The 19th Christmas - James Patterson Page 0,46

took off his shoes, and massaged his feet. Then he walked quietly down the hallway and into the bedroom, where Cindy was sleeping like an angel, her arms spread out like wings, her blond curls framing her adorable face.

He didn’t want to wake her up. But he needed to sleep.

He returned to the living room, took the spare blanket and pillow out of the coat closet, stripped down, and got comfortable on the couch. He blinked in the dark, listened to traffic and a couple of drunk guys singing “Silent Night.”

He sighed deeply and counseled himself to turn off his thoughts. The way he understood it, your brain had to be bored in order for it to go to sleep. His brain couldn’t be more agitated.

He pictured himself standing in Sloane’s foyer with Jacobi, Lindsay, and Hallows, all of them staring at an older man duct-taped to a chair and shot dead.

The front door behind them had been unlocked by someone with a key, or, more likely, it had been opened from the inside by Sloane himself. He had known his killers. Or he had trusted them. They had asked Sloane to let them in and he had. Why?

Sloane’s safe had been open, and according to the handheld print reader, the only prints on the safe were Sloane’s. Had he opened the safe for his killers?

Conklin could see a shadow standing behind Sloane, holding a gun to his neck.

The safe had been cleaned out. If Sloane had a phone and a laptop, they’d been stolen. Shell casings had been retrieved by the shooter. CSI picked up a few prints not belonging to the victim and ran them at the scene, but there were no matches in the criminal database.

The killer or killers had worn gloves.

So. A couple of questions: Was this a robbery, and the homicide sprang from that? Or was this a homicide and the robbery staged?

And here were some more questions: Were the robber-killers Loman and an associate? Or was the anonymous tip that Loman had been seen exiting Sloane’s place a deliberate misdirection?

If the tip was a misdirection, someone who knew Loman or worked for Loman, or possibly even Loman himself, had called it in.

Why?

To keep the cops busy while they did their big heist.

Conklin rolled over to face the back of the couch, punched the pillow, and again tried to empty his mind. A minute later he threw off the blanket, got a beer from the fridge, and stood in the bedroom doorway watching Cindy sleep.

She had been working flat-out on her story about Eduardo Varela. Her drop-dead deadline was tomorrow, the day before Christmas. He looked at his watch. It was five after two, so actually, it was due today. He hadn’t been able to talk to her about the piece or read a draft of that one or the Christmas-for-immigrants story. He always read her stuff before she sent it in.

He missed the hell out of her, and she was right here.

Rich slugged down his beer, grabbed his phone, and texted Jacobi.

What are you doing?

Chkg out BlkStar w/ Brady.

Find anything? Conklin texted.

Is a dead end anything? Get some sleep. C u in the a.m.

Conklin went back to the couch and turned the case over in his mind again. If the Sloane hit was a ruse, what was the real deal? If Sloane was the real deal, then he’d been killed for what had been in his safe. Would the canvass of Sloane’s friends and neighbors turn up a lead or a window into the hit?

What would CSI have to report and how long would he have to wait?

Was there a thread that tied Julian Lambert, the de Young Museum, two druggies in the van in Hunters Point, BlackStarVR, and Arnold Sloane together?

Conklin didn’t see it. After a while his brain got tired of cycling through unanswerable questions, and he fell asleep.

Chapter 57

Yuki was propped up in bed with her laptop. It was just past midnight, which meant Christmas Eve was tonight. She was wearing one of Brady’s shirts as a nightgown and was aggravated that he wasn’t home.

They’d made no plans for Christmas, not for dinner in or out with friends. Unopened cards and wrapped gifts were on the coffee table, but there was still no tree.

Brady had warned her that his life would belong to the Job if he took over for Jacobi as chief of police and kept doing his other work as well. The situation was meant to be temporary, and