The Hunt Club

by John Lescroart

  "My partner doesn't think it's stupid. He thinks that's what probably happened. I've been trying to get behind it, but it's been giving me this monster headache." Juhle pulled his hand down across his face, pressed at his forehead.

  "I think you're right about one thing, Dev. I think Andrea's connected somehow. But she's the third victim, not the suspect."

  "Well"—Juhle forced himself up and out of his lounger—"that's your theory. But either way, let's find her."

  19 /

  Farrell reached Fairchild on his cell phone and met him at Terrific Tennis, the large indoor facility at the edge of the Moscone Center. He was finishing up a set with someone who looked like a pro to Farrell's untrained eye—dressed like one, played like one. Farrell stood behind the Plexiglas in the hallway that ran along the back of the courts, caught the producer's eye, and five minutes later, the set—or the lesson—was over. Dripping in his whites with a towel draped over his shoulders, Fairchild stopped at the desk for a bottled water, then sat across from Wes at a wafer-size, waist-high table.

  "You see that guy? Andy Bresson?" he began without preamble. "Forget the governor. He's the terminator. Sixoh, six-oh. Or should I say, oh-six, oh-six?"

  "What's the difference?" Farrell asked.

  "Depends on who's serving."

  "But you were both serving."

  "Yeah, it changes. I gather you don't play." Fairchild mopped his brow, took a long drink. "So," he said, "Andrea. Still missing, I presume?"

  Farrell eyed him carefully. Fairchild wasn't even bothering to feign interest. "You don't seem too worried about her, I must say."

  "That's because I'm not worried about her. A little pissed off perhaps, since she blew off the show tonight. But worried? No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because she's doing this to me. You hear we had some words the other night?"

  "I heard it was a little more than that."

  Fairchild shook his head. "She slapped me, that's all. She was drunk and chose to believe I'd been using her when it turned out I couldn't do much to help her score the New York gig. Now she's making the point that she can screw around with me and my job, too."

  "That's what this is?"

  "My call, anyway. Plus, she's getting some press, all this attention. It might even go national, she stays underground long enough. So she won't need me anymore. Na na na. Spoiled and idiotic, that's what she is."

  "So you haven't seen her since she slapped you?"

  "No."

  "Talk to her?"

  "She's not going to talk to me. I think she went crying to Wyatt Hunt."

  "Well, he took her home, if that's what you mean. Now he's trying to find her. He's worried. We're all worried, tell the truth."

  Fairchild went to put his sweaty hand on Farrell's arm, then stopped himself. "Wes, save yourself the grief. My guess is she's already called her mother, maybe her firm, to let 'em both know she's all right. Meanwhile, look at all the attention." He dried his hand, shook his head into his towel. "Trust me, she's just taking a few days."

  "So you and her weren't out together Monday night?"

  "Monday. Just a sec. What's today?"

  "Thursday."

  "So we had the fight on Tuesday, that's right. So Monday. No. We had a date, but she went in to work for a while and then called me from there and canceled."

  "She say why?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. Something must've come up."

  * * *

  Farrell knew Richard Tombo from back when he'd been a newly minted assistant DA. They'd faced each other in court probably a dozen times. Since the younger man had gone out on his own, they'd run into each other regularly around the Hall of Justice, at Lou the Greek's. They seemed to inhabit the same basic restaurant and legal universe. Tombo worked out of a quaint, brass-railed, beautifully restored carriage house in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid. He was in his office, tie undone, suit jacket on a valet beside the desk. His legal pad was full of scribblings. Three empty coffee mugs held down his desk blotter. A folder filled with pleadings was open in front of him.

  "What do you mean, 'Why am I still here?'" Tombo said in his modulated, professional announcer tone. "Wesley, my man, this is when I work for my money."

  "I thought they paid you princely sums to stand in front of the camera down at the Hall."

  "Princely enough. But that ends in a week, maybe two. Meanwhile"—he gestured to the work before him—"I abandon my clients and lo, I have no steady income. So no, I'm not even semiretired. I'm still billing sixty, seventy."

  Farrell remembered those days in his own life when he'd been just starting out with one of the big corporate firms. He'd been thrilled that they'd pay him the big bucks if he worked all the time. And by all the time, they meant every single waking minute of every day, including weekends and holidays. Billing twenty-two hundred hours a year meant twelve-hour days, minimum. Now, looking at the relatively young and still vibrant, energetic, charismatic Tombo, he wondered how long he could keep it up. How long he'd want to. How long his family could take it. "If this is billable time I'm on," he said, "I don't want to keep you."

  "Not to worry," Tombo said. "If it's Andrea, whatever I can do " He picked up one of the mugs, saw that it was empty, put it back down, and sighed. "So there's still no word."

  Farrell shook his head. "I've got to tell you, Rich, it's somewhat refreshing to hear your concern. I just got through with Fairchild, and he thinks it's all about him."

  Tombo waved that off. "That's just Spencer. He's in television. He thinks everything is all about him."

  "So you don't think that?"

  "No. Not at all. She's not going to miss a scheduled shoot, Wes. It's not in her bones."

  "That's what I'd always thought, too. All of us—Wyatt Hunt, Amy, me. Hunt's trying to find a way to get some police cooperation, although last we heard from them, they thought she might be on the run."

  "From what?"

  "Them. The cops." A pause. "They apparently think she might have killed the judge and his girlfriend."

  "No, really?"

  "Really. So it would kind of help if you, for example, could remember anything about Monday night, since you were with her until five or so for the wrap-up, right? Just tell me you guys all went out to dinner and burned down the town."

  Tombo thought a minute, reached for his mug again, this time grabbed it, and stood up. "No," he said, pouring another cup over at a sideboard, "that was Tuesday, wasn't it? You and me and all of us at Sam's? Her fight with Spencer?"

  "Right. But I'm talking Monday."

  Tombo cricked his back, a lion stretching, then settled more comfortably against the counter. "Okay." He closed his eyes, brought the coffee to his mouth with a loud slurp. "No," he said at last. "Dinner with a client. I remember because Spencer originally had had other plans for the two of them."

  "That's what he told me. Do you remember who the client was?"

  "I never knew, so it's not a matter of remembering. But I don't think she mentioned it. And, Wes? I don't think I have to familiarize you with the old dinner with a client trick, do I?"

  "You got that sense Monday?"

  "I can't say it was as strong as a sense. She just dropped the excuse early enough, it could have been preemptive, that's all. The New York thing was coming to a head. Maybe she saw the writing on the wall and didn't want to face it yet with Spencer."

  Farrell said, "You know anybody who might have wanted to hurt her? Anybody she was afraid of?"

  "Andrea? Afraid. No. And I can't imagine anybody wanting to hurt her."

  But his brow clouded briefly, and Farrell saw it. "What?"

  Tombo hesitated again, then drew a deep breath. "Just something Spencer mentioned this morning, that maybe she'd stumbled on some great story, some big scoop."

  "About what?"

  "Dirty operations—I guess wet ops, even—being run out of the prisons. Except that, as I told Spencer, for about a zillion excellent reasons, that can't happe
n."

  "But Andrea thought it could? Or it was actually happening?"

  "All I can say, Wes, is she never mentioned it to me."

  * * *

  Wu was with Jason Brandt and a distraught Carla Shapiro at the secretary's apartment on Grove at Masonic when she got Farrell's call from Tombo's office about Andrea's possible Monday night meeting with a client. They sat around a kitchen table on the fourth floor of the older apartment building. The floor was black-and-white checkered linoleum, the counters white tile. The sweating window over the sink looked into an open shaft and then across fifteen or twenty feet of open space to the kitchen of another mirror-image apartment. Getting the dishes cleaned and out of the sink didn't appear to be a priority either for Carla or her roommate, who was out for the night.

  Wu closed her cell phone. "That was somebody else we're working with, Carla. He says Andrea might have had a client meeting Monday night, too. Does that ring a bell at all?"

  The poor young woman was drained with anxiety and lack of sleep. She'd changed from her prim and preppy work clothes into some oversize, formless gray sweats, which diminished her underweight frame even further. Her reddened eyes seemed to plead that she'd taken all of the questioning she could handle, but she steeled herself for another effort. "God, Monday," she said. "I don't even remember Monday anymore."

  Because Andrea would often call her after normal business hours, Carla had gotten into the habit of keeping her desk calendar up to date on her Palm Pilot. They'd already gone over Andrea's appointments for the past couple of weeks, but now she dutifully punched in Monday again, scrolled to the evening, sighed. "I don't have anything for it in here."

  "Maybe we can talk about Tuesday, then." Brandt spoke in an understanding, even sympathetic tone. "Let's start with the last time you saw Andrea, how's that? And that was Tuesday, right?"

  "Right. It was, let's see, about ten thirty or eleven. We'd all just heard the news about Judge Palmer, and I went into her office to see if she was all right." Carla looked to each of them. "She wasn't. She was just sitting there in a daze."

  "Crying?" Wu asked.

  "No. Like she was in shock. She said she'd just seen him the day before."

  "There you go," Brandt said. "Monday."

  Carla nodded. "Okay. Okay, now I'm remembering. She was at lunch with the judge that Monday."

  "Was that their semiregular monthly status conference?" Wu asked.

  "Yes. They usually had it on Mondays."

  Brandt kept it on point. "Do you remember her coming back after lunch?"

  Carla closed her eyes for a moment, trying to bring it back. When she spoke, it was with a kind of relief. "All right. She did come back. She had a meeting in his office with Mr. Piersall, which was the norm after she saw the judge. It went on for a while, longer than usual."

  "Do you know why?" Wu asked.

  "I think so. Evidently there was a problem at Pelican Bay—you know, the prison—last week that got the judge really upset. But she barely mentioned that to me, other than saying she had to talk to Mr. Piersall about it a little. So by the time she's done with that it's now almost three fifteen, and the Trial TV limo comes to get her at three thirty." Suddenly she gave a little start, looked off into the middle distance. "Oh."

  Wu came forward. "What?"

  "This is probably nothing, but I just remembered, Betsy Sobo."

  "Who is?" Brandt asked.

  "Another associate. Upstairs."

  Wu asked, "What about her?"

  "She called twice while Andrea was with Mr. Piersall. Andrea had asked her if she'd come down and talk to her about something. So she'd blocked out a half hour and was a little upset when Andrea wasn't back from Mr. Piersall."

  Brandt asked, "Do you know what Andrea wanted to talk about with her?"

  Wu asked, "Were they friends or something like that?"

  Carla shook her head. "No to both. You know, we have a hundred attorneys. It's not like everybody knows everyone else. I don't think I've ever seen her. She's not in the union group and works on another floor. I didn't know Andrea even knew her, but I guess she did."

  Wu pressed. "And she'd made an appointment to see her?"

  Brandt amplified. "This was after she'd come back from seeing the judge?"

  "I'm not sure of that. It might have been anytime, really. But it was for that afternoon."

  "But they didn't get together that day?" Brandt asked.

  "No. I know they didn't. Andrea ran out of time."

  "So maybe they connected that night." Wu's color was up. If Andrea had met this Sobo person for any length of time on Monday night, she would no longer be a suspect in Palmer's murder. "Can you get in touch with her?" she asked.

  "Now?" Carla glanced up at the wall clock: 9:40. "I'm sure I can somehow."

  Carla obviously had tracked down associates before. She called the firm's night number, got the directory, connected to Sobo, who, of course, as a young associate was on permanent call, never off the clock.

  Wu punched in her pager number, and they all waited in a kind of suspension for about three minutes. And then Wu's cell phone rang.

  * * *

  "This is Betsy Sobo," the voice said. "Can I help you?"

  "Betsy, hi. This is Amy Wu. You don't know me, and I'm sorry to bother you at this hour, but I'm an attorney with Freeman Farrell and I'm over here now at Carla Shapiro's apartment. Andrea Parisi's secretary?"

  If Sobo had been angry at Parisi on Monday, there was no sign of it now in her voice. "Oh, God. Have they found her?"

  "No. Not yet. That's what I'm working on. You had an appointment with Andrea on Monday afternoon, is that right?"

  "Yes. I said I'd give her a half hour, but she she got busy and couldn't make it."

  "So here's my question. Did you reschedule or anything? For Monday night by any chance?"

  "No."

  In the cold, humid kitchen, Wu's shoulders fell. "So you didn't see her Monday night?"

  "No. What would I have seen her about?"

  "That's the other thing I wanted to ask. Why she wanted to meet with you."

  "I didn't know that, either, specifically. She just asked me if I could spare some time while she picked my brain, and I said sure, she being such a star and all."

  "Did she say what she wanted to pick your brain about?"

  "Again, not specifically. She was rushing out to a meeting with Mr. Piersall."

  "So she called you after her appearance before Judge Palmer?"

  "I don't know about that." Suddenly, it hit her. "Wait a minute. You mean the Judge Palmer? Who got shot? You're saying Andrea was with him on Monday?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, my God." The voice took on a desperate edge. "You're saying she's probably dead, too, then, isn't she?"

  "We don't know. We hope not. We're trying to find her." Wu hesitated. "I'm assuming she hasn't gotten in touch with you since Monday, either, is that right?"

  "Yes. I mean yes, that's right. No, I haven't heard from her."

  "And you have no idea what she wanted to talk to you about?"

  "Well, some idea, of course. I figured it must have been something about some kind of family benefits with the union. That's what she worked on."

  "But Carla tells us you weren't on the union team?"

  "Right, I know. We're the poor stepchildren of the firm. But still, I guess I'm kind of the house whiz kid on family law."

  "Family law?"

  "You know—divorce, annulments, adoption, custody, restraining orders—where those good times just keep on comin'."

  20 /

  Checking his calls driving back from Juhle's, Hunt got the message from his answering machine at work. "Wyatt Hunt, this is Gary Piersall. I'd like to talk to you as soon as you can get back to me. No matter what time. It's about Andrea Parisi, and it could be very important." He left three telephone numbers.

  He got him on the first one. Piersall was still at the office and told him to come on down as soon as he could
get there. He should just park in one of the partners' spaces under the building. They were marked.

  Hunt checked his watch. It was closing in on ten thirty. "Do you want to tell me about it on the phone?" he asked.