Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

“Thank you.”

I turned away from the alley to face her.

“So what’s happening right now? What about the other locations Bantam mentioned?”

“We also have agents at Western Data and at the home of Declan McGinnis in Scottsdale.”

“And what’s McGinnis have to say for himself?”

“Nothing so far. We haven’t found him.”

“He’s missing?”

She shrugged.

“We’re not sure whether he’s voluntarily or involuntarily missing, but he’s gone. And so is his dog. It’s possible that he did some investigating on his own after the agents visited Friday. He might have gotten too close to Stone, and Stone reacted. There’s another possibility, too.”

“That they were in it together?”

She nodded.

“Yes, a team. McGinnis and Stone. And wherever they are, they’re together.”

I thought about it and knew it was not without precedent. The Hillside Strangler turned out to be two cousins. And there were other serial killer teams before and after. Bittaker and Norris came to mind. Two of the most heinous sex killers to ever walk the planet somehow found each other and became a team in California. They tape-recorded their torture sessions. A cop once gave me a copy of one such session that took place in the back of a van. After the first scream of panic and pain, I turned the thing off.

“You see, Jack? This is why we need time before the media fire-storm. Both men had laptops and they took those with them. But they also had computers at Western Data and we have them. We’ve got an EER team coming in from Quantico. They’ll be on the ground by-”

“Ear?”

“ E-E-R. Electronic Evidence Retrieval team. They’re in the air now. We’ll put them on the system at Western Data and see what we can learn. And remember what we already learned today. That place is wired for sight and sound. The archived recordings should be able to help us as well.”

I nodded. I was still thinking about McGinnis and Stone working together as a tag team of murderers.

“What do you think?” I asked Rachel. “You think it’s one Unsub or two?”

“I’m not ready to say for sure yet. But I think we’re talking about a team here.”

“Why?”

“You know the scenario we spun the other night? Where the Unsub comes to L.A., lures Angela to your house, then kills her and flies to Vegas to follow you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the bureau checked every airline flying out of LAX and Burbank to Vegas that night. Only four passengers on the late flights bought tickets that night. Everybody else had reservations. Agents tracked and interviewed three of them and they were cleared. The fourth, of course, was you.”

“Okay, then he could have driven.”

She shook her head.

“He could have driven but why send the GO! package overnight if you were driving to Vegas. You see? Sending the package overnight only works if he was flying over and was going to pick it up, or if he was sending it to somebody.”

“His partner.”

I nodded and started pacing in a circle as I riffed on this new scenario. It all seemed to make sense.

“So Angela goes to the trap site and alerts them. They read her e-mail. They read my e-mail. And their response is that one goes to L.A. to take care of her and one goes to Vegas to take care of me.” “That’s how I’m seeing it.”

“Wait. What about her phone? You said the bureau traced the call the killer made to me on her phone to the airport in Vegas. How did the phone get to-”

“The GO! package. He sent your gun and her phone. They knew it would be a way of further tying you to her murder. After your suicide, the cops would find her phone in your room. Then when it didn’t work out as planned, Stone called you from the airport. Maybe he just wanted to chat, or maybe he knew it would help set the idea that there was one killer out there who had gone from L.A. to Vegas.”

“Stone? So you’re saying McGinnis went to L.A. for Angela, and Stone went to Vegas for me.”

She nodded.

“You said the man with sideburns was no older than thirty. Stone is twenty-six and McGinnis is forty-six. You can disguise appearance but one of the hardest things to do without being obvious about it is to disguise age. And it’s much harder to go younger than older. I’m betting your man with the sideburns was Stone.”

It made sense to me.

“There’s another thing that indicates we’re dealing with a team here,” Rachel said. “It was right in front of us the whole time.”

“What’s that?”

“A loose end from the Denise Babbit killing. She was put in the trunk of her own car and it was abandoned in South L.A., where Alonzo Winslow happened upon it.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So if the killer worked alone, how did he get out of South L.A. after he dropped off the car? We’re talking late at night in a predominantly black neighborhood. Did he take a bus or call a cab and wait on the curb? Rodia Gardens is about a mile from the nearest Metro stop. Did he just walk it, a white man in a black neighborhood in the middle of the night? I don’t think so. You don’t end a murder as well planned as this with that kind of getaway. None of those scenarios makes much sense.”

“So whoever dropped her car off had a ride out of there.”

“You got it.”

I nodded and went silent for a long moment while I thought of all the new information. Rachel finally interrupted.

“I’m going to have to get to work, Jack,” she said. “And you need to get on a plane.”

“What is your assignment? I mean, besides me.”

“I’m going to work with the EER team at Western Data. I need to get over there now to get things ready.”

“Did they shut that place down?”

“More or less. They sent everybody home except for a skeleton crew to keep systems operating and to help with the EER team. I think Carver in the bunker and O’Connor on the surface, maybe a few others.”

“This is going to put them out of business.”

“We can’t help that. Besides, if the CEO of that company and his young cohort were dipping into stored data to find victims for their shared kill dreams, then I think their customers are entitled to know that. What happens after that happens.”

I nodded.

“I guess so.”

“Jack, you gotta go. I told Bantam I could handle this. I wish I could hug you but now’s not the time. But I want you to be very careful. Get back to L.A. and be safe. Call me for anything and, obviously, call me if you hear from one of these men again.”

I nodded.

“I’m going back to the hotel to get my stuff. You want me to leave the room for you?”

“No, the bureau’s paying my way now. When you check out, can you just leave my bag with the front desk? I’ll check back in there later.”

“Okay, Rachel. And you be careful yourself.”

As I turned to head to my car, I slyly reached out and squeezed her wrist. I hoped the message was felt loud and clear; we were in this together.

Ten minutes later the warehouse was in my rearview mirror and I was on the way back to the Mesa Verde Inn. I was on hold with Southwest Airlines, waiting to book a flight back to L.A., but I could not concentrate on anything other than the idea that the Unsub was actually two killers acting in unison.

To me, the idea of two people meeting and acting on the same wavelength of sexual sadism and murder more than doubled the sense of dread such dark things conjured. I thought of the term Yolanda Chavez had used during the tour of Western Data. Dark fiber . Could there be anything as deep and dark in the fiber of one’s being as the desire to share such things as what had happened to Denise Babbit and the other victims? I didn’t think so and the thought of it chilled me to the center of my soul.