The Hunt Club

34

"I must insist," Ward said. "As you can see, this really isn't a good time, inspector. My wife is really feeling quiteill. We just had to leave the auction preview because of it, and I assure you we would not have done that if it wasn't quite serious."

The two men stood face-to-face in the circular, vaulted marble foyer. The fact that they'd acquiesced to this point and in essence invited Juhle inside the château represented a colossal logistical error on the Manions' part-if they'd made him stay outside, he would have needed a warrant to enter without their express permission, but once he'd been admitted, it would be a lot tougher psychologically to kick him out.

As soon as they'd come inside, Carol, in the attitude of someone overcome by heat, had collapsed into one of the wing chairs along the walls. Now she rested an elbow on the arm of the chair and, eyes closed, supported her forehead with the first two fingers of her right hand. Juhle's unexpected presence, appearing out of the blinding whiteness of the afternoon, had dealt her the day's second psychic blow and rocked her.

This had been Hunt's intention, the crux of his plan, and clearly it was working.

Juhle kept up the pressure. "Mr. Manion, I've driven all the way up here from San Francisco to ask your wife just a very few questions after which I'll be on my way. But I'm in the middle of the murder investigation of a federal judge, and it's critical that I have your wife's statement. If you'd like to take a few minutes to get her a glass of water or freshen up a bit, that would be fine, but this is really very urgent."

Ward Manion looked down at his wife, over to Juhle. "This is intolerable. I'm going to call my lawyer."

"By all means," Juhle said. "That's your right. But if you've got nothing to hide, the easiest thing might be to just answer my questions."

Manion raised his voice. "Nothing to hide? This is preposterous! You get out of this house right now. You can't talk to us like this…"

But Carol suddenly got to her feet, came up from behind her husband, and touched his arm. "Ward."

He whirled, nearly knocking her over. "Carol, sit back down. I've got this…"

"No. No, it's all right. I'll talk to him. I don't need a lawyer. As you know, we haven't done anything wrong."

"No, of course we haven't. But all this is so…so wrong. They're treating you like a common criminal, barging in like this…" Ward shook his head in disgust. He came back to Juhle. "This is absurd. What do you want to know?"

"What do you want to ask me?" Mrs. Manion said.

Juhle got out his portable tape recorder, turned it on, and put it on the umbrella stand next to the front door. "When was the last time you spoke to George Palmer?"

She sighed heavily, threw a weary glance at her husband, and sank back into her armchair. Finally she raised her eyes to Juhle. "On last Monday afternoon. He called me at my house to invite me to a party."

It went on for nearly a half hour. It all came out-the long-ago relationship between Staci Keilly and her natural son Cameron, the connection between Staci Rosalier and Palmer, the photograph, her son Todd's true identity. To everything, her answers were straightforward and unambiguous. She admitted to the incredible coincidence factor. But she really hadn't known who Staci Rosalier was. She'd never heard the name before it had been in the press last Wednesday. If the victim's name had been Staci Keilly, of course, she would have notified the authorities. As to the photograph, naturally she'd noticed some similarity between the boy in the picture and her son Todd, but given the fact that she knew she'd never met this Staci woman-and why would this strange person have a picture of Todd?-she wrote it off as another in what was turning out to be a bizarre string of coincidences. But for the record, she didn't think the other boy looked exactly like Todd, anyway.

Finally, Juhle brought it around to Andrea Parisi, and Carol again said that she'd already told him about her original telephone call to Andrea, the invitation to be the celebrity emcee at the Library Foundation benefit, the appointment that Parisi had never kept. What was the problem?

Juhle hammered at the apparent discrepancies: Why did she wait three hours before calling Parisi's office after the time of the meeting when Parisi hadn't shown up? Why didn't she call while she would have been waiting in frustration? Why had Parisi told colleagues at her law firm that their meeting was going to concern custody issues? Given that, did Carol expect Juhle to believe that Mrs. Manion and Staci, Palmer, and Parisi were not already involved in negotiations over the child to whom they both had a claim?

And yet she denied it. With a gathering calm and growing disdain.

As they continued to spar, Juhle could feel the air between them grow thick and putrid. Though his understanding of exactly what had happened and why seemed to shock her, she grew more imperturbable as the interrogation went on.

Finally, Juhle got to the phone call. "Mrs. Manion. You talked to one of our witnesses not two hours ago, and you didn't deny that you called Ms. Parisi on Wednesday afternoon from the Saint Francis Hotel to change your appointment to her office downtown."

The accusation-and with it the knowledge that Juhle had obviously spoken to the young woman who'd chatted her up in the tent at Meadowood-drew new blood. The facade gave, cracked, came back together. "That's just not true, inspector. I wasn't there."

"You told our witness you were."

"I did not. She's either mistaken, or she's a liar."

Juhle didn't miss a beat. "How do you know it's a she?"

"I don't really know, inspector. It had to be a he or a she, didn't it? I picked one at random. Do you have other witnesses who say they actually saw me at the Saint Francis?"

"We'll find them."

"I doubt you will, inspector. I very much doubt you will. Because I wasn't there. I was at home waiting for Ms. Parisi."

At last, Ward could endure it no longer. "Aren't we just about to the end here, Sergeant? If you haven't gotten what you came here for by now, don't you agree it's probably not going to be forthcoming? Obviously, my wife has some inadvertent connection to all these tragic events, but to assume as you appear to that she played even the most minor role in any of them is patently absurd."

Part of Hunt's plan had been for Juhle to deliver the message to Carol that she hadn't fooled anyone. The truth was out there. People knew what she had done. He had done that. But he couldn't pass up at least taking a shot at getting her to confess.

He went into a crouch to put himself at her eye level, his elbows resting on his thighs and his fingers linked in front of him. He spoke from his heart. "Mrs. Manion," he said. "You're an intelligent woman. I think you must intuitively understand that it's only a matter of time before this will destroy you. You're not a bad person. You snapped under an unexpected threat to your son's future and your life together and then tried to cover up what you'd done. But you're not the kind of person who will be able to live with yourself, knowing what it is you've done, that you've killed innocent people. You don't want your son to have to live with all the ways this will change you. And you know it will. It already has."

From her expression, he thought for just a moment that he had her.

"It can be over right now," he said. "You can end it all right here."

She seemed to be considering what he'd said. Drawing a breath in sharply, she pursed her lips and blinked rapidly several times. At last, she cocked her head to one side and brought her open hand down over her mouth. Her back went straight in the chair. "Todd is my son, and he is innocent. He loves me."

And Juhle knew that he had lost.

"I am his mother," she went on. "I would never let any harm come to him. I will protect him. I am his mother," she repeated.

Juhle, sickened and depleted, pulled himself up to his feet. "As a matter of fact," he said, "you're not even that."