Treasure Hunt

by John Lescroart

  “Sure.”

  “The police impounded the limo last night. Do you have any idea why?”

  “I presume they wanted to search it more thoroughly.”

  “For what?”

  “For whatever they find. You know they think they have the murder weapon?”

  This brought a little snort. “Yes. Lorraine Hess told me. The tire iron.”

  “Not necessarily the tire iron from the limo, but a tire iron certainly.”

  “And are they sure?”

  “Reasonably, yes. Unless there’s some way Dominic Como’s hair ended up on another tire iron that found its way into the Palace’s lagoon.”

  “Yes.” Carter’s smile did not reach to his eyes. “That would be an impressive long shot. So, presumably I had access to the tire iron more than most. Am I then a suspect?”

  “I haven’t heard that from the police. I don’t believe they have a suspect yet.”

  “Ah, I was forgetting. We don’t have suspects anymore, do we? Only persons of interest. The vocabulary change affords me little comfort.” Carter’s lips pursed out, and then in. His facial muscles moved in a way that suggested he was trying to smile, but this time, his lips could not hold the expression. “Let me ask you this, then, Mr. Hunt. Among the potential suspects—people with access to the limo and the tire iron and so on—are there any other black men with prison time in their background?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Can you appreciate why this might be a matter of some concern to me? Of more than average concern?”

  “Obviously. Don’t take this wrong, but might someone come to the conclusion that you had some kind of a motive?”

  Carter’s eyes closed down almost to slits before he opened them again as the broad expressive face fell into relaxation. “I’ve had the job eight years. I’m an ex-convict. All the demographics predict that I shouldn’t have a steady job, much less an education, and yet I do. All compliments of Dominic, a generous and powerful man.”

  “But there was a price,” Hunt said.

  “If he wanted to go, if he needed to go, doesn’t matter where it was, what time it was, how long you had to wait for him, whatever he was doing, you either took him and took it or he’d find someone else who would. This was unstated and intuitively understood. And an absolute job requirement.”

  “So you were essentially on call all the time? Even with the other drivers he used?”

  This brought a mirthless laugh. “Again, I don’t mean any kind of slur. Dominic was a great man. It was a privilege to work for him. But for the interns, the younger people without criminal records, the girls . . . there wasn’t much in the line of actual driving, except to our work sites. Certainly they did not drive him to open- ended events, nighttime meetings with partners and constituents, other things. . . .”

  “Women?”

  Carter’s smile and gesture were ambiguous. “In any event,” he said, “with the other drivers, the relationship was symbiotic. Dominic got good, presentable, inexpensive help, and then he placed that help with other people in the city who could help him. You want tickets to the Giants? The Warriors? The Niners? You want a parking ticket fixed? Or, more likely, a drug bust. You’d like the ear of your supervisor on a development issue?”

  “But that wasn’t you? You weren’t in line for one of those jobs?”

  “No. I was a lifer. I am a lifer. Except now, with him gone . . .” He spread his hands.

  “And you’re concerned that someone might take that as a motive? That you wanted out?”

  “Perhaps unwisely, I mentioned it to a few people. And I don’t really know if I did want that. What else would I do? What am I going to do now? But did I sometimes feel trapped? Yes. Might Dominic have heard about it and fired me? Perhaps. He didn’t tolerate disloyalty, even the hint of it. He might even have fired me on Tuesday.”

  Hunt nodded. “Well, as motives go, I’d call that pretty weak. Even if anyone could prove it.”

  “I agree. But my so-called alibis for both nights are also flimsy. I live alone and I was at home alone both nights. So, combined with my record, my race, the motive, the lack of alibi, and the fact that except for his killer, I was the last person to see him, the police—”

  “I see what you’re saying.”

  “Well, no, I’m not sure that you do, since I haven’t said it yet.”

  Hunt waited.

  “I’ve wanted to stay out of all of this to the extent that I could. Reward or no reward, I know how the police often go about their work. And I’m afraid—you see, it’s already happened to me once before—I’m afraid that they might find in me a path of least resistance. That’s the only reason I’ve decided to talk to you.”

  “You know something.”

  “Yes. And I only mention it with great reluctance because of everything I’ve told you about here today. I wanted you to understand me. If they don’t have someone else, there’s a likelihood they’re going to come knocking at my door.” He took a breath and held it, his lips again pursed and tight. “He fired Alicia Thorpe that morning.”

  21

  “Yeah, we’re sitting outside her place right now, hoping to talk to her,” Juhle said. “Got any idea where she might be?”

  Hunt was in his car talking on his cell phone, which miraculously had a strong signal two floors down in the City Hall lot. After finishing up with Al Carter, he’d half jogged through the thickening drizzle, gotten to his car, and punched in Juhle’s number. “Sorry. I know where she was an hour ago, and that was here. But Ellen Como had her kicked out.”

  “She could do that?”

  “It was her party, Devin. She could do anything she wanted. It wasn’t very pretty.” He paused. “So what did you get?”

  Juhle ran down the latest link in the chain that was apparently beginning to close around Alicia Thorpe. “At least,” Juhle concluded, “if it’s her scarf . . .”

  “Why do you think it’s hers?”

  “She’s the only female driver. The scarf’s in the limo. Hello? Anyway, at least it gives us something to ask her about. Not to mention Carter corroborating Ellen’s story that Dominic fired her. You believe him?”

  “Yep.”

  “On the very day? We got that right?”

  “Tuesday morning.”

  “Did Carter change his story, then, about who Como was going to see?”

  “No. He didn’t know that. Dominic said he was meeting an old friend and didn’t go into it. In truth, it might not have been Alicia. But Carter thought it might have been. So how long before you find out about the semen? If it was Como’s.”

  “As opposed to whose?”

  “I don’t know, Dev. Maybe as opposed to any other guy who’d ever been in the limo getting some head from somebody wearing a scarf. Where’d you find it in the limo, anyway? The scarf?”

  “Under the backseat. Why?”

  “Just trying to picture the scenario that gets Dominic into the backseat.”

  “That’s where people sit in limos, Wyatt.”

  “Yeah, mostly, I know. Except I don’t think Como did. I read that somewhere. Or saw his picture. Something, maybe both. He prided himself on being a regular guy, sitting in the passenger seat up front. I’m sure of that.”

  “And what’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. So how long?”

  “How long what?”

  “Before you know the semen was Dominic’s.”

  “DNA? About the same as the DNA on the tire iron. Round it off to four days, maybe six, multiply by the phase of the moon, divide by, I don’t know, let’s say fourteen. It’s anybody’s guess. But after today, we may not need it until the trial. We’ll see.”

  “You think you’re near an arrest?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “It would be great if you could say something else besides ‘We’ll see.’ ”

  “It would, I know.”

  “Well, keep me in the loop.”

>   “We’ll see.” Juhle’s tone was distinctly ironic. “Hey, this could be her. Gotta run.” And he broke off the connection.

  Alicia pulled up to the curb outside the house where she rented her basement room and sat unmoving, staring straight ahead, in the driver’s seat with the motor running, her hands locked onto the steering wheel. She had her lights on and the windshield wipers swished back and forth intermittently.

  “What’s she doing?” Juhle asked.

  “I don’t know. Waiting for her favorite song to end? Meditating?”

  Juhle gave her a full minute before his patience ran out. He got out of his own car, crossed the street, came up behind her, and knocked on the driver’s side window.

  Startled, Alicia jerked her hands away from the wheel and her head toward Juhle, who wore a practiced professional expression and held his badge open next to the window.

  After a brief moment of what he took to be confusion, she moved one hand over to the door and the window came down.

  “Yes?”

  “Ms. Thorpe. Inspector Juhle, you may remember. I wonder if we could ask you just a few more questions?”

  She dropped her head before lifting it back up again. Then she dredged half a smile from somewhere, said, “Sure,” grabbed her purse, rolled up the window, and pushed open the door.

  By this time, Russo had joined Juhle, and now the three of them marched across the lawn and down the side path that led to the entrance to her room in the back. The wind wasn’t as strong as it had been downtown, although the mist and drizzle out here had intensified into true rain, falling straight down on them.

  It didn’t make any of them walk any more quickly.

  When they got inside with the door closed behind them, Alicia hit the lights and adjusted the thermostat, then turned. “I’m just going to throw on a pullover, if that’s okay.” She crossed the room and took down a bright green knitted sweater that was hanging from a peg on the opposite wall, and brought it over her head. Coming back to them, she got to the table and pulled out one of its chairs, indicating that they do the same.

  They all sat.

  “I’m supposed to be at work in about an hour and a half. Should I call them and tell them I’ll be late?”

  Juhle and Russo exchanged a glance, and Russo said, “I don’t think we’ll be that long, but if we get close, you’ll have that opportunity. Okay?”

  “Fine.” She looked from one inspector to the other. “So.” She drew a breath. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well,” Juhle began, “as I said, we’ve got a few more questions for you.”

  “About Mr. Como?”

  Russo had gone solemn, and she nodded. “Him and a few other things, yes.”

  “Am I some kind of a suspect?” Alicia asked.

  Juhle answered. “We haven’t identified any true suspects yet, Ms. Thorpe. We’re trying to fill in gaps in our understanding at this time. And hope you might be able to help us.”

  “So I’m not under arrest?”

  “You are absolutely not under arrest,” Juhle said. “You don’t have to talk to us at all and can terminate this interview at any time.”

  “So I don’t need to call a lawyer?”

  Russo forced a conspiratorial smile. “If you want to call a lawyer, Alicia, that is your right,” she said. “We could wait here for him or her to show up, or make another appointment later. But we are hoping to keep making progress on this case and thought you would want to help us keep it moving along to catch Mr. Como’s killer.”

  “It shouldn’t take us more than a half hour,” Juhle added. “Maybe less.”

  “Okay,” Alicia said. “In that case . . .”

  “Great. Thank you.” Juhle took out his pocket tape recorder and placed it on the table between them. “We’ll just be taping what we say to preserve an accurate record. We did this last time, too, you recall?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” Juhle pushed away from the table and leaned back in his wooden chair. He crossed one leg over the other, his body language clearly stating that he was no threat to Alicia or to anyone else. “I apologize if we cover a few things we went through last time, but we’ve been talking to a lot of people and sometimes we lose track of the sources of certain information.”

  This was the purest of twaddle, and Juhle knew it. What he was really hoping was that Alicia would contradict her earlier answers, and thus give them substantial leverage. And of course, if Alicia had elected to wait to talk to a lawyer, she would have known this. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. She didn’t even seem to realize it might be a troublesome issue.

  “Now, then,” Juhle began, “you’d been driving for Mr. Como for how long?”

  Tag-teaming, Juhle and Russo walked her through most of her earlier statement—her service at Sunset, her duties as Como’s driver, her perceptions of some other key members of the staff at the Ortega campus—and finally got to her personal relationship with her boss, which she answered as she always had. They were close friends, but not intimate.

  Juhle kept it casual. “So, once again, you did not have any kind of physical relationship with Mr. Como?”

  “No.”

  “Never kissed him?”

  She hesitated. “Not in a romantic way, no.”

  Russo picked up the distinction. “What other way did you kiss him, then?”

  Alicia showed her first sign of true frustration, a sigh accompanied by a slight puckering around her lips. “More like a buss on the cheek, sometimes, when I’d first see him or when I was leaving.”

  “Both?” Russo asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  Russo wasn’t letting it go. “Usually?”

  Pausing again, nodding, Alicia said, “By the end, yes. Most days. Just like friends do. Maybe a small hug and a little kiss hello.”

  “A hug and a kiss, then?” Juhle asked.

  “Not a big hug. Really just like a greeting or a good-bye.” She leveled her gaze at both of the inspectors in turn. “Come on, you guys. You know what I’m talking about. We usually kissed hello and good-bye, just like I’d do with my brother. It wasn’t sexual. We had become friends, that’s all.”

  Juhle asked, “And you were still friends on the day he was killed?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Russo: “You weren’t having any troubles at work?”

  “No.”

  “None?”

  Alicia straightened up in her chair. “What’s this about?”

  Russo came forward, but did not answer her. Instead, she said, “You were at Mr. Como’s service this morning.”

  “Not for long.”

  “We understand that Mrs. Como asked you to leave.”

  A bitter chuckle. “If that’s how you want to put it.”

  Juhle asked, “How would you put it?”

  “Were you there?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, the way I’d put it is she had me thrown out.”

  “Why would she have wanted to do that?” Russo asked.

  “Because she’s a crazy woman,” Alicia said. “She thinks I had something going on with Dominic, which I think we’ve been through enough, huh?”

  “Were you aware,” Juhle said, “that she demanded that Mr. Como fire you?”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing she did would surprise me.”

  “But Mr. Como didn’t tell you that?”

  “What?”

  “That his wife wanted him to fire you.”

  “No. When?”

  “Anytime. It never came up?”

  “No. Never.”

  Sarah Russo, her hands clasped in front of her on the table, raised her head. “And he didn’t, in fact, fire you?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “That last Tuesday was just another day at the office for you,” Juhle said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. God knows, I’ve thought about it enough, tryi
ng to remember any hint he might have given me while we were on the road about his appointment that night. But it was just a normal day.”

  “Tuesday, you mean?”

  “Right. That last Tuesday.”

  “But you didn’t come into work the next day?” Russo asked.

  “Yes, I did. I went home when I saw Dominic wasn’t there.”

  “And what about the day after that?”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you come in then?”

  Alicia paused. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Alicia hesitated a moment longer. “Well, Dominic wasn’t in, so there wouldn’t have been anything for me to do.”

  Russo, on a scent, came forward. “How did you know he wasn’t in?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—it’s a straightforward question—how did you know Dominic wasn’t in?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I must have called.”

  “You must have called? Why would you have called? Did you call most mornings to see if he was at work before you came in?”

  “No. Sometimes. I must have those days. Or I had heard he was missing. I think that was probably it. His wife by then had said he was missing.” Alicia’s eyes were bright with emotion, and suddenly she found a voice for it. “And while we’re on that, listen,” she said. “I’ve been sitting here letting you guys ask me all these questions, but don’t you think—forget all these innuendoes about me and Dominic—don’t you think it’s just a little suspicious that his wife didn’t even call to report him missing until he was already gone for a whole day? Isn’t that a little hard to explain? Doesn’t that bother you at all? Plus the fact that Mrs. Como is the one who was jealous, regardless of whether I gave her a reason to be or not. And I didn’t. She’s the one who thought Dominic was cheating on her, and if she thought that, she might have wanted to kill him for it. Doesn’t that make more sense than sniffing all around me?”

  Juhle raised his eyebrows at his partner. He wasn’t here to tell Alicia everything or anything that they knew, or assumed: that Ellen Como had had no real access to the presumed murder weapon, that they had no indication or information that she’d ever ridden or even been in her husband’s limo, and hence couldn’t have left a possibly incriminating scarf there, that both Ellen and Al Carter, apparently independently, had stated unequivocally that Dominic had in fact fired Alicia on his last morning at work. Ellen’s behavior and unsubstantiated alibi notwithstanding, she was not really their prime suspect. Although of course they had not totally written her off.