Blood Work (1998)

by Michael Connelly

  "Bozos."

  "I don't know. It's hard to blame them. They carry a lot of cases and this one looked the way it was set up to look."

  "Still no excuse."

  McCaleb let it go and turned silent. He didn't particularly feel the need to defend Arrango and Walters anyway. He returned to his thoughts on the events of the night and came to one positive conclusion: he was apparently making enough waves to engage a response from someone, though he didn't know what exactly that response had been.

  They got to the L.A. Times plant ten minutes before their appointment with Glory's supervisor, a man named Clint Neff. The Times plant was a huge property at the corner of Winnetka and Prairie in Chatsworth in the northwest corner of Los Angeles. It was a neighborhood of slick office buildings, warehouses and upper-middle-class neighborhoods. The Times building looked as though it were made of smoked glass and white plastic. They stopped at a guard station and had to wait while a man in uniform called in to confirm their appointment before lifting the gate. After they parked, McCaleb took the legal pad from his bag to take in with him. The bag itself had become too cumbersome to lug around. He made sure Graciela locked the car before they left it.

  Through automatic sliding doors they stepped into a two-story lobby of black marble and terra-cotta tile. Their steps echoed on the floor. It was cold and austere, and not unlike the paper's coverage of the community, some critics would say.

  A white-haired man in a uniform of matching blue pants and shirt came down a hallway and greeted them. The oval patch above the pocket of his shirt said his name was Clint before he got a chance to say it. A set of professional ear protectors like those worn by ground crews at airports was around his neck. Graciela introduced herself and then McCaleb.

  "Miss Rivers, all I can say is that we're all real sorry here," Neff said. "Your sister was a good gal. A fine worker and a good friend to us."

  "Thank you. She was."

  "If you want to come back, we can sit down for a minute and I can help you as best I can."

  He led the way back down the hall, walking in front of them and throwing conversation over his shoulder.

  "Your sister probably told you, but this is where we print all the papers for the Valley edition and then most of the specials we insert in all the editions. You know, the TV magazine and whatnot."

  "Yes, I know," Graciela said.

  "You know, I don't know what good I'll be to you. I told some of the crew you might want to talk to them, too. They said it would be fine."

  They came to a set of stairs and went up.

  "Is Annette Stapleton still on the night shift?" McCaleb asked.

  "Uh . . . actually, no," Neff said. He was winded from the climb. "Nettie . . . got sorta spooked after what happened with Glory and I don't blame her, a thing like that. So she's on days now."

  Neff headed down another hallway toward a set of double doors.

  "She's here today?"

  "Sure is. You can talk to her if you-the only thing I ask is that you talk to these folks on their breaks. Like Nettie for example. She goes to the break room at ten-thirty and maybe we'll be done by then, so you can talk with her then."

  "No problem," McCaleb said.

  After a few steps in silence Neff turned around to look at McCaleb.

  "So you were an FBI man, is that right?"

  "Right."

  "That must've been pretty interesting."

  "Sometimes."

  "How come you quit? You look like a young man to me."

  "I guess it got a little too interesting."

  McCaleb looked at Graciela and winked. She smiled. McCaleb was saved from further personal inquiry by the noise of the press room. They came to the thick double doors which barely contained the roar of the presses on the other side. From a dispenser attached to the wall next to the doors, Neff pulled two plastic packages containing disposable foam earplugs and handed them to McCaleb and Graciela.

  "Better put these in while we walk through. We're running the whole line right now. Printing the Book Review. A million-two copies. Those plugs'll knock about thirty decibels off the sound. You still can't hear yourself think, though."

  As they opened the packages and put in the plugs, Neff pulled his ear protectors up and into place. He opened one of the doors and they walked along the line of presses. The sensory impact was tactile as much as it was auditory. The floor vibrated as if they had just stepped into a minor earthquake. The earplugs did little to soften the high-pitched keening of the presses. A heavy thumping sound provided an underlying bass line. Neff led them to a door and into what was obviously the break room. There were long lunch tables and a variety of vending machines. The free spaces on the walls were taken up with corkboards cluttered with company and union announcements and safety-related warnings. The noise was greatly decreased when the door swung shut. They crossed the room and through another door entered Neff's small office. As Neff pulled his ear set down around his neck again, McCaleb and Graciela pulled their plugs.

  "Better hang on to those," Neff said. "You go out the way you came in. Depending on when that is, we might be rolling out there."

  McCaleb took the plastic bag out of his pocket and put the plugs in it. Neff took the seat behind his desk and signaled them to two in front of it. The vinyl padding of the seat McCaleb was assigned was smeared with ink. He hesitated before sitting.

  "Don't worry," Neff said, "it's dry."

  For the next fifteen minutes they talked to Neff about Gloria Torres and got very little usable or salient information. It was clear that Neff liked Glory but it was also clear that his relationship was typical of most supervisor-employee interaction. It was primarily job focused and there was little personal information passed back and forth. When asked if he knew of anything that could have been troubling Glory, Neff shook his head and said he wished he knew something that would help. Any disputes with fellow employees? Same shake of the head.

  Out of the blue McCaleb asked him if he knew James Cordell.

  "Who's that?" Neff said.

  "What about Donald Kenyon?"

  "What, that savings and loan guy?" Neff smiled. "Yeah, we were pals. At the country club. Milken and that guy, Boesky, hung out with us, too."

  McCaleb returned the smile and nodded. It was clear Neff was not going to be of much help. His mind drifted and Graciela asked Neff questions about who Glory's friends were. McCaleb thought about the ink-stained chair upon which he sat. He knew where the ink came from. Probably everyone who sat in the chair before him was someone called in off the press line. It was why they all wore the navy blue uniforms. To hide the ink.

  A thought occurred to him. Glory had been on her way home from work when she was killed. But she wasn't in any uniform. She had changed. Here. But there had been nothing in the LAPD report about detectives finding work clothes in her car or checking the contents of a locker.

  "Excuse me," McCaleb said, interrupting Neff as he told Graciela about how skilled her sister was at driving a forklift that loaded huge rolls of newsprint into the presses. "Is there a locker room? Did Glory have a locker?"

  "Sure, we got a locker room. Who wants to get into their automobile covered with ink? We've got complete fa-"

  "Would Glory's locker have been cleaned out yet?"

  Neff sat back and thought a moment.

  "You know, we got another hiring freeze here. We haven't been able to get permission to replace Glory. Since we haven't done that, I doubt we've cleaned out her locker."

  McCaleb felt a little jump. Maybe it was a break.

  "Then is there a key? Can we look at it?"

  "Uh, sure, I suppose so. I have to go get the master from the maintenance supervisor."

  Neff left them in his office while he went to get the master key and to find Nettie Stapleton. Since Glory's locker was obviously in the women's locker room, Neff had said before leaving that Nettie would escort Graciela in to search its contents. McCaleb would have to wait in the hallway with Neff.
This did not sit well with McCaleb. It was not that he didn't think Graciela capable of searching a locker. It was just that he would look at and treat the locker in its entirety, taking in the subtleties of what he saw the way he studied crime scenes and crime scene tapes.

  Soon Neff was back with Stapleton and introductions were made. She remembered Graciela and offered seemingly heartfelt condolences. Neff then led the entourage downstairs to the hallway leading to the locker rooms. McCaleb was going to make one last offer, that if the locker room was empty, he be allowed in. But as they approached the door to the women's locker room, he could hear the sound of the showers running. He knew he was going to be left out.

  McCaleb had run out of things to ask Neff and was short of small talk. While they waited, he slowly sauntered away from the man so that he could avoid idle conversation and personal questions. There were more bulletin boards affixed to the wall between the locker room doors and he acted as though he was reading some of the posted notices.

  Four minutes of silence went by in the hallway. McCaleb had moved from one end of the side-by-side bulletin boards to the other. When Graciela and Nettie finally came out, he was staring at a hand-drawn rendering of a liquid drop on a poster attached to the board. The drop was half shaded in with red, indicating that the employees were halfway toward their goal in an ongoing blood drive. Graciela walked up to him.

  "Nothing," she said. "Just some clothes, a bottle of perfume and her earphones. There were four pictures of Raymond and one of me taped to the door."

  "Earphones?"

  "I mean ear protectors. But nothing else."

  "What kind of clothes?"

  McCaleb was still staring at the poster as he spoke.

  "A couple of fresh uniforms and a top from home and a pair of jeans."

  "You check all the pockets?"

  "Yes. Nothing."

  It hit him then, with the impact of an armor-piercing bullet. He leaned forward and put his hand up against the bulletin board for support.

  "Terry, what is it?" Graciela said. "Are you okay?"

  He didn't respond. His thoughts were racing. Graciela put her hand to his forehead to feel for fever. He brushed it aside.

  "No, it's not that," he said.

  "Is there a problem?" Neff chimed in.

  "No," McCaleb said, a little too loudly. "We just have to go. I need to get to the car."

  "Is everything all right?"

  "Yes," McCaleb said, again too loudly. "I'm sorry, but everything's fine. We just have to go."

  McCaleb nodded his thanks to Annette Stapleton and headed down the hallway toward what he believed was the entrance lobby. Graciela followed and Neff called after them, telling them to take their first left.

  28

  WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT? What’s going on?"

  McCaleb was walking quickly toward the car. He felt that maintaining velocity would somehow help keep the growing dread he was feeling from entirely overtaking his thoughts. Graciela had to trot to keep up.

  "The blood."

  "The blood?"

  "They both gave blood. Your sister and Cordell. It was right there in front of me all the-I saw that poster and I remembered I saw a letter at Cordell's house . . . and I just knew. Do you have your keys?"

  "Listen, slow down, Terry. Slow down."

  He reluctantly slowed his pace and she came up next to him, digging the car keys out of her purse.

  "Now tell me what you are talking about."

  "Open the car and I'll show you."

  They reached the car. She unlocked his door first and started around to her side. He slipped in and reached across to open her door. He then leaned forward and started going through the bag on the floor. It was so jammed with paperwork, he had to pull the gun out and place it on the floor mat just so there was room to look through the documents. Graciela got in the car and started watching.

  "You can start it," he said without turning his attention from his task.

  "What are you doing?"

  He pulled out the Cordell autopsy.

  "I'm looking for-shit, this is just the preliminary report."

  He flipped through the protocol to make sure. It was incomplete.

  "No toxicology and blood."

  He shoved the autopsy report back into the bag and then the gun. He straightened up.

  "We've got to find a phone. I'll call his wife."

  Graciela started the car.

  "Fine," she said. "We will-we'll go to my house. But you have to tell me what it is you're thinking, Terry."

  "Okay, just give me a minute to think first."

  He slowed the jumble of thoughts streaming through his mind and tried to analyze the jump he had just made.

  "I'm talking about the match," he said. "The link."

  "What link?"

  "What have we been missing? What have we been looking for? The link between these cases. At first the connection was simply the randomness of crime. That's what the cops thought. That's what I thought when I first started looking at it. We had two holdup victims-no connection other than the killer and the chance crossing of his path with the paths of these individuals. This is L.A., this sort of thing happens all the time. The capital of random violence, right?"

  Graciela turned onto Sherman Way

  . They were just a couple of minutes from her home.

  "Right."

  "Wrong. Because then we read more into it. We discover a killer who takes personal icons and this suggests something more involved than random collisions of shooter and victim. This suggests a deeper relationship-the targeting, stalking and acquisition of each victim."

  McCaleb stopped. They were passing the Sherman Market and they both wordlessly looked at the store as they went by. McCaleb waited a moment longer before continuing.

  "Then all of a sudden we get another wrinkle, another layer of the onion is peeled back. We get the ballistics and it's a whole new ball game. Now we have another murder and what looks like a professional running through this. A hitter. Why? What could possibly be the connection between your sister, James Cordell and Donald Kenyon?"

  Graciela didn't answer. She was coming up on Alabama now and moved the car into the left-turn lane.

  "Blood," he said. "Blood has got to be the link."

  She pulled into the driveway of her home. She turned the engine off.

  "Blood," she said.

  McCaleb stared straight ahead at the closed garage door. He spoke slowly, the dread finally catching up with him.

  "All this time I've been thinking, What did she see, what did she know? Whose path could she have crossed that would have gotten her killed? You see, I looked at her life and made a judgment. I decided that she didn't have anything that anyone would want to take, so the reason had to be elsewhere. But I missed it. Missed it completely. Your sister was a good mother, a good sister, good employee and friend. But the one thing she had that made her almost unique was her blood. That made what she had inside her so very valuable . . . to someone."

  He waited a beat. He still didn't look at her.

  "Someone like me."

  He heard her breath leaving her body and he felt as though it was the hope going out of him. His hope of redemption.

  "You're saying she was . . . taken for her organs. You look at a poster back there and can say that?"

  He finally looked over at her.

  "I just knew it. That's all."

  He opened his door.

  "We call Mrs. Cordell. She'll tell us her husband's blood type. It will be AB with CMV negative. Perfect match. Then we get Kenyon's blood. It, too, will match. I'd bet on it."

  He turned his body to get out.

  "It doesn't make sense," she said. "Because you told me Mr. Cordell died right there. At the bank. His heart wasn't taken. His organs. It's not the same. And Kenyon. Kenyon died at his house."

  He got out and then leaned down and looked in at her. She was looking out through the windshield now.

  "Cordell and Ken
yon didn't work out," he said. "The shooter learned from them. He finally got it right with your sister."

  McCaleb shut the door and walked toward the house. It was a while before Graciela caught up to him.

  Inside, McCaleb sat down on a sectional couch in the living room and Graciela brought him the phone from the kitchen. He realized he had left Amelia Cordell's number in his bag in the car. He also realized that the car was unlocked and his gun was in the bag as well.