Free The Hunt Club by John Lescroart Page B

right? Hell, we celebrate our diversity. I tolerate your religion. You tolerate me not having one.”
    â€œBut I don’t like it, Dev. Our jobs, you know, we could get killed any day without any warning. I don’t want to see you die and cast into outer darkness.”
    â€œI know. And I appreciate it. I really do. And I halfway agree with—the die part. But meanwhile, all I’m trying to do is figure out what happened here and how I can hurt Malinoff as much as possible without getting arrested for it. That’s all. Just those two things.”
    â€œI’ll still be praying for you.”
    â€œI know you will, Shiu, I know you will.” Juhle took a last look at the room. He was four years older than Shiu, and with his many more years in homicide, the acknowledged senior partner. When they’d seen all they needed to at any one given place, it fell to him to make the call, which he now did. “Well, while we await the arrival of our ace crime-team specialists, perhaps we should go see what the grieving wife can tell us.”

    The living room was done in soft tones of ivory and pink and lavender. The mirror-image footprint of the office where Judge Palmer and the current Jane Doe lay dead across the hall struck Juhle as singularly sterile—similar in its own way to those rooms in the projects where the furniture in the unused living rooms are sometimes covered with plastic so they will last forever. Even though Juhle was far from a connoisseur, he was struck by the display of wealth and good taste. The wide, gold-etched mahogany coffee table; the sideboard with its Venetian glass collection; the occasional table with its stunning and apparently fresh floral arrangement; both love seats; the two matching crystal chandeliers; the eighteen-by-twenty-foot Oriental rug; the overstuffed couch—every article of furnishing was superb. And yet there seemed to be no life to this interior, no sense of play or even of excessive familiarity. As though it were a dollhouse that Mrs. Palmer had assembled not to live in but only to have, to rearrange, to impress others with.
    In his career, Juhle had seen enough shock from victims’ relatives that he knew he was looking at something very much like it now. The woman herself was large, though not fat. She sat at the very end of the overstuffed sofa with its pastel floral design, wearing a cream-colored tailored suit that ended at her knees and that now, with the sag of her strong shoulders, seemed to hang on her like a laundry sack. Mrs. Palmer’s artfully honey-dyed hair showed signs that it had been carefully coiffed earlier, but every little while she would run a hand all the way through it, front to back, then pull at strands on the sides as though she were a distracted schoolgirl. Her face, probably a little more than conventionally attractive when she was made up, now was blotched and haggard, her eyes minimized behind the swollen lids.
    Across from her in a love seat, keeping silent watch, Sanchez’s rookie Officer Garelia had stood when Juhle and Shiu came in and immediately crossed over to stand, silent and ramrod straight, at the door by which they’d entered. He didn’t look to be more than twenty-three years old or so, and Juhle guessed it might be his first murder scene, perhaps the first time he’d seen a body or two up close.
    But Juhle wasn’t here to critique the furniture or observe the reactions of rookie cops. Sparing his injured arm by using his foot, he moved the loveseat’s ottoman closer to the couch and sat down. “Mrs. Palmer,” he began, “I’m Sergeant Inspector Devin Juhle with homicide, and this is my partner Inspector Shiu. Are you up to talking to us?”
    She adjusted her posture, sitting back further into the sofa. Looking from Juhle to Shiu, her eyes took on a look of surprise, as though she hadn’t noticed when they’d come in. “Yes, I think so.”