program that waits for a return visit from the intruder. When he comes back, the program will attach a tracer which will provide the site manager with the intruder’s E-mail address. And once you have that you have the intruder cold. You can identify him then. If it looks like a cop you close the elevator – the page you hijacked and were using as a secret gateway – and you go find a new web page to hijack. But in this case it wasn’t a cop. It was a lawyer.”
“And they didn’t shut down,” Bosch said. “They sent someone out to kill him.”
“Right.”
“So you think this is what Elias did,” Bosch said. “He got these notes in the mail and followed the clues. He stumbled into this web site and set off an alarm. A flag. They then killed him.”
“Yes, that would be my interpretation of what we know at this point, particularly in light of the fourth note. ‘He knows you know.’ ”
Bosch shook his head, confused by his own extrapolations of the story.
“I’m still not getting this. Who is the ‘they’ we’re talking about here? That I just accused of murder.”
“The group. The users of the site. The site administrator – which might possibly be Kincaid – picked up on the intruder, realized it was Elias, and dispatched someone to take care of the problem in order to fend off exposure. Whether or not he polled all members of the group first doesn’t matter. They are all guilty because the web site is a criminal enterprise.”
Bosch held his hand up to slow her down.
“Slow down. We can leave the group and the bigger picture for the DA to worry about. Stay focused on the killer and Kincaid. We are assuming he was involved in all of this and somehow someone knew about it, then decided to inform Elias instead of the cops. Does that make sense?”
“Sure it does. We just don’t know all the details yet. But the notes speak for themselves. They clearly indicate someone tipped Elias to the site, then later warned him that he had been found out.”
Bosch nodded and thought about this for a moment.
“Wait a minute. If he set off a flag, then didn’t you just do the same?”
“No. Thanks to the O’Connors. When they were inside the server they added my IP as well as their own to the site’s good guy list. No alarms. The operators and users of the site won’t know we’ve been there unless they actually look at their good guy list and notice it has been altered. I think we’ve got the time to do what we need to do.”
Bosch nodded. He wanted to ask whether what the O’Connors had done had been legal but thought it best not to know.
“So who sent Elias the notes?” he asked instead.
“The wife,” Edgar said. “I think she got an attack of the guilts and wanted to help Elias rip Sam the car czar a new asshole. She sent the notes.”
“It fits,” Rider said. “Whoever sent the notes had knowledge of two separate things: Charlotte’s Web Site and the car-wash receipts. Actually, a third thing as well: that Elias had tripped an alarm. So my vote goes with the wife, too. What was she like today?”
Bosch spent the next ten minutes updating her on their activities during the day.
“And that’s just our work on the case,” Edgar added. “Harry didn’t even tell you how we got the back window of my car shot out.”
“What?”
Edgar told the story and Rider seemed mesmerized by it.
“They catch the shooter?”
“Not that we heard. We didn’t wait around.”
“You know, I’ve never been shot at,” she said. “Must be a rush.”
“Not the kind you want,” Bosch said. “I still have questions about all of this Internet stuff.”
“What are they?” Rider said. “If I can’t answer, one of the O’Connors can.”
“No, not technical questions. Logic questions. I still don’t understand how and why this stuff is still available for us to look at. I understand what you said about the users all being pedophiles and their seeming feeling of safety, but now we have Elias dead. If they killed him, why the hell didn’t they at least move to a new gateway?”
“Maybe they are in the process of trying to do just that. Elias hasn’t been dead forty-eight hours.”
“And what about Kincaid? We just told him we are reopening the case. Whether he was in danger of exposure or not, it seems he would have gotten on the computer the minute we left and either contacted the site administrator or tried to crash the site and those pictures himself.”
“Again, maybe it’s in process. And even if it is, it’s too late. The O’Connors backed everything onto a Zip drive. They can crash the site but we still have it. We’ll be able to trace every IP address and take down every one of those people – if you consider them people.”
Again the fervor and anger in her voice made Bosch wonder if something about what she had seen on the web site had touched something personal, something deep inside.
“So where do we go from here?” he asked. “Search warrants?”
“Yep,” Rider said. “And we bring in the Kincaids. Fuck their big mansion on the hill. We have enough already to bring them in for questioning on the child abuse. We separate them and sweat them in the rooms. We go for the wife and get a confession. Get her to waive spousal privilege and give us her husband, that rat bastard.”
“You’re talking about a very powerful and politically connected family.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the car czar.”
Bosch checked her look to make sure she was kidding.
“I’m afraid of moving too fast and blowing it. We’ve got nothing that directly links anybody to Stacey Kincaid or Howard Elias. If we bring mom down here and don’t turn her, then we watch the car czar drive away. That’s what I’m afraid of, okay?”
Rider nodded.
“She’s dying to be turned,” Edgar said. “Why else send those notes to Elias?”
Bosch put his elbows on the desk and washed his face with his hands as he thought about things. He had to make a decision.
“What about Charlotte’s Web Site?” he asked, his face still covered by his hands. “What do we do with that?”
“We give that to Inglert and the O’Connors,” Rider said. “They’ll jump all over it. Like I said, they’ll be able to trace the good guy list to the users. They’ll identify them and take them down. We’re talking multiple arrests of an Internet pedophile ring. That’s just for starters. The DA might want to try to link them all to the homicides.”
“They’re probably all over the country,” Edgar said. “Not just L.A.”
“They might be all over the world but it won’t matter. Our people will work with the bureau on it.”
More silence passed by and Bosch finally dropped his hands to the desk. He’d made his decision.
“Okay,” he said. “You two stay here and work on the search warrants. I want them ready to go tonight, in case we decide to move. We want all weapons, computer equipment – you know what to do. I want warrants for the old house, which they still own, as well as the new house, all cars and Kincaid’s office. Also, Jerry, see what you can find out about the security guy.”
“D.C. Richter, will do. What – ”
“In fact, on the warrants, write up one for his car.”
“What’s the PC?” Rider asked.
Bosch thought a moment. He knew what he wanted but he needed a legal means of getting there.
“Just say that as Kincaid’s director of security it is believed that his vehicle may have been used in the commission of crimes relating to Stacey Kincaid.”
“That’s not probable cause, Harry.”
“We stick the warrant in with the other ones,” he said. “Maybe the judge won’t care after he’s read what is in them. In fact, check the judge list. Let’s take these to a woman.”
Rider smiled and said, “Aren’t we sly?”
“What are you going to be doing, Harry?” Edgar asked.
“I’m going downtown to talk to Irving and Lindell, tell them what we got and see how they want to play it.”
Bosch looked at Rider and now saw disappointment.
