19th Christmas

by Patterson, James

  We watched people walking between the buildings, most of them millennials in tight jeans and pullovers or satin BlackStar baseball jackets. I also saw several older, professorial types.

  I noticed ordinary unmarked cars like ours in the lot, as well as dozens of cars with BlackStar parking stickers. I saw an undercover cop I knew standing by the waterfall, two others smoking cigarettes and strolling as they worked their phones.

  “What’s the plan, Chief?” Conklin asked Jacobi.

  “Special response teams have warrants. Risk warrants to seize weapons, and the Feds will have a search warrant for electronics, computers, and like that,” said Jacobi. “Couldn’t be more than a few hundred thousand computers in this place. After they lock all of these buildings down, the three of us and everyone else Brady can get will go in looking for Mr. Lomachenko. Just waiting now for the word ‘Go.’”

  Conklin swept his gaze across the huge campus, the half a dozen buildings and the expansive greens between and surrounding them, some trees scattered around as well. He sighed. “Lot of ground to cover.”

  I agreed. “I’m getting out,” I said, opening the car door. “I need some air. I’ve got to make a quick call to Joe.”

  Jacobi held the door for me, and I’d just gotten my feet on the ground when a shot cracked across the campus.

  Around us, some people stopped to listen, some dropped to the ground, and others dashed toward doorways.

  I saw no gunmen, no sign of the shooter. I got out of my crouch behind the car door and went to help Jacobi to his feet.

  That’s when I saw that his face was gray and that he was clutching his thigh.

  “I’m hit,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  And then his eyes rolled back and he passed out.

  CHAPTER 83

  AN EMT NAMED Murphy hustled me out of the ambulance.

  Doors banged closed, and the bus, with my dear friend Jacobi inside, took off down Lombard Street, turned a corner, and was gone.

  I forced myself to come back to the moment.

  BlackStar employees who had been crossing the green seconds earlier had hit the ground or were hiding behind trees as SWAT poured out of their vans and took up positions around adjacent buildings.

  I stared out over my car-door shield, looking for the shooter—and something stood out to me. Within the scattered BlackStar workers, I saw three men walking away from the executive offices and toward the corner of the grounds leading to O’Reilly Ave.

  They weren’t taking cover. They walked with purpose, as if unfazed by the shots and the panic. They were dressed differently from the techs I’d seen earlier sauntering through the campus.

  They just looked … off.

  The tallest of the three was dark-haired and wearing a leather bomber jacket. The shortest of the men wore a khaki-colored Windbreaker and a billed cap. He kept his eyes down.

  The third man was bracketed by the other two. His hair was silver. The BlackStar logo was on the back of his jacket, and I had the impression that he was being propelled forward by his companions.

  I grabbed my partner’s arm.

  “Rich. The chunky one with the cap. Tell me. Is that our guy?”

  Sunlight slanted through the copse of trees and into our eyes as the three men took the path heading away from us.

  Conklin said, “I can’t say for sure.”

  We crossed the lawns, planning to intersect the path the men were traveling. Then they changed course and walked more quickly toward one of the brick buildings.

  My heart was banging hard and I was panting even though I was walking at a steady pace. My gut was telling me that the guy with the cap was the man in the picture on Jacobi’s phone.

  My gut said that it was Loman. William Lomachenko.

  CHAPTER 84

  THIS WAS JUST brilliant. Had Russell’s shot hit a cop?

  Loman stood with his hostage and his second in command outside the side entrance to Building 3. He’d seen cops wearing SFPD Windbreakers cluster around a body on the ground, and an ambulance had pulled up to the main parking lot near the lake.

  The three of them were hidden from the SWAT team on the green, but Loman still felt exposed. He reached around Bavar and pulled on the door handle. It didn’t budge. A tiny red light centered on a metal plate in the brick wall beside the door caught his attention. Below the light was a small lens at eye level.

  His screwup associate stated the obvious. “It’s an iris reader.”

  Loman had nothing to say to Russell. His shot, fired in panic when Bavar tried to make a break for it, had hit a cop, launched a law enforcement response, and guttered the smooth execution of their plan.

  But he did speak to Bavar. “Look at the lens.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bavar, laughing. “You shoot me, and this becomes the worst day of your life.”

  Bavar’s contempt despite the loaded guns pointed right at him actually made sense to Loman. Bavar was a cocky bastard but he was not stupid. Without him, there would be no payday.

  According to the plan, while the airport fandango was going down, Russell’s man on the street, Sam Wallace, had been tracking David Bavar, watching and reporting to Russell when Bavar left his home in his candy-apple-red Maserati. So Loman and Russell had been waiting for BlackStar’s CEO superstar when he arrived at his private parking space behind Building 4.

  It had worked just like it was supposed to. Until now.

  Russell was sputtering, spinning excuses for why he hadn’t known that BlackStar would be overrun with staffers today, unable to explain the police presence.

  Loman burned as he looked at Russell, standing there with his gun in Bavar’s gut.

  “I can’t know everything, Willy,” Russell said. “I had excellent information. It’s well known that Bavar always comes in alone on Christmas—”

  Bavar said, “Oh. I guess you didn’t get my memo to staff last night. BlackStar has a rush order. Santa says all those who work on December twenty-fifth get a bonus.”

  It was like a lit match had been dropped into a gas can. Loman’s anger at Russell exploded.

  He moved his gun out of his retirement plan’s back and pointed it at Russell’s chest. Russell’s eyes widened and he started backing up.

  “Willy, no, no, no.”

  “I thought I could count on you, Dick.”

  Loman fired twice.

  Russell dropped, then rolled on the ground, moaning. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Loman still had the gun on him. Russell held up his hand, palm facing Loman, a plea not to shoot.

  Loman shot him again, through his palm and into his heart, and Russell, the big gambler, the deep thinker with a scientific mind, exhaled his last breath. Loman wished he could kill him again. Russell had blown their carefully choreographed hit-and-escape strategy.

  Loman had planned to milk Bavar for information for a while before killing him, but a reboot was possible. His flight was paid for and the jet was still waiting. He had seed money in Zurich. He’d figure out how to finance his new life once he was out of the country.

  He said to Bavar, “Look into the scanner.”

  Bavar had gone pale. He wasn’t joking and smirking now that he’d seen how easy it was for Loman to kill. He put his eye up to the iris reader. The lock thunked open, and Loman pulled on the door, held it open with his foot, and poked Bavar with the gun.

  Loman said, “Move.”

  Bavar did it.

  Loman’s pulse was pounding loudly in his ears. Shooting Russell hadn’t alleviated his anger at all. He flashed on his wife, imagining Imogene sitting in her rose-colored chair in the living room, having packed for an overnight trip like he had told her to. He thought she’d be wearing her engagement ring and the diamond pin he’d gotten her for her birthday. Sweet woman born on Christmas Day.

  He had planned a wonderful life for them. Now he thought that he might never see her again.

  CHAPTER 85

  CONKLIN AND I lost sight of maybe-
Loman when the three men suddenly ducked into the space between Buildings 3 and 4. Speeding up, our guns holstered, we continued along the footpath in their direction.

  Two shots rang out, then a third.

  Conklin and I now ran toward the gap in the staggered line of brick buildings, and there, in front of a side door, was a body that matched Ben Wallace’s description of Loman’s number-two man. Bullet holes had punched through the tall man’s flight jacket, and blood was pooling around him.

  Conklin stooped, felt for his pulse, then shook his head no.

  I went for the door, pulled on the handle, shook it a couple of times, and looked at my partner.

  “Go ahead,” he told me. “If this circumstance isn’t exigent, I don’t know what is.”

  I fired shots into the door around the lock, hammered in the glass with my gun butt, reached inside, and opened the door.

  The lights were on. The hardwood floors gleamed. The white walls were hung with large, framed graphics, and a Christmas tree twinkled in a corner of the sparsely furnished reception area.

  Ahead of us, against the far wall, was an unoccupied reception desk festooned with pin lights. Beside the desk, a short staircase and a wheelchair ramp led to an elevator bank.

  To our left was a wooden interior door. I tried the handle but the door was locked. Across the room on our right was an identical door—ajar, as if it had been opened in a hurry and not pulled shut.

  I phoned Brady and got him. I said, “There’s a gunshot fatality outside the south side entrance to Building Three.”

  “Noted. What else have you got?” I told him I thought that the shooter was inside the building, that he wasn’t alone, that the building had to be evacuated and a perimeter set up around the murder scene.

  “Conklin and I are inside the building, going after the shooter. We need backup.”

  I clicked off, and moments later a bullhorn cleared its throat with an electronic squeal and a voice announced, “This is SFPD. We need everyone to evacuate the building right now. Use the front entrance only. Repeat, evacuate through the front entrance only and go to the main parking lot, where you will receive instructions. Thank you.”

  Conklin and I blocked the shattered side entrance to protect the murder scene. At the same time, we had a clear view of the large, open lobby. Workers appeared, young people in ones and twos, speaking excitedly into their phones, pouring down the stairs from the elevator bank, threading around coworkers, heading toward the main exit.

  I searched the faces of every person coming into the reception area.

  If my gut was right and Loman was here, he was wearing a khaki Windbreaker and trousers and maybe a billed cap. He’d been herding a silver-haired guy in a black baseball jacket with the BlackStar logo on the back.

  Richie said, “Old guy in blue boiler suit at two o’clock.”

  The man crossing the lobby was wearing dark-blue workman’s coveralls. He was balding and paunchy, and he avoided looking at me as he headed for the front doors.

  That was him, the man in the photo on Jacobi’s phone.

  Rich yelled out, “You! In the coveralls. Stop. We need to talk to you.”

  Coveralls said, “Me? Sure. No problem.”

  Conklin shouted, “Keep your hands where we can see them!”

  The subject said, “I work here. I’ve got ID.”

  His hand darted into his coveralls.

  Rich and I yelled in unison, “Hands in the air!”

  But the man in blue pulled a gun and, gripping it with both hands, aimed it at us.

  “Talk to this,” he yelled.

  We were fifteen feet away from him, but the lobby was swarming with panicked human obstacles who were running between us and the man and his gun as they streamed toward the exit.

  We didn’t have a clear shot, and neither did Loman.

  A young man racing for the doors slammed into Loman’s back and shoulder. Loman spun, staggered, then caught himself. He whipped around toward the young man who’d run into him and who was now sputtering apologies as he backed away.

  Loman had shifted his eyes away from us. We were closing in on him when the front doors exploded inward and the reception area filled with a dozen SWAT team commandos, fully armed. Terrified BlackStar employees tried to break around the men in black, but the exit was now blocked.

  Conklin and I reached Loman in two strides, and I saw his expression change as his mood went from defiance to defeat. There was no way out alive. He was done.

  His gun clattered to the floor. He raised his hands high over his head and shouted at us, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot!”

  We threw him to the floor, and not too gently.

  I cuffed him behind his back, and my partner patted him down. Loman was packing a roll of duct tape in a hip pocket and had no wallet or ID, no other weapons.

  Conklin and I dragged Loman to his feet, and still high on adrenaline overload, I arrested him on suspicion of murder and read him his rights. Conklin bagged his gun and handed him off to the SWAT commander, Lieutenant Reg Covington, who grinned at us, then marched our prisoner out to the van.

  Conklin’s hands were shaking.

  I, too, was shaken. And I still had a question.

  “Rich, that is Loman, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We got him.”

  CHAPTER 86

  ONCE THE FEISTY man in the blue coveralls was inside a squad car heading to the Hall of Justice, Conklin and I, along with a dozen other cops, searched the four-story building for two men: the silver-haired man wearing a BlackStar jacket and the janitor whose uniform Loman was wearing.

  We found a brown-haired man inside a supply closet, tied up with strips of undershirt and gagged with his boxers.

  When he was unbound and ungagged, he thanked us and told us his name was Steven Kelly. He was in his mid-forties and had been working at BlackStar in janitorial services for five years. When he was partially dressed in the baggy trousers his captor had left behind, he said, “The guy who made me strip held a gun on Mr. Bavar. He made Mr. Bavar tie me up.”

  I said, “Mr. David Bavar? Head of BlackStar?”

  “That’s him,” Kelly said. “The boss of bosses. This is his company.”

  Kelly walked us to a nearby conference room and pointed out the portrait of David Bavar, founder and CEO of BlackStar VR. That was him, the silver-haired man I’d seen walking between Loman and the tall man wearing the satin baseball jacket.

  I called Brady, and this time I got his outgoing message. I left him one of my own, saying that David Bavar, BlackStar’s CEO, may have been kidnapped and that we had a suspect in custody.

  “Could be Loman,” I said. “Brady, we need the security footage, especially from the south side entrance to Building Three and everything you can get from inside.”

  Conklin drove us to the Hall, and by the time we were back in the squad room, Loman had been booked and the dead man had been identified as Richard Ross Russell of San Francisco.

  Russell’s prints were on file because he was in the education system, an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University with advanced degrees in science and math. He was unmarried and had no known criminal associates or a record of any kind.

  But we had forensics.

  A gun had been found in the shrubbery near Russell’s body. Russell’s prints were on the gun, and GSR was on his right hand. Ballistics had put a rush on the bullet taken from Jacobi’s thigh, and the lab matched that bullet to those fired from Russell’s gun.

  I leaned back in my desk chair and stared up at the TV hanging high on the front wall. The airport shooting was still top of the news. There were first-person reports of bystanders and porters, and interviews with Gerald Herz and with airline executives.

  A mention of the shooting at BlackStar was just a chyron, type crawling along the bottom of the screen, and there was no mention of David Bavar.

  I still couldn’t make sense of what had gone down at BlackStar. What was the point
of it all?

  Who had shot Russell—and why? What was the connection between Russell, Lomachenko, and David Bavar? Was this, in fact, a kidnapping?

  And, most urgent, where was David Bavar now?

  If we were very lucky, security footage might have the answers.

  CHAPTER 87

  AT JUST AFTER 6:00 p.m., William Lomachenko was wearing an orange jumpsuit and chilling in a holding cell.

  Conklin and I were at our desks, eating ham sandwiches for Christmas dinner, drinking coffee, and talking over our upcoming interview with Loman.

  We had done our research.

  Loman didn’t have a police record, and outwardly, everything about him spelled Mr. Average Guy. His house was of the cookie-cutter variety in a working-class neighborhood. He and his wife had an import business, and Loman sold gold chains to local stores. He had an old car. Wore big-box-store clothes.

  We had a search warrant for his house, but so far nothing incriminating had turned up. And we were able to get a warrant to look into Lomachenko’s finances. The banks were closed today, but we did have a few facts to work with.

  One, we had a positive ID on Lomachenko from the DMV photo on file.

  Two, we had caught him red-handed at BlackStar, and he was in our seventh-floor lockup now.

  I should have felt frickin’ elated, but we had to make a case against him or turn him loose. Right now, the man we called Loman hadn’t left his fingerprints on anything but the gun he’d been holding when we took him down. I would bet anything that Loman had used that gun on Russell, but even though we had a skeleton crew at our lab over Christmas, it might be days before forensics would process it and get back to us.

  Conklin and I talked about how we were going to approach Loman: make him comfortable, befriend him, show him the way out and work from the outside in—or go straight at him hard. If we went at him wrong, he could stop talking. It was his right.

  Rich and I were in agreement.