“Fast food is all about hooking the consumer,” she said. “Making food addictive. That’s what we do. What I do. It’s like dealing drugs. We work like crazy to get the fat-salt-sugar ‘bliss point’ to a T. It’s a science. And I’ve got the degrees in chemistry to prove it. And of course, there’s this.”
She grabbed folds of belly fat through her house dress with both hands and jiggled them. Where was she going with this?
“I’m not sure I follow you, Donna. You’re not saying you set off bombs because you’re addicted to fast food?”
“Hell, no. I had nothing to do with any bombs. I’m just saying I don’t feel bad that someone’s holding Chuck’s up for a fortune. Corporations like Chuck’s are corrupt. Unconscionable.”
I said, “I thought you might tell me that you were getting screwed on the potential merger. That Walter was going to lose his job. Because that I might understand.”
“Well, that’s true, Sergeant. You think I was going to get a fair share in Chuck’s merger with Space Dogs? I was the fat girl, supposed to take whatever I was offered. How do they dare treat me that way? How do they dare after all I’ve put into Chuck’s and the zillions they’ve made off my brains and talent and my hard work?”
Conklin answered his ringing cell phone and said, “How long? Okay. We’ve got the situation under control.”
He ended the call and said to me, “The cavalry is on the way. They’re just entering El Cerrito.”
Chapter 86
Sirens wailed in the near distance, closing in on the cozy yellow Craftsman-style house on Belmont Avenue.
I took out my phone and called Jacobi.
When he answered, I said, “Warren, we need a search warrant for a refrigerated transport van and for the house belonging to Donna Timko and Walter Brenner. We’re bringing them in as soon as you convince the Feds that they belong to us. We caught them and we want them.”
I gave Jacobi the particulars as the sirens got loud enough for him to hear them over my phone, and then I hung up. I looked through the window at the neat suburban houses across the street, lights and TVs on in the front rooms.
The neighbors were going to be shocked.
Walter and Donna are such nice people. I just can’t believe that they’d put bombs—No wayyy. Really?
“See that?” I said as squad cars drove up on the lawn and the flashing red-and-blue lights lit the dining room up like Christmas Eve in an alternative universe.
I said, “This is Walt and Donna saying good-bye to their best chance to get a break.”
“You’re too funny,” Timko said, laughing again. “You’ve got nothing on us. No evidence. No witnesses. No confession. No nothing. We’ll be home in the morning.”
“Take your toothbrush with you just in case. We’ve got you on threatening a police officer, resisting arrest, unlawful restraint, and of course, suspicion of murder. That’s before CSI goes through the van and this house.”
“Be my guest. There’s nothing to find,” Timko said.
“Really?” My turn to grin. “Not a trace of explosives? Not a print matching one on a ransom note? You’re sure?”
The look on Timko’s face said she was terrified. Out of her tiny freaking mind.
Conklin moved the dining table out of the way, and we each took one of Donna’s arms and hauled her to her feet. I cuffed her. The pleasure was all mine.
“Donna Timko, you’re under arrest on quite a few charges,” I said, “most of them felonies.” And then I listed them.
She shouted, “I have diabetes. You can’t lock me up. I’ll die.”
“I’m pretty sure they can scrounge up some insulin at the Women’s Jail. Meanwhile, you have the right to remain silent. If you can’t afford an attorney, you’ll be provided with one, courtesy of the City of San Francisco. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Do you understand everything I just said?”
Conklin read Walt Brenner his rights as car radios squawked right outside the house. The doorbell rang and knuckles rapped hard on the front door.
“This is the police. We’re coming in.”
Guess what? The killer with the large brown eyes started to cry.
Chapter 87
Yuki heard the gun go off. She didn’t know who’d been executed, but she knew how the victim had felt. First the shocked terror of being pulled out of the crowd. Then disbelief. Then not-not-not ready to leave her friends, her family, her life because it wasn’t her time. Then the pleading, followed by…maybe relief in the sharp report of the gun. That she couldn’t know.
She kept her eyes down as she stepped around clumps of passengers huddled on the deck. She edged along the narrow path between the pool and the railing, keeping tabs on her new best friend, Becky, who was whimpering behind her, “Don’t let it be Carl or Luke. Please God. Not them.”
Yuki and Becky had been to the stinking waste bucket, each of them acting as a privacy curtain for the other, while a gunman in fatigues and mask watched over them with an assault rifle and hurried them along.
Taking along a buddy to use the bucket was more for company and support than for protection from men’s eyes. This late in the game, Yuki didn’t care who saw her squatting over a bucket. She just didn’t care anymore.
This ship was a prison camp.
And soon another hour would pass. Another one of them would be murdered.
Becky touched her arm and whispered, “This will be over soon. They’ll pay.”
“I know,” said Yuki.
Becky dropped down beside her husband and son, and Yuki headed toward the spot where Brady waited for her. He raised his hand and she went to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He helped her down beside him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Freakin’ fabulous,” she said.
She handed him the bottle of water the gunman had given her. Brady twisted off the cap. He returned the bottle to Yuki, who took a few gulps and then passed it back to Brady.
Twenty yards away, on the other side of the pool, three guards leaned against railings. One smoked, one paced, and one talked on his radio, speaking to someone in their militia, checking in as they did every half hour.
Another goon was on the track above them. He swept the mass of prisoners with his torchlight, three or four times before shutting the light off.
Brady put his hand to the back of Yuki’s head and, drawing her close, kissed her temple. She hugged her knees in the chilly dark, glad for the comforting weight of Brady’s arm around her shoulders.
The guard who had been pacing went to the rail on their side of the pool. He flicked his cigarette into the water, then, still with his back to them, lit a match and bent his head. Brady was on his feet fast, like a panther.
The match was still burning when Brady reached his left hand around the man’s face and hooked his mouth with his fingers, getting a grip on his skull with his right.
It took less than the count of three.
Before the gunman even got his hands up, Brady had twisted his head with a powerful jerk.
The gunman went slack and Brady lowered him soundlessly to the deck.
Yuki put her hand over her mouth to muffle a scream as Lazaroff got up to help Brady. The two worked as one in the dark, wordlessly stripping off the dead pirate’s clothes and mask, then sliding his body under one of the lounge chairs piled nearby.
As soon as that was done, Lazaroff melted into the amorphous blackness of the crowd and Brady sat down beside her.
He lifted his shirt, took her hand, and placed it on the terrorist’s fatigues and mask. Then he put her hand to the waistband of his jeans, before wrapping his arm around her again.
My God. My God.
Brady had on pirate gear, and more than that, he had a gun.