The Hunt Club

22

After the Army, then CPS, then as a private investigator, Hunt had come to the conclusion that there was a joke about everything. No matter how grotesque, depressing, horrifying, just plain awful, stupid, venal, or tasteless any given situation was, if there was anything that could remotely be construed to have a shred of humor in it-hell, bring it on! Somebody's gonna laugh. Dead babies, mistreated animals, AIDS and all variants on every STD, medical mishaps, sexual dysfunctions, murders and suicides, infidelities, accidental mayhem, severed limbs-you're killing me here.

And sure enough, Wes Farrell dredged up this morning's gem about that old comedic standby, the U.S. federal judge. They were all just checking in, sitting around his upstairs office before the business day had officially begun downstairs, and Farrell asked conversationally if anybody knew the difference between a federal judge and the Ku Klux Klan. To a roomful of blank, groggy stares, he finally said, "Nobody? Okay. The KKK wears white robes and scares the shit out of black people."

There were five other people in the room-Hunt, Tamara, Chiurco, Amy Wu, Jason Brandt-and nobody reacted with so much as a smile. It wasn't much of a happy moment, what with Andrea still missing and now, according to Hunt, with Juhle still considering her the most likely suspect in the murders of Palmer and Rosalier. And a probable suicide at that.

But that didn't stop Brandt from chiming in with his own contribution. "So this psychiatrist shows up at the Pearly Gates, all pissed off because he was young and in perfect health and he shouldn't have died so soon. It wasn't right. Saint Peter says he's sorry, but no real reason, they had to take him a little earlier than they'd originally planned. So the shrink is all, 'You mean you ended my wonderful life on earth early for no reason? Why would you do that? Just because you could?' And Saint Peter looks both ways, leans over and whispers, 'It's God. He thinks he's a federal judge.'"

Hunt was wide awake in spite of only five hours of sleep. He gave the moment its due, which wasn't much, then threw a glance around the room at his partners and said, "Maybe we could talk about what we all did last night and see if it gets us anywhere."

But as they started to revisit their individual interviews, it became clear that the earlier desultory banter was covering up a more profound shift in the general mood. Now it was Friday morning, and Andrea had been gone since Wednesday afternoon-one and a half days ago. Forty-two hours. They'd all read the Chronicle story this morning, front page. Now the whole world was looking for Andrea, the photogenic television personality.

And now the three lawyers had their daily billable work looming ahead of them. Tamara and Chiurco were still obviously ready to take instructions and run with them-whatever Hunt wanted-but Mary Mahoney hadn't gotten them one step closer to Andrea Parisi. And finally, Tamara was the one who said it out loud: "I'm starting to believe she must be dead, Wyatt."

There were somber nods all around.

"It may not matter at this stage," Brandt suggested, "but maybe the best thing for us would be to try to contact Missing Persons again. Tell them everything we know and see where they can take it."

"They're not going to find her if Juhle can't," Hunt said. "He's got her as his main suspect in these killings. He's got people working on it, believe me."

Farrell, who'd been sitting forward on the couch, his head down, now lifted it. "This phone call to her cell phone," he said. "That's the last time we know of anybody talking to her?"

Hunt said it was.

"So you know for a fact-you found this out last night?-that she hasn't used her cell phone since then?"

"Right."

Farrell let out a heavy breath. "Well, it seems to me, then, whether she's on the run or whether she's dead, either one, there's no trail left to follow. None of us found out anything that goes anywhere, did we?"

Again, a silent, bleak consensus.

Which Hunt still wasn't ready to accept. "Okay, I'm discouraged myself. But let's talk for a minute about Juhle's idea, that Andrea is either on the run or has killed herself. Anybody here besides me see the tragic flaw in that argument?"

Wu spoke up. "It assumes that Andrea's a double murderer."

Hunt turned to her, his face all but lit up. "There it is," he said. "Now I know that you, Wes, and Tamara, and Craig, didn't know her very well. But Amy and Jason did, and I was getting close, and there is just no way I can accept that she killed anybody."

"Me neither," Brandt said. "Amy and I have both known her since law school, and I agree with you. I can't imagine it."

"All right," Hunt said. "If we believe that, we can eliminate the fact that she left the parking garage of her own accord. In fact, what happened is she met somebody, probably whoever called her from the Saint Francis, who either talked her into coming away with them or outright snatched her."

"Somebody she knew," Wu added.

"Probably. Okay," Hunt said. "So that's where we are. And I still believe that's ahead of the police."

"Yeah, but Wyatt?" Brandt seemed to have taken some signal from the group, making him its spokesman. Now he cleared his throat. "However it happened, she's been gone two nights now. I'm trying to imagine some scenario where this went down, even exactly as we described it, where she isn't already dead. And I hate to say this, but I can't find one."

Hunt took in his assembled team, looked around the room from one set of eyes to the next. Wu had tears in hers. Tamara and Craig were holding hands. He saw no sign of any more hope and realized that all of these smart people had reached the same all but inescapable conclusion.

Hunt, Tamara, and Craig said their good-byes to Wu, Brandt, and Farrell at the Freeman Building. Mostly in silence, they walked the few blocks back to The Hunt Club offices and climbed the stairs. Once they were inside, Tamara went around to her desk and sat down, while Hunt crossed to the front window and stared down onto Grant Avenue, and Chiurco went over to start the coffee.

Putting the phone on speaker, Tamara pushed a button, and they heard that they had seven messages.

"Seven? A new record," Chiurco said. "Great timing, huh?"

Scowling, Wyatt turned away from the window and came to hover, arms crossed, over the phone.

Beep. Yesterday, 6:18 P.M. "Wyatt, Bill Frazier." This was the doctor who wanted background on his mother's new boyfriend. "Just calling to check on progress. You'd mentioned that you might have something by tomorrow, and things are heating up pretty quick with the two lovebirds. I don't want Mom to do something dumb, like elope before I get a chance to stop her. Sorry to push, but if you've got anything, I'd like to hear it sooner than later. Thanks."

Beep. Yesterday, 7:04 P.M. "Hey, Wyatt, you there? Pick up if you can. Where are you, man? You got your cell turned off? This is Peter Buckner." The lead attorney in the depositions Hunt had attended at the McClelland offices on Wednesday. "All right. We got a problem with Jeremy Harter. He didn't show for his depo this afternoon, and he's not answering…"

Hunt reached down and punched the button to kill the sound. He turned to Chiurco. "Did you get all your subpoenas served yesterday?"

"Four of 'em."

"Man." Hunt shook his head. "When's the court date?"

"Tuesday." Which meant Craig shouldn't really take any time for other business such as Andrea.

Swearing, Hunt pushed the button again, heard the end of Peter Buckner's message, then a chirpy voice of someone identifying herself as Melanie was telling him that he'd been preapproved for a platinum…

Tamara hit the skip button. "I've never been glad to get one of those before," she said.

Beep. 9:19 P.M. "Mr. Hunt. My name is Ephraim Goldman and I'm a senior associate at Mannheim Shelby, referred to you by Geoff Chilcott at…"

Hunt skipped over the rest of that one. "Later," he said.

They all listened to the next three, Tamara taking notes. Every message was new or continuing business, and none of them had anything to do with Andrea Parisi. Hunt sat himself down on the chair by the door and tried to get his mind to focus. He had a business to run here, he knew, but those demands suddenly didn't seem remotely compelling. He was starting to realize that the business was growing so fast that soon he'd have to bring on some more stringers, of which luckily there was a plethora-off-duty cops and even some of the other PIs were always ready to make some extra spending money. But he didn't have the time right now even to interview, much less hire.

"Do you know where Mickey is today?" he asked Tamara.

"I think he was cabbing. He's off his phone, though. I tried this morning."

"I know. I tried him last night. You think there's any way we could get him to leave it on so we can reach him?"

Tamara smiled. "I doubt it."

"Well, if he checks in, tell him to call me. You know what," Hunt said. "It's true. Good help is hard to find."

"Fortunately," Chiurco said, "you've got us."

Hunt nodded. "That is fortunate. There's just not enough of you two to go around."

"So what do you want us to do?" Tamara asked.

With a game plan that was anything but strategic, Hunt found himself approaching the Piersall building he'd left only about eight hours before. All he knew was that, business be damned, his personal priority was Andrea Parisi. He'd told Tamara and Craig that somehow they'd have to handle what they could among all these callers and somehow put off the others. Be self-starters. Manufacture brilliant excuses. Figure it out. That's why he paid them the big bucks. If they lost a client in the process, so be it. He'd take responsibility. And they should also be ready to drop everything in ten seconds if he needed them on Andrea.

His employees might truly believe she was already dead-and, in fact, he saw that they clearly felt sorry for his inability to accept that truth-but he was not going to presume that she was gone until he was forced to. It was going to take a lot more than everyone else believing it.

In contrast to last night, Montgomery this morning was clogged. The usual deliveries and normal heavy street traffic crept along around several police cars and the vans representing all of the local and a couple of the national television stations. A crowd of onlookers ebbed and flowed around the broadcasters and their crews.

Hunt was only somewhat surprised-it wasn't yet nine o'clock-to recognize Spencer Fairchild and Richard Tombo hovering by the Trial TV van, sipping from Styrofoam mugs, and he picked his way through the crowd over to where they stood. When Tombo saw him, he motioned him inside the perimeter of their cameras, lights, and wires.

"What's all this about?" Hunt asked. "Is there anything new on Andrea?"

"She hasn't turned up, if that's what you mean," Tombo said. "But suddenly she seems to be in the middle of everything. You heard they found her car in the garage here?"

"That wasn't any 'they,' Rich. That was me."

"No joke?"

"I've got no jokes left in me. I found the car last night."

Spencer Fairchild, next to them both, didn't miss a beat. "You want to be on television, Wyatt?"

Hunt might not have any jokes in him, but he still had half a laugh left, and he used it now. "Like I want a root canal. But what's so important about the car that it's drawn all you flies? Did the crime-scene people come up with something?"

"Not that we've heard," Fairchild said. "As to all the cameras, it's another development in Donolan. We get a different shot than down at the Hall of Justice. Breaks up the monotony."

Hunt swiveled his head, took in all the activity. "Help me out here, Spencer. What's Donolan got to do with Andrea at this point?"

Fairchild clearly wondered if Hunt was putting him on. "Andrea is Donolan. The beautiful commentator goes missing in the middle of the trial? You couldn't have scripted it any better. And now suddenly because she's gone, Judge Palmer is Donolan, too. As we speak, Wyatt, this is turning into the hottest story in the country. I've got to hand it to Andrea. Even if she didn't plan all of this…"

"What are you talking about?" Hunt was surprised to hear the anger in his voice. "She didn't…nobody planned anything here."

Fairchild's condescension fairly dripped. "I know that's your story. Farrell told me the same thing last night. But I find it interesting to learn that you were both the last person to see Andrea on Wednesday and then the very same person to find her car. What made you think, out of the whole city to choose from, to look here? I wonder if it could have been because you drove down behind her, then drove her away to wherever she's hiding out now."

Suddenly Tombo stepped in. "Hey, Spence, easy…"

But the producer didn't back off. "Hey, yourself, Rich. It wouldn't be the first time Andrea's hooked up with some guy to boost the old career another notch. First me, now maybe Wyatt here…they're fooling everybody, the two of them, thinking this is just a hell of a lot of fun." He turned. "What do you say about that, Hunt? True? False? Any comment at all?"

"Yeah," Hunt said, "here's a comment. You're pathetic." Every impulse in his body wanted to take a swing at Fairchild and deck him, but he forced himself to turn away.

Fairchild walked several steps after him. "When you see her, tell her she's played this out too far already. There's no getting back from where she's gone! She'll never work in television again!"

Nearly blind with anger, Hunt willed himself through the lobby doors and across to the elevators. The elevator doors would open in a couple of seconds on the fourteenth floor, and he still had very little conscious idea of exactly what had brought him up here. It was more than the need to escape from Fairchild's insane accusations-he'd been on his way over here before he'd ever seen the video cams outside. He'd been wrestling with the logic of what he thought he knew about Andrea and what he could accept, what he felt. For if she were dead, as they all now feared, Hunt still in some obscure way felt a degree of responsibility.

Not for her death itself, of course, but for the last hours of her life, when he'd voluntarily taken on the role of her protector. And lover. With a stab of guilt, for the first time, he realized that he perhaps unknowingly had, in fact, taken advantage of her fragile state, her vulnerability. He hadn't seen it like that at the time. But he didn't want to fool himself-that might have been the true dynamic after all. The thought curdled his stomach.

And then, after he'd left her, someone had abducted her and done her grievous harm.

He did not believe, as Juhle did, that she had killed Palmer and Rosalier and then taken her own life.

He did not believe, as Fairchild did, that she'd plotted her own disappearance as some sort of publicity/celebrity-making stunt.

Hunt believed that he knew what had happened with a certainty that was startling. And that certitude-in its first flowering now after everyone's hope but his for Andrea's life had flown away-was rearranging his interior landscape back into something that he thought he had long abandoned and that he now recognized as both terrifying and familiar.

The anger that had nearly literally blinded him downstairs wasn't occasioned by the ravings of a prancing jackass like Spencer Fairchild. But those irrational stupidities had shattered somewhere within him the last resistance to the deep and abiding rage that he'd come to believe in the past four or five years he'd finally tamed.

A rage that had ruled his days from his sense of abandonment through his succession of foster homes until he'd finally moved in with the Hunts. A rage that had fueled his CID work in Iraq, then delivered him to his work rescuing children, finally blossoming into a general rage at the world he'd been left in when Sophie and their unborn baby had been taken from him. A wide-ranging rage at bureaucracy, at venality, at the incompetence and outright villainy of men like Wilson Mayhew. A rage, finally, that had almost undone him with its power and intensity. Day to day, night to night, unyielding and terrible rage. For the world seemed to promise so much. And that promise so often was a lie.

And then, after he'd established his business and worked as a private investigator for a while, the rage had gradually started to subside. His work was a job now, not a vocation. Wyatt Hunt read, he did his sports, he played his music, he satisfied his clients. He would not feed his rage any longer with his overwhelming desire to excel, to make right, to care, to love. The inevitable failures-and he'd come to believe that at least partial failure was always foreordained-had taken too great a toll on him. He didn't choose to live at that level anymore, and he'd been content. Marginalized, perhaps, never too deeply involved. But content.

And now suddenly, a toggle switch thrown, that inner contentment was over. And this was why he had felt so disoriented at Farrell's, so distracted on the walk over here, so unable to connect with what should have been sorrow at the idea of Andrea's death. He was not really sad, not unfocused, not lost. With a kind of terrible joy, he realized that what he felt now was pure-the rage for justice that had nearly consumed him before but that had also given his life ballast, moments of real connection and meaning.

If someone had killed Andrea Parisi, had rent the fabric of his world so thoroughly, he was going to bring whoever it was to justice. Nothing else mattered. He would take whatever help he could get, but if he had to do it all alone, then he would.

The elevator door opened, and he strode out to the first desk to his left, where a young woman stopped her typing to look up at him. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "I need to talk to Carla Shapiro."

Juhle said, "No. No evidence."

He was in Lanier's office, sitting awkwardly forward because of his sling. Shiu stood one step inside the closed door, at rigid attention. It was a small room with a big desk in it. There were three windows, two in the wall behind Juhle and one in the wall behind Shiu. None of them opened to the morning's sunshine in the real world. None of them opened at all, in fact. Just beyond Shiu's window, about a million miles away, Juhle could see four of his fellow homicide inspectors shooting the breeze and laughing about something.

When Juhle brought his gaze back inside, Lanier wasn't laughing. "No evidence at all?"

Juhle looked over at Shiu-no help. "Maybe if we can get Mrs. Levin-the Palmers' neighbor-down to see Parisi's car, she might give us a positive make."

Lanier grunted, leaned back in his chair, and pushed himself away from the desk until he got to his back wall, where he stopped. "Maybe she might, huh?"

Juhle shrugged. "What we've got, Marcel, are connections. Six or seven of them, which taken together are pretty damn compelling if you ask me and Shiu, and you did."

"We don't have any other suspects, sir," Shiu said.

"Here's a tip, my son," Lanier said. "That's probably the kind of thing you don't want to mention out loud to somebody who does your performance reviews." He turned to Juhle. "But Parisi?"

Juhle shrugged again. "I didn't just make it up, Marcel. I think she did it, tried to bluff it out, made it a day or two until guilt or remorse or whatever the hell else you feel made her kill herself."

"I don't feel anything," Lanier said.

"I know, me neither. Feelings, I mean. I don't feel any feelings. I do feel my shoulder."

"He won't take ibuprofen," Shiu said.

"I did for the first ten days. Not only didn't it work, it hurt my stomach."

"I'll tell you what hurts my stomach," Lanier said. "My stomach hurts when I start thinking about going out in front of our ravenous media representatives with the announcement that the case on Federal Judge George Palmer-did I say federal judge?-only the fourth federal judge to be killed in the entire history of the United States-"

"Is that true?" Shiu asked. "Only the fourth one? Wow."

Lanier risked a quick, conspiratorial I-know-why-you-hate-this-guy glance at Juhle. "Right. So I tell the jackals we've solved this case, locked it up tight in only three days. The murderer's Andrea Parisi. But you'll just have to take our word for it because we don't have any evidence. What do you think, Dev? You think they'll go for it?"

Juhle sulked. Lanier was right, and Juhle was dead beat after the last couple of sleepless nights. "What do you want us to do, Marcel? I could drive out to Andrea's house, find some hair in the sink or something, drop it off over at the judge's…"

"We can't do-" Shiu began.

Wincing, Juhle held up a hand. "Kidding, Shiu. Back off."

"But all kidding aside," Lanier said, "we've already got some issues-well, especially you, Dev, are not going to get any slack here. Whatever you get has got to be rock solid."

Juhle's eyes turned dark. "What the fuck does that mean?" He shot an I-dare-you look at his partner.

Lanier pushed off from the back wall and wheeled his chair forward, up to the desk, and put his arms on his blotter. "That means that there are some people in positions of authority who were not completely convinced by your exoneration on the OI." The officer-involved shooting that had cost Juhle three months of administration leave but had finally resulted in his merit citation.

"Well, how can I put this? Fuck them."

Shiu straightened up more, tightened down his jaw. Even Lanier seemed to wince. Profanity was tolerated in the field, but Deputy Chief of Inspectors Abe Glitsky frowned on it in the various units under his command.

Immune to this sensitivity, Juhle didn't slow down. "I mean it, Marcel. Who are they? No, I know who they are. Maybe I should…"

"Maybe not, Dev. Maybe nothing, okay? We both know who they are, and they're wrong, and you're up for cop of the year, okay? You want my opinion, I hope you get it. And you might as long as you don't say 'fuck' too often around Glitsky. But my point is that these couple of supervisors have the ear of the mayor and the chief. And not only is this the biggest case in the world, but we've finessed the FBI to keep the hell away from it because it's not political. So it's all yours, both of you guys, and welcome to it. But don't come to me without any evidence, please. If Parisi did it, show me something that'll prove it. Or at least find something that eliminates everybody else?"

"You want us to prove a negative?" Juhle asked. "That can get tricky."

"Don't get smart, Dev. You know what I want. I want more. If it's on Parisi, fine. But we don't even have next of kin on one of the victims if I'm not mistaken. To the critical soul, this might bespeak a lack of vigor in the investigation. Am I making myself clear?" His eyes went to Shiu. "You really don't have any other suspects?"

"I don't know who they'd be at this point, sir."

"You don't. Not with all these union hassles? Nobody the judge had ever ruled against? Maybe the girlfriend had another boyfriend? Don't I remember the wife has a sister? What was she doing Monday night? I don't know squat about this case, and I can think of half a dozen questions you haven't even asked yet."

"I have asked them, Marcel," Juhle said. "I've asked every goddamn question you just gave us, and the other half dozen you didn't mention on top of those. And for the record, we went down to the judge's chambers first thing and spent a fascinating few hours talking to his staff, and found out that he's got lots of cases with people who are mad at him. Not just the CCPOA. And believe me, they're all rattling around in my brain every single second. And sure, I might be wrong, but it's good police work to follow the clearest trail." He paused to grab a breath.

Shiu stepped into the breach. "And that, with respect, sir," he said, "looks like Parisi."

Lanier held up a hand. "I've heard. I get your message. But traditionally we like those little links in what we call the chain of evidence that maybe-"

Juhle had heard enough. He was already on his feet, interrupting. "You want us to shake some more trees, Marcel, sure, we'll do it. But there's no more evidence in those directions than there is with Parisi. It's going to look like what we're really doing is covering our ass."

Lanier blew his frustration out at them. "There are worse ideas," he said. He gestured toward his closed office door. "Keep me up on developments. My door's always open."