The Hunt Club

37

Hunt rolled out onto a very steep hillside dotted with low shrub and coarse spring grass. The rest of it seemed to be a kind of slippery schist of broken-up limestone and dry dirt. A bright half-moon had risen on the horizon. About a hundred feet below him in its light, Hunt could see an unpaved road that ran in the cut, where the promontory's steeper slope met the tended vineyard beneath it. There was no question in his mind that this was the road that Juhle had taken when they'd split up, and that several hundred feet farther along by the barn was where he had been planning to meet up with Chiurco.

He wiped the blood off his face, off his hands onto his pants and shirtsleeves. He started downhill, keeping low, using the cover of the shrubbery whenever he could, just in case. For all he knew, and had to assume, Mrs. Manion was armed and obviously at least competent enough as a strategist to have been nearly able to eliminate him from tonight's equation.

Because of Amy's phone calls to her, she would certainly have known that she was dealing with more than one adversary, and she might already have disabled one or all of his troops. It would not do to be careless now.

So he forced himself to move slowly and with great care. Even so, every five or six steps brought a small landslide of the unpacked dirt and rock that comprised the face of the slope. Twice, Hunt slid as he stepped and loosened what felt and sounded like an avalance of earth under him. Moving next from shrub to shrub to avoid further slides, he made it down finally to the road, where he turned to his left. He unholstered his gun, racked a round, then keeping low, broke into what he hoped was a silent enough jog.

It wasn't far-a few hundred yards uphill-to the crossroads where Juhle and Chiurco were to have met, and Hunt stood in the middle of the road, where a driveway broke off and led to the barn off to his left. Hunt, paralyzed, standing tall here where the roads met, where Juhle and Chiurco couldn't miss him, held his breath and tried to listen to the sounds of the night over the beating of his heart.

Where were his guys? And on the other side of the barn, where was Tamara?

Automatically, he glanced at his watch, although it told him nothing. He realized that he had almost no idea of how much time had passed since he'd left Juhle-maybe as much as an hour. Certainly no less than forty-five minutes.

But whatever it had been, his men weren't where he thought they'd meet up or where they were supposed to have been waiting for him. Which meant that something else had gone wrong. Or Devin and Craig had given up on him and forced something. And if that were the case, judging from the silence, it was already over.

He turned back to the barn and stared at its looming form. Moving to one side, then another, he tried to get an angle through its ancient redwood planks. Were there places he could actually see through the structure? Did he just imagine it or was there a dim light out in the junkyard beyond it on the other side?

Now, without his goggles, without his flashlight, he had to depend upon the moon, but as he advanced on the barn, the promontory's shadow engulfed the road, and again he was in darkness. But here, because of the contrast, he could see that he hadn't been mistaken. Someone had turned on some kind of a light, perhaps over the barn door on the other side.

He kept moving forward, slowly, quietly. Now into the barn, stall by stall, letting his vision grow accustomed to the space. The front door wasn't completely closed, and a thin shaft of weak yellow light drifted through the crack.

And then, so faintly he couldn't at first place where it came from, he heard a man's voice. He waited, patient now, unwilling to expose himself until he was completely certain about what was transpiring out there. At last, he came around the low wall of the last stall and crossed the no-man's-land of open space in the center of the barn, coming to rest in the shadow still far back behind the door.

Now a woman's voice. Sharp and imperious, although the words were still indistinct. It definitely wasn't Tamara, but Hunt didn't imagine that Carol Manion would use that tone to Juhle. So who did that leave?

He moved to his left and forward toward the door. Quietly, quietly. The gun flat down against his side. One more step, and then he finally could see Juhle, obviously still alive and even well, sitting with his arms behind him, next to Chiurco on the edge of an empty trough in the middle of the junk-strewn foreyard. A great relief flooded him, and he even dropped his guard and took another step toward the door-now as the whole scene opened in front of him.

Shiu was here, too!

Juhle must have relented and called him earlier while they'd been killing time at the base camp and told him he'd probably want to come up after all. Obviously, Juhle wanting to let him in on the arrest, covering his sorry partner's ass, when it might otherwise look bad for Shiu, who looked as though he hadn't wanted to investigate the people for whom he'd done so much security work.

Shiu's presence hadn't been part of Hunt's original plan, but not much this night seemed to be working out in textbook style. Besides, Dev was always such an incorrigibly good guy, and if calling Shiu up without telling Hunt had been an element in making the plan work, he wasn't going to complain about it.

Shiu was standing in front of a rusted-out old tractor, next to Carol Manion, his own gun drawn.

An instant before he got to the door and stepped out into the open, something about the arrangement of the characters stopped Hunt in his tracks. His eyes darted back to Juhle-with his arms behind him.

He looked more closely, caught a glint of metal.

Christ! Juhle was handcuffed.

Which could only mean that Shiu…

Shiu?

"What's your girlfriend's name again?" Shiu raised his gun to Craig Chiurco's face.

"Tamara."

"Call her."

"She's not here," Chiurco said.

"Juhle said she was."

"I was mistaken," Juhle said.

"Shut up, Devin. I'm talking to your friend here."

"Juhle's telling the truth, sir. He was wrong. She went out the back way, when he was coming up."

"Then that's going to turn out very badly for you, I'm afraid."

Carol Manion spoke up. "Mr. Shiu, please don't…"

"Not now, Mrs. Manion." Shiu never took his eyes off Juhle, but he was talking to Carol. "If you hadn't panicked and taken Parisi, we wouldn't even be here. But no, you had to talk to her and find out what she knew, didn't you? And that's what's screwed it all up. Don't you understand that? If you'd left it all up to me, none of this would have happened. So don't tell me how we're getting out of this. Right now it's a work in progress and I'm making the calls."

"So what'd she do with Parisi?" Juhle asked. "Is she dead?"

"Probably," Shiu said, "by now." He came back to Chiurco. "Call your girlfriend."

Craig took a shallow breath and swallowed. "I told you. She's not here."

Shiu took a fast step forward, sighted along his barrel, and pulled the trigger-a huge blast that echoed across the valley. Craig let out a muffled scream and dropped to the ground. "Tamara!" Shiu called out. "That was a warning. The next one's in your boyfriend's head. I need to see you right now."

With a cry, Tamara broke from around the far side of the château, running into the light toward them. "Craig!"

Shiu turned his gun quickly to Juhle to make sure he still had his attention, then turned again to Chiurco. Stepping back, he made room to let Tamara get up next to Craig. He was getting himself back up, his face spooked and his hand over his right ear.

"You didn't have to do that, Mr. Shiu." Carol Manion, used to giving orders, spoke in that sharp tone of hers. "She would have come out eventually."

"We don't have eventually, Mrs. Manion. We've got now, and she is out now, so let's call the way I did it a success."

"Enjoy it while you can," Juhle said. "Would that be your first? Success, I mean?"

"Why, no, Devin. Since you mention it, locking you up with your own handcuffs ranks right up there. Or is it the thought of shooting you with your own gun here?" Shiu gave his head a disappointed wag. "What? No clever comeback? I don't know why, but I keep expecting you to come up with something pithy, suitable to the occasion. I'm beginning to think you just don't have the imagination for it."

"Considering the source, that's a compliment. And speaking of imagination, what do you plan to do now? Have you given that any thought, you fucking moron? You think you'll be able to get away with killing us all?" Juhle took a chance on the ongoing dynamic between Shiu and Carol Manion. He turned to her. "What did he mean, you took Parisi, and she's probably dead by now? You didn't have him take care of that like you did the judge and Staci? I'm assuming you paid him to do them."

Shiu raised the gun again. "Shut up, Devin."

But Juhle had had guns pointed at him before. The current threat left him so unfazed that he actually produced a chuckle. "Or what, Shiu? Or you'll shoot me here where I sit. I don't think so. I'd bleed all over the place, and even you should know that will leave traces. In some jurisdictions, most of the homicide cops are competent."

Carol Manion crossed her arms over her chest, worry now written all over her face. "Mr. Shiu, he's right. We can't…"

"That's enough! I'm thinking."

Juhle kept his eyes on the matriarch. "Listen to those gears try to turn," he said. "It's a little painful to watch, isn't it?" Then, the truth dawning, Juhle said, "You put Parisi in the cave where you've locked up Hunt."

"I didn't want to kill her," Mrs. Manion said. "I couldn't shoot anybody."

"No. I don't suppose you could," Juhle said.

"With George and that slut…they were going to try to take my Todd, and suddenly, there was no other solution but Mr. Shiu…but I, I didn't plan for Ms. Parisi. And Mr. Shiu couldn't…he was working. It was the middle of the day."

"So you went and picked her up in her garage and drove her up here?"

Carol nodded. "She wanted to come. I told her I was impressed with her from the television and wanted her to do some legal work for us, for the winery, that she just had to see it. I didn't want to hurt her. I never did hurt her. She just needed to go away." She looked over toward the old rickety structure. "We're knocking down the barn this week, you know? Cleaning up the whole area. Ward wants to plant an organic-herb garden. And stucco over the old cave, of course. The thing is just an eyesore."

"That's enough!" Shiu said. "Everybody on your feet."

"I don't think so," Juhle said. "It goes down out here or not at all."

"All right, then, if that's how it has to be, it goes down here." He raised the weapon.

Next to Shiu, Carol Manion brought a hand up to her face. "No! You can't do that."

In the barn, Hunt saw he'd run out of time. He raised his own weapon, extended his arm, drawing a bead on Shiu.

But out in the yard, in her panic taking a step toward Shiu's prisoners, Carol Manion got herself to where she was blocking Hunt's line of sight. He couldn't squeeze off a round at Shiu. She was in the way.

But something was happening with Shiu out of his vision, and Mrs. Manion took another step, reaching out toward him, and yelled, "You can't do this!"

Hunt heard Shiu's voice. "I've had enough of you."

A tremendous explosion ripped the air. Hunt saw Carol Manion's arms fly out to her sides as she staggered backward and then collapsed into the dirt on her back. Tamara screamed. But in the time, an instant really, that Hunt took his eyes off the place where Carol Manion had fallen, Shiu had moved again, this time behind Juhle, blocked again, his gun extended.

Hunt had to move right now if he was to have a chance.

In his haste to get to one side, no time to decide or to waste, trying to keep his eye on Shiu and get a shot at him-Hunt wasn't thinking about all the farming tools and debris littering the barn's floor that he'd up to now been so careful to avoid-his foot kicked something metallic, and in the otherwise dead silence outside, he might as well have set off a cherry bomb.

With no hesitation at the noise, Shiu turned and fired twice at the narrow opening in the barn's door. The bullets hit wood on either side of the gap. He fired another couple of rounds on the heels of the first.

No return fire came from the barn.

Juhle's hands were locked behind him, but in the seconds of distraction from the gunshots, he managed to get to his feet and direct a vicious karate kick at Shiu's gun hand, hitting the weapon and sending it skittering along the dirt.

"Craig! Tam!" he yelled. "Get it."

But Shiu threw an elbow into Juhle's face, knocking him backward over the trough, then spun and kicked at the same time, catching Chiurco as he broke from where he'd been sitting and sending him sprawling into Tamara's path. She, too, went down. Shiu looked around for a length of a heartbeat, got his bearings, turned and dove for the gun.

Now, finally, Hunt had a clear shot, albeit at a moving target, and he came up into the door shooting. Two shots, four shots. All misses. He saw the dirt kick up on all sides around his target. Shiu, on the ground and rolling, got to Juhle's gun and, on his stomach, fully extended, got off two more shots at the barn door. On the first one, Hunt cried out. Shiu then turned and fired once in the direction of his prisoners to slow down any thought of their own attack.

His gun clicked empty. It clicked again, and Shiu swore, then dropped it as he rolled again, going for cover behind the back wheel of the tractor.

"Wyatt!" Juhle called. "He's out of ammo! Wyatt!"

"I'm down, Dev. I'm hit!"

Huddled behind the trough with both Juhle and Chiurco, Tamara was the first to find her wits and move. "Stay down, babe," she said as she broke around the trough at a dead run. Juhle's gun was on the ground five feet in front of the tractor, and she dove, somersaulted, and came up with it, tossing it back behind her to her boyfriend. "Craig! Devin's got ammunition! Use it!"

But she'd barely gotten the words out when Shiu hit her from behind at the knees, and she went down hard. In the seconds of respite he'd earned himself behind the tractor, Shiu had wrestled his own gun from his holster. Now he pulled Tamara up by the hair with his gun hand, then locked his other arm around her neck, pushed the barrel of his weapon into her temple. "That's it! It's over! Give it up!"

When he got no response, he fired in rapid succession twice into the air, then screamed out, "The next shot kills her! The next shot kills her! I'm not bluffing! Throw the guns on the ground and come on out! Everybody! Move or she dies now!"

Chiurco only paused for an instant before throwing Juhle's gun out over the trough. He and Juhle shared a look. They had no choice. They got to their feet.

In a fluid and unexpected move, Shiu leaned down and scooped up Juhle's gun. Keeping his own weapon pressed tight up against Tamara's head, with his other hand, he released the automatic's magazine and almost before it had fallen to the ground, he'd rammed a fresh magazine of his own into place in the handle of Juhle's gun. Tamara couldn't see what was happening and didn't react fast enough-and now Shiu had his own gun reholstered, and Juhle's loaded weapon at her head.

"Okay, now, you two," he said. "Over by the barn door." Then, raising his voice, "You in the barn! Hunt! Throw out the gun."

A silence.

"Hunt! I'm counting to three, and she dies. One…"

"I don't have it. You shot it away. It's somewhere back in the dark."

This slowed Shiu down for a beat, but he recovered quickly enough. "I need to see you. Get out here."

"I'm on the ground."

"Then crawl. Hands out front. Any sign of a gun and everybody dies, understand? The girl first. You other two, move aside. Let him out."

The only sound was the slow drag of Hunt's body as he pulled it across the last few feet over the floor of the barn. When he started to come into view, it appeared as if he'd been hit twice on the left side. His left arm hung apparently useless behind a bloody left leg, as he pulled himself forward with his good right side into the light. His face was still a smeared mess of dried and fresh blood. His right hand, scratching against the floor as he pulled himself along, left a bloody trail in the ancient dirt.

When his body was a little more than halfway out of the barn, Hunt was breathing hard with the pain and exertion. He stopped and looked up. "You can't do this, Shiu."

"No? What's it look like I'm doing?"

"You'll never sell it."

"No? Funny, I think I will," Shiu said. "After all, it was Devin's gun that shot poor Mrs. Manion. I'm afraid it will look like Inspector Juhle got himself in another firefight-he's known for that, you know. And then he found a reason to shoot you and your people, too. Maybe you double-crossed him somehow. When I came up here after the Manions called me, after all of your threats to their family today, I saw what was happening and tried to stop it. In the end, I had to shoot my partner in self-defense, but unfortunately not in time to save the other victims. I think it works out just fine."

"Except for one thing."

"What's that?"

Hunt paused, making sure that his body was primed to react. "You didn't rack a round on the last reload." As he said the words, Hunt pulled his left hand out from where he'd been keeping his own gun hidden behind his leg.

Shiu's double take took only a fraction of a second before he pulled the trigger on Juhle's Glock behind Tamara's head.

The dry click still hung in the air as Hunt was swinging his own gun up as fast as he could. In one movement, he steadied his left wrist with his right hand and squeezed off one shot.

It hit Shiu high in the forehead.

Juhle's gun went flying as the bullet knocked Shiu backpedaling until he rammed up against the tractor and sank to the ground.

Tamara, too, had collapsed in a heap, and Chiurco had run to her, but Juhle was already moving beyond them, getting to Shiu where he slumped, kicking his shoulder hard so that he fell to one side. Hunt, limping, was right behind him and pulled Shiu's gun out of his holster.

Taking a gasp of breath, he reached over and put a finger to Shiu's neck, leaving it there for a long moment. Then he stood up and faced his friend.

"I don't think he's going to make it," he said.

"Yeah, but enough about him," Juhle said. "Get me out of these goddamned handcuffs."