The Prison Guard's Son Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  License Notes

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Prison Guard’s Son

  Copyright © 2016 by Trace Conger

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, brands, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Molly O’Connor

  “Dig good ditches.”

  “No there ain't no rest for the wicked,

  until we close our eyes for good.”

  — "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked,” Cage the Elephant

  “He who fights with monsters should look to it that

  he himself does not become a monster.”

  — Friedrich Nietzsche

  One

  MONSTERS ARE REAL. THEY HIDE behind familiar names and faces, and they're capable of entering your safe little world anytime and turning your life upside down. And they can vanish as quickly as they appeared. You may never cross paths with pure evil, but sometimes you do.

  Sometimes these monsters walk down your street.

  Sometimes they notice you.

  And sometimes they follow you home.

  SINCE LOSING MY PI LICENSE and taking my practice underground three years ago, I had made enough cash and built a solid enough reputation I no longer hustled for work. These days it falls in my lap. That's what happened when Willie Baker called me. He found me the same way all my clients do. Word of mouth. He knew someone who knew someone who put him in touch with me, and here I sat in a city park in Parkersburg, West Virginia, across from the Parkersburg Correctional Facility. It was a fitting location considering Willie was going to ask me to do something illegal, and if I played my cards wrong I might end up in the very building that stood on the other side of the impenetrable razor-wire fence.

  Willie had given me enough detail over the phone to entice me to drive the two-hundred miles to Parkersburg, but what he told me in the next fifteen minutes would determine whether I took his case or not.

  I arrived twenty minutes early and grabbed a seat at a park bench under a giant oak tree. It was mid November and many of the trees had already dropped their leaves. Those trees that hadn't yet surrendered to fall painted a backdrop of orange, yellow and red hues. A group of children collected a pile of downed leaves and plowed through them, their arms spread wide and their heads tilted back, mouths open laughing. They looked like airplanes flying through vibrant-colored clouds. Their mothers looked on and smiled, probably wanting to join in.

  A moment later loose gravel popped under a vehicle's tires. It was a Ford Econoline van with a prison logo on the door. It belonged to the large gray building across the street, the one with the shitty views and the bars on the doors. The van parked next to my Lincoln Navigator and an older man stepped out of the vehicle. He closed the door and without locking it limped across the parking lot toward me. A gray Walmart shopping bag dangled from his right hand. The bag sagged under the weight of the papers inside, some of which had pierced the thin lining in an attempt to escape, and I thought the bottom might fall out before he made it to the bench.

  "Mr. Finn?" he said.

  I slid to my left. "Have a seat."

  He shook my hand and sat down. "It's nice to meet you. Thanks for helping me."

  "I haven't agreed to help you yet, Mr. Baker. But I am anxious to learn more about your situation."

  From our call, I knew the man sitting next to me in the unwashed blue prison guard uniform and Carhartt work jacket wanted me to find the two men who murdered his son, Josh, in 1984. He explained how the two men responsible were arrested, tried and convicted, and how they were released in 1992 after serving only eight years in some detention center for fuckups.

  Willie Baker, much like the rest of Parkersburg, felt eight years was a bit light for what they did to his son, and now he wanted to levy his own justice. I didn't discuss details over the phone, which is why we sat next to each other feeling the November breeze whip across the playground.

  "Start from the beginning," I said. "Just so I know I didn't misunderstand you on our first call."

  Baker grabbed his left pants leg with his right hand and pulled it up so his left leg crossed the other. He leaned back against the hard park bench and drew in a deep breath.

  "It was in eighty-four. My wife had taken Josh to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. They were in a store when my wife turned around and Josh was gone." He crinkled the bag between his fingers. "My wife was always so careful with him, and she only turned her back for a minute. But that's all it took. He was gone. Mitz and the saleswoman tore the store upside down, but they didn't find him. He had wandered out into the mall and disappeared."

  "How old was your son when all this happened?"

  "He was four." Baker paused. "He would have been thirty-seven next month."

  "Go on," I said.

  "It was a weekend and I was home working on our car. It was the only car we had and Mitz had to borrow my brother's Impala to go to the mall. She was gone for a few hours. Then she comes home and jumps that Impala over the curb and almost hits the tree in our front yard. She runs into the garage yelling about how they took Josh. I get her to calm down enough so that she can tell me what happened. She's crying and she yells 'they can't find him.' I'm listening to her but I'm not putting it all together. Then I notice Josh isn't in the car and it hits me. She tells me he wandered off. Said she went to the mall security office. They asked around, made an announcement over the PA, talked to the clerks to see if anyone remembered seeing him, but there was nothing. He was gone. One minute he's there and the next, he's not. Gone into thin air."

  "So she w
ent to the police?"

  "The mall called the police. Mitz called me several times but I was under the car in the garage and didn't hear the phone ring."

  "What did the police do?" I said.

  "They interviewed my wife and me. She told them the same story I just told you. That night they put Josh's picture on the TV. On the local news. Then they called us at home the next day to tell us they found him." He dropped his head and grabbed the bag with his hands so tight I thought he might rip it in two. "They found his body next to an abandoned tobacco shack a few miles from our house."

  "The two boys you mentioned on the phone. Tell me about them."

  "Jacob Vance and Raymond Turner. I'll never forget 'em. Both nine years old at the time. Local boys. They took him from the mall."

  "Did they know your son? Or your family?"

  "No. Never seen or heard of them before. The police figured Josh just walked away from Mitz and into the mall and these two boys found him walking by hisself and lured him away."

  "No motive?"

  "Except for being sick in the head, no."

  "How did the police find them? The boys?"

  "A woman saw the TV news the night they showed Josh's picture. She remembered seeing a neighbor boy from down the road earlier in the day walking with a boy who looked like Josh. She called the police. The cops interviewed him and his buddy--Vance and Turner--and one of them confessed to everything. Confessed about how they took him from the mall and into the woods. And..." He wiped his eyes. "And how..."

  "That's enough," I said, not wanting him to relive the hell he probably experienced every day since eighty-four. "I don't need to know anything more about your son, but tell me about the boys. What is it you want me to do?"

  "I want them boys dead. I want someone to take a hammer and crush their skulls just like they did to my little boy."

  "I find people, Willie. I don't kill them."

  "I know. I only want you to find them. I've already made arrangements for someone else to kill 'em. All I want you to do is tell me where there are."

  "Seems like a long time to be waiting for revenge," I said. "Why now? If they've been out for so long, why go after them now?"

  "After Josh was killed, Mitz and I had to get through everything together. We were all that we had. I knew if I did something stupid the police would take me away, and I wasn’t sure Mitz was strong enough to make it on her own. But she died of ovarian cancer last year. With Mitz gone, I've got no reason to hold back anymore. I'd do it myself if I were younger. And if I could find them."

  "If something happens to these two, you're the first person the police will come for."

  "I know, but I work at the prison six days a week. I'll have an alibi." He smacked his leg with his right hand. "And with this bum leg, no one'll believe I'd be able to catch and kill two men." He looked at the prison and then back at me. "I've got two-hundred-thousand dollars saved up. Most of that was Mitz's life insurance. I don't know if it's enough, but it's all I got. I want you to tell me where they are. Both of them. I'll take care of the rest."

  "No offense Willie, but this job seems too easy. You could find any number of PIs who could locate these two for a fraction of what you're offering me. Why not save your money and go with someone else?"

  "These two aren't going to be easy to find. Trust me, I've hired it out before. Just the locating part. I never told anyone about what I wanted done to them. Went through a few other PIs. They turned up nothing."

  "So why me?"

  "After Vance and Turner were released in 1992, the state didn't think they would be safe. That what they did to my boy was so heinous their lives would be in danger. Can you believe that, their lives? Never mind what they did to my family. The government gave them new identities and shipped them off to God knows where. And that's it. New names and new locations. And I'm stuck back here to mourn my boy who never got the chance to grow up. None of the people I hired came close to finding them because Jacob Vance and Raymond Turner don't exist anymore. What I need is someone who can find their new identities." He looked over his shoulder and spoke low. "So I can give my boy the justice he deserves."

  I'd never heard of the government using witness protection to safeguard anyone except federal witnesses. Not our government anyway. "That adds quite the dynamic, Willie."

  "I know it does. That's why I need someone who can do it right. Those two have to pay the real price for what they did to Josh." He handed me the plastic bag. "That's the police file. It's everything I got. Don't make your decision without reading it. Look at it and see what those two boys did to my son, and if you want to pass then that's fine. I'll look for someone else to help me."

  I took the bag and set it on my knee to keep it from breaking open. The tall tower of the Parkersburg Correctional Facility stared down at me, as if daring me to take the case.

  "I'll review your information, Willie, but you have to be prepared for me to say no. If these guys really are in WITSEC then they'll be difficult as shit to find."

  "Difficult but not impossible," said Willie. He stood up. "All I ask is that you consider it. I have to get back to work."

  "I'll let you know as soon as I can," I said.

  Willie limped across the park moving faster than when he arrived. Maybe he was late for his shift, or maybe he felt lighter having handed off the information on his long dead son, like some burden lifted. Or maybe he moved faster because he was thinking about the two responsible for his son's death getting what he thought they deserved.

  After Willie pulled out of the parking lot I turned to see the group of children still plowing through the hand-raked mounds of leaves a few hundred feet away. Their mothers still looked on with a hint of jealousy. Part of me wanted to stay and watch, but the other part urged me off the bench and into my car. I had some reading to do.

  Two

  THE PLASTIC BAG WILLIE GAVE me contained photocopies from his son's case file. It included police reports, coroner report, transcribed court testimony, Vance’s and Turner’s 1984 booking photos, handwritten interview notes and a few other documents. Together they painted a gruesome image of what happened that November afternoon thirty-two years ago.

  According to the information, after they left the mall Vance and Turner made Josh walk two miles through an upscale neighborhood, a city park and a wooded area until they reached the tobacco shack. Images from multiple mall security cameras captured Vance and Turner leaving the mall, Josh between them, each holding one of Josh's hands. Timestamps on sequential photos indicated only two minutes passed from the time Josh first encountered Vance and Turner until the time all three walked out the mall's front entrance. Two minutes to snatch a kid and vanish in broad daylight.

  Medical reports showed Josh had been sexually assaulted, tortured and had suffered repeated blows to the head and body, presumably with rocks. His body revealed multiple fractures to the skull, a broken arm, cuts to the cheek and lips and several marks on his back that resembled the heel of a thick-soled boot. The pathologist also found traces of modeling glue in Josh's eyes and theorized that Vance and Turner tried to glue his eyes shut. The official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

  Several witnesses testified they had seen the two boys with Josh. One man said they walked past him in the park, but he didn't think anything suspicious until he saw Josh on the news that evening. Another woman saw the three boys on her street and recognized Raymond Turner, who lived on her block. After seeing the news segment she directed the police to Turner's house.

  A white envelope, softened with age, contained a series of photographs revealing what investigators discovered when they arrived at the tobacco shack. The photos captured various angles of Josh lying chest down, his right cheek seemingly floating in a pool of blood. A crimson trail leading somewhere beyond the edges of the photos indicated he had been dragged from one spot to another. A few of the photos showed Josh's body covered with jagged wooden boards, probably pulled from the dilapidated to
bacco shack, in a crude attempt to conceal the body.

  Feeling my stomach tightening, I turned my attention to the police booking photos of Jacob Vance and Raymond Turner. The photos showed the two standing in front of a height chart. Vance stood four-feet-eight-inches tall and Turner was two inches shorter. They each held a small whiteboard with their name, social security number, booking date and some type of case number written in thick black marker.

  Both boys had short hair, but while Vance had a buzz cut, Turner had more of a tousled style that reached his eyebrows and covered part of his ears. From what I could see in the booking photos, Turner's hair looked similar to Josh's. Neither looked like a cold-blooded killer, but what nine-year-old did?

  I slipped the photos back into the envelope and swapped it for the police report. According to the report, when the police asked Raymond Turner about Josh, he immediately confessed to his role in the abduction. Then he rolled on Vance and the police picked him up within the hour.

  During questioning they both admitted to kidnapping Josh and leaving him near the tobacco shack, but they said he was alive when they left. When it came to the actual assault, each said it was the other who beat, sexually assaulted and killed the boy.

  Vance and Turner later recanted their admissions, but evidence, including footprints at the crime scene that matched the boys' boots, forensic tests confirming modeling glue residue on Turner's T-shirt and blood spatter on Vance's clothes, which the police found in a garbage can outside his home, was all the proof the court needed.

  Even though Vance and Turner were only nine years old, they were tried as adults. The court found both guilty of murdering Josh Baker and remanded them to the ironically named Pleasant Hill juvenile detention facility forty miles outside of Parkersburg for at least eight years. Even though they went to big-boy court, they were too young to go to prison. According to a few newspaper clippings, the court sealed the trial records, which made me wonder how Willie had compiled the information that now littered the inside of my Navigator.