The Hunter

by John Lescroart

  “And then, suddenly, three years later, out of nowhere my dad calls you when he gets arrested?”

  “Well, not exactly out of nowhere. I’d come to know them fairly well by then.” He hesitated. “It wasn’t always a picnic. They had some problems.” Another pause. “The truth is they were starting to fight. Money was tight, they weren’t having much fun. Your mother was staying home with you, and your father . . .”

  Hunt prompted him. “My father…?”

  “Well, your father, he didn’t make much at the garage. He felt that they needed more, so he got into some behaviors—and Margie thought maybe between the two of us, me and her, we’d be able to talk some sense into him.”

  “What behaviors?” Hunt asked.

  Bernard finally came out with it. “He sold some marijuana, stole a couple cars, got caught driving drunk. All petty stuff, really, but it’s a slippery slope. They had a few loud fights; the cops got called.”

  “I know. I read about the fights in my own file since there had to be a CPS follow-up on those, to see if the house was safe. Plus, there was the one child endangerment—that was my mom, not my dad—where they let her off with a warning, no charge. And then the three DVs.” Domestic violence.

  Bernard nodded. “Yes, sadly, all of the above. Both of them struggled.” He sighed. “Anyway, long story short, I became their counselor. I helped get Kevin a second job on the weekends, landscaping with one of the parishioners here at the church. And Margie was babysitting and starting to take in alterations.…​She was quite a talented seamstress.” Bernard’s pale blue eyes glazed over. “They were going to get through it. They were good people at heart, just young and poor and inexperienced. They were in love. I knew that. You couldn’t help but see that. Somehow, it was all going to work out. And then Kevin called me from jail . . .” Bernard ran his hand down his cheek.

  “And you moved me out of CPS and into Catholic Charities.”

  “I did. In those days, the networks in the Catholic community were very strong. I thought it would be the best for you.”

  “But why didn’t my father…? Why didn’t he put me in some kind of holding pattern, some foster home or something, while he was at trial? What was he going to do about me when he got out?”

  “Well, yes,” Bernard said. “All of that.” He pulled himself forward to the edge of his chair, rested his elbows on his knees. “First, he wasn’t sure that he was ever going to get out, to beat the charge. Second, even if he didn’t get convicted, he knew the trial would take at least a year. And as it turned out, the two trials took the better part of four years. But I think the main thing, and we argued about this, was that he felt he couldn’t be a good father to you, the father you deserved. He was in jail, he might never get out, he didn’t want you growing up with all those strikes against you. He wanted you to have a fresh start with a good family. He wanted what was best for you.”

  “And he’d get that by abandoning me?”

  “I know. I think he was wrong. But that wasn’t how he saw it. He saw it as his sacrifice for your good.”

  Hunt let out a breath. “Okay, let me ask you this, Father: How did you lose track of me?”

  “Oh, there was never any question about that. Once you were placed, wherever it might have been, I was out of the loop from that time on.”

  “Why was that?”

  “That’s just the way they did it then. Back when you were in the system, great pains were taken to keep the child and the birth parents separated forever.”

  “That’s what my mom and dad said last night.”

  “Well, it’s true.” The priest spread his hands. “I realize that nowadays it’s not uncommon for birth mothers to be told who is adopting their child, or for the adoptive parents to have a way to contact the birth parents. But back then, that just wasn’t done. It was thought to be better all around if the break was clean and final.”

  Hunt looked up at the crucifix that hung on the wall over Bernard’s chair. “So after the trials,” he asked, “after they were over, then what?”

  Bernard made a small kissing noise of regret, his eyes baleful. “Then he disappeared. He came by here and told me he was getting out of the state before they decided to arrest him and try him again. I tried to talk him out of it. I thought I could help set him up with some kind of job, maybe even get him into college, but he wasn’t having it. He wasn’t going to talk about it. He’d only come by to say good-bye”—Bernard indicated the ancient brown oversize envelope from which he’d extracted the photographs, lying there on the coffee table between them—“and to leave this package in case you…​in case I ever saw you again.” He picked it up and shook it and another, smaller envelope fell out into his hand. It had the name Wyatt in pencil faded to near invisibility in block letters on the front but otherwise was unaddressed and sealed. “That’s for you, too.”

  Hunt reached out, picked it up, held it in both hands. He put a finger under the flap and ripped it open. Inside was one sheet of lined notebook paper, folded over into thirds. The words were again printed, in pencil. There was no date.

  “Wyatt,” it began.

  If you are reading this, then you’ve met Father Bernard and you know the cops and everybody thinks I killed your mother, but I swear to you that I did not. When they let me go, I started looking to find out who did, but it had been four years and whatever trail there might have been was totally cold. Meanwhile, some nice people who felt sorry for me after the trials offered me some traveling money and a job down in Texas, and I’ve decided it’s probably the best offer I’m going to get so I’m going to take it. Maybe I should stay but I don’t see how it would do me any good. Even if I found whoever was responsible for your mother’s death, the cops would never believe me.

  Just leaving and starting over is the best thing I can do. I’m sorry I’m such a lousy father. But I did want you to know the truth about your mother and me.

  I didn’t kill her.

  Love, your dad

  He had signed his full name formally in longhand. “Kevin M. Carson.”

  5

  DEVIN JUHLE’S LEAST FAVORITE PART of his job was correcting the typed transcripts against the tapes of witness interviews. He’d been doing this at his desk since just after noon and so wasn’t in the world’s best mood to begin with. This showed on his face as he looked up and noticed Wyatt Hunt picking his way across the homicide detail toward him.

  When Hunt got close and said what he’d come to say, Juhle started right back in at him. “So just yesterday I believe it was,” he began, “I told you with sincere regret that I wouldn’t be able to work for you, and then the next thing I know, you’re here standing in front of me at my desk in the midafternoon where, when I’m not out on the street risking life and limb for the citizens of this great city, I do my real job for which I get paid as a homicide inspector, and you’re asking me if I could just look up a little something for you in my free time and for no compensation whatsoever?”

  “There would be the compensation of performing a small but meaningful service for your best friend in the world.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be enough.”

  “It will be, especially when you hear what it is.”

  “I don’t want to hear what it is, Wyatt. I’ve got other work I’m supposed to be doing, as I believe I’ve mentioned already now a time or two. And after I’m done here, I’ve got three witness interviews starting”—Juhle checked his watch—“in exactly forty-two minutes and they will take me through the rest of the afternoon and possibly even into the night and that in turn will make me late for dinner, which Connie hates and I can’t say I blame her because I hate it, too.”

  “You are in rare eloquence today,” Hunt said.

  In his chair behind his desk, Juhle gave Hunt a patient look and lowered his voice. “That’s because, Wyatt, I’m trying to convey to you in the clearest terms imaginable that I can’t just stop what I’m doing and take on a freelance
gig for you, however small or inconsequential it may be.”

  “It’s small but it’s not inconsequential, Devin. It’s a still-unsolved murder, which makes it an active case, and the victim was my mother.”

  Juhle was halfway to what would probably have been another snappy comeback when he stopped in midbreath. “What?”

  Hunt nodded. “My birth mother, Margie Carson.”

  Now Juhle shook his head. “I’m going to wind up doing this for you, aren’t I? Whatever it is. It’s really about your mother? Who was really murdered? You’re not making this up as we go along to get me on board?”

  “Scout’s honor. It really happened. It really hasn’t been solved.”

  “And you just found this out?”

  “Not an hour ago.”

  “That sounds like a story all by itself.”

  “It is, but the main event is the trial.”

  “They had a trial? I thought you said it was unsolved.”

  “It is. The man charged with killing her got off twice on hung juries.”

  “Yeah, well, welcome to San Francisco.”

  “He was also my father.”

  Again, Juhle went all but still, then was shaking his head, chortling. “Okay, congratulations. You actually had me going there for a minute, Wyatt. That was good.” He checked his watch, pushed back his chair, started to stand. “And don’t think I haven’t enjoyed our little interaction here, but I’ve really got to get going.”

  “It’s true,” Hunt said.

  “I just don’t think so.”

  “It’s easily checked. It’ll be out in the warehouse in the Bayview. That’s all I’m asking. If you’d just go out there and take a look. I’d go myself, but they wouldn’t let me in. You have to be a cop.”

  “Really? When did that start?” Juhle collapsed back into his chair. “What was her name again, your mother?”

  “Margie Carson. The first trial was in ’71.”

  Wearily, Juhle came forward and wrote on a Post-it. He looked up. “If I get done with these witnesses, and I’m not yet late for dinner, and I happen to get back to this building sometime today, none of which are very likely, I might try to go out and take a look. No promises, though.”

  “You’ll do it. I know you will.” Hunt smiled, pointed at him. “You’re my man, Devin.”

  “I am most assuredly not your man, Wyatt. I’m just a poor working cop trying to do my real job.”

  “Well, then, I’d best be on my way and let you get to it.”

  PARKING ALWAYS BEING WHAT IT WAS, expensive or impossible, Hunt had driven back to his warehouse from Star of the Sea, parked his Cooper inside, closed the double-wide garage door behind him, and walked over to the Hall of Justice to see Juhle and make his request for the case file.

  Now, walking back in bright sunshine and rare warmth—October is midsummer in San Francisco—he got to his alley door and lowered himself into the shade that covered the concrete stoop.

  He sat straight up, his head back against the door, surprised to find that he was fighting to control his breathing.

  Aside from his various sports and exercises, Hunt kept himself in shape by running several miles most mornings, out to the Embarcadero and then around to Crissy Field—sometimes all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge—and back, so it was unusual for him to feel physically weak, and practically unheard of that he would give in to it. Now, though, without warning, he was hyperaware that he’d broken into a cold sweat, he was breathing hard, his head had gone light to the point of dizziness.

  He pressed at his temples, then slowly brought his whole self over and down until his elbows came to rest on his knees, all the weight of his head on his two hands.

  He didn’t know exactly if he’d call it a memory. There wasn’t anything substantive to it. All at once there simply seemed to be a new place somewhere inside of him. Maybe it had been there all along, and it had just been carefully, methodically, completely covered up and hidden over, but now it felt like nothing more than a yawning, open pit in the middle of his gut.

  He kept gulping at the air to see if it would fill that pit up, but it wasn’t doing him any good.

  Wafting on the light breeze, a whiff of popcorn from somewhere brought the world up into his face and suddenly he knew that he was going to be sick.

  Unlocking the back door as fast as he could, he ran through his kitchen and made it to the bathroom in time, but just. Then, afterward, on the cold tile, Hunt sat with his arms crossed over his chest, hugging himself to fight off a chill. Finally, some minutes later, he got to his feet and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was sallow, his eyes bright, nearly glistening. Turning on the cold water, he splashed his face, dried off, went and sat on the couch in his den.

  Gina Roake had bought him a quilt about a year ago that he kept folded over the back of the couch. Now he pulled it close and arranged it over himself and sat back. After a while, he pulled out his phone. Though he’d heard no signal, he checked for a new message, then brought up the day’s earlier exchange: Progress? And his reply: Who are you? Call me. We can talk.

  But there was no new message waiting on his screen, no reply. His fingers tapped out another text: My mother was murdered.

  Send.

  HUNT’S PHONE COMPANY CONNECTION, Callie Lucente, had punched at his phone a few times and now was shaking her head. “Nothing we can use here, Wyatt. Whoever it was probably just used it once, then tossed it.”

  They were alone in the back office of one of the AT&T stores on Market Street—a sparse desk, wall cabinets, bookshelves groaning with inventory. Callie worked out of a different physical shop location every day to keep employees on their toes. Any day she might show up anywhere. She was a lead analyst in the Asset Protection department, and her real daily job was figuring out and thwarting the new and clever ways that AT&T employees could steal from the company. But as a long-term employee and a techno-nerd of the first order, she also knew everything there was to know about cell phones. And now she was telling Hunt that they were pretty much out of luck in terms of identifying his texter.

  “What about the phone numbers themselves?” Hunt asked. “We know the area codes, at least, both local. Doesn’t that narrow it down at all?”

  Lucente had a tasteful silver stud in each eyebrow and now she raised both of them, surprised at Hunt’s ignorance. “The area code’s the whole city, Wyatt, if you want to call that narrowing down the search. But these area codes don’t mean anything anyway. When they sold the phones, they picked some random numbers and area codes. Didn’t even have to be from where they were buying them.”

  “So there’s no record of who bought the phone? I know when I bought my phone, I set up an account, didn’t I? Signed about half my life away if I remember.”

  “Yeah, you did, but you didn’t buy a go-phone.” She held up Hunt’s instrument. “This is a righteous AT&T product, connected to a company account. Your texter, on the other hand, bought a number of minutes for this thing at Best Buy or someplace.”

  “So wouldn’t they have a record of that sale?”

  “Not if it was cash, which I’m betting it was. You know the people who buy these, Wyatt, are not always your most upright citizens. These things are how drugs get run, you might have heard; it’s maybe their main use. Plus, the clerks selling ’em, it’s not like they get commissions. So yes, in theory they’re supposed to connect a name with every phone when they sell it, but they can afford to be lazy, and P.S., nobody’s checking. You know the name on your texter’s phone? Take a guess.”

  “Mickey Mouse.”

  “Close. ‘Prepaid Phone.’ ” She held up his phone and showed him the information she’d pulled up from his mystery texter. She tapped Hunt’s cell phone screen a few times. “And on the first text, ‘Any Customer.’ And this address? How much you want to bet it’s the store’s?”

  Hunt bucked up. “So at least then we know where it was bought.”

  She shrugged. “That might be s
omeplace to look, if it’s actually the store address and not just made up like Prepaid Phone. Be my guest. Check it out. But they’re going to have sold a lot of these, I guarantee it. How are you going to identify any one buyer?”

  “The one that bought multiple phones?”

  “Except if they bought them in two or nine different stores.” She handed him back his phone.

  He boosted himself off the desk and slipped the phone into its holster. “So we just completely strike out?”

  She nodded sympathetically. “On these two texts, I think so. Those phones are long gone, Wyatt, smashed and run over and dumped. They’re not going to lead you to anybody. You know the average life span of these things, don’t you? Fifteen minutes, an hour. One or two uses. That’s what they’re for, and then they’re discarded because they’re evidence.”

  “Callie,” Hunt said. “You got any other ideas? I’ve got to find this person.”

  “I can appreciate that,” she said. She was sitting on the desk, pulling at strands of her short, curly dark hair, thinking. “The last text, they just asked if you’d made any progress, but you didn’t have anything to report. True?”

  Hunt nodded.

  “And now you do, right?”

  “Quite a bit, actually.”

  “Okay, then, next time you get a text, the odds are pretty good I can pinpoint where they’re calling from, especially if the call’s made in the city. In fact, you and I can be talking at the same time as you’re texting, so I can get you a location on your texter in real time.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, Wyatt. That’s not even hard. I can show you in thirty seconds. Once I get the number, I can track ’em. But first they’ve got to call you.”

  “All right,” Hunt said. “When they do, if they do, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “ARE YOU OKAY, WYATT?” Tamara sat across from him, her legs crossed, the appointments book that they’d been going over for the past twenty minutes now closed on her lap. “You seem a little…​subdued.”