He slowly crawled north on the 101, back through the Cahuenga Pass, and finally picked up some speed as he switched to the 134 north. He exited on Victory and drove west until he found Atoll Avenue. The neighborhood he turned into was decidedly industrial. He could smell a bakery and he passed a fenced yard where slabs of jagged granite were stacked and pointing at the sky. There were warehouses without names on them. There was a pool chemical supply wholesaler and an industrial waste recycling center. Just where Atoll dead-ended at an old railroad spur with tall weeds poking up between the rails, McCaleb turned the Taurus down a driveway bordered on both sides by a long row of small, single-garage-bay warehouses. Each unit was a separate small business or storage lockup. Some had the names of businesses painted over the aluminum roll-up doors, some had no identifying marks at all and were either unrented or used anonymously for storage. McCaleb stopped the car in front of the rusting door marked with the address James Noone had given deputies three months before. There were no other markings on the door but the address. He killed the car’s engine and got out.
It was a black night. No moon, no stars. The row of warehouses was dark save for a single floodlight down at the entrance. McCaleb looked around. He heard the tinny sound of music-Jimi Hendrix singing Let me stand next to your fire -from somewhere seemingly far away. And further down the drive, six warehouses away, the door to one of the garages had been pulled down unevenly until it jammed, offering a three-foot slice of the warehouse’s interior that looked like a crooked smile blacker than the sky.
He checked Noone’s unit, dropping to a crouch to study the line where the garage door met the concrete pavement. He wasn’t sure but there appeared to be a dim light emanating from within the warehouse. He stepped closer and could make out the padlock that attached a steel ring on the door to a matching ring embedded in the concrete.
He stood up and banged the door with an open palm. The noise was loud and he heard it reverberate inside. He stepped back and looked around again. Other than the sound of the music, there was only silence. The air was still. The night wind had not found its way down to the space between the rows of garages.
McCaleb got back in the car, started it and backed it up at an angle so that the headlights were at least partially focused on Noone’s garage. He then killed the engine but left the lights on, got out and went to the trunk. After lifting up the trunk mat, he found the jack assembly intact. He removed the jack handle and came around the car to the garage door. He looked up and down the drive once more and then bent down to the padlock.
As a bureau agent, McCaleb had never once been involved in an illegal break-in. He knew that they were a matter of routine but he had somehow avoided the ethical dilemma himself. But he felt no dilemma now as he worked the iron bar into the hasp of the lock. He wasn’t carrying the badge anymore and, above that, this was personal. Noone was a killer and, worse yet, he had sought to pin his work on McCaleb. McCaleb didn’t give a second thought to Noone’s rights to protection from unlawful search and seizure.
Holding the jack handle on the far end for leverage, he slowly began pulling the steel bar in a clockwise motion. The padlock hasp remained strong but the steel ring attached to the door groaned under the pressure and then snapped off, its solder points giving way.
McCaleb straightened up and looked around and listened. Nothing. Just Hendrix covering Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” He quickly moved back to the Taurus and returned the jack handle to the spare-tire kit, pulled the trunk mat back over it and closed the trunk lid.
As he came around the car, he bent over next to the front tire and ran two fingers along the wheel rim, picking up a good amount of black carbon dust that had built up from the brake pads. He stepped over to the garage door and, squatting down by the lock, he smeared the carbon over the break points of the solder so that it would appear as though the ring had been broken off the door some time ago and the break points had been exposed to the elements. He then rubbed the rest of the dirt off his fingers onto one of his black socks.
When he was ready, he gripped the door’s pull handle with his right hand. With his left he reached behind him and under his coat. He brought it back gripping his pistol, which he held at shoulder height, pointing skyward. With one move he stood and jerked the door up with him, using its momentum to keep it moving up until it was above his head.
His eyes quickly scanned the dim confines of the garage, his gun now pointed in the direction his eyes moved. The car’s headlights illuminated about a third of the room. He could see an unmade cot and a stack of cardboard boxes against the left wall. Scanning right, he saw the outline of a desk and file cabinets. There was a computer on the desk, the monitor’s screen apparently on and facing the rear wall, throwing a violet glow against it. McCaleb noticed the six-foot-long light hanging from the ceiling. In the shadowy light his eyes traced the aluminum conduit from the junction box along the ceiling and down the wall to a switch near the cot. He stepped sideways and reached for the switch without looking at it.
A fluorescent bulb blinked once, buzzed and then lit the garage with its severe light. McCaleb could now see that there was no one in the room and there were no closets to be checked. Just the approximately twenty-by-twelve-foot space cluttered with a mish-mash of office furniture and equipment and the basic necessities of home-a bed, a chest of drawers, an electric space heater, a double-coil hot plate and a half-size refrigerator. No sink and no bathroom.
McCaleb stepped backward and then around the car. He reached in through the open window and shut off the lights. He then slipped the pistol back into his waistband, this time in the front for easier access. Finally, he stepped into the garage.
If the air had been still outside, then on the inside it seemed stagnant. McCaleb moved slowly around the old steel government desk and looked at the computer. The monitor was lit and a screen saver glowed on the screen. Random numbers of different sizes and colors floated on a sea of purple velvet. McCaleb stared at the screen for a few moments and he felt a tugging inside, almost a coiling of some deep muscle. In his mind the picture of a single red apple bouncing on a dirty linoleum floor appeared and then was gone. A tremble climbed the ladder of his spine.
“Shit,” he whispered.
He looked away from the computer screen, noticing that also on the desk was a collection of books clasped between brass bookends. Most were reference books on accessing and using the Internet. There were two volumes containing Internet addresses and two biographies of well-known computer hackers. There were also three books on crime scene investigation, a manual on homicide investigation, a book on an FBI investigation of a serial killer known as the Poet, and, finally, two books on hypnosis, the last about a man named Horace Gomble. McCaleb knew about Gomble. He had been the subject of more than one investigation by the bureau’s serial crimes unit. Gomble was a former Las Vegas entertainer who had used his skills as a hypnotist, along with drug enhancers, to molest a series of young girls at county fairs throughout Florida. As far as McCaleb knew, he was still in prison.
McCaleb moved slowly all the way behind the desk now and sat down in the worn command chair facing the computer. Using a pen from his pocket, he pulled the desk’s center drawer open. There was not much in it but a few pens and a plastic CD-ROM case. He used his pen to flip the case over and saw that it was called Brain Scan. He read the packaging and saw that the CD offered its user a guided tour of the human brain with detailed graphics and analysis of its workings.
He closed the drawer and used the pen again to open one of the two side drawers. The first one was empty except for an unopened box of Crackerjack. He closed it and below it was a file drawer. In this there were several manila files hanging in green folders hooked on two rails. Bending down to see better, McCaleb read the name on the tab of the first file.
GLORIA TORRES
He dropped the pen to the floor and in the same moment decided not to pick it up and that he didn’t care anymore about leaving
fingerprints or possibly infecting a crime scene. He pulled the file out and opened it on the desk. It contained photos of Gloria Torres in various clothing at various times of the day. In two of the photos Raymond was with her. In one she was with Graciela.
There were typewritten logs in the file. Surveillance logs. Detailed descriptions of Gloria’s movements on a day-to-day basis. He quickly scanned these and saw repeated notations of her nightly stop at Sherman Market on her way home from work.
He closed the file, left it on the desk and reached for the next one in the drawer. He could have guessed the name written on the tab before he saw it.
JAMES CORDELL
He didn’t bother opening it. He knew it would contain photos and surveillance notes just like the first one. Instead he reached down and looked at the next file in line. It was as expected:
DONALD KENYON
He didn’t pull that file, either. He used his finger to bend back the tabs on the remaining files so he could read them. As he did this, his heart lurched inside his chest, as if it had somehow come loose inside. He knew the names on the file tabs. Every single one of them.
“It’s you,” he whispered.
And in his mind he saw the apples cascading onto the floor and going every which way.
He shoved the file drawer closed and the loud bang echoed off the concrete floor and steel walls, startling him like a shot. He looked out into the night through the open door and listened. He heard nothing, not even the music anymore. Only silence.
His eyes moved to the computer monitor and he studied the numbers moving lazily around on the screen. He knew the computer had been left on for a reason. Not because Noone was coming back; McCaleb knew he was long gone. No, it had been left on for him. McCaleb had been expected here. He knew this now, knew in his heart that Noone had choreographed every move.
McCaleb tapped the space bar and the screen saver disappeared. In its place was a prompt for a password. McCaleb didn’t hesitate. He had the sense he was being played like a piano. He typed in numbers in an order he knew by heart.
903472568
He hit the enter key and the computer went to work. In a few moments the password was accepted and the screen flashed to the program manager template, a white screen with various icons spread across the field. McCaleb studied these quickly. Most were for accessing games. There also were icons for accessing America Online and Word for Windows. The last symbol he looked at was a tiny file cabinet and he guessed that was the computer’s file manager icon. He found the electronic mouse on the side of the computer and used it to move the computer arrow to the file cabinet. He double-clicked and the screen flashed to the file manager. It was basic computer navigating. In the file manager the listing of files ran down the left side of the screen in a neat column. Choosing one of the files and clicking the arrow on it would bring up the titles of the documents contained in that file in a column on the right side of the screen.
Using the mouse, McCaleb ran the arrow down the files column, studying each one. Most were software files for the operation of various icon programs such as America Online, the Las Vegas Casino game and others. But eventually he came to a file titledCODE. He clicked the mouse and several document titles appeared on the right side of the screen. He read through these quickly and realized they corresponded with the names on the file tabs in the desk drawer.
All except for one document. McCaleb stared at it for a long moment, his finger raised and poised over the mouse button.
McCaleb.doc
He clicked the mouse and the document quickly filled the screen. McCaleb began to read it like a man reading his own obituary. The words filled him with dread, for he knew that they unalterably changed his life. They stripped his soul from him, took any meaning from his accomplishments and made a horrible mockery of them.
Hello Agent McCaleb:
It is you out there, I would hope.
I will assume so. I will assume that you have lived up to that wonderful reputation you carried so nobly.
I wonder? Are you alone? Are you running from them now as a wanted man? But, of course, now you have what you need to save yourself from them. But I am asking about before now, how did it feel to be the hunted one? I wanted you to know that feeling. My feelings… A terrible thing to live with fear, no?
Fear never sleeps.
Most of all, what I wanted was a place in your heart, Agent McCaleb. I wanted always to be with you. Cain and Abel, Kennedy and Oswald, darkness and light. Two worthy opponents, chained together through time…
I could have killed you. I had that power and opportunity. But it would have been too easy, don’t you think? The man on the dock, asking directions. Your morning walk, the man on the rock jetty with the fishing pole. Do you remember me?
Now you do. I was there. But it would have been too easy, don’t you agree? Too easy.
You see, I needed something more than vengeance or the vanquishing of a foe. Those are the goals of fools. I wanted-no, I needed and craved-something different. To test you first by turning you into me. The villain. The hunted one.
Then, when you emerged from that fire, your skin scorched but your body whole, to reveal myself as your most ardent benefactor. Yes, it was me. I followed her. I studied her. I chose her for you. She was my Valentine to you.
You are mine forever, Agent McCaleb. Every breath you take belongs to me. Every beat of that stolen heart is the echo of my voice in your head. Always. Every day.
Remember…
Every breath…
McCaleb folded his arms across his chest and held himself as though he had been flayed open with a blade. A deep shudder rolled through him and a moan escaped his throat. He pushed the chair back from the desk, away from the horrible message still on the screen, and bent his body forward into the crash position. His plane was going down.
41
HIS THOUGHTS WERE blood red and black. He felt as though he were in some permanent void, surrounded by a velvet curtain of black space, his hands forever searching for the seam through which to escape but never finding it. He saw the faces of Graciela Rivers and Raymond as distant images receding into the darkness.
Suddenly, he felt a cold hand on his neck and he jumped, a shriek escaping from his throat like a prisoner going over the wall. He sat up. It was Winston. His reaction had scared her as much as she had scared him.
“Terry? Are you okay?”
“Yes. I mean, no. It’s him. Noone is the Code Killer. He killed all of them. The last three for me. He did it until he got it right. He killed Gloria Torres for her heart. For me. So that I would live and be the testament to his glory.”
The coincidence of the name and Noone’s purpose suddenly struck McCaleb.
“Wait a minute,” Winston said. “Slow down. What are you talking about?”
“It’s him. It’s all here. Check the files, the computer. He killed those others. He then decided to save me. To kill for me.”
He pointed to the computer screen, where the message to McCaleb was still displayed. He waited while she read it but finally couldn’t contain himself.
“All the pieces, they were right there. All the time.”
“What pieces?”
“The code. It was so simple. He used every digit but the number one. No one. Get it? I am no one. That’s all he was saying.”
“Terry, let’s talk about this later. Tell me how you got here? How did you know it was Noone?”
“The tape. The session we did with him.”
“The hypnosis? What about it?”
“Remember how I told you not to speak so the subject would not be confused?”
“Right. You said only you should ask questions to Noone. Anything between us should be signals or written down.”
“But at the end, when I knew it was all going to shit, I got frustrated. I said to you, ‘Anything else?’ and you shook your head no. I asked, ‘Are you sure?’ and you shook your head again. I broke my own rule by speaking to you. The thi
ng is, I asked those questions to you out loud. So Noone should have answered me. If he was in a true hypnotic trance, he should have answered because he would not have known those questions were directed at you. But he didn’t answer. It shows cognizance of the situation. He knew, either by the direction of my voice or its inflection, that I was talking to you instead of him. He shouldn’t have known that. Not in a true trance. He should have answered every question spoken in that room unless it was specifically addressed to someone else. I never used your name.”
“He was faking.”
“Right. And if he was faking it, then his answers were bogus. It meant he was part of the setup. I had the videos compared before I came here. There are hard copies in my car. James Noone and the Good Samaritan are the same guy. The shooter.”
Winston shook her head as if to signal brain overload. Her eyes scanned the room for a place to sit down. There was only the cot.
“You want to sit here,” McCaleb said, standing up.
“I want to sit down but not in here. We have to back out of here, Terry. I need to call Captain Hitchens and then the others, LAPD and the bureau. I better put out a pickup on Noone, too.”
McCaleb was amazed that she still didn’t have all the pieces together.
“Aren’t you listening? There is no Noone. He doesn’t exist.”
“What do you mean?”
“The name. It goes with everything else, Noone. Break it down and you get no one. I am no one. The pieces were there all the time…”
He shook his head and dropped back into the chair. He put his face in his hands.
“How am I… I can’t live with this.”
Again Winston put her hand on his neck but this time he didn’t startle.
Blood Work Page 36