Blood Work (1998)

by Michael Connelly

  "No, I never tried that. I'll have to remember."

  "Sure. It's a good tip. You can use it."

  "So what's up? How are things going?"

  "Well, on the case not so good. I thought we had something yesterday but then we hit a bit of a stall. I'm going to rethink things today,"

  "Okay."

  "I was calling because I was wondering about tomorrow. You know, whether you were thinking of bringing Raymond down so I could take him out to the rocks."

  "The rocks?"

  "The jetty. There's good fishing off there. I walk out most mornings and there's always people there, lines out."

  "Well, Raymond hasn't stopped talking about it since we left the other night. So I was planning on it. As long as it's still all right with you."

  McCaleb hesitated, thinking about Bolotov and wondering if he could possibly be a threat. But he wanted to see Graciela and the boy. He felt a need to see them.

  "It sounds like maybe we should do it another time," she said then.

  "No," he said, the specter of Bolotov disappearing from his mind. "I was just thinking. I want you to come down. It will be fun. And I could make up for that dinner I was supposed to cook the other night."

  "Then good."

  "And you two should stay over. I've got plenty of room. Two staterooms and the salon table collapses and becomes a third bed."

  "Well, we'll see. I like to keep some constants in Raymond's life. Like his bed."

  "I understand."

  They talked about the arrangements a little further and she agreed to come down to the marina the following morning. After hanging up, he continued to lie in bed with the phone sitting on his stomach. His thoughts were on Graciela. He liked being with her and the thought of spending all of Saturday with her made him smile. Then the thought of Bolotov intruded again. McCaleb carefully considered the situation and decided that Bolotov was not a threat. Most spoken threats were never carried out. Even if Bolotov wanted to, it would be difficult for him to find The Following Sea. Lastly, the Russian was no longer a suspect in the murders.

  Those thoughts led to the next question. If he was not a suspect, then why had he run? McCaleb thought of Winston's explanation the night before. Bolotov had not been the shooter but he was probably guilty of something. He ran.

  McCaleb put it aside, rolled out of bed and finally got up.

  After he had gotten one cup of coffee down, McCaleb went down to the office and gathered up all of the reports and the tapes and brought them back up to the salon. He then opened the slider to air out the boat and sat back down and began methodically going through all of the videotapes associated with the case.

  Twenty minutes later he was watching the shooting of Gloria Torres for the third time in a row when he heard Buddy Lockridge's voice from behind him.

  "What the hell is that?"

  McCaleb turned around and saw Lockridge standing in the open door of the salon. He hadn't felt him come aboard. He grabbed the remote and flicked off the television.

  "It's a tape. What are you doing here?"

  "Reporting for duty."

  McCaleb stared blankly at him.

  "You told me yesterday you'd need me this morning."

  "Oh, right. Well, I don't think I'm-I'm just going to work around here today, I think. You going to be around later if something comes up?"

  "Prob'ly."

  "Okay, thanks."

  McCaleb waited for him to leave but Lockridge just stood there.

  "What?"

  "Is that what you're working on?" Lockridge asked, pointing at the tube.

  "Yes, Buddy, that's it. But I can't talk to you about it. It's a private matter."

  "That's cool."

  "Then what else?"

  "Um, well, when's payday?"

  "Payday? What are you talk-oh, you mean for you? Oh, anytime. You need some money?"

  "Sort of. I could use some today."

  McCaleb went to the galley counter where he had left his wallet and keys. As he was opening the wallet, he computed that he had used Buddy for no more than eight hours. He took out six twenties and handed the bills to Lockridge. Fanning the money in his hands, Buddy said it was too much.

  "Some of it's for gas," McCaleb explained. "And the extra is for the hanging around and being on call. That okay?"

  "Fine with me. Thanks, Terror."

  McCaleb smiled. Lockridge had been calling him that ever since the night they met and McCaleb had been so mad about the harmonica noise.

  Lockridge finally left then and McCaleb got back to work. Nothing struck him as significant during his viewing of the videotapes and he went on to the paperwork. On this read-through time was not a factor and he tried to absorb every detail on every page.

  He started backward, beginning with the Kang-Torres case. But as he went through the crime reports and investigative summaries, he found nothing aside from the conflict in the timeline he had constructed earlier that tugged at him as being out of order or needing further investigation. Despite his dislike of Arrango's personality and Walters's complacency, he couldn't find anything wrong or anything that had slipped through.

  Finally, he came to the autopsy report and the grainy photocopies of the photos of Gloria Torres's body. He hadn't looked at these before. With good reason. Death photos had always been the way he remembered victims. He saw them in death, not in life. He saw what had been done to them. During the first read-through of the murder book, he had decided that he didn't need to see the photos of Gloria. It wasn't what he wanted or needed to know about her.

  But now, grasping for anything, he studied the photos. The poor duplication of them by the photocopier made the details murky and softened the impact. He leafed through them quickly and then came back to the first one. It was Gloria's naked body on the steel table, the photo taken before the autopsy. A long incision, made by the surgeon who took her organs, ran between the breasts and down the sternum. McCaleb held the photo in both hands and looked at her violated body for a long moment, feeling a mixture of sadness and the heat of guilt.

  The phone rang, startling him. He grabbed the phone before it could ring again.

  "Yes?"

  "Terry? It's Dr. Fox."

  McCaleb inexplicably turned the photo over on the table.

  "Are you there?"

  "Yes, hi, how are you?"

  "I'm fine. How are you?"

  "I'm fine, too, Doc."

  "What are you doing?"

  "Doing? I'm just sort of sitting here."

  "Terry, you know what I mean. What did you decide about that woman's request? The sister."

  "I, uh . . ." He turned the photo back over and looked at it. "I decided I needed to look into it."

  She didn't say anything but he pictured her at her desk closing her eyes and shaking her head.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  "I'm sorry, too," she said. "Terry, I really don't think you understand the risks of what you are doing."

  "I think I do, Doctor. I don't think I have a choice, anyway."

  "I don't think I have one, either."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I don't think I can continue to be your doctor if this is what you are going to do. You obviously don't value my advice or feel you should follow my instructions. You are choosing this pursuit of yours over your health. I can't be around while you do this."

  "Are you firing me, Doc?"

  He laughed uneasily.

  "It's not a joke. Maybe that's your problem. You think it's some sort of joke, that you're invincible."

  "No, I don't feel invincible."

  "Well, your words and actions don't match up. On Monday I'll have one of my assistants gather your files and put together two or three cardiologists I can refer you to."

  McCaleb closed his eyes.

  "Look, Doc, I . . . I don't know what to say. We've been together a long time. Don't you feel an obligation to see it through?"

  "It goes two ways. If I don't hear
from you by Monday, I'll have to assume you are going on with this. I'll have your records here at the office ready for you."

  She hung up. McCaleb sat still, the phone still to his ear until it started blaring its hang-up tone.

  McCaleb got up and took a walk outside. From the cockpit he surveyed the marina and the parking lot. He saw no sign of Buddy Lockridge or anyone else. The air was still. He leaned over the stern and looked down into the water. It was too dark to see bottom. He spit into the water and with it went the misgivings he felt over Fox's edict. He decided he would not be swayed.

  The photo was there on the table waiting for him when he got back. He picked it up again and studied it once more, this time his eyes traveling up the body to the face. There was some kind of dark salve on the eyes and then he remembered that the eyes had probably been taken along with the internal organs.

  He noticed the three small perforations running along the ridge of the left ear and down to the lobe. On the right lobe there was only one.

  He was about to put the photo aside when he realized that earlier he had read through a property report listing the items removed from the victim at the hospital and then turned over to police.

  Curious to make sure all details checked out, he went back to the stack of paperwork and dug out the property report. His finger ran down the list of clothing until he got to the subheading of jewelry.

  JEWELRY

  1. Timex watch

  2. Three earrings (2 crescent moon, one silver hoop)

  3. Two rings (birthstone, silver)

  He thought about this for a long moment, remembering that on the video of the shooting it was clear that Gloria Torres was wearing a total of four earrings. The hoop, the crescent moon and the dangling cross on her left ear. On her right ear there had been only a crescent moon. This accounting did not fit with the property report, which listed only three earrings. Nor did it jibe with the perforation marks clearly visible on Gloria's ears in the evidence photo.

  He turned to the television, thinking that he would look at the tape again, but then stopped. He was sure. He did not imagine something like a cross. Somehow it was not accounted for.

  A loose end. He tapped his fingers on the property report, trying to think about whether this was a notable detail or not. What had happened to the cross earring? Why wasn't it on the list?

  He checked his watch and saw it was ten minutes after twelve. Graciela would be at lunch. He called the hospital and asked to be transferred to the main cafeteria. When a woman answered, he asked if it would be possible for her to go to the nurse seated at the table next to one of the windows and give her a message. When the woman hesitated, McCaleb described Graciela and gave her name. The woman on the phone reluctantly asked what the message was.

  "Just tell her to call Dr. McCaleb as soon as she can."

  About five minutes later he got the callback.

  "Dr. McCaleb?"

  "Sorry, I had to do that so she would be sure to give you the message."

  "What's up?"

  "Well, I'm going through the case files again and I've got a loose end here. The property report says that they took two crescent moon earrings and a hoop earring off your sister's ears at the hospital after she was brought in."

  "Right, they would have needed to remove those for the CAT scan. They wanted to look at the wound track."

  "Okay, what about the cross earring she wore in her left ear? There's nothing on the property report about-"

  "She wasn't wearing it that night. I always thought that was weird. Like it was bad luck, because that was her favorite earring. She usually wore it every day."

  "Like a personal signature," McCaleb said. "What do you mean, she wasn't wearing it that night?"

  "Because when the police gave me her things-you know, her watch and rings and earrings-it wasn't there. She wasn't wearing it."

  "Are you sure? In the video she's wearing it."

  "What video?"

  "From the store."

  She was silent a moment.

  "No, that can't be. I found it in her jewelry box. I gave it to them at the funeral home so they could, you know, put it on for when she was buried."

  Now McCaleb was silent and then he put it together.

  "But wouldn't she have had two of them? I don't know anything about crosses, but don't you buy earrings in pairs?"

  "Oh, you're right. I didn't think about that."

  "So the one you found was the extra one?"

  He felt a stirring inside that he immediately recognized but hadn't felt in a long time.

  "I guess . . . ," Graciela said. "So if she did have one on in the store, what happened to it?"

  "That's what I want to find out."

  "But what does it matter anyway?"

  He was silent for a few moments thinking about how he should answer. He decided that what he was thinking was too speculative at the moment to share with her.

  "It's just a loose end that should be tied up. Let me ask you something, was it the kind of earring that just hooked on or was there a hasp to make sure it didn't fall off easily? You know what I mean? I couldn't tell that from the video."

  "Yes. Um, I think there was like a hook that you sort of clipped after it was on your ear. I don't think it would have fallen off."

  While she was speaking, McCaleb was looking through the stack for the paramedics' report. He ran his finger down the lines of the information box until he found the squad number and names of the two paramedics who had treated and transported Gloria.

  "Okay, I'm gonna go," he said. "Are we still on for tomorrow?"

  "Sure. Um, Terry?"

  "What?"

  "You saw the video from the store? I mean, all of it? You saw Glory . . ."

  "Yes," he said quietly. "I had to."

  "Was she . . . was she scared?"

  "No, Graciela. It was very quick. She never saw it coming."

  "I guess that's good."

  "I think so . . . Listen, are you going to be all right?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Okay then. I'll see you tomorrow."

  The paramedics who had transported Gloria worked out of Fire Station 76. McCaleb called but the crew that had worked the night of January 22nd was off until Sunday. However, the station captain told him that under department policy governing what are called "crime transports," any property left behind on a stretcher or found anywhere in an ambulance would have been turned over to police custody. This meant that if this had occurred following the transport of Gloria Torres, there would be a property-received report in the murder book. There wasn't. The cross earring remained unaccounted for.

  The irony that McCaleb carried inside of him alongside a stranger's heart was the secret belief that he had been the wrong one saved. It should have been someone else. In the days and weeks before he received Glory's heart, he had been prepared for the end. He had accepted it as the way it was to be. He was long past believing in a God-the horrors he had seen and documented had little by little sapped his stores of faith until the only absolute he believed in was that there were no bounds to the evil acts of men. And in those seemingly final days, as his own heart withered and tapped out its final cadences, he did not grasp desperately for his lost faith as a shield or a means of easing the fear of the unknown. Instead, he was accepting of the end, of his own nothingness. He was ready.

  It was easy to do. When he had been with the bureau, he was driven and consumed by a mission, a calling. And when he carried it out and was successful, he knew he was making a difference. Better than any heart surgeon, he was saving lives from horrible ends. He was facing off against the worst kinds of evil, the most malignant cancers, and the battle, though always wearing and painful, gave his life its meaning.

  That was gone the moment his heart deserted him and he fell to the floor of the field office thinking he had surely been stabbed in the chest. It was still gone two years later when the pager sounded and he was told they had a heart for him.

&nbs
p; He had a new heart but it didn't feel like a new life. He was a man on a boat that never left port. It didn't matter what stock quotes about second chances he had used with a newspaper reporter. That existence was not enough for McCaleb. That was the struggle he was facing when Graciela Rivers had stepped down off the dock and into his life.