The Scarecrow (45 page)
I reserve the mornings for research on my subject. Wesley John Carver remains largely an enigma but I am getting closer to who and what he is. As he lies in the twilight world of a coma in the hospital ward of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Los Angeles, I close in on him.
Some of what I know has come from the FBI, which continues to work the case in Arizona, Nevada and California. But most of it I have gotten on my own and from several sources.
Carver was a killer of high intelligence and clear-eyed self-understanding. He was clever and calculating, and able to manipulate people by tapping into their deepest and darkest desires. He lurked on websites and chat rooms, identified potential disciples and victims and then followed them home, tracing them through the labyrinthine portals of the digital world. He then made casual contact in the real world. He used them or killed them or both.
He had been doing it for years—well before Western Data and the trunk murders had caught anyone’s eye. Marc Courier had only been the latest in a long line of followers.
Still, the record of grim deeds Carver committed cannot overshadow the motivations behind it. That is what my editor in New York tells me each time we talk. I must be able to tell more than what happened. I must tell why. It’s breadth and depth again—the ol’ B and D—and I am used to that.
What I have learned so far is this: Carver grew up an only child without ever knowing who his father was. His mother worked the strip club circuit, which kept the two of them on the road from Los Angeles to San Francisco to New York and back during his younger years. He was what they called a dressing-room baby, held backstage in the arms of housemothers, costumers and other dancers while his own mother worked in the spotlights out front. She was a featured act, performing under the stage name “L.A. Woman” and dancing exclusively to the music of the signature Los Angeles rock band of the era, The Doors.
There are hints that Carver was abused sexually by more than one of the people he was left with in dressing rooms and that on many nights he slept in the same hotel room where his mother entertained men who had paid to be with her.
Most notable in all of this was that his mother had developed an unnamed but degenerative bone disease that threatened her livelihood. When not onstage, and away from the world in which she worked, she often wore leg braces prescribed to provide support for weakening ligaments and joints. Young Wesley was often called upon to help secure the leather straps around his mother’s legs.
It is a dismal and depressing portrait, but not one that adds up to multiple murder. The secret ingredients of that carcinogen have not yet been revealed—by me or the FBI. What made the horrors of Carver’s upbringing metastasize into the cancer of his adulthood remains to be learned. But Rachel often reminds me of her favorite line from a Coen brothers film:
Nobody knows anybody, not that well
. She tells me no one will ever know what sent Wesley Carver down the path he took.
I am in Bakersfield today. For the fourth day in a row I will spend the morning with Karen Carver and she will tell me her memories of her son. She has not seen or talked to him since the day he left as an eighteen-year-old for MIT, but her knowledge of his early life and her willingness to share it with me bring me closer to answering the question of why.
Tomorrow I will drive home, my conversations with the now wheelchair-bound mother of the killer completed for the time being. There is other research to complete and a looming deadline for my book. More important than all of that, it has been five days since I have seen Rachel and the separation has grown difficult to take. I’ve become a believer in the single-bullet theory and need to return home.
Meantime, the prognosis for Wesley Carver is not good. The physicians who tend to him believe he will never regain consciousness, that the damage from Rachel’s bullet has left him in permanent darkness. He mumbles and sometimes hums in his prison bed but that is all there will ever be.
There are some who have called for his prosecution, conviction and execution in such a state. And others have called this idea barbaric, no matter how heinous the crimes he is accused of committing. At a recent rally outside the corrections center in downtown L.A., one crowd marched with signs that said
PULL THE PLUG ON MURDER
, while the signs of the competing group said
ALL LIFE IS SACRED
.
I wonder what Carver would think of such a thing. Would he be amused? Would he feel comforted?
All I know is that I can’t erase the image of Angela Cook slipping into darkness, her eyes open and afraid. I believe that Wesley Carver has already been convicted in some sort of court of higher reason. And he is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
C
arver waited in darkness. His mind was a jumble of thoughts. So many he was not sure which were true memories and which were made up.
They filtered through his mind like smoke. Nothing that stayed. Nothing that he could grab on to.
He heard the voices on occasion but could not make them out clearly. They were like muffled conversations all around him. Nobody was talking to him. They were talking around him. When he asked questions, nobody answered.
He still had his music and it was the only thing that saved him. He heard it and tried to sing along but often he had no voice and had to just hum. He kept falling behind.
This is the end… beautiful friend, the end…
He believed it was his father’s voice that sang to him. The father he never knew, coming to him in the grace of music.
Like in church.
He felt a terrible amount of pain. Like an ax embedded in the center of his forehead. Unrelenting pain. He waited for someone to stop it. To save him from it. But no one came. No one heard him.
He waited in darkness.
The author gratefully acknowledges the help of many in the research, writing and editing of this book. They include Asya Muchnick, Bill Massey, Daniel Daly, Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski, James Swain, Jane Davis, Jeff Pollack, Linda Connelly, Mary Mercer, Pamela Marshall, Pamela Wilson, Philip Spitzer, Roger Mills, Scott B. Anderson, Shannon Byrne, Sue Gissal and Terrell Lee Lankford.
Many thanks also to Gregory Hoblit, Greg Stout, Jeff Pollack, John Houghton, Mike Roche, Rick Jackson and Tim Marcia.
Excerpt from “The Changeling,” words and music by The Doors, © 1971 Doors Music Co. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission; Excerpt from “Riders on the Storm,” words and music by The Doors, © 1971 Doors Music Co. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission; Excerpt from “The End,” words and music by The Doors, © 1967 Doors Music Co. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
Michael Connelly
is a former journalist and the author of the #1 bestsellers
The Brass Verdict
and
The Lincoln Lawyer,
the bestselling series of Harry Bosch novels, and the bestselling novels
Chasing the Dime, Void Moon, Blood Work,
and
The Poet
.
Crime Beat,
a collection of his journalism, was also a
New York Times
bestseller. He spends his time in California and Florida.
And for more Michael Connelly…
Please turn this page for a preview of
Nine Dragons,
available in hardcover in October 2009.
One
F
rom across the aisle Harry Bosch looked into his partner’s cubicle and watched him conduct his daily ritual of straightening the corners on his stacks of files, clearing the paperwork from the center of his desk and finally placing his rinsed-out coffee cup in a desk drawer. Bosch checked his watch and saw it was only 3:40. It seemed that each day, Ignacio Ferras began the ritual a minute or two earlier than the day before. It was only Tuesday, the second day of the week, and already he was edging toward the early exit. This routine was always prompted by a phone call from home. There was a wife waiting there with a brand-new set of twins. She watched the clock like the owner of a candy store watches the fat kids. She needed the break and she needed her husband home to deliver it. Even across the aisle from his partner, and with the four-foot sound walls separating work spaces in the new squad room, Bosch could usually hear both sides of the call. It always began with “When are you coming home?”
Everything in final order at his workstation, Ferras looked over at Bosch.
“Harry, I’m going to take off,” he said. “Beat some of the traffic. I have a lot of calls out but they all have my cell. No need waiting around for that.”
Ferras had rubbed his shoulder as he spoke. This was also part of the routine. It was his unspoken way of reminding Bosch that he had taken a bullet a couple years before and had earned the early exit.
Bosch just nodded. He didn’t really care if his partner left early, just as long as he’d be there when they finally got a call out. It had been four weeks since they’d drawn a fresh kill and they were well into the August heat. Bosch could feel the call coming. As certain as the Santa Ana winds each August, Bosch knew a call was coming.
Ferras stood up and locked his desk. He was taking his jacket off the back of the chair when Bosch saw Larry Gandle step out of his office on the far side of the squad room and head toward them. As the senior man in the partnership, Bosch had been given the first choice of cubicles a month earlier, when Robbery-Homicide Division moved over from the decrepit Parker Center to the new Police Administration Building. Most detective threes took the pods facing the windows that looked out on City Hall. Bosch had chosen the opposite. He had given his partner the view and taken the pod that let him watch what was happening in the squad room. Now he saw the approaching lieutenant and he instinctively knew that his partner wasn’t going home early.
Gandle was holding a piece of paper torn from a notepad and had an extra hop in his step. That told Bosch the wait was over. The call out was here. Bosch started to rise.
“Bosch and Ferras, you’re up,” Gandle said when he got to them. “Need you to take a case for South Bureau.”
Bosch saw his partner’s shoulders slump. He ignored it and reached out for the paper Gandle was holding. He looked at the address written on it. South Normandie. He’d been there before.
“It’s a liquor store,” Gandle said. “One man down behind the counter, patrol is holding a witness. You two good to go?”
“We’re good,” Bosch said before his partner could complain.
But that didn’t work.
“Lieutenant, this is Homicide Special,” Ferras said, turning and pointing to the boar’s head mounted over the squad room door. “Why are we taking a rob job at a liquor store? You know it was a banger and the South guys could wrap it up—or at least put a name on the shooter—before midnight.”
Ferras had a point. Homicide Special was for the difficult and complex cases. It was an elite squad that went after the tough cases with the relentless skill of a boar rooting in the mud for a truffle. A liquor store holdup in gang territory hardly qualified.
Gandle, whose balding pate and dour expression made him a perfect administrator, spread his hands in a gesture offering a complete lack of sympathy.
“I told everybody in the staff meeting last week, we’ve got South’s back this week. They’ve got on a skeleton crew while everybody else is in homicide school. They caught three cases over the weekend and one this morning. So there goes the skeleton crew. You guys are up and the rob job is yours. That’s it. Any other questions? Patrol is waiting down there with a witness.”
“We’re good, Loo,” Bosch said, ending the discussion.
“I’ll wait to hear from you, then.”
Gandle headed back to his office. Bosch pulled his coat off the back of his chair, put it on and opened the middle drawer of his desk. He took out a fresh notebook and pen and stuck them in his side pocket. The truth was, he didn’t care what kind of case it was. He wanted a fresh kill.
Ferras stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the clock on the wall over the bulletin boards.
“Shit,” Ferras said. “Every time.”
“What do you mean, ‘every time’?” Bosch said. “We haven’t caught a case in a month.”
“Yeah, well, I was getting used to that.”
“Well, if you don’t want to work murders, there’s always a nine-to-five table, like auto theft.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Then, let’s go.”
Bosch stepped out of the cubicle into the aisle and headed toward the door. Ferras followed, pulling his phone out so he could call his wife and give her the bad news. On the way out of the squad room, both men reached up and patted the boar on the nose for good luck.
Two
B
osch didn’t need to lecture Ferras on the way to South L.A. His silence was his lecture. His young partner seemed to wither under the pressure of what was not said and finally opened up.
“This is driving me crazy,” he said.
“What is?” Bosch asked.
“The twins. There’s so much work, so much crying. It’s a domino effect. One wakes up and that starts the other one up. Neither of us is getting any sleep and my wife is…”
“What?”
“I don’t know, going crazy. Calling me all the time, asking when I’m coming home. So I come home and then it’s my turn and I get the boys and I get no break. It’s work, kids, work, kids, work, kids every day.”
“What about a nanny?”
“We can’t afford a nanny. Not with the way things are and we don’t even get overtime anymore.”
Bosch didn’t know what to say. His daughter was a month away from her thirteenth birthday and almost ten thousand miles away from him. He had never been directly involved in raising her. Basically he saw her for four weeks a year—two one-week visits in Hong Kong and then a two-week span in the summer when she came to L.A. and stayed with him. It was only when she was in California that she was under his full-time supervision and control, and he knew that wasn’t good enough for him to consider himself a valid parent.