She threw a quick glance at her brother, then came back to Mickey. “I was volunteering at the Sunset Youth Project. Getting involved in the process. I hope that’s going to be my life’s work.”
“So you know these people? The people Dominic worked with?”
“Some better than others, but I’m familiar with most of them now, yes.”
“So would you be willing to work with us if it turns out that this means we can help you out?”
She hesitated for only an instant, then met his eyes. “Whatever it takes,” she said.
“All right,” Mickey said. “Let me work out some of the details and run it by Mr. Hunt, see what he says.”
Again, she put her hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.” Her eyes had gone glassy, perhaps a prelude to more tears. “I really didn’t kill him,” she said. “I cared about him a lot, okay? He was a great man, and maybe we were getting a little too close, but I really didn’t kill him.”
“I’m taking that as a given,” he said. Mickey was also tempted to ask her what she meant by “a little too close,” but if she became a client, there’d be time for all of those questions. He was far too aware, he realized, of how her hand felt resting on his arm, so he patted that hand in a professional manner, and pushed himself back from the table. Standing up, he took a business card out of his wallet and handed one to her and one to her brother. “If the cops come again, make me your one phone call and I’ll at least be able to put you in touch with a good lawyer. Meanwhile, let me go see what I can do.”
Wyatt Hunt’s home was a unique environment incongruously existing in its light-industrial, south-of-Market ’hood. Less than three blocks away, San Francisco’s Hall of Justice-a six-story blue-gray slab of concrete that would have been at home in East Berlin before the wall fell-set the tone for the surrounding area. The flat, dirty, perennially windswept streets weren’t so much run-down or dangerous-like the Tenderloin district, for example-as simply depressing, and often deserted, especially now on a weekend.