Blood Work

by Michael Connelly

  “Would you say they were dark or light colored?”

  “I really don’t know. I just told you that and I’ve been over this with the police. They have every-”

  “Did you hear a third shot?”

  “A third? No, only two.”

  “But there were three shots. So you don’t know if you heard the first two shots or the last two.”

  “That’s right.”

  He thought about this for a second, deciding that it was probably impossible to decide for sure whether she had heard the first two or last two shots.

  “Mrs. Taaffe, that’s it. Thanks a lot. You’ve been a help and I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  The brief interview helped answer only the question he had about the delay in her 911 call but it still left the discrepancy between the timing of the Good Samaritan’s 911 call and the time on the store’s surveillance tape. McCaleb checked his watch again. It was now after five. All the detectives would be gone but he decided to call anyway.

  To his surprise he was told when he called West Valley Division that both Arrango and Walters were in and asked which one he wanted. He decided to try Walters, since he had seemed sympathetic to his situation the day before. Walters picked up after three rings.

  “It’s Terry McCaleb… The Gloria Torres thing?”

  “Right, right.”

  “I guess you heard I got the books from Winston over at the sheriff’s.”

  “Yeah, we’re not too happy about that. We also got a call from the Slimes about it, too. Some reporter. That wasn’t cool. I don’t know who you’ve been talk-”

  “Look, your partner put me in a position where I had to look for information where I could get it. Don’t worry about the Times. They’ll sit on the story because there is no story. Not at the moment.”

  “And it best stay that way. Anyway, I’m kind of busy here. What’ve you got?”

  “You got a case?”

  “Yeah. They just keep dropping like flies out here in the Big Valley.”

  “Well, look, I won’t hold you up. I’ve just got one question maybe you can help me with.”

  McCaleb waited. Walters didn’t say anything, He seemed different from the day before. McCaleb wondered if Arrango was sitting close by and listening. He decided to press on.

  “I just want to know about the timing,” he said. “The video from the store shows the shooting going down at”-he quickly scanned his timeline-“let’s see, ten forty-one thirty-seven. Then you have the nine one one records and they say the call from the Good Samaritan came in at exactly ten forty-one oh three. See what I’m getting at? How’d the guy call it in thirty-four seconds before the shooting actually happened?”

  “Simple, the time on the video was off. It was fast.”

  “Oh, okay,” McCaleb said, as if the possibility had not occurred to him. “You guys checked it out?”

  “My partner did.”

  “Really? I didn’t see any report on it in the book.”

  “Look, he made a phone call to the security company, checked it out, no report, okay? The guy who installed that system put it in more than a year ago-right after the first time Mr. Kang got robbed. Eddie talked to the guy. He set the camera clock off his own watch back then and hasn’t been back in there since. He showed Mr. Kang how to set the camera clock in case there was a power outage or something.”

  “Okay,” McCaleb said, not sure where this was going.

  “So, your guess is as good as mine. Is it showing the original time set off the installer’s watch or did the old man set it a few times himself? Either way it doesn’t matter. We can’t trust it just coming off somebody’s watch. Maybe the watch was fast, maybe the camera clock has been gaining a couple seconds every week or two. Who knows? We can’t trust it, is what I’m saying. But we can trust the nine-eleven clock. That’s the time we know is correct and it’s the time we went with.”

  McCaleb was silent and Walters seemed to take it as some kind of judgment.

  “Look, the camera clock is just a detail that doesn’t mean anything anyway,” he said. “If we worried about every detail that didn’t fit, we’d still be working our first case. I’m busy here, man, what else you got?”

  “That’s it, I guess. You guys never checked the surveillance clock, right? You know, to check the time against the dispatch clock?”

  “Nope. We went back a couple days later but there had been a power outage-Santa Anas blew down the line. The time on it was useless to us then.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeah, too bad. I gotta go. Keep in touch. You get something, you call us before Winston or we’re not going to be happy with you. All right?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  Walters hung up. McCaleb put the phone down and stared at it for a few moments, wondering what his next move should or would be. He was drawing a blank. But it had always been his practice to go back to the start whenever he hit a stall. The start most often meant the crime scene. But this case was different. He could go back to the actual crime.

  He put the video of the Sherman Market murders back in the VCR and watched the tape again in slow motion. He sat there gripping the edges of the table so hard his knuckles and finger joints began to hurt. It wasn’t until the third run-through that he picked up on something he had missed earlier and had been there all along.

  Chan Ho Kang’s watch. The watch his wife now wore. On the video the watch was seen as Kang desperately grasped for purchase on the counter.

  McCaleb fished around on the video for a few minutes, backing and forwarding the tape until he froze the image on what he believed was the best view of the watch’s face. The best he could do was a clean look at it but the LED readout was not picked up by the video shot from the upper wall. The numbers on the watch-the time-were not readable.

  He sat there staring at the frozen image, wondering if he should pursue it. If he could read the time on the watch, he might be able to triangulate the time of the shooting by using the camera clock and the dispatch clock. It might clear up a loose end. But did it mean anything? Walters had been right about one thing. There are always details that don’t add up. Always loose ends. And McCaleb wasn’t sure if this one was worth the time it would take to tie it up.

  His private debate was interrupted. Living on a boat, he had learned to read the subtle rises and falls of his home, to know whether each was caused by a boat wake out in the fairway or the weight of someone coming on board. McCaleb felt the boat dip slightly and immediately looked over his shoulder and out the sliding door. Graciela Rivers had just stepped onboard and was turning around to help a little boy step on next. Raymond. Dinner. He had completely forgotten.

  “Shit,” he said as he quickly turned off the video and got up to go out and greet them.

  12

  YOU FORGOT, DIDN’T YOU?”

  There was an easy smile on her face.

  “No-I mean, I sort of forgot for the last five hours. I got lost in all of this paperwork I’ve been looking through. I meant to go over to the market and-”

  “Well, that’s okay. We can do it another-”

  “No, no, are you kidding? We’re going to have dinner. Is this Raymond?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Graciela turned to the boy, who was standing shyly behind her at the stern. He seemed small for his age, with dark hair and eyes, brown skin. He wore shorts and a striped shirt. He carried a sweater in his hands.

  “Raymond, this is Mr. McCaleb. The man I was telling you about. This is his boat. He lives on it.”

  McCaleb stepped forward and leaned down with his hand out. The boy was carrying a toy police car in his right hand and had to transfer it to the other. He then tentatively took McCaleb’s hand and they shook. McCaleb felt an unexplainable sadness as he met the boy.

  “It’s Terry,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Raymond. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Can you fish off this boat?”

  “Sure you can. Someday I�
�ll take you out, if you want.”

  “That would be good.”

  McCaleb straightened up and smiled at Graciela. She looked lovely. She wore a light summer dress similar to the one she had worn the first time she had come to the boat. It was the kind that the breeze off the water easily pushed against her figure. She, too, carried a sweater. McCaleb was in shorts, sandals and a T-shirt that said Robicheaux’s Dock amp; Baitshop on it. He felt a little embarrassed.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Over there they’ve got a nice restaurant on top of the marine store. They’ve got good food and a great view of the sunset. Why don’t we have dinner there?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Graciela said.

  “All I have to do is change real quick and, Raymond, I have an idea. Why don’t we drop a line off the stern and you see if you can catch something while I go inside and show Graciela a few things I’ve been working on?”

  The boy’s face brightened.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, then, we’ll fix you up.”

  McCaleb left them there and went inside. In the salon he took his lightest rod and reel out of the overhead storage rack, went to the tackle box under the chart table and got out a steel leader already set with a number eight hook and a sinker. He attached the leader to the reel line and then went to the cooler in the galley, where he knew he had some frozen squid. Using a sharp knife, he cut off a piece of squid skirt and drove the hook through it.

  He returned to the stern with the rod and reel and handed the rig to Raymond. Crouching behind the boy with his arms coming around him, he gave him a quick lesson on casting the bait into the middle of the fairway. He then told him how to keep his finger on the line and to read it for nibbles.

  “You okay now?” he asked when the lesson was completed.

  “Uh-huh. Are there fish in here by the boats?”

  “Sure, I’ve seen a school of sheepshead swimming right where your line is.”

  “Sheepshead?”

  “It’s a fish with yellow stripes. Sometimes you can see them moving in the water. You watch for them.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you all right now if I go in and get your mother something to drink?”

  “She’s not my mother.”

  “Oh, yes, I-I’m sorry, Raymond. I meant Graciela. You okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Okay, give a holler if you hook one. And then start reeling!”

  He pointed a finger into the boy’s side and dragged it up his tiny rib cage. McCaleb’s father had done the same thing to him when he was holding a fishing pole, his sides unprotected. Raymond giggled and maneuvered away, never taking his eyes off the spot where his line disappeared into the dark water.

  Graciela followed McCaleb into the salon and he closed the slider so the boy would not hear them. His face must have been red from the slip-up with the boy. She read him before he got the chance to apologize.

  “That’s okay. It’s going to happen a lot now.”

  He nodded.

  “Is he going to stay with you?”

  “Yes. I’m the only one but that doesn’t matter. I’ve been around since he was born. For him to lose his mother and then me, I think it would be too much. I want him to stay with me.”

  “Where’s his father?”

  “Who knows.”

  McCaleb nodded and decided to step out of that area of questioning.

  “You are going to be great for him,” he said. “You want a glass of wine?”

  “ That would be great.”

  “Red or white?”

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  “I can’t have any right now. In a couple months.”

  “Oh, then I don’t want you to open a bottle of wine just for me. I can have-”

  “Please, I want to. How about a red? I’ve got some good red and if I open it, I can at least smell it.”

  She smiled.

  “I remember Glory was like that when she was pregnant. She used to sit right next to me and say she just wanted to smell the wine I was drinking.”

  The smile turned sad.

  “She was a good person,” McCaleb said. “I can tell that by the boy. That’s what you wanted me to see.”

  She nodded. He went to the galley and got a bottle of red wine out of the sea rack. It was a Sanford pinot noir, one of his favorites. While he was opening it, she came over to the counter. He could smell a light scent of perfume. It was vanilla, he thought. It thrilled him. It wasn’t so much being close to her as feeling that something was awakening in him after a long dormancy.

  “Do you have children?” she asked then.

  “Me, no.”

  “Were you ever married?”

  “Yes, once.”

  He poured her a glass and watched her taste it. She smiled and nodded.

  “It’s good. How long ago was that?”

  “What, when I was married? Let’s see, I got married about ten years ago. Lasted three years. She was an agent and we worked together in Quantico. Then, when it didn’t work out and we got divorced, we still had to work with each other and it… I don’t know, we were cool about it but it wasn’t a good thing, you know? About the same time my dad was getting sick out here. So I gave them the idea of sending someone from the unit out here permanently. I sold it to them as a cost-cutting move. I mean, I was flying out here all the time anyway. A lot of us were. I figured they ought to have a little outpost or something out here and save some of that dough. They agreed and I got the job.”

  Graciela nodded, turned and looked out the slider to check on Raymond. He was staring intently into the water where he hoped the fish were.

  “How ’bout you?” McCaleb asked. “You ever get married?”

  “Once, too.”

  “Kids?”

  “No.”

  She was still looking out at Raymond. Her smile was still in place but straining under the conversation. McCaleb was curious about her but decided to let it go.

  “By the way, you were good with him,” she said, nodding in Raymond’s direction. “It’s a balance. You have to teach them and let them find out for themselves. That was nice with him.”

  She looked at him and he shook his shoulders to indicate it was luck. He took her glass and held it up to his nose to savor its aroma and then handed it back to her. He then poured himself the last from the coffee pot and added some milk and sugar. They clicked mug to glass and drank. She said she liked hers. He said his tasted like tar.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I feel so bad drinking this in front of you.”

  “Don’t. I’m glad you like it.”

  Silence filled the salon. Her eyes fell to the stacks of reports and videotapes on the galley table.

  “What did you want to show me?”

  “Uh, nothing specific. I just didn’t want to talk in front of Raymond.”

  He checked on the boy through the glass. He was doing fine. His focus was still intently on the line cutting through the incoming tide. McCaleb hoped he would hook something but guessed it was unlikely. Below the marina’s beautiful surface the water was fouled with pollutants. Any fish that survived down there was a bottom feeder with the survival skills of a cockroach.

  He looked back at Graciela.

  “But I wanted to let you know I met with the sheriff’s detective this morning. She was a lot cooler about it than the LAPD guys.”

  “She?”

  “Jaye Winston. She’s good. We worked together before. Anyway, she gave me copies of everything on both cases. That’s what I spent all day looking through. There’s a lot.”

  He summarized as best he could, trying to be gentle about details relating to her sister. He didn’t tell her he had a videotape of her sister’s murder there on the boat with them.

  “In the bureau we have this thing called doing a full field,” he said at the end of the summary. “It means leaving nothing untouched, nothing to chance. The bottom line here is that the investigation of
your sister’s murder was not a full field but at the same time there’s nothing that jumps out at me as a gaping hole in what was done. There were some mistakes made, maybe some assumptions that were made before all the facts were in but they weren’t necessarily wrong anyway. The investigation was thorough enough.”

  “Thorough enough,” she repeated, looking down as she talked. McCaleb realized it had been a poor choice of words.

  “I mean-”

  “So this guy is just going to get away with it,” she said as a statement. “I guess I should’ve known this is what you were going to tell me.”

  “Well, I’m not telling you that. Winston, over at the sheriff’s department-at least she’s still actively pursuing this. And I’m not done, either, Graciela. I’m not saying that. I have a stake in this, too.”

  “I know. I don’t mean to sound unhappy with you. It’s not you at all. But I’m frustrated.”

  “I understand that. I don’t want you to be. Let’s go have a nice dinner and we’ll talk more later.”

  “Okay.”

  “You go on out there with Raymond. I’ve got to change.”

  After changing into a clean pair of Dockers and a yellow Hawaiian shirt with flying slices of pineapple on it, McCaleb led them down the docks to the restaurant. He hadn’t bothered reeling in Raymond’s line. He’d put the rod in one of the gunwale holders and told the boy they’d check on it when they got back.

  They ate at the table with Graciela and Raymond on the side that afforded them a view of the sun just starting to set over the forest of sailboat masts. Graciela and McCaleb ordered the grilled swordfish special, while Raymond had fish and chips. McCaleb repeatedly tried to draw Raymond into conversation but was unsuccessful most of the time. He and Graciela mostly talked about the differences between living on a boat and living in a house. McCaleb told Graciela about how peaceful and restoring it was to be on the water.

  “And it’s even better when you’re out there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the Pacific.

  “How long before you have your boat ready?” Graciela asked.

  “Not long. As soon as I get the second engine back together, it will be ready to run. The rest is all cosmetic. I can do that anytime.”