The Hunt Club (17 page)

So Andrea wasn't at her mother's house. Feet up on his desk, Hunt thought for another minute or so, then picked up the phone again and punched in some numbers he knew by heart.

“Juhle, homicide.”

“Hunt, Chinatown.”

“Wrong.”

“How could I be wrong? I haven't said anything yet.”

“Why do I have to explain everything, Wyatt? If I say, ‘Juhle, homicide,' you don't say, ‘Hunt, Chinatown.' You say something like ‘Hunt, investigations.' It's the work, not where you do it. Try again later.” And he hung up.

Hunt sometimes thought that the only thing worse than dealing with someone who had a personality was dealing with somebody who didn't. He punched up Devin's number again, got his deadpan, “Juhle, homicide,” and this time said, “Hunt, investigations.”

“Wyatt,” Juhle boomed, “how've you been all this time?”

“I've been good, Devin, but I'm investigating right now even as we speak. I need you to find out something for me.”

“That would be
me
investigating, not you. And I believe I've mentioned I do homicide. Are you calling about a homicide?”

“I hope not.”

“Then I'm not your man. Shiu and I, we're out the door in about two minutes on a murder case, which is what we do. And it's all we do. So good luck.”

“Don't hang up!” Hunt was surprised to note the sharper edge in his voice. In spite of his assurances to Amy Wu that everything probably was fine with Andrea Parisi, Hunt was aware that the knot in his stomach where the last pork
bao
had settled had not gone away. “You remember last night we talked a little about Andrea Parisi…”

Juhle's voice fell half an octave. “Yeah.”

“I just got a call from Amy Wu.”

“What about?”

“About Andrea not returning her calls since yesterday and not showing up at work this morning.”

“Hey, I almost didn't come in myself. It happens. My arm was killing me. I had to drop a Vicodin.”

“Not the same thing, really.” Hunt tried to keep the impatience and worry out of his voice. “I wondered if you could make a few calls around and see if a thirty-something Jane Doe has turned up somewhere.”

“She wouldn't be a Jane Doe if it's Parisi. Somebody would recognize her.”

“That would depend on how she looks, wouldn't it? Say if she was beat up…”

“You're serious, aren't you?”

“Yep.”

“Why can't you make those calls and look for her?”

“I'm tied up with clients for the next several hours. You could do it quicker through one of those magical networks you cops employ, where you can find out about anything. Besides, you answered your own phone, which indicates that you're in your office either doing paperwork or screwing around until something more important comes up. And this is it.”

Juhle looked down at the first stack of Judge Palmer's bank records on his desk in front of him. “How long has she been gone?”

“Since before dinner last night.”

“And you want me to check where?”

“Everywhere you'd look if you were looking for somebody. The morgue would be my last choice, but hospitals. Maybe she got herself drunk and arrested last night and isn't checking her messages.”

“You want missing persons,” Juhle said.

“They won't start looking until somebody's gone three days, Dev. You know this, and that's too long.”

“Not really, since it gives the missing person time to show back up if they've had a change of heart and decided to come back to their spouse or boyfriend or mother and father.”

“This isn't any of those.”

“You checked her house, her work, her…?”

“Yes to all the above. Some of us—Wu, Tamara, me—we're going to be calling around, but you know you can cover more ground a lot easier.”

Juhle hesitated for a couple of seconds. He said, “Now you mention it, I kind of wanted to talk to her myself about what you mentioned last night.”

“What was that?”

“Palmer, basically. The prison guards. Lanier thinks there might be something there after all.”

“So you're admitting you owe me?”

Juhle sighed into the line. “All right. I'll see what I can find out,” he said.

Tamara opened the door
before Hunt put the receiver down. “Do you really think she's in trouble?”

“You've been listening in on my calls.”

“Just the last two, and only to save you the time it would take to brief me. Are you really worried?”

“Let's say I'd feel better if we heard from her.”

“What are you going to do next?”

He consulted his watch. “I
was
going to be finishing this class on the Net and then getting some business done, but I'm due at McClelland's, and that's going to take most of the afternoon.”

“Do you want me to call anybody else in the meanwhile?”

Hunt was up, gathering papers, snatching up his briefcase. “Try Andrea's office again and make friends with her secretary, try to avoid getting her all worked up. Find out the last clients she saw, what they talked about, where she was last night…”

“Whoa!” Tamara raised a palm, stopping him. “I'm trying to avoid getting her all worked up, right? I'll just talk to her and see what she gives me.”

“Okay, you're right. Otherwise, stay near the phones in case Devin calls back. You can page me. Or if you hear from her, of course.”

Marcel Lanier closed the door
to his office in the homicide detail. He went behind his desk and sat, leaving his two inspectors to wonder if he wanted them to remain standing or to sit. Shiu had come in before Juhle and apparently didn't intend to move. He now blocked access to the two chairs in the small area facing Lanier's desk. So they stood, unnaturally close together, by the door.

“If it's not the wife, you understand,” the lieutenant began in a low and brooding tone, “we're going to be having jurisdictional issues again.” He meant the FBI and Homeland Security. “What do you suggest we do about that?”

Juhle, with a little sleep under his belt and a Vicodin easing his hand and shoulder pain this morning, cracked an easy grin. “The Feds? How about we don't tell 'em? Yesterday, they backed out of it, thinking it was local. Maybe it still is; there's just a few complications. So today we just leave it. If they don't ask, we don't tell.”

Lanier's mouth turned upward briefly in a parody of a smile. “That's a fine idea, Devin, except for the press conference that I'm supposed to be giving in about two hours.”

Juhle shrugged. “The investigation is continuing. Tell 'em we're making progress. Which we are. Reporters love progress.”

“We all do. But what would that progress be in this case?”

“Eliminating suspects. We don't have to tell them Jeannette's out because, in fact, maybe she's not. We're just pretty sure she wasn't the shooter.”

Lanier didn't like that. “Pretty sure?”

Shiu stood at attention. “My money, she's still in it.”

Lanier turned his head. “What about you, Dev?”

Not exactly exuding enthusiasm, Juhle lowered his chin an inch, which served as a nod. “Barring something pretty weird, it's probably true she couldn't have been there for the shooting, sir. She was up in Marin.”

Shiu spoke up in a hurry. “But that doesn't mean she couldn't have planned it and hired someone.”

“That's where you're going with this?”

“I think it's still our best shot, sir. One thing's sure—if Mrs. Palmer knew about the Rosalier girl, she's got the best motive. We'll be trying to find out if she did and if so, how.”

“So she's still the focus?” Lanier asked. “Just on the off chance somebody with the feebs comes and asks.”

“We're not ready to abandon the motive, Marcel,” Juhle said. “Oh, and I did mention she got herself lawyered up, didn't I? Everett Washburn.”

Although retaining an attorney was universally viewed by the cops as nearly tantamount to an admission of guilt, in this case the news didn't rock Lanier much. “You'd expect that, wouldn't you? Judge's wife. She knows the game. But Washburn, shit.”

“Yes, sir,” Juhle said. “High-powered. Good news is maybe it takes a couple of years before it gets to trial and he'll die before then.”

Lanier shook his head. “I wouldn't get my hopes up. Prosecutors have been saying that for the past ten years. The old fart's going to live forever. He's too smart to die.”

But clearly Mrs. Palmer's choice of legal representation wasn't his main concern. He leaned back in his chair, cast his gaze up to the ceiling for a minute. When he came back down to his inspectors, his face was set. “I want you to understand, Shiu, that I agree with you that she's got a good motive. Hell, the classic motive, no question. So I'm just being devil's advocate here a minute.”

Juhle was starting to like this. In the old days, when he was paired with Shane Manning, the two of them would toss case theories back and forth all day long, dig into them for nuances, contradictions, contexts. Lanier might be the boss, but he'd come up through the ranks and had been an inspector himself for fifteen years. This was what cops did, how they talked, the way they thought. Juhle wondered for the hundredth time what he'd done to deserve his current partner, who just didn't have a cop's imagination. Standing here by the desk, rooted to the floor, for example.

“Excuse me, before you start,” Juhle said, “my esteemed colleague here actually likes standing at attention all day, but I'd really like to sit down.” Amazingly, his partner moved, crossing behind the desk to the far chair while Juhle took the near one. “Okay,” Juhle said when he'd taken the load off, “advocate.”

Lanier wasted no time, held up a finger. “First, professional hit is your call, am I right?”

“Right,” Shiu said. “Best case.”

“Okay, a couple of questions. Like, how do you explain the slug in the book? The shooter's three, four feet max, from his targets, who at the very least aren't moving much. Palmer's in his chair. How does he clean miss? And okay, of course, gun's go off by themselves, but just to think about. Next, what's this nonsense about how they can tell that the shooter is probably short? Like kid-size, small-woman-size.”

Juhle snapped his fingers. “That rent-a-midget place,” he said.

Shiu painted on a frustrated look that Lanier ignored and went on. “The other question is where does a woman like Jeannette Palmer find a professional killer, first, who's going to trust her, and second, who she's going to know how to talk to once she finds him, if she can get that far? How does she even ask? What, she's doing research for a book or something?”

Shiu spoke up. “Are you suggesting we drop it?”

“No. But I do think it's a reach.”

“Why is that?” Shiu asked.

Lanier gave it another moment, considering. “Okay, the stuff I've just mentioned, for starters. Not insignificant, especially setting up the deal in the first place. Next, no scuff marks on any of the slugs, which means no silencer. Another small point, I grant you, but if I'm shooting somebody—make that two people—during daylight hours in a street-facing room in a house in a quiet, highend residential neighborhood, even if I'm using a .22 pistol, I'm trying to keep the noise down, you know. Simple precaution.”

Lanier paused, picked at a spot on his right ear. A silence built in the small room, but the lieutenant obviously had more to say, and evidently even Shiu saw the wisdom in letting him get to it uninterrupted.

“You know what's the real thing, though?” he asked. “I'm picturing the moment, okay. Palmer's in his big leather chair, the girl is next to him, the shooter's across the desk.” He shook his head. “I just don't see it.”

“Why not?” Shiu asked.

“May I?” Juhle asked.

Lanier nodded.

“It's too far away,” Juhle said. “The judge let him in—we've got no sign of forced entry. Okay, say, he showed the gun at the door, backed everybody in. No way do they get to the office with the judge sitting in his chair. No, the second he's inside, the shooter pops him in the head right now, then goes for the girl. They are not all somehow chatting in the office.”

“I have no trouble with any of that.” Shiu had sat back, crossed his legs, spoke to Juhle, while including Lanier. But a tone of defensiveness crept in. His back was straight and stiff against the wooden chair. “But maybe the person didn't appear to be a threat. Maybe the judge knew him. Or her. And the victims thought they were going to be able to talk things out.”

The guy even
sits
at attention, Juhle was thinking. He said, “It's not a deal breaker, but there is one more thing.” He turned to Lanier. “He shoots the girl again, am I right, Marcel?”