The Hunter

by John Lescroart

  “And you have no idea where she is now?”

  “None. I’m sorry, but none.”

  Hunt let out a breath. He reached for his coffee and drained the cup.

  “You know, Wyatt,” the priest said, “young women with young children sometimes form very strong bonds with one another. They might not otherwise be particularly well suited. They might not become friends at any other time of their lives, but while they’re both in this strained and trying situation with toddlers and other young children, often without their men around during the day, they connect.”

  “So was my mother…​Did she lean toward being nuts around religion?”

  “Not that I saw. Maybe she was a little more devout than most people nowadays, but she struck me back then as relatively normal.”

  Hunt huffed out another frustrated breath. “Do we have any idea of Evie’s real name? Was she married? And would her real name have been her married name or her maiden name?”

  Bernard spread his palms, shook his head in ignorance and defeat. “I wish I could help you, Wyatt,” he said, “but I don’t know. I don’t know where you could find any of that.”

  10

  AT TEN MINUTES TO FIVE on that Friday afternoon, Abe Glitsky, head of San Francisco homicide, stopped by to have a word with Devin Juhle, who sat at the table that was laden with the case file of the long-ago trials of Kevin Carson.

  Glitsky’s demeanor tended to be off-putting. His brow perennially jutted over anomalous, soulful blue eyes, made more startling in contrast to his dark skin. A prominent hooked nose seemed to gain definition from a slash of an ancient scar that ran through both lips. His colleagues had been known to place bets on whether he would break even the smallest semblance of a smile on any given day.

  “How’s all this coming along?” he asked.

  Juhle, engrossed in witness testimony, started in surprise, looking up. He jerked his feet off the table and back onto the floor.

  “And by coming along,” Glitsky added, “I mean going away.”

  “Pretty soon, I’d guess.” He gestured toward the pile of boxes. “This bothering anybody?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of, though it’s wreaking havoc with the feng shui, you must admit. You discovering anything?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Are you looking for anything specific? That you’re spending all this time on?”

  Juhle hesitated for a lengthy beat before putting the folder down onto his lap. “Somebody complaining?”

  Glitsky hefted a haunch on the adjacent table. “I just got a call from Vi Lapeer”—the chief of police—“who in turn just heard from a retired ADA named Ferrill Moore, who tried your case twice back before the Civil War and who apparently talked to your pal Wyatt Hunt yesterday morning. And stewed about that conversation all day today and seemed to be under the impression that we’ve reopened the case.”

  Juhle took a breath. “Not to get technical, Abe, but the case has never been closed, so it can’t be reopened. They never got a conviction. It sounds to me like Mr. Moore might just be an old geezer with too much time on his hands.”

  Glitsky was all agreement. “There might be some truth in that, Devin, but he seems to have the connections and ability to make a political stink somewhere up the food chain. So much so that the chief asked me how much department time I was devoting to this thing in these times of budgetary constraints. And if any, why? And I didn’t have a really good answer.”

  “Two hours,” Juhle said. “Maybe three.”

  “Plus the lab time to check out this cell phone somebody brought in to you.”

  Juhle held up a finger. “Come on, Abe. Two hours max, also approved by you.”

  Glitsky’s lips went tight. “I realize that. But it still leaves the chief’s question: Why are you devoting any time to this at all? We’ve already got people, as you know, who do cold cases. And you’re not them.”

  “Because maybe I’ll find something they missed last time.”

  “Last two times. And I think the consensus is that they didn’t miss anything. The jury just didn’t do its job. Sound familiar?”

  Juhle met Glitsky’s glance. “You want me to quit?”

  “I’d like to avoid the impression that we are using the people’s money to do the personal work of a private investigator.”

  “It’s an open case, Abe. You okayed a few hours.”

  Glitsky nodded. “I did. And you’ve worked a few hours, have you not?” He raised a hand. “Look, Dev, I’m not busting your chops. The weekend is coming up. You’ll find out whatever you find out from the lab about this cell phone. Mr. Hunt can peruse this stuff to his heart’s content. You can even be here and help him out, although do me a favor and keep a low profile. But it would be a nice surprise if all this stuff was back over in the warehouse come Monday morning. How’s that sound?”

  Juhle worked his mouth, then exhaled audibly. “Sounds like an order.”

  “Communication.” Glitsky nodded. “It’s a beautiful thing.” Then, after a pause, he added thoughtfully, “Though I’ve got to admit I agree with you. It’s pretty bizarre the chief considers this important enough to call me personally to shut you down.”

  “THE OTHER THING IT SOUNDS LIKE…​I hate it when stuff like this happens…​I can’t even say it.”

  “Sure you can.” Juhle’s wife, Connie, sat next to him, both of them wrapped in a blanket on the hard cold bench, peering through the fog for the occasional glimpse of their son, Eric, who played tight end on the junior varsity for the Riordan Crusaders. The game was still in the first half and the stands wouldn’t be full for another hour at least, and they had lots of room around them for privacy. “Come on, Dev. What?”

  Juhle looked in both directions, even turned his head to check behind him. “I don’t think any part of this is Glitsky, you understand. He got a perfectly reasonable call from the chief, who herself got an earful from an ex-DA, and you know how they are.”

  “Okay, but again, what?”

  “But you know what I just can’t help thinking when there’s an open case—even just a technically open case that was probably a jury malfunction—and not just some bean counter, but the honest-to-God, no-bullshit, actual chief of police calls off an investigating inspector? You know what that makes me think about?”

  “You really can’t say it, can you?”

  “I can hardly think it.”

  Connie leaned over and put her mouth right next to his ear. “Cover-up,” she whispered. “Maybe even conspiracy.”

  Juhle’s mouth turned down. “Just hearing it said out loud makes me cringe. I don’t believe in that stuff. I don’t even believe it when I see it in the movies.” He hung his head, frustration weighing on him like a yoke. “But the thing is, there’s no reason on God’s green earth to call me off of this thing. I don’t care how tight the budget is, we’re talking three or four hours of my time, an hour or two of lab time. Tops! To say anything about that impacting the budget is just absurd.”

  “Or maybe it’s just the usual lab personnel whining about their workload.”

  “So the chief of police gets involved?”

  “I know, I know.” He squeezed her hand under the blanket. “I’m sure I’m just overreacting.”

  “But you’re not really sure.”

  “Well, I’m sure of one thing. I’m damn sure now that I’m looking for something, that something is in those files, where before I was just helping Wyatt to feel better about his father. Now, for no apparent reason, Glitsky tells me to wrap it up in a day or two and don’t give it another thought. Which of course makes me give it a whole lot of other thought.”

  Connie glanced toward the field and followed the play until it ended. “I can’t even see who had the ball on that play. I can’t even tell which team has got the ball.”

  “Our ball,” Juhle said. “But Eric isn’t in.”

  “How can you tell? And why don’t they play when it’s warm?”

  “Footb
all’s a cold-weather game. It’s supposed to be like this.”

  Connie blew out a trail of vapor. “Nothing is supposed to be like this.” Then, “Okay, thinking about it. Did either of Wyatt’s parents have anything to do with the police? I mean, other than his father being arrested by them. Or politics? Or money? Or anything? Didn’t you say they were just two poor kids trying to get by?”

  “That’s who they were. But that was forty years ago. Somebody they knew back then might have turned into somebody important by now. Might have been on the way to being somebody back then.”

  “And he killed Wyatt’s mother? Why?”

  Juhle shrugged. “Don’t know. Can’t say. Jealousy? Some kind of love triangle? But I’ll tell you one thing: This makes me realize how weak the case was against Wyatt’s dad. Which, of course, nobody is mentioning. Maybe I should go talk to this guy Moore, the prosecutor. See if I can drag more out of him than Wyatt did.”

  “Not a good idea. Maybe you should just do what Abe says and leave this alone.”

  “I want to. I would have. No, honest.”

  “You just don’t like being told you can’t do something.”

  “That, too.”

  “So you’re going to find a way to keep at this, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not sure. I have to think about it some more.”

  She turned to look into his face. “You are such a liar,” she said.

  * * *

  TAMARA’S LIFE OUTSIDE OF HER JOB, her brother, and her grandfather was essentially that of a widow. For several years, starting in her early twenties, she had been involved with one of Wyatt’s other employees, Craig Chiurco. Like Jill Phillips—amassing investigative hours on the way to her PI license—Craig had been an everyday feature of the job, and Tamara’s social life revolved around him and their small circle of friends. The problem was that Craig wasn’t “into” settling down. He was also a serious stoner with a very dangerous hidden side to his life. Three years ago, Tamara had broken it off with him after a fight over his drug use. Shortly after that, one of Craig’s terrible secrets caught up with him and he was gunned down in a San Francisco courtroom.

  In response, Tamara quit coming to work and stopped eating. Her breakup with Craig had been a tentative thing; they might have gotten back together if he hadn’t been killed. But more than that, she had lost confidence in her instincts, in who she was. If she went out, she went alone. She’d see a movie and come home and go to sleep. Mostly, she stayed in the tiny living room of their one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment, reading or watching television. Finally, a little over a year ago, Hunt and her brother, Mickey, had persuaded her to come back to work. Gradually, she’d put back on most of the twenty pounds she’d lost.

  Now, after an exciting dinner of Kraft macaroni and cheese, with her grandfather already asleep by nine and Mickey gone to meet his girlfriend, the rest of an empty Friday night yawned before her. She had The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest sitting on the small end table next to her reading chair, but suddenly she’d had enough for the moment of Mr. Larsson’s men and their misogyny.

  She briefly considered calling Wyatt and then realized that he had a telephone, too, and if he wanted to see her, he could make the call. Something seemed to be changing with them over the past few days, the banter veering over into unexpected substance. And, of course, Wyatt and Gina had broken up. But though she liked Wyatt, maybe even sometimes thought she might love him, Tamara wasn’t going to let herself inadvertently slip into a romantic entanglement with her boss—she’d addressed that issue head-on with him and they seemed to be on the same page. He wasn’t going to do anything unless it was unambiguous and he meant it, and that was fine with her. If and when that time came, she’d listen to her heart.

  But until then, she was dying here. She had to get herself a life.

  Checking her face in the mirror over the dresser in Mickey’s room, she couldn’t deny that she looked pretty decent, even hot—good bone structure, clear green eyes, luminous skin, shining dark hair. Still, she had enough experience in the city to know that you didn’t want to get too caught up in expecting to meet an unmarried straight man. Her basic intention was simply to get out into the night, maybe do something that could be construed as fun.

  At the mirror, she applied a touch of bright red lipstick, then went to the hall closet and pulled out a heavy leather coat.

  THE LITTLE SHAMROCK was about four blocks west of Tamara’s apartment, on Lincoln Way near Ninth Avenue. It had been around since late in the nineteenth century, pouring honest drinks, anchoring the neighborhood. Like most Irish bars, it had seen its share of fights, but mostly it was a friendly place, filled with working locals as opposed to the yuppies in the downtown establishments. People played serious darts in a low, dark room down a short hallway in the back; other patrons sat on low, dilapidated chairs and couches by the bathrooms. Up front, where the room narrowed to about twelve feet, the crowd filled all the space here at prime time on a Friday night.

  Tamara managed to get up to the actual bar and snag a stool and was waiting for her Cosmo to arrive when she heard the guy next to her say to the guy next to him, “So here I am in my car with this line behind me at the ATM machine and suddenly I’m totally blanking on my PIN number.”

  She reached over and gently touched his forearm. “Excuse me,” she said.

  He turned and, seeing her, smiled and said, “Just this one time, I believe I will.”

  “Will what?”

  “Excuse you. Which is what I believe you asked.” He reached across himself with his right hand. “I’m Will. This is the derelict I live with, Robin, which is really a girl’s name.”

  “Robin Hood was a girl?” Robin asked. “I don’t think so. Robin Roberts, ace pitcher. Batman and—please note, not a girl—Robin.” He leaned over and shook Tamara’s hand as well. “Robin,” he said, “with an i.”

  Tamara surprised herself with a small but genuine laugh. “With an i? As opposed to what?”

  “Robyn with a y, he said. “Which is the girl’s spelling.”

  “But we digress,” Will put in. “You said ‘excuse me’ as though you wanted to tell me something.”

  “I did. If I can just remember…​ah, I’ve got it. I overheard part of your ATM story and I just couldn’t let it go by. Do you know what ATM stands for?”

  “Of course. Automated teller machine.”

  “He went to college,” Robin said.

  “Okay, how about PIN?

  “You mean as in PIN number?”

  “Aha!” she exclaimed again. “Now do you see it?” The bartender brought her drink and she took a careful sip, then came back to them. “You said you were at the ATM machine and forgot your PIN number. The automated teller machine machine and the personal information number number. Redundancies everywhere you look.”

  “Is my face red?” Will asked. “I am so embarrassed. Is my face the color of your Cosmo? That’s what it feels like.”

  “Only a little,” she said, and held out her hand again. “I’m Tamara.”

  HUNT’S BROTHER RICH was the only one of his siblings who’d settled in the Bay Area. A vice president and certified financial planner with Schwab, he lived in San Anselmo in Marin County with his wife, Emma, and their four-year-old, Kaitlin. Tonight they’d finished their dinner, and then Rich had barely eked out a two-games-to-one table hockey victory in the night’s tournament with Wyatt before they’d all piled into Rich’s car and driven, cold or no, to the local Marble Slab ice cream parlor to slap on another thousand or so calories.

  Now they all sat together at their cast-iron and marble-slab table. “I like it when Uncle Wyatt comes over,” Kaitlin said to the group at large.

  “I like it, too.” Hunt was sitting across from her and leaned over closer. “But are you sure it’s not just because we always come down here and get ice cream?”

  One of her eyebrows shot up in surprise, perhaps that Hunt had caught her out with a deeper truth than she
’d been aware of. “No,” she said, recovering with a calm certainty, “that’s just a bonus.”

  “Good answer, sweetie,” Emma said.

  “And a great bonus it is,” her father added, “even if it means your mother and I get to run an extra three miles tomorrow. But hey, we love running, don’t we, Em?”

  “It’s our favorite,” she said. “Better than ice cream.”

  “Now you’re teasing,” Kaitlin said. “You don’t like running more than ice cream. Not even close. And I don’t like anything more than ice cream . . .” She paused for the effect and broke a beautiful smile. “Except Uncle Wyatt coming over.”

  Wyatt pointed at her with an approving nod and said to her parents, “This is a wonderful child.”

  WYATT AND RICH were in the living room with coffee, talking about the Giants, who were in second place, three games out with three weeks to play. Even though they’d won the World Series last year, the Giants had broken the hearts of both of the brothers enough times in the past that neither believed another miracle was possible.

  Although Hunt was closer. “You gotta believe,” he said. “It’s only three games. The team needs you to believe.”

  Rich was shaking his head. “I can’t do it again, Wyatt. They had the right word for it, you know. Last year was torture, even if they eventually won. That wasn’t just a slogan, you know. It was a profound reflection of reality. Rooting for those guys could kill you. I damn near had a heart attack in the play-offs. I mean, literally a heart attack. So now, at last, they’re the world champions, at least for a few more days. I’ve seen it once. I don’t need to see it again. I can die happy.”