The Hunt Club

by John Lescroart

  He forced her out of his mind.

  After his day off yesterday, his workload had backed up and was fairly heavy. At noon, he was scheduled to assist in some predeposition statements from some witnesses in a fraud case at one of his clients' offices, which might take up a good portion of the afternoon. He had three surveillances of one kind or another that were in more or less active status. A doctor had also hired him to find out some history about his very rich mother's new and much younger boyfriend. And when things got slow, he could always fall back on locating witnesses—there were always a few that needed to be found.

  But he had some computer work to get out of the way first. He was taking an online class on information technology and computer forensics, pumping up his skills set to compete with the big PI firms should his specialization as a legal investigator become a liability. When he finished today's lesson, he was planning to search the Net as part of a background check on one of the job applicants with an executive headhunting firm that he'd snagged as a client.

  Engrossed in the intricacies of computer forensics, he never heard the telephone ring outside on Tamara's desk. He had told her that he was doing his lesson online and didn't want to be disturbed for an hour. So he jumped when the phone went off at his elbow.

  "That was a short hour," he said.

  "I'm sorry, but it's Amy Wu. I thought you'd want to talk to her. She sounds upset."

  If it was Wu, he would talk to her. He punched at the phone. "Amy, what's up?"

  Her voice unusually serious, Wu said, "Maybe nothing. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I was wondering if you've talked to Andrea recently."

  "Not since yesterday afternoon."

  "Okay, maybe that's good news. What time was that?"

  "Two. Two thirty. Why would it be bad news?"

  Wu paused. "I've been calling all around. Nobody's seen her. Well, nobody I've talked to at least. I've called Spencer, too, and he hasn't heard from her since Tuesday night. He told me to try you."

  Hunt knew well enough the reason that her Trial TV producer hadn't heard from her. He also assumed that Fairchild must have seen him rush out after Parisi at the Occidental.

  But Wu was going on. "Last night I paged her and also left a message at her home, asking her to call me no matter what time she got in, and she never did."

  "Call? Or get in?"

  "I don't know for sure. Both."

  "What was so urgent?"

  Wu hesitated. "Did you hear they identified the woman who was killed with Judge Palmer?"

  "I did. Staci something, right? Waitress at MoMo's. I didn't know her."

  "We did. Andrea and Jason and I. We all knew who she was at least."

  "So that's why you wanted to get to Andrea? To tell her about Staci?"

  "Originally. You know, to talk about it a little. But then when she didn't call back "

  "Did you try her at work? She was going in there when I left her."

  Another pause. "When you left her? You're saying you didn't just talk to her yesterday afternoon, you were with her?"

  "She passed out, and I took her back to my place." He gave her the short version. "Anyway, after she got herself together, I took her home. She was talking about going in to work."

  "But she didn't go to work. Not yesterday. And she's not there now and hasn't called this morning."

  Hunt, frowning, checked his watch. True, it wasn't yet ten o'clock. And okay, Parisi could have gotten in sometime after he left her driveway last night and be out having an early meeting with a client. She could be doing a morning workout. She could be out jogging. She could have simply decided to sleep in and not answer her telephone. She might even have stood him up to go out with another guy and wasn't back home yet. But Wu, not really given to histrionics, was upset. Hunt felt a seed of real concern in the bottom of his gut. "Was her secretary worried?" he asked.

  "Not particularly. She said that sometimes she comes in later."

  "That's probably what it is."

  "Maybe. But you know Andrea, Wyatt. You page her, she calls back. Her cell phone's surgically implanted in her ear."

  "Maybe she's turned it off."

  "That would take us to the outer fringes of reality."

  Hunt believed Wu, but so what? Given the events of Parisi's last couple of days, he considered it plausible that she might have turned off her cell phone and simply checked out for a few hours. She'd given him every sign that she wanted to think about things. But again, Wu was their mutual friend, and her worry was genuine and somewhat contagious. "Who else have you tried?" he asked her. "Does she have family nearby? Maybe she's staying with them."

  "I know her mom teaches at Cal and lives in Berkeley, I think, but I don't have her number, and I'm not sure if I want to get her worried, too."

  "I could find her and call and make it sound innocuous. I promise."

  "Do you think it would be dumb to check anywhere official?"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. The police? Hospitals?"

  "Not yet, I don't think. How long has it been? Am I the last one who talked to her?"

  "So far."

  "And what's that? Eighteen, twenty hours ago?" Though those numbers startled him in some way, Hunt kept up the optimistic front. "She's a big girl, Amy. She could be anywhere. She could just be hiding out."

  "From what?"

  "Fame. I don't know. Figuring out what she's going to do with Spencer. Or her law career. It really could be anything."

  "You really think so?"

  "I really don't know. But why don't I find her mother's number, and after that, if she's not there, I'll call around, the official places. Meanwhile, you wait and see if she calls you back. And when she does, you call me, right?"

  "Okay."

  "Okay, then. Later."

  They hung up and within fifteen minutes, Hunt was talking to Deanne, one of Andrea's sisters in Berkeley, keeping his questions generic and low-key. Identifying himself as a private investigator, he said he was doing a background check on the résumé for someone who had given her sister as a reference at this number. Deanne certainly didn't sound as though she'd experienced any trauma recently in her life. She laughed and said her sister hadn't lived there for years, so whomever Hunt was checking up on wasn't very current. Deanne hadn't seen Andrea in a month or so, but she was fairly sure that her mother had talked to her last weekend. Hunt thanked her for her time and hung up.

  So Andrea wasn't at her mother's house. Feet up on his desk, Hunt thought for another minute or so, then picked up the phone again and punched in some numbers he knew by heart.

  15 /

  "Juhle, homicide."

  "Hunt, Chinatown."

  "Wrong."

  "How could I be wrong? I haven't said anything yet."

  "Why do I have to explain everything, Wyatt? If I say, 'Juhle, homicide,' you don't say, 'Hunt, Chinatown.' You say something like 'Hunt, investigations.' It's the work, not where you do it. Try again later." And he hung up.

  Hunt sometimes thought that the only thing worse than dealing with someone who had a personality was dealing with somebody who didn't. He punched up Devin's number again, got his deadpan, "Juhle, homicide," and this time said, "Hunt, investigations."

  "Wyatt," Juhle boomed, "how've you been all this time?"

  "I've been good, Devin, but I'm investigating right now even as we speak. I need you to find out something for me."

  "That would be me investigating, not you. And I believe I've mentioned I do homicide. Are you calling about a homicide?"

  "I hope not."

  "Then I'm not your man. Shiu and I, we're out the door in about two minutes on a murder case, which is what we do. And it's all we do. So good luck."

  "Don't hang up!" Hunt was surprised to note the sharper edge in his voice. In spite of his assurances to Amy Wu that everything probably was fine with Andrea Parisi, Hunt was aware that the knot in his stomach where the last pork bao had settled had not gone away. "You remember last night w
e talked a little about Andrea Parisi "

  Juhle's voice fell half an octave. "Yeah."

  "I just got a call from Amy Wu."

  "What about?"

  "About Andrea not returning her calls since yesterday and not showing up at work this morning."

  "Hey, I almost didn't come in myself. It happens. My arm was killing me. I had to drop a Vicodin."

  "Not the same thing, really." Hunt tried to keep the impatience and worry out of his voice. "I wondered if you could make a few calls around and see if a thirty-something Jane Doe has turned up somewhere."

  "She wouldn't be a Jane Doe if it's Parisi. Somebody would recognize her."

  "That would depend on how she looks, wouldn't it? Say if she was beat up "

  "You're serious, aren't you?"

  "Yep."

  "Why can't you make those calls and look for her?"

  "I'm tied up with clients for the next several hours. You could do it quicker through one of those magical networks you cops employ, where you can find out about anything. Besides, you answered your own phone, which indicates that you're in your office either doing paperwork or screwing around until something more important comes up. And this is it."

  Juhle looked down at the first stack of Judge Palmer's bank records on his desk in front of him. "How long has she been gone?"

  "Since before dinner last night."

  "And you want me to check where?"

  "Everywhere you'd look if you were looking for somebody. The morgue would be my last choice, but hospitals. Maybe she got herself drunk and arrested last night and isn't checking her messages."

  "You want missing persons," Juhle said.

  "They won't start looking until somebody's gone three days, Dev. You know this, and that's too long."

  "Not really, since it gives the missing person time to show back up if they've had a change of heart and decided to come back to their spouse or boyfriend or mother and father."

  "This isn't any of those."

  "You checked her house, her work, her ?"

  "Yes to all the above. Some of us—Wu, Tamara, me—we're going to be calling around, but you know you can cover more ground a lot easier."

  Juhle hesitated for a couple of seconds. He said, "Now you mention it, I kind of wanted to talk to her myself about what you mentioned last night."

  "What was that?"

  "Palmer, basically. The prison guards. Lanier thinks there might be something there after all."

  "So you're admitting you owe me?"

  Juhle sighed into the line. "All right. I'll see what I can find out," he said.

  * * *

  Tamara opened the door before Hunt put the receiver down. "Do you really think she's in trouble?"

  "You've been listening in on my calls."

  "Just the last two, and only to save you the time it would take to brief me. Are you really worried?"

  "Let's say I'd feel better if we heard from her."

  "What are you going to do next?"

  He consulted his watch. "I was going to be finishing this class on the Net and then getting some business done, but I'm due at McClelland's, and that's going to take most of the afternoon."

  "Do you want me to call anybody else in the meanwhile?"

  Hunt was up, gathering papers, snatching up his briefcase. "Try Andrea's office again and make friends with her secretary, try to avoid getting her all worked up. Find out the last clients she saw, what they talked about, where she was last night "

  "Whoa!" Tamara raised a palm, stopping him. "I'm trying to avoid getting her all worked up, right? I'll just talk to her and see what she gives me."

  "Okay, you're right. Otherwise, stay near the phones in case Devin calls back. You can page me. Or if you hear from her, of course."

  * * *

  Marcel Lanier closed the door to his office in the homicide detail. He went behind his desk and sat, leaving his two inspectors to wonder if he wanted them to remain standing or to sit. Shiu had come in before Juhle and apparently didn't intend to move. He now blocked access to the two chairs in the small area facing Lanier's desk. So they stood, unnaturally close together, by the door.

  "If it's not the wife, you understand," the lieutenant began in a low and brooding tone, "we're going to be having jurisdictional issues again." He meant the FBI and Homeland Security. "What do you suggest we do about that?"

  Juhle, with a little sleep under his belt and a Vicodin easing his hand and shoulder pain this morning, cracked an easy grin. "The Feds? How about we don't tell 'em? Yesterday, they backed out of it, thinking it was local. Maybe it still is; there's just a few complications. So today we just leave it. If they don't ask, we don't tell."

  Lanier's mouth turned upward briefly in a parody of a smile. "That's a fine idea, Devin, except for the press conference that I'm supposed to be giving in about two hours."

  Juhle shrugged. "The investigation is continuing. Tell 'em we're making progress. Which we are. Reporters love progress."

  "We all do. But what would that progress be in this case?"

  "Eliminating suspects. We don't have to tell them Jeannette's out because, in fact, maybe she's not. We're just pretty sure she wasn't the shooter."

  Lanier didn't like that. "Pretty sure?"

  Shiu stood at attention. "My money, she's still in it."

  Lanier turned his head. "What about you, Dev?"

  Not exactly exuding enthusiasm, Juhle lowered his chin an inch, which served as a nod. "Barring something pretty weird, it's probably true she couldn't have been there for the shooting, sir. She was up in Marin."

  Shiu spoke up in a hurry. "But that doesn't mean she couldn't have planned it and hired someone."

  "That's where you're going with this?"

  "I think it's still our best shot, sir. One thing's sure—if Mrs. Palmer knew about the Rosalier girl, she's got the best motive. We'll be trying to find out if she did and if so, how."

  "So she's still the focus?" Lanier asked. "Just on the off chance somebody with the feebs comes and asks."

  "We're not ready to abandon the motive, Marcel," Juhle said. "Oh, and I did mention she got herself lawyered up, didn't I? Everett Washburn."

  Although retaining an attorney was universally viewed by the cops as nearly tantamount to an admission of guilt, in this case the news didn't rock Lanier much. "You'd expect that, wouldn't you? Judge's wife. She knows the game. But Washburn, shit."

  "Yes, sir," Juhle said. "High-powered. Good news is maybe it takes a couple of years before it gets to trial and he'll die before then."

  Lanier shook his head. "I wouldn't get my hopes up. Prosecutors have been saying that for the past ten years. The old fart's going to live forever. He's too smart to die."

  But clearly Mrs. Palmer's choice of legal representation wasn't his main concern. He leaned back in his chair, cast his gaze up to the ceiling for a minute. When he came back down to his inspectors, his face was set. "I want you to understand, Shiu, that I agree with you that she's got a good motive. Hell, the classic motive, no question. So I'm just being devil's advocate here a minute."

  Juhle was starting to like this. In the old days, when he was paired with Shane Manning, the two of them would toss case theories back and forth all day long, dig into them for nuances, contradictions, contexts. Lanier might be the boss, but he'd come up through the ranks and had been an inspector himself for fifteen years. This was what cops did, how they talked, the way they thought. Juhle wondered for the hundredth time what he'd done to deserve his current partner, who just didn't have a cop's imagination. Standing here by the desk, rooted to the floor, for example.

  "Excuse me, before you start," Juhle said, "my esteemed colleague here actually likes standing at attention all day, but I'd really like to sit down." Amazingly, his partner moved, crossing behind the desk to the far chair while Juhle took the near one. "Okay," Juhle said when he'd taken the load off, "advocate."

  Lanier wasted no time, held up a finger. "First, professional hit is yo
ur call, am I right?"

  "Right," Shiu said. "Best case."