When they were inside the server they added my IP as well as their own to the site’s good guy list. No alarms. The operators and users of the site won’t know we’ve been there unless they actually look at their good guy list and notice it has been altered. I think we’ve got the time to do what we need to do.”
Bosch nodded. He wanted to ask whether what the O’Connors had done had been legal but thought it best not to know.
“So who sent Elias the notes?” he asked instead.
“The wife,” Edgar said. “I think she got an attack of the guilts and wanted to help Elias rip Sam the car czar a new asshole. She sent the notes.”
“It fits,” Rider said. “Whoever sent the notes had knowledge of two separate things: Charlotte’s Web Site and the car-wash receipts. Actually, a third thing as well: that Elias had tripped an alarm. So my vote goes with the wife, too. What was she like today?”
Bosch spent the next ten minutes updating her on their activities during the day.
“And that’s just our work on the case,” Edgar added. “Harry didn’t even tell you how we got the back window of my car shot out.”
“What?”
Edgar told the story and Rider seemed mesmerized by it.
“They catch the shooter?”
“Not that we heard. We didn’t wait around.”
“You know, I’ve never been shot at,” she said. “Must be a rush.”
“Not the kind you want,” Bosch said. “I still have questions about all of this Internet stuff.”
“What are they?” Rider said. “If I can’t answer, one of the O’Connors can.”
“No, not technical questions. Logic questions. I still don’t understand how and why this stuff is still available for us to look at. I understand what you said about the users all being pedophiles and their seeming feeling of safety, but now we have Elias dead. If they killed him, why the hell didn’t they at least move to a new gateway?”
“Maybe they are in the process of trying to do just that. Elias hasn’t been dead forty-eight hours.”
“And what about Kincaid? We just told him we are reopening the case. Whether he was in danger of exposure or not, it seems he would have gotten on the computer the minute we left and either contacted the site administrator or tried to crash the site and those pictures himself.”
“Again, maybe it’s in process. And even if it is, it’s too late. The O’Connors backed everything onto a Zip drive. They can crash the site but we still have it. We’ll be able to trace every IP address and take down every one of those people – if you consider them people.”
Again the fervor and anger in her voice made Bosch wonder if something about what she had seen on the web site had touched something personal, something deep inside.
“So where do we go from here?” he asked. “Search warrants?”
“Yep,” Rider said. “And we bring in the Kincaids. Fuck their big mansion on the hill. We have enough already to bring them in for questioning on the child abuse. We separate them and sweat them in the rooms. We go for the wife and get a confession. Get her to waive spousal privilege and give us her husband, that rat bastard.”
“You’re talking about a very powerful and politically connected family.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the car czar.”
Bosch checked her look to make sure she was kidding.
“I’m afraid of moving too fast and blowing it. We’ve got nothing that directly links anybody to Stacey Kincaid or Howard Elias. If we bring mom down here and don’t turn her, then we watch the car czar drive away. That’s what I’m afraid of, okay?”
Rider nodded.
“She’s dying to be turned,” Edgar said. “Why else send those notes to Elias?”
Bosch put his elbows on the desk and washed his face with his hands as he thought about things. He had to make a decision.
“What about Charlotte’s Web Site?” he asked, his face still covered by his hands. “What do we do with that?”
“We give that to Inglert and the O’Connors,” Rider said. “They’ll jump all over it. Like I said, they’ll be able to trace the good guy list to the users. They’ll identify them and take them down. We’re talking multiple arrests of an Internet pedophile ring. That’s just for starters. The DA might want to try to link them all to the homicides.”
“They’re probably all over the country,” Edgar said. “Not just L.A.”