The Hunt Club

by John Lescroart

  The Hunt Club

  John Lescroart

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

  ISBN: 1-4295-0225-8

  Copyright Š The Lescroart Corporation, 2006

  Excerpt from The Suspect copyright Š The Lescroart Corporation, 2007

  All rights reserved

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  PUBLISHER'S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  The author of the New York Times bestselling novels featuring Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky brings a new hero into the fold .

  At first, The Hunt Club had a membership of one: private investigator Wyatt Hunt. Since then, others have joined, both on and off the official payroll. Their common interest is obtaining justice—one way or another. But they don't mind having a little fun along the way, and that's exactly what they're doing one late-spring night at a San Francisco bar .

  One of them is missing the festivities, though. Homicide inspector Devin Juhle has just caught a major case: the shooting death of a sixty-three-year-old federal judge and his twentysomething mistress. While Juhle works, Hunt plays, hooking up with TV star and legal analyst Andrea Parisi—once he escorts her safely home and sobers her up, that is.

  But before Hunt knows it, Juhle's case will be of great interest to the members of The Hunt Club. Especially to Hunt himself. Not just because Andrea's card was found in the wallet of one of the victims, but because just hours after their first romantic encounter, she disappears .

  "ENTERTAINING."

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  "Lescroart guides the reader skillfully through the maze of clues and suspects, providing a satisfactory conclusion for all."

  —Orlando Sentinel

  "[Hunt's] child-services background gives him the ability to read motives in surprisingly insightful ways."

  —Booklist

  "A carefully crafted police procedural an explosive conclusion."

  —Lansing State Journal

  "Longtime Lescroart fans can relax: These pals are at least as interesting and enterprising as Hardy/Glitsky . Most readers will agree that it's a great combination, both on the job and on the page."

  —Publishers Weekly

  "Grisham and Turow remain the two best-known writers in the genre. There is, however, a third novelist at work today who deserves to be considered alongside Turow and Grisham. His name is John Lescroart."

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  "What separates Lescroart from the usual courtroom novelist is his characters . They tend to come alive as people and not just action figures."

  —Winston-Salem Journal

  Praise for John Lescroart's Previous Novels

  The Motive

  "Surpasses anything Grisham ever wrote and bears comparison with Turow."

  —The Washington Post

  "Unfolds like a classic Law & Order."

  —Entertainment Weekly

  The Second Chair

  "Lescroart gives his ever-growing readership another spellbinder to savor."

  —Library Journal

  The First Law

  "With his latest, Lescroart again lands in the top tier of crime fiction."

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Oath

  A People Page-Turner

  "A TERRIFIC CRIME STORY."

  —People

  "Hardy and Glitsky are like good wine, improving with time."

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  The Hearing

  "A SPINE-TINGLING LEGAL THRILLER."

  —Larry King, USA Today

  Nothing But the Truth

  "RIVETING ONE OF LESCROART'S BEST TALES YET."

  —Chicago Tribune

  The Mercy Rule

  "WELL WRITTEN, WELL PLOTTED, WELL DONE."

  —Nelson DeMille

  Guilt

  "BEGIN GUILT OVER A WEEKEND . If you start during the workweek, you will be up very, very late, and your pleasure will be tainted with, well, guilt."

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  A Certain Justice

  "A West Coast take on The Bonfire of the Vanities richly satisfying."

  —Kirkus Reviews

  "A gifted writer . I read him with great pleasure."

  —Richard North Patterson

  The 13th Juror

  "FAST-PACED sustains interest to the very end."

  —The Wall Street Journal

  Hard Evidence

  "ENGROSSING compulsively readable, a dense and involving saga of big-city crime and punishment."

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  Dead Irish

  "Full of all the things I like. Lescroart's a pro."

  —Jonathan Kellerman

  ALSO BY JOHN LESCROART

  The Suspect

  The Motive

  The Second Chair

  The First Law

  The Oath

  The Hearing

  Nothing but the Truth

  The Mercy Rule

  Guilt

  A Certain Justice

  The 13th Juror

  Hard Evidence

  The Vig

  Dead Irish

  Rasputin's Revenge

  Son of Holmes

  S
unburn

  To Justine Rose Lescroart, daughter of my heart

  "You think you know yourself until things start happening, until you lose the insulation of normality."

  —Robert Wilson, A Small Death in Lisbon

  That was then

  1(1992)

  From the outside, the large four-story San Francisco apartment building on Twenty-second Avenue near Balboa in the Richmond District was well kept up, but I had seen that before when I'd been called on complaints, and by itself it meant nothing. This building probably had forty units, each one a self-contained and discrete universe inhabited by singles, doubles, students, old folks, happy and unhappy, married and unmarried, gay and straight couples, with or without children.

  On this cold and dreary morning, the mandated call had come from Cabrillo Elementary, where the kids were in sixth and fourth grade, respectively. Both of them had been absent the entire previous week of school, and no parent had called the office with an excuse. When the school's attendance officer had phoned the Dades' home for the first time last Wednesday, she'd left a message that no one returned. On Friday, she called again and talked to Tammy, the sixth grader, who said everybody had the flu, that was all. No, her mother was too sick and sleeping and couldn't come to the phone. Tammy thought that she and her brother would probably be better by Monday and she'd bring a note from her mother or the doctor. Somebody, anyway. Monday, they didn't make it, though, and the attendance officer had called Child Protective Services to check out what might really be going on. She noted on the complaint that both children appeared to be under-nourished and poorly clothed.

  Now it was Tuesday morning, a little before 10:00. My partner for the call, my favorite partner in CPS, for that matter, named Bettina Keck, stood with me—Wyatt Hunt—outside the building after the first few rings from the button in the lobby went unanswered.

  "Why am I not believing nobody's home?" Bettina said.

  It was freezing standing there and I had already had enough waiting. I was going down the list of residents' namecards, pressing each button one after the other. "I hate when they make us do this. If anyone answers, you up for talking?"

  "Why me?"

  "You're smarter? Wait, no, that can't be it."

  "Funnier, too," she said. And as if on cue, a squawk came out of the box, the voice of an elderly woman. "Who's down there?"

  Bettina leaned close to the speaker. "FedEx delivery."

  "See?" I said. "Brilliant."

  Bettina shushed me and we heard, "I didn't order anything."

  "What apartment are you?"

  "Eight."

  My finger went to the namecard for Bettina to read. She got it without missing a beat. "You're Mrs. Craft?"

  "I am."

  "Well, you've got to sign for your delivery."

  "What is it?"

  "Right now, ma'am, it's a brown box. If you don't want it, I'll just have it sent back."

  "To where?"

  "Let me see. It looks like a jewelry store. Maybe you won a prize."

  A pause. Then, "Oh, all right."

  And the door buzzed, letting us into the building.

  "You might be smarter at that," I said, holding the door for my partner.

  "No might about it." She smiled at me. "Best part of the job."

  We took the stairs, through a door just inside the entrance, and came out on the third floor. The Dade residence was number 22, down the hallway on our left, and we stood in front of its door, listening to the television playing inside. Bettina nodded and I knocked. Immediately, the TV sound diminished. I knocked again. And again. "Whoever just turned down the television," I said in a loud and authoritative tone, "open the door, please."

  Finally, a young girl's voice, thin and timid: "Who is it?"

  "Child Protective Services," Bettina said softly. "Open up, please."

  "I'm not allowed."

  "You're not allowed not to, honey. Is that Tammy?"

  After a hesitation, the voice asked, "How do you know that?"

  "Your school called us to check on you. They're worried about you and your brother. You've missed a lot of days."

  "We've been sick."

  "That's what they said."

  "We'd just like to make sure you're okay," I put in.

  "We might still be contagious."

  "We'll take that chance, Tammy," Bettina said. "We're not allowed to go away until we see you."

  "If you don't let us in," I added, "we may have to come back with the police. You don't want that, do you?"

  "You don't need to call the police," Tammy said. "We haven't done anything wrong."

  Effortlessly tag-teaming with me, Bettina spoke. "Nobody's saying you did, honey. We just want to make sure everything's okay in there. Is your brother with you?"

  "He's okay, except he's still sick."

  "How about your mom? Is she there with you? Or your dad?"

  "We don't have a dad."

  "Okay, your mom, then."

  "She's sleeping. She doesn't feel good, either. She's got the flu, too."

  "Tammy," keeping a rising sense of concern out of my voice, "we need to come in right now. Please, open the door."

  A couple of seconds more and we heard the lock turn, and there she was. Remarkably composed and reasonably well dressed, I thought immediately, for a girl who was clearly starving to death.

  Bettina went down on one knee. I heard her asking, "Tammy, honey, have you had anything to eat lately?" while I opened the door and passed behind them, half-hearing the young girl's response: "Some bread."

  In the living room in front of the television set, an emaciated young boy sat under a pile of blankets, staring with hollow and empty eyes at the silent screen. "Hey, buddy," I said gently. "Are you Mickey?"

  The boy glanced over at me and nodded.

  "How are you doing?"

  "Okay," he said in a tinsel voice, "except I'm a little hungry."

  "Well, we'll get you some food right away, then. How's that sound?"

  "Good. If you want."

  "I do. I do want. Where's your mom, Mickey?"

  Bettina, holding Tammy's hand, heard the question as she came into the room. "She's in her bedroom," Bettina said. "Maybe I should stay with the kids in here a minute, and you go see how she is?"

  "On it," I said.

  Mrs. Dade was in her bed, all right, and sleeping. But it wasn't the kind of sleep where you woke up.

  The autopsy later revealed that she had died of an overdose of heroin, probably in the form of black tar, probably on the third or fourth day the kids had missed school. While we were waiting for the unnecessary ambulance, Tammy told us that her mother had lost her job at the Safeway a couple of weeks ago because of her drug problem, which was really a disease she couldn't help. She had told Tammy and Mickey that she knew she shouldn't be using drugs, that they were bad, and she was trying to stop, but it was really, really hard. The main thing, though, was that they must never, ever tell anybody because if the police ever found out, they'd come and either take Mom away or take them away from her.

  Tammy took DARE at school, and she knew that this was true. Everybody agreed you shouldn't live with people who used drugs.

  Which was why Tammy hadn't told anybody.

  And this hadn't been the only time with Mom. Sometimes she would disappear into her bedroom for a couple of days. This was just longer than usual. Tammy didn't want to look in because sometimes her mom would get mad if she checked up on her. She didn't want her children to see her doing drugs. She was ashamed of it. In a day or two more, Tammy thought, her mom would probably come out of her bedroom, or she would go check when they were really out of food, and then they'd go back to school and Mom would go shopping and get them something to eat. Meanwhile, Tammy just fed herself and Mickey from what was left in the kitchen. She rationed it so it wouldn't run out. She needed to protect her brother, too, along with her mom.