Michael Connelly - Blood Work

Hello Agent McCaleb:

It is you out there, I would hope.

I will assume so. I will assume that you have lived up to that wonderful reputation you carried so nobly.

I wonder? Are you alone? Are you running from them now as a wanted man? But, of course, now you have what you need to save yourself from them. But I am asking about before now, how did it feel to be the hunted one? I wanted you to know that feeling. My feelings… A terrible thing to live with fear, no?

Fear never sleeps.

Most of all, what I wanted was a place in your heart, Agent McCaleb. I wanted always to be with you. Cain and Abel, Kennedy and Oswald, darkness and light. Two worthy opponents, chained together through time…

I could have killed you. I had that power and opportunity. But it would have been too easy, don’t you think? The man on the dock, asking directions. Your morning walk, the man on the rock jetty with the fishing pole. Do you remember me?

Now you do. I was there. But it would have been too easy, don’t you agree? Too easy.

You see, I needed something more than vengeance or the vanquishing of a foe. Those are the goals of fools. I wanted-no, I needed and craved-something different. To test you first by turning you into me. The villain. The hunted one.

Then, when you emerged from that fire, your skin scorched but your body whole, to reveal myself as your most ardent benefactor. Yes, it was me. I followed her. I studied her. I chose her for you. She was my Valentine to you.

You are mine forever, Agent McCaleb. Every breath you take belongs to me. Every beat of that stolen heart is the echo of my voice in your head. Always. Every day.

Remember…

Every breath…

McCaleb folded his arms across his chest and held himself as though he had been flayed open with a blade. A deep shudder rolled through him and a moan escaped his throat. He pushed the chair back from the desk, away from the horrible message still on the screen, and bent his body forward into the crash position. His plane was going down.

HIS THOUGHTS WERE blood red and black. He felt as though he were in some permanent void, surrounded by a velvet curtain of black space, his hands forever searching for the seam through which to escape but never finding it. He saw the faces of Graciela Rivers and Raymond as distant images receding into the darkness.

Suddenly, he felt a cold hand on his neck and he jumped, a shriek escaping from his throat like a prisoner going over the wall. He sat up. It was Winston. His reaction had scared her as much as she had scared him.

“Terry? Are you okay?”

“Yes. I mean, no. It’s him. Noone is the Code Killer. He killed all of them. The last three for me. He did it until he got it right. He killed Gloria Torres for her heart. For me. So that I would live and be the testament to his glory.”

The coincidence of the name and Noone’s purpose suddenly struck McCaleb.

“Wait a minute,” Winston said. “Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“It’s him. It’s all here. Check the files, the computer. He killed those others. He then decided to save me. To kill for me.”

He pointed to the computer screen, where the message to McCaleb was still displayed. He waited while she read it but finally couldn’t contain himself.

“All the pieces, they were right there. All the time.”

“What pieces?”

“The code. It was so simple. He used every digit but the number one. No one. Get it? I am no one. That’s all he was saying.”

“Terry, let’s talk about this later. Tell me how you got here? How did you know it was Noone?”

“The tape. The session we did with him.”

“The hypnosis? What about it?”

“Remember how I told you not to speak so the subject would not be confused?”

“Right. You said only you should ask questions to Noone. Anything between us should be signals or written down.”

“But at the end, when I knew it was all going to shit, I got frustrated. I said to you, ‘Anything else?’ and you shook your head no. I asked, ‘Are you sure?’ and you shook your head again. I broke my own rule by speaking to you. The thing is, I asked those questions to you out loud. So Noone should have answered me. If he was in a true hypnotic trance, he should have answered because he would not have known those questions were directed at you. But he didn’t answer. It shows cognizance of the situation. He knew, either by the direction of my voice or its inflection, that I was talking to you instead of him. He shouldn’t have known that. Not in a true trance. He should have answered every question spoken in that room unless it was specifically addressed to someone else. I never used your name.”

“He was faking.”

“Right. And if he was faking it, then his answers were bogus. It meant he was part of the setup. I had the videos compared before I came here. There are hard copies in my car. James Noone and the Good Samaritan are the same guy. The shooter.”

Winston shook her head as if to signal brain overload. Her eyes scanned the room for a place to sit down. There was only the cot.

“You want to sit here,” McCaleb said, standing up.

“I want to sit down but not in here. We have to back out of here, Terry. I need to call Captain Hitchens and then the others, LAPD and the bureau. I better put out a pickup on Noone, too.”

McCaleb was amazed that she still didn’t have all the pieces together.

“Aren’t you listening? There is no Noone. He doesn’t exist.”

“What do you mean?”

“The name. It goes with everything else, Noone. Break it down and you get no one. I am no one. The pieces were there all the time…”

He shook his head and dropped back into the chair. He put his face in his hands.

“How am I… I can’t live with this.”

Again Winston put her hand on his neck but this time he didn’t startle.

“Come on, Terry, let’s not think about that. Let’s go out to the car and wait. I have to get a crime scene crew in here, maybe get some prints so we can ID this guy.”

McCaleb stood up and walked around the desk and out toward the door. He spoke without looking back at her.

“He never left a print anywhere else before. I doubt he started now.”

Two hours later McCaleb was sitting in the Taurus, parked out on Atoll behind the yellow police lines that had been strung between the rows of garage warehouses. A hundred yards down the drive he could see the cluster of activity in and around Noone’s brightly lit garage. There were several detectives-some McCaleb recognized from the Code Killer task force, technicians, videographers from at least two of the agencies involved, and a half dozen uniformed officers standing by.

Moths to the flame, he thought. He watched it all with a strange detachment. His thoughts were on other things. Graciela and Raymond. And Noone. He couldn’t stop thinking about the man who called himself Noone. He had been in the same room with him. He had been that close.

He needed a drink, wanted the burning taste of whiskey in his throat, but he knew to take that taste would be the same as putting a gun to his head. He knew that despite the pain cutting through him, he would not give Noone, or whoever he was, that satisfaction. He decided in the darkness of the car that he would live. Despite it all he would live.

He didn’t notice the men walking down the drive toward him until they were almost to the Taurus. He flicked on the lights and identified them as Nevins and Uhlig and Arrango. He turned the lights off and waited. They opened the doors of the car and got in, Nevins in the front, the other two in the back, with Arrango directly behind McCaleb.

“Got any heat in this thing?” Nevins asked. “It’s getting cold out here.”