“Yeah. ‘Sorry to wake you, Mrs. Lugo, but your husband’s dead. Oh, and by the way, we think he was working with the serial killer we just caught.’”
Dixon patted Vail on the back. “I think it’d be better if I do the talking when we get there.” They made their way into the stairwell, then down the two flights. “Regardless of what Ray was involved in, we owe it to the badge to do it right, so his wife gets news of his death from us rather than some reporter when the story breaks in the morning.”
As they walked to Dixon’s Ford Crown Victoria, Vail pulled the task force roster from her back pocket and unfolded it. “Can you drive with the light on? I want to enter this stuff into my phone on the way over.”
“Not a bad idea. The light may help keep me awake.”
They arrived at the Lugo home a bit past 2:00 AM. It was a modest but well-maintained two-story stucco in a planned development. A kids’ basketball standard was evident just over the sturdy wood fence.
As they approached the house, bright halogen lights snapped on. “Motion sensors,” Dixon said.
Vail nodded at the eave. “And surveillance cameras. Designed to come on with the lights.”
“Look at the windows,” Dixon said.
White decorative wire “sculptures” covered the glass.
“I don’t think those were installed for their aesthetic value,” Vail said. “If I didn’t know who lived here, I’d say the people who own this house are scared of something.”
“Or someone.”
They stepped up to the front door and stood there, staring at it, both alone with their thoughts. Finally Vail said, “Roxx, we’ve gotta just do it.”
Dixon sighed, then leaned forward and pressed the button beside the door. The deep bark of a large dog started up as if activated by the door-bell. “Ray had security in place, that’s for sure.”
“Goes with what he told us in the van.”
They stood there, waiting, bathed in light with the surveillance camera rolling. Finally, footsteps. A voice spilled out from a speaker. “Who is it and what do you want?”
“It’s Roxxann Dixon and Karen Vail. We’re friends of Ray’s from the major crimes task force.”
“Where’s Ray?” the voice asked.
“Mrs. Lugo, it’d be real good if you could open the door. We have a message from your husband.”
Vail looked at Dixon. They didn’t truly have anything from Ray other than bad news—but by the time they got finished telling her why they were there, Merilynn Lugo wouldn’t be asking what the message was.
“Go ahead. I can hear you just fine.”
Vail heard a child’s voice in the background. It sent a shiver down her back. Shit, I hate this. Absolutely hate this. “Mrs. Lugo,” Vail said, “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news.”
Dixon looked at her. Vail lifted her hands to say, She left us no choice.
The door swung open. Merilynn Lugo was a thick Hispanic woman with delicate features. Her mouth had fallen agape and her hands drew up to her cheeks as she searched the faces of the two cops. No doubt hoping she had heard wrong.
“I’m sorry,” Dixon said.
And in that moment of realization, Merilynn Lugo burst into tears. That’s when Vail saw the young boy behind his mother, holding on to her leg. Merilynn reached out—her face had lost all color—and Dixon grabbed her, helping her gently to the floor.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” the boy asked. The dog started barking again.
Merilynn pulled her son close. “Mommy’s not feeling too good.” She took a deep breath. “But I’ll—I’ll be okay. You want to go let Bart into the backyard?” She nodded at him and forced a smile. “Go on, Mario.”
When the boy walked out, Merilynn turned back to Vail. Tears streamed down her face. “How,” she finally asked. “How did it happen?”
Vail sat on the floor beside Merilynn. “A gunshot wound,” Vail said. “We’d captured a serial killer the task force was after. We think it was the guy who kidnapped you and Mario—”
“You—you caught him?”
Vail regarded Merilynn’s face before answering. “We did. And Ray . . . Ray was a big part of that. But while I was interrogating the suspect, Ray . . . Ray came into the room and shot him. One of the rounds ricocheted and hit Ray in the neck. We tried to save him. We rushed him to the hospital, but . . . ” Vail stole a look at Dixon. “He asked that we make sure to look out for you and your son.”
Merilynn swiped a hand across her wet cheeks, balled up her night-gown and used it to blot the tears. Vail and Dixon waited, Vail keeping a hand on Merilynn’s shoulder to support her.
“Ray told us about what happened. With the kidnapping—”
“Is he still alive?” Merilynn asked. “Did the bastard die?”
Dixon and Vail shared a glance. Dixon said, “All we know is that he’s out of surgery.”
Merilynn straightened up. “Then I need to get out of here.”
“‘Get out,’” Dixon said. “What do you mean?”
“He’s going to come after us. He will.”
“Why?” Vail asked.
“We need protection,” Merilynn said. “Or we need to leave.”
“We’ll make sure you’re taken care of. Don’t worry about that. But tell us what happened. When you got kidnapped, what—”
“I think you need to leave us alone right now,” Merilynn said. She clumsily pushed herself up from the floor.
Vail and Dixon rose as well.
“Look,” Vail said, “I know this is a tough time. But we’ve got a lot of unanswered questions, and someone else’s life might depend on those answers.”
“I can’t help you. Sorry.” The dog began barking again.
“A disc,” Vail pressed. “Ray mentioned something about a disc. Do you know what he was talking about?”
Merilynn swung her head toward the yard. The barking continued. “No.” She faced Vail. “I don’t know anything about a disc.”
“But—”
“He’s going to wake the neighbors,” Merilynn said as she hurried out of the room. “Please let yourself out. And lock the door behind you.”
WALKING TOWARD THEIR CAR, Vail said, “Something’s not right. We need to come back. After the initial shock fades. Tomorrow. We have to find out what the hell’s going on. What she knows.”
“Meantime, I’ll have the Sheriff’s Department post a deputy. Until we know what the deal is. For all we know, Mayfield had an accomplice.”
Vail stopped. Her head swung hard to Dixon. “I hadn’t thought of that. I should have, but I didn’t.”
“None of us considered that possibility. We’ve been going almost 24/7 for days. Who had the time to step back and think things through?”
Vail rested her head on the Ford’s doorframe. She was exhausted emotionally and physically drained. Her life the past two months had been bordering on disaster, and she needed a vacation. Badly.
But with Robby missing, she knew a respite to recharge was not going to be coming soon.
6
After the sheriff’s deputy arrived to baby-sit the Lugo household, Dixon headed toward Highway 29, the main drag that worked its way through the various business districts of the Napa Valley. She turned to Vail, who had gone silent. “Let’s swing by the B&B, pick up your clothes, and head over to my place. We’ll get some sleep, eat something, and approach this with a fresh perspective.”
Vail leaned back against the headrest. “Yeah.”
They drove without further discussion until they pulled into the B&B’s small compacted gravel parking lot. Dixon shoved the shift into park and got out.
Vail followed and met her at the door to the room, fifteen feet away. She reached her hand into the front pocket and pulled out the key. Stood there staring at it. “What if we never find him, Roxx? What if Mayfield—”
“Stop,” Dixon said. “We need to keep an open mind; let’s try not to let the negativity creep in. Until we know, it’s all speculat
ion—and that’s not going to find him.” She leaned forward and they embraced.
A long moment later, Vail said, “Thanks, Roxx. I needed that.”
Dixon sniffed back tears. “I needed it, too.”
MORNING CAME and Vail pried open her eyes. She and Dixon had sat on her living room couch and finished a bottle of Peju Cabernet, Dixon lamenting the loss of Eddie Agbayani and Vail . . . trying to be a good friend, listening to the stories of Dixon and Agbayani’s intense but less than smooth relationship.
And trying not to let Robby’s absence consume her. The wine helped with that.
Dixon’s white standard poodle, Margot, lay in her owner’s lap, sensing her emotional void and seeking to fill it as only a dog can do. Her black one, Quinn, stepped gently onto the couch and sidled against Vail’s body.
“They think they’re lap dogs,” Dixon had said as she stroked Margot’s curls of cotton-soft fur.
Vail swallowed a mouthful of Cabernet, set down her glass, and began rubbing Quinn. “But they’re huge.”
“Don’t tell them that. But it’s very comforting. I don’t mind.”
“Apparently they don’t, either.”
Margot remained in Dixon’s lap—Quinn had settled his front legs across Vail’s thighs—until Dixon drained the last drop from the bottle and decided they should try to catch whatever sleep either could get.
Vail lay awake until sometime in the early morning hours. And now Dixon was knocking on her door. “Yeah,” Vail said. She swung her legs off the bed. “I’m here. Sort of. I think.”
Dixon pushed open the door and the usually head-turning blonde was a disheveled mess. “Slept like shit.”
“Me, too.”
“Can you be ready in twenty? I just got a call from Matt Aaron. He’s at the B&B, and he found something.”
MATTHEW AARON’S forensic kit was splayed open. A bottle of luminol was on the bathroom vanity and a square of carpet was missing from an area partially beneath the large overstuffed bed.
Vail and Dixon stood in the doorway. Oh, shit. Her mind added it up in milliseconds: Luminol. A sample cutout. He found blood. Robby’s blood?
“You want us to put booties on?” Dixon asked.
Aaron waved a hand, welcoming them in. “Maid already cleaned it, right? So forget about it being a useful crime scene. But I vacuumed anyway, did a full workup, just in case. I’m about ready to close up shop.”
They ventured in, Vail stopping by the conspicuously defiled carpet. “You found something.”
“I did. I covered the place in luminol—the proprietor probably isn’t going to be too happy with me—but I’m glad I did. I got a hit right there.” He nodded to the area beside the bed. “So I cut away the carpet and sprayed again. When you have heavy blood loss, it seeps down into the carpet fibers—”
“And into the pad,” Vail said.
“And into the pad. It lit up like a purple battlefield. So I took the pad, too. We’ll run it for DNA and see what it shows.”
Vail’s shoulders slumped. She sat cross-legged on the floor beside the void in the carpet. “It could be from something else. It might not be Robby’s.”
“That’s what the DNA will tell us. Do you have an exemplar we can use for comparison?”
“I can get you one.” Vail’s eyes remained on the carpet. “Whatever happened here, there was substantial blood loss.”
“Not enough that someone bled out,” Dixon said. “Right?”
“Probably not. But the sooner you can get Detective Hernandez’s DNA—”
“Whoever caused that wound didn’t want anyone finding it,” Dixon said. “They cleaned it pretty good. We didn’t see anything.”
“Nothing,” Aaron said, “until the luminol.”
Vail nodded slowly. She pulled her BlackBerry and tapped out an email to Bledsoe, asking him to go over to Robby’s house and get some hair from his bathroom, as well as his toothbrush. She told him to overnight the hair to the Sheriff’s Department, and to bring the other sample to the FBI lab.
“Can you send a section of the carpet pad to the FBI?” Vail asked.
Aaron, who had begun packing his case, froze. His set jaw and narrowed eyes said all that needed to be said.
“I want a second set of eyes looking at this. No offense.”
“You know,” Aaron said, “whenever someone says, ‘No offense,’ it’s usually preceded or followed by an offensive remark. And why shouldn’t I take offense that you don’t trust my work?”
“Matt,” Dixon said. “Please. Just do it.” She tapped Vail on the shoulder and extended a hand. Vail grabbed it and Dixon pulled her up.
Vail sighed deeply, then looked around the room. She had only stayed there a couple of nights, but they held intense memories of Robby. Her eyes lingered on the bed, where they had spent their last hours together.
No. Not our last. Please, not our last.
7
As Dixon drove back to the Sheriff’s Department, Vail left a voice mail for her son Jonathan to call her when he took his lunch break, or between classes if he had enough time.
They used their electronic proximity cards to enter the secured section of the building and headed to the task force conference room, where Brix was seated beside Merilynn Lugo. The woman’s face was streaked and flushed.
Vail sat beside her. “I’m glad you came. We sure could use your help.”
Brix shook his head. “She’s here because she wants our help.”
“Of course,” Dixon said. She remained standing, across the conference table from Merilynn and Vail. “Anything.”
Brix cleared his throat and curled his face into a squint.
Reading Brix’s expression, Vail guessed they were thinking the same thing: blindly offering “anything” was dangerous.
“She wants witness protection,” Brix said. “Federal witness protection.”
There was a long silence as Vail and Dixon processed her request. Merilynn kept her gaze on the table, apparently content to let Brix do the talking for the moment.
“To get that,” Vail finally said, “to even get consideration, you’d have to level with us. Tell us everything you know.”
“I can’t live like this anymore,” Merilynn said. “I need protection.”
“Protection from what?” Dixon said.
“WITSEC, the witness security program, isn’t something that’s given out lightly,” Vail said. “There are procedures and requirements. It has to be approved.”
“You’re the FBI, you can make it happen.”
Vail shook her head. “It’s not like that, Mrs. Lugo. The FBI doesn’t administer WITSEC. The Department of Justice does. Application has to be made to the Office of Enforcement Operations, and it has to be approved by DOJ headquarters. Then you’re interviewed by the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees the program, to determine if you’re a good fit.”
“You have to understand the reason why WITSEC exists,” Dixon said. “Witnesses are given protection because of testimony they agree to provide against another criminal the government’s trying to build a case against. In exchange for that testimony, the government relocates you, gives you a new identity and financial backing to make it work.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Brix said, “but you don’t have any testimony we need. John Mayfield, assuming he survives, is never going to see the light of day, and will very likely get the death penalty.”
“Trust me,” Merilynn said. “I’ve got information you need. “But if I give it to you, I want something in return. The safety of me and my son. That’s the price.”
Vail and Dixon shared a look.
Dixon said, “If we’re going to submit a request for WITSEC, we really need to know what you’ve got. And we need to know what Ray was involved with, what was going on between him and Mayfield.”
“While you’re at it,” Vail said, “you might also want to tell us why you think you need protection.” She didn’t mean for it to come off as sarca
stic—but given all she’d been through recently, her tone wasn’t a top priority. She knew that wasn’t a healthy approach, but she was too tired and emotionally drained to care.
Merilynn set her jaw. She either did not appreciate the weight of her request, or she didn’t believe that getting into the WITSEC program involved anything more than stating that you needed it.
With the silence growing, Vail knew she had to do something to get Merilynn talking. She had to treat the woman as if she was a suspect being interviewed. If she could establish a rapport and break down the barrier, the information they needed might come tumbling out.
“I was kidnapped once,” Vail said. “I was drugged. When I woke up, I was in handcuffs in a small, dark place. Is that what happened to you? Did Mayfield drug you?”
Merilynn tilted her head and studied Vail’s face.
Is she trying to determine if I’m lying to her?
“It was a couple months ago,” Vail said. “I’ve had some . . . issues trying to get past it.”
“He didn’t drug us,” Merilynn said. “He came up behind my son, grabbed him, and held a knife to his neck. Ray said it was all about control.” She swiped at a tear. “With that knife at Mario’s neck, what was I gonna do?” Her face spread into a wan smile. “Anything he wanted, that’s what.”
“I can’t even imagine what that’s like,” Dixon said.
Vail shivered imperceptibly. I can. I know what it’s like to have your son used as a pawn against you, powerless to help him.
“It was paralyzing,” Merilynn said. “The guy, he was big and mean and serious. He just had this look about him. He said to keep my mouth shut. I kept it shut, didn’t even breathe.” She sat there a moment, staring at the table. “Everything was like a tunnel. All I could see was my son with the knife at his neck. All I could hear was that man’s voice.”
“The man was John Mayfield?” Vail asked.
Merilynn bent forward and pressed on both temples with her fingers. “I didn’t know who he was back then. Ray kept asking me what he looked like, but I couldn’t remember. I was so freaked out, I never looked at his face.”
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