"Thank you very much for tonight," she said. "He's quiet most of the time but I think he enjoyed it and I know I did."
McCaleb took her hand and shook it but then she leaned into him, brought her face up and kissed him on the cheek. As she stepped back, she brought her hand to her mouth.
"Bristly," she said with a smile. "Are you growing a beard?"
"Thinking about it."
This made her laugh for some reason. She walked around the car and he followed so he could hold open the door. When she was in her seat, she looked up at him.
"You know, you should believe in them," she said.
He looked down at her.
"You mean angels?"
She nodded. He nodded back. She started the car and drove off.
Back at the boat, he went over to the corner of the stern. The fishing pole was still in the slot and the line was still in the water as Raymond had left it. But as he reeled the line in, McCaleb could tell there was no drag on it. When the line finally came out of the water, he saw the hook and weight but no bait. Something down there had cleaned him out.
13
ON THURSDAY MORNING McCaleb was up before the port stevedores had anything to do with it. The caffeine of the day before had surged through his veins without ebb and kept him from sleep. It fueled disquieting thoughts of the investigation, of the differences between angles and angels and of Graciela and the boy. Eventually, he gave up on sleep and just waited with eyes open for the first light to filter through the blinds.
He was showered and finished measuring vital signs and swallowing pills by six o'clock. He took the stack of investigative reports back up to the table in the salon, put on another pot of coffee and ate a bowl of cereal. In between, he constantly checked his watch and thought about whether to call Vernon Carruthers without talking to Jaye Winston first.
Winston wouldn't be in yet. But three hours ahead at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., McCaleb's friend Vernon Carruthers would be in his place in the FAT unit of the crime lab. McCaleb knew he shouldn't talk to Carruthers before getting the go-ahead from Winston. It was Winston's case. But the three-hour time difference between L.A. and Washington had him anxious. At his core McCaleb was an impatient man. The urge to get something going and not lose the day was pressing him.
After rinsing out the bowl and leaving it in the sink, he checked his watch once more and decided not to wait. He got out his phone book and called Carruthers on his direct line. He picked up on one ring.
"Vernon, it's Terry."
"Terrell McCaleb! You here in the city?"
"Nah, still in L.A. How are you, man?"
"How are you ? I mean, like long time, no hear."
"I know, I know. But I'm doing okay. Thanks for the cards you sent to the hospital. Tell Marie I said thanks, too. It meant a lot. I know I should've called or written. I'm sorry."
"Well, we tried calling you but you're unlisted and nobody in the FO seemed to have the new number. Talked to Kate and she didn't even know. All she knew was you gave up your apartment in Westwood. Somebody else in the FO said you were livin' on a boat now. You really cut yourself off from everybody."
"Well, I just thought it would be best for a while. You know, until I was mobile and everything. But everything's good. How about you?"
"Can't complain. You coming out here anytime soon? You know you still have the room. Haven't rented it out to anybody from Quantico yet. Wouldn't dare."
McCaleb laughed and told him that unfortunately there were no immediate plans for a trip east. He had known Carruthers for nearly twelve years. McCaleb had worked out of Quantico and Carruthers had worked out of Firearms and Toolmarks in the crime lab up in D.C. but it seemed that the two were often working the same cases. Whenever Carruthers came down to Quantico for meetings, McCaleb and his then wife, Kate, had put him up in their spare bedroom. It beat the spare accommodations of a room in an academy dorm. In return, whenever McCaleb was in D.C., Carruthers and his wife, Marie, had let him bunk in the room that had belonged to their son. He had died years earlier of leukemia when he was twelve. Carruthers had insisted on the trade-off, even though it meant McCaleb was giving up a decent FBI-paid room at the Hilton near Dupont Circle
. At first McCaleb felt like an intruder sleeping in the boy's room. But Vernon and Marie made him feel welcome. And the southern cooking and the good company couldn't be touched by the Hilton.
"Well, anytime," Carruthers said with a returning laugh. "Anytime."
"Thanks, man."
"So by my estimate, it's gotta be barely the crack a' dawn out there. What're you calling so early for?"
"Well, I'm calling on a bit of business."
"You? Business? I was about to ask you how the wonderful world of retirement was treating you. Are you really living on a goddamned boat?"
"Yeah, I'm on a boat. But I'm not quite into the pasture yet."
"Well, what's up then?"
McCaleb told him the story, including the part about his receiving Gloria Torres's heart. McCaleb wanted Carruthers to know everything, unlike the others involved. He knew he could trust him with it and knew he would understand the bond McCaleb had to the victim. Carruthers had a strong empathy for victims, especially the young ones. The trauma of watching his son die over time in front of him had manifested itself in a dedication to his job that surpassed that of even the best field agents McCaleb had known.
Halfway through the telling, the booming sound of a cargo ship being unloaded began echoing across the marina. Carruthers asked what the hell it was and McCaleb told him as he took the phone down into the forward stateroom and closed the door to get away as much as possible from the noise.
"So what you want is for me to take a look at a slug from this?" Carruthers asked when McCaleb was finished. "I don't know. That Sheriff's Department out there, they've got good people."
"I know that. I'm not doubting that. I just want a fresh look and, mostly, I want you to put a laser profile through your computer, if you can. You never know. We might hit something. I've got a feeling about this one."
"You and your feelings. I remember those. All right, then who am I getting the package from? Them or you?"
"I'm going to try to finesse it. Get the Sheriff's Department out here to send in the package. I don't want you doing this off the books. But if you can, I'd like to put some grease on it. This shooter's a repeater. We might save somebody's life if we can get a line on him."
Carruthers was silent a few moments and McCaleb guessed he was running his schedule through his head.
"This is the thing. Today's Thursday. I need it by Tuesday morning latest and preferably Monday so I have time to do it justice. Next Wednesday I'm flying out to Kansas City to testify. Mob case. They think I'll be out there the rest of the week. So if you want it expedited, you’ve got to expedite it to me. If you do, I'll give it my immediate attention."
"That's not going to cause major problems?"
" 'Course it is. I'm backed up two months here, what else is new? But just get me the package and I'll take care of it."
"I'll get it to you. One way or the other by Monday latest."
"Okay, buddy."
"Oh, one last thing. Take my number. Like I said, I'm not acting in any official capacity on this thing. By rights, you should communicate with the Sheriff's Department, but I'd appreciate a heads-up if you come up with anything unusual."
"You got it," he said without hesitation. "Give me the number. And the address. Marie will want that for Christmas cards."
After McCaleb gave him the information, Carruthers cleared his throat.
"So, you talk to Kate lately?" he asked.
"She called the hospital a couple days after the transplant. But I was still out of it. We didn't talk long."
"Hmmm. Well, you ought to call her just to let her know you're okay."
"I don't know. How is she doing?"
"Fine, I guess. Haven't heard anything to the contrary. You should call her."
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"It's better just to leave it alone, I think. We're divorced, remember?"
"Whatever. You're the boss. I'll send her an E-mail just to let her know you're still breathing out there."
After a few more minutes of catching up, McCaleb clicked off the phone and went back up to the salon for more coffee. He was out of milk so he took it black. It was hair of the dog that bit him but he had to keep the momentum. If things went as he hoped, he would be on the road most of the day.
It was now near seven and almost time to call Winston. He went out onto the deck to take a look at the morning. The marine layer had come in strong and thick and the other boats looked ghostlike in the mist. It would be a few hours before it burned off and anybody got a look at the sun. He looked over at Buddy Lockridge's boat and saw no activity yet.
At 7:10 he sat at the salon table with his legal pad and punched Jaye Winston's number into the cordless phone. He caught her just as she was sitting down at her desk.
"I just walked in," she said. "And I didn't expect to hear from you for a couple of days. That was a lot of paper I gave you."
"Yeah, well, once I got into it, I couldn't put it down, I guess."
"What did you think?"
McCaleb knew she was asking what he thought of her investigation, asking him to make a judgment.
"I think you run a tight show but I already knew that from before. I liked all the moves you made on this one, Jaye. No complaints from me."
"But?"
"But I've got a few questions I wrote down here if you've got a few minutes. Maybe a couple of suggestions if you want 'em. A lead or two maybe."
Winston laughed good-naturedly.
"You federal guys always have questions, always have suggestions, always have new leads."
"Hey, I'm not federal anymore."
"Well, I guess it sticks in the blood, then. Go ahead."
McCaleb looked over the notes he had taken the day before and started right in on the Mikail Bolotov angle.
"First off, Ritenbaugh and Aguilar, you close to them?"
"Don't even know them. They're not in homicide. The captain pulled them out of burglaries and gave them to me for a week. That was when we were running down the three-strikes names. What about them?"
"Well, I think one of the names that they scratched off that list needs a second look."
"Which one?"
"Mikail Bolotov."
McCaleb heard the rustling of papers as Winston looked for the report from Ritenbaugh and Aguilar.
"Okay, got it. What are you seeing here? Looks like he's got a solid alibi."
"Have you ever heard of geographic cross-referencing?"
"What?"
He explained the concept and told her what he had done and how it led to Bolotov. He further explained that Bolotov had been interviewed before the Sherman Market robbery/shooting and therefore the significance of the location of Bolotov's home and employment to the market murders and one of the HK P7 thefts was not as apparent as it was to the other case. When he was done, Winston agreed that the Russian needed to be rechecked but she was not as enthusiastic about the prospect as McCaleb.
"Look, like I said, I don't know those two guys, so I can't vouch for them, but I have to assume they're not fresh off the boat. I have to assume they could handle an interview like this and check out the alibi."
McCaleb didn't say anything.
"Look, I've got court this week. I can't go check this guy out again."
"I can."
Now she didn't say anything.
"I'll be cool," McCaleb said. "Just sort of play it by ear."
"I don't know, Terry. You're a citizen now. This might be going too far."
"Well, think about it. I've got some other stuff here to talk about."
"Fine. What else?"
McCaleb knew that if she didn't bring up Bolotov again during the conversation, she was giving him unofficial permission to check the Russian out. She just didn't want to sanction what he was doing.
He glanced down at the legal pad again. He wanted to be careful with what he asked next. He needed to build up to the big questions he had, bring Winston along and not let her think he was second-guessing everything.
"Um, first off, I didn't see anything in there about the bank card in the Cordell case. I know the guy took the money. Did he take the card?"
"No. It was in the machine. It rolled it out but when he didn't take it, the machine automatically swallowed it again. It's a built-in security measure so people don't leave their cards to be taken."
McCaleb nodded and drew a check mark next to that question on his pad.
"Okay. Next I have a question about the Cherokee. How come you didn't put that out to the media?"
"Well, we did put it out but not right away. On that first day we were still evaluating things and didn't put it into the first press release. I wasn't sure we should put that out because then the guy might see it and just dump the car. A few days later, when nothing was happening and we were hitting the wall, I put out another press release with the Cherokee in it. Trouble is, Cordell was old news and nobody picked it up. A little weekly paper up there in the desert was the only one to run it. I know, it was a screwup. I guess I should've put it all out in the first press release."
"Not necessarily," McCaleb said as he drew another check on the pad. "I can see your reasoning."
He read through the notes on the page again.
"Couple things . . . In both tapes the shooter says something-after the shots. He's either talking to himself or the camera. There were no reports on that. Was anything done to-"
"There's a guy in the bureau here who has a brother who is deaf. He took the tapes to him to see if he could lip-read them. He couldn't be sure but on the first one-the ATM tape-he thought he said, 'Don't forget the cashola' just as he took the money from the machine. On the other tape he was less sure. He thought he might have said either the same thing or possibly something along the lines of 'Don't fuck with the' something or other. The last word was least clear to him on both tapes. I guess I never typed up a supp on it. You don't miss a thing, do you?"
"All the time," McCaleb said. "Would the lip reader know Russian if that was what this guy was saying?"
"What? Oh, you mean if it was Bolotov. No, I doubt his brother knows Russian."
McCaleb wrote down the possible translations of what the shooter had said. He then drummed the pen against the pad and wondered if he should take his shot now.
"Do you have anything else?" Winston finally asked.
He decided it wasn't the right moment to bring up Carruthers. At least not directly.
"The gun," he said.
"I know. I don't like it, either. The P7 is not your routine scumbag's choice of firearm. It had to have been stolen. You saw I pulled reports on stolens. But like with everything else, I hit a wall. It got me nowhere."
"I think it's a good theory," McCaleb said. "To a point. I don't like him keeping it after the first shooting. If it was stolen, I see him throwing that thing as far out into the desert as he can about ten minutes after he takes down Cordell. He then goes and steals another for the next time."
"No, you can't say that," Winston said and McCaleb envisioned her shaking her head. "There is no definitive pattern here. He could have been just as likely to keep the gun because he knew it was valuable. And you have to remember, Cordell was a through-and-through shot. He might have figured the lead wouldn't be found or if it had hit the bank-like it actually did-it would be too mangled for comparison. Remember, he picked up the brass. He probably believed the gun had at least one more use."
"I guess you're probably right."
They took a breather, neither one of them talking for a few moments. McCaleb had two more things on his page.
"Next thing," he began carefully. "The slugs."
"What about them?"
"You said yesterday that you're holding the ballistics from both cases."
"That's right. It's
all in evidence lockup. What are you getting at?"
"Have you ever heard of the bureau's DRUGFIRE computer?"
"No."
"It might work for us. For you. It's a long shot but it's worth a shot."
"What is it?"
McCaleb told her. DRUGFIRE was an FBI computer program designed along similar lines of computerized storage of latent fingerprint data. It was the brainchild of the crime lab in the early 1980s, when the cocaine wars that broke out in most cities, particularly Miami, were responsible for a jump in murders nationwide. Most of the slayings were by gunfire. The bureau, struggling for a means of tracking related murders and killers across the country, came up with the DRUGFIRE program. The unique characteristics of groove marks found on the spent bullets used in drug murders were read by a laser, coded for computer storage and entered into a data bank. The computer's program operated in much the same way as fingerprint computer systems used by law enforcement agencies across the nation. The system allowed for the quick comparison of coded bullet profiles.
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