Blood Work

by Michael Connelly

  And that was the problem. First thing Monday morning McCaleb would be on the hot seat, the focus of intense scrutiny. Most, if not all, of those in the meeting at the Star Center would be non-believers. But rather than prepare for the meeting or do what additional investigation he could, McCaleb was going fishing on the jetty with a woman and a little boy. It didn’t sit right with him and he kept thinking he should cancel the visit from Graciela and Raymond. In the end, he didn’t. It was true that he needed to talk with Graciela, but more than that, he found that he just wanted to be with her. And that was what brought the twin paths of his uneasy thoughts to an intersection: guilt over putting the investigation aside and guilt over his desire for a woman who had come to him for his help.

  When he was done with the laundry and the general cleanup, he walked over to the marina center. At the store he bought the makings of the evening’s dinner. At the bait shop he bought a bucket of live bait, choosing shrimp and squid, and a small rod-and-reel outfit that he planned to present to Raymond as his own. Back at the boat, he put the rod in one of the gunwale holders and dumped the bait bucket into the live well. He then put away the store items in the galley.

  He was finished and the boat was ready by ten. Seeing no sign of Graciela’s convertible in the parking lot, he decided to walk over and check with Buddy Lockridge about his availability on Monday morning. He first went up to the gate and made sure it was propped open so Graciela and the boy could enter the marina, then he went to Lockridge’s boat.

  Adhering to marina custom, McCaleb did not step onto the Double-Down. Instead, he called Lockridge’s name and waited on the dock. The boat’s main hatch was open so he knew Lockridge was awake and around somewhere. After half a minute, Buddy’s disheveled hair, followed by his crumpled face, poked up through the hatch. McCaleb guessed he had spent a good part of the night drinking.

  “Yo, Terry.”

  “Yo. You okay?”

  “Fine as always. What’s up, we going somewhere?”

  “No, not today. But I need you Monday morning early. Can you drive me out to the Star Center? I mean like we’ve got to leave by seven.”

  Buddy thought a moment to see if it fit with his busy schedule and nodded.

  “It’s a go.”

  “You’re going to be all right to drive?”

  “You bet. What’s going on at the Star Center?”

  “Just a meeting. But I’ve got to be there on time.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing. We leave at seven. I’ll set the alarm.”

  “Okay, and one other thing. Keep an eye out around here.”

  “You mean the guy from the clock plant?”

  “Yeah. I doubt he’ll show but you never know. He’s got tattoos running up both arms. And they’re big arms. You’ll know him if you see him.”

  “I’ll be on the lookout. Looks like you’ve got a couple visitors right now.”

  McCaleb saw that Lockridge was looking past him. He turned and looked back at The Following Sea. Graciela was standing in the stern. She was lifting Raymond down into the boat.

  “I gotta go, Bud. I’ll see you Monday.”

  Graciela was wearing faded blue jeans and a Dodgers sweatshirt with her hair up under a matching baseball cap. She had a duffel bag slung over her shoulder and was carrying a grocery bag. Raymond was wearing blue jeans and a Kings hockey sweater. He also had on a baseball cap and carried with him a toy fire truck and an old stuffed animal that looked to McCaleb like a lamb.

  McCaleb gave Graciela a tentative hug and shook Raymond’s hand after the boy stuck his stuffed animal under his other arm.

  “Good to see you guys,” he said. “Ready to catch some fish today, Raymond?”

  The boy seemed too shy to answer. Graciela nudged the boy on the shoulder and he nodded in agreement.

  McCaleb took the bags, led them into the boat and gave them the complete tour he had not shown them on their earlier visit. Along the way, he left the grocery bag in the galley and put the duffel bag down on the bed in the main stateroom. He told Graciela it was her room and the sheets were freshly washed. He then showed Raymond the upper bunk in the forward stateroom. McCaleb had moved most of the boxes of files under the desk and the room seemed neat enough for the boy. There was a guard bar on the bunk so that he wouldn’t roll out of bed. When McCaleb told him it was called a berth, his face scrunched up in confusion.

  “That’s what they call beds on boats, Raymond,” he said. “And they call the bathroom the head. ”

  “How come?”

  “You know, I never asked.”

  He led them to the head and showed them how to use the foot pedal for flushing. He noticed Graciela looking at the temperature chart on the hook and he told her what it was for. She put her finger on the line from Thursday.

  “You had a fever?”

  “A slight fever. It went away.”

  “What did your doctor say?”

  “I didn’t tell her yet. It went away and I’m fine.”

  She looked at him with a mixture of concern and, he thought, annoyance. He then realized how important it probably was to her that he survive. She didn’t want her sister’s last gift to be for nothing.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m fine. I was just doing a little too much running around that day. I took a long nap and the fever was gone. I’ve been okay since.”

  He pointed to the slashes on the chart following the one fever reading. Raymond pulled on his pants leg and said, “Where do you sleep?”

  McCaleb glanced briefly at Graciela and turned toward the stairs before she could see his face start to color.

  “Come on up, I’ll show you.”

  When they got back up to the salon, McCaleb explained to Raymond how he could turn the galley table into a single berth. The boy seemed satisfied.

  “So let’s see what you got,” McCaleb said.

  He started going through Graciela’s grocery bag and putting things away. Their agreement was that she would make lunch, he would do the same with dinner. She had gone to a deli and it looked like they were going to have submarine sandwiches.

  “How’d you know that subs were my favorite?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” Graciela said. “But they’re Raymond’s, too.”

  McCaleb reached over and caught Raymond in the ribs again with a finger and the boy recoiled with a giggle.

  “Well, while Graciela makes sandwiches to take with us, why don’t you come out and help me with the equipment. We have fish out there waitin’ for us!”

  “Okay!”

  As he ushered the boy out to the stern, he looked back at Graciela and winked. Out on the deck he presented Raymond with the rod and reel he had bought him. When the boy realized the outfit was his to keep, he grabbed onto the pole as if it were a rope being dropped to him by a rescue squad. It made McCaleb feel sad instead of good. He wondered whether the young boy had ever had a man in his life.

  McCaleb looked up and saw Graciela standing in the open door to the salon. She also had a sad look on her face, even though she was smiling at them. McCaleb decided they had to break away from such emotions.

  “Okay,” he said. “Bait. We’ve got to fill a bucket, ’cause I’ve got a feeling they’re going to be biting out there today.”

  He got the floating bucket and dipping net out of the compartment next to the live well and then showed Raymond how to dip the net into the well, and bring up the bait. He put a couple netfuls of shrimp and squid into the bucket and then turned the chore over to Raymond. He then went inside to get the tackle box and a couple more rods for himself and Graciela to use.

  When he was inside and out of earshot of the boy, Graciela came up to him and hugged him.

  “That was very nice of you,” she said.

  He held her eyes for a few moments before saying anything.

  “I think maybe it does more for me than him.”

  “He’s so excited,” she said. “I can tell. He can’t wait to catch some
thing. I hope he does.”

  They walked out along the marina’s main dock, past the stores and restaurant, and then crossed a parking lot until they came to the main channel into the city’s marinas. There was a crushed-gravel path here and it led them out to the mouth of the channel and the breakwater, a rock jetty that curved out into the Pacific for a hundred yards. They carefully stepped from one huge granite slab to another until they were about halfway out.

  “Raymond, this is my secret spot. I think we should try it right here.”

  There was no objection. McCaleb put down his equipment and set to work getting ready to fish. The rocks were still wet from the nightly assault of high seas. McCaleb had brought towels and walked about the spot looking for flat rocks that would make good seats. He spread the towels out and told Graciela and Raymond to sit down. He opened the tackle box, took out the tube of sun block and handed it to Graciela. He then started baiting lines. He decided to put the squid on Raymond’s rig because he thought it would be the best bait and he wanted the boy to catch the first fish.

  Fifteen minutes later they had three lines in the water. McCaleb had taught the boy how to cast his line out, leave the reel open and let the squid swim with it in the current.

  “What will I catch?” he inquired, his eyes on his line.

  “I don’t know, Raymond. A lot of fish out there.”

  McCaleb took a rock directly next to Graciela’s. The boy was too nervous to sit and wait. He danced with his pole from rock to rock, anxiously waiting and hoping.

  “I should’ve brought a camera,” Graciela whispered

  “Next time,” McCaleb said “You see that?”

  He was pointing across the water to the horizon. The bluish outline of an island could be seen rising in the far mist.

  “Catalina?”

  “Yeah. That’s it.”

  “It’s weird. I can’t get used to the idea of you having lived on an island.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “How did your family end up here?”

  “They were from Chicago. My father was a ballplayer. Baseball. One spring-it was nineteen fifty-he got a tryout with the Cubs. They used to come out to Catalina for spring training. The Wrigleys owned the Cubs and most of the island. So they came out here.

  “My father and my mother were high school sweethearts. They had gotten married and he got this chance to go for the Cubs. He was a shortstop and second baseman. Anyway, he came out here but didn’t make the team. But he loved the place. He got a job working for the Wrigleys. And he sent for her.”

  His plan was to end the story there but she prompted more out of him.

  “Then you came.”

  “A little while later.”

  “But your parents didn’t stay?”

  “My mother didn’t. She couldn’t take the island. She stayed ten years and that was enough. It can be claustrophobic for some people… Anyway, they split up. My father stayed and he wanted me with him. I stayed. My mother went back to Chicago.”

  She nodded.

  “What did your father do for the Wrigleys?”

  “A lot of things. He worked on their ranch, then he worked up at the house. They kept a sixty-three-foot Chris-Craft in the harbor. He got a job as a deckhand and eventually he skippered that for them. Finally he got his own boat and put it out for charter. He was also a volunteer fireman.”

  He smiled and she smiled back.

  “And The Following Sea was his boat?”

  “His boat, his house, his business, everything. The Wrigleys financed him. He lived on the boat for about twelve years. Until he got so sick they-I mean, me, I was the one-I took him over town to the hospital. He died over here. In Long Beach.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Not for you.”

  He looked at her.

  “It’s just that at the end there comes a time when everybody knows. He knew there was no chance and he just wanted to go back over there. To his boat. And the island. I wouldn’t do it. I wanted to try everything, every goddamn marvel of science and medicine. And besides, if he was over there, it would be a hassle for me to get out to see him. I’d have to take the ferry. I made him stay in that hospital. He died alone in his room. I was down in San Diego on a case.”

  McCaleb looked out across the water. He could see a ferry heading toward the island.

  “I just wish I had listened to him.”

  She reached her hand over and put it on his forearm.

  “There is no sense in being haunted by good intentions.”

  He glanced over at Raymond. The boy had settled down and was standing still, looking down at his reel while a steady torrent of line was being pulled out. McCaleb knew that a squid didn’t have that kind of pulling power.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Raymond. I think you’ve got something there.”

  He put his rod down and went to the boy. He flipped the reel’s bail over and the line caught. Almost immediately the pole was pulled down and almost out of the boy’s hands. McCaleb grabbed it and held it up.

  “You got one!”

  “Hey! I got one! I got one!”

  “Remember what I told you, Raymond. Pull back, reel down. Pull back, reel down. I’ll help you with the pole until we tire that boy out. It feels like a big one. You okay?”

  “Yeah!”

  With McCaleb doing most of the pulling up on the pole, they began to fight the fish. Meantime, McCaleb directed Graciela to reel in the other lines to avoid a tangle with the live line. McCaleb and the boy fought the fish for about ten minutes. All the while McCaleb could feel through the pole the fight slipping out of it as it tired. Finally, he was able to turn the pole over to Raymond so he could finish the job himself.

  McCaleb slipped on a pair of gloves from the tackle box and climbed down the rocks to the water’s edge. Just a few inches below the surface he saw the silvery fish weakly struggling against the line. McCaleb kneeled on the rock, getting his shoes and pants wet, and leaned out until he could grab hold of Raymond’s line. He tugged the fish forward and brought its mouth up, reached into the water and locked a gloved hand around the tail, just forward of the back fins. He then yanked the fish out of the water and climbed back up the rocks to Raymond.

  The fish was shining in the sun like polished metal.

  “Barracuda, Raymond,” he said, holding it up. “Look at those teeth.”

  22

  THE DAY HAD GONE WELL. Raymond caught two barracudas and a white bass. The first fish had been the biggest and most exciting, though the second was hooked while they were eating lunch and almost pulled the unattended pole into the water. After they got back in the late afternoon Graciela insisted that Raymond rest before dinner and took him down to the forward stateroom. McCaleb used the time to spray off the fishing equipment with the stern hose. When Graciela came back up and they were alone, sitting on chairs on the deck, he felt a physical craving for a cold beer that he could just sit back and enjoy.

  “That was wonderful,” Graciela said of the outing to the jetty.

  “I’m glad. Think you’re going to stay for dinner?”

  “Of course. He wants to stay over, too. He loves boats. And I think he wants to fish again tomorrow. You’ve created a monster.”

  McCaleb nodded, thinking about the night ahead. A few minutes of easy silence went by while they watched the other activities in the marina. Saturdays were always busy days. McCaleb kept his eyes moving. Having guests made him more alert for the Russian, even though he’d decided the chances of Bolotov showing up were slim. He’d had the upper hand in Toliver’s office. If he had wanted to harm McCaleb, he could have done it then. But thoughts of Bolotov brought the case intruding. He remembered a question he’d thought of for Graciela.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said. “You first came to me last Saturday. But the story about me ran a week before that. Why did you wait a week?”

  “I didn’t really. I didn’t see the
article. A friend of Glory’s from the paper called up and said he saw it and wondered if, you know, you could’ve been the one who got her heart. Then I went to the library and read the story. I came here the next day.”

  He nodded. She decided it was her turn to ask a question.

  “Those boxes down there.”

  “What boxes?”

  “Stacked under the desk. Are they your cases?”

  “They’re old files.”

  “I recognize some of the names written on them. The article mentioned some of them. Luther Hatch, I remember him. And the Code Killer. Why did they call him that?”

  “Because he-if it was a he-left messages for us or sent messages to us that always had the same number at the bottom.”

  “What did it mean?”

  “We never found out. The best people at the bureau and even the encryption people at the National Security Agency couldn’t crack it. Personally, I didn’t think it meant anything at all. It wasn’t a code. It was just another way for the UnSub to tweak us, keep us chasing our tails… nine-oh-three, four-seven-two, five-six-eight.”

  “That’s the code?”

  “That’s the number. Like I said, I don’t think there was any code.”

  “Is that what they decided in Washington, too?”

  “No. They never gave up on it. They were sure it meant something. They thought it might be the guy’s Social Security number. You know, scrambled around. With their computer they printed out every combination and then got all the names from Social Security. Hundreds of thousands. They ran them all through the computers.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Criminal records, profile matches… it was one big wild-goose chase. The UnSub wasn’t on the list.”