Blood Work

35

LOCKRIDGE DROPPED McCALEB off at the curb on Cabrillo Way, about half a mile from the marina. He walked in the rest of the way, keeping to the shadows cast by the small shops that lined the boulevard. The plan was for Buddy to leave his keys in the Taurus and then go to his boat as if everything about his life was routine and normal. If he saw anything unusual, anyone hanging around the marina who wasn’t recognizable, he was to flick on the mast light on the Double-Down. McCaleb would be able to see the light from a good distance away and he would keep clear.

When the marina came into sight, McCaleb’s eyes scanned the points of the dozens of masts. It was dark now and he saw no lights. Things looked good. He glanced around and spotted a pay phone outside a mini-market and went to it to call Lockridge anyway. It also gave him a chance to put the heavy leather bag down for a spell. Buddy picked up the phone right away.

“Is it safe?” McCaleb asked, remembering the line from a movie he had enjoyed some years before.

“Think so,” Buddy said. “I don’t see anyone and nobody grabbed me on the way in. I didn’t see anything that looked like an unmarked cop car out in the lot, either.”

“What’s my boat look like?”

There was a silence while Buddy took a look.

“It’s still there. Looks like they got yellow tape strung between the piers, like you’re not supposed to go on it or something.”

“Okay, Bud, I’m coming in. I’m going to go into the laundry first and stick my bag in one of the dryers. If I go to the boat and get jumped by them, you come get the bag and sit on it until I get out. You okay with that?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, listen. If everything goes okay on the boat, I won’t be staying long, so I’m going to say this now, thanks for everything, Buddy, you’ve been a big help.”

“No sweat, man. I don’t care about what these bastards are trying to do to you. I know you’re cool.”

McCaleb thanked him again and hung up, then picked up his bag and started carrying it under his arm as he headed toward the marina. He first ducked into the laundry and found an empty dryer in which to stow the bag. He then made it all the way to the boat without problem. Before unlocking the slider he took one last look around the marina and saw nothing amiss, nothing that raised an alarm. He noticed the dark form of Buddy Lockridge sitting in the cockpit of the Double-Down. He heard a wah-wah tremolo from a harmonica and he nodded toward the shadow figure. He then slid open the door.

The boat smelled stuffy and stale but there was still a lingering scent of perfume. He guessed Jaye Winston had left it behind. He didn’t turn on a light but rather reached for the flashlight clamped on the underside of the chart table. He flicked it on and held the light down at his side and pointing at the floor. He headed below, knowing he had to move quickly. He just wanted to grab enough clothes, drugs and medical supplies to last him a few days. He figured, one way or the other, it would be all the time he would get.

He opened one of the hallway hatches and got out the large duffel bag. He then went into the master stateroom and gathered the clothes he would need. Doing it surreptitiously by flashlight slowed the process down but finally he had what he needed.

When he was done, he carried the bag across the hallway to the head to gather drugs, medical supplies and his clipboard. He put the open bag on the sink and was about to begin laying in the pharmaceutical boxes and vials when he realized something. When he had crossed the hallway, there had been a light on topside. The galley light. Or maybe one of the overheads in the salon. He momentarily froze and tried to listen for any sound from above while he reviewed his own movements. He was sure he had not put on a light when he had come in.

He listened nearly half a minute but there was nothing. He quietly stepped back into the hallway and looked up the stairway. He stood stock still and listened again while trying to weigh his options. The only way out besides going back up the stairs was the deck hatch in the roof of the forward stateroom. But it would be foolish to think that whoever was topside didn’t have that escape route covered.

“Buddy,” he called. “Is that you?”

The answer came after a long beat of silence.

“No, Terry, it’s not Buddy.”

A female voice. McCaleb recognized it.

“Jaye?”

“Why don’t you come on up?”

He looked back into the head. The flashlight was inside the duffel bag, illuminating little else but its contents. Otherwise he was in the dark.

“I’m coming up.”

She was sitting on the cushioned swivel chair near the teak coffee table. He had apparently gone right past her in the dark. He slid into the matching chair on the other side of the salon.

“Hello, Jaye. How’s it going?”

“I’ve had better days.”

“Same here. I was going to call you in the morning.”

“Well, I’m here now.”

“And where are your friends?”

“They’re not my friends. And they definitely aren’t your friends, Terry.”

“Didn’t sound like it. So what’s going on? How come you’re here and they’re not?”

“Because every now and then one of us dopey locals turns out to be smarter than the bureau boys.”

McCaleb smiled without humor.

“You knew I’d have to come back for my medicine.”

She returned the smile and nodded.

“They figure you’re already halfway to Mexico if you’re not there already. But I saw that cabinet full of drugs and knew you had to come back. It was like a leash.”

“So now you get to take me in and get the bust and get the glory.”

“Not necessarily.”

He did not respond at first. He thought about her words, wondering how she was playing this.

“What are you saying, Jaye?”

“I’m saying my gut is telling me one thing, the evidence something else. I usually trust my gut.”

“Me too. What evidence are you talking about? What did you people find in here today?”

“Nothing much, just a baseball hat with the CI logo on it. We figured out it means Catalina Island and it matches the description James Noone gave of the cap the driver of the Cherokee was wearing. Then nothing else-until we opened up the top drawer of that chart table.”

McCaleb looked over at the chart table. He remembered opening the top drawer and checking it after the intruder had been scared off the night before. There was nothing in there amiss or that could hurt him.

“What was in it?”

“In it? Nothing. It was underneath. Taped underneath.”

McCaleb got up and went to the chart drawers. He pulled the top drawer out and turned it over. He ran his finger over the adhesive residue left by pieces of heavy tape. He smiled and shook his head. He thought about how quickly the intruder could have come in, taken a pretaped package and slapped it up under the open drawer.

“Let me guess,” he said. “It was a plastic-”

“No. Don’t say anything. You say anything and it could come back to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, Terry.”

“I’m not worried about that. Not anymore. So let me guess. Under the drawer was a bag-a Ziploc type of bag. Inside it was the cross earring taken from Gloria Torres and a photograph of James Cordell’s family. The one taken from his car.”

Winston nodded. McCaleb returned to his seat.

“You left out Donald Kenyon’s cuff link,” she said. “Sterling silver, in the shape of a dollar sign.”

“I didn’t know about that. I bet Nevins and Uhlig and that asshole Arrango put on six inches apiece when they found that bag.”

“They were strutting all right,” she said, nodding. “It made them very happy.”

“But not you.”

“No. It was too easy.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“You know, Terry, you don’t seem very concerned that evidence linking you to three murders was found in your boat. Not to mention the obvious motive you have for those murders.” She nodded toward McCaleb’s chest. “No, you look like, at best, you are maybe moderately annoyed. You want to tell me why?”

McCaleb leaned forward, elbows on his knees. This brought his face more fully into the light.

“It was all planted, Jaye. The hat, earring, everything. Last night somebody broke in here. He didn’t take anything. So he must’ve left things. I’ve got witnesses. I’m being set up. I don’t know why, but it’s a setup.”

“Well, if you’re thinking Bolotov, forget it. He’s been in Van Nuys jail since his parole officer picked him up Sunday afternoon.”

“No, I’m not thinking Bolotov. He’s in the clear.”

“That sure sounds like a different tune.”

“Events have overtaken the possibility of him being a suspect. Remember, I figured him for that burglary near his work in which the HK P7 was taken. That would have given him the right gun to make him a suspect in Cordell and Torres. But that burglary occurred in December, near Christmas. Now add Kenyon. He was killed with a P7 in November. So it can’t be the same gun; even if Bolotov did the burglary. So he’s clear. I still don’t know why he went ape shit on me and ran, though.”

“Well, like you said, he probably is good for that Christmas burglary. You went in there and spooked him, made it sound like you were going to put a couple of murders on him. He ran. That’s all.”

McCaleb nodded.

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“His boss is going to drop his complaint in lieu of restitution for the window that was broken. That’s it. They’ll release him after a hearing today.”

McCaleb nodded again and looked down at the carpet.

“So forget about him, Terry, what else have you got?”

He brought his eyes back up and looked intently back at her.

“I’m close. I’m just one or two steps away from putting this all together. I know who the shooter is now. And I’m just a few days away from knowing who hired him. I’ve got names, a list of suspects. I know the person we want is on that list. Trust your gut on this one, Jaye. You can hook me up now and bring me in and get the bust, but it’s wrong and it won’t fit. Eventually, I’ll be able to prove it. But in the meantime, we’ll miss the chance we’ve got right now.”

“Who is the shooter?

McCaleb stood up.

“I have to get my bag. I’ll show you.”

“Where’s your bag?”

“In a dryer in the marina laundry. I stashed it there. I didn’t know what to expect when I came in here.”

She thought a moment.

“Let me go get it,” he said. “You’ve still got the pharmacy here. I’m not going anywhere. If you don’t trust me, come with me.”

She waved him off.

“All right, go. Get your bag. I’ll wait.”

On the way to the laundry McCaleb met Buddy Lockridge, who was holding the leather satchel taken from the laundry.

“Everything okay? You told me to go get this if I saw anybody put the moves on you.”

“Everything’s fine, Buddy. I think.”

“I don’t know what she’s telling you, but she was one of them that was here today.”

“I know. But I think she’s on my side.”

McCaleb took the bag from him and headed back to his boat. Inside, he turned on the television, put the Sherman Market tape in the VCR, and started playing it. He fast-forwarded the image and watched the jerking motions of the shooter coming in, shooting Gloria Torres and the market owner, then disappearing. Then the Good Samaritan came in and McCaleb put the tape on normal speed. At the moment the Good Samaritan looked up from his work on Gloria’s stricken figure, McCaleb hit the pause button and the image froze.

He pointed at the man on the television screen and looked back at Jaye Winston.

“There. There’s your shooter.”

She stared at the tube for a long moment, her face betraying none of her thoughts.

“Okay, tell me, how is that my shooter?”

“The timeline. Arrango and Walters never saw this as anything more than a common robbery and shooting. That’s how it looked-who can blame them? But they were sloppy. They never bothered completing or verifying a timeline. They took what they saw at face value. But there was a problem between the time on the store video when the shooting went down and the time on the big clock downtown when the Good Samaritan called it in.”

“Right. You told me. What was the discrepancy, a half minute or so?”

“Thirty-four seconds. According to the store’s video, the Good Samaritan called in the shooting thirty-four seconds before it happened.”

“But you said Walters or Arrango said they couldn’t verify the accuracy of the video clock. They just assumed it was off because the old man-Mr. Kang-probably set it himself.”

“Right, they assumed. I didn’t.”

McCaleb backed the tape up to the point that Chan Ho Kang’s watch was visible as his arm stretched across the counter. He played with it in slow motion, going back and forth until he had the time strip across the bottom at the right moment. He paused the image again. He then went to the bag and took out the hard copy of the video enhancement.

“Okay, what I did was triangulate the time to get an accurate fix on when exactly this went down. You see the watch?”

She nodded. He handed her the hard copy.

“I had a friend who used to do work for the bureau enhance this image. That’s the hard copy. As you can see, the time on the watch and the video match. To the second. Old man Kang must have set the camera clock right off his watch. You with me?”

“I’m with you. The video and the watch match. What does it mean?”

McCaleb held his hand up in a hold-on gesture and then got out his notebook and referred to his timeline notes.

“Now we know, according to the Central Communications Center clock downtown, that the Good Samaritan called in the shooting at 10:41:03, which was thirty-four seconds before the shooting took place according to the videotape. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He explained that evening’s trip to the store and then to the Kang home, where he had been allowed access to the watch. He told her that the watch’s setting had not been disturbed since the murders.

“I then called the CCC and got a time check and compared it to the watch. The watch is running only four seconds ahead of the CCC clock. Therefore, that means the video clock was running only four seconds ahead of CCC at the time of the murders.”

Winston narrowed her eyebrows and leaned forward, trying to follow his explanation.

“That would mean…”

She didn’t finish.

“It means that there is almost no difference-just four seconds-between the video clock and the CCC clock. So when the Good Samaritan called in the store shooting at ten forty-one oh three on the CCC clock, it was exactly ten forty-one oh seven on the store clock. There was only four seconds difference.”

“But that’s impossible,” Winston said, shaking her head. “There was no shooting at the time. That’s thirty seconds too early. Gloria wasn’t even in the store yet. She was probably just pulling in.”

McCaleb was silent. He decided to let her make the conclusions without having to be told or prompted. He knew it would have a stronger impact if she came to the same spot he was at on her own.

“So,” she said, “this guy, this Good Samaritan, had to have called in the shooting before the shooting took place.”

McCaleb nodded. He noted the deepening intensity in her eyes.

“Why would he do that unless… he knew. Unless he knew the shooting was going down? He’s-damn!-he’s got to be the shooter!”

McCaleb nodded once more, but this time he had a satisfied smile on his face. He knew he had her in his car now. And they were about to hit the gas pedal.