The paramedics who had transported Gloria worked out of Fire Station 76. McCaleb called but the crew that had worked the night of January 22nd was off until Sunday. However, the station captain told him that under department policy governing what are called “crime transports,” any property left behind on a stretcher or found anywhere in an ambulance would have been turned over to police custody. This meant that if this had occurred following the transport of Gloria Torres, there would be a property-received report in the murder book. There wasn’t. The cross earring remained unaccounted for.

The irony that McCaleb carried inside of him alongside a stranger’s heart was the secret belief that he had been the wrong one saved. It should have been someone else. In the days and weeks before he received Glory’s heart, he had been prepared for the end. He had accepted it as the way it was to be. He was long past believing in a God-the horrors he had seen and documented had little by little sapped his stores of faith until the only absolute he believed in was that there were no bounds to the evil acts of men. And in those seemingly final days, as his own heart withered and tapped out its final cadences, he did not grasp desperately for his lost faith as a shield or a means of easing the fear of the unknown. Instead, he was accepting of the end, of his own nothingness. He was ready.

It was easy to do. When he had been with the bureau, he was driven and consumed by a mission, a calling. And when he carried it out and was successful, he knew he was making a difference. Better than any heart surgeon, he was saving lives from horrible ends. He was facing off against the worst kinds of evil, the most malignant cancers, and the battle, though always wearing and painful, gave his life its meaning.

That was gone the moment his heart deserted him and he fell to the floor of the field office thinking he had surely been stabbed in the chest. It was still gone two years later when the pager sounded and he was told they had a heart for him.

He had a new heart but it didn’t feel like a new life. He was a man on a boat that never left port. It didn’t matter what stock quotes about second chances he had used with a newspaper reporter. That existence was not enough for McCaleb. That was the struggle he was facing when Graciela Rivers had stepped down off the dock and into his life.

The quest she had given him had been a way of avoiding his own inner struggle. But now things were suddenly different. The missing cross earring stirred something deep and dormant in him. His long experience had given him true knowledge and instincts about evil. He knew its signs.

This was one of them.

19

McCALEB HAD BEEN to the sheriff’s homicide bureau so often during the week that the receptionist just waved him back without a phone call or escort. Jaye Winston was at her desk, using a three-hole punch on a thin stack of documents which she then slipped over the prongs of an open binder. She snapped it closed and looked up at her visitor.

“You moving in?”

“Feels like it. You get caught up on the paper?”

“Instead of four months behind I’m only two. What’s going on? I didn’t think I was going to see you today.”

“You still upset about me holding that thing back?”

“Water under the bridge.”

She leaned back in her chair, looked him over and waited for an explanation of why he was there.

“I’ve sort of come up with something I think bears looking into,” he said.

“Is this about Bolotov again?”

“No, it’s something new.”

“Don’t become the boy who cried wolf on me, McCaleb.”

She smiled.

“I won’t.”

“Then tell me.”

He put his palms down on the desk and leaned over it, so he could speak to her in a confidential tone. There were still plenty of Winston’s colleagues around the bureau, working at their desks and trying to get things done before the weekend.

“Arrango and Walters missed something,” McCaleb said. “So did I on my first go-through. But I picked up on it this morning when I took a second look at the videos and the paperwork. It’s something that has to be considered pretty seriously. I think it changes things.”

Winston furrowed her eyebrows and looked at him seriously.

“Quit talking in circles. What did they miss?”

“I’d rather show you than tell you.” He reached down to the floor and opened his leather satchel. He pulled out the copy of the surveillance tape and held it up to her. “Can we go look at this?”

“I guess so.”

Winston got up and led the way to the video room. She turned the machines on and popped in the tape after looking at it and noting it was not one of the tapes she had given McCaleb on Wednesday.

“What is this?”

“It’s the surveillance from the market.”

“Not the one I gave you.”

“It’s a copy. I’m having somebody look at the other one.”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“A tech I knew when I was with the bureau. I’m just trying to get some of the images enhanced. Not a big deal.”

“So what are you showing me?”

She had the surveillance tape playing.

“Where’s the freeze?”

Winston pointed to a button on the console and McCaleb held his finger over it, waiting for the right moment. On the tape Gloria Torres approached the counter and smiled at Kang. Then came the gunman and the shot that threw her body forward over the counter. McCaleb froze the image and used a pen from his pocket to point at Gloria’s left ear.

“It’s pretty murky but on a blowup you can see she has three earrings on this ear,” he said. Then tapping the pen at each point on the ear, he added, “A crescent moon on a stud, a hoop and then dangling from the lobe, a cross.”

“Okay. I can’t really see it too well but I’ll take your word for it.”

McCaleb hit the freeze button again and the video started playing. He stopped it at the moment Gloria’s body rebounded backward, her head turning to the left.

“Right ear,” he said, using the pen again to point. “Just the matching crescent moon.”

“Okay, what’s it mean?”

He ignored the question and hit the button again. The gun was fired. Gloria was hurled into the counter and then rebounded backward into the shooter. Holding her in front of him, he fired at Mr. Kang while stepping backward out of the camera’s field of vision and lowering Gloria to the ground.

“The victim is then lowered down out of view of the camera.”

“What, you’re saying that was intentional?”

“Exactly.”

“Why?”

He opened the satchel again and drew out the property report and handed it to Winston.

“That’s the police property report on the victim’s possessions. It was filled out at the hospital. Remember, she was still alive. They took her things there, gave them to a patrol officer. That is his report. What don’t you see?”

Winston scanned the page.

“I don’t know. It’s just a list of-the cross earring?”

“Right. It’s not there. He took it.”

“The patrolman?”

“No. The shooter. The shooter took her earring.”

A puzzled look came across Winston’s face. She wasn’t following the logic. She hadn’t had the same experiences or seen the same things that McCaleb had. She didn’t see it for what it was.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “How do you know he took it? It could have just fallen off and gotten lost.”

“No. I’ve talked to the victim’s sister and I’ve talked to the hospital and the paramedics.”

He knew this was exaggerating his investigation into this aspect but he needed to pin Winston down. He couldn’t give her a way out or a way to any other conclusion than his own conclusion.

“The sister says the earring had a safety hasp. It is unlikely that it fell off. Even if it did, the paramedics didn’t find it on the stretcher or in the ambulance, and they didn’t find it at the hospital. He took it, Jaye. The shooter. Besides, if it was going to fall off, despite the safety hasp, it probably would have been when he fired the round. You saw the impact on the head. If the earring was going to come loose, it would have been then. Only it didn’t. It was taken off.”