McCaleb looked down at the counter at his purchase but before he could see what it was he felt the cold ring of steel against his temple. He quickly turned and there was the masked man with a gun. McCaleb knew in the way knowledge and logic accompany dreams that the man was smiling behind the mask. The robber lowered the gun and fired into McCaleb’s chest, his bullet hitting the ten ring-the circle of the heart. The bullet went through McCaleb as if he were a paper target. But the impact forced him backward a step and then in slow motion he was falling. He felt no pain, only a sense of relief. He looked at the killer as he was going down and recognized the eyes watching through the mask. They were his own eyes. Then came the wink.
And he kept falling and falling.
“Fucking assholes,” McCaleb said, finally giving up on sleep and sitting up. It was the third time in a month it had happened.
He checked the clock and realized he had slept for more than ten hours. He slowly made his way to the head and took a shower. After he had toweled off, he took the morning reading of vital signs and the prescribed complement of assorted pills and liquid chemicals. He logged it all on the progress chart and then got out his razor. He was about to spread shaving cream across his face when he looked in the mirror and said, “Fuck it.”
He shaved his neck so he would look neat but left it at that, deciding that to shave two or three times a day for the rest of his life, or for as long as he was on prednisone, wasn’t an alternative. He had never had a beard before. The bureau wouldn’t have allowed it.
After dressing, he took a tall glass of orange juice, his phone book and the portable phone out to the stern and sat in the fishing chair as the sun came up. Between gulps of juice he constantly checked his watch, waiting for it to hit seven-fifteen, which he believed would be the best time to call Jaye Winston.
The Sheriff’s Department homicide offices were in Whittier on the far side of the county. From that location, the squad’s detectives handled all killings committed in unincorporated Los Angeles County and the various cities the department contracted with to provide law enforcement services. One of those cities was Palmdale, where James Cordell had been murdered.
Because the homicide squad offices were so distant, McCaleb had decided that it would be foolish to take an hour-long cab ride out there without knowing whether Winston would be in when he arrived. So he had decided on the seven-fifteen call rather than the surprise visit with a box of doughnuts.
“Those assholes.”
McCaleb looked around and saw one of his neighbors, Buddy Lockridge, standing in the cockpit of his sailboat, a forty-two-foot Hunter called the
“Yeah,” he said. “Not a good way to start the day.”
“Point is they shouldn’t be allowed to do that all through the night,” Buddy said. “Goddamn nuisance. I mean, you gotta be able to hear that from here to Long Beach.”
McCaleb just nodded.
“I talked to them over there in the harbor master’s. You know, told them to make a complaint to the Port Authority but they don’t give a shit. I’m thinking of gettin’ a little petition going. You going to sign it?”
“I’ll sign it.”
McCaleb looked at his watch.
“I know, you think it’s a waste of time.”
“No. I just don’t know if it will work. The port’s a twenty-four-hour operation. They’re not going to stop unloading ships at night because a bunch of people on their boats in the marina sign a complaint.”
“Yeah, I know. The assholes… I wish one of them boxes would drop on
