“From what you described,” Mann said, “sounds like he could get lost in those woods. Unless he’s a survivalist, sooner or later he’s gonna need food and water.”
“There are plenty of houses to breach,” Dixon said. “I say we go public, put the word out. Make everyone aware he’s out there. We can circulate a photo. Go full blast.”
Vail had to hold her tongue. If they had gone public a couple days ago with the Crush Killer’s murders, John Mayfield might’ve been caught sooner. And Robby might still be—
She stopped herself. No sense in looking backward. It was time to move ahead, keep tending the path they had started clearing.
Dixon’s phone buzzed. She lifted it, listened, and said, “Be right over. Have her wait—” Dixon’s eyes rose from their focus on the ground and met Vail’s. “Really. Okay, thanks.”
“What?” Vail asked.
Dixon turned to Burt Gordon, who had just entered the yard. “Finish up here, then meet us back at the department.”
“What’s the deal?” Vail asked.
“Merilynn Lugo. That’s where Brix went. She gave him a DVD for us.”
24
Dixon and Vail burst through the second-floor doors of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department and strode purposefully to the glass window. Dixon swiped her proximity card and the electronic locks clicked open.
They walked briskly down the hall to the task force conference room. Sitting on the table was a black DVD case with a Post-it note stuck on the front: “From Ray.”
“I didn’t say anything because it was a long shot and I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but I made one last attempt with Merilynn. I took her on a little field trip to visit Mayfield in the hospital. He didn’t look so threatening with all the tubes and beeping machines. I told her we’d submitted her WITSEC request and that we needed her to do something for us. Seemed like I was getting through, but I didn’t want to push her. So I gave her a little time to think about it. Her place was on the way back from Herndon, so I stopped by.”
“And she gave you a DVD?”
Brix scooped it up and handed it to Vail.
Vail pried open the lid and stared at the disc, which bore Ray Lugo’s slanted handwriting. Did it hold some secret information that would give her clues as to what happened to Robby? Would it answer the question of what John Mayfield had meant when he taunted them with, “There’s more to this than you know?”
“Karen,” Dixon said softly, “We need to watch this.”
Vail woke from her stupor. “Right.” She plucked the disc from the plastic spindle, then placed the DVD in the laptop tray and watched as Windows Media Player loaded.
Brix, Dixon, Mann, and Vail stood around the computer. Vail felt Dixon shudder when the image of Lugo’s living room filled the screen. Lugo then appeared and sat down on the couch. The angle of the camera and Lugo’s proximity to the lens gave the impression it was filmed on a webcam.
He leaned in close, looked up at something off to his right, then turned back to the camera. “If you’re watching this, something must’ve happened to me.” He lowered his voice and his eyes danced from left to right, suddenly avoiding the lens.
“I . . . this is Sergeant Raymond Lugo of the St. Helena Police Department. Everything I’m about to tell you is the truth. If you’re watching this . . . I have to assume you’re law enforcement. I need you to . . . I need you to look after my wife and son. Please promise me that.” He glanced up at the camera and then canted his eyes downward again.
He took a deep breath, covered his face with both hands, then dropped them to his lap and extended his neck. Staring at the ceiling.
“C’mon, Ray,” Dixon said under her breath. “Get to it.”
“In October, my wife, Merilynn, and my son, Mario, were kidnapped. I got a call. This guy said he had them, and he’d kill them unless I did what he wanted. He proved he had them. I—I had no choice.”
Lugo looked away, licked his lips, kept his head down as he talked.
“He told me. If I tell anyone at work, he’d kill them. If I call in the FBI, he’d kill them. If I told the media . . . he’d kill them. And he said he had a way of finding out if I told anyone at work. He knew I was a cop. I couldn’t . . . ” He looked up at the camera. “I couldn’t take a chance he was telling the truth.”
His bottom lip quivered, and he bit down to arrest its twitch.
“He had them,” Lugo finally said. “For two days. He called back and I, I made a deal with him. And he let them go. Left them by the side of the road in front of the fire station, near the Sheriff’s Department.
“I looked at video, tried to figure out who this guy was. I spoke with Merilynn. And my son. Tried to get any information I could to find this fucker.” He wiped at his face with both hands, sighed deeply, and sat back into the couch. He was far from the camera now, but his voice was still audible. “He told me not to look for him, that I’d never find him. And . . . and that no place was safe. If I did anything wrong—tried finding him, reporting it, he’d find Merilynn and Mario again. Only this time they wouldn’t be coming home. He’d kill them. And it wouldn’t be pleasant.” His eyes narrowed in anger, then he sat forward, leaning closer to the lens in a way that distorted his facial features.
“I couldn’t find anything, I got nowhere. But the deal I cut with him. I thought it might give me some clues as to who he was. I thought maybe there was some way I could track him based on the info he wanted me to get for him. Finally I found something. But he knew and he called me, warned me. The only warning I’d get, he said. Stop immediately or he’d kill them. And me.”
Vail put her hands on her hips. “What the fuck were you doing for him, Ray?” she shouted, as if it would do some good. No one seemed to mind. They all wanted the same question answered.
“I thought that if I got that kind of a rise out of him, I must’ve been on to something. It had to do with a guy I knew, César Guevara.”
Vail and Dixon eyed each other.
“The guy wanted info on César,” Lugo continued, “from the police database. Not just ours, but the Sheriff’s Department’s, too. So I ran the stuff he wanted. Then I started looking into César’s business. He runs a mobile bottling company out of American Canyon. I know César from when we were kids, working the vineyards. But the kidnapper is somehow tied in with him because he called me right after I went to see César and started asking questions. He said he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, that he didn’t know a big white guy who drives a van. But that’s all I had on the kidnapper. That’s all Merilynn and my son could tell me. He spoke English like a native, no accent. And that was it.
“An hour after visiting César, the kidnapper called me. I knew I was on to something. What it was—I didn’t know. But . . . ” He turned away and said, “I was too afraid to look into it. He said he’d find us. Another state, another country, didn’t matter. He’d track us down.”
A noise behind him. Lugo twisted his torso. What looked like Merilynn in the background, entering the room. Lugo reached out his hand, splayed fingers covering the webcam, the screen darkening. Fumbling. Raised voices. Lugo’s body leaned left, then the video cut off.
They waited a few seconds before Dixon blurted, “That’s it? Please, tell me there’s more.”
They continued to stare at the screen, but the progress bar at the bottom struck the endpoint and then the video started from the beginning. Brix stuck out his index finger and clicked the mouse. Windows Media Player closed.
Vail looked up. Her eyes searched the conference room and came to rest on the clock. It was now almost 5:00 PM. Damn it. She grabbed her temples, took a deep breath, and coughed. Then she sat down heavily on a nearby chair.