The Narrows (2004)

by Michael Connelly

  "Agent Cates," Alpert said. "The tape."

  "Oh, excuse my language there. They don't have anything is what I meant to say."

  "Very good, Agent Cates. Keep me informed."

  And only silence followed. Alpert continued to smile warmly at Cates until the local agent got the message.

  "Oh, um, you want me to leave?"

  "I want you out there working on those victims," Alpert said. "No sense wasting time in here listening to us hash things around to no end."

  "Okay, then."

  Cates got up. If he had been a white man the embarrassment would have been more recognizable on his face.

  "Thank you, Agent Cates," Alpert said to his back as he went through the door.

  Alpert then turned his attention back to the table.

  "I think Mary, Greta, Harvey and Doug can all be excused as well. We need you guys back in the trenches, I'm afraid. No pun intended."

  There was that administrative smile again.

  "Actually," Mary Pond said, "I'd like to stay and hear what Brass has to say. It might help me in the field."

  Alpert lost his smile at the challenge.

  "No," he said firmly, "that won't be necessary."

  An uneasy silence engulfed the room until it was finally punctuated by the sounds of the science team's chairs being pushed back from their tables. The four of them got up and left the room without speaking. It was painful for Rachel to watch. The unchecked arrogance of command staff was endemic in the bureau. It was never going to change.

  "Now, where were we?" Alpert said, easily morphing past what he had just done to five good people. "Brass, your turn now. I have you down here for the boat, the tape and bags, the clothes, the GPS device, and now you have the gum, which we all know will lead nowhere, thank you very much, Agent Walling."

  He said the.word agent like it was synonymous with idiot. Rachel raised her hands in surrender.

  "Sorry, I didn't know half the field team is in the dark on the suspect. Funny, but when I was in Behavioral we never did it that way. We pooled information and knowledge. We didn't hide it from one another."

  "You mean when you were working for the man we are looking for right now?"

  "Look, Agent Alpert, if you are trying to taint me with that brush, then you-"

  "This is a classified case, Agent Walling. That is all I am trying to get across to you. As I told you before, it is 'need to know.'"

  "Obviously."

  Alpert turned away from her as if dismissing her from memory and looked at the television screen.

  "Brass, can you begin please?"

  Alpert made sure he stood between Rachel and the screen, to further underline her position as outsider on the case.

  "Okay," Doran said, "I have something significant and... well, strange, to begin with. I told you about the boat yesterday. The initial fingerprint analysis of manageable surfaces came back negative. It had been out there in the elements for who knows how long. So we took it another step. Agent Alpert approved disassembly of the evidence and that was done in the hangar at Nellis last night. On the boat there are grip locations-handholds for moving the boat. This at one time was a navy lifeboat, built in the late thirties and probably sold off as military surplus after World War Two."

  As Doran continued Dei opened a file and pulled out a photo of the boat. She held it for Rachel to see, since Rachel had never actually seen the boat. It was already at Nellis by the time she had gotten to the excavation site. She thought it was amazing and typical that the bureau could amass so much information about a boat set adrift in the desert but so little about the crime it was attached to.

  "We could not get into the interior of the grip holes with our first analysis. When we disassembled the piece we were able to get in there. This is where we got lucky because this little hollow was protected from the elements for the most part."

  "And?" Alpert asked impatiently. He obviously wasn't interested in the journey. He just wanted the destination.

  "And we got two prints out of the port side grip on the bow. This morning we ran them through the data banks and got a hit almost right away. This is going to sound strange but the prints came from Terry McCaleb."

  "How can that be?" asked Dei.

  Alpert didn't say anything. His eyes stared down at the table in front of him. Rachel sat quiet as well, her mind racing to catch up with and understand this latest piece of information. "At some point he put his hand into the grip hole on the boat, that's the only way it can be," Doran said.

  "But he's dead," Alpert said.

  "What?" Rachel exclaimed.

  Everyone in the room turned and looked at her. Dei slowry nodded.

  "He died about a month ago. Heart attack. I guess the news didn't get to South Dakota."

  Doran's voice came from the speaker.

  "Rachel, I am so sorry. I should have gotten word to you. But I was too upset about it and went out to California right away. I'm sorry. I should have told you."

  Rachel looked down at her hands. Terry McCaleb had been her friend and colleague. He was one of the em-paths. She felt a sudden and deep sense of loss, despite the fact that she had not spoken to him in years. Their shared experiences had left them bonded for life and now that life, for him, was gone.

  "Okay, people, let's take a break here," Alpert said. "Fifteen minutes and then back in here. Brass, can you callback?"

  "I will. I've got more to report."

  "Talk to you then."

  They all filed out to get coffee or use the restrooms. To leave Rachel alone.

  "Are you all right, Agent Walling?" Alpert asked.

  She looked up at him. The last thing she would take would be comfort from him.

  "I'm fine," she said, moving her eyes back to the blank TV screen. Rachel remained in the conference room by herself. Her initial shock gave way to a wave of guilt coming up behind her like a following sea. Terry McCaleb had attempted to contact her over the years. She had gotten the messages but had never responded. She had sent him a card and a note when he was in the hospital recovering from the transplant. That had been five or six years ago. She couldn't remember. She did remember specifically deciding not to put a personal return address on the envelope. At the time she told herself it was because she wasn't going to be stuck in Minot for very long. But she knew then as she knew now that the real reason was she didn't want the connection. She didn't want the questions about the choices she had made. She didn't want that link to the past.

  Now she didn't have to worry, the link was forever gone.

  The door opened and Cherie Dei looked in.

  "Rachel, do you want a bottle of water?"

  "Sure, that would be nice. Thank you."

  "Tissues?"

  "No, that's all right, I'm not crying."

  "Be right back."

  Dei closed the door.

  "I don't cry," Rachel said to no one.

  She put her elbows on the table and held her hands over her face. In the darkness she saw a memory. She and Terry on a case. They weren't partners but Backus had put them together on this one. It was a crime scene analysis. A bad one. A mother and daughter tied up and thrown into the water, the girl squeezing so hard on a crucifix it left its full impression on her hand. The mark was still there when the bodies were found. Terry was working with the photos and Rachel went to the cafeteria to get coffee. When she came back she could tell he had been crying. That was when she knew he was an empath, that he was her kind.

  Dei came back into the room and put a bottle of spring water and a plastic cup down in front her.

  "You okay?"

  "Yes, fine. Thanks for the water."

  "It was quite a shock. I didn't really know him and it bowled me over when the word spread."

  Rachel just nodded. She didn't want to talk about it. The speakerphone rang and Rachel reached for it ahead of Dei. She picked up the handset rather than push the teleconference button. This way she could speak privately at first to Doran-at
least, Doran's side of it would not be overheard.

  "Brass?"

  "Rachel, hi, I am so sorry I didn't-" "It's all right. It isn't your job to keep me informed of everything."

  "I know but this I should have told you about."

  "It was probably in one of the bulletins and I just missed it. It's just strange finding out about it this way."

  "I know. I'm sorry."

  "So you went to the funeral?"

  "The service, yes. It was out on the island where he lived. Catalina. It was really beautiful there and really sad."

  "Were there many agents?"

  "No, not too many. It was kind of hard to get to. You have to take a ferry. But there were a few and there were some cops and family and friends. Clint Eastwood was there. I think he took his own helicopter out."

  The door opened and Alpert came in. He seemed renewed, as if he had been sucking on pure oxygen during the break. The other two agents, Zigo and Gunning, followed him in and sat down.

  "We're ready to start," Rachel said to Doran. "I've got to put you on the screen now."

  "Okay, Rachel. We'll talk later."

  Rachel handed the phone to Alpert, who set up the teleconference. Doran appeared on the screen, looking more tired than before.

  "Okay," Alpert said. "We ready to continue?"

  After no one said a word he continued.

  "All right then, what do these prints on the boat mean?"

  "It means we've got to find out when and why McCaleb was out in the desert before he died," Dei said.

  "And it means we've got to go over to L.A. and take a look at his death," Gunning said. "Just to be sure a heart attack was a heart attack."

  "I agree with that but there is a problem," Doran said. "He was cremated."

  "That sucks," said Gunning.

  "Was there an autopsy?" Alpert asked. "Blood and tissue taken?"

  "I don't know about that," Doran said. "All I know is that he was cremated. I flew out for the service. The family let his ashes go over the side of his boat."

  Alpert looked at the faces around the room and stopped at Gunning's.

  "Ed, you're on it. Go over there and see what you can come up with. Do it quick. I'll call the FO over there and tell them to give you the people you need. And for God's sake keep it out of the press. McCaleb was a minor celebrity because of the movie thing. If the press gets a whiff of this they'll be on us like the jacket on a book."

  "Got it."

  "Other ideas? Suggestions?"

  Nobody said anything at first. Then Rachel cleared her throat and spoke quietly.

  "You know, Backus was Terry's mentor, too."

  There was a pause of silence and then Doran said, "That's right."

  "When they started the mentoring program Terry was the first one Backus picked. I was next after that."

  "And what is the significance of that to us now?" Alpert asked.

  Rachel shrugged. "Who knows? But Backus called me out with the GPS. Maybe he called Terry out before me."

  Everybody paused for a moment to think about that.

  "I mean, why am I here? Why did he send the package to me when he knows I'm not in Behavioral anymore? There's a reason. Backus has some kind of plan. Maybe Terry was the first part of it."

  Alpert slowly nodded his head.

  "I think it is an angle we need to be aware of."

  "He could be watching Rachel," Doran said.

  "Well, let's not jump ahead of ourselves here," Alpert said. "Let's stay with the facts. Agent Walling, I want you to exercise all caution of course. But let's check out the McCaleb situation and see what we've got before we start jumping. Meantime, Brass, what else have you got?"

  They waited as Doran looked down and off camera at some paperwork and apparently shifted gears from McCaleb back to the rest of the evidence.

  "We've got something that might tie in with McCaleb. But let me go down my list and get this other stuff out of the way first. Uh, first, we're just starting now with the tape and the bags recovered with the bodies. Give us another day on that and I'll have a report. Let's see, on the clothes, they're probably going to be in the drying room another week before they're ready for analysis. So nothing there. The gum we already talked about. We'll put the dental profile into the bite mark database by the end of the day. Which leaves the GPS."

  Rachel noticed that everyone in the room was staring intently at the television screen. It was as if Doran was in the room with them.

  "We're making some good progress here. We traced the serial number to a Big Five Sporting Goods store in Long Beach, California. Agents from the Los Angeles FO went to the store yesterday and obtained a store sales record showing the purchase of this Gulliver one hundred model by a man named Aubrey Snow. Turns out Mr. Snow is a fishing guide and was out on the water yesterday. Last night, when he finally returned to dock he was questioned at length about his Gulliver. He told us that he lost the device about eleven months ago in a poker game with several other guides. It was valuable because at the time it had several waypoints corresponding to his favorite or most productive fishing spots along the coast of Southern California and Mexico."

  "Did he give us the guy who won it?" Alpert asked quickly.

  "Unfortunately, no. It was an impromptu game. There was bad weather at the time and business was slow. A lot of guides were stuck in dock and they were getting together to play poker almost every night. Different nights, different players. A lot of drinking. Mr. Snow could not remember a name or much else about the man who won the GPS. He didn't think he was from the marina where Mr. Snow keeps his boat because he hasn't seen the man since. The FO was supposed to get together with Snow and an artist today so they can try to come up with a picture of this guy. But even if they get a good drawing, that area has marinas and fishing charters all over the place. I was already told that the FO has only two agents to spare on this."

  "I'll make a call and change that," Alpert said. "When I call to get Ed set up on the McCaleb thing, I'll get more bodies on this. I'll go right to Rusty Havershaw."

  Rachel knew the name. Havershaw was the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office.

  "That'll be a help," Doran said.

  "You said this connects to McCaleb. How so?"

  "Well, did you see the movie?"

  "Actually, no, I didn't get around to it."

  "Well, McCaleb was running a fishing charter out of Catalina. I don't know how plugged in he was to that community but there is a possibility that he knew some of the guides in those poker games."

  "I see. It's a stretch but it is there. Ed, keep that in mind."

  "Got it."

  There was a knock on the door but Alpert ignored it. Cherie Dei got up and answered it. Rachel could see it was Agent Cates. He whispered something to Dei.

  "Anything else, Brass?" Alpert asked.

  "Not at the moment. I think we need to shift emphasis toL.A. and find-"

  "Excuse me," Dei said, bringing Cates back into the room. "Listen to this."

  Cates flicked his hands up like he was signaling that this was no big deal.

  "Uh, I just got a call from the checkpoint out at the site. They're holding a man there who just drove up. He's a private detective from L.A. His name is Huhromibus Bosch. He-"

  "You mean Hieronymus Bosch?" Rachel asked. "Like the painter?"

  "Yeah, that's it. I don't know about any painter but that is how my guy said it. Anyway, this is the deal. They put him in one of the RVs and took a look in his car without him knowing. He had a file on the front seat. There are notes and stuff but there also are photos. One of the photos is of the boat."

  "You mean the boat from out there?" Alpert asked.

  "Yeah, the one that marked the first grave. There also was a news article on the six missing men."

  Alpert looked at the others in the room for a moment before speaking.

  "Cherie and Tom, call Nellis and have them get ready with a chopper," he finally said. "Get
out there and get going. And take Agent Walling with you."

  CHAPTER 18

  They put me in an RV and told me to make myself at home. There was a kitchen and a table and a sitting area. There was a window but the view was of the side of another RV. The air-conditioning was on and that kept the smell out for the most part. When I asked questions they hadn't answered them. They told me that other agents were coming soon to speak to me.