Unlucky 13 (23 page)

“That’s a better idea than the meat processor,” I said. “We go missing, the FBI will be all over that plant, and you know human blood and remains will spell it all out, PDQ.”

“Good
point. Well, I’m loaded with ideas. That’s my best one so far. Walt, get his gun. Come on. I can’t do everything.”

Walt was a lefty.

He walked over to Conklin and pressed the gun muzzle to his temple. Sweat rolled down my sides, but my partner was cool, give him credit. Give him all the credit in the world.

Walt said, “Take out your gun with the tips of your fingers and pass it to me. No sudden
moves. My metabolism is high,
normally
. Now? I could shoot you out of pure freaking jitters. So do what I say. Okay?”

If Conklin didn’t hand over his gun, Brenner might reach for it. That would give my partner an opportunity to head-butt him, elbow him in the groin, any number of moves that might work—or get us both killed.

Timko flicked her eyes toward Conklin, who was gauging the situation,
looking to see what her brother was going to do.

I knew what
I
had to do, and that I had to get it right the first time.

It might be the only chance Conklin and I had to get out of El Cerrito alive.

MY HANDS WERE
flat on the table, but I hooked my thumbs under the edge of it. I took a breath, gathered my strength, and exhaled. Rising out of my chair, I flipped the dining table away from me and toward Donna Timko.

Donna yelped as the tabletop went vertical. She bolted out of her chair before the hundred pounds of tiger maple came down on her thighs, but she lost her footing and
fell backward to the floor along with her chair and the fancy bone china crashing around her.

At the moment I flipped the table, Walt reflexively turned his gun on me.

Conklin went into action. Using both hands, he slammed Walt’s forearm away from his head to the left, and using the power of his legs, drove Walt into the wall. He followed that body slam up with a knee to Walt’s
groin, then moved
to get the gun out of his grip. He wrenched Walt’s gun backward. The angle of the trigger guard snapped Walt’s finger.

I heard it break.

Brenner’s scream was part shock, part fury, and then there was the pain. And Conklin wasn’t through with him yet.

As Conklin forced Walt’s arm behind him and brought him to the floor, I went for Timko.

I’m fit and she was a loose pile of what-the-fuck happened
crammed into the corner behind an upended chair and dining table. I threw the chair out of my way, got around the table, and found the big woman lying on her shooting arm.

Her gun hand was flat to the ground and I stomped on it, hard. Timko shrieked, releasing her Colt, and I kicked it under the lowboy and out of the way.

My Glock had also fallen to the floor during the table flip, and I picked
it up. Then, gun in hand, I squatted down to Donna’s eye level. I was blowing hard and my heart was still galloping. I was pumping so much adrenaline, I might have been able to fly. But I kept my wheels on the ground and spoke in measured tones to the helpless criminal staring at me defiantly with hard, furious eyes.

“Donna, you don’t have much time. I’ll bet that the belly bombs were Walt’s
idea. Tell me the whole story before this house fills with cops and I’ll work with you.”

“Neither of us is guilty of anything.”

I kept going, giving her another chance to give me the confession I wanted.

“Right after the cops, there’s going to be a wave of pumped-up FBI and ATF agents who are going to see belly bombs as a career maker. Feds trump local. So I hope you understand, Donna. When
the Feds show up, this deal goes out of my hands for good. Feds will seek the death penalty.”

“I want a lawyer. That’s all I have to say.”

“Sure thing, Donna. No problem. You can call your lawyer after you’re booked. In the years to come, I hope you’ll remember that I told you that your best chance to get a break was right now, with me.”

DONNA LAUGHED MANIACALLY
. I was pretty sure that losing control of this shooting match was making her hysterical, but still. She was laughing.

I shrugged and said, “Well, I tried.”

“Am I under arrest?” Brenner asked from where he was cuffed and facedown on the scatter rug.

“Not yet,” said Conklin. “But when I hear sirens, I’m reading you your rights. That gives you, I don’t know,
two minutes to play ball. Confess or don’t, I don’t really give a shit.”

I said to my partner, “I think I can still get home in time for a late dinner with my husband. That’ll be a nice change.”

“So what are you actually saying?” Timko said, squirming
and pushing against the wall in an effort to sit upright in her corner. “You’re making us a real offer?”

“No promises,” I said. “You tell me
who did what in these bombings. And I need to know if there are any more bombs in play. Talk to me. Get me on your side and I’ll help you with the powers that be.”

She said, “Huh. What are you, Sergeant? Size eight?”

I said, “Uh, ten. Why?”

This was prelude to girl talk, I guessed. My cue to get Timko to think I liked her. I pulled over a chair, sat so that I was looking down at the woman who
couldn’t do a thing but look back.

“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.”

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 a 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.

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
.

ONE OF THE
masked thugs had put a seventies rock track on the bar’s sound system. As “You Make Loving Fun” blasted overhead, Brady and Lazaroff lay next to each other on the deck, talking mouth to ear in the dark.

When Brady worked narcotics for the Miami PD, he’d worked with undercover cops, run stings with them, and led raids against drug traffickers. Cops got almost no training
in hand-to-hand combat, but Brady had taken some training in mixed martial arts on his own. As for guns, he knew and could operate almost any weapon in current use.

His new friend aboard the
FinStar
, Brett Lazaroff, had been a Navy corpsman in the early days of Vietnam. He had been involved in search-and-destroy missions and
worked with the Marines as well as local irregulars, going into villages
and finding and killing guerrillas.