“No problem, I didn’t think I’d get out of here until after seven. You’re giving me a head start.”
McCaleb looked at his watch and then back at Noone.
“It’s almost seven-thirty right now.”
“What?”
He looked at his watch, surprise showing on his face.
“People in the hypnotic state often lose time,” McCaleb said.
“I thought it was only like ten minutes.”
“That’s normal. It’s called disturbed time.”
McCaleb stood up and they shook hands and Winston walked him out. McCaleb sat back down and clasped his hands together on top of his head. He was bone tired and wished that
The door to the interview room opened and Captain Hitchens stepped in. He had a dour expression on his face that was easy to interpret.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked as he sat down on the table next to the scissors.
“Same as you. It was a bust. We got a better description of the car but it still only narrows it down to ten thousand or so. And we got the hat, which there may even be more of.”
“ Cleveland Indians?”
“What? Oh, the CI? Maybe, but I think they have a little Indian guy on their hats.”
“Right, right. Well… what about Molotov?”
“Bolotov.”
“Whatever. I guess we’ve painted him out now.”
“Looks it.”
Hitchens clapped his hands together and after a few uncomfortable moments of silence, Winston came back in and stood there with her hands in the pockets of her blazer.
“Where’s Arrango and Walters?” McCaleb asked.
“They left,” she said. “They weren’t impressed.”
McCaleb stood back up and told Hitchens that if he got off the table he’d put it back in place and then put the light bulbs back into the ceiling. Hitchens said not to bother. He told McCaleb that he had done enough-which McCaleb took to mean in more ways than one.
“Then I guess I’ll be going,” he said. Pointing at the mirror, he added, “You think at some point I could get a copy of the tape or the transcript? I’d like to look at it at some point. Might get a few ideas for a follow-up.”
“Well, Jaye can make you a copy. We’ve got a transfer machine. But as far as any follow-ups go, I don’t see much of a need to pursue this. The guy clearly didn’t see our shooter’s face and the plates were covered. What else is there to say?”
McCaleb didn’t answer. They all left after that, Hitchens pushing his chair back toward his office and Winston leading McCaleb into the video room. She grabbed a fresh tape off a shelf and put it in a tape machine already attached to the one that had recorded the hypnotism session.
“Look, I still think it was worth the shot,” McCaleb said as she pushed the buttons that began dubbing one tape onto the other.
“Don’t worry, it was. I’m disappointed only in the lack of results and because we lost the Russian, not in the fact that we did it. I don’t know what the captain thinks and I don’t care about those LAPD guys, that’s how I look at it.”
McCaleb nodded. It was nice of her to put it that way and let him off the hook. After all, he had pushed for the use of hypnotism and it hadn’t paid off. She could have dumped all the blame on him.
“Well, if Hitchens gives you grief, just put it all on me. Tell him it was all me.”
Winston didn’t reply. She popped the dubbed tape out of the machine, slid it into its cardboard sleeve and handed it to McCaleb.
“I’ll walk you out,” she said.
“Nah, that’s okay. I know the way.”
“Okay, Terry, stay in touch.”
“Sure.” They were out in the hallway before Terry remembered something. “Hey, did you talk to the captain about the DRUGFIRE thing?”
“Oh, yeah, we’re going to do it. A package goes out FedEx tomorrow. I called your guy in D.C. and told him it was coming.”
“Great. You tell Arrango?”
Winston frowned and shook her head.
“Basically, I get the idea that any idea that comes from you, Arrango isn’t interested in. I didn’t tell him.”
McCaleb nodded, threw a salute her way and headed for the exit. He walked through the parking lot, his eyes scanning for Buddy Lockridge’s Taurus. Before he spotted it, another car pulled up alongside him. McCaleb glanced over and saw Arrango looking up at him from the passenger seat.
McCaleb braced himself for the detective’s gloating about the lack of success from the session.
“What?” he said.
He kept walking and the car stayed alongside him.
“Nothing,” Arrango said “I just wanted to tell you that was a hell of a show in there. Four stars. We’ll put a teletype out on the watchband first thing in the morning.”
“That’s funny, Arrango.”
“Just making the point that your little session in there cost us a witness, a suspect who probably should have never been a suspect, and didn’t get us squat.”
“We got more than we had before… I never said the guy was going to give us the shooter’s goddamn address.”
“Yeah, well, we already figured out what the CI on the hat means. Complete Idiots-that’s what the shooter probably thinks of us.”
“If he does, he was already thinking that before tonight.”
Arrango didn’t have an answer for that.
“You know,” McCaleb said, “you ought to think about your witness. Ellen Taaffe.”
