"All of this was put together from witnesses and physical evidence . . . and the video," he began.
"What video?"
"I'll get to that. It was a Florida case. This was before I was sent out here. A whole family . . . abducted. Mother, father, two daughters. The Showitz family. Aubrey-Lynn, the girl in the photo, she was the youngest."
"How old?"
"She had just turned fifteen on the vacation. They were from the Midwest, a little town in Ohio. And it was their first family vacation. They didn't have a lot of money. The father owned a little auto garage-there was still grease under his nails when they found him."
McCaleb blew his air out in a short laugh-the kind a person makes when something isn't funny but he wished it were.
"So they were on a cut-rate vacation and they did Disney World and all of that and they eventually got down to Fort Lauderdale, where they stayed in one room in this little shitty motel by the I-95 freeway. They had made the reservation from Ohio and thought because the place was called the Sea Breeze, it was near the ocean."
His voice caught because he had never spoken the story out loud; every detail about it was pitiful and made him hurt inside.
"Anyway, when they got there, they decided to stay. They were only going to be in town a couple days and they'd lose their deposit if they left for a beach hotel. So they stayed. And on their first night there one of the girls spots this pickup in the lot that was attached to a trailer with an airboat on it. You know what an airboat is?"
"Like with an airplane propeller and it goes in the swamp out there?"
"Right, the Everglades."
"I saw them on CNN when that plane crashed into the swamp and disappeared."
"Yeah, same thing. But this girl and her family had never seen one other than on TV or in a magazine and so they were looking it over and a man-the owner-just happens to walk up to them. He's a friendly guy and he tells the family that he'll take 'em on out for a real Florida airboat ride if they want."
Graciela turned her face into the crook of his neck and pressed a hand against his chest. She knew where the story was going.
"So they said okay. I mean, they were from some town in Ohio with only one high school. They didn't know anything about the real world. So they went ahead and accepted this man's-this stranger's-invitation."
"And he killed them?"
"All of them," McCaleb said, nodding in the dark. "They went out with him and they never came back. The father was found first. A couple nights later his body was found by a frogger working the grass. It wasn't too far from a ramp where they launch those boats. He'd been shot once in the back of the head and dumped off the boat."
"What about the girls?"
"It took the local sheriffs a couple days to ID the father and trace him to the Sea Breeze. When there was no sign there of the wife and kids, and they weren't back in Ohio, the sheriffs went back out into the 'Glades with helicopters and more airboats. They found the three other bodies about six miles out. The middle of nowhere. A spot the airboaters call the Devil's Keep. The bodies were there. He had done things to all three of them. Then he tied them to concrete blocks and threw them over. While they were alive. They drowned."
"Oh, God . . ."
"God wasn't anywhere around that day. Decomposition gases eventually made the bodies float to the top, even with the concrete blocks attached."
After a long moment of silence he continued.
"About that time the bureau was called in and I went down there with another agent, named Walling. There wasn't a whole lot to go on. We worked up a profile-we knew it was somebody very familiar with the 'Glades. Most of it's three feet deep anywhere you stop out there. But the women were dropped in a deep spot. He didn't want them found. He had to have known about that spot. The Devil's Keep. It was like a sinkhole or a meteorite crater. He had to have been out there before to have known about it."
McCaleb was staring through the darkness at the ceiling, but what he was seeing was his own private and horrible version of the events that took place at the Devil's Keep. It was a vision that was never far from memory, always in the dark reaches of his mind.
"He had stripped them, taken their jewelry, anything that would ID them. But in Aubrey-Lynn's hand, when they pried it open, there was a silver necklace with a crucifix. She had somehow hidden it from him and held on to it. Probably praying to her God until the end."
McCaleb thought about the story and the hold it had on him. Its resonance still moved through his life all these years later, like the incoming tide that gently lifted the boat in an almost rhythmic pattern. The story was always there. He knew he didn't need to display the photo above his desk like a holy card. He would never be able to forget the face of that girl. He knew that his heart had started to die with that girl's face.
"Did they catch that man?" Graciela asked.
She had just heard the story for the first time and already needed to know someone had paid for the horrible crime. She needed the closure. She didn't understand, as McCaleb did, that it didn't matter. That there was never closure on a story like this.
"No. They never caught him. They went through the registry at the Sea Breeze and ran everybody down. There was one person they never found. He had registered as Earl Hanford but it was a phony. The trail ended there . . . until he sent the video."
A beat of silence passed.
"It was sent to the sheriff's lead detective. The family had a video camera. They took it with them on the airboat trip. The tape starts with lots of happy scenes and smiles. Disney World, the beach, then some of the 'Glades. Then the killer started taping . . . everything. He wore a black hood over his face so we couldn't ID him. He never showed enough of the boat to help us, either. He knew what he was doing."
"You watched it?"
McCaleb nodded. He disengaged from Graciela and sat on the side of the bed, his back to her.
"He had a rifle. They did what he wanted. All sorts of things . . . the two sisters . . . together. Other things. And he killed them anyway. He-ah, shit . . ."
He shook his head and rubbed his hands harshly over his face. He felt her warm hand on his back.
"The blocks he tied them to weren't enough to take them right down. They struggled, you know, on the surface. He watched and taped it. It got him aroused. He was masturbating while he watched them drown."
He heard Graciela crying quietly. He lay back down and put an arm around her.
"The tape was the last we ever heard from him," he said. "He's out there somewhere. Another one."
He looked at her in the darkness, not sure if she could see him.
"That's the story."
"I'm sorry you have that to carry around."
"And now you have it. I'm sorry, too."
She rubbed the tears away from her eyes.
"That's when you stopped believing in angels, isn't it?"
He nodded.
An hour or so before dawn McCaleb got up and went back to his uncomfortable bed in the salon. They had spent the night until that point talking in whispers, holding and kissing, but never making love. Once back in his sleeping bag, sleep still did not come to him. McCaleb's mind kept running over the details of the hours he had just spent with Graciela, the touch of her warm hands on his skin, the softness of her breasts against his lips, the taste of her lips. And during moments when his mind wandered from these sensual memories, he also thought about the story he had told her and the way she had reacted.
In the morning they did not talk about what had happened in the stateroom or what had been said, even when Raymond had gone out to the stern to look into the live well and was out of earshot. Graciela seemed to act as if there had been no rendezvous, consummated or not, and McCaleb acted in kind. The first thing he spoke of while he scrambled eggs for the three of them was the case.
"I want you to do something for me when you get home today," he said, checking over his shoulder to make sure Raymond was still outside. "I want you to think
about your sister and write down as much as you can about her routines. I mean like places she would go, friends she would see. Anything you can think of she did between the first of the year and the night she went into that store. Also, I want to talk to her friends and boss at the Times. It might be better if you set that up."
"All right. How come?"
"Because things are changing about the case. Remember I asked you about the earring?"
McCaleb told her his belief that it had been the shooter who had taken the earring. He also told her how he had found out late Friday that something of a personal nature had been taken from the victim in the first shooting as well.
"What was it?"
"A photo of his wife and kids."
"What do you think it means?"
"That maybe these weren't robberies. That maybe this man at the ATM and then your sister were picked for some other reason. There's a chance they might have had some prior interaction with the man who shot them. You know, crossed paths with him somewhere. That's why I want you to do this. The wife of the first victim is doing it for me with her husband. I'll look at the two of them together and see if there are any commonalities."
Graciela folded her arms and leaned against the galley counter.
"You mean like they did something to this man to cause this?"
"No. I mean that they crossed paths and something about them attracted him to them. There's no valid reason. I think we're looking for a psychopath. There is no telling what caught his eye. Why he chose these two people out of the nine million others who live in this county."
She slowly shook her head in disbelief.
"What do the police say about all of this?"
"I don't think the LAPD even knows yet. And the sheriff's investigator is not sure whether or not she sees it the way I do. We're all going to talk about it tomorrow morning."
"What about the man?"
"What man?"
"The store owner. Maybe he was the one who crossed the path. Maybe Glory had nothing to do with it."
McCaleb shook his head and said, "No. If he was the target, the shooter would have just gone in and shot him when nobody else was in the store. It was your sister. Your sister and the first man up in Lancaster. There is some connection. We have to find it."
McCaleb reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a photo Amelia Cordell had given him. It showed James Cordell in close-up, a bright smile on his face. He showed the photo to Graciela.
"Do you recognize this man? Is he someone that your sister might have known?"
She took the photo from him and studied it but then shook her head.
"Not that I know of. Is he . . . the man from Lancaster?"
McCaleb nodded and took the photo back. He put it in his pocket, then told Graciela to go get Raymond to come inside for his breakfast. As she got to the sliding door, he stopped her.
"Graciela, do you trust me?"
She looked back at him.
"Of course."
"Then trust me about this. I don't care if the LAPD and the sheriffs don't believe me, but I know what I know. With or without them, I'm going to keep pushing on this."
She nodded and turned back to the door and the boy out in the stern.
23
THE DETECTIVE BUREAU at the Sheriff's Department's Star Center was crowded with detectives when McCaleb entered at eight o'clock on Monday morning. However, the receptionist who had let him walk back to homicide on his own just three days earlier told him he had to wait for the captain. This puzzled McCaleb but before he could ask about it, the receptionist was on the phone making a call. As soon as she hung up, McCaleb saw Captain Hitchens emerge from the meeting room he had sat in with Jaye Winston on Friday. He closed the door behind him and headed toward McCaleb. Terry noticed that the blinds over the meeting room's glass window were drawn and closed. Hitchens beckoned him to follow.
"Terry, come on back with me."
McCaleb followed him to his office and Hitchens told him to have a seat. McCaleb was getting a bad feeling about the overly cordial treatment. Hitchens sat behind his desk, folded his arms and leaned forward on the calendar blotter with a smile on his face.
"So, where have you been?"
McCaleb looked at his watch.
"What do you mean? Jaye Winston set the meeting for eight. It's two minutes after."
"I mean Sunday, Saturday. Jaye's been calling."
McCaleb immediately knew what had happened. On Saturday, when he had been cleaning up the boat, he had taken the phone and the answer machine and placed them in a cabinet next to the chart table. He had then forgotten about it. Calls to the boat and messages left while they had been out on the jetty fishing both days would have been missed. The phone and machine were still in the cabinet.
"Damn," he now said to Hitchens. "I haven't checked my machine."
"Well, we were calling. Could've saved you a trip out."
"The meeting's been canceled? I thought Jaye wanted-"
"The meeting isn't canceled, Terry. It's just that some things have come up and we feel it's better if we conduct the investigation without outside complications."
McCaleb studied him for a long moment.
"Complications? Is this because of the heart transplant? Jaye told you?"
"She didn't have to tell me. But it's because of a number of things. Look, you came in here and shook things up. Gave us a number of things-good hard leads-to follow. We're going to do that and we're going to be very diligent in our investigation, but at this point I have to draw the line on your involvement. I'm sorry."
There was something not said, McCaleb thought as the captain spoke. Something was going on he didn't understand or at least know about it. Good hard leads, Hitchens had said. Suddenly, McCaleb understood. If Winston couldn't get through to him during the weekend, then neither could Vernon Carruthers in Washington, D.C.
"My FAT guy found something?"
"Fat guy?"
"Firearms and Toolmarks. What did he get, Captain?"
Hitchens raised his hands palm out.
"We're not going to talk about that. I told you, we thank you very much for the jump start. But let us handle it from here. We will let you know what happens and if good things happen, you will be properly credited in our records and with the media."
"I don't need to be credited. I just need to be part of this."
"I'm sorry. But we'll take it from here."
"And Jaye agrees with this?"
"It doesn't matter if she agrees or doesn't agree. Last I checked, I was running the detective bureau here, not Jaye Winston."
There was enough annoyance in his tone for McCaleb to conclude that Winston had not been in agreement with Hitchens. That was good to know. He might need her. Staring at Hitchens, McCaleb knew he wasn't going to go quietly back to his boat and drop it. No way. The captain had to be smart enough to realize it as well.
"I know what you're thinking. And all I'm saying is don't get yourself in a jam. If we come across you in the field, there's going to be a problem."
McCaleb nodded.
"Fair enough."
"You've been warned."
McCaleb told Lockridge to cruise around the visitor's lot. He wanted to get to a phone quickly but first he wanted to see if he could get an idea who had been in the meeting room Hitchens had come out of. He knew Jaye Winston was obviously in there and probably Arrango and Walters. But following his hunch that Vernon Carruthers had come up with a ballistics match with the DRUGFIRE laser program, he also suspected that someone from the bureau besides Maggie Griffin was in the meeting room.
As they moved slowly through the parking lot, McCaleb checked the rear driver's-side window of each parked car they passed. Finally, in the third lane, he saw what he was looking for.
"Hold it here, Bud," he said.
They stopped behind a metallic blue Ford LTD. On the rear driver's-side window was the telltale bar-code sticker. It was a bureau car. A laser reader at t
he garage entrance of the federal building in Westwood scanned the bar code and raised the steel gate to permit entrance after hours.
McCaleb got out and walked up to the car. There were no other exterior markings to help him identify the agent who had driven it. But whoever had been driving the car made it easy for him. Driving east to the meeting against a rising sun, the driver had turned down the windshield visor and left it down. All the FBI agents McCaleb had ever known kept the government gas card assigned to their car clipped to the visor for easy access. This driver was no exception.
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