The Hunter

by John Lescroart

  It was 10:15 p.m. in San Francisco.

  Juhle looked at his watch, took a deep breath, and opened the interrogation room door again. Juhle was reminded of the Dumpster on the street outside of Original Joe’s. “How you holding up, Chewey? You ready to tell us something yet?”

  “Hey. I already told you what I know. Everything I know. I didn’t shoot no guy. He was already dead, on the ground, when I got to him.”

  “But then you robbed him.”

  “It was just his wallet. He didn’t need it no more, now, did he?”

  “And his cell phone.”

  A shrug. “Same thing.”

  “The point is, Chewey, you were right there when Mr. Orloff got popped and you profited from his death. Who’s to say you didn’t make some deal with the shooter to set it all up?”

  “Aw, come on now, hey! With a cab? How’s that happen?”

  “I don’t know, Chewey. That’s why we’re talking. We want you to tell us about the cab.”

  “I mean, I don’t know nothing about that cab. I was just sitting there like I do, chillin’. That spot, people give you their doggie bags some nights.”

  “And you’re just sitting there?”

  “Like I said. And the cab pulls up at the curb and the window come down.”

  “The passenger window?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The front seat passenger window?”

  “Right.”

  “Is there a passenger in the cab?”

  “Not that I see. I mean, nobody’s in the front and nobody’s getting out the back.” An elaborate shrug. “It’s a cab coming to pick up somebody at the restaurant. Happens alla time.”

  “So there’s just the driver in the cab?”

  “That I see.”

  “Okay, what did he look like?”

  Chewey rolled his eyes. “Cabrón. Do I look?”

  “That’s what I’m asking. Did you look?”

  “I’m sitting on the sidewalk, minding my business. That’s all I’m doing.”

  “Yeah, but, Chewey”—Juhle putting a little edge into it—“here’s the thing. You’re telling me that you’re sitting there and that’s all you’re doing. But what that really means is that you’re doing nothing. It’s not like you’re playing a video game or something. You’re not into sudoku, are you?”

  “That like some kind of karate?”

  “Kind of,” Juhle said. “The point is, you’re not doing it—sudoku, karate, video games, whatever. You’re just sitting there and a cab drives up and, what, pulls over?”

  “Yeah. Like waiting for his ride, the guy who called him, you know.”

  “So how long was he there, pulled over?”

  “I don’t know. A minute, five minutes.”

  “And he’s where? In front of you?”

  “No. Down the street a ways.”

  “Ten feet? Twenty feet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which one, Chewey?”

  “I don’t know. One of ’em.”

  “Okay, then. Either way, here’s the question: What else are you doing if you’re not looking at the cab?”

  “All right, I see the cab, but I’m not looking at it. I mean, it’s a cab. I seen ’em before. What I look at it for?”

  “You don’t see the driver?”

  “I must have, you just said. But I don’t remember.”

  “Even after the gunshot? He’s ten feet away and just shot somebody almost right in front of you and you didn’t happen to glance at who was doing the shooting?”

  “The driver, you mean?”

  Juhle cocked his head. “Who we been talking about all this time, Chewey? The driver. Did you see the driver at any time?”

  “All right, yeah.”

  “There you go,” Juhle said with real satisfaction. “How hard was that?”

  “But I don’t know him. I’m not, like, doing something with him.”

  “No. We really didn’t think you were. But the point is you saw him. What’d he look like?”

  “Like a white man.”

  “Old? Young?”

  “Old. White hair. No beard or nothing. Just a face.”

  Juhle sat back in some triumph, not just to get a little distance on the smell. “You think you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “I doubt it. It was just like a second he’s driving off. I wasn’t really looking.”

  “No, I guess you were looking at the dead guy you were fixing to rob.”

  A vacant grin of sublime indifference. “Mostly that, yeah.”

  It took much if not all of Juhle’s forbearance not to reach across the table and bitch slap this poor fool, and he still might have done it if there hadn’t been a knock on the door. Exhaling heavily, he reached over and was looking at Russo.

  “They found the cab,” she said.

  20

  AFTER HE LEFT THE BAR DOWNSTAIRS, Hunt got to his room and picked up his small travel suitcase, placing it on the bed. He had just started unzipping it when he stopped and straightened up, looking around quickly from side to side, something like little bright exploding yellow lights nibbling at the edge of his vision.

  Nothing there, except those pinpoints of light no matter which way he turned to focus on them.

  Bringing his hands up to the sides of his head, he pushed at his temples. A sudden wave of vertigo threatened his balance for a minute and he pulled a chair up behind him and sat down on it, the back of his head suddenly struck with a searing blast of pain. Squinting against the room’s dim light, he went back over how many drinks he’d had—two and a half at the most. Certainly not enough for this reaction, he knew.

  Now he lay fully clothed on the bed in his dark room at the airport hotel. The pinpoints had continued to explode, even when he closed his eyes, and very much in the manner of a fireworks display, on what felt like the periphery of his vision, except that they had changed color to a dull pewter and expanded into Rorschach blobs that disintegrated with a viscosity that reminded him of motor oil.

  * * *

  THE CAB, now cordoned off by a fence of yellow crime-scene police tape, was in the last parking place on Van Ness Avenue at the end of the street near the back entrance to Fort Mason where it abutted Aquatic Park. Beyond it, the Municipal Pier jutted out into the bay. Overhead, eucalyptus and cypress branches clawed at the dark sky, silhouetted by the glow from the streetlights.

  In Juhle’s city-issue, he and Sarah pulled up and parked next to a lone black-and-white police car from which a couple of patrolmen emerged with flashlights. After the brief introductions and sharing of IDs, Russo nodded over toward the vehicle.

  “So who reported this?” she asked.

  The two patrolmen looked at one another for a second trying to decide who would do the talking.

  “Anybody? Anybody?” Juhle prompted them with his best imitation of Ferris Bueller’s teacher.

  The tall black one, Thomas, said, “It was a little bit roundabout. This cab here picked up three parking tickets at this same spot yesterday and today. So finally the traffic-detail guy notices it’s the same cab and instead of just putting a boot on it and calling in a tow, he calls Yellow, who it turns out’s been looking for this thing since it didn’t check back in two nights ago.”

  “We called them, didn’t we?” Juhle asked.

  “I vaguely remember it,” Russo said. “And I believe they told us that all their cars came back in.”

  “Except this one, which apparently they forgot.”

  “Apparently. Maybe they were busy and didn’t have time to check thoroughly.”

  “Maybe. But we know the car, we know the last pickup, don’t we?”

  “I believe we could identify it, Devin. Given some time.”

  Juhle turned back to the somewhat bewildered patrolmen. “So then what?”

  “Then, I think somebody at Yellow must have remembered your call, since they called in downtown and reported that we’d found it and where. Then dispatch sent
us down to watch it until you got here.”

  “All right, thanks. Good job. Can I see your beam? Anybody call a tow?”

  “Not yet.” Thomas handed over his flashlight. “You want me to?”

  “Give us a minute,” Juhle said, and started down to the cab.

  Russo trailing by a step. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I’m not thinking.” He shined the flashlight’s beams across the windshield, over the parking tickets stuck under the wipers. Crossing in front of the car, at the driver’s window he leaned over close, shading his eyes against the glare so he could see inside, and shone the light down over the front seats. “Uh-oh,” he said, straightening up.

  “What do you got?” Sarah asked.

  “You tell me. Take a look.”

  He shone the light in again, backing off so she could lean over and see inside. She stayed down there for a long moment, then straightened. “That black stain?”

  “Yep.”

  “But that makes no sense. He didn’t get shot in the car. He shot somebody from inside the car.”

  “Right.” Juhle was walking, quickly now, back around the front to the other side, where he shone the light on the driver’s-side window. “You see it?”

  Russo leaned down and squinted.

  “On the window inside.”

  Russo nodded soberly. “It could be.”

  “Give me another minute. Time for some gloves, too.”

  Juhle trudged back up the street to his car, reached in, and popped open the trunk, then went back there and pulled out a strip of metal, which he brought with him back to the cab. “Did I ever tell you that before I was a cop I used to boost cars?” He was pulling his own latex gloves on.

  Going around again to the passenger side, Juhle slid the jimmy down next to the window and jockeyed around for a minute or so until, finding the purchase he wanted, he pulled and the door’s locks came up.

  “Okay now.”

  With great care, he pulled open the door. Again he shone the light, now without a glaring window between him and the seat. Then he brought the light up to the passenger window, the door under it. Straightening up, he blew out hard enough to puff out his cheeks. “Patrolman Thomas,” he said over the car, “call homicide and have them send a crime-scene unit down here right away.”

  Next, leaning down now, back into the car, he reached to a point underneath the steering wheel and pulled the lever to release the trunk. Behind him, Sarah Russo was already moving, at the trunk in a couple of steps, and lifting the hood. The streetlights gave only feeble illumination, but it was enough to get the general idea, and Juhle’s flashlight beam took away any vestige of doubt about what they were looking at.

  “Patrolman Thomas. While you’re at it, get the coroner’s van down here as well.”

  THE MAN IN THE TRUNK was identified as Ahmed I. Muhammed, and he had been the driver of record. He had been shot once in the left temple at point-blank range, by someone standing outside the car. The bullet, the same size slug used with Orloff, was embedded in the car door on the passenger side.

  They were hoping that the computerized dispatch records at Yellow Cab might reveal an address or phone number to which the cab had been called close to the time of Orloff’s death, which was around 7:30. But the last pickup of record, to an address on Green Street, had been at 4:48, pretty far outside of their window. And while they might have to contact that phone number and identify the caller tomorrow, neither inspector believed for a minute that it had anything to do with the crime. Apparently, Mr. Muhammed preferred to troll the streets keeping an eye out for the random fare, or at least he had done that last Tuesday night. His pickup on Green put him near some high-foot-traffic real estate—Cow Hollow, the Marina, Polk Street—and he could easily have kept himself busy that way for the rest of his shift.

  Or until he picked up his murderer.

  “You think he picked him up?” Sarah asked Juhle as they stood around shivering in the mist, waiting for Lennard Faro, the crime-scene specialist, to finish his on-site examination before they towed the cab down to the police garage and took it apart.

  “Had to. He had to get someplace quiet and secluded where he could get out, pretend to be paying him by the driver’s window, and pop him. Then reach in, pull him out, and get him in the trunk. Not easy, and impossible if he’s anywhere near people.”

  Russo looked around. “This is a good spot for that.”

  “Yeah, but it could have been anywhere. Doesn’t matter. He wound up coming here eventually.”

  “So why didn’t he just dump the body?”

  “He wanted to buy himself a couple of days. And see? It worked. Not that I think it’s going to do Mr. Spencer too much good.”

  Sarah stomped her feet and hugged herself. “I’m getting tired of just standing around. You want to go get him now? I say we’ve got enough.”

  “I’d agree. To question him with gloves off anyway. Unless you’ve got another old guy with white hair you want to talk to.”

  “No. He’d be my favorite.”

  “Good. Let’s leave this party to Lennard and go wake somebody up.”

  IT WAS A VERY SHORT, very steeply uphill drive to the Larkin Street home of Lionel Spencer. They parked at the curb in front and again rang the bell by the gate in the fence. By now it was closer to two a.m., but the lights were still on inside.

  When there was no answer on the third ring, Juhle said, “Remember he told us he often doesn’t hear the bell.”

  “I remember. Sometimes the delivery people have to come back twice.”

  “Exactly. Talk about hell.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I’ll call him.”

  “Sure. Do that.” After four rings, she got his answering machine and said, “Mr. Spencer. This is Inspector Russo. If you’re home right now, we’ve been ringing your bell outside and would like to come in and talk to you. If you’re not, would you please give me a call as soon as you get this message? Thanks.”

  Juhle turned to her. “So now what?”

  “Call me a wimp, but I’m thinking about some sleep.”

  “Wimp. But sleep would work. And tomorrow, a warrant. How’s that sound?”

  He held up a fist and she bumped it with one of her own. “Winner,” she said.

  21

  THE INDIANAPOLIS CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES had a familiar feel, and with some reason. The same kind of people were doing the same kind of critical, frustrating, boring, dangerous, mind-numbing work that Hunt had done for most of a decade of his earlier life. Street-smart and edgy case workers and hard-core bureaucrats waged their perpetual wars on one another all in the name of what was best for the children, when in fact very few of the solutions were good ones, just better than the alternatives.

  Hunt wasn’t in the front door of the huge, bland office building for five minutes before he felt as though he could draw a flow chart about how the whole place worked, or didn’t.

  The difference to him, of course, is that he didn’t have a Bettina Keck to run interference for him. He was simply an out-of-state nuisance who wasn’t really part of anyone’s job description. And so at a little after two o’clock, after the puddle-jumper flight to Indianapolis, after his headache had finally, mostly, passed, and after three or four stops at various CPS substations, he wound up talking to an obvious lifer in Records with a name tag that read “John Edmonds.” And he hadn’t gotten very far with him before Edmonds was shaking his bald head, peering over the tops of his half-lens glasses, an “are you kidding me?” expression pretty much eliminating the need for Hunt to go on talking, so he wrapped it up quickly. “No, huh?”

  “I’m afraid not. No chance. All the records that far back have been destroyed.”

  “That’s what they told me in San Francisco, too, but it turned out nobody actually got around to doing that job, and they were stuck in the basement.”

  “Yes, well, that didn’t happen here. We went over to computers in the early nineties, and a command dec
ision was made to destroy all the old records where the children would have been thirty or older. We’re talking sixty years worth of files, maybe more. And I know because I was part of the team that shredded them. It took the better part of two months full-time for six of us if you want to talk tedious. And remember, this was nearly twenty years ago, so these people, the people in those destroyed records, would be at least fifty or so now. Whatever happened to them as kids, I don’t care what it was, it wouldn’t matter too much anymore, would it?”

  “I can appreciate that,” Hunt said. “But I guess my question remains. Is it possible that some of these records might have fallen through the cracks?”

  “Why would they? What cracks? We started at the front of the storage facility and moved through it to the back. Now the place—the old warehouse?—it’s a roller derby rink, if you can believe that. So no, there weren’t any cracks. We cleaned it out and the state sold the building off a couple of years later and that’s all there is to it.”

  Fighting his fatigue and frustration, Hunt forced a smile. “All right, John, let me ask you just one more. This is my mother I’m talking about and I just flew two thousand miles to find out a couple of answers about her childhood. I think she had been in some trouble when she was a kid, and I think whatever it was does still matter very much in the here and now. You’ve been in this business a long time. If you wanted to find something about her, where would you look?”

  “Well, really, then, there’s only one possibility, and that’s the newspapers.” Edmonds scratched behind his ear. “Although you got a major problem with them, too. And not just the fact that there’s not gonna be an index telling you where you might find something. Your eyeballs do all the walking, step by step, and that’s if you’re lucky and there’s still copies of old editions somewhere on microfiche. So good luck with that. But the biggest problem is if your mother was a minor when she was having these problems, even if they were newsworthy events, they’re not gonna have her name in the paper, now, are they?”