The Scarecrow

FIVE: The Farm

Carver had been busy all day routing and opening the final gateways that would allow for a test run of data transmission from Mercer and Gissal in St. Louis. It had consumed him and he had not made his appointed rounds until late in the day. He checked his traps and a charge shot through his chest when he saw he had caught something in one of his cages. The screen avatar displayed it as a fat gray rat running on a wheel inside the cage labeled TRUNK MURDER.

Using his mouse, Carver opened the cage and took out the rat. Its eyes were ruby red and its sharp teeth gleamed with ice-blue saliva. The animal wore a collar with a silver identity tag on it. He clicked on the tag and brought up the rat’s information. The date and time of the visit had occurred the night before, just after he had last checked his traps. A ten-digit Internet protocol address had been captured. The visit to his www.trunkmurder.com site had lasted only twelve seconds. But it was enough. It meant someone out there had plugged the words trunk murder into a search engine. Now he would try to find out who and why.

Two minutes later Carver’s breath caught in his throat as he followed the IP-a basic computer address-back to an Internet service provider. There was good and bad news. The good news: it wasn’t a huge provider like Yahoo, which had traffic gateways all over the world and was time-consuming as hell to trace. The bad news: it was a small private provider with the domain name of LATimes.com.

The Los Angeles Times, he thought, as something inside clutched his chest. A reporter from Los Angeles had gone to his trunk murder website. Carver leaned back in his chair and thought about how he should approach this. He had the IP address but no name to go with it. He couldn’t even be sure it was a reporter who had made the visit. A lot of non-reporters work at newspapers.

He rolled his chair down to the next workstation. He logged on as McGinnis, having broken his codes long ago. He went to the Los Angeles Times website and in the search window of the online archive typed trunk murder.

He got three hits on stories containing the phrase in the last three weeks, including one published on the website just that evening and due to go into the next morning’s paper. He pulled the latest story up on screen first and read it.

LAPD Drug Crackdown Draws Community Fire

By Angela Cook and Jack McEvoy

Times Staff Writers

A drug crackdown at a housing project in Watts has drawn fire from local activists who complained Tuesday that the LAPD only paid attention to the problem in the minority-populated complex when a white woman was allegedly murdered there.

Police announced the arrest of 16 residents of Rodia Gardens on drug charges and the seizure of a small amount of drugs following a one-week investigation. Police spokesmen said the “peep and sweep” operation was in response to the murder of Denise Babbit, 23, of Hollywood.

A 16-year-old alleged gang member who is a resident of Rodia Gardens was arrested in the slaying. Babbit’s body was found two weeks ago in the trunk of her car at a beachside parking lot in Santa Monica. The investigation traced the crime back to Rodia Gardens, where Santa Monica police believe Babbit, an exotic dancer, went to buy drugs. Instead, she was abducted, held for several hours and repeatedly sexually assaulted before being strangled.

Several community activists questioned why efforts to stem the tide of drug dealing and related crime in the projects did not come before the murder. They were quick to point out that the victim of the trunk murder was white while the members of the community are almost 100 percent African American.

“Look, let’s face it,” said Rev. William Treacher, head of a group called South Los Angeles Ministers, also known as SLAM, “this is just another form of police racism. They ignore Rodia Gardens and let it become a stew of drugs and gang crime. Then this white woman who puts drugs in her body and takes her clothes off for a living goes down and gets herself killed there and what do you get? A task force. Where were the police before this? Where was the task force? Why does it take a crime against a white person to draw attention to problems in the black community?”

A police spokesman denied that race had anything to do with the anti-drug operation and said similar operations have occurred in Rodia Gardens numerous times before.

“Who complains about getting drug dealers and gangbangers off the street?” asked Capt. Art Grossman, who directed the operation.

Carver stopped reading the story. He didn’t sense any threat to him. Still, it didn’t explain why someone from the Times-presumably Cook or McEvoy-had put trunk murder into a search engine. Were they just being thorough, covering all the bases? Or was there something else? He looked at the two previous stories in the archives that mentioned trunk murder and found they had been written by McEvoy. They were straight news stories about the Denise Babbit case, one about the discovery of her body, and the second-a day later-about the arrest of the young gangbanger in her murder.

Carver couldn’t help but smile to himself as he read about the kid getting tagged for the murder. But his humor didn’t let him drop his caution. He plugged McEvoy into the archive search and soon found hundreds of stories, all related to crime in Los Angeles. He was the crime beat reporter. At the bottom of each of his stories was his e-mail address: JackMcEvoy@LATimes.com.

Carver then put Angela Cook into the search engine and got far fewer stories. She had been writing for the Times for less than six months and only in the past week had she written any crime stories. Before that, she wrote a variety of stories on events ranging from a garbage strike to a competitive eating contest. She seemed to have no specific beat until this week when she shared two bylines with McEvoy.

“He’s teaching her the ropes,” Carver said out loud.

He guessed that Cook was young and McEvoy was old. That would make her the easier mark. He took a chance and went onto Facebook, using a phony ID he had concocted long ago, and sure enough she had a page. The contents weren’t for public consumption but her photo was there. She was a beauty with shoulder-length blond hair. Green eyes and a trained pout to her lips. That pout, Carver thought. He could change that.

The photo was a portrait shot. He was disappointed that he could not see all of her. Especially the length and shape of her legs.

He started humming. It always calmed him. Songs he remembered from the sixties and seventies, when he was a boy. Hard rockers a woman could dance and show her body off to.

He kept searching, finding that Angela Cook had abandoned a MySpace page a few years earlier but had not deleted it. He also found a professional profile on LinkedIn and that led to the mother lode-a blog page called www.CityofAngela.com in which she kept an ongoing diary of her life and work in Los Angeles.

The latest entry in the blog brimmed with Cook’s excitement over being assigned to the police and crime beat, and being trained for the position by the veteran Jack McEvoy.

It was always amazing to Carver how trusting or naive young people were. They didn’t believe that anybody could connect the dots. They believed that they could bare their souls on the Internet, post photos and information at will, and not expect any consequences. From her blog he was able to glean all the information he needed about Angela Cook. Her hometown, her college sorority, even her dog’s name. He knew Death Cab for Cutie was her favorite band and pizza at a place called Mozza was her favorite food. In between the meaningless data, he learned her birthday and that she only had to walk two blocks from her apartment to get her favorite pizza at her favorite restaurant. He was circling her and she didn’t even know it. But each time around he got closer.

He paused when he found a blog post from nine months earlier with the heading My Top 10 Serial Killers. Below it she listed ten killers that were household names because of their cross-country rampages of murder. Number one on her list was Ted Bundy-Because I’m from Florida and that’s where he ended up.

Carver’s lip twitched. He liked this girl.

The mantrap alert sounded and Carver immediately killed the Internet connection. He switched screens and on the camera saw McGinnis coming through. Carver swiveled around and was facing McGinnis as he opened the final door to the control room. He had his key card on a retractable cord that was clipped to his belt. It made him look like a dork.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

Carver stood up and rolled the chair back into place at the empty workstation.

“I’m running a program in my office and just wanted to check something on Mercer and Gissal.”

McGinnis didn’t seem to care. He looked through the main window into the server room, the heart and soul of the business.

“How’s that going?” he asked.

“A few routing hiccups,” Carver reported. “But we’ll work it out and we’ll be up and running before the target date. I may have to go back out there but it will be a quick trip.”

“Good. Where is everybody? You alone?”

“Stone and Early are in the back, building a tower. I’m watching things up here until my night shift comes in.”

McGinnis nodded approvingly. Building another tower meant more business.

“Anything else happening?”

“We have an issue in tower thirty-seven. I moved things off it until I can figure it out. It’s temporary.”

“We lose anything?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Whose blade?”

“Belongs to a private nursing facility in Stockton, California. Not a big one.”

McGinnis nodded. It wasn’t a client he needed to worry about.

“What about last week’s intrusion?” he asked.

“Taken care of. The target was Guthrie, Jones. They’re in tobacco litigation with a firm called Biggs, Barlow and Cowdry. In Raleigh-Durham. Somebody at Biggs-a low-ranking genius-thought Guthrie was holding back on discovery and tried to take a look for himself.”

“And?”

“The FBI has opened a child porn investigation and the genius is the primary target. I don’t think he’ll be around to bother us very much longer.”

McGinnis nodded his approval and smiled.

“That’s my scarecrow,” he said. “You’re the best.”

Carver didn’t need McGinnis to say it to know it. But he was the boss. And Carver owed the older man for giving him the chance to create his own lab and data center. McGinnis had put him on the map. A month didn’t go by that Carver wasn’t wooed by a competitor.

“Thanks.”

McGinnis moved back to the mantrap door.

“I’m going to the airport later. We’ve got somebody coming in from San Diego and they’ll take the tour tomorrow.”

“Where are you taking him?”

“Tonight? Probably Rosie’s for barbecue.”

“The usual. And then the Highlighter?”

“If I have to. You want to come out? You could impress these people, you know, help me out.”

“Only thing they’ll be impressed by will be the naked women. Not my scene.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a tough job but somebody’s gotta do it. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

McGinnis left the control room. His office was up on the surface in the front of the building. It was private and he stayed there most of the time to greet prospective clients and probably to keep clear of Carver. Their conversations in the bunker always seemed a bit strained. McGinnis seemed to know to keep those times to a minimum.

The bunker belonged to Carver. The business was set up with McGinnis and the administrative staff up top at the entry point. The web hosting center with all the designers and operators was on the surface as well. The high-security colocation farm was below surface in the so-called bunker. Few employees had subterranean access and Carver liked it that way.

Carver sat down again at the workstation and went back online. He pulled up Angela Cook’s photo once more and studied it for a few minutes, then switched over to Google. It was now time to go to work on Jack McEvoy and to see if he had been smarter than Angela Cook in protecting himself.

He put the name into the search engine and soon a new thrill blasted through him. Jack McEvoy had no blog or any profile on Facebook or anywhere else that Carver could find. But his name scored numerous hits on Google. Carver had initially thought the name was familiar and now he knew why. A dozen years earlier McEvoy had written the definitive book on the killer known as the Poet, and Carver had read that book-repeatedly. Check that, McEvoy had done more than simply write the book about the killer. He had been the journalist who had revealed the Poet to the world. He had gotten close enough to breathe in the Poet’s last breath.

Jack McEvoy was a giant slayer.

Carver slowly nodded as he studied McEvoy’s book jacket photo on an old Amazon page.

“Well, Jack,” he said out loud. “I’m honored.”

Angela Cook’s dog did her in. The dog’s name was Arfy-according to a five-month-old entry in her blog. From there it took Carver only two variations-for fitting it into the six-character password requirement-to come up with Arphie and to successfully log onto her LATimes.com account.

There was always something oddly tantalizing about being inside another person’s computer. The mercurial addiction of invasion. It gave him a deep tug in the guts. It was like he was inside another’s mind and body. He was them.

His first stop was her e-mail. He opened it up and found that she kept a clean board. There were only two unread messages and a few others that had been read and saved. He saw none from Jack McEvoy. The new messages were a how-are-you-doing-out-there-in-L.A. from a friend in Florida-he knew this because the server was Road Runner in Tampa Bay-and an internal Times message that appeared to be a terse back-and-forth with a supervisor or an editor.

From: Alan Prendergast ‹ AlanPrendergast@LATimes.com›

Subject: Re: collision

Date: May 12, 2009 2:11 PM PDT

To: AngelaCook@LATimes.com

Hold tight. A lot can happen in two weeks.

From: Angela Cook ‹ AngelaCook@LATimes.com›

Subject: collision

Date: May 12, 2009 1:59 PM PDT

To: AlanPrendergast@LATimes.com

You told me I WOULD write it!

It looked like Angela was upset. But Carver didn’t know enough about the situation to understand it, so he moved on, opening up her old mail folder and getting lucky. She had not cleared her old mail list in several days. Carver scrolled through hundreds of messages and saw several from her colleague and cowriter Jack McEvoy. Carver began with the earliest one and started working his way forward to the most recent messages.

Soon he realized it was all innocuous, just basic communication between colleagues about stories and meetings in the cafeteria for coffee. Nothing salacious. Carver guessed from what he read that Cook and McEvoy were strangers until quite recently. There was a stiffness or formality to the e-mails. No shorthand or slang employed by either. It appeared that Jack didn’t know Angela until she had been assigned to the crime beat and he was assigned to train her.

In the last message, sent just a few hours before, Jack had sent Angela an e-mail with a proposed summary for a story they were working on together. Carver eagerly read it and felt his concerns about detection ease with every word.

From: Jack McEvoy ‹ JackMcEvoy@LATimes.com›

Subject: collision slug

Date: May 12, 2009 2:23 PM PDT

To: AngelaCook@LATimes.com

Angela, this is what I sent Prendo for the futures budget. Let me know if you want any changes.

Jack

COLLISION-On April 25th the body of Denise Babbit was found in the trunk of her own car in a beachside parking lot in Santa Monica. She had been sexually assaulted and asphyxiated when a plastic bag was pulled over her head and secured with clothesline. The exotic dancer with a history of drug problems died with her eyes wide open. It wasn’t long before police traced a lone fingerprint left on her car’s rearview mirror to a 16-year-old drug dealer and gangbanger from a South L.A. housing project. Alonzo Winslow, who grew up fast in the projects, not knowing his father and rarely seeing his mother, was arrested and charged as a juvenile with the crime. He confessed his role to the police and now awaits efforts by the state to prosecute him as an adult. We talk to the suspect and his family as well as those who knew the victim, and trace this fatal collision back to its origins. 90 inches-McEvoy and Cook, w/art by Lester

Carver read it again. He felt the muscles in his neck start to relax. McEvoy and Cook didn’t know anything. Jack the giant slayer was climbing the wrong bean stalk.

Just as he had planned it. Carver made a mental note to check back to read the story when it was published. He would be one of only three people on the planet to know how wrong it was-including that poor soul Alonzo Winslow.

He killed the list and brought up Cook’s sent messages. There was just the overlap of the back-and-forth with McEvoy and the missive to Prendergast. It was all pretty dry and useless to Carver.

He closed the e-mail and went to the browser. He scrolled down, seeing all the websites Cook had visited in recent days. He saw trunkmurder.com as well as several visits to Google and the websites of other newspapers. He then saw a website that intrigued him. He opened up DanikasDungeon.com and was treated to a visit to a Dutch bondage-and-domination site replete with photos of women controlling, taunting and torturing men. Carver smiled. He doubted there was a journalistic reason for Cook’s visit. He believed he was getting a glimpse of Angela Cook’s private interests. Her own dark journey.

Carver didn’t linger. He put the information aside, knowing it might be useful at a later time. He tried Prendergast next, since it appeared his password was obvious. He went with Prendo and was in on his first attempt. People were so stupid and obvious sometimes. He went to the mailbox, and there at the top of the list was a message from McEvoy that had been sent only two minutes earlier.

“What are you up to, Jack?”

Carver opened the message.

From: Jack McEvoy ‹ JackMcEvoy@LATimes.com›

Subject: collision

Date: May 12, 2009 4:33 PM PDT

To: AlanPrendergast@LATimes.com

Cc: AngelaCook@LATimes.com

Prendo, I was looking for you but you were at dinner. The story is changing. Alonzo didn’t confess to the killing and I don’t even think he did it. I’m heading to Vegas tonight to pursue things further tomorrow. Will fill you in then. Angela can handle the beat. I’ve got dimes.

– Jack

Carver felt his gorge rise in his throat. His neck muscles tightened sharply and he pushed back from the table in case he had to vomit. He pulled the trash can out from underneath so he could use it if necessary. His vision momentarily darkened at the edges but then the darkness passed and he cleared.

He kicked the trash can back into place and leaned forward to study the message again.

McEvoy had made the connection to Las Vegas. Carver now knew that he had only himself to blame. He had repeated his modus operandi too soon. He had left himself open and now Jack the giant slayer was on his trail. A critical mistake. McEvoy would get to Las Vegas and with even minimal luck he would put things together.

Carver had to stop that. A critical mistake didn’t have to be a fatal mistake, he told himself. He closed his eyes and thought for a long moment. It brought his confidence back. Some of it. He knew he was prepared for all eventualities. The beginning tendrils of a plan were reaching to him and the first order of business was to delete the message on the screen in front of him, and then go back into Angela Cook’s account and delete it from her mailbox as well. Prendergast and Cook would never see it and, with any luck, they’d never know what Jack McEvoy knew.

Carver deleted the message but before signing off uploaded a spy-ware program that would allow him to track all of Prendergast’s Internet activities in real time. He would know who Prendergast e-mailed, who contacted him and what websites he viewed. Carver then returned to Cook’s account and quickly took the same actions.

McEvoy was next but Carver decided that could come later-after Jack got to Vegas and was operating out there alone. First things first. He got up and put his hand on the reader next to the glass door to the server room. Once the scan was completed and approved, the door unlocked and he slid it open. It was cold in the server room, always kept at a brisk sixty-two degrees. His steps echoed on the raised metal flooring as he walked down the third row to the sixth tower. He unlocked the front of the refrigerator-size server with a key, bent down and pulled two of the data blades out a quarter inch. He then closed and relocked the door and headed back to his workstation.

Within a few seconds a screen alarm buzzed from the workstations. He typed in commands that would bring up the response protocol. He then waited a few more seconds and reached over to the phone. He pushed the intercom button and typed in McGinnis’s extension.

“Hey, boss, you still there?”

“What is it, Wesley? I’m about to head out.”

“We’ve got a code three problem. You better come look.”

Code 3 meant drop everything and move.

“I’ll be right there.”

Carver tried to suppress a smile. He wouldn’t want McGinnis to see it. Three minutes later McGinnis came through the door, his key card snapping back to his belt. He was out of breath from taking the stairs down.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Dewey and Bach in L.A. just got data-bombed. The whole route collapsed.”

“Jesus, how?”

“You got me.”

“Who did it?”

Carver shrugged.

“Can’t tell from this end. It might’ve been internal.”

“You call them yet?”

“No, I was waiting to tell you first.”

McGinnis stood behind Carver, shifting his weight from foot to foot and looking through the glass at the servers, as if the answer was in there.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“The problem’s not here-I’ve checked everything. It’s on their end. I think I need to send somebody out there to fix it and reopen the traffic. I think Stone is up. I’ll send him. Then we see where it came from and make sure it won’t happen again. If it’s a hack, then we burn the fuckers in their beds.”

“How long will it take?”

“They have flights to L.A. almost every hour. I’ll put Stone on a plane and he’ll hit it first thing tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you go? I want this taken care of.”

Carver hesitated. He wanted McGinnis to keep thinking it was his idea.

“I think Freddy Stone can handle it.”

“But you’re the best. I want Dewey and Bach to see that we don’t fuck around. We get things done. You got a problem, we send our best man. Not some kid. Take Stone or whoever you need, but I want you to go.”

“I’ll leave right now.”

“Just keep me informed.”

“Will do.”

“I gotta get to the airport myself to make that pickup.”

“Yeah, you’ve got the tough job.”

“Don’t rub it in.”

He clapped Carver on the shoulder and went back out through the door. Carver sat there motionless for a few moments, feeling the residual compression on his shoulder. He hated to be touched.

Finally, he moved. He leaned toward his screen and entered the alarm disengagement code. He confirmed the protocol and then deleted it.

Carver pulled his cell phone and hit a speed dial number.

“What’s up?” Stone said.

“Are you still with Early?”

“Yeah, we’re building the tower.”

“Come back to the control room. We have a problem. Actually, two problems. And we need to take care of them. I’m working on a plan.”

“On my way.”

Carver closed the phone with a snap.