Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

My mind flashed on thoughts of Sideburns and riding up in the elevator with him, then of him following me down the hallway to my room.

What if he hadn’t heard Rachel’s voice? Would he have walked on by or would he have pushed in behind me?

Rachel got up and walked over to the room’s phone. She dialed the operator and asked for the manager. She was on hold for a few moments before her call was taken.

“Yes, it’s Agent Walling. I’m still in room four ten and I’ve located Mr. McEvoy and he’s safe. I am now wondering if you can tell me if there are any guests in the next three rooms going down the hall. I think that would be four eleven, twelve and thirteen.”

She waited and listened and then thanked the manager.

“One last question,” she said. “There is a door marked exit at the end of the hall. I’m assuming those are stairs. Where do they go?”

She listened, thanked him again and then hung up.

“There’s nobody registered in those rooms. The stairs go down to the parking lot.”

“You think that guy with the sideburns was him?”

She sat back down.

“Possibly.”

I thought about his wraparound sunglasses, the driving gloves and the cowboy hat. The bushy sideburns covered most of the rest of his face and drew the eye away from any other distinguishing features. I realized that if I had to describe the man who had followed me, I would only be able to remember the hat, hair, gloves, sunglasses and sideburns-the throwaway or changeable features of a disguise.

“Jesus! I can’t believe how stupid I was. How? How did this guy find out about me and then actually find me? We’re talking about less than twenty-four hours and he’s sitting next to me at the slots.”

“Let’s go down and you show me what machine he was at. We might be able to pull prints.”

I shook my head.

“Forget it. He was wearing driving gloves. In fact, even the ceiling cameras down there won’t help you. He was wearing a cowboy hat, sunglasses-his whole getup was a disguise.”

“We’ll pull the video anyway. Maybe there will be something that will help us.”

“I doubt it.”

I shook my head again, more to myself than to Rachel.

“He got right next to me.”

“That trick with the prison secretary’s e-mail shows he has a certain skill set. I think it would be wise to consider your e-mail accounts to be breached at this point.”

“But that doesn’t explain how he knew about me in the first place. In order for him to breach my e-mail, he had to know about me.”

I slapped the bed in annoyance and nodded my head.

“Okay, I don’t know how he knew about me, but I did send e-mails last night. To both my editor and my partner on the story, telling them that the story was changing and that I was following a lead to Vegas. I talked to my editor today and he said he never got it.”

Rachel nodded knowingly.

“Destroying outgoing communications. That would fall under isolation of the target. Did your partner get his?”

“It’s a her and I don’t know if she got it because she’s not answering her phone or her e-mail and she didn’t-”

I stopped in my verbal tracks and looked at Rachel.

“What?”

“She didn’t show up for work today. She didn’t call in and nobody could reach her. They even sent somebody to her apartment but they got no answer.”

Rachel abruptly stood up.

“We’ve got to go back to L.A., Jack. The chopper’s waiting.”

“What about my interview? And you said you were going to pull the video from downstairs.”

“What about your partner? The interview and video can wait till later.”

Embarrassed, I nodded and got off the bed. It was time to go.

I had no idea where Angela Cook lived. I told Rachel what I did know about her, including her odd fixation with the Poet case, and that I’d heard she had a blog but had never read it. Rachel transmitted all the information to an agent in L.A. before we boarded the military chopper and headed south toward Nellis Air Force Base.

On the flight there we wore headsets, which cut down on the engine noise but didn’t allow for conversation that wasn’t in sign language. Rachel took my files and spent the hour with them. I watched her making comparisons between the crime scene and autopsy reports of Denise Babbit and Sharon Oglevy. She worked with a look of complete concentration on her face and took notes on a legal pad she’d pulled out of her own bag. She spent a lot of time looking at the horrible photos of the dead women, taken both at the crime scene and on the autopsy table.

For the most part I sat in my straight-back seat and racked my brain, trying to put together an explanation for how all of this could have happened so fast. More specifically, how this killer could have started hunting me when I had barely started hunting him. By the time we landed at Nellis, I thought I had something and was waiting for the opportunity to tell Rachel.

We immediately transferred to a waiting jet on which we were the only passengers. We sat across from each other, and the pilot informed Rachel that there was a call holding for her on the onboard telephone. We strapped in, she picked up the phone and the jet immediately started taxiing out to the runway. On the overhead the pilot told us we would be on the ground in L.A. in an hour. Nothing like the power and might of the federal government, I thought. This was the way to travel-except for one thing. It was a small plane and I didn’t fly small planes.

Rachel mostly listened to her caller, then asked a few questions and finally hung up.

“Angela Cook was not at her home,” she said. “They can’t find her.”

I didn’t respond. A sharp stab of fear and dread for Angela worked its way up under my ribs. This didn’t ease any as the jet took off, rising at a steeper angle than I was used to with commercial airliners. I almost tore the armrest off with my fingernails. After we were safely up I finally spoke.

“Rachel, I think I know how this guy could’ve found us so quickly-Angela, at least.”

“Tell me.”

“No, you first. Tell me what you found in the files.”

“Jack, don’t be so petty. This has become a little bit larger than a newspaper story.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t go first. It’s also larger than the FBI’s penchant for taking information but not giving anything back in return.”

She shook off the barb.

“Fine, I’ll start. But first let me commend you, Jack. From what I have read about these cases, I would say there is absolutely no doubt that they are connected by a single killer. The same man is responsible for both. But he escaped notice because in each case an alternate suspect came to light quickly and the local authorities proceeded with blinders on. In each case, they had their man from the beginning and didn’t look into other possibilities. Except of course in the Babbit case, their man was a boy.”

I leaned forward, beaming with confidence after her compliment.

“And he never confessed like they put out to the press,” I said. “I have the transcript back at my office. Nine-hour interrogation and the kid never confessed. He said he stole her car and her money, but the body was already in the trunk. He never said he killed her.”

Rachel nodded.

“I assumed that. So what I was doing with the material you have here was profiling the two killings. Looking for a signature.”

“The signature’s obvious. He likes strangling women with plastic bags.”

“Technically they weren’t strangled. They were asphyxiated. Suffocated. There’s a difference.”

“Okay.”

“There is something very familiar about the use of the plastic bag and the cord around the neck, but I was actually looking for something a little less obvious than the surface signature. I was also looking for connections or similarities between the women. If we find what connects them we’ll find the killer.”