The Hunter

by John Lescroart

  He had to start there.

  Reaching over and picking up his phone, he returned to the original text message, got back into “Send” mode, and typed, Write me back. What is this about?

  He sat holding the phone for another minute or two, his knuckles going white around its slim rectangularity. Then he pushed and held the on/off button, swiped the bar to power off, and got up from the table on his way to bed.

  3

  THE CATHOLIC CHARITIES MAIN OFFICE was on Howard near Main, easy walking distance from Hunt’s home. The clerk there, a kind-looking elderly woman named Melissa Wagner, told him that they had stopped handling adoptions two years before, and now the files and paperwork had been taken over by the California State Department of Social Services, Adoption Support Unit, and shipped to a storage facility in Sacramento.

  “You are kidding me.”

  Ms. Wagner smiled under her bifocals. “Nothing’s easy, you know. That’s one of the rules.”

  “I’ve heard about it. But I wasn’t planning to drive up to Sacramento today.”

  “Oh, there’d be no sense in doing that anyway. You can’t just walk in and ask for your birth records.”

  “Of course you can’t. I knew that. That would be too easy.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You send them a notarized letter telling them your birthday and your adoptive parents’ names, and then request the information you want about your birth mother and father. Then, if one of your parents signed a Consent to Contact form, they can put you in touch with them.”

  “What if they didn’t? Sign the form, I mean.”

  “Well,” Ms. Wagner sighed, “then it becomes more complicated.”

  “Why am I not surprised? So what are the complications?”

  “Well, you can mitigate some of them, maybe, if you include in your original letter some questions that they’re allowed to answer.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as your parents’ race and general physical description, or how old they were when they put you up for adoption, medical information. Are you looking for something related to a medical condition?”

  “No.”

  “Are you part American Indian?”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Because if you were American Indian, you could petition the superior court and they could release those records so you could get any benefits that might accrue from belonging to your tribe.”

  “Well, I think that’s a long shot.”

  “And actually, you don’t look very Native American to me,” she said.

  “Not so much,” Hunt agreed. “So I have to send this notarized letter and then if there’s no consent form, that’s the end of the search?”

  “You could petition the superior court, as I said, even if you’re not Native American. But you’d need a pretty compelling reason for them to agree, usually medical. Otherwise, I’m afraid if your parents didn’t want you to find them, there’s essentially no way for you to do it.”

  * * *

  AT HIS DESK IN HIS OFFICE, Hunt was putting the finishing touches on the letter to Sacramento. Tamara came in with coffee and now sat in one of the armchairs across from him. “What if it wasn’t Catholic Charities?” she asked him.

  “But it was. My dad knew that one.”

  “No. You said he’d adopted you through them.”

  “Right. Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Yeah, but what if they got ahold of you after you were already in the system? When Mick and I…​when Mom died, we went directly to CPS, as you know. So even if Catholic Charities eventually got you, you probably spent time at CPS while they sorted through the admin stuff getting you over to them. They’re the dumping grounds, wherever you wind up.”

  Hunt nodded thoughtfully. “That’s worth a look, except . . .”

  “I’m ahead of you.” She held up a finger. “Fortunately, your first name is not exactly common, is it? What year are you talking about?”

  “Nineteen seventy, seventy-one.”

  “Okay, so you look through the files and find a Wyatt. How many could there be? The real challenge might be getting them to let you look at their files.”

  Now Hunt was on his feet. “That,” he said, “should not be an issue.”

  WHEN HUNT HAD BEEN A FIELD-WORKER at CPS, Bettina Keck had been his partner. A black woman from the projects, she had been funny, smart, tough, and fearless. Unfortunately, the stress of the job—taking children away from their abusive parents—had taken its toll and she’d eventually become addicted to OxyContin and alcohol and was fired, then spent seven years in and out of rehab. Finally clean and sober, she’d gone back and somehow gotten herself rehired at CPS and now, ten years after that, was deputy director. Not only had Hunt never lost touch with her through all the rehabs, but also he had been, along with her husband, one of her mentors during her last rehab stint, the one that had finally worked.

  Now with that history between them, they sat in her cubicle at her cluttered office on Otis Street. “Of course it’s an issue, Wyatt,” Bettina said. She wanted to help, she really did, and her frown reflected her disappointment that she wouldn’t be able to. “You know this. The files are private. Even if they still exist, you can’t look at them without a court order.”

  “I won’t really look. I’ll just peek.”

  “Peeking counts.”

  “And what do you mean, if they still exist? Why wouldn’t they exist?”

  “Well, we’re talking thirty, maybe forty years ago. Records from back then should have been purged.”

  Hunt straightened up in his folding chair. “Okay,” he said, “how about this? First, we go across the street and find out if the records still exist. If they don’t, okay, I lose. But if they do . . .”

  “No, listen.” Keck was shaking her head. “The problem is that you’re not looking for one particular record. If that was it, I could just go over there and have somebody pull it out. Wyatt Smith, or Wyatt Jones. Probably not technically legal, but I’d do that for you. But for what you want, you’re going to have to look through all of the records, and you admit that you might not even have come through CPS in the first place. I can’t ask somebody to go back into all those files and look for that.”

  Hunt broke a grin. “Sure you can. It’d be fun!”

  “It might take a couple of days.”

  “Bettina, everybody’s bored to death over there anyway. This could be your chance to brighten up lives. They’ll love you for it. Really. You could make it a contest. Find the Wyatt. Give out prizes. I’ll supply them. Maybe a bottle of wine or some Giants tickets, or even cash, say a hundred bucks.”

  “Going for bribery now.” Keck brought both hands up to her face and pulled down on her cheeks. “You can wear a girl down, Wyatt.” But she raised herself out of her chair. “Let’s see what’s left to begin with, then take things from there.”

  Hunt’s phone emitted a two-toned chirp when he got text messages and now, just as he was getting out of his chair, it sounded. He pulled his phone from its holster.

  The message said, “Progress?”

  Hunt’s thumbs flew. Who are you? Call me. We can talk.

  He touched “Send.”

  “What’s that all about?” Keck was hovering over him.

  “It’s what started all this. Somebody’s stalking me by text.”

  “So change your phone. Get a new number.”

  “I don’t want to do that. Whoever it is knows something and wants me to discover whatever it is. Why they’re doing it this way I don’t know, but I’m going to need to find out.”

  “What, though, exactly?”

  “Who they are and what they want.”

  Can’t talk. Text.

  Why?

  Progress?

  No.

  Later then.

  Wait. Records?

  Hunt stood glued to his screen, finally looked up at Keck. “Gone
,” he said.

  “That was weird.” Keck crossed her arms. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that this person has a reason for not wanting you to know who he or she is.”

  “Sure.”

  “So maybe they won’t appreciate it much if you expose them.”

  Hunt shrugged. “They should have thought of that before they started.”

  AFTER ALL THE BACK AND FORTH, the reality turned out to be anti-climactic.

  At the records office across the street, Keck and Hunt learned that, yes, the files should have been purged—destroyed—long ago. But, in fact, that bit of bureaucratic housekeeping had possibly not been completed. The head clerk of records management had held the same job during Hunt’s tenure there and he told them without much apology that you had to expect these kind of delays on nonessentials in an office like theirs where everything tended to be an emergency.

  Hunt looked around and realized that his theory about the clerks being bored to death wasn’t holding up. Everybody was working—on their phones, at their desks and computers, in the interview rooms. It brought back to him his own experiences here, when they were always behind. Too much work; too many incompetent, irresponsible, stupid, addicted parents; and too many children who needed to be rescued, interviewed, evaluated, placed. Why did people have kids anyway, Hunt thought for the thousandth time, if they weren’t going to take care of them?

  But that wasn’t his mission here today. “If these files still existed,” he asked the records boss, “where would they be?”

  “Down the basement.”

  Hunt made the request sound casual. “You mind if we go down? We don’t want to get anybody in trouble and Bettina here was worried about confidentiality issues.”

  The man didn’t really have to think about his answer. “Anything down there,” he said, “the statutes got to have run on ninety-nine percent of it, whatever it might be. Really, who’s gonna squabble? Y’all go knock yourselves out.”

  Five minutes later Keck and Hunt found themselves in the semi-finished, low-ceilinged basement—bare bulbs and concrete floors and a footprint the size of the building above them, maybe twelve thousand square feet. They’d packed the files in moving boxes and stacked them in aisles five tall and two deep by year, the latest being 1992, when CPS had gone to computers.

  Hunt stood with his hands on his hips in front of the rows and said, “I can do this, Bett. Thanks for getting me down here.”

  But Keck shook her head, pointed at the boxes. “Let me have one of those suckers. If this is all there is, shouldn’t take us an hour.”

  It didn’t even take twenty minutes. Going through the 1970 files, near the end of his third box, Hunt came upon the name Wyatt Carson. He pulled out the manila folder and opened it. He must have made some noise, because Keck was suddenly standing over him. “You got something? Wyatt, are you all right?”

  Hunt’s neck was flushed and his hands had gone cold and were shaking. Keck touched his shoulder. Hunt, his voice sounding raw, read from the file: “The subject child’s father, Kevin Carson, is in custody awaiting trial for the murder of his wife, the child’s mother, Margaret.”

  Keck went down to a knee next to Hunt and put an arm around his shoulders. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  “No,” he said. “No. It really isn’t.”

  4

  “JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH. God in His mercy be praised.” The man, in cassock and collar, made the sign of the cross and then held his hands together in front of his chest as though he was in a state of rapture.

  And perhaps he was.

  In his mid to late seventies, ruddy cheeked, white-haired, and well fed, the priest stood in the door to the Star of the Sea rectory’s waiting room, beaming at Hunt, now coming forward with his hand extended, his eyes glassy with emotion. “Welcome, welcome.” He gripped Hunt’s hand. “Don Bernard,” he said. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this day.”

  Hunt shook. “What day is that, Father?”

  “When I’d see you again. If I’d see you again.” He backed away a half step and looked into Hunt’s face. “I don’t know if I’d have picked you out in a crowd, but looking at you now, I can see your mother like she’s here in the room with us. You’ve got her eyes exactly.” With an effort he stopped staring at Hunt’s face. “How did you finally come to find me?”

  Hunt explained how Bernard’s name had been in the CPS report as the primary contact in case of emergency. Hunt had then called the archdiocesan office and found out Fr. Bernard was still alive and where he lived. “And they sent me here.”

  “All this happened when?”

  “Since this morning. Someone put me on the trail to find my mother and suddenly it became important.”

  “You hadn’t sought her out before then? Before now?”

  “No. I have my parents—Bob and Charlene Hunt—and they’ve been fine for me. Better than fine.”

  “I can see that. At a glance. They’ve done a good job.”

  “Yes, they have.” Hunt shifted on his feet. “I don’t want you to take offense, Father, but have you been texting me?”

  The priest’s face clouded. “Have I been what?”

  “Texting me. Leaving me text messages on my cell phone.”

  The cloud gave way to a sunny laugh. “I don’t even own a cell phone. All this modern technology is too much for me. You send messages now by telephone? Why would you do that if you could just call and talk in person?”

  “That’s a question for another day, Father, but some people seem to prefer it.”

  “So someone has been sending you these messages about your mother?”

  “Asking how she died. If I knew how she died. That’s what got me going.”

  “Since yesterday? It certainly didn’t take you very much time.”

  “No.” Hunt explained. “I’m a private investigator by trade. I can generally find people if I’m looking for them.”

  “A private investigator,” Bernard said. “What an amazing world. But you still don’t know who contacted you to start you looking?”

  “No.”

  “Or why?”

  “That, too. I was hoping you might be able to help.”

  “Maybe not with that,” the priest said, “but I can tell you about your parents.”

  Hunt paused, then asked, “Did my father kill her?”

  “No, your father did not kill her. They never proved that, and they tried twice.”

  “Who?”

  “The courts. The law. He was tried twice for her murder and they couldn’t convict. Because he was innocent. He simply didn’t do it.”

  “So who did?”

  The priest let out a breath. “No one knows. No one’s ever found out.”

  “So what happened to my father?”

  Bernard sighed again. “If you’ve got the time, why don’t you take a seat and wait here? I want to get a few things. I can be back in a couple of minutes.”

  IN THE RECTORY’S SMALL SITTING ROOM, Hunt held photographs of himself as an infant and a toddler, pictures of the family into which, apparently, he had been born. In every shot, the couple looked impossibly young, innocent, happy. Here was Wyatt, a three-year-old on the merry-go-round in Golden Gate Park. The image brought to his consciousness a memory that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. For a moment, the mnemonic pull of the photograph made him blink.

  He turned the picture so that the priest could see it. “An hour ago, I would have told you I had no memories of my parents. But I remember this, the day. It was warm and smelled like popcorn. I feel a little whacked upside the head.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  Hunt flipped his way through the stack. “Not her, though. I don’t remember her.” He stared at his mother, Margaret Carson, holding him when he’d been a small baby. He wasn’t sure he saw what Fr. Bernard had recognized in her eyes as the template of his own, but then, without anything changing in terms of wha
t he recognized as his conscious memory, something turned over inside him and the muscles in his face went tight.

  He tucked the picture behind the small pile.

  “Or him, either.” His father, Kevin Carson, had Wyatt on his shoulders, holding on to his shoulder-length hair. The man was grinning with swagger under his mustache, wearing a white T-shirt, his arms crossed over his chest. He was leaning up against what Hunt knew—recognized?—as a brown Ford Fairlane 500, one leg braced against the back bumper.

  “You said my father was tried twice for my mother’s murder?” he asked. “How did that happen? What about double jeopardy?”

  “The jury hung both times,” Bernard said. “The DA elected not to go for three.”

  “So where was I all this time?”

  “When your father was arrested, I was his phone call. The Child Protective Services had already taken you in by that time, and since your parents didn’t have any other family, I . . .”

  “Wait a minute. They didn’t have any family, either? How did that happen?”

  “They were just…​well, as you can see, they were just a couple of kids on their own. When your mom was maybe fifteen or so, she ran away from her home, I think it was in Indiana, where she’d been in some kind of abusive situation she didn’t like to talk about. No, not didn’t like to talk about, wouldn’t talk about. Whatever it was, she was done with it. It was behind her and never coming back.

  “Your dad lost both his parents in a car wreck a few months before he met your mother. So it was just the two of them, alone together against the world. Or at least, that’s how they felt, and you couldn’t really blame them.”

  Hunt sat back on the couch, the pictures in his lap. “How’d you meet them?”

  A wistful smile. “I married them. Smallest wedding in history, I believe. Just the two of them and their two witnesses. They came in and had the nuptials in the middle of six-thirty mass. She was carrying you at the time, maybe four months along.”