“I don’t know how long I’ll be,” he said.

“It’s going to get hot out here. Maybe I could just go in with you. I won’t say anything.”

“It’s cooling down, Buddy. But if you get hot, run the air. Drive around a little bit. There’s probably kids selling lemonade around here someplace.”

He got out before any debate could begin. He wasn’t going to bring Lockridge into the investigation and turn it into amateur hour. On the way up the driveway he stopped and looked into the Suburban. The back was full of tools and there was clutter in the front seats. Hs felt a charge. He might be in luck. It looked as though the truck had been sitting untouched.

James Cordell’s widow was named Amelia. McCaleb knew that from the reports. A woman he assumed to be her opened the arched front door before he reached it. Jaye Winston had said she would call ahead to smooth his way in.

“Mrs. Cordell?”

“Yes?”

“My name’s Terry McCaleb. Did Detective Winston call about me?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Is this a bad time?”

“As opposed to a good time?”

“Poor choice of words. I’m sorry. Do you have some time that we can talk?”

She was a short woman with brown hair and small features. Her nose was red and McCaleb guessed she either had a cold or had been crying. McCaleb wondered if the call from Jaye Winston had set her off.

She nodded and invited him in, leading the way to a neatly kept living room where she sat on the sofa and he took the chair opposite her. There was a box of tissues on the coffee table between them. The sound of television was coming from another room. It sounded like cartoons were on.

“Is that your partner waiting in the car?” she asked.

“Uh, my driver.”

“Does he want to come in? It might get hot out there.”

“No, he’s fine.”

“You’re a private investigator?”

“Technically, no. I’m a friend of the family of the woman who was killed in Canoga Park. I don’t know what Detective Winston told you, but I used to work for the FBI and so I have some experience in these kinds of things. The Sheriff’s Department, as you probably know, and the LAPD have not been able to, uh, advance the investigation very far in recent weeks. I’m trying to do what I can to help.”

She nodded.

“First off, I’m sorry about what happened to your husband and your family.”

She frowned and nodded.

“I know it doesn’t matter what a stranger thinks but you do have my sympathy. From what I’ve read in the sheriff’s files, James was a good man.”

She smiled and said, “Thank you. It’s just so funny to hear him called James. Everyone called him Jim or Jimmy. And you are right, he was a good man.”

McCaleb nodded.

“What questions can I answer, Mr. McCaleb? I really don’t know anything about what happened. That’s what was confusing about Jaye’s call.”

“Well, first…” He reached down to his satchel, opened it and took out the Polaroid that Graciela had given him the day she came to his boat. He handed it across the table to Amelia Cordell. “Could you look at that and tell me if you recognize the woman or if you think she might be someone your husband could have known.”

She took the photo and stared at it, her face serious and her eyes making small movements as she seemed to study everything about the photo. She shook her head finally.

“No, I don’t think so. Is she the one who…”

“Yes, she was the victim in the second robbery.”

“Is that her son?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. How could my husband have known this woman-are you suggesting that they might have-”

“No. No, I’m not suggesting anything, Mrs. Cordell. I’m just trying to cover… Look, to be very honest, Mrs. Cordell, some things have come up in the investigation to possibly indicate-and I have to stress possibly -that there was more here than meets the eye.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that possibly robbery was not a motive here. Or not the only motive.”

She stared blankly at him for a moment and McCaleb knew she was still taking things the wrong way.

“Mrs. Cordell, I am not in any way trying to suggest that your husband and that woman had any kind of a relationship. What I’m saying is that somewhere, sometime, your husband and that woman crossed the shooter’s path. So you see there is a relationship. But it is a relationship between the victims and the shooter. It is likely that your husband and the other victims crossed the shooter’s line at separate points but I need to cover everything and that is why I show you the photograph. You are sure you don’t recognize her?”

“I’m sure.”

“Would your husband have any reason in the weeks before the shooting to have spent any time in Canoga Park?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Would he have had any dealings with the Los Angeles Times ? More specifically, any reason he would have gone to the newspaper’s plant in Chatsworth?”

Again her answer was no.

“Was there any problem at work? Anything that he might have wanted to talk to a reporter about?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was she a reporter?”

“No, but she worked where there were reporters. Maybe their paths crossed with the shooter there.”

“Well, I don’t think so. If something was bothering Jimmy, he would have told me. He always did.”

“Okay. I understand.”

McCaleb spent the next fifteen minutes asking Mrs. Cordell questions about her husband’s daily routine and his activities in the weeks before the shooting. He took three pages of notes but even as he wrote them, they didn’t seem helpful. Jimmy Cordell seemed like a man who worked hard and spent most of his off time with his family. In the weeks before his death he had been working exclusively on sections of the aqueduct in the central part of the state and his wife did not believe he had spent any time at all to the south. She did not think he had been down into the Valley or other parts of the city since before Christmas.

McCaleb folded his notebook closed.

“I appreciate your time, Mrs. Cordell. The last thing I wanted to ask about is whether or not any of your husband’s possessions were missing.”

“His possessions? What do you mean?”

Amelia Cordell led McCaleb out to the Chevy Suburban. They had already discussed her husband’s clothing and jewelry. Nothing had been taken, she assured him, just as the ATM video had seemed to attest. That left the Suburban.

“No one’s been in it?” he asked as she was unlocking it.

“I drove it home from the sheriff’s office. That was actually the only time I ever drove it. Jimmy bought it for work only. He said if we started using it for nonwork driving, he couldn’t write everything off. I don’t drive it because it’s too high up for me to be climbing in and out of all the time.”

McCaleb nodded and leaned into the truck through the open driver’s door. The rear seat was folded down and the cargo area was full of surveying equipment, a folding drafting table and other tools. McCaleb quickly dismissed it all. It was equipment, not something of a personal nature.

He concentrated on the front section of the vehicle. A patina of road dust covered everything. Cordell must have been driving in the desert with the windows down. Using one finger, he opened a pocket on the door and saw it was crammed with service station receipts and a small spiral notebook on which Cordell had noted mileage, dates and destinations. McCaleb took the notebook out and flipped through the pages to see if there had been any trips to the west Valley, particularly Chatsworth or Canoga Park. There were none recorded. It appeared Amelia Cordell had been correct about her husband.

He flipped down the driver-side visor and found two folded maps. McCaleb walked them around to the front and opened them on the hood. One was a gas station map of central California and another was a survey map that showed the aqueduct and its many access roads. McCaleb was looking for any unusual notations Cordell might have made on the maps but there were none. He refolded them and put them back.