The Hunt Club

17

Wes Farrell's work environment didn't bear much resemblance to the other law offices Hunt visited throughout the city. It took up nearly the entire third floor of a stately renovated building in the heart of downtown. A casual visitor who came up via the elevator in the underground parking lot-thereby avoiding the formal reception area and bustling legal offices on the floors below-might reach the conclusion that this was the private residence of an eccentric and spectacularly slovenly person.

Farrell's mostly unused desk sat over in the corner under one of the windows, which left the rest of the space free to resemble a living room, with an overstuffed couch and matching easy chairs, a couple of floor lamps, a Salvation Army coffee table. A Nerf basketball net graced the wall by the door. Farrell had willy-nilly pinned up some old and unframed advertising prints from the Fillmore era and one poster of Cheryl Tiegs walking out of some water somewhere wearing a see-through bathing suit and a killer smile. The counter and cabinets on the left-hand wall might have been a college student's kitchen, with the sink and coffee machine and mugs out, and binders of stuff, legal pads, and books scattered about everywhere.

But nobody was enjoying the place at the moment. Farrell, slouched on the couch, his feet up on the table, summed it up for all of them. "I'm getting a bad feeling here."

Wu slumped in one of the easy chairs, hands folded in her lap. Hunt, who'd charged out of McClelland's a few blocks away after his depos finished up, was standing by the television perched on a low wall unit under the street windows. He reached over and switched the thing off. They'd just finished watching today's Donolan wrap-up on Trial TV, featuring only Richard Tombo, no mention at all of Andrea Parisi. "Amy and I, we're ahead of you on that one, Wes," he said. He turned to Amy. "You talked to Spencer recently?"

"Forty-five minutes ago," she said. "She hasn't called. He's thinking it's serious."

"He's right," Hunt said. "So, as far as we know, nobody's talked to her since she left to go to the Manions?"

"Do we know she even did that?" Farrell asked.

Hunt nodded. "She took her car. We know that. It was in her garage when I dropped her off at her house, and it wasn't there last night."

"So where's the car?" Wu asked.

"No lo se." Hunt blew out in frustration. "And apparently she never made it out to her meeting. Manion called her office and asked where she was-if she'd forgotten the appointment."

"So she just gets in her car and disappears?" Farrell asked.

"So far," Hunt said, "that's what we've got. It's not good." He walked over to the seating area, straddled the armrest on the other easy chair. "And while we're at it, here's the other thing I've been wondering about most of the day. She'd just found out she wasn't going to get the anchor gig in New York, right? She was badly hungover. She even thought that slapping Spencer might cost her the regular gig on Trial TV, with ramifications if it got out at Piersall as well."

"You're saying she might have killed herself?" Wu asked.

Hunt didn't want to think that but knew that it wasn't impossible. People were complicated, endlessly unknowable. What he had interpreted as a hopeful beginning, she could have seen as another possibly tawdry episode in a life that might have been filled with similar connections. He said, "I've got Tamara calling emergency rooms all around the state because it's the only thing I can think of. But you know her better than I do, Amy. What do you think?"

"Do I think she might have killed herself? I want to say no, but…"

Hunt's cell phone rang and, holding up a finger to Wu, he got it and moved over to the window for better reception. "Yeah, we just saw it, too," he said. Then, "I know… Uh-huh. Sutter Street, Wes Farrell's place upstairs… Yeah, we're all here now… What about?…Okay, just a sec." He turned back to face the room, spoke to Farrell and Wu in a suddenly husky voice. "Devin wants to come up and say hi to all of us. It's about this. We all gonna be here for ten more minutes?" He got nods all around and went back to the phone. "Okay, Dev, we're here. Sure, it's your call."

When he closed the phone, he remained standing by the window, facing out. His shoulders rose, fell, rose again.

"Wyatt," Wu said with some concern. "What is it?"

Finally, he turned around. "It's just that Devin and Shiu are homicide, and they want to come up here and talk about Andrea." He let out a long breath. "Homicide means somebody's dead."

The next few minutes passed in an agonized semi-silence. At one point, Wu said, "If they had anything definite, it would have been on the news. Especially what we just watched. They can't have anything."

"Unless the police didn't tell them or asked them to sit on it. But let's hope," Farrell said.

Hunt called Tamara again, found out that Andrea hadn't been admitted to any of the emergency rooms she'd called so far, although she still had another ten or fifteen to call in the nine-county Bay Area alone, to say nothing of the state at large. It was going to be a while.

The conference phone buzzed and Farrell picked it up and said, "Good. Send him up."

The first sight of Juhle's face was reassuring. He looked done in after a long day of work, but it didn't look like he was here to deliver the kind of bad news they'd all been fearing-his eyes, in fact, appeared lit up with a kind of expectation. But the sense of relief hadn't gotten any chance to take hold before Wu asked if they'd heard anything about Andrea.

"Just tell us she's not dead," Farrell added.

Juhle shook his head. "Not that I know of. You got any reason to think she's dead?"

"You do homicides, Dev," Hunt said. "You wanted to talk to us."

"I did. I do. And it's a homicide, all right, but not hers." He looked into the three concerned faces in front of him. "I just came from talking to Rich Tombo down outside the Hall after his gig. He'd called and left a message that he felt there was something he needed to tell me. Any of you guys hear the rumor that Andrea Parisi had been romantically involved with Judge Palmer?"

Hunt felt the blood drain out of his face. Because immediately the rumor rang true. How had it not occurred to him? Palmer, of course-the "other guy" Andrea had been seeing for two years before Fairchild, who didn't want a serious relationship, who had dumped her, who worked with the CCPOA. And now, who had been murdered.

Wes Farrell harrumphed. "It's hearsay, Dev."

"Well, yes, it is." Juhle wasn't here to fight anybody. "But we're not in trial, and this is the kind of hearsay that makes us feel like it would be a good idea to question the object of it if at all possible."

"Which, right now, it isn't," Hunt said.

"So it seems," Juhle said.

"Wait a minute," Amy said. "You're saying you want to ask Andrea about George Palmer's death?"

"Right."

"As a suspect? That's ridiculous."

Juhle shrugged.

Farrell was unconvinced. "It's just a rumor."

"Granted," Juhle said. "But we know about when Palmer started up with Staci Rosalier. The other victim. About six months ago. Right about when Donolan began. Which, according to Tombo, is when the judge broke it off with Andrea."

Shiu amplified. "Tombo's opinion was that she wasn't over him."

"Yeah, but Dev," Hunt said, "they broke up six months ago. And then she kills them both last Monday?"

"I'm sorry," Farrell said. "There's just no way."

"No? Were you with her, Wes, on Monday night?"

"No, but…"

Juhle looked from Wu to Hunt. "Either of you? Okay, then. Here's what we know. She did the broadcast with her TV people at four thirty and another one at five, after which her limo dropped her at her firm at five thirty or so. She worked for an hour and a half and signed out of the building at seven-oh-eight."

"And then what?" Farrell asked.

A shrug. "Then we don't know. It's why I wanted to talk to all of you. Tombo told me you guys all were out with her the next night, Wyatt's little anniversary soiree, which I now so wish I'd attended. Maybe she mentioned something about what she'd done the night before to one of you."

"This is insane," Wu said. "I know she saw the judge every week or two with the union stuff they did. In fact, she'd just…" Suddenly, Wu stopped.

Juhle didn't miss the slip. "I'm listening, Amy."

Wu looked for help from Hunt to Farrell, but neither could offer anything. "Well, she had seen him having lunch that Monday."

"And how," Shiu asked, "do you know she did that, ma'am?"

"She told me at Sam's. She couldn't believe it about him having been shot. She'd just seen him at MoMo's the day before."

Juhle's eyebrows went up. "MoMo's is where Staci Rosalier waited lunch tables."

"Wait up, Dev," Hunt put in. "So your theory is that six months after Andrea and Palmer broke up, she sees him and his new girlfriend at MoMo's and out of the blue succumbs to this mad fit of jealousy and decides she has to kill them both that night? At his house? Doesn't that seem a little out there?"

"Absolutely. I don't pretend to have the answers, just questions. The primary one being where is she? But add that to her apparent motive…" He shrugged. "I don't know how out there it is anymore."

Hunt was out on Sutter Street alone with Juhle, who'd hung back while Shiu went to get the car. "So you want to know what she was doing Monday night?"

"Yeah. First, though, same as you, I'd just like to find her." His face set hard, he went on. "And it's funny, we heard from Tombo that your very own self left your cigar place hot on her tail Tuesday night. You catch her?"

"She was drunk, Dev," Hunt said. "I took her back to my place to dry out. Then brought her back home around noon."

"That would be yesterday, the last anybody's seen her." Juhle paused. "You fuck her?"

The question, completely unexpected, left Hunt tongue-tied just long enough.

So that Juhle said, "Shit. You did."

"I never said that."

Juhle had no patience for it. "Yeah, you did. Give me a break. And now you're also the last one we know to have seen her."

"And now I'm a suspect, too?"

"It's not as funny as you seem to think. I'm not kidding. It's going to occur to Shiu, too, I guarantee you."

"And then what? He's going to arrest me?"

"Don't push it, Wyatt. Don't give him an excuse. He might." After a second, Juhle said, "So Parisi's the one who stood you up last night." It wasn't a question. He had figured it out, and now took a step forward into Hunt's personal space. He lowered his voice to a whisper laced with anger. "Maybe you remember last night when you told me she didn't do much work herself involving the prison guards' union? Except for meeting with my murder victim every week or so? Did you know she was sleeping with him, too?"

"I didn't know that. I never suspected that."

"Good for you. But the rest of it, you just didn't think it mattered?"

Hunt's guts roiled and he felt the flush rise in his face. He'd asked for this. "I know it matters, Dev. What can I say? I should have told you. I fucked up. I'm sorry."

"Damn straight you fucked up."

"Right. I know. She was hurting. She was a mess. I guess I was trying to protect her."

"From me?"

"From everything. But you, too. Right."

"You know what? That really pisses me off. If she's innocent, she doesn't need protection from me or anybody else. You get that?"

"Yeah, but if any of this gets out, it won't matter if she killed those two or not. If she's been having an affair with the judge on her biggest case, she's toast."

"Not my problem. Not yours, either. I need to find her."

"So do I."

"If you do, I need to see her."

"Dev, I won't hide her from you."

"No? Let's hope not. But while we're on this, what else haven't you told me?"

Hunt said nothing.

"No hurry, Wyatt. I've got all day."

"You'll find this out, anyway, when you get to looking in her house," Hunt said at last. "She's got a gun collection in her dining room."

"Swell. Terrific. Fucking peachy."

"She…" He stopped. There was no point in arguing with Juhle about this or trying to explain it away. It was what it was.

"Anything else," Juhle asked, "that you know about her that might matter?"

After another minute, Hunt said, "Nothing." Then: "No. Wait." He considered whether it was, in fact, something and at last he spoke. "I don't think she stood me up."

Juhle moved away a half step, squinted with still-angry eyes. "I'm so happy for you. What the hell does that mean?"

"She's the one who brought up the idea of us going to dinner. She said she'd call me one way or the other. She doesn't do that if she's planning to light out of town. She would have called. So whatever's up with her, it wasn't her choice. It happened to her."

"So she's a victim? Like every single convict in every jail in the world."

"I'm not saying she sees herself as a victim, Dev. I'm saying she might be one. That's my truest call."

The cop backed up another step. "Your truest one? Okay, I'll take it into consideration." Shiu pulled the car up to the curb and gave a polite little honk. Juhle turned, got to the door and opened it, then turned back. "But I'll tell you what, Wyatt. Your truest call meant a hell of a lot more to me yesterday than it does today."

The dressing-down left Hunt literally shaking. Or maybe it was the information-still just a rumor, he reminded himself, although he intuitively believed it-about Andrea and Palmer. He stood out on the sidewalk in front of the Freeman building staring after Shiu and Juhle's car until long after it had turned a corner and disappeared.

When he came back to himself, he returned to the main doors of Freeman, Farrell, Hardy & Roake, rang the after-hours bell, and waited for the click that unlocked the door. In a minute, he was up the stairs, knocking on Farrell's door, letting himself in. Wu was sitting on the couch, talking on the telephone. Farrell had undone his tie and taken off his dress shirt, leaving him in today's T-shirt, which read, SEEN ONE SHOPPING CENTER, SEEN A MALL. Farrell was standing behind the easy chairs and had just shot a Nerf ball toward the basket. Neither attorney was facing the television set, which was back on, albeit silent. On the screen was a picture of Andrea Parisi. Hunt ran over and hit the sound.

"…not been seen since midafternoon yesterday. Further cause for concern among authorities is the fact that Ms. Parisi's legal work brought her into regular contact with Judge George Palmer, who was shot to death at his home last Monday evening. Anyone having any knowledge of Ms. Parisi or her whereabouts is urged to call the police or this station at…"

Hunt muted the sound. Wu still held the phone but now was standing, staring at the screen. Farrell, too, had turned, and his face had clouded over. "Well, now it's official at least," he said. "Maybe Missing Persons will move on it after all."

"Don't count on it," Hunt said. "The TV saying somebody's missing doesn't necessarily mean that they're missing."

"But she is missing," Wu insisted. "I know something's happened. We all know that. She'd never go this long without telling somebody."

Hunt pointed at the phone in her hand. "Who are you talking to?"

"Oh." With an I'm-stupid expression, she spoke back into the phone. "Jason. Did you hear that?"

Farrell sat on the arm of the easy chair, his jaw tight. "Devin doesn't really consider her a suspect in Palmer, does he, Wyatt?"

Hunt lowered himself down onto the wall unit next to the television. "I'd say close to as good as the wife."

"What do you think?"

"You really want to know? You don't want to know."

"You think she's dead, don't you?" Wu had hung up and now sat, her hands nervous little birds in her lap. "I'm afraid of that, too."

Farrell's expression showed he wasn't far from that thought himself, but he said, "What about kidnapped?"

Hunt shook his head. "Why? And no ransom demand. It makes no sense."

"Neither does her disappearing," Farrell said, "unless she just split up the coast or somewhere to get her head straight. Between this thing with Palmer and her fight with Spencer, I could see her just laying low for a few days."

But Wu was shaking her head. "She would have told Carla, at least. And probably Gary Piersall."

"Maybe she did, Amy," Hunt said.

"No, not Carla, anyway. I talked to her enough times today. Nobody's that good an actress."

Farrell said, "Maybe she just wasn't thinking straight and forgot to tell anybody."

Wu shook her head. "That's just not her."

Hunt said, "She was fine when I left her. She wasn't freaking out. She was going in to work. Besides, if she's taking a mental health day or two, the story breaking on TV is going to bring her back in. If that or some ransom demand doesn't happen in the next few hours, and I don't think they will…" He let the sentence hang unfinished.

"So what do we do?" Wu asked. "Just sit and wait?"

"I don't know what else we can do," Farrell said. "She turns up or she doesn't."

"Well, maybe not." Hunt lifted himself up from the credenza, the nebulous idea of why he'd felt he needed to come back up here beginning to form into something more cohesive. "If she's dead, nothing we do makes any difference. But if she's not…if she's hurt or trapped or crashed and skidded off the road someplace or anything besides dead, there's still a chance we can do something."

"All right, maybe," Farrell said, "if we could get the police…"

But Hunt was shaking his head. "Think about it, Wes. We've already got the police. Juhle wants her. He'll pull out all those stops." He took in both of them. "I'm talking about us."

"Us? You mean you and me and Amy?"

Hunt nodded. "And Jason. And my troops, Tamara and Craig and Mickey."

Wes cracked a thin smile. "And do what?"

But Wu said, "I'm in. Whatever it takes."

"Here's what I see," Hunt said. "Wes, hear me out. We've got three options. One, Andrea's already dead. Two, for some reason she went away on her own. On that, she'll either come home on her own, too, or she plans to stay away indefinitely, in which case she's left the country and we'll never see her again."

"I don't think that's it," Wu said.

Hunt nodded. "I don't, either. But she also might have had a bona fide accident going where she was going, and then the cops will probably find her or her car. So forget one and two. Those are just out of our control."

"Okay," Farrell said. "What's three?"

"Three, somebody took her." Hunt held up his hands, forestalling the response he saw in both of their faces. "I'm not saying that's what happened, but it's the only thing we can look at, and possibly affect, rather than just sit and wait. If somebody took her, they did it for a reason-something she did, someone she knew, something she was involved in. That's what's left."

"So what do we do?" Farrell asked.

"How about if you go talk to Fairchild and Tombo. Between the two of them, they're going to know more than any of us but may not know what they know."

"What do you want me to do?" Wu asked.

"You and Jason, maybe you could get with Carla Shapiro. Find out who Andrea hung with at work, what her caseload was, her personal life outside of Trial TV. Meanwhile, I'll put Tamara and my stringers on the phones and try to pick up any other lead I can."

"Where?" Wu asked.

"I don't know exactly. I'll start digging. Maybe, as you say, Wes, talk to Devin some more."

"He's a good guy, Wyatt, but he's a cop on a big case. He's not going to be inclined to share." Farrell came forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. "Don't get me wrong. I'm on the team here. But this is a helluva long shot, the whole idea."

"I realize that," Hunt said. "But what's the alternative?"