Blood Work

by Michael Connelly

  It was half past nine by the time he reached the shore and was skirting along the black water intermittently broken by the froth of crashing waves. The night fog was coming in heavy and pushing across the highway, butting into the sheer bluffs that guarded the Palisades. It carried with the strong scent and feel of the sea and it reminded McCaleb of night fishing with his father when he was a boy. It always scared him when his father throttled down and killed the engines so they could drift in the dark. His breath held tight at the end of the night when the old man turned the key to restart. He had nightmares as a boy about drifting alone in the dark in a dead boat. He never told his father about those dreams. He never told him he didn’t want to go night fishing. He always held his fears to himself.

  McCaleb looked out to his left to try to find the line where ocean met sky but he couldn’t see it. Two shades of darkness blending somewhere out there, the moon hidden in cloud cover. It seemed to fit his mood. He turned on the radio and fished around for some blues but gave up and turned it off. He remembered Buddy’s collection of harmonicas and reached into the door pocket for one. He flipped on the overhead light and checked the etching on the top plate. It was a Tombo in the key of C. He wiped it off on his shirt and as he drove, he played with the instrument, mostly producing a cacophony that at times made him laugh out loud at how ugly it was. But every now and then he put together a couple of notes. Buddy had tried to teach him once and he’d gotten to the point where he could play the opening riffs of “Midnight Rambler.” He tried for that now but couldn’t find the chord and what he produced sounded more like a wheezing old man.

  When he turned into Topanga Canyon, he put the harmonica down. The road through the canyon was a snake and he’d need both hands on the wheel. Fresh out of distractions, he finally began considering his situation. He first brooded about Winston and how much he could count on her. He knew she was capable and ambitious. What he didn’t know was how well she would stand up to the pressure she would certainly encounter by going against the bureau and the LAPD. He concluded that he was lucky to have her on his side but that he couldn’t sit back and wait for her to show up with the case wrapped up in a box. He could only count on himself.

  He figured that if Winston did not convince the others, then at best he had two days before they had an indictment from a grand jury and would go to the media with their prize. After that, his chances of working the case would diminish rapidly. He’d be the lead on the six and eleven o’clock news. He’d have no choice but to give up the investigation, get a lawyer and surrender. The priority would then be clearing his game in the courtroom, never mind catching the real shooter and whoever it was who had hired him.

  There was a gravel turnout on the road and McCaleb pulled over, put the ear in park and looked out at the blackness of the drop-off to his right. Far off he saw the square lights of a house deep in the canyon and he wondered what it would be like to be there. He reached over to the seat next to him for the harmonica but it was gone, slipped over the side during one of the turns of the snaking road.

  Three minutes went by and no car passed him. He dropped the car back into drive and continued on his way. Once he crested the mountain, the road straightened out some and dropped down into Woodland Hills. He stayed on Topanga Canyon Boulevard until he reached Sherman Way and then he cut east into Canoga Park. Five minutes later he stopped in front of Graciela’s home and watched the windows for a few minutes. He thought about what he would say to her. He wasn’t sure what he had started with her but it felt strong and right to him. Before he even opened the door to the car, he was mourning the possibility that it might already be over.

  She opened the front door before he reached it and he wondered if she had been watching him sitting in the car.

  “Terry? Is everything all right? Why are you driving?”

  “I had to.”

  “Come in, come in.”

  She stepped back and allowed him in. They went to the living room and took the same seats on the sectional sofa that they had taken before. A small color television on a wooden stand played softly in the corner. The ten o’clock news on Channel 5 was just starting. Graciela used a remote to turn it off. McCaleb put his heavy bag down between his feet. He had left the duffel in the car, unwilling to presume that he would be asked to stay.

  “Tell me,” she said. “What is happening?”

  “They think it was me. The FBI, LAPD, all of them but one sheriff’s detective. They think I killed your sister for her heart.”

  McCaleb looked at her face and then glanced away like a guilty man. He winced at the thought of what this must show to her but he knew down deep that he was guilty. He was the beneficiary, even if he had nothing to do with the actual crime. He was alive now because Glory was dead. A question echoed through his mind like the slamming of a dozen doors down a dark hallway. How can I live with this?

  “That’s ridiculous,” Graciela said angrily. “How can they think that you-”

  “Wait,” he said, cutting her off. “I have to tell you some things, Graciela. Then you decide what and who to believe.”

  “I don’t have to hear-”

  He held his hand up cutting her off again.

  “Just listen to me, okay? Where’s Raymond?”

  “He’s asleep. It’s a school night.”

  He nodded and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together.

  “They searched my boat. While I was with you, they were searching my boat. They had made the same connection we made. The blood work. But they’re looking at me for it. They found things on my boat. I wanted to tell you before you heard it from them or saw it on TV or the paper.”

  “What things, Terry?”

  “Hidden under a drawer. They found your sister’s earring. The cross the shooter took.”

  He watched her a moment before continuing. Her eyes dropped from his to the glass-topped coffee table as she thought about his words.

  “They also found the photo from Cordell’s car. And they found a cuff link that was taken from Donald Kenyon. They found all the icons the killer took, Graciela. My source, the sheriff’s detective, she tells me they are going to go to a grand jury and indict me. I can’t go back to my boat now.”

  She glanced at him and then away. She stood up and walked to the window, even though the curtain was closed. She shook her head.

  “You want me to leave?” he said to her back.

  “No, I don’t want you to leave. This makes no sense. How can they-did you tell the detective about the intruder? He’s the one who must have done this, who put those things in the drawer. He’s the killer. Oh my God! We were that close to my sister’s…”

  She didn’t finish. McCaleb got up and went to her, relief coursing through him. She didn’t believe it. None of it. He put his arms around her from behind and pushed his face into her hair.

  “I’m so glad you believe me,” he whispered.

  She turned around in his arms and they kissed for a long moment.

  “What can I do to help?” she whispered.

  “Just keep believing. And I’ll do the rest. Can I stay here?

  “Nobody knows that we’re together. They might come here, but I don’t think it will be to look for me. It might be just to tell you they think it’s me.”

  “I want you to stay. As long as you need or want to.”

  “I just need a place where I can work. Where I can go through everything again. I get this feeling I missed something. Like the blood work. There’s got to be some answers in all of that paper.”

  “You can work here. I’ll stay home tomorrow and help look through-”

  “No. You can’t. You can’t do anything unusual. I just want you to get up in the morning and take Raymond to school and then go to work. I can do this. This part is my job.”

  He held her face in his hands. The weight of his guilt was lessened by her just being there with him and he felt the subtle opening inside of some passage that had long been close
d. He wasn’t sure where it would lead but knew in his heart he wanted to go there, that he must go there.

  “I was just about to go to bed,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “What about Raymond? Shouldn’t we-”

  “Raymond’s asleep. Don’t worry about him. For right now let’s worry about us.”

  38

  IN THE MORNING, after Graciela and Raymond were gone and the house was quiet, McCaleb opened his leather bag and spread all of the accumulated paperwork in six stacks across the coffee table. While contemplating it all, he drank a glass of orange juice and ate two untoasted blueberry Pop Tarts that he guessed were meant for Raymond. When he was done, he set to work, hoping his involvement in the paper would keep his mind off things beyond his control, mainly Jaye Winston’s investigation of the names on the list.

  Despite that distraction McCaleb could feel the flow of adrenaline start to kick in. He was looking for the tell. The piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit before but would make sense now, that would tell him the story. He had survived in the bureau largely by following gut instincts. He was following one now. He knew that the larger the case file was-the larger the accumulation of facts-the easier it was for the tell to be hidden. He would go hunting for it now, in a sense looking for the perfect red apple in the stack at the grocery store-the one that when pulled brings the whole pile down and bouncing across the floor.

  But as jazzed as McCaleb had been at eight-thirty in the morning, his spirits had immolated by late afternoon. In eight hours interrupted only by bologna sandwiches and unanswered calls to Winston, he had reviewed every page of every document he had accumulated in the ten days he had worked the case. And the tell-if it had ever been there-remained hidden. The feelings of paranoia and isolation were creeping back up on him. At one point he realized he was daydreaming about what would be the best place to flee to, the mountains of Canada or the beaches of Mexico.

  At four o’clock he called the Star Center once more and was told for the fifth time that Winston was not in. This time, however, the secretary added that she was presumed gone for the day. In earlier calls the secretary had dutifully refused to reveal where Winston was or give him her pager number. For that he would have to speak to the captain and McCaleb declined, knowing the jeopardy he would place Winston in if it was revealed she was not only sympathetic to a suspect but was actually aiding him.

  After hanging up, he called his phone on the boat and played back two messages that had come in during the last hour. The first was Buddy Lockridge checking in and the second was a wrong number, a woman saying she wasn’t sure if she had the right number but was looking for some one named Luther Hatch. She left a callback number. McCaleb recognized the name Luther Hatch-the suspect in the case in which he had first met Jaye Winston. Once he made that connection, he recognized her voice on the message. She was telling him to call her.

  As he punched in the numbers Winston had left, he recognized the exchange-it was the same for the bureau offices in Westwood, where he used to work. The phone was answered immediately.

  “This is Winston.”

  “This is McCaleb.”

  Silence.

  “Hey,” she finally said. “I was wondering if you would get that message.”

  “What’s up? Can you talk?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk, then. Do they know you are helping me?”

  “No, obviously.”

  “But you’re there because they moved the investigation to the bureau, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay, have you had a chance to run those names down yet?”

  “I’ve been out on it all day.”

  “Do you have anything? Do any of them look good?”

  “No, there’s nothing there.”

  McCaleb closed his eyes and cursed silently. Where had he gone wrong? How could this be a dead end? He was confused and his mind was running over the possibilities. He wondered if Winston had had enough time to thoroughly run out the list.

  “Is there any place or time I can talk to you about this? I need to ask you some questions.”

  “In a little while I probably can. Why don’t you give me a number and I’ll get back to you?”

  McCaleb was silent while he thought about this. But he didn’t take long. As Winston had said the night before, her neck was way out there for him. He believed he could trust her. He gave her Graciela’s number.

  “Call me back as soon as you can.”

  “I will.”

  “One last thing. Did they go to the grand jury yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “How long before they do?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then. Bye.”

  She hung up before she heard him curse out loud. The following morning they were going to seek an indictment against him for murder. And he was sure that obtaining it would be only a formality. Grand juries were always rigged in the prosecution’s favor. In McCaleb’s case, he knew that all they needed to do was show the Sherman Market tape and then introduce the earring found during the search of his boat. They would be staging press conferences by the afternoon-perfect timing for the six o’clock news.

  While he was standing there contemplating his grim future, the phone rang in his hand.

  “It’s Jaye.”

  “Where are you?”

  “The federal cafeteria. A pay phone.”

  McCaleb immediately envisioned her location, in an a cove with vending machines off to the side of the cafeteria dining room. It was private enough,

  “What’s going on, Jaye?”

  “It’s not good. They’re putting the finishing touches on the package they’re going to take to the DA’s office tonight. They’ll take it to the grand jury tomorrow morning. They’re going to seek one murder charge for Gloria Torres. After that’s in the pipeline, they’ll take their time before adding on Cordell and Kenyon.”

  “Okay,” McCaleb said, not sure how to respond. He decided there was no sense in continuing to curse out loud.

  “My advice is that you come in, Terry. You tell them what you told me and convince them. I’ll be on your side but right now I’m handcuffed. I have information about the Good Samaritan I shouldn’t have. If I reveal it, I’ll go into the shitter with you. “

  “What about the list? Nothing at all?”

  “Look, that much I did talk about with them. So I would have the time to work the list. I came in this morning and told them in order to be ready to counter your defense, we needed to investigate the other recipients of the organs from Gloria Torres. I said I had a source who would slip us the list of names without us having to get a search warrant, etcetera, etcetera, and they said great. They gave me the day. But nothing, Terry. I’m sorry but I checked out every name. I got nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, I don’t have the list with me but-”

  “Hold on.”

  McCaleb walked into Graciela’s bedroom, where he had seen the copy of the list he had given her on the bureau. He grabbed it and read the first name to Winston.

  “J. B. Dickey-he got the liver.”

  “Right, okay, he didn’t make it. He got the transplant but there were complications and he died three weeks after surgery.”

  “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t him.”

  “I know that. But I talked to the surgeon at St. Joseph ’s. It was a charity case. The guy was on MediCal and the hospital picked up the rest. This wasn’t a guy with money or connections to a hit man, Terry. Come on.”

  “Okay, next. Tammy Domike, one of the kidneys.”

  “Right. She’s a schoolteacher. She’s twenty-eight, married to a carpenter and has two kids. She doesn’t fit either It just wasn’t-”

  “William Farley, the other kidney.”

  “Retired Chippie from Bakersfield. He’s been in a wheelchair for twelve years-since he took a bullet in the s
pine during a routine traffic pullover on the grapevine. They never caught the guy, either.”

  “California Highway Patrol,” McCaleb mused out loud. “He could have friends who could have pulled this off for him.”

  Winston was silent for a long moment before responding.

  “It seems unlikely, Terry. I mean, listen to what you’re-”

  “I know, I know, never mind. What about the eyes? Christine Foye got the corneas.”

  “Right. She sells books for a living and just got out of college. It’s not her, either. Look, Terry, we were hoping that one of these people would be some millionaire or a politician or anybody with the juice to do this. Somebody obvious. But it’s just not there. I’m sorry.”

  “So I’m still the best and only suspect.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Thanks, Jaye, you’ve been a big help. I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait! And don’t get mad at me. I’ve been the only one who has listened to you. Remember?”

  “I know, I’m sorry.”

  “Well, there was one other thing, I was thinking. I wasn’t going to tell you until I had some time to check it out. I’m going to start on it tomorrow. I’m working on a warrant for information right now.”

  “What? Tell me. I need something now.”

  “Well, you were only thinking in terms of who got the organs that became available after the death of Gloria Torres, right?”

  “Right. Cordell’s and Kenyon’s were not harvested.”

  “I know. I’m not talking about that. But there is always a waiting list, right?”

  “Yeah, always. I waited almost two years because of the blood type.”

  “Well, maybe someone just wanted to move up the list.”

  “Move up?”

  “You know, they were like you, waiting, and they knew it would be a long wait. Maybe even a fatal wait. Weren’t you told that with your blood type there was no telling when a heart would become available?”

  “Yeah, they told me not to get my hopes up.”