My mind saw it now, more vividly than when I’d watched the unending surveillance footage.
The skinny guy had delivered food to Chuck’s.
Then, having handed off a half dozen white cartons to the kitchen, he’d pulled up his hood and gone into the restaurant. I was staring at his composite image right now.
But even if my sketchy memory was dead-on, this might mean only that the delivery truck driver liked to buy lunch after he made a delivery.
But why hide his face?
If he was a deadbeat dad, or if there was a warrant out for him, and he wasn’t the stupidest person on earth, he might have fooled around with his facial hair to avoid detection by the security cameras.
Or else this guy, who had the means and the opportunity to deliver preformed frozen hamburger patties to Chuck’s restaurants, was no dead-beat dad.
He was Mr. Ka-boom.
“He works for Chuck’s,” I said to Conklin. “I’m sure of it. Richie? I think we have a suspect.”
Chapter 73
Bo Kellner forwarded the composite image of our suspected belly bomber to my phone. I thanked him, said, “Great job, Bo,” and handed my car keys to Conklin.
Once Conklin and I were inside the elevator, I checked the time again and saw that, as if I didn’t already know it, we were edging up on the bomber’s deadline. We had about twelve hours to name, locate, and arrest the man I’d tentatively identified as Mr. Ka-boom. The sun was down and offices were closed. Catching this guy without a name was a lot to hope for.
We piled into my Explorer and burned rubber in the forensic lab’s lot, then headed out to Emeryville at high speed.
I texted and then called Michael Jansing’s cell.
The phone rang three times and then rolled my call over to Jansing’s voice mail. So I called him at home.
This time a woman answered and identified herself as Emily Jansing. When I said I had to speak with her husband, she complained that he was at dinner and said that he’d call me later.
“Mrs. Jansing. I’ll come to your front door and kick it in if you don’t put your husband on the phone. Now!”
I guess she knew I meant that.
The phone clattered onto a hard surface. I heard raised voices in the background, then footsteps on hardwood floors, and finally Jansing came on the line.
“We have a suspect,” I said. “I’m sending a photo to your phone.”
“You think I know him?”
“Let’s hope and pray to God that you do,” I said.
I sent the image of a possible Chuck’s delivery man as Conklin took a hard right onto the US 101 North on-ramp. I could see the bridge up ahead, but we were still twenty minutes away from Chuck’s Prime’s headquarters.
Jansing said, “I don’t know him. He doesn’t look familiar to me at all.”
“He may be one of your truckers. Does that help?”
“I don’t know our truckers,” said Chuck’s CEO. “None of them.”
Traffic slowed as we approached the Powell Street exit, and after an interminable sixty seconds of stop-and-go along Hollis, Richie said, “Hang on.”
He flipped on the lights and the siren, and while that didn’t exactly blow vehicles out of the road, the noise meant that I had to shout to communicate with Jansing. “We have to get into your personnel records.”
A volley of yelling back and forth concluded with Jansing’s offer to have his assistant, Caroline Henley, let us into the office so that we could examine the company’s personnel files. “Caroline lives two blocks from the office,” said Jansing.
Which was a relief.
At half past six and there was no fast way to get a warrant.
By the time Conklin pulled my screaming, flashing car up to Chuck’s cream-colored corporate headquarters, my heart was pounding hard against my rib cage—like it was trying to crash out of jail.
Was I right that the skinny delivery man was the belly bomber?
If so, could we stop him before he bombed again?
Conklin set the brakes and asked, “You okay?”
“There’s Caroline,” I said, pointing to a brown-haired woman wearing tight jeans and a short tan coat, who was lowering her head against the wind as she came toward us.
We got out of the car and exchanged greetings, then climbed the steps to the Emery Tech Building’s front door. Henley swiped her access card in the reader, and the locks thunked open. Once we were inside the lobby, I showed her the composite of our one lone suspect.
“Do you know him?” I asked her.
She took my phone in hand and said, “Yeah. I think that’s Walt.”
My hopped-up adrenal glands squirted a little more juice into my bloodstream. Jansing’s assistant knew the guy.
“What’s Walt’s last name?” Conklin asked as the elevator doors slid open.
“Bremmer. Or something like that,” Caroline said. “I only met him once, but I think he’s a very popular guy in our delivery fleet. He’s not in any trouble, is he?”
“How fast can you get into the files?” I asked her.
Chapter 74
In her own humble opinion, Cindy was a good driver. She kept to the speed limit, slowed at yellow lights, and let moms pushing baby strollers cross the street in their own good time.
So it was against her own rules of the road that Cindy sped up Lake Street at sixty-five, cutting in front of slower cars as she shot through the residential neighborhood.
If only she could be sure that the taillights up ahead belonged to the green Subaru. She pulled out of line to pass the vehicle in front of her, but she was forced to return to her own lane as an oncoming van leaned furiously on the horn.
It was frightening and embarrassing, and Cindy hunched reflexively, worried that if Mackie was up ahead and looked into her rearview mirror, she might once again make Cindy.
Still, Cindy pressed on.
At the moment, she was riding the tailgate of a Ford Escape, flying past the fenced-in, well-cropped lawns of St. Anne’s Home of the Poor. The Subaru was two cars ahead of the Escape, and although Cindy couldn’t identify the driver as Mackie Morales, she thought that the back of the driver’s head definitely looked to be that of a young adult female with short dark hair.
The driver turned her head to check her mirror, and Cindy saw her face.
That was her. That was Mackie Morales. For sure.
Cindy reached for her phone in the seat beside her and hit number three on her speed dial.
Lindsay’s voice came through the earpiece: “You have reached Sergeant Lindsay Boxer. Leave your name and time that you called—”
Damn it.
Cindy needed both hands on the wheel. She clicked off without leaving a message and tossed her phone back onto the passenger seat. Up ahead, Lake Street terminated at a T intersection. Cindy saw the Subaru take the left onto Arguello Boulevard toward the Presidio, and she followed the Outback into the turn too fast. Centrifugal force sent her handbag and cell phone off the passenger seat and onto the floor.
Cindy kept going, past the gate to Presidio Terrace and onward toward the Presidio, a former army post for more than two hundred years and now a National Park.
Where was Morales going?
It didn’t really matter. All Cindy had to do was follow her to her destination, then park inconspicuously, and call Lindsay, text Lindsay to death, wait for Lindsay.
As Cindy passed Inspiration Point on her right, she saw the Subaru gather speed around the next curve. Traffic had thinned so that now there was very little cover on the two-lane road between her Honda and Morales.
Whatcha going to do now, Cindy?
Cindy eased up on the gas. That was really her only option. She let a gray Lexus pass her and then a line of three motorcycles, and now the road split at a fork; it continued as Arguello on the right and was Washington Boulevard on the left. And there, up ahead, was a stop sign and there was no running it. This was a damned three-way stop. Cindy swore as she braked, and traffic filled in from Washington, crossing in front of her, blocking her view. And when she could move forward again, she didn’t see the Subaru anymore.