The Narrows - Michael Connelly [40]
There was a beep and I hesitated, not sure I wanted to make contact yet. But I went ahead anyway.
“Uh, yes, hello, my name is Harry Bosch. I’m an investigator from Los Angeles and would like to talk to you about Terry McCaleb.”
I left my cell phone number and closed the phone, still not sure I had made the right move but thinking that leaving it short and cryptic was the best way to go. It might get her to call me back.
The last reference in the notes was the most intriguing of all. McCaleb had written “Zzyzx” and then asked if it was possible and if so, how. This had to be a reference to Zzyzx Road. This was a leap. A giant leap. McCaleb had received photos from someone who had watched and photographed his family. That same person had taken photographs at Zzyzx Road near the California-Nevada border. Somehow McCaleb saw a possible link and was asking himself if one mystery could be related to the other. Could he have set something in motion by calling Vegas Metro and offering to help with the missing men case? To be able to make the leap to such questions was impossible. It meant I was missing something. I was missing the bridge, the piece of information that made the jump possible. McCaleb had to have known something that wasn’t noted in the file but that made the possibility of a link seem real to him.
The last notations to check were the two Las Vegas phone numbers written on the border of the file along with the name William Bing. I opened my cell again and called the first number. The call was picked up by a recorded voice announcing that I had reached the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. I hung up as the voice began to list a number of options I could choose from.
The second number was followed by the name. I punched it into the phone, prepared to awaken William Bing and ask him what his connection to Terry McCaleb was. But the call was answered after several rings by a woman who said, “Las Vegas Memorial Medical Center, how would you like me to direct your call?”
I wasn’t expecting that. To gain some time while I thought about what to do I asked her for the hospital’s location. By the time she was finished giving me the address on Blue Diamond Road I had come up with a valid question.
“Do you have a doctor on staff named William Bing?”
After a moment the answer came back negative.
“Do you have any employee named William Bing?”
“No, we don’t, sir.”
“How about a patient?”
There was another pause as she consulted a computer.
“Not currently, no.”
“Did you formerly have a patient there named William Bing?”
“I don’t have access to that kind of information, sir.”
I thanked her and closed the phone.
I thought about the last two numbers in McCaleb’s notes for a long moment. My conclusions were simple. Terry McCaleb was a heart transplant recipient. If he were to travel to another city he would need to know where to go and who to ask for if there was an emergency or any medical problem. My guess was that McCaleb had called information to get the two numbers noted on the file. He then made a reservation at the Mandalay Bay and checked in with a local hospital as a precaution. The fact that there was no William Bing on staff at Las Vegas Memorial Medical Center did not preclude that he might be a cardio specialist who handled patients there.
I opened the phone, checked the time on the display screen and called Graciela anyway. She answered quickly, her voice alert, though I could tell she had been sleeping.
“Graciela, sorry to call so late. I have a few more questions.”
“Can I answer them tomorrow?”
“Just tell me, did Terry go to Las Vegas within the month before he died?”
“Las Vegas? I don’t know. Why?”
“What do you mean you don’t know? He was your husband.”
“I told you, we had . . . separated. He was staying on the boat. I know he went over to the mainland a few times but if he went to Vegas from there I wouldn’t have any way of knowing unless he told me, and he didn’t tell me.”
“What about credit-card bills and cell phone records, ATM withdrawals, things like that?”