Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

During the break I got the one-minute warning and soon I was on live coast-to-coast and beyond. The show host in Atlanta threw me softball questions that I answered with an enthusiasm that falsely suggested I had never heard them before and that the story had not been playing for three days already in the Times . When I was finished and the program moved on to the next story, Christian DuChateau told me over the earpiece that I was free to go and that he owed me a favor for saving the show from the near disaster that was Alonzo Winslow. He told me that the limo would take me wherever I needed to go.

“Christian, would you mind if I used him to make one stop along the way? It won’t take long.”

“Not at all. I have somebody else taking Alonzo home, so you can use the car the rest of the morning if you need it. Like I said, I owe you one.”

That worked for me. I made a quick stop in the greenroom to grab another cup of coffee and found Alonzo and Wanda still there. They seemed to still be waiting for someone to take them to the studio to be interviewed. No one had told them yet that they had been canceled and they seemed too naive to realize it.

I decided not to be the bearer of bad news. I told them good-bye and gave them each a card with my cell phone number on it.

“Hey, I see you on the TV,” Alonzo said, nodding to the flat-screen on the wall. “You cool, muthafucka. I get my turn now.”

“Thanks, Alonzo. You take care.”

“I’ll take care as soon as somebody give me a million dollahs.”

I nodded, grabbed another doughnut to go with my coffee and headed out of the room, leaving Alonzo waiting for a million dollars that wasn’t going to come.

Once in the car, I told the driver about the stop I needed to make and he said he had already been told to go where I directed. We pulled into my driveway at twenty minutes after seven. I sat in the car, looking at the house for almost a minute before getting the courage to get out and go in.

I unlocked the front door and entered, stepping on three days of mail that had been pushed through the slot. Neither rain nor snow nor yellow crime scene tape had stopped my mailman from his appointed rounds. I looked quickly through all the envelopes and found that two of my new credit cards had come in. I put these envelopes in my back pocket and left the rest on the floor.

Crime scene debris was littered throughout the house. Black fingerprint dust seemed to be on every surface. There were also empty tape dispensers and discarded rubber gloves all over the floor. It didn’t appear that the investigators and technicians gave one thought to who would be returning to the house after they were gone.

I hesitated only briefly and then walked down the hallway and entered my bedroom. There was a musty smell here that was puzzling because it seemed stronger than the day we had found Angela’s body. The box spring, mattress and bed frame were gone and I assumed they were being held for analysis and as evidence.

Pausing for a moment, I studied the spot where the bed had been. I wish I could say that at that moment my heart filled with sadness for Angela Cook. But somehow I was already past that point, or my mind was protecting itself and not allowing me to dwell on such things. If I thought about anything, I thought about how hard it was going to be to sell the place. If I felt anything, I felt the need to get out of there as soon as I could.

I walked quickly to the closet, remembering a story I had once written for the Times about a private company that offered a clean-up service at homes where murders and suicides had taken place. It was a thriving business. I decided I would have to dig that story out of archives and give them a call. Maybe they’d give me a discount.

I pulled my big suitcase off the shelf in the closet. I put it down on the floor and a breath of stale air released as I flipped it open. I hadn’t used it since I had moved into the house more than a decade earlier. I quickly started filling it with clothes that were on my usual rotation. When it was maxed out, I brought down my more-often-used duffel bag and filled it with shoes and belts and ties-even though I would soon have no use for ties. Lastly, I went into the bathroom and emptied everything on the sink and in the medicine cabinet into the plastic bag that lined the trash can.

“Need some help?”

I almost jumped through the shower curtain. I turned around and saw that it was the driver I had left at the car ten minutes earlier after telling him I would only be five minutes.

“You scared me, man.”

“I just wanted to see if you needed-What happened here?”

He was staring at the rubber gloves strewn on the floor and at the big empty spot where the bed used to be.

“It’s a long story. If you could get that big suitcase out to the car, I’ll get the rest. I need to check something on my computer before we leave.”

I grabbed my racquetball racquet off a hook on the bedroom door and then followed him out with the bag and the duffel. I dumped it all in the trunk next to the big suitcase and then headed back toward the house. I noticed the neighbor across the street was at the bottom of her driveway, watching me. She was holding her home-delivered Times in her hand. I waved but she didn’t return the gesture and I realized that she wasn’t going to be friendly or neighborly to me anymore. I had brought darkness and death to our fair neighborhood.

Back inside the house I went directly to the office. But when I entered, I immediately saw that my desktop computer was not on my desktop. It was gone and I realized that the police or the FBI had taken it. Somehow, knowing that a bunch of strange men were looking through all my work and personal files, including my ill-fated novel, made me feel exposed in a whole new way. I was not the killer out there on the loose but the FBI had my computer. When Rachel got back from Washington, I was going to ask her to get it back for me.

My shoulders sagged a little and I could feel that the hard exterior I had put on to help me get through the return to my house was slipping. I had to get out or the horrors of what had happened to Angela would creep back into my thoughts and paralyze me. I had to keep moving.

My last stop in the house was the kitchen. I checked the refrigerator and took all the outdated or close-to-outdated items out and dumped them in the trash can. I dropped in the bananas from the fruit bowl and a half loaf of bread from one of the cabinets. I then went out the back door and put the bag in the bigger can next to the garage. I went inside again, locked up and went out the front door to the waiting car.

“Back to the Kyoto,” I told the driver.

I had almost a full day still ahead and it was time to get to work.

As we drove away I saw that my neighbor had gone back inside her safe little home. I was drawn to turn and look through the rear window at my house. It was the only place I had ever owned and I had never contemplated not living there. I realized that one killer had given it to me and another had taken it away.

We made the turn onto Sunset and I lost sight of it.

Carver worked his hunch on the computer while Stone gathered the things he wanted to take with him. Between searches Carver shredded the pages in Stone’s recycle box. He wanted to leave the FBI something that would keep its agents busy.

He stopped everything when the photo and story appeared on the screen. He scanned it quickly, then looked across the warehouse at Stone. He was throwing clothing into a black trash bag. He had no suitcase. Carver could tell he was working gingerly and was still in some pain.

“I was right,” Carver said. “She’s in L.A. ”