The Hunter

by John Lescroart

  “No. I’ve got them on. They just connected.”

  “Okay. I’ll get looking.”

  My father, Hunt tapped. Who were the friends who gave him the job?

  Not his friends.

  ???

  They needed to get him out of the way.

  Why?

  Too close. Lucky they didn’t kill him.

  “Got ’em,” Callie exclaimed in speaker mode. “Just west of Santa Rosa.”

  This was most of an hour north of San Francisco, and Hunt grimaced and swore at the news. He couldn’t be sending any of his staff up there to try to pinpoint where this call had originated. “Can you narrow it down any more?” he asked.

  He heard an exasperated sigh over his speaker. “Keep ’em on,” Callie said.

  “I’m trying,” he whispered.

  Still there? he tapped.

  Yes.

  Trial transcripts.

  ??

  Reading them now. Worthwhile?

  Don’t know. Police must have seen.

  Maybe missed something.

  “Okay!” Callie said. “They’re at a place called Zazu. I can get the number!”

  “Get it!”

  Any suggestions? he tapped.

  Can’t.

  Why not?

  Too dangerous.

  “Here it is,” Callie said. “Take it down.”

  “Got it,” Hunt said.

  Callie: “Open another line. Or, better, I can patch you.”

  “Do it.”

  The texter wrote: If he finds out, he’ll kill me.

  So, it’s a man, then?

  “Fongaloo!” Hunt heard, apparently one of Callie’s swear words. “Zazu’s busy.”

  One person? he tapped. My father wrote they.

  “I’m on auto redial,” Callie said.

  Yes. One person.

  You? Hunt wrote. Male or female?

  Stop asking. Find him. Good-bye.

  Hunt all but collapsed into his chair.

  FOUR MINUTES LATER, Hunt finally got through.

  “Thank you for calling Zazu Restaurant and Farm. This is Brittany. How can I help you?”

  “Hi, Brittany. My name is Wyatt Hunt and I’m an investigator in San Francisco working on a murder case.” Hunt neglected to say private before the word investigator. It was often a useful omission.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. I’m completely serious. We have just identified that a person of interest in my investigation is in your restaurant and has been using a cell phone sometime in the past couple of minutes, texting.”

  “Oh my God. This isn’t a joke?”

  “No. No joke. Don’t panic, okay, please. This is just a witness, not a suspect. Nobody’s in any danger. But I’d like to identify who it was. Do you remember anybody obviously texting, maybe sitting alone, over the past few minutes?”

  “A man or a woman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you know they were here? How did you know that?”

  “Cell phone magic, where luckily the magicians are on our side. So can you remember anybody? Or are there only a couple of people sitting alone?”

  “No. Not that I was looking. I’ve been on the phone most of the past half hour. And we’ve got…​we’re really crowded, so eight, nine, no, maybe ten people alone at their tables.”

  “How about people on cell phones now?”

  “Just a second.” She sighed into the line. “Two people are using their cell phones right now, but neither of them is alone. We’re talking about asking clients not to use them while they’re eating, but it’s kind of a losing fight, you know? And texting, you almost really can’t tell at all.”

  8

  IN THE CASE FILE ROOM outside the homicide detail, Juhle was enjoying his late bag lunch at the table as Hunt finished and closed the first binder’s worth of trial transcript and reached for the next.

  “You finding anything good in there?”

  Hunt looked up. “They haven’t even gotten to any witnesses yet, or even what the crime’s about. Half of this thing”—he motioned to the binder—“is early motions and about the admissibility of different kinds of evidence that the judge is supposed to rule on. But I’m afraid to skip anything because you know that’s exactly where it will be, whatever it is I’m looking for.”

  “Do you even know what it is?”

  Hunt shook his head. “I’m hoping I recognize it when I see it.”

  Juhle finished chewing, drank some Diet Coke, and swallowed. “Might I make a suggestion about how your time could be better utilized?”

  “Of course.”

  “Read the police reports. There’s only about a hundred pages of them. Go over in the corner there and copy them. That’s where the action is. With the added bonus that if they’re copies, you can take them, and with a forty-year-old case, nobody’s going to care.”

  * * *

  BY 6:30, back in his office, Hunt looked up at Tamara and said, “I appreciate your help in all this, but you might as well go on home. I don’t think it’s going to be here, whatever it turns out to be.” He sat back in his office chair and stretched. “We almost got our texter today. That’s where we’re more likely to catch a break.”

  “Yeah, but that all depends on getting the next call, which we’ve got no control over, and in fact, might not even happen again.”

  “It’ll happen,” Hunt said.

  Tamara made a face. “Maybe not, though. Whoever it is knows that you’re on the road, you’ve made some discoveries. If they’re truly worried about actually getting killed if they’re caught texting you . . .”

  “They are.”

  “Well, then they might think they’ve done enough. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “Let’s hope that’s not it,” Hunt said. He flicked at the pages in front of him. “Because there’s nothing here. Sixteen prosecution witnesses, basically none for the defense, no hint of somebody else who might have done it.” Hunt chuffed out a breath. “I can’t believe they let him off, you want to know the truth.”

  “Twice. So there must have been something.”

  “Not necessarily. Moore seemed to think it’s the city’s water supply, makes people feebleminded and fuzzy-headed.”

  Tamara frowned.

  “His words, not mine.” Sighing, he shook his head wearily. “I ought to let it go for today. Get a fresh start tomorrow. You want to go get a drink? On me?”

  Tamara paused, came forward in her chair, sat back again.

  “She thinks,” Hunt said. Another few seconds. “She thinks some more. Tam?”

  “I’m thinking some more.”

  “It’s not that hard a question. To drink or not to drink.”

  “That’s not the question.”

  “No? I thought that was the question.”

  Tamara shook her head. “Not really. The hard question is, Do you think we’re spending too much time together?”

  Hunt hesitated, then asked, “For what?”

  “You know. For an employer and his employee.”

  “We’re a little more than that, Tam. But I think we can share a preprandial cocktail without risk of scandal.”

  “I’m not worried about scandal, Wyatt.”

  Hunt’s head canted to one side. The tone in his voice went softer. “But you are worried about something?”

  Tamara didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then, “I’m worried about you and me starting to spend a lot of time together more or less out of work or routine or habit, and then just letting something between us start to change without anybody really deciding to change anything. I know you know what I’m talking about. And I wouldn’t be into that.”

  “Into what, exactly?”

  “Something casual and undefined, like you and Gina were. That’s not who I am. I think you know that, but I just wanted to be completely straight about it.”

  “I got it,” Hunt said. “Message delivered. I’ll keep it in the front
of my mind.”

  “It’s too important to mess with,” she said.

  “I agree. I won’t mess with it. Promise.” He stood up behind his desk. “That still leaves the field clear, though, to go and have a drink together, wouldn’t you think?”

  * * *

  BOULEVARD ON THIS THURSDAY NIGHT throbbed with the manic energy of glamour and effortless success that San Francisco often promised but did not so reliably deliver. This place did. Well-dressed and fashionable patrons were three deep at the bar, all the dining tables were full, a small crowd clustered near the waitress station by the front door, waiting to be seated.

  As upstairs tenants, Hunt and Tamara were both known to Theodore, the bartender, and within five minutes of their arrival he had somehow magically procured two “reserved” seats for them next to one another at the far end of the bar.

  Now they clinked glasses—Tamara’s Cosmo and Hunt’s Oban—and she sipped and said, “I know we’re supposed to be taking a break from all this, but I’ve been thinking about your texter and your mother’s killer, and I’ve got a couple of ideas if you’ve got the patience for them.”

  “I’ll stop you when I get bored,” he said.

  “Well, first, this may be obvious, but I hadn’t thought of it until just now. Your killer now is an old man, at least sixty and maybe way more. Though he’s still dangerous. At least he scares your texter. So what does that tell us?”

  “He’s really ugly?” Hunt said. “Scary ugly?”

  Tamara put down her glass on the bar. “All right, if you don’t want to do this . . .”

  “No, actually, I really do. I hadn’t thought about his age much, either, but you’ve got to be right. Okay, he’s old and scary, and this means…?”

  “I think it means your texter is a woman, maybe a woman who is living with your killer, maybe married to him.”

  But Hunt shook his head. “I don’t think so. She’d just leave him.”

  “Not necessarily. Maybe he’s told her if she tries to leave him, he’ll kill her. And she knows—maybe because he’s told her—that he’s killed before. So what she really needs is to get him arrested for this other murder. That gets her out from under him, but she’s no part of it.”

  Hunt sipped Scotch. “That’s a good theory, but how do we know it’s a her?”

  “We don’t. Not for sure. They could be gay, I suppose, both of them, and that would be the same dynamic. But either way it’s got to be somebody close to the killer on a more or less day-to-day basis, don’t you think? Otherwise, there’d be no danger of getting caught sending these texts.”

  “That is, in fact, an excellent point.” Hunt twirled his glass on the bar. “In my father’s letter, though, he talks about the money he’s being offered, and talks about ‘they’ or ‘them.’ Which makes me think there was more than one person involved. Even though our texter said there’s only one.”

  “That could be,” Tamara said, “but that doesn’t change much, even if it’s true. It still leaves one of the killers living with somebody who found out. Everything works the same. And another thing . . .”

  “I’m listening.”

  “He’s rich. He was rich then, and he’s richer now.”

  “How do you get that?”

  “Well, he, or they, offered your father money to leave. Actually gave him money to get out of town, right?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Okay, he had money then. So now let’s just say we’ve got this very rich guy, which is another reason his wife doesn’t want to leave him, other than she’s afraid of him. If she leaves him, or even if she just pisses him off and he divorces her, she loses at least half of her money. Whereas if he’s arrested…​well, you see where I’m going.”

  “I do, but the last part’s mostly a guess.”

  “Actually, the whole thing’s a guess, except it’s probably a guy and we know he’s over sixty. Those are real.”

  “And I buy that he might live with our texter. Or at least sees her regularly.”

  With a victorious smile, Tamara pointed at Hunt. “You just said ‘her.’ ”

  “I did.” He nodded. “That must mean I pretty much buy that, too. It feels right, anyway.” He tipped up his drink. “Which means if we can identify her, we’ve got him, or at least we’re damn close.”

  Tamara’s face fell. “Well, yes. But even with a positive ID, we still don’t have a case, do we? We don’t have any evidence. We don’t have any facts.”

  At this stark and true assessment, Hunt slumped a bit on his stool. “It’s got to be in that stuff upstairs, don’t you think?”

  “Either that,” Tamara replied, “or it doesn’t exist.”

  TAMARA CALLED A CAB and left him with a chaste kiss on the cheek. Hunt stayed at the bar. He had every intention of finishing his Scotch and then going upstairs for another run at the police reports, but then Theodore asked him if he’d like a refill, and without thinking about it too much he said, sure, why not? The second drink was again one of Theodore’s trademark heavy pours, and by the time the glass was empty again, Hunt realized he wasn’t going to get much technical or any other kind of work done tonight.

  And since that was the case anyway, he ordered one more.

  T HE MERRY-GO-ROUND was spinning too fast. Hunt was holding a cherry snow cone and it was making his hands cold, but he couldn’t let go of it, or it would get all over his clothes and even maybe the other horses. But holding on to the snow cone, he couldn’t control the spin or the speed of the horses, and it felt as though he was going to tip over and fall, but then suddenly, just as he was about to come off the horse, there was his mother standing next to him, holding him straight, then taking the snow cone and putting his hands down on the pommel so he could hold on.

  But the horses continued to pick up speed and he saw his mother begin to fall behind where he was and then she was gone out of his sight completely and he heard a kind of a strangled cry as she must have been thrown off the merry-go-round behind him, bumping as though she were falling down stairs. And he was still turning and turning, but couldn’t turn around to look and see where his mom had gone.

  He called out. “Mom! Mommy!” She didn’t answer.

  So now, in a panic, he decided he had to dismount and look for her, but somehow now his clothes were different, more like blankets, and he was all tangled up in them. He struggled as they seemed to take on a will of their own, holding him down so that he couldn’t get free of them, so then he just leaned out from his perch on the saddle and slipped off and now he was still wrapped in the blankets, but on a rug in a hallway where the spinning had stopped, but his mother was still somewhere off behind him.

  Turning around, he could see a bright light through the bottom crack of a door at the end of the dark hallway, and he wrestled himself out of his blankets and fell down because he was dizzy from the horses. But then he got on his feet again and saw the red cherry juice coming out toward him from under the door where his mom had dropped the snow cone and he reached down and touched it and the juice was thick and sticky and warm and he opened the door and his mom was lying on her side on the ground, facing him with her eyes open and he called out to her and her mouth gaped and he . . .

  Hunt jerked up in his bed and yelled out, “Mom!”

  His breathing came in gulps as he brought both his hands up to his face.

  He was in pitch darkness and he reached out blind and found the light next to his bed and turned it on, trying to get his bearings. He recognized his own home, of course, though he had no immediate recollection of how he had gotten there. Gina’s comforter was bunched up around him. He was still dressed except for his shoes. The digital clock by his bed read 3:12 a.m. Sucking in several more deep breaths, his eyes scanned around the room until it finally began to feel familiar, unthreatening.

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  Closing his eyes, steeling himself, he tried to visualize the scenes from his dream again—he’d come ou
t of a hallway into a brighter room with windows on his left. But the main thing was his mother on the floor, unmoving, blood pooling under her head.

  In his gut, he knew that part wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.

  Hunt untangled the comforter, shifted to the side, and swung his feet down to the floor. He needed some water, and there was a bottle of aspirin in the bathroom. He started to get to his feet, but halfway up, a realization struck him with enough force that it knocked him back down on the mattress.

  He had discovered his mother’s body.

  9

  TAMARA KNOCKED ON HIS OFFICE DOOR and opened it. “I might have something.”

  At his desk, Hunt sat with his head cradled in both hands, hovering over the pages of the file spread out in front of him. “Something would be good.” Turning a page over, he lifted his head and fixed her with red-rimmed eyes. “Hit me.”

  Moving up to the desk, she placed one of his copied pages down in front of him. “It’s not exactly a smoking gun,” she said, “but you’d have already seen it if it was.”

  A faint smile. “I’m not so sure about that. But what’ve you got?”

  She pushed the paper toward him. “This is that apparently unrelated child-endangerment police report from before your mother was killed.”

  Hunt brought it closer. “Sure. I’ve seen it,” he said. “I’ve read it over twice, as I have most of the rest of this stuff. That one can’t have anything to do with the murder, though. It’s five months too soon.”

  “Right. I know. But as requested, and because I’m a total stone pro, I looked at it again, too. And went right by it, as you did, and then came back because something nagged at me.” She reached out and turned the page over. “Check out the last line.”

  Hunt read aloud from the nearly illegible scrawl. “ ‘Copy to CPS for follow up.’ ” He looked back up at her. “They always do that when they get a complaint and there are kids involved. They go back a couple of weeks later and make sure everything’s still going along fine.”