Treasure Hunt Part 30

"The quality of decisiveness," Juhle said, "is not strained."

"What?" Russo asked.

At that moment, the cell phone on Juhle's belt went off with a ringtone from an old-fas.h.i.+oned telephone that was so loud it made them both jump.

"You gotta change that," Russo said.

But Juhle, already on the call, didn't even hear her. "Yeah," he said, and then again. "Yeah, but we'll be in the field most of the day. Nothing so far, but if he's interested, he can catch us down at the Hall when we get back in. I'll be on this phone. Right." He listened for another few seconds, then said, "You could tell him that maybe he ought to be checking those himself, but I wouldn't waste too much time on it if I were him." He rolled his eyes over at Russo. "Because we've already got a person of interest with no alibi for that night, as he knows . . . no . . . no . . . no, we like thorough, that's fine. All right. Just a sec, I need something to write with." Resting the phone against his ear, he pulled out his little notebook and the pen from his pocket. "Okay, shoot. You want to spell that? All right, you're not sure, it's phonetic. Got it. We'll try. Okay. Fine. Later."

Hitting the disconnect b.u.t.ton, he said to Russo, "That was Hunt's girl, and-"

"You mean his secretary?"

"Yes, of course. What could have gotten into me that I said 'girl'? You'd think that after all those weeks of sensitivity training . . . what I meant to say was that was Hunt's executive a.s.sistant, is what I was saying. He wanted us to know that Turner's Communities of Opportunity, including Neshek, had a meeting at City Hall on Monday night before she was killed."

"Okay."

"And he wanted us to check everybody's alibi. I told her to tell him we already had Alicia's lack of one and liked it a lot, but if he got a better one, he should let us know."

"I heard you. So what'd she have you write down?"

"A guy's name." Juhle looked down at his pad. "Keydrion Mugisa or something like that. He'll have a sheet somewhere. We'll find him. One of Len Turner's people. I'm thinking probably not Irish."

"What about him?"

"I don't know. That's what Hunt's asked me to find out."

"We gonna do it?"

"Might as well. I don't see how it could hurt."

Al Carter was sitting in the lobby at a fold-up lunch-style table among a large group of what Mickey had come to recognize as Battalion members-mostly young men, but some young women as well, all reasonably well-dressed and well-groomed. A hum of comfortable, loose banter floated out across the lobby all the way to the door where Mickey entered.

He was here mostly to see Lorraine Hess about her whereabouts and activities on Monday night, but when he saw Carter, Mickey thought of a question he wanted to ask him and headed over that way first. They were working from boxes filled with perforated forms-pledge cards-that they were tearing into thirds, organizing in some way, and then sending the oblong mailing through a Pitney Bowes automatic postage machine. When they'd gone through that, another few of the Battalion kids packed them into a growing pile of open-topped white cardboard boxes that Mickey guessed would soon be on their way to the nearest post office, or possibly even all the way down to the main station at Rincon Annex, if the ma.s.s mailing was big enough.

Mickey got about two-thirds of the way there when Carter saw him. After an infinitesimally brief look of confusion or maybe impatience, the older man rearranged his face into its natural and neutral expression and pushed himself back from his folding chair. Closing the now-small distance between them, he extended his hand. "Al Carter," he said, reintroducing himself.

"Yes, sir. I remember. Mickey Dade."

"Well, Mickey Dade, what happened to you?"

"I got hit by a car. Or rather, my car got hit by a car. It looks worse than it is."

"I'm glad to hear that. 'Cause if it was as bad as it looks, you'd be dead at least twice. You want to sit down a minute?"

"That'd be good."

They got over to the wall by the administrative offices and sat down where a few extra fold-up chairs had been set up. "I met your boss yesterday at Mr. Como's memorial," Carter began. "Hunt. So what brings you down here to these environs again?"

"I've got a few more questions for Ms. Hess, but then I saw you and I thought I'd ask-"

Carter stopped him by replying, "I already told your Mr. Hunt about Mr. Como firing Alicia that last morning. I don't know what I can add to that."

"That's not an issue," Mickey said. "Or not the issue I was talking about."

"All right." He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, a question.

"Last time I was here, you told me you'd known my grandfather, Jim Parr."

"I did. Reasonably well."

"Well, I know there were a lot of people at that memorial, but you didn't by any chance run into Jim there, did you?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. Why?"

Mickey took a deep breath and released it. "He hasn't come home. He didn't come home last night."

Carter straightened up, his face now thoughtful, his frown p.r.o.nounced.

"What?" Mickey asked.

"Well, I didn't just see your grandfather yesterday. I don't know if you heard about Mrs. Como when she saw Alicia . . ."

"She kicked her out."

"Yes, she did. Or rather, she asked that she be removed. I don't know if you'd heard that I stepped in and became the remover."

"No, I don't think so."

"I went over to her, put an arm around her, got her outside, and the two of us ran into your grandfather. I was surprised that they knew each other."

"Yeah. We'd had her and her brother over the night before."

"So I gathered." He paused and looked sideways over at Mickey, obviously conflicted about going on. "You know," he said, "when we first talked about the reward last time you were up here, I didn't want any part of it. I didn't want to make any profit out of Dominic's death. But since then . . . well, it's a h.e.l.l of a lot of money. It's life-changing money."

"It might be. But I don't see what you're getting at."

"I'm getting at what I told your boss yesterday, about Alicia. Getting fired. If that turns out to be what the police need, for her arrest, I mean. I'd just want you and Mr. Hunt to remember where you heard it."

"There's no chance we'd forget, sir. But I don't see what Alicia being fired has to do with her and my grandfather."

"I don't see that either. Not specifically. But I just have the same feeling I had yesterday when I felt like I was pointing the finger at her. I don't mean to do that. I like the young woman very much."

"But . . . ?"

"But I know what I know." His vision lasered into Mickey's face. "She told Jim she'd drive him home."

"Alicia did?"

He nodded. "That's who we're talking about, isn't it? Jim had come down on the bus, and was going to take it home, but she said she was going by his way, and she'd take him. Wouldn't hear otherwise." He shook his head, uncomprehending. "And now you're telling me he never made it home. You hear what I'm saying?"

The sudden pounding of his heart into his broken ribs threatened to double Mickey over with pain just as an explosive throbbing expanded behind his eyes. He brought his good right hand up to his forehead and squeezed at both temples. "Give me a minute." Dry-throated, he barely got the words out. "I just need another minute."

It took him more like fifteen minutes, and when he got his breathing and the pain back under control, he was still at a complete loss as to how he was supposed to proceed. Al Carter, having made sure he was basically all right, and with nothing else to tell him, left Mickey and went back to his supervision of the pledge-card mailing.

When his head had sufficiently cleared, Mickey's first inclination was to call Alicia and simply ask her.

But he found that he couldn't do it. Some psychic barrier had arisen. He didn't know what it meant yet, but for the first time now the weight of all the evidence against this woman he had believed and cared for had tipped the scales out of her favor. He didn't immediately leap to the conclusion that something bad or, G.o.d forbid, tragic, had happened to Jim, or even that, if something had, Alicia had played a role in it. But the possibility loomed large and ate at his guts. Along with the stark reality that so far as he now knew, Alicia had been the last person to have been with Jim, who'd known where he was. And with all of that, suddenly-very suddenly-he found himself reluctant to give her any more benefit of his doubt. And that, more than anything, shook him to his depths. He found himself unwittingly back in Hunt's camp, reinterpreting not only Alicia's confession, but nearly everything she'd told him about herself and about her relations.h.i.+p with Dominic Como.

Doubting.

Was she truly the kind of person Mickey had heard about but never met, a bona fide psychopath-nerveless, emotionless, a consummate actor, absolutely capable of cold-blooded murder whenever it suited her convenience?

Doubting and doubting.

In the cascading maelstrom of his thoughts, his next idea was to call Tamara and Hunt and tell them the basic facts, even to warn them about his suspicions, such as they were. Although he realized that the warning would be something Hunt wouldn't need. He was already on his guard. Still, this new information was too important to ignore.

How could Alicia have been with him all that time last night and never mentioned the fact that she'd driven Jim back from the memorial? Granted, they were engrossed in his strategy for her safety. Mickey himself had never been out of pain. They hadn't exactly been chatting aimlessly about life and its vicissitudes, but he'd have thought that the bare fact of Jim's transportation would have come up, at least tangentially, casually. "Oh, by the way, I saw your grandfather today and . . ." But there had been nothing.

Gradually, the pain subsided and his head cleared. He told himself-a thin whisper in the howling storm of his cogitations-that this latest information about Alicia need not have any sinister element. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that she'd dropped Jim off at the apartment, or even-more likely-at the Shamrock or another of the neighborhood bars. Once there, as he'd done quite recently, he'd gotten himself loaded and pitied by a barman or, amazingly enough, some lonely woman. And that he was even now, as Mickey fretted, sleeping it all off.

Meanwhile, Mickey was here to do a job. In the time it took him to talk to Lorraine Hess about her Monday-night activities, Jim could be back home and the fact that Alicia had driven him yesterday would simply be a favor she'd done. The new information had taken him by surprise, that was all. He'd take a figurative deep breath, not do anything out of panic.

So he stood and walked across the lobby and knocked on Hess's door and a woman's voice told him to come in.

She clearly couldn't place him immediately, so he said his name again and the light came on. Looking fatigued and haggard, Hess nevertheless put her empathy for Mickey on her sleeve-the cast, the black eye. She stood up, matronlike, clucking and asking questions about his injuries, coming partway around her desk to make sure he got settled into his chair, asking if he'd like anything to drink or eat-they might have doughnuts left over in the lounge.

Mickey, somewhat to his own surprise, since he normally didn't eat two doughnuts in a year, told her he wouldn't mind some coffee, black, and maybe a doughnut, and she placed the order to someone over her intercom.

In a moment, someone knocked on the door and it opened to one of the Battalion members-a young teenage girl-bringing in coffee in a paper cup and a couple of round, sugared mounds of doughnut on a paper plate. Looking for permission from Hess, and getting a nod, she placed the items on the front edge of the desk, then actually curtsied and left, closing the door behind her. Mickey pulled his chair up to be within reach and took a bite of the pastry. "Oh, my G.o.d," he said, "custard-filled. I'm in heaven."

His enthusiasm brought a small smile to Hess's face. "They're my favorite too."

Mickey washed down his bite of heaven with a sip of coffee, then held the paper plate out to her. "Have the other one."

She shook her head no. "Can't. I've already had two this morning, which is one over my limit, and should be two over it." A beat. "So you should be in the hospital, but you've got too much work to do. And you're here. So your work has to do with me?"

"Actually, with all the people who were at the Communities of Opportunity meeting at City Hall a couple of nights ago. Just basic legwork to eliminate people, really. How many of you were there, by the way?"

Her face became contemplative. "All told, let's see, maybe twenty. Do you want just the professionals, or everybody? Some of us had staff with us."

"I think just the professionals, unless you think one of the staff might have had issues with Nancy Neshek."

"Oh, of course," she said. She sat straighter abruptly, suddenly struggling against a wave of emotion. "This is about her, isn't it? Was that the night she was killed?"

"Yes."

"So after the meeting?"

"That's right. We're going on that a.s.sumption, although it could have been the next morning. She was down close to room temperature when she was discovered, so it had to be fifteen, maybe twenty hours, before ..."

But Hess was holding her one hand, putting the other over her mouth. "Please," she said. "I don't mean to be squeamish, but . . ." She exhaled heavily, closed her eyes, came back to him. "These details. I go a bit light- headed when I think about the reality of them. Of Nancy. I mean, the person who was Nancy. To think of her as lying there at room temperature." She shook her head from side to side. "I'm sorry."

Mickey waved it off. "It's all right. I shouldn't have been so descriptive. But the point is we're trying to eliminate individuals who the police won't have to interrogate at all, and the best way to do that is establish who had alibis and who didn't."

"Alibis for what? The night Nancy was killed?"

"Right. As I say, in most cases, just a formality."

The confusion on Hess's face gave way to a frown. "But at the service yesterday, your Mr. Hunt said they were a.s.suming that the same person killed Dominic and Nancy."

"That's right."

"But that means . . . you think . . . I mean, on any level, do you think I might have done these things? That there's even the remotest possibility?"

"No, ma'am. It only means that if you can account for your time when either one of the murders was committed, you're automatically and completely eliminated, probably from both of them. Have the police asked you about the night of Dominic's death yet?"

A hand pressing into the scalp at her hairline, she was still shaking her head slowly back and forth. She seemed about to break into tears. "I can't believe this." Taking a breath, getting herself together, she finally looked across her desk at Mickey. "I don't know about the individual days, one by one. But I have a twelve- year-old boy, Gary. He's a special needs child. He's just started seventh grade and he's not having an easy time of it. With his medical bills and the economy being what it is, I had to let go one of his tutors, so we've been doing homework together every school night for at least the past three weeks. A lot of homework. Every single school night, Sunday through Thursday, and even a little bit on the weekends. I've also had to cut his caregiver back to half-time. But I'm sorry. This isn't about me. You can ask Gary if you need to. He'll remember. I know he'll remember. It's been grueling. He won't need any reminding."

"So you went to this meeting on Monday night?"

"I did. But it was over at eight or so, and I was home by eight-thirty. Not much later, I'm sure. Where does Nancy live? Do you know?"

"Not exactly," Mickey said. "Somewhere out in Seacliff."

Hess spread her hands, palms out. "I live on lower Telegraph Hill. I would have had to drive pretty fast."

"Well, there you go. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

She put both hands over her mouth for a moment, then lowered them so she could speak. "It's just that I'm so lost over this. Over everything that's happened. It just doesn't seem possible."

"I know," Mickey said. "It's hard." He placed his coffee cup back on the desk. "While I'm here, could I trouble you to write me down a list of everybody you remember at that Monday meeting? It looks like I'm going to have a long day."

She sighed. "All right. I'll try to do that. But I can't really believe it was anybody who was there. I mean, everybody loved Nancy."

"I'm sure they did," Mickey said. "I'm sure they did."

Armed with his list of names, many with phone numbers, of those who'd been at the meeting, Mickey sat with Hess's permission in one of the free cubicles in the large open staff room at the Ortega campus. Making conversation while she'd drawn up the list, he'd let drop that he didn't have a telephone, and she'd offered him the use of theirs. Save him a lot of driving. Beyond the five he'd heard of-Turner, Hess, Neshek, and the two Sanchezes-there were seven other nonprofit professional executives.

His first call wasn't to any of these people, though, but back to his own apartment, where he listened to the answering machine. Next he called the office and got his sister on the first ring. "Any word on Jim?" he asked.

"Still nothing."

"Maybe I should drop by the apartment."

"He'd pick up the phone, I think, if he were there. And I've called about ten times already."

"Yeah. I just did too."