The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19) - James Patterson Page 0,72

Imogene, into the jail. We set her up on a chair outside his cage.

Loman grabbed the bars and greeted her sorrowfully. “Bunny, are you okay? Are you okay?”

She, too, was wearing an orange jumpsuit. I’d woken Brady from REM sleep and filled him in in less than thirty seconds. What we were doing wasn’t illegal, but it was unorthodox. We needed our lieutenant/chief to help us make it happen. He had put in the call, and Mrs. Lomachenko had been transported pronto from the women’s jail a few blocks away.

She looked her husband directly in the eye. She didn’t bother with pleasantries, just got right to it.

“Willy, they said you killed Dick Russell. That’s a lie. That’s got to be a lie. You love him.”

Loman’s eyes watered up. He looked past his wife and directed angry looks at me and Conklin.

“Can we have some privacy?”

My partner and I stepped ten feet away and turned our backs. Cameras monitored by techs lined the cell block and one was pointing at the Lomachenkos.

Loman said, “I had to do it, Imogene. It was self-defense. He was going to shoot me.”

She responded in a strong, unmodulated voice, “William. The police are charging me as your coconspirator. Your accomplice to a murder. I must be dreaming. I must be having a very bad dream.”

“I’m sorry, Bunny,” he said. “Very sorry.”

“Sorry for what, exactly, Willy? I don’t understand any of this. What did you do?”

He told her a version of the story he’d told us, but this time it was a confession of involvement—and there was motive. It took all the restraint I had to keep my hands still and my eyes on the far end of the hallway.

“I wanted us to have a better life,” Lomachenko told his wife. “There was going to be a huge payday and no one was going to get hurt. No one. Believe me, Imogene. Please. I did this for us. I had a private jet waiting. You and I were going to fly to Switzerland. I bought a place there for us and filled it with modern art. A beautiful high-rise condo, three bedrooms, overlooking Lake Geneva.”

A mirror was angled at the juncture of two walls, giving a view of the block. I saw Mrs. Lomachenko shaking her head vigorously, displaying disbelief and anger.

Her husband went on. “This was your birthday surprise. We were going to be rich and have nothing but the best for the rest of our lives. You can thank Dick for screwing it up.”

“I don’t know you,” Imogene Lomachenko said. “Twenty years of marriage. A nice life. And you wanted to what? Take all of that away from me? You wanted me to live as a fugitive in a foreign country? Are you crazy?”

Imogene Lomachenko’s fury and indignation reverberated throughout the cellblock. Other prisoners laughed. They jeered.

Lomachenko’s head was down.

Imogene went on.

“And now what’s going to happen to me? I’m going to die in a high-rise cell in San Francisco with a view of a wall?”

“It was an accident,” he said. “A terrible accident. If Dick had done his research, we’d have—”

That was my cue.

I said, “Mr. Lomachenko, this just came in.”

I looked down at my phone and called up the video our computer specialist had just sent to me.

I said, “There was a camera above the doorway to Building Three.”

“What … and so what? I don’t believe you. I didn’t see a camera.”

I said, “It saw you.”

CHAPTER 91

I’D PREVIEWED THE video with Conklin a moment before, and now I held up the phone so that both Imogene and her husband could see the screen.

The visual quality was exceptional. And now that I could hear the audio, it, too, was clear. What you’d expect from a cutting-edge technology company.

Russell: “Willy, no, no, no.”

Willy: “I thought I could count on you, Dick.”

Lomachenko was on his feet, shaking the bars. He yelled at me and Conklin, “Stop that. For God’s sake, stop the film.”

The video continued running, and I made sure that Imogene could see every bit of it: Loman pointing the gun at Russell and firing once, then again. The same overhead view showed David Bavar cowering beside the side door and Lomachenko standing over the body of Russell.

Imogene’s expression was of wide-eyed horror. She gasped loudly, then covered her mouth with her hands.

We all heard Russell’s dying moans and the third shot, the coup de grâce, followed by Lomachenko’s voice saying to Bavar, “Look into the scanner.”

We watched Lomachenko open the door, tell Bavar to