The Scarecrow (jack Mcevoy, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #20)

The novel alternates between two narrators. Jack McEvoy, a veteran crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times, tells his story in the first person. Wesley Carver, the chief technology officer at Western Data Consultants, a data storage facility in Mesa, Arizona, is depicted in the third person. As the company's threat engineer, Carver detects and retaliates against digital intrusions. Their paths converge as Jack's reporting exposes Carver as a serial killer.

Jack is told he is being laid off, the 99th of 100 positions cut from the paper. He is given two weeks to train his replacement, Angela Cook, a young reporter from Florida. That same afternoon, a woman named Wanda Sessums calls, presenting herself as the mother of 16-year-old Alonzo Winslow, who was arrested for the trunk murder of Denise Babbit, a 23-year-old exotic dancer. Jack dismisses the call but later conceives a plan to use his remaining days to write one last murder story as a capstone to his career.

Jack visits Wanda at the Rodia Gardens housing project in Watts and discovers she is actually Alonzo's grandmother. She authorizes his access to the case, and Winslow's public defender covertly provides the interrogation transcript. Reading it, Jack finds that Alonzo never confessed to murder; over nine hours, the teenager admitted only to stealing Babbit's car, insisting the body was already in the trunk. The police press release was crafted to imply a confession that never occurred.

In a parallel thread, Carver's true nature emerges. He obsessively surveils the company's receptionist through hidden cameras and maintains a relationship with Freddy Stone, a younger protégé recruited from an online chat room. Carver and Stone share a psychosexual fixation on leg braces known as abasiophilia and refer to their victims, women who wear such braces, as "iron maidens."

Angela conducts her own research and finds stories about other trunk murders, including a Las Vegas case in which Brian Oglevy was convicted of killing his ex-wife and placing her body in a car trunk. Jack initially dismisses the findings but later recognizes striking parallels: Both victims were asphyxiated with plastic bags tied around the neck, sexually assaulted, and left naked in car trunks. Angela also visits a website called trunkmurder.com, which appears under construction.

The website is Carver's digital trap, capturing visitors' IP addresses and forwarding them to a companion site called Denslow Data. Carver traces Angela's visit to the Times, breaches the newspaper's system, reads emails revealing Jack's plans to investigate the Las Vegas case, and deletes a key email to editor Alan Prendergast. He recognizes Jack as the journalist who once exposed a serial killer known as the Poet.

In Las Vegas, Jack meets Oglevy's defense attorney, William Schifino, and they compare crime scene photographs. Jack drives toward Ely State Prison to interview Oglevy but discovers en route that his credit cards, phone, and bank account have all been compromised. A fabricated threat forces a prison lockdown, stranding Jack overnight in Ely.

At his hotel, he finds FBI Agent Rachel Walling, his former lover from the Poet case 12 years earlier, waiting in his room. She tracked his disconnections and theorizes the killer is isolating Jack to stage his death as a suicide. Meanwhile, Angela has not shown up for work. Rachel and Jack rush back to Los Angeles via FBI jet. At Jack's house, Jack looks under the bed and discovers Angela's body, wrapped in plastic and suffocated with a bag. His registered handgun is missing. Rachel reconstructs the plan: The killer lured Angela with a fake email from Jack's computer, killed her, shipped the gun to Las Vegas, and followed Jack to Ely to complete a murder-suicide.

In a parallel thread, Carver kills Declan McGinnis, the company's CEO, and forces Stone to bury the body in the desert. He drops Jack's stolen gun into the grave.

After police questioning, Jack is barred from writing the main story since he is now its subject; the Times assigns reporter Larry Bernard to the case. Jack realizes both victims' law firms use Western Data for data storage. This is the critical connection: The killer accessed confidential legal files through the company's servers to identify targets and plan murders designed to implicate others.

Jack flies to Phoenix, where Rachel, forced to resign from the FBI over the unauthorized jet, meets him. Posing as law firm representatives, they tour Western Data and meet Carver. They note McGinnis's conspicuous absence and learn that a server engineer named Freddy has abruptly quit. Following leads to Freddy's warehouse, they find evidence linking him to the fabricated prison threat. Rachel calls the FBI, which takes over. She is reinstated, and Freddy Stone's real identity is revealed as Marc Courier, a fugitive from Chicago with a history of identity theft. A hidden server at Western Data contains videos of killings with at least six victims.

One night, Jack discovers Courier attempting to abduct Rachel from her hotel. He pursues Courier to a top-floor storage area, catches him off guard, and flips him over a stairwell railing. Courier falls 13 floors to his death, revealing that McGinnis is buried in the desert.

Back in Los Angeles, Jack declines an offer to return to the Times, having accepted a book deal and a position at the Velvet Coffin, a media website. Clearing his desk, he notices a photo from The Wizard of Oz in an editor's office and recognizes the killer's signature: The Scarecrow is constructed with a bag pulled over the head and cinched with cord, mirroring how the killer suffocated victims with plastic bags and clothesline. Jack discovers that the illustrator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was William Wallace Denslow, connecting to the "Denslow Data" website. He flies to Mesa to share his theory with Rachel at a coffee shop. Rachel searches "Freddy Stone" on Jack's laptop and finds the name references Fred Stone, the actor who originated the Scarecrow in the 1902 Broadway production. The evidence converges on Carver as the true mastermind.

Jack notices a webcam in the coffee shop and realizes Carver may be watching. They rush to Western Data and find two FBI agents handcuffed in the server room. Carver appears on a monitor and triggers the carbon dioxide fire-suppression system, planning to destroy evidence and escape through a rear exit with a breathing mask. Jack races to the back entrance, where Carver ambushes him. Rachel strikes Carver from behind with a wrench, and they use his hand on the biometric scanner to unlock the server room door. Carver revives and grabs a gun, but Rachel shoots him in the head. Both agents survive. Carver is left in a coma.

In an epilogue six weeks later, Jack works on his book. His research reveals Carver's origins: Raised by a mother who worked as a stripper, young Wesley was left in dressing rooms where evidence suggests he was abused. His mother had a degenerative bone disease requiring leg braces, which Wesley helped strap on, the likely source of his fixation. Carver lies in a permanent coma, never expected to regain consciousness. A final chapter enters his perspective: He waits in darkness, trapped in the identity he created for himself, hearing only the music of The Doors, which he believes is the voice of the father he never knew.