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."Hello? Are you still there?""Uh, yeah.Tell you what, can we go off the record here?" "Off the record? We're not even talking about anything here.""I know.I am going to tell you something if I can tell it to you off the record.Meaning, you can't use it.""Sure, fine, whatever, we're off the record.Could you please get to the point or whatever this important information is because I need to write a story this morning?""Terry McCaleb was murdered.""Uh, no, actually he wasn't.I read the story.He had a heart attack.He had a heart transplant like six years before.He-""I know what was put out in the press and I'm telling you it is wrong.And it will come out that it is wrong.And I'm trying to find out who killed him.Now can you tell me whether or not you put out a story that had his name in it?"She seemed exasperated when she answered."Yes, I wrote one story that he was in.For like a paragraph or two.Okay?""Just a paragraph? What did it say?""It was a follow-up to my story on the missing men.I did a follow-up to see what had come in.You know, what new leads, if any.McCaleb was mentioned, that's all.I said he came forward and offered his help and a theory but Metro said no thanks.It was worth throwing in because the story was dry as a bone and he was sort of famous because of the movie and Clint Eastwood and all of that.Does that answer your question?""So he didn't call you?""Technically, yes, he did.I got his number from Ritz and called him.I left a message and he called me back.So technically he called me, if that's how you want it.What is it you think happened to him anyway?""Did he tell you what his theory was? The one Ritz wasn't interested in?""No, he said he didn't want to comment at all and he asked me to keep his name out of the paper.I talked to my editor and we decided to keep it in.Like I said, he was famous.""Did Terry know you put his name in the story?""I don't know.I never spoke to him again.""In that one conversation you had, did he say anything about the triangle theory?""Triangle theory? No, he didn't.Now I answered your questions, you answer mine.Who says he was murdered? Is that official?"Now it was time to back out.I needed to stop her in her tracks, make sure she wouldn't hang up and immediately start making calls to check me or my story out."Well, not really.""Not really? Are you-well, what exactly makes you say this?""Well, because he was in perfect shape and he had a young person's heart in him.""So, what about organ rejection and infection? A thousand different things could have-do you have any official finding about this or confirmation? Is there an official investigation?""No.That would be like asking the CIA to investigate the Kennedy assassination.The third one.It would just be a cover-up.""What are you talking about? The third what?""The third Kennedy.The son.John-John.You think his plane just dove into the water like they said? There were three witnesses in New Jersey who saw men carrying their bodies onto that plane before it took off.The witnesses have disappeared, too.It was part of the triangle theory and then-""Okay, mister, thanks a lot for your call.But I'm on deadline right now and need to-"She hung up before finishing her own sentence.I smiled.I thought I was safe and was particularly proud of my creativity.I reached over to the passenger seat and lifted the file.I opened it and looked at the chronology.Terry had noted the conversation with Hinton on February 2.The story probably ran in the next day or two.As soon as I got to a library with a computer I would be able to look the story up and get the exact date and read what had been written in the one reference to McCaleb.For the time being I listed it on the chronology on February 3.1 studied what I had for a few moments and started putting my own case theory into form:McCaleb sees the January 7 Los Angeles Times story on the missing men.He gets interested.He sees something in the story that the cops may have missed or misinterpreted.He works up a theory and his thoughts and calls Ritz at Metro two days later.Ritz gives him the cold shoulder but happens to mention the call to Hinton when she does a follow-up.After all, it serves Ritz to keep the story circulating in the press and dropping a "celebrity" investigator's name might help do so.Hinton's follow-up story with the mention of McCaleb runs in the Sun the first week of February.Less than two weeks later-February 13-McCaleb is alone on his boat when Jordan Shandy shows up on a water taxi and asks for a half-day charter.McCaleb grows suspicious of the man while they are fishing and surreptitiously takes photos of him.A week later Shandy is at the Promenade mall stalking McCaleb's family and surreptitiously taking photographs-the same thing McCaleb had done to him.That same night someone takes the GPS device from The Following Sea and possibly tampers with McCaleb's medicine.By February 27 McCaleb has received the photos of his family at the mall.The origin or method of delivery of the photos is unknown but this date is documented by the creation record of the photo file on his computer.Just two days after putting the photos into his computer he leaves Catalina for the mainland.His destination is unknown but his car is returned in dirty condition, as if he had been off-road with it.There is also a record of him having phone numbers for a hospital in Las Vegas and the Mandalay Bay Resort, one of the last known locations of one of the missing men.Possibilities and interpretations abounded.My guess was that everything turned on the photos.I believed that it was seeing those photos that drew McCaleb across to the mainland.I believed that his car came back dirty after three days because he had gone into the desert at Zzyzx Road.He had taken the bait, whether knowingly or not, and gone to the desert.I looked at my chronology again and concluded that the mention of McCaleb in the follow-up story in the Sun had drawn a response.Shandy was somehow involved in the disappearances.If so, he would probably keep an eye on the media for any updates on the investigation.When he saw McCaleb's name in the follow-up, he came to Catalina to check him out.On the boat that morning during the four-hour charter he could have seen McCaleb taking his medicine, seen the capsules, and hatched a plan to eliminate the threat.That left the question of the GPS device and why it was taken during the February 21 boat break-in.I now believed it was simply taken as cover.Shandy could not be sure his entry to the boat to change Terry's meds would go unnoticed.So he took the device so McCaleb wouldn't wonder further about the intentions of the intruder if he discovered there had been a break-in.The larger question was why McCaleb was seen as a threat if his triangle theory was not revealed in the Sun story.I didn't know.I thought there was a possibility that he wasn't seen as a threat at all, that he was just a celebrity whom Shandy liked outwitting by killing.It was one of the unknowns.It was also one of the contradictions.My theory certainly had contradictions.If the first six men disappeared without a trace, why was McCaleb killed in such a way that there were witnesses and a body that could possibly reveal the truth? This was incongruous.My only answer was that if McCaleb simply disappeared, then it would spark an investigation and perhaps a second look at his view and theory of the missing men case
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