Every Crooked Path

by Steven James

  The distant sound of sirens came coursing through the night.

  I didn’t move, didn’t get rid of my weapon. “Hear that, Billy? Put down your gun. Backup’s on its way.”

  “Then I have nothing to lose, do I?” He cocked the gun.

  “Billy,” Elle pleaded, “put it down and—”

  “Shut up!”

  I didn’t have a great look at Billy, but it might be all I was going to get. “It’s over, Billy.”

  “It’s far from over.”

  End this, Pat.

  He’s going to kill Elle.

  Her life was in danger.

  “Drop the gun!” I shouted.

  He refused to lay down his weapon.

  I didn’t always follow protocol.

  But now I did.

  I let instinct direct me and I fired at Billy McReynolds until he was no longer a threat.

  “No!” Elle shuddered and dropped to her knees beside her husband, then shook him. “Billy! Oh, please.”

  “Get back, Elle,” I said.

  She was draped over him, weeping.

  “Back up,” I repeated.

  Trembling, Elle moved away from his body.

  Keeping my gun on him, I approached Billy, kicked his Glock away, and knelt to check his pulse.

  Nothing.

  He was gone.

  As I was patting down his pockets to find the phone that he was going to use to upload the files, I realized my mistake.

  The renovations were done four years ago.

  Billy has only been on the air for three.

  Timing. Location.

  Her name.

  Elle.

  He wasn’t going to kill her.

  He was never going to—

  No, he didn’t have his cell.

  Not anymore.

  The Piper had just taken it from him.

  98

  I began turning to face her. “Oh, you’re good, Elle.”

  She stood about three meters from me and had just picked up the Glock I’d kicked away from her dead husband’s hand. “I wish you hadn’t said that. I was going to let you live.”

  Without hesitation she fired, hitting me in the right shoulder. The impact spun me sideways and when I was transferring my gun to my other hand so I could get a shot off at her, she came at me with surprising speed and kicked fiercely at my arm, hitting my radial nerve and jarring the gun free. With her foot, she sent it sliding to the other side of the garage.

  “Uh-uh-uh, we can’t have any of that, now.”

  Elle. Lizzie. Beth.

  Elizabeth.

  All the same person.

  The one who was behind all this from the start.

  “You knew you both couldn’t escape,” I said. “You convinced Billy to give up his life so you could get away.”

  “Now, who’s going to believe nonsense like that? There aren’t going to be any witnesses left. Apparently, before you could get here, Billy shot the three children. When the police officers find you dead, I’ll tell them all about how you were valiantly trying to save me when Billy fired at you, right before you killed him. You’ll be remembered as a hero. That should be of some comfort.”

  She hit a button on the wall to close the garage door and give herself some privacy for the four murders she was about to commit.

  Backup won’t know we’re here. They won’t get here until it’s too late.

  “You worked at the studio before Billy’s show started,” I said. “You’re the one who had it renovated. When did you make the entrance to the basement from here in the garage? After he came on board or before?”

  “I had it all done at once. Made it that much easier.”

  Children naturally trust women more than men. Maybe that’s how she was able to get them to go with her. And she could’ve worn the slacks and wingtip shoes to make it look like a man was filming Aurora’s birthday.

  “You were the fifth person.”

  “The fifth person?”

  “You filmed it.”

  “Sometimes. Yes.”

  “And Tobin would have recognized Chip, so are you the one who attended his open house?”

  “Going after Adrienne was Chip’s idea. It was bold. I give him credit for that.” She tilted her head at me. “So, have you figured out why yet?”

  “Why?”

  “Why the ICSC?”

  I thought of the people filming the scene of Randy’s suicide last week.

  People are curious. When there’s a beheading video from the Middle East, it’ll get hundreds of thousands of views within hours. Macabre curiosity is part of human nature.

  “The best way to hide in a crowd,” I said, “is to let everyone wear a mask. When seven hundred million images and videos of child pornography are suddenly available for free and without any way for law enforcement to track them—well, millions of people will view and download them—just because they’re curious, if nothing else. Law enforcement would have no way to know who the molesters and pornographers are and who the innocent people are.”

  “Based on people’s viewing habits, my Russian colleagues and I are conservatively anticipating that twenty-five to thirty percent of smart phones and computers in the world will have child porn on them by the end of the week.”

  Keeping the gun on me, she started typing in the passcode on the phone.

  Beyond her, at the top of the stairs, Maggie Rivers, who must have left the room in the basement, appeared.

  No, no, no.

  Don’t let Elle see her!

  Maggie looked at me, then at the fuse box beside her.

  I nodded and she silently stepped toward it. I slid my left hand toward my pocket where I had the automatic knife.

  “Look at me, Elle.”

  She peered at me. “Yes?”

  “I’ll need you to turn it off.”

  “I’m not turning anything off.”

  “All of them. When I tell you to.”

  She looked at me quizzically. “What are you talking about?”

  Maggie reached for the fuse box.

  I yelled to her, “Now, Maggie!”

  “What?” Elle spun.

  Maggie snapped off the fuses, drowning the garage in shadows. The children in the van cried out.

  In the darkness I scrambled to my feet, snapping out the blade as I did.

  It was all I had.

  But it was enough.

  Elle managed to get off one shot that whizzed past my face before I drove the knife into the side of her neck. A warm spray of blood splattered against my hand and cheek.

  As the Piper dropped to the ground, I felt for the gun, tore it from her hands, and said to Maggie, “Leave the lights off. This isn’t something you need to see.”

  99

  Two days later

  Friday, June 22

  10:20 a.m.

  “How’s your coffee?” Christie asked me.

  “Worth coming back for.”

  Yesterday, Francis Edlemore had told me about a coffeehouse and used bookstore I’d never been to called the Mystorium. Now, since it was on the way to the hospital where Tobin was recovering, I’d swung by with Christie and Tessa.

  We had about ten minutes before we needed to leave.

  My right arm was in a sling because of the GSW in my shoulder where Ellie shot me in the garage. It would slow down my workouts at the Hangout, but I’d dealt with injuries worse than this before.

  It would heal.

  I would recover.

  And only a scar would remain.

  Tessa wandered over to peruse some of the books in the half-off bin. Christie’s phone rang and she stepped aside to take the call.

  Tobin was doing well despite the punctured lung and the two broken ri
bs he’d sustained in his fight with Chip Hinchcliffe. Thankfully, when Jodie had arrived at the warehouse and followed the blood trail, she’d found Tobin in the water in time and managed to get him to shore.

  Ruined her evening gown.

  The price you have to pay.

  A lot had happened in the past two days.

  After I’d left the warehouse Wednesday night, Naomi had tried to apprehend Blake and his bodyguard, but they overpowered her and got away.

  Later, when SWAT went to the bar where Blake had been with his silent ladies, they found nothing. The room had been completely cleared out. He must have known earlier that he was going to be moving on.

  I’d told him I was coming for him.

  He’d said he would be ready.

  Well, we’ll see about that.

  As for the Final Territory, we’d managed to stop the ICSC’s files from being uploaded to the Internet, but, despite the patch Angela and Lacey had come up with, many of the files had still been infected when Ivan Romanoff managed to open the file containing the virus.

  However, with Marcus Rockwell’s offer to allow the ICSC to use Krazle’s search algorithms, it looked like the files would be able to be reindexed. It would be a big job, but at least everything was still safely tucked away in their database.

  Romanoff was in custody and was talking, trying to plea bargain. His confession, along with the information that Cyber was able to obtain from Elle Lachman’s computer and Dr. Madera’s mailing list, gave us enough to go after the known Final Territory members.

  Yesterday, working with INTERPOL, we made arrests in fourteen countries, and it looked like nearly all of the fifty-two registered users had been identified, caught, or were being pursued.

  Skylar turned herself in and was facing some serious charges for working with the Final Territory to extort Francis, but the last I heard he wasn’t going to press charges and it looked like she was going to be given leniency from the state in exchange for her testimony.

  Derek, the boy at St. Stephen’s Research Hospital, was safe.

  The three children we’d managed to rescue from the garage beside the BranchWide Studios were back with their parents.

  At least the long and arduous healing process could begin for them. Dr. Perrior was going to work with the NYPD to make sure they received all the counseling they needed.

  It would take time, but at least now that was something they actually had on their side.

  Maria Aguirre put the paperwork through to expedite the internal review to clear me from the shooting last week, and though the Internal Affairs investigation involving Tobin was still ongoing, with all that we knew now, I imagined it wouldn’t amount to anything.

  Yesterday afternoon when I was visiting Tobin, he took off his wedding ring and set it beside his bed. “Misty would want me to move on,” he explained to me softly. “The best way to remember her is to love her enough to finally do that. I guess I’ve known that for a long time. I just haven’t been able to do it without, well, some sort of closure.”

  I told him about sending his photo to Lily Keating to see if she could identify him as Shane. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” I said.

  “You needed to be sure.”

  “No, I needed to trust you.”

  “You trusted where the facts were pointing. I’d rather you did that than trust me any day.”

  Last week he’d said to me that without hope the only thing that keeps us going is momentum or fear, that otherwise we’ll see what a small role we play in “the sprawling script of the universe.” All too often that leads to despair, and being chained to the past can be the most stifling thing of all.

  But hope can break even the thickest chain. And I sensed that he had it again, or at least he was on the road to finding it. And that was probably worth the pain of all that he’d been through in the last couple days.

  +++

  Since Wednesday night Tessa had been dealing with the fallout from that woman cop impersonating her changing in her bedroom, and then the video of it being posted online.

  But finally she’d realized that, when you stepped back to look at things, it wasn’t really that huge of a deal, and the more she thought about it, the more she just found it ironic—here she was, popular on all these sites, getting all these comments, all this attention, and it wasn’t even her.

  Let ’em keep thinking it was her.

  Idiots.

  Leaving the half-off bin, she went to the front counter. The woman working there looked about four or five years older than her.

  “Do you have any stuff by Poe?” Tessa asked.

  “Sure. I mean, he tends more toward horror, but—”

  “His Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin stories.”

  The woman seemed pleased. “Yes. I don’t get that many fans of Dupin in here. Let me see what I can find you.” She typed at her computer to look up the books.

  “He’s way better than Holmes.”

  “Agreed.” She tapped the screen triumphantly. “C’mon, I’ll show you where they are.” Then she extended her hand. “By the way, I’m Rebekah.”

  “Tessa.”

  “Good to meet you.”

  “You too.”

  +++

  In Derek’s room at St. Stephen’s Research Hospital, Francis Edlemore handed over the bracelet that Skylar had made for him, the one he’d removed from his own wrist when he found out she wasn’t to be trusted.

  Derek admired it. “Will she be back? Miss Shapiro, I mean?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “She was nice.”

  “Yes. She was.”

  And she wasn’t.

  She was good.

  She was bad.

  She was both.

  Just like you.

  Just like everyone.

  “I hope I see her again,” Derek said.

  “I hope so too.”

  Yesterday, Dr. Madera had sent the record of Francis’s chats with graciousgirl4 to Claire, and honestly, Francis was glad that the truth was out there at last. Keeping secrets takes its toll.

  Honesty is the best policy.

  Yes, it is.

  Francis wasn’t sure he would be able to keep his job, but there were a lot of kids to help and someone needed to do it. Besides, now that the files had to be reorganized, they needed people there at the ICSC who knew what they were doing.

  He hoped he could stay. It was his chance to do something right. To make a difference.

  To do something good.

  From what the NYPD had been able to discover from analyzing Dr. Madera’s computer, he’d been spending a lot of time in chat rooms pretending to be a teenage girl. It wasn’t illegal, but they were going to be keeping a closer eye on him.

  Probably a good thing.

  In light of all that had happened, Dr. Perrior had agreed to continue meeting with Francis if he wanted to, but Francis wasn’t sure. Maybe he would try to move on without a counselor.

  There was a lot to think about.

  A lot to decide.

  “Why wouldn’t Miss Shapiro come back?” Derek asked.

  “Well, she has some things to sort out, but I’m hoping she’ll get a second chance to make them right.” Then he told Derek about the tortoises in the Galápagos Islands getting a second chance. “There’s a lot more of them now than there used to be.”

  “They live, like, a hundred and fifty years, right?”

  “Some of them do, yes.”

  “That’d be cool.”

  “Yeah, it would.”

  Derek folded his arms grumpily. “I wish I was a tortoise.”

  “Why?”

  “I heard the doctors talking to my mom. They didn’t know I was listening. They said I wasn’t gonna live very long.”

  Francis want
ed to encourage Derek, but he didn’t want to lie to him.

  Honesty.

  The best policy.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I was dead once. A long time ago. I died and the doctors brought me back to life.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. None of us knows how long we have. The secret is making each day count.”

  “Because it might be your last one?”

  “And because wasting any of them would be a big mistake.”

  “Like blowing up a balloon?”

  Francis looked at him curiously. “Blowing up a balloon?”

  “Yeah. One day it’s gonna pop, but you can make something cool out of it before it does.”

  “I like that. You’re pretty smart, Derek.”

  “And you’re pretty nice, Mr. Edlemore. For a blown up.”

  “Blown up? Oh, you mean grown up. Right? I mean—Oh. That was a joke.”

  Derek shook his head. But he was smiling.

  “Here,” Francis said, “let me tie that on your wrist for you.” He leaned forward and took the two ends of the bracelet. “Then, we’ll get started on making something cool.”

  +++

  Christie finished up her call and Tessa went to check out. She seemed pretty excited about whatever book she’d found.

  “Well,” Christie said, joining me. “That was Jodie on the phone.”

  “Jodie?”

  “Yeah. So, I need to tell you a couple things.”

  “Okay.”

  “First, regarding Omaha, I’m going to tell the firm there that I’ve decided to pursue another position.”

  “Here in the city?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Excellent. This day is just getting better and better.”

  “The other night Tessa had a suggestion. I think we’ve come up with a plan. That’s what I was talking with Jodie about.”

  “And that is?”

  “She needs a place to stay and so do we. She’s short on money and so are we. If we split expenses, and share a place, I think we can make it work.”

  “I like it,” I said. “It’s clever, simple, elegant.” Then I had a thought. “Wait—your church is pretty conservative. What are the people there going to say when they find out you and your daughter are staying with a lesbian?”