The Scarecrow (47 page)

As with any sort of downward spiral, the closer you get to the end, the tighter the circles become. In the writing process and thereafter, I kept hearing of things that were happening and had to try to get them into the story. The
Times
is meant to represent the entire business—all newspapers. So I might hear of something happening at one paper and I would incorporate it into my story of the
Times.
But after the book was finished, the spiral continued. The day after I turned in the manuscript, the
Times
’s parent company filed for bankruptcy. This necessitated several changes in the manuscript. Three days after the book was supposedly locked and ready to be printed, the
Rocky Mountain News
closed. This meant we had to unlock the book and make changes. Since then, the
Times
has announced plans to close more foreign bureaus this summer. Sadly, it goes on and on. In many ways, I wish the book weren’t so timely, because what is making it timely is all of this bad news for newspapers.

What is your biggest fear about the decline of newspapers and daily print journalism?

I understand and even accept the shift to online news. What I worry about is the reliability of the news and the loss of vigilance. Anybody can start a website, write a blog or hold themselves out as a journalist. But the newspaper is an institution (the
Rocky Mountain News
was 150 years old) with set standards and requirements of journalists. It is also the central point of community news. It usually sets the stage for what is important and what is news. A lot of that will be lost. There will be no central place for news. There will be dozens of websites that people will probably pick according to their political persuasion. Ultimately, it will be the public that loses here. A friend of mine who lost her job in the business says that you can bet on government corruption becoming the growth industry because there will be no watchdogs like there are at newspapers. The thing I wonder is whether a bunch of news websites and bloggers could ever bring down a corrupt president the way Nixon was felled by the
Washington Post
and other papers. At the moment, I doubt it.

Did you make up the name the “Velvet Coffin” (“a place to work so pleasurable that you would easily slip in and stay till you died”) to describe the
Los Angeles Times,
or was it really called this back when you were a reporter there?

That was its nickname when I went to work there in 1988. I remember people in the business telling me that I had made it to the velvet coffin. That it would be my last stop because it didn’t get any better than working for the
L.A. Times.
I remember if they sent you somewhere on a story, they flew you first class. In the early ’90s its circulation grew to over 1.2 million and it was the largest daily newspaper in the country. It’s got less than two-thirds of that circulation now, and it is still declining.

In
The Scarecrow,
you bring FBI agent Rachel Walling and journalist Jack McEvoy back together for the first time since The Poet. In recent years we’ve seen Rachel working closely with LAPD detective Harry Bosch and falling in and out of a romantic relationship with him. Do you think Jack is a better match for Rachel than Harry is?

I think the thing about my books is that nobody matches up well, and in the friction of these relationships is some of the drama I need for each story. For the moment, at least, Jack fits better with Rachel because he needs her more than Harry does. Harry has sort of built himself to need no one on any level. Jack is not that way, and I think that would make him more attractive to Rachel. The question is who and what does Rachel need. I am not sure yet because I need to explore this character more. I hope I get the chance.

I think your killer, the Scarecrow, is by far the creepiest one you have ever written. What elements do you think you need to create a truly terrifying fictional killer?

Prior to this, I've written from the killer's point of view only two other times. One of those times was with
The Poet
.
Since that was a Jack McEvoy/Rachel Walling story, I decided to do it again here. The truth is, the villains are easiest to create because there are no bounds. The creepier your imagination can go, then the better. I think the thing to remember is that these sorts of people need to square their crimes with themselves. So they have built-in mechanisms that allow them to live with themselves and that give them plausible explanations for why they are the way they are. When they become true believers in the cancer that affects their character, they are really frightening.

Care to explain how the Scarecrow, Wesley Carver, got his name?

He operates a data storage center. This is a hermetically sealed environment where there are rows and rows of servers for storing digital information. Businesses anywhere in the world can instantly back up their vital records to centers like these. These are often called farms by people in the business because of the rows and rows of servers set up like crops, and because most often they are located outside urban areas—in traditional farming areas—for security reasons. As the man charged with keeping intruders off the crops, so to speak, Carver is like a scarecrow watching over the farm.

Identity theft, cyberstalking, computer hacking, and the sharing of sexual perversities are just some of the ways the Internet is used by predators in
The Scarecrow.
It is not the first time you have used the Internet to showcase crime. Why does it make for such a good playground for evil?

I think I write about the Internet so often because it is such a force of positive change in my lifetime. But with the good comes the bad. For every invention that positively changes the world, there will be those who turn it toward the dark side. That is the grist of fiction as well as social reflection. I find it fascinating, if not scary as hell, that the Internet is the great meeting place in our time for all things. This is including the bad. People with similar perversities and aberrant tastes find one another on the Internet every day. It breeds acceptance. To me, the scariest lines in the whole book are what Rachel says about this to Jack: “Meeting people with shared beliefs helps justify those beliefs. It emboldens. Sometimes it’s a call to action.”

Photos

Michael Connelly writes about real places in his books. Here are a few of the locations mentioned in
The Scarecrow
.

Jack McEvoy’s Dictionary

Excerpt From
The Scarecrow

I leaned back in my chair and studied the contents of my cubicle. A desk, a computer, a phone and two shelves stacked with files, notebooks and newspapers. A red leather-bound dictionary so old and well used that the Webster’s had been worn off its spine. My mother had given it to me when I told her I wanted to be a writer.

It was all I really had left after twenty years in journalism. All I would take with me at the end of the two weeks that had any meaning was that dictionary.

The Short Stop Bar

Excerpt From
The Scarecrow

The Short Stop was on Sunset in Echo Park. That made it close to Dodger Stadium, so presumably it drew its name from the baseball position. It was also close to the Los Angeles Police Academy and that made it a cop bar in its early years. It was the kind of place you’d read about in Joseph Wambaugh novels, where cops came to be with their own kind and the groupies who didn’t judge them. But those days were long past. Echo Park was changing. It was getting Hollywood hip and the cops were crowded out of the Short Stop by the young professionals moving into the neighborhood. The prices went up and the cops found other watering holes. Police paraphernalia still hung on the walls but any cop who stopped in nowadays was simply misinformed.

Still, I liked the place because it was close to downtown and on the way to my house in Hollywood.

The Globe Lobby of the Los Angeles Times

Excerpt From
The Scarecrow

The globe lobby was the formal entrance to the newspaper building at the corner of First and Spring. A brass globe the size of a Volkswagen rotated on a steel axis at the center of the room. The many international bureaus and outposts of the Times were permanently notched on the raised continents, despite the fact that many had been shuttered to save money. The marble walls were adorned with photos and plaques denoting the many milestones in the history of the paper, the Pulitzer Prizes won and the staffs that won them, and the correspondents killed in the line of duty. It was a proud museum, just as the whole paper would be before too long. The word was that the building was up for sale.

But I only cared about the next twelve days. I had one last deadline and one last murder story to write. I just needed that globe to keep turning until then.

The Loneliest Road In America

Excerpt From
The Scarecrow

Highway 93 took me past Nellis Air Force Base and then connected with 50 North. It wasn’t too long before I began to see why it was known as the loneliest road in America. The empty desert ruled the horizon in every direction. Hard, chiseled mountain ranges, barren of any vegetation, rose and fell away as I drove. The only signs of civilization were the two-lane blacktop and the power lines carried over the ranges by iron stick figures that looked like they were giants from another planet.