Vail 02 - Crush (10 page)

She hesitated. “Weather’s been good. Vacation was good, too. But . . .”

“I don’t think I like the sound of this, Karen. But what?”

She and Gifford didn’t agree on much, and they’d had their share of arguments, but this was not likely to sit well with him, given what had happened with Yates, and, of course, Dead Eyes. Given the work the profilers did, the mental health of those in his units was a top priority. “Well, we kind of stumbled onto something here.”

“What kind of ‘something’?”

“Something like a dead body. Both breasts severed and removed from the scene—”

“Ah, Jesus Christ, Karen. What are you, a serial killer magnet?”

“Yeah, that’s a good one, boss. Remind me to put that on my new personalized license plate.”

“Serious, Karen. I sent you away to
get
away, get your mind off this shit.”

“Believe me, I wasn’t looking for it. It was a ‘wrong place, wrong time’ kind of thing.”
Maybe I
am
some sort of psychosexual offender magnet.

“So let me guess. You told the detective assigned to the case that you should help out, because you’re the great Karen Vail, super agent who thinks she can absorb all sorts of psychological trauma and keep on ticking.”

“Not in so many words.”

“So now he wants BAU support.”

“Right again, sir. Did you eat your Wheaties this morning? You’re on a roll.”

Silence.
Ooops. I must’ve gone a tad too far. Why do I always do that?

Finally, Gifford said, “So you think this is a serial offender?”

“I do. Not his first kill. Pretty brazen, possibly narcissistic.”

“Fine, you’re there, you take the case. But I don’t want you staying longer than your vacation. And when you get back, I want you to take a real vacation. Maybe we’ll put you in a cement overcoat, suspend you by crane over the Potomac, where you can’t get into trouble.”

“If you think it’ll help.”

“Honestly, I don’t. Somehow trouble will find you.”

“I’ll have the Incident Commander send you a formal note on letterhead. And hey, the sheriff here went to the National Academy.”

“Well,
hey,
that really makes my day, Karen. That makes me so happy. Glad to hear it. Just . . . just keep me up to date on what’s going on.”

Before she could reply, she realized the line was dead. But she still needed the VICAP run, so she called back. Asked for a colleague of hers, Frank Del Monaco. He answered on the third ring.

“Frank, it’s Karen.” She heard an audible sigh. “Something wrong?”

“I was having such a nice day before you called, is all.”

“And now?”

“Not so much. Wait—aren’t you in California on vacation?”

“Well, you got the first part right. Listen, I need you to run something through VICAP.”

“What do I look like, your servant?”

“Frank, I’m three thousand miles away. If I could do it myself, and not have to ask you for anything, I’d do it. Now, I need you to run the following parameters. The UNSUB we’re looking for—”

“You’re on vacation and you’re working a case?”

“Yes, Frank. And I don’t need any shit from you. Just run this or I’ll call Rooney or Hutchings.”

“Rooney’s in California, too. But, fine, whatever.”

Vail gave him the details of the behaviors she had observed. Del Monaco said he would run the report when he was done with his meetings and get back to her when he had the results.

She hung up and tried Robby again. Voice mail. She went back into the sheriff’s department and tracked down Brix. “I need a car or I need to ride with someone.”

“What about Hernandez?”

“He’s off doing his own thing. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Smart guy, probably tasting wine and enjoying himself.”

She ignored his swipe. “So—car or not?”

“Not. You can ride with Dixon.” He told Vail to wait there, then disappeared back into the task force conference room, down the hall. He emerged a moment later with a reluctant Dixon. Vail couldn’t hear what was being said, but from Dixon’s hand movements, it appeared she was asking, “Why me?”

After her apparently futile argument, Dixon moved back into the room while Brix held open the door. Dixon appeared seconds later with her binder clutched in her left hand. She made her way down the corridor to Vail. Her body was stiff, her face tight.

“Guess I’m chauffeuring you around today,” Dixon said.

“Just for a bit, till my friend gets my voice mail, then you can be rid of me.”

They walked outside to Dixon’s county-issued vehicle, a Ford Crown Victoria. She got in and unlocked the doors.

As Vail sorted herself out, Dixon snapped her seat belt and said, “Now what?”

“This is your investigation,” Vail said. “I’m here to help, that’s it. If there’s some insight I can offer that’ll help narrow our pool of suspects, that’s my specialty.”

Dixon put the car in drive and headed out of the lot. “Problem is, we have no pool of suspects.”

“At this point, we don’t even have a pond.”

Dixon stifled a laugh. “Yeah, no pond.”

“I put in a call to Quantico and we should have a report on the VICAP results later. Meanwhile, let’s make use of our time.”

“How about we start where all crimes start? Motive.”

Vail knew that motive for a serial killer was a much different animal from that which a traditional criminal exhibits. But she decided to go with Dixon, see where it would lead. “Keep in mind that most murders are between individuals who know each other. Serial offenders are traditionally stranger on stranger crimes, which makes it harder. Motive isn’t always visible to us.”

“Noted,” Dixon said. “But we have one thing going for us.

Victimology—in this case Victoria Cameron and the Jane Doe. Start with basic investigative policework: Who would want her dead? Had she had any arguments with anyone? What was her relationship with her husband like? Do any of these things have to do with the Jane Doe lying in the morgue?”

“All good stuff,” Vail said. “We may want to extend that to looking into where Victoria shopped, places she frequented on a regular basis, people she did business with, and so on. Once we get an ID on the corpse Brix unearthed, we’ll do the same for her. That’ll generate a suspect pool and then I can be a little more helpful.”

“I thought your info was pretty helpful.”

Vail tried not to let the surprise show on her face. “Thanks, Roxxann. I appreciate that.”

WHILE DRIVING, Dixon activated her visor-mounted Bluetooth and called her office. She spoke with the deputy district attorney and explained why they needed a search warrant drawn for Silver Ridge Estates, and told her that Brix would be drafting the probable cause statement. She was promised an executed warrant within the hour.

“So what’s the scoop on the guys on the task force?”

Dixon chuckled. “What am I, the school gossip queen?”

“It’s best to know who I’m dealing with so I don’t put my foot in my mouth.” Vail threw up a hand. “Scratch that. I’m gonna put my foot in my mouth anyway. But I’d still like to know who these people are.”

“Haven’t you profiled everyone in that room already?”

Vail couldn’t help but let a smile tilt her lips. “I try not to do that. Makes it hard to get along with people.” She shook her head. “Scratch that, too. Guess it doesn’t help. But to answer your question, yeah, I can’t help but do it. Like Scott Fuller. He seems like a know-it-all.”

“Oh, yeah. Boy Wonder, everything handed to him on a gold platter. He’s read all the books, can probably even recite what chapters that shit comes from. But he’s light on experience.”

“Book smarts, not street smarts. He’s certainly got the profiling stuff down—but it’s textbook stuff, dated info, like he read all the Underwood, Douglas, and Ressler books and committed them to memory.”

Dixon nodded. “But here’s the wrinkle. He’s the stepson of Stan Owens.”

Vail tilted her head. “Really. See, now that’s good to know.”

“Which is how he’s ascended the ranks so quickly.”

“And one to be careful around,” Vail said.

“But Ray Lugo’s a good guy. Been here all his life, started out as an underage migrant field worker picking grapes. Parents were illegal, but he was born here, so he’s a U.S. citizen. He worked hard, did well in school, and went to the Academy, became a cop.”

“And here he is, a sergeant. Very impressive.”

“Whereas Fuller had it handed to him, Ray’s earned it.”

“And you?” Vail asked.

“Me? I don’t like to talk about myself.”

“Neither do I. But—”

“But if you had to draw conclusions about me—”

“I’d say you’re intuitive. You’re diligent, detail oriented. You’ve been doing this job awhile but you’re not bored with it. And . . .”

Dixon slowed for a stopped truck in front of her. “And what?”

“And you’re intimidated by being a woman in a male-dominated profession.”

“Is that some sort of . . . what do they call it, projection?”

Vail laughed. “Maybe.”

“But you’re right. Sort of. Still, I have no trouble putting one of these guys in their place if they get out of line. But it really hasn’t been a problem.”

“But it was, once.”

“Once.”

That’s all she said, and Vail let it drop. She watched more vineyards roll by, then asked, “So how long have you been with the DA’s office?”

“A few months.”

Vail lifted an eyebrow. “I take it you were in law enforcement before that.”

Dixon glanced at Vail.

Vail knew the look: Dixon was measuring her answer. There was a story behind this, and she was deciding how fine a filter to use . . . how much she would share and how much she would hold back.

“In a nutshell,” Dixon finally said, “I was born and raised here, in the valley. I was with the sheriff’s department for five years, then took a job with Vallejo PD. I was promoted to detective and a few years later I transferred to the DA’s office. So there you go. My law enforcement pedigree.”

Vail figured she had Dixon’s reaction pegged correctly: A detective did not usually transfer out of her department to become an investigator for the district attorney unless she was retiring from that agency, or injured, or in search of a quieter, safer existence. There was definitely more to her transfer than she was relating.

But Vail didn’t want to press it, since it was their first time having a conversation—and because Dixon was turning right at Montalvo Villa Estate Wines, a large winery set back from Highway 29, majestic in its pristine setting and architecture. Its landmark sign established its founding in 1931.

Vail and Dixon drove down the long, paved roadway lined by impeccably maintained vineyards. Placards mounted on a wood fence that ran the length of the road labeled the vineyards with what Vail assumed were family names: Genevieve’s Family Vineyard, and, fifty yards further, Mona’s Estate Vineyard.

“Anything I need to know about the family?”

“They’ve got three residences on-site. The parents, Frederick and Mona, have the main house. The two smaller houses, if you can even use the word ‘small’ in this setting, belong to their daughter Genevieve and her husband, and their son Phillip and his wife. The other son lives off-site, as did Victoria and her husband, Kevin.”

“Any reason why two siblings get to live on the family estate and two don’t?”

“No idea. They’re private people, for the most part. But Victoria and her husband purchased their own winery, so maybe that ruffled some family feathers. Frederick has been around in the region a lot longer than someone like Robert Mondavi, but he never got the attention or the respect Mondavi got. I’m not singing the blues for Frederick, though. He’s done just fine lurking in the shadows, so to speak.”

“If he values his privacy and shrouds himself in mystery, he can’t take on the persona of a colorful, influential personality. Sounds like that isn’t what he wants.”

Dixon pulled the car into a spot and shoved the gearshift forward. “Oh, he wants it. But he wants it to come to him. The attention, that is. But he won’t go in search of it. I guess it’s a different way of going about getting attention: His behavior, the mystery and privacy, has promoted some of the attention he claims to want to avoid. People wonder. The lack of access produces greater interest.”

They got out of the car, walked to the winery’s administrative offices, identified themselves, and asked to see Frederick Montalvo. The office manager raised an eyebrow as she perused Vail’s credentials, then was on the phone to her boss. A moment later, she said, “I’ll take you back.”

They were led through strategically lit, walnut-paneled, high-ceilinged corridors. The woman stopped at a room at the far end of the hall, rapped the wooden door three times, then opened it. Vail stepped in after Dixon, and the scene before her stopped her short. The entire far wall consisted of what appeared to be one expansive glass pane—possibly twenty feet wide and fifteen feet high. Beyond the window stood the vines of an endless vineyard, stretching back and ending at a steep climbing hill, itself covered with neat rows of grapevines. Vail
thought she was looking at a three-dimensional painting of unrivaled beauty.