Michael Connelly - Blood Work

He checked the glove compartment and the center console. There was more paperwork and several tapes for use in the stereo, an assortment of pens and mechanical pencils, and a pack of opened mail. Cordell liked country music. Nothing seemed amiss. Nothing came to mind.

“Do you know if he had any particular kind of pen or pencil he liked? Like a special pen he might have gotten as a gift or something?”

“I don’t think so. Nothing I remember.”

McCaleb took the rubber band off the mail and looked through the envelopes. It appeared to be departmental mail, notices of meetings, reports on problems on the aqueduct that Cordell was to check out. McCaleb put the band back around the stack and placed it back in the glove box. Amelia Cordell watched him silently.

In an open bin between the seats there was a pager and a pair of sunglasses. Cordell had been coming home at night when he stopped at the ATM. That explained why the glasses were not on, but not the beeper.

“Mrs. Cordell, do you know why his pager is here? How come he wasn’t wearing it?”

She thought a moment and then said, “He usually didn’t keep it on his belt for long rides because he said it was uncomfortable. He said it dug into his kidneys. He forgot it a few times. You know, left it in the car and missed his pages. That’s how I know why.”

McCaleb nodded. As he sat there thinking about what to check next, the passenger door was suddenly opened and Buddy Lockridge looked in.

“What’s up?”

McCaleb had to squint to look at him because of the sun coming into the car over Buddy’s shoulder.

“I’m almost done, Buddy. Why don’t you wait in the car?”

“My ass was getting sore.” He looked past McCaleb and nodded at Amelia Cordell. “Sorry, ma’am.”

McCaleb was annoyed by the intrusion but introduced Lockridge as his associate to Amelia Cordell.

“So what are we looking for?” Buddy asked.

“We? I’m just looking for something that’s not here. Why don’t you wait in the car?”

“Like something that might’ve been taken. I see.”

He flipped down the passenger-side visor. McCaleb had already checked it and there was nothing there.

“I got it, Buddy. Why don’t you-”

“What went there, a picture?”

He pointed toward the dashboard. McCaleb followed the line of his finger but didn’t see anything.

“What are you talking about?”

“There. See the dust? Looks like a picture or something. Maybe he kept a parking pass there until he needed it.”

McCaleb looked again but still didn’t see what Lockridge was pointing at and talking about. He shifted to his right and leaned toward Buddy and then turned his head back to look at the dashboard.

Now he saw it.

A coat of driving dust had settled on the clear plastic guard over the display of speedometer and other gauges. On one side of the plastic there was a clearly defined square where there was no dust. Something had been propped on the plastic guard until recently. McCaleb realized how lucky he was. He probably would never have noticed it. It only became apparent when viewed from the passenger side and with the sun coming in at a low angle.

“Mrs. Cordell?” McCaleb said. “Can you walk around and look at this through the other door?”

He waited. Lockridge stepped out of the way so she could look in. McCaleb pointed to the outline on the plastic guard. It was about five inches wide by three inches deep.

“Did your husband keep a picture of you or the kids here?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Boy, I don’t really know. He had pictures but I just don’t know where he put them. He could have but I don’t know. I never drive this. We always take the Caravan-even when just Jim and I would go out. Like I said, I didn’t like climbing up there.”

McCaleb nodded.

“Is there anyone he worked with who might know, who might have ridden with him to jobs or to lunch, that sort of thing?”

Driving on the Antelope Valley Freeway back toward the city, they passed a seemingly never-ending line of cars stacked in the lanes going the other way. Commuters heading home or travelers getting out of the city for the weekend. McCaleb barely noticed. He was deep in his own thoughts. He barely even heard Lockridge until he repeated himself twice.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said I guess I helped you out back there, noticing that.”

“You did, Buddy. I might not have noticed it. But I still wish you had stayed in the car. This is all I’m paying you for, to drive.”

With a double hand gesture McCaleb indicated the car.

“Yeah, well, you might still be back there looking if I had stayed in the car.”

“We’ll never know now.”

“So aren’t you going to tell me what you found out?”

“Nothing, Buddy. I didn’t find out anything.”

He had lied. Amelia Cordell had taken him back inside and allowed him to use her phone to call her husband’s office. Buddy had been sent back to the car to wait. Inside, McCaleb talked to James Cordell’s supervisor, who gave him the names and numbers of some of the aqueduct maintenance supervisors Cordell would have been working with in early January. McCaleb then called the Lone Pine aqueduct station and talked to Maggie Mason, who was one of those supervisors. She reported that she had joined Cordell for lunch twice in the week before the shooting. Both times Cordell had driven.

Avoiding the leading question, McCaleb had asked her if she had noticed anything of a personal nature on the dashboard of the Suburban. Without hesitation Mason said there had been a photograph of Cordell’s family on the dashboard. She said she had even leaned over to get a look at it. She remembered that it was Cordell’s wife holding their two little daughters on her lap.

As they were heading home, McCaleb felt a mix of dread and excitement growing inside. Someone, somewhere, had Gloria Torres’s earring and James Cordell’s family photo. He now knew that the evil of these two killings came together in the form of a person who killed not for money, not out of fear and not for revenge against his victims. This evil went far beyond that. This person killed for pleasure and to fulfill a fantasy that burned like a virus inside his brain.

Evil was everywhere. McCaleb knew that better than most. But he also knew that it could not be confronted in the abstract. It needed to be embodied in flesh and blood and breath, to be a person who could be hunted down and destroyed. McCaleb had that now. He felt his heart rise up in rage, and a horrible joy.

THE SATURDAY MORNING mist came in thick and felt like a gentle hand on the back of his neck. McCaleb had gotten up by seven so that he could get into the laundry in the marina’s commons building and use several of the machines at once to get all of the bed clothes cleaned. Then he set about getting the boat cleaned up and ready for overnight guests. But as he worked, he found it hard to concentrate on the chores in front of him.

He had talked to Jaye Winston when he got in from the desert the evening before. When he told her about the photo that was missing from Cordell’s Suburban, she grudgingly agreed that McCaleb might be onto a viable new lead. An hour later she called back and said a meeting was set for 8A.M. Monday at the Star Center. She and her captain and a few other sheriff’s detectives would be there. So would Arrango and Walters. So would Maggie Griffin from the FBI. Griffin was the agent who had taken McCaleb’s place in the VICAP slot in the L.A. field office. McCaleb only knew her by her reputation, which was good.

And that was the problem. First thing Monday morning McCaleb would be on the hot seat, the focus of intense scrutiny. Most, if not all, of those in the meeting at the Star Center would be non-believers. But rather than prepare for the meeting or do what additional investigation he could, McCaleb was going fishing on the jetty with a woman and a little boy. It didn’t sit right with him and he kept thinking he should cancel the visit from Graciela and Raymond. In the end, he didn’t. It was true that he needed to talk with Graciela, but more than that, he found that he just wanted to be with her. And that was what brought the twin paths of his uneasy thoughts to an intersection: guilt over putting the investigation aside and guilt over his desire for a woman who had come to him for his help.