The Narrows

CHAPTER 30

At 8 that morning I was in my Mercedes in front of the lobby entrance of the Embassy Suites on Paradise Road. I had two large Starbucks coffees in the cup holders and a bag of doughnuts. I was freshly showered and shaved. I had changed the clothes I slept in. I had gassed up the car and maxed out my withdrawal limit at the station's ATM. I was ready for a day in the desert but Rachel Walling did not come out through the glass doors. After waiting five minutes I was about to call her when my phone rang first. It was her.

"Give me five minutes."

"Where are you?"

"I had to go into the FO for a meeting. I'm driving back now."

"What meeting?"

"I'll tell you when I see you. I'm on Paradise now."

"All right."

I closed the phone and waited, looking at the billboard on the back of a cab that was waiting in front of me. It was an advertisement for a floor show at the Riviera. It showed the beautifully proportioned rear ends of a dozen women standing side by side and naked. It made me think about the changing nature of Vegas and what had been mentioned in the Times article on the missing men. I thought about all the people who had moved here on the family ticket only to have that ticket punched with this and a thousand other billboards just like it after they got here.

A basic G-car-a Crown Victoria-pulled up next to me from the opposite direction and Rachel put down the window.

"You want me to drive?"

"I want to drive," I said, thinking it would give me a little slice of control over things.

She made no argument. She pulled the Crown Vic into a parking space and got into my car.

I didn't move the Mercedes.

"Are you going to drink both of those coffees?" she asked me.

"No, one's for you. Sugar's in the bag. They didn't have cream to go."

"I don't use it."

She lifted one of the coffees and drank from it. I looked forward, out through the windshield, then I checked the rearview. And I waited.

"Well," she finally said, "are we going?"

"I don't know. I think we need to talk first."

"About what?"

"About what is going on."

"What do you mean?" "What were you doing at the field office so early? What's going on, Agent Walling?"

She let out her breath in annoyance.

"Look, Harry, you are forgetting something here. This investigation is of high importance to the bureau. You could say the director is directly involved."

"And?"

"And so when he wants a ten a.m. briefing, that means us agents in Quantico and out in the field get together at nine a.m. to make sure we know what we're telling him and that there's not going to be blowback on anybody."

I nodded. Now I got it.

"And nine a.m. in Quantico is six a.m. in Vegas."

"You got it."

"So what happened at the ten? What did you all tell the director?"

"That's FBI business."

I looked at her and she was waiting with a smile.

"But I will tell you because you are about to tell me all of your secrets, too. The director is going to go public. It's too risky not to. It will look like a cover-up if this comes out later in uncontrolled fashion. It's all about managing the moment, Harry."

I put the car in drive and headed toward the parking lot exit. I had already plotted my route. I'd take Flamingo to the 15 and then a quick jog over to the Blue Diamond Highway. Then it would be a straight shot north to Clear.

"What's he going to say?"

"He'll hold a press conference late this afternoon. He'll announce that Backus is apparently alive and we're out looking for him. He'll hold up the picture Terry McCaleb took of the man who called himself Shandy."

"Did they check all of that out yet?"

"Yes. There's no trace line on Shandy yet-it was probably just a name he gave Terry. But photographic analysis and comparison of the photos Terry took and photos of Backus are under way as we speak. The initial report is they're going to come in as a match. It was Backus."

"And Terry didn't recognize him."

"Well, he obviously recognized something. He took the pictures, so there was some sort of suspicion. But the guy had a beard, hat and glasses. The analyst on it said he'd also changed his nose and teeth and maybe had cheek implants. There's a lot of things he could have done, even a surgery that would have changed his voice. Look, I looked at the photos and didn't see it for sure and I worked directly with Backus for five years, much longer than Terry. Terry got moved out to L.A. to man the Behavioral Sciences outpost."

"Any idea where he got all of that done?"

"We're pretty sure we know. About six years ago the bodies of a surgeon and bis wife were found in their burned-out home in Prague. The home had a surgical suite and the doctor was the subject of an Interpol intelligence file. The wife was his nurse. He was suspected of being a face man-a surgeon who would change your face for a certain price. The theory was that someone he changed murdered him and his wife to cover the trail. All records he might have kept on the faces he changed were lost in the fire. It was ruled an arson." "What connected Backus to him?"

"Nothing for sure. But as you can imagine, everything Backus did or touched as an agent was gone over once he was revealed. His entire case history was audited as much as possible. He did a lot of consulting on cases abroad. Part of the FBI image machine. He went to places like Poland, Yugoslavia, Italy, France, you name it."

"He went to Prague?"

She nodded.

"He went to Prague on a case. To consult. Young women disappearing and ending up in the river. Prostitutes. The doctor-the face man-was questioned in the investigation because he did the breast augmentations on three of the victims. Backus was there. He helped question the doctor."

"And he could have been told about the doctor's suspected sideline."

"Exactly. We think he knew and we think he went there to change his face."

"That wouldn't have been easy. His real face was on the front of every newspaper and magazine back then."

"Look, Bob Backus is a psychopathic killer but he is a very smart psychopath. Outside of the made-up guys in books and movies, nobody's ever been smarter at this. Not even Bundy. We have to assume that he had an escape plan all along. From day one. When I put him out that window eight years ago, you better believe he already had a plan in place. I'm talking about money, IDs, whatever he would need to reinvent himself and get away. He probably carried it with him. We assume from L.A. he made his way back east first and then split to Europe." "He burned down his condo," I said.

"Right, we give him credit for that, which puts him in Virginia three weeks after I shot him in L.A. That was a shrewd move. He torched the place and then got to Europe, where he could lie low for a while, change his face and then start again."

" Amsterdam."

She nodded.

"The first killing in Amsterdam occurred seven months after the face man burned in Prague."

I nodded. It all seemed to fit together. Then I thought of something else.

"How is the director going to announce the surprise that Backus is alive when four years ago you had Amsterdam?"

"He's got all kinds of deniability on that. First and most important, that was another director's watch. So he can lay anything he needs to off on him. That's FBI tradition. But realistically, that was another country and it wasn't an investigation we were running. And it was never absolutely confirmed. We had handwriting analysis, but that was really it and that is not in the same league as fingerprinting or DNA when it comes to confirming. So the director can simply say nothing was for sure about Backus in Amsterdam. Either way he's safe. He just has to worry about the here and the now."

"Manage the moment."

"FBI one-oh-one."

"And you people are going along with his going public?"

"No. We asked for a week. He gave us the day. The press conference is at six p.m. eastern time." "Like anything's going to happen today."

"Yeah, we know. We're fucked."

"Backus will probably go under, change his face again and not turn up for another four years."

"Probably. But the director won't get hit with any blowback on it. He'll be safe."

We were silent for a few moments thinking about that. I could understand the director's decision but it certainly helped him more than it helped the investigation.

We were on the 15 and I was pulling into the exit lane for the Blue Diamond Highway.

"What happened at the nine a.m., before the director's meeting?"

"The usual round-robin. Updates from every agent."

"And?"

"And there's not a lot that is new. A few things. We talked about you mostly. I'm counting on you, Harry."

"For what?"

"For a new lead here. Where are we going?"

"Do they know we're riding together, or are you still supposed to be watching me as in watching me."

"I think they would prefer the latter-in fact, I know they would. But that would be boring and besides, like I said, what are they going to do to me if they find out I'm riding with you, send me back to Minot? BFD, I got to like that place."

" Minot might not be a big fucking deal, but maybe they'll send you someplace else. Don't they have bureau offices in Guam and places like that?"

"Yes, but it's all relative. I heard Guam isn't that bad-a lot of terrorism angles, which is all the rage. And after eight years in Minot and Rapid City, a change like that might not be bad no matter what the investigations are about."

"What was said about me at the meeting?"

"It was mostly me, since you are my assignment. I told them I ran a check through the L.A. field office and got your pedigree. I gave them that and told them you went behind the wall last year."

"What do you mean, that I retired?"

"No, Homeland Security. You ran afoul of them, went behind the wall and came back out again. That impressed Cherie Dei. Made her more willing to let you run a little."

"I had been wondering about that."

Actually, I had been wondering why Agent Dei had not simply put the clamps on me.

"What about Terry McCaleb's notes?" I asked.

"What about them?"

"Better minds than mine must have gone to work on them. What did they come up with? What was their take on the triangle theory?"

"It is an established pattern with serials that they commit what we call 'triangle crimes.' We see it often. That is, the victim can be traced through three points of a triangle. There is their point of origin or entry-then-home or in this case the airport. Then there is what we call the point of prey-the place where killer and victim come into contact, where they crisscross. And then there is the point of disposal. With serials the three points are never the same because it is the best way for them to avoid detection. That is what Terry saw when he read mat newspaper story. He circled it because the Metro guy was going the wrong way with it. He wasn't thinking triangle, he was thinking circle."

"So is the bureau working on the triangle now?"

"Of course they are. But some things take time. Right now there is a higher emphasis on crime scene analysis. But we've got somebody in Quantico working the triangle. The FBI is effective but sometimes slow, Harry. I am sure you know this."

"Sure."

"It's a tortoise-and-hare race. We're the tortoise, you're the hare."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're moving faster than us, Harry. Something tells me you figured out the triangle theory and are taking a shot at the missing point. The point of prey."

I nodded. Whether I was being used or not didn't matter. They were allowing me to stay in the hunt and that was what was important to me.

"You start with the airport and you end with Zzyzx. That leaves one more point-the intersection of predator and prey-and I think I've got it. We're going there."

"Then tell me."

"First tell me one more thing about McCaleb's notes."

"I think I already told you everything. They're still being analyzed."

"William Bing, who is that?"

She hesitated but only for a moment.

"That's a no-go, a dead end."

"How so?"

"William Bing is a heart transplant patient who was in Vegas Memorial getting a checkup and some tests. We think Terry knew him and when he was over here he visited him in the hospital."

"Did you people talk to Bing yet?"

"Not yet. We're trying to track him."

"Seems odd."

"What, that he would visit a guy?"

"No, not that. I mean that he would write that on the file if it wasn't connected to the case."

"Terry wrote stuff down. It's pretty obvious from all his files and notebooks that he wrote stuff down. If he was coming over here to work on this, then maybe he wrote Bing's name and the hospital number down on the file so he wouldn't forget to visit or call him. Could be a lot of reasons."

I didn't respond. I still had trouble seeing it.

"How did he know the guy?"

"We don't know. Maybe the movie. Terry got hundreds of letters from transplant people after that movie came out. He was sort of a hero to a lot of people in the same boat as he was."

As we headed north on Blue Diamond I saw a sign for the Travel America truck stop and remembered the receipt I had found in Terry McCaleb's car. I pulled in, even though I had gassed up the Mercedes after leaving Eleanor's house that morning. I stopped the car and just looked at the travel complex.

"What is it? You need gas?"

"No, we're fine. It's just that… McCaleb was here."

"What is this? You getting a psychic reading or something?"

"No, I found a receipt in his car. I wonder if this means he went up to Clear." 'To clear what?"

"No, the town of Clear. That's where we're going."

"Well, we might never know unless we get up there and ask some questions."

I nodded and pulled the car back onto Blue Diamond and started north again. Along the way I told Rachel my theory of the theory. That is, my take on McCaleb's triangle and how Clear fit into it. I could tell that my telling it drew her interest. She may have even been excited about it. She agreed with my take on the victims and how and why they may have been chosen. She agreed that it appeared to mirror the victimology-her word-in Amsterdam.

We brainstormed for an hour on it and then grew quiet as we started to get close. The barren, rugged landscape was giving way to outposts of humanity and we began to see billboards advertising the brothels that waited just ahead.

"Have you ever been to one of these?" Rachel asked me.

"No."

I thought about the steam-and-cream tents in Vietnam but didn't bring them up.

"I didn't mean like as a customer. But as a cop."

"Still no. But I tracked a few people through them. And by that I mean by credit cards and other means. We're not going to find the people here overly cooperative. At least I never did by phone. And calling in a local sheriff is a joke. The state collects taxes from these joints. A big chunk of it goes back to the home county."

"I get it. So how do we handle it?" Almost smiling because she had used the word we, I threw the question back at her.

"I don't know," she said. "I guess we just go in through the front door."

Meaning we play it straight and just go in and ask our questions. I wasn't sure it was the right way to go but she had a badge and I didn't.

We cleared the town of Pahrump and in another 10 miles came to an intersection where a sign with clear on it and an arrow to the left was posted. I turned and the asphalt soon gave way to a crushed rock road that kicked up a flume of dust behind my car. The town of Clear could see us coming from a mile away.

That is, if it was looking for us. But the town of Clear, Nevada, turned out to be little more than a trailer park. The gravel road led us to another intersection and another sign with an arrow. We turned north again and soon came to a clearing where an old trailer sat with rust dripping from its rivets. A sign running along the top edge of the trailer said, welcome to clear, sports bar open, rooms for rent. There were no cars parked in the clearing in front of the bar.

I drove on past the welcome wagon, and the new road curved into a neighborhood of trailer homes baking like beer cans in the sun. Few were in better shape than the welcome wagon. Eventually, we came to a permanent structure that appeared to be a town hall as well as the location of the spring the town was named for. We kept going and were rewarded by another arrow on another sign, this one reading simply brothels.

Nevada licenses over thirty brothels across die state. In these places prostitution is legal, controlled and mon- itored. We found three of those state-licensed businesses at the end of the road in Clear. The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies.

"Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "Why are these places always named after women-as if women actually own them?"

"You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys."

Rachel smiled.

"You're right. I guess it's a shrewd move. Name a place of female degradation and slavery after a female and it doesn't sound so bad, does it? It's packaging."

"Slavery? Last I heard these women were volunteers. Some of them are supposedly housewives who come up from Vegas."

"If you believe that, then you are naive, Bosch. Just because you can come and go doesn't mean you're not a slave."

I nodded thoughtfully, not wanting to get into a debate with her about this subject because I knew it would bring me back to examining and questioning things in my own past.

Rachel apparently wanted to drop it there, too.

"So which one do you want to start with?" she asked.

I pulled the car to a stop in front of Tawny's High Five Ranch. It didn't look like much of a ranch. It was a conglomeration of three or four trailers that were connected by covered walkways. I looked to my left and saw that Sheila's Front Porch was of similar design and configuration and it had no front porch. Miss Delilah's to my right was the same and I got the distinct impression that the three seemingly separate brothels were not competitors but rather branches of the same tree.

"I don't know," I said. "Looks like eenie, meenie, minie, moe to me."

Rachel cracked her door open.

"Wait a second," I said. "I've got this."

I handed her the file of photos Buddy Lockridge had brought to Vegas the day before. Rachel opened it and saw the front and side shots of the man known as Shandy but presumed to be Robert Backus.

"I'm not going to even ask where you got these."

"Fine. But you carry them. It will have more weight coming from you, since you've got the badge."

"For the moment, at least."

"Did you bring the photos of the missing men?"

"Yes, I've got them."

"Good."

She took the file and got out of the car. I did likewise. We both walked around to the front of the car, where we stopped for a moment and surveyed the three brothels again. There were a few cars parked in front of each. There were also four flat-head Harleys lined up like a row of mean chrome in front of Miss Delilah's House of Holies. Air-brushed on the gas tank of one of the bikes was a skull smoking a joint with a smoke ring forming a halo above it.

"Let's take Delilah's last," I said. "Maybe we'll get lucky before we need to go there."

"The bikes?" "Yeah, the bikes. They're Road Saints. I say let sleeping dogs lie."

"Good enough for me."

Leading the way, Rachel marched toward the front door of Sheila's. She didn't wait for me because she knew I would be following in her wake.