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Hunt's base camp was up a side road that began a few hundred feet north of the Manions' driveway and wound up the western slope facing the château. It was a place Mickey knew ofhe'd come up here a few times with female companions to make outwhere a turnout that coincided with a break in the topography gave them an unimpeded look and more importantly walkie-talkie access across to the valley, the promontory, and to the California oaks, which grew amid the boulders at the very crest of the ridge beyond the Manions' roof.
On a line, they were less than a half mile from the main house.
Hunt's Cooper and Mickey's Camaro, both excessively visible on the Silverado Trail, were parked on the shoulder of the road. Jason, back from the Meadowood, had parked his purple PT Cruiser well up the street, so that the random Napa County cop, should one appear, wouldn't become suspicious.
Amy and Jason, Hunt and Mickey stood in a tight group in a patch of shade. Juhle had been in the house across the way for about a half hour, and the small talk in the clearing had gotten smaller and smaller until finally it had disappeared altogether. Suddenly, Mickey, who hadn't taken his eyes off the château the whole time, said, "Happening."
Hunt lifted his binoculars and was watching as Juhle appeared at the front door on his way out. His body language alone told the story, affirmed when nobody accompanied him out.
Juhle got to his car door and opened it, Hunt lowered the binoculars, got his telephone off his belt, and handed it to Wu.
"You ready?"
She'd been game all along. Though her task was simple and straightforward enough, she and Wyatt had discussed it in some detail, and now she took the phone without any hesitation. Still, she did have a question. "You're sure you don't want to wait until Devin gets up here?"
"I'm sure," Hunt said. "Whatever else happened with Dev and her, you can bet he delivered the message, so we hit her now when it's still in her craw, before she can digest it. And I'm damn sure Dev doesn't want to see this next part. He won't even want to hear about it."
Mickey said, "The dude's in this far, Wyatt, he's following your lead, he ought to get over it."
Hunt shrugged. "Yeah, well, it's his job. Everything he's done up to now, it's in his little manual of what he's allowed to do. As we all know, he's got these due-process issues, which fortunately I don't have to worry about."
"Yeah, but for the record, Amy and I are officers of the court, too. In fact, last time I looked I was a DA." Jason, all nerves now, wasn't complaining, just stating a fact. "So Wyatt's idea that we don't talk about it, that might be a good thing to remember when this is over."
Amy put a calming hand on his arm. "Understood. I think everybody gets that, Jason. Let's get this done. Wyatt, what's the number?"
Hunt gave it to her, and she punched it in, the three men standing around her in various attitudes of tension. Hunt, arms crossed, the muscles in his jaw working. Mickey shifting from foot to foot. Jason, hands in his pockets, high color in his face, although his dark eyes were hooded, almost brooding; he chewed at the inside of his lower lip. Nobody said a word.
Amy affected being cool, but her eyes darted from the trees to the sky to the men around her while she waited for the first ring and gave away the state of her nerves. A breeze freshened and blew some of her hair across her face, and almost angrily, she brushed it away. Suddenly, with an audible sigh of relief, she nodded. "Ringing," she whispered.
Then she nodded. Someone had picked up.
"May I please speak to Carol Manion?" Wu's eyes were closed in concentration. "Yes, I understand that," she said, "but this is an emergency. I need to speak with her personally." Another pause. "That won't be possible. Would you please ask? It's actually really urgent. Yes." And finally, the coup. "Tell her it's Staci Rosalier."
Wu's knuckles were white on the cell phone. She opened her eyes, caught Hunt's steely gaze, and nodded again imperceptibly. Carol was coming to the phone.
* * *
When it came, the voice was far from the refined contralto Wu had noted at the auction preview. Everything that had happened to Carol Manion today, first with Amy and then evidently with Juhle, had as Hunt predicted finally managed to erode the surface veneer of control and sophistication. The voice rode a wave of dread now that broke and churned in her throat. "Who is this?"
Hunt had told Amy to get right to it, not to give her a chance to hang up. Wu spoke in measured, even tones. "It's Staci Rosalier, Carol. Staci Keilly. Todd's mother."
"Who is this? Is this the police again? This is pure harassment."
"It's not the police, Carol. You know it's not the police."
"Who is it, then? What do you want?"
"I want my son back. But it's too late for that. I'll settle for Andrea Parisi."
"I'm hanging up."
"I'll leave you alone if you lead me to Andrea."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do, Carol. Don't make me threaten you. I don't want to take Todd and force you to trade, but I will if I have to."
Now through the line, Carol came across in a clear panic. Wu heard her yelling back through the house. "Todd! Todd! Where are you? Come in here. I need to see you. Right now!" She ended in a shriek.
Other noises sounded in the background. Male. Concerned.
Now, back into the phone, no mistaking it, Carol's fear bled out and over into her voice. "He's here. He's fine."
"I know that. I'd never hurt my own son. But I would take him from you."
"Tell me who you are!"
"I've told you that. Where is Andrea?"
"I said I don't know! I don't know."
"All right," Wu said. "I've warned you. Look out your back windows. I'll call back in exactly five minutes."
* * *
In the dining room off the kitchen at the château, Carol stood holding the phone, breathing hard, her face gone pale. Ward had come in with the earlier screams, followed by Todd along with the security guard who'd admitted Juhle earlier, and Todd's nanny. Now the four of them hovered in the doorway.
Looking at the phone as though surprised that she still held it, she put it down into its receiver and turned back to the rest of them. "Oh, Todd," she said, moving toward him, arms extended. "My baby. Are you all right? Tell me you're all right."
"I'm fine, Mom. I'm good. Are you okay?"
She was down at his level, hugging him tightly. "I'm good," she said, but her voice broke. Her shoulders heaved and then heaved again. She tried to stifle a desperate sob.
"Carol." Ward was down next to her. "What's this about? Talk to me."
But instead she gathered herself, stood, and faced the guard. "Has anyone been here to the house today besides Inspector Juhle?"
"No, ma'am."
"You're sure?" Her voice snapped at him. "Don't look at Todd! I want your answer. Was anybody here?"
Stunned by the violence of the outburst, the guard backed up a step. "No, ma'am. I'm sure. Nobody."
Ward reached out his hand. "Carol "
She held up a warning finger to her husband, came back at the guard. "When we drove up, he was outside. Juhle. Had he been out there alone for long?"
"No, ma'am. A minute, two minutes at the most, before you got here. I watched him the whole time."
"What did he do?"
"He sat in his car for a minute, no more, then got out and walked to where the driveway drops off."
"And what did he do there?"
"It seemed like he was looking at the view."
"And that's all? He never went around the back."
"No, ma'am, he didn't have time for anything like that. You and Mr. Manion arrived about a minute later. Almost immediately, in fact."
She whirled around to the nanny. "And you've been with Todd all day, too?"
"Sí, seńora. Toda el día."
She turned to her son. "Todd? Is that true. All day?"
The boy, now frightened by his mother's madness, moved a step away toward his n
anny. "Mo-om."
Ward came over and put his arm around his wife, dismissing the others with an impatient wave, wanting to get her away. He walked with her a few steps into the living room, whose enormous west-facing windows featured full-length white drapes now drawn against the afternoon sun. "Who was that on the telephone now that's got you so upset? Is it more of this, this police business?" He reached after her as she moved away. "Carol? Please "
She had reached where the drapes met in the center of the windows and now threw them open with enough violence that one of them ripped at the runners above. Then, stepping back as if stung, her hands to her mouth, she whimpered through her fingers.
In silver paint on the glass, backward so they could be read from inside, someone had spray-painted the capital letters: T-O-D-D.
* * *
"Hello." Mrs. Manion's voice now barely audible in the cell phone, laced with panic but still managing to maintain a tenuous control.
"Don't interrupt. You can send everyone else away," Wu said, using the exact, carefully rehearsed lines they'd agreed upon. "No one else has to be involved. This is about Andrea now, not about you. We'll be watching."
* * *
Amy had gone pale, her hand shaking as she handed the phone back to Huntit had grown hot to the touch. "God!" she said, blowing out with each breath. "Oh, my God."
Jason put his arm around her. "You okay?"
She shook her head no. Blew out again. "Shit. Shit shit shit. That was horrible."
"It was awesome," Mick said.
"I think I might be sick."
"Here." Jason lowered her to the ground, sat with his arms around her.
Hunt went down on a knee, lifted her chin with his finger. "That was perfect, Ames," he said. "You did good."
She nodded, her breath still coming hard, and Jason looked across to Hunt. "So what do we do now?" he asked.
"Now, you guysAmy and Jasonyou take off. You've both done plenty. You get caught in any part of this, your jobs are at least severely compromised if not over. You've got too much to lose."
"Like you guys don't," Jason said.
Hunt waved away the objection. "I've changed jobs before. It didn't kill me. I can always do something else. And Devin's a big boy who's here because he wants to be. Everybody elseMick, Tammy, Craigthey're on the payroll. I'm sure they'll get a huge bonus."
Mick perked right up. "How big?" he asked.
"Huge," Hunt said, "unprecedented." He went back to Amy and Jason. "But you guys are volunteers who've done some great work, and now you've got to get out of here and go home. I mean it."
"And what are you all going to do?" Amy asked.
Hunt said. "The rest of us, we play this way."
* * *
Juhle and Hunt had been together at the base camp for three hours since Amy's call to Carol. Now Mickey was back in his car, parked again where the road cut into the Silverado Trail, where he would be ready to tail the Manions should all of them, including Carol, come off their mountain by car and try to make some kind of getaway.
Juhle hung up from the "I'm going to be late" call to his wife and walked over to where Hunt, his binoculars mounted on a tripod in front of him, half-leaned against the hood of his Cooper. "How long you gonna give this?" he asked.
Hunt looked at his watch, at the declining sun, at the château, finally at his friend. "As long as it takes," he said. "You want, go on home. I'll call you from wherever we find Andrea. You can come out then and get famous."
"You still think this is going to work?"
"I don't know."
"It's taking a while."
"I figured it would. She's got some choices to make. She could come clean to Wardor mostly clean, enough to get him to cooperate with her. Either that or convince him and everybody else in the house that she can handle whatever it is herself, that she's not having a breakdown. If that's her choice, then she's got to get rid of them, send them out to dinner, say she's got a headache, something. Whatever it is, it's going to take some time."
"If somebody writes one of my kid's name on my windows, I call the cops."
"I know, but she won't do that."
"What if she calls in twenty private security guards or even Shiu, for Christ's sake. Wouldn't that be a fine kettle of fish?"
"What if " Hunt looked over at the house. There'd been no activity in or around it since Wu's phone calls. "She's not going to any kind of police, Dev. If she was going that way, they'd already be here. You guys are all the enemy now. Even Shiu. He might moonlight for her, but I've got to believe he's your partner first, a homicide cop investigating a couple of murders which, p.s., it looks an awful lot like she committed."
"He might just come on for double overtime."
"Unlikely."
"And you don't think Ward will call the cops, either?"
Hunt shook his head. "He might want to, but she'll talk him out of it. It's her problem and she's motivated. I hope I've made her realize that giving us Andrea is her only out. That's all we want."
"Not quite," Juhle said. "I, for example, want to put cuffs on her."
"I left that part out. And if you weren't here, that wouldn't be my issue, as I've said all along."
"You'd let her walk on the murders?" Juhle asked.
Hunt shrugged. "I want Andrea." He deadpanned his friend. The discussion was over. Picking up his walkie-talkie, he pushed the button. "You guys still good?"
Chiurco's voice crackled back up at him. "Affirmativo, mon capitaine, but nothing since the curtains. Except we did see a rattlesnake. Big old sucker."
"How about you catch it and go set it loose in the house? That'll scare her out."
Tamara's voice carried out of the speaker. "No way, Wyatt."
"That was more or less in the order of a joke, Tam."
"I'm laughing," she said.
"Good. Call if you get lonely." Hunt rang off, turned to Juhle. "Really, you don't have to stick around. We can handle it. Besides, it might not happen."
It was Juhle's turn to take a beat, check out the château, note the time.
"Really," Hunt said.
"Maybe I'll just hang a few more minutes. Take my chances."
It was within three weeks of the longest day of the year, but the Coast Range cut off the direct sun in the lower parts of the valley by a little after six. By quarter to seven, the shadow had moved up to the base camp, and Juhle put on the jacket he wore every day in San Francisco.
* * *
"Here we go," Hunt said.
Juhle came up next to him, squinting into the shadows, as Hunt straightened up off his car's hood, grabbed his walkie-talkie, and buzzed his troops, telling Mickey down on the lower road that people were coming out of the house into the parking area in front. He should hit his ignition and be ready to roll.
"How many we talking about?"
"Hold on." Hunt put a steadying hand on one leg of the tripod and leaned down into the binoculars. He had his night visions in the trunk of the Cooper, but it wasn't really quite twilight yet, and he hadn't changed over to them. "Some guy in a dark suit with the kid and a woman. I don't know if it's Carol. Can you get her, Craig? Over."
"No. We're blocked by the house."
Hunt followed the little procession as they made their way over to one of the SUVs. "Do we know how many people were in the house? The Manions, the kid, the security guy. Anybody else?"
"The kid's got a nanny," Craig said. "We saw her upstairs through the windows."
"So five. Five."
"Sounds right," Mickey said.
The man in the suit got into the car while the boy and the woman got into the backseat from the far door, now outside of Hunt's vision. In the evening stillness, even from across the distance, Hunt picked up the faint echoes of the car's ignition kicking in. It rolled forward, pulled up, and stopped right at the front door, blocking most of it. Hunt saw the house's door open and close. He had a sense of movement, but that was all it was. "Mick," he said, "the
y're coming down. I don't know if everybody got in the car, but you'd better follow and find out."
"Roger. On it." Three minutes later, Mick checked in again. "Tinted windows, Wyatt. I can't see in."
Hunt resisted the urge to swear. "All right. Which way are they headed?"
The Hunt Club Page 38