The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(59)
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.
Finding David Bavar was critical and urgent. Getting Lomachenko’s confession to killing Richard Russell would hold him as we put the pieces of assorted murder and mayhem—Julian Lambert, deceased; Arnold Sloane, deceased; and the Keystone Cops caper at SFO this morning—into a believable whole.
We didn’t yet have proof that Loman had murdered anyone or kidnapped Bavar, but we were prepared to work on him until the sun came up—or until he said, “Get me my lawyer.”
Which wouldn’t be a good thing. With a good lawyer and a sympathetic judge, he might get bail. And then he might jump.
I balled up my brown bag of sandwich crusts and dunked it into the trash can.
Conklin said, “Ready?”
“After I brush my teeth.”
Minutes later we were in our chairs at the scarred gray metal table in Interview 1. With Loman facing the glass and the camera rolling, I took the lead.
I asked our suspect nicely, “Mr. Lomachenko, we don’t get it. Why were you at BlackStar VR this afternoon?”
“Tell ya the truth, I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “Dick Russell, friend of mine, asked me to come with him. I thought he just wanted company. Someone to talk to or hold his coat.”