The Narrows - Michael Connelly [22]
“No.”
I took a shot at seeing if Buddy might let something slip.
“When did you first notice this file on the computer?”
“I don’t know. It must’ve been . . . actually, I just saw them for the first time with you here.”
“Buddy, don’t bullshit me. This could be important. I’ve watched you work this thing like it was yours since high school. I know you went into that machine when Terry wasn’t around. He probably knew, too. He didn’t care and neither do I. Just tell me, when did you first see this file?”
He let a few moments pass while he thought about it.
“I first saw them about a month before he died. But if your real question is when did Terry see them, then all you have to do is look at the file archive and see when it was created.”
“Then do it, Buddy.”
Lockridge took over the keyboard again and went into the photo file’s history. In a few seconds he had the answer.
“February twenty-seventh,” he said. “That was when that file was created.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “Now, assuming that Terry didn’t take these, how would they end up on his computer?”
“Well, there’s a few ways. One is that he got them in an e-mail and downloaded them. Another is that somebody borrowed his camera and shot them. He then found them and downloaded them. The third way is maybe somebody just sent him a photo chip right out of the camera or a CD with the pictures already on it. That would probably be the most untraceable way.”
“Could Terry do e-mail from here?”
“No, up at the house. There is no hard line on the boat. I told him he ought to get one of those cellular modems, go wireless like that commercial where the guy’s sitting at his desk in the middle of a field. But he never got around to it.”
The printer kicked out the photo and I grabbed it ahead of Buddy’s reach. But then I placed it down on the desk so we could both view it. The reflection was blurred and dim but still more recognizable on the print than it was on the computer screen. I could now see that the photographer was holding the camera in front of his face, obscuring it completely. But then I was able to identify the overlapping L and A configuration of the Los Angeles Dodgers logo. The photographer was wearing a baseball cap.
On any given day there might be fifty thousand people wearing Dodgers caps in this city. I don’t know for sure. But what I do know is that I don’t believe in coincidences. I never have and I never will. I looked at the murky reflection of the photographer and my sudden guess was that it was the mystery man. Jordan Shandy.
Lockridge saw it, too.
“Goddamn,” he said. “That’s the guy, right? I think that’s the charter. Shandy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”
I put the print of Shandy holding up the Spanish mackerel next to the enlargement. There was no way to make a match but there was nothing that made me think the other way. There was no way to be sure but I was sure. I knew that the same man who had showed up unannounced for a private charter with Terry McCaleb had also stalked and photographed his family.
What I didn’t know was where McCaleb had gotten these photos and whether he had made the same jump as I had just made.
I started stacking all of the photos I had printed. All the time I was trying to put something together, some connection of logic. But it wasn’t there. I didn’t have enough of the picture. Only a few pieces. My instincts told me that McCaleb had been baited in some way. Photos of his family came to him in the form of an e-mail or a photo chip or a CD. And the last two photos were the key. The first thirty-four were the bait. The last two were the hook hidden inside that bait.
I believed the message was obvious. The photographer wanted to draw McCaleb out to the desert. Out to Zzyzx Road.
9
RACHEL WALLING rode the escalator down into the cavernous baggage pickup area at McCarran International. She had carried her luggage during the journey from South Dakota but the airport was designed so that every passenger had to go this way. The escalator landing area was crowded with people waiting. Limo