Michael Connelly - Blood Work

McCaleb was glancing through the credit card statements when he felt the boat dip and looked out to see Graciela stepping down into the stern. It was a pleasant surprise.

“Graciela,” he said as he stepped out to the stern. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t get my message?”

“No, I-oh, I haven’t checked messages.”

“Well, I called and said I was coming down. I wrote up some things about Glory. Like you asked.”

McCaleb almost groaned. More paperwork. Instead, he told her he appreciated her doing the work so quickly after his request.

He noticed that she carried a duffel bag slung over her arm. He took it from her.

“What’s in the bag? You didn’t write that much, did you?”

She looked at him and smiled.

“My stuff. I’m thinking about staying over again.”

McCaleb felt a little thrill inside, even though he knew that her staying over didn’t necessarily mean they would be sleeping together.

“Where’s Raymond?”

“With Mrs. Otero. She’ll also get him to school tomorrow. I’m taking the day off.”

“How come?”

“So I can be your driver.”

“I already have somebody to drive me. You don’t have to take-”

“I know but I want to. Besides, I made an appointment for you at the Times with Glory’s boss. And I want to go with you when you talk to him.”

“Okay, you got the job.”

She smiled and he led her into the salon.

After McCaleb took her bag down to the stateroom and poured her a glass of wine from a new bottle of red, he sat with her in the stern and began going over the case’s new developments. As he told her about Kenyon, her eyes widened as she struggled to accept the idea that there was a connection somewhere between her sister and the murdered criminal.

“Nothing obvious comes to mind, right?” he asked.

“No. I have no idea how they could be…”

She didn’t finish.

McCaleb shook his head and slouched in his deck chair. She opened her purse and took out the notebook in which she had written down her sister’s activities. They went over it. Nothing she had written jumped out at McCaleb as being significant. But he told her the information could still be useful as the case continued to evolve.

“It’s amazing how much everything has changed,” he said. “A week ago this was a basic holdup. Now we have possibilities of the motivation being pathological or even being some kind of contract hit. The random possibility is now third.”

Graciela sipped her wine before speaking.

“It makes it harder, doesn’t it?” she asked in a soft voice.

“No,” he said. “It just means we’re getting close. You have to open up and let all of the possibilities in. Then sift it out… All of this just means we’re getting close.”

After they watched the sunset, Graciela drove them to a small Italian restaurant in the Belmont Shores section of Long Beach. McCaleb liked the food and they had the privacy of one of the restaurant’s three round booths. During dinner McCaleb had tried to change the subject, sensing that Graciela was still depressed by the turns of the investigation. He told her some lame jokes he remembered from his bureau days but they barely brought a smile.

“It must have been hard when this was your full-time job,” she said as she pushed her half-finished plate of gnocchi aside. “I mean, just dealing with these kinds of people all the time. It must have been…”

She didn’t finish. He just nodded. He didn’t think they needed to go there again.

“Do you ever think you’ll get past it?”

“What, the job?”

“No, what it did to you. Like that story you told me. The Devil’s Keep. The whole thing of what happened to you. Can you get past that?”

He thought for a moment. He sensed that a lot was riding on his answer. She was asking about faith and she was deciding something about him. He knew it was important that his answer be honest yet the correct one. For himself he needed to be correct.

“Graciela, all I can tell you is that I hope I can get past it. I want to be restored. To what, I’m not sure. But I’ve been empty for a long time and I want to be filled. In my mind, it feels too weird to talk about but it’s there. I want you to know that. I don’t know if it answers what you need to know about me. But I’m hoping and waiting to have what I think you have.”

He wasn’t sure if he was making sense. He slid around in the booth until he was right next to her. He leaned over and kissed her high on the cheek. Shielded by the red-checked tablecloth, he put his hand on her knee and ran it softly across the top of her thigh. It was the kind of caress a lover would undertake. But he was desperate to hold on to her, not to lose her, and he lacked confidence in his words. He had to touch her in some way.

“Can we go?” she asked.

He looked at her a moment.

“Where?”

“To the boat.”

He nodded.

Back at the boat Graciela led him to the stateroom and made love to him without hesitation. As they moved in a slow rhythm, McCaleb felt his heart pounding so strong and hard in his chest that the beat seemed to echo in his temples, a throbbing sensation that urged him on. He was sure she also felt it, pulsing against her own chest, the cadence of life.

At the end, a shudder rolled through his body and he pressed his face hard into the crook of her neck. A short, clipped laugh, like a gasp, involuntarily came from his throat and he hoped she would think it was a cough or a grab for breath. He gently lowered more of his weight onto her and buried his face in the soft nest of hair behind her ear. She ran a hand down his back, then all the way up again, leaving it soft and warm on his neck.

“What’s so funny?” she whispered.

“Nothing… I’m just happy, that’s all.”

He pressed his face tighter against her and whispered into her ear, his nose full of her smell, his heart and mind full of hope.

“You are the one bringing me back,” he said. “You’re my chance.”

She brought her arms up around his neck and pulled him tightly down on her. She didn’t say a word.

In the dead of night McCaleb awoke. He had been dreaming of swimming underwater with no need to break the surface for air.

He was on his back, his arm against Graciela’s naked back. He felt the warmth of the contact. He thought about raising himself to look over her at the clock but he didn’t want to break the seam of their touch. As he closed his eyes to return to the dream, the unmistakable sound of the slider upstairs being slowly rolled open brought him awake. He realized that something-a sound-had woken him from the dream. He felt an icicle go through his chest and he became fully alert. Somebody was on the boat.

The Russian, he thought. Bolotov had found him and had come to make good on his threat. But then he quickly dismissed the possibility, returning to his instinctive belief that the Russian would not be that stupid.

He rolled to the edge of the bed and reached down to the remote phone set on the floor. He hit the speed dial combination for Buddy Lockridge’s boat and waited for him to answer. He wanted Lockridge to look at The Following Sea and tell him if he could see anyone or anything amiss. The thought of Donald Kenyon being marched to his front door and shot with a fragmenting bullet flashed through his mind. And he realized that whoever was up there probably wasn’t counting on Graciela’s being on the boat. He suddenly knew that no matter what happened in the next few minutes, the intruder must not and would not get to her.

After four rings Lockridge didn’t answer and McCaleb knew he couldn’t waste any more time. He quickly got out of bed and headed toward the stateroom’s closed door, checking the red glowing numerals of the clock and seeing it was ten minutes past three.