John Lescroart - Treasure Hunt

He started to say something, but could only manage a guttural gurgle.

“It’s okay, Jim,” Tamara whispered through her enthusiasm. “It’s Tam. You’re going to be okay.” He closed his eyes again for a moment and in that time Tamara pressed the call button by the head of the bed.

Almost immediately a nurse was next to her, checking his vitals, glancing with concern at the monitor.

“He’s awake,” Tamara said. “He just tried to talk to me.” And Jim opened his eyes again. “Maybe he could have some water?”

“Water’s always good,” the nurse said. She poured a glassful from the pitcher near his bed, put in a straw, and directed it to Jim’s mouth.

After swallowing two or three times, he lifted his head slightly and the straw came out. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Kaiser,” Tamara said. “You got shot? Do you remember?”

Shaking his head no, Jim closed his eyes again. His chest rose and fell under his blankets. When he opened his eyes again, Tamara thought she detected some vestigial sign of his old spark. “I thought she hit people on the head,” he said.

“You do remember.”

An infinitesimal nod. “Lorraine.”

“Right.”

He sighed. “Como and her.”

“Yep.”

“I thought I remembered that. But I didn’t want to say until I was sure.”

“You remembered right.”

“Mickey told me not to go. But I had to find out.”

“That’s all right. Don’t worry about that now.”

“He’s gonna bust my ass.”

“Probably.”

He paused to take a weary breath or two. “But a gun?”

“Her ex-husband’s. After the first two, she thought it would be cleaner.”

A small ripple of what might have been laughter, or at least ironic amusement, shook him. “And look at me. How do you like that?”

“A lot, Jim. I like it a lot.”

He closed his eyes as if savoring the moment. “So where is she now?”

“In jail.”

Again, he nodded. Closed his eyes.

“He’s tired,” the nurse said. “Maybe that’s enough for today.”

“Okay.” Tamara wasn’t going to push it. She squeezed his hand again and felt the small but definite response. His mouth creased upward marginally. She stood up and leaned in to plant a kiss on his cheek. “I’ll bring in Mickey tomorrow,” she whispered. “Meanwhile, you keep getting better.”

She started to take her hand out from under his, but suddenly, he squeezed hard enough to hold her and opened his eyes one more time. “Tam?”

“Yeah?”

“You still eating?”

“Every day, Jim. Every day.”

“Good. Don’t stop that again.”

“I won’t.”

He patted her hand. “That’s my big favorite girl.” With a final small nod, he closed his eyes once again, and the pressure of his hand holding hers went away.

Watching him, she stood still long enough to see his chest rise and fall a few times, then pulled her hand out from under his and turned for the door.

Various legal technicalities and the perennially overcrowded San Francisco court docket held up the arraignment of Lorraine Hess, but Hunt was in the Department 11 courtroom that Friday morning and listened to her plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to two counts of first degree murder, one count of attempted murder, and assault with a deadly weapon.

Just after she was led back to the holding cells, Hunt walked across the lobby of the Hall of Justice. Outside, he stood on the steps in the windy sunshine and debated with himself whether he should go back inside and try to talk to Juhle. But he was reluctant to put himself in the position of seeming to apologize for his unorthodox ways.

After all, in spite of even Gina’s concerns that he’d acted recklessly, he had delivered Dominic Como’s and Nancy Neshek’s murderer into Juhle’s hands without even a minor scuffle. In the process, he’d saved his friend, and Russo as well, from another false or, at best, deeply flawed arrest.

If Juhle didn’t like the way Hunt had done that job, that was just too bad. When you’re at the table and your hand comes in, you’ve got to bet it and play it now, and that’s what Hunt had done.

Sure, it could have gone differently. Granted, there were more risks involved than Juhle and even Gina felt comfortable with, but the fact was that Hunt was not a cop. He was a private investigator and didn’t have to abide by the written and unwritten rules of the police force. If Juhle didn’t like that, he’d have to get over it.

He checked his watch, scanned the traffic as it flowed by him on Bryant, then descended the steps and jaywalked across the street, to where Lou the Greek’s was probably just starting to serve the day’s first orders of the Special, whatever that might turn out to be.

If Hunt went right down now, he could get a table with no wait.

He was halfway through his Yeanling Clay Bowl, sitting at a two-top that faced away from the entrance and the bar, when a shadow crossed his table and in the next second Juhle was in the chair across from him.

“I saw you in there,” Juhle said without preamble. “I love that she pleaded not guilty.”

Hunt shrugged. “How does she do that after she confessed?”

“Happens all the time,” Juhle said. “You’d be surprised.” He pointed at Hunt’s food. “Yeanling Clay Bowl?”

Hunt nodded. “And the yeanling today is especially fresh and tasty.”

“Do I have time to get some and talk to you, or are you running out to solve another crime?”

“I’ve got no crimes on the agenda. I’m back to litigation work. Not that I’m complaining. There’s suddenly a ton of it.”

“Getting your name in the paper never hurts.”

“Yeah, there’s that.” Hunt shrugged again, twisted a forkful of the noodle contingent of his dish. “What else do you want to talk about?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a week now. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t know how you knew.”

Hunt chewed. “I didn’t. Not till the last minute. Before that, I was wrong on every guess. Turner, Ellen, Alicia. I was all over the money. I never even looked at Hess.”

“So what changed?”

“She snagged herself. At Como’s memorial, she pretended she had barely heard of Neshek’s death, but then a few minutes later, before anybody had said anything about it, she asked me if the cops had found anything at Neshek’s house.”

Juhle spoke up. “And she shouldn’t have known that soon that Neshek had been killed in her own home.”

“See? You can figure things out, after all. But I didn’t figure it out. At least not then. I just thought somebody might have included that detail before I went over to talk to them. You know, ‘Did you hear Nancy got killed at her house last night?’ kind of thing. So I didn’t put too much on it. She possibly could have known. So I gave her the benefit.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so the next day, Mickey’s up at Sunset talking to her about her alibi for Monday night and she tells him she’s got a son she’s helping with homework all night, but then she lets drop that she doesn’t even know where Neshek lived. So I get this little ‘ding ding ding’ in my brain and wonder how likely that is. I mean, she’s worked with Dominic like for a decade and all these execs go to the same functions.” He raised a hand and stopped one of the waiters going by. “You ordering?”

Juhle nodded and told the waiter he was going to walk on the wild side and have the Special and a Diet Coke, and then he came back to Hunt. “So she said she didn’t know where Neshek lived?”

“Right. At the same time, she tells Mickey how she’s hurting for money. Big bills, medical stuff. But somehow before that she had the money for a full-time caregiver and a tutor. Anyway, that sticks with me a little bit. But still, I mean, possible, I suppose. And she’s still got her kid as an alibi. Plus, there’s absolutely no hint of a motive, so I let it pass again. Strike two.”