19th Christmas Read online

  He said, “My first impression is that this is the work of professionals. The dead man is Arnold Sloane, store manager at Milano’s Fine Jewelry. Sloane has finished his dinner for one and refilled his wineglass, and that’s when someone rings the doorbell.

  “He either looks through the peephole or is expecting company. In any case, he knows this person or, more likely, persons. They come in or they push in, hold a gun on him, duct-tape him to the chair, gag him with a T-shirt. Then they go through the rooms.”

  I said, “It was a robbery?”

  Hallows nodded. “Looks like it. They threaten Mr. Sloane and he gives up the safe combination. The safe in his den was opened without tools or explosives. And there’s a little gratuitous vandalism. Either staging a robbery scene for our benefit or working out a grudge. So they break up his stuff, take a knife to the pictures, and slice up his clothes. Some sadism here, I think. He knows what’s going on. Maybe praying that after they rob him, they’ll leave. Or what? He knows what’s going to happen. He can’t even bargain with them. So he sits in the chair and then they go ahead and shoot him.”

  Hallows is a tough old dog, but he was disturbed by what he had seen.

  “Damn psychos.” He shook his head.

  I looked past Hallows and saw the body of an older man duct-taped to an upholstered armchair, a gag made out of a T-shirt tied around his head. Three gunshot wounds bloomed red on his pajamas.

  Hallows said, “Shell casings were removed by the shooters. They were careful. Maybe we’ll have something for you to go on in a couple of days.”

  Jacobi said, “Thanks, Lieutenant. Can you give us the tour?”

  I realized with a shock that we were the damned primaries on this homicide. This was our case. Mine and Conklin’s.

  We walked past the techs processing the living room: making sketches of the layout, putting down markers next to blood spatter, shooting photos, and taking prints.

  Hallows brought us to the bedroom and showed us the empty safe in the closet and the slashed clothing. We went back to the living room, walking carefully behind Hallows, seeing the horror of a cold, professional murder done at close range.

  When the ME’s techs came in to remove the body, we got out of the way.

  Once Conklin, Jacobi, and I were standing outside in the dark again, I asked Jacobi, “Say the tipster wasn’t blowing smoke—what’s Sloane’s connection to Loman?”

  Jacobi said, “Maybe somehow Loman knew that Sloane might have millions in his safe.”

  Really? Was this Loman’s big heist?

  A man had been murdered and robbed, not in a museum or a bank or an art gallery, but in an eleven-hundredsquare-foot condo in the Castro District.

  If the killers had left anything of forensic value behind, CSI would find it. The whodunit detective work was going to be first up for SFPD. But Conklin and I were still on the Loman task force. We needed help to secure the crime scene right now.

  I conferred with my partner and then took Officer Thompsett aside. As first officer, he and his partner could stand in as primaries until we had forensics.

  “Until detectives are assigned, this is your case, Officer,” I said. “Draft some uniforms and canvass the neighborhood. Keep records of everything. Call me or Conklin if you get a lead.”

  “Will do, Sergeant.”

  I got into the squad car, called Brady, and reported in. I thought of calling Joe, but it was too late. I leaned against the passenger-side window and dropped into a dream about Chris Dietz. I was facing him down that long sixth-floor hallway, and he had TEC-9s pointed at me, one in each hand.

  My gun jammed.

  Dietz taunted me as he fired, and I knew that this was finally it. Death at the Anthony Hotel.

  I was startled awake.

  It was still deep night. I was inside the squad car and Conklin was saying my name.

  “What’s wrong?” I snapped at him.

  “Time to go,” he said. “Sorry, Linds. We have to go.”

  CHAPTER 51

  BRADY PEERED AT his watch with bleary eyes.

  Was that right? He shook his wrist, looked at his watch again. The second hand was still sweeping jerkily around the face.

  It was three minutes shy of midnight.

  He lifted his eyes and looked out at the squad room through the glass walls of his office. There wasn’t another soul in the Homicide bullpen, and that was also true of Robbery, Vice, Narcotics, and Organized Crime.

  Mayor Caputo had taken the informant’s tip about Loman’s threat on his life very seriously. He’d canceled the Toys for Tots Christmas gift giveaway because his presence would be putting citizens in danger. And then he’d gone to his office as Brady had requested and stayed on top of the rumored Christmas heist. He was angry that he could be manipulated, threatened, and he wasn’t going to accept anything less than “We locked the bastard up. He’s behind bars and under armed guard.”

  Yes, sir. Brady wanted the same.

  Whoever Loman was. Wherever he was. He had to be caught and held.

  Every ambulatory cop in San Francisco was working to find Loman, prompting a new phrase for spinning your wheels. Now it was working a Loman.

  Brady had just gotten off the phone with Lindsay when a shadow crossed his desk. He started, then saw that Sergeant Roger Bentley was standing in the doorway.

  Brady snapped, “What is it, Bentley?”

  Bentley was a solid cop but not a brilliant one. He lumbered into Brady’s office and dropped into a chair that hadn’t been built for a man of his size and weight.

  Bentley said, “My kid is home for the holidays. He’s taking computer science at San Jose State.”

  Brady said, “Uh-huh,” thinking, Oh, man, please. Not his kid’s theory of the phantom heist.

  Bentley said, “Declan picked up some information in a … like, a virtual chat room.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Brady’s head was spinning almost clear off his neck. He’d never heard of so many tips netting nothing. Meanwhile, three people had been shot in the past couple of hours, he had two possible accessories to a rumored upcoming armed robbery in holding, the mayor was panicking, and every cop in the city who hadn’t had the foresight to blow town for the holidays was on the Loman case.

  The SFPD was seriously depleted—emotionally, psychologically, and physically—and they had nothing to show for it.

  Brady said, “Bentley, cut to the chase, will you please?”

  “Okay, okay. I hardly understand this virtual stuff, but Declan is aces at it. He says the heist has something to do with computer software, a new program or something, manufactured in top secret labs by a company called BlackStar.”

  “Not exactly a rock-solid lead, Bentley, but thanks.”

  Bentley said, “You said … never mind. Good night, Lieu.”

  He took the four steps to the door, then spun around and said, “Lieu, Declan says a guy who is part of this heist is some kind of systems-analyst genius. He kills on the game boards. He calls himself the Low Man’s Brain.”

  “I don’t get you, Bentley. I haven’t slept in three days.”

  “The Low Man. Loman. Get it?”

  “Okay. Now I get it. Go home, Bentley, and tell Declan I said thanks.”

  Brady was out of gas. He remembered there was a day-old steak sandwich in the fridge with his name on the wrapper.

  He made the trek to the break room, found the sandwich and an unopened bottle of near beer—thank you, Jesus—and brought it all back to his desk.

  Maybe it was the protein or the carbs, but when he was halfway through the sandwich, the name BlackStar started ringing a tinny and distant bell. Brady sat upright in his chair, took his mouse in hand, and called up the computer files from the crime scene at the Anthony Hotel.

  The photos were numerous, organized chronologically, starting in the hallway. First shots were of the blood spatter, the markers, the bullet holes, the dead man lying in his blood, and the door to 6F hanging by one h
inge. The next photos were of Chris Dietz’s body from several angles and then the inside of Dietz’s rented crib.

  Brady impatiently clicked through the photos of the half-eaten food, the open closet, the electronics lined up on the coffee table.

  He didn’t know enough about electronics to understand the functions of the assortment of small black boxes, but he could read the logo imprinted on two of them. The corporate name had been unfamiliar to him—until Declan’s dad spoke the words five minutes ago.

  The gadgets were made by BlackStar VR.

  Did that mean something? BlackStar. The Low Man’s Brain. He was at a loss. What would Jacobi do?

  Well. He’d just have to ask him.

  CHAPTER 52

  JACOBI HAD HIS key in the ignition of his car and was thinking about home, bed, and blessed sleep when Brady called and asked him to work a new angle on the Loman case.

  If Brady was working, how could Jacobi say no?

  “Tell me about it,” he said to Brady.

  Brady filled him in on the BlackStar lead and invited Jacobi to work from his comfortable former office on the fifth floor. Jacobi got out of his car and set the alarm. He said, “I’ll use Boxer’s desk. She won’t mind.”

  The Homicide bullpen was grim in the daytime, but right now, the flickering fluorescent lights reminded Jacobi of hundreds of late nights working murder cases in this room.

  Even after Brady told him all that he knew on this new tip, Jacobi still didn’t get it. Sergeant Bentley’s kid had turned up a possible lead in a chat room—a video gamer with a screen name sounding like Loman hinted that he was part of a crew targeting a computer company. To Jacobi, following up on an anonymous internet tip was like feeling for your glasses under the bed in the dark after a night of drinking.

  The odds of finding the glasses were better.

  Jacobi adjusted Boxer’s chair, typed her password into her cranky old Dell, and brought up BlackStar Virtual Reality’s website.

  He quickly gathered that BlackStar was privately held, had its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, and employed a couple of thousand employees on a modern campus in the Presidio. The company also had dozens of manufacturing plants and offices worldwide. As Jacobi clicked around the site, he learned that BSVR specialized in sophisticated computer games, corporate intelligence, and cybersecurity and that NASA and the US military were major clients.

  That was interesting.

  Jacobi pulled the desk phone toward him and dialed Bentley’s son at the number Brady had given him. Declan Bentley was a nineteen-year-old college freshman and video gamer. According to his father, he was also conversant in various technical areas Jacobi lumped together under the heading of computer stuff.

  Jacobi had taught himself to text and program his GPS and play around with some apps on his phone, but he was far from tech-smart. He was a member of the AARP. That’s just the way it was.

  He figured Declan would be awake, and in fact, the kid answered his phone on the second ring, said, “Talk to me.”

  “Declan, it’s Warren Jacobi. Maybe your father told you I was going to call.”

  “Oh, right. I’d be happy to help.”

  “Excellent. Thanks, Declan. Appreciate it.”

  Jacobi wrote the kid’s name and the time and date on one of the yellow pads Brady left all over the squad room.

  “Here’s the deal, Declan. Your chat-room conversation with the Low Man’s Brain. Tell me everything you remember.”

  Part Four

  * * *

  DECEMBER 24

  CHAPTER 53

  JACOBI LOOKED AT his watch—early in the morning on December 24. Officially Christmas Eve, and all over the city, cops of all levels and from all departments were staked out at plum targets, watching for a job to begin.

  Nothing was off the table.

  If the Low Man’s Brain was part of Loman’s crew, if he had leaked something useful to Declan Bentley, Jacobi had to extract that information PDQ.

  He asked the kid, “This guy actually said he was part of a plan to hit BlackStar VR? You believed him?”

  Declan said, “Yeah, I did believe him. The Brain says he’s a systems analyst. He’s online a lot, and he’s a killer gamer, so over time he’s earned some cred with me.”

  “What word did he use, Declan? Hit? Rob? Attack?”

  “He said, ‘Put a world of hurt on BlackStar.’”

  “Did you save a copy of the chat, Declan?”

  “I didn’t even think to do that.”

  Jacobi pressed on. “Did you ask him what he meant by putting ‘a world of hurt’ on a company?”

  “Sure. I said, ‘Dude. What the hell?’ He just laughed and then said something like, ‘You’ll read about it,’ and then he said he was going to put the hurt on me in Lord of Klandar—that’s a game—and he left the room. If Dad hadn’t mentioned that he was working the Loman case, I wouldn’t have even put those two names together.”

  “So help me understand, Declan,” Jacobi said. “This Low Man’s Brain. That’s a screen name, right? He says he’s involved in a criminal enterprise, he admits that he’s a criminal, and he’s confident no one can figure out who he is?”

  “No one can,” said Declan. “No way, not possible. I don’t know if the Brain is a he or a cyborg or a five-year-old girl genius in the Netherlands.”

  Jacobi said, “Okay, okay. You have any idea why BlackStar would be the target of this hit?”

  Declan said, “BSVR is big, man, and profitable. Privately held. They’re like the new Intel. Maybe they have a weaponized program that could penetrate any kind of system. That’s possible. Their games are all about war. Or maybe the Brain is just full of crap.”

  “Okay, Declan, I’m drowning in maybes and I need a definite something. BlackStar’s founder is a man named David Bavar. Apparently, he’s your typical tech genius, very rich, keeps to himself. Do you know anything about him that I don’t know?”

  “Well, right now he’s in Davos. Switzerland.”

  “How do you know that?” Jacobi asked.

  “He’s been streaming his ski trip in the Alps. He’s pretty good. Want me to show you how you can be, like, sitting on his shoulders going down a black-diamond slope?”

  Jacobi said, “Some other time.” He thanked the kid and wished him a merry Christmas before he hung up.

  Was anything he’d just learned useful?

  Loman, whoever he was, did big stickup jobs, or so the story went. As Jacobi understood it, stealing a program wouldn’t require a crew with guns and masks. Digital theft would be done over the internet. Wouldn’t it?

  Jacobi went back to the keyboard with his stiff old fingers and looked up BlackStar’s CEO on all available databases. He found him in a court document related to a lawsuit against BSVR for patent infringement. BlackStar had beaten that rap.

  Noting that it was around midmorning in Davos, Jacobi made the call. He listened to the phone ring and had just about decided that Bavar must already be out on the slopes when someone answered the phone.

  CHAPTER 54

  JACOBI PRESSED THE phone to his ear and introduced himself to David Bavar as chief of police, retired, on special assignment.

  He gave the tech billionaire Boxer’s extension and the phone number of the department so that he could call back on a line that would be answered “SFPD, Homicide.” Jacobi drummed his fingers on the desk, got a cup of mud from the break room, and returned to Boxer’s desk just as the phone rang.

  “Chief Jacobi,” he said.

  “Ah, this is David Bavar. Now, tell me again what this is about.”

  Jacobi explained that a criminal with a rumored history of big, bloody robberies on an epic scale was reportedly targeting BlackStar, and possibly this hit would come tonight.

  When Bavar laughed, Jacobi felt ridiculous. That pissed him off.

  He took a breath and realized that most people would be skeptical if they got a call like this from a stranger. Still. He was trying to he
lp the guy. When Bavar asked him the source of his information, Jacobi took the easy way out.

  “I can’t discuss this while our investigation is in progress.”

  Bavar said, “So what is it you think I should do? I’m at the airport in Zurich and will be out of touch for about eight hours. After that, I can be reached at this number. My offices are officially closed until New Year’s. We’re in the cybersecurity business, Chief, uh, Jacobi, and I guarantee you that no one is hacking into our systems. If we had a vulnerability, I would know about it.”

  “Say that that’s true, Mr. Bavar. Do you have any enemies who might want to do harm to your company?”

  “Hundreds. No one likes an overnight success.”

  “Does the name Loman mean anything to you?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bavar. “Who or what is Loman?”

  Jacobi reluctantly crossed that avenue off his list and moved on.

  “Mr. Bavar, do you have any objects of value that a professional criminal with a history of armored-car and casino heists would find worth his time?”

  “Like what?”

  “You tell me, Mr. Bavar. This isn’t my field. Do you have some kind of cutting-edge gizmo or stealth hacking program or top secret government plans, anything like that?”

  “Nothing that could be found, recognized, and stolen in some kind of break-in. It just doesn’t work that way, but if you want to drive out to our corporate headquarters in the Presidio—what time is it there, midnight?”

  “A little later.”

  “If you want to take a look around, go ahead.”

  David Bavar gave Jacobi the name and number of his head of security, then told him he had to board his plane.

  CHAPTER 55

  JACOBI CALLED THE security guy, Ronald Wilkins, rousing him from bed. Jacobi apologized, then used the magic words “David Bavar asked me to call you.”