“I guess you’re probably right.”

They took a breather, neither one of them talking for a few moments. McCaleb had two more things on his page.

“Next thing,” he began carefully. “The slugs.”

“What about them?”

“You said yesterday that you’re holding the ballistics from both cases.”

“That’s right. It’s all in evidence lockup. What are you getting at?”

“Have you ever heard of the bureau’s DRUGFIRE computer?”

“No.”

“It might work for us. For you. It’s a long shot but it’s worth a shot.”

“What is it?”

McCaleb told her. DRUGFIRE was an FBI computer program designed along similar lines of computerized storage of latent fingerprint data. It was the brainchild of the crime lab in the early 1980s, when the cocaine wars that broke out in most cities, particularly Miami, were responsible for a jump in murders nationwide. Most of the slayings were by gunfire. The bureau, struggling for a means of tracking related murders and killers across the country, came up with the DRUGFIRE program. The unique characteristics of groove marks found on the spent bullets used in drug murders were read by a laser, coded for computer storage and entered into a data bank. The computer’s program operated in much the same way as fingerprint computer systems used by law enforcement agencies across the nation. The system allowed for the quick comparison of coded bullet profiles.

Eventually, the database grew as more ballistic entries were added. The program was also widened, though it kept the name DRUGFIRE, to include all cases referred to the FBI. Whether it was a mob killing in Las Vegas or a gang killing in South Los Angeles or a serial killing in Fort Lauderdale, every gunshot case sent to the FBI for analysis was added to the database. After more than a decade, there were thousands of bullets on file in the computer.

“I’ve been thinking about this guy,” McCaleb said “He hangs on to that gun. Whatever the reason, whether he stole it or not, his hanging on to it is really the only mistake he’s made. It makes me think we’ve got a chance of making a match. Looking at the MO on those tapes, chances are he just didn’t start popping people beginning with your case. He’s used a gun before-maybe even that particular gun.”

“But I told you, we checked for similars. Nothing on ballistics. We also put out teletypes and a request on the National Crime Index computer. We got blanked.”

“I understand. But this guy’s method could be evolving, changing. Maybe what he did with that gun in, say, Phoenix isn’t the same as what he did with it here. All I’m saying is that there’s a chance that this guy came into town from someplace else. If he did, then he probably used that gun in that other place. And if we’re lucky, the data is sitting there in the bureau computer.”

“Maybe,” Winston said.

She went quiet as she brooded over his proposal. McCaleb knew what the considerations were. DRUGFIRE was a long shot and Winston was smart enough to know that. But if she went for it, she would be drawing in federal involvement, not to mention acknowledging that she was taking direction from McCaleb, an outsider with no real standing in the case.

“What do you think?” McCaleb finally asked. “You only need to send them one bullet. You have, what, four of them from the two cases?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not so keen on sending our stuff off to Washington. I doubt L.A. will be, either.”

“ L.A. doesn’t have to know. You’re the keeper of the evidence. You can send one bullet if you want. And it could be to D.C. and back inside a week. Arrango wouldn’t have to know it was even sent. I already talked to a guy I know in Firearms and Toolmarks. He said he’d grease this one if we got him the package.”

McCaleb closed his eyes. If there was a point at which she might get outright angry, it was now.

“You already told this guy we’d be doing this?” she asked, annoyance in her voice.

“No, I didn’t tell him that. I told him I was dealing with a detective out here who was very thorough and dedicated and would probably want to make sure she left no stone uncovered.”

“Gee, where have I heard that before?”

McCaleb smiled.

“There’s another thing,” he said. “Even if we don’t get lucky with this, we’ll at least have the gun in the computer. Somewhere down the road, it might match up with something.”

She thought about this for a moment. McCaleb was pretty sure he had painted her into the corner. Like watching the cemetery for Luther Hatch. She had to go for it or she’d wonder about it always.

“Okay, okay,” Winston finally said. “I’ll talk to the captain about it. I’ll tell him I want to do this. If he gives the go-ahead, I’ll send a package. One bullet-that’s all.”

“That’s all it takes.”

McCaleb filled her in further on Carruthers’s need to get the package by Tuesday morning and urged her to get in with the captain as soon as possible. This created another silence.

“All I can say is, it’s worth the shot, Jaye,” he said by way of reinforcement.

“I know. It’s just that… well, never mind. Give me your guy’s name and his number.”

McCaleb clenched his fist and punched it into the air in front of him. It didn’t matter how long a shot it was. They were rolling the dice. It felt good to him to be getting something going.

After he gave Winston the direct number and address for contacting Carruthers, she asked if there was anything else McCaleb wanted to talk about. He looked down at his pad but what he wanted to talk about wasn’t written down on it.

“I’ve got one last thing that’s probably going to put you on the spot,” he said.

“Oh, no,” Winston said with a groan. “Serves me right for answering the phone on a court day. Give it to me, McCaleb. What is it?”

“James Noone.”

“The witness? What about him?”

“He saw the shooter. He saw the shooter’s car.”

“Yeah, a lot of good it did us. There’s only about a hundred thousand of those Cherokees in southern California and his description of the guy is so vague he can’t tell if the guy was wearing a hat or not. He’s a witness but just barely.”

“But he saw him. It was during a stress situation. The more stress, the deeper the imprint. Noone would be perfect.”

“Perfect for what?”

“To be hypnotized.”

BUDDY LOCKRIDGE PULLED the Taurus into an open spot in the parking lot of Video GraFX Consultants on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood. Lockridge was not dressed Hollywood-cool for his second day as McCaleb’s driver. This time he was wearing boat shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with ukuleles and hula girls floating on an ocean blue background. McCaleb told him he didn’t think he would be long and got out.

VGC was a business used mostly by the entertainment industry. It rented professional video equipment as well as video editing and dubbing studios. Adult filmmakers, whose product was almost exclusively shot on video, were its main clients but VGC also provided one of the best video-effects and image-enhancing labs in Hollywood.

McCaleb had been inside VGC once before, working on loan to the field office’s bank unit. It was the downside of his being transferred from Quantico to the FO outpost; technically he was under the command of the FO’s special agent in charge. And whenever the SAC thought things were slow-if they ever were-in the serials unit, he would yank McCaleb out and put him on something else, usually something McCaleb considered menial.

When he had walked into VGC the previous time, he had a videotape from the ceiling camera of a Wells Fargo Bank in Beverly Hills. The bank had been robbed by several masked gunmen who had escaped with $363,000 in cash. It was the group’s fourth bank robbery in twelve days. The one lead agents had was on the video. When one of the robbers had reached his arm across the teller’s counter to grab the bag she had just stuffed her cash into, his sleeve had caught on the edge of the marble counter and was pulled back. The robber quickly pulled the sleeve forward again but for a split second the form of a tattoo was seen on the inside of his forearm. The image was grainy and had been shot by a camera thirty feet away. After a tech in the field office lab said he could do nothing with it, it was decided not to send the tape to Washington HQ because it would take more than a month to have it analyzed. The robbers were hitting every three days. They seemed agitated in the videos, on the verge of violence. Speed was a necessity.