chemical supply wholesaler and an industrial waste recycling center. Just where Atoll dead-ended at an old railroad spur with tall weeds poking up between the rails, McCaleb turned the Taurus down a driveway bordered on both sides by a long row of small, single-garage-bay warehouses. Each unit was a separate small business or storage lockup. Some had the names of businesses painted over the aluminum roll-up doors, some had no identifying marks at all and were either unrented or used anonymously for storage. McCaleb stopped the car in front of the rusting door marked with the address James Noone had given deputies three months before. There were no other markings on the door but the address. He killed the car’s engine and got out.
It was a black night. No moon, no stars. The row of warehouses was dark save for a single floodlight down at the entrance. McCaleb looked around. He heard the tinny sound of music-Jimi Hendrix singing
He checked Noone’s unit, dropping to a crouch to study the line where the garage door met the concrete pavement. He wasn’t sure but there appeared to be a dim light emanating from within the warehouse. He stepped closer and could make out the padlock that attached a steel ring on the door to a matching ring embedded in the concrete.
He stood up and banged the door with an open palm. The noise was loud and he heard it reverberate inside. He stepped back and looked around again. Other than the sound of the music, there was only silence. The air was still. The night wind had not found its way down to the space between the rows of garages.
McCaleb got back in the car, started it and backed it up at an angle so that the headlights were at least partially focused on Noone’s garage. He then killed the engine but left the lights on, got out and went to the trunk. After lifting up the trunk mat, he found the jack assembly intact. He removed the jack handle and came around the car to the garage door. He looked up and down the drive once more and then bent down to the padlock.
As a bureau agent, McCaleb had never once been involved in an illegal break-in. He knew that they were a matter of routine but he had somehow avoided the ethical dilemma himself. But he felt no dilemma now as he worked the iron bar into the hasp of the lock. He wasn’t carrying the badge anymore and, above that, this was personal. Noone was a killer and, worse yet, he had sought to pin his work on McCaleb. McCaleb didn’t give a second thought to Noone’s rights to protection from unlawful search and seizure.
Holding the jack handle on the far end for leverage, he slowly began pulling the steel bar in a clockwise motion. The padlock hasp remained strong but the steel ring attached to the door groaned under the pressure and then snapped off, its solder points giving way.
McCaleb straightened up and looked around and listened. Nothing. Just Hendrix covering Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” He quickly moved back to the Taurus and returned the jack handle to the spare-tire kit, pulled the trunk mat back over it and closed the trunk lid.
As he came around the car, he bent over next to the front tire and ran two fingers along the wheel rim, picking up a good amount of black carbon dust that had built up from the brake pads. He stepped over to the garage door and, squatting down by the lock, he smeared the carbon over the break points of the solder so that it would appear as though the ring had been broken off the door some time ago and the break points had been exposed to the elements. He then rubbed the rest of the dirt off his fingers onto one of his black socks.
When he was ready, he gripped the door’s pull handle with his right hand. With his left he reached behind him and under his coat. He brought it back gripping his pistol, which he held at shoulder height, pointing skyward. With one move he stood and jerked the door up with him, using its momentum to keep it moving up until it was above his head.
His eyes quickly scanned the dim confines of the garage, his gun now pointed in the direction his eyes moved. The car’s headlights illuminated about a third of the room. He could see an unmade cot and a stack of cardboard boxes against the left wall. Scanning right, he saw the outline of a desk and file cabinets. There was a computer on the desk, the monitor’s screen apparently on and facing the rear wall, throwing a violet glow against it. McCaleb noticed the six-foot-long light hanging from the ceiling. In the shadowy light his eyes traced the aluminum conduit from the junction box along the ceiling and down the wall to a switch near the cot. He stepped sideways and reached for the switch without looking at it.
A fluorescent bulb blinked once, buzzed and then lit the garage with its severe light. McCaleb could now see that there was no one in the room and there were no closets to be checked. Just the approximately twenty-by- twelve-foot space cluttered with a mish-mash of office furniture and equipment and the basic necessities of home-a bed, a chest of drawers, an electric space heater, a double-coil hot plate and a half-size refrigerator. No sink and no bathroom.
McCaleb stepped backward and then around the car. He reached in through the open window and shut off the lights. He then slipped the pistol back into his waistband, this time in the front for easier access. Finally, he stepped into the garage.
If the air had been still outside, then on the inside it seemed stagnant. McCaleb moved slowly around the old steel government desk and looked at the computer. The monitor was lit and a screen saver glowed on the screen. Random numbers of different sizes and colors floated on a sea of purple velvet. McCaleb stared at the screen for a few moments and he felt a tugging inside, almost a coiling of some deep muscle. In his mind the picture of a single red apple bouncing on a dirty linoleum floor appeared and then was gone. A tremble climbed the ladder of his spine.
“Shit,” he whispered.
He looked away from the computer screen, noticing that also on the desk was a collection of books clasped between brass bookends. Most were reference books on accessing and using the Internet. There were two volumes containing Internet addresses and two biographies of well-known computer hackers. There were also three books on crime scene investigation, a manual on homicide investigation, a book on an FBI investigation of a serial killer known as the Poet, and, finally, two books on hypnosis, the last about a man named Horace Gomble. McCaleb knew about Gomble. He had been the subject of more than one investigation by the bureau’s serial crimes unit. Gomble was a former Las Vegas entertainer who had used his skills as a hypnotist, along with drug enhancers, to molest a series of young girls at county fairs throughout Florida. As far as McCaleb knew, he was still in prison.
McCaleb moved slowly all the way behind the desk now and sat down in the worn command chair facing the computer. Using a pen from his pocket, he pulled the desk’s center drawer open. There was not much in it but a few pens and a plastic CD-ROM case. He used his pen to flip the case over and saw that it was called
He closed the drawer and used the pen again to open one of the two side drawers. The first one was empty except for an unopened box of Crackerjack. He closed it and below it was a file drawer. In this there were several manila files hanging in green folders hooked on two rails. Bending down to see better, McCaleb read the name on the tab of the first file.
GLORIA TORRES
He dropped the pen to the floor and in the same moment decided not to pick it up and that he didn’t care anymore about leaving fingerprints or possibly infecting a crime scene. He pulled the file out and opened it on the desk. It contained photos of Gloria Torres in various clothing at various times of the day. In two of the photos Raymond was with her. In one she was with Graciela.
There were typewritten logs in the file. Surveillance logs. Detailed descriptions of Gloria’s movements on a day-to-day basis. He quickly scanned these and saw repeated notations of her nightly stop at Sherman Market on her way home from work.
He closed the file, left it on the desk and reached for the next one in the drawer. He could have guessed the name written on the tab before he saw it.
JAMES CORDELL
He didn’t bother opening it. He knew it would contain photos and surveillance notes just like the first one. Instead he reached down and looked at the next file in line. It was as expected:
DONALD KENYON
He didn’t pull that file, either. He used his finger to bend back the tabs on the remaining files so he could read them. As he did this, his heart lurched inside his chest, as if it had somehow come loose inside. He knew the
