Vail 02 - Crush (28 page)

Dixon and Robby exchanged an uneasy glance. “Did you call Jonathan?” Robby asked.

“Went right to voicemail. He turns his phone off because the school confiscates it if it so much as vibrates.”

“Well that worked out great,” Bledsoe said. “Smart rule.”

“I’ll call the school,” Robby said, flipping open his phone. “Have them go into lockdown.”

“They can’t go into lockdown before school starts,” she said. Into her phone: “Bledsoe, you’ve gotta find him—”

“I’ll find him, Karen. I’ll be there in ten. I’ve got it handled, okay?”

No, not okay. That’s not quick enough.
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.” She hung up, then leaned back against the wall and sank down to the floor.

R
obby’s cell phone was clasped in his left hand as he knelt in front of Vail. He lifted her chin with a finger. “Karen, look at me.” He waited until her eyes met his. “It’s going to be okay. Bledsoe knows what he’s doing.”

She took a deep, uneven breath. Rage was building beneath the surface. Anger at having been so close to this killer, at having him over her shoulder—he touched her—and now, several hours later, he was within striking distance of her son.

He could’ve killed me, but he didn’t. Now he’s flown across the country. Why? Control. Power. That’s an awful lot of effort to go through to show her he’s running the show. Unless he intends to kill Jonathan
.

She pulled herself to her feet, shook off Robby’s attempt to help her.

“Karen,” Dixon said. “There’s nothing you can do but sit and wait. Let’s go down the hall, get a cup of coffee.”

Vail ground her molars. She knew Dixon was trying to help, to help her pass the time until Bledsoe called with news.
Of what? That Jonathan was safe? Or—

She pulled her gun and swung her arm, backhanding the window in the door to her right. The glass shattered with a crisp, jolting crash.

“Jesus, Karen.” Dixon grabbed her hand and forced the Glock toward the floor. “Calm the fuck down, will you?”

Vail yanked her hand free. “Goddamn bastard. No one threatens my son!”

Robby held up a hand. “Karen, look at me. Karen—” He waited while she focused on his face. “Put your weapon away.”

Vail ripped open her fanny pack and shoved the Glock inside. “I swear, I’m gonna kill this guy. If he touches Jonathan, I will castrate the fucker.”

“I hear you,” Robby said.

“Then I’m going to put a bullet in his deranged brain.”

Robby drew her close and enveloped her in his large torso.

“After he begs for his life,” she mumbled into his chest.

Robby stroked her hair. “That’s only if I don’t get to him first. I won’t be so nice about it.”

Lugo and Brix were walking down the hall toward them. Brix said, “We heard a window—” His eyes followed the door down to the floor, where shards of glass had landed. “What the hell happened?”

“Bats,” Dixon said.

Brix looked at her, then at Robby. “Bats?”

“Bats. Their sonar got fucked up.”

Brix took a step to his left, saw Vail huddled in Robby’s arms. “What’s going on?”

“UNSUB says he’s in Virginia,” Dixon said. “He texted Karen. He’s at her son’s school.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I need to go,” Vail said. She craned her neck up toward Robby. “When’s the next flight?”

“There’s a six-twenty-five out of SFO,” Lugo said.

Robby shook his head. “Even if you left now, you probably wouldn’t make the flight. Besides, it won’t even get there till almost six, and that’s if there are no delays. Then you have to get out of Dulles in rush hour.”

“I don’t care. I need to do something—”

“You called Bledsoe. He’ll handle it—if there’s even something to handle.”

Vail’s BlackBerry rang. She shoved Robby aside and fumbled the phone from her belt. Bledsoe’s number. “Yeah.”

“I’m on-site. Everything looks okay. I’ve got six officers en route, should be here any minute. We’ll comb the place, make sure everything’s cool. Then I’m gonna put someone on Jonathan, shadow him till you catch this guy. Good?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “Good. Thanks, Bledsoe. You’re the best.”

D
ixon and Vail sat in the break room around the small round table, on formed, yellow plastic chairs.
D
Vail clutched a cup of hot tea.

Robby walked in and took a seat. He placed a hand atop Vail’s. “I also asked Lugo to do a search for flights out of SFO that’d arrive in the DC metro area by morning. Just to see if it’s even possible. Virgin has one, a 9:35 p.m. departure, arrives Dulles 5:30 a.m. I mapped out the timeline and it works out.”

Vail bowed her head. “So he could be there.”

“Yeah,” Robby said. “If not him, an accomplice. Impossible to say.”

“Call Virgin. Find out if they had anyone on that flight who looked suspicious.”

Robby tilted his head. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Just get a passenger manifest and we’ll check ’em all out ourselves. And see if they’ve got any videotape of the terminal that we can examine.”

“Already done. Lugo’s calling the airline. And he’s requesting video from SFO’s security cameras, in case one of them caught the offender.” Robby fought off a yawn. “Before it records over.”

Dixon flipped her notepad to a clean page and clicked her pen. “Okay. Let’s take a step back and look at this. You two have a personal stake here. But we can’t let our feelings cloud our thoughts, affect our opinions.”

Vail warmed her hands on the sides of the mug. “He let me live, then he went after my son. All the way across the country?”

“A lot of effort just to scare you,” Dixon said. “Killing you
would’ve accomplished the same thing if he was after control, to show his superiority.”

Vail’s phone buzzed, followed a second later by Dixon’s. Vail figured it was regarding the same issue. They both answered simultaneously.

At the other end of Vail’s call was Bledsoe. “I just wanted you to know I saw Jonathan and he’s fine. He’s in the classroom. School just started and I’ve got them in lockdown. There’s an officer posted outside and he’ll be Jonathan’s shadow until we put this scumbag away. Okay? You can stop stressing.”

“Why do you think I was stressing?”

“You don’t really want an answer to that, do you?”

“No. And—Bledsoe . . . thanks. Unfortunately I don’t have much info on this killer.” She told him what she knew, then said, “I assume you’ll want the unit’s help on this. If the offender’s now in your neck of the woods, you should pick up the investigation. Bring in Rooney and Del Monaco.”

“How about we just leave it at Rooney?”

Vail chuckled. “Do me a favor and touch base with Gifford, let him know what’s going on, okay?” Vail thanked him again, then hung up.

“I assume he found Jonathan,” Robby said.

“He’s fine. They’re locked down. Bledsoe posted a cop.”

Robby reached across the table and took her hand. “You okay?”

“Better. But I won’t be ‘okay’ till we catch this bastard.” She nodded at Dixon. “What was your call about?”

“Gordon and Mann are on their way in with a person of interest. They ran Fuller’s LUDs and cell records. One number in particular kept coming up, and the two of them had some long conversations the morning of the fire. Number belongs to Walton Silva, a buddy of Fuller’s. They went to his place with the K9 unit and got a hit outside an old cottage in the back.

“So they requested a warrant, and in the meantime they woke him up, gave him the bad news about Scott, and asked him to come down to the station to help us out. Once he was on county premises, they took his phone—gave him some bullshit story about new county guidelines because some workers in the building have pacemakers—and then
executed the warrant on his wife. Searched the cottage and found chemical residue that looked and smelled like what was used around the building.”

“Until the lab can make a definitive match,” Vail said, “we don’t have much.”

“We can sweat him,” Robby said.

Dixon flipped her notepad closed. “That’s the plan. But there’s a little twist.” She looked at them. “Good, you’re sitting. There were also calls to another number on Fuller’s cell logs. And on Silva’s. Right after Fuller talked to Silva, Silva called this other number. Every time. Care to guess who the number belongs to?”

Vail shrugged.

Dixon rose from her chair. “I’ll let it be a surprise. C’mon, let’s go. You’re gonna want to see this.”

V
ail and Robby made their way through the maze of corridors and into the task force conference room where Brix sat, waiting. On the wall-mounted television screen was the image of a man, shown from an angle above eye level.

Brix motioned to the monitor. “Meet Walton Silva. A thirty-one-year-old investment banker with Rutledge Warren Stone. He’s a newbie in the firm.”

“Does he know why he’s here?” Dixon asked.

“I told him we needed help finding the guy who killed Scott Fuller, that we’re all pretty shaken up about it, and that Sheriff Owens was on our backs to solve it quickly.”

Dixon folded her arms. “Good.”

“Mind if I do this with Roxxann?” Vail asked. “One of the things we do in the profiling unit is teach interview techniques.”

Brix’s jaw moved from side to side. He was considering the request. “Roxx, you’re lead investigator. Your call.”

Dixon pulled her attention from the television monitor. “We work well together.”

“What’s your plan?” Brix asked.

Vail tilted her head. “We’ll need a printout of Fuller’s mobile calls.”

Brix reached over to the table and grabbed a manila folder. “It’s all in here.”

Vail snuck a look inside, then nodded. “Good. You got Silva’s cell?”

Brix dug it out of his pocket. Vail slipped it into hers.

“I think we should keep it cordial for as long as possible,” Vail said.

“Brix, when you see me pull out my BlackBerry, give me a minute, then come in and whisper in my ear. Nothing funny or cute.”

A smile thinned Brix’s lips, then he nodded knowingly. “I like that.”

“I thought you might.” Vail glanced over at Silva, then turned to Dixon. “Let’s do this.”

Moments later, after a brief strategy session in the hall, Vail and Dixon entered Interview Room 2, a small, six-by-eight room containing a square table topped with the same taupe and gray faux marble found in the conference room. Two black chairs. And that was it.

The size of the room injected Vail with an instant dose of claustrophobia. Her eyes did a quick once-over of the space, her mind measuring it and adding it up and knowing it was small, but willing her brain to think it was plenty big, with enough air. She stood beside the door, ready to make a quick exit if the need arose.
I can do this. No big deal.

As Vail struggled with her unfounded anxieties, she looked over at Walton Silva, who was occupying one of the two seats in the room. Silva wore well-tailored sweats that probably never saw the inside of a gym.

Dixon introduced herself, then nodded at Vail and said simply, “This is my partner. Can we get you anything to drink?”

“Any reason this had to be done now?” Silva made no attempt to stop his yawn. “It’s not even light out yet.”

Dixon sat down opposite Silva. “The sheriff is really upset about his stepson. He’s busting our butts. He’s called everyone in. We don’t want to let him down. And we’re hoping you can help us.”

Silva yawned again. “I’ll help you anyway I can. But what can
I
do?”

“We need to know about Scott. We knew him around the station, but friends always know us better than our coworkers.”

Silva shrugged.

“You’re with Rutledge Warren Stone, right?”

“I started there about a year ago.”

“How’d you do when the market tanked?”

“Like everyone else who had money in the market, I guess. I may be an investment banker, but I didn’t have a crystal ball. I took a bath.” His gaze drifted to Vail, who was standing still and quiet, across
the room and to Dixon’s right, Vail’s shoulder beside the door. Back to Dixon: “But what’s that got to do with Scott?”

“How close were the two of you?”

Silva lifted a shoulder. “We went to school together, hung out, that sort of thing. We kind of lost touch when I left for college. But as soon as I moved back to town, we started talking again.”

“Scott was a good guy, wasn’t he?”

Silva sucked his left cheek, paused a moment, then said, “Yeah.”

“Did you two see a lot of one another?”

“About once or twice a month. We’d grab a beer when he got off shift. But we weren’t as close as we were before I left.”

“So you weren’t that close.”

“Nah, not like we were.”

“Let me show you something, Walton. It’s something Lieutenant Brix gave me a few minutes ago, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Maybe you can help me understand it.”

“Sure.”

Dixon splayed open the manila folder Brix had given them, then turned it so Silva could see it. “These are phone logs for Scott’s cell phone. Can you tell me if you recognize any numbers on it?”

Silva pulled the sheets closer and looked them over. His eyes seemed to hover a bit, then he moved on down the long list. “No, nothing that looks familiar.”

Vail was moving now, catching Dixon’s attention. Dixon glanced over her right shoulder at Vail as Vail punched in a number on her BlackBerry. Dixon turned back to Silva.

“You sure about that?”

Silva shrugged again. “Yeah.” He looked at Vail and said, “I thought you’re not supposed to use cell phones in this building.”

Before Vail could answer, a musical ring tone sounded: the unmistakable strains of “Stairway to Heaven.” Silva’s eyes widened. Vail produced a thin-form Sanyo from her front pocket and held it up. A small red LED flashed on the top of the device.