“But at the end, when I knew it was all going to shit, I got frustrated. I said to you, ‘Anything else?’ and you shook your head no. I asked, ‘Are you sure?’ and you shook your head again. I broke my own rule by speaking to you. The thing is, I asked those questions to you out loud. So Noone should have answered me. If he was in a true hypnotic trance, he should have answered because he would not have known those questions were directed at you. But he didn’t answer. It shows cognizance of the situation. He knew, either by the direction of my voice or its inflection, that I was talking to you instead of him. He shouldn’t have known that. Not in a true trance. He should have answered every question spoken in that room unless it was specifically addressed to someone else. I never used your name.”
“He was faking.”
“Right. And if he was faking it, then his answers were bogus. It meant he was part of the setup. I had the videos compared before I came here. There are hard copies in my car. James Noone and the Good Samaritan are the same guy. The shooter.”
Winston shook her head as if to signal brain overload. Her eyes scanned the room for a place to sit down. There was only the cot.
“You want to sit here,” McCaleb said, standing up.
“I want to sit down but not in here. We have to back out of here, Terry. I need to call Captain Hitchens and then the others, LAPD and the bureau. I better put out a pickup on Noone, too.”
McCaleb was amazed that she still didn’t have all the pieces together.
“Aren’t you listening? There is no Noone. He doesn’t exist.”
“What do you mean?”
“The name. It goes with everything else, Noone. Break it down and you get
He shook his head and dropped back into the chair. He put his face in his hands.
“How am I… I can’t live with this.”
Again Winston put her hand on his neck but this time he didn’t startle.
“Come on, Terry, let’s not think about that. Let’s go out to the car and wait. I have to get a crime scene crew in here, maybe get some prints so we can ID this guy.”
McCaleb stood up and walked around the desk and out toward the door. He spoke without looking back at her.
“He never left a print anywhere else before. I doubt he started now.”
Two hours later McCaleb was sitting in the Taurus, parked out on Atoll behind the yellow police lines that had been strung between the rows of garage warehouses. A hundred yards down the drive he could see the cluster of activity in and around Noone’s brightly lit garage. There were several detectives-some McCaleb recognized from the Code Killer task force, technicians, videographers from at least two of the agencies involved, and a half dozen uniformed officers standing by.
Moths to the flame, he thought. He watched it all with a strange detachment. His thoughts were on other things. Graciela and Raymond. And Noone. He couldn’t stop thinking about the man who called himself Noone. He had been in the same room with him. He had been that close.
He needed a drink, wanted the burning taste of whiskey in his throat, but he knew to take that taste would be the same as putting a gun to his head. He knew that despite the pain cutting through him, he would not give Noone, or whoever he was, that satisfaction. He decided in the darkness of the car that he would live. Despite it all he would live.
He didn’t notice the men walking down the drive toward him until they were almost to the Taurus. He flicked on the lights and identified them as Nevins and Uhlig and Arrango. He turned the lights off and waited. They opened the doors of the car and got in, Nevins in the front, the other two in the back, with Arrango directly behind McCaleb.
“Got any heat in this thing?” Nevins asked. “It’s getting cold out here.”
McCaleb started the car but waited to turn the heater on until the engine got warm. He looked in the rearview mirror at Arrango. It was too dark to see if he had a toothpick in his mouth.
“Where’s Walters?”
“Busy.”
“Okay,” Nevins said. “Uh, we came down to tell you it looks like we were wrong about you, McCaleb. I’m sorry. We’re sorry. Looks like Noone is the guy. You did good work.”
McCaleb only nodded. It was a half-assed apology but he didn’t care about that. What he had found out in order to clear his name would be harder to live with than if he had been publicly accused of the murders. Apologies meant nothing to him.
“We know it’s been a long night for you and we want to get you on your way. I was thinking we could just kind of get your rundown on how all of this shakes out and then maybe tomorrow you come in and give a formal statement. What do you think?”
“Fine. As far as the formal statement goes, I’ll give it to Winston. Not you guys.”
“Fair enough. I can understand that. But for now, why don’t you tell us how, in your view, how this whole thing works. Can you do that?”
McCaleb leaned forward and switched on the heater. He composed his thoughts for a few moments before beginning.
