John Lescroart - The Hunt Club

Across from her in a love seat, keeping silent watch, Sanchez's rookie Officer Garelia had stood when Juhle and Shiu came in and immediately crossed over to stand, silent and ramrod straight, at the door by which they'd entered. He didn't look to be more than twenty-three years old or so, and Juhle guessed it might be his first murder scene, perhaps the first time he'd seen a body or two up close.

But Juhle wasn't here to critique the furniture or observe the reactions of rookie cops. Sparing his injured arm by using his foot, he moved the loveseat's ottoman closer to the couch and sat down. "Mrs. Palmer," he began, "I'm Sergeant Inspector Devin Juhle with homicide, and this is my partner Inspector Shiu. Are you up to talking to us?"

She adjusted her posture, sitting back further into the sofa. Looking from Juhle to Shiu, her eyes took on a look of surprise, as though she hadn't noticed when they'd come in. "Yes, I think so." With an air of desperation, she let out a breath and asked, "Who is that woman in there with him?"

"We don't know, ma'am. We were hoping you might be able to tell us."

Mrs. Palmer's head moved from side to side as if she had little control over it. "I've never seen her before in my life. And now she's here, dead, in my house. What can that be about?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

"And what was she doing here ? With my husband? This is our house. He wouldn't have brought her here." She looked from one of them to the other as though she sought their agreement. "He wouldn't have," she repeated.

Juhle and Shiu shared a glance. Shiu stepped into the silence. "You discovered the bodies this morning, ma'am?"

"Yes. When I got in." She drew another long breath, then pulled at a hanging strand of her hair. "I was at my sister's last night. Vanessa Waverly. That was my maiden name-she's divorced and went back to using it-Waverly."

Juhle noted the disjointed flow of her words. He had to remember to keep the questions simple and see if she might settle down. "And where was that?"

"Novato." A Marin County town about a half-hour's drive north of the city. "It's far enough, I usually stay over with her when I go up there."

"Do you do that often?"

"Every few weeks or so. She's my business partner-we run a spa and salon in Mill Valley. JVs."

"So it was a business meeting?"

"Yes, but I mean…she's my sister, too, mostly. We had dinner together. That's really all it usually is. We just talk."

"And you left here when?"

"Actually, early. Around four. I wanted to miss rush hour on the bridge."

"All right." Juhle tempered his voice. "And you were with your sister the whole night after that?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me about when you got back here this morning?"

She sighed heavily, closing her eyes on the exhale. When she opened them, she took another weary breath. "I got in before eight but didn't want to wake him up if he'd managed to still be sleeping in. He's always had terrible insomnia, so I just left my overnight bag by the stairs and went into the kitchen to make myself some coffee. But then I thought I smelled something burning, so I went looking, and it was coming from his office. When I stopped at the door, I realized I couldn't see his chair, so I walked over…"

Juhle didn't have to close his eyes to reimagine the scene of carnage he'd just witnessed. Though it was, in fact, behind the desk, enough of the young woman's body showed around it that even a cursory glance from the door to the office would have revealed some part of it. Of course, he realized, Mrs. Palmer might not have even given the office that minimal glance. Although if she remembered noticing that she hadn't seen the chair…

She had closed her eyes again and now opened them. "I'm sorry," she said. "I do want to help you find who did this if I can."

"Do you have any idea who it might have been? Did your husband have any enemies?"

"Don't you think we have to know who that woman is first? Why is she here? Whatever it is, that's what this has to be about. Doesn't it?"

Juhle wasn't sure that was true. He could envision several scenarios off the top of his head that explained the girl's presence. But Jeannette Palmer was right. The overwhelming likelihood was that it wasn't about the judge by himself. Jane Doe was part of it.

"But all right. George's enemies." Her big shoulders heaved in a mirthless laugh. "This sounds awful for such a charming man, but it could have been anybody, really. You'd have to check his files. Every time he made a decision, he made an enemy, and he's been doing that for years and years. Then there's the CCPOA…"

Juhle shot another quick look over to Shiu. The CCPOA, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, was the prison guards' union, the most powerful and richest labor organization in the state. It was no secret that it wasn't doing much of a good job at policing itself. And suddenly Juhle, with a shock of recognition, put it together that the judge-who had been in the news looking into the possibility of putting the CCPOA into receivership, deposing its president, and freezing its assets-was George Palmer.

Jeannette Palmer didn't notice the silent exchange, and she was going on. "They're not nice people, and they were terrified that George was going to put them out of business."

"Did they threaten him?" Shiu asked. He had taken out the small notepad he used.

"Not that I know of. Not overtly, anyway. George would have told me."

Juhle waited for a moment, then asked if she knew what the judge had done on the previous night. She opened her eyes, brought him into focus. "He was home here when I left but said he was going out to dinner."

"Did he say with who or where?"

"No. It was casual. He just said he had to see some people about a horse, which was our code for cases he wasn't supposed to talk about. Even to me. Maybe his secretary would know. I'm sorry. But it wasn't the dinner. We know he came back from that, don't we? With her."

At the moment, Juhle didn't even know if he'd gone out at all, but he simply said, "Maybe not with her. Maybe she came later."

The thought seemed to give her a moment's reprieve. Perhaps grateful for that, she nodded. "Maybe she did," she said. "Maybe she came with the killer."

This, Juhle thought, was a pretty thing to think. But not very likely.

She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. "Oh, God," she whispered, "oh, God."

Juhle gave her a moment, then spoke her name, and she opened her eyes, but the faraway gaze she'd worn when they'd entered was back.

He tried again. "Mrs. Palmer?"

But she just looked at him and shook her head.

Snapping his fingers,Amy Wu's boss Dismas Hardy had told Wyatt Hunt that he could set himself up as a private investigator just like that. But it hadn't been exactly just like that. First Hunt needed to convince the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs that his time in the army as a member of the CID should count as the required education in police science, criminal law, or justice, and then that his years of work in the CPS gave him at least the equivalent of six thousand hours of investigative experience. Then there was his evaluation by the federal Department of Justice and the criminal-history background check. To say nothing of the two-hour written exam on laws and regulations. And finally the additional requirements for a firearms permit. All that took the better part of two months.

Then four years ago tonight, he had hung up the shingle.

Now he sat against the wall at a large round table in the power corner at Sam's, the classic restaurant and watering hole at Bush Street and Belden Alley. Fresh from a successful day locating a Piedmont dentist's nineteen-year-old daughter who'd dropped out of the USF dorms and moved in with her boyfriend in the Mission District, Hunt was the first one here for the anniversary party. Sitting alone at the table, he took a first sip of his Bombay Sapphire gibson and sighed with contentment.