Blood Work

7

McCALEB HELD UP a finger to the cab driver and made another call. He first thought about Jaye Winston but decided to wait. Instead he called Graciela Rivers at the number she had given him for the nursing station in the emergency room of Holy Cross Medical Center. She agreed to meet him for an early lunch, even though he explained that he hadn’t accomplished much. He told her to look for him in the emergency room waiting room at eleven-thirty.

The hospital was in a part of the Valley called Mission Hills. On the way there, McCaleb looked out the window at the passing scenery. It was mostly strip shopping centers and gas stations. The driver was making his way toward the 405 so that he could head north.

McCaleb’s knowledge of the Valley had come only through cases. There had been many, most of them falling under his review only on paper and photo prints and videotape from the body dumps along the freeway embankments or the hillsides fringing the northern flats. The Code Killer had hit four times in the Valley before he disappeared like the morning marine layer.

“What are you, police?”

McCaleb looked away from the window and over the seat at the rearview mirror. The driver’s eyes were on him.

“What?”

“Are you policeman or something?”

McCaleb shook his head.

“No, I’m no one. “

He looked back out the window as the cab labored up a freeway on-ramp. They passed a woman who was holding a sign asking for money. Another victim waiting to be victimized again.

He sat in the waiting room on a plastic chair across from an injured woman and her husband. The woman had internal pain and kept her arms folded across her midsection. She was hunched over, protecting the hurt. Her husband was being attentive, repeatedly asking how she felt and going to the intake window to ask when she would be taken back for examination. But twice McCaleb heard him quietly ask her, “What are you going to tell them?”

And each time the woman turned her face away.

At quarter to twelve Graciela Rivers came through the double doors of the ER ward. She suggested that they just go to the hospital cafeteria because she had only an hour. McCaleb didn’t mind because his taste for food had still not come back since the transplant. Eating at the hospital would be no different to him than eating at Jozu on Melrose. Most days he didn’t care what he ate and sometimes he forgot about meals until a headache reminded him that he needed to refuel.

The cafeteria was almost empty. They took their trays to a table next to a window, which looked out on a huge green lawn surrounding a large white cross.

“This is my one chance to look at daylight,” Graciela said. “Back in the ER rooms there are no windows. So I always try to get a window.”

McCaleb nodded that he understood.

“Way back when I worked in Quantico, our offices were below ground. The basement. No windows, always damp, freezing in the winter even with the heat on. I never saw the sun. It wears on you after a while.”

“Is that why you moved out here?”

“No. Other reasons. But I did figure I’d get a window. I was wrong. They stuck me in a storage closet at the FO. Seventeen floors up but no windows. I think that’s why I live on the boat now. I like having the sky close by.”

“What’s the FO?”

“Sorry. Field office. It was in Westwood. In the big federal building near the veterans cemetery.”

She nodded.

“So, did you really grow up on Catalina like the paper said?”

“Until I was sixteen,” he said. “Then I lived with my mother in Chicago… It’s funny, I spent all the time I was growing up on that island just wanting to get off it. Now I’m just trying to get back there.”

“What will you do there?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a mooring over there my father left me. Maybe I won’t do anything. Maybe I’ll just drop a line and sit in the sun with a beer in my hand.”

He smiled and she smiled back.

“If you already have a mooring, why can’t you go now?”

“The boat’s not ready. Neither am I yet.”

She nodded.

“It was your father’s boat?”

Another detail from the newspaper. He had obviously said too much about himself to Keisha Russell. He didn’t like people knowing so much about him so easily.

“He lived on it over there. When he died, it came to me. I let it sit in dry dock for years. Now it needs a lot of work.”

“Did he name it or was that you?”

“His name.”

She frowned and squinted her eyes as if something was sour.

“Why did he call it The Following Sea instead of just Following Sea ? It doesn’t make sense with The in front of Following Sea. ”

“No, it makes sense. It doesn’t refer to the act of following behind the sea. There is something known as the following sea, or a following sea.”

“Oh. What is it?”

“A sea is a wave. You know, how you hear on surf reports that the seas are two to four feet or whatever?”

“Right.”

“Okay, well a following sea is the one you have to watch out for. It’s the one that comes up behind a vessel. You don’t see it coming. It hits you from behind and swamps you. Sinks you. The rule is that if you’re running in following seas, you’ve just got to be moving faster than they are. Stay ahead of them. He named the boat that because it was like a reminder. You know, always watch over your shoulder. It was something he always said to me when I was growing up. Even when I went over town.”

“Over town?”

“When I left the island. He told me always to watch out for the following sea, even on land.”

She smiled.

“Now that I know the story, I like the name. Do you miss him?”

He nodded but offered nothing else. The conversation drifted away and they began to eat their sandwiches. McCaleb hadn’t planned on the meeting being about him. After a few bites he started filling her in on the morning’s lack of solid accomplishment. He didn’t tell her about watching her sister being murdered on the videotape but he told her about his hunch that the Torres-Kang slayings were connected to at least one other incident. He told her how he was further guessing that that other incident might be the ATM robbery and shooting recounted in the stories Keisha Russell had read him.

“What will you do next?” she asked when he was done.

“Take a nap.”

She looked at him curiously.

“I’m beat,” he said. “I haven’t been running around and doing as much thinking as this for a long time. I’m going back to my boat and resting up. Tomorrow I’ll start again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” he said with a smile. “You were looking for somebody with a reason to get involved in this. I’ve got the reason and I’m involved, but I’ve got to take it slow at first. You being a nurse, I hope you understand.”

“I do. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. That would make Glory’s dying even more…”

“I understand.”

They were silent for a few moments before he picked up the conversation again.

“Your take on the LAPD was right on. I think they’re in a holding pattern, waiting for something to happen-probably for this guy to hit again. They’re definitely not working it. It’s a cold case until something happens to warm it up.”

She shook her head.

“They’re not working it but they don’t want you to have a try at it. That makes a lot of sense.”

“It’s a territorial thing. It’s the way the game is played.”

“It’s not a game.”

“I know.”

He wished he had chosen a better word.

“Then what can you do?”

“Well, in the morning, when I’m fresh, I’ll try the Sheriff’s Department on this other case, the one I think is connected. I know the lead on it. Jaye Winston. We worked a case once a long time ago. It went well and I’m hoping that will get me in the door. At least further in than I got with the L.A. people.”

She nodded but she wasn’t all that good at masking her disappointment.

“Graciela,” he said, “I don’t know if you were expecting somebody to just come in and solve this like turning a key in a lock but it’s not realistic to believe that. That’s movies. This is real. In all my years in the bureau, most of the cases turned on some little detail, some little thing that was missed or didn’t seem important at first. But then it comes back around to being the key to the whole thing. It just takes time to get there sometimes, to find that little detail.”

“I know. I know. It just frustrates me that more wasn’t done sooner.”

“Yes, when the…”

He was going to say when the blood was fresh.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that with most cases the more time goes by, the harder it gets.”

He knew he wasn’t helping her any by telling her the reality of the situation. But he wanted her to be prepared for his eventual failure. He had been good in his day but not that good. He now realized that by agreeing to take the case he had only set Graciela Rivers up for disappointment. His selfish dream of redemption would be another painful dose of reality for her.

“Those men just didn’t care,” she said.

He studied her downcast eyes. He knew she was talking about Arrango and Walters.

“Well, I do.”

They finished eating in silence. After McCaleb pushed his plate aside, he watched her as she gazed out the window. Even in her white polyester nurse’s uniform with her hair pinned back, Graciela Rivers stirred something in him. She had a kind of sadness about her that he wished somehow to soothe. He wondered if it had been there before her sister died. With most people it is. McCaleb had even seen it in the faces of babies-the sadness already there. The events of their lives seemed only to confirm the sadness they already carried.

“Was this where she died?” he asked.

She nodded and looked back at him.

“She was first taken to Northridge, stabilized and then transferred here. I was here when life support was terminated. I was with her.”

He shook his head.

“It must have been very hard.”

“I see people dying every day in the ER. We joke about it to relieve the stress, say they are ‘Three-D.’ Definitely Done Dancing. But when it’s your own… I don’t joke about it anymore.”

He watched her face as she shook it off, shifted gears and moved on, away from the trouble spot. Some people have that fifth gear that they can drop into, to get away.

“Tell me about her,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s really why I came. Tell me things about her. It will help me. The better feel that I have for her, the better I’ll be at this.”

She was quiet a moment, her mouth curled in a frown as she thought about how to sum her sister up in a few words.

“Is there a kitchen on that boat of yours?” she finally asked.

Her question caught him off guard.

“What?”

“A kitchen. On your boat.”

“Uh, it’s actually called a galley.”

“Then galley. Is it big enough to cook real meals?”

“Sure. Why are you asking me about my boat?”

“You want to know my sister?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have to meet her son. Everything that was good about my sister is in Raymond. He’s all you have to know.”

McCaleb nodded slowly as he understood.

“So how about I bring Raymond down to your boat tonight and we make you dinner. I already told him about you and about the boat. He wants to see it.”

He thought a moment and said, “Tell you what. How about we wait until tomorrow. That way I can tell you about how my visit to the Sheriff’s Department went. Maybe I’ll have something more positive to report.”

“Tomorrow will be fine.”

“And don’t worry about cooking dinner. Dinner will be my job.”

“You’re turning this all around. I wanted to-”

“I know, I know. But you can save that for one night at your home. You’re coming to my home tomorrow and I’ll take care of dinner, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, still frowning but realizing he wouldn’t be budged. Then she smiled. “We’ll be there.”

Traffic south on the 405 was intense and the cab didn’t drop him off at the marina in San Pedro until after two. The cab was not air-conditioned and he caught a slight headache from the mixture of freeway exhaust fumes and the driver’s body odor.

After he got inside the boat, he checked his phone machine and found the only message he had was a hang-up call. He felt out of sync because his travels that day had involved more physical activity than he’d had for a long while. His leg muscles were sore and his back was aching. He went down to the head and checked his temperature but there was no fever. Blood pressure and pulse also checked out fine. He logged it all on the clipboard, then went to his stateroom, stripped off his clothes and crawled into the unmade bed.

Despite his physical depletion he had insomnia and lay wide awake on the pillow. His mind churned with the thoughts of the day and images from the video. After an hour of fooling himself, he got up and went up to the salon. He dug the notebook out of the jacket he had draped over a chair and read through the notes he had taken earlier. Nothing stood out but he felt comforted in some way at having started a record of his investigation.

On a fresh page he jotted down some additional thoughts about the video and a couple of questions he wanted to be sure to cover with Jaye Winston the next day. Assuming that the investigators had linked the cases, he wanted to know how solid the connection was and whether the three hundred dollars taken from James Cordell in the first case was actually taken from the victim or from the ATM’s cash tray.

He put the notebook aside when he realized he was hungry. He got up, scrambled three egg whites in a skillet, mixed in some Tabasco sauce and salsa and made a sandwich with white toast. After two bites he put on more Tabasco.

When he had cleaned up the galley, he felt the fatigue coming back and finally closing him down. He knew he could sleep now. He took a quick shower, another temperature reading and the evening batch of medications. In the mirror he saw he had what looked like a two-day growth of beard even though he had shaved that morning. It was a side effect of one of the drugs he was taking. Prednisone helped fight organ rejection and stimulated hair growth at the same time. He smiled at his reflection, thinking that the day before he should have told Bonnie Fox that he felt like a werewolf, not Frankenstein. He was getting his monsters mixed up. He went to bed.

His dream was in black and white. They all were now but they had not been before the operation. He didn’t know what this meant. He had told Dr. Fox about it and she had just shrugged.

In this dream he was in the market. He was a player in the video he had been shown by Arrango and Walters. He was at the counter smiling at Chan Ho Kang. The store owner smiled back in an unfriendly way and said something.

“What?” McCaleb asked.

“You don’t deserve it,” Mr. Kang said.

McCaleb looked down at the counter at his purchase but before he could see what it was he felt the cold ring of steel against his temple. He quickly turned and there was the masked man with a gun. McCaleb knew in the way knowledge and logic accompany dreams that the man was smiling behind the mask. The robber lowered the gun and fired into McCaleb’s chest, his bullet hitting the ten ring-the circle of the heart. The bullet went through McCaleb as if he were a paper target. But the impact forced him backward a step and then in slow motion he was falling. He felt no pain, only a sense of relief. He looked at the killer as he was going down and recognized the eyes watching through the mask. They were his own eyes. Then came the wink.

And he kept falling and falling.