Michael Connelly - Blood Work

“Right. Cordell’s and Kenyon’s were not harvested.”

“I know. I’m not talking about that. But there is always a waiting list, right?”

“Yeah, always. I waited almost two years because of the blood type.”

“Well, maybe someone just wanted to move up the list.”

“Move up?”

“You know, they were like you, waiting, and they knew it would be a long wait. Maybe even a fatal wait. Weren’t you told that with your blood type there was no telling when a heart would become available?”

“Yeah, they told me not to get my hopes up.”

“Okay, so maybe our guy is still waiting but by taking out Gloria Torres, he has in effect moved up one notch on the list. Improved his chances.”

McCaleb thought about this. He saw the possibility. He suddenly remembered Bonnie Fox telling him that there was another patient on the ward who was in the same situation McCaleb had been in. He wondered now if she meant literally the same situation, waiting for a heart that was type AB with CMV negative. He thought of the boy he had seen in the hospital bed. Could he be the patient Fox meant?

McCaleb thought about what a parent would be willing to do to save a child. Could it be possible?

“It could work,” he said, his adrenaline returning and the monotonal quality of his voice gone now. “What you’re saying is that it could be somebody still waiting.”

“Right. And I am going to go to BOPRA with a warrant to get all their waiting lists and their blood donor records. It should be interesting to see how they respond.”

McCaleb nodded but his mind was skipping ahead.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said. “It’s too complicated.”

“What is?”

“The whole thing. If somebody wanted to move up on the list, why take out donors? Why not just knock people off the list?”

“Because that might be too obvious. If two or three people needing heart or liver transplants in a row get hit, it’s bound to raise a question somewhere. But by hitting the donors, it’s more obscure. No one noticed it until you came along.”

“I guess,” McCaleb said, still not sure he was convinced. “Then if you’re right, it could even mean the shooter’s going to hit again. You’ve got to go down the list of AB donors. You’ve got to warn them, protect them.”

That possibility brought the excitement back. It was jangling in his veins.

“I know,” Winston said. “When I get the warrant, I’m going to have to tell Nevins and Uhlig, all of them, what I am doing. That’s why you have to come in, Terry. It’s the only way. You have to come in with a lawyer and lay this all out, then take your chances. Nevins, Uhlig, these are smart people. They’ll see where they went wrong.”

McCaleb didn’t respond. He saw the logic in what she was saying but was hesitant to agree because it would be putting his fate in the hands of others. He would rather rely on himself.

“Do you have a lawyer, Terry?”

“No, I don’t have a lawyer. Why would I have a lawyer? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

He cringed. He had heard countless guilty individuals make the same statement before. Winston probably had, too.

“I meant do you know a lawyer who could help you?” she said. “If you don’t, then I can suggest a few. Michael Haller, Jr. would be a good choice.”

“I know lawyers in case I need one. I have to think about this.”

“Well, call me. I can bring you in, make sure everything is handled right.”

McCaleb’s mind wandered and he was inside a holding cell at the county jail. He had been in the lockup on interviews as a bureau agent. He knew how loud jails were and how dangerous. He knew that innocent or not, he would never surrender himself to that.

“Terry, you there?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking about something. How can I reach you to arrange this?”

“I’ll give you my pager and my home. I’ll be here until probably six but after that I’m heading home. Call me anywhere, any time.”

She gave him the numbers and McCaleb wrote them down in his notebook. He then put it away and shook his head.

“I can’t believe this. I’m sitting here talking about turning myself in for something I didn’t do.”

“I know that. But the truth is a powerful thing. It will work out. Just make sure you call me, Terry. When you decide.”

“I’ll call you.”

He hung up.

BONNIE FOX’S RECEPTIONIST, the frowner, told McCaleb that the doctor had been in transplant surgery all afternoon and would probably not be available for another two to three hours. McCaleb almost cursed out loud but instead left Graciela’s number and told the frowner to write down that he needed Fox to call back as soon as possible no matter what the hour. He was about to hang up when he thought of something.

“Hey, who is getting the heart?”

“What?”

“You said she was in surgery. Which patient? Was it the boy?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to discuss other patients with you,” said the frowner.

“Fine,” he said. “Then just make sure you tell her to call me.”

McCaleb spent the next fifteen minutes pacing between the living room and kitchen, hoping unrealistically that the phone would ring and Fox would be on the line.

He finally managed to shoehorn the anxiety into a side compartment of his brain and started thinking about the larger problems at hand. McCaleb knew he had to start making decisions, chief of which was to decide whether to get a lawyer. He knew Winston was right; it was the smart move to get legal protection. But McCaleb couldn’t bring himself to make the call to Michael Haller, Jr. or anybody else, to give up on his own skills and rely on another’s.

In the living room, there were no documents left on the coffee table. As he had gone through the pages, he had returned them to the leather bag until all that was on the table was the stack of videotapes.

Desperate for a diversion from his thoughts about what exactly Fox had said to him about the other patient, he picked up the videocassette on top of the stack and walked it over to the television. He popped it into the VCR without looking to see which tape it was. It didn’t matter. He just wanted something else to think about for a while.

But as he dropped back onto the couch, he immediately ignored the tape that was playing. Michael Haller, Jr., he thought. Yes, he would be a good attorney. Not as good as his old man, the legendary Mickey Haller. But the legend was long dead and Junior had taken his place as one of the most visible and successful defense attorneys in Los Angeles. Junior would get him out of this, McCaleb knew. But, of course, that would be after the reputation-destroying media blitz, the looting of his savings and the selling of The Following Sea. And even when it was over and he was clear, he would still carry the stigma of suspicion and guilt with him.

Forever.

McCaleb squinted his eyes and wondered what it was he was staring at on the TV. The camera was focused on the legs and feet of someone standing on a table. Then he recognized his own walking boots and placed what he was seeing. The hypnosis session. The camera had been running when McCaleb climbed onto the table to remove some of the overhead lighting tubes. James Noone appeared in the frame and reached up as one of the long fluorescent light tubes was handed down to him.

McCaleb grabbed the TV remote off the arm of the couch and hit the fast forward button. Interested because he had forgotten to review the hypnosis session as he had promised Captain Hitchens he would, McCaleb decided to skip through the preliminaries. He moved the tape past the initial interview and relaxation exercises to the actual questioning of Noone under hypnosis. He wanted to hear James Noone’s recounting of the details of the shooting and the killer’s getaway.