Elliot leaned back and scratched at his beard. “Fifty to one. Maybe a hundred to one. I’d be stunned if they didn’t.”
“I would be too. The timing’s just too perfect. So the question is, why exactly would someone want to kill him over this?”
Elliot broke a smile. “You going for the reward?”
“Not specifically, although if we came up with something really good right here and now, I’d be happy to share with you.”
“Okay. Deal.” Elliot stretched out a hand and they shook. “Now give me a second.” Sitting in his wheelchair, he closed his eyes, head back. “Theory number one takes a bit of a stretch to start out, but ends strong.”
“Let’s hear the stretch part.”
“All right. We assume that Como either didn’t know about or wasn’t hands-on responsible for any of the stuff from tomorrow’s column.” He held up a hand. “I said it was a stretch. But let’s assume…”
Roake made a face. “Okay, but only for the sake of argument.”
“Fair enough. Como is a bona fide saint who doesn’t know that scandal is about to blow up all over at Sunset. Somebody else, let’s call him Turner for lack of a better word, has been screwing with the books and playing loose with the rules for three years or more-”
“Try twenty,” Roake said.
“Okay, twenty. Anyway, so last week Como gets wind of let’s say the AmeriCorps problem cutting off his federal grants. So he goes to Turner, his corporate counsel, and realizes that it’s got to have been Turner behind the cooking of the books and the misuse of the funds. So he meets him alone and calls him on it, says he’s going to fire him, get him kicked off the COO program, all of the above. Turner can’t have that happen, and voila. He whacks him.”
“Yeah, but Turner knows this stuff’s going to come out anyway.”
“Sure, but if the community hangs together, Sunset loses some federal funding for a while, but otherwise nothing happens. Nothing changes. On the other hand, if Como makes a stink, Turner’s in deep shit with the whole nonprofit world, which is his entire income. Not to say life.”
Roake chewed on it for a moment. “Possible,” she said, “if you can buy the premise, which I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said. “I don’t know if I can either. I mean, it would be hard to argue that Como didn’t know he had some drivers taking him around places, you know?”
“I know. So where’s that leave us?”
“We need a second theory, and I got the first one, so it’s your turn.”
“All right.” Roake closed her own eyes. “Okay, how’s this: One of those private interests that provided the funding, they got pissed that Como was essentially stealing from them, personally.”
“So they killed him?” Elliot was shaking his head. “Doesn’t sing for me at all. And besides, that’s the COO money you’re talking about, and that report-the budget analysis-was coming out right about the time somebody killed him. So if it was about money, the timing says it was about the federal money.”
“And Turner, somehow, don’t you think? All right, how’s this? They both knew about the money problems. Are either of them looking at prison time over this?”
“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer, you should know this, right? Me, I’d say not impossible.”
“Okay, let’s go with that for the moment. Say Turner knows he’s going to jail if it’s him and Como each pointing fingers at each other. Except if Como’s dead, then it’s Turner’s finger and that finger’s only pointing in one direction, at Como. Como stole the money, misappropriated the money, it’s all his fault.”
“That’s good,” Elliot said.
“Yeah, but… if that were the case, I’m surprised Turner didn’t even try to make it look like a suicide-Como knows he’s going down for this, and decides to kill himself. But still, in general terms, I think it flies. Or”-Roake’s eyes lit up-“even better… you’re going to like this… Turner’s got some rehab and paroled people in these residential units and he hires one of them to take Como out. They don’t do it, he violates them back, and they go to jail. And, hell, what do they care about Como anyway?”
“So it’s a hit?”
“At least it’s a theory that works. And we’ve got to have something involving both Len Turner and the money, right?”
Elliot clucked. “It’s tempting to think so. Maybe Hunt ought to talk to him.”
“Thanks, Jeff,” she said, “but that’s pretty much exactly what I came here to talk him out of. He’s basically working for Turner, but he doesn’t want to be messing with him. Besides, Turner’s controlling the funds for the reward.”
Elliot raised his eyebrows. “So you’re telling me Hunt gives Turner a pass? He’s not going to look at him at all?”
“That’s my hope. They’re just supposed to be a clearinghouse for information going to the police.”
“So what do your psychic powers say?”
“Unfortunately,” she said, “they say I’m whistling in the wind.”
When they looked in the trunk of the limo out at the Sunset Youth Project, they found that its tire iron was in fact missing. Now, back at his desk in the homicide detail, Devin Juhle hung up his telephone and looked across his desk and then the desk of his partner, Russo, where she sat with the tip of her tongue sticking out through her lips as she labored over the typed transcription of an interview they’d done on another of their cases.
Picking up a paper clip, he tossed it across, and she looked up in exasperation.
“What?”
“You’ll never believe who that was.”
“George Clooney.”
“Nope. Guess again.”
“If it’s not George Clooney, I don’t care who it was.”
“Yes, you will.”
She picked up the paper clip, unbent it, bent it back. “It couldn’t have been the lab already with the tire iron.”
Juhle nodded with satisfaction. “Mr. Como must have been more important than even we thought he was. And they found a trace of his DNA. Strong profile, and no doubt about it.”
“How’d the lab even find the DNA after that soak in the lake?”
“Probably that prayer to Saint Jude I said.”
“But really?”
“Really. Hair follicle stuck to the tire iron. It settled into the mud and the mud covered it up so all of it didn’t wash away. In a million years it might have been a hair fossil if we’d have left it alone.” Juhle leaned back, linked his hands around the back of his head. “You know what this means? Warrant for the car.”
Russo’s shoulders sagged as she let out a sigh. “And I suppose we’re going to want to do this tonight?”
“Get the warrant tonight, impound it tonight before anybody can get it any cleaner, do the search first thing tomorrow.” He gestured to the marked-up paperwork on his partner’s desk. “Sarah, what’s got into you? Look what you’re working on when the game’s afoot. The trail’s heating up. I can feel it.” Now he was on his feet. “Let’s go find us a judge. You with me? I know you’re with me.”
She sighed again, with perhaps exaggerated weariness. “Yes, kimosabe, I’m with you.”
16
Much to Hunt’s delight, Tamara had fielded three calls in the afternoon from previous clients who all seemed to have developed amnesia about the last six months. Or maybe Hunt had served sufficient penance for his transgressions and his firm’s name in the newspaper suddenly announced to the legal world at large that he was back in business. If the city’s well-connected service-oriented charities were entrusting him with work, then clearly his name was no longer anathema, and his firm no longer a pariah.
