Treasure Hunt

by John Lescroart

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Hunt replied, “but it’s an absolute fact.”

  Turner asked Hunt, “You think this is connected to Dominic?”

  “How could it be?” Hess asked the group at large. “How could any of this even be happening?”

  Carter, calm but firm, put a hand on Hess’s arm. “Lorraine. Think about it. How could it not be connected to Dominic?”

  “Nobody knows about that one way or the other,” Hunt said. “Cause of death was the same. Blunt force trauma to the head. Beyond that it’s all conjecture.”

  “So you’re saying someone killed her?” Turner asked.

  Hunt nodded. “Without a doubt.”

  “Lorraine’s right. This is unbelievable.” Jaime Sanchez put his arm around his wife and drew her in closer to himself. He looked to Hunt for an answer. “Do you have any idea what this is all about?”

  “No,” Hunt said. “The timing suggests a connection with Mr. Como’s death. Plus, Ms. Neshek called my offices on Monday night with a question about the reward.”

  “What was the question?” Turner asked.

  “She never got to ask it. She wanted to talk to me in person, but never got to it.”

  “And this is why we’re paying you?” Len Turner asked. “This and the Chronicle story this morning?”

  The question was so unexpected and so hostile that for a moment it stopped Hunt in his tracks. But not for too long. “I knew nothing about the CityTalk column until it came out this morning. And even if I had known about it, I would not have been able to stop it. Jeff Elliot writes what he wants. We are doing what you’re paying us to do, Mr. Turner. We’re following up leads as quickly and efficiently as we can.”

  Turner was fuming. “Well, I trust, Mr. Hunt, that you’ll also do the other thing that we’re paying you for, which is to keep us well-informed of the progress of your investigation. That seems to have become a problem.”

  Lorraine Hess interrupted. “So you’re saying these murders were about the money? They had to be about the money.”

  “Not at all,” Hunt said. “I don’t know what they’re about, though I do believe they’re connected.”

  “Nancy and Dominic ran very different operations, Mr. Hunt,” Turner said. “You’ve admitted that any connection between them was conjecture. Don’t you have anything specific to report to us in the way of progress?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t. We’ve had lots of phone calls and several interviews, although I don’t believe the police are close to an arrest yet. On either case.”

  “But poor Nancy.” Tears had overflowed onto Hess’s cheeks. “And you’re saying the police haven’t found anything at her house either? Nothing at all? I mean, this isn’t a situation like Dominic, found four days later floating in the lagoon. There must be something.”

  “I don’t know,” Hunt said. “They only discovered the body last night. I’m sure they haven’t gotten through sifting everything they got. Something may turn up.”

  “This just seems so hard to imagine,” Jimi Sanchez said. “Nancy and Dominic were the last people you’d ever—”

  But he was interrupted by what sounded to Hunt like a strangled cry right behind him.

  Turning, Hunt was still only a few feet from Ellen Como, who was standing now as if transfixed, her hand extended outward, her eyes focused on a spot somewhere in the back of the room. Following her line of vision, Hunt didn’t at first notice anything unusual, the large crowd mostly milling in front of one of the brochure- and pledge-card tables, until he heard Ellen’s voice again. “How dare that slut show her face in here!” And then raising her voice even further, speaking to no one and to everyone, Ellen Como went on, “Put her out! Put her out on the street where she belongs! Get her out of here now! Now! Do you hear me?”

  The suddenly silent crowd seemed to separate and open a corridor through the room and Hunt, standing right beside Lorraine Hess, found himself looking at a very attractive young woman in a plain black dress that hinted at an exquisite body beneath it. She was standing perfectly still with one hand held over her heart. Her eyes were wide in surprise at being thrust into the spotlight by this unexpected reaction, and this, if anything, made her, if possible, even more luminous.

  On the other side of Hunt, Al Carter spoke in a matter-of-fact tone—“I’ll get her”—and moved at the same time to escort the young woman, who Hunt immediately knew had to be Alicia Thorpe, out of the room.

  The exterior of the 2006 Lincoln Town Car was spotless and shone with a high gloss. The black leather seats, likewise, might as well have been brand-new. The trunk contained a spare tire, but no tire iron or any other tools or debris. It looked as though it had been vacuumed within the past day. All the nonleather internal soft surfaces—dashboard, steering wheel—had recently been wiped down with Armor All, which, as all cops and many miscreants know, does not readily yield fingerprints. Russo and Juhle stood by while the crime scene personnel lifted the front rugs on both sides and found nothing under them. The CSI team had also already shone their flashlights and used their whisk brooms under the nonremovable front seats. The entire exercise had so far yielded one paper clip, nearly hermetically wedged into the seat-belt connector on the driver’s side.

  The police impound garage doubled as a maintenance shed for city-issued cars, and looked very much like the service area of any gas station. Russo, on her knees, her own flashlight in hand, watched while crime scene personnel now felt around under the passenger-side track that allowed the seat to move forward and backward. The technician, in her surgical gloves, worked something back and forth gently until it came loose from its perch under the seat. The woman straightened up, cricking her back, held up for their inspection an unopened condom in its wrapper.

  “Eureka,” Russo said. “Getting warm now.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Juhle’s enthusiasm less than genuine. “That ought to break the case wide open.”

  “You wait.”

  After she placed the condom in a Ziploc bag, the tech opened the back door of the limo, waited for her partner to do the same on his side, and then the two of them lifted the backseat. Russo turned her flashlight beam to the area under the seat cushion itself and it illuminated what looked like a multicolored rag of some kind scrunched into a ball and caught there.

  “What’s that?” Juhle asked.

  The tech was extricating it with some care from the springs under the seat. She finally brought it out and held it up by one end so that it fell open and revealed itself as a silk head scarf in reds, yellows, and oranges. But all of it did not fall out; several folds in the silk appeared to be stuck to each other.

  The inspectors watched and waited while the technician pulled one of her standard tools—a Wood’s lamp—out of her kit and shone it on the scarf. Under its ultraviolet light, a smear of characteristic stains appeared as fluorescent.

  She made a face and held it out at arm’s length.

  “Semen,” she said.

  19

  Jim Parr got outside, then, noting the weather, immediately went back in and up the stairs to his place to get his heavy peacoat. And so by less than a minute he missed his first chance to catch the N-Judah bus to downtown. As he rounded the corner to the bus stop, he saw it pulling away and took the opportunity to dust off several of his favorite underutilized profanities.

  The next bus put him in the thick of the last- minute crowd rushing into the War Memorial building. He was standing in the middle of the crush of humanity at the bottom of the stairs when word traveled down that the Green Room had reached its capacity and that no one else could be admitted. Over the next twenty minutes, those members of the crowd who chose to remain, including Parr, managed to push themselves upstairs, where they got backed into the hallway that led to the doors inside of which the memorial was to take place.

  Jostled back and across the entire hallway and now near the entrance to the elevator, Parr had just about decided to call it a day when he saw his old acquaintance and success
or Al Carter approaching him, shouldering his way through the mass of people gathered between his spot and the Green Room’s door, his arm protectively around a tearful and perhaps frightened Alicia Thorpe.

  “Al!” he called out. “Alicia!”

  Carter raised a finger in acknowledgment.

  On an impulse, Parr pressed the button for the elevator. When it opened, he stepped back into it and held the door open as a few of the overload of mourners filed in before Carter and Alicia finally made it too.

  “Going down?”

  “Anywhere,” Carter replied, his arm still around Alicia’s shoulder wrap.

  Though she was clearly shaken, Alicia’s hooded expression barely allowed her to nod at Parr before she leaned her head against Carter’s chest. The doors closed in front of them and the elevator began its descent.

  On the ground floor, Carter stayed around long enough to exchange a few pleasantries with Parr. Then he turned to Alicia. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’d like to kill Ellen,” she said, “but otherwise . . .”

  “You got a way home?” Carter asked.

  “I’m good,” she said. “I drove myself down.”

  Parr cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t by any chance be going back my way, would you? Save me another Muni adventure.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Done.”

  Carter had made sure the guard at the door he’d exited upstairs knew he’d be coming back in. He was certain that he’d be readmitted, so he could afford these moments of pleasantries with Jim and Alicia, but clearly he wanted to get back up. After a few last encouraging words to Alicia, Carter left them both in the lobby and disappeared again into the elevator.

  When he was gone, Alicia turned to Parr. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Now they were speed-walking together on Van Ness into the teeth of the misty north wind. Alicia had parked a few blocks away and the walk to her car wasn’t much conducive to conversation.

  Once they were both in her car, the doors slammed shut and quickly locked behind them, they sat for another moment in silence, breathing heavily. Alicia fumbled in her purse, found her keys, turned the ignition on, and blasted the heater and then the fan all the way up.

  Parr still wore his heavy coat over his dress suit and it had cut the wind and cold to some extent. But Alicia—in her flimsy dress and woolen shawl—hugged herself with her hands up and down on opposite arms and took deep breaths and long exhales until she had gotten herself back to some sort of comfort.

  Eventually, she reached out and put her hands on the steering wheel, then gave Parr an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get so cold.”

  “I’ll forgive you this time. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Just cold.”

  “Maybe not just that, huh? What happened back there?”

  For an answer, she just shook her head. Her hands gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, her knuckles white. She turned away from Parr to study a green light’s worth of traffic as it passed outside her window. Slamming the car into gear, she released the parking brake, turned the wheel, again checked the traffic.

  Then, abruptly, another shudder of cold or something else went through her, and she shifted back into neutral and set the parking brake. She stared into some middle space somewhere out in front of her. “Fucking Ellen Como,” she said.

  “What about her?”

  “She saw me and went ballistic and kicked me out of there. She thinks I had a thing with Dominic.” She paused. “Which I did not. Thanks for not asking.”

  Parr shrugged. “None of my business.”

  “I’m not that kind of person, not with married men anyway. I just don’t get involved that way anymore. It’s nothing but trouble, you know?”

  Parr chortled. “Full disclosure. It’s not a big problem in my life.” “And Dominic wouldn’t have been any part of that anyway, no matter what. That wasn’t who he was either. You knew that, too, didn’t you?”

  Parr stopped looking at her. He folded his arms over his chest.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He hesitated. “People can change,” he said. “I believe that. I did.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the Dominic I knew maybe wasn’t the Dominic you knew.”

  She brought her hands down off the steering wheel, onto her lap. “You’re saying he used to play around.” Her startling green eyes took on a glassy brightness, as if tears were starting to form in them. She turned to face him. “Regularly? Often?”

  Parr shrugged.

  “And if that’s true, you don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Listen to me, darling. You tell me to my face that you walk on burning coals, I’m going to believe you. I’m just saying that for Dominic, the Dominic I knew, it might have been a little out of character if he didn’t even try.”

  She took a long beat and waited. “Did Mickey know that Dominic too?”

  “Mickey? I don’t know where Mickey—”

  She shook her head in impatience. “Come on, Jim. What I’m asking is if Mickey is assuming that I slept with Dominic too? The way everybody else is?”

  “Well, first, not everybody else is.”

  “That’s not an answer!” Her voice taking on a panicky tone. “Did you tell him that you thought I probably was?”

  “Easy, hon, easy. Mickey and I never talked about it. Not at all. I had my business with Dominic and Mickey has his life. He never asked about my opinion on any of this we’re talking about, and I wouldn’t have told him anything because I didn’t know anything. Now I do, but only because you’ve told me. And it’s still none of my business. Or his.”

  “No. I think it is his.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s just that Mickey’s investigating who killed Dominic. And I already told him what I told you, that Dominic and I were close but not that close, and if he thought that wasn’t true, then not only would I be a liar, but I’d have a motive, you see?”

  Parr reached over and patted her on the hand. “You’re overthinking this, darling. Mick’s not that complicated. You want an old man’s opinion, I’d say that he’s thinking about you and him, not about you and Dominic. And I couldn’t exactly say I’d blame him.”

  She all but blushed. “You’re sweet, Jim. That’s a sweet thing to say.”

  “I’m a sweet old fart all right. But the point is Mick’s on your side. We all are.”

  She let out a deep sigh. “I can’t tell you what a relief that is, Jim. Especially after what Ellen . . . what she did in there. I can’t have Mickey thinking I did this too. I didn’t. I really didn’t. You’ll tell him that, won’t you? And he’s got to believe me and you, too, then, right? To stand between me and the police. You see that, don’t you?”

  “ ’Course I do, darling. Even a blind man could see it.”

  “Well, all right then.” Taking another breath, she picked up Parr’s hand and kissed it. “Now let’s get you home,” she said.

  She pulled out into the traffic lane, got up a couple of blocks to California Street, and hung a left, heading west.

  “You know, if you don’t mind,” Parr said after a moment, “it’s out of the way, but maybe you could drop me out at Sutter.”

  “What for?”

  “I thought I’d talk to some people, see who’s hanging around, who knows what.”

  “Mickey said he was going to be out there talking to Al Carter.”

  Parr scratched at his cheek. “That’s Mickey and Al, and Al’s back there at the memorial. So I don’t think I’ll be in anybody’s way, not for a little while, at least.”

  “So what are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know exactly, except I’ll know it if I see it or hear it. Somebody always knows something, you know, even if they don’t know what it is. And what else am I doing with my time anyway? That is, if you
don’t mind the drive.”

  “The drive’s nothing. Driving’s what I do. I’ll be happy to take you out there.”

  “Even you,” he said after a bit.

  She shot a glance over to him. “Even me what?”

  “You drove Dominic that Tuesday morning, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “How long? Four hours? Five?”

  “Something like that. Why?”

  “You think hard enough, I bet you can remember something he said that would give you an idea about who he was meeting that night. ’Specially if you two were close, like you say. You talk about anything important with Dominic that morning? Anything unusual?”

  Her hands were again tight on the wheel, her eyes straight ahead, her brow creased in concentration or worry. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so. Nothing I can remember, anyway.”

  Linda Colores, heretofore the Hang-up Lady, tried to make herself comfortable on the one wooden chair that Tamara had set up across from her reception station in the outer office. But it didn’t seem to be working.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Ms. Colores, perhaps twenty-two years old, was a thin and stylishly dressed woman. She flashed a quick and apologetic smile, then raised a hand to her right temple. “I’m sorry. My head . . .”

  Tamara had already opened her desk drawer. “I’ve got some ibuprofen, if . . .”

  But Ms. Colores waved that off. “No. I’m sorry, but I know what it is. Food.”

  “Did you eat something that disagreed with you?”

  “No. Not food that way. I shouldn’t say food. I should say no food.” She stole a quick glance at her watch. “Is that the real time, eleven-fifteen?”

  Tamara checked her own watch, then the corner of her computer, saw that it was, and nodded. “Eleven-fifteen,” she said.

  Ms. Colores swallowed. “I’m so stupid. I’m out of bed at seven, I run five miles, I get ready for my appointment with you before I have to go and work all day, and I just forget one little thing. Actually, two. The first one is that I’m hypoglycemic. I don’t eat, my head explodes, and other things. The second thing I then forget is to actually put some food in my mouth.”