He clicked the phone back on and called his own machine to check for messages. There were nine, the machine having accumulated them unplayed since Saturday. He listened to four messages from Jaye Winston and two from Vernon Carruthers that were outdated by events. There was also Graciela’s message that she would be coming to the boat Monday. Of the two remaining messages, the first was from Tony Banks, the video tech. He told McCaleb that he had completed the job on the video he had dropped off. The other message was from Jaye Winston again. She had called that morning to tell McCaleb that his prediction had come true. The bureau was increasing its involvement in the investigations of the murders. Hitchens had not only promised full cooperation but was abdicating lead status to agents Nevins and Uhlig. She was frustrated. McCaleb could easily read it in her voice. But so was he. He clicked off and blew out his breath.
“Now what?” Graciela asked.
“I don’t know. I need to confirm this… this idea before I take the next step.”
“What about the sheriff’s detective? She should have the complete autopsy. She’d know the blood type.”
“No.”
He didn’t say anything else by way of explanation. He looked around what he could see of the house from the couch. It was small, neatly furnished and kept. There was a large framed photo of Gloria Torres on the top shelf of a china cabinet in the adjoining dining room.
“Why don’t you want to call her?” Graciela asked.
“I’m not sure. I just… I want to figure things out a little bit before I talk to her. I think I should wait a little while and see if I hear from Mrs. Cordell.”
“What about calling the coroner’s office directly?”
“No, I don’t think that would work, either.”
What he was leaving unsaid was the fact that if he confirmed his theory, it would mean that anyone who benefited from Glory’s death would rightly have to be considered a suspect. That included him. Therefore, he did not want to make any inquiry to authorities that might set that into motion. Not until he was ready with a few more answers with which to defend himself.
“I know!” Graciela suddenly said. “The computer in the blood lab-I can probably confirm it there. Unless his name’s been deleted. But I doubt that. I remember coming across the name of a donor who had been dead four years and he was still on there.”
What she was saying made little sense to McCaleb.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
She looked at her watch and jumped up from her chair.
“Let me change and then we have to hurry. I’ll explain everything on the way.”
She then disappeared down a hallway and McCaleb heard a bedroom door close.
Once inside the hospital, Graciela, her nurse’s uniform and her familiar face, got them where they needed to go. She was like an ambassador for whom all barriers were lifted. No one stopped them. No one questioned them. They took a staff elevator to the fourth floor, arriving a few minutes past twelve.
Graciela had told McCaleb her plan on the way over. She figured they could count on having fifteen minutes to do what they had to do. That was the maximum-just the time it would take for the blood supplies coordinator to go down to the hospital cafeteria, get her lunch and then bring it back up to the pathology lab. The BSC actually had an hour lunch break but it was routine in that job to eat lunch at your desk because there was no replacement while you were gone. The BSC was a nursing position but because the job did not involve direct patient care, no one filled in the spot when the BSC went on break.
As Graciela expected, they got to the path lab at 12:05 and found the BSC desk empty. McCaleb felt his pulse quicken a little bit as he looked at the flying toasters floating across the screen of the computer sitting on the desk. However, the desk sat in a large open lab station. About ten feet from the computer desk was another desk where a woman in a nurse’s uniform sat. Graciela showed nothing but ease with the situation.
“Hey, Patrice, what’s the haps?” she said cheerfully.
The woman turned from the files she was dealing with in front of her and smiled. She glanced at McCaleb but then looked back at Graciela.
“Graciela,” she said, drawing each syllable out and overdoing the Latin inflection like a television news anchor. “Nothing’s happening, girl. How ’bout you?”
“Nada. Who’s the BSC and where’s the BSC?”
“It’s Patty Kirk for a few days. She went down to get a sandwich a couple minutes ago.”
“Hmmmm,” Graciela said as if it had just dawned on her. “Well, I’m going to make a quick connect.”
She came around the counter and headed toward the computer.
“We’ve got an SCW down in emergency with rare blood. I have a feeling this guy’s going to run through everything we got and I want to see what’s out there.”
“You could’ve just called up. I would’ve run it for you.”
“I know but I’m showing my friend, Terry, how we do things around here. Terry, this is Patrice. Patrice, Terry. He’s pre-med, UCLA. I’m seeing if I can’t talk him out of it.”
Patrice looked at McCaleb and smiled again, then her eyes studied him in an appraising way. He knew what she was thinking.
“I know, it’s kind of late,” he said. “It’s a midlife crisis sort of thing.”
“I should say so. Good luck during residency. I’ve seen twenty-five-year-olds come out of that looking like they were fifty.”
“I know. I’ll be ready.”
They smiled at each other and the conversation was finally over. Patrice went back to her files and McCaleb looked at Graciela, who was seated in front of the computer. The toasters were gone and the screen was awake. There was some sort of template with white boxes on it.
“You can come around,” she said. “Patrice won’t bite you.”
Patrice laughed but didn’t say anything. McCaleb came around and stood behind her chair. She looked up at him and winked, knowing that he was blocking any view Patrice had of her. He winked back and smiled. Her coolness was impressive. He looked at his watch and then held his arm down so she could see it was now seven after twelve. She turned her attention to the computer.
“Now, we’re looking for type AB blood, okay. So what we do is log on here and connect with BOPRA. That’s short for Blood and Organ Procurement and Request Agency. That’s the big regional blood bank we deal with. Most hospitals around here do.”
“Right.”
She reached up and ran her finger beneath a small piece of paper taped to the monitor above the screen. There was a six-digit number written on it. McCaleb knew this was the access code. On the drive over Graciela had explained how little security was attached to the BOPRA system. The code to access the computer was changed monthly. But the BSC position at Holy Cross was not a full-time position, meaning that nurses assigned to it were put through on rotation. This rotation was also routinely disrupted because nurses who had colds, viruses and any other maladies that did not require them to miss work but required that they be kept away from patients were often assigned to the BSC desk. Because of the high number of people working in the slot, the BOPRA code was simply taped to the monitor each month when it was changed. In eight years as a nurse, Graciela had worked at two other hospitals in Los Angeles. She had said that this practice was the same at each of those hospitals as
