Blood Work

He glanced over at Raymond. The boy had settled down and was standing still, looking down at his reel while a steady torrent of line was being pulled out. McCaleb knew that a squid didn’t have that kind of pulling power.

“Hey, wait a minute, Raymond. I think you’ve got something there.”

He put his rod down and went to the boy. He flipped the reel’s bail over and the line caught. Almost immediately the pole was pulled down and almost out of the boy’s hands. McCaleb grabbed it and held it up.

“You got one!”

“Hey! I got one! I got one!”

“Remember what I told you, Raymond. Pull back, reel down. Pull back, reel down. I’ll help you with the pole until we tire that boy out. It feels like a big one. You okay?”

“Yeah!”

With McCaleb doing most of the pulling up on the pole, they began to fight the fish. Meantime, McCaleb directed Graciela to reel in the other lines to avoid a tangle with the live line. McCaleb and the boy fought the fish for about ten minutes. All the while McCaleb could feel through the pole the fight slipping out of it as it tired. Finally, he was able to turn the pole over to Raymond so he could finish the job himself.

McCaleb slipped on a pair of gloves from the tackle box and climbed down the rocks to the water’s edge. Just a few inches below the surface he saw the silvery fish weakly struggling against the line. McCaleb kneeled on the rock, getting his shoes and pants wet, and leaned out until he could grab hold of Raymond’s line. He tugged the fish forward and brought its mouth up, reached into the water and locked a gloved hand around the tail, just forward of the back fins. He then yanked the fish out of the water and climbed back up the rocks to Raymond.

The fish was shining in the sun like polished metal.

“Barracuda, Raymond,” he said, holding it up. “Look at those teeth.”

22

THE DAY HAD GONE WELL. Raymond caught two barracudas and a white bass. The first fish had been the biggest and most exciting, though the second was hooked while they were eating lunch and almost pulled the unattended pole into the water. After they got back in the late afternoon Graciela insisted that Raymond rest before dinner and took him down to the forward stateroom. McCaleb used the time to spray off the fishing equipment with the stern hose. When Graciela came back up and they were alone, sitting on chairs on the deck, he felt a physical craving for a cold beer that he could just sit back and enjoy.

“That was wonderful,” Graciela said of the outing to the jetty.

“I’m glad. Think you’re going to stay for dinner?”

“Of course. He wants to stay over, too. He loves boats. And I think he wants to fish again tomorrow. You’ve created a monster.”

McCaleb nodded, thinking about the night ahead. A few minutes of easy silence went by while they watched the other activities in the marina. Saturdays were always busy days. McCaleb kept his eyes moving. Having guests made him more alert for the Russian, even though he’d decided the chances of Bolotov showing up were slim. He’d had the upper hand in Toliver’s office. If he had wanted to harm McCaleb, he could have done it then. But thoughts of Bolotov brought the case intruding. He remembered a question he’d thought of for Graciela.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You first came to me last Saturday. But the story about me ran a week before that. Why did you wait a week?”

“I didn’t really. I didn’t see the article. A friend of Glory’s from the paper called up and said he saw it and wondered if, you know, you could’ve been the one who got her heart. Then I went to the library and read the story. I came here the next day.”

He nodded. She decided it was her turn to ask a question.

“Those boxes down there.”

“What boxes?”

“Stacked under the desk. Are they your cases?”

“They’re old files.”

“I recognize some of the names written on them. The article mentioned some of them. Luther Hatch, I remember him. And the Code Killer. Why did they call him that?”

“Because he-if it was a he-left messages for us or sent messages to us that always had the same number at the bottom.”

“What did it mean?”

“We never found out. The best people at the bureau and even the encryption people at the National Security Agency couldn’t crack it. Personally, I didn’t think it meant anything at all. It wasn’t a code. It was just another way for the UnSub to tweak us, keep us chasing our tails… nine-oh-three, four-seven-two, five-six-eight.”

“That’s the code?”

“That’s the number. Like I said, I don’t think there was any code.”

“Is that what they decided in Washington, too?”

“No. They never gave up on it. They were sure it meant something. They thought it might be the guy’s Social Security number. You know, scrambled around. With their computer they printed out every combination and then got all the names from Social Security. Hundreds of thousands. They ran them all through the computers.”

“Looking for what?”

“Criminal records, profile matches… it was one big wild-goose chase. The UnSub wasn’t on the list.”

“What is UnSub?”

“Unknown subject. That’s what we called each one until we caught him. We never caught the Code Killer.”

McCaleb heard the faint sound of a harmonica and looked over at the Double-Down. Lockridge was down below practicing Spoonful.

“Was he the only one of your cases where that happened?”

“You mean where the guy was never caught? No. Unfortunately, a lot of them get away. But the Code case was personal, I guess. He sent letters to me. He resented me for some reason.”

“What did he do to the people he…”

“The Code Killer was unusual. He killed in many different ways and with no discernible pattern. Men, women, even one small child. He shot, he stabbed, he strangled. There was no handle.”

“Then how did you know it was him each time?”

“He told us. The letters, the code left at the crime scenes. You see, the victims and who they were didn’t matter. They were only objects by which he could exercise power and stick it in the face of authority. He was an authority-complex killer. There was another killer, the Poet. He was a traveler, was active across the country a few years ago,”

“I remember. He got away here in L.A., right?”

“Right. He was an authority killer, too. See, you strip away their fantasies and their methods and a lot of these people are very much alike. The Poet got off on watching us flailing around. The Code Killer was the same way. He liked to tweak the cops every chance he got.”

“Then he just stopped?”

“He either died or went to jail for something else. Or he moved somewhere else and started a new routine. But it’s not something these guys can just turn off.”

“And what did you do in the Luther Hatch case?”

“Just my job. Look, we should talk about something else, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I just… I don’t know, I don’t like all of those old stories.”

He had wanted to talk to her about her sister and the latest developments but now it didn’t seem like the right time. He let the opportunity pass.

For dinner McCaleb grilled hamburgers and barracuda steaks. Raymond seemed enthusiastic about eating the