The Scarecrow (15 page)

“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.

SIX: The Loneliest Road in America

A
t nine
A.M
. Wednesday I was waiting outside the locked door of the offices of Schifino & Associates on the fourth floor of an office building on Charleston near downtown Las Vegas. I was tired and slid down the wall to sit on the nicely carpeted floor. I was feeling particularly unlucky in a town that was supposed to inspire luck.

The early morning had started out well enough. After checking into the Mandalay Bay at midnight, I found myself too keyed up to sleep. I went down to the casino and turned the two hundred dollars I had brought with me into three times that amount at the roulette and blackjack tables.

The growth of my cash portfolio along with the free booze I’d drunk while gambling made sleep come easier when I returned to my room. Things took a dramatic downturn after my wake-up call came. The problem was I wasn’t supposed to have a wake-up call. The front desk was calling to tell me my
Times
-issued American Express card had been rejected.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I bought an airline ticket with it last night, I rented a car at McCarran and it was fine when I checked in here. Somebody ran the card.”

“Yes, sir, that is just an authorizing process. The card is not charged until six
A.M
. on the morning of checkout. We ran the card and it was rejected. Could you please come down and give us another card?”

“No problem. I wanted to get up now anyway so I could win some more of your money.”

Only there
was
a problem, because my three other credit cards didn’t work either. All were rejected and I was forced to chip back half of my winnings to get out of the hotel. Once I got to my rental car I pulled out my cell to start calling the credit-card companies one by one. Only I couldn’t make the calls because my phone was dead, and it wasn’t a matter of being in a bad cell zone. The phone was
dead
, service disconnected.

Annoyed and confused but undaunted, I headed to the address I had looked up for William Schifino. I still had a story to pursue.

A few minutes after nine, a woman stepped off the elevator and headed down the hallway toward me. I noticed the slight hesitation in her step when she saw me on the floor leaning against Schifino’s door. I stood up and nodded as she got closer.

“Do you work with William Schifino?” I said with a smile.

“Yes, I’m his receptionist. What can I do for you?”

“I need to speak to Mr. Schifino. I came from Los Angeles. I—”

“Do you have an appointment? Mr. Schifino sees potential clients by appointment only.”

“I don’t have an appointment but I’m not a potential client. I’m a reporter. I want to talk to Mr. Schifino about Brian Oglevy. He was convicted last year of—”

“I know who Brian Oglevy is. That case is on appeal.”

“Right, I know, I know. I have new information. I think Mr. Schifino will want to speak to me.”

She paused with her key a few inches from the lock and turned her eyes as if to size me up for the first time.

“I know he will,” I said.

“You can come in and wait. I don’t know when he’ll be in. He doesn’t have court until this afternoon.”

“Maybe you could call him.”

“Maybe.”

We entered the office and she directed me to a couch in a small waiting area. The furnishings were comfortable and seemed relatively new. I got the feeling that Schifino was an accomplished lawyer. The receptionist went behind her desk, turned on her computer and began her routine of preparing for the day.

“Are you going to call him?” I asked.

“When I get a moment. Just make yourself comfortable.”

I tried to but I didn’t like waiting around. I pulled my laptop out of my bag and turned it on.

“Do you have WiFi here?” I asked.

“We do.”

“Could I borrow it to check my e-mail? I’ll only be on a few minutes.”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

I studied her for a moment.

“Excuse me?”

“I said no. It’s a secured system and you will have to ask Mr. Schifino about that.”

“Well, could you ask him for me when you call him to tell him I am waiting here?”

“As soon as possible.”

She gave me an efficient smile and went back to her busywork. The phone buzzed and she opened an appointment book and started scheduling a meeting for a client and telling him about the credit cards they accepted for legal services rendered. It reminded me of my own current credit-card situation and I grabbed one of the magazines off the coffee table to try to avoid thinking about it.

It was called the
Nevada Legal Review
and it was chock-full of ads for lawyers and legal services like transcription and data storage. There were also articles about legal cases, most of them dealing with casino licensing or crimes against casinos. I was twenty minutes into a story about a legal attack on the law that kept brothels from operating in Las Vegas and Clark County when the office door opened and a man stepped in. He nodded to me and looked at the receptionist, who was still on the phone.

“Hold, please,” the receptionist said.

She pointed to me.

“Mr. Schifino, this man has no appointment. He says he’s a reporter from Los Angeles. He—”

“Brian Oglevy is innocent,” I said, cutting her off. “And I think I can prove it.”

Schifino studied me for a long moment. He had dark hair and a handsome face with an uneven tan from wearing a baseball cap. He was either a golfer or a coach. Or maybe both. His eyes were sharp and he quickly came to a decision about me.

“Then I guess you better come on back to the office,” he said.

I followed him to his office and he sat down behind a large desk while signaling me to the seat on the other side.

“You work for the
Times
?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good paper but in a lot of trouble these days. Financially.”

“Yeah, they all are.”

“So how did you come to the conclusion in L.A. that my guy over here is an innocent man?”

I gave him my best scoundrel’s smile.

“Well, I don’t know that for sure, but I had to get in to see you. But this is what I’ve got. I’ve got a kid over there, sitting in jail for a murder I am thinking he didn’t commit, and it seems to me that the details are a lot like the details in your Oglevy case—what details I know. Only, my case happened two weeks ago.”

“So if they are the same, my client has an obvious alibi and there might be a third party here at work.”

“Exactly.”

“All right, well, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“Well, I was hoping I could see what you’ve got too.”

“Fair enough. My client is in prison and I don’t think he’s too worried about attorney-client privilege at this point, not if my trading information might help his cause. Besides, most of what I tell you is available in court records.”

Schifino pulled his files and we began a show-me-yours-show-you-mine session. I told him what I knew about Winslow and maintained a reserved excitement as we went through the crime reports. But when we moved into side-by-side comparisons of the crime scene photos, the adrenaline kicked in and it became difficult to contain myself. Not only did the Oglevy photos completely match those from the Babbit case, but the victims looked stunningly alike.

“This is amazing!” I said. “It’s almost like the same woman.”

Both were tall brunettes with large brown eyes, bobbed noses and long-legged dancer’s bodies. Immediately I was hit with the profound sense that these women had not been selected randomly by their killer. They had been chosen. They fit some kind of mold that had made them targets.

Schifino was riding the same wave. He pointed from photo to photo, accenting the similarities in the crime scenes. Both women were suffocated with a plastic bag that was tied around the neck with a thin white cord. Each was placed naked and facing inward in the trunk of the car, and their clothes were simply dropped on top of them.

“My God… look at this,” he said. “These crimes are absolutely the same and it doesn’t take an expert to see that. I have to tell you something, Jack. When you came in here, I thought you were going to be this morning’s entertainment. A diversion. Some wild-ass reporter who shows up chasing a pipe dream. But this…”

He gestured to the side-by-side sets of photos we had laid out across the desk.

“This is my client’s freedom right here. He’s getting out!”

He was standing behind his desk, too excited to sit down.

“How did this happen?” I asked. “How did this slip through?”

“Because they were solved quickly,” Schifino said. “In each case the police were led to an obvious suspect and looked no further. They didn’t look for similars because they didn’t need to. They had their suspects and were off to the races.”

“But how did the killer know to put Sharon Oglevy’s body in her ex-husband’s trunk? How would he even know where to find the car?”

“I don’t know, but that is off point. The point here is that these two killings are of such a strikingly similar pattern that there is just no way that either Brian Oglevy or Alonzo Winslow could be responsible. The other details will fall into place when the real investigation is begun. But for now, there is no doubt in my mind that you’re exposing something huge here. I mean, how do you know that these are the only two? There could be others.”

I nodded. I hadn’t thought about that possibility. Angela Cook’s online search had only come up with the Oglevy case. But two cases make a pattern. There still could be more.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

Schifino finally sat down. He rotated back and forth in his chair while considering the question.

“I’m going to draw up and file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. This is new information that is exculpatory and we’re going to put it into open court.”

“But I’m not supposed to have those files. You can’t cite them.”

“Sure I can. What I don’t have to do is say where I got them.”

I frowned. I would be the obvious source once my story was published.

“How long will it take for you to get this into court?”

“I have to do some research but I’ll file it by the end of the week.”

“That’s going to blow this up. I don’t know if I can be ready to publish my story by then.”

Schifino held his hands out wide and shook his head.

“My client’s been up at Ely for more than a year. Do you know that the conditions are so bad at that prison that on frequent occasion death row inmates drop their appeals and volunteer to be executed, just to get out of there? Every day he is up there is a day too long.”

“I know, I know. It’s just that…”

I stopped to think about things and there was no way I could justify keeping Brian Oglevy in prison even a day longer just so I could have time to plan and write the story. Schifino was right.

“Okay, then I want to know the minute you file it,” I said. “And I want to talk to your client.”

“No problem. You get the exclusive as soon as he walks.”

“No, not then. Now. I am going to write the story that springs him and Alonzo Winslow. I want to talk to him today. How do I do it?”

“He’s in maximum security and unless you’re on the list, you won’t get in to see him.”

“You can get me in, can’t you?”

Schifino was sitting behind the aircraft carrier he called a desk. He brought a hand up to his chin, thought about the question and then nodded.

“I can get you in. I need to fax a letter up to the prison that says you are an investigator working for me and that you are entitled access to Brian. I then give you a to-whom-it-may-concern letter that you carry with you, and that identifies you as working for me. If you work for an attorney, you don’t need a state license. You carry the letter with you and show it at the gate. It will get you in.”

“Technically, I don’t work for you. My paper has rules about reporters misrepresenting themselves.”

Schifino reached into his pocket and pulled out his cash. He handed a dollar across the desk to me. I reached across the murder scene photos to take it.