Michael Connelly: The Narrows

As she moved past me in the tight entry hall I smelled a sweet orange fragrance. I remembered that from the funeral, from when I had clasped her hands with both of mine, said how sorry I was for her loss and offered my help if she needed it in any way. She was wearing black then. This day she was wearing a flowery summer dress that went better with the fragrance. I pointed her to the living room and told her to have a seat on the couch. I asked if she wanted something to drink, even though I knew I had nothing in the house to respond with but probably a couple bottles of beer in the box and water from the tap.

"I'm fine, Mr. Bosch. No thank you."

"Please, call me Harry. Nobody calls me Mr. Bosch."

Now I tried a smile but it didn't work on her. And I didn't know why I expected it would. She'd been through a lot in her life. I'd seen the movie. And now this latest tragedy. I sat down in the chair across from the couch and waited. She cleared her throat before speaking.

"I guess you must be wondering why I needed to talk to you. I was not very forthcoming on the phone."

"That's all right," I said. "But it did make me curious. Is something wrong? What can I do for you?"

She nodded and looked down at her hands, which held a small black-beaded purse on her lap. It looked like something she might have bought for the funeral.

"Something is very wrong and I don't know who to turn to. I know enough about things from Terry-I mean how they work-to know I can't go to the police. Not yet. Besides, they'll be coming to me. Soon, I suppose. But until then, I need someone I can trust, who will help me. I can pay you."

Leaning forward I put my elbows on my knees and my hands together. I had only met her that one other time-at the funeral. Her husband and I had once been close but not in the last few years and now it was too late. I didn't know where the trust she spoke of came from.

"What did Terry tell you about me that would make you want to trust me? To choose me. You and I don't really even know each other, Graciela."

She nodded like that was a fair question and assessment.

"At one time in our marriage Terry told me everything about everything. He told me about the last case you two worked together. He told me what happened and how you saved each other's life. On the boat. So that makes me think I can trust you."

I nodded.

"He one time told me something about you that I always remembered," she added. "He told me there were things about you he didn't like and that he didn't agree with. I think he meant the way you do things. But he said at the end of the day, after all the cops and agents he had known and worked with, if he had to pick somebody to work a murder case with, that it would be you. Hands down. He said he would pick you because you wouldn't give up."

I felt a tightness around my eyes. It was almost like I could hear Terry McCaleb saying it. I asked a question, already knowing the answer.

"What is it you want me to do for you?"

"I want you to investigate his death."

Even though I knew it was going to be what she would ask me, Graciela McCaleb's request gave me pause. Terry McCaleb had died on his boat a month earlier. I had read about it in the Las Vegas Sun. It had made the papers because of the movie. FBI agent gets heart transplant and then tracks down his donor's killer. It was a story that had Hollywood written all over it and Clint Eastwood played the part, even though he had a couple decades on Terry. The film was a modest success at best, but it still gave Terry the kind of notoriety that guaranteed an obituary notice in papers across the country. I had just gotten back to my apartment near the strip one morning and picked up the Sun. Terry's death was a short story in the back of the A section.

A deep tremor rolled through me when I read it. I was surprised but not that surprised. Terry had always seemed to be a man on borrowed time. But there was nothing suspicious in what I had read or what I had then heard when I went out to Catalina for the funeral service. It had been his heart-his new heart-that had failed. It had given him six good years, better than the national average for a heart transplant patient, but then it had succumbed to the same factors that destroyed the original.

"I don't understand," I said to Graciela. "He was on the boat, a charter, and he collapsed. They said… his heart."

"Yes, it was his heart," she said. "But something new has come up. I want you to look into it. I know you're retired from the police, but Terry and I watched on the news last year what happened here."

Her eyes moved around the room and she gestured with her hands. She was talking about what had happened in my house a year earlier when my first post-retirement investigation had ended so badly and with so much blood.

"I know you still look into things," she said. "You're like Terry was. He couldn't leave it behind. Some of you are like that. When we saw on the news what happened here, that's when Terry said he would want you if he had to pick someone. I think what he was telling me was that if anything ever happened to him, I should go to you."

I nodded and looked at the floor.

"Tell me what has come up and I will tell you what I can do."

"You have a bond with him, you know?"

I nodded again.

"Tell me."

She cleared her throat. She moved to the edge of the couch and began to tell it.

"I'm a nurse. I don't know if you saw the movie but they made me a waitress in the movie. That's not right. I'm a nurse. I know about medicine. I know about hospitals, all of it."

I nodded and didn't say anything to stop her.

"The coroner's office conducted an autopsy on Terry. There were no signs of anything unusual but they decided to go ahead with the autopsy at the request of Dr. Hansen-Terry's cardio doctor-because he wanted to see if they could find out what went wrong."

"Okay," I said. "What did they find?"

"Nothing. I mean, nothing criminal. The heart simply stopped beating… and he died. It happens. The autopsy showed that the muscles of the heart's walls were thinning, getting narrow. Cardiomyopathy. The body was rejecting the heart. They took the normal blood samples and that was it. They released him to me. His body. Terry didn't want to be buried-he always told me that. So he was cremated at Griffin and Reeves and after the funeral service Buddy took the children and me out on the boat and we did what Terry asked. We let him go then. Into the water. It was very private. It was nice."

"Who is Buddy?"

"Oh, he is the man Terry worked with on the charter business. His partner."

"Right. I remember."

I nodded and tried to retrack her story, looking for the opening, the reason she had come to see me.

"The blood scan from the autopsy," I said. "What did they find in it?"

She shook her head.

"No, it's what they didn't find."

"What?"

"You have to remember that Terry took a ton of meds. Every day, pill after pill, liquid after liquid. It kept him alive-I mean, until the end. So the blood scan was like a page and a half long."

"They sent it to you?"

"No, Dr. Hansen got it. He told me about it. And he was calling because there were things missing from the scan that should have been there but weren't. CellCept and Prograf. They weren't in his blood when he died."

"And they're important."

She nodded.

"Exactly. He took seven capsules of Prograf every day. CellCept twice a day. These were his key meds. They kept his heart safe."

"And without them he would die?"

"Three or four days would be all it would take. Congestive heart failure would come up quickly. And that is exactly what happened."

"Why did he stop taking them?"

"He didn't and that is why I need you. Someone tampered with his meds and killed him."