Blood Work

11

REFRESHED FROM an hour-long nap during which he had no dreams that he could remember, McCaleb made himself a sandwich of white bread and processed cheese. He opened a can of Coke to go with it and went back to the galley table to go through the Gloria Torres case.

He started with the surveillance tape from the Sherman Market. He had seen it twice already in the company of Arrango and Walters but decided he needed to watch it again. He put the tape in and watched it on normal speed, then put what was left of his sandwich in the sink. He couldn’t eat any more. His insides were clenched too tight.

He rewound the tape and started playing it again, this time on slow-motion play. Gloria’s movements seemed languid and relaxed. McCaleb found himself almost ready to return the smile she showed. He wondered what she was thinking. Was the smile for Mr. Kang? McCaleb doubted it. It was a secret smile. A smile for something inside. His guess was that she was thinking about her son and he knew then that she had at least been happy in that final conscious moment.

The tape brought no new ideas, just the rekindling of anger toward the shooter. He put in the crime scene tape next and watched the documentation, measuring and quantification of the carnage. Gloria’s body, of course, was not there and the blood on the floor where she had dropped was minimal-thanks to the Good Samaritan. But the store owner’s corpse was crumpled on the floor behind the counter, blood seemingly surrounding it completely. It made McCaleb think of the old woman he had seen in the store the day before. She stood where her husband had fallen. That took a certain kind of courage, a kind McCaleb didn’t think he had.

After turning off the tape, he started through the stack of reports. Arrango and Walters had not produced as much paper as Winston had. McCaleb tried not to take this to mean anything significant but he couldn’t help it. In his experience, the size of a murder book reflected not only the depth of the investigation but the commitment of the investigators. McCaleb believed there was a sacred bond between the victim and the investigator. All homicide cops understood this. Some took it straight to the heart. Some less so, simply as a matter of psychological survival. But it was there in all of them. It didn’t matter if you had religion, if you believed the soul of the departed watched over you. Even if you believed that all things ended with the final breath, you still spoke for the dead. Your name was whispered on the last breath. But only you heard it. Only you knew it. No other crime came with such a covenant.

McCaleb set aside the thick protocols from the autopsies of Torres and Kang to read last. As with the Cordell file, he knew, the autopsies would provide few salient details beyond what was already obvious. He quickly went through the initial crime reports and next came to a thin sheaf of witness reports. They were statements of people who each had a little part of the whole: a gas station attendant, a passing motorist, a Times pressroom employee who worked with Gloria. There were also investigative summaries, supplemental reports, fact sheets, crime scene charts, ballistics reports and a chronological record of the travels and calls made by the detectives on the case. Last in this section of the stack was the transcript of the never-identified Good Samaritan’s 911 call made after he stumbled into the shooting’s aftermath and tried to save Gloria’s life. The transcript was of a man speaking English with difficulty as he hurriedly reported a shooting. But when the operator offered to switch him to a Spanish-speaker, he declined.

CALLER: I must go. I go now. The girl is shot very bad. The man, he run. He drive away. A black car, like a truck.

OPERATOR: Sir, please stay on the line… Sir? Sir?

That was it. He was gone. He had mentioned the vehicle but gave no description of the suspect.

Following this statement there was a ballistics report identifying the bullets recovered in the market and during the autopsy of Chan Ho Kang as nine-millimeter Federal FMJs. A photo from the store video was analyzed and the weapon was again identified as the HK P7.

It struck McCaleb as he finished an initial reading of the rest of the reports that what was missing from the murder book was a timeline. Unlike the Cordell case, which had only one witness, the Torres case had a variety of minor witnesses and time markers. The detectives apparently had not sat down with all of these and collated them into a timeline. They had not re-created the sequence of incidents that made up the event as a whole.

McCaleb sat back and thought about this for a moment. Why wasn’t it there? Would such a timeline or exact sequence of events even be useful? Probably not initially, he decided. In terms of identifying a killer, it would give little help. And at least initially, that’s all that mattered. But a sequential analysis of the event should have been done later, after the dust had settled, so to speak. McCaleb had often advised investigators who sent their cases to him to create a timeline. It could be useful breaking alibis, finding holes in witness accounts, in simply giving the investigator a better command and knowledge of exactly what had happened.

McCaleb was fully aware that he was Monday morning quarterbacking. Arrango and Walters didn’t have the luxury of coming into a case two months after the fact. Maybe thought of a timeline got lost. They had other concerns and other cases to worry about.

He got up and went to the galley to turn on the coffeemaker. He was feeling fatigued again and had been awake only ninety minutes. McCaleb hadn’t been drinking much coffee since the transplant. Dr. Fox had told him to avoid caffeine and on the occasion that he had ignored that advice and had a cup, it sometimes caused a fluttering sensation in his chest. But he wanted to keep alert and finish his work. He took the risk.

After the coffee was ready, he poured himself a mug, then overpowered it with milk and sugar. He sat back down and silently chastised himself for looking for reasons to excuse Arrango and Walters. They should have taken the time to work the case thoroughly. McCaleb was angry with himself for having thought anything else.

He took up the legal pad and began to read through the witness reports again, noting down the salient times and a brief summary of what each witness brought to the case. He then overlaid various time notations from the other crime reports. It took him an hour to do this, during which time he refilled his mug three times without really thinking about it. When he was finished, he had constructed a timeline on two pages of the pad. The problem, he realized as he studied his work, was that the sequence was inexact in all but a couple of references and contained outright conflicts, if not impossibilities.

10:01P.M.-End of B shift, Los Angles Times pressroom, Chatsworth facility. Gloria punches out.

10:10P.M.-approximate-Gloria leaves with coworker Annette Stapleton. They talk in the parking lot approximately five minutes. Gloria leaves in her blue Honda Civic.

10:29P.M.-Gloria at the Chevron gas station on Winnetka at Roscoe. Self-service credit card sale: $14.40. Attendant Connor Davis recalls Gloria as a regular nighttime customer who would ask about sports scores because he often had a game on the radio. Time ascribed to credit card records.

10:40 to 10:43P.M.-approximate-Motorist Ellen Taaffe traveling east on Sherman Way, windows down, hears popping sound as she passes the Sherman Market. Looks, sees nothing wrong. Two cars in the lot. Sale signs in windows of the market prevent viewing into the store. As she looks, she hears another popping sound but again sees nothing unusual. Timing of sounds ascribed by Taaffe to the beginning of KFWB news report cycle which started at 10:40.

10:41:03P.M.-Unidentified male with Spanish accent calls 911, says a woman has been shot at the Sherman Market and needs help. Does not stay for police. Illegal alien?

10:41:37P.M.-Gloria Torres is shot to death, according to store’s security video time clock.

10:42:55P.M.-Good Samaritan enters store and helps Gloria, according to security video time clock.

10:43:21P.M.-Ellen Taaffe uses her car phone to call 911 dispatch to report sound of possible gunfire. She is told the shooting has already been reported. Her name and number are forwarded to detectives.

10:47P.M.-Paramedics arrive, transport Gloria to Northridge Medical Center. Chan Ho Kang pronounced dead.

10:49P.M.-First police arrive on scene.

He read it all again. He knew homicide was an inexact science but the timeline bothered him. According to the first homicide investigation report, the actual shooting was determined by the detectives to have occurred during the sixty seconds between 10:40 and 10:41P.M. In deciding this, the detectives had used the one source of time they knew to be exact and unassailably correct-the time log at the department’s emergency dispatch center. The first call reporting the shooting-from the Good Samaritan-had come in at 10:41:03 to a 911 operator. Using that time and the report by motorist Ellen Taaffe about hearing the shots sometime after the start of the KFWB news report led to the conclusion that the shooting had to have been after 10:40 but before 10:41:03, when the Good Samaritan made the call.

This time frame, of course, was in contradiction to the time of 10:41:37 shown on the store’s videotape at the start of the shooting.

McCaleb looked through the reports again, hoping he had missed some page on which there was an explanation of this discrepancy. There was nothing. He drummed his fingers on the table for a few moments while he thought about things. He checked his watch and saw it was almost five. It was unlikely any of the investigators would still be around.

Again he studied the timeline he had constructed, searching for an explanation for the anomaly. His eyes held on the second call to the dispatch center. Ellen Taaffe, the motorist who had heard the shooting, had called on her mobile phone at 10:43:21 to report the shooting and was told it had already been reported.

He thought about this. The detectives had used her hearing of the shots to set the murders within the minute of 10:40, the very start of the news program. Yet when she called 911, they already knew about the shooting. Why had she delayed more than two minutes to make the call? And was she ever asked if she saw the Good Samaritan?

McCaleb quickly flipped through the stack of reports until he located the Ellen Taaffe witness statement. It was one page, with her signature beneath a statement typed below a two-inch information block. The statement said nothing about how long she had waited between hearing the shots and calling the 911 dispatch center. The statement did say she believed that there were two cars parked in front of the store but she could not identify the type of vehicles they were or remember if there had been any occupants.

He looked at the information box. It said Taaffe was thirty-five years old and married. She lived in Northridge and was an executive with a headhunting firm. She had been driving home from the movies at Topanga Plaza when she heard the shooting. Her home and work phone numbers were contained in the witness information box. McCaleb went to the phone and dialed the work number. A secretary answered, corrected his pronunciation of Taaffe and said he had just caught her on her way out the door.

“This is Ellen Taaffe,” a voice said, rhyming the name with waif.

“Yes, hello, Mrs. Taaffe. You don’t know me. My name is McCaleb. I’m an investigator working on that shooting a couple months ago on Sherman Way. The one you heard and talked to the police about?”

He heard her breath going out in a way that indicated she was being put out by the call.

“I don’t understand, I already talked to the detectives. Are you with the police?”

“No, I’m… I work for the family of the woman who was killed there. Is this a bad time?”

“Yes, I’m on my way out the door. I’d like to beat the traffic and… and, frankly, I don’t know what I can tell you. I told everything to the police.”

“This will only take a minute. I just have a few quick questions. This woman had a little boy. I’m just trying to catch the guy who took her away.”

He heard the breath go out again.

“All right, I’ll try to help. What are the questions?”

“Okay, one, how long did you wait between hearing the shots and calling nine one one on your car phone?”

“I didn’t wait. I called right then. I grew up around guns. My father was a police officer and I went with him to the range sometimes. I knew that what I heard was a gun. I called right away.”

“Well, I’m looking at the police records and they say you thought you heard the shooting around ten-forty but didn’t call it in until ten-forty-three. I don’t-”

“What they don’t tell you in those reports is that I got a tape. I called right away but I got a tape. All the nine one one lines were busy and I was put on hold. I don’t know how long. It was aggravating. But when my call finally was put through, they said they already knew about the shooting anyway.”

“How long do you think you were on hold?”

“I just said I’m not sure. Maybe a minute. Maybe more or maybe less. I don’t know.”

“Okay. The report says you heard a shot and looked out your window at the store. Then you heard another shot. You saw two cars in the lot. The next question is, did you see anyone outside?”

“No. There was no one there. I told this to the police.”

“It seems like if the inside of the store was lit, you might be able to see if there was anyone in the cars.”

“If there was anyone in either of the cars, I don’t remember seeing them.”

“Was one of the cars a sports utility vehicle, like a Cherokee?”

“I don’t know. The police already asked that. But my attention was on the store. I looked right past the cars.”

“Would you say they were dark or light colored?”

“I really don’t know. I just told you that and I’ve been over this with the police. They have every-”

“Did you hear a third shot?”

“A third? No, only two.”

“But there were three shots. So you don’t know if you heard the first two shots or the last two.”

“That’s right.”

He thought about this for a second, deciding that it was probably impossible to decide for sure whether she had heard the first two or last two shots.

“Mrs. Taaffe, that’s it. Thanks a lot. You’ve been a help and I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

The brief interview helped answer only the question he had about the delay in her 911 call but it still left the discrepancy between the timing of the Good Samaritan’s 911 call and the time on the store’s surveillance tape. McCaleb checked his watch again. It was now after five. All the detectives would be gone but he decided to call anyway.

To his surprise he was told when he called West Valley Division that both Arrango and Walters were in and asked which one he wanted. He decided to try Walters, since he had seemed sympathetic to his situation the day before. Walters picked up after three rings.

“It’s Terry McCaleb… The Gloria Torres thing?”

“Right, right.”

“I guess you heard I got the books from Winston over at the sheriff’s.”

“Yeah, we’re not too happy about that. We also got a call from the Slimes about it, too. Some reporter. That wasn’t cool. I don’t know who you’ve been talk-”

“Look, your partner put me in a position where I had to look for information where I could get it. Don’t worry about the Times. They’ll sit on the story because there is no story. Not at the moment.”

“And it best stay that way. Anyway, I’m kind of busy here. What’ve you got?”

“You got a case?”

“Yeah. They just keep dropping like flies out here in the Big Valley.”

“Well, look, I won’t hold you up. I’ve just got one question maybe you can help me with.”

McCaleb waited. Walters didn’t say anything, He seemed different from the day before. McCaleb wondered if Arrango was sitting close by and listening. He decided to press on.

“I just want to know about the timing,” he said. “The video from the store shows the shooting going down at”-he quickly scanned his timeline-“let’s see, ten forty-one thirty-seven. Then you have the nine one one records and they say the call from the Good Samaritan came in at exactly ten forty-one oh three. See what I’m getting at? How’d the guy call it in thirty-four seconds before the shooting actually happened?”

“Simple, the time on the video was off. It was fast.”

“Oh, okay,” McCaleb said, as if the possibility had not occurred to him. “You guys checked it out?”

“My partner did.”

“Really? I didn’t see any report on it in the book.”

“Look, he made a phone call to the security company, checked it out, no report, okay? The guy who installed that system put it in more than a year ago-right after the first time Mr. Kang got robbed. Eddie talked to the guy. He set the camera clock off his own watch back then and hasn’t been back in there since. He showed Mr. Kang how to set the camera clock in case there was a power outage or something.”

“Okay,” McCaleb said, not sure where this was going.

“So, your guess is as good as mine. Is it showing the original time set off the installer’s watch or did the old man set it a few times himself? Either way it doesn’t matter. We can’t trust it just coming off somebody’s watch. Maybe the watch was fast, maybe the camera clock has been gaining a couple seconds every week or two. Who knows? We can’t trust it, is what I’m saying. But we can trust the nine-eleven clock. That’s the time we know is correct and it’s the time we went with.”

McCaleb was silent and Walters seemed to take it as some kind of judgment.

“Look, the camera clock is just a detail that doesn’t mean anything anyway,” he said. “If we worried about every detail that didn’t fit, we’d still be working our first case. I’m busy here, man, what else you got?”

“That’s it, I guess. You guys never checked the surveillance clock, right? You know, to check the time against the dispatch clock?”

“Nope. We went back a couple days later but there had been a power outage-Santa Anas blew down the line. The time on it was useless to us then.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah, too bad. I gotta go. Keep in touch. You get something, you call us before Winston or we’re not going to be happy with you. All right?”

“I’ll call you.”

Walters hung up. McCaleb put the phone down and stared at it for a few moments, wondering what his next move should or would be. He was drawing a blank. But it had always been his practice to go back to the start whenever he hit a stall. The start most often meant the crime scene. But this case was different. He could go back to the actual crime.

He put the video of the Sherman Market murders back in the VCR and watched the tape again in slow motion. He sat there gripping the edges of the table so hard his knuckles and finger joints began to hurt. It wasn’t until the third run-through that he picked up on something he had missed earlier and had been there all along.

Chan Ho Kang’s watch. The watch his wife now wore. On the video the watch was seen as Kang desperately grasped for purchase on the counter.

McCaleb fished around on the video for a few minutes, backing and forwarding the tape until he froze the image on what he believed was the best view of the watch’s face. The best he could do was a clean look at it but the LED readout was not picked up by the video shot from the upper wall. The numbers on the watch-the time-were not readable.

He sat there staring at the frozen image, wondering if he should pursue it. If he could read the time on the watch, he might be able to triangulate the time of the shooting by using the camera clock and the dispatch clock. It might clear up a loose end. But did it mean anything? Walters had been right about one thing. There are always details that don’t add up. Always loose ends. And McCaleb wasn’t sure if this one was worth the time it would take to tie it up.

His private debate was interrupted. Living on a boat, he had learned to read the subtle rises and falls of his home, to know whether each was caused by a boat wake out in the fairway or the weight of someone coming on board. McCaleb felt the boat dip slightly and immediately looked over his shoulder and out the sliding door. Graciela Rivers had just stepped onboard and was turning around to help a little boy step on next. Raymond. Dinner. He had completely forgotten.

“Shit,” he said as he quickly turned off the video and got up to go out and greet them.