Recovering from heart transplant surgery, McCaleb says hunting serial killers and rapists is the furthest thing from his mind these days.
McCaleb, 46, says he gave his heart to the bureau-his doctors say severe stress triggered a virus that led to the near-fatal weakening of his original heart-but doesn’t miss it.
“When you go through something like this, it changes you more than just physically,” he said in an interview last week. “It puts things in perspective. Those FBI days seem like a long time ago. I’ve got a new start now. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with it but I’m not too worried. I’ll find something.”
McCaleb almost didn’t get the new start. Because he has a blood type found in less than one percent of the population, his wait for a suitable heart lasted almost two years.
“He really strung it out,” said Dr. Bonnie Fox, the surgeon who performed the transplant. “We probably would have lost him or he would have become too weak to undergo the surgery if we’d had to wait much longer.”
McCaleb is out of the hospital and already physically active after only eight weeks. He says that only on occasion does he think about the adrenaline-pumping investigations that once occupied him.
The former agent’s case list reads like a Who’s Who of a macabre walk of fame. Among the cases he worked locally were the Nightstalker and Poet investigations and he took key roles in the hunts for the Code Killer, Sunset Strip Strangler and Luther Hatch, who became known after his arrest as the Cemetery Man because of his visits to the graves of his victims.
McCaleb had been a profiler in the unit’s Quantico base for several years. He specialized in West Coast cases and was flown to Los Angeles often to assist local police in investigations. Finally, the unit’s supervisors decided to create a satellite post here and McCaleb was returned to his native Los Angeles to work out of the FBI field office in Westwood. The move put him closer to many of the investigations in which the FBI was called upon for assistance.
Not all of the investigations were successful and eventually the stress took its toll. McCaleb suffered a heart attack while working late one evening in the local field office. He was found by a night janitor, who was credited with saving the agent’s life. Doctors determined McCaleb suffered from advanced cardiomyopathy-a weakening of the heart’s muscles-and placed him on a transplant list. As he waited, he was given a disability retirement by the bureau.
He traded his bureau pager for a hospital pager and on Feb. 9 it sounded; a heart from a donor with matching blood was available. After six hours of surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the donor’s heart was beating in McCaleb’s chest.
McCaleb is unsure what he’ll do with his new life-other than go fishing. He has had offers from former agents and police detectives to join them as a private investigator or security consultant. But his focus so far has been on restoring The Following Sea, a twenty-year-old sport-fishing boat he inherited from his father. The boat was left to deteriorate for six years but now has McCaleb’s full-time attention.
“At the moment I’m content to take things a little at a time,” he said. “I’m not worried too much about what’s ahead.”
His regrets are few but like all retired investigators and fishermen, McCaleb laments the ones that got away.
“I wish I had solved all the cases,” he said. “I hated it when somebody got away. I still do.”
For a moment McCaleb studied the photo they had used with the story. It was an old head shot they had used many times before during his days with the bureau. His eyes stared boldly into the camera.
When Keisha Russell had come around to do the story on him, she had come with a photographer. But McCaleb wouldn’t let them take a fresh shot. He told them to use one of the old photos. He didn’t want anybody to see the way he looked now.
Not that anyone could tell much, unless he had his shirt off. He was about thirty pounds lighter but that wasn’t what he wanted to hide. It was the eyes. He had lost that look-the eyes as piercingly hard as bullets. He didn’t want anyone to know he had lost that.
He folded the newspaper clip and put it aside. He tapped his fingers on the desk for a few seconds while brooding over things and then looked at the steel paper spike next to the phone. The number Graciela Rivers had given him was scratched in pencil on the scrap of paper that sat at the top of the stack of notes punctured by the spike.
When he was an agent, he had carried with him a bottomless reservoir of rage for the men he hunted. He had seen firsthand what they had done and he wanted them to pay for the horrible manifestations of their fantasies. Blood debts had to be paid in blood. That was why in the bureau’s serial killer unit the agents called what they did “blood work.” There was no other way to describe it. And so it worked on him, cut at him, every time one didn’t pay. Every time one got away.
What happened to Gloria Torres now cut at him. He was alive because she had been taken away by evil. Graciela had told him the story. Gloria had died for no reason other than that she was in the way of somebody and a cash register. It was a simple, stupid and ghastly reason to die. It somehow put McCaleb in debt. To her and her son, to Graciela, even to himself.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number scratched on the paper. It was late but he didn’t want to wait and he didn’t think she would want him to. She answered in a whisper after only one ring.
“Miss Rivers?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Terry McCaleb. You came by my-”
“Yes.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“No.”
“Well, listen, I wanted to tell you that I, uh, have been thinking about things and I promised you I’d call you back no matter what I decided.”
“Yes.”
There was a hopeful tone in just her one word. It touched his heart.
“Well, this is what I think. My, um, my skills, I guess you’d call them, they’re not really suited to this kind of crime. From what you described about your sister, we’re talking about a random occurrence with a financial motive. A robbery. So it’s different from, you know, the kind of cases I worked for the bureau, the serial cases.”
“I understand.”
The hopefulness was bleeding out.
“No, I’m not saying I’m not going to-you know, that I’m not interested. I’m calling because I am going to go see the police tomorrow and ask about this. But-”
“Thank you.”
“-I don’t know how successful I’m going to be. That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t want to get your hopes up, is what I’m saying. These things… I don’t know.”
“I understand. Thank you for just being willing to do this. Nobody-”
“Well, I’ll take a look at things,” he said, cutting her off. He didn’t want her thanking him too much. “I don’t know what kind of help or cooperation I’ll get from the L.A. police but I’ll do what I can. I owe your sister at least that much. To try.”
She was silent and he told her he needed to get some additional information about her sister as well as the names of the LAPD detectives on the case. They talked for about ten minutes and when he had all of the information he needed written down in a small notebook, an uneasy silence played across the telephone line.
“Well,” he finally said, “I guess that’s it, then. I’ll call you if I have any other questions or if anything else comes up.”
“Thank you again.”
“Something tells me I should be thanking you. I’m glad I’ll be able to do this. I just hope it helps.”
“Oh, it will. You’ve got her heart. She’ll guide you.”
“Yes,” he said hesitantly, not really understanding what she meant or why he was agreeing. “I’ll call you when I can.”
He hung up and stared at the phone for a few moments, thinking about her last line. Then again he unfolded the newspaper clip with his picture. He studied the eyes for a long time.