The Scarecrow (43 page)

I tried to set the stage for what I would show her on the laptop.

“First of all, I was bothered by a question. What was the plan in abducting you?”

“After seeing some of the video recovered in the bunker, I don’t want to think about that.”

“Sorry, wrong choice of words. I don’t mean what was going to happen to you. What I mean is
why
you. Why take so big a risk to go after you? The easy answer is that it would create a large distraction from the central
investigation. And that is true, but at best it would be a temporary diversion. Agents would start pouring into this place
by the dozens. Pretty soon you wouldn’t be able to run a stop sign without getting pulled over by the feds. Diversion over.”

Rachel followed the logic and nodded in agreement.

“Okay, but what if there was another reason?” I asked. “You have two killers out there. A mentor and a student. The student
tries to abduct you on his own. Why?”

“Because McGinnis was dead,” Rachel said. “There was only the student.”

“Okay, then if that is true, why even make the move? Why go after you? Why not get the hell out of Dodge instead? You see,
it isn’t adding up. At least with the way we’ve been looking at it. We think grabbing you was a diversionary move. But it
really wasn’t.”

“Then what was it?”

“Well, what if McGinnis wasn’t the mentor? What if he was meant to look like he was? What if he was just a fall guy and abducting
you was part of a plan to secure the real mentor? To help him get away.”

“What about the evidence we recovered?”

“You mean him having my book on his bookshelf and the leg braces and porno in the house? Isn’t that kind of convenient?”

“That stuff wasn’t left lying around the house. It was hidden and only found after an hours-long search. But never mind all
of that. Yes, it could have been planted. I’m thinking more about the server in Western Data we found that was full of video
evidence.”

“First of all, you said he isn’t identifiable on the videos. And who is to say he and Courier were the only ones with access
to that server. Couldn’t the evidence on there have been planted just like the stuff at the house?”

She didn’t respond right away and I knew I had her thinking. Maybe she had thought all along that things were hanging too
easily on McGinnis. But then she shook her head like this didn’t add up either.

“It still doesn’t make sense if you’re claiming the mentor is Carver. He didn’t try to get away. When Courier was trying to
grab me, Carver was in the bunker with Torres and…”

She didn’t finish. I did.

“Mowry. Yes, he was with two FBI agents.”

I watched the realization come to her.

“He would have a perfect alibi because two agents would vouch for him,” she finally said. “If I disappeared while he was with
the EER team, he would have an alibi and the bureau would be almost certain that it was McGinnis and Courier who had grabbed
me.”

I nodded.

“It would not only put Carver above suspicion, it would keep him right in the middle of your investigation.”

I waited only a second for her to respond. When she didn’t, I pressed on.

“Think about it. How did Courier know what hotel you were in? We told Carver when he asked us during the tour. Remember? Then
he told Courier. He
sent
Courier.”

She shook her head.

“And last night I even said I was going back to the hotel to get room service and to go to sleep.”

I spread my hands as if to say the conclusion was obvious.

“But this isn’t enough, Jack. It doesn’t add up to Carver being—”

“I know. But maybe this does.”

I turned the computer so she could see the screen. I had the page of scarecrow images up on Google. She leaned over and looked
at it first, then pulled the computer all the way over to her side of the table. She worked the keyboard and blew the images
up, one by one. I didn’t need to say anything.

“Denslow!” she suddenly said. “Did you see this? The original illustrator of
Wizard of Oz
was named William Denslow.”

“Yeah, I saw that. That’s why I’m here.”

“It still doesn’t connect directly to Carver.”

“It doesn’t matter. There’s a lot of smoke here, Rachel. Carver connects to a lot of it. He had access to McGinnis and Freddy
Stone. He had access to the servers. We also know he has the technical skills we’ve seen all through this.”

Rachel was typing on my laptop while she responded.

“There is still no direct connection, Jack. This could just as easily be someone setting up Carver as it is—I just got another
hit. I Googled the name Freddy Stone. Take a look at this.”

She turned the laptop around so I could see the screen. On it was a Wikipedia biography of an early twentieth-century actor
named Fred Stone. The bio said Stone was best known for first establishing the character of the Scarecrow in the 1902 Broadway
version of
The Wizard of Oz
.

“See, it’s got to be Carver. All the spokes in the wheel come to him in the center. He’s making scarecrows out of the victims.
It’s his secret signature.”

Rachel shook her head once.

“Look, we checked him out! He was clean. He’s some sort of genius out of MIT.”

“Clean how? You mean no arrest record? It wouldn’t be the first time one of these guys operated completely beneath law enforcement
radar. Ted Bundy worked at some sort of crisis hotline when he wasn’t out killing women. It put him in constant contact with
the police. Besides that, the geniuses are the ones you gotta watch out for, you ask me.”

“But I have a vibe for these guys and I didn’t pick up a thing. I had lunch with him today. He took me to McGinnis’s favorite
barbecue joint.”

I could see self-doubt in her eyes. She hadn’t seen this coming.

“Let’s go get him,” I said. “We confront him and make him talk. Most of these serials are proud of their work. My bet is he’ll
talk.”

She looked up from the screen at me.

“Go get him? Jack, you’re not an agent and you’re not a cop. You’re a reporter.”

“Not anymore. I got walked out by security today with a cardboard box. I’m done as a reporter.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s a long story that I’ll tell you later. What are we going to do about Carver?”

“I don’t know, Jack.”

“Well, you can’t just go back there and bring him his latte.”

I noticed one of the customers sitting a few tables behind Rachel turn from the screen of his laptop and look up toward the
open-beamed ceiling and smile. He then raised a fist and offered up his middle finger. I followed his gaze to one of the crossbeams.
There was a small black camera mounted on the beam, its lens trained on the sitting area of the coffee shop. The kid turned
back and started typing on his computer.

I jumped up, leaving Rachel and moving toward him.

“Hey,” I said, pointing up at the camera. “What is that? Where’s it go?”

The kid crinkled his nose at my stupidity and shrugged.

“It’s a live cam, man. It goes everywhere. I just got a shout from a buddy in Amsterdam who saw me.”

It suddenly dawned on me. The receipt.
Free WiFi with every purchase. Check us out on the net.
I turned and looked at Rachel. The laptop, with a full-screen photo of a Scarecrow on it, was facing the camera. I turned
back and looked up at the lens. Call it a premonition or call it certain knowledge, but I knew I was looking back at Carver.

“Rachel?” I said, not looking away. “Did you tell him where you were going to get coffee?”

“Yes,” she said from behind me. “I said I was just going down the street.”

That confirmed it. I turned and walked back to the table. I picked up the laptop and closed it.

“He’s been watching us,” I said. “We gotta go.”

I headed out of the coffee shop and she came out right behind me.

“I’ll drive,” she said.

R
achel turned her rental car through the main gate and went charging up to the front door of Western Data. She was driving
one-handed, working her phone with the other. She threw the car into park and we got out.

“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Neither of them is answering.”

Rachel used a Western Data key card to unlock and enter the front door. The reception desk was empty and we quickly moved
to the next door. As we entered the internal hallway, she pulled her gun out of a holster that was on her belt under her jacket.

“I don’t know what’s going on but he’s still here,” she said.

“Carver?” I asked. “How do you know that?”

“I rode with him to lunch. His car is still out there. The silver Lexus.”

We took the stairs down to the octagon room and approached the mantrap leading to the bunker. Rachel hesitated before opening
the door.

“What?” I whispered.

“He’ll know we’re coming in. Stay behind me.”

She raised the gun and we squeezed in together, then quickly moved to the second door. When we came through the other side,
the control room was empty.

“This isn’t right,” Rachel said. “Where is everybody? And that’s supposed to be open.”

She pointed to the glass door that led to the server room. It was closed. I scanned the control room and saw the door to Carver’s
private office was ajar. I moved toward it and pushed it all the way open.

The room was empty. I stepped in and went to Carver’s worktable. I put one finger down on the touch pad and the two screens
came alive. On the main screen I was looking at an overhead view of the coffee shop where I had just made a case to Rachel
that Carver was the Unsub.

“Rachel?”

She came in and I pointed at the screen.

“He was watching us.”

She hurried back into the control room and I followed her. She moved to the center workstation, put her gun down on the desk
and started working the keyboard and touch pad. The two monitors came alive and soon she had pulled up multiplex screens divided
into thirty-two interior camera views of the facility. But all of the squares were black. She started flipping through several
screens and found the same thing each time. All cameras were dark.

“He’s killed all of the cameras,” Rachel said. “What is—”

“Wait. There!”

I pointed to one camera angle surrounded by several black squares. Rachel manipulated the touch pad and brought the image
up to full screen.

The camera view captured a passageway between two rows of server towers in the farm. Lying facedown on the floor were two
bodies, their wrists cuffed behind their backs and their ankles bound with cable ties.

Rachel grabbed the stem microphone attached to the desk, depressed the button and almost shrieked into it.

“George! Sarah! Can you hear me?”

At the sound of Rachel’s voice the figures on the screen stirred and the male raised his head. It looked like there was blood
on his white shirt.

“Rachel?” he said, his voice sounding weak over an overhead speaker. “I can hear you.”

“Where is he? Where’s Carver, George?”

“I don’t know. He was just here. He just brought us in here.”

“What happened?”

“After you left he went into his office. He was in there for a little bit and when he came out, he got the drop on us. He
grabbed my gun out of my briefcase. He herded us in here and put us on the floor. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t talk.”

“Sarah, where’s your weapon?”

“He got that, too,” Mowry called out. “I’m sorry, Rachel. We didn’t see it coming.”

“Not your fault. It’s mine. We’re going to get you out of there.”

Rachel released the microphone and quickly came around the workstation, bringing her weapon with her. She went to the biometric
reader and put her hand on the scanner.

“He could be in there, waiting,” I warned.

“I know, but what am I going to do, leave them lying in there?”

The device completed the scan and she grabbed the handle to slide the door open. It didn’t move. Her hand scan had been rejected.

Rachel looked back at the scanner.

“That makes no sense. My profile was put in yesterday.”

She put her hand on the scanner and began the procedure again.

“Who put it in?” I asked.

She looked back at me and didn’t need to answer for me to know it had been Carver.

“Who else can open that door?” I asked.

“Nobody who’s on this side. It was me, Mowry and Torres.”

“What about employees here?”

She stepped away from the scanner and tried the door again. It didn’t budge.

“They’re on a skeleton staff upstairs and there’s nobody with authorization for the farm. We’re screwed! We can’t get—”

“Rachel!”

I pointed at the screen. Carver had suddenly stepped into the view of the one working camera in the server room. He stood
in front of the two agents on the floor, hands in the pockets of his lab coat, and looking directly up at the camera.

Rachel quickly came around to see the screen.

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

I didn’t need to answer because it became clear that Carver was pulling a box of cigarettes and a throwaway lighter from his
pockets. In one of those moments when the mind delivers useless information I realized they were probably the cigarettes missing
from Freddy Stone’s/Marc Courier’s box of belongings. As we watched, Carver calmly drew a cigarette from the box and put it
in his mouth.

Rachel quickly pulled over the microphone.

“Wesley? What’s going on?”

Carver was raising the lighter to the end of the cigarette but stopped when he heard the question. He looked back up at the
camera.

“You can dispense with the niceties, Agent Walling. We’re at the end of the dance now.”

“What are you doing?” she said more forcefully.

“You know what I’m doing,” Carver said. “I’m ending it. I’d rather not spend the rest of my days chased like an animal and
then put in a cage. Being put on display, trotted out for interviews with bureau shrinks and profilers hoping to learn all
the dark secrets in the universe. I think I would find that to be a fate worse than death, Agent Walling.”