Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

I called Conklin from the road and told his voice mail that the bomber was stirring, and that I’d be in the squad room shortly. I called Jacobi and left the same message.

I reached the Hall and parked with ten minutes to spare and met Beskin on the steps to the main entrance. Up to a point, he was central casting’s idea of an FBI agent: six-one, square-shouldered and square-jawed, with a government-issue haircut and a good gray suit. And then there were his bright-red-and-silver running shoes.

He saw me looking at them.

“What?” he said. “The fastest way to get here was to run.”

Agent Beskin and I exchanged nervous chitchat as we waited for Jansing to arrive. Pulling up minutes later, he parked his Beemer illegally but he was on time.

I asked Chuck’s sandy-haired CEO, “Did he call?”

“Not yet.”

We entered the Hall through the heavy steel-and-glass front doors. I badged Jansing and Beskin through security and we arrived upstairs before the clock struck eight.

Our electronics tech from the radio room, Kelli Pearson, was waiting in Brady’s empty office with her bag of tricks open and ready. I knew her to be smart and thorough, and I introduced her as such to Jansing and Beskin. Then we all took seats in the glass-walled hundred square feet that felt almost roomy without Brady’s bulk behind the desk.

Jansing said, “The bomber keeps saying no police. And yet, here we are.”

I said, “It was either come here and trace the call or go to your office and miss an opportunity to catch this guy.”

The call came to Jansing’s phone at ten after the hour. Pearson got the number and tapped it from the phone plugged into her laptop. The software chased the number to the cell phone tower that routed the bomber’s call but didn’t ring the bomber’s phone.

On my signal, Jansing said into his phone, “This is Jansing.”

I leaned in so that Jansing’s ear and mine bracketed his cell phone. I heard the chilling electronically modulated voice say, “Listen up. Five million is the price. If you don’t have it ready for drop-off by tomorrow morning at eight on the nose, bombs will go off. Multiple.”

“Wait,” Jansing said.

Pearson turned the laptop so we could see the blinking dot that represented the bomber’s car moving east on Carroll Avenue. This was an industrial area, dense with warehouses, trucking companies, heavy-equipment lots, and commercial truck traffic.

“No waiting,” said the robo-bomber. His voice was so freaking mechanical, I wondered if there was really a person speaking into a phone.

“Money for lives, Jansing,” said the hollow voice. “I don’t mind blowing up people. Why should I?”

“How can you go from asking a hundred thousand to demanding five million? I can’t get that much—”

“Once I have the money, I’ll stop. Otherwise…”

The phone went dead.

Pearson tapped her keyboard—but there was no blinking dot on the map of the Bayview area of San Francisco.

“That shitbird took the battery out of his phone,” Agent Beskin said. “For God’s sake! I keep waiting for him to do something stupid.”

I called Dispatch from Brady’s desk phone.

“I need all cars in the vicinity of Carroll and Third Street in the Bayview neighborhood to report any suspicious vehicular activity.”

“What type of vehicle, Sergeant?”

“Damned if I know,” I snapped. “Sorry. Anything suspicious, that’s all.”

Once again, our belly bomber was driving the action. We wouldn’t have time to set up a trap because we wouldn’t know the drop point until he made his next call to Jansing.

Beskin said to Jansing, “We’ll stick with you, Mr. Jansing, as many agents as it takes to keep you safe and to get this guy when he calls again. We’ll be ready for him. He won’t get away from us the next time.”

I couldn’t think of a reason in the world for Jansing to believe him.