The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(54)

Now he was dead.

Like Lambert, Ben Wallace claimed to be a pickup player. Also like Lambert, Wallace seemed entirely disposable. There was every chance that if he’d gotten out to the parking area, he and his crewmates would have been executed at the drop-off.

In the last hour the airport had been closed. Flights had been canceled. Travelers had been evacuated. News outlets carried the story of a foiled terrorist attack.

Our job was to find Loman, and right now the only living lead to him was Benjamin Wallace. Briggs and Rafferty had been charged with possession of unregistered firearms and drugs—the coke they’d had stashed in their cookie jar. They had a lawyer now and hadn’t said a word about Loman.

Wallace was shaky. Was he ready to give it all up?

The door opened, and Conklin settled Wallace back into the plastic chair across from us. Then Conklin started asking questions about Loman’s recruiter, Russell. Had Wallace ever met him? Wallace said he had, once. Conklin asked him what Russell looked like, what he sounded like, when he’d said he would pay Wallace his fifteen thousand dollars.

Wallace answered that Russell was above-average height and had dark hair, a pointed nose, and unaccented speech. That he seemed nice. And smart. And that Russell was going to pay everyone off when they got to the van.

I studied everything about Wallace.

I listened to his vocal inflections and observed his body language, eye movements, looking for tells, for lies. I was checking him against all the hundreds of interrogations I’d done, trying to discern if he was telling us the truth.

“This job we were doing,” said Wallace, “was supposed to be a whatchamacallit … a head fake.”

The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. A head fake was a ruse. A diversion. A diversion from what?

“How so?” Conklin asked.

“There wasn’t supposed to be any trouble. It was supposed to be cut-and-dried, a robbery at the cargo terminal and then out. Loman was doing a different job. I think so, anyway. And it was all going as planned until Leonard went rogue.”

What had Wallace said?

Was Loman’s big heist still in play?

Wallace took off on a little side road then, talking about how he should have just kept to his lame job, minded his own business, not listened to his dopey brother.

I picked up my water bottle and pounded it once on the table to get his attention. “You said ‘head fake,’ Ben. That you thought Loman was ‘doing a different job.’ Dig deep. Tell us about that.”

“I don’t know,” Wallace whined. “I told you five times already, we were just supposed to go to the cargo terminal, open the box, take the bags, and get to the parking lot. Look. Everything that went wrong was Leonard’s fault.”

“Leonard was the red-haired one,” I said. He was the fake cop whose brains were spattered inside the shuttle train.

“Johnny Leonard. I’d just met him, but I knew he was nuts,” said Wallace. “He saw cops on routine patrol in the terminal, and he thought he saw someone looking at him wrong, like an undercover, and he snapped.

“Next thing you know, he’s shooting and cops are shooting back. And our easy-breezy plan just blew up. It was shoot or be shot. Once Leonard started firing, I knew I was a dead man.”

Conklin said, “If you can’t tell us about Loman, you’ve given us nothing.”

Said Wallace, “I don’t know anything else.”

I slapped the table and said, “Okay, then. We’re done. Good-bye and good luck.”

I meant it.





CHAPTER 80





“DON’T SAY IT like that!” Wallace shouted. “I’m going to be killed. Loman is going to have me killed, understand? Oh God.”

Conklin said, “If I’m God, I’m pissed off, buddy. Your crew put a lot of innocent people in danger today, and maybe a US Marine, a passenger on his way to Cincinnati, is going to die. You should pray that he lives.”

Wallace nodded and my partner went on.

“You want us to help you? Or do you and your pacemaker want to take your chances with the FBI and DHS?”

Wallace started to sob and shake his head no.

Conklin put his hand on Wallace’s shoulder, and I could see something shift inside the young man.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

He knew that he was done.

Conklin said, “Hey, Ben. We’re the good guys. San Francisco police. In about three minutes the Feds are going to come through the door. They outrank us. The federal government trumps local PD. We won’t be able to help you, my friend, and that’s the truth.”

Wallace shook his head some more, choosing between a rock and a hard place. He looked up and said to Conklin, “Loman’s going to hit a computer company. That’s the real job.”

My adrenaline spiked again.

Jacobi had been working on a tip about a hit on a computer company. Had that tip now been confirmed?

I asked, “Where did you get that?”

“Leonard told me.”

The dead guy. I said, “What computer company? Give us a name.”

Wallace was panting now, sweating profusely, lips trembling. I found him believable. Then again, I’d been wrong before. I cautioned myself not to interrupt Wallace as he went on.