state and his wife did not believe he had spent any time at all to the south. She did not think he had been down into the Valley or other parts of the city since before Christmas.
McCaleb folded his notebook closed.
“I appreciate your time, Mrs. Cordell. The last thing I wanted to ask about is whether or not any of your husband’s possessions were missing.”
“His possessions? What do you mean?”
Amelia Cordell led McCaleb out to the Chevy Suburban. They had already discussed her husband’s clothing and jewelry. Nothing had been taken, she assured him, just as the ATM video had seemed to attest. That left the Suburban.
“No one’s been in it?” he asked as she was unlocking it.
“I drove it home from the sheriff’s office. That was actually the only time I ever drove it. Jimmy bought it for work only. He said if we started using it for nonwork driving, he couldn’t write everything off. I don’t drive it because it’s too high up for me to be climbing in and out of all the time.”
McCaleb nodded and leaned into the truck through the open driver’s door. The rear seat was folded down and the cargo area was full of surveying equipment, a folding drafting table and other tools. McCaleb quickly dismissed it all. It was equipment, not something of a personal nature.
He concentrated on the front section of the vehicle. A patina of road dust covered everything. Cordell must have been driving in the desert with the windows down. Using one finger, he opened a pocket on the door and saw it was crammed with service station receipts and a small spiral notebook on which Cordell had noted mileage, dates and destinations. McCaleb took the notebook out and flipped through the pages to see if there had been any trips to the west Valley, particularly Chatsworth or Canoga Park. There were none recorded. It appeared Amelia Cordell had been correct about her husband.
He flipped down the driver-side visor and found two folded maps. McCaleb walked them around to the front and opened them on the hood. One was a gas station map of central California and another was a survey map that showed the aqueduct and its many access roads. McCaleb was looking for any unusual notations Cordell might have made on the maps but there were none. He refolded them and put them back.
He now sat in the driver’s seat and looked around. He noticed the rearview mirror and asked Amelia Cordell if her husband had ever hung anything off it, knickknacks or otherwise. She said she didn’t remember anything.
He checked the glove compartment and the center console. There was more paperwork and several tapes for use in the stereo, an assortment of pens and mechanical pencils, and a pack of opened mail. Cordell liked country music. Nothing seemed amiss. Nothing came to mind.
“Do you know if he had any particular kind of pen or pencil he liked? Like a special pen he might have gotten as a gift or something?”
“I don’t think so. Nothing I remember.”
McCaleb took the rubber band off the mail and looked through the envelopes. It appeared to be departmental mail, notices of meetings, reports on problems on the aqueduct that Cordell was to check out. McCaleb put the band back around the stack and placed it back in the glove box. Amelia Cordell watched him silently.
In an open bin between the seats there was a pager and a pair of sunglasses. Cordell had been coming home at night when he stopped at the ATM. That explained why the glasses were not on, but not the beeper.
“Mrs. Cordell, do you know why his pager is here? How come he wasn’t wearing it?”
She thought a moment and then said, “He usually didn’t keep it on his belt for long rides because he said it was uncomfortable. He said it dug into his kidneys. He forgot it a few times. You know, left it in the car and missed his pages. That’s how I know why.”
McCaleb nodded. As he sat there thinking about what to check next, the passenger door was suddenly opened and Buddy Lockridge looked in.
“What’s up?”
McCaleb had to squint to look at him because of the sun coming into the car over Buddy’s shoulder.
“I’m almost done, Buddy. Why don’t you wait in the car?”
“My ass was getting sore.” He looked past McCaleb and nodded at Amelia Cordell. “Sorry, ma’am.”
McCaleb was annoyed by the intrusion but introduced Lockridge as his associate to Amelia Cordell.
“So what are we looking for?” Buddy asked.
“We? I’m just looking for something that’s not here. Why don’t you wait in the car?”
“Like something that might’ve been taken. I see.”
He flipped down the passenger-side visor. McCaleb had already checked it and there was nothing there.
“I got it, Buddy. Why don’t you-”
“What went there, a picture?”
He pointed toward the dashboard. McCaleb followed the line of his finger but didn’t see anything.
“What are you talking about?”
“There. See the dust? Looks like a picture or something. Maybe he kept a parking pass there until he needed it.”
McCaleb looked again but still didn’t see what Lockridge was pointing at and talking about. He shifted to his right and leaned toward Buddy and then turned his head back to look at the dashboard.
Now he saw it.
A coat of driving dust had settled on the clear plastic guard over the display of speedometer and other gauges. On one side of the plastic there was a clearly defined square where there was no dust. Something had been propped on the plastic guard until recently. McCaleb realized how lucky he was. He probably would never have noticed it. It only became apparent when viewed from the passenger side and with the sun coming in at a low angle.
“Mrs. Cordell?” McCaleb said. “Can you walk around and look at this through the other door?”
He waited. Lockridge stepped out of the way so she could look in. McCaleb pointed to the outline on the plastic guard. It was about five inches wide by three inches deep.
“Did your husband keep a picture of you or the kids here?”
She shook her head slowly.
“Boy, I don’t really know. He had pictures but I just don’t know where he put them. He could have but I don’t know. I never drive this. We always take the Caravan-even when just Jim and I would go out. Like I said, I didn’t like climbing up there.”
McCaleb nodded.
“Is there anyone he worked with who might know, who might have ridden with him to jobs or to lunch, that sort of thing?”
Driving on the Antelope Valley Freeway back toward the city, they passed a seemingly never-ending line of cars stacked in the lanes going the other way. Commuters heading home or travelers getting out of the city for the weekend. McCaleb barely noticed. He was deep in his own thoughts. He barely even heard Lockridge until he repeated himself twice.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said I guess I helped you out back there, noticing that.”
“You did, Buddy. I might not have noticed it. But I still wish you had stayed in the car. This is all I’m paying you for, to drive.”
With a double hand gesture McCaleb indicated the car.
“Yeah, well, you might still be back there looking if I had stayed in the car.”
“We’ll never know now.”
“So aren’t you going to tell me what you found out?”
“Nothing, Buddy. I didn’t find out anything.”
He had lied. Amelia Cordell had taken him back inside and allowed him to use her phone to call her husband’s office. Buddy had been sent back to the car to wait. Inside, McCaleb talked to James Cordell’s supervisor, who gave him the names and numbers of some of the aqueduct maintenance supervisors Cordell would have been working with in early January. McCaleb then called the Lone Pine aqueduct station and talked to Maggie Mason, who was one of those supervisors. She reported that she had joined Cordell for lunch twice in the week before the
