Treasure Hunt Part 29

"It's okay," she said. "You should have heard me last night."

"What were you swearing at?"

"The idiots at the hospital. You don't want to know. Oh, and then Jim. He never came home."

Hunt took a long beat. "Jim didn't come home? Till when?"

"So far, till the last time I tried to reach him, which is like ten minutes ago." She gave Hunt the excuses she'd fed herself last night. He had been planning on going to the Como memorial. After that, he might . . . or he might . . . finally, she ran out of steam. "He just could have picked a better night," she concluded. "That's all."

"Let's hope that's all."

As soon as he'd said them, he regretted the words. And Tamara called him on it. "What do you mean, 'Let's hope that's all'?"

Hunt hesitated, wanting to avoid coming out with it directly. But there didn't seem to be any other way. "I mean, if he went to the memorial, Tam, maybe he met somebody there among our group of possible suspects. Which I wouldn't want to think. But you know, I was there, and I never saw him."

"Maybe he never got there."

"Or couldn't get in. The place was packed."

"Okay." She a.s.sayed a low-wattage smile. "Now we can say 'Let's hope that's all.' I just wish he'd turn up."

Hunt slid off the edge of her desk. "Me, too, hon. Me too."

Back in his office again, Hunt couldn't seem to get himself focused. As long as there was a question about whether Alicia had actually been fired that Tuesday morning, he could live with the presumption of her innocence. Knowing that Dominic had in fact fired her, and that she'd lied about it, washed a great portion of his personal doubt away.

And now this woman was staying at his home.

Also, he had to call Juhle, but how was he going to talk to him, knowing what he now knew? The subject would come up, and then Hunt would be withholding evidence in a murder investigation. Talk about losing his license. But beyond that, how did he justify it? How could he live with himself?

His brain kept running back to Alicia having free run of his place. Try as he might, he couldn't remember if he'd turned the combination lock on his gun safe when he'd closed it up after taking out the gun he was carrying. What if she did a thorough search? Had he folded the throw rug back down over the loosened board? Had he even made sure that the board was flush and secure? No matter what, he told himself, he'd have to go home and check that.

He had Tamara call and verify that she was still there. Yep.

And now the phone on his desk chimed. Gingerly, he picked up the receiver. "What's up?" he asked Tamara.

"There's two gentlemen out here to see you, sir. Mr. Len Turner and an a.s.sociate. He doesn't have an appointment, but says you'll want to talk to him."

"He's right," Hunt said. Quickly, without conscious thought, he reached around and checked the weight of his gun, tucked into a holster attached to the center of his belt at his back. "Send him in."

Turner's African-American a.s.sociate, whom he introduced first thing as Battalion Colonel Keydrion Mugisa, looked to be about twenty-five. He stood about six foot three and certainly weighed less than a hundred and seventy pounds. This lack of heft did not make him less intimidating, though. His handshake was cool, and in spite of its brevity, apparent effortlessness, and the polite accompanying nod for a greeting, it was crus.h.i.+ng. Under his cla.s.sic trench coat, he was well-dressed in light green slacks, a light brown dress s.h.i.+rt, a thin dark-brown tie, and an olive sport coat. He wore his hair Obama-style. The skin of his face was very black and smooth; his eyes dark brown, flat, unexpressive. A well-trimmed goatee surrounded a thin mouth that stayed closed.

In a thousand-dollar pinstripe business suit, Turner took Hunt's hand in both of his as though they were by now old friends. One of the flaws of Hunt's office was lack of seating s.p.a.ce, but Tamara brought in the chair from outside, then closed the door behind her on her way out.

"So," Hunt began when everybody was comfortable. "How can I help you?"

"Actually," Turner said, "I thought I might be able to help you."

"That would be great. I can use all the help I can get."

"I think we all can. But after our discussion yesterday, I really came away with the impression that you may be widening the scope of your involvement in this matter in a way that n.o.body really intended when we decided to bring you on board. When we originally spoke, as I'm sure you remember, the idea was that your function would be to help the police a.n.a.lyze the quality of the information that came in on the reward hotline, and then turn the valid or promising leads over to them. Does that ring a bell?"

Hunt smiled cooperatively. "That's pretty much it."

Turner smiled back at him. "That's what I'd understood. And in fact it's why I agreed on behalf of the reward partic.i.p.ants to take you on board. It seemed a valuable service worth the fee you were charging."

"Thank you. I think we've already saved the police a lot of needless legwork, and frankly, we've turned up some valuable evidence in the process. The probable murder weapon, for example. From one of our callers. They seem pretty happy with what we're doing so far-no complaints, anyway."

"Yes, but, well . . ." Turner crossed a leg. The hostile tone he'd adopted the day before was nowhere to be seen, although the presence of Mugisa, to Hunt, lent a tone of unstated threat to the meeting. "It seemed to me that yesterday you had taken that initial a.s.signment and expanded it to include suspicions of some of us in the charitable community."

Hunt said nothing. He sat up straight with his hands clasped lightly on the desk in front of him. He adopted an inquisitive air, staring at Turner.

"My point," Turner said at last, "is that your fees for a.s.sisting us in this reward endeavor are adequate and acceptable to us, but that if you are diluting your efforts on our behalf in an independent investigation, perhaps we will have to reconsider our agreement. We need somebody whose loyalty is undivided, Mr. Hunt, and whose concentration is totally focused on the job for which we're paying you. If you can't give us that loyalty and focus, we'll need to find someone who can." He held up his hand. "I am responsible for the administration of this reward fund. It's my responsibility to see that the integrity of the process is uncompromised."

After this little speech, Hunt nodded thoughtfully. "Nancy Neshek was one of the very first calls on the reward line, Mr. Turner. She was killed that same night, just after a meeting of your Communities of Opportunity. My staff and I are simply following up on her call to this office, a call that might have indirectly or directly led to her murder. The police think this is a reasonable a.s.sumption and, further, that her death is probably related in some way to Mr. Como's.

"I would think, Mr. Turner, that it would be in the interests of those who put up the reward to have us ensure not only that information is appropriately transmitted to the police, but that also they are not personally at risk because of their inadvertent connection to these terrible events. But of course, if it is your instruction that we not consider that possibility, then naturally we'll do as we are instructed. Do you think it would be better if I explain the situation personally to the people who've put up the largest parts of the reward?"

Turner gave it a minute before responding. "I don't think so, no. I can take care of that. If you come upon anything that concerns you in this regard, you communicate it to me first and I'll make the decision on who, if anyone, we need to contact. How's that sound?"

Sounds like a stalemate, Hunt thought to himself. He couldn't do anything Turner told him not to do. But Turner couldn't very well tell him to ignore any possible threat to the people who had put up the reward. In other words, he could keep doing what he'd been doing all along and remain on the payroll. "It sounds like it ought to work," he said. And then, losing his stomach for this circ.u.mlocution, Hunt cut back to his point. "So did Como and Neshek have a personal relations.h.i.+p I don't know about?"

"Not that I'm aware of. They were professional colleagues, no more."

"So the two of them being killed within a week of one another, and she on the day she called our reward line about his murder, that was a coincidence?"

"Possibly, though you're right, it doesn't seem likely. But looking for an answer among the professional community I work with is not going to get you anywhere, I can guarantee you."

"What I'm doing is looking for an answer anywhere and everywhere. And to that end, here's one I'd like now, if you can give it to me: What did you do last Monday night after your COO meeting?"

Turner's eyes flared briefly. He glanced over at Mugisa, who, during this entire discussion, might as well have been a block of stone. Finally, back at Hunt, he shook his head in apparent disappointment. "I don't think you've heard a word I've said, Mr. Hunt, but for the record, I stayed on at City Hall with some members of my staff, including Keydrion here." He turned to the young man. "We left at about what time, Key, nine?"

"Nine."

"So nine. I live with my wife and two children on Seventeenth Avenue near California. I got home at nine-fifteen, nine-twenty at the latest. My oldest, Ben, had five friends over making a float for their homecoming parade in my living room and all of them greeted me when I got home. How's that?"

"That's good," Hunt said. Then he looked to Turner's companion. "How about you, Keydrion? You go straight home after you dropped him off?"

Turner shook his head again in apparent disgust. "Let's go, Key," he said.

Hunt brought the visitor's chair out of his office after they'd gone. He put it in its normal place across from Tamara by the window. "Any word about Jim?" he asked.

Mute, she shook her head.

"He'll turn up."

"This isn't normal, this late."

Hunt sighed, scratched at his cheek. "What do you want to do? You want to go home and wait?"

"No. What good would that do?"

"Probably none. But if you want, it's an option."

"No. I'll just wait here. Maybe if Mickey checks in, I can send him out looking at the usual haunts. After he's done with your stuff, I mean."

"That's okay, Tam. You could call him now if you're that worried."

"No, I can't. He doesn't have his cell phone. He's got to call in."

"Well, if he does." Hunt looked down at her. "So you know, I mostly just sent him out on these errands to get him out of my sight."

"You're really that mad at him?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"He's trying to do what he thinks is right."

"If I didn't think that, he'd already be fired. But he's got me in a potentially terrible bind with Devin and Sarah, just when we're getting back in their reasonably good graces, and also not so good a place in my own home. I really don't like feeling that I could open my door and be looking down the barrel of one of my own guns."

"Wyatt. Come on. She's not going to do that."

"Well, as I said to Mickey when he said the same thing, I hope you're right. But I won't know for sure, though, will I, until it happens or not?"

"It won't."

Hunt shrugged. It either would or it wouldn't, and talking about it wasn't going to make any difference. "So listen," he said, "I was supposed to call Gloria White twenty minutes ago and then Turner showed up. So I need to touch base with her now or sooner. Meanwhile, can I bother you to call Devin, set up a time we can get together? I don't think they know yet about the Monday- night meeting before Neshek got killed, and it wouldn't hurt if they were following up on that too."

"Plus, that gets them off Alicia for a while."

"Secondarily. I thought you might notice that."

"Softie," she said, with an approving smile.

"Don't get your hopes up," he told her. "It's probably temporary. Anyway, see if Devin can run some kind of a sheet on a Keydrion Mugisa? He'll have to guess on the spelling, but that's why they pay him the big bucks. He'll do it. In any event, the kid said exactly one word that whole time, you realize that? Which makes me think he wasn't really there to add to the meeting."

"Why, then?"

"To let me know Turner could do more than just fire me if I got too far out of line."

29.

Aside from his physical pains, which remained substantial, Mickey felt sick to his stomach at Hunt's response to what he'd done. Driving out through the rain once again to the Ortega campus, s.h.i.+fting the Volkswagen, an inordinately difficult task with his steering arm in the cast, he kept revisiting his decision-making process from the time Alicia had appeared at his bedside. Maybe the Vicodin had played a role and affected his judgment, he told himself. Nevertheless, he wished he'd brought some of them with him from the hospital. His head pounded with every beat of his pulse, every b.u.mp in the road.

And then there was the psychic pain as well. Mickey knew that Hunt was an experienced and intelligent guy, not given to extremes of emotion or flights of fancy, and Hunt didn't think much of Alicia's basic story. Clearly, Hunt had read Alicia's admission of her lie to the police completely differently than Mickey had. To Mickey, it had been the baring of a burdened soul, utterly believable. To Hunt, on the other hand, this confession had pretty much sealed the deal that she should be considered the prime suspect in Como's death. And in Neshek's.

Although every fiber in his being rebelled at that thought, Mickey couldn't get it out of his mind. What if she was just playing him for a lovesick dope?

He kept hearing himself explaining to Hunt, replaying the words in his head, that he could tell when someone was a good person. If anyone else had said them, Mickey knew what his response would be because it was the same one he had to his own words-what a tool.

Of course you couldn't tell when someone was a good person. Or a bad person. Or anything. You just saw enough of someone that over time you came to trust what appeared to be their essential character.

And even Mickey would not argue that once you had the essential-character thing down, anomalies could occur. Good people did bad things all the time, sometimes by mistake, sometimes because they'd lost track of themselves in an altered chemical or alcoholic state, sometimes because smart, good people do foolish, wrong things. So to say that you could tell if someone was a good person was not only inherently idiotic, it was irrelevant to anything. It certainly couldn't explain or predict guilt or innocence.

That said, though, he could intellectually give his a.s.sent to a slightly different, though related, proposition: Alicia Thorpe might be a good or a bad person (and she'd at least told one big whopper of a lie in a crucial setting), but there was no way in the world he could imagine her brutally killing not just one but two people.

And with that, he kept returning to another fundamental question: Why would she have come back to him, instead of just simply blowing Dodge? What, he asked himself, would be in it for her? Mickey's involvement with her could not keep her from getting arrested if the cops came to that. If anything, he reasoned, the fact that she had come back to Mickey argued that she desperately wanted the killer to be found. Otherwise, why wouldn't she have fled after her last interview with Juhle and Russo? Instead, she'd found out he was in the hospital and she'd come running to him.

Why would she have done that if she didn't believe he could save her? She was truly innocent and she would put her trust in the one person who absolutely believed in her, that's why.

Of course, there were other, more disturbing, possible answers. But let Wyatt Hunt agonize over them, Mickey wasn't going to.

Even if it meant infuriating his boss, and it did.

Even if it meant his job, and it might.

The bottom line was that it was a matter of faith. And for good or ill, Mickey believed her. He believed in her. If she were lying and betrayed him . . .

But he shook his head. That wasn't happening. He wasn't going to go there.

Russo and Juhle were parked outside of Alicia's house again.

"I've got this amazing sense of dej vu," Juhle said. "Wasn't she not home yesterday at this time too?"

"It was later, but yes."

"Where does she go?"

"This is probably mostly when she kills her victims. Except those days she's surfing."

"She kills people before she goes to work?"

"Right. Usually. If she's not too busy surfing, or if the waves suck. And then, remember, she's got to get cleaned up afterward, either from the killings or the surfing, or both, if she's got to be dressed up to greet the carnivores."

Juhle, nodding sagely, looked at his watch. "How long you want to give it?"

They'd already been parked here for nearly a half hour. They had been on their way out to Nancy Neshek's to canva.s.s the neighborhood, but the idea of slogging to mostly empty houses through the rain to try to talk to rich people who didn't look out their windows had persuaded them both to take another stab at interviewing Alicia Thorpe. After the scarf identification yesterday, both of them thought she was close to breaking, and now Russo was of the opinion that even though they didn't know definitely whose s.e.m.e.n it was, they could drop the news, which they'd held back yesterday, about its presence on the scarf and see if they could break her at last.

Yesterday, she'd remained strong in her insistence that she'd lost the scarf a few week ago, but that, too, was something they had on tape that she could possibly contradict, and once that happened, their leverage would increase exponentially. Neither of them had much doubt about her factual guilt, and they felt that they needed just one small break to have an excuse to put on the handcuffs and take her downtown, and once that happened, the confession was pretty much just going to be a matter of time.

"Ten more minutes," Russo said. "Then we get something to eat and come back one time on our way out to Seacliff."