When he was sure Mickey had gone, Hunt stood up, opened his door, went into the outer office, and put a haunch on the corner of Tamara’s desk. “Did he tell you?”
“Uh-huh. Basically. She’s at your place.”
“If she hasn’t stolen my goods and lit out for the border already. But did he also tell you about her lying to the police?”
Her brow clouded. “I think he left out that part.”
Hunt filled her in. “And you know what this means, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, forgetting the obvious obstruction of justice, and let’s do that, this is the one bit of information that, if she tells it to Devin or Sarah, puts her in jail.”
“Why?”
“Because getting fired on the last day of Dominic’s life counts, believe me. If we only know about that from Ellen Como, it’s just what she thinks Dominic intended to do. If we get it from Carter, it’s what he thinks he overheard. But if it’s an admission we get directly from Alicia, guess what? It’s a fact.” He slammed a palm on her desk. “Shit. Pardon the language.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You should have heard me last night.”
“What were you swearing at?”
“The idiots at the hospital. You don’t want to know. Oh, and then Jim. He never came home.”
Hunt took a long beat. “Jim didn’t come home? Till when?”
“So far, till the last time I tried to reach him, which is like ten minutes ago.” She gave Hunt the excuses she’d fed herself last night. He had been planning on going to the Como memorial. After that, he might… or he might… finally, she ran out of steam. “He just could have picked a better night,” she concluded. “That’s all.”
“Let’s hope that’s all.”
As soon as he’d said them, he regretted the words. And Tamara called him on it. “What do you mean, ‘Let’s hope that’s all’?”
Hunt hesitated, wanting to avoid coming out with it directly. But there didn’t seem to be any other way. “I mean, if he went to the memorial, Tam, maybe he met somebody there among our group of possible suspects. Which I wouldn’t want to think. But you know, I was there, and I never saw him.”
“Maybe he never got there.”
“Or couldn’t get in. The place was packed.”
“Okay.” She assayed a low-wattage smile. “Now we can say ‘Let’s hope that’s all.’ I just wish he’d turn up.”
Hunt slid off the edge of her desk. “Me, too, hon. Me too.”
Back in his office again, Hunt couldn’t seem to get himself focused. As long as there was a question about whether Alicia had actually been fired that Tuesday morning, he could live with the presumption of her innocence. Knowing that Dominic had in fact fired her, and that she’d lied about it, washed a great portion of his personal doubt away.
And now this woman was staying at his home.
Also, he had to call Juhle, but how was he going to talk to him, knowing what he now knew? The subject would come up, and then Hunt would be withholding evidence in a murder investigation. Talk about losing his license. But beyond that, how did he justify it? How could he live with himself?
His brain kept running back to Alicia having free run of his place. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember if he’d turned the combination lock on his gun safe when he’d closed it up after taking out the gun he was carrying. What if she did a thorough search? Had he folded the throw rug back down over the loosened board? Had he even made sure that the board was flush and secure? No matter what, he told himself, he’d have to go home and check that.
He had Tamara call and verify that she was still there. Yep.
And now the phone on his desk chimed. Gingerly, he picked up the receiver. “What’s up?” he asked Tamara.
“There’s two gentlemen out here to see you, sir. Mr. Len Turner and an associate. He doesn’t have an appointment, but says you’ll want to talk to him.”
“He’s right,” Hunt said. Quickly, without conscious thought, he reached around and checked the weight of his gun, tucked into a holster attached to the center of his belt at his back. “Send him in.”
Turner’s African-American associate, whom he introduced first thing as Battalion Colonel Keydrion Mugisa, looked to be about twenty-five. He stood about six foot three and certainly weighed less than a hundred and seventy pounds. This lack of heft did not make him less intimidating, though. His handshake was cool, and in spite of its brevity, apparent effortlessness, and the polite accompanying nod for a greeting, it was crushing. Under his classic trench coat, he was well-dressed in light green slacks, a light brown dress shirt, a thin dark-brown tie, and an olive sport coat. He wore his hair Obama-style. The skin of his face was very black and smooth; his eyes dark brown, flat, unexpressive. A well-trimmed goatee surrounded a thin mouth that stayed closed.
In a thousand-dollar pinstripe business suit, Turner took Hunt’s hand in both of his as though they were by now old friends. One of the flaws of Hunt’s office was lack of seating space, but Tamara brought in the chair from outside, then closed the door behind her on her way out.
“So,” Hunt began when everybody was comfortable. “How can I help you?”
“Actually,” Turner said, “I thought I might be able to help you.”
“That would be great. I can use all the help I can get.”
“I think we all can. But after our discussion yesterday, I really came away with the impression that you may be widening the scope of your involvement in this matter in a way that nobody really intended when we decided to bring you on board. When we originally spoke, as I’m sure you remember, the idea was that your function would be to help the police analyze the quality of the information that came in on the reward hotline, and then turn the valid or promising leads over to them. Does that ring a bell?”
Hunt smiled cooperatively. “That’s pretty much it.”
Turner smiled back at him. “That’s what I’d understood. And in fact it’s why I agreed on behalf of the reward participants to take you on board. It seemed a valuable service worth the fee you were charging.”
“Thank you. I think we’ve already saved the police a lot of needless legwork, and frankly, we’ve turned up some valuable evidence in the process. The probable murder weapon, for example. From one of our callers. They seem pretty happy with what we’re doing so far-no complaints, anyway.”
“Yes, but, well…” Turner crossed a leg. The hostile tone he’d adopted the day before was nowhere to be seen, although the presence of Mugisa, to Hunt, lent a tone of unstated threat to the meeting. “It seemed to me that yesterday you had taken that initial assignment and expanded it to include suspicions of some of us in the charitable community.”
Hunt said nothing. He sat up straight with his hands clasped lightly on the desk in front of him. He adopted an inquisitive air, staring at Turner.
“My point,” Turner said at last, “is that your fees for assisting us in this reward endeavor are adequate and acceptable to us, but that if you are diluting your efforts on our behalf in an independent investigation, perhaps we will have to reconsider our agreement. We need somebody whose loyalty is undivided, Mr. Hunt, and whose concentration is totally focused on the job for which we’re paying you. If you can’t give us that loyalty and focus, we’ll need to find someone who can.” He held up his hand. “I am responsible for the administration of this reward fund. It’s my responsibility to see that the integrity of the process is uncompromised.”
After this little speech, Hunt nodded thoughtfully. “Nancy Neshek was one of the very first calls on the reward line, Mr. Turner. She was killed that same night, just after a meeting of your Communities of Opportunity. My staff and I are simply following up on her call to this office, a call that might have indirectly or directly led to her murder. The police think this is a reasonable assumption and, further, that her death is probably related in some way to Mr. Como’s.