Crush kv-2

by Alan Jacobson

  “And who on the board has a last name that begins with W?” Dixon asked. “Would that be Mr. Wirth?”

  Crystal pursed her lips, clearly debating whether to keep answering these questions—then obviously deciding one more won’t hurt. “Yes,” she said.

  “How is Mr. Nicholson?” Vail asked. What she wanted to ask was, Is Mr. Nicholson still alive?

  “I spoke to him this morning.”

  “Nice guy?”

  “Spineless, if you ask me.”

  “I just did.” Vail forced a smile. “But if he’s spineless, why did he defy the board and vote against the Superior contract?”

  Crystal’s jaw dropped. Before she could ask, Vail said, “You’re not the first person we’ve spoken to about this.” She shrugged. “But you can understand that, from our point of view, that doesn’t fit. A spineless guy doesn’t oppose the others. He goes along. He doesn’t want confrontation.”

  “Yes. Well, I suggest you ask him about it.”

  “Last thing,” Dixon said. “What’s the status of the Superior contract? If there were only a few who opposed it, did they win the renewal?”

  “Actually, no,” Crystal said. “First, that was a preliminary vote. I wanted to see where we were. Second, because it affects everyone’s business, it’s one of the only things where we require a unanimous vote. As I said, this AVA board is very unusual in how it works. I don’t know of any other AVA that works the way we do.” She tried to smile—but it was only a half-hearted effort. “But it’s worked for us.”

  Vail was the first to stand. She placed her used napkin on the food tray. “Thanks so much for your hospitality—and for the food.”

  Crystal rose from her chair. Dixon motioned her down. “No need to show us out.”

  “Yeah,” Vail said. “The way out is pretty obvious. One might say it’s crystal clear.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  A s Vail and Dixon walked down the glass stairs, Dixon said, “‘One might say it’s crystal clear’? Were you trying to be funny?”

  “I was trying.”

  Dixon shook her head. “Try harder.”

  They cleared the sliding front doors and headed toward the parking lot and Lugo’s car.

  “Three people opposed the vote on Superior’s new contract,” Dixon said. “If César Guevara found out about this, that’s something to kill over. They’d lose millions in business. He does it himself or he hires someone to take out Victoria.”

  Vail stopped at the edge of the crushed glass path. “See, this is where this case doesn’t make sense. Serial killers don’t kill for money—I mean, there were a couple of exceptions, and they were women—but we’re talking about a psychopath who’s living out his psychosexual fantasies, which are rooted in a dysfunctional childhood. And what about this Todd Nicholson? He’s still alive and kicking.”

  “Maybe he’s the next victim.” Dixon’s phone buzzed. She flipped it open. “Text from Brix. They checked Ortiz’s story. El Brinquito, the restaurant, confirms his alibi. Wants to know if we’re still here. He and Lugo want to meet us here in five.” She tapped out a message to him. Sent it. “What do you say we talk with Todd Nicholson, as well as one of the other board members who was in favor of the Superior contract? See what their take was.”

  “Board confidentiality might get in the way.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes a couple of badges opens their mouths.”

  They stood there for a bit, alone with their thoughts, before Vail said, “Look. There are five vics attributed to the Crush Killer. There are few commonalities among them. We’ve got Victoria Cameron and Maryanne Bernal, whose wineries were members of the Georges Valley AVA. Victoria was an active board member. Maryanne was a former member. We need to find out more about Isaac Jenkins and Dawn Zackery. Ray was looking into Ursula Robbins, whose winery was in Georges Valley AVA.”

  “Do you see the common thread? Georges Valley.”

  “We’ll see when we find out more about the other two vics. In one way, it makes sense because of the male vic—Jenkins. This type of killer wouldn’t go after men. But looking at it from a for-profit motive, it doesn’t make sense. That’s just not what drives these psychopaths. I mean, severing sexual organs—like what this UNSUB’s done with the breasts—that could point to an offender with mental health issues. But the rest of his behaviors are very well explained by his psychopathy.” She leaned back against a pillar that separated the small entry plaza from the parking lot, staring out at the glass building, then shook her head. “This case . . . I can’t get a handle on it. Things just aren’t adding up the way they should be. Something’s not right.”

  Dixon looked at her phone and pressed a button. “Email from Crystal.” She scrolled and pressed the trackball. “Board roster.”

  “So let’s pick someone who wasn’t opposed to the Superior contract and start there. See if he or she talks to us.”

  “They’re here,” Dixon said with a nod to the lot’s entrance.

  They met Brix and Lugo halfway to their car and watched their reactions as they tilted their heads, taking in the winery. “I’ve read about this place,” Brix said. “Never been here. Pretty impressive.”

  Lugo nodded appreciatively. “The photos I’ve seen don’t do it justice.”

  Vail’s phone rang: Art Rooney’s number. “I’ve gotta take this.”

  “No problem. I’ll brief them on what Crystal told us.”

  Vail stepped away and answered. “Art, what a pleasant surprise.”

  “Wait till you hear what I have to say. You might not think it’s so pleasant.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was looking through the file we have here, and dipshit Del Monaco did his usual thorough job.”

  “What did he miss?”

  “He ran the VICAP search too narrow. So I expanded it and added some stuff, and bingo. I got you another vic to run down. From ’98.”

  “Where?”

  “Frisco.”

  “Yeah, Art . . . I should’ve told you before. They don’t like that abbreviation.”

  “Offer my sincere apologies. Meantime, I’ve spoken with an Inspector Robert Friedberg with the San Francisco PD. He’s waiting to hear from you. I just emailed you his direct line.”

  “Thanks, Art. This case is really bugging me. Maybe this’ll help.”

  “Anything you wanna run by me?”

  “If we were in the same room, yeah. I’d sit down with you for a couple of hours and go through everything. Bottom line is nothing’s adding up. Based on what we know, which is incomplete, this UNSUB might have a profit motive. But—”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. Not for a male SK.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Keep looking, Karen. You’ll find something.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t have much longer. Gifford wants me home tomorrow night.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

  Vail turned back to Dixon and Brix. “I wish I was as confident about that as you are.”

  “Look on the bright side. If you head back tomorrow night, we can sit down in the same room for a few hours and hash this thing out.”

  “Thanks, Art. Talk to you soon.” She hung up, scrolled to Rooney’s email, and dialed through to Inspector Friedberg. She mentioned Art Rooney and Friedberg agreed to meet her in the Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.

  Vail hung up and rejoined Dixon, Brix, and Lugo. “Did you tell them about Superior Mobile Bottling?” she asked Dixon.

  Before Dixon could answer, Brix said, “I’m vaguely familiar with Superior. Privately held, family-owned business. Like half of all the other businesses in the valley.”

  “Privately held,” Vail said. “Meaning we don’t know much about their operations. Their financing, investors, the people with skin in the game.”

  Brix nodded. “That’s pretty much true. But they’ve been around a long time, as long as we’ve been contracting out bottling for Silver Ridge. Like most mob
ile bottlers, they own a fleet of semis outfitted to do bottling, corking, and labeling on-site at the wineries that contract with them. It’s pretty lucrative, because they can turn out a lot of finished product pretty efficiently, and very reasonably. They make their money on volume. Kind of like the Costco model. Small margins, high volumes. And the wineries don’t have to invest in the equipment themselves, so everyone’s happy.”

  Dixon rubbed her eyes. “Any reason to look into them further?”

  “Waste of time,” Lugo said.

  Brix raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of any complaints. You want more, we can have Agbayani do some checks.”

  Lugo shook his head. “I’m telling you. Waste of time. Just like Ortiz.”

  Dixon twisted her lips in thought, then said, “Give Eddie a ring, have him do some digging. Meantime, let’s focus our energies on what’s most likely to net us something useful.”

  “And on that front,” Vail said, “we might have something. A VICAP hit in San Francisco. I’ve got us an appointment with the detective who’s got a cold case from ’98. Rooney already spoke with him. We’re meeting him in an hour and a half.”

  “Then we better get our asses in gear,” Dixon said. “Catch up with you later?”

  Brix nodded. “Keep me posted.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  W hile en route to their meet with Friedberg, Vail looked over the roster of Georges Valley AVA board members. She called three and explained she wanted to drop by to talk with them. All three declined. But the fourth agreed to sit down with her: Ian Wirth, whose home was located near downtown Napa. Vail set a tentative time for their meeting, and told him she would call him when they were thirty minutes away so he had time to leave his winery and get home in time for their arrival.

  Dixon, right hand resting atop the steering wheel, pointed out the windshield with her index finger. “Meeting place is just up ahead. We’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

  Vail turned another page in the file Kevin Cameron had given them. “Can’t say any of this is helpful, other than the Superior issue we covered with Crystal—which I’m not even sure was helpful at all. Problem is, a lot of this is in shorthand or some kind of abbreviation-speak Victoria devised for herself.”

  “We’re not out of ammo yet,” Dixon said. “And we may get lucky. That sit-down with the other board member might lead somewhere. And maybe this detective will have something that’ll put it all into focus.” As the freeway curved, she nudged Vail on the forearm. “Look up. You’re gonna miss the view.”

  “Whoa,” Vail said, leaning forward in the seat. The Golden Gate Bridge swung into sight behind, and between, the mountains that sat on both sides of the 101 freeway. “I’ve never seen it in person.”

  “Just wait,” Dixon said. “Better views around the bend.”

  They drove up the two-lane mountain road and saw a knot of tourists walking along a dirt and gravel path. Dixon hung a left into the turnout parking area and slid her vehicle into the remaining slot.

  Inspector Friedberg was standing beside his unmarked car in a black overcoat, a cigarette in his hand, and a chocolate brown woolly pulled down over his head. “Robert Friedberg,” he said, shifting the cigarette to his left hand and offering his right.

  “This is Roxxann Dixon and I’m Karen Vail.”

  Friedberg returned the cigarette to his smoking hand. “Agent Rooney said you’ve never been here before.”

  “Not really,” Vail said. “Not any kind of trip that counts. This was supposed to be it—a vacation.”

  “Welcome to the Golden Gate. Come on, we can walk and talk, I can show you one of my favorite views in the state.” He led them down a dirt path that curved and elevated, climbing toward a soil and cement plateau that opened up to a view of the Pacific.

  Vail stopped and took in the 180 degree panorama, from the brightly glinting white and gray skyscrapers of San Francisco off to the left, to the scores of small white sailboats listing in the bay, heading back after a day on the ocean. Oh—and there was a huge orange-red bridge splayed out before her. Larger than life, it seemingly grew out of an outcropping of mountain beneath her feet and spanned the bay to her right, landing somewhere on the San Francisco shore at two o’clock. A large cargo ship was passing beneath at midspan, moving slowly but steadily, leaving two parallel, relatively small wakes behind it.

  From their perch, they were standing midway up the North Art Deco tower, looking down onto the roadway and the dozens of cars below.

  She looked over at Friedberg, who was sucking on his cigarette. A stiff wind blew against her face. “Amazing view. I’ve never stood above a bridge and looked down on it from so high up. That color is so . . . dominating and unusual. Not quite golden, though.”

  Friedberg took another long drag, then blew it out the side of his mouth. The smoke caught the wind and rode around his neck. “Golden Gate refers to the strait below us, the entrance to the bay from the Pacific. The color’s called International Orange, whatever that means. They’ve only repainted it once, since 1937. Know how long it took?” He turned to Dixon, who was standing slightly behind Vail. “You’re from around here.”

  Dixon shrugged. “Haven’t the slightest.”

  “Twenty-seven years.”

  Vail nodded. “Job security. And a great view.”

  “Now they’ve got an army of thirty-eight painters. Their whole job is touching up the bridge. It’s the salt air. Very corrosive.”

  “You know a lot about the bridge,” Vail said.

  “A buddy of mine is one of those thirty-eight painters.” He shook his head and laughed. “Marty says the damn thing can sway twenty-seven feet to either side on a windy day. And the roadway can drop about ten feet when fully loaded—”

  “Inspector,” Vail said. “I love the view. It’s—” she turned and looked back at the expanse before them—“among the more beautiful I’ve ever seen. But the flip side to all this beauty is the killer Investigator Dixon and I are trying to find. While I’d love to sightsee and get the VIP tour, I just don’t have the time. No offense.”

  Friedberg sucked hard on his cigarette. His eyes were riveted to Vail’s. He blew away the smoke, then nodded. “Fair enough. Totally understand. So let me get right to it.” He turned to face the bridge and stood there a long moment without speaking. Finally, he threw down his cigarette and ground the butt into the dirt. “Follow me.”

  Friedberg picked up the squished cigarette, then trudged off, away from the bridge, up the inclined frontage to a sunken, below-ground-level concrete complex. A low-slung steel pipe fence surrounded the area, most likely to prevent a kid or careless adult from falling over the edge and landing below on the cement ground.

  Friedberg tossed the spent butt into a garbage pail, then led the way down a set of stairs. Directly in front of them was a twenty-foot raised circle of concrete, with an inner ring of thick, rusted bolts protruding from the surface. Off to the right, one level lower, was a central roadway that split barracks-style quarters on both sides. But the inspector headed left instead.

  Vail took a step forward to get a better view of the ugly, flat-topped one-story buildings—oddly out of place against the green undulating hills of the mountain peaks behind them. “What is this place?”

  “Battery Spencer,” Friedberg said. “A gun battery that was used from the 1840s till World War Two. The military considered San Francisco Bay to be the most important harbor on the west coast. So they stationed three huge rifle guns here to protect the city and the bridge from attack. Right here,” he said, motioning to the large circular platform in front of them, “was the emplacement for Gun 2.” He stepped onto the gun mount and walked ahead. “But that’s not what I wanted to show you. Over here.”

  Friedberg stopped in front of a slight overhang, at a cement outcropping that contained a rectangular horizontal iron door hinged at the top.

  “A fireplace?” Dixon asked.

  “Actually,” Friedberg said, “I’m not sure w
hat it was. It was a military installation, who knows what they did here. February 16, 1998, Marin County sheriff’s office got a call a little after midnight. A terrible smell at Battery Spencer. A deputy sheriff was nearby, so he took the call, even though it was outside his jurisdiction. He followed his nose, which led him here.” Friedberg grabbed the irregular bottom of the iron door with both hands and lifted it. The metal hinge squealed.

  “Body dump,” Vail said.

  “Body dump. Take a look.”

  Dixon and Vail stepped forward and peered in. “Goes down quite a bit.”

  “Wasn’t any fun getting the body out, I can tell you that much.”

  “How’d you catch the case?” Dixon asked. “This isn’t SFPD jurisdiction.”

  Friedberg chuckled. “Jurisdiction around here is a freaking nightmare. Need a scorecard and map to keep it straight. A hundred feet in any direction, jurisdiction could change. Basically, it goes by who owned the land before it became a national park. So where we’re standing is U.S. Park Police. They assigned a Criminal Investigative Branch detective, who ran the investigation and coordinated with the Marin County sheriff’s office. That’s where I came in. This was a couple years before I hooked up with SFPD.” He shook his head. “Let’s just say I regretted working the case from day one. But I kept a copy of the file. I always hoped one day I’d solve it.”

  Vail stepped back and Friedberg lowered the cover. “ID on the vic?”

  “Betsy Ivers. Bank teller, thirty-three, single.”

  “Any connection to the wine country?” Dixon asked.

  “None I remember. But it’s been a while since I reviewed the file.”

  “Did Agent Rooney go over the unusual things our killer does to the body?”

  Friedberg clapped his hands to shake off the dirt. “I went to that FBI Profiling seminar in ’06 that your colleague did, Agent Safarik. I know what to look for. He was really good. Great freaking class. How is he?”

  “Doing well,” Vail said. “He retired, but he’s got his own company, still doing profiling, expert testimony, the whole shebang.”