Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

“I don’t know. Somebody’s messing with me. My phone, my e-mail, my bank accounts-I’m driving through the middle of the desert and I don’t even have a credit card that works.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Ely, to talk to somebody.”

“The prison?”

“That’s right.”

“What, somebody called you up and said he was innocent and you come running, hoping to prove the real cops are wrong again?”

“No, nothing like that. Look, Rachel, this guy is strangling women and stuffing them into the trunks of cars. He does horrible things to them and he’s been getting away with it for at least two years.”

“Jack, I’ve read your stories about the girl in the trunk. It was a gangbanger and he confessed.”

I got an unexpected thrill from knowing she was reading my stories. But it wasn’t helping me to convince her.

“Don’t believe everything you read in the paper, Rachel. I’m getting to the truth now and I need someone-somebody in authority-to step in and-”

“You know I’m not in Behavioral anymore. Why call me?”

“Because I can trust you.”

That brought a long moment of silence. I refused to break first.

“How can you say that?” she finally said. “We haven’t seen each other in a long, long time.”

“Doesn’t matter. After what we went through back then, I’ll always trust you, Rachel. And I know you could help me now… and maybe make up for some things yourself.”

She scoffed at that.

“What are you talking about? No-wait, don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter. Please don’t call me again, Jack. The bottom line is, I can’t help you. So good luck and be careful. Be safe.”

She hung up the phone.

I held it to my ear for nearly a minute after she was gone. I guess I was hoping that she’d change her mind, pick up the phone and call me back. But that didn’t happen and after a while I dropped the phone into the cup holder between the seats. I had no more calls to make.

Up ahead the car that had passed me disappeared over the next ridgeline. I felt like I had been left all alone on the surface of the moon.

As with most people who pass through the gates of Ely State Prison, my luck did not change for the better upon arrival at my destination. I was allowed in through the attorney/investigator entrance. I clutched the introduction letter William Schifino had written for me and showed it to the watch captain. I was placed in a holding room and waited for twenty minutes for Brian Oglevy to be delivered to me. But when the door opened, it was the watch captain who entered. No Brian Oglevy.

“Mr. McEvoy,” the captain said, pronouncing my name wrong. “I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to do this today.”

I suddenly thought that I had been exposed as a fraud. That they knew I was a reporter working on a story and not an investigator for a defense attorney.

“What do you mean? It was all set up. I have the letter from the lawyer. You saw it. He also faxed you a letter saying I was coming.”

“Yeah, we got the fax and I was prepared to carry through but the man you want to see is unavailable at this time. You come back tomorrow and you can have your visit.”

I shook my head angrily. All of the problems of the day were about to boil over and this prison captain was going to get burned.

“Look, I just drove four hours from Vegas to do this interview. You’re telling me to turn around and go back and then do the whole thing again tomorrow? I’m not go-”

“I’m not telling you to go back to Vegas. I was you, I’d just go into town and stay at the Hotel Nevada. It ain’t a bad place. They got a gaming hall and a hoppin’ bar on most nights. You put up there and get back in here tomorrow morning and I’ll have your man all ready for you. I can promise you that.”

I shook my head, feeling impotent about everything. I had no choice here.

“Nine o’clock,” I said. “And you’ll be here?”

“I’ll be here to personally set it up.”

“Can you tell me why I can’t see him today?”

“No, I can’t. It’s a security issue.”

I shook my head in frustration one final time.

“Thank you, Captain. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“We’ll be here.”

After getting back to my rental, I plugged the Hotel Nevada in Ely into the GPS and followed instructions until I got there in thirty minutes. I pulled the car into the parking lot and emptied my pockets before deciding to go in. I had $248 in cash. I knew I had to budget at least $75 for gas to get back to the airport in Vegas. I could eat cheap until I got home but would need another $40 for the cab ride from the airport to my house. So I calculated I had about a hundred bucks for the hotel. Looking up at its tired six floors, I figured that wasn’t going to be a problem. I got out, grabbed my carry-on bag and went inside.

I took a forty-five-dollar-a-night room on the fourth floor. The room was neat and clean and the bed was reasonably comfortable. It was only four P.M., too early to put the remainder of my fortune toward alcohol. So I pulled out my throwaway phone and started eating into my minutes. I first called Angela Cook, trying both her cell and desk line and getting no answer on either. I left the same message twice, then swallowed my pride and called Alan Prendergast back. I apologized for my outburst earlier and my use of foul language. I tried to calmly explain what was happening and the pressure I was feeling. He responded monosyllabically and said he had a meeting to go to. I told him I would get him a budget line for the revised story if I could get online and he told me not to rush.

“Prendo, we’ve got to get this into Friday’s paper or everybody else will have it.”

“Look, I talked about this in the news meeting. We want to move cautiously. We’ve got you running around in the desert. We haven’t even heard from Angela and, frankly, we’re getting worried. She should have checked in. So what I want you to do is get back here as soon as you can and then we will all sit down and see what we’ve got.”

I could have gotten angry all over again about the way I was being treated but something more pressing had come through from him. Angela.

“You’ve gotten no message from her all day?”

“Not a one. I sent a reporter to her apartment to see if she was there but there was no answer. We don’t know where she is.”

“This ever happen with her before?”

“She’s called in sick a few times very late in the day. Probably hung over or something. But at least she called in. Not this time, though.”

“Well, listen. If anybody hears from her, let me know, okay?”

“You got it, Jack.”

“Okay, Prendo. We’ll talk when I get back.”

“Got dimes?” Prendergast asked by way of a peace offering.

“A few,” I said. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

I closed the phone and thought about Angela being missing in action. I started wondering if everything was connected. My credit cards, nobody hearing from Angela. It seemed like a stretch because I couldn’t see where anything linked up.

I looked around my forty-five-dollar room. There was a little pamphlet on the side table that said the hotel was more than seventy-five years old and at one time was the tallest building in all of Nevada. That was back when copper mining had made Ely a boomtown and nobody had ever heard of Las Vegas. Those days were long past.

I booted up my laptop and used the hotel’s free WiFi to try to sign into my e-mail account. But my password was not accepted after three tries and I was locked out. No doubt whoever had canceled my credit cards and my cellular phone service had also changed my password.

“This is crazy,” I said out loud.