“So how long does this last?”
“It varies. A day, two weeks? With rest and medication, he could come out of it soon.” Gutierrez turned back and put a hand on Hunt’s knee, pushing at it. He jerked back into consciousness, although his face still lacked any animation. “Señor,” the doctor said, “do you need to be in a hospital tonight?”
“A hospital?” Tamara asked.
Gutierrez nodded. “In the U.S., he would be admitted to a hospital and I can arrange that here.”
“Do you think it’s necessary for him to get better?”
The doctor shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not necessary, but it might not hurt. A hospital here in a strange place might do him more harm than good. I can’t say.”
Tamara sat wringing her hands, looked over at Wyatt. “Do you understand the doctor? Should we go to the hospital?”
Through the fog, Hunt swallowed, managed a single syllable. “Here.”
“Can you get back over to the bed?” Gutierrez asked.
Tamara stood up. “I can help him.”
She came over and took off the blanket, then took him by both hands and helped him rise out of the chair. A couple of steps over to the bed and it was done. “We’ll try to stay here first,” she said.
“I think and I hope,” Gutierrez said to Tamara, “that this will pass relatively quickly. We can treat tonight as an isolated episode. He is able to talk and understand, but he is, of course, physically and emotionally exhausted. So the first thing is to sleep.” He handed her a small paper packet. “He is to take one of these…how long since he stopped drinking?”
“Six hours, maybe seven.”
“All right. One and only one now. So he can sleep. Then, in the morning, if the anxiety continues, the migraine.” He gave her a small plastic container with four pills in it. “One of these. Lorazepam. To dial down, I believe you say, the anxiety. But not until the morning, and only if he needs it. This can be addictive, so be careful and see a doctor when you get back home if he needs more. How long are you staying here?”
“Only a day or two more.”
“All right. Good. You were wise to come get me, and with sleep, the regular rhythm of sleep, this might pass quickly. Sometimes an emotional episode, a breakdown, it can be its own kind of healing. But if he does not respond by, say, tomorrow or the next day, please call me again and we will take further steps.”
“Let’s hope he comes around,” she said.
“Yes, let us hope.” The doctor stood and closed his bag. Tamara walked him to the door, thanked him again, then went into the bathroom to get a glass of water so she could give Wyatt his pill.
28
WEDNESDAY MORNING, two days later, Hunt opened his eyes, turned his head, and saw Tamara sitting tucked sideways into the armchair, sipping from a coffee mug and reading. She had opened the blinds and sunlight fell on her hair and across her shoulders. She wore one of the hotel’s white bathrobes. A white carafe, another coffee mug, and a basket of fruit sat at her elbow on the end table.
Where had he been?
He could tell by the angle of the sun that he’d slept away most of the morning. The sky out the window was deep blue. He could smell coffee and chocolate and he stretched out in a yawn under the covers and then turned to look at her. “You are so beautiful,” he said.
Surprise and relief seemed to hit her in a flood. She turned her book facedown, lowered her coffee mug, and turned to face him, her face etched with worry. “I’m glad you think so,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Good.” His speech came a little slowly, a trace of grogginess hanging on. “Better,” he said, “if I had some coffee.”
“I think I might have saved you a little.”
“That would be good, if you did.”
“Well, let’s see.” She picked up the carafe—“It’s your lucky day”—and filled his mug.
He watched her add a packet of powdered chocolate and stir and then get up and come over and wait until he’d pushed himself up, stacking extra propping pillows behind him. He took the mug. “What time is it?”
“About noon.”
“Tuesday?”
Her face relaxed into a soft smile. “Wednesday. Last time I checked.”
“So that was two days ago?” He hesitated. Then, “I guess that’s a relief. It feels like a week ago.” Resting his mug on the sheets covering him, he patted the bed.
After a moment, she reached over and grabbed her own coffee, then came back to the bedside and sat, clutching her mug with both hands.
“I don’t know what happened,” Hunt said, his voice still thick. “I can’t explain it. All I can say is I’m sorry and if you want to leave now, I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Why would I want to leave you? And you don’t have anything to be sorry about. You had a panic attack. The doctor said it was exhaustion and anxiety. Guess what? Real stuff. The mescal probably didn’t help, either. Basically, you just shorted out for a while. That’s what it was.”
“Shorted out. Nice.”
“Hey. Circuits overload. They short out. It happens.”
“All right, but it’s never happened to me.”
“Sorry to say, but new reality time. Yes, it has.”
Hunt nodded wearily. “Touché.” A pause. “I vaguely remember a doctor. That was smart.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know what was happening. Luckily, he’s on call with the hotels in town and could come right over.”
“I’m just so sorry to have put you through that.”
“Wyatt.” She dismissed the apology with a little brush of her hand. “You’re the one who went through it. I’m just glad I was here.”
“Seeing me at my best.”
“Get over that, please, would you? Best. Worst. It doesn’t matter. I’m here. You want to get rid of me, it’s going to take more than that. You’re going to have to kick me out.”
“I’m not doing that. The last thing I want is to get rid of you.”
“Good. It’s not in my plan, either.”
“I’m just embarrassed that . . .”
She put a finger against his lips. “What? That you’re not perfect? That you’ve got emotions and feelings you can’t control churning up in there? That sometimes life just seems too hard? This just in, Wyatt. People aren’t perfect. One day—who knows?—you might even catch me on an off day. Bitchy, crabby, depressed, all of the above. That could happen, and then what? You’re going to leave?”
“I’m not going to leave.”
“Me, neither. End of story. Okay?” She remembered her coffee and lifted it to her mouth. Reaching out, she touched his face and asked gently. “So how’s the light show this morning?”
Wyatt lifted his chin, seemed to scan the corners of the room, came back to her, and said with the lift of surprise, “No sign of it.”
“Good. If it starts to come back, the doctor left another pill you can take, just so you know. Meanwhile, you might want to consider eating a little food.”
“I like the concept,” Wyatt said. “Then I’ve got to call Devin.”
* * *
HUNT FELT HE’D GOTTEN EVERYTHING he’d come here to get. He’d followed the trail of his mother’s killer forward from the first texter’s message and backward to Jonestown. Evie Spencer had led him to Jones, to Indianapolis and his maternal grandmother, then from Lionel to his biological father and his happy and functional Mexican family to Lionel Spencer’s brother Lance, who was now the last unturned stone. If Lance turned out to be a dry well, Wyatt had no idea of where he’d even begin to turn next. But it might not come to that, to a dead end. One faint glimmer had reoccurred to him and gave him a vestige of hope: His texter’s last message had simply said that it wasn’t Lionel.
First name only.
Didn’t this invite the possibility that it might be another Spencer? And if another Spencer, who else could it be but Lance?
A long shot, Hunt knew, but something.<
br />
And if in the end after all his efforts he couldn’t get a satisfactory conclusion to the investigation, he tried to put a good face on the possibility that he might finally have to abandon it altogether. No doubt some good had already come of it. If he wanted to look at it selfishly, it had been an incredible personal journey that had acquainted him with his long-lost origins and, he felt, had peeled off the scabs that had formed over his early life. These had opened fresh wounds that had caused some pain, but they were wounds he felt could now truly begin to heal. Perhaps had already begun to heal.
Finally, a tectonic shift had occurred with him and Tamara as well. It was far more than that they had become lovers, although that of course was part of it. A new trust flourished, a bond that hadn’t been completely forged before yesterday and his breakdown, if that’s what it had been, or panic attack, or whatever they wanted to call it. Now, out loud, without reservation, they were both in it, with each other, for the long haul.
So there would be compensations, yes, if he had to give up and admit defeat. But in his heart, Hunt did not want to abandon this chase. He had come this far. Each stop on the scavenger hunt had led him to the next clue. It was unfathomable for him to imagine that it would all lead nowhere.
His cell phone did not work in Teotitlán, but Wyatt managed to use the landline at his hotel after lunch to place calls to Juhle at his home and to his cell, both of which went to his voice mail. He and Tamara made reservations to fly out of Oaxaca to Phoenix at 5:30 this afternoon.
Today, though, in their last half hour here, Hunt had an important stop to make. He pulled their car to the side of the road outside Kevin Carson’s shop, which only two days ago had been so intimidating, so loaded with emotional portent, that he could barely force himself inside. Now he and Tamara knocked on the already-opened wooden door, called out a greeting, and walked together into the heavily shaded front room.
Kevin Carson stopped the work he was doing on his loom, yelled for Maria, and came around. Ostensibly, they were here to arrange to get the woven gifts from the family shipped to California. Though Tamara spoke little Spanish and Maria only token English—she was, after all, married to an American—the two women split off to tend to their business in the back of the house.
Wyatt waded into an initially awkward silence. “I wanted to thank you for the celebration,” he began. “That was a hell of a party.”
His father nodded. “We don’t party enough,” he said. “Good to have an excuse, and you showing up sure was one.” He paused for a beat, then took a breath and pushed ahead. “I don’t know if it means anything—I told you I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d come to kill me, and I wouldn’t’ve—you’d a had every right. But I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see how you turned out.”
“I’ve got a great family.”
“Must have.”
“So do you.”
“I know that. I’m proud of each one of them.” He met Wyatt’s eyes, ran his front teeth over his lower lip. “Not so much proud of myself, though. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You were thinking I’d be better off. Maybe you were right.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“No, of course not. You’ll never know that. But you sure as hell wouldn’t have wound up down here married to Maria if you’d been stuck with dragging me along. And it seems like down here is where you’re meant to be.”
“I hope that’s true. Though the road to get here . . .”
Hunt held up a hand. “That’s the road you had to take. I get it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s all right.”
Kevin Carson blinked a time or two, then cleared his throat. “I appreciate that,” he said. “I’m not sure I deserve it, but I appreciate it.”
“I’d like it if we tried to stay in touch,” Wyatt said.
His father nodded. “I’m sure we can do that.”
“Good, then. Let’s try to do that.”
“Deal.”
The men shook hands and nodded as their eyes met.
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Kevin asked.
“Little bit,” Hunt replied, all the possible antecedents clear to him. “Little bit.” It was all a bitch. That was the pure truth of it: Margie being murdered, Kevin feeling forced to abandon his only son, the two trials, running away to Mexico, building a new life in a new language from scratch, dealing with all the loss. “I’ve got a plane to catch, so what say we go check on our women?” he asked. “See what they’re up to.”
* * *
DEVIN JUHLE HATED LYING to his partner, but Sarah had already logically and pointedly closed the door to any other considerations concerning the guilt of Lionel Spencer, and he didn’t feel as though he wanted to spin his wheels with her again on the topic, or explain to her why he was willing to waste both of their time reworking elements of a case that featured no unresolved issues. So he made up a story to Sarah about being on a witness list and possibly having to appear in court in one of his old cases, and she had bought it and went off on her own business.
But yet another call from Wyatt Hunt—two actually, and from Mexico yet, with the same rather urgent message about Lance, the older brother of Lionel Spencer—were, against his better judgment, nudging him along the path of doubt. Not reasonable doubt, since there wasn’t anything particularly reasonable about Hunt’s suggestion.
Of course the very first thing Juhle had done when he got the new name was run Lance Spencer through the criminal database, where he learned that the man had no criminal record. A quick Google search revealed that he was the CEO of an aircraft-leasing company, a pilot, a board member of three other corporations, and evidently a substantial donor to several charities. He had a home on Nob Hill in San Francisco and another one in Sonoma County. He was married with a wife and a child.
In short, the man was a pillar of the community.
So what possible reason could Juhle give Lance Spencer if he knocked on his door and told him he had some questions about his brother’s death? Did Lance, by any chance, kill Lionel and try to make it look like a suicide? Well, no, Juhle would be forced to say, there wasn’t any evidence to suggest such a thing, but . . .
It was ludicrous. As a cop, Juhle did not want to talk to a murder suspect without some sort of game plan. This might be his only chance to interview Lance, and certainly would be his only chance to take him by surprise. He didn’t want to stumble through some vague, open-ended question-and-answer session that would accomplish nothing except to alert Lance that he was under suspicion.
It wasn’t really that any of Hunt’s information was immediately verifiable, led to or sprung from any hard evidence, but Juhle had a history with Hunt over the past few years. They had been involved together in three cases—twice on the same side, once more or less in opposition—and in all three, Hunt’s vision and instincts had carried the day. Devin knew that Wyatt certainly understood all the subtleties that pointed to the incontrovertible guilt of Lionel Spencer, and still he remained unconvinced. So much as he might be tempted, Juhle just couldn’t convince himself to discount Hunt’s input.
Hunt had proven himself to be a tireless and sometimes inspired investigator. He was also by police standards a complete wild card—he didn’t have to operate within the system as Juhle did, and because he didn’t have to, he didn’t. Hunt could operate on instinct, hunch, pique, ego, and just plain orneriness in a way that Juhle simply could not. This made him difficult both as a friend and a quasi partner. But there was no real arguing with Wyatt’s success. He’d been right and Juhle had been dead wrong at least three times. Juhle knew he would be wise to remember that, and he was remembering it now as he drove out to pay a personal call on the former chief of police Dan Rigby.
Rigby had been gracious enough taking Juhle’s call. He remembered their last discussion when he’d told the inspector to get back to him if he could help with the case, which at that time had been the Margie Carson murder o
nly. Now the two men sat at Rigby’s kitchen table, and the chief’s cranberry juice stopped halfway to his mouth. “You’re telling me,” he said, “that this forty-year-old case suddenly got opened and now there are three other homicides connected to it?”
“Two homicides and a suicide, but yeah.”
“That’s unusual.”
“I thought so, too. Oh, and one other thing makes it more so. Kevin Carson?”
“Sure. The husband, the killer. What about him?”
“He didn’t kill these latest three.”
“You know that?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“What, is he dead?”
“No, sir. He’s in Mexico. Deep Mexico. He wasn’t here in San Francisco last week, guaranteed. Or last year, either. In fact, he hasn’t been in this country since before the designated hitter.”
This time, the juice made it to the chief’s mouth. He sloshed it around a bit, then swallowed. “You’re saying we had the wrong guy.”
“No, sir. Only that he couldn’t have done the last ones. So maybe he didn’t do the first one, either.”
Rigby wagged his head as though disillusioned. “I suppose that happens. So, is that what you wanted to see me about? Tell me I screwed one up?”
“No, sir. You might remember, last time we talked I asked you about a woman named Evie Secrist. She was the other woman with Margie Carson where you and your partner Jim Burg got called out because they’d left their young kids in Margie’s apartment alone together.”
“Yeah, I remember that.”
“Well, it turns out her real name was Evie Spencer. She was married at the time to the guy we’ve made for the two homicides last week, and who then shot himself. His name’s Lionel Spencer. But I have a source who doesn’t believe it’s Lionel.”
“What? A snitch? A witness?”
“No. As it turns out, it’s Margie Carson’s son. He’s a private eye in town. He’s tracked down his father in Mexico, and the father thinks none of this could have been Lionel. He wouldn’t have had the stomach for it.”
The Hunter Page 28
