Hunt decided to be conciliatory. "That's right, Mary was your ID on Staci, wasn't she? Anyway, she told Tamara he was her brother."
"Did she get a name?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Of course not. That would be too easy."
"Right."
They got to the fourth floor, crossed the hallway to suite A, and Juhle opened the door. The drapes were still open as Juhle and Shiu had left them the other night, and the room was fairly bright. Juhle walked straight across to the table next to the sofa bed and picked up the framed photo of the boy and, in sort of a slow-motion double take, stared at it for a long moment, his frown growing more pronounced.
"What?" Hunt asked, crossing over.
"This is her brother?"
"According to Mahoney."
"How old do you make him?"
Hunt looked. "From that picture? Good luck. You're the one with kids. Six?"
"That's about right, I'd guess. And she was twenty-two?"
"So?"
"So fourteen years. That's a good stretch between babies, don't you think?"
Hunt shrugged. "Happens all the time. Plus, that picture might be six, ten, fifteen years old. They could be as close in age as Mickey and Tamara."
Juhle's face went a little slack. He rolled his hurt shoulder, let out a heavy breath, and suddenly, surprisingly, turned and sat down on the sofa bed. "I'm losing it, Wyatt, I swear to God," he said. "You know that? I'm losing it."
"What are you talking about?"
Juhle hung his head, shook it as though it weighed a ton. "This goddamn shooting. The scumbag I shot last year."
"What about it? You didn't have a choice, Dev. Plus, you saved a bunch of lives."
"Yeah, but suddenly I'm the tall poppy."
"What's that mean?"
"You know, a field of poppies, one of them sticks up too high, that's the one you chop off. Ever since the…the incident, everything I do gets second-guessed. Lanier just brought it up again this morning, more or less saying that if it wasn't me on this Palmer case, it'd go a lot easier on him. On everybody. So what do I do? I know I'm under the magnifying glass, right? So that's what I'm thinking about. How things get perceived-if you can believe that bullshit."
"Don't worry about that. Just do your job."
"Easy for you to say. I tried to convince Lanier this morning that I'd actually considered other suspects, and I have, but I couldn't get a one of them to gel, except Parisi. I don't seem to be able to get my brain working the way it used to."
"You followed a lead till it gave out, Dev. That's what you do."
"No. It's more than that. Like this picture just now." Juhle put on a voice. "Oh, really? It might not have been taken in the recent past. It might, in fact, be ten fucking years old." He looked up at Hunt, shook his head again, continued in his regular voice. "Jesus Christ! Where's my brain?"
"Your brain's fine, Dev."
"That's nice to hear, but you're not inside my head with me, Wyatt. Now I'm second-guessing myself. This job's about half instinct, you know, and I'm getting pretty damn close to zero confidence in mine. And that, of course, makes me act that much more certain of everything, even when I'm not or shouldn't be. It's eating me up."
Hunt walked over and stood by the window for a second, then came back and sat down next to his friend. "If it's any help," he said, "I personally think you're still the same horse's ass you've always been. And the only way you're going to convince other people that you're a good cop is to be one over time. Don't get pushed into having to defend something that might be wrong. The investigation is continuing. You don't know yet and you don't say until you do. Then your mind isn't cluttered with all this confidence crap. You just do what you do."
"He was coming at me, Wyatt. He'd already killed Shane and opened up once on me. I had no choice at all."
"I believe you. So does every cop in the city. Including Lanier."
"I'm still waking up a couple of times a week. See the double barrels coming down. Connie's even trying to talk me into going to see a shrink."
"It might not kill you."
"Maybe I should."
"Couldn't hurt."
After a small silence, Juhle checked his watch, said, "Funeral," and stood up.
They were driving up Second Street, this time Juhle in the front passenger seat, heading eventually for Fifth and Mission, the Chronicle's offices. Hunt spoke from the backseat. "Hey, Mick, are you all right?"
"Great. Why?"
"Because I've driven with you approximately four hundred times, and you've never once before driven close to the speed limit."
"I never exceed the speed limit," he said. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Inspector Juhle here doesn't do traffic," Hunt said. "He just does homicide."
But Mickey Dade knew that Hunt was capable of a lie like this one-trying to get him to slam it up to sixty-and Juhle would write him up a ticket while Hunt got a chuckle out of it. So he turned to Juhle, sitting next to him. "Is that true? You don't write tickets? I thought all cops kind of did everything."
"Are you kidding?" Juhle asked. "Traffic division does traffic. I do murders. You want to know the truth, I get pulled over myself for speeding or running a red or some damn thing about every month or two."
"They tag you?"
"No. Of course not. They see the badge, and they either back off or I shoot 'em. But in theory, I'm not on lights and sirens, I'm at the limit or I get tagged. Just like you or any other citizen would."
"Awesome," Mickey said. "That's really true?"
"Scout's honor."
"Cool." And Mickey punched it up to forty-five before the next intersection.
When Mickey pulled the cab up in front of the Chronicle Building, Juhle opened his door. "You don't mind waiting?"
"No sweat."
Juhle disappeared into the building, and Mickey looked back over his shoulder. "So how'd you like the pictures? That's an awesome house. Manion's."
"Oh, yeah, sorry. I should have called you off that. I'll pay you for the time, but as it turned out, Juhle had already gone out and talked to her. Then I got busy and never got the time to call you."
"No big deal. I shot the house anyway, though, and JPEG'd it off to you, home and work. You should check it out."
"I will."
"Someday, I'm a famous chef, I'm going to have a house like that."
"I hope you do, Mick. I hope you do."
"Goddamn it! God damn it!" Standing on the Geary Street edge of the wide expanse of concrete in front of Saint Mary's Cathedral, Juhle snapped closed his cell phone.
"Shiu again?" Hunt asked mildly.
"You know how long it takes to run a ballistics test, soup to nuts? On a bad day, maybe one hour. You know how long Shiu's been waiting for them to start?" Juhle consulted his watch. "It's already been two and a half hours."
"And you're thinking you should have gone down with him, exerted some authority, as you say, but it's probably just as well you didn't. Since Andrea never shot either of those guns at the judge or anybody else, those tests aren't going to turn out like you want, anyway, and then you'd be really mad. Besides, if you'd have gone down there, you wouldn't have come to Andrea's office, and then where would you be? Still thinking she's your suspect. Now, you're here, with an actual chance to see if not talk to somebody who might have had something to do with the case you're trying to solve."
The last couple of days, Hunt was almost getting to where he was starting to expect television crews wherever he happened to go. Certainly, all three local channels and a couple of the cable stations were again represented here, although it looked as though Trial TV had for some inexplicable reason decided that they didn't need to carry Palmer's funeral live and direct.