John Lescroart - Treasure Hunt

“Yes, sir.”

“And did you do that the day after you dropped off Mr. Como for the last time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And was there a condom in the car, or a scarf?”

“No, sir. Nothing like that.”

“But”-and here Hunt came back to Hess-“in fact, those items are exactly what the police did find. So the reason you were so sure there was evidence in the car, Lorraine, was that you put it there, didn’t you?”

Hess seemed rooted to the floor, unable to reply.

“My only question,” Hunt went on, “is if you stole the scarf intending to kill Dominic, or if you simply found it later and decided to use it to frame Alicia.”

“Lorraine?” Ellen Como asked a last time. “It’s you. Could it really have been you?”

Hunt, standing next to Juhle, took a step in Hess’s direction. “Do you want to tell us about the federal money, too, Lorraine? Dominic’s private safe? He not only broke it off with you, he discovered you’d been taking the money, too, didn’t he? He was going to let you go out at Sunset as well.”

“This is all wrong,” Hess said. “You don’t know this. You can’t prove any of it.”

“I don’t have to prove it, Lorraine. The police will have all the proof they need when they get a search warrant for your bank account, won’t they? When they find all the unexplained cash deposits. And when they talk to all the extra help you hired for your son, they’re going to find you paid with a lot more cash than you can explain, aren’t they? And even if you’ve got more cash stashed in other bank accounts, they’re going to find that, too, aren’t they?”

Lorraine Hess put her hands in the pockets of the ski parka she was wearing, then lifted out her right hand, in which she was holding a revolver. Juhle, caught completely off-guard, went to reach for his shoulder holster.

Hunt motioned for Juhle to stop, then turned and spoke calmly to Hess. “What are you going to do now, Lorraine? Kill us all? And then go on the run? Who’s going to take care of your son? And how long do you think it’s going to take the police to find you?”

Hess stood holding the gun in both of her hands, aiming it squarely at Hunt’s chest. Her eyes flitted over to Ellen Como, to Juhle, to Carter and Alicia, and then back to Hunt. No one seemed to be breathing.

But then at last, something shifted in Hess’s position, and she slowly began to lower the gun, then finally dropped it with a clatter onto the basketball court’s flooring at her feet.

Now staring with a pathetically blotched face at Juhle, she hung her head, wagged it disconsolately from side to side, then looked back at him. “Thank God,” she said. “Thank God. It’s finally over.” She met Juhle’s eyes. “I never meant… but it doesn’t matter what I meant now, does it?”

Hunt had crossed the circle and gotten his hands on the weapon. Now, that threat removed, he looked up at her. “Lorraine,” he said. “Jim Parr. Where’s Jim Parr?”

For an answer, Hess turned vaguely, almost wistfully, to Juhle. “I wonder if you could send somebody to see if my son Gary’s all right? I always worry about those pills I give him when I need him to sleep, that I might have given him too many.”

Juhle hated this.

He imagined himself in front of the Police Commission, explaining how he had gotten involved in this half-assed operation. And without his partner or any other backup. This was not how it was done, fraught with risk and uncertainty for everyone involved. He wondered and sincerely doubted if any other cop he knew would have made the kind of promise he’d made to Hunt; if any other homicide inspector, with an imminent arrest of his prime suspect in his pocket, would have postponed the moment and agreed to this amateur-hour charade. His only consolation was that when Hunt’s scenario failed-as it surely would-he would then pick up the Thorpe woman. Of course, the fact that Hunt had invited Roake along would complicate that arrest, but not impossibly so. Still, it galled Juhle that Hunt had never even mentioned Roake’s presence here as Thorpe’s attorney during their phone call. In fact, everything about this felt wrong to him. But, he told himself, that’s what happened when you believed your friends.

And people wondered why cops grew so jaded over time. It was because you were either in the brotherhood or you were not. You played by the rules or you didn’t.

Somehow Hunt had persuaded him he had no choice. And that, more than anything else, added to his fury and frustration.

Almost as soon as Juhle had arrived, Hunt suggested that they all come out now to the basketball court. Now Roake, Thorpe, and Dade sat together in consecutive chairs while Juhle stood behind them, arms crossed and his shoulder holster unbuttoned, where he could keep his eye on them as well as on whoever entered through the Brannan Street door. The lights were up; the temperature fairly cool, in the mid-sixties, the way Hunt liked to keep it.

They weren’t in there and settled for more than three or four minutes when the doorbell for this side of the warehouse rang and Al Carter, who for some reason Hunt had designated to greet the guests, crossed to the door by the garage entrance, opened it up, and said hello to Len Turner and a tall, thin, well-dressed young black man that Juhle guessed must be Keydrion Mugisa.

Inside his jacket, Juhle’s hand went to the butt of his duty weapon.

The doorbell rang again. As instructed, Carter opened the door again.

Quite clearly, Juhle heard him say, “Hello, Lorraine.”

And then he heard the voice of Lorraine Hess as she said, “Hi, Al, you dumb shit.”

And then the enormous boom of the shot.

Hunt was over by the residence side of the warehouse and broke for the door, jumping over Carter’s prone form. He got outside just as Lorraine Hess was running to get to her car, sitting and idling there at the curb fifty feet up the street, a couple of seconds after the unmistakable report.

“Hold it,” he yelled. “Stop!”

Stopping and turning in her tracks, but without any hesitation, she raised her arm and fired another shot. Hunt, seeing her arm coming up, dove sideways away from the building and heard the bullet ricochet off something back at the corner.

Hunt by this time was lying on the pavement, leveling his gun out in front of him, but he found that he could not fire. She was not then firing at him and it was bad luck to shoot in the back even an escaping murderer. To say nothing of the fact that under those conditions, it was nearly impossible to claim self-defense.

Even if it was. Even if she’d just shot at you.

Lorraine Hess got to the door of her car and again he saw her extend her arm, and again he rolled as the shot pinged off the pavement behind him.

Still on the ground, he squeezed off a round in the general direction of her tires. Off to his left, coming out his door, Juhle had his own weapon out, extended in both hands. He got off two quick shots that cracked the windshield before Hess got the car moving, and then Juhle had to jump backward inside the warehouse as she slammed it into gear and tried to run him down, smashing her front bumper into the side of the building, then bouncing off and coming on, faster now and off the curb.

Hunt, in her path now as well, rolled out into the street and the car passed him, missing him by no more than a few inches. He turned to see her disappear around the corner with a squeal of her tires, heard the diminishing roar of the engine as she sped away, and, lying there on the street, then heard Juhle’s professional voice talking urgently into his cell phone. “I’m calling to report a shooting victim at around Sixth and Brannan. Ambulance required immediately. Urgent, repeat, urgent.” And then, as he closed up the phone, “Son of a bitch.”