"I'll give it some thought," Hunt said.
They said their good nights and got into their cars and headed through the lot and up the ramps. At the top, Hunt flashed his brights and honked, then got out of his Cooper and ran up to to Juhle's window. "Let me ask you one last thing."
"Sure. Why not? You're going to, anyway."
"I know you've got a warrant in to check Parisi's phone records, and you'll get a look at them soon enough. But I also know you've got somebody in security with SBC and Cingular and every cell phone company in the world who you could call right now. I've seen you do it. What I want shouldn't take five minutes."
"You're shitting me." Juhle's shoulders heaved in a soundless laugh. He looked at his watch. "One fifteen in the morning?" But, in fact, it wasn't a completely unreasonable request, and he sighed in resignation, set his parking brake, pulled out his phone. "What do you want to know?"
Hunt had both Andrea's cell and home telephone numbers, and he wanted to check traffic to or from each phone from noon on Wednesday. That's all. As it turned out, Juhle did this kind of thing often enough that he knew the number he needed to call by heart. When he got connected, he explained that the paperwork-the warrant to look at the phone records-had been signed by the judge and was on its way but that they were hot in a murder case. It was life and death, and they needed some information right now.
It took a bit longer than the five minutes Hunt had predicted. Andrea Parisi hadn't made or received any calls on her home phone after noon on Wednesday. She had received one call on her home phone that day at 2:48 P.M. It had been placed from a pay phone in the lobby of the Saint Francis Hotel, about six blocks from where they were right now, and it had lasted forty-two seconds.
When he rang off, Juhle didn't seem too impressed with the new information. "It could've been anybody, Wyatt. Hell, forty-two seconds, it could have been a wrong number."
Hunt mostly agreed with him. It could have been anybody. But Hunt did not think it was from just anybody. Hunt was going to choose to believe that it was from the person who had ultimately met Andrea in the firm's parking garage, after telling her that they'd meet in her office. More than that, of far greater significance in Hunt's mind, the call's existence went a long way toward debunking Juhle's vision of what may have been Andrea's final hours.
She had not been so distracted and confused that without any thought she'd more or less automatically driven to work, then realized how hopeless her existence had become. No, she had taken a quick business call that had changed her immediate plans. It was a small enough thing, but it meant that Juhle was not right in all respects.
Logic or no, Juhle might not be right at all. And this in turn meant, logic or no, that Hunt might not be wrong.
22
After the Army, then CPS, then as a private investigator, Hunt had come to the conclusion that there was a joke about everything. No matter how grotesque, depressing, horrifying, just plain awful, stupid, venal, or tasteless any given situation was, if there was anything that could remotely be construed to have a shred of humor in it-hell, bring it on! Somebody's gonna laugh. Dead babies, mistreated animals, AIDS and all variants on every STD, medical mishaps, sexual dysfunctions, murders and suicides, infidelities, accidental mayhem, severed limbs-you're killing me here.
And sure enough, Wes Farrell dredged up this morning's gem about that old comedic standby, the U.S. federal judge. They were all just checking in, sitting around his upstairs office before the business day had officially begun downstairs, and Farrell asked conversationally if anybody knew the difference between a federal judge and the Ku Klux Klan. To a roomful of blank, groggy stares, he finally said, "Nobody? Okay. The KKK wears white robes and scares the shit out of black people."
There were five other people in the room-Hunt, Tamara, Chiurco, Amy Wu, Jason Brandt-and nobody reacted with so much as a smile. It wasn't much of a happy moment, what with Andrea still missing and now, according to Hunt, with Juhle still considering her the most likely suspect in the murders of Palmer and Rosalier. And a probable suicide at that.
But that didn't stop Brandt from chiming in with his own contribution. "So this psychiatrist shows up at the Pearly Gates, all pissed off because he was young and in perfect health and he shouldn't have died so soon. It wasn't right. Saint Peter says he's sorry, but no real reason, they had to take him a little earlier than they'd originally planned. So the shrink is all, 'You mean you ended my wonderful life on earth early for no reason? Why would you do that? Just because you could?' And Saint Peter looks both ways, leans over and whispers, 'It's God. He thinks he's a federal judge.'"
Hunt was wide awake in spite of only five hours of sleep. He gave the moment its due, which wasn't much, then threw a glance around the room at his partners and said, "Maybe we could talk about what we all did last night and see if it gets us anywhere."
But as they started to revisit their individual interviews, it became clear that the earlier desultory banter was covering up a more profound shift in the general mood. Now it was Friday morning, and Andrea had been gone since Wednesday afternoon-one and a half days ago. Forty-two hours. They'd all read the Chronicle story this morning, front page. Now the whole world was looking for Andrea, the photogenic television personality.
And now the three lawyers had their daily billable work looming ahead of them. Tamara and Chiurco were still obviously ready to take instructions and run with them-whatever Hunt wanted-but Mary Mahoney hadn't gotten them one step closer to Andrea Parisi. And finally, Tamara was the one who said it out loud: "I'm starting to believe she must be dead, Wyatt."
There were somber nods all around.
"It may not matter at this stage," Brandt suggested, "but maybe the best thing for us would be to try to contact Missing Persons again. Tell them everything we know and see where they can take it."
"They're not going to find her if Juhle can't," Hunt said. "He's got her as his main suspect in these killings. He's got people working on it, believe me."
Farrell, who'd been sitting forward on the couch, his head down, now lifted it. "This phone call to her cell phone," he said. "That's the last time we know of anybody talking to her?"
Hunt said it was.
"So you know for a fact-you found this out last night?-that she hasn't used her cell phone since then?"
"Right."
Farrell let out a heavy breath. "Well, it seems to me, then, whether she's on the run or whether she's dead, either one, there's no trail left to follow. None of us found out anything that goes anywhere, did we?"
Again, a silent, bleak consensus.
Which Hunt still wasn't ready to accept. "Okay, I'm discouraged myself. But let's talk for a minute about Juhle's idea, that Andrea is either on the run or has killed herself. Anybody here besides me see the tragic flaw in that argument?"
Wu spoke up. "It assumes that Andrea's a double murderer."
Hunt turned to her, his face all but lit up. "There it is," he said. "Now I know that you, Wes, and Tamara, and Craig, didn't know her very well. But Amy and Jason did, and I was getting close, and there is just no way I can accept that she killed anybody."
"Me neither," Brandt said. "Amy and I have both known her since law school, and I agree with you. I can't imagine it."
"All right," Hunt said. "If we believe that, we can eliminate the fact that she left the parking garage of her own accord. In fact, what happened is she met somebody, probably whoever called her from the Saint Francis, who either talked her into coming away with them or outright snatched her."