The Hunt Club (16 page)

Without taking that last shot, he walked off the court and turned out the lights on the playground side of his place, flipped on the overheads on the living side, went in and showered. When he finished, he went into his bedroom, opened his dresser, pulled out another pair of gray sweats and put them on, then opened another drawer and reached under the T-shirts where he kept the picture.

He hadn't taken it out in a couple of years. He didn't even remember the last time.

It was the only one he had kept of Sophie. The night he'd burned all the rest of them, he'd taken this one out of the frame, but something about it had stopped him. He hadn't been able to make himself erase all signs that she'd ever existed. He couldn't do it.

It wasn't a glamour shot, which was maybe what he liked about it the most—although God knew she'd had the capacity for glamour when the mood struck her—but it captured her. The laugh, the skin, the
magic
of her. It might have been the night she got pregnant, or, as her glow revealed, she may have already known. But in this shot, she was in her medical scrubs, just off her rounds at the Med Center, on a Saturday evening at the Shamrock Bar where they'd met.

She'd given him a new telephoto lens for his birthday, and Hunt had been shooting extreme close-ups of birds in Golden Gate Park all day. When she'd come in and sat down at the bar, he'd been in the bathroom—timing was his specialty—camera and new honking lens around his neck. When he'd come out, she hadn't seen him. She was talking to the bartender there, laughing at something he was saying. And Hunt had raised his camera, brought her up close enough to touch, and caught her in that moment. When he saw what he'd captured, he'd blown it up to eight by ten and framed it and put it next to their bed, along with her favorite shot of him—on a windboard flying over the bay.

Now he moved the glossy over under the light and laid it flat on the dresser. His face softened by degrees until he put his hands down on either side of the picture and leaned on them.

He'd considered sharing his life with someone back when he was with her. But since then, that feeling had left him. There had been a few women since—nice enough, attractive enough—set-ups by Connie, that type of thing, but if the kind of involvement he'd had with Sophie was going to empty his soul out so thoroughly, his own preservation demanded that he avoid it. He just wasn't going to open that door again. It wasn't worth the pain.

He didn't even know Parisi. Not really. And what he did know wasn't all good by a long shot. But she'd gotten inside him.

“How dumb is this?” he said aloud to the picture.

But, of course, Sophie couldn't answer.

The following morning
—Thursday, June 2—Hunt was moved by two considerations to walk the fifteen-odd blocks from his home to his detective agency's two-room office over the Half Moon Café on Grant Avenue in Chinatown.

First, an unexpected break in the fog had created a glorious morning.

The other was that the waiting period was over today—he'd circled the date on his calendar—and he could stop and pick up his new gun, a 380 ACP Sig Sauer P232, which gave him about an inch less barrel and an inch less height than the weapon he'd been carrying for the last couple of years, the Sig P229.

He'd fallen in love with the new weapon the last time he'd been to the range with Devin Juhle, who'd been trying one out and ultimately decided against it. For Devin, it was too small, and he didn't feel he could be as accurate with it. But Hunt had found the opposite to be true. Lighter and easier to handle, the gun performed better for Hunt than anything he'd ever shot. Plus, though the actual spec difference in size wasn't that great, it felt far less bulky in his back-of-the-belt holster.

Armed with his new toy, knocked out by the beauty of the day, Hunt surprised himself by stopping in and buying a bag of freshly made, still-hot
char siu bao
—sticky dough buns filled with pork in a sweet sauce. The Chinese food last night with Juhle had been so good that he was unable to resist the craving for more this morning. Back out on the street, Hunt's sense of well-being got so much the better of him that he emptied his pockets and put all his coins in the hat of a homeless guy who was sleeping in one of the doorways.

In his office, Tamara was out from behind her desk watering the plants. She wore a red miniskirt, red low-heeled shoes, and a demure white blouse that nevertheless stopped in time to display a couple of inches of taut flat stomach and a faux-diamond navel stud. “If you ever get a job in a real office,” Hunt said, “you know they probably won't let you show off your tummy.”

She flashed him a tolerant smile. “That's why I won't work in a place like that. Craig likes my tummy.”

“It's a fine tummy,” Hunt said, “but old guys like me—not saying me personally, but guys like me—might find it distracting in a business environment.”

“Well, that's their problem. Not saying you personally, but people like you. We're never going to have this be like a real office, are we? With dress codes and everything?”

“It's unlikely,” Hunt said. “Except maybe if Craig pierces anything I can see.”

“Does his tongue count?”

Hunt held up a hand. “Tam. Please. Not before breakfast. He hasn't done his tongue, has he?”

“No, but we were talking about maybe the two of us…You wouldn't really fire us, would you?”

“No. Never, I hope. But I also would find it a little hard to have a casual little chat like we're having right now because I would be creeped out.”

She smiled at him. “Maybe I shouldn't tell you, then, about Craig's…”

Hunt stopped her. “Better left unsaid,” he said. “But speaking of the boy?”

“He's process serving. Six subpoenas.”

“Six in one day? Don't tell me somebody's actually getting to trial.”

She nodded. “Believe it or not. One of Aaron Rand's clients. Craig's on his cell if you need him.” She pointed to the white bag in his hand. “Tell me those are fresh
bao
.”

“I'll play your silly game,” he said. “These are fresh
bao
, but sadly I only bought a dozen.”

She gave him a look, held out a be-ringed hand punctuated with red nail polish. “A dozen feeds a hungry family of four. Give.”

“Besides, they're just out of the oven. Way too hot to eat.”

“I'll blow on them.”

Hunt sighed theatrically. “It doesn't seem right.” He opened the bag, handed her one of the buns. He turned and let himself into his office, closing the frosted glass door behind him. Taking off his coat, hanging it on the rack by his door, he reached around and took out his new gun, just to look at it again. But holding it now, he suddenly realized that he needed to run downtown and get his CCW—carry a concealed weapon—permit updated to cover it. Technically, he shouldn't be walking around with the thing in its holster on him until he'd done all the paperwork. He reminded himself to remember to take care of it at lunchtime, then put the gun back where it belonged and went around to his desk.

The office was good-sized, square, utilitarian. When he'd first seen it, it had essentially been a large windowless closet—a major factor in its affordable rent. His first improvement was to knock out a three-foot-square section of the wall and put glass between Tamara's office and his own to let in some natural light.

Next Hunt installed wall-to-wall carpet throughout. He had a standard-issue IKEA blond desk with a computer and phone and a matching swivel chair and a double stack of light tan metal filing cabinets. From his home, he'd brought down two acoustic guitars—one steel and one gut—and hung them for easy access on the wall to his left. On his right was a Corian counter with a sink and hot plate and printer and fax machine on top and a small refrigerator with drawers for surveillance supplies—night goggles, binoculars, pilot bags when pit stops to pee weren't an option—and photo equipment underneath. He thought that the bunch of framed old black-and-white baseball photographs that he'd gotten cheap at the ballpark didn't look too bad above the counter.

He'd resisted the urge to call Andrea when he'd gotten up. He knew that he could have pretended that he was just checking up on her, making sure she was feeling okay, that her hangover had abated, but he didn't need Juhle to tell him how lame that would be. He'd get in touch later in the day, casually. No mention of the phone call she had promised yesterday.

Now that he'd made it all the way into work without having yielded to the temptation to call her, he resolved that he'd put it off until later and simply ask her out. She'd either say yes or no. He didn't really believe it, but he knew it was possible that their moment yesterday could after all have been her exhaustion and vulnerability, and he didn't want to play to those cards. If anything real had been there yesterday, it would still be there today—or even tomorrow.

He forced her out of his mind.

After his day off yesterday, his workload had backed up and was fairly heavy. At noon, he was scheduled to assist in some predeposition statements from some witnesses in a fraud case at one of his clients' offices, which might take up a good portion of the afternoon. He had three surveillances of one kind or another that were in more or less active status. A doctor had also hired him to find out some history about his very rich mother's new and much younger boyfriend. And when things got slow, he could always fall back on locating witnesses—there were always a few that needed to be found.

But he had some computer work to get out of the way first. He was taking an online class on information technology and computer forensics, pumping up his skills set to compete with the big PI firms should his specialization as a legal investigator become a liability. When he finished today's lesson, he was planning to search the Net as part of a background check on one of the job applicants with an executive headhunting firm that he'd snagged as a client.

Engrossed in the intricacies of computer forensics, he never heard the telephone ring outside on Tamara's desk. He had told her that he was doing his lesson online and didn't want to be disturbed for an hour. So he jumped when the phone went off at his elbow.

“That was a short hour,” he said.

“I'm sorry, but it's Amy Wu. I thought you'd want to talk to her. She sounds upset.”

If it was Wu, he would talk to her. He punched at the phone. “Amy, what's up?”

Her voice unusually serious, Wu said, “Maybe nothing. Maybe I'm just paranoid. I was wondering if you've talked to Andrea recently.”

“Not since yesterday afternoon.”

“Okay, maybe that's good news. What time was that?”

“Two. Two thirty. Why would it be bad news?”

Wu paused. “I've been calling all around. Nobody's seen her. Well, nobody I've talked to at least. I've called Spencer, too, and he hasn't heard from her since Tuesday night. He told me to try you.”

Hunt knew well enough the reason that her Trial TV producer hadn't heard from her. He also assumed that Fairchild must have seen him rush out after Parisi at the Occidental.

But Wu was going on. “Last night I paged her and also left a message at her home, asking her to call me no matter what time she got in, and she never did.”

“Call? Or get in?”

“I don't know for sure. Both.”

“What was so urgent?”

Wu hesitated. “Did you hear they identified the woman who was killed with Judge Palmer?”

“I did. Staci something, right? Waitress at MoMo's. I didn't know her.”

“We did. Andrea and Jason and I. We all knew who she was at least.”

“So that's why you wanted to get to Andrea? To tell her about Staci?”

“Originally. You know, to talk about it a little. But then when she didn't call back…”

“Did you try her at work? She was going in there when I left her.”

Another pause. “When you left her? You're saying you didn't just talk to her yesterday afternoon, you were
with
her?”

“She passed out, and I took her back to my place.” He gave her the short version. “Anyway, after she got herself together, I took her home. She was talking about going in to work.”

“But she didn't go to work. Not yesterday. And she's not there now and hasn't called this morning.”

Hunt, frowning, checked his watch. True, it wasn't yet ten o'clock. And okay, Parisi could have gotten in sometime after he left her driveway last night and be out having an early meeting with a client. She could be doing a morning workout. She could be out jogging. She could have simply decided to sleep in and not answer her telephone. She might even have stood him up to go out with another guy and wasn't back home yet. But Wu, not really given to histrionics, was upset. Hunt felt a seed of real concern in the bottom of his gut. “Was her secretary worried?” he asked.

“Not particularly. She said that sometimes she comes in later.”

“That's probably what it is.”

“Maybe. But you know Andrea, Wyatt. You page her, she calls back. Her cell phone's surgically implanted in her ear.”

“Maybe she's turned it off.”

“That would take us to the outer fringes of reality.”

Hunt believed Wu, but so what? Given the events of Parisi's last couple of days, he considered it plausible that she might have turned off her cell phone and simply checked out for a few hours. She'd given him every sign that she wanted to think about things. But again, Wu was their mutual friend, and her worry was genuine and somewhat contagious. “Who else have you tried?” he asked her. “Does she have family nearby? Maybe she's staying with them.”

“I know her mom teaches at Cal and lives in Berkeley, I think, but I don't have her number, and I'm not sure if I want to get her worried, too.”

“I could find her and call and make it sound innocuous. I promise.”

“Do you think it would be dumb to check anywhere official?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. The police? Hospitals?”

“Not yet, I don't think. How long has it been? Am I the last one who talked to her?”

“So far.”

“And what's that? Eighteen, twenty hours ago?” Though those numbers startled him in some way, Hunt kept up the optimistic front. “She's a big girl, Amy. She could be anywhere. She could just be hiding out.”

“From what?”

“Fame. I don't know. Figuring out what she's going to do with Spencer. Or her law career. It really could be anything.”

“You really think so?”

“I really don't know. But why don't I find her mother's number, and after that, if she's not there, I'll call around, the official places. Meanwhile, you wait and see if she calls you back. And when she does, you call me, right?”

“Okay.”

“Okay, then. Later.”

They hung up and within fifteen minutes, Hunt was talking to Deanne, one of Andrea's sisters in Berkeley, keeping his questions generic and low-key. Identifying himself as a private investigator, he said he was doing a background check on the résumé for someone who had given her sister as a reference at this number. Deanne certainly didn't sound as though she'd experienced any trauma recently in her life. She laughed and said her sister hadn't lived there for years, so whomever Hunt was checking up on wasn't very current. Deanne hadn't seen Andrea in a month or so, but she was fairly sure that her mother had talked to her last weekend. Hunt thanked her for her time and hung up.