“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.
“What’s Walt’s last name?” Conklin asked as the elevator doors slid open.
“Bremmer. Or something like that,” Caroline said. “I only met him once, but I think he’s a very popular guy in our delivery fleet. He’s not in any trouble, is he?”
“How fast can you get into the files?” I asked her.
CHAPTER 74
IN HER OWN humble opinion, Cindy was a good driver. She kept to the speed limit, slowed at yellow lights, and let moms pushing baby strollers cross the street in their own good time.
So it was against her own rules of the road that Cindy sped up Lake Street at sixty-five, cutting in front of slower cars as she shot through the residential neighborhood.
If only she could be sure that the taillights up ahead belonged to the green Subaru. She pulled out of line to pass the vehicle in front of her, but she was forced to return to her own lane as an oncoming van leaned furiously on the horn.
It was frightening and embarrassing, and Cindy hunched reflexively, worried that if Mackie was up ahead and looked into her rearview mirror, she might once again make Cindy.
Still, Cindy pressed on.
At the moment, she was riding the tailgate of a Ford Escape, flying past the fenced-in, well-cropped lawns of St. Anne’s Home of the Poor. The Subaru was two cars ahead of the Escape, and although Cindy couldn’t identify the driver as Mackie Morales, she thought that the back of the driver’s head definitely looked to be that of a young adult female with short dark hair.
The driver turned her head to check her mirror, and Cindy saw her face.
That was her. That was Mackie Morales. For sure.
Cindy reached for her phone in the seat beside her and hit number three on her speed dial.
Lindsay’s voice came through the earpiece: “You have reached Sergeant Lindsay Boxer. Leave your name and time that you called—”
Damn it.
Cindy needed both hands on the wheel. She clicked off without leaving a message and tossed her phone back onto the passenger seat. Up ahead, Lake Street terminated at a T intersection. Cindy saw the Subaru take the left onto Arguello Boulevard toward the Presidio, and she followed the Outback into the turn too fast. Centrifugal force sent her handbag and cell phone off the passenger seat and onto the floor.