"Well, the complexions don't match. One guy looks Mexican."
"That would be easy. A couple hours in a tanning salon could give him that look."
Banks played the pointer's red dot along the bridge the Good Samaritan's nose.
"Look at the slope of the nose," he said. "See the double bump?"
"Right."
The red dot jumped to the left screen and found the same double bump in the slope of James Noone's nose.
"It's an unscientific guess but it looks pretty close me," Banks said.
"Me too."
"You've got different-color eyes but that can be done."
"Contacts."
"Right. And here, the expanded jawline on this guy on the right. A dental appliance-you know, like a rubber sleep guard-or even wads of tissue paper like Brando used in The Godfather could be used to make that appearance."
McCaleb nodded, silently noting another possible connection to the gangster movie. Cannolis and now possibly wads of tissue paper as cheek implants.
"And hair is always changeable," Banks was saying. "In fact, this guy looks like he's got on a wig."
Banks ran the red dot along the Good Samaritan's hairline. McCaleb silently chastised himself for seeing this only now. The hairline was a perfect line, the telltale indication of a hairpiece.
"Let's see what else we've got."
Banks went back to the dials and pulled back on the image. He then used the mouse to delineate a new enhancement area. The Good Samaritan's hands.
"It's like chicks," Banks said. "They can put on makeup, wigs, even get their tits done. But they can't do nothing about their hands. Their hands-and sometimes their feet-always give 'em away."
Once he had the Good Samaritan's hands blown up and in focus, he went to work on the other console until he had an enlargement of Noone's right hand on the opposite screen. Banks stood up so that he was at direct eye level with the screens and leaned to within a few inches of each tube as he studied and compared the hands.
"Okay, here, look."
McCaleb stood up and looked closely at the screens.
"What?"
"The first one has got a bit of a scar here on the knuckle. You see it, the discoloration?"
McCaleb leaned in close to the image of the Good Samaritan's right hand.
"Wait a sec," Banks said. He opened a drawer in the console and pulled out a photographer's eyepiece, the kind used to study and magnify negatives on a light table. "Try this."
McCaleb held the eyepiece over the knuckle in question and looked through it. He could see a swirl of white scar tissue on the knuckle. Though the whole image was distorted and blurry, he identified the scar as almost being in the shape of a question mark.
"Okay," he said. "Let's see the other."
He took a step to his left and used the eyepiece to locate the same knuckle on James Noone's right hand. The hand was not held in the same posture or at the same angle but the thick white swirl of scar tissue was there. McCaleb held steady and studied the image until he was sure. He then closed his eyes for a moment. It was a lock. The man on each of the VDT screens was the same man.
"Is it there?" Banks asked.
McCaleb handed him the eyepiece.
"It's there. Any chance I can get hard copies of those two screens?"
Banks was looking through the eyepiece at the second screen.
"It's there all right," he said. "And yes, I can make hard copies. Let me put the images on a disk and take it back to the printer in the lab. It'll take a few minutes."
"Thanks, man."
"I hope it helps."
"More than you know."
"What's the guy doing anyway? Dressing up like a Mexican and doing good deeds?"
"Not really. Someday I'll tell you the whole thing."
Banks let it go and went to work on the console, transferring the video images on the screens to a computer disk. He backed up the videos and transferred the headshots as well.
"Be back in a few minutes," he said, getting up. "Unless I have to warm up the machine."
"Hey, is there a phone I can use while you're gone?"
"In the left drawer there. Hit nine first."
McCaleb called Winston's home number and got her machine. As he listened to her voice, he hesitated about leaving a message, aware of the consequences to Winston if it was ever proved that she had worked with the subject of a murder investigation. A tape of his voice could do that. But he decided that the discoveries he had made in the last hour made it worth the risk. He didn't want to page Winston because he didn't want to wait around for her to call. He had to move. He hatched a quick plan and left a message after the beep.
"Jaye, it's me. I'll explain all of this when I see you but for now just trust me. I know who the shooter is. It's Noone, Jaye, James Noone. I'm heading to his address now-the address on the witness report. Meet me there if you can. I'll run it all down for you then."
He hung up and called her pager number. He then punched in her home phone number and hung up. With any luck, he thought, Winston would get the message and soon be heading toward Noone's address to back him up.
McCaleb pulled his leather bag onto his lap and opened the zippered center pouch. The two guns were there, his own Sig-Sauer P-228 and the HK P7 he now knew James Noone had planted under his boat. McCaleb reached into the bag and took his own weapon out. He checked the action and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. He pulled his jacket down over it.
40
WHEN QUESTIONED on the night of James Cordell's murder, James Noone had provided deputies with a single address for both his home and workplace. Until McCaleb got there, the address on Atoll Avenue
in North Hollywood defied identification as an apartment or an office. That area of the Valley was a hodgepodge mixture of residential, commercial and even industrial zoning.
He slowly crawled north on the 101, back through the Cahuenga Pass, and finally picked up some speed as he switched to the 134 north. He exited on Victory and drove west until he found Atoll Avenue
. The neighborhood he turned into was decidedly industrial. He could smell a bakery and he passed a fenced yard where slabs of jagged granite were stacked and pointing at the sky. There were warehouses without names on them. There was a pool 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 Let me stand next to your fire -from somewhere seemingly far away. And further down the drive, six warehouses away, the door to one of the garages had been pulled down unevenly until it jammed, offering a three-foot slice of the warehouse's interior that looked like a crooked smile blacker than the sky.
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 Brain Scan. He read the packaging and saw that the CD offered its user a guided tour of the human brain with detailed graphics and analysis of its workings.
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 names on the file tabs. Every single one of them.
"It's you," he whispered.
And in his mind he saw the apples cascading onto the floor and going every which way.
He shoved the file drawer closed and the loud bang echoed off the concrete floor and steel walls, startling him like a shot. He looked out into the night through the open door and listened. He heard nothing, not even the music anymore. Only silence.
His eyes moved to the computer monitor and he studied the numbers moving lazily around on the screen. He knew the computer had been left on for a reason. Not because Noone was coming back; McCaleb knew he was long gone. No, it had been left on for him. McCaleb had been expected here. He knew this now, knew in his heart that Noone had choreographed every move.
McCaleb tapped the space bar and the screen saver disappeared. In its place was a prompt for a password. McCaleb didn't hesitate. He had the sense he was being played like a piano. He typed in numbers in an order he knew by heart.
903472568
He hit the enter key and the comp
uter went to work. In a few moments the password was accepted and the screen flashed to the program manager template, a white screen with various icons spread across the field. McCaleb studied these quickly. Most were for accessing games. There also were icons for accessing America Online and Word for Windows. The last symbol he looked at was a tiny file cabinet and he guessed that was the computer's file manager icon. He found the electronic mouse on the side of the computer and used it to move the computer arrow to the file cabinet. He double-clicked and the screen flashed to the file manager. It was basic computer navigating. In the file manager the listing of files ran down the left side of the screen in a neat column. Choosing one of the files and clicking the arrow on it would bring up the titles of the documents contained in that file in a column on the right side of the screen.
Using the mouse, McCaleb ran the arrow down the files column, studying each one. Most were software files for the operation of various icon programs such as America Online, the Las Vegas Casino game and others. But eventually he came to a file titled CODE . He clicked the mouse and several document titles appeared on the right side of the screen. He read through these quickly and realized they corresponded with the names on the file tabs in the desk drawer.