Blood Work

by Michael Connelly

“Hey, I’m not federal anymore.”

  “Well, I guess it sticks in the blood, then. Go ahead.”

  McCaleb looked over the notes he had taken the day before and started right in on the Mikail Bolotov angle.

  “First off, Ritenbaugh and Aguilar, you close to them?”

  “Don’t even know them. They’re not in homicide. The captain pulled them out of burglaries and gave them to me for a week. That was when we were running down the three-strikes names. What about them?”

  “Well, I think one of the names that they scratched off that list needs a second look.”

  “Which one?”

  “Mikail Bolotov.”

  McCaleb heard the rustling of papers as Winston looked for the report from Ritenbaugh and Aguilar.

  “Okay, got it. What are you seeing here? Looks like he’s got a solid alibi.”

  “Have you ever heard of geographic cross-referencing?”

  “What?”

  He explained the concept and told her what he had done and how it led to Bolotov. He further explained that Bolotov had been interviewed before the Sherman Market robbery/shooting and therefore the significance of the location of Bolotov’s home and employment to the market murders and one of the HK P7 thefts was not as apparent as it was to the other case. When he was done, Winston agreed that the Russian needed to be rechecked but she was not as enthusiastic about the prospect as McCaleb.

  “Look, like I said, I don’t know those two guys, so I can’t vouch for them, but I have to assume they’re not fresh off the boat. I have to assume they could handle an interview like this and check out the alibi.”

  McCaleb didn’t say anything.

  “Look, I’ve got court this week. I can’t go check this guy out again.”

  “I can.”

  Now she didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll be cool,” McCaleb said. “Just sort of play it by ear.”

  “I don’t know, Terry. You’re a citizen now. This might be going too far.”

  “Well, think about it. I’ve got some other stuff here to talk about.”

  “Fine. What else?”

  McCaleb knew that if she didn’t bring up Bolotov again during the conversation, she was giving him unofficial permission to check the Russian out. She just didn’t want to sanction what he was doing.

  He glanced down at the legal pad again. He wanted to be careful with what he asked next. He needed to build up to the big questions he had, bring Winston along and not let her think he was second-guessing everything.

  “Um, first off, I didn’t see anything in there about the bank card in the Cordell case. I know the guy took the money. Did he take the card?”

  “No. It was in the machine. It rolled it out but when he didn’t take it, the machine automatically swallowed it again. It’s a built-in security measure so people don’t leave their cards to be taken.”

  McCaleb nodded and drew a check mark next to that question on his pad.

  “Okay. Next I have a question about the Cherokee. How come you didn’t put that out to the media?”

  “Well, we did put it out but not right away. On that first day we were still evaluating things and didn’t put it into the first press release. I wasn’t sure we should put that out because then the guy might see it and just dump the car. A few days later, when nothing was happening and we were hitting the wall, I put out another press release with the Cherokee in it. Trouble is, Cordell was old news and nobody picked it up. A little weekly paper up there in the desert was the only one to run it. I know, it was a screwup. I guess I should’ve put it all out in the first press release.”

  “Not necessarily,” McCaleb said as he drew another check on the pad. “I can see your reasoning.”

  He read through the notes on the page again.

  “Couple things… In both tapes the shooter says something-after the shots. He’s either talking to himself or the camera. There were no reports on that. Was anything done to-”

  “There’s a guy in the bureau here who has a brother who is deaf. He took the tapes to him to see if he could lip-read them. He couldn’t be sure but on the first one-the ATM tape-he thought he said, ‘Don’t forget the cashola’ just as he took the money from the machine. On the other tape he was less sure. He thought he might have said either the same thing or possibly something along the lines of ‘Don’t fuck with the’ something or other. The last word was least clear to him on both tapes. I guess I never typed up a supp on it. You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

  “All the time,” McCaleb said. “Would the lip reader know Russian if that was what this guy was saying?”

  “What? Oh, you mean if it was Bolotov. No, I doubt his brother knows Russian.”

  McCaleb wrote down the possible translations of what the shooter had said. He then drummed the pen against the pad and wondered if he should take his shot now.

  “Do you have anything else?” Winston finally asked.

  He decided it wasn’t the right moment to bring up Carruthers. At least not directly.

  “The gun,” he said.

  “I know. I don’t like it, either. The P7 is not your routine scumbag’s choice of firearm. It had to have been stolen. You saw I pulled reports on stolens. But like with everything else, I hit a wall. It got me nowhere.”

  “I think it’s a good theory,” McCaleb said. “To a point. I don’t like him keeping it after the first shooting. If it was stolen, I see him throwing that thing as far out into the desert as he can about ten minutes after he takes down Cordell. He then goes and steals another for the next time.”

  “No, you can’t say that,” Winston said and McCaleb envisioned her shaking her head. “There is no definitive pattern here. He could have been just as likely to keep the gun because he knew it was valuable. And you have to remember, Cordell was a through-and-through shot. He might have figured the lead wouldn’t be found or if it had hit the bank-like it actually did-it would be too mangled for comparison. Remember, he picked up the brass. He probably believed the gun had at least one more use.”

  “I guess you’re probably right.”

  They took a breather, neither one of them talking for a few moments. McCaleb had two more things on his page.

  “Next thing,” he began carefully. “The slugs.”

  “What about them?”

  “You said yesterday that you’re holding the ballistics from both cases.”

  “That’s right. It’s all in evidence lockup. What are you getting at?”

  “Have you ever heard of the bureau’s DRUGFIRE computer?”

  “No.”

  “It might work for us. For you. It’s a long shot but it’s worth a shot.”

  “What is it?”

  McCaleb told her. DRUGFIRE was an FBI computer program designed along similar lines of computerized storage of latent fingerprint data. It was the brainchild of the crime lab in the early 1980s, when the cocaine wars that broke out in most cities, particularly Miami, were responsible for a jump in murders nationwide. Most of the slayings were by gunfire. The bureau, struggling for a means of tracking related murders and killers across the country, came up with the DRUGFIRE program. The unique characteristics of groove marks found on the spent bullets used in drug murders were read by a laser, coded for computer storage and entered into a data bank. The computer’s program operated in much the same way as fingerprint computer systems used by law enforcement agencies across the nation. The system allowed for the quick comparison of coded bullet profiles.

  Eventually, the database grew as more ballistic entries were added. The program was also widened, though it kept the name DRUGFIRE, to include all cases referred to the FBI. Whether it was a mob killing in Las Vegas or a gang killing in South Los Angeles or a serial killing in Fort Lauderdale, every gunshot case sent to the FBI for analysis was added to the database. After more than a decade, there were thousands of bullets on file in the computer.

  “I’ve been thinking about this guy,” McCaleb said “He hangs on to tha
t gun. Whatever the reason, whether he stole it or not, his hanging on to it is really the only mistake he’s made. It makes me think we’ve got a chance of making a match. Looking at the MO on those tapes, chances are he just didn’t start popping people beginning with your case. He’s used a gun before-maybe even that particular gun.”

  “But I told you, we checked for similars. Nothing on ballistics. We also put out teletypes and a request on the National Crime Index computer. We got blanked.”

  “I understand. But this guy’s method could be evolving, changing. Maybe what he did with that gun in, say, Phoenix isn’t the same as what he did with it here. All I’m saying is that there’s a chance that this guy came into town from someplace else. If he did, then he probably used that gun in that other place. And if we’re lucky, the data is sitting there in the bureau computer.”

  “Maybe,” Winston said.

  She went quiet as she brooded over his proposal. McCaleb knew what the considerations were. DRUGFIRE was a long shot and Winston was smart enough to know that. But if she went for it, she would be drawing in federal involvement, not to mention acknowledging that she was taking direction from McCaleb, an outsider with no real standing in the case.

  “What do you think?” McCaleb finally asked. “You only need to send them one bullet. You have, what, four of them from the two cases?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not so keen on sending our stuff off to Washington. I doubt L.A. will be, either.”

  “ L.A. doesn’t have to know. You’re the keeper of the evidence. You can send one bullet if you want. And it could be to D.C. and back inside a week. Arrango wouldn’t have to know it was even sent. I already talked to a guy I know in Firearms and Toolmarks. He said he’d grease this one if we got him the package.”

  McCaleb closed his eyes. If there was a point at which she might get outright angry, it was now.

  “You already told this guy we’d be doing this?” she asked, annoyance in her voice.

  “No, I didn’t tell him that. I told him I was dealing with a detective out here who was very thorough and dedicated and would probably want to make sure she left no stone uncovered.”

  “Gee, where have I heard that before?”

  McCaleb smiled.

  “There’s another thing,” he said. “Even if we don’t get lucky with this, we’ll at least have the gun in the computer. Somewhere down the road, it might match up with something.”

  She thought about this for a moment. McCaleb was pretty sure he had painted her into the corner. Like watching the cemetery for Luther Hatch. She had to go for it or she’d wonder about it always.

  “Okay, okay,” Winston finally said. “I’ll talk to the captain about it. I’ll tell him I want to do this. If he gives the go-ahead, I’ll send a package. One bullet-that’s all.”

  “That’s all it takes.”

  McCaleb filled her in further on Carruthers’s need to get the package by Tuesday morning and urged her to get in with the captain as soon as possible. This created another silence.

  “All I can say is, it’s worth the shot, Jaye,” he said by way of reinforcement.

  “I know. It’s just that… well, never mind. Give me your guy’s name and his number.”

  McCaleb clenched his fist and punched it into the air in front of him. It didn’t matter how long a shot it was. They were rolling the dice. It felt good to him to be getting something going.

  After he gave Winston the direct number and address for contacting Carruthers, she asked if there was anything else McCaleb wanted to talk about. He looked down at his pad but what he wanted to talk about wasn’t written down on it.

  “I’ve got one last thing that’s probably going to put you on the spot,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” Winston said with a groan. “Serves me right for answering the phone on a court day. Give it to me, McCaleb. What is it?”

  “James Noone.”

  “The witness? What about him?”

  “He saw the shooter. He saw the shooter’s car.”

  “Yeah, a lot of good it did us. There’s only about a hundred thousand of those Cherokees in southern California and his description of the guy is so vague he can’t tell if the guy was wearing a hat or not. He’s a witness but just barely.”

  “But he saw him. It was during a stress situation. The more stress, the deeper the imprint. Noone would be perfect.”

  “Perfect for what?”

  “To be hypnotized.”

  14

  BUDDY LOCKRIDGE PULLED the Taurus into an open spot in the parking lot of Video GraFX Consultants on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood. Lockridge was not dressed Hollywood-cool for his second day as McCaleb’s driver. This time he was wearing boat shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with ukuleles and hula girls floating on an ocean blue background. McCaleb told him he didn’t think he would be long and got out.

  VGC was a business used mostly by the entertainment industry. It rented professional video equipment as well as video editing and dubbing studios. Adult filmmakers, whose product was almost exclusively shot on video, were its main clients but VGC also provided one of the best video-effects and image-enhancing labs in Hollywood.

  McCaleb had been inside VGC once before, working on loan to the field office’s bank unit. It was the downside of his being transferred from Quantico to the FO outpost; technically he was under the command of the FO’s special agent in charge. And whenever the SAC thought things were slow-if they ever were-in the serials unit, he would yank McCaleb out and put him on something else, usually something McCaleb considered menial.

  When he had walked into VGC the previous time, he had a videotape from the ceiling camera of a Wells Fargo Bank in Beverly Hills. The bank had been robbed by several masked gunmen who had escaped with $363,000 in cash. It was the group’s fourth bank robbery in twelve days. The one lead agents had was on the video. When one of the robbers had reached his arm across the teller’s counter to grab the bag she had just stuffed her cash into, his sleeve had caught on the edge of the marble counter and was pulled back. The robber quickly pulled the sleeve forward again but for a split second the form of a tattoo was seen on the inside of his forearm. The image was grainy and had been shot by a camera thirty feet away. After a tech in the field office lab said he could do nothing with it, it was decided not to send the tape to Washington HQ because it would take more than a month to have it analyzed. The robbers were hitting every three days. They seemed agitated in the videos, on the verge of violence. Speed was a necessity.

  McCaleb took the tape to Video GraFX. A VGC tech took the frame from the video and in one day enhanced it through pixel redefinition and amplification to the point that the tattoo was identifiable. It was a flying hawk clutching a rifle in one claw and a scythe in the other.

  The tattoo broke the case. Its description and a photocopy were teletyped and faxed to sixty field offices across the country. A supervisor in the Butte office then retransmitted the information to the smaller Resident Agency in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where an agent recognized the tattoo as the insignia he had seen on a flag flown outside the house of a member of a local group of anti-government extremists. The group had intermittently been under bureau observation and suspicion because of its recent purchases of huge tracts of rural land outside the city. The supervisor of the RA was able to provide the Los Angeles FO with a list of members’ names and social security numbers. Agents then began checking hotels and soon found seven members of the group staying at the Airport Hilton. The group was placed under surveillance and the following day watched as they robbed a bank in Willowbrook. Thirty agents were poised in surveillance points outside and ready to go in at the first sign of violence. There wasn’t any. The robbers were followed back to their hotel and systematically arrested in their rooms by agents posing as room service waiters and housekeeping staff. One of the robbers eventually cooperated with agents and admitted that the group had been robbing banks in order to raise capital to buy more land in Idaho. The grou
p wanted the land so members could safely sit out the Armageddon their leader promised was coming to the United States.

  Now McCaleb was back. As he stepped to the reception counter, he noticed that the letter of thanks under the bureau’s seal that he had sent following the bank robbery investigation was framed on the wall behind the receptionist. He leaned over the counter until he could read the name of the man he had sent the letter to.

  “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  McCaleb pointed at the letter and said, “I’d like to talk to Tony Banks.”

  She asked McCaleb his name, didn’t seem to recognize it though it was on the letter that hung on the wall above her, and then put in a call. Shortly after, a man McCaleb recognized as Tony Banks came out to greet him. He didn’t recognize McCaleb until he started recounting the bank video story.

  “Right, right, I remember. You sent the letter.”

  He pointed to the framed letter.

  “That’s me.”

  “So what can I do for you? Another bank job?”

  He was eyeing the videotape McCaleb had in his hand.

  “Well, I’ve got another case here. I’m wondering if you could take a look at this tape. There’s something on it I want to see if I can get a better look at.”

  “Well, let’s take a look. Always glad to help out.”

  He led McCaleb down a hallway of gray carpet past several doors that he knew from his previous visit were editing booths. Business was good. There were Occupied signs on all of the doors. From behind one of them McCaleb heard muffled cries of passion. Banks looked over his shoulder at him and rolled his eyes.

  “It’s not real,” he said. “They’re editing a tape.”

  McCaleb nodded. Banks had explained the same thing to him when he had been there before.

  Banks opened the last door in the hallway. He ducked his head inside to make sure the room was empty, then stepped back and signaled McCaleb inside. There were two chairs set in front of a video editing machine with twin thirty-inch monitors above it. Banks turned on the equipment, pushed a button and the left side cassette cradle opened.