Mickey, getting a little hot now, “What do you mean by that?”
Hunt held up a restraining palm. “Nothing. I’m just cautioning you to go slow and be a little wary. And neither of you should be socializing with these people. Really.”
But Mickey couldn’t let it go. “She didn’t do anything, Wyatt. I know she didn’t.”
“All right,” Wyatt said, “but let me ask you this: Did she tell you that Dominic Como had fired her on the last day of his life?”
The siblings exchanged another glance. “Who told you that?” Mickey asked.
“Mrs. Como. Who heard it point blank from her husband.”
“Maybe she was lying to you. Maybe he was lying to her.”
“Maybe both,” Hunt admitted. “But maybe I’m going to ask Alicia about it today, if she’s at the service. Not at a nice friendly dinner. And while I’m at it, I plan to ask her, and Al Carter if I get the chance, if either of them know where they store the tire iron in a Lincoln Town Car.”
“Why would that matter?”
“Because we know the weapon that killed Dominic Como was a tire iron. And we know that the tire iron from his limo isn’t there anymore.”
“We do?” Mickey asked. “When did we find that out?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Juhle and Russo went out to Sunset and looked. And they’re probably looking for more in it now even as we speak.”
After a minute, Tamara brought up the usual objection. “That doesn’t mean the tire iron that killed him came from that car.”
“Good, Tam. No, it doesn’t. Not automatically. But on the other hand, there’s nothing says it isn’t either. It certainly could be. And, Mick, just consider this: Your friend Alicia, who might have just been jilted by him, and fired at the same time on the last day we know he was alive, had easy access to it. And then certainly had access back to him.”
Mickey was sitting back, his mouth set, his hands clenched in his lap. “This is bullshit.”
“No, Mick. These are facts we have to deal with.” Hunt slowed himself down with a breath. “Look, I’m not saying she’s guilty of anything. She might be the nicest person in the world. But she’s in this until conflicting evidence or an alibi gets her out, okay? You can’t become friends with her, and probably not with her brother either. I’m sorry, but you just can’t.” He looked from one of them to the other. “Neither of you.”
A heavy silence settled in the tiny reception area. Mickey and Tamara shared a few more looks, until at last Mickey came back to Hunt, his voice again under control. “So. What do you want me to do?”
“Look around up at Sanctuary House. Nancy Neshek’s place. That would be a start. Juhle and Russo are going to be futzing with the limo and crime scene stuff from last night all morning. This gives us a small opening before anybody in Sanctuary has a chance to get their guards up.”
“So you’re going to talk to Al Carter?” Mickey asked.
“Yeah. If he’s at the service, which he should be. What about him?”
A shrug. “One of my lunatics yesterday, Damien Jones? Maybe he wasn’t actually off on everything. He said we should look for somebody, probably with the Battalion but maybe not, up at Sunset. Which, by the way, my grandfather agrees with. Meanwhile, just so you’re clear that Al Carter’s another guy with access to the tire iron. Also the last known human to see Como alive. I don’t know about his alibi, if any. And he hasn’t told us very much about Como’s mysterious last appointment either.”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to him. That’s a good thought. But listen”-Hunt leaned his lanky form forward, his elbows on his knees-“the main thing for all of us-even you, Tam-is to be careful here. Whoever it is, this killer’s now done it twice. Let’s not force a third. All we’re trying to do is collect information and pass the valid stuff along to Devin. That’s all.”
Mickey shook his head. “Nice try, but it’s gotten bigger than that, Wyatt,” he said. “A whole lot bigger.”
The address of the administrative headquarters for the Sanctuary House for Battered Women was on Potrero Avenue near San Francisco General Hospital. Unlike the other service-oriented nonprofits he’d visited in the last few days, for obvious reasons Sanctuary did not shelter, educate, or test any of its clientele on-site-instead, they were assigned, often with their children, to one of the organization’s seventeen secure locations within the city limits. Because of this, Sanctuary’s footprint here on Potrero was so small as to be nearly invisible. Mickey drove by what should have been the address twice before he realized that the office must be somewhere among the buildings that made up the much larger hospital complex.
Fifteen minutes after he’d finally managed to park in a handicapped zone in the hospital’s main but still woefully inadequate lot, he found the place-one of many apparently identical offices on the ground floor of the hospital’s Admitting and Triage Building. It was a typical overused bureaucratic medical landscape-already at nine A.M., long lines had formed at each of the glass windows, with the chairs in the main lobby filled with mostly older and poorly dressed patients. Although there was still the usual complement of mothers with their coughing or sleeping children, spaced- out young adults, and obvious derelicts, all waiting in numb patience while the clammy fluorescent lighting lit the area and reflected up at them from the greenish tile flooring.
The only indication of Sanctuary House’s presence was the name of the organization stenciled onto the glass doorway, now open at the farthest extent of the lobby. Mickey stood in the doorway for a long moment. In front of him, a counter bisected most of the room across the front, and behind it were mazes of green and gray filing cabinets and a few desks. Venetian blinds over the high back windows. To his left, the counter made a right angle, and behind it more of the ubiquitous green-tinged glass separated out the two or three other offices.
He heard low voices, apparently coming from one or more of those offices, but saw no one, so he stepped forward and, following instructions, “Please Ring for Assistance,” pushed the little hotel bell that someone had duct-taped down to the peeling wooden counter.
In five seconds, a tiny and tentative bespectacled young woman appeared from between one of the banks of filing cabinets, wearing what looked to Mickey like a thrift-store cotton dress and a devastated and yet somehow impatient expression. Beneath her wire- rimmed glasses, her eyes were red and swollen. Mickey at once realized two things: that the employees had heard the news about their executive director, and that maybe this should have been an assignment for Tamara-the vast majority of the time, Mickey supposed that men here were going to be the enemy; it came with the turf. Still, he dredged up a look of respectful solicitude.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Having done his homework, Mickey knew the name of the associate director. “I’d like to speak to Adele Watrous,” he said, “if she’s in.”
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“Are you Ms. Watrous?”
“No.”
“I was hoping to talk to Ms. Watrous.”
“It’s Mrs., and she is having a difficult morning. I’m afraid we all are. Can I tell her what this is about?”
Mickey’s heart went out to this young woman, but he was here to get information-specifically if Nancy Neshek had mentioned to anyone here the question she’d wanted to ask Hunt-and the further down the food chain he went with the staff, he thought, the less likely the result. “I’m afraid it’s about Ms. Neshek, which I can see you already know about. I’m very sorry.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out, and then she closed it, nodded twice, then again, and finally disappeared back into the maze. After another moment, a grandmotherly woman appeared. Her snow- white hair was disheveled and she, too, had clearly been crying, but she spoke in a crisp, no- nonsense manner. “I’m Adele Watrous,” she said. “Is this about Nancy? How can I help you?”
“I’m working on the investigation into Mr. Como’s death,” he began, “and now Ms. Neshek’s. Nancy’s. She made a call to our office on the night she died, and I was hoping to talk to you about whatever she might have told you, if anything, that might shed some light on her death.”
Nodding wearily, Mrs. Watrous lifted the flip-up portion of the counter and motioned him inside into the office proper, then led him beyond the first door they passed and into the second one. Once they were seated, the door closed behind them, she templed her hands at her mouth and blew into them a time or two, regaining her composure.
“When did you hear about it?” Mickey began.
