Michael Connelly - Blood Work

The boy’s face brightened.

“Okay.”

“Okay, then, we’ll fix you up.”

McCaleb left them there and went inside. In the salon he took his lightest rod and reel out of the overhead storage rack, went to the tackle box under the chart table and got out a steel leader already set with a number eight hook and a sinker. He attached the leader to the reel line and then went to the cooler in the galley, where he knew he had some frozen squid. Using a sharp knife, he cut off a piece of squid skirt and drove the hook through it.

He returned to the stern with the rod and reel and handed the rig to Raymond. Crouching behind the boy with his arms coming around him, he gave him a quick lesson on casting the bait into the middle of the fairway. He then told him how to keep his finger on the line and to read it for nibbles.

“You okay now?” he asked when the lesson was completed.

“Uh-huh. Are there fish in here by the boats?”

“Sure, I’ve seen a school of sheepshead swimming right where your line is.”

“Sheepshead?”

“It’s a fish with yellow stripes. Sometimes you can see them moving in the water. You watch for them.”

“Okay.”

“Are you all right now if I go in and get your mother something to drink?”

“She’s not my mother.”

“Oh, yes, I-I’m sorry, Raymond. I meant Graciela. You okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“Okay, give a holler if you hook one. And then start reeling!”

He pointed a finger into the boy’s side and dragged it up his tiny rib cage. McCaleb’s father had done the same thing to him when he was holding a fishing pole, his sides unprotected. Raymond giggled and maneuvered away, never taking his eyes off the spot where his line disappeared into the dark water.

Graciela followed McCaleb into the salon and he closed the slider so the boy would not hear them. His face must have been red from the slip-up with the boy. She read him before he got the chance to apologize.

“That’s okay. It’s going to happen a lot now.”

He nodded.

“Is he going to stay with you?”

“Yes. I’m the only one but that doesn’t matter. I’ve been around since he was born. For him to lose his mother and then me, I think it would be too much. I want him to stay with me.”

“Where’s his father?”

“Who knows.”

McCaleb nodded and decided to step out of that area of questioning.

“You are going to be great for him,” he said. “You want a glass of wine?”

“ That would be great.”

“Red or white?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“I can’t have any right now. In a couple months.”

“Oh, then I don’t want you to open a bottle of wine just for me. I can have-”

“Please, I want to. How about a red? I’ve got some good red and if I open it, I can at least smell it.”

She smiled.

“I remember Glory was like that when she was pregnant. She used to sit right next to me and say she just wanted to smell the wine I was drinking.”

The smile turned sad.

“She was a good person,” McCaleb said. “I can tell that by the boy. That’s what you wanted me to see.”

She nodded. He went to the galley and got a bottle of red wine out of the sea rack. It was a Sanford pinot noir, one of his favorites. While he was opening it, she came over to the counter. He could smell a light scent of perfume. It was vanilla, he thought. It thrilled him. It wasn’t so much being close to her as feeling that something was awakening in him after a long dormancy.

“Do you have children?” she asked then.

“Me, no.”

“Were you ever married?”

“Yes, once.”

He poured her a glass and watched her taste it. She smiled and nodded.

“It’s good. How long ago was that?”

“What, when I was married? Let’s see, I got married about ten years ago. Lasted three years. She was an agent and we worked together in Quantico. Then, when it didn’t work out and we got divorced, we still had to work with each other and it… I don’t know, we were cool about it but it wasn’t a good thing, you know? About the same time my dad was getting sick out here. So I gave them the idea of sending someone from the unit out here permanently. I sold it to them as a cost-cutting move. I mean, I was flying out here all the time anyway. A lot of us were. I figured they ought to have a little outpost or something out here and save some of that dough. They agreed and I got the job.”

Graciela nodded, turned and looked out the slider to check on Raymond. He was staring intently into the water where he hoped the fish were.

“How ’bout you?” McCaleb asked. “You ever get married?”

“Once, too.”

“Kids?”

“No.”

She was still looking out at Raymond. Her smile was still in place but straining under the conversation. McCaleb was curious about her but decided to let it go.

“By the way, you were good with him,” she said, nodding in Raymond’s direction. “It’s a balance. You have to teach them and let them find out for themselves. That was nice with him.”

She looked at him and he shook his shoulders to indicate it was luck. He took her glass and held it up to his nose to savor its aroma and then handed it back to her. He then poured himself the last from the coffee pot and added some milk and sugar. They clicked mug to glass and drank. She said she liked hers. He said his tasted like tar.

“Sorry,” she said. “I feel so bad drinking this in front of you.”

“Don’t. I’m glad you like it.”

Silence filled the salon. Her eyes fell to the stacks of reports and videotapes on the galley table.

“What did you want to show me?”

“Uh, nothing specific. I just didn’t want to talk in front of Raymond.”

He checked on the boy through the glass. He was doing fine. His focus was still intently on the line cutting through the incoming tide. McCaleb hoped he would hook something but guessed it was unlikely. Below the marina’s beautiful surface the water was fouled with pollutants. Any fish that survived down there was a bottom feeder with the survival skills of a cockroach.

He looked back at Graciela.

“But I wanted to let you know I met with the sheriff’s detective this morning. She was a lot cooler about it than the LAPD guys.”

“She?”

“Jaye Winston. She’s good. We worked together before. Anyway, she gave me copies of everything on both cases. That’s what I spent all day looking through. There’s a lot.”

He summarized as best he could, trying to be gentle about details relating to her sister. He didn’t tell her he had a videotape of her sister’s murder there on the boat with them.

“In the bureau we have this thing called doing a full field,” he said at the end of the summary. “It means leaving nothing untouched, nothing to chance. The bottom line here is that the investigation of your sister’s murder was not a full field but at the same time there’s nothing that jumps out at me as a gaping hole in what was done. There were some mistakes made, maybe some assumptions that were made before all the facts were in but they weren’t necessarily wrong anyway. The investigation was thorough enough.”

“Thorough enough,” she repeated, looking down as she talked. McCaleb realized it had been a poor choice of words.

“I mean-”

“So this guy is just going to get away with it,” she said as a statement. “I guess I should’ve known this is what you were going to tell me.”

“Well, I’m not telling you that. Winston, over at the sheriff’s department-at least she’s still actively pursuing this. And I’m not done, either, Graciela. I’m not saying that. I have a stake in this, too.”