“Uh… actually, no,” Neff said. He was winded from the climb. “Nettie… got sorta spooked after what happened with Glory and I don’t blame her, a thing like that. So she’s on days now.”
Neff headed down another hallway toward a set of double doors.
“She’s here today?”
“Sure is. You can talk to her if you-the only thing I ask is that you talk to these folks on their breaks. Like Nettie for example. She goes to the break room at ten-thirty and maybe we’ll be done by then, so you can talk with her then.”
“No problem,” McCaleb said.
After a few steps in silence Neff turned around to look at McCaleb.
“So you were an FBI man, is that right?”
“Right.”
“That must’ve been pretty interesting.”
“Sometimes.”
“How come you quit? You look like a young man to me.”
“I guess it got a little too interesting.”
McCaleb looked at Graciela and winked. She smiled. McCaleb was saved from further personal inquiry by the noise of the press room. They came to the thick double doors which barely contained the roar of the presses on the other side. From a dispenser attached to the wall next to the doors, Neff pulled two plastic packages containing disposable foam earplugs and handed them to McCaleb and Graciela.
“Better put these in while we walk through. We’re running the whole line right now. Printing the
As they opened the packages and put in the plugs, Neff pulled his ear protectors up and into place. He opened one of the doors and they walked along the line of presses. The sensory impact was tactile as much as it was auditory. The floor vibrated as if they had just stepped into a minor earthquake. The earplugs did little to soften the high-pitched keening of the presses. A heavy thumping sound provided an underlying bass line. Neff led them to a door and into what was obviously the break room. There were long lunch tables and a variety of vending machines. The free spaces on the walls were taken up with corkboards cluttered with company and union announcements and safety-related warnings. The noise was greatly decreased when the door swung shut. They crossed the room and through another door entered Neff’s small office. As Neff pulled his ear set down around his neck again, McCaleb and Graciela pulled their plugs.
“Better hang on to those,” Neff said. “You go out the way you came in. Depending on when that is, we might be rolling out there.”
McCaleb took the plastic bag out of his pocket and put the plugs in it. Neff took the seat behind his desk and signaled them to two in front of it. The vinyl padding of the seat McCaleb was assigned was smeared with ink. He hesitated before sitting.
“Don’t worry,” Neff said, “it’s dry.”
For the next fifteen minutes they talked to Neff about Gloria Torres and got very little usable or salient information. It was clear that Neff liked Glory but it was also clear that his relationship was typical of most supervisor-employee interaction. It was primarily job focused and there was little personal information passed back and forth. When asked if he knew of anything that could have been troubling Glory, Neff shook his head and said he wished he knew something that would help. Any disputes with fellow employees? Same shake of the head.
Out of the blue McCaleb asked him if he knew James Cordell.
“Who’s that?” Neff said.
“What about Donald Kenyon?”
“What, that savings and loan guy?” Neff smiled. “Yeah, we were pals. At the country club. Milken and that guy, Boesky, hung out with us, too.”
McCaleb returned the smile and nodded. It was clear Neff was not going to be of much help. His mind drifted and Graciela asked Neff questions about who Glory’s friends were. McCaleb thought about the ink-stained chair upon which he sat. He knew where the ink came from. Probably everyone who sat in the chair before him was someone called in off the press line. It was why they all wore the navy blue uniforms. To hide the ink.
A thought occurred to him. Glory had been on her way home from work when she was killed. But she wasn’t in any uniform. She had changed. Here. But there had been nothing in the LAPD report about detectives finding work clothes in her car or checking the contents of a locker.
“Excuse me,” McCaleb said, interrupting Neff as he told Graciela about how skilled her sister was at driving a forklift that loaded huge rolls of newsprint into the presses. “Is there a locker room? Did Glory have a locker?”
“Sure, we got a locker room. Who wants to get into their automobile covered with ink? We’ve got complete fa-”
“Would Glory’s locker have been cleaned out yet?”
Neff sat back and thought a moment.
“You know, we got another hiring freeze here. We haven’t been able to get permission to replace Glory. Since we haven’t done that, I doubt we’ve cleaned out her locker.”
McCaleb felt a little jump. Maybe it was a break.
“Then is there a key? Can we look at it?”
“Uh, sure, I suppose so. I have to go get the master from the maintenance supervisor.”
Neff left them in his office while he went to get the master key and to find Nettie Stapleton. Since Glory’s locker was obviously in the women’s locker room, Neff had said before leaving that Nettie would escort Graciela in to search its contents. McCaleb would have to wait in the hallway with Neff. This did not sit well with McCaleb. It was not that he didn’t think Graciela capable of searching a locker. It was just that he would look at and treat the locker in its entirety, taking in the subtleties of what he saw the way he studied crime scenes and crime scene tapes.
Soon Neff was back with Stapleton and introductions were made. She remembered Graciela and offered seemingly heartfelt condolences. Neff then led the entourage downstairs to the hallway leading to the locker rooms. McCaleb was going to make one last offer, that if the locker room was empty, he be allowed in. But as they approached the door to the women’s locker room, he could hear the sound of the showers running. He knew he was going to be left out.
McCaleb had run out of things to ask Neff and was short of small talk. While they waited, he slowly sauntered away from the man so that he could avoid idle conversation and personal questions. There were more bulletin boards affixed to the wall between the locker room doors and he acted as though he was reading some of the posted notices.
Four minutes of silence went by in the hallway. McCaleb had moved from one end of the side-by-side bulletin boards to the other. When Graciela and Nettie finally came out, he was staring at a hand-drawn rendering of a liquid drop on a poster attached to the board. The drop was half shaded in with red, indicating that the employees were halfway toward their goal in an ongoing blood drive. Graciela walked up to him.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just some clothes, a bottle of perfume and her earphones. There were four pictures of Raymond and one of me taped to the door.”
“Earphones?”
“I mean ear protectors. But nothing else.”
“What kind of clothes?”
McCaleb was still staring at the poster as he spoke.
“A couple of fresh uniforms and a top from home and a pair of jeans.”
“You check all the pockets?”
“Yes. Nothing.”
It hit him then, with the impact of an armor-piercing bullet. He leaned forward and put his hand up against the bulletin board for support.
“Terry, what is it?” Graciela said. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t respond. His thoughts were racing. Graciela put her hand to his forehead to feel for fever. He brushed it aside.
