Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

“Absolutely.”

The two agents stood up, as did Chavez.

“Good luck, gentlemen,” McGinnis offered. “I hope you catch the bad guys. We’re willing to help in any way we can.”

“Thank you, sir,” Agent Richmond said.

As they left administration, Carver noticed that Chavez was tagging along behind the agents. Carver was holding the door but when it was her turn to go through, he cut her off.

“We’ll take it from here, thank you,” he said.

He stepped through the doorway in front of her and pulled the door closed behind him.

On Saturday morning I was in my room at the Kyoto reading Larry Bernard’s front-page story about the release of Alonzo Winslow from juvenile custody when one of the detectives from Hollywood Division called me. Her name was Bynum. She told me my house had been cleared as a crime scene and returned to my custody.

“I can just go back?”

“That’s right. You can go home now.”

“Does that mean the investigation is complete? I mean, pending the arrest of the guy, of course.”

“No, we still have a few loose ends we’re trying to figure out.”

“Loose ends?”

“I can’t discuss the case with you.”

“Well, can I ask you about Angela?”

“What about her?”

“I was wondering if she had been… you know, tortured or anything.”

There was a pause while the detective decided how much to tell me.

“I’m sorry but the answer is yes. There was evidence of rape with a foreign object and the same pattern of slow suffocation as in the other cases. Multiple ligature marks on the neck. He repeatedly choked her out and revived her. Whether this was a means of getting her to talk about the story you two were working on, or just his way of getting off, is unclear at this time. I guess we will have to ask the man himself when we get him.”

I was silent as I thought about the horror Angela had faced.

“Anything else, Jack? It’s Saturday. I’m hoping to salvage half a day off with my daughter.”

“Uh, no, sorry.”

“Well, you can go home now. Have a nice day.”

Bynum hung up and I sat there, thinking. Calling it “home” seemed wrong. I wasn’t sure I wanted the house back, because I wasn’t sure it was home any longer. My sleep-what little there was of it-had been invaded the last two nights by images of Angela Cook’s face in the darkness under the bed and the muffled coughing sound so expertly implanted in my mind by her killer. Only in my dream, everything was underwater. Her wrists were not bound and she reached up to me as she sank. Her last cry for help came out in a bubble and when it broke with the sound the Unsub had made, I came awake.

To now live and try to sleep in the same place seemed impossible to me. I spread the curtains and looked out the single window of my small room. I had a view of the civic center. The beautiful and ageless City Hall rose in front of me. Next to it was the criminal courts building, as ugly as the prison most of its customers were headed to. The sidewalks and green lawns were empty. It was Saturday and nobody came downtown on the weekend. I pulled the curtains closed.

I decided I would keep the room as long as the paper was paying. I would go to the house but only to get fresh clothes and other things I needed. In the afternoon I would call a Realtor and see about getting rid of the place. If I could. For Sale: Nicely kept and restored Hollywood bungalow where serial killer struck. Bring all offers.

My cell phone rang, jarring me out of the reverie. My real cell phone. I had finally gotten it turned back on with full function the day before. The caller ID said private number and I had learned not to let those go unanswered.

It was Rachel.

“Hey,” I said.

“You sound down. What’s wrong?”

What a profiler. She had read me with one word. I decided not to bring up what Detective Bynum had said about Angela’s torturous end.

“Nothing. I’m just… nothing. What’s going on with you? Are you working?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to take a break and get some coffee or something? I’m downtown.”

“No, I can’t.”

I had not seen her since we had been split apart by the detectives after we’d found and reported Angela’s body. As with everything else, the separation, though only forty-eight hours, was not going well for me. I stood up and started pacing in the small confines of the room.

“Well, when will I get to see you?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Jack. Have some patience with me. I’m under the gun here.”

I felt embarrassed and changed the subject.

“Speaking of under the gun, I could use an armed escort.”

“For what?”

“The LAPD says I have access to my house again. They said I could go home but I don’t think I can stay there. I just want to get some clothes but it’s going to be sort of creepy being in there by myself.”

“I’m sorry, Jack, I can’t take you. If you are truly worried, though, I can make a call.”

I was beginning to get the picture. This had happened to me with her once before. I had to resign myself to the fact that Rachel was like a feral cat. She was intrigued by what could be and hovered close to the touch of another, but ultimately she jumped back and away from it. If you pushed it, her claws came out.

“Never mind, Rachel, I was just trying to get you to come out.”

“I am really sorry, Jack, but I can’t do it.”

“Why did you call?”

There was a silence before she answered.

“To check in and to update you on a few things. If you wanted to hear them.”

“Down to business. Sure, go ahead.”

I sat back down on the bed and opened a notebook to write in.

“Yesterday they confirmed that the trunk murder website Angela visited was indeed the trip wire she stepped on,” Rachel said. “But so far it’s a dead end.”

“A dead end? I thought everything can be traced on the Internet.”

“The physical location of the site is a web-hosting facility in Mesa, Arizona, called Western Data Consultants. Agents went there with a warrant and were able to pull the details about the site setup and operation. It was registered through a company in Seattle called See Jane Run, which registers, designs and maintains numerous sites through Western Data. It’s kind of a go-between company. It doesn’t have the physical plant where websites are hosted on servers. That’s what Western Data does. See Jane Run builds and maintains websites for clients and pays a company like Western Data to host them. Kind of a middle man.”

“So did they go to Seattle?”

“Agents from the Seattle field office are handling it.”

“And?”

“The trunk murder site was set up and paid for entirely over the Internet. No one at See Jane Run ever met the man who paid for it. The physical address given two years ago when the sites were set up was a mail drop near SeaTac that is no longer valid. We’re trying to trace that but that will be a dead end, too. This guy is good.”

“You just said ‘sites’-plural. Were there more than one?”

“You noticed that. Yes, two sites. Trunk murder dot com was the first site and the second is called Denslow Data. That was the name he used in setting these up. Bill Denslow. Both sites are on a five-year plan that he paid for in advance. He used a money order-untraceable except back to the point of purchase. Another dead end.”

I took a couple moments to write some notes down.

“Okay,” I finally said. “So is Denslow the Unsub?”

“The man posing as Denslow is the Unsub but we’re not dumb enough to think he would put his real name on a website.”

“Then what does it mean? D-E-N-slow. Is it like half an acronym or something?”