“I don’t know yet. These sorts of things, you never know what is important until it becomes important, if you know what I mean.”
“Not really.”
“Well, I guess I mean details. I’m looking for the telling detail. There used to be a game when I was a kid. I don’t remember what it was called but they still might have it around for kids today. You’ve got a clear plastic tube that stands vertical. There are a bunch of plastic straws running through holes all around the center of it. You load a bunch of marbles into the tube so that they are held up by the straws. The object of the game is to pull a straw out without any marbles dropping. And there always seemed to be one straw that when you pulled it out, everything came down like a landslide. That’s what I’m looking for. I’ve got lots of details. I’m looking for the one that brings the landslide when it’s pulled out. Trouble is, you can’t tell which one it is until you start pulling.”
She looked at him blankly, the way she had been staring at the coffee table.
“Well, look, I’ve taken too much of your time. I think I’ll be on my way and, like I said, I’ll get these things back to you. And I’ll call you if anything else comes up. My number is on the inventory list there in case you think of anything else or there is anything I can do for you.”
He nodded and she said good-bye. He turned to head to the door when he thought of something and turned back.
“Oh, I almost forgot. There was a letter in one of the files commending your husband for stopping at an accident up near Lone Pine. Do you remember that?”
“Sure. That was two years ago, November.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Just that Jimmy was driving home from up there and he came across the accident. It had just happened and there were people and debris thrown every which way and that. He called for ambulances on his cell phone and stopped to comfort the people. A little boy died right in his arms that night. He had a hard time with that.”
McCaleb nodded.
“That was the kind of man he was, Mr. McCaleb.”
All McCaleb could do was nod his head again
McCaleb had to wait out on the front driveway for ten minutes before Buddy Lockridge finally drove up. He had a Howlin’ Wolf tape playing loud an the stereo. McCaleb turned it down after climbing in.
“Where you been?”
“Drivin’. Where to?”
“Well, I was waiting. Back to the marina.”
Buddy made a U-turn and headed back to the freeway.
“Well, you told me I didn’t have to just sit in the car. You told me to take a drive, I took a drive. How am I supposed to know how long you’re going to be if you don’t tell me?”
He was right but McCaleb was still annoyed. He didn’t apologize.
“If this thing lasts much longer, I ought to get a cell phone for you to carry.”
“If this lasts much longer, I want a raise.”
McCaleb didn’t respond. Lockridge turned the tape back up and pulled a harmonica out of the door pocket. He started playing along to “Wang Dang Doodle.” McCaleb looked out the window and thought about Amelia Cordell and how one bullet had taken two lives.
The investigation of the Donald Kenyon murder was a joint FBI-Beverly Hills police operation. But the case was cold. The lead agents for the bureau, a pair from the special investigation unit in Los Angeles named Nevins and Uhlig, had concluded in the most recent report, filed in December, that Kenyon had likely been executed by a contract killer. There were two theories as to who had employed the assassin. Theory one was that one of the two thousand victims of the savings and loan collapse had been unsatisfied with Kenyon’s sentence or possibly feared he would flee justice once again and therefore had engaged the services of a killer. Theory two was that the killer had been in the employ of the silent partner who Kenyon had claimed during the trial had forced him to loot the savings and loan. That partner, whom Kenyon had refused to identify, remained unidentified as well by the bureau, according to this last report.
McCaleb found the outlining of theory two in the report interesting because it indicated that the federal government might now give credence to Kenyon’s claim that he had been forced to siphon funds from his savings and loan by a second party. This claim had been derided during Kenyon’s trial by the prosecution, which took to referring to this alleged second party as Kenyon’s phantom. Now, here was an FBI document which suggested that the phantom might actually exist.
