“It’s a good one. Isn’t he getting it?”
“Not clearly enough, I don’t believe.” She paused. “So, off the record, what do you think the odds are that these two reports”-here she indicated the article she’d just read-“had nothing whatsoever to do with Como’s death?”
Elliot leaned back and scratched at his beard. “Fifty to one. Maybe a hundred to one. I’d be stunned if they didn’t.”
“I would be too. The timing’s just too perfect. So the question is, why exactly would someone want to kill him over this?”
Elliot broke a smile. “You going for the reward?”
“Not specifically, although if we came up with something really good right here and now, I’d be happy to share with you.”
“Okay. Deal.” Elliot stretched out a hand and they shook. “Now give me a second.” Sitting in his wheelchair, he closed his eyes, head back. “Theory number one takes a bit of a stretch to start out, but ends strong.”
“Let’s hear the stretch part.”
“All right. We assume that Como either didn’t know about or wasn’t hands-on responsible for any of the stuff from tomorrow’s column.” He held up a hand. “I said it was a stretch. But let’s assume…”
Roake made a face. “Okay, but only for the sake of argument.”
“Fair enough. Como is a bona fide saint who doesn’t know that scandal is about to blow up all over at Sunset. Somebody else, let’s call him Turner for lack of a better word, has been screwing with the books and playing loose with the rules for three years or more-”
“Try twenty,” Roake said.
“Okay, twenty. Anyway, so last week Como gets wind of let’s say the AmeriCorps problem cutting off his federal grants. So he goes to Turner, his corporate counsel, and realizes that it’s got to have been Turner behind the cooking of the books and the misuse of the funds. So he meets him alone and calls him on it, says he’s going to fire him, get him kicked off the COO program, all of the above. Turner can’t have that happen, and voila. He whacks him.”
“Yeah, but Turner knows this stuff’s going to come out anyway.”
“Sure, but if the community hangs together, Sunset loses some federal funding for a while, but otherwise nothing happens. Nothing changes. On the other hand, if Como makes a stink, Turner’s in deep shit with the whole nonprofit world, which is his entire income. Not to say life.”
Roake chewed on it for a moment. “Possible,” she said, “if you can buy the premise, which I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said. “I don’t know if I can either. I mean, it would be hard to argue that Como didn’t know he had some drivers taking him around places, you know?”
“I know. So where’s that leave us?”
“We need a second theory, and I got the first one, so it’s your turn.”
“All right.” Roake closed her own eyes. “Okay, how’s this: One of those private interests that provided the funding, they got pissed that Como was essentially stealing from them, personally.”
“So they killed him?” Elliot was shaking his head. “Doesn’t sing for me at all. And besides, that’s the COO money you’re talking about, and that report-the budget analysis-was coming out right about the time somebody killed him. So if it was about money, the timing says it was about the federal money.”
“And Turner, somehow, don’t you think? All right, how’s this? They both knew about the money problems. Are either of them looking at prison time over this?”
“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer, you should know this, right? Me, I’d say not impossible.”
“Okay, let’s go with that for the moment. Say Turner knows he’s going to jail if it’s him and Como each pointing fingers at each other. Except if Como’s dead, then it’s Turner’s finger and that finger’s only pointing in one direction, at Como. Como stole the money, misappropriated the money, it’s all his fault.”
“That’s good,” Elliot said.
“Yeah, but… if that were the case, I’m surprised Turner didn’t even try to make it look like a suicide-Como knows he’s going down for this, and decides to kill himself. But still, in general terms, I think it flies. Or”-Roake’s eyes lit up-“even better… you’re going to like this… Turner’s got some rehab and paroled people in these residential units and he hires one of them to take Como out. They don’t do it, he violates them back, and they go to jail. And, hell, what do they care about Como anyway?”
“So it’s a hit?”
“At least it’s a theory that works. And we’ve got to have something involving both Len Turner and the money, right?”
Elliot clucked. “It’s tempting to think so. Maybe Hunt ought to talk to him.”
“Thanks, Jeff,” she said, “but that’s pretty much exactly what I came here to talk him out of. He’s basically working for Turner, but he doesn’t want to be messing with him. Besides, Turner’s controlling the funds for the reward.”
Elliot raised his eyebrows. “So you’re telling me Hunt gives Turner a pass? He’s not going to look at him at all?”
“That’s my hope. They’re just supposed to be a clearinghouse for information going to the police.”
“So what do your psychic powers say?”
“Unfortunately,” she said, “they say I’m whistling in the wind.”
When they looked in the trunk of the limo out at the Sunset Youth Project, they found that its tire iron was in fact missing. Now, back at his desk in the homicide detail, Devin Juhle hung up his telephone and looked across his desk and then the desk of his partner, Russo, where she sat with the tip of her tongue sticking out through her lips as she labored over the typed transcription of an interview they’d done on another of their cases.
Picking up a paper clip, he tossed it across, and she looked up in exasperation.
“What?”
“You’ll never believe who that was.”
“George Clooney.”
“Nope. Guess again.”
“If it’s not George Clooney, I don’t care who it was.”
“Yes, you will.”
She picked up the paper clip, unbent it, bent it back. “It couldn’t have been the lab already with the tire iron.”
Juhle nodded with satisfaction. “Mr. Como must have been more important than even we thought he was. And they found a trace of his DNA. Strong profile, and no doubt about it.”
“How’d the lab even find the DNA after that soak in the lake?”
“Probably that prayer to Saint Jude I said.”
“But really?”
“Really. Hair follicle stuck to the tire iron. It settled into the mud and the mud covered it up so all of it didn’t wash away. In a million years it might have been a hair fossil if we’d have left it alone.” Juhle leaned back, linked his hands around the back of his head. “You know what this means? Warrant for the car.”
Russo’s shoulders sagged as she let out a sigh. “And I suppose we’re going to want to do this tonight?”
“Get the warrant tonight, impound it tonight before anybody can get it any cleaner, do the search first thing tomorrow.” He gestured to the marked-up paperwork on his partner’s desk. “Sarah, what’s got into you? Look what you’re working on when the game’s afoot. The trail’s heating up. I can feel it.” Now he was on his feet. “Let’s go find us a judge. You with me? I know you’re with me.”
She sighed again, with perhaps exaggerated weariness. “Yes, kimosabe, I’m with you.”
16
Much to Hunt’s delight, Tamara had fielded three calls in the afternoon from previous clients who all seemed to have developed amnesia about the last six months. Or maybe Hunt had served sufficient penance for his transgressions and his firm’s name in the newspaper suddenly announced to the legal world at large that he was back in business. If the city’s well-connected service-oriented charities were entrusting him with work, then clearly his name was no longer anathema, and his firm no longer a pariah.
All three of t
he clients were law firms located in buildings that were within a short walking distance from Hunt’s office, and by seven-thirty on this Tuesday night he was walking out of the last one at Market and Spear, now wrestling with something that had been the least of his worries over the past months-staffing. In the past two and a half hours, he’d just reestablished personal relations with these big-time litigators who needed private investigators to sit in on their depositions or serve subpoenas or locate and deliver witnesses. Everybody he’d talked to seemed genuinely enthusiastic that he was back in business-had they actually thought he’d closed up?-and all of them had work that, of course, couldn’t wait. After all, this was the law, where nothing could wait. Everything had to be done yesterday latest. When could he start?
But he only had Mickey, who didn’t have any kind of license besides the one that he used to drive, and Tamara, ditto, who’d been back on the job for a whole two days now. Thinking it never rained but it poured, but basically happy about it, Hunt headed back to his office to make some calls to see if he could line up a few underemployed, licensed stringers that he could bring on to do some work for him temporarily.
When he got inside the main door, though, he noticed the message light blinking “1” and pushed the button to hear Juhle pass along the news that Hunt’s anonymous source might be in line for part of the reward after all, since the police lab had discovered Dominic Como’s hair on the tire iron they’d retrieved from the drained lagoon. And what did Hunt think of that?
Hunt thought first that Cecil Rand would be happy to see some money at the end of this, and second that it was not too surprising, finding the murder weapon near the scene of the crime, although the speed of the police lab’s analysis was nearly unprecedented. He also didn’t think any of this was overwhelmingly important. It didn’t identify a suspect, not unless there were fingerprints or other identifying marks on the tire iron, and there couldn’t have been or Juhle would have mentioned them.
Hunt went back through the door behind Tamara’s station, switched on his light, and, pulling the chair up behind his own desk, sat down and started going through the notes he’d taken at his various meetings, estimating his personnel needs for the next couple of weeks. Touching his mouse, he awakened the computer screen in front of him, and he pulled up his address book.
And then suddenly he wasn’t looking at the screen anymore, but had slumped back in his chair, some barely registered thought nagging at him. For a minute, maybe more, he didn’t move except to squeeze the skin around his lower lip.
Finally, he got up and walked outside again to the reception area, over to Tamara’s desk. There, on her yellow pad, she’d written the names and telephone numbers of the reward callers, and up near the top was Nancy Neshek, who hadn’t been either at work or at her home all day. Hunt had tried for the fourth and last time just at five o’clock, before he’d gone out for his first meeting, and neither had her workplace heard from her nor had she answered her home telephone.
Hunt sat down in Tamara’s chair and punched in the Neshek home number. On the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up again and Hunt waited and then, on the off chance that she was monitoring her calls and would pick up when she heard him, he left a brief message identifying himself. He then waited again to give her time to reach the phone, until at last, when it was clear she wasn’t going to answer, he hung up.
And sat still again.
She had called and left a message here last night, saying it was somewhat important and that he could reach her either at her home or office the next day. She’d been very specific. He could reach her either at home or her office. And he hadn’t been able to do so. Of course, something could have come up. She might have made other last-minute plans, but…
It had been bothering him at some subconscious level since late in the afternoon, and now suddenly it struck him as truly significant. Five minutes later, Hunt had used his computer wizardry and discovered her home address on Seacliff Avenue, and was in a cab on his way home.
There he picked up his Cooper. It didn’t take him fifteen more minutes to pull up outside Nancy Neshek’s house on the cliffs overlooking Phelan Beach. When he got out of his car, he was struck, in spite of the size and stunning architecture of the homes, by how deserted the street felt, and how strongly the gusts blew off the ocean a hundred or more feet below. In the deepening dusk, the two-story Neshek home still exuded a pale yellow glow, although through its lower windows, all was dark inside. Hunt first went to the front door and rang the doorbell, hearing the chimes echo back through the house.
He checked his watch. It was just eight o’clock. Abandoning the front porch, he walked down the driveway and around to the side of the garage, where a quick look revealed a car parked inside. Next, he crossed over a perfectly manicured gravel path and climbed the six steps up to the back door, a thick slab of oak whose large window let Hunt look into a kind of mudroom behind what appeared to be the kitchen.
Going back to the car for his flashlight, he also slipped on a pair of gloves, his heart now pounding in his throat. He knew that he could be shot or restrained or arrested now as a cat burglar and no one would blink an eye. Returning to the back door, he tried the handle and verified that it was indeed locked. He shone a fast beam of light into the mudroom and kitchen and saw nothing unusual or out of place.
Back down those rear stairs, he followed the gravel path again along the back of the house until he came abreast of another bank of windows. Stepping through the garden and getting to them, he saw that they made up the back wall of the dining room.
In the neighbor’s house twenty feet over, a light came on, and he froze. An outside door opened over there, then slammed shut. Another gust rattled the trees and hedges behind him. Drawing a slow breath, he got back through the garden and now followed the lawn next to the gravel path-reducing the noise of his footsteps-around the side of the house, where the neighbors had just turned on their lights.
Hunt estimated when he’d cleared the dining room windows and stepped up to the next bank of them. A dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood as he risked another brief beam from his flashlight. He shone the light over the floor and the leather couch, the rattan rug in the center of the living room, and then the matching chairs over on the piano side.
He would never have seen it if he hadn’t caught a glimpse of a river stone fireplace mantel and leaned in at the window to follow the play of his beam over the stones. And there, with the side of his face pressed against the window, on the floor he saw a hand and a portion of an arm before the rest of the body disappeared from his angle of vision.
Mickey rubbed the boneless goat-leg roast with olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme. He inserted fifteen cloves of garlic into slits he’d made in the meat, and now the smell of the thing cooking with root vegetables in the oven infused the entire small apartment.
Alicia sat on one side of the fold- down table, Tamara and Jim Parr on the other, and after throwing together a beet, arugula, and goat cheese salad, Ian had boosted himself up onto the kitchen counter. Mickey was just stirring the polenta into the pot of boiling and salted water. Ian had explained with no embarrassment at all that he was an addict and an alcoholic and couldn’t drink, but everyone else was having cheap rose in heavy juice glasses.
They were talking about surfing, which was what Alicia told them she had been doing all day out at Ocean Beach.
“How did you not freeze?” Tamara asked.
“Oh, you never go without a wetsuit. It’s not like surfing in Hawaii or even down south. If you didn’t have a wetsuit, you couldn’t last five minutes.”
“How about the sharks?” Mickey said.
But Alicia was shaking her head. “Not here. Up in Bolinas, maybe, but not here.”
“Famous last words,” Ian put in. “I tell her she’s surfing around the general vicinity of Seal Rock. You know why it’s called Seal Rock? Right. You know the preferred diet of the great white shark? I rest my case.�
��
But Alicia just shook her head. “I’ve never even seen a shark out there, Ian.”
“Most people who get eaten don’t see ’em, either, except from the inside.”
“Well, I’m not planning to get eaten. Besides, you’ve got to take risks sometimes if you want to do what you want to do.” Suddenly she turned back to face her tablemates. “Am I right, Mr. Parr?”
Flattered to be included, Parr nearly choked on his wine and then, coughing, was shaking his head up and down, laughing at himself. “No guts, no glory,” he said. “That’s my motto, and I managed to get myself old living with it.”
“You’re not old, Mr. Parr.”
“Jim, please.”
“Jim, then. Who is not old in spite of a life of risk.” Then Alicia whirled back on her brother. “See?” And finally, to the rest of them, “Ian doesn’t want me sleeping out in my car either. Too dangerous.”
“It is dangerous,” Ian said. “There’s all kinds of nuts out there.”
Mickey turned away from the stove. “You sleep out in your car?” Alicia nodded. “Sometimes. Last night I did. I wanted the early morning waves.”
“Actually in it?” Mickey asked.
And Tamara clarified, adding, “Mickey’s been spending about half his nights sleeping outside.”
“Mostly on the ground, though,” he said. “I can’t stretch out in my car.”
“She can,” Ian explained. “She’s got a Honda Element. She can run laps in the damn thing if she takes the seats and her surfboard out.”
“Why do you do it, Mick?” Alicia asked. “Sleep out, I mean.”
He stirred the polenta for a moment. “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “It’s not structured. It’s peaceful. You feel free. You wake up with the sun.” He shrugged. “I just like it. How about you?”
She sighed. “Well, here’s the thing. I get two days off a week, Monday and Tuesday. Otherwise, I’ve got to be in a dress and nylons and high heels and makeup. And sometimes, a lot of the time, I guess I feel like I’m trapped. So I drive off and sleep where I stop, and I don’t feel so… I don’t know, so regimented. Like I can still make some of my own decisions, and I’m not stuck in a life I don’t want to live. I mean,” she added, “look at all of us-maybe not you, Jim-but the rest of us. We’re just all marking time, trying to get into something that’s going to feel like our real lives, you know. You guys going to chef classes, and, Tamara, you starting your day job again.
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