Authors: Michael Connelly
“So did they go to Seattle?”
“Agents from the Seattle field office are handling it.”
“And?”
“The trunk murder site was set up and paid for entirely over the Internet. No one at See Jane Run ever met the man who paid
for it. The physical address given two years ago when the sites were set up was a mail drop near SeaTac that is no longer
valid. We’re trying to trace that but that will be a dead end, too. This guy is good.”
“You just said ‘sites’—plural. Were there more than one?”
“You noticed that. Yes, two sites.
Trunk murder dot com
was the first site and the second is called
Denslow Data
. That was
the name he used in setting these up. Bill Denslow. Both sites are on a five-year plan that he paid for in advance. He used
a money order—untraceable except back to the point of purchase. Another dead end.”
I took a couple moments to write some notes down.
“Okay,” I finally said. “So is Denslow the Unsub?”
“The man posing as Denslow is the Unsub but we’re not dumb enough to think he would put his real name on a website.”
“Then what does it mean? D-E-N-slow. Is it like half an acronym or something?”
“It could be. We’re working on it. So far we haven’t found the connection. We’re working on the possible acronym and the name
itself. But we haven’t come up with a Bill Denslow with any sort of criminal record that would approach this.”
“Maybe it’s just a guy the Unsub hated, growing up. Like a neighbor or a teacher.”
“Could be.”
“So why the two websites?”
“One was the capture site and one was the OP site.”
“OP?”
“Observation point.”
“You’re completely losing me.”
“Okay, the trunk murder site was set up to collect the IP—the computer address—of anybody who visited the site. This is what
happened with Angela. You understand?”
“Right. She did a search and it brought her to the site.”
“Right. The site collected IPs but was built so that those addresses were automatically forwarded to another dot com site.
This one was called
Denslow Data
. This is a common practice. You go to a site and your ID is captured and sent on for marketing
use elsewhere. It’s essentially the origin of spam.”
“Okay. So now
Denslow Data
has Angela’s ID. What happened to it there?”
“Nothing. It stayed there.”
“Then how did—”
“Look, here’s the trick.
Denslow Data
was built with a function that was completely the opposite of the
trunk murder
site.
It captures no data of visitors. You see what I’m getting at?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, look at it from the Unsub’s point of view. He has set up trunk murder dot com to capture the computer ID of anybody
who might be onto him and looking for him. The only problem with that is if he went to the site to check it, then his own
ID would be captured. And sure he could use somebody else’s computer to run the check, but it would still help fix location.
He could be tracked to a high degree through his own site.”
I nodded as I finally understood the setup.
“I see,” I said. “So he has the captured IP address forwarded to another site where there is no capture mechanism and he can
check it without fear of being tracked.”
“Exactly.”
“So after Angela hit on the trunk murder site he went to the
Denslow
site and got her IP. He traced it back to the
Times
and figured this might be more than a morbid curiosity about trunk murders. He breaches the
Times
system and that leads him to me and Angela and our stories. He reads my e-mails and he knows that we are onto something.
That I’m onto something and heading to Vegas.”
“That’s right. So he concocted the scheme to take you both out in a murder-suicide.”
I was silent for a moment as I spun it once more. It added up, even though I didn’t like the total.
“It was my e-mail that got her killed.”
“No, Jack. You can’t look at it that way. If anything, her fate was sealed when she checked out trunk murder dot com. You
can’t blame yourself for an e-mail you sent to an editor.”
I didn’t respond. I tried to put the question of guilt out of my head for a while and to concentrate on the Unsub.
“Jack, you there?”
“I’m just thinking. So this is all completely untraceable?”
“From this angle. Once we get this guy and grab his computer, we’ll be able to tear it apart and trace his visits to Denslow.
That will be solid evidence.”
“You mean if he used his own computer.”
“Yes.”
“Seems unlikely, given the skill he’s already shown.”
“Maybe. It will depend on how often he checked his trap. It appears he was onto Angela less than twenty-four hours after her
visit to the trunk murder site. That would indicate a routine, a daily trap check, and that might indicate he was using his
own computer or one in close proximity.”
I thought about all of this for a moment and leaned back on the pillow, closing my eyes. What I knew about the world was depressing.
“There’s something else I want to tell you,” Rachel said.
“What?”
I opened my eyes.
“We figured out how he drew Angela to your house.”
“How?”
“You did it.”
“What are you talking about? I was—”
“I know, I know. I am just saying that is how it was meant to look. We found her laptop in her apartment. In her e-mail account
is an e-mail from you. It was sent Tuesday night. You said you had picked up some interesting information on the Winslow case.
The Unsub, as you, said it was very important and invited her over to show it to her.”
“Jesus!”
“She returned the e-mail, saying she was on her way. She came to your house and he was waiting for her. It was after you’d
left for Vegas.”
“He must’ve been watching my house. He watched me leave.”
“You leave, he gets in and uses your home computer to send the message. Then he waits for her. And once he is through with
her, he follows you out to Vegas to complete the setup by killing you and making it look like a suicide.”
“But what about my gun? He gets in the house and finds it easily enough. He could then drive it to Vegas to follow me. But
it still doesn’t explain how I supposedly got it there. I flew and I didn’t check a bag. That’s a big hole, isn’t it?”
“We think we’ve got that filled in, too.”
I squeezed my eyes shut again.
“Tell me.”
“After he baited Angela he used your computer to print out a GO! cargo shipping form.”
“Go? I’ve never heard of Go.”
“It’s a small competitor to FedEx and the others. G-O with an exclamation mark. Stands for Guaranteed Overnight. It’s airport-to-airport
shipping. A growing business now that airlines limit luggage and charge for it. You can download shipping forms off the Internet,
and someone did just that on your computer. It was for a package sent first overnight to yourself. It was held for pickup
at the cargo facility at McCarran International. No signature required. Just show your copy of the shipping form. You can
drop packages off at LAX as late as eleven o’clock.”
I could only shake my head.
“This is how we think he did it,” Rachel said. “He baits Angela and then goes to work on the shipment. Angela shows up and
he does his thing with her. He leaves her—whether she is dead or not at this point we don’t know. He then goes to the airport
and drops the package with the gun. They don’t X-ray domestic packages at GO! He then either drives to Vegas or flies, quite
possibly even on the same plane as you. Either way, once he’s there, he picks up the package and has the gun. He then follows
you to Ely to complete the plan.”
“It seems so tight. Are you sure he could have pulled this off?”
“It is tight and we’re not sure, but the scenario works.”
“What about Schifino?”
“He’s been briefed but doesn’t feel he’s in danger now, if he ever was. He declined protection but we’re watching him anyway.”
I wondered if the Las Vegas lawyer would ever realize how close he may have been to being the worst kind of victim. Rachel
continued.
“I take it you would have called me by now if there had been any further contact from the Unsub.”
“No, no contact. Besides, you have the phone. Has he tried calling it again?”
“No.”
“What happened with the trace?”
“We traced his call to you to a cell tower at McCarran. The US Airways terminal. Within two hours of the call to you, there
were flights from that terminal to twenty-four different American cities. He could have been going just about anywhere with
connections from those twenty-four.”
“What about Seattle?”
“It wasn’t a direct flight but he could have flown to a connection city and gone from there. We are executing a search warrant
today that will give us the passenger manifests from all the flights. We’ll run the names through the computer and see what
we get. This is our guy’s first mistake and, hopefully, we’ll make him pay for it.”
“A mistake? How so?”
“He should never have called you. He should never have made contact. He gave us information and a location. It’s very unlike
what we’ve seen before from him.”
“But you were the one who wanted to bet me that he would make contact. Why is it so shocking? You were right.”
“Yes, but I said that before I knew all I know now. I think, based on what we now have in the profile of this man, that it
was out of character for him to call you.”
I thought about all of that for a few moments before asking the next question.
“What else is the bureau doing?”
“Well, we’re profiling Babbit and Oglevy. We know they fit into his program and we need to figure out where they intersect
and where he came across them. We’re also still looking for his signature.”
I sat up and wrote
signature
down in the notebook and then underlined it.
“The signature is different from his program.”
“Yes, Jack. The program is what he does with the victim. The signature is something he leaves behind to mark his turf. It’s
the difference between a painting and the artist’s signature marking it as his work. You can tell a van Gogh just by looking
at it. But he also signed his work. Only with these killers the signature is not so obvious. Most times we don’t see it until
after. But if we could decipher the signature now, it might help lead us to him.”
“Is that what they have you doing? Working on that?”
“Yes.”
But she had hesitated before answering.
“Using your notes off my files?”
“That’s right.”
Now I hesitated, but not too long.
“That’s a lie, Rachel. What is going on?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Because I have your notes right here, Rachel. When they finally cut me loose Thursday, I demanded that they give me all of
my files and notes back. They gave me your notes, thinking they were mine. On your legal pad. I have them, Rachel, so why
are you lying to me?”
“Jack, I am not lying. So what if you have my notes, you think I can’t—”
“Where are you? Right now. Where exactly are you? Tell me the truth.”
She hesitated.
“I’m in Washington.”
“Shit, you’re zeroing in on See Jane Run, right? I’m coming up there.”
“Not that Washington, Jack.”
This totally puzzled me and then my internal computer spit out a new scenario. Rachel had parlayed uncovering the Unsub into
a return to the job she wanted and was best suited for.
“Are you working for Behavioral?”
“I wish. I’m at Washington Headquarters for an OPR hearing Monday morning.”
I knew that the OPR was the Office of Professional Responsibility, the bureau’s version of Internal Affairs.
“You told them about us? They’re going after you for it?”
“No, Jack, I didn’t tell them anything about that. It’s about the jet I took to Nellis on Wednesday. After you called me.”
I jumped off the bed and started pacing again.
“You have to be kidding me. What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t it matter that you saved at least one life—mine—and in the process brought this killer to law enforcement attention?
Do they know that they released a sixteen-year-old kid falsely accused of murder from jail yesterday because of you? Do they
know an innocent man who has spent a year in a Nevada prison will get out soon? They should be giving you a medal, not a hearing.”
There was silence and then she spoke.
“And they should be giving you a raise instead of laying you off, Jack. Look, I appreciate what you are saying, but the reality
is, I made some bad judgments and they seem more concerned about that and the money it cost than anything else.”
“Jesus Christ! If they do one thing to you, Rachel, it’s going to be all over the front page. I will burn—”
“Jack, I can take care of myself. You have to worry about yourself right now, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. What time is the hearing Monday?”
“It’s at nine.”
I was going to alert Keisha, my ex-wife. I knew they wouldn’t let her into a closed-door personnel hearing, but if they knew
a
Times
reporter was hovering outside, waiting on the results, they might think twice about what they did inside.
“Jack, look, I know what you’re thinking. But I want you to just cool your jets and let me deal with this. It’s my job and
my hearing. Okay?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to just sit back when they are fucking with somebody… somebody I care about.”
“Thank you, Jack, but if that is how you really feel about me, then I need you to stand down on this one. I’ll let you know
what happens as soon as I know.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
I yanked open the curtain again and a blast of sunlight entered the room.
“Okay.”
“Thank you. Are you going to your house? If you really want it, I can get somebody to meet you there.”
“Nah, I’ll be all right. I was just making a play for you. I want to see you. But if you’re not even in town… When did you
get there, anyway?”