Michael Connelly - Blood Work

“It’s Terry McCaleb… The Gloria Torres thing?”

“Right, right.”

“I guess you heard I got the books from Winston over at the sheriff’s.”

“Yeah, we’re not too happy about that. We also got a call from the Slimes about it, too. Some reporter. That wasn’t cool. I don’t know who you’ve been talk-”

“Look, your partner put me in a position where I had to look for information where I could get it. Don’t worry about the Times. They’ll sit on the story because there is no story. Not at the moment.”

“And it best stay that way. Anyway, I’m kind of busy here. What’ve you got?”

“You got a case?”

“Yeah. They just keep dropping like flies out here in the Big Valley.”

“Well, look, I won’t hold you up. I’ve just got one question maybe you can help me with.”

McCaleb waited. Walters didn’t say anything, He seemed different from the day before. McCaleb wondered if Arrango was sitting close by and listening. He decided to press on.

“I just want to know about the timing,” he said. “The video from the store shows the shooting going down at”-he quickly scanned his timeline-“let’s see, ten forty-one thirty-seven. Then you have the nine one one records and they say the call from the Good Samaritan came in at exactly ten forty-one oh three. See what I’m getting at? How’d the guy call it in thirty-four seconds before the shooting actually happened?”

“Simple, the time on the video was off. It was fast.”

“Oh, okay,” McCaleb said, as if the possibility had not occurred to him. “You guys checked it out?”

“My partner did.”

“Really? I didn’t see any report on it in the book.”

“Look, he made a phone call to the security company, checked it out, no report, okay? The guy who installed that system put it in more than a year ago-right after the first time Mr. Kang got robbed. Eddie talked to the guy. He set the camera clock off his own watch back then and hasn’t been back in there since. He showed Mr. Kang how to set the camera clock in case there was a power outage or something.”

“Okay,” McCaleb said, not sure where this was going.

“So, your guess is as good as mine. Is it showing the original time set off the installer’s watch or did the old man set it a few times himself? Either way it doesn’t matter. We can’t trust it just coming off somebody’s watch. Maybe the watch was fast, maybe the camera clock has been gaining a couple seconds every week or two. Who knows? We can’t trust it, is what I’m saying. But we can trust the nine-eleven clock. That’s the time we know is correct and it’s the time we went with.”

McCaleb was silent and Walters seemed to take it as some kind of judgment.

“Look, the camera clock is just a detail that doesn’t mean anything anyway,” he said. “If we worried about every detail that didn’t fit, we’d still be working our first case. I’m busy here, man, what else you got?”

“That’s it, I guess. You guys never checked the surveillance clock, right? You know, to check the time against the dispatch clock?”

“Nope. We went back a couple days later but there had been a power outage-Santa Anas blew down the line. The time on it was useless to us then.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah, too bad. I gotta go. Keep in touch. You get something, you call us before Winston or we’re not going to be happy with you. All right?”

“I’ll call you.”

Walters hung up. McCaleb put the phone down and stared at it for a few moments, wondering what his next move should or would be. He was drawing a blank. But it had always been his practice to go back to the start whenever he hit a stall. The start most often meant the crime scene. But this case was different. He could go back to the actual crime.

He put the video of the Sherman Market murders back in the VCR and watched the tape again in slow motion. He sat there gripping the edges of the table so hard his knuckles and finger joints began to hurt. It wasn’t until the third run-through that he picked up on something he had missed earlier and had been there all along.

Chan Ho Kang’s watch. The watch his wife now wore. On the video the watch was seen as Kang desperately grasped for purchase on the counter.

McCaleb fished around on the video for a few minutes, backing and forwarding the tape until he froze the image on what he believed was the best view of the watch’s face. The best he could do was a clean look at it but the LED readout was not picked up by the video shot from the upper wall. The numbers on the watch-the time-were not readable.

He sat there staring at the frozen image, wondering if he should pursue it. If he could read the time on the watch, he might be able to triangulate the time of the shooting by using the camera clock and the dispatch clock. It might clear up a loose end. But did it mean anything? Walters had been right about one thing. There are always details that don’t add up. Always loose ends. And McCaleb wasn’t sure if this one was worth the time it would take to tie it up.

His private debate was interrupted. Living on a boat, he had learned to read the subtle rises and falls of his home, to know whether each was caused by a boat wake out in the fairway or the weight of someone coming on board. McCaleb felt the boat dip slightly and immediately looked over his shoulder and out the sliding door. Graciela Rivers had just stepped onboard and was turning around to help a little boy step on next. Raymond. Dinner. He had completely forgotten.

“Shit,” he said as he quickly turned off the video and got up to go out and greet them.

YOU FORGOT, DIDN’T YOU?”

There was an easy smile on her face.

“No-I mean, I sort of forgot for the last five hours. I got lost in all of this paperwork I’ve been looking through. I meant to go over to the market and-”

“Well, that’s okay. We can do it another-”

“No, no, are you kidding? We’re going to have dinner. Is this Raymond?”

“Oh, yes.”

Graciela turned to the boy, who was standing shyly behind her at the stern. He seemed small for his age, with dark hair and eyes, brown skin. He wore shorts and a striped shirt. He carried a sweater in his hands.

“Raymond, this is Mr. McCaleb. The man I was telling you about. This is his boat. He lives on it.”

McCaleb stepped forward and leaned down with his hand out. The boy was carrying a toy police car in his right hand and had to transfer it to the other. He then tentatively took McCaleb’s hand and they shook. McCaleb felt an unexplainable sadness as he met the boy.

“It’s Terry,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Raymond. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Can you fish off this boat?”

“Sure you can. Someday I’ll take you out, if you want.”

“That would be good.”

McCaleb straightened up and smiled at Graciela. She looked lovely. She wore a light summer dress similar to the one she had worn the first time she had come to the boat. It was the kind that the breeze off the water easily pushed against her figure. She, too, carried a sweater. McCaleb was in shorts, sandals and a T-shirt that said Robicheaux’s Dock amp; Baitshop on it. He felt a little embarrassed.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Over there they’ve got a nice restaurant on top of the marine store. They’ve got good food and a great view of the sunset. Why don’t we have dinner there?”

“Sounds good to me,” Graciela said.

“All I have to do is change real quick and, Raymond, I have an idea. Why don’t we drop a line off the stern and you see if you can catch something while I go inside and show Graciela a few things I’ve been working on?”