Blood Work

by Michael Connelly

  “Ever been there, Vasquez Rocks?” Buddy asked after tucking the harmonica between his legs.

  “Yeah.”

  “Neat place. It’s named after a Mexican desperado who holed up in the crevices about a hundred years ago after robbing a bank or something. So many places to hide in there, they could never find him and he became a legend.”

  McCaleb nodded. He liked the story. He thought about how his histories of places were so different. They always involved bodies and blood work. No legends. No heroes.

  They made good time on the front of the wave of rush hour and weekend traffic out of the city and it was just past five when they got to Lancaster. They cruised through a subdivision called Desert Flower Estates, looking for the home where James Cordell had lived. McCaleb saw a lot of desert but not many flowers or homes that met his definition of estate. The subdivision was built on land as flat and most days as hot as a frying pan. The homes were Spanish style with red-barrel roofs and arched windows and doors in the front. There were dozens of matching developments scattered through the Antelope Valley. The homes were large and reasonably attractive. They were bought mostly by families escaping the expense and crime and crowding of Los Angeles.

  Desert Flower Estates had apparently offered three different design plans to its buyers. Consequently, McCaleb noticed as they drove through, about every third house was the same and sometimes there were even side-by-side duplicates. It reminded him of some of the post-World War II neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley.

  The thought of living in one of the homes he was passing depressed him. And it wasn’t because of anything he saw. It was the distance this place was from the ocean and the feeling of renewal the sea gave him. He knew he’d never last in a neighborhood like this. He would dry up and blow away like one of the tumbleweeds they periodically passed on the street.

  “This is it,” Buddy said.

  He pointed to a number on a mailbox and McCaleb nodded. They pulled in. McCaleb noticed that the white Chevy Suburban he had seen in the crime scene video was parked in the driveway below a basketball rim. There was an open garage with a mini-van parked on one side and the other side cluttered with bikes and boxes, a tool bench and other clutter. Standing up in the back of the garage was a surf board. It was an old long board and it made McCaleb think that maybe at one time James Cordell had known something about the ocean.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be,” he said.

  “It’s going to get hot out here. Maybe I could just go in with you. I won’t say anything.”

  “It’s cooling down, Buddy. But if you get hot, run the air. Drive around a little bit. There’s probably kids selling lemonade around here someplace.”

  He got out before any debate could begin. He wasn’t going to bring Lockridge into the investigation and turn it into amateur hour. On the way up the driveway he stopped and looked into the Suburban. The back was full of tools and there was clutter in the front seats. Hs felt a charge. He might be in luck. It looked as though the truck had been sitting untouched.

  James Cordell’s widow was named Amelia. McCaleb knew that from the reports. A woman he assumed to be her opened the arched front door before he reached it. Jaye Winston had said she would call ahead to smooth his way in.

  “Mrs. Cordell?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name’s Terry McCaleb. Did Detective Winston call about me?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Is this a bad time?”

  “As opposed to a good time?”

  “Poor choice of words. I’m sorry. Do you have some time that we can talk?”

  She was a short woman with brown hair and small features. Her nose was red and McCaleb guessed she either had a cold or had been crying. McCaleb wondered if the call from Jaye Winston had set her off.

  She nodded and invited him in, leading the way to a neatly kept living room where she sat on the sofa and he took the chair opposite her. There was a box of tissues on the coffee table between them. The sound of television was coming from another room. It sounded like cartoons were on.

  “Is that your partner waiting in the car?” she asked.

  “Uh, my driver.”

  “Does he want to come in? It might get hot out there.”

  “No, he’s fine.”

  “You’re a private investigator?”

  “Technically, no. I’m a friend of the family of the woman who was killed in Canoga Park. I don’t know what Detective Winston told you, but I used to work for the FBI and so I have some experience in these kinds of things. The Sheriff’s Department, as you probably know, and the LAPD have not been able to, uh, advance the investigation very far in recent weeks. I’m trying to do what I can to help.”

  She nodded.

  “First off, I’m sorry about what happened to your husband and your family.”

  She frowned and nodded.

  “I know it doesn’t matter what a stranger thinks but you do have my sympathy. From what I’ve read in the sheriff’s files, James was a good man.”

  She smiled and said, “Thank you. It’s just so funny to hear him called James. Everyone called him Jim or Jimmy. And you are right, he was a good man.”

  McCaleb nodded.

  “What questions can I answer, Mr. McCaleb? I really don’t know anything about what happened. That’s what was confusing about Jaye’s call.”

  “Well, first…” He reached down to his satchel, opened it and took out the Polaroid that Graciela had given him the day she came to his boat. He handed it across the table to Amelia Cordell. “Could you look at that and tell me if you recognize the woman or if you think she might be someone your husband could have known.”

  She took the photo and stared at it, her face serious and her eyes making small movements as she seemed to study everything about the photo. She shook her head finally.

  “No, I don’t think so. Is she the one who…”

  “Yes, she was the victim in the second robbery.”

  “Is that her son?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand. How could my husband have known this woman-are you suggesting that they might have-”

  “No. No, I’m not suggesting anything, Mrs. Cordell. I’m just trying to cover… Look, to be very honest, Mrs. Cordell, some things have come up in the investigation to possibly indicate-and I have to stress possibly -that there was more here than meets the eye.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that possibly robbery was not a motive here. Or not the only motive.”

  She stared blankly at him for a moment and McCaleb knew she was still taking things the wrong way.

  “Mrs. Cordell, I am not in any way trying to suggest that your husband and that woman had any kind of a relationship. What I’m saying is that somewhere, sometime, your husband and that woman crossed the shooter’s path. So you see there is a relationship. But it is a relationship between the victims and the shooter. It is likely that your husband and the other victims crossed the shooter’s line at separate points but I need to cover everything and that is why I show you the photograph. You are sure you don’t recognize her?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Would your husband have any reason in the weeks before the shooting to have spent any time in Canoga Park?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Would he have had any dealings with the Los Angeles Times ? More specifically, any reason he would have gone to the newspaper’s plant in Chatsworth?”

  Again her answer was no.

  “Was there any problem at work? Anything that he might have wanted to talk to a reporter about?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was she a reporter?”

  “No, but she worked where there were reporters. Maybe their paths crossed with the shooter there.”

  “Well, I don’t think so. If something was bothering Jimmy, he would have told me. He always did.”

  “Okay. I under
stand.”

  McCaleb spent the next fifteen minutes asking Mrs. Cordell questions about her husband’s daily routine and his activities in the weeks before the shooting. He took three pages of notes but even as he wrote them, they didn’t seem helpful. Jimmy Cordell seemed like a man who worked hard and spent most of his off time with his family. In the weeks before his death he had been working exclusively on sections of the aqueduct in the central part of the state and his wife did not believe he had spent any time at all to the south. She did not think he had been down into the Valley or other parts of the city since before Christmas.

  McCaleb folded his notebook closed.

  “I appreciate your time, Mrs. Cordell. The last thing I wanted to ask about is whether or not any of your husband’s possessions were missing.”

  “His possessions? What do you mean?”

  Amelia Cordell led McCaleb out to the Chevy Suburban. They had already discussed her husband’s clothing and jewelry. Nothing had been taken, she assured him, just as the ATM video had seemed to attest. That left the Suburban.

  “No one’s been in it?” he asked as she was unlocking it.

  “I drove it home from the sheriff’s office. That was actually the only time I ever drove it. Jimmy bought it for work only. He said if we started using it for nonwork driving, he couldn’t write everything off. I don’t drive it because it’s too high up for me to be climbing in and out of all the time.”

  McCaleb nodded and leaned into the truck through the open driver’s door. The rear seat was folded down and the cargo area was full of surveying equipment, a folding drafting table and other tools. McCaleb quickly dismissed it all. It was equipment, not something of a personal nature.

  He concentrated on the front section of the vehicle. A patina of road dust covered everything. Cordell must have been driving in the desert with the windows down. Using one finger, he opened a pocket on the door and saw it was crammed with service station receipts and a small spiral notebook on which Cordell had noted mileage, dates and destinations. McCaleb took the notebook out and flipped through the pages to see if there had been any trips to the west Valley, particularly Chatsworth or Canoga Park. There were none recorded. It appeared Amelia Cordell had been correct about her husband.

  He flipped down the driver-side visor and found two folded maps. McCaleb walked them around to the front and opened them on the hood. One was a gas station map of central California and another was a survey map that showed the aqueduct and its many access roads. McCaleb was looking for any unusual notations Cordell might have made on the maps but there were none. He refolded them and put them back.

  He now sat in the driver’s seat and looked around. He noticed the rearview mirror and asked Amelia Cordell if her husband had ever hung anything off it, knickknacks or otherwise. She said she didn’t remember anything.

  He checked the glove compartment and the center console. There was more paperwork and several tapes for use in the stereo, an assortment of pens and mechanical pencils, and a pack of opened mail. Cordell liked country music. Nothing seemed amiss. Nothing came to mind.

  “Do you know if he had any particular kind of pen or pencil he liked? Like a special pen he might have gotten as a gift or something?”

  “I don’t think so. Nothing I remember.”

  McCaleb took the rubber band off the mail and looked through the envelopes. It appeared to be departmental mail, notices of meetings, reports on problems on the aqueduct that Cordell was to check out. McCaleb put the band back around the stack and placed it back in the glove box. Amelia Cordell watched him silently.

  In an open bin between the seats there was a pager and a pair of sunglasses. Cordell had been coming home at night when he stopped at the ATM. That explained why the glasses were not on, but not the beeper.

  “Mrs. Cordell, do you know why his pager is here? How come he wasn’t wearing it?”

  She thought a moment and then said, “He usually didn’t keep it on his belt for long rides because he said it was uncomfortable. He said it dug into his kidneys. He forgot it a few times. You know, left it in the car and missed his pages. That’s how I know why.”

  McCaleb nodded. As he sat there thinking about what to check next, the passenger door was suddenly opened and Buddy Lockridge looked in.

  “What’s up?”

  McCaleb had to squint to look at him because of the sun coming into the car over Buddy’s shoulder.

  “I’m almost done, Buddy. Why don’t you wait in the car?”

  “My ass was getting sore.” He looked past McCaleb and nodded at Amelia Cordell. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  McCaleb was annoyed by the intrusion but introduced Lockridge as his associate to Amelia Cordell.

  “So what are we looking for?” Buddy asked.

  “We? I’m just looking for something that’s not here. Why don’t you wait in the car?”

  “Like something that might’ve been taken. I see.”

  He flipped down the passenger-side visor. McCaleb had already checked it and there was nothing there.

  “I got it, Buddy. Why don’t you-”

  “What went there, a picture?”

  He pointed toward the dashboard. McCaleb followed the line of his finger but didn’t see anything.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There. See the dust? Looks like a picture or something. Maybe he kept a parking pass there until he needed it.”

  McCaleb looked again but still didn’t see what Lockridge was pointing at and talking about. He shifted to his right and leaned toward Buddy and then turned his head back to look at the dashboard.

  Now he saw it.

  A coat of driving dust had settled on the clear plastic guard over the display of speedometer and other gauges. On one side of the plastic there was a clearly defined square where there was no dust. Something had been propped on the plastic guard until recently. McCaleb realized how lucky he was. He probably would never have noticed it. It only became apparent when viewed from the passenger side and with the sun coming in at a low angle.

  “Mrs. Cordell?” McCaleb said. “Can you walk around and look at this through the other door?”

  He waited. Lockridge stepped out of the way so she could look in. McCaleb pointed to the outline on the plastic guard. It was about five inches wide by three inches deep.

  “Did your husband keep a picture of you or the kids here?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Boy, I don’t really know. He had pictures but I just don’t know where he put them. He could have but I don’t know. I never drive this. We always take the Caravan-even when just Jim and I would go out. Like I said, I didn’t like climbing up there.”

  McCaleb nodded.

  “Is there anyone he worked with who might know, who might have ridden with him to jobs or to lunch, that sort of thing?”

  Driving on the Antelope Valley Freeway back toward the city, they passed a seemingly never-ending line of cars stacked in the lanes going the other way. Commuters heading home or travelers getting out of the city for the weekend. McCaleb barely noticed. He was deep in his own thoughts. He barely even heard Lockridge until he repeated himself twice.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I said I guess I helped you out back there, noticing that.”

  “You did, Buddy. I might not have noticed it. But I still wish you had stayed in the car. This is all I’m paying you for, to drive.”

  With a double hand gesture McCaleb indicated the car.

  “Yeah, well, you might still be back there looking if I had stayed in the car.”

  “We’ll never know now.”

  “So aren’t you going to tell me what you found out?”

  “Nothing, Buddy. I didn’t find out anything.”

  He had lied. Amelia Cordell had taken him back inside and allowed him to use her phone to call her husband’s office. Buddy had been sent back to the car to wait. Inside, McCaleb talked to James Cordell’s supervisor, who gave him the names
and numbers of some of the aqueduct maintenance supervisors Cordell would have been working with in early January. McCaleb then called the Lone Pine aqueduct station and talked to Maggie Mason, who was one of those supervisors. She reported that she had joined Cordell for lunch twice in the week before the shooting. Both times Cordell had driven.

  Avoiding the leading question, McCaleb had asked her if she had noticed anything of a personal nature on the dashboard of the Suburban. Without hesitation Mason said there had been a photograph of Cordell’s family on the dashboard. She said she had even leaned over to get a look at it. She remembered that it was Cordell’s wife holding their two little daughters on her lap.

  As they were heading home, McCaleb felt a mix of dread and excitement growing inside. Someone, somewhere, had Gloria Torres’s earring and James Cordell’s family photo. He now knew that the evil of these two killings came together in the form of a person who killed not for money, not out of fear and not for revenge against his victims. This evil went far beyond that. This person killed for pleasure and to fulfill a fantasy that burned like a virus inside his brain.

  Evil was everywhere. McCaleb knew that better than most. But he also knew that it could not be confronted in the abstract. It needed to be embodied in flesh and blood and breath, to be a person who could be hunted down and destroyed. McCaleb had that now. He felt his heart rise up in rage, and a horrible joy.

  21

  THE SATURDAY MORNING mist came in thick and felt like a gentle hand on the back of his neck. McCaleb had gotten up by seven so that he could get into the laundry in the marina’s commons building and use several of the machines at once to get all of the bed clothes cleaned. Then he set about getting the boat cleaned up and ready for overnight guests. But as he worked, he found it hard to concentrate on the chores in front of him.

  He had talked to Jaye Winston when he got in from the desert the evening before. When he told her about the photo that was missing from Cordell’s Suburban, she grudgingly agreed that McCaleb might be onto a viable new lead. An hour later she called back and said a meeting was set for 8A.M. Monday at the Star Center. She and her captain and a few other sheriff’s detectives would be there. So would Arrango and Walters. So would Maggie Griffin from the FBI. Griffin was the agent who had taken McCaleb’s place in the VICAP slot in the L.A. field office. McCaleb only knew her by her reputation, which was good.