The Hunt Club

21

Hunt and Piersall rode down to the main lobby together in silence, then took the walk around to the basement elevator, got in, and Hunt pressed the button marked "4," where he thought he remembered parking. Still without a word, Piersall reached around him and hit "5."

When the door opened, Hunt stepped out and quickly looked both ways. The only car on that level was a black Miata. He didn't see his own distinctive car and stepped back inside the elevator. At "5," they both got out. At this time of night, theirs were the only two cars on that level. Piersall had put on his suit coat again and carried a large briefcase. He beeped open the trunk of his Lexus, dropped the briefcase inside, and went around to his driver's door. There, he paused, seemed to consider saying something, but instead merely gave Hunt a minimal nod, opened the door, and got in.

Hunt sat in his own front seat, trying to make some decision about what to do next. Next to him, he was vaguely aware of Piersall's car backing out of its spot, then driving off.

While all of Piersall's information about the CCPOA might be relevant to Judge Palmer's murder, Hunt couldn't quite get into focus how it could help him find Andrea. Taking the newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket, he reread it for the fourth or fifth time, wondering what it meant.

If anything.

If, as Piersall seemed to believe, this escaped convict Mowery had anything to do with Palmer's murder, and further if Mowery had come to set his sights on Andrea, then Hunt had little doubt that she would, in fact, be dead by now.

But that was a lot of ifs.

None of them contemplated the reality that Hunt had chosen to believe and act on-that somehow she was still alive. Though as each hour passed, that position became more difficult to sustain. He knew that he would have to call Juhle first thing in the morning and convey Piersall's information, but none of that seemed capable of helping him in his primary objective. Which even now he was beginning to recognize as more of an irrational hope than a realistic possibility.

But until she was found, while she might still be alive, he couldn't abandon the pursuit.

Alone on this parking level, down in the bowels of the building, Hunt suddenly understood with a jolt something that had been nagging at him. Hitting the ignition and throwing the car into reverse, he peeled out with a screech of rubber, got to the end of his row, and turned up, following the exit sign.

Stopping at the entrance to level four, he drove down to the elevator bank and pulled into the space next to the Miata he'd briefly glimpsed on the elevator ride down when the doors had opened and he'd stepped out for a moment to look for his own car.

Getting out of his Cooper, he went to the Miata driver's window and peered in. There was nothing to identify the owner-no purse, no article of clothing, no junk. Just black leather seats. He went around to the back and checked the license plate, trying to remember if he'd even glanced at Andrea's plates when the car had been in her garage. But for the life of him, he couldn't dredge up anything he recognized.

But his adrenaline was up, and though it was irrational, he knew. This was her car.

The scenario flickered in his mind, frames in a silent movie. She'd come to the office on Wednesday after all, not driven directly to the Manions. Her assailant therefore had very possibly not killed her on sight-certainly not by gunshot, anyway, not in the middle of an afternoon in what would have at that time been a crowded parking structure. But had taken her somewhere, where conceivably she might still be alive.

Hunt had to take the elevator back up to the lobby again and get outside before he could get reception on his cell phone. Standing on the dark and empty sidewalk, he listened to the rings on the other end of the line. "Come on, come on, come on. Pick up. Connie! I know, I'm sorry, but it's important. I need to talk to Dev."

Juhle wasn't the happiest Hunt had ever heard him with the idea of running the license plate at this ungodly hour to find out whom the car belonged to, but by the time he called Hunt back, having gotten somebody on the night shift at Central Station to do the two-minute computer check, he sounded wide awake. It was Andrea's car all right.

While he waited for the first black and white to arrive, Hunt used the time to check in with his troops.

Farrell, smart man, was off the clock, his phones either turned off or unplugged, and Hunt left a message, calling a meeting for the morning on Sutter Street at eight o'clock sharp.

Amy and Jason were still awake and watching television, having drawn blanks from Carla Shapiro. Amy mentioned the tenuous, tantalizing near meeting with Betsy Sobo, perhaps on family-law/union-benefits issues, that Parisi had scheduled and then bailed on for Monday afternoon. Brandt and Wu also reported that by now all the local television channels had picked up the story of Andrea's disappearance and were giving it a lot of prominence-they were watching News 4 Late Edition now, and the story was heading up the hour. Amy had also called Parisi's mother, who had already been contacted by several media types. She was now distraught and had no idea where her daughter was or what could have happened to her.

Tamara and Chiurco didn't have much to offer, either, on any possible connection between Staci Rosalier and Andrea Parisi. Hunt only now remembered that he hadn't yet caught up with Mickey Dade, who didn't seem to be answering his cell phone either.

Hunt left a message, asking Mickey to check out Thai restaurants on Ocean Avenue that might have once had a waitress named Staci Rosalier. He knew that if this trail grew hot at all, Juhle would find a way to get some manpower on that aspect of it, and Mickey's work would be largely redundant.

But Hunt couldn't think of any other assignment for the cabbie before the first patrol car finally arrived. It really hadn't been that long since he'd woken up Juhle-maybe twenty minutes. He met the police vehicle at the garage entrance and led the way down. The uniformed officers had him move his own car while they laid out the yellow tape around the Miata. Treating the car as a potential crime scene, which perhaps it was.

Juhle pulled up-no Shiu, no comment-eight or ten minutes later. A CSI unit was on the way to do a once-over before they towed Andrea's convertible downtown. If there was anything on or in the car, Juhle was confident that they'd find it. At this time of the morning, they didn't need crowd control, so Juhle dismissed the uniformed officers. When they'd driven off, he boosted himself onto the hood of the family car he'd driven down and said, "So what do you make of this?"

Hunt ran down his scenario.

"You're saying somebody snatched her out of here?"

"That's my guess. They've got video cameras coming out of the elevators in the lobby, so we can find out for sure as soon as we can get to them. But there's no way she ever made it up to her office. Someone would have seen her."

"How about if she just parked, then walked back up through the garage here and out onto the street? Then away."

"Remotely possible, I suppose," Hunt said. "But why would she do that?"

"Maybe after she left her house, she heard something or talked to somebody and decided she had to disappear."

"So she wants to disappear and immediately dumps her best way to get out of town? Plus, she doesn't hit the ATM and she hasn't used any of her credit cards." Hunt shook his head. "There's only two ways to go, Dev. Either somebody picked her up or she was snatched."

"Not saying I don't agree with you, but we keep coming back to why. If somebody wanted to kill her, they'd have killed her. If it was a kidnap, where's the ransom demand? You're saying somebody just took her because they wanted to look at her or something? The most logical thing, admit it, is that she's on the run or killed herself. And if you've got a better reason for her to do that than because she killed Palmer and Staci, I'd like to hear what it is."

Hunt hesitated, but he'd brought Juhle along with him this far already. He had to tell him about Piersall and the CCPOA. Screw the attorney-client privilege. But before he could really begin, he got interrupted by the arrival of the crime-scene unit. When the techs went to work, Hunt started again, and by the time he'd finished, they'd dusted the outside of the car for fingerprints and now were setting up to tow it to the PD garage to do a thorough search of the interior, luminol it for blood, and check it for gunshot residue.

Juhle was pacing, all the prison guards' union facts making an impression. "You're telling me that Palmer was already drafting this order to federalize the whole prison system on Monday? I talked to his secretary, and she never mentioned anything about it."

"Did you ask her?"

"I asked her if she knew of anybody who might have had a reason to kill the judge."

"Maybe she didn't think of the order in those terms. Maybe she thought it was another piece of paper like the thousand others she'd typed up before. Slow grind of the court."

"So how did you find out about it?"

"What's more important than that is whether it's true. And I'm sure you'll check it out, but this will save you some time: It is."

"And Jim Pine got wind of it and sent somebody, some parolee, to make sure the order didn't get signed? That's the theory?"

Hunt nodded.

"What about the girl? Staci. That was just bad luck, her being there at precisely that time? I have some troubles with that."

"Me, too. But I can also think of ten ways to explain it."

"But all of them, I bet, some variation on the theme of luck or coincidence." Dissatisfied, Juhle pushed absently at the source of the pain in his shoulder. "But let's leave that for a minute and go back to Parisi. When the judge got killed, say, she had a feeling Pine must have been behind it. So what? You're saying she went to Pine and asked him about it? Only if she was an idiot, which she wasn't."

"How about if she mentions it to Piersall, just to float the idea, and he lets enough of it slip to tip off Pine?"

"We did this earlier," Juhle said, "when I said you were reaching. You still are."

"I don't think it's any kind of a reach to see a connection between the union and Parisi, Dev. She worked for it. The judge was all over it. The timing is perfect. It all fits."

"Staci Rosalier doesn't fit."

"Again, bad luck. Or-and I know you hate this-coincidence."

"No. I've got a better one. How about this?" Juhle held up a finger. "One, Rosalier had Parisi's card." Juhle pointed at the Miata, held up a second finger. "Two, a car that looked a lot like this one right here was in the street in front of the judge's house when he got shot. Three, regardless of what you may think, there wasn't anything professional about the job on the judge and Staci. We've got one missed shot and no coups to the head. Not a pro. Four, by your own admission, Parisi might be a jealous woman with at least some propensity to violence-the slap?-and a gun collection. Further, she has just maybe that day come to believe, contrary to what she's been thinking for the past six months, that she isn't going to be able to move three thousand miles away from the man she still loves and who she's forced to see all the time because of business. Finally, and again, just that day, Monday, she goes to lunch and sees the judge and puts it together that the sweet young thing who's waiting on him is the girl he's fucking instead of her! You think that doesn't get her just a little upset?" Back to pacing now, Juhle had gotten himself wound up. "Hell, Wyatt, the more I think about it, the more I like her for these killings. And then she blows Dodge."

Hunt, leaning against Juhle's car, was silent. It was an impressive litany, he had to admit. All of Piersall's theories and concerns about the union and all of the apparent linearity of the crises that had forced the judge to begin drafting his order lacked the immediacy and passion of Juhle's argument. The only reason Hunt couldn't bring himself to accept it was because he didn't want to or couldn't bear to, he wasn't sure which.

"And you know what I would have done after that?" Juhle stopped in front of him. "I would have tried to tough it out, to go on with my work, my normal life. But the very first night, I get so drunk I pass out. And the next day, I'm so distracted and lost that I leave for an appointment and wind up in my parking lot at work, never having thought about where I was going or what I was doing. And I realize it's hopeless. I'm not going to pull it off. I'm going to get caught, arrested, and tried, and then spend most if not all of the rest of my life in prison-and that's something I know more about than almost anybody who hasn't been inside because I work for the people who guard them."

"You're thinking she killed herself."

A brisk nod. "I'm thinking she walked out of here on her own two feet, got herself out to the Golden Gate Bridge by the time it was dark, and then walked halfway across. That or something very much like it is really what I think happened here, Wyatt, and my heart goes out to you if it did. Now, am I going to check the security cameras here in this building in the morning? Will I have a talk with Mr. Pine and follow up with Jeannette Palmer and maybe even take an interest in how Mr. Mowery managed to get himself out of a high-security prison environment and what he might have done or be doing right now in his hours of precious freedom? You bet I am. All of the above.

"But until I find even a little tiny bit of actual evidence that connects anyone in the union or anywhere else to these murders, I'm going to stick with what makes the most sense, leaving coincidence and luck out of it. And that is Andrea Parisi. And I hope like hell I'll find some evidence that proves either theory. I don't care which. I just want proof." Finally, Juhle tried a smile. "Meanwhile, though, I think I'll get back home and try to squeeze a little sleep into this night while there's still time. And you might want to try the same thing."

"I'll give it some thought," Hunt said.

They said their good nights and got into their cars and headed through the lot and up the ramps. At the top, Hunt flashed his brights and honked, then got out of his Cooper and ran up to to Juhle's window. "Let me ask you one last thing."

"Sure. Why not? You're going to, anyway."

"I know you've got a warrant in to check Parisi's phone records, and you'll get a look at them soon enough. But I also know you've got somebody in security with SBC and Cingular and every cell phone company in the world who you could call right now. I've seen you do it. What I want shouldn't take five minutes."

"You're shitting me." Juhle's shoulders heaved in a soundless laugh. He looked at his watch. "One fifteen in the morning?" But, in fact, it wasn't a completely unreasonable request, and he sighed in resignation, set his parking brake, pulled out his phone. "What do you want to know?"

Hunt had both Andrea's cell and home telephone numbers, and he wanted to check traffic to or from each phone from noon on Wednesday. That's all. As it turned out, Juhle did this kind of thing often enough that he knew the number he needed to call by heart. When he got connected, he explained that the paperwork-the warrant to look at the phone records-had been signed by the judge and was on its way but that they were hot in a murder case. It was life and death, and they needed some information right now.

It took a bit longer than the five minutes Hunt had predicted. Andrea Parisi hadn't made or received any calls on her home phone after noon on Wednesday. She had received one call on her home phone that day at 2:48 P.M. It had been placed from a pay phone in the lobby of the Saint Francis Hotel, about six blocks from where they were right now, and it had lasted forty-two seconds.

When he rang off, Juhle didn't seem too impressed with the new information. "It could've been anybody, Wyatt. Hell, forty-two seconds, it could have been a wrong number."

Hunt mostly agreed with him. It could have been anybody. But Hunt did not think it was from just anybody. Hunt was going to choose to believe that it was from the person who had ultimately met Andrea in the firm's parking garage, after telling her that they'd meet in her office. More than that, of far greater significance in Hunt's mind, the call's existence went a long way toward debunking Juhle's vision of what may have been Andrea's final hours.

She had not been so distracted and confused that without any thought she'd more or less automatically driven to work, then realized how hopeless her existence had become. No, she had taken a quick business call that had changed her immediate plans. It was a small enough thing, but it meant that Juhle was not right in all respects.

Logic or no, Juhle might not be right at all. And this in turn meant, logic or no, that Hunt might not be wrong.