Treasure Hunt

by John Lescroart

  The day seemed to be getting off to a slow start again this morning following the closure of the admin offices until midafternoon of the day before for Como’s memorial. Al had dropped by here after his meeting with his brother and sister-in-law at the Mudhouse yesterday. He stayed just long enough to let his presence register and to pick up a stack of a hundred or so pledge cards—newly printed with a recent photo of a smiling and vibrant Dominic Como. All the Sunset people had been urged to hand these out to acquaintances, friends, and businesses, so it was good form to grab a bunch and disappear with them, although in Carter’s case, he simply tossed them into his garbage when he finally got home.

  Now he closed his umbrella and walked through the empty, echoing lobby. The teachers’ lounge, back behind the wide-open general offices area, seemed to have attracted everyone who’d so far come in to work today and it fairly hummed with low-key activity. Making his way through the desks and cubbies outside, when he got to the lounge door, he put on a confident and sober face, and waded into the crowd.

  Younger Battalion members mingled here democratically with both the clerical and executive staff. Someone had brought in doughnuts, and of course there was regular and decaf coffee and hot water for those who wanted tea or hot cider. But in spite of the sweets and drinks, between Como’s and Neshek’s deaths, yesterday’s CityTalk column, and the miserable weather, the mood in the room was decidedly somber.

  Al slapped some backs and made small talk as he negotiated his way through to the refreshment table. Not for nothing had he worked all those years with the consummate politician that was Dominic Como. He finally found himself holding a jelly doughnut and a cup of coffee, on the periphery of a small group of women that included his nominal new boss, Lorraine Hess.

  In a quick appraisal, Carter saw that the events of the past two weeks had played havoc with Hess’s looks. When Al had first come on at Sunset, she’d been in her mid- to upper thirties and quite attractive, vivacious and upbeat, with a body that was a little short of spectacular. Over the years, she’d softened her image, and her body tone, considerably until she began to fit Al’s description of the poster child for the aging female bureaucrat—large and gray. But especially when she smiled, which had until recently been quite often, her face had always retained something of its youthful glow and even beauty.

  But not today.

  Today she wore fatigue like a shroud that enveloped all of her. Her eyes, rimmed with dark bags, had sunk in over her hollowed-out cheeks. Even through the thick padding of imperfectly applied makeup, blotches were apparent on her forehead, on the imprecise, jowl-lined thickness of her jaw.

  The conversation she was engaged in with the other women around her concerned the AmeriCorps improprieties and what they would mean in terms of immediate funding, whether there would be layoffs, how it would affect Sunset’s ability to conduct business with the city. Hess, a master at these administrative and bureaucratic details, was holding her own against the onslaught, downplaying the threat, but Al could clearly see that on top of everything else she’d endured, these topics and her people were wearing her down.

  He decided to rescue her. “Pardon me for butting in,” he said, “but Lorraine’s telling you the truth. It’s not going to change anything. Dominic knew all about this long ago too. He was trying to get it all straightened out behind the scenes before they went public with it, but . . . well, we know what happened before he could do that.

  “But the plain fact is, and we’ve all heard him say it a hundred times, that with government funding, when you get a difference of opinion, one side is going to say that the other is guilty of sin. That’s discouraging, especially when we’re set on helping others. But the thing we have to do now, all of us, is just to forget about all this bad news and go back about our work and not concern ourselves with things over which we don’t have control. First of all, Len Turner and Dominic were already talking about appealing the suspension of funding, and next, when Lorraine takes over here full-time, she’ll convince these auditors that all of these are insignificant issues that have, for the most part, been resolved. Isn’t that right, Lorraine?”

  She forced a weary smile. “Exactly. That’s what I’ve been trying to say. This isn’t the time to panic, but to buckle down and do our work. And, Al”—now the smile came to bloom—“for a minute there, you sounded like you were channeling Dominic.”

  “I think after eight years he may have rubbed off some.”

  “Well, keep him around if you can.”

  Al showed some of his own teeth. “I intend to.”

  The bell, indicating the first period of the school day, sounded, and Al more or less naturally fell into step beside Hess as she headed back toward her office. When they’d cleared the lounge, she took his arm and leaned in toward him. “Thank you for that in there.”

  He shrugged. “They’re just worried. It’s a hard time.”

  “Tell me about it. But I’m still very grateful for your help speaking up. It gets tiresome talking about it.”

  And then she was opening her office door and they were inside. Hess went around her desk and, sighing, lowered herself into her chair.

  “I wanted to ask you,” Al began, “any word on when we get the limo back?”

  She shook her head. “Shouldn’t be too long. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, nobody’s noticed too much yet, but I don’t seem to have a job. I’ve been filling the hours distributing pledge cards, but . . .” He trailed off with a hopeful smile.

  “But that’s hardly the most productive use of your time.”

  “Well, yes, that. But more, I was wondering about . . . later.”

  “In what sense?”

  “I mean, when you move up, the whole question of the limo. If you’d be doing the job the same way Dominic did. In that way.”

  From her reaction, it might have been the first time she’d considered that question. She cocked her head to one side, let the beginning of a small thoughtful smile hover at her lips for a moment. “If you’re asking me will I be needing a driver,” she said, “I can’t imagine doing the job without one. And I also can’t imagine it being anyone but you, Al. Does that answer your question?”

  He didn’t want to appear either too grateful or too needy, so he simply nodded. “Yes, ma’am, it does. Thank you.”

  So great was Hunt’s fury that he didn’t trust himself to come out of his office and face Mickey again. After first verifying that Mickey had independent transportation around town—Tamara’s Volkswagen—he gave his orders to Tamara by intercom that Mickey was to get the identity of everybody who’d been at the Monday night Communities of Opportunity meeting at City Hall, and then get all of their alibis: what they’d done after they’d left the meeting. That ought to take Mickey the rest of the day and maybe then some, Hunt thought, and it might possibly, though not definitely, keep Hunt from killing or maiming his young, gullible, dumb-shit associate.

  When he was sure Mickey had gone, Hunt stood up, opened his door, went into the outer office, and put a haunch on the corner of Tamara’s desk. “Did he tell you?”

  “Uh-huh. Basically. She’s at your place.”

  “If she hasn’t stolen my goods and lit out for the border already. But did he also tell you about her lying to the police?”

  Her brow clouded. “I think he left out that part.”

  Hunt filled her in. “And you know what this means, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, forgetting the obvious obstruction of justice, and let’s do that, this is the one bit of information that, if she tells it to Devin or Sarah, puts her in jail.”

  “Why?”

  “Because getting fired on the last day of Dominic’s life counts, believe me. If we only know about that from Ellen Como, it’s just what she thinks Dominic intended to do. If we get it from Carter, it’s what he thinks he overheard. But if it’s an admission we get directly from Alicia, guess what? It’s a fact.” He slamm
ed a palm on her desk. “Shit. Pardon the language.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You should have heard me last night.”

  “What were you swearing at?”

  “The idiots at the hospital. You don’t want to know. Oh, and then Jim. He never came home.”

  Hunt took a long beat. “Jim didn’t come home? Till when?”

  “So far, till the last time I tried to reach him, which is like ten minutes ago.” She gave Hunt the excuses she’d fed herself last night. He had been planning on going to the Como memorial. After that, he might . . . or he might . . . finally, she ran out of steam. “He just could have picked a better night,” she concluded. “That’s all.”

  “Let’s hope that’s all.”

  As soon as he’d said them, he regretted the words. And Tamara called him on it. “What do you mean, ‘Let’s hope that’s all’?”

  Hunt hesitated, wanting to avoid coming out with it directly. But there didn’t seem to be any other way. “I mean, if he went to the memorial, Tam, maybe he met somebody there among our group of possible suspects. Which I wouldn’t want to think. But you know, I was there, and I never saw him.”

  “Maybe he never got there.”

  “Or couldn’t get in. The place was packed.”

  “Okay.” She assayed a low-wattage smile. “Now we can say ‘Let’s hope that’s all.’ I just wish he’d turn up.”

  Hunt slid off the edge of her desk. “Me, too, hon. Me too.”

  Back in his office again, Hunt couldn’t seem to get himself focused. As long as there was a question about whether Alicia had actually been fired that Tuesday morning, he could live with the presumption of her innocence. Knowing that Dominic had in fact fired her, and that she’d lied about it, washed a great portion of his personal doubt away.

  And now this woman was staying at his home.

  Also, he had to call Juhle, but how was he going to talk to him, knowing what he now knew? The subject would come up, and then Hunt would be withholding evidence in a murder investigation. Talk about losing his license. But beyond that, how did he justify it? How could he live with himself?

  His brain kept running back to Alicia having free run of his place. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember if he’d turned the combination lock on his gun safe when he’d closed it up after taking out the gun he was carrying. What if she did a thorough search? Had he folded the throw rug back down over the loosened board? Had he even made sure that the board was flush and secure? No matter what, he told himself, he’d have to go home and check that.

  He had Tamara call and verify that she was still there. Yep.

  And now the phone on his desk chimed. Gingerly, he picked up the receiver. “What’s up?” he asked Tamara.

  “There’s two gentlemen out here to see you, sir. Mr. Len Turner and an associate. He doesn’t have an appointment, but says you’ll want to talk to him.”

  “He’s right,” Hunt said. Quickly, without conscious thought, he reached around and checked the weight of his gun, tucked into a holster attached to the center of his belt at his back. “Send him in.”

  Turner’s African-American associate, whom he introduced first thing as Battalion Colonel Keydrion Mugisa, looked to be about twenty-five. He stood about six foot three and certainly weighed less than a hundred and seventy pounds. This lack of heft did not make him less intimidating, though. His handshake was cool, and in spite of its brevity, apparent effortlessness, and the polite accompanying nod for a greeting, it was crushing. Under his classic trench coat, he was well-dressed in light green slacks, a light brown dress shirt, a thin dark-brown tie, and an olive sport coat. He wore his hair Obama-style. The skin of his face was very black and smooth; his eyes dark brown, flat, unexpressive. A well-trimmed goatee surrounded a thin mouth that stayed closed.

  In a thousand-dollar pinstripe business suit, Turner took Hunt’s hand in both of his as though they were by now old friends. One of the flaws of Hunt’s office was lack of seating space, but Tamara brought in the chair from outside, then closed the door behind her on her way out.

  “So,” Hunt began when everybody was comfortable. “How can I help you?”

  “Actually,” Turner said, “I thought I might be able to help you.”

  “That would be great. I can use all the help I can get.”

  “I think we all can. But after our discussion yesterday, I really came away with the impression that you may be widening the scope of your involvement in this matter in a way that nobody really intended when we decided to bring you on board. When we originally spoke, as I’m sure you remember, the idea was that your function would be to help the police analyze the quality of the information that came in on the reward hotline, and then turn the valid or promising leads over to them. Does that ring a bell?”

  Hunt smiled cooperatively. “That’s pretty much it.”

  Turner smiled back at him. “That’s what I’d understood. And in fact it’s why I agreed on behalf of the reward participants to take you on board. It seemed a valuable service worth the fee you were charging.”

  “Thank you. I think we’ve already saved the police a lot of needless legwork, and frankly, we’ve turned up some valuable evidence in the process. The probable murder weapon, for example. From one of our callers. They seem pretty happy with what we’re doing so far—no complaints, anyway.”

  “Yes, but, well . . .” Turner crossed a leg. The hostile tone he’d adopted the day before was nowhere to be seen, although the presence of Mugisa, to Hunt, lent a tone of unstated threat to the meeting. “It seemed to me that yesterday you had taken that initial assignment and expanded it to include suspicions of some of us in the charitable community.”

  Hunt said nothing. He sat up straight with his hands clasped lightly on the desk in front of him. He adopted an inquisitive air, staring at Turner.

  “My point,” Turner said at last, “is that your fees for assisting us in this reward endeavor are adequate and acceptable to us, but that if you are diluting your efforts on our behalf in an independent investigation, perhaps we will have to reconsider our agreement. We need somebody whose loyalty is undivided, Mr. Hunt, and whose concentration is totally focused on the job for which we’re paying you. If you can’t give us that loyalty and focus, we’ll need to find someone who can.” He held up his hand. “I am responsible for the administration of this reward fund. It’s my responsibility to see that the integrity of the process is uncompromised.”

  After this little speech, Hunt nodded thoughtfully. “Nancy Neshek was one of the very first calls on the reward line, Mr. Turner. She was killed that same night, just after a meeting of your Communities of Opportunity. My staff and I are simply following up on her call to this office, a call that might have indirectly or directly led to her murder. The police think this is a reasonable assumption and, further, that her death is probably related in some way to Mr. Como’s.

  “I would think, Mr. Turner, that it would be in the interests of those who put up the reward to have us ensure not only that information is appropriately transmitted to the police, but that also they are not personally at risk because of their inadvertent connection to these terrible events. But of course, if it is your instruction that we not consider that possibility, then naturally we’ll do as we are instructed. Do you think it would be better if I explain the situation personally to the people who’ve put up the largest parts of the reward?”

  Turner gave it a minute before responding. “I don’t think so, no. I can take care of that. If you come upon anything that concerns you in this regard, you communicate it to me first and I’ll make the decision on who, if anyone, we need to contact. How’s that sound?”

  Sounds like a stalemate, Hunt thought to himself. He couldn’t do anything Turner told him not to do. But Turner couldn’t very well tell him to ignore any possible threat to the people who had put up the reward. In other words, he could keep doing what he’d been doing all along and remain on the payroll. “It sounds like it ought to w
ork,” he said. And then, losing his stomach for this circumlocution, Hunt cut back to his point. “So did Como and Neshek have a personal relationship I don’t know about?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. They were professional colleagues, no more.”

  “So the two of them being killed within a week of one another, and she on the day she called our reward line about his murder, that was a coincidence?”

  “Possibly, though you’re right, it doesn’t seem likely. But looking for an answer among the professional community I work with is not going to get you anywhere, I can guarantee you.”

  “What I’m doing is looking for an answer anywhere and everywhere. And to that end, here’s one I’d like now, if you can give it to me: What did you do last Monday night after your COO meeting?”

  Turner’s eyes flared briefly. He glanced over at Mugisa, who, during this entire discussion, might as well have been a block of stone. Finally, back at Hunt, he shook his head in apparent disappointment. “I don’t think you’ve heard a word I’ve said, Mr. Hunt, but for the record, I stayed on at City Hall with some members of my staff, including Keydrion here.” He turned to the young man. “We left at about what time, Key, nine?”

  “Nine.”

  “So nine. I live with my wife and two children on Seventeenth Avenue near California. I got home at nine-fifteen, nine-twenty at the latest. My oldest, Ben, had five friends over making a float for their homecoming parade in my living room and all of them greeted me when I got home. How’s that?”

  “That’s good,” Hunt said. Then he looked to Turner’s companion. “How about you, Keydrion? You go straight home after you dropped him off?”

  Turner shook his head again in apparent disgust. “Let’s go, Key,” he said.

  Hunt brought the visitor’s chair out of his office after they’d gone. He put it in its normal place across from Tamara by the window. “Any word about Jim?” he asked.