The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23)(107)

Ballard was not interested in disabusing Denning of his belief. She wanted him thinking that any connection to him might have died with the Midnight Men.

“We know you gave them the layout of the house and the combination to plug into a garage opener,” Ballard said.

“You can’t prove that,” Denning said.

“We don’t have to,” Ballard said. “We aren’t the police. But we know that’s what happened and we’re willing to keep what we know to ourselves in exchange for the information we need.”

“What information?” Denning said. “And if you’re not the cops, why do you want this?”

“We want to know how you contacted the Midnight Men,” Ballard said. “Because there are others like you out there and we want to contact them.”

“Look, that’s not what they even called themselves,” Denning said. “The media did that. The whole thing blew up in the news last week and I wanted to stop them but it was too late. They went silent. But that’s one thing I can prove. I tried to stop it. And if there are others, I don’t know them. Can I go now?”

He stood up.

“No,” Bosch said. “Sit back down.”

Denning stayed standing and looked at Bosch, likely taking the measure of a man who was twice his age. Still, something about Bosch’s piercing stare chilled him and he sat down.

“You need to back up,” Ballard said. “Before you tried to stop them, how did you contact them?”

Denning shook his head as though he wished he could redo the past.

“They were just two guys on the Internet,” he said. “We started talking and one thing led to another. Hannah, she really fucked me over … and I … never mind. Fuck it.”

“These two guys, where on the Internet did you meet them?” Ballard asked.

“I don’t know. I was floating around … there’s a bunch of sites. Forums. You’re anonymous, you know? So you can say what you feel. Just put it out there, and some people respond and tell you things. Tell you about other places to go. Give you passwords. It just sort of happens. There’s a lot if you’re looking for it. You know, a place where everybody’s been there like you. Gotten fucked over by a woman. You sort of go down the rabbit hole.”

“This rabbit hole … are you talking about Dark Web stuff?”

“Yes, definitely. Everybody, everything anonymous. These guys, the so-called Midnight Men, they had a site and I got this password. And then … that was it.”

“How did you access the Dark Web?”

“Easy. Got a VPN first, then went through Tor.”

Ballard knew Bosch was probably at sea when it came to the Dark Web, but through cases and FBI bulletins, she had rudimentary knowledge of how virtual private networks and Dark Web browsers like Tor worked.

“So, how did you specifically find the Midnight Men?”

“They posted on a forum that said, you know, they were in the L.A. area and were, uh, were willing to … do things … to even the score, I guess you’d call it.”

Denning looked off to the side, too humiliated by his actions to hold Ballard’s eyes.

“Look at me,” Ballard said. “Is that what they called it? ‘Evening the score’?”

Denning turned his face back toward Ballard but kept his eyes down.

“No, they … I think the heading was ‘Teach a Bitch a Lesson,’ ” he said. “Yeah, and I … made a post about my situation and then they gave me a site and password to check out and things sort of went from there.”

“What was the site called?”

“It didn’t have a name. A lot of stuff doesn’t have names. It was a number.”

“Do you have a laptop in that bag?”

“Um, yeah.”

“I want you to show us. Take us to that site.”

“Uh, no, we’re not going to do that. It’s really bad stuff and I — ”

He stopped when Bosch stood up and came toward the couch. Ballard could see that something about Bosch’s demeanor unnerved Denning. Harry’s hands were balled into fists, the scars on his knuckles white. Denning leaned back into the couch while Bosch roughly grabbed his backpack and started unzipping compartments until he found the laptop. He stepped over to the desk, put the computer down, and brought the desk chair back over.

“Show us the fucking site,” Bosch said.

“All right,” Denning said. “Take it easy.”

He moved to the desk and sat down. He opened the laptop. Ballard got up and stood behind him so she could see the screen. She watched while Denning signed into the hotel’s Internet.

“Some places have blocks on the Dark Web,” he said. “They don’t let you use Tor.”

“We’ll see,” Ballard said. “Keep going.”

There were no blocks, and Denning was able to go into his private network and use the Tor browser to access the site put together by the Midnight Men. The number he typed in was 2-0-8-1-1-2 and Ballard committed it to memory. He then added a numeric password which Ballard memorized as well.

“What’s the significance of the numbers?” she asked.

“Numbers assigned to letters,” Denning said. “A-1, B-2, and so on. Translates to T-H-A-L — ‘Teach Her a Lesson.’ But I didn’t find that out till later.”