The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(38)

If Brady was working, how could Jacobi say no?

“Tell me about it,” he said to Brady.

Brady filled him in on the BlackStar lead and invited Jacobi to work from his comfortable former office on the fifth floor. Jacobi got out of his car and set the alarm. He said, “I’ll use Boxer’s desk. She won’t mind.”

The Homicide bullpen was grim in the daytime, but right now, the flickering fluorescent lights reminded Jacobi of hundreds of late nights working murder cases in this room.

Even after Brady told him all that he knew on this new tip, Jacobi still didn’t get it. Sergeant Bentley’s kid had turned up a possible lead in a chat room—a video gamer with a screen name sounding like Loman hinted that he was part of a crew targeting a computer company. To Jacobi, following up on an anonymous internet tip was like feeling for your glasses under the bed in the dark after a night of drinking.

The odds of finding the glasses were better.

Jacobi adjusted Boxer’s chair, typed her password into her cranky old Dell, and brought up BlackStar Virtual Reality’s website.

He quickly gathered that BlackStar was privately held, had its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, and employed a couple of thousand employees on a modern campus in the Presidio. The company also had dozens of manufacturing plants and offices worldwide. As Jacobi clicked around the site, he learned that BSVR specialized in sophisticated computer games, corporate intelligence, and cybersecurity and that NASA and the US military were major clients.

That was interesting.

Jacobi pulled the desk phone toward him and dialed Bentley’s son at the number Brady had given him. Declan Bentley was a nineteen-year-old college freshman and video gamer. According to his father, he was also conversant in various technical areas Jacobi lumped together under the heading of computer stuff.

Jacobi had taught himself to text and program his GPS and play around with some apps on his phone, but he was far from tech-smart. He was a member of the AARP. That’s just the way it was.

He figured Declan would be awake, and in fact, the kid answered his phone on the second ring, said, “Talk to me.”

“Declan, it’s Warren Jacobi. Maybe your father told you I was going to call.”

“Oh, right. I’d be happy to help.”

“Excellent. Thanks, Declan. Appreciate it.”

Jacobi wrote the kid’s name and the time and date on one of the yellow pads Brady left all over the squad room.

“Here’s the deal, Declan. Your chat-room conversation with the Low Man’s Brain. Tell me everything you remember.”





Part Four




* * *





DECEMBER 24





CHAPTER 53





JACOBI LOOKED AT his watch—early in the morning on December 24. Officially Christmas Eve, and all over the city, cops of all levels and from all departments were staked out at plum targets, watching for a job to begin.

Nothing was off the table.

If the Low Man’s Brain was part of Loman’s crew, if he had leaked something useful to Declan Bentley, Jacobi had to extract that information PDQ.

He asked the kid, “This guy actually said he was part of a plan to hit BlackStar VR? You believed him?”

Declan said, “Yeah, I did believe him. The Brain says he’s a systems analyst. He’s online a lot, and he’s a killer gamer, so over time he’s earned some cred with me.”

“What word did he use, Declan? Hit? Rob? Attack?”

“He said, ‘Put a world of hurt on BlackStar.’”

“Did you save a copy of the chat, Declan?”

“I didn’t even think to do that.”

Jacobi pressed on. “Did you ask him what he meant by putting ‘a world of hurt’ on a company?”

“Sure. I said, ‘Dude. What the hell?’ He just laughed and then said something like, ‘You’ll read about it,’ and then he said he was going to put the hurt on me in Lord of Klandar—that’s a game—and he left the room. If Dad hadn’t mentioned that he was working the Loman case, I wouldn’t have even put those two names together.”

“So help me understand, Declan,” Jacobi said. “This Low Man’s Brain. That’s a screen name, right? He says he’s involved in a criminal enterprise, he admits that he’s a criminal, and he’s confident no one can figure out who he is?”

“No one can,” said Declan. “No way, not possible. I don’t know if the Brain is a he or a cyborg or a five-year-old girl genius in the Netherlands.”

Jacobi said, “Okay, okay. You have any idea why BlackStar would be the target of this hit?”

Declan said, “BSVR is big, man, and profitable. Privately held. They’re like the new Intel. Maybe they have a weaponized program that could penetrate any kind of system. That’s possible. Their games are all about war. Or maybe the Brain is just full of crap.”

“Okay, Declan, I’m drowning in maybes and I need a definite something. BlackStar’s founder is a man named David Bavar. Apparently, he’s your typical tech genius, very rich, keeps to himself. Do you know anything about him that I don’t know?”

“Well, right now he’s in Davos. Switzerland.”