Free Unlucky 13 by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

accompanied by cheese, bacon,and bread. The way most people tuck into hamburgers, they hardly chew, am I right?”
    Cortes shrugged expansively.
    I thought about recently wolfing down a Chuckburger at my desk and gave myself a belated scolding for taking a chance like that.
    Cortes went on.
    “Odds are your killer didn’t get it right the first time. I can imagine some trial runs before there was liftoff. But to conceive of thisbomb at all, well, you’re dealing with some kind of genius. You see that, don’t you?”
    Claire said, “What they used to call in the comic books an
evil
genius.”
    Cortes said, “I ran a simple comparison between the beef in my sample and what’s available locally, and I’ve concluded that my sample of mush is consistent with the beef at Chuck’s Prime.”
    We thanked Cortes, and Claire and I backtrackedthrough the maze of offices out to the parking lot.
    I said to Claire, “You know what I’m thinking?”
    “Hold on.” She put her thumbs to her temples. “Let me tune in to your frequency.”
    “I’m thinking maybe the Jeep victims’ belly bombs were the test run. If that’s so, if that was the first—”
    Claire said, “So you’re thinking there could be another belly bomb?”
    “I think so. We still don’t get themessage.”

CHAPTER 25
    CONKLIN WAS IN the break room, washing out the coffee pot, when I found him.
    I got a fresh can of coffee from the cupboard and popped the top. “I’ve got a belly bomb update,” I said.
    “Hit me with it.”
    I filled him in on the two-stage explosive that had been packaged in a gel cap and disguised inside ground beef consistent with Chuck’s Prime Beef blend.
    “The FBI is locking down Chuck’smeat-processing plant. We should go to Emeryville,” I said.
    “Let’s do it.”
    Conklin put on his good tie. I refreshed my lipstick and then drove us across the Bay Bridge to Emeryville, which sits along the east side of the bay.
    The morning sun filtered through the fog and put aflattering glow on the streets of Emeryville. Gentrification had bred lots of modern structures in this former industrialflatland—new shops and restaurants and, near the marina, film production companies and office parks with some historical buildings thrown into the mix.
    Chuck’s corporate headquarters was on 65th Street in the Emery Tech Building, a streamlined, block-long, brick-and-glass building that had once been a valve-and-regulator plant.
    I parked right out front and placed a card on the dash that identifiedour gray Crown Vic as a cop car. Then Conklin and I entered the building.
    We sat in a reception area appointed with gears and parts from the old plant and waited to meet the chief executive officer, Michael Jansing, the son-in-law of Charles “Chuck” Andersen, the original Chuck.
    After about twenty minutes of thumb twiddling, we were shown to a conference room where we met CEO Jansing, a sandy-hairedman of fifty with narrow, closely spaced blue eyes.
    Jansing in turn introduced us to six other people sitting around the sturdy redwood table: the marketing director, the heads of PR, HR, and Security, two lawyers, and the head of the product-development team, who was attending the meeting by teleconference.
    It was a diverse group with one thing in common: they weren’t glad to see representativesof the SFPD. Their body language and facial expressions told me they were wary, angry, defensive, and suspicious. It was obvious that they thought we weren’t friends of the Chuck’s family andthat we could have a bad, or even a fatal, effect on their reputation.
    Accordingly, Jansing was putting on an extraordinary show of force for a preliminary meeting with two midlevel cops.
    I can’t say thathe was crazy to do so.
    After we took seats at the table, Jansing said, “The FBI tore apart our Hayes Valley store and found nothing. Frankly, I was a little surprised to hear from you, Sergeant Boxer.”
    “We’re working with the FBI,” I told the