Джеймс Паттерсон - The 19th Christmas

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.”

“Why did you disguise yourself?”

Loman stared at me without answering for a long moment, then he said, “There were cops everywhere. I knew Russell was dead and you guys would try to pin it on me. I wanted to disappear. Saddest thing. That man has been my friend for twenty years. He was almost family.”

I said, “Okay. But why did you have a gun? What was that all about?”

“Ah. Well. Russell told me that the head of the company, Mr. Bavar, had stolen an invention of his, some kind of software hack. He said it could be worth millions. Dick wanted to scare Bavar into paying him for this intellectual theft. So he tracked down the information that Bavar would be alone in his office on Christmas. Apparently, it was a habit of his to go to his office and write seven-figure bonus checks for his inner circle.”

I listened, teeing up my next question.

I asked, “So how did this go wrong, Mr. Lomachenko? Why did you shoot Russell?”

“ Me? No. You’ve got it all wrong, Sergeant Boxer. Bavar shot Dick. Not me. But it was understandable. Russell was out of control,” Lomachenko said. “He was getting madder and madder, threatening to shoot Bavar if he didn’t get a million bucks. Like I said. Dick was shaking him down. I was just standing there, watching, and then Bavar snatched Dick’s gun away from him and bang. Just like that, he shot him. Bang, bang, bang. I didn’t stick around to see what happened after that.”

“Yes, I see,” I said, thinking Loman didn’t seem or act nervous. No blinking, no tears. Lying came easily to him. I would even say he enjoyed the attention.

I went on. “So, do I have this right? You say you were just tagging along, and next thing you know, a fight breaks out. Bavar gets the gun away from Russell and shoots him.”

“Exactly right. I had nothing to do with this, except that I saw Bavar shoot Dick. Honest to God, I was just window dressing.”

No. He was just full of shit.

For the next hour Conklin and I took turns asking Loman about BlackStar. When he’d gotten to the point where he was repeating himself, we asked about other elements of the Loman-related crime spree we’d been chasing for the past five days—the false leads, the dead bodies, and the airport terror attack this morning.

We had a lot. We wanted to let him know how much we had and how closely we’d been keeping track of him, hoping he would slip up or try to make a deal.

But he denied every piece and part of it with a smile.

“Whatever you think you’ve got on me, you’re just wrong. I have nothing to do with any of that.” That’s what he said.