The 19th Christmas

by James Patterson

  Apparently, our mayor didn’t think so, and he wasn’t going to call off his bodyguards or the SFPD until Loman was in jail.

  At the same time, while every cop in the city was chasing the phantom Loman, there’d been a fatal stabbing in the Tenderloin, a shooting at a cash machine in the Marina, a vehicular manslaughter or outright homicide on Jackson, and a domestic dispute in Bayview that had ended with a child dead and a wife in a coma.

  I was thinking of phoning Joe just to say hello when dispatch called on our radio channel. I grabbed the mic, and day-shift dispatcher May Hess said, “Sergeant, can you take a call? There’s a woman named Cheryl Sandler on the line. She claims to be a close friend of Julian Lambert, deceased.”

  “Put her through.” I couldn’t say it fast enough.

  Chapter 68

  A tearful female voice said, “Sergeant, the medical examiner’s office told me to talk to you. What should I do?”

  An hour later Conklin and I were in the box with Cheryl Sandler. Tall, thirty, and pretty, she had boy-cut platinum-blond hair and wore a black dress and jacket; her eye makeup was smudged. She had an arrest record for running out on a restaurant check as well as convictions for shoplifting and returning the stolen merchandise for cash.

  She and Lambert had petty theft in common.

  I asked routine questions about where she lived and worked, and after she’d filled in those blanks, she told me about Julian.

  He had a wonderful spirit. She loved him. They’d spent the night together at his place five days ago, before we’d pulled him in for his grab-and-dash on Geary. She told us that Lambert had called her from the jail and they had made plans to get together after his release, but he had stood her up. That wasn’t like him. At all. She went to his place and looked around. Nothing had been disturbed since she’d been there last. She was going insane worrying about him but figured maybe the police had moved him. Maybe he couldn’t use a phone.

  And then, this morning, she’d seen the TV report about the man’s body being pulled from a car trunk. She’d called the hotline that was on the screen and was transferred to the ME; she’d ID’d Lambert from his morgue shot.

  Cheryl’s story seemed logical. She was understandably distraught and jittery. I suspected she was coming down off a drug high.

  “I never, ever, ever expected this,” she told us.

  I asked, “When you last saw Julian, how did he seem to you?”

  “Excited.”

  “Excited about what?”

  “Christmas was coming and…” She shook her head, wrapped her arms around herself, and cried. “He was the sweetest boy. Ever.”

  Conklin handed Cheryl a box of tissues and said, “Can I see you for a minute, Sergeant?”

  I left the room with Conklin, and we took up a position on the other side of the mirrored observation window. The young woman had put her head on the table and seemed to be sobbing.

  “What’s your BS meter saying?” he asked.

  “Too soon to tell,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “If it’s an act, it’s a good one. I’ll get her some tea.”

  “When you come back, why don’t you take over?”

  Conklin has a way with women. In fact, he’s famous for it. I went back into Interview 1 and told the young woman that Inspector Conklin would be right back.

  She said, “How can Jules be dead? How did this happen?”

  I said, “Let’s try to figure it out.”

  Conklin hip-bumped the door and came in with tea for three in paper containers. He found a clean ashtray for the tea bags, set down a dish of sweeteners, and took his seat across from Cheryl.

  He said, “Sorry to have to ask you personal questions, but you may be the only person who can help us.”

  She nodded. Wiped her eyes. “I want to help.”

  Conklin asked, “How long have you known Julian?”

  “We’ve been together about three months, but I’ve known him for a year or so. We hung out at the same bar. Had some bar talk, you know. Flirting.”

  Conklin said, “Did he seem worried about anything or anybody? Had he been threatened at all?”

  “No, that’s the crazy thing. Everyone liked Jules. He was friendly. He was funny, too. But can I tell you something off the record?”

  She was talking to Richie now. Asking him if she could trust him. The camera in the ceiling was rolling.

  Conklin said, “Of course, Cheryl. Go ahead.”

  “I think there’s going to be a big robbery at the airport. Something to do with US Customs.”

  “Julian told you that? He specified customs?”

  “I think he was going to be a lookout. He told me that the crew chief is a big-time robber and that he’s cold-blooded. You know what really scares me? If he found out that Jules talked to the police when he was arrested…”

  Conklin was still giving Cheryl Sandler his full attention.

  He asked her, “You’re sure he wasn’t making stuff up to impress you?”

  “He isn’t like that.”

  “Okay. Anything else?” Conklin asked her. “Do you know the boss’s name?”

  She shook her head. I wasn’t convinced.

  “It’s okay to tell us,” said Conklin. “You won’t be connected to this guy. I promise you.”

  Cheryl leaned across the table and whispered to my partner. Conklin said, “Got it. Thank you. I’ll call you if we have further questions. Wait right here, Cheryl. I’ll get a police officer to drive you home.”

  “I shouldn’t be seen in a police car,” she said.

  “Here’s my number. If you think of anything we should know,” he said, handing her his card, “call, day or night.”

  She tucked the card into her bag and blew her nose.

  Richie said, “Sit tight. I’ll call you a cab.”

  Chapter 69

  Dick Russell took note of the active police presence as he drove slowly along the arrival lane outside the International Terminal.

  Cruisers lingered in the taxi lanes. Uniformed officers talked to each other as they stood near curbside check-ins. No one even glanced at the seven-year-old gray Prius.

  Then again, a number of these “cops” were on Willy’s payroll.

  There was rapid movement up ahead: Willy sprinting across the street to the curb and hailing him. Dick brought the car to a stop but kept the motor running as his partner got into the passenger seat.

  Dick quipped, “I guess I should ask you: How was the trip?”

  “Short and sweet,” said Willy, snorting a laugh.

  Dick had dropped Willy off an hour earlier, then parked in a short-term lot and waited for his partner to inspect the site one last time, making sure it was all a go.

  “I had a latte and did some people-watching,” Willy said.

  Both men were dressed in casual business attire, sports jackets and ties. Willy had on wraparound sunglasses and a billed cap, Dick a toupee and a fake mustache, items that were good enough to thwart facial-recognition software if the security footage was scrutinized.

  But the airport was teeming with travelers taking the last possible flights to their family Christmases. No one was watching them. They wouldn’t stand out on video.

  Dick said to Willy, “Let’s take another spin around the terminal. We still have plenty of time.”

  Willy said, “Sure. Let’s go.”

  He buckled his seat belt, then tapped a number into his burner phone. A sweet young voice said, “Hi there, Mr. Loman.”

  “Hi, Cheryl. How’d it go?”

  “In my humble opinion, I think I was very good. Even I started to believe it. Poor me, losing Julian like that. I felt sorry for myself.”

  She laughed, and Willy said, “I’m sure he would have liked you. Now tell me everything.”

  Cheryl described it all, how she’d called the hotline, spoken to Sergeant Boxer, one of the cops who had arrested Julian. She told Mr. Loman about being interviewed in the Homicide interrogation ro
om and how she’d cried over her dead boyfriend.

  “I let them drag the airport job out of me,” she said. “They totally bought it, Mr. L.”

  “And why do you think they believed you?”

  “Because they didn’t grill me. They didn’t hold me. They didn’t give me a polygraph. They gave me green tea and a cab ride home. Oh, and they’ll keep me posted on how the case goes.”

  “Very good, Cheryl. Proud of you.”

  He told the girl where to find the key to the box at Mailbox Inc. that held her packet of cash, and he thanked her.

  “Be safe, Mr. Loman,” she said. “Call if you need anything.”

  “Will do.”

  He would never see her or talk to her again. Twenty-four hours from now he and Imogene, using the names he’d bought and paid for, would be flying out of San Rafael Airport. No wait times, runway lit and open twenty-four hours; their private jet would take them to New York, and from there, they’d go to Zurich.

  But they weren’t in the air yet.

  Willy was satisfied that the planning stage was over. Everything on the list was checked off and now they were counting down to the execution phase, which was complicated and risky.

  He and Dick still had a lot of work to do.

  Chapter 70

  I called Brady and heard police radios squawking in the background as I filled him in on our interview with Cheryl Sandler. He was irritated by this vague new lead about an upcoming hit at the airport, and I understood.

  He snapped, “Can you confirm this goddamned tip?”

  “No, but we checked Cheryl out, and she is who she says she is,” I told him. “She has two priors for petty theft. She is, in fact, a seamstress, and as she said, she does live on Waller Street. With a little prompting, she named Loman. I gotta say, she seemed pretty damned terrified.”

  Brady didn’t speak.

  “Brady? You still there?”

  He said, “I’ll make calls. You’ll have contacts by the time you get out to SFO.”

  “Okay. We’re on our way.”

  Until a few years ago I’d been the Homicide squad’s commanding officer. The job had come with a title of lieutenant, an office the size of a bread box, and a hotline to the mayor, but it had made me feel older and crankier. It took me away from what I wanted to do—catch bad guys and have time at home with my family.

  I’d stepped aside and Brady got the job. Good for him. Good for me. He was a first-class boss—honest, admirable, brave. I had no regrets.

  Right now he was in a surveillance van handling the current shit-storm, and soon he’d call Mayor Caputo, brief him on the latest unconfirmed Loman tip, and ask him to release funds and send help quick.

  The mayor would give Brady what he wanted, of course.

  Way before my partner and I reached SFO, the SFPD Airport Bureau, Homeland Security, and International Arrivals and US Customs would be on high alert.

  The SFO security command center would have cameras on every individual on-site, and agents manning the operation would relay information on any suspicious persons to undercovers throughout the airport.

  All Conklin and I had to do was find and contain Loman, a man we had never seen and wouldn’t be able to identify because we had no idea what he looked like. “As they say, they don’t pay the big bucks for the easy jobs,” I said.

  “Still standing by for the big bucks.”

  We smiled and then left the squad room, trotted down four flights of stairs, and exited onto Bryant Street. We located an unoccupied unmarked car at the curb and signed it out. I felt the day slipping away, and at the same time I was having flashbacks of the shooting gallery on the sixth floor of the Anthony Hotel—the sounds, the smell of my own sweat. I was glad that Conklin wanted to drive.

  We strapped on Kevlar vests and buckled our seat belts. Conklin gunned the engine.

  Chapter 71

  We burned rubber as our car shot out into stop-and-go traffic. I flipped on the lights and the siren, then called the radio room and asked for a dedicated channel for communications with Brady and airport PD.

  “You’re blue channel, Sergeant,” I was told.

  Traffic slowed us down when we hit the intersection of Sixth and the 280 Freeway. Richie swerved, jumped lanes, and sped ahead. I gripped the dash, fighting carsickness, until we pulled off the highway onto the airport access road. We stopped minutes later under the International Terminal’s swooping marquee that glowed with the holiday light display.

  I buzzed down my window and took a few deep breaths. The airport’s curbside looked as crowded as it always did during a holiday.

  Travelers arrived and disembarked from cabs and hired cars with their luggage and families. They wheeled and humped their bags to airport check-in, unaware that cameras were on them, that some of the porters were undercover cops, that some of their fellow travelers were likewise plainclothes law enforcement dressed to blend in, all of them connected by wireless coms to the surveillance headquarters below the ground floor of the terminal.

  I tried to remember if I had kissed my husband good-bye. Yes, I remembered his whiskery kiss and pat on my rump at the door. But I’d left Julie sleeping under the tree with her arm over Martha. I hadn’t said good-bye to Julie.

  Conklin turned to me. “Ready?”

  An airport cop rounded the front of our car, banged on the roof, and, while blocking my door, shouted, “Move your vehicle. You can’t park here.”

  I tugged on the chain around my neck and showed him my badge, saying, “Sergeant Boxer, Homicide. Step aside.”

  Brady’s voice came over the radio. “Conklin. Boxer. Captain Gerald Herz from airport security is commanding this operation. Good luck.”

  Conklin crossed himself.

  I checked that my vest was lying flat under my jacket.

  Together, we got out of the car.

  Chapter 72

  San Francisco’s International Terminal is an enormous structure, almost two million square feet enclosed by glass and steel. It’s got five floors, two concourses, and twenty-four gates, and it’s built to handle five thousand passengers an hour.

  After entering from the street, Conklin and I stood at the far end of the Main Hall, staring out at the hundreds of travelers crossing several football-field lengths of terrazzo flooring between the airport shops and check-in booths spanning the hall.

  We’d been here before, of course, but this time we were looking for one particular ant in this mammoth anthill. Unless that person was holding up a sign reading I AM LOMAN, I had no idea how we or any of the surveillance crew in the pit would be able to identify our suspect.

  I phoned our contact, Captain Herz of SFPD airport security. When he answered, I told him our location and gave him our descriptions. I said, “I’m five ten, blond. My partner is taller. We’re wearing SFPD caps and Windbreakers.”

  Herz answered, “Okay, good, I was told to expect you. Walk to the opposite concourse and you’ll see the travel agency.”

  Chrome letters on the overhead marquee across the terminal from where we stood spelled out AIRPORT TRAVEL AGENCY. A man in a dark-blue police uniform and a billed cap raised his hand. I lifted mine.

  We crossed the passageway from the entrance and the wall of ticketing stations and shops to where Herz waited for us in front of the travel agency.

  I took note of the twenty-five-foot-wide entrance, the size of an average airport shop. The long counter was at a right angle to the front, and a conveyor belt traveled through an opening in the back wall and out to luggage handling in the rear. I also noted a stack of six black nylon suitcases in front of the counter and two uniformed airport cops going through them.

  Herz was wiry and tanned and had a steely handshake. There were laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, but he was deadly serious as he briefed us. He explained that short-term baggage storage, twenty-four hours or less, was available only at this location. All left bags were x-rayed before being accepted for storage.

  The ca
ptain said, “We found a bag outside the doorway this morning, unlocked, no ID tags. Inside the bag were plastic-wrapped kilos of white powder. It could be anything—drugs, anthrax, talcum powder, I don’t know.”

  I thought how damned easy it was for anyone to bring anything into an airport terminal. Unknown white powder. Semiautomatic weapons. Explosives. Bags weren’t x-rayed unless people tried to check them in or take them through security.

  Herz went on. “Forensics just picked up the lot of it. We’ve now gone through all of the bags in storage. Nothing looks hazardous or particularly valuable. Everything is labeled. But…”

  I tried to wait him out, but after ten seconds or so, I had to say, “But what?”

  He said, “But a tip just came in to airport security, a woman saying that there could be a nerve-gas attack coming over the HVAC system. The operator said, ‘Please repeat that,’ and the caller said, ‘Loman is targeting the cargo area,’ then hung up,” Herz said. “We couldn’t trace the call.”

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  I was staring at Herz, imagining nerve gas billowing through air-conditioning vents, paralyzing airport personnel and travelers—to what end? I pictured rows of body bags.

  I could see it in Herz’s eyes. He, too, was trying to part the fog surrounding this terror threat, figure out what it was and how to shut it down.

  “I’ve got guys going through HVAC, and the surveillance room is working overtime.”

  Herz went over the basics, and even though I had a pretty good idea that there were cameras in every niche of this terminal, including the baggage areas and the bathrooms, it was reassuring to hear him describe the pit.

  I could see it in my mind’s eye: the whiteboards around the room covered with notations, the names of security officers and the number assigned to the unsubs—unidentified subjects— they would follow through the airport.

  Until the unsubs were cleared, they were active and would have tails listening to their conversations, looking over their shoulders to see their tickets, following them into restrooms, and staying with them to security check-ins; TSA would take it from there.