The Narrows - Michael Connelly [9]
Lockridge was giving me more information and avenues of questioning than I could handle at once. I stayed on McCaleb but would definitely come back to Otto, their charter client.
“You’re saying that Terry was content to sort of be small-time.”
“Exactly. I kept telling him, ‘Move the charter over here to the mainland, put out some ads and get some serious work.’ But he didn’t want to.”
“Did you ever ask him why?”
“Sure, he wanted to stay on the island. He didn’t want to be away from the family all the time. And he wanted time to work on his files.”
“You mean his old cases?”
“Yeah, that and some new ones.”
“What new ones?”
“I don’t know. He was always clipping articles out of the newspaper and sticking them in files, making phone calls, things like that.”
“On the boat?”
“Yeah, on the boat. Graciela wouldn’t allow it in the house. He told me that, that she didn’t like him doing it. Sometimes it got to the point he was sleeping on the boat at night. At the end. I think it was because of the files. He’d get obsessed with something and she’d end up telling him to stay on the boat until he got over it.”
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“Any case or file you remember he was interested in lately?”
“No, he no longer included me in that stuff. I helped him work on his heart case and then he sort of shut me out of that stuff.”
“Did that bother you?”
“Not really. I mean, I was willing to help. Chasing bad guys is more interesting than chasing fish, but I knew that was his world and not mine.”
It sounded too much like a stock answer, like he was repeating an explanation McCaleb had once given to him. I decided to leave it at that but I knew this was a subject I would come back to with him.
“Okay, let’s go back to Otto. You fished with him how many times?”
“This was our third—no, fourth—trip.”
“Always down to Mexico?”
“Pretty much.”
“What does he do for a living that he can afford to do this?”
“He’s retired. Thinks he’s Zane Grey and wants to go sportfishing, catch a black marlin and put it up on his wall. He can afford it. He told me he was a salesman, but I never asked what he sold.”
“Retired? How old is he?”
“I don’t know, midsixties.”
“Retired from where?”
“Just across the water. Long Beach, I think.”
“What did you mean a minute ago when you said he liked to go fishing and get his ashes hauled?”
“I meant exactly that. We took him fishing and when we’d stop off in Cabo, he always had something on the side.”
“So each night on this last trip, you guys brought the boat into port, always to Cabo.”
“The first two nights in Cabo and then the third night we made it to San Diego.”
“Who chose those places?”
“Well, Otto wanted to go to Cabo, and San Diego was just the halfway point on the trip back. We always take it slow going back.”
“What happened in Cabo with Otto?”
“I told you, he had a little something on the side down there. Both nights he got cleaned up and went into town. I think he was meeting a senorita there. He had made some calls on his cell phone.”
“Is he married?”
“Far as I know. I think that’s why he liked the four-day charters. His wife thought he was out there fishing. She probably didn’t know about stopping in Cabo for a Margarita—and I’m not talking about the drink.”
“What about Terry, did he go into town?”
He answered without hesitation.
“Nope, Terry had nothing going in that department and he would never leave the boat. He’d never even step on the dock.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. He just said he didn’t need to. I think he was superstitious about it.”
“How so?”
“You know, the captain stays with the vessel, that sort of thing.”
“What about you?”
“Most of the time I hung with Terry and the boat. Every now and then I’d go to town to one of the bars or something.”
“What about on that last trip?”
“No, I stayed with the boat. I was a little short of bread.”
“So on that last trip, Terry never got off the boat?”
“That’s right.”
“And nobody besides you, Otto and him were ever