“You going to get any flak for giving me this stuff?”

“No. The captain knows what you did for us on Lisa Mondrian.”

Lisa Mondrian was the woman found in Vasquez Rocks. McCaleb thought it was unusual that Winston had referred to her by name. It was unusual because most cops he knew tried to depersonalize the victims. It made it easier to live with.

“The captain was the lieutenant back then,” Winston was saying. “He knows we owe you one. We talked and he said give you the stuff. I just wish we could pay you with something better than this. I don’t know what you’ll be able to do with this, Terry. We’ve just been waiting.”

Meaning they were waiting for the shooter to strike again and hopefully make a mistake. Unfortunately it often took fresh blood to solve old killings.

“Well, I’ll see what I can do with it. At least it’s something to keep me busy. What was that you said on the phone about it being three-strikes stuff?”

Winston frowned.

“We’re getting more and more like these. Ever since they put in the three-strikes law in Sacramento. I don’t know since you’ve been out of the life if you’ve followed it. But the law says three felony convictions and you’re out. Automatic life without parole.”

“Right. I know about it.”

“Well, with some of these assholes, all that did was make ’em more careful. Now they wipe out witnesses where before they’d just rob. Three strikes was supposed to be some kind of deterrent. You ask me, it just got a lot of people killed like James Cordell and the two in that market.”

“So you think that’s what this guy’s doing?”

“Looks it to me. You saw one of the tapes. There’s no hesitation. This scumbag knew what he was going to do before he even went up to that ATM or into that store. He wanted no witnesses. So that’s the hunch I’ve been following. In my spare time I’ve been going through the files, looking for stick-up men with two or more falls already under their belts. I think the man in the ski mask is one of them. He used to be a robber. Now he’s a robbing murderer. Natural evolution.”

“And no luck yet?”

“With the files, nope. But either I’ll find him or he’ll find me. He’s not the type who’s going to suddenly go square. And judging by the fact he’s shooting people for a few hundred dollars, he’s decided that under no circumstances is he going back to the cage. That’s for sure. He’s going to do this again. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet-it’s been two months since the last one. But when he does, maybe he’ll fuck up just a little and we’ll get him. Sooner or later, we will. I guarantee it. My victim had a wife and two little daughters. I’m going to get the piece of shit who did this.”

McCaleb nodded. He liked her outrage-fueled dedication. It was a full turn away from Arrango’s view of things. He started gathering up the documents and tapes and told Winston he would be calling her after he looked over all of the material. He told her it might be a few days.

“No sweat,” she said. “Whatever you can do we can use.”

When McCaleb got back to the Taurus, he found Buddy Lockridge sitting with his back to the driver’s-side door and his legs stretched across the front seat. He was idly practicing a blues riff on a harmonica while reading a book opened on his lap. McCaleb opened the passenger door and waited for him to move his legs. As he finally got in, he noticed Buddy had been reading a book titled Inspector Imanishi Investigates.

“That was pretty quick,” Buddy said.

“Yeah, there wasn’t a lot to say.”

He put the stack of reports and videocassettes on the floor between his feet.

“What’s all of that?”

“Just some stuff I have to go through.”

Lockridge leaned over and looked at the top sheet. It was an incident report.

“James Cordell,” he read out loud. “Who’s that?”

“Buddy, I’m beginning to think-”

“I know, I know.”

He took the hint, straightened up and started the car. He asked nothing more about the documents.

“So, where to now?”

“Now we just go back. San Pedro.”

“I thought you said you needed me for a few days. I’ll stop asking questions, I promise.”

There was a slight protest in his voice.

“It’s not that. I still need you. But right now I need to go back and go through some of this stuff.”

Buddy dejectedly tossed his book onto the dashboard, dropped the harp into the door pocket and put the car into gear.

THERE WAS MORE natural light in the salon than down below in the office stateroom. McCaleb decided to work there. He also had a television and video player built into a cabinet topside. He cleared the galley table, wiped it with a sponge and paper towel and then put the stack of reports Winston had given him down on top. He got a legal pad and a sharpened pencil out of the chart table drawer and brought them over as well.

He decided that the best way to do it would be to go through the material chronologically. That meant the Cordell case came first. He went through the stack, separating out the reports regarding the Gloria Torres killing and putting them aside. He then took what was left and separated the reports into small stacks relating to the initial investigation and evidence inventory, follow-up interviews, dead-end leads, miscellaneous reports, fact sheets and weekly summaries.

When he had worked for the bureau, it was his routine to completely clear his desk and spread all the paperwork from a submitted case file across it. The cases came in from police departments all over the West. Some sent thick packages and some just thin files. He always asked for videotape of the crime scene. Big or small, the packages were all about the same thing. McCaleb was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. He became angry and vengeful as he read, all while alone in his little office, his coat on the door hook, his gun in the drawer. He could tune everything out but what was in front of him. He did his best work at the desk. As a field agent, he was average at best. But at his desk, he was better than most. And he felt a secret thrill in the back of his mind each time he opened one of those packages and the hunt for a new evil began again. He felt that thrill now as he began to read.

James Cordell had a lot going for him. A family, nice home and cars, good health and a job that paid well enough to allow his wife to be a full-time mother to their two daughters. He was an engineer with a private firm contracted by the state to maintain the structural integrity of the aqueduct system that delivered water from the snow melt in the mountains in the central state to the reservoirs that nursed the sprawl of Southern California. He lived in Lancaster in northeast Los Angeles County, which put him within an hour and a half by car of any point on the water line. On the night of January twenty-second he had been heading home from a long day inspecting the Lone Pine segment of the concrete aqueduct. It was payday and he stopped at the Regional State Bank branch just a mile from his home. His paycheck had been automatically deposited and he needed cash. But he was shot in the head and left for dead at the ATM before the machine finished spitting out his money. His killer was the one who took the crisp twenties when they rolled out of the machine.

The first thing McCaleb realized as he read the initial crime reports was that a sanitized version of events had been given to the media. The circumstances described in the Times story Keisha Russell had read to him the day before did not mesh cleanly with the facts in the reports. The story she had read said that Cordell’s body was found fifteen minutes after the shooting. According to the crime report, Cordell was found almost immediately by an ATM customer who had pulled into the bank lot just as another vehicle-most likely the shooter’s-was speeding out. The witness, identified as James Noone, quickly called for help on a cellular car phone.