Blood Work

by Michael Connelly

  “Come on, Terry, let’s not think about that. Let’s go out to the car and wait. I have to get a crime scene crew in here, maybe get some prints so we can ID this guy.”

  McCaleb stood up and walked around the desk and out toward the door. He spoke without looking back at her.

  “He never left a print anywhere else before. I doubt he started now.”

  Two hours later McCaleb was sitting in the Taurus, parked out on Atoll behind the yellow police lines that had been strung between the rows of garage warehouses. A hundred yards down the drive he could see the cluster of activity in and around Noone’s brightly lit garage. There were several detectives-some McCaleb recognized from the Code Killer task force, technicians, videographers from at least two of the agencies involved, and a half dozen uniformed officers standing by.

  Moths to the flame, he thought. He watched it all with a strange detachment. His thoughts were on other things. Graciela and Raymond. And Noone. He couldn’t stop thinking about the man who called himself Noone. He had been in the same room with him. He had been that close.

  He needed a drink, wanted the burning taste of whiskey in his throat, but he knew to take that taste would be the same as putting a gun to his head. He knew that despite the pain cutting through him, he would not give Noone, or whoever he was, that satisfaction. He decided in the darkness of the car that he would live. Despite it all he would live.

  He didn’t notice the men walking down the drive toward him until they were almost to the Taurus. He flicked on the lights and identified them as Nevins and Uhlig and Arrango. He turned the lights off and waited. They opened the doors of the car and got in, Nevins in the front, the other two in the back, with Arrango directly behind McCaleb.

  “Got any heat in this thing?” Nevins asked. “It’s getting cold out here.”

  McCaleb started the car but waited to turn the heater on until the engine got warm. He looked in the rearview mirror at Arrango. It was too dark to see if he had a toothpick in his mouth.

  “Where’s Walters?”

  “Busy.”

  “Okay,” Nevins said. “Uh, we came down to tell you it looks like we were wrong about you, McCaleb. I’m sorry. We’re sorry. Looks like Noone is the guy. You did good work.”

  McCaleb only nodded. It was a half-assed apology but he didn’t care about that. What he had found out in order to clear his name would be harder to live with than if he had been publicly accused of the murders. Apologies meant nothing to him.

  “We know it’s been a long night for you and we want to get you on your way. I was thinking we could just kind of get your rundown on how all of this shakes out and then maybe tomorrow you come in and give a formal statement. What do you think?”

  “Fine. As far as the formal statement goes, I’ll give it to Winston. Not you guys.”

  “Fair enough. I can understand that. But for now, why don’t you tell us how, in your view, how this whole thing works. Can you do that?”

  McCaleb leaned forward and switched on the heater. He composed his thoughts for a few moments before beginning.

  “I’ll call him Noone because that’s all we have and maybe all we’ll ever have. It begins with the Code Killer. That was Noone. At that time I was the bureau’s point man on the task force. By agreement with the LAPD, I became the media spokesman on the case. I led the briefings, requests for interviews went to me. For ten months my face became synonymous on TV with the Code Killer. And so Noone fixated on me. As we got closer to him he fixated on me. He sent letters to me. In his mind, I was the nemesis. I was the embodiment of the task force that was hunting him.”

  “Aren’t you taking a lot of the credit for yourself?” Arrango asked. “I mean, you weren’t the only-”

  “Shut up and listen, Arrango. You might learn something.”

  McCaleb stared at him in the rearview and Arrango stared back. McCaleb saw Nevins hold a hand up in a calming motion directed at Arrango.

  “ He gave me the credit,” McCaleb said. “I didn’t take it. Eventually, when he knew the risks were too great, he dropped out. The killings stopped. The Code Killer disappeared. About that same time I went down with… with my problems. I needed the transplant and it became news because I had been a face in the news. Noone saw this. He could have easily been aware of this. And he hatched what he would consider his grandest scheme.”

  “He decided that rather than kill you, he would save you,” Uhlig said.

  McCaleb nodded.

  “It would give him the ultimate victory because it would last and last. To simply eliminate me, kill me, would bring only a fleeting sense of fulfillment. But by saving me… now there was something unique, something that would get him into the hall of fame. And he’d always have me around as a reminder of how smart and powerful he is. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Nevins said. “But that’s the psychological side. What I want to know is how he did it? How’d he get the names? How did he know about Kenyon and Cordell and then Torres?”

  “His computer. Your techs are going to have to take that thing apart.”

  “We’ve got Bob Clearmountain coming in,” Nevins said. “You remember him?”

  McCaleb nodded. Clearmountain was the L.A. field office’s resident computer expert. A hacker extraordinary in his own right.

  “Good. Then he’ll be able to answer that question better than me. Eventually. My guess is that you’ll find a hacking program in that computer. Noone got into BOPRA and from there got the names. He chose his targets based on age, physical fitness and proximity. And he went to work. With Kenyon and Cordell things went wrong. They went right with Torres. That is, according to Noone’s view.”

  “And he planned all along to lay it on you?”

  “All I think is that he wanted me to follow the trail and find out for myself what he had done. He knew that would happen if I became a suspect. Because then I would have to look into it myself. But then that didn’t happen at first because the case investigators missed the clues.”

  He looked at Arrango in the mirror as he said this. He could see the detective’s eyes turn dark with anger. He was about to explode.

  “Arrango, the fact is, you treated it as an everyday stop-and-rob with the addition of shots fired, nothing more and nothing less. You missed it. So Noone jump-started the whole thing.”

  “How?” Uhlig and Nevins asked in unison.

  “My involvement came about because of an article in the Times. That article was prompted by a letter from a reader. Whatever name was on that letter, I bet it was Noone.”

  He stopped there, waiting for disagreement. None came.

  “The letter prompts the article. The article prompts Graciela Rivers. Graciela Rivers prompts me. Like dominoes.”

  A thought suddenly occurred to him. He remembered the man in the old foreign car watching from across the street the first time he visited the Sherman Market. He realized the car matched the one he had seen speeding from the marina lot the night he chased the intruder.

  “I think Noone was watching me all along,” he said. “Watching his plan unfold. He knew when it was time to get into my boat and plant the evidence. He knew when to call you.”

  He looked at Nevins, whose eyes shifted away and out the windshield.

  “You got an anonymous call? What was said?”

  “Actually, it was an anonymous message. Taken down by the overnight person. It just said, ‘Check the blood. McCaleb has their blood.’ That was it.”

  “It fits. That was him. Just another move in the game.”

  They were silent for a while. The windows were beginning to fog with the heat and their breath.

  “Well, I don’t know how much of this we’ll ever confirm,” Nevins said. “Certainly a lot of maybes.”

  McCaleb nodded. He doubted any of it would ever be confirmed because he doubted Noone would ever be identified or found.

  “Okay, then,” Nevins continued. “I guess we’ll be in touch.”

  He
opened his door and the others followed. Before he got out, Uhlig reached over the seat and tapped McCaleb’s shoulder with a harmonica.

  “It was on the floor back here,” he said.

  As Arrango stepped out onto the asphalt, McCaleb lowered his window and looked up at him.

  “You know, you could’ve busted it. It was all there in the book. It was waiting for you.”

  “Fuck you, McCaleb.”

  He walked away, following the two agents back toward Noone’s garage. McCaleb smiled slightly. He had to admit that in spite of everything he still wasn’t above the guilty pleasure of tweaking Arrango.

  * * *

  McCaleb sat in the car for a few more minutes before leaving. It was late, past ten o’clock, and he was wondering where to go. He had not talked to Graciela yet and he looked forward to the task with a mixture of dread and relief, the latter coming from knowing that one way or another their relationship would be clearly defined soon. The problem he had was that he wasn’t sure that he wanted to deliver his tidings at night. His news seemed better delivered during the unflinching light of day.

  He put his hand on the ignition and took one last look up the drive toward the lighted garage where his life had been so brutally changed. He saw that the light cast from the garage and across the driveway was moving. He guessed that the overhead light had been disturbed somehow and was swinging. Something occurred to him then and he took his hand off the ignition.

  McCaleb stepped out of the Taurus and without hesitation ducked under the yellow tape. The uniform officer in charge of entry to the crime scene said nothing. He had probably inferred-wrongly-that McCaleb was a detective, having watched three of the lead investigators walk down and sit in the car with him.

  He walked to the periphery of the light and waited until he could catch Jaye Winston’s eye. She was standing with a clipboard and writing down descriptions of the warehouse’s contents. Every item in the place was being tagged and taken.

  When Winston stepped out of the way of one of the technicians, she glanced out into the darkness and McCaleb caught her attention with a wave. She walked out of the garage and over to him. She had a cautious smile on her face.

  “I thought you were clear. Why aren’t you gone?”

  “I’m going. Just wanted to say thanks for everything. You gettin’ anything in there?”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  “You were right. Place is clean. Latents guys haven’t even found a smudge. There are prints on the computer but my guess is that they are yours. I don’t know how we’re going to track this guy. It’s like he was never here.”

  He signaled her closer when he noticed Arrango step out of the garage and put a cigarette in his mouth.

  “I think he made a mistake,” he said quietly. “Get your best latents man and go to the Star Center. Have him laser the light tubes in the ceiling of the interview room. When I was setting up the hypnosis session, I took down some lights and handed them to Noone. He had to take them from me or he might give himself away. There might be prints.”

  Her face brightened and she smiled.

  “It’s on the tape of the session,” he said. “You can tell them it was your find.”

  “Thanks, Terry.”

  She clapped him gently on the shoulder. He nodded and started walking back to the car. She called after him and he looked back.

  “Are you all right?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t know where you are going. But good luck.”

  He waved and turned back toward his destination.

  42

  IT SEEMED that every light was on in Graciela’s home and this time McCaleb didn’t linger in the car. He knew there was no longer any time to brood over choices. He had to face her and tell her the truth-tell her everything and accept the consequences.

  Once again she opened the door before he got there. This woman who cares so much as to watch and wait for me, he thought as he stepped to the door. Now I must crush her heart.

  “Terry, where have you been? I’ve been so worried.”

  She rushed from the door and embraced him. He felt his will weaken but not break. He pulled her around to his side and led her back in with his arm around her shoulder, holding her close for what might be the last time.

  “Let’s go in,” he said. “I have things to tell you.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “For now.”

  They went to the living room and he sat next to her on the sectional. He held both her hands in his.

  “Raymond in bed?”

  “Yes. What is it, Terry? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s over. They haven’t caught him yet but they know who it is. Hopefully, they’ll get him soon. I’m in the clear.”

  “Tell me.”

  He squeezed her hands. He realized that his were sweating and let hers go. It felt as if he were letting loose a fallen bird that he had nursed back to health. He felt that he would never hold her hands again.

  “Remember that night we talked about faith and how hard it is for me to have it?”

  She nodded.

  “Before I tell you everything, I want you to know that in the last few days-actually, in all the time that I’ve known you-I have felt something inside of me coming back. It’s a faith of some sort. Maybe a belief in something. I don’t know. But I do know it was a start, a beginning of something good…”

  “Was?”

  He looked away from her for a moment to try to put the words together. It was hard. He knew he only had this one chance.

  He looked back at her.

  “But it’s so new and so fragile, this change. And I don’t know if it can last with what I have to tell you. But I want you to decide. I haven’t prayed for anything in a long time. But I’ll say a prayer that I see you-and Raymond-on my dock again. Or I’ll pick up the phone and I’ll hear your voice. I’m going to leave it up to you to decide.”

  He leaned into her and kissed her gently on the cheek. She didn’t resist.

  “Tell me,” she said quietly.

  “Graciela, your sister is dead because of me. Because of something I did a long time ago. Because I crossed a line somewhere and allowed my ego to challenge a madman’s, Gloria is dead.”

  His eyes dropped away from hers. The pain he had just put into them was too much for him to witness.

  “Tell me,” she said again, even quieter this time.

  And he did. He told her about the man known for the time being only as James Noone. He told her of the trail he had followed to the garage warehouse. He told her what he found there and what was waiting for him on the computer.

  She began to cry as he told it, quiet tears that rolled down her cheeks and fell to the denim blouse she wore. He wanted to reach out to her, grab her and hold her close and kiss the tears on her cheeks. But he couldn’t. He knew he was out of her world at that moment. He could not enter of his own choice. She would have to invite him back in.

  When he was done, they sat quietly for a few moments. Graciela finally reached up and with open palms smeared the tears on her cheeks.

  “I must look awful.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  She looked down at the rug through the glass coffee table and a long period of silence passed by.

  “What will you do now?” she finally asked.

  “I’m not sure but I have a few ideas. I’m going to find him, Graciela.”

  “Can’t you leave it? Let the police find him?”

  McCaleb shook his head.

  “I don’t think I can. Not now. If I don’t find him and face him, I’ll never know if I can get past this. I don’t know if that makes sense or not.”

  She nodded, still looking at the floor, and more silence went by. Finally she looked up at him.

  “I want you to go now, Terry. I need to be alone.”

  McCaleb nodded and slowly stood up.

  “Okay.”

  Again he fought an almost overwhelming ur
ge to just touch her. Nothing more. He just wanted to feel her warmth once more. Like on the first day when she had touched him.

  “Good-bye, Graciela.”

  “Good-bye, Terry.”

  He crossed the room and headed toward the door. On his way he glanced at the china cabinet in the living room and saw the framed photo of Gloria Torres. She was smiling at the camera on that happy day so long ago. It was a smile he knew would always haunt him.

  43

  AFTER A NIGHT of fitful sleep with dreams of being dragged down through deep, dark water, McCaleb rose at dawn. He showered and then made himself a heavy breakfast-an onion and green pepper omelet, microwaved sausage and a half quart of orange juice. When he was done, he still felt hungry and didn’t know why. Afterward he went down to the head and took another reading of his vital signs. Everything was fine. At five after seven he called Jaye Winston’s office number. She was there and he could tell by her voice that she had worked straight through night.

  “Two things,” McCaleb said. “When do you want to do this formal statement and when do I get my car back?”

  “Well, the Cherokee you can have any time. I just have to call over to release it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Right here. Our impound lot.”

  “I suppose I have to come get it.”

  “Well, you’ve got to come out here anyway to give me a statement. Why don’t you do both at the same time?”

  “Okay, when? I want to get this over with. I want to get out of here, take a vacation.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. I just have to get away, try to work all of this poison out. Maybe Vegas.”

  “Now that’s a great place for mental rehabilitation.”

  McCaleb ignored her sarcasm.

  “I know. So when can we meet?”

  “I’ve got to put the case together ASAP and I need your statement. So anytime this morning would be good for me. I’ll just make room for you.”

  “Then I’m on my way.”