The Narrows

CHAPTER 20

THE THREE AGENTS WERE Still talking about Bosch when the helicopter lifted off the desert floor and they began the forty-minute journey back to Las Vegas. The three agents wore headphones so they could communicate with each other despite the noise of the rotor wash. Dei clearly remained annoyed with the private detective and Rachel thought that maybe Cherie felt that somehow Bosch had gotten something over on her. Rachel remained amused. She knew they hadn't seen the last of Bosch. He had seen-it-all-twice eyes, and that nod at the end told her he wasn't going to just fold up his tent and go home.

"What about the triangle theory?" Dei said.

Rachel waited for Zigo to go first but as usual he said nothing.

"I think Terry was probably onto something," she said. "Somebody should go to work on it."

"At the moment I don't know if we have the bodies to chase all of this stuff. I'll ask Brass if she's got anybody. And this William Bing-that name hasn't come up before."

"My guess is that he is a doctor. Terry was coming over here and probably wanted to have a name in case something went wrong."

"Rachel, when we get back, can you just run that down? I know what Alpert said, you're an observer and all, but if that's just a loose end, then it will be good to nail it down."

"No problem. I can do it from my hotel room if you don't want him seeing me working a phone."

"No, stay in the FO. If Alpert doesn't see you he'll start wondering what you're up to."

Dei, who was in the front passenger seat, turned and looked back at Rachel, who was behind the pilot's seat.

"What was with you two, anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. You and Bosch. All the looks, the smiles. 'I hope you are taking appropriate precautions.' What's going on with that, Rachel?"

"Look, he's outnumbered here, okay? It's natural that he'd pick one of us to play to. It's covered in the manual on interview techniques and tendencies. Check it out sometime."

"And what about you? Are you playing to him? Is that in the manual, too?"

Rachel shook her head as if to dismiss the whole discussion.

"I just like his style. He acts like he still has the badge, you know? He didn't stand down to us and I think that's sort of cool."

"You've been out in the boonies too long, Rachel, or you wouldn't say that. We don't like people who won't stand down to us."

"Maybe I have."

"So does that mean you think he's going to be a problem?"

"Definitely," said Zigo.

"Probably," added Rachel.

Dei shook her head.

"I don't have the people for all of this. I can't spend my time watching this guy."

"You want me to keep tabs on him?" Rachel asked.

"You volunteering?"

"I'm looking for something to do. So, yeah, I'm volunteering."

"You know, before nine-eleven and Homeland Security, we used to get whatever we needed. Bagging serials were the best headlines the bureau got. Now it's terrorists twenty-four-seven and we can't even get overtime."

Rachel noted how Dei pointedly did not say whether she wanted her to check up on Bosch or not. A nice way to have deniability if something went wrong. She decided that once back at the field office she would get Dei alone and get her to run a check on whether Bosch really had a home in Las Vegas. She'd try to find out what he was up to and keep a loose watch on him.

She looked out her window and down at the black asphalt ribbon that cut through the desert. They were following it back to the city. At that same moment she saw a black Mercedes-Benz SUV heading in the same direction. It was dirty from off-roading in the desert. She knew it was Bosch making his way to Vegas. Then she noticed the drawing on the roof of the Mercedes. He had used a rag or something to draw a happy face in the white dust on the roof. The drawing made her smile, too.

Dei's voice came in through the earphones.

"What is it, Rachel? What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing. I'm just thinking about something."

"Yeah, I wish I could smile knowing that there might be a psycho-agent out there waiting to put a plastic bag over my head."

Rachel looked at Dei, annoyed by such a snide and brutal remark. Dei apparently saw something in her eyes.

"Sorry. I just think you better start taking this more seriously."

Rachel looked at her until Dei had to look away.

"You really think I'm not serious about this?"

"I know you are. I shouldn't have said anything."

Rachel looked back down at the I-15 freeway. They were long past the black Mercedes. Bosch was gone, far behind them.

She studied the terrain for a while. It was all so different yet all the same. A moonscape carpet of rock and sand. She knew it was full of life but all life was hidden. The predators were underground, waiting to come out at night.

"Ladies and gentlemen?" the pilot's voice said in her ear. "Switch to channel three. You've got an incoming call."

Rachel had to take her headset off to figure out how to change the frequency. She thought that the headset had a stupid design. When she put the set back on she heard Brass Doran's voice. She was talking rapid-fire the way Rachel remembered she always did whenever something big came up.

"-cent integrity. It definitely came from him."

"What?" Rachel said. "I didn't hear any of that."

"Brass," Dei said, "start again."

"I said we got a match from the bite mark database. With the gum. It's got ninety-five percent integrity, which is one of the highest matches I've ever seen."

"Who?" Rachel asked.

"Rach, you are going to love this. Ted Bundy. That gum was chewed by Ted Bundy."

"That's impossible," Dei said. "First of all, Bundy's been dead for years, long before any of these men went missing. And he was never known to have gotten to Nevada or California or to have targeted men. Something's wrong with the data, Brass. It's a bad read or-"

"We ran it twice. Both times it came up Bundy."

"No," Rachel said. "It's right."

Dei turned and looked back at her. Rachel was thinking about Bundy. The ultimate serial killer. Handsome, smart and vicious. He was a biter, too. He had been the only one to really give her the creeps. The others she just felt a loathing and disgust for.

"How do you know it's right, Rachel?"

"I just know. Twenty-five years ago Backus helped set up the VICAP database. Brass remembers. Over the next eight years the data was collected. Agents from the unit were sent out to interview every serial killer and rapist who was incarcerated in the country. That was before I was there but even later, when I was there, we kept doing interviews and adding to the base. Bundy was in- terviewed several times, mostly by Bob. Right before his execution he called Bob down to Raiford and Bob took me with him. We spent three days interviewing him. I remember that Ted kept borrowing gum from Bob. It was Juicy Fruit. That's what Bob chewed."

"Then what, he'd spit it back into Bob's hand?" Zigo asked incredulously.

"No, he'd throw it in the trash can. We interviewed him in the death house captain's office. There was a trash can. When we were done each day, Bundy was led out. There were many points when Bob was alone in that office. He could have just taken the gum out of the can."

"So you're saying Bob more or less went Dumpster diving for Ted Bundy's gum and then held on to it so he could put it in a grave all these years later?"

"I'm saying he took the gum out of that prison, knowing it had Bundy's teeth marks in it. Maybe it was just a souvenir then. But it became something else later. Something maybe to taunt us with."

"And where'd he.been keeping it, in the fridge?"

"Maybe. That's where I'd keep it."

Dei turned back around in her seat.

"What do you think, Brass?" she asked.

"I think I should've thought of it myself. I think Rachel is onto something. I think Bob and Ted actually got along. He went down there several times to talk to him. Sometimes alone. He could have gotten the gum any one of those times."

Rachel watched Dei nod her head in agreement.

Zigo cleared his throat and spoke.

"So this was just another way of him coming out and telling us he did this and how smart he was about it. To taunt us. First the GPS with the prints and now the gum."

"That's what I would say," Doran agreed.

It wasn't that simple, Rachel knew. She unconsciously shook her head and Zigo, sitting next to her, picked up on it.

"You disagree, Agent Walling?"

She noted that Zigo must have attended the Randal Alpert school of building relations among fellow colleagues.

"I just don't think it is as simple as that. You are looking at it from the wrong angle. Remember, the GPS and his prints came to us first but that gum was in that grave first. He might have intended for the gum to be found first. Before there was any direct connection to him."

"If that was the case, what was he doing?" Dei asked.

"I don't know. I don't have the answer. I'm just saying, don't assume at this point we know what the plan or even the sequence was supposed to be."

"Rachel, you know we always keep an open mind on things. We take things as they come and never stop looking from all angles."

That sounded like a line taped to the wall in the public information office in Quantico, where agents always had pithy policy and procedure statements to deliver over the phone to reporters. Rachel decided to step back from tangling with Dei on this. She had to be careful not to outstay her welcome and she sensed she was nearing that point with her former student.

"Yes, I know," she said. "Okay, Brass, anything else new?" Dei asked.

"That was it. That was enough."

"Okay. Then we'll talk to you at the next one."

Meaning the next conference room case session. Doran said good-bye and broke off and then the onboard communication link remained silent as the helicopter crossed the dividing line between the harsh undeveloped landscape and the beginning of the sprawl of Las Vegas. As Rachel looked down she knew it was merely a trading of one form of a desert for another. Down there, beneath all the barrel tile and gravel roofs, predators still waited to come out at night. To find their victims.