He had agreed to the newspaper interview only because he was in the reporter’s debt. When he had been with the bureau, Keisha Russell had always been good to him. She was the kind of reporter who gave some and didn’t always take. She had called him on the boat a month earlier to collect on that debt. She’d been assigned the story for the Times ’s “Whatever Happened to…” column. Since a year earlier she had written a story about McCaleb’s wait for a heart, she wanted to update it now that he had finally received the transplant. McCaleb wanted to decline the invitation, knowing it would disrupt the anonymous life he was now living, but Russell had reminded him of all the times she had helped him-either holding back details of an investigation or putting them into a story, depending on what McCaleb thought would be useful. McCaleb felt he had no choice. He always made good on his debts.

On the day the story was published, McCaleb had taken it as his official badge of has-been status. Usually, the column was reserved for updates on hack politicians who had disappeared from the local scene or people whose fifteen minutes of fame had long ago lapsed. Every now and then it featured a washed-up TV star who was selling real estate or had become a painter because it was his true creative calling.

He unfolded the clip now and reread it.

New Heart, New Start for Former FBI Agent

By Keisha Russell

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It used to be that Terrell McCaleb’s face was a routine fixture on the nightly newscasts of Los Angeles and his words always found space in the local newspapers. It was not a nice routine for him or the city.

An FBI agent, McCaleb was the bureau’s point man in the investigations of the handful of serial killers that plagued Los Angeles and the West in the last decade.