"Probably. Still, it's not going to look very good when it comes out this guy was interviewed and skated."
"Too fucking bad. I say, let the chips fall. We've got the press conference scheduled for three o'clock."
McCaleb considered what she had said about the killing stopping after Crimmins had been interviewed. He felt a thrill of satisfaction that it might have been his directive to interview academy washouts that had halted the killings. While he was savoring the thought, Winston opened a file and took a color photo off a stack of them. She handed it to him. It showed Crimmins in his academy uniform. Clean cut, clean shaven, a thin face and hopeful eyes that seemed to betray his confidence. It was as if he knew when the photo was taken that he would not make it, that there would be no graduation photo.
"So it looks like when he was Noone, there was not much of a disguise used," he said. "The glasses and something inside his cheeks to make his face look fuller."
"Right. Probably because he knew he would have direct contact with cops and a full-on disguise would show."
"Can I keep this?"
"Sure, we'll be giving them out today."
"What's next? You got addresses?"
"Nothing good. The warehouse you already found was the only thing current. But there's got to be another place. His web page was still operational even after we unplugged the warehouse. It means he's got another computer somewhere. Running as we speak."
"Can't they just trace the phone line in?"
"He's got an anonymous provider."
"What's that?"
"Anything going to or from the web page goes through this anonymous provider of Internet access. We can't trace and we can't crack open the provider because of First Amendment bullshit. Besides, the expert over at the bureau, Bob Clearmountain, told me guys like him now use microwaves instead of hardwire phone lines. Makes it harder to trace and locate."
The technology was beyond McCaleb. He changed the subject.
"You going to ID him at the press conference?"
"Think so. We'll get the photo out, show the hypnotism video, see what it brings. By the way, Keisha Russell at the Times. Did you tip her off?"
"I owed her the call. She helped me at the beginning of this thing. I left her a voice mail this morning. Thought I'd give her a head start on it. Sorry."
"No, that's okay. I like her. I needed to talk to her anyway. Nevins told me what you said last night, about it probably being our guy who sent the letter that prompted the story about you in the Times. "
"Right. Did she keep the letter?"
"No. She only remembered it was signed Bob something or other. It was probably him. He had this thing so wired."
McCaleb suddenly thought of something. Graciela had told him that she had not become aware of the Times story on him until a man who claimed he had worked with Glory called and told her of the story. She then went to the library to read it. McCaleb realized that the caller could have been Crimmins setting his plan into motion.
"What is it?" Winston asked.
"Nothing. I was just thinking."
He decided not to tell Winston his hunch yet. He would check it out himself. It would give him a reason to break his promise not to call Graciela. He could make it an official call.
"So," Winston said. "Where do you think he is?"
"Crimmins?" He hesitated. "In the wind, I guess."
Winston studied his face a moment.
"I thought you might have an idea."
He looked away from her and down at the desk.
"Well, the wind doesn't blow forever," she said, letting it go. "He's got to come down somewhere."
"Hope so."
They were silent then, finished with each other except for the formality of the statement he would have to tape.
"It may be none of my business," Winston said, "but how are you going to deal with this?"
"I'm working on it."
"Well, if you ever need somebody to talk to . . ."
He nodded his thanks.
"Okay, then should we go get this over with?"
An hour later McCaleb was alone in the interview room. He had told his story to Winston and she had left with the tape to get it transcribed. She had given him permission to use the phone that was on the table and told him he had the room for as long as he needed it.
He composed his thoughts for a few moments and then punched in the number for the nursing station in the emergency room at Holy Cross. He asked for Graciela but the woman who answered said Graciela was not there.
"Is she on break?"
"No, she's not here today."
"Okay, thank you."
He hung up. He guessed that she had called in sick. He couldn't blame her. Not with the news he had delivered the night before. He punched in her home number. But after five rings the call was picked up by an answering machine. After the beep he fumbled through the message he wanted to leave.
"Uh, Graciela, it's me, Terry, you there?"
He waited a long moment and then continued.
"Um, I just wanted . . . they told me you weren't at work and I, uh, I wanted to say hello and there's a couple of questions I need to ask you about things. Loose ends mostly . . . but it would help to-anyway, I'm gonna go and I'll probably try to call you later on. Um, I'll probably be on the road so you don't have to worry about calling me back."
He wished he could erase the message and start over. He cursed to himself and hung up, then wondered if the curse had been recorded. He shook his head, got up and left the room.
44
IT TOOK HIM two days to find the picture that Daniel Crimmins as James Noone had drawn during the hypnosis session. McCaleb started at Rosarita Beach and then worked his way south. He found it between La Fonda and Ensenada on a remote stretch of the coast. Playa Grande was a small village on a two-tiered rock flow overlooking the sea. The village mostly consisted of a motel with six small detached bungalows, a pottery store, a small restaurant and market and a Pemex station. There was also a small stable for renting horses to ride down on the beach. The commercial core, if it was big enough to be called that, was at the edge of a cliff overlooking the beach. On the stepped bluff above it was a wide scattering of small houses and trailer homes.
What made McCaleb stop was the stable. He remembered Crimmins describing horses on the beach. He got out of the Cherokee and walked down a steep trail cut through the rock outcroppings to the beach. The wide, white beach was a private enclave about a mile long and enclosed on each end by huge, jagged rock flows into the sea. Near the south end, McCaleb saw the rock overhang that Crimmins had described during the hypnosis session. McCaleb knew that the best and most convincing way to lie is to tell as much truth as possible. So he had taken his subject's description of the place at which he felt most relaxed in the world to be a true description of a place he knew. Now, McCaleb had found it.
He had arrived at Playa Grande through simple deduction and legwork. The description Crimmins had given during the session had obviously been the Pacific Coast. He had said he liked to drive down to this place and since McCaleb knew there was no California beach south of L.A. as remote as he had described or with horses on it, that obviously made the destination Mexico. And since Crimmins had said he drove there, that pretty much eliminated Cabo and the other points far south along the Baja peninsula. It took two days to cover the coastline that was left. McCaleb stopped at every village and every time he saw a cutoff from the highway to the beach.
Crimmins had been right. It was a truly beautiful and restful spot. The sand was like sugar and a million years of crashing waves had carved a deep bite into the cliff face, creating the overhang that resembled nothing so much as a rock wave, curled and about to break over the beach.
McCaleb was the only person on the beach to be seen in either direction. It was a weekday and he guessed that this stretch of sand lay largely unpopulated until the weekends. That was why Crimmins had liked it.
Three horses were on the
beach. They milled around an empty feed trough while waiting for customers. There was no need to tie them. The beach was completely enclosed by water and rock. The only way off it was the steep trail back up to the stable.
McCaleb wore a baseball cap and sunglasses as protection against the power of the midday sun. He wore long pants and a windbreaker as well. But, entranced by the beauty of the spot, he remained on the beach long after he determined Daniel Crimmins was nowhere to be seen. After a while a teenager wearing shorts and a sweatshirt with no sleeves came down the trail and approached.
"You would like horse ride?"
"No, gracias. "
From the pocket of his coat McCaleb pulled the folded photos Tony Banks had made from the videotapes. He showed them to the boy.
"You seen? This man . . . I want to find."
The boy stared at the photos and made no indication he understood. Finally he just shook his head.
"No, no find."
He turned and headed back to the trail. McCaleb returned the photos to his jacket and after a few minutes headed back up the steep incline himself. He stopped twice on the way up but the climb still left him exhausted.
McCaleb ate lobster enchiladas at the restaurant for lunch. It cost him the equivalent of $5 American. He showed the photos a few more times but got no takers. He walked to the Pemex station after lunch and used the pay phone there to check the machine on his boat for messages. There were none. He then called Graciela's number for the fourth time while he had been on the road and once again got her machine. He didn't leave a message this time. If she was ignoring his calls, it was probably because she simply no longer wanted to talk to him.
McCaleb checked into the Playa Grande Motel, paying cash and using a phony name. As an afterthought he showed the photos to the man behind the counter in the small office and got another negative response.
His bungalow had a partial view of the beach below and a wide view of the Pacific. He checked what he could see of the beach and it was still empty except for the horses. He took off his windbreaker and decided to take a nap. It had been a wearying two days of driving bad roads, walking on sand and climbing steep trails.
Before lying down, he opened his duffel bag on the bed, put his toothbrush and toothpaste in the bathroom and then arranged the plastic vials containing his medicines and the box of disposable thermometer strips on the bed table. He took the Sig-Sauer out of the bag and put it on the table as well. It was always a marginal risk taking weapons across the border. But at the crossing, as expected, McCaleb had been simply waved through by the bored Mexican federales.
As he dropped off to sleep with his head between two musty pillows, he decided he would try the beach again at sunset. Crimmins had described the sunset during the hypnosis session. Maybe he would be on the beach then. If not, McCaleb decided he would begin looking for Crimmins in the scattered neighborhood above the village. McCaleb was confident he would find him. He felt no doubt that he had found the place Crimmins had described.
He dreamed in colors for the first time in months, his eyes darting under tight eyelids. He was on a runaway horse, a huge Appaloosa the same color as the wet sand, galloping down the beach. He was being chased but his unsteady mount prevented him from turning to see who it was behind him. He only knew that he must run, that if he stopped he would perish. The animal's hooves were throwing great clods of wet sand in the air as it galloped.
The rhythmic cadence of the horse's gallop was replaced by the pounding sound of his own heart. McCaleb came awake and tried to calm his body. After a few moments he decided he should check his temperature.
As he sat up and put his feet down on the carpet, his eyes checked the bed table by habit. He was looking for the clock that was on the table next to his own bed on the boat. But there was no clock here. He looked away and then his eyes darted back to the table as he realized the gun was gone.
McCaleb quickly stood up and looked around the room, an eerie feeling of dislocation coming over him. He knew he had placed the gun on the table before sleeping. Someone had been in the room while he slept. Crimmins. He had no doubt. Crimmins had been in the room.
He hastily checked the windbreaker and duffel bag and found nothing else missing. He scanned the room again and his eyes came across a fishing pole standing in the corner of the room next to the door. He went to the corner and grabbed it. It was the same model rod and reel combination he had bought for Raymond. As he turned it in his hands and studied it, he found the initials RT had been cut into the cork hand grip. Raymond had marked the pole as his. Or someone had marked it for him. Regardless, the message was clear. Crimmins had Raymond.
McCaleb was fully alert now, his chest filling with the constricting ache of dread. He punched his fists into the arms of the windbreaker as he put it on and then left the bungalow after studying the door and finding no sign that the lock had been tampered with. He moved quickly to the motel office, the bell ringing loudly overhead as he shoved the door open. The man who had taken his money stood up from the chair behind the counter, an uneasy smile on his face. He was about to say something when McCaleb, in one unhesitating motion, stepped to the counter, reached over it and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt. He jerked him forward until his body was prone over the top of the counter, the edge of the Formica digging into his substantial gut. McCaleb bent down until he was in the man's face.
"Where is he?"
"Que?"
"The man, the one you gave the key to my room. Where is he?"
"Nohabla -"
McCaleb pulled down on the man's shirt harder and put his forearm on the back of his neck. McCaleb could feel his own strength flagging but pushed down harder.
"Bullshit, you don't. Where is he?"
The man sputtered and moaned.
"I don't know," he finally said. "Please. I don't know where he is."
"Was he alone when he came here?"
"Alone, yes."
"Where does he live?"
"I do not know this. Please. He say he your brother and have surprise for you. I give him the key so he surprise you."
McCaleb let go and pushed the man back over the counter so hard that he fell backward right into his chair. He held his hands up in a beseeching manner and McCaleb realized he must be truly scaring the man.
"Please."
"Please, what?"
"Please, I don't want to have trouble."
"It's too late. How did he know I was here?"
"I call him. He pay me. He come here yesterday and say you might come. He give me phone number. He pay me."
"And how did you know it was me?"
"He give me picture."
"All right, give it to me. The number and the picture."
Without hesitation the man reached to a drawer in front of him. McCaleb quickly reached over and grabbed his wrist and roughly jerked it away from the drawer. He opened the drawer himself and his eyes held on a photograph sitting on top of a clutter of paperwork. It was a photo of McCaleb walking along the rock jetty near the marina with Graciela and Raymond. McCaleb could feel his face turning red as the anger pushed hot blood into the tightened muscles of his jaw. He held the photo up and studied the back. There was a phone number written on the back.
"Please," the motel man said. "You take the money. One hundred American dollars. I don't want trouble for you."
He was reaching into his shirt pocket.
"No," McCaleb said. "You keep it. You earned it."
He yanked the door open then, hitting the overhead bell so hard that the twine it hung from snapped and the bell bounced into the corner of the office.
He went through the gravel parking lot and over to the phone at the Pemex station. He dialed the number on the back of the photograph and listened to a series of clicks on the line as the call went through at least two call-forwarding circuits. McCaleb cursed to himself. He would not be able to trace the number to an address, even if he could get someone in local authority to do it for him
.
Finally the call reached the last circuit and started ringing. McCaleb held his breath and waited but the call was not picked up by human or machine. After twelve rings he crashed the receiver down onto its hook but it bounced off and dropped, swinging erratically back and forth beneath the phone. McCaleb stood frozen by anger and the impotence of his position, the light sound of the still-ringing phone buzzing from below.
After a long moment he realized he was staring through the glass pane of the phone booth at the motel parking lot. His Cherokee was there and one other car. A dusty white Caprice with a California plate on the back.
Blood Work (1998) Page 41