Patrick Bowers 08 - Every Crooked Path

  DeYoung cleared his throat heartily and gestured for me to join him. “Walk with me, Pat. Something came up. I need to brief Media Relations ahead of the press conference.”

  We started down the hall.

  “So we still don’t know the jumper’s identity?” he asked me.

  “No, sir. Not yet. But we have a few things we’re looking into. So you’ll be releasing the contents of the note?”

  “I’m not convinced it’s the right call at this point, but I trust your judgment.” Then he pivoted the conversation. “I understand the meeting with Ms. Aguirre went well earlier?”

  “We talked things through. Yes.”

  “Good, good, good. I’m glad to hear that. She tells me everything is in order. I’ll look forward to reading her final report.”

  “You haven’t read it yet?”

  He rubbed his forehead melodramatically. “Been a hectic day. A hectic day.”

  “Is that what you wanted to talk with me about? The incident last night?”

  “Actually, I’m assigning you to work with Detective Cavanaugh. I think your expertise will be beneficial to an investigation he’s heading up.”

  “I already have the Stewart homicide and the suicide last night on my plate.”

  “This might be related to them. That’s one of the things I need you to help sort out.”

  We rounded the corner. “So, Detective Cavanaugh,” I said. “Is this Tobin Cavanaugh?”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve heard his name, never worked with him. He’s with the Special Victims Unit?”

  “Yes. Nearly nine years with the Vice Enforcement Sexual Exploitation of Children Unit. Recently transferred to SVU.”

  The Exploitation of Children Unit investigated cases of child pornography, while the SVU focused on crimes involving rape, sexual assault and the molestation of children. The two units worked closely together and it wasn’t uncommon for detectives to switch from one to the other.

  I wondered about the Final Territory connection. Maybe with his background, Cavanaugh had run into it before and would be able to help shed some light on all this.

  Often that’s how these things work: you start to uncover folds of one case and they lead you to the folds of another.

  “The origami of death,” my mentor, Dr. Calvin Werjonic, used to say. “Our job is to see the final shape by studying the creases before any more people die.”

  “You mentioned that Cavanaugh’s work might be related to what happened last night,” I said to DeYoung. “What makes you say that?”

  “I’ll have to let him fill you in. Time. I’m too pressed for time right now.”

  “Is he here?”

  “He’s at NYPD headquarters leading a briefing in their cyber crime center. They’re analyzing the flash drive from the apartment. I told him you’d be right over.”

  12

  Francis spent his days looking at the things most people would prefer to pretend weren’t really happening in the world.

  Now, as he sat in front of his computer in his cubicle, he kept an eye out for Claire to leave her office so he could talk to her about having the consortium pay for his counseling.

  A little while ago, he’d called his insurance company but had been put on hold for so long he’d finally hung up, deciding he would try again this afternoon during his coffee break.

  Most people knew that child pornography was out there on the web, but search engines were getting better at weeding it out and at posting warnings about it, and it was retreating into the deeper cracks and crevices of the Internet, so it was more difficult to stumble across accidentally.

  But it was still there, and if you knew where to look, you could find it. Especially on the Dark Web, or Tor, where two percent of the sites involve child porn, but receive eighty-three percent of the traffic. A chilling statistic that spoke volumes to the real reason people went on Tor.

  When Francis started at this job eight years ago, the images were less violent and easier to stomach.

  But those didn’t seem to satisfy today’s consumers of child porn, and every year the pictures and videos became more and more deviant and hard-core.

  Basically, his job was simple.

  After law enforcement agencies, search engines, and individuals reported images and videos that were suspected of being child pornography, Francis entered them into a giant searchable database.

  Every photo and video file has a unique digital signature known as a hash value. Those values allow you to track and identify files.

  In 2002, in the Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition case, the Supreme Court had ruled that child pornography was criminal only if it contained images depicting actual children. So cartoons and computer generated images didn’t officially count.

  That meant that it was vital, whenever possible, to identify the children who were being molested so their molesters could be prosecuted and the images taken down.

  To try fooling law enforcement, child pornographers would insert random images into the videos or embed the videos inside a text document so that the pixel pattern was different.

  But Francis was good at his job. He knew the tricks and how to get past them.

  He even knew ways of back-tracing emails and chats to specific IP addresses, and had learned how pornographers could turn on and turn off another person’s webcam without the person knowing. That way they could film them during their chats.

  He’d never done it, of course, but part of his job required knowing ways around the law so he could help law enforcement officers find those who were breaking it.

  Francis was responsible for four things: screening, identifying, cataloging, reporting. It was easy to remember by using the acronym “SICR.” All he had to do was keep in mind that there was no one sicker than the people who were filming these things and he could stay focused on the core elements of his job.

  Simple.

  The acronym wasn’t as necessary for him now as it had been back when he was getting started, but he would sometimes still use it to remind himself of his responsibilities, just so he wouldn’t get distracted.

  The ICSC was creating a registry of all known child pornography so they could search servers in real time and help law enforcement identify when IP addresses were distributing or downloading illicit material. Since 2002, ICSC’s computers had screened over a hundred million images from North America. It was the most comprehensive single-country database in the world.

  Combining the databases of the eighty-four other participating countries brought the total of the ICSC’s image database to more than seven hundred million unique files that had been identified as child porn or as exploitative of children: one image or video of a child being molested for every ten people on the planet.

  Of course, it would be impossible for a human being to search through or organize hundreds of millions of photos and videos, so Francis used advanced software to sort and compare the hash values and pixel patterns. He informed law enforcement agencies in different countries when a child’s image came up so that, if possible, he or she could be identified, located, and protected.

  Over the years he’d helped to save three hundred and forty-one children, at least that he knew about, from molestation, and he’d assisted law enforcement in identifying twice that many people who were trafficking in violent child pornography.

  The numbers were something tangible, something real.

  Those six hundred seventy-eight men and women had over four hundred thousand images of child pornography among them, and with average sentences of fourteen years, they were serving, collectively, nearly ten thousand years in prison.

  It was something specific he could look at to remind himself that he really was helping to make a difference: getting child molesters off the street for nearly ten thousand years. Even if he died today, he’d done some
thing good with his life.

  He brought those things back to mind when his job wore on him, when the images got to him.

  His position wasn’t entirely unique in the tech community. There were staff members at Yahoo, Google, Bing, Krazle, Facebook, Twitter, every major website, file-sharing site, or search engine, who also had to view child pornography for a living.

  They would spend their days looking at the most vile and heart-wrenching acts against children ever filmed, report them, block the users or take down the sites, report the images to the ICSC and law enforcement, and then clock out at the end of the day and go home and do their best to act like everything was normal and okay in the world.

  Most of them received no counseling, no stipend for counseling, no time off for counseling.

  This is what the Internet has spawned.

  Or more accurately, what human nature has spawned through the Internet.

  No one could look at those things hour after hour, day after day, and not be affected by them.

  Most people quit within a couple of months. Some turned to drinking or drugs, or slipped into depression, or committed suicide at nearly fifteen times the national rate.

  At least the ICSC paid for their staff’s time when they went to see counselors.

  It proved that they cared for their employees.

  Francis had heard that they usually tried to hire women for these positions, but because of a discrimination lawsuit before his time, they’d had to give that up. He’d been hired soon after that.

  He’d been doing this almost ten times longer than the next most experienced analyst at the ICSC.

  +++

  When Claire didn’t appear, Francis finally left his cubicle and, somewhat hesitantly, tapped on her door.

  “Yes?” she called.

  He eased it open and peered into her office.

  “You can come in, Francis.”

  He took two small steps.

  A few months ago she’d gone to a conference and come back encouraging everyone to call her by her first name from then on. “I want this office to be one of openness, of familiarity, of transparency,” she’d said. “I don’t want you to look at me as your boss, but rather as your work associate.” Then she gave a double thumbs-up. “As your friend.”

  This sort of thing happened a lot after conferences. It didn’t always stick, but Claire typically did come back with a whole handful of new management ideas.

  Francis was still getting used to it. He still wanted to call her Mrs. Nolan.

  An imposing painting of the ICSC’s president, Alejandro Gomez, stared at him from above her shoulder. Francis always found it a bit intimidating.

  Mr. Gomez spent most of his time with world leaders at the U.N., or with major donors. The donor banquet next week was his brainchild, and Francis hadn’t seen him around the ICSC offices hardly at all in the last few weeks as his meetings picked up.

  “What can I do for you, Francis?” Claire asked.

  “How are you?”

  “Very well. And you?”

  “I’ve been seeing Dr. Perrior.”

  “Yes, and how is it going?”

  “Good. Um, that’s the thing. My insurance, it’s not going to cover the visits anymore.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Is there any way you could, I mean that the ICSC, could pay for the sessions?”

  “As per our company policy, we can give you paid leave for the time you spend in counseling, but as you know, with the disparity in what different therapists charge, we have to be fair.”

  “I know.”

  “So if we paid for yours, we’d have to pay for everyone else’s too, wouldn’t we?”

  “Yes. I guess.”

  “So perhaps you can find another counselor?”

  “Dr. Perrior recommended someone.”

  “Well, good. That’s good, then.” She smiled and lifted her hands in a slightly celebratory manner. “Problem solved.”

  “Okay.”

  “Will there be anything else?”

  “No. Thank you, Mrs. Nolan.”

  “Claire.”

  “Thank you, Claire.”

  13

  I arrived in the New York Police Department’s CCS, or Cyber Command Suite—a public-relations-sensitive term that the police commissioner came up with to describe the room.

  A suite?

  Really?

  Yeah, there was a term guaranteed to strike fear in the hearts of criminals everywhere.

  Although not as glitzy and slick as Hollywood might have portrayed it, the main workspace of the CCS did look a bit like it came from the set of a movie: Dim lights. No windows. Arrays of computers. Monitors covering the walls. Servers stacked in the corner for easy access for the technicians.

  The room was almost empty when I entered, but one analyst pointed to a briefing room and put her finger to her lips to indicate for me to be quiet as I entered.

  The door was open. I slipped in the back.

  Never a fan of briefings, I was just glad I didn’t have to sit through this one from the start.

  I recognized Detective Cavanaugh right away from some internal memos I’d seen in the past. He was standing up front between a projection screen and a whiteboard speaking to the officers.

  Caucasian. Medium height. Mid- to late forties. He had a narrow face that might have appeared haggard on someone else, but gave him a look of calculated intensity. I got the immediate impression that he was a man who was serious about his work, focused, and driven.

  Well, if that was the case, we were going to get along just fine.

  Trying not to disturb anyone, I found a folding chair leaning against the back wall, but the legs didn’t have those little rubber knobs on them and scraped noisily on the floor as I positioned it. Most of the people in the room turned to look.

  “Sorry.”

  I sat beside Agent Aldéric Descartes, another joint task force member.

  When Cavanaugh went on, I couldn’t tell if he was perturbed by the interruption or not. “As I was saying, keep in mind that these guys know how children think. They might spend weeks or months grooming the child so they can initiate a sexual encounter.”

  I thought of a guy whom a friend of mine had put away, a pedophile named Hal Lloyd. As a computer expert he’d consulted with the Bureau’s Cyber Division before he was arrested. He knew how to hide his tracks and was only caught when he made the mistake of trying to groom the daughter of a city commissioner for sex.

  Cavanaugh typed at his laptop’s keyboard, and a video appeared on the projection screen. It showed children swinging, laughing, and chasing each other around a playground. Light, airy, uplifting instrumental woodwind music played in the background.

  He paused the footage. “This is a training video for groomers. Our unit pulled it off YouTube yesterday.”

  Although people had already been paying attention, now the room went stone silent.

  No one moved.

  “By the time it came to our attention, it’d already been viewed more than fifteen thousand times. It keeps popping up again on other sites, we keep taking it down. As you know, once it’s out there, it’s out there. There’s no bringing it back. This video is targeted more at hebephiles than pedophiles.”

  From my work over the years, I knew that a pedophile is someone who has a sexual interest in prepubescent children. A hebephile is sexually attracted to young adolescents, usually between ages eleven and fourteen.

  Cavanaugh tapped the spacebar to restart the video.

  A woman’s voice came on: “In the past, child lovers had to hide in the shadows. We were isolated, ostracized, persecuted. Today, through technology, we have the ability to support one another in our pursuits. We have community. We have the resources to help establish and promote long-
term, committed intergenerational relationships.”

  Cavanaugh stopped it again. “Note the phrasing, the spin, the word choice: ‘child lovers’ and ‘long-term, committed intergenerational relationships.’ The web provides accessibility, anonymity, community, and plenty of social reinforcement for deviant behavior. In the past if you were interested in molesting children, you had to pretty much go it alone since it was so hard to find social support and justification for your activity. Not anymore. Now there are dozens of sites out there dedicated to helping you get away with it, as well as videos, like this one, on how to avoid prosecution, on what you can and cannot say in chats to skirt around the variances in state laws, and ways to claim entrapment if you are caught.”

  In a twisted and tragic way, the Internet was a child pornographer’s dream come true. It removed geographic, societal, cultural, jurisdictional, and psychological barriers and offered sites that provided supportive, facilitative communities. Throw in powerful sexual addictions, the anonymity Cavanaugh had just mentioned, and 24/7 access, and you’ve created a potent mix.

  He started the video once more and, as the narrator spoke, footage appeared of children at recess filmed through the metal fence surrounding their elementary school, then went to a little girl walking through a mall holding her mother’s hand, and half a dozen young teenagers playing volleyball on a sandy beach near the ocean.

  “In North America, children ages ten to twelve are ideal. Younger children are easier to encourage to engage in a romance, but are more likely to tell their parents that something strange or ‘scary’ has happened.

  “Also, children in those preteen years are still, for the most part, trusting, looking for affirmation, and less likely to tell their friends about the relationship. As you know, we have to protect children from feeling guilty or dirty or shameful, but also from shying away from us, so we need to do whatever’s necessary to protect the privacy of the relationships.

  “Some children are best convinced through promises, others through gifts, others through enhanced persuasion—although this is only in the service of continuing the romance. In time you’ll learn to read the children in your life and find the best ways to help them keep things confidential.”