“Get us back to the Sheriff’s Department,” she said to Brix.
Shoulders slumped and defeat painted on his face like makeup, Brix rolled his eyes toward Vail. “Why?”
“We don’t have time to wash. We’ve gotta do something. We have to figure out what happened to Robby. The first forty-eight hours are crucial—”
“Karen,” Dixon said, a hand on her arm, “we need to take a breath. We need to sort ourselves out, figure out what everything means, where we go from here.”
Vail grabbed her head with both hands and leaned her elbows on her knees. “I can’t lose him, Roxx, I can’t—I have to find out what happened. What if Mayfield—”
“You can’t think like that. If Mayfield killed Robby, don’t you think he would’ve said something? Wouldn’t a narcissistic killer do that? Rub it in your face?”
“I don’t—I don’t know. I can’t think.” Vail took a deep breath. Coughed—she’d inhaled smoke from a fire a few days ago and it hadn’t fully cleared her lungs yet—and then leaned back. “He kind of did just that, Roxx. When we interviewed him. He was gloating that we hadn’t really figured things out. We’d caught him, but that wasn’t everything. That’s what he was saying. That he was smarter than us. Superior to us—” She stopped, then turned to Dixon. “Superior. Superior Mobile Bottling.”
“We’ve been down that road,” Brix said. “César Guevara was a dead end.”
Guevara, an executive of a mobile corking, labeling, and bottling one-stop shop for wineries that lacked their own in-house production facilities, had been their serial murder suspect until the task force failed to turn up anything compelling linking Guevara to the victims. When John Mayfield emerged as the Crush Killer, Superior Mobile Bottling—and César Guevara—fell off their radar. Vail shook her head. That was only a few hours ago. So much has happened in such a short period of time.
“I don’t think anything’s off the table now,” Vail said. “We missed something. I’ve had that feeling all along. Something wasn’t right, I just couldn’t figure it out.” She dropped her head back against the metal cage. Tears streamed from her eyes, streaking down the dried blood on her cheeks.
Dixon put an arm around her and pulled her close. Vail felt immediate guilt: Dixon had just suffered her own loss—Eddie Agbayani, her estranged boyfriend, someone she loved—had been John Mayfield’s final victim. But at the moment, Vail could not summon the energy, the outward empathy, to grieve for her friend. She had only enough strength to keep herself together, to keep her wits about her before she fell apart and lost it.
“We’ll figure this out, Karen,” Brix said. “We may’ve caught Mayfield, but we’re far from solving this case.” He pulled his phone. “I’m getting everyone back to the Sheriff’s Department. We’ll hash this out.”
As Brix sent off his text message, the Department of Corrections van pulled in front of the sally port roll-up door in the jail’s parking lot. “Hold it,” Brix said. Vail had used her shirt to keep pressure on Lugo’s neck wound. Brix quickly unbuttoned his uniform top and helped Vail into it.
They got out, then climbed into their cars, frigid air sneaking into the vehicle like an unwanted passenger. Vail was silent for most of the short drive, lost in a fugue of disbelief and depression.
Finally, staring straight out the windshield, she said, “I’m sorry. About Eddie.”
Dixon nodded but did not speak.
Vail turned to face her and saw tears shining on her cheek. The past week had been an emotional and trying time.
But what lay ahead for Karen Vail would be like nothing she had ever experienced.
3
After parking their car in the Napa County Sheriff’s Department lot, Vail and Dixon headed up the two flights of stairs. In the restroom, they cleaned themselves up as best they could, replacing their soiled tops with Sheriff’s Department T-shirts. Vail’s nylon fanny pack was beyond cleaning, so she dumped it in the trash.
“I’ve got a paddle holster you can use,” Dixon said, then led her down the hall and pulled one from a bin on a shelf in the detectives’ off-duty office, which adjoined the major crimes task force conference room.
They pushed through the side door and saw Brix seated at the long table with Detective Burt Gordon and ATF Special Agent Austin Mann. Vail and Dixon took chairs. Vail settled beside Mann—an awkward choice. Because of his prosthetic left forearm, and the manner in which the Crush Killer collapsed his victims’ windpipes, Vail had considered the highly regarded Mann a suspect. She came to regret the accusation. At present, that was the least of her concerns. Robby. I have to find Robby.
For a long minute, no one spoke—it was as if they were taking a moment of silence for their fallen comrades.
Vacant stares and bowed heads.
Brix cleared his throat. “This has been a tough week. For all of us. But if we’re going to be effective in what we need to accomplish, we’ve gotta pull ourselves together and put our personal feelings aside.” He pushed his chair back and walked over to the white board. Found a clear space and uncapped a marker.
Vail leaned closer to Mann. In a low voice, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Our deal is settled,” he said. “We’re good.”
“Okay,” Brix said. “We’ve got a lot of unanswered questions. Let’s set them out, then start digging. As we answer them, we’ll cross them off the list. And hopefully, when all our questions are answered, Detective Robby Hernandez will be safe, and in our custody.” He looked around the room.
Vail pushed herself up straight in her chair. “The biggest question involves Ray.”
Brix wrote “Ray Lugo” on the board. “What did he know? What was he involved in? What were his ties to John Mayfield?”
To Vail, Dixon said, “You sensed some strange body language when he and Guevara saw each other.”
“I did. But everything we thought, all our conversations with witnesses, have to be reexamined in a new light.” She turned to the others. “When we visited Superior Mobile Bottling, it seemed like César Guevara kept looking at Ray, like he was angry at him. Was he angry because he thought Ray was responsible for bringing us there?”
Dixon pointed at the board. “We need to follow up with Guevara. Find out what his relationship with Ray really was.”
Brix made the note. “And that disc.” He turned to Mann and Gordon. “In the ambulance, Ray said he had some kind of disc. He died before he could tell us what was on it or where it was.”
“He also told us,” Vail said, “that his wife and son had been kidnapped. By John Mayfield. That’s why Ray shot him in the interview room. Revenge?” She shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe he just wanted to make sure Mayfield could never come after them again.”
Brix held up a hand. “Before you ask, no, when they were kidnapped, Ray didn’t know who was behind it, and no, he never said anything to us about it. Apparently Mayfield said he’d know if Ray told us. And he’d kill his family. Ray was also apparently forced into doing things for Mayfield.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gordon said. “What the hell does that mean?”
They sat in silence for a moment. Finally Mann cleared his throat. “We’ve also got Mayfield’s comment, ‘There’s more to this than you know.’ Maybe he was referring to Ray’s involvement.”
Brix’s phone rang. He reached into his pocket and fished it out. “Brix.” He listened a moment, then his eyes flicked across the face of each task force member. “And when will we know?” He nodded, thanked the caller, then snapped his phone shut.