“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.”

“To hypnotize like that?”

“That’s right.”

Arrango barked a command at Walters to stop the car. He popped his door open and jumped out. He came up close to McCaleb, their faces inches apart. Close enough for McCaleb to smell his breath. He guessed that the detective kept a flask of bourbon in the glove compartment.

“Listen to me, bureau man, you stay the fuck away from my witnesses. You just stay the fuck away from my case.”

He didn’t back away when he was done. He just stayed there, his whisky breath burning McCaleb’s nose. McCaleb smiled and nodded slowly as if he had just come into possession of a great secret.

“You’re really worried, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re worried I’m going to break this. You don’t care about the actual case, about the people killed or hurt by this. You just don’t want me doing what you can’t.”

McCaleb waited for a response but Arrango said nothing.

“Then be worried, Arrango.”

“Yeah? Because you’re going to break this one?”

He laughed in a fake way that had far more venom in it than humor.

“Because I’ll let you in on a little secret,” McCaleb said. “You know Gloria Torres? The victim you don’t give a shit about? I’ve got her heart.”

McCaleb tapped his chest and looked back at him.

“I got her heart. I’m alive because she’s dead. And that cuts me into this in a big way. So I don’t care much about your feelings, Arrango. I couldn’t give a fuck about stepping on your toes. You’re an asshole and that’s fine, be an asshole. I’ll put up with that. But I’m not backing out of this till we get this guy. I don’t care if it’s you, me or somebody else. But I’m in this one for the whole ride.”

They just stared at each other for a long moment and then McCaleb raised his right hand and calmly pushed Arrango away from him.

“I gotta go, Arrango. See you around.”

18

HE DREAMED of darkness. A moving darkness, like blood in water, with darting images in the periphery that he couldn’t grab onto with his eyes until they were gone.

Three times in the night he was awakened by some interior alarm. Sitting up so fast he grew dizzy, he would wait and listen and there would be nothing but the sound of the wind through dozens of masts in the marina. He would get up and check the boat, look out across the marina for Bolotov even though he thought it unlikely the Russian would ever show up. He’d then use the bathroom and check the vitals. Status quo each time and he would return to the dark waters of the same indecipherable dream.

At nine o’clock Friday morning the phone woke him. It was Jaye Winston.

“You awake?”

“Yeah. Just getting a slow start today. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that I just heard from Arrango and he told me something that really bothers me.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“He told me who you got that new heart from.”

McCaleb rubbed a hand across his face. He had forgotten that he had told Arrango.

“Why does that bother you, Jaye?”

“Because I wish you had told me everything. I don’t like secrets, Terry. That asshole calls up and makes me feel like an asshole because I’m the last one to know this.”

“What’s the difference whether you knew or not?”

“It’s kind of a conflict of interest, isn’t it?”

“No. It’s not a conflict. You ask me, it’s an enhancement. It makes me want to get this guy even more than you people. Is there something else that’s bothering you? Is this about Noone?”

“No, it’s not about that. I told you last night, I stand behind doing it. The captain gave me some grief already today but I still think we had to do it.”

“Good. So do I.”

There was a tentative silence after that. McCaleb still thought there was something else she wanted to say and he waited her out.

“Look, just don’t go off cowboying on this, okay?” Winston said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. I just don’t know what you’ve got planned. And I don’t want to have to worry about what you’re up to because of your ‘enhancement,’ as you call it.”

“I understand. It’s not even a point of contention, Jaye. As I’ve said all along, if I get something, it goes to you guys. That’s still the plan.”

“Okay, then.”

“All right.”

He was putting the phone down when he heard her voice.

“By the way, the bullet went to your man today. He’ll get it tomorrow if he works Saturdays. If not, Monday.”

“Good.”

“You’ll let me know if he gets something, right?”

“He’s going to tell you first. You sent the package.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Terry. He’s your man, he’s going to call you. Hopefully, he’ll call me real quick after.”