walking across to check the peephole, and then opening the door to Devin Juhle, all by himself.
Juhle hated this.
He imagined himself in front of the Police Commission, explaining how he had gotten involved in this half- assed operation. And without his partner or any other backup. This was not how it was done, fraught with risk and uncertainty for everyone involved. He wondered, and sincerely doubted, if any other cop he knew would make the kind of promise he’d made to Hunt; if any other homicide inspector, with an imminent arrest of his prime suspect in his pocket, would have postponed the moment and agreed to this amateur-hour charade. His only consolation was that when Hunt’s scenario failed-as it surely would-he would then pick up the Thorpe woman. Of course, the fact that Hunt had invited Roake along would complicate that arrest, but not impossibly so. Still, it galled Juhle that Hunt had never even mentioned Roake’s presence here as Thorpe’s attorney during their phone call. In fact, everything about this felt wrong to him. But, he told himself, that’s what happened when you believed your friends.
And people wondered why cops grew so jaded over time. It was because you were either in the brotherhood or you were not. You played by the rules or you didn’t.
Somehow Hunt had persuaded him that he had no choice. And that, more than anything else, added to his fury and frustration.
Almost as soon as Juhle had arrived, Hunt suggested that they all come out now to the basketball court. Now Roake, Thorpe, Mickey Dade, and Carter sat together in consecutive chairs while Juhle stood behind them, arms crossed and his shoulder holster unbuttoned, where he could keep his eye on them as well as on whoever entered through the Brannan Street door. The lights were up; the temperature fairly cool, in the mid-sixties, the way Hunt liked to keep it.
They weren’t in there and settled for more than three or four minutes when the doorbell for this side of the warehouse rang and Hunt crossed to the door by the garage entrance, opened it up, and said hello to Len Turner and a tall, thin, well-dressed young black man that Juhle guessed must be Keydrion Mugisa.
Inside his jacket, Juhle’s hand went to the butt of his duty weapon.
Hunt hadn’t invited Keydrion to attend this meeting with Turner, so they had to bring another chair over to add to the circle. Turner, after a barely cordial greeting to Hunt, fell into the role of his voluble and friendly self after he recognized Carter and Juhle. Lorraine Hess had met up with Jaime and Lola Sanchez outside on the street and they came in together a few minutes after Turner. The last arrival, and the only one to make any kind of a stink- when she saw that Alicia Thorpe was in attendance-was Ellen Como. But Hunt got her calmed down and seated her next to him on his right. Juhle took the left seat. So around the circle, it went Juhle, Roake, Alicia, Mickey, Al Carter, Lorraine Hess, Jaime and Lola Sanchez, Turner, Keydrion, Ellen Como, and Wyatt Hunt. In the relative chill, all of the latter arrivals kept their coats on.
The low hum of conversation gradually faded to silence and all eyes went to Hunt. “I would thank all of you for coming down here tonight,” he began, “but the truth is that none of you actually did so because I asked you to. In fact, you’re all here for your own very good reasons, and they’re all about your own self-interest. Some of you-Mr. Carter, Mrs. Como, Ms. Hess-want to make your claim to all or a portion of the reward. Some of you-Mr. Turner, Mr. Mugisa, Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez, and again, Mr. Carter, want to make sure that the police understand and believe your alibis for the night of the two murders, and let’s make no mistake, the same person killed Dominic Como and Nancy Neshek.”
“That’s right. And she’s right here,” Ellen Como blurted out. “We all know that.” Looking across to Juhle, she pointed at Alicia. “I don’t know why you’re not arresting her, Inspector, why you haven’t done it already. Can there be any doubt? We all know what she did and why-”
Hunt held out a hand toward her. “Mrs. Como, please.”
“No, she’s right, Hunt,” Jaime Sanchez said. “What the hell?”
Hunt shot his gaze around the circle. “Inspector Juhle is here to make an arrest tonight, all right, but he’s promised it’s not going to be Alicia Thorpe unless we fail to provide him with somebody else.”
“What are you saying?” Turner demanded. “That one of us-?”
“I think you can figure that out for yourself, sir,” Hunt said.
Next to him, Ellen Como stood up. “I didn’t come down here to have to take this kind of abuse. I’m the victim here. My husband was the one who was killed. Doesn’t anybody care about that? I’m not going to be any party to this.” She turned toward the door and pushed her chair out of her way.
“Mrs. Como!” Hunt spoke up. “No one’s accusing you of anything. Sit back down. Please. We need every one of you here if we’re going to get to the truth.”
Straight across from Hunt, Lorraine Hess said, “Are you really saying that one of us killed Dominic? And Nancy too?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hunt said. “One of you.”
“But I was… I was with my son…”
“I didn’t say you, Ms. Hess”-Hunt took in the group-“or all of you. I said one of you.”
“And you intend to prove this,” Turner said, “to Juhle’s satisfaction? Right here, right now. How do you intend to do that?”
“By comparing the stories you’ve told and seeing where they don’t agree. But also, a little bit,” Hunt replied, “by the process of elimination. You, for example, Mr. Turner. Mr. Mugisa drove you home right after the COO meeting on the night Nancy Neshek was killed. You’ve got your son and your wife and the other kids who were there building their homecoming float who will swear that you were with them until you went to bed. No one’s suggested that you’ve done anything different, and you can prove that. So you didn’t kill Ms. Neshek, and therefore you didn’t kill Dominic.”
Turner sat back, shaking his head in derision. “Well, of course I didn’t. The idea’s ridiculous.”
“The whole concept is ridiculous,” Jaime Sanchez said. “Lola and I went to dinner after that meeting, and then home together.”
“Where did you go to dinner?” Hunt asked.
“The Hayes Valley Grill. We walked there from City Hall. They know us there. I’m sure I’ll even have a credit card receipt.”
“And after that?”
“Jesus Christ!” Turner raised his hands as if in exhortation. “Inspector Juhle, is this the kind of questioning that Mr. Hunt thinks is going to get us anywhere? Do you have any reason to believe that Jimi and Lola Sanchez are any kind of even potential suspects in either of these murders?”
Juhle said, “No, sir. No, I don’t.” He turned to Hunt. “If this is your idea of breaking the case, Wyatt, maybe you should send these good people home and let me go about doing my job, which is arresting my suspect.”
Hunt kept his cool. “Mr. Sanchez,” he said, “my apologies to you and your wife. I was using you as an example of Mr. Turner’s point about the process of elimination, which I think we can all agree is not too satisfying. Far better is the question of the information we’ve received, and where what one person told us is contradicted by somebody else.” Now Hunt turned in his chair. “For example, Mrs. Como. You told me that your husband was in love with Ms. Thorpe and that-”
Ellen cut him off and snapped back at him. “He was. He told me. There wasn’t any doubt about that.”
“No, not about that bare fact. Your husband was in love with her, okay. But Alicia swears that they didn’t have a physical relationship.”
“Well, she’s lying. What do you expect?”
“I’m not lying,” Alicia said, as Roake put a restraining hand on her arm.
Hunt turned to Ellen and went on. “How do you know Alicia’s lying?”
“Because they were caught in the office.”
“Making love, you mean?”
“Fucking, is what I mean. Fucking is what they were doing, not making love. Don’t try to dignify it.”
“And where were they doing this?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, physically, where were they having sex in the office when they were caught?”
“I don’t know. How would I know?”
“So how did you know about it in the first place?”
