and putting them aside. He then took what was left and separated the reports into small stacks relating to the initial investigation and evidence inventory, follow-up interviews, dead-end leads, miscellaneous reports, fact sheets and weekly summaries.
When he had worked for the bureau, it was his routine to completely clear his desk and spread all the paperwork from a submitted case file across it. The cases came in from police departments all over the West. Some sent thick packages and some just thin files. He always asked for videotape of the crime scene. Big or small, the packages were all about the same thing. McCaleb was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. He became angry and vengeful as he read, all while alone in his little office, his coat on the door hook, his gun in the drawer. He could tune everything out but what was in front of him. He did his best work at the desk. As a field agent, he was average at best. But at his desk, he was better than most. And he felt a secret thrill in the back of his mind each time he opened one of those packages and the hunt for a new evil began again. He felt that thrill now as he began to read.
James Cordell had a lot going for him. A family, nice home and cars, good health and a job that paid well enough to allow his wife to be a full-time mother to their two daughters. He was an engineer with a private firm contracted by the state to maintain the structural integrity of the aqueduct system that delivered water from the snow melt in the mountains in the central state to the reservoirs that nursed the sprawl of Southern California. He lived in Lancaster in northeast Los Angeles County, which put him within an hour and a half by car of any point on the water line. On the night of January twenty-second he had been heading home from a long day inspecting the Lone Pine segment of the concrete aqueduct. It was payday and he stopped at the Regional State Bank branch just a mile from his home. His paycheck had been automatically deposited and he needed cash. But he was shot in the head and left for dead at the ATM before the machine finished spitting out his money. His killer was the one who took the crisp twenties when they rolled out of the machine.
The first thing McCaleb realized as he read the initial crime reports was that a sanitized version of events had been given to the media. The circumstances described in the
Because the call was relayed through a cell transponder, the 911 operator did not have an automatic address readout of the exact location from which the call had been made. She had to take that information the old- fashioned way-manually-and managed to transpose two numbers of the address Noone had given when she dispatched an emergency medical unit. In his statement, Noone said he had watched helplessly as a paramedic ambulance went screaming by to a location seven blocks away. He had to call and explain himself all over again to a new operator. The paramedics were redirected but Cordell was dead by the time they arrived.
As he read the initial reports, it was hard for McCaleb to make a judgment on whether the delay in the arrival of paramedics was of any consequence. Cordell had suffered a devastating head wound. Even if paramedics had gotten to him ten minutes sooner, it probably would have made no difference. It was unlikely that death could have been avoided.
Still, the 911 screwup was just the type of thing the media loved to run with. So somebody in the Sheriff’s Department-probably Jaye Winston’s supervisor-had decided to keep that information quiet.
The screwup was a side matter that held little interest for McCaleb. What did interest him was that there was at least a partial witness as well as a vehicle description. According to Noone’s statement, he had almost been creamed by a black blur as he had pulled into the bank’s lot. He described the exiting vehicle as a black Jeep Cherokee with the newer, smoother styling. He got only a split-second view of the driver, a man he described only as white and with either gray hair or a gray cap on his head.
There were no other witnesses listed in the initial reports. Before moving on to the supplemental reports and the autopsy protocol, McCaleb decided to look at the videos. He turned on the television and VCR and first popped in the tape made from the ATM’s surveillance camera.
As with the tape from the Sherman Market, there was a timeline running across the bottom of the frame. The picture was shot through a fish-eye lens that distorted the image. The man McCaleb assumed was James Cordell came into the frame and slid his bank card into the machine. His face was very close to the camera, blocking out a view of almost everything else. It was a design flaw-unless the real purpose of the camera was not to capture robberies but the faces of fraud artists using stolen or gimmick bank cards.
As Cordell typed in his code number, he hesitated and looked over his right shoulder, his head tracking something passing behind him-the Cherokee pulling into the lot. He finished typing in his transaction and a nervous look came across his face. Nobody likes going to an ATM at night, even a well-lighted machine in a low-crime neighborhood. The only machine McCaleb ever used was inside a twenty-four-hour supermarket, where there always was the safety and deterrent of crowds. Cordell took a nervous glance over his left shoulder, nodded at someone off-screen and then looked back at the machine. Nothing about the person he looked at had alarmed him further. The shooter obviously had not pulled on the mask. Despite his outward calm, Cordell’s eyes dropped down to the cash slot, his mind probably repeating a silent mantra of
Then almost immediately the gun came into the frame, reaching over his shoulder and just kissing his left temple before the trigger was pulled and James Cordell’s life was taken. There was the blast of blood misting the camera lens and the man went forward and to his right, apparently going into the wall next to the ATM and then falling backward to the ground.
The shooter then moved into the video frame and grabbed the cash as it was delivered through the slot. At that moment McCaleb paused the picture. On the screen was a full view of the masked shooter. He was in the same dark jumpsuit and mask worn by the shooter in the Gloria Torres tape. As Winston had said, ballistics weren’t necessary. They would only be a scientific confirmation of something Winston knew and now McCaleb knew in the gut. It was the same man. Same clothes, same method of operation, same dead eyes behind the mask.
He flicked the button again and the video continued. The shooter grabbed the cash from the machine. As he did this, he seemed to be saying something but his face was not squared to the camera as with the Sherman Market shootings. It was as if he was speaking to himself this time rather than to the camera.
The shooter quickly moved to the left of the screen and stooped to pick up something unseen. The bullet casing. He then darted to the right and disappeared from the screen. McCaleb watched for a few moments. The only figure in the picture was the still form of Cordell on the pavement below the machine. The only movement was the widening pool of blood around his head. Seeking the lower ground, the blood slid into a joint in the pavement and started moving in a line toward the curb.
A minute went by and then a man entered the video screen, crouching over Cordell’s body. James Noone. He was bald across the top of his head and wearing thin-framed glasses. He touched the wounded man’s neck, then looked around, probably to make sure he was safe himself. He then jumped up and was gone, presumably to make the call on his cell phone. Another half minute went by before Noone returned to the frame to wait for help. As the time went by, Noone swiveled his head back and forth, apparently fearing that the gunman, if not in the car he had seen speeding away, might still be around. Finally, his attention was drawn in the direction of the street. His mouth opened in a silent scream and he waved his arms above his head as he apparently watched the paramedics speed by. He then jumped up and left the screen again.
A few moments later the screen jumped. McCaleb checked the time and saw that it was now seven minutes later. Two paramedics moved quickly into place around Cordell. They checked for pulse and pupil response. They ripped open his shirt and one of the rescuers listened to his chest with a stethoscope. Another quickly arrived with a wheeled stretcher. But one of the first two looked at the man and shook his head. Cordell was dead.
A few moments later the screen went blank.
After pausing a moment, almost in reverence, McCaleb put in the crime scene tape next. This was obviously taken from a hand-held video camera. It started with some environmental shots of the bank property and the street. In the bank lot there were two vehicles: a dusty white Chevy Suburban and a smaller vehicle barely visible on its other side. McCaleb assumed the Suburban was Cordell’s. It was large and rugged, dusty from driving the mountain and desert roads alongside the aqueduct. He assumed the other car belonged to the witness, James
