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.
TWENTY: The Scarecrow
Carver 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.
Acknowledgments
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.
About the Author
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.
PART ONE: Homicide Special
One
From 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.