A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 13

McCaleb made the crossing by himself, The Following Sea arriving at Avalon Harbor just as darkness did. Buddy Lockridge had stayed behind at Cabrillo Marina because no new charters had come up and he wouldn’t be needed until Saturday. As he arrived at the island McCaleb radioed the harbor master’s boat on channel 16 and got help mooring the boat.

The added weight of the two heavy books he had found in the used-books section at Dutton’s bookstore in Brentwood plus the smaller cooler filled with frozen tamales made the walk up the hill to his house exhausting. He had to stop twice on the side of the road to rest. Each time he sat down on the cooler and took one of the books out of his leather bag so that he could once more study the dark work of Hieronymus Bosch – even in the shadows of evening.

Since his visit to the Getty, the images in the Bosch paintings were never far from his thoughts. Nep Fitzgerald had said something at the end of the meeting in her office. Just before closing the book on the plates reproducing The Garden of Earthly Delights she looked at him with a small smile, as if she had something to say but was hesitant.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing really, just an observation.”

“Go ahead and make it. I’d like to hear it.”

“I was just going to mention that a lot of the critics and scholars who view Bosch’s work see corollaries to contemporary times. That’s the mark of a great artist – if his work stands the test of time. If it has the power to connect to people and… and maybe influence them.”

McCaleb nodded. He knew she wanted him to tell her what he was working on.

“I understand what you are saying. I’m sorry but at the moment I can’t tell you about this. Maybe someday I will, or someday you will just know what it was. But thank you. You have helped a lot, I think. I don’t know for sure yet.”

Sitting on the cooler now, McCaleb remembered the conversation. Corollaries to contemporary times, he thought. And crimes. He opened the larger of the two books he had bought and opened it to a color illustration of Bosch’s masterpiece. He studied the owl with black eyes and all of his instincts told him he was on to something significant. Something very dark and dangerous.

When he got home Graciela took the cooler from him and opened it on the kitchen counter. She took three of the green corn tamales out and put them on a plate for defrosting in the microwave.

“I’m making chili relenos, too,” she said. “It’s a good thing you called from the boat or we would’ve gone ahead and eaten without you.”

McCaleb let her vent. He knew she was angry about what he was doing. He walked over to the table where Cielo was propped in a bouncing chair. She was staring up at the ceiling fan and moving her hands in front of her, getting used to them. McCaleb bent down and kissed both of them and then her forehead.

“Where’s Raymond?”

“In his room. On the computer. Why did you only get ten?”

He looked over at her as he slid into a chair next to Cielo. She was putting the other tamales into a plastic Tupperware container for freezing.

“I took the cooler in and told them to fill it. That’s how many fit, I guess.”

She shook her head, annoyed with him.

“We’ll have one extra.”

“Then throw it out or invite one of Raymond’s friends over for dinner next time. Who cares, Graciela? It’s a tamale.”

Graciela turned and looked at him with dark, upset eyes that immediately softened.

“You’re sweaty.”

“I just walked up the hill. The shuttle was closed for the night.”

She opened an overhead cabinet and took out a plastic box holding a thermometer. There was a thermometer in every room in the house. She took this one out and shook it and came over to him.

“Open.”

“Let’s use the electronic.”

“No, I don’t trust them.”

She put the end of the thermometer under his tongue and then used her hand to gently bring his jaw up and close his mouth. Very professional. She had been an emergency room nurse when he met her and was now the school nurse and an office clerk at Catalina Elementary. She had just gone back to work after the Christmas holiday. McCaleb sensed that she wanted to be a full-time mother, but they couldn’t afford it so he never brought it up directly. He hoped that in a couple of years the charter service would be more established and they would have the choice then. Sometimes he wished they had kept a share of the money for the book-and-movie deal but he also knew that their decision to honor Graciela’s sister by not making money from what happened had been the only choice. They had given half the money to the Make a Wish Foundation and put the other half in a trust fund for Raymond. It would pay for college if he wanted that.

Graciela held his wrist and checked his pulse while he sat silently watching her.

“You’re high,” she said, dropping his wrist. “Open.”

He opened his mouth and she took out the thermometer and read it. She went to the sink and washed it, then returned it to its case and the cabinet. She didn’t say anything and McCaleb knew that meant his temperature was normal.

“You wish I had a fever, don’t you?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yes, you do. That way you could tell me to stop this.”

“What do you mean, tell you to stop it? Last night you said it was just going to be last night. Then this morning you said it was just going to be today. What are you telling me now, Terry?”

He looked over at Cielo and held out a finger for her to grasp.

“It’s not over.” He now looked back at Graciela. “Some things came up today.”

“Some things? Whatever they are, give them to Detective Winston. It’s her job. It’s not your job to be doing this.”

“I can’t. Not yet. Not until I am sure.”

Graciela turned and walked back to the counter. She put the plate with the tamales on it into the microwave and set it for defrost.

“Will you take her in and change her? It’s been a while. And she’ll need a bottle while I make dinner.”

McCaleb carefully raised his daughter out of the bouncing seat and put her on his shoulder. She made some fussing noises and he gently patted her back to calm her. He walked over to Graciela’s back, put his arm around the front of her and pulled her backward into him. He kissed the top of her head and held his face in her hair.

“It will all be over soon and we’ll be back to normal.”

“I hope so.”

She touched his arm, which crossed her body beneath her breasts. The touch of her fingertips was the approval he sought. It told him this was a rough spot but they were okay. He held her tighter, kissed the back of her neck and then let her go.

Cielo watched the slowly moving mobile that hung over the changing table as he put a new diaper on her tiny body. Cardboard stars and half moons hung from threads. Raymond had made it with Graciela as a Christmas present. An air current from somewhere in the house gently turned it and Cielo’s dark blue eyes focused on it. McCaleb bent down and kissed her forehead.

After wrapping her in two baby blankets he took her out to the porch and gave her the bottle while gently moving in the rocking chair. Looking down at the harbor he noticed he had left on the instrument lights on The Following Sea’s bridge. He knew he could call the harbor master on the pier and whoever was working nights could just motor over and turn them off. But he knew he’d be going back to the boat after dinner. He would get the lights then.

He looked down at Cielo. Her eyes were closed but he knew she was awake. She was working the bottle forcefully. Graciela had stopped full-time breastfeeding when she had gone back to work. Bottle feedings were new and he found them to be perhaps the single most pleasurable moments of being a new father. He often whispered to his daughter during these times. Promises mostly. Promises that he would always love her and be with her. He told her never to be afraid or feel alone. Sometimes when she would suddenly open her eyes and look at him, he sensed that she was communicating the same things back to him. And he felt a kind of love he had never known before.

“Terry.”

He looked up at Graciela’s whisper.

“Dinner’s ready.”

He checked the bottle and saw it was almost empty.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he whispered.

After Graciela left them he looked down at his daughter. The whispering had made her open her eyes. She stared up at him. He kissed her on the forehead and then just held her gaze.

“I have to do this, baby,” he whispered.

The boat was cold inside. McCaleb turned on the salon lights and then positioned the space heater in the center of the room and turned it on low. He wanted to warm up but not too much, for then he might get sleepy. He was still tired from the exertions of the day.

He was down in the front cabin going through his old files when he heard the cell phone start to chirp from his leather bag up in the salon. He closed the file he was studying and took it with him as he bounded up the stairs to the salon and grabbed the phone out of his bag. It was Jaye Winston.

“So how’d it go at the Getty? I thought you were going to call me back.”

“Oh, well it ran late and I wanted to get back to the boat and get across before dark. I forgot to call.”

“You’re back on the island?”

She sounded disappointed.

“Yeah, I told Graciela this morning I’d be back. But don’t worry, I’m still working on a few things.”

“What happened at the Getty?”

“Nothing much,” he lied. “I talked to a couple people and looked at some paintings.”

“You see any owls that match ours?”

She laughed as she asked the question.

“A couple close ones. I got some books I want to look through tonight. I was going to call you, see if maybe we could get together tomorrow.”

“When? I’ve got a meeting in the morning at ten and another at eleven.”

“I was thinking the afternoon anyway. There’s something I have to do in the morning myself.”

He didn’t want to tell her that he wanted to watch the opening statements in the Storey trial. He knew they’d be carried live on Court TV, which he got up at the house with the satellite dish.

“Well, I could probably get a chopper to take me out there but I’ll have to check with aero first.”

“No, I’ll be coming back over.”

“You will? Great! You want to come here?”

“No, I was thinking about something more quiet and private.”

“How come?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Getting mysterious on me. This isn’t a scam to get the sheriff’s to pay for pancakes again, is it?”

They both laughed.

“No scam. Any chance you could come out to Cabrillo and meet me at my boat?”

“I’ll be there. What time?”

He made the appointment for three o’clock thinking that would give him plenty of time to prepare a profile and figure out how he would tell her what he had to say. It would also give him enough time to be ready for what he hoped she would allow him to do that night.

“Anything on the owl?” he asked once they had the meeting arranged.

“Very little, none of it good. Inside there are manufacturing markings. The plastic mold was made in China. The company ships them to two distributors over here, one in Ohio and one in Tennessee. From there they probably go all over. It’s a long shot and a lot of work.”

“So you’re going to drop it.”

“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just not a priority. It’s on my partner’s plate. He’s got calls out. We’ll see what he gets from the distributors, evaluate and decide where to go from there.”

McCaleb nodded. Prioritizing investigative leads and even investigations themselves was a necessary evil. But it still bothered him. He was sure the owl was a key and knowing everything about it would be useful.

“Okay, so we’re all set?” she asked.

“About tomorrow? Yeah, we’re set.”

“We’ll see you at three.”

“We?”

“Kurt and I. My partner. You haven’t met him yet.”

“Uh, look, tomorrow could it just be me and you? Nothing against your partner but I’d just like to talk to you tomorrow, Jaye.”

There was a moment of silence before she responded.

“Terry, what’s going on with you?”

“I just want to talk to you about this. You brought me in, I want to give what I have to you. If you want to bring your partner in on it after, that’s fine.”

There was another pause.

“I’m getting a bad vibe from all of this, Terry.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the way I want it. I guess you have to take it or leave it.”

His ultimatum made her go silent even longer this time. He waited for her.

“All right, man,” she finally said. “It’s your show. I’ll take it.”

“Thanks, Jaye. I’ll see you then.”

They hung up. He looked at the old case file he had pulled and still held in his hand. He put the phone down on the coffee table and leaned back on the couch and opened the file.