The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(37)

My gun jammed.

Dietz taunted me as he fired, and I knew that this was finally it. Death at the Anthony Hotel.

I was startled awake.

It was still deep night. I was inside the squad car and Conklin was saying my name.

“What’s wrong?” I snapped at him.

“Time to go,” he said. “Sorry, Linds. We have to go.”





CHAPTER 51





BRADY PEERED AT his watch with bleary eyes.

Was that right? He shook his wrist, looked at his watch again. The second hand was still sweeping jerkily around the face.

It was three minutes shy of midnight.

He lifted his eyes and looked out at the squad room through the glass walls of his office. There wasn’t another soul in the Homicide bullpen, and that was also true of Robbery, Vice, Narcotics, and Organized Crime.

Mayor Caputo had taken the informant’s tip about Loman’s threat on his life very seriously. He’d canceled the Toys for Tots Christmas gift giveaway because his presence would be putting citizens in danger. And then he’d gone to his office as Brady had requested and stayed on top of the rumored Christmas heist. He was angry that he could be manipulated, threatened, and he wasn’t going to accept anything less than “We locked the bastard up. He’s behind bars and under armed guard.”

Yes, sir. Brady wanted the same.

Whoever Loman was. Wherever he was. He had to be caught and held.

Every ambulatory cop in San Francisco was working to find Loman, prompting a new phrase for spinning your wheels. Now it was working a Loman.

Brady had just gotten off the phone with Lindsay when a shadow crossed his desk. He started, then saw that Sergeant Roger Bentley was standing in the doorway.

Brady snapped, “What is it, Bentley?”

Bentley was a solid cop but not a brilliant one. He lumbered into Brady’s office and dropped into a chair that hadn’t been built for a man of his size and weight.

Bentley said, “My kid is home for the holidays. He’s taking computer science at San Jose State.”

Brady said, “Uh-huh,” thinking, Oh, man, please. Not his kid’s theory of the phantom heist.

Bentley said, “Declan picked up some information in a … like, a virtual chat room.”

“Uh-huh.”

Brady’s head was spinning almost clear off his neck. He’d never heard of so many tips netting nothing. Meanwhile, three people had been shot in the past couple of hours, he had two possible accessories to a rumored upcoming armed robbery in holding, the mayor was panicking, and every cop in the city who hadn’t had the foresight to blow town for the holidays was on the Loman case.

The SFPD was seriously depleted—emotionally, psychologically, and physically—and they had nothing to show for it.

Brady said, “Bentley, cut to the chase, will you please?”

“Okay, okay. I hardly understand this virtual stuff, but Declan is aces at it. He says the heist has something to do with computer software, a new program or something, manufactured in top secret labs by a company called BlackStar.”

“Not exactly a rock-solid lead, Bentley, but thanks.”

Bentley said, “You said … never mind. Good night, Lieu.”

He took the four steps to the door, then spun around and said, “Lieu, Declan says a guy who is part of this heist is some kind of systems-analyst genius. He kills on the game boards. He calls himself the Low Man’s Brain.”

“I don’t get you, Bentley. I haven’t slept in three days.”

“The Low Man. Loman. Get it?”

“Okay. Now I get it. Go home, Bentley, and tell Declan I said thanks.”

Brady was out of gas. He remembered there was a day-old steak sandwich in the fridge with his name on the wrapper.

He made the trek to the break room, found the sandwich and an unopened bottle of near beer—thank you, Jesus—and brought it all back to his desk.

Maybe it was the protein or the carbs, but when he was halfway through the sandwich, the name BlackStar started ringing a tinny and distant bell. Brady sat upright in his chair, took his mouse in hand, and called up the computer files from the crime scene at the Anthony Hotel.

The photos were numerous, organized chronologically, starting in the hallway. First shots were of the blood spatter, the markers, the bullet holes, the dead man lying in his blood, and the door to 6F hanging by one hinge. The next photos were of Chris Dietz’s body from several angles and then the inside of Dietz’s rented crib.

Brady impatiently clicked through the photos of the half-eaten food, the open closet, the electronics lined up on the coffee table.

He didn’t know enough about electronics to understand the functions of the assortment of small black boxes, but he could read the logo imprinted on two of them. The corporate name had been unfamiliar to him—until Declan’s dad spoke the words five minutes ago.

The gadgets were made by BlackStar VR.

Did that mean something? BlackStar. The Low Man’s Brain. He was at a loss. What would Jacobi do?

Well. He’d just have to ask him.





CHAPTER 52





JACOBI HAD HIS key in the ignition of his car and was thinking about home, bed, and blessed sleep when Brady called and asked him to work a new angle on the Loman case.