“All I’m saying is that he had a fighting chance.”

“Yes, sir, I understand. I’m sure it will be one of the things they take a look at.”

“I mean, I think somebody ought to investigate how this could-and the thing is, we’re only what, a half mile from the hospital?”

“We’re aware of that, Mr. Noone,” the deputy said patiently. “Now if we could just move on for a moment. Could you tell me if you saw anything before you found the body? Anything unusual.”

“Yes, I saw the guy. At least I think I did.”

“What guy is that?”

“The robber. I saw the getaway car.”

“Can you describe that, sir?”

“Sure, black Cherokee. The new kind. Not one of those that look like a shoe box.”

The deputy looked a bit confused but McCaleb understood that Noone was describing a Grand Cherokee model. He had one himself.

“I was pulling in and it came tearing out of here, almost hit me,” Noone said. “The guy was a real asshole. I blasted my horn at him, then I pull in and find this man here. I called on my cell phone but then it got all fucked up.”

“Yes, sir. Can you refrain from that kind of language? This might be played in court one day.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Can we go back to this car? Did you happen to see a license plate?”

“I wasn’t even looking.”

“How many people in the vehicle?”

“I think one, the driver.”

“Male or female?”

“Male.”

“Can you describe him for me?”

“Wasn’t really looking. I was just trying not to get plowed into, that’s all.”

“White? Black? Asian?”

“Oh, he was white. I’m pretty sure about that. But I couldn’t identify him or anything like that.”

“What about hair color?”

“It was gray.”

“Gray?”

The deputy said it with surprise. An old robber. It seemed unusual to him.

“I think,” Noone said. “It was all so quick. I can’t be sure.”

“What about a hat?”

“Yeah, it could have been a hat.”

“What do you mean, the gray?”

“Yeah, gray hat, gray hair. I can’t be sure.”

“Okay, anything else? Was he wearing glasses?”

“Uh, I either don’t remember or didn’t see. I really wasn’t looking at the guy, you know. Besides, the car had dark windows. The only time I could really see the guy was through the windshield and I only saw that for a second. When he was coming right at me.”

“Okay, Mr. Noone. This is a help. We are going to need you to make a formal statement and the detectives will need to talk to you. Is this going to be an inconvenience?”

“Yes, but what are you gonna do? I want to help. I tried to help. I don’t mind.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m going to have a deputy take you into the Palmdale station. The detectives will talk to you there. They’ll be with you as soon as possible and I’ll make sure they know you are waiting.”

“Well, okay. What about my wheels?”

“Someone will take you back here when they are done.”

The tape ended there. McCaleb ejected it and thought about what he had seen and heard and read so far. The fact that the Sheriff’s Department did not give the black Cherokee to the media was curious. It would be something he would have to ask Jaye Winston about. He made a note of it on the legal pad he had been writing questions on and then started through the remaining reports on Cordell.

The crime scene evidence inventory was a single page that was almost blank. Collected evidence amounted to the slug removed from the wall, a half dozen fingerprints lifted from the ATM and photographs of a tire mark possibly made by the shooter’s car. The video from the ATM camera was also listed.

Clipped to the report were photocopies of photos of the tread mark and a freeze frame from the ATM video of the gun in the shooter’s hand. An ancillary report from the crime lab stated that it was the technician’s opinion that the tire mark had been on the asphalt at least several days and was not useful in the investigation.

A ballistics report identified the bullet as a slightly pancaked nine-millimeter Federal FMJ. Stapled to the report was a photocopy of a page from the autopsy showing a top-view drawing of the skull. The track of the bullet through Cordell’s brain was charted on the drawing. The bullet had entered just forward on the left temple, then tumbled on a straight line through the frontal lobe and out through the right temple region. The track of the tumbling bullet had been an inch wide. As McCaleb read it, he realized it was probably a good thing the paramedics were late. If they had managed to save Cordell, it probably would have been for a life on a machine in one of those medical centers that were nothing more than vegetable warehouses.

The ballistics report also contained an enhanced photo of the gun. Though much of the weapon was hidden in the gloved grip of the shooter, the sheriff’s firearms experts had identified it as a Heckler amp; Koch P7, a nine-millimeter pistol with a four-inch barrel and nickel finish.

The weapon identification was a curiosity to McCaleb. The HK P7 was a fairly expensive weapon, about a thousand dollars on the legitimate market, and not the kind of weapon normally seen in street crimes. He guessed that Jaye Winston must have assumed that the gun itself had to have been taken earlier in a robbery or burglary. McCaleb looked through the remaining supplemental reports and sure enough Winston had pulled crime reports from across the county in which an HK P7 of matching description had been reported stolen. It did not appear that she had taken the lead much further than that. It was true that many gun thefts went unreported because the people who lost the weapons shouldn’t have had them in the first place. But as Winston had undoubtedly done before, McCaleb scanned the list of reported thefts-only five in the last two years-to see if any names or addresses turned a switch. None did. All five of the burglaries Winston had collected were open cases with no suspects. It was a dead end.

After the burglary list was a report detailing all thefts of black Grand Cherokees in the county during the last year. Winston had apparently believed the shooter’s car was also a contradiction-a high-line vehicle used in an economically low-line crime. McCaleb thought it was a good jump to consider the car was probably stolen. There were twenty-four Cherokees on the list but no other reports indicating any follow-up. Maybe, he considered, Winston had simply changed her mind after connecting her shooting to the Torres case. The Good Samaritan had described a getaway vehicle from the market shooting that could be a Cherokee. Since that indicated the shooter had not gotten rid of it, it possibly hadn’t been stolen after all.

The autopsy protocol was next and McCaleb flipped through the pages quickly. He knew from experience that ninety percent of any autopsy report was dedicated to the minute description of the procedure, identifying the characteristics of the victim’s interior organs and state of health at the time of death. Most of the time it was only the summary that was important to McCaleb. But in the Cordell case even that part of the autopsy was irrelevant because it was obvious. He found the summary anyway and nodded as he read what he already knew. Massive brain damage had led to Cordell’s death within minutes of the shooting.

He put the autopsy report aside. The next stack of reports dealt with Winston’s three-strike theory. Believing the shooter was an ex-convict facing life without parole for another conviction, Winston had gone to the state parole offices in Van Nuys and Lancaster and pulled files on paroled armed robbers who were Caucasian and had two prior felony convictions on their records. These were people facing third-strike penalties if arrested again under the new law. There were seventy-one of them assigned to the two parole offices geographically nearest the two robbery-shootings.