The Hunter

by John Lescroart

  “Guess I’d better pour some of this for you if I don’t want to have her kill me,” he said. Tamara was beginning to marvel at the genetic encoding that made the father and son sound so much alike, even in tone and the rhythms of their speech. “The key ingredient here”—

  he continued as he began to pour into the first glass—“is ice. We break out the ice about twice a year.”

  “Thank you,” Tamara said. “It looks delicious.”

  “It is,” he said. “Maria’s a genius.” He pushed the second glass toward Wyatt and asked, “So where were we?”

  “Lionel Spencer and his airplane.” Wyatt hadn’t lost his place, spoke without hesitation. “So did you use it? Fly down to Texas with him? Or take the money?”

  “None of those,” his father said. He finished pouring his own glass and set it down untouched in front of him. “In the end, I just split. I didn’t want to owe anybody anything. If I was going to start over, and I was, it was going to be from scratch.” He adjusted his glasses and looked to Tamara again, then back to Wyatt, finally taking a drink. “You know,” he said. “I’m having a hard time believing that Lionel killed Margie. Did you know him?”

  “No. I never met him.”

  “Well, if you’d known him . . .” He shook his head against the possibility. “I just can’t see it. Especially the way she was killed, bludgeoned to death. It took a while to get it done. So it was close and personal. And Lionel was just a pure milquetoast. He didn’t have it in him. If it was a gun, then maybe, but only just maybe. As it happened, no way. He was afraid of Evie, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Do you think Evie could have done it?” Tamara asked.

  “No. She might have been crazy, but she was all about peace and love and Jesus.”

  Wyatt put his own glass down after a sip. “But she died at Jonestown. She might have even killed her own children.”

  “That was a lot later. What, eight or ten years?” In another unconscious reflection of his son’s mannerisms, Carson brought one hand to his forehead and squeezed at his temples. “The news about that didn’t get down here until a few weeks after it happened. When I saw her name, I couldn’t believe it.”

  “But she did it,” Wyatt said. “Had her children drink the Kool-Aid, didn’t she?”

  “Probably,” Carson said. “But that was years of brainwashing and drugs after Margie was killed. I can’t see her hurting a flea when we knew her. In fact, and I just remembered this, if she found spiders or ladybugs or whatever in our apartment, she’d pick them up and go outside or to the window and let them go so they wouldn’t be hurt.”

  Wyatt sat back and crossed his arms, a study in exhaustion, the skin dark and sunken under his eyes. “This connection to Jonestown,” he said, “is the closest thing to a motive we’ve been able to come up with. It’s the only thing that makes Margie’s death something other than a random, totally meaningless killing.”

  Carson let out a weary sigh. “I hate to say this, but that’s what I’ve come to believe it was.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t accept that,” Wyatt replied. “There must have been someone else. You mentioned a brother, Lionel’s brother.”

  “Lance.” Carson’s mouth went tight for a beat, as though remembering a bad taste. “Yeah, Lance was around. He was Lionel’s older brother, couple of years older.”

  Wyatt asked, “And what was he like?”

  Carson didn’t answer right away. He glanced off into nothing, perhaps struck by the question, by the previously unimagined thought. “He was a soldier,” he said at last. “That’s what he was like. A soldier.”

  “And close to Jones?” Tamara asked.

  “Near the top,” Carson said.

  27

  THEY GOT INTERRUPTED AGAIN as Maria knocked on the side of the back door and stepped into the patio, followed by a native Indian man of an indeterminate age somewhere between twenty-five and forty. Short and thick and bearded, and with a nose like Maria’s, the man grew his black ponytail halfway down his back like a horse’s mane. He was dressed in exactly the same manner as Kevin Carson, except that his serape was brown and yellow and he didn’t wear glasses.

  When Carson saw him, a cloud passed quickly over his face, but then evaporated into a mere look of exasperation. Saying “Excuse me” to Wyatt and Tamara, he stood up and spoke sharply in Zapotec to his wife. Unmoved, she stood with her arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head in obvious disagreement.

  The man said something to Carson.

  The two Americans stood up as the conversation continued. “What’s happening?” Tamara whispered, but Wyatt simply shook his head—he didn’t know—and reached out to take her hand.

  Carson was still talking to the visitor when a couple—a tiny and very pretty young pregnant woman and another young man, this one clean-shaven, short-haired, taller, in black jeans and an Obama “Hope” T-shirt—came up through the house and stood now in the doorway out to the patio. Taking in the situation at a glance, the younger man pulled his wife with him and crossed from the door around behind the bearded man, both of them ignoring Carson. The man extended his hand to Wyatt. “I am Sergio,” he said in heavily accented English, “and this”—he pushed the pregnant woman forward—“is Marissa. She is your sister.”

  Wyatt seemed to take the news in a kind of panic, his eyes going from Marissa over to Tamara, back to his father, who had turned, apparently to try and take control before things got out of hand. “I’m sorry,” Carson said, “this is Maria’s doing. I didn’t mean . . .” He stopped, his meaning clear enough.

  But Wyatt looked behind him and over to take in the first visitor. The bearded young man evidently took it as a kind of invitation and stepped around Carson and looked Wyatt up and down before extending his own hand and offering a wary smile. “Daveed,” he said. David. “Soy tu hermano.”

  Wyatt was shaking hands with David, introducing himself and Tamara, when the next four people, maybe the two children that they’d seen earlier, and another couple—their parents?—pressed their way out through the back door. Realizing that resistance was swiftly becoming hopeless, Kevin Carson took on the role of host and translator. Though he seemed acutely aware of Wyatt’s discomfort, and in fact appeared to share a good deal of it, at this point he was mostly directing traffic. “This is Paulo and his wife, Téadora. Paulo is my youngest. The kids are Billy, Guillermo; and Féderico, Freddy. They’d be your half nephews, I suppose.” He met Wyatt’s eyes, turned to Tamara. “I’m sorry about this. Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” Wyatt said, his eyes troubled, his smile a brittle thing.

  “This is amazing,” Tamara said.

  “It’s going to get worse,” Carson promised.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME MARIA and the other woman started bringing out the first platters of mole and eggs and chicken and liver and tamales, for of course the return of the lost son was an unbridled cause for celebration, a total of fourteen people were circulating in and out of the patio. Another table and more chairs appeared from somewhere. David’s wife, Carla, arrived, accompanied by their two toddlers, then another of Kevin’s sons, another half brother, Ramon, and his wife, Gloria, showed up with their three children, coming home from school with the others’ kids for their lunch.

  Wyatt and Tamara stood next to their translator, all with their unrefusable beers, and tried their best to engage with the unexpected onslaught of family. Fully four of the seven youngsters would not relinquish the tight semicircle they formed in front of their newfound relative and couldn’t hear enough about life in America, oohing with surprise and admiration as Tamara described Wyatt’s warehouse home in San Francisco, complete with his half basketball court.

  Which led to even more questions, and more answers. Yes, he had a car, a Mini Cooper. Also a Kawasaki motorcycle. Some guitars. Surfboards. He windsurfed all the time, mostly under the Golden Gate Bridge.

  The breathlessness he heard in the questions didn
’t just come from the children. Kevin Carson, perhaps in spite of himself, couldn’t keep the excitement and sense of awe at Wyatt’s accomplishments and acquisitions out of his voice. And his was the voice of the multitude, everyone including Sergio speaking to Wyatt—and to Tamara—through him.

  No, Tamara was not a movie star, didn’t even want to be one. No, they weren’t married. Well, they should be. They obviously were together and should stay together. Surely, she was at least a model. They were sure they had seen her in magazines.

  All the family here made their living with the loom. After lunch, along with the mescal, they brought out samples of all the different styles they’d each come to specialize in, each in their own shop, sending the children off running to the various storefronts to bring back gifts, for of course Wyatt and Tamara must keep whatever they could carry home, and more.

  And then the older children had gone back to school, the younger ones to naps, the women, including Tamara, into the kitchen to clean up. Wyatt sat on the bench against the wall under the bougainvillea, sipping mescal and ice from his juice glass with his three half brothers and his father.

  Sitting around in a shaded patio in the middle of a beautiful fall afternoon, two beers and a few mescals humming in his bloodstream, Wyatt closed his eyes and put his head back against the stucco wall and listened to Kevin Carson and his three sons as they spoke in an almost dead language he would never understand about whatever it was—their families, their work, their lives, the future.

  His half sister, pregnant Marissa, came out with half cups of coffee on a little tray. She let her three brothers grab theirs, but took the last two of them around the table. One, with some ceremony, she gave to Wyatt and the other she placed in front of her father, his father, pausing to lean over and sweetly kiss the top of his head.

  THEY GOT CHECKED INTO THE HOTEL and Wyatt told Tamara that if she didn’t mind, he was just going to lie down for a minute. If he could get a phone line to the States, maybe through the switchboard here, he was going to try to call Devin Juhle a little later and maybe see what he could find out about Lance Spencer, if he was still alive. But in the meanwhile, he could use a power nap. He was a little wrung out.

  “A little?”

  He shrugged, forced his lips into the semblance of a smile. “Maybe slightly more than a little.”

  “All right,” she said. “You sleep and I’ll go check my e-mails at their business center. Is your head okay?”

  “A little.”

  “You mean it hurts a little or it’s okay a little?”

  “A little of both.” He sat down on the bed. “That’s too many questions.”

  “Do you want me to wake you up?”

  “How ’bout in an hour?”

  “You’re sure that’s enough?”

  “It’ll have to be.”

  She was sitting across from him on the chair in front of the room’s desk, at about his eye level. “Wyatt,” she said. “You can take more than an hour. The world won’t end.”

  “It might,” he said. Then, “An hour would be fine. Really.”

  “That’s all you’re going to need?”

  “Not need,” he said. “Could use, that’s all.”

  She took in a breath. “Well, if you could use more, just let me know and I’ll let you go.”

  “I know. You’re great. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ve just got to get myself a little bit together.”

  She reached out and touched his knee. “I could stay and lie here next to you. I won’t get frisky, I promise.”

  “No. You go ahead. I’m fine.”

  “One hour alone and a quick nap and all this goes back where it needs to be, huh?”

  He managed a nod and swallowed whatever he was going to say. He was staring straight ahead but not really at her. At nothing. Finally, he sighed and said, “Oh, man,” in a tortured voice before he eased himself all the way down onto his back.

  “You want to scooch up to the pillows? You’ll be more comfortable.”

  He didn’t answer, so she shrugged and stood up to go into the bathroom for a minute. When she came out, he was still lying exactly as she’d left him, his eyes closed. But something about his body language stopped her and on closer inspection she saw that far from relaxing into sleep, he seemed to be in a state of high tension. He’d clenched his hands into fists at his sides and his breathing came in quick, shallow gasps.

  “Wyatt?” She reached down and touched his leg. “Wyatt, are you all right?”

  An involuntary moan, low and deep, came up from somewhere inside him and it called forth in Tamara a stab of real fear. This was a primal sound she’d never heard from him before and she had no idea what to do with it. She sat down on the bed next to him and placed a flat palm on his chest, where she felt his heart racing under his shirt. Lying down now, her face up close next to his, she whispered to him. “It’s okay. Shhh now. It’s okay.”

  But clearly it wasn’t okay. Wyatt turned away from her and all at once his legs were up and he was in the fetal position, and in that same moment, his whole body heaved as though from an electric shock in one great moment of release, and suddenly he was truly sobbing, gasping uncontrollably, curled up into himself, emitting unintelligible cries and a near-continuous moan.

  Terrified now at this breakdown, Tamara pulled herself against him and hugged his back, trying to get her arms around him—to comfort him, to hold him down. But he showed no sign that he was even aware of her. His body shook and spasmed against her as the sobs wracked him again and again.

  She held tight behind him and let it go on. She could do nothing to stop it in any event. Until finally—two minutes later? ten?—the deep, wrenching sobbing seemed to have succeeded in sapping him of all of his strength. The deep guttural moaning gave way to an exhausted mewling sound until eventually the gasping, too, subsided and at last he became still.

  AFTER THE CRYING JAG, he’d fallen into a deep sleep. Tamara pulled the covers up over him and he had stayed that way for the next four hours, occasionally calling out in an agitated fashion, but mostly on his side, curled up, silent. Tamara sat at the desk chair pretty much the whole time, thumbing through all the tourist magazines the hotel supplied to the rooms and then starting on a novel called The Art of Racing in the Rain that one of the earlier guests had left in the bookshelf. Given the high hurdle of disbelief she had to surmount because its narrator was a dog, she thought it was a damn good book, although because of her concerns about Wyatt, she had some trouble completely engaging with it.

  When around 8:15 she looked over and saw that he had at last opened his eyes, she put her book down and went over to sit by him, gently lowering herself, touching his face, running her hand down the length of his side.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  He closed his eyes and exhaled, and for a few seconds she thought that he hadn’t actually woken up after all, but then he opened his eyes again.

  “Everything’s all right,” she said. “You’re safe here.”

  No response.

  His eyes were open, but he was looking more or less through her.

  “Do you feel like you want to get up? I’m sure we could find some dinner somewhere. It’s still not too late.”

  He closed his eyes and began to rock himself back and forth.

  WYATT HAD COME TO AGAIN—if that was the word—and without much in the way of interaction had let her get him out of the bed and sitting up in the chair, where she’d put a blanket over him because he seemed to be cold. Then finally, about an hour ago, Tamara finally had let her mounting worries over Wyatt trump her fear that if she left him alone, he might either run away or do something else even more foolish. She had told him where she was going, then braved a run to the front desk to see if she could get some kind of help.

  When Tamara brought Dr. Gutierrez, an elderly man with a kindly manner and thank God excellent English, back to the room, Hunt was where she had left him
in the armchair, sitting up with his eyes closed, his face drawn and lifeless. Gutierrez immediately crossed to him and turned on the light over his chair.

  “Señor Hunt,” he said gently. “Can you hear me?”

  Wyatt opened his eyes and nodded.

  “I’m a doctor. How are you feeling?”

  It took a minute, but finally he dredged up a word. “Tired.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  Again, a weary nod, after which he closed his eyes again. “Tired,” he said again.

  The doctor turned back to Tamara. “How long has he been like this?”

  “I don’t know exactly. A couple of hours. He kind of had a breakdown earlier in the afternoon and then went to sleep.”

  “A breakdown?”

  “Crying. Sobbing, really. He’s been under a lot of pressure.”

  “He’s been drinking, too,” Gutierrez said.

  “Yes. Beer and mescal.”

  The doctor nodded, unsurprised. “Not the wisest combination.”

  “No. But I don’t think he was drunk. We were talking all the way home, and even after we got here. And then he just kind of broke down.”

  “The pressure you mentioned. It is emotional?”

  “He met his biological father for the first time today. He was adopted as a small child. He’s also been complaining of a migraine.”

  “So this has been going on?”

  “A few days at least, yes.”

  “Has he been sleeping?”

  “Very little. Two or three hours a day.”

  Gutierrez tsked. “Not enough. So this sounds to me like acute anxiety along with lack of sleep, which go together like beans and rice. And of course the alcohol does not help, either.”

  “So you’re saying he’s tired and he’s drunk?”

  The doctor’s face clouded over and he shook his head. “Oh no, señora, much more than that. He’s had what they would call in the States a nervous breakdown. He’s no longer able to cope emotionally with everything that has happened to him, so his conscious mind has simply shut down.”