“Not a clue.” Hunt shook his head. “Except I’m pretty sure it wasn’t if I knew how to compute the circumference of a circle.”
“Pi-R-squared,” Juhle said.
But Hunt kept shaking his head. “Nope. That’s the area. I think it’s pi-D, but that wasn’t what she called about anyway.”
Juhle hesitated. “So what got you out here?”
Hunt ran it down for him-the original call with its sense of urgency, her lack of availability at both of her phone numbers during the whole day. “But really, bottom line,” he concluded, “it was just a hunch.”
“Hunches are good.”
“I’ve got another one, then. Whoever did this, did Como.”
“Not impossible, maybe even probable.” He indicated the house.
“Let’s see if whoever it was left something for us in the way of evidence. And by us I mean the police, not you and me.”
“I thought we were all about share and share alike.”
“Wrong. In fact, you’re lucky you’re not sitting in an interview room downtown, and you know it.” As far as it went, this was probably true. Who was to say that Hunt hadn’t in fact come out here to speak to Neshek and had gotten inside the house, where for some reason he struck her down with the poker, then set the house alarm, locked up, walked out, and called Juhle? Certainly, both Juhle and Russo had been overtly aware enough of this possibility that they hadn’t permitted Hunt to enter the house and thus have a ready and benign explanation if they found trace evidence of his presence there-a fingerprint, a hair follicle. Hunt had spent time answering questions in police custody before, and knew that the only thing that stood between him and another interrogation room right now was the forbearance of Juhle and Russo. “And in any event,” Juhle went on, “I’ll want a taped interview from you by tomorrow, let’s say high noon.”
“Dev, come on, it’s-”
“It’s the only offer you’re getting from me, Wyatt, and it’s a damn good one. I’d suggest you take it before I get Sarah involved and ask her opinion, which I think would be somewhat less lenient.”
Wyatt came forward on his chair. “You realize, Dev, that I didn’t even have to call this in. I could have gone home and let somebody else discover the body in three days or a week or whenever.”
“You could have, but that would have been a crime. A private eye sees a body, he’s supposed to report it. It’s kind of like our rule that if you find a body, we’re going to want a statement. It’s all about having a complete file. This really isn’t negotiable, Wyatt. And it’s a favor I probably shouldn’t even offer. But really, really, in my heart, I don’t see you killing our victim out there.”
Hunt managed to chortle. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. So, tomorrow, noon.”
Hunt gave it a last try. “You know Como’s memorial service is tomorrow at eleven? I was planning to go to that, see who showed up, talk to a few people.”
“The whole world’s going to show up.”
“Yeah, but my point is that I’ll be in the Green Room at the War Memorial when high noon rolls around.”
“Well”-Juhle’s smile had no humor in it-“then in that case we’d better get your statement before eleven. In fact, keep talking much longer and we’ll drive downtown right now and get it all polished up before dawn if you’d like. Good?”
It didn’t sound good to Hunt. He’d heard the best offer he was going to get. So he stood up, shook Juhle’s hand, told him he’d be there before eleven, and said good night.
17
“I know it’s early,” Hunt began when Mickey picked up his phone at around seven o’clock the next morning, “but-”
“No sweat,” Mickey replied. “We saw CityTalk and figured, ‘Whoa.’ Tam’s in the shower now and as soon as she’s out, we’re on our way down. Unless you’ve got something for us to do out here.”
“No. We need to talk first before we do anything. You guys are great. Have you heard yet about Nancy Neshek?”
He hadn’t, and Hunt told him.
Mickey paused to take in the enormity of it. “This thing’s heating up pretty good, isn’t it?” he said at last.
“It’s not cooling down, that’s for sure,” Hunt said.
Hunt pulled a chair for himself from the back room, and forty minutes after Mickey had hung up the phone at his apartment, the three of them were all seated and gathered in the tiny reception area at the Hunt Club.
“We’ve got some huge issues to deal with today that weren’t here yesterday,” Hunt began. “First, Tam, I’ve got a list for you and I’ve got to put you on calling in some freelance troops to do some hourly work for us. Evidently, with the reward, word’s gotten out that we’re in the private investigations business again, and I’m not about to let the opportunity pass because we don’t have enough people. If I give you the assignments and deadlines, you think you’d be comfortable doling ’em out?”
This was a significant increase over any of the responsibilities Tamara had shouldered in the past, but Mickey could see that the idea hit her like a shot of adrenaline. Hunt clearly was trying to motivate her to stay on, take more ownership of her job, get back to the way she’d been before the meltdown. And this appeared to be an effective way to do it. “If you think I can.”
“I know you can. Get ’em in here so you can see them in person, make sure they’re not stoned or drunk, get an idea of what they’re capable of, tell them what we’ll pay, and parcel out the individual gigs. Good?”
“Good.”
“All right. Now. We got three new calls this morning, but the first two sound like crazies to me. We all agree?”
Nods all around. And no wonder, with one call being from Belinda the psychic again-apparently she was hot on the scent now-and the other from a guy who used to know Dominic at one of the projects and had seen him walking around near Japantown yesterday-he was sure of it.
“But the Len Turner call,” Hunt went on, “I’m going to have to talk to him again. He’ll be at the memorial service today. As you heard on his phone message, he’s pretty pissed off. He thinks we had something to do with the leak to CityTalk, if that’s what it was.”
Mickey raised a finger. “What do you think it was, Wyatt?”
“I think these reports were due to come out anyway and both Turner and Dominic knew about them in advance somehow. Beyond that, I think he’s a dangerous guy who thinks that since he’s paying us, we’ll do whatever he wants. Now, I don’t know what they did about these reports, if anything, but obviously somebody’s playing fast and loose with this community money. And meanwhile, I want to protect our position vis-à-vis the reward, and Turner’s clearly the guy to see about that. But first I’ve got to waste a couple of hours this morning talking to Juhle and Russo about finding Neshek’s body. So, Mick, we’re going to want to change our strategy.”
“Okay. Sure. Whatever.”
“This isn’t clearinghouse stuff anymore. Which is why we’ve got to be careful with Mr. Turner, since it’s not what he thinks he’s paying us to do. We don’t want to give him a reason to pull the plug, agreed?”
“Of course.”
He looked over at Tamara. “See why I love this guy?” Then, back to Mickey. “Okay. Even if we haven’t had any reward calls, you and I are both going to get in a quick look at this Neshek thing, if only because then we can eliminate suspects on Como.”
“How’s that?” Mickey asked.
“If somebody’s got an alibi for Monday night, two nights ago, when Neshek got killed, then odds are they didn’t kill Como. Assuming, of course, which I am, that the same person killed both of them.”
“Do Juhle and Russo think that?” Tamara asked.
“They won’t say so, at least not to me, but they’d be dumb if they didn’t.”
Mickey sat, his arm resting on the back of his chair, apparently relaxed. But he couldn’t stop tapping his foot. “So what’s the plan?”