"If somebody writes one of my kid's name on my windows, I call the cops."
"I know, but she won't do that."
"What if she calls in twenty private security guards or even Shiu, for Christ's sake. Wouldn't that be a fine kettle of fish?"
"What if…" Hunt looked over at the house. There'd been no activity in or around it since Wu's phone calls. "She's not going to any kind of police, Dev. If she was going that way, they'd already be here. You guys are all the enemy now. Even Shiu. He might moonlight for her, but I've got to believe he's your partner first, a homicide cop investigating a couple of murders which, p.s., it looks an awful lot like she committed."
"He might just come on for double overtime."
"Unlikely."
"And you don't think Ward will call the cops, either?"
Hunt shook his head. "He might want to, but she'll talk him out of it. It's her problem and she's motivated. I hope I've made her realize that giving us Andrea is her only out. That's all we want."
"Not quite," Juhle said. "I, for example, want to put cuffs on her."
"I left that part out. And if you weren't here, that wouldn't be my issue, as I've said all along."
"You'd let her walk on the murders?" Juhle asked.
Hunt shrugged. "I want Andrea." He deadpanned his friend. The discussion was over. Picking up his walkie-talkie, he pushed the button. "You guys still good?"
Chiurco's voice crackled back up at him. "Affirmativo, mon capitaine, but nothing since the curtains. Except we did see a rattlesnake. Big old sucker."
"How about you catch it and go set it loose in the house? That'll scare her out."
Tamara's voice carried out of the speaker. "No way, Wyatt."
"That was more or less in the order of a joke, Tam."
"I'm laughing," she said.
"Good. Call if you get lonely." Hunt rang off, turned to Juhle. "Really, you don't have to stick around. We can handle it. Besides, it might not happen."
It was Juhle's turn to take a beat, check out the château, note the time.
"Really," Hunt said.
"Maybe I'll just hang a few more minutes. Take my chances."
It was within three weeks of the longest day of the year, but the Coast Range cut off the direct sun in the lower parts of the valley by a little after six. By quarter to seven, the shadow had moved up to the base camp, and Juhle put on the jacket he wore every day in San Francisco.
"Here we go," Hunt said.
Juhle came up next to him, squinting into the shadows, as Hunt straightened up off his car's hood, grabbed his walkie-talkie, and buzzed his troops, telling Mickey down on the lower road that people were coming out of the house into the parking area in front. He should hit his ignition and be ready to roll.
"How many we talking about?"
"Hold on." Hunt put a steadying hand on one leg of the tripod and leaned down into the binoculars. He had his night visions in the trunk of the Cooper, but it wasn't really quite twilight yet, and he hadn't changed over to them. "Some guy in a dark suit with the kid and a woman. I don't know if it's Carol. Can you get her, Craig? Over."
"No. We're blocked by the house."
Hunt followed the little procession as they made their way over to one of the SUVs. "Do we know how many people were in the house? The Manions, the kid, the security guy. Anybody else?"
"The kid's got a nanny," Craig said. "We saw her upstairs through the windows."
"So five. Five."
"Sounds right," Mickey said.
The man in the suit got into the car while the boy and the woman got into the backseat from the far door, now outside of Hunt's vision. In the evening stillness, even from across the distance, Hunt picked up the faint echoes of the car's ignition kicking in. It rolled forward, pulled up, and stopped right at the front door, blocking most of it. Hunt saw the house's door open and close. He had a sense of movement, but that was all it was. "Mick," he said, "they're coming down. I don't know if everybody got in the car, but you'd better follow and find out."
"Roger. On it." Three minutes later, Mick checked in again. "Tinted windows, Wyatt. I can't see in."
Hunt resisted the urge to swear. "All right. Which way are they headed?"
"North."
"So not back to the city?"
"Probably not. Maybe food in the valley."
"Let's hope. Okay, stay with 'em. Call when you know who's with them."
"Check."
Twenty minutes later, Chiurco's voice, albeit quietly, rasped through the speaker. "Wyatt, you got me? The back door just opened."
"You on night vision?"
"Yeah."
The sky directly overhead was still blue, but by now the shadows from the Coast Range had engulfed the entire landscape up to the peaks behind Hunt's lookout. True dusk wasn't ten minutes away. Hunt had changed over to his Night Scout binoculars, but they were useless since he had no view of the back of the house.
Hunt didn't need any visual equipment, though, to see the blade of light that swept across the ridge behind the château, then swung back higher in among the oaks and boulders, where Tamara and Craig had been hiding all afternoon. Hunt saw no trace of them in the light's beam, a good sign that nobody else could see them, either.
He hoped. "Lay low," he whispered.
The beam of light disappeared altogether, only to return in about twenty seconds from the same spot and following the same trajectory. Chiurco's voice, barely audible now: "Trying to flush us."
"Got you. Hang back. Can you tell who it was?"
"An older woman, I'd say. It must be Carol, huh? Now she's back inside."
Glued to his binoculars now, Hunt realized that he'd made a tactical error. With Mickey now gone with his walkie-talkie, he could not leave his own vantage point at the base camp and keep the front door under surveillance at the same time. There would have to be a gap. When they started driving down to the house, they would not know whether Carol was driving or walking to some location on her property. Everything depended on their ability to follow wherever she might lead them, and while she was out of their sight, they might lose her. He pointed this out to Juhle.
"So what do we do? You want me to go down first?"
"Same problem. No communication," Hunt said. But then suddenly the point became moot. "Damn. Here she is." He spoke into his walkie-talkie. "She's out the front door, Craig. Can you get her in vision?"
"Not fast. We're starting down. Coming around your right side."
"Got it. Be quick if you can. But she's got her flashlight, and looks like something in the other hand. Maybe a gun, Craig. Watch out."
"We're watching."
Next to Hunt, Juhle whispered. "Where's she going? If she gets near her car, we've got to haul ass!"
"We've got to wait, Dev. We've got to wait. If she doesn't get in a car, we've got her."
They could see the flashlight crossing behind the fountain. "Come on, Carol," Hunt said. "Don't get in the car. Don't get in the car!"
"We've got to get down there." Juhle, caught up in the urgency, opened the passenger door to the Cooper. "We've got to move, Wyatt. Now! We're going to lose her!"
As the flashlight's beam now crossed in front of the other SUV down in the château's parking area, Hunt realized that she wasn't going to be driving anywhere. He grabbed his tripod, threw it into his backseat, and picked up his one pair of Vipers, his night-vision goggles. Running around to the driver's door, he handed the goggles to Juhle as he slid in behind the wheel. "Don't drop those," he said. He started the car, threw it into gear, swung a U-turn, and peeled out in a hail of dust and gravel.
36
From the time Hunt hit the gas on the downhill, it took the Cooper seventy-eight seconds to get to the driveway turnoff up to Manion Cellars. After the right turn, Hunt doused his headlights, took his Vipers from Juhle, and pulled them down over his eyes into place. Getting his bearings with the night-vision lenses, he drove slowly and hoped quietly up toward the gate that crossed the driveway.