Vail crawled toward Fuller to get his handgun. Then she would wake him and find out what the hell he did to her—and why. Then, and only then, maybe she’d kill him. At least, that’s what she felt like doing.
Vail came upon Fuller’s boots, yanked on them. The movement made her nauseous. “Fuller, wake up!” But he didn’t respond. She scrabbled forward, grabbed his shirt to give him a good shake, but it was wet. Not just wet, but slimy and thick. Blood.
That’s the blood I smelled. Fuller’s?
She drew back, wiped her hands on her blouse, then peered closer to try to get a better look at where he was bleeding. She felt for his wrist, for a pulse. But there was nothing. Jesus Christ. What the hell happened here?
Argument with Fuller. Sharp—she brought her right hand to her neck. Something stuck her neck. She remembered that. But Fuller? Dead? Why wasn’t she killed, too?
And if Fuller had tried to burn her alive, then who’d want to kill him—and leave her among the living?
Cell phone—she needed to call someone. Robby. Dixon. Where did she keep it? Come on, Karen, think.
She felt around and located her BlackBerry. Couldn’t find Robby’s or Dixon’s number. New phone. Shit! She paged to the call log. A DC number—Rooney. She hit Call and waited while it rang. He answered on the first ring.
“Karen. Everything okay?”
His voice was amplified, like he was on a headset. “No, Art, things are all fucked up. I—I don’t know what happened. I think I was drugged—”
“Drugged—where are you?”
She slowly turned. It was dark . . . no lights of any kind. “I’m in the middle of nowhere. A vineyard, I’m in a vineyard. More than that, I don’t know. I remember driving on—on Silver . . . Silverado. Silverado Trail. I remember that. I thought someone was following me. Turned out to be Scott Fuller. He tried to run me off the road, we crashed, I got out of my car, and—I’m not sure. We argued. About the arson. I was talking to him,”—asking him whether he killed Victoria Cameron—“I was asking him if he killed Victoria Cameron. Then I felt something sharp and I went down. When I woke up, I was on the ground, I was dizzy—and Fuller’s dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“I don’t know—blood. There’s blood on his chest, I checked for a pulse. But my phone, it’s a new one after the fire, the one you gave me. And there’s no contact list so I don’t have anyone’s number—”
“Karen. Listen to me. I’m going to call Detective Hernandez. Then I’ll call Brix.”
“Call Dixon, Roxxann Dixon.”
“Okay. I’ll call her. How are you, are you able to wait for them?”
“I’m . . . okay, I think. Just have Robby call me. I’ll try to direct him to where I am.”
“Need be, we’ll track your cell signal. Meantime, be careful, Karen. Someone tried to kill you. And he’s still out there.”
“Actually, Art, the guy who tried to kill me is a few feet away from me. Dead. And whoever drugged me and killed him could just as easily have killed me, too. So I think he’s got other plans.”
“Maybe. If this guy’s a narcissist, this could all be part of his game. Showing you how superior he is, that he controls things, not you. He could’ve easily killed you, but didn’t. Maybe next time he will. We don’t know what’s going on yet. But we can’t assume it’s safe just because this one time keeping you alive served his purpose better.”
Vail knew he was right. “Fine. I’ll keep you posted. Just make sure they keep this stuff off the police band.”
She hung up and waited for Robby to call her. Meantime, she didn’t want to move—she’d already compromised the crime scene by crawling through it. At present, less was more. She kept her feet planted.
Robby’s call came through two minutes later. She told him her location, as best she could estimate, then waited. A short time later, two cars pulled up simultaneously, approaching from opposite directions. As Dixon and Robby exited their vehicles, Vail called out to them. As they started toward her, Brix drove up. The three of them left their headlights burning and stood at the edge of the vineyard, twenty yards from Vail’s Taurus. To their right sat Fuller’s upended vehicle.
“Sorry,” Vail called to them.
“For what?” Robby asked.
“The car. It only had thirty thousand miles on it.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m still groggy and dizzy, but I’ve been worse.” Robby knew firsthand she was telling the truth.
Dixon turned on the black tactical flashlight she was holding and panned it around. She paused on Fuller’s Chrysler. “What happened?”
“Fuller tried to kill me again.”
“Again?” Brix asked.
Vail went through the sequence of events in as much detail as she remembered, including Rooney’s discovery of the sealed record.
Brix and Dixon shared a look of disbelief.
“So that’s what I mean by ‘again.’”
“Until we know for sure,” Brix said, “it’s just a theory.”
Vail let that slide. “Whatever,” she said. “But you may want to notify Stan Owens. I’m sure he’ll want to come down here, ID the body.”
Brix pulled his phone. “Damn straight.”
“Meantime, I’ve gotta find my sidearm without disturbing the area more than I already have.”
“Get Matt Aaron down here,” Brix said to Dixon. “And an ambulance for her.”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” Vail said. “I’ll be okay, I just need some time.”
“You’re getting the ambulance,” Dixon said. “This is no time for tough guy theatrics. Sounds like you were injected with something. Until we get a better handle on what happened to you, we need to do this right.”
Robby took the flashlight from Dixon, then stepped closer to Vail. “I don’t know where the crime scene boundary is, but you think you can catch this?”
“I’m still kind of groggy and unsteady. Just stay there and shine the light on the ground. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
After several minutes of doing a tight-beamed grid search, Vail saw something metallic at the base of a thick vine. “Over there.” She pointed to the spot and Robby moved a step to his right, crouching lower to change the light’s angle. “Got it.” She stepped a few paces to her left, toward the handgun. “I’m gonna put my business card under a rock to mark where we found it.”
Using the bottom, clean portion of her blouse, Vail picked up the Glock and blew on it to dislodge any loose dirt. She pulled the slide back and gave it another good infusion of air. Then she carefully slipped it into her fanny pack. “I’m gonna have to turn it in to the local resident agency. They’ll send it on to the lab for processing.”
“Did Fuller ever touch it?”
She thought a moment before answering. “I think he just knocked it out of my hand. I picked it up after, so I’m pretty sure there aren’t any of his prints on there.” She carefully made her way out of the vineyard, doing her best to avoid destroying any trace evidence or footprints.
When she reached Robby, they embraced.
“Ready to go home yet?” he asked by her ear.
Vail looked up at him, her expression hard, her jaw set. That was the only answer he needed.
“I’ll call the resident agency, if you want. Which one is it?”
Vail stepped away and brushed back her hair. “Santa Rosa.”
Robby strained to get a look at his watch. “Hopefully I’ll catch someone working late.” He pulled out his phone and started dialing.
The flash of a first responder’s light bar flickered in the night sky, accompanied by a siren that pierced the countryside like an air raid warning. As Vail sat down on the bumper, a clean-cut paramedic in his late twenties jumped out and attended to her. “How are you doing, ma’am?”
The man’s name was embroidered above his left pocket and read, Marcus. “Much better now,” she said, giving him a quick once over. “Nothing like a man in uniform.�
�
Marcus shifted his feet, grinned sheepishly, and probably blushed.
Robby snapped his phone shut. “Excuse me?”
Vail turned to Robby and said, “Second time in a week I find myself flirting with a medic. Fun as it might seem, I think I should get my kicks another way. Take up bowling, maybe. Or mahjong. What do you think?”
Robby looked over at the confused first responder and shrugged. “I don’t know what it is about her, but she grows on you.”
That seemed to fluster poor young Marcus even more, and he turned away and fumbled with his penlight to examine Vail’s pupils.
Dixon walked over with Matt Aaron, who was toting his toolkit.
“What is it about you, Vail?” Aaron asked. “Things are generally pretty quiet around here. You come to town and I can’t seem to have a night with my wife.”
“If you ask my boss, I’m a serial killer magnet.”
Aaron threw his head back. “A what?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” She twisted away from the medic, who was examining the welt on her temple. “DB’s out there in the vineyard, to the left of that upended Chrysler. It’s Scott Fuller.”
“Detective Scott Fuller?”
“Is there another Scott Fuller in town?”
“I don’t think this is very funny, Agent Vail. Scott was a colleague of ours.”
“He’s also a fucking arsonist. He tried to kill me. Twice. So forgive me if I don’t share your warm fuzzies.”
Aaron’s eyes narrowed. He studied her a moment, seemed to compose himself, then said, “So what happened here? What should I be looking for out there?”
“He attacked me. Clocked me good,” she said, then turned so her swollen temple was visible. “I recovered my handgun, which he’d knocked from my hand. I was questioning him when I felt a prick in my neck and that’s the last I remember. When I woke up, Fuller was dead. I’m sorry if I fucked up your crime scene. I wasn’t thinking clearly when I came to, and I was dizzy so I couldn’t stand up. I crawled around trying to find my Glock. But obviously there was someone else out there, so I’d look for a third set of footprints.”
“Obviously?”
“Whoever drugged me, he came up from behind.”
Aaron gave her a look of disgust, then turned and trudged off toward his vehicle. “Don’t go anywhere,” he called into the night air. “I’ll be back to do a GSR.”
“Don’t let him bother you,” Dixon said. “I know you and Scott didn’t hit it off, but he was part of the community. A lot of people saw him as a child prodigy. Some of that had to do with Stan Owens.”
Tires crunched dirt behind them, followed by another swirling light bar and bright headlights.
“Speaking of which,” Dixon said, “here he is.” She turned to Vail, who winced as Marcus applied an icepack to her head. “Be prepared.”
“For what?” Vail asked.
“Owens seems like a nice guy, but he can be a real bastard when he’s pissed. And hearing his stepson’s been murdered ain’t gonna make him happy.”
Owens spent a moment conferring with Brix, who had been helping unload klieg lights and tripods from Aaron’s vehicle. With the icepack pressed to her head, Vail watched Owens’s body language. His shoulders slumped, he brought his hands to his head, grabbed his hair, then walked forward toward the Chrysler. Brix put his arm out to stop him, said something, then Owens swung away, out of his friend’s grasp. Red and tear-swollen eyes reflected in the swirling emergency lights. Then Owens turned toward Vail and they locked gazes. Vail had a feeling this was not going to go well.
As if sensing her thoughts, Robby said, “Oh, shit, here it comes.”
Vail turned to Dixon. “I assume you’re familiar with the saying, ‘It’s about to hit the fan’?”
Owens was approaching with a slow, deliberate gait, his eyes focused on Vail, who looked down at the ground. She felt bad for Owens and didn’t want to be seen as confrontational.
“What the fuck did you do to my son?” Owens said, as he advanced on them.
Vail held up her free hand, and cocked her head to the side, as if to say, “It wasn’t my fault.” But Owens suddenly lunged at her and would’ve landed a hard right had Robby not stepped in front and knocked him backwards to the ground.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Sheriff,” Robby said, looking down at him. “But you need to get your shit together. Agent Vail had nothing to do with your son’s death. He attacked her. And if you can’t deal with this rationally and objectively, haul your ass out of here and let your people do their jobs.”
Vail placed a hand on Robby’s shoulder. Owens got to his feet. He was average height, about five-ten, and that made him nine inches shorter than Robby. He wouldn’t move against Vail again. Instead, he ground his molars. The incessant flickering of the red and blue lights lent an uneasy tension to the already edgy scene.
Brix was now at Owens’s side. He put an arm around the sheriff’s back and turned him, then led him away. Brix glanced over his shoulder at Vail. She couldn’t read his expression. Apologetic? Disgust? It was too dark to make it out. Could’ve been either.
The paramedic knelt on a knee and started to pack up his case. Dixon held out a hand. “Hold it a second. I need you to draw a blood sample.”
“A blood sam—I don’t usually do that.”
“I know. But I need it done. Now.”
Marcus looked at the firm expressions worn by the people surrounding him, then knelt back down and opened his kit. He pulled out a plastic-encased syringe and tore it open. “What is it you want?”
Dixon looked out toward Aaron, who appeared to be moving with purpose off in the distance, then said, “I’ll let you know in a second.” She pulled her cell phone and called him. Vail watched as Aaron, now bathed in the bright lights trained on Fuller’s body and the immediate vicinity, moved to answer his phone. He said something to Dixon, then shoved his phone back in his pocket.
Dixon hung up, turned to Marcus, and gave him specific instructions. To Vail, she said, “I’m hoping whatever you were drugged with will still be in your system. If we wait too long, it’ll clear—”
“Yeah, got it,” Vail said. “Thanks.”
“Hey, just trying to keep my head about me, do the right things. Aaron said he’d be over in a bit to get the GSR.”
Marcus reached out, took Vail’s left forearm, and wedged it in his armpit, then, with gloved hands, tied a rubber strip around Vail’s bicep as he prepared to do the blood draw. “When we’re done here, I’ll give you a sterile container. Go into the back of the rig, pee into it, then seal it. It’s not ideal, but we’re improvising here.”
Robby stretched his neck back, rolled his shoulders. “So this UNSUB is getting bolder. He must’ve been shadowing you and followed you and Fuller here. Then he drugged you and killed Fuller.”
“Until and unless we learn more, that seems like a reasonable conclusion,” Dixon said. “But why would he leave Karen alive? And why kill Scott?”
Good questions. Vail unrolled her shirt sleeve and rose from the bumper. “Could simply be that he wanted to show us he can operate with impunity. Ultimate power. Kill a cop, he’s got total control. As to why he chose to kill Fuller and not me, it might simply have been who had their back to him when he struck.”
“The luck of the draw,” Dixon said. “So to speak.”
“Unless . . .” Vail shoved her hands into the back pockets of her pants and began to pace. “Unless that’s not it at all.”
“How do you mean?” Robby asked.
“We’re missing something very important here.” She pointed at Dixon. “Give me your phone.” Dixon handed it over and Vail hit Send. Aaron answered. “It’s Vail. How was Fuller killed?”
There was a moment’s silence. Vail looked at the phone’s display to see if the line was still active, then glanced off in Aaron’s direction to see what he was doing. She didn’t see him. Was he still pissed at her? Or was he examining Fuller’s bod
y?
“Aaron, you there?”
“Right here.”
Vail turned, threw a hand up to her chest. “Jesus Christ, man, don’t sneak up on me like that. My nerves are a little raw.”
“I’ll have to remember that.” Aaron motioned to her and she handed the phone back to Dixon, then extended her arm. Aaron placed a number of adhesive gun-shot residue disks across the back of her hands, sleeves, chest, and torso. He drew a grid in his notebook and made notations as to where each of the round tabs had been placed.
“So how was Scott killed?” Dixon asked.
While Aaron continued his task, he said, “His trachea wasn’t crushed, if that’s what you’re thinking. Looks like he took three forty-caliber rounds to the chest. One is up around the dicrotic notch; looks like stippling on the neck, indicating that shot was very close range, maybe around two feet. Another one looks to be from a little further away than the others. Most likely that was the shooter’s first shot. But I’ll know more once I get him to the lab and I can do a full workup.”
“What about—”
“No. Toenails are intact.”
“Okay,” Vail said. “Figured as much. Thanks.”
“Yeah, whatever.” He pointed at her fanny pack. “You carry a forty-caliber pistol, correct?”
“A Glock 23.”
Aaron pulled an evidence bag from his pocket and extended a hand. “Your weapon.”
Vail shook her head. “Actually, it’s going to the FBI lab.”
“No,” Aaron said, drawing it out as if it was a musical note, “it’s going into this evidence bag and back to my lab.”
Vail thought about that a moment, then said, “I’m a federal agent and I have to abide by federal rules and regulations. If you’ve got a problem with that, my ASAC is Thomas Gifford. I’m sure he can quote the appropriate section from the Manual of Administrative Operations Procedures. So my sidearm is going to the FBI lab. I’d imagine you can have it once they’re done with it.”
Aaron groaned—it sounded more like a growl—and walked off, back toward the lighted crime scene.
Vail stared off at the ground for a moment, lost in thought. “This isn’t his typical kill,” she finally said. “No ritual behaviors. He didn’t choke Fuller and he didn’t yank off a toenail. He used a handgun to kill him.”
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