The Narrows - Michael Connelly [62]
I leaned back. She was a fortress I didn’t think I could break through. But if nothing else, I had gotten that smile from Rachel Walling. That told me I might have a shot at climbing over the FBI barricade with her later.
“My client is Graciela McCaleb. Terry McCaleb’s wife. Widow, I mean.”
Dei blinked, then quickly recovered from the surprise. Or possibly it wasn’t surprise. Possibly it was a confirmation of some sort.
“And why did she hire you?”
“Because somebody switched out her husband’s medicine and killed him.”
That brought a momentary silence. Rachel slowly stepped away from the counter and came back to her chair. With few questions or any direction from Dei I told them the story of how I had come to be called by Graciela, the details of her husband’s tainted medications, and my investigation up until the point I reached the desert. I began to believe I was not surprising them with anything. Rather, it seemed more like I was confirming something or at least telling a story they already knew parts of. When I was finished Dei hit me with a few clarifying questions related to my movements. Zigo and Walling asked nothing.
“So,” Dei said after the story was finished. “That’s an interesting story. A lot of information. Why don’t you put it into context for us now. What does it all mean to you?”
“You’re asking me that? I thought that’s what Quantico does, puts it all into the blender and pours out a case profile and all of the answers.”
“Don’t worry, we will. But I’d like your view of it.”
“Well,” I said, but then didn’t continue. I was trying to put it all together and into my own blender, adding Robert Backus in as the newest ingredient.
“Well, what?”
“Sorry, I was just trying to put it together.”
“Just tell us what you are thinking.”
“Did anybody here know Terry McCaleb?”
“We all did. What does that have to do with —”
“I mean really know him.”
“I did once,” Rachel said. “We worked cases. But I hadn’t been in touch. I didn’t even know he was dead until today.”
“Well, you should know, and will know once you go over there and check his house and his boat and everything else, that he was still working cases. He couldn’t let it go. He worked some of his own old unsolveds and he worked new cases. He read the papers and watched TV. He made calls to cops on cases that interested him and offered to help out.”
“And this got him killed?” Dei asked.
I nodded.
“Eventually. I think so. In January the L.A. Times ran that story in the file you have there. Terry read it and got interested. He called over to Vegas Metro to offer his services. They shined him on, not interested. But they weren’t above dropping his name in the local paper when it ran a follow-up story on the missing men.”
“When was that?”
“Beginning of February. I’m sure you can check. Anyway, that story, his name in that story, drew the Poet to him.”
“Look, we’re not confirming anything about the Poet. Do you understand that?”
“Sure, whatever you want. You can take this whole thing as a hypothetical if you want.”
“Go on with it.”
“Somebody was abducting those men—and we now know burying them in the desert. Like all good serial killers he kept his eye on the media, to see if anybody was putting two and two together and getting close. He sees the follow-up story and he sees McCaleb’s name. It’s an old colleague. My guess is he knew McCaleb back in the day. At Quantico, before Terry came out to set up the Behavioral Sciences outpost in L.A. Before he went down with the bad heart.”
“Actually, Terry was the first agent Backus mentored in the unit,” Walling said.
Dei looked at her like she had betrayed some trust. Walling ignored her and I liked that about her.
“There you go,” I said. “They had that connection. Backus sees the name in the paper and one of two things happened. He took it as a challenge or he knew McCaleb was relentless and was going to keep coming, despite