Vail unfolded her arms, pleadingly holding out her hands. “We’re just looking for help, trying to figure out who killed Scott. Did you kill Scott, Walton?”
He sat back in his chair. “Are you out of your minds? Scott was my friend.”
Dixon nodded sympathetically. “Judging by how often you talked on the phone, I can see that. What did you talk about when he called you?”
Silva leaned his chair back on its two rear legs. “Stuff. You know, the market, where I saw things going.”
“The stock market?”
“That’s what I do. Securities, equities.”
Dixon nodded. “Right. But, see, nothing’s been going on in the market lately. Volatility mostly. Goes up, then down, then up. But you had this long conversation with him on the ninth. What was that about?”
“How am I supposed to remember what we talked about?”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
Silva looked up at the ceiling. “I have lots of conversations every day. I can’t remember what they’re all about.”
“This one I think you’d remember. Because it was right before the fire. And then you spoke again, right after the fire.”
Silva let the chair fall forward onto all four legs. “Why do you keep asking me about this fire?”
Dixon leaned in close again, glanced back at Vail, as if she wanted to have a private conversation with Silva, out of the earshot of her partner. “Can I be totally honest with you, Walton?”
The man squinted. “Please.”
“We did a preliminary rapid DNA screen on that foam. It’s the latest in DNA technology, and it’s not a hundred percent accurate—but it’s close. The lab will be doing a more comprehensive test, but that’ll take a few days. But the rapid screen, it showed your DNA mixed in with the Class A foam. You so much as breathe in the same room and it’ll pick up your DNA. And, see, that foam was identified as an identical match for the one used in the fire. The arson.”
Silva slapped the table. “Now wait a minute—”
“Calm down, Walton. Before you get upset, I have good news for you. I know it sounds like the evidence implicates you as the person who set the fire. But that’s not what we’re getting at.”
“What are you getting at, then?” Silva asked.
“Well, Scott’s death.”
Silva rubbed his face with both hands. “I’ve had enough. I think I need an attorney.”
“For what?” Vail asked. “We’re trying to help you here. You bring in an attorney and the DA will, for sure, file charges against you. We don’t care about the fire, you hear? We just want to find Scott’s killer.”
“And I told you. I can’t help you there.”
Vail stepped up to the table. “Sure you can,” she said in a lilting voice. “We know Scott set the fire. He told us that shortly before he was killed.”
“He did? Why—”
“Why he told us is unimportant. The point is, he did. But—can we—can we keep talking here, Walton? Because we know you didn’t set the fire.”
“Fine. So what is it you want?”
“Well,” Vail said, “we just want to know why Scott set it. If we can figure that out, it may lead us to his killer. And that’s all we’re interested in.”
“So I tell you what I know about that, and I can go. Right?”
Vail turned to Dixon. “Yeah.”
Dixon shrugged agreement.
Silva chewed on this a moment, not saying anything, but his eyes were roaming the room, thinking, working it through.
Come on, scumbag. Say something stupid.
Finally, Silva leaned forward. “It was nothing, really. At least, my part wasn’t that big a deal. Scott wanted to set this fire, like he told you, but he didn’t want anyone getting hurt. So he asked me how he could control the fire so it wouldn’t spread.”
Atta boy. That qualifies. “Why would you know anything about that?”
“My dad was a chemical engineer at Dow for forty years. I asked him some questions one day. He’s retired and gets bored easily. So I asked him how to do a controlled burn if all you had were household supplies lying around. He was all too happy to help me out. So, yeah, it was Class A foam. It prevented the fire from spreading, just what Scott wanted. That’s the extent of my involvement.”
“The scorched dirt near the cottage,” Dixon said. “Did Scott do a test run? Just to make sure the foam would work?”
Silva’s eyes flicked between Vail and Dixon. “Yeah. Scott was testing it.”
“I’m sure Scott told you why he wanted to do this, to set this fire.”
“All he told me was that an FBI agent was causing problems. She wanted to go public with this killer you people are after, and he couldn’t let that happen.”
“Couldn’t let it happen, like silence her? Kill her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I figured he just wanted to scare her.”
Bullshit. You fucking scumbag. I’d like to wring your goddamn neck—
“Because it would destroy the tourism industry?” Dixon asked.
“The tourism industry?” Silva chuckled. “Heck no. He was worried about Congressman Church.”
Dixon leaned forward. “Worried how? Why?”
“The congressman is going to run for governor.”
Dixon sat back in her chair.
Vail’s anger vanished like an extinguished candle. Her focus was immediately laser thin on Silva’s words. And it wasn’t good. She’d totally missed that one.
“So what if the guy wants to run for governor?” Dixon asked. “He’s a politician.”
But Vail suddenly got it. If Church is in office, he takes his cadre with him. And he wouldn’t be the first California governor to win the United States presidency.
Silva spread his hands, as if even an imbecile should understand. “If he’s elected governor,” Silva said, “he takes his people along for the ride.”
Vail was exhausted and felt weak, spacey. She needed caffeine, calories, and glucose for her brain to burn. But she couldn’t walk out now. “Okay, Walton. I think I’m seeing this come into focus. Why don’t you spell it out for me. Church—Congressman Church—is going to run for governor, and what happens then?”
“Scott would get a high-level law enforcement position, like Deputy Director of Homeland Security, I’d get Commissioner of Financial Institutions, and Tim would be his Chief of Staff.”
“Tim,” Vail repeated. The “surprise” Dixon referenced earlier. “Timothy Nance?”
“Yeah.”
Dixon said, “And if Special Agent Vail, that FBI agent who was threatening to go public with this killer, went to the media, it’d hurt Congressman Church’s chances?”
“Well, yeah,” Silva said, as if it were obvious. “Any negative publicity would be a bad thing. Things get blown out of proportion in political campaigns. This serial killer happened under his watch. They’ll say he didn’t do enough to protect the People, didn’t come down hard enough on the police to find the guy. Of all his territory, Napa is his top cut, the prime rib of his district.”
“Okay, Walton.” Vail nodded casually, as if it was all just a misunderstanding. No big deal. “I think we’ve got the picture. Get that agent out of the way, and the problem is eliminated.”
“That’s about it.”
“But,” Dixon said, “you didn’t think ‘elimination’ meant death.”
Silva looked from Vail to Dixon.
Gotcha, asshole.
He thrust his chin back, as if Dixon’s comment was a most absurd conclusion. “Of course not.”
“All right, Walton. Thanks so much. That does help.” Dixon pulled a pad and pen from a drawer beneath the table and slid it across to Silva. “Go ahead and write all that down, starting with Scott planning the fire and what he wanted to accomplish. Don’t leave anything out. When you’re done, you can go.” She rose from her chair. “Thanks again, Walton. You’ve really put this whole thing into focus for us.”
“That was a pleasure to watch,” Brix said.
“I like that Class A foam shit,” Robby said. “That chemical marker stuff was brilliant.”
Brix laughed. “That rapid screen DNA was even better. Where did you get that?”
“That was good, wasn’t it?” Vail said. “We thought of it right before we went in.”
“Good work, Roxxi,” Brix said. He sighed, rubbed his forehead. “So now we go pick up Nance, hopefully get his confession and wrap this thing up.”
Vail turned to the monitor and watched Silva put down the pen. “I’ll be right back.” She headed into the interview room, glanced at the pad, and asked Silva to sign the bottom. After he scrawled his name and handed Vail the pad, he said, “Can I go now?”
“Absolutely. We’ve got a car and driver waiting outside for you.” She extended a hand and Silva took it. “Thanks for your cooperation. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Karen Vail. Special Agent Karen Vail. FBI.”
Silva’s hand went limp. “You—”
“Yeah, that’s me. And yes, I’m fucking pissed.” She forced a smile. “But it’s been great meeting you, Walton. Have a pleasant stay in lockup.”
Vail walked out and joined Robby in the conference room.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
She looked over at the monitor, where Walton sat, grasping his hair with both hands.
Before Vail could respond, her BlackBerry buzzed. As she pulled it from her belt, Brix’s and Dixon’s phones chimed. She glanced at the display. A text message.
And another body.
THIRTY-ONE
W alton Silva kept bemoaning that the sun had not yet risen when he was roused from bed. The task force members couldn’t have made that complaint because, as they gathered around the fresh crime scene, the sky was brightening in the east, silhouetting the vineyard-tipped hills against pale yellow hues.
As Vail and Robby huffed up the steep rise, something that had been bothering Vail on the ride over continued clawing at her thoughts—but her brain function was fuzzy with sleep deprivation, and it took a while to fight through the fog.
“If this is the work of our Crush Killer, he can’t be in Virginia,” Vail said to Robby.
“That’s a big ‘if.’ Let’s first see what we’ve got, then we can draw some conclusions.”
Vail looked over at Robby in the rising brightness. “That’s something I would say, with some food in my stomach and sleep under my belt. You’re absolutely right.” She grabbed a peek at her watch, then said, “There’s no reason for you to be here. You can go grab some shut-eye.”
“As soon as we get a look at the body, figure out whether or not this is the same asshole, I’ll take off, let Bledsoe know what’s going down, and hit the sack.”
“Wish I could hit that sack with you.”
They joined the huddle of task force members—Dixon, Gordon, Mann, and Brix. Lugo stood at the periphery, rubbing his face with both hands, in obvious distress.
“What do we have?” Vail asked.
Lugo looked at her with a long face. “Same fucking thing. Breasts, windpipe, toenail. Go see for yourself.”
Relief flooded over Vail—Jonathan was safe because it was now highly probable the killer was still in California—and she instantly felt deep remorse and embarrassment that she could be relieved over the discovery of a new victim. She cut herself some slack—lack of sleep did strange things to the way one processed information and stress—and moved past Lugo.
Matt Aaron was crouched over the body, his klieg lights creating the sense of an important event. And there, in the center of his stage, lit up like a diamond on display, was a woman who looked to be in her late thirties.
“TOD?” Vail asked.
Aaron did not shift his attention. “Maybe an hour ago.”
“Jesus Christ,” Brix said. “An hour?” He twisted his body, eyes scanning the countryside. “Where the hell is this guy?”
“Obviously not in Virginia,” Robby said. He touched Vail’s shoulder—she wished he’d lean over and give her a hug and kiss—she needed it. “I’ve still got those clothes I bought for you in my car. I’ll leave the bags on Roxxann’s trunk.”
“Thanks.”
He then walked off, toward his car.
Vail closed her eyes. She was so tired she thought she could fall asleep right here, right now, vertically suspended. But there would not be any sleep, not for a while.
“The bastard pulled one over on us, made us jump through hoops, made me think he was across the country stalking my son.”
“Yeah, how about that?” Austin Mann asked.
Vail opened her eyes. “Smart guy. And out to show us just how smart he is, how superior he is, by tricking us—tricking me into thinking he was after my son. He knew that’d get a visceral, no-holds-barred response.”
“But there’d be no way for him to know you’d actually fallen for it.”
“What mother wouldn’t? Who could take the chance? Of course I fell for it. He knew. He’s a goddamn smart one. Organized.” The beginnings of a profile were taking shape. “This guy will have a higher education. He owns a more expensive car, like a high-end Toyota or some other foreign make. He works in a job that doesn’t recognize his true worth, and this frustrates him. He has to show us how intelligent he is to compensate for his failings in the real world.”
Burt Gordon cleared his throat. “Doesn’t help us much. We know the kind of person we may be looking for, but who is he? There can be hundreds of people who fit those parameters.”
“Once we start getting a suspect pool, we can narrow it down using these guidelines.”
Gordon gave a slight laugh, then looked to Aaron. “Any ID on the vic?”
“Nothing. No wallet, credit cards, license. I’ll get you something as soon as I can run her prints, dental impressions—you know the deal.”
“Knife under her lower back?”
Aaron inched closer, directed his flashlight at the body, and examined the area. “Can’t tell. And I’m not sticking my hand underneath to find out. We’ll know when it’s time to move the body.”
Vail’s phone vibrated. She plucked it from its holster, glanced at the display, and lifted it to her face. “Vail.”
“It’s Bledsoe.”
She reminded herself to enter in her contacts—not having caller ID configured for her phone numbers was a pain in the ass.
“Good news. We just found a fresh vic.” Did I just say that? Shit, I really need some sleep.
“How is that good news?”
Vail rolled her head back, then side to side. “It’s not, it’s not. I just meant, if we found another vic in Napa—”
“How can that be, if the fucker’s here, two thousand miles away?”
“Exactly. That seems to be the question of the day. Until we know for sure, we’re assuming he’s here in Napa, that his text last night was a ruse just to screw with our heads.”
“Between you and me, it worked.”
“I know it worked, Bledsoe. Thanks for pointing out the goddamn obvious.” She noticed Dixon giving her a look. Vail turned away and walked off a few paces. “Sorry. I haven’t had a whole lot of sleep.”
“Takes a lot to piss me off, you know that.”
“Now there’s a quality I could use some of myself. Listen, can you put Jonathan on the phone?”
“I would if I was still there. I left the school a while ago. Everything was clean. My guy’s on him. Trevor Greenwich. Give him a buzz.”
“It’s just—I just need to hear Jonathan’s voice.”
“No need to explain. Take care of yourself. Get some sleep. And call me if you need anything else, especially if your killer really is in my backyard.”
“Count on it.”
Bledsoe gave Vail the cop’s cell and she immediately dialed through. As it was ringing, she r
ealized she knew this officer. She’d had a run-in with the guy a couple of months ago. Not that it was his fault; he was just doing his job—but she was not in the mood to take any shit from the guy. When he answered, she identified herself—waiting for some sign of recognition—but got nothing. She plowed forward, not allowing too much room for him to comment, and asked him to pull Jonathan out of class for a moment. Greenwich didn’t argue, nor did he question her as to why. Jonathan was on the line seconds later.
“Mom?”
“Hey, how are you?”
“Fine. What’s the deal with the cop?”
“He’s there to protect you. And please be polite. He’s there as a favor, okay?”
“A favor for what? Everything’s fine.”
“It’s not something I want to get into. I’ll tell you when I get home. But for now, it’s important you let the officer hang around close by. Okay?”
“Is this a big deal?”
“I hope not. I’ll let you know if anything changes. And call me if you have any concerns, if anything doesn’t feel right. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
“I love you.”
“You too.”
Vail put away her phone and joined Dixon at the crime scene boundary.
“Everything okay?”
“I just needed to hear my son’s voice.” She turned to Dixon. “You have kids?”
“Me?” She laughed. “No. I’d like to, I think. But first I have to meet someone. I’m not into the single parent thing. Certainly not being a cop. You divorced?”
Vail took a moment before answering. “That’s a long story I’d rather not get into right now. Better on a day when I’m awake and not dealing with a major case. Let’s just say I am doing ‘the single parent thing,’ though that wasn’t the plan. It just sort of . . . happened. And given how things turned out, it was probably for the best. Jonathan’s father ended up being a bit more than I bargained for.”
“It’s nice, I think, having children. Watching them grow up, become people, have families of their own. And when you get old, you’ve got family around.”
Vail couldn’t help but look down at the corpse laid out in front of them. It seemed wrong to be having such a conversation in its presence. She turned and headed away. Dixon followed. “That sums it up,” Vail said. “But that’s only part of the deal. Lots of challenges along the way. Makes life interesting, to say the least.”
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