Treasure Hunt wh-2

by John Lescroart

  Hunt by this time was lying on the pavement, leveling his gun out in front of him, but he found that he could not fire. She was not then firing at him and it was bad luck to shoot in the back even an escaping murderer. To say nothing of the fact that under those conditions, it was nearly impossible to claim self-defense.

  Even if it was. Even if she’d just shot at you.

  Lorraine Hess got to the door of her car and again he saw her extend her arm, and again he rolled as the shot pinged off the pavement behind him.

  Still on the ground, he squeezed off a round in the general direction of her tires. Off to his left, coming out his door, Juhle had his own weapon out, extended in both hands. He got off two quick shots that cracked the windshield before Hess got the car moving, and then Juhle had to jump backward inside the warehouse as she slammed it into gear and tried to run him down, smashing her front bumper into the side of the building, then bouncing off and coming on, faster now and off the curb.

  Hunt, in her path now as well, rolled out into the street and the car passed him, missing him by no more than a few inches. He turned to see her disappear around the corner with a squeal of her tires, heard the diminishing roar of the engine as she sped away, and, lying there on the street, then heard Juhle’s professional voice talking urgently into his cell phone. “I’m calling to report a shooting victim at around Sixth and Brannan. Ambulance required immediately. Urgent, repeat, urgent.” And then, as he closed up the phone, “Son of a bitch.”

  It was one week to the day after the arrest of Lorraine Hess.

  Wyatt Hunt put down the pages and looked across Gina’s small living room to where she sat with her Oban, her legs tucked up under her. “A twenty-two doesn’t make an enormous boom,” he said. “More like a ‘pop.’”

  “Everybody’s a critic.”

  “And besides,” Hunt went on, “that’s not what happened.”

  “I realize that. But it’s damn sure what very easily could have happened, and forcing you to take a good hard look at the other possibilities was kind of my point in doing the exercise. Because actually, it could have been much worse even than this. In my first draft of this, she runs you over and you die too. But then you’d be out of your misery, and I didn’t want that.”

  “You wanted me to suffer?”

  “Just a little more. I wanted you to see where this so easily could have gone.” Her smile was fleeting, laced with portent. “But just for fun, let me count the ways.” She held up a finger. “First, Lorraine doesn’t confess and goes home and realizes that she’s finished and she shoots her son while he sleeps and then takes her own life. And meanwhile, of course, Devin arrests Alicia.”

  “Don’t be such a softie,” Hunt said. “Have something bad happen.”

  “Something bad is coming right up,” she said. “Because maybe you’ve forgotten about it, but that first shot, Lorraine’s first shot as soon as Al Carter opened the door? In my little version of the story, it killed him and he’s lying dead on the floor of your place. And guess who the mildly angry Inspector Juhle is going to blame for that homicide-hint, it’s not just Lorraine, but the person who set up the encounter in the first place. So the good news is that nobody cares what he thinks because he’s going to lose his job for getting involved in this at all. But the bad news is you can’t give him a job because you lose your license at least, your shop gets closed up, and you maybe even go to jail. Next, in her ongoing rage and plain old embarrassment at having somebody shot to death in her partner’s presence when he was right there to stop it and she would have been there if you hadn’t sandbagged him, Sarah Russo comes after me for conspiracy or obstructing justice or some trumped-up charge and I lose my license too.”

  “And,” Hunt added, “we become another of San Francisco’s prominent homeless couples, living out of a Dumpster.”

  “Laugh if you want, Wyatt, but all of this was this close to happening, and I don’t see you realizing that.”

  “That’s because it didn’t…”

  “Oh, and the last thing… because Lorraine killed herself when she got home, see above, she never could have told us where she had dumped Jim Parr at Lake Merced after she shot him, and he would have undoubtedly died too.”

  “And still may.”

  “True. But maybe dead, or as Billy Crystal would put it, mostly dead, is far preferable to completely and officially dead. They’ve done studies.”

  “All right.” Hunt crossed a leg and sat back in his chair. “Yep, those all would have been bad things, I agree. But what else would you have had me do, in some future case where I’ll be able to apply all these important lessons you’re trying to teach me from this one?”

  “How about you just call Juhle-or whoever the relevant police figure may be in the future-and tell him what you’d figured out?”

  “And then what? In the first place, he doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m blowing smoke at him to protect Alicia. Then, even if he buys what I’m telling him, he’s still got no evidence. So he’s going to play it by the book. He shows up with twenty- five cops, the SWAT team, a tank, and a helicopter and scares Lorraine away. Or worse, he simply goes and talks to her and she denies it and not only is she on her guard because she knows she’s a possible suspect, but Juhle’s back at square one-”

  “Not exactly. He could have found witnesses at that Noriega bar. Or after they found Jim, dead by this time, he could have gotten a warrant to look for the gun.”

  “But once she knows they’re looking at her, she ditches it.”

  “They’d eventually have gotten to her, Wyatt.”

  “I’m not so sure. And in any event, it wouldn’t have been soon enough. All of his focus, and Russo’s, too, was on Alicia, you remember. At the very least they would have brought her downtown-even with you there lawyering her up-and put her through a very bad time. And she was our client. She was my first responsibility.”

  “That’s another thing, Wyatt: How did she get to be your client?”

  “Mickey brought her on. He committed us.”

  “For how much retainer?”

  “I know,” he said.

  “So how weak is that?”

  “Very. Admittedly. But it’s what I acted on. Which, in my defense, worked out okay.”

  “I grant that. But what I’m trying to tell you is you didn’t have to take all those risks, to bring all of us together like that.”

  “I did. I needed Alicia for Devin, Carter for Hess, you for Alicia. Ellen for Hess’s lie about seeing Alicia and Dominic doing it. Turner and the Sanchez couple for verisimilitude and to convince Hess it was a charity business meeting, me and Mickey for the party favors. I’d probably do the same thing again under the same conditions.”

  “Which, luckily, are not likely to recur.” She tipped up her Scotch, set the glass down on the end table next to her, then got up and crossed the room, where she leaned down and kissed him. “I’d just like you to try to think about it. Is that asking so much?”

  With a straight face, he held up his right hand. “I hereby promise to think about it.” He tapped the pages he still held in his lap. “These words have not been in vain.”

  Still leaning over him, her arms on the arms of his chair, she looked him full in the face. “I believe I’ve mentioned,” she said, “how it worries me that you lie so easily.”

  “I’m in therapy for it.” Hunt grinned. “Honest.”

  Jim Parr, in an extremely drunken haze by the reed-lined water’s edge at Lake Merced, and thinking they had gotten themselves to this private place so he could get himself fellated by the still reasonably-hot-by-his-standards Lorraine Hess, had taken the. 22 brass-jacketed bullet point-blank in the chest. It had passed through his heavy peacoat, slowed down considerably, nicked his sternum, and been deflected down and slightly to the right, where it had missed a lung and lodged behind a front rib. It had not hit any of his major organs or, more importantly, any arteries.

  Nevertheless, between the drink and the b
ullet, he had gone down like a dead man-enough to fool Hess, anyway-falling back into the muddy reeds, where he lay unmoving and progressively more comatose for the next twenty-eight hours until a police unit found him exactly where Hess had told Juhle he’d be. His pulse was a bare flicker, his body temperature ninety-two, and the paramedics had to resuscitate him twice in the ambulance when he flatlined on the way to the ER at the Kaiser Hospital on Masonic and Geary. His doctor said that his survival was a flat-out miracle, but offered his theory that the exposure and low body temperature had probably saved him. He didn’t even have a theory about how he survived the gunshot wound.

  For the first few days, Tamara and Mickey had come in to visit him every day and night, but he remained in the ICU, basically unresponsive, and Mickey had stopped coming by at every opportunity, since he truly hated hospitals and Jim wouldn’t know he was there anyway. Tamara, though, wanted to be around for when her grandfather woke up, as she believed he would, and she visited whenever she could.

  Now, Thursday, six days after Jim’s admittance, during the later evening visiting hours, Tamara was sitting by her grandfather’s bed a few blocks from their apartment, holding one of his cold hands in both of hers when he opened his eyes for the first time, saw her, squeezed her hand, and smiled feebly.

  He started to say something, but could only manage a guttural gurgle.

  “It’s okay, Jim,” Tamara whispered through her enthusiasm. “It’s Tam. You’re going to be okay.” He closed his eyes again for a moment and in that time Tamara pressed the call button by the head of the bed.

  Almost immediately a nurse was next to her, checking his vitals, glancing with concern at the monitor.

  “He’s awake,” Tamara said. “He just tried to talk to me.” And Jim opened his eyes again. “Maybe he could have some water?”

  “Water’s always good,” the nurse said. She poured a glassful from the pitcher near his bed, put in a straw, and directed it to Jim’s mouth.

  After swallowing two or three times, he lifted his head slightly and the straw came out. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Kaiser,” Tamara said. “You got shot? Do you remember?”

  Shaking his head no, Jim closed his eyes again. His chest rose and fell under his blankets. When he opened his eyes again, Tamara thought she detected some vestigial sign of his old spark. “I thought she hit people on the head,” he said.

  “You do remember.”

  An infinitesimal nod. “Lorraine.”

  “Right.”

  He sighed. “Como and her.”

  “Yep.”

  “I thought I remembered that. But I didn’t want to say until I was sure.”

  “You remembered right.”

  “Mickey told me not to go. But I had to find out.”

  “That’s all right. Don’t worry about that now.”

  “He’s gonna bust my ass.”

  “Probably.”

  He paused to take a weary breath or two. “But a gun?”

  “Her ex-husband’s. After the first two, she thought it would be cleaner.”

  A small ripple of what might have been laughter, or at least ironic amusement, shook him. “And look at me. How do you like that?”

  “A lot, Jim. I like it a lot.”

  He closed his eyes as if savoring the moment. “So where is she now?”

  “In jail.”

  Again, he nodded. Closed his eyes.

  “He’s tired,” the nurse said. “Maybe that’s enough for today.”

  “Okay.” Tamara wasn’t going to push it. She squeezed his hand again and felt the small but definite response. His mouth creased upward marginally. She stood up and leaned in to plant a kiss on his cheek. “I’ll bring in Mickey tomorrow,” she whispered. “Meanwhile, you keep getting better.”

  She started to take her hand out from under his, but suddenly, he squeezed hard enough to hold her and opened his eyes one more time. “Tam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You still eating?”

  “Every day, Jim. Every day.”

  “Good. Don’t stop that again.”

  “I won’t.”

  He patted her hand. “That’s my big favorite girl.” With a final small nod, he closed his eyes once again, and the pressure of his hand holding hers went away.

  Watching him, she stood still long enough to see his chest rise and fall a few times, then pulled her hand out from under his and turned for the door.

  35

  Various legal technicalities and the perennially overcrowded San Francisco court docket held up the arraignment of Lorraine Hess, but Hunt was in the Department 11 courtroom that Friday morning and listened to her plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to two counts of first degree murder, one count of attempted murder, and assault with a deadly weapon.

  Just after she was led back to the holding cells, Hunt walked across the lobby of the Hall of Justice. Outside, he stood on the steps in the windy sunshine and debated with himself whether he should go back inside and try to talk to Juhle. But he was reluctant to put himself in the position of seeming to apologize for his unorthodox ways.

  After all, in spite of even Gina’s concerns that he’d acted recklessly, he had delivered Dominic Como’s and Nancy Neshek’s murderer into Juhle’s hands without even a minor scuffle. In the process, he’d saved his friend, and Russo as well, from another false or, at best, deeply flawed arrest.

  If Juhle didn’t like the way Hunt had done that job, that was just too bad. When you’re at the table and your hand comes in, you’ve got to bet it and play it now, and that’s what Hunt had done.

  Sure, it could have gone differently. Granted, there were more risks involved than Juhle and even Gina felt comfortable with, but the fact was that Hunt was not a cop. He was a private investigator and didn’t have to abide by the written and unwritten rules of the police force. If Juhle didn’t like that, he’d have to get over it.

  He checked his watch, scanned the traffic as it flowed by him on Bryant, then descended the steps and jaywalked across the street, to where Lou the Greek’s was probably just starting to serve the day’s first orders of the Special, whatever that might turn out to be.

  If Hunt went right down now, he could get a table with no wait.

  He was halfway through his Yeanling Clay Bowl, sitting at a two-top that faced away from the entrance and the bar, when a shadow crossed his table and in the next second Juhle was in the chair across from him.

  “I saw you in there,” Juhle said without preamble. “I love that she pleaded not guilty.”

  Hunt shrugged. “How does she do that after she confessed?”

  “Happens all the time,” Juhle said. “You’d be surprised.” He pointed at Hunt’s food. “Yeanling Clay Bowl?”

  Hunt nodded. “And the yeanling today is especially fresh and tasty.”

  “Do I have time to get some and talk to you, or are you running out to solve another crime?”

  “I’ve got no crimes on the agenda. I’m back to litigation work. Not that I’m complaining. There’s suddenly a ton of it.”

  “Getting your name in the paper never hurts.”

  “Yeah, there’s that.” Hunt shrugged again, twisted a forkful of the noodle contingent of his dish. “What else do you want to talk about?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a week now. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t know how you knew.”

  Hunt chewed. “I didn’t. Not till the last minute. Before that, I was wrong on every guess. Turner, Ellen, Alicia. I was all over the money. I never even looked at Hess.”

  “So what changed?”

  “She snagged herself. At Como’s memorial, she pretended she had barely heard of Neshek’s death, but then a few minutes later, before anybody had said anything about it, she asked me if the cops had found anything at Neshek’s house.”

  Juhle spoke up. “And she shouldn’t have known that soon that Neshek had been killed in her own home.”

  “See?
You can figure things out, after all. But I didn’t figure it out. At least not then. I just thought somebody might have included that detail before I went over to talk to them. You know, ‘Did you hear Nancy got killed at her house last night?’ kind of thing. So I didn’t put too much on it. She possibly could have known. So I gave her the benefit.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, so the next day, Mickey’s up at Sunset talking to her about her alibi for Monday night and she tells him she’s got a son she’s helping with homework all night, but then she lets drop that she doesn’t even know where Neshek lived. So I get this little ‘ding ding ding’ in my brain and wonder how likely that is. I mean, she’s worked with Dominic like for a decade and all these execs go to the same functions.” He raised a hand and stopped one of the waiters going by. “You ordering?”

  Juhle nodded and told the waiter he was going to walk on the wild side and have the Special and a Diet Coke, and then he came back to Hunt. “So she said she didn’t know where Neshek lived?”

  “Right. At the same time, she tells Mickey how she’s hurting for money. Big bills, medical stuff. But somehow before that she had the money for a full-time caregiver and a tutor. Anyway, that sticks with me a little bit. But still, I mean, possible, I suppose. And she’s still got her kid as an alibi. Plus, there’s absolutely no hint of a motive, so I let it pass again. Strike two.”

  “All right, the oh two pitch.”

  “I’m talking with Alicia Thorpe, trying to bust her story wide open, and she tells me that she’d met Ellen Como at a Sanctuary House benefit at Neshek’s place.”

  “Ellen Como? Am I missing something?”

  “No, hang on. So Alicia’s talking about this first meeting with Ellen and then she lets slip-I mean, really just an aside, pure luck-that Dominic pulled her away from the Sunset staff to introduce her to Ellen. And she mentions Hess specifically, at Neshek’s house.”