John Lescroart: The Hunt Club

I went and searched. They were down to three slices of mildewed white bread, some rice crackers, and about a tablespoon of peanut butter.

I had been on the jobfor five years and still didn't have my own office at Child Protective Services. I didn't really want or need one. Seventy-five to eighty percent of my work was, after all, in the field. The rest of it was writing reports of what I'd done. The supervisors got the offices, and as far as I was concerned, they could have them. Supervisors worried about closing cases and about numbers and about following established procedures. I cared about saving kids' lives. There tended to be a difference in approach.

After negotiating the gauntlet of homeless persons camped on the surrounding streets, I would arrive at the Otis Street building every morning somewhere around eight o'clock, check in for any possible true emergency calls, then most days pick up my daily allotment of "normal" cases. Every one of these was an emergency of some kind, although too often not designated as such by the bureaucracy.

To get an emergency declaration and hence the immediate attention of a caseworker or team of them, the home situation of the child had to be defined as life-threatening in the near term. Say, a woman holding her three-year-old by the heels out of a six-story window would be an emergency. Day-to-day problems were of a lesser nature and included chronic starvation or suspected physical abuse or a parent in some drug-induced or otherwise psychically impaired state. Or an uncle in a suspected carnal relationship with his eight-year-old niece.

The more or less routine call this morning was from Holly Park, a housing project near the southern border of the city. Due to its internal and conflicting gang affiliations, its grinding poverty and persistent air of hopelessness, and the astronomical percentage of its population that either used or dealt street drugs, it had the highest neighborhood homicide rate after Hunter's Point. And was undefeated for number one in most other crimes, violent and not.

I don't mind fog or rain, heat or cold, but I hate the wind, and today, a Thursday in early April, it was blowing hard. In an effort to save it from the vandalism that plagued Holly Park, I parked my already beat-up Lumina three blocks east of the project, then opened my door to a gust of Alaskan Express against which my parka was about as effective as chain mail. The day was bright and sunny, but the wind was relentless and bitter, bitter, bitter cold.

Hands tucked into the bottoms of my jacket pockets, I got to the address I'd memorized and, from across the street, stared at the tagged and scarred wasteland I was supposed to enter. I knew that fifty years ago the place had once been a showcase of sorts-the barracks-style apartment units freshly painted, with grassy areas and well-kept gardens, even trees. Residents got fined if they didn't mow their lawns, keep their individual porches and balconies clean and free of laundry or garbage. Now there wasn't one tree left, no hint of a garden, barely a blade of grass. From my vantage across the street, I picked up hundreds of glints of light in the packed tan earth surrounding the buildings-I'd been here many times before, knew that these were remains of countless discarded and broken bottles of beer, wine, liquor, anything alcoholic that came in glass. Pepsi and Coke weren't locked in combat in this arena.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, I saw no one. Of course, with the cold and the wind, people wouldn't be out to bask and frolic, but I kind of expected to see some soul passing between the pods of buildings, some woman hanging laundry, somebody doing something. But the place appeared completely deserted.

I wondered whether I should have waited a few more minutes at the office and hooked up with a partner for this call. One of the relatively new hires, maybe, who still had some fire in the gut. But finding someone in the office I could count on, with whom I could stand to spend much time, had become all but impossible.

Because the office had in the past couple of years become cancerous. This coincided with the appointment and arrival of Deputy Director Wilson Mayhew. From my line supervisors splitting hairs and playing power games, to so many of my fellow emergency response workers putting their experience to work dodging calls when they bothered to report in at all, most people in the department seemed to take their cultural cues from Mayhew. We were all county employees after all, covered by the union and essentially invulnerable to discipline. Without a motivational deputy director, caseworkers who cared about the work and about the kids tended to burn out after a few years. Now most of those who remained stayed on because they couldn't be touched-between accrued vacation and sick days and cheating on your time card in a hundred clever ways. Fully a third of the caseworker staff did nothing substantive ever. A couple never even came in to work, and it didn't seem to matter to Mayhew or the lower-ranking supes, who were then spared the hassle of having to confront them.

Bettina, still on the job, was having some substance issues herself in the wake of her divorce, and now I preferred to work alone.

Well, there was nothing for it but to go ahead. I was here now. And Keeshiana Jefferson needed help now. I had to go in and assess how bad it was. I took a step off the curb.

"Hey."

I turned, stepped back, double-taking at the absolutely impossible sight of another white guy in this neighborhood. Then, the features congealed into something vaguely then very familiar. "Dev?" I said. "Devin Juhle?" Juhle had been the shortstop to my second base on my high school team. Before college separated us, he'd probably been my best friend.

The other man broke an easy if slightly perplexed grin, then his own recognition kicked in. "Wyatt? What are you doing here?"

"Working," I said, more or less automatically reaching for my wallet, my identification. "I'm with CPS. Child Protective Services."

"I know what CPS is. I'm a cop."

"You're not."

"Am, too."

"You're not dressed like a cop."

"I'm an inspector. We don't wear a uniform. I'm with homicide."

I threw a quick look across the street. "You're saying I'm too late, then?"

"For what?"

"Keeshiana Jefferson."

"Never heard of her."

A rush of relief swept over me. At least Keeshiana wasn't the victim in the homicide Dev was investigating. I might be in time after all. "Well, hey," I said, "good to see you, but I got a gig in there."

Juhle put a hand on my arm. "You're not going in there alone?"

"That's my plan." Seeing Juhle's concern, I added, "Not to worry, Dev. I do this every day."

"Here?"

"Here, there, everywhere."

"And do what?"

"Talk to people mostly. Sometimes take a kid out."

Juhle cast a worried glance over to the projects, then back to me. "Are you packing?"

"A gun?" I chortled and spread the sides of my parka wide open. "Just cookies and chips in case somebody's hungry. I really gotta go."

"What's the exact address?" Juhle asked me. "I'm hanging here anyway with my partner, looking for witnesses. I'll stay close."

"No need," I said, "but I appreciate the offer. But really, catch you later. I gotta go check the place out now."

The wooden door to the barrack unit closed behind me, and the hallway went almost pitch-dark. Someone had painted out the long glass windows on either side of the door. I let my eyes adjust for a few seconds, then tried the light switch, which had come into view. It didn't work.

There was a stink in the hall, the familiar trifecta of mold, urine, animal. I also noted a whiff of pot and tobacco smoke, although the stronger smells predominated. The wind howled outside as it tore between the buildings, and hearing it, I thought to turn back and open the door again slightly to get some light. Just outside in a pile of rubble against the building, I spied a rock that would serve my purpose. I picked it up and propped the door with it, holding it open about five inches.