The Scarecrow

by Michael Connelly

  I thought about all of that for a few moments before asking the next question.

  “What else is the bureau doing?”

  “Well, we’re profiling Babbit and Oglevy. We know they fit into his program and we need to figure out where they intersect and where he came across them. We’re also still looking for his signature.”

  I sat up and wrote signature down in the notebook and then underlined it.

  “The signature is different from his program.”

  “Yes, Jack. The program is what he does with the victim. The signature is something he leaves behind to mark his turf. It’s the difference between a painting and the artist’s signature marking it as his work. You can tell a van Gogh just by looking at it. But he also signed his work. Only with these killers the signature is not so obvious. Most times we don’t see it until after. But if we could decipher the signature now, it might help lead us to him.”

  “Is that what they have you doing? Working on that?”

  “Yes.”

  But she had hesitated before answering.

  “Using your notes off my files?”

  “That’s right.”

  Now I hesitated, but not too long.

  “That’s a lie, Rachel. What is going on?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Because I have your notes right here, Rachel. When they finally cut me loose Thursday, I demanded that they give me all of my files and notes back. They gave me your notes, thinking they were mine. On your legal pad. I have them, Rachel, so why are you lying to me?”

  “Jack, I am not lying. So what if you have my notes, you think I can’t—”

  “Where are you? Right now. Where exactly are you? Tell me the truth.”

  She hesitated.

  “I’m in Washington.”

  “Shit, you’re zeroing in on See Jane Run, right? I’m coming up there.”

  “Not that Washington, Jack.”

  This totally puzzled me and then my internal computer spit out a new scenario. Rachel had parlayed uncovering the Unsub into a return to the job she wanted and was best suited for.

  “Are you working for Behavioral?”

  “I wish. I’m at Washington Headquarters for an OPR hearing Monday morning.”

  I knew that the OPR was the Office of Professional Responsibility, the bureau’s version of Internal Affairs.

  “You told them about us? They’re going after you for it?”

  “No, Jack, I didn’t tell them anything about that. It’s about the jet I took to Nellis on Wednesday. After you called me.”

  I jumped off the bed and started pacing again.

  “You have to be kidding me. What are they going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t it matter that you saved at least one life—mine—and in the process brought this killer to law enforcement attention? Do they know that they released a sixteen-year-old kid falsely accused of murder from jail yesterday because of you? Do they know an innocent man who has spent a year in a Nevada prison will get out soon? They should be giving you a medal, not a hearing.”

  There was silence and then she spoke.

  “And they should be giving you a raise instead of laying you off, Jack. Look, I appreciate what you are saying, but the reality is, I made some bad judgments and they seem more concerned about that and the money it cost than anything else.”

  “Jesus Christ! If they do one thing to you, Rachel, it’s going to be all over the front page. I will burn—”

  “Jack, I can take care of myself. You have to worry about yourself right now, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay. What time is the hearing Monday?”

  “It’s at nine.”

  I was going to alert Keisha, my ex-wife. I knew they wouldn’t let her into a closed-door personnel hearing, but if they knew a Times reporter was hovering outside, waiting on the results, they might think twice about what they did inside.

  “Jack, look, I know what you’re thinking. But I want you to just cool your jets and let me deal with this. It’s my job and my hearing. Okay?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to just sit back when they are fucking with somebody… somebody I care about.”

  “Thank you, Jack, but if that is how you really feel about me, then I need you to stand down on this one. I’ll let you know what happens as soon as I know.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  I yanked open the curtain again and a blast of sunlight entered the room.

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you. Are you going to your house? If you really want it, I can get somebody to meet you there.”

  “Nah, I’ll be all right. I was just making a play for you. I want to see you. But if you’re not even in town… When did you get there, anyway?”

  “This morning on a red-eye. I tried to delay it so I could stay on the case. But that’s not the way the bureau works.”

  “Right.”

  “So I’m here and I’m meeting with my defense rep to go over everything. In fact, he’s going to be here any minute and I need to put some stuff together.”

  “Fine. I’ll let you go. Where are you going to be staying?”

  “The Hotel Monaco on F Street.”

  We ended the call after that. I stood at the window, looking out but not seeing what was there. I was thinking about Rachel fighting for her job and the one thing that seemed to keep her tethered to the world.

  I realized she wasn’t that much different from me.

  NINE: The Dark of Dreams

  Carver watched the home in Scottsdale from the darkness of his car. It was too early to make his move. He would wait and watch until he was sure it was safe. This didn’t bother him. He enjoyed being alone and in the dark. It was his place. He had his music on the iPod and the Lizard King had kept him company his whole life.

  I’m a changeling, see me change. I’m a changeling, see me change.

  It had always been his anthem, a song to set his life by. He turned the volume up and closed his eyes. He reached his hand down to the side of the seat and pushed the button that reclined him further.

  The music transported him back. Past all the memories and nightmares. Back to the dressing room with Alma. She was supposed to be watching him but she had her hands full with the thread and needlework. She couldn’t watch him all the time and it wasn’t fair to expect it. There were house rules about mothers and children. The mother was ultimately responsible, even while onstage.

  Young Wesley made his move, slipping through the beaded curtains as quiet as a mouse. He was so small he only disturbed five or six strands. He then went down the hall past the foul-smelling bathroom to where the flashing lights emanated from.

  He made the turn and there was Mr. Grable in his tuxedo, sitting on a stool. He was holding the microphone, waiting for the song to end.

  The music was loud at this end of the hall, but not so loud that Wesley didn’t hear the cheers—and some of the jeers. He crept up behind Mr. Grable and looked out between the legs of the stool. The stage was splashed with harsh white light. He saw her then. Naked in front of all the men. The music pulsing through him.

  Girl, you gotta love your man…

  She moved perfectly with the music. As if it had been written and recorded just for her. He watched and felt entranced. He didn’t want the music to stop. It was perfect. She was perfect and he—

  He was suddenly grabbed from behind by the back of his T-shirt’s collar and yanked backward down the hall. He managed to look up and see it was Alma.

  “You are a very bad little boy!” she scolded.

  “No,” he cried. “I wanna see my—”

  “Not now, you don’t!”

  She dragged him back through the beads and into the dressing room. She pushed him down onto the pile of feather boas and silk scarves.

  “You are in big troub—What is that?”

  She was pointing at him, finger aimed low. At the place whe
re he felt strange feelings begin from.

  “I’m a good boy,” he said.

  “Not with that, you aren’t,” Alma said. “Let’s see what you’ve got there.”

  She reached down and put her hand under his belt. She started to pull his pants down.

  “You little pervert,” Alma said. “I’m going to show you what we do with perverts around here.”

  Wesley was frozen in terror. That word she called him. He didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t know what to do.

  The sharp knock of metal on glass cut through the music and the dream. Carver jumped up in his seat. Momentarily disoriented, he looked around, realized where he was, and pulled the buds out of his ears.

  He looked out the window, and there was McGinnis, standing in the street. He was holding a leash that led down to the collar on a little pip-squeak dog. Carver saw the fat Notre Dame ring on his finger. He must have hit the window with it to get his attention.

  Carver lowered the window. At the same time, he used his foot to make sure the gun he’d placed on the floor was out of sight.

  “Wesley, what are you doing here?”

  The dog started yapping before Carver could answer, and McGinnis shushed it.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Carver said.

  “Then, why didn’t you come up to the house?”

  “Because I also have to show you something.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Get in and I’ll take you.”

  “Take me where? It’s almost midnight. I don’t under—”

  “It has to do with that visit from the FBI the other day. I think I know who they’re looking for.”

  McGinnis took a step forward to look in closely at Carver.

  “Wesley, what’s going on? What do you mean ‘who they’re looking for’?”

  “Just get in and I’ll explain it on the way.”

  “What about my dog?”

  “You can bring it. We won’t be long.”

  McGinnis shook his head like he was annoyed with the whole thing but then walked around to get into the car. Carver leaned forward and quickly grabbed the gun off the floor and put it into the rear waistband of his pants. He’d have to live with the discomfort.

  McGinnis put the dog in the backseat and then got into the front.

  “It’s a she,” he said.

  “What?” Carver asked.

  “The dog’s a she, not an it.”

  “Whatever. She won’t pee in my car, will she?”

  “Don’t worry. She just went.”

  “Good.”

  Carver started driving out of the neighborhood.

  “Is your house locked?” he asked.

  “Yes, I lock up when we go on walks. You never know with the neighborhood kids. They all know I live alone.”

  “That’s smart.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To where Freddy Stone lives.”

  “Okay, so now tell me what is going on and what it has to do with the FBI.”

  “I told you. I have to show you.”

  “Then tell me what you’re going to show me. Have you talked to Stone? Did you ask him where the hell he’s been?”

  Carver shook his head.

  “No, I haven’t talked to him. That’s why I went to his place tonight, to try to catch him. He wasn’t there but I found something else. The website the FBI was asking about. He’s the guy behind it.”

  “So as soon as he hears that the FBI came by with a warrant, he takes a hike.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “We need to call the FBI, Wesley. We can’t look like we were protecting this guy, no matter what he was into.”

  “But it could hurt the business if it blows up in the media. It could bring us down.”

  McGinnis shook his head.

  “We’ll just have to take our lumps,” he said emphatically. “Covering it up will never work.”

  “All right. We go to his place first and then we call the FBI. Do you remember the names of those two agents?”

  “I have their cards at the office. One was named Bantam. I remember it because he was a big guy but his name was Bantam, like the bantamweight class in boxing, which is the small guys.”

  “Right. Now I remember.”

  The lights of the tall buildings in downtown Phoenix spread out before them on both sides of the freeway. Carver stopped talking and McGinnis did likewise. The dog was sleeping on the backseat of the car.

  Carver’s mind wandered back to the memory the music had conjured earlier. He wondered what had made him go down the hallway to look. He knew the answer was tangled down deep in his darkest roots. In a place no one could go.

  TEN: Live at Five

  I never left my hotel room Saturday, even when some of the reporters on the weekend shift called and invited me over to the Red Wind for cocktails after work. They were celebrating another day on the front page with the story. The latest report being on Alonzo Winslow’s first day of freedom and an update on the growing search for the trunk murder suspect. I didn’t feel much like celebrating a story that was no longer mine. I also didn’t go to the Red Wind anymore. They used to put the front pages of the A section, Metro and Sports over the urinals in the men’s restroom. Now they had flat-screen plasma TVs tuned to Fox and CNN and Bloomberg. Each screen adding insult to injury, a reminder that our business was dying.

  Instead I stayed in Saturday night and started working my way through the files, using Rachel’s notes as a blueprint. With her in Washington and off the case, I felt uncomfortable leaving the profiling to nameless, faceless agents on the task force or as far away as Quantico. This was my story and I was going to keep out in front on it.

  I worked late into the night, pulling together the details of two dead women’s lives, looking for the commonality Rachel was sure was there. They were women from two different hometowns who had migrated to two different cities in two different states. As far as I could tell, they had never crossed paths, except on the outside chance that Denise Babbit had gone to Las Vegas and happened to catch the Femmes Fatales show at the Cleopatra.

  Could that be the connection between their murders? It seemed far-fetched.

  I finally exhausted that pursuit and decided to approach things from a completely different angle. The killer’s angle. On a fresh sheet of Rachel’s notebook paper, I started listing all the things the Unsub would have needed to know in order to accomplish each murder in terms of method, timing and location. This proved to be a daunting task and by midnight I was spent. I fell asleep in my clothes on top of the bedspread, the files and my notes all around me.

  The four A.M. call from the front desk was jarring, but it saved me from my recurring dream of Angela.

  “Hello,” I croaked into the phone.

  “Mr. McEvoy, your limo is here.”

  “My limo?”

  “He said he was from CNN.”

  I had totally forgotten. It had been set up by the Times’ media relations office on Friday. I was supposed to go live to the nation on a weekend show that ran from eight to ten on Sunday mornings. The problem with that was, it was eight to ten East Coast time, five to seven West Coast time. On Friday the show’s producer had been unclear where in the show they would go to me. So I had to be ready to go live at five.

  “Tell him I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  I actually took fifteen, dragging myself into the shower, shaving and getting dressed in the last unwrinkled shirt I had in the room. The driver didn’t seem concerned and drove at a leisurely pace toward Hollywood. There was no traffic and we were making good time.

  The car wasn’t actually a limo. It was a Lincoln Town Car sedan. A year earlier I had written a series of stories about a lawyer who worked out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car while a client who was working off his fees drove him around. Sitting in the backseat now on the way to CNN, I got to like it. It was a good way to see L.A.

  The CNN building was on Sun
set Boulevard not far from the Hollywood police station. After passing through a security checkpoint in the lobby I went up to the studio where I was slated to be remotely interviewed from Atlanta for the weekend edition of a show called CNN Newsroom. I was led by a young person to the greenroom, and I found Wanda Sessums and Alonzo Winslow already there. For some reason I was shocked by the idea that they could have gotten up so early and beaten me—the professional journalist—to the studio.

  Wanda looked at me like I was a stranger. Alonzo barely had his eyes open.

  “Wanda, you remember me? I’m Jack McEvoy, the reporter? I came to see you last Monday.”

  She nodded and clicked an ill-fitting pair of dentures in her mouth. She had not worn them when I visited her at home.

  “That’s right. You the one who put all the lies in the paper about my Zo.”

  This statement perked Alonzo up.

  “Well, he’s out now, right?” I said quickly.

  I stepped over and offered my hand to her grandson. He hesitantly took it and we shook but he seemed confused by who I was.

  “Glad to meet you finally, Alonzo, and glad you’re out. I’m Jack. I’m the reporter who talked to your grandmother and started the investigation that led to your release.”

  “My grandmother? Motherfucker, what you talking about?”

  “He don’t know what he talkin’,” Wanda said quickly.

  I suddenly understood the error of my ways. Wanda was his grandmother but had been playing his mother—Moms—because his real mother was on the street. He probably thought his real mother was his sister, if he knew her at all.

  “Sorry, I got confused,” I said. “Anyway, I think we are being interviewed together.”

  “Why the fuck you bein’ interviewed?” Alonzo asked. “I’m the one spent the motherfuckin’ time in jail.”

  “I think it’s because I’m the one who got you out.”

  “Yeah, that funny. Mr. Meyer say he the one that got me out.”

  “Our lawyer got him out,” Wanda chimed in.

  “Then how come your lawyer isn’t here and going on CNN?”

  “He coming.”

  I nodded. This was news to me. When I left work Friday it was going to be just Alonzo and me on the show. Now we had Moms and Meyer aboard. I decided this was not going to go well on live broadcast. Too many people and at least one of them the broadcast censors would have issues with. I went over to a table where there was a coffee urn and poured a cup. I took it black. I then reached into a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and chose an Original Glazed. I tried to keep to myself and watch the overhead television, which was tuned to CNN and would soon be broadcasting the newsmagazine show we were scheduled to appear on. After a while a technician came in and wired us for sound, clipping a microphone to our collars and putting an audio feed earpiece into our ears and hiding all wires under our shirts.