrested, let alone convicted. After all, you’re printed when you’re arrested for a crime, not when you’re convicted of it.

  Officially, you might be considered by the courts to be innocent until proven guilty, but while you’re in police custody it’s the opposite—you’re treated as if you were guilty until you’re proven innocent.

  The system is skewed like that.

  She went on, “We should have DNA results back sometime this morning.”

  Though the Bureau had been experimenting with a new device that could do a DNA analysis in ninety minutes, it was still in beta, and because of the backlog of more than five hundred thousand DNA kits nationwide that were waiting to be tested, even current cases didn’t always make it to the front of the queue right away.

  We entered the empty elevator.

  “Did you submit your report yet?” she asked.

  “I sent it in before I left Christie’s place.”

  “Okay, so let’s run through it, see how you do.”

  “How I do?”

  “I’ll be DeYoung. You be you.”

  I pressed the button for the tenth floor. “Alright, I’m game.”

  The doors closed.

  She cleared her throat in a surprisingly good imitation of the Assistant Director. “So, Pat.” Her voice was gruff, yet somehow ingratiating and avuncular, just like DeYoung’s. “I read that report of yours. Glad you’re okay, glad about that, but I see you didn’t follow protocol here.”

  I’d never heard her imitate him before. “Have you been practicing?”

  “Stay in character, Pat.”

  “Oh. Right.” I regrouped and answered as if she were DeYoung, “I was trying to protect innocent bystanders on the street.”

  “Yes, yes, so you shot our John Doe? Do you have any idea on how this is going to play in the court of public opinion?”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t thinking of that.”

  “Not good, Pat. Not good. Could give the Bureau a black eye. Now, I’m not saying you did the wrong thing. But I’m not saying you did the right one either.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That the OPR is going to have to take a close look at this. A close look indeed.”

  That much was true: the Office of Professional Responsibility would undoubtedly be poring over this closely.

  She switched back to Jodie mode. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’ll have to let me know how it goes when you speak with him.”

  “I will. And I’ll let you know how close you were—but it sounds like you’ve got him pegged.”

  The elevator doors parted and we passed the nine doorways between the elevator bay and my office.

  There was a note waiting for me on my desk.

  “DeYoung?” Jodie asked as I picked it up.

  “He wants to see me right away.” Though Jodie and I were partners, I was the senior agent and she typically looked to me for direction. “Listen, while I’m in there I’d like you to check on something. Our guy from last night mentioned that we weren’t able to protect someone named Ted. I want to know who this Ted is.”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Look into people who’ve died or been killed while in custody—NYPD or federal protection. He said ‘you’ after I told him I was a federal agent, so start with the Bureau, then move to the witness protection program. The jumper signed his note ‘Randy.’ See if that helps, if any known associates come up.”

  “I don’t have clearance for that, not with the DOJ.”

  “Talk to Harrington. He owes me one.”

  “Alright. Good luck in there with DeYoung.”

  “Thanks.”

  I finished the coffee and tried to bank the cup off the wall and into the trash can by the door on my way out, but I missed and it splatted some dark drops onto the wall and dribbled more onto the floor.

  “Don’t quit your day job.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  8

  Assistant Director DeYoung and a Hispanic woman I didn’t recognize were waiting for me in the Louis J. Freeh Conference Room, named after the FBI’s Director back in the nineties.

  DeYoung had been with the Bureau for twenty-seven years, most of it seated behind a desk, and it showed around his waistline.

  The woman beside him was in her fifties, wore a navy blazer and skirt, and had dark-rimmed reading glasses. Stern lines radiated out around her eyes.

  DeYoung introduced her as Maria Aguirre. “She’s from OPR. Legal.”

  An Office of Professional Responsibility lawyer.

  Well, that didn’t take long.

  As we shook hands I noticed the scent of cigarette smoke on her. She asked, “Is this the arm?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your report noted that you sustained a knife wound during the confrontation with the subject and that one of the paramedics had to treat you. Is this the arm that was injured?”

  “No. It was
the left one.”

  “I hope it heals promptly.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “You have to be careful out there.”

  That seemed like an odd thing to say.

  “Yes. You do.”

  We took our seats at the conference room table, DeYoung struggling a bit to fit in between the table and the wall behind him.

  To get things started, he cleared his throat in a way that was remarkably similar to Jodie’s imitation. Then he mentioned offhandedly that he looked forward to reading my report.

  I’d anticipated that he would have read what I sent in before passing it on to legal, so his words surprised me. Maybe this was some new policy that I wasn’t aware of.

  “Alright, Pat,” he said, “as you know, any instance in which an agent discharges his firearm while on duty requires an incident review by the Office of Professional Responsibility.”

  “Yes.” I’d been through this routine before, although normally the wheels didn’t turn this fast.

  “We just need to make sure that this whole incident doesn’t give the Bureau a black eye.”

  Amazing—Jodie had anticipated he would say.

  Ms. Aguirre pulled out a laptop and plopped a formidable stack of file folders from her briefcase onto the table.

  “I think it might be best if I spoke with Agent Bowers alone,” she said to DeYoung.

  “Oh.” By his demeanor I could tell he was caught off guard by that. “Well, yes. Certainly.” With a bit of effort he extricated himself from the chair. “So . . . I’ll just leave you two to it, then.”

  “Thank you.”

  Alright.

  Here we go.

  She opened the top folder.

  I wasn’t surprised that she’d read my report already, but her pile of papers contained far more material than a printout would have required, more even than she would’ve been able to skim through this morning.

  Was she reading up on you already? Before last night?

  Hmm.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Although I couldn’t think of why she might have been researching me, it seemed like a legitimate possibility.

  “Forgive me for not being more familiar with your personnel file,” she said, “but I’m new to the Field Office here. Just transferred in from L.A.”

  Most OPR lawyers were based at Headquarters in Washington, D.C., but L.A. was also large enough to have some on staff.

  “It looks like they put you right to work.” I gestured toward the file folders.

  “Yes. It looks like they did.”

  “How has the transition been?”

  “Taxing.”

  Okay.

  She paged through her notes. “I must say, you have an impressive work history here at the Bureau, Agent Bowers.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ve been quite busy, I see: a master’s degree in criminology and law studies from Marquette, a PhD in environmental criminology from Simon Fraser University. And two books to your credit?”

  “One grew out of my dissertation on geospatial investigation.”

  “Yes, of course. But it’s no less an accomplishment.” She peered at me over the top of her glasses. “And you teach courses at the Academy as well?”

  “I fly down every few months, teach short-term and interim seminars.”

  “How do you pull it off?”

  “Pull it off?”

  “How do you do it all? How do you fit everything in?”

  “I’m a bit thin in the hobby department.”

  “I see.” Back to the papers. “And this isn’t the first time you’ve been under an OPR review.”

  Well, no one’s perfect.

  It wasn’t really a question, so I waited her out and finally she continued. “It looks like you have a habit of making judgment calls in the field that don’t always line up with protocol.”

  “Protocol doesn’t always line up with what happens in the field.”

  She set down the papers and turned her attention to her laptop screen, then repositioned her glasses. “I should tell you that I haven’t signed off on your report yet.”

  “Okay.”

  “I wanted to verify a few things first.”

  “Alright.”

  “Can you walk me through what happened last night on that balcony?”

  “It’s all there in my report.”

  “Yes, but if you could just recount it for me verbally. If you don’t mind.”

  “Are there any specific questions you have, or were there some details that were unclear? It might save us both some time if I could address those first.”

  My suggestion had no effect on her. “In your own words. Please.”

  I thought, The report you have is already in my own words but didn’t want to sound dismissive of her concerns, so I kept that to myself and just went ahead and summarized the encounter with the suspect, detailing the events that led up to him jumping from the balcony.

  As I spoke, she glanced back and forth from me to the printed report and then to the laptop screen as if she were verifying one account against the other, even though there weren’t going to be any discrepancies if the papers were simply a printout of the online report. And my memory wasn’t too bad. I was pretty sure my verbal account lined up almost verbatim with my written one.

  When I finished, she consulted the papers one last time. “So, he was coming at you with the knife when you fired, correct?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Coming at you. After you identified yourself as a federal agent and asked him to put up his hands, he failed to comply, and you fired as he threatened your life with the knife he was carrying.”

  She was putting words into my mouth and I didn’t like it.

  “I shot him in the leg to stop him from jumping. If I was afraid for my life I wouldn’t have aimed at his leg. He’d already gotten rid of his knife. Just like it says right there in the report.”

  “Agent Fleming only arrived after the altercation and the shot, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  Ms. Aguirre closed the folder and leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers in front of her. “There were no eyewitnesses up there in the apartment.”

  “No, there were not.”

  “The man who attacked you had illegally accessed a restricted-access crime scene and he wounded you while apparently trying to take your life. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no need to drag you through an OPR review. What purpose would it serve? A review of that nature would be time-consuming.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “I’m sure we would both prefer not having to distract ourselves from the work we already have on our plates. After all, the man did have a knife. He was armed.”

  “Yes. When he attacked me, he was.”

  While I was working as a homicide detective in Milwaukee, there was one instance in which my partner had used deadly force to stop a man who’d murdered at least two children after he molested them. There was some confusion about whether or not Sergeant Walker had believed my life was in danger when he squeezed the trigger. I thought of that now, of how the investigation had ended at that point.

  The district attorney had been satisfied.

  Justice had been served.

  Everyone was glad the killer was dead.

  After what that man had done to those little girls, he deserved to die. Actually, in my mind, he deserved worse than that. There are times when death doesn’t seem like punishment enough, and when you start talking about sexually molesting and slaughtering children—well, that pretty much tops my list.

  “Obviously,” I said to Ms. Aguirre, “I would prefer that there be no disciplinary action.”

  She nodded as if we’d come to some sort of
an unstated agreement. “As would I.”

  “But I’m not going to change what’s in that report.”

  She looked past me toward the west wall. “Agent Bowers, I’ve seen a lot of good agents come and go over the years. You seem like the kind of public servant we’re going to want around working for the Bureau for a long time.”

  “I appreciate you saying that.”

  “We have only the matter of the timing of the shot to determine.”

  “It’s been determined. Just like it says in the report.”

  She held up the paper. “Are you absolutely certain you have no corrections or clarifications that you need to make to this?”

  “Nothing pops to mind.”

  “Kindly close the door on your way out.”

  I stood. “Have a good day, Ms. Aguirre.”

  “I plan to, Agent Bowers.”

  9

  Jodie looked up from her computer when I entered. “Well, how did it go?”

  “I may be looking at an official reprimand.”

  “Well, you’ve been down that road before. At least you know the ropes.”

  “That is true.” I took a seat. “So, did you find out anything?”

  “You know how you wanted me to look into people named Ted who’ve died in custody or while under police protection?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, your friend at the DOJ was quite helpful. Turns out there’s a guy, Theodore Wooford, who was caught in a sting operation last month in D.C. that was set up to catch sexual predators—you know, people who target underage teens online and arrange to meet with the intent to have sex.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, when they took him in, they found records of lewd chats he’d had with minors, as well as a few images of child pornography on his computer. He tried to cut a deal and offered to help them infiltrate an online group he called the Final Territory. In exchange, he wanted to be placed on probation but serve no prison time. And since he hadn’t distributed any images, just downloaded them, they were considering a plea deal.”

  “What is that?” I asked. “The Final Territory?”

  “Well, it wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen. Wooford claimed they traded in child porn. Sort of a twenty-first-century incarnation of the Wonderland Club.”