The Scarecrow

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: [email protected].

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.