Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

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.