Crush

“Thank you, Agent Vail,” Brix said. “And we appreciate your input. But this is our community, and we have to live with all the various interests and forces that govern our local economy. Putting out a public notice may save the life of one person, but it’ll have a profound effect on thousands of people’s lives. If not tens of thousands. A lot of family businesses depend on the wine-growing and wine-selling economy. Sales tax on purchases, bed-and-breakfast room taxes, income taxes from the booming trade of people just being in town: restaurants, gift shops, stores. We tip that scale the wrong way, we may never recover.”

Nance added, “There’s a lot of competition from wine regions all over the world now. Washington state, Argentina, Chile, France, Italy. Not to mention other areas in California. We don’t want to jump the gun and cripple the Napa Valley in a way it might not be able to recover from financially.”

“We need more to go on before we go public,” Prisco said.

“And we need to be sure that going public is the right thing,” Fuller said. “I mean, contacting this guy may be the wrong way to go. He could look at it as a challenge, and really go off the deep end. And go on a killing spree. You see what I’m thinking?”

A killing spree? What the hell is Fuller talking about?

“What I’m thinking is that a little knowledge is very dangerous,” Vail said. “You’ve asked me here to help. I hate to say it, but sooner or later you’re going to have to go public with this. It’s our best chance at catching this killer.”

“I want you to promise,” Nance said, “that you won’t act without seeking the proper permission from the sheriff, whose office is spear-heading this investigation and who personally bears ultimate responsibility for the disposition of the case and its impact on the community.” He looked over at Owens, who did not react one way or another. “Do I need to make myself clearer, or do you understand what I’m saying?”

Vail stifled a chuckle. “I’m not an imbecile, Mr. Nance. I understand what’s driving you and I know exactly where you’re coming from. As to promising you what I will or will not do, I’m not going to do any such thing. I’m part of this task force. I don’t work for you and I don’t work for Congressman Church. I work for the federal government. And for the victims, for the People. I’m sorry if that bothers you.” She rose from her chair and pushed it tight against the table. “No, check that. I’m not sorry at all.”

VAIL WALKED OUTSIDE and descended the first flight of stairs directly ahead of her. She turned and leaned against the metal railing and looked up at the three flags blowing hard in the wind. The sky was now deep blue, a few barely visible clouds dotting the expanse. She closed her eyes and let the gentle breeze slink through her red hair. This was supposed to be a vacation. What the hell was I thinking? All I can do is advise, I can’t make these people do the right thing.

She put her head back. The coolness of the evening’s arrival relaxed her, cleared her mind.

“You have a knack.”

Vail opened her eyes and spun around. Dixon was standing there. “A knack?”

“For pissing people off. I thought I was the only one.”

“Oh, no, I’ve perfected it.” Vail grinned, then let the smile fade. “I don’t do it on purpose. But I challenge people. I don’t hold back what I’m thinking. Good or bad, it’s who I am.” She took a deep breath and looked around. “I’m not trying to piss anyone off. This is something I know about and feel strongly about. I do have a knack, a kind of sixth sense, I guess. I don’t know how to describe it. I just understand these killers. It’s not like reading a textbook, like Fuller. I’ve seen it, I’ve been down in the trenches.”

“I hear you.”

“There’s a saying in my unit, one of our profilers started using it maybe a dozen years ago and it stuck: Knee deep in the blood and guts. That kind of describes what we do. After a while, you get dragged down in the muck, and you start to slog your way through it, and pretty soon you’re emotionally and physically stuck in it. And it affects you.” She stopped, thought a moment, then continued. “But more than that, you begin to see things you didn’t see before, have a better understanding of what you’re looking at when you see these behaviors. I’ve talked to these killers, I’ve sat a foot from their faces, I’ve asked them questions, I’ve made them cry. And in all those interviews, all these years, they add up to a deep understanding of who these ass-holes are. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but being inside their heads affected me.”

Vail pushed away from the railing, then checked her watch. She didn’t realize how late it was; Robby would be arriving in a few minutes. “Can you drop me at my B&B?”

“Where are you staying?”

“Mountain Crest, in St. Helena.”

Dixon looked back over her shoulder at the sheriff’s department building, as Fuller, Lugo, and Brix were walking through the door. The meeting had ended.

Dixon turned back. “Sure, let’s go. I live out that way anyway.”

JOHN WAYNE MAYFIELD waited until the two women got into their car. He was now sure they were cops—detectives, actually, because they weren’t in uniform. But they had the look, he decided. Other men in suits left the building, too. He wasn’t sure if they were with the women, but the fact that they were leaving, and not entering, made the task ahead easier.

He got out of his vehicle and walked up the two flights of stairs to the entrance. He had nothing to fear; he’d been in this building many times before and would not be out of place. But he’d never been here to do what he was about to do. And that made him nervous.

But he was good at handling himself and defusing potentially hazardous situations. He knew what to say if someone stopped him. But they’ve got no reason to stop me.

Mayfield pushed through the door and moved down the hall, nodded at the legal clerk behind the glass, then swiped his prox card and walked through the door. He surveyed the nearby rooms on either side of him. He needed to look confident, like he was supposed to be here and not snooping or doing anything nefarious or suspicious. So he opened the first door he came to on the left and stepped in. Looked around. Nothing of interest.

Moved back out into the hall and tried the next door. He knew one of these rooms had to be where the cops met, where they kept their case files and notes. Over the years, he had read about the Major Crimes task force that convened to track fleeing felons, bank robbers, kidnappers, and the like. He figured this task force had already met to discuss him. Maybe that’s what those women were doing. And those men.

But this building was a maze of the worst kind: The hallways and doors all looked alike, save for the teal and white placards mounted outside each door. As he continued to wander the hallway, he read the little signs looking for some kind of task force notation . . . or a large meeting room of some sort.

As he made his way around yet another bend, he was beginning to doubt he would find what he was looking for. And the longer he was here, the more likely he’d run into trouble. But he was sure he had blown them away with the wine cave murder. He left it for everyone to see. They had to be working his case. They had to be. He was surprised there was nothing in the newspaper. Not even a death notice.

He paused beside another door, whose teal placard read, Conference Room # 3. Mayfield pushed through and walked in. The motion sensors fired and turned on the lights. This was it, the base of operations. A whiteboard with a grid. Names, what looked like tasks and assignments. Oh, yes. Very good. He fished around his deep pocket for the digital camera. He aimed and depressed the shutter. Once, twice, three times.

This was too much—it was all about him! Of course it was.

Then something caught his eye. The word “Vallejo.” So they knew about Vallejo and Detective Edward Agbayani. Well, that was impressive.

He looked over the names on the whiteboard. Brix and Lugo: no introduction necessary. Dixon, Vail, Fuller—he needed to look those up.

Mayfield walked around the room, realizing he’d already gotten most of the info he needed. Best to get out of there. While he could explain away his presence, why take the risk?

As he turned to leave, he saw a laptop beside scattered papers lying on the conference table. He grabbed a sheet off the top and glanced at it. Names and phone numbers. Neatly typed into a grid, hole-punched for binders.

Very good.

He folded the paper into his pocket and walked out. Moved down the hall to find a computer he could use. The laptop in the conference room would have sufficed, but if any of the task force members walked in on him, that would be a lot more difficult to explain than if he was discovered in front of a PC somewhere else, in an unoccupied office.

But it was late in the day, and most of the clerical staff had clocked out. He wasn’t looking to hack into anyone’s terminal . . . just a computer with Internet access he could safely use that wouldn’t leave behind search results traceable to him. He turned the corner into a large, cubicle-filled room. The dividers were tall, nearly ceiling height, and he couldn’t see over them. He walked around, turned the corner, and entered the main aisle that cut through and past all the desks. He kept his head forward, not wanting to look suspicious. But the area was largely deserted, except for a black-haired head thirty feet away.

He slid into the cubicle and faced the monitor. Turned it on, hit the spacebar, and the screen lit up. It looked like a plain vanilla Windows desktop. No password screen, so it was likely a standalone computer, not connected to the county network. Exactly what he needed.

He opened Internet Explorer, and in the Live Search field, typed “Roxxann Dixon Napa California.” Got several hits, including one that contained a photo of her and a brief bio of her position with the district attorney’s office. It said she served on the Major Crimes Task Force. Bingo. This is the blonde I saw.

Next he typed in “Karen Vail Napa California.” No relevant hits. Narrowed the search to “Karen Vail.” And got references to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Clicked on one: “FBI Profiler Karen Vail, fresh off the case of the Dead Eyes killer, the notorious serial killer who terrorized women in the Virginia area . . .”

Mayfield slid back his chair. “Whoa.” He said it aloud then quickly snapped his flapping lips shut. FBI. A profiler. They are taking this seriously. I must’ve scared the shit out of them. That’s why they haven’t told the media. They’re afraid they don’t know what they’re dealing with.

His eyes were drawn again to the words “FBI Profiler.” A federal case. As it should be. John Wayne Mayfield deserves nationwide coverage. But there’s no fun in spoon feeding them the story. They have to realize themselves what they have here. Once enough pressure’s applied, it’ll reach a point where they can’t contain it anymore. Then the newspapers and TV would find out. Everyone would know. It would blow up into a huge story.

A broad smile spread Mayfield’s lips.

He looked back at the screen, fingered the mouse. Time to turn up the heat. And he had just the thing to get their attention. Something that would drive them nuts.

NINETEEN

Vail and Dixon pulled into Mountain Crest’s small gravel lot beside Robby’s Murano. His brake lights were still glowing.

Vail had the door open before Dixon brought the Ford to a stop. “Hey, come out for a sec. I want you to meet someone.”

Vail jumped out of the car and into Robby’s arms. He gave her a big embrace, then seemed to notice Dixon standing there and released his grip.

“Oh—this is Roxxann Dixon,” Vail said. “We’re working together on the task force.”

Robby straightened up, then reached out to shake. “Robby Hernandez.”

“Good to meet you.”

“So . . .” Robby said. “How was your day?”

Vail and Dixon shared a look before Dixon said, “Let’s just say it was . . . productive and leave it at that.”

“Uh huh.” Robby squinted and shifted his gaze from Dixon to Vail, then decided to heed Dixon’s advice.

Dixon backed away. “You two have a great evening. Pick you up tomorrow? Eight-thirty?”

“Sure,” Vail said. “See you in the morning.”

Dixon got in her car and drove off.

Vail tilted her head at Robby the way a mother looks at a son expecting an explanation.

“What?”

“You found her attractive,” she said. “I can tell.”

“Well, yeah. She is. Is that up for debate?”

Vail slapped him in the arm. “Wrong answer.”

“I’m just saying. It is what it is. I didn’t say I was attracted to her. I said she was attractive.”

“Is there a difference?” Vail asked.

“Yeah. But to set the record straight, yes, I was attracted to her. I’m a man, she’s a beautiful woman. But you’re more beautiful. Besides, you’ve got my heart.”

She reached out and grabbed his groin. “That’s not all I’ve got.”

Robby raised his eyebrows, then guiltily glanced around the parking lot, which was now bathed in fading light. He said, “I think I should take this inside.”

AND THAT’S EXACTLY what he did. Afterwards, Vail rolled off him and stared at the ceiling. “That makes up for what turned out to be a tough day.”

“You have to learn to play well with others,” Robby said.

“How did you know what happened?”

He gave her a look that said, Come on. “Give me some credit. I think I know you pretty well, Karen.”

She yawned. “You know what, I don’t even care anymore. About today. I’m hungry . . . starved. But I’m so . . . I feel so rested. I don’t want to move.”

Robby got off the bed and drew the curtains. It was now ink black outside, the sun having set and the woods filtering whatever stray light might be emanating from the moon. “Let’s order room service,” Vail said, her speech groggy.

“Good one,” Robby said as he slipped on his pants. “How about I go out, get something, and bring it back?”

“Sounds good to me,” she mumbled. “Wake me when you get back . . .”

VAIL WAS ASLEEP, dreaming of yodeling sommeliers, the oak barrel scent of raspberry-nosed Pinot Noir, the weight of Robby lying atop her, the heat of the Day Spa sauna . . . hot . . .

Sweating . . .

So hot . . .

And the stench of gasoline. Gasoline?

Nose stings, hard to breath, smoke—

Vail woke from her stupor, lifted her head, and saw nothing. Blackness like a velvet coffin enveloped her. Cocoonlike in its confinement, thick. She felt around—she was on the bed. Asleep. Robby—he went for food.

Felt her fanny pack on the night table, with the Glock’s prominent bulge.

Can’t see. Cough! What’s the layout of the room? She couldn’t remember—but just then, something blasted through the small window, a fireball, flames—feeding on the once-delicate frilly curtains, conflagrating upwards toward the ceiling. Covering the walls.

Vail snatched the fanny pack and tossed the strap over her head. Wrapped a robe around herself and stumbled off the bed. Ran for the door—grabbed the knob and—fuck! Hotter than hot. Found a piece of clothing, wrapped it around her hand and tried to turn it. Locked? Jammed? She slammed against it with her shoulder. It rattled but didn’t budge. The door opens from the inside—it’d have to be pushed open from the outside.

She turned toward the window—only way out—but a wall of flames stared back. Angry, ferocious fire lunged at her.

The smoke, so thick. Get down, crawl—she fell to her knees, more because of her inability to breathe than a memory of what to do in the case of fires, which was suddenly plucked from some deep reach of consciousness.

She started toward the bathroom, but the air . . . so thick with particulates she tasted it on her tongue. Go, go, toward the bathroom. Window? Can’t remember . . .

Get out of here!

Made it to the bathroom, reached up—doorknob hot, burning hot—can’t open it. Hot doorknob means fire inside the room.

Turned back toward the front door, need a chair, smash through it . . .

But as she crawled along the floor, her chest felt heavy, tight—no air.

Robby! she screamed in her mind. Jonathan . . .

No, keep going. Cover mouth, keep going . . .

As she fought the intense heat, flames all around her, crackling, black smoke—the room door burst open. She couldn’t lift her head but two arms grabbed her and yanked her hard, and she felt herself being lifted into the air and thrown against a body. Robby . . . thank God . . .

She was bouncing up and down, helpless, a rag doll bobbing about on Robby’s back as he ran away from the burning building, the adjacent hedges now lit up like a bonfire.

coughing—

hair in her face—

and an explosion behind her—a fireball rose up into the sky, wood shards slamming into her back and above her, to the side, all around, and—

Robby, move faster!

He kept going, the smoke still thick, and she kept bouncing around as he ran into the graveled parking lot. Eyes burning. Tearing. Can’t see—

Off in the distance, a siren.

Vail lifted her head.

Forced her eyes open, then closed, then open . . .

... saw two blurred headlights jumping in the darkness. They stopped, someone running toward her, and she was suddenly laid down on the gravel, looking up and seeing—

“Karen! Oh my god—what happened?”

She looked up, blinked repeatedly, eyes thick, and Robby was only a few feet away, running toward her. And then he was leaning over her, lifted her up and embraced her, held her close.

“Are you okay?” He pushed her away, held her at arm’s length, looking at her. “Karen—Karen, are you okay?”

Vail coughed, hard, nodded, her senses coming back to her with the cleaner air starting to infiltrate her lungs. With her pulled hard against his body, his long arm and large hand wrapped around her body, grabbing her hip, Robby led her farther away, toward his car. But he stopped, turned, and said, “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

Coughing.

“I’ll be fine.”

And then he was moving her toward the car again.

JOHN WAYNE MAYFIELD sat in the thicket, a pair of Carson Super-Zoom binoculars pressed against his face. Normally, seeing in the distance at night would require a specialized night vision apparatus. But he didn’t have such equipment—and with the intense illumination given off by the fire, the area was lit just fine for his needs.

He had never experimented with fire, but watching the flames jump and consume and devour—he had to admit, it carried a certain excitement. A certain power.

But how would you leave your mark? How would others know it was you who set the fire?

Most of all, it was so distant, so removed from the action. The thrill just wasn’t there, at least not the same level of thrill he sought. That he craved. He was a tactile person. He needed to feel the death with his hands. And watch, up close.

As he sat there, he considered the virtues of various methods of killing. Guns, arson, poison . . . they all caused death but they just didn’t possess the qualities he sought. Still, he had to admit, fire setting had its merits. To arsonists, the scene before him was, in fact, the kindling that stoked their desires. Their internal fires.

Mayfield lifted the binoculars back to his face and watched.

THE SIREN WAS LOUDER NOW, filling her ears, floodlights and headlights and movement all around her. Firefighters jumping off the truck, pulling hose, paramedics rushing to her side, grabbing her left arm, Robby steadying her on the right, moving her quickly, lifting her off the ground and carrying her away from the fire truck, away from the commotion, from the smoke.

They sat her down on the ambulance’s bumper, strapped an oxygen mask to her face, and one of the men started examining her, bright light flicking across her eye as he checked her pupils.

Vail looked over at Robby. “Thank you, thank you . . .” she said through the mask. “You saved my life. You saved me . . .” As tears started rolling down her ash-covered and soot-stained face, the paramedic was saying something, turning her head back toward him.

She heard something. Robby was talking to her.

“Don’t thank me.”

What?

Don’t thank me. That’s what he said.

And then it registered. Vail turned her head away from the medic, focused on Robby’s face. And noticed he was looking off to the left.

“Thank her,” he said.

Standing in the flickering light of the fire engine’s swirling light bar, with singed clothing and blackened face, was Roxxann Dixon.

TWENTY

Vail sat there looking at Dixon, who was now bent at the waist, coughing hard. The other paramedic left Vail’s side and helped Dixon to the ambulance’s bumper, beside Vail. He reached inside and grabbed another oxygen mask, then strapped it over Dixon’s face.

Vail pulled down her mask with a weak hand that felt like it weighed fifty pounds. “You? That was you?”

Dixon’s eyes moved right, the whites in stark contrast to her soot-covered face—and they narrowed as she smiled. Then nodded.

Vail grinned too. A silent thanks.

AN HOUR LATER, with the blaze now doused and the fire chief, Brix, Lugo, and Fuller on scene, Vail and Dixon were breathing easier and refusing transport. Their eyes had been flushed, they’d been infused with oxygen, and a few second-degree burns on Vail’s legs were dressed with Silvadene ointment.

Once Vail had her wits about her, she asked Dixon why she had inexplicably shown up at the bed-and-breakfast—not that she was complaining.

“You forgot your purse,” Dixon had told her. “It was shoved under the seat. When I got home, I pulled mine out of the glovebox and remembered you’d stowed yours, too. I checked and it was still there. I figured your phone and wallet were probably inside, and it wasn’t that far, so I thought I’d bring it by.” She turned back toward the destroyed building. “I certainly wasn’t expecting this.”

Vail said, “This is the first time I’m glad I left my purse somewhere.”

Now, half an hour later, Dixon was approaching the ambulance, her face smeared with black ash and streaked saline, giving it a running mascara appearance. “Okay,” she said. “We’re covered. Once the fire is out, the exigency under which we entered the scene is greatly diminished. Further search or scrutiny of the scene requires a search warrant or consent from the owner or agent in control of the premises. I had Ray contact the owner. She went to San Francisco for dinner. She’s on her way back.”

“What makes you think this is a crime scene?” Robby asked.

“Just being thorough. I think it’s strange that right after you left, an aggressive fire breaks out and nearly kills Karen.”

“I agree,” Vail said. “So what’s procedure out here?”

“Well, the firefighters are doing their bit, poking around, conducting an investigation to determine the ignition source and method to make sure the fire’s really out, and that the cause of the fire no longer exists. That’s their responsibility, and it’s covered by the exigency under which they entered the premises. But because we’re here, a defense attorney could make the case that the search is going beyond what is required by exigency and turning to the collection of criminal evidence.”

“But since I paid for the room rental, don’t I have the right to give consent for the search?”

“Hmm. I’ll make a call. You may be right.” Dixon pulled her cell phone. “By the way, one of the fire guys said he saw a gas can behind the building. Don’t know if it’s related, or if it’s from a lawn mower, or whatever. To be safe, they backed off and waited for Brix to get here.”

“Brix is here? Didn’t even see him.”

“Behind the structure,” Dixon said, tilting her head back over her shoulder. “There’s another guy with him from the Napa sheriff’s office. I don’t know who he is, but they’ve been pointing at things, talking a lot.” She turned and punched a speed dial number into her phone.

Vail sighed. “All our stuff was in that room. We’ve got nothing to wear.”

“Just stuff,” Robby said. “Replaceable.”

The noise of crunching boots on gravel made them turn. Walking toward them was Brix, alongside a short, squat man in a suit. His legs were so thick he rocked a bit from side to side as he approached.

Brix nodded at Dixon, then gestured to the man. “Burt Gordon, Napa County arson investigator.”

Gordon acknowledged Vail, Dixon, and Robby. “This look familiar?” He held up a plastic bag. Inside was a dinged, dull-metal butane lighter.

Vail and Robby shook their heads.

“Should it?” Robby asked.

“I’m here with an investigator from CalFire. We rely on them to determine cause and origin, and he’s pretty sure this here lighter is what was used to start it. That and gasoline. Found a can back behind the building. We’ll know more by morning, once we’ve had a chance to run it all through the lab.”

“Arson,” Vail said. Jesus Christ. What have I gotten myself into?

“Looks that way. When so much fire spreads that quickly, the cause is automatically suspicious.” Gordon handed the evidence bags to a nearby assistant. “Building was a freestanding structure, so no one else was at risk. All the other renters got out without a problem. So the question begging to be asked is, Any idea who’d want to kill you?”

“We just got to town a couple days ago,” Robby said. “Not enough time for anyone to get to know us, let alone want to kill us.”

Vail rose from the bumper. “I wouldn’t exactly say that.”

Robby gave her a pleading look. “I don’t think I want to know.”

Dixon shoved her cell back into her pocket. To Vail, she said, “We’re good for the search. You were right.” She looked up at Robby. “As to any . . . disputes Karen may have had, they would’ve been with law enforcement officers. None of them would’ve done this.”

Vail nodded slowly. “I’ve pushed some buttons, but Roxxann’s right.”

“We talking about people here, on-site?”

Vail nodded. “The task force. Brix, mostly. I said some things the mayor, board of supervisors president, and Congressman Church’s District Director took offense to.”

“Again,” Dixon said, “not the kind of people who’d be involved with something like this.”

Gordon sucked on his teeth, then nodded slowly. “Okay, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to meet with each one of these people, on-site, right now. Get alibis, statements from each of them—”

“Mayor Prisco, Supervisor Zimbroski, and Tim Nance aren’t here,” Dixon said.

“Then I’ll send someone to go find them. This is serious goddamn shit, Investigator Dixon. And I take my job seriously. Which means I gotta ask you, where were you tonight?”

Dixon set her jaw, then said, “I went home after dropping Karen off here.”

“Anyone who can corroborate that?”

“My dog. He’s a standard poodle. He’s very smart.”

Gordon’s eyes narrowed.

“But,” Dixon said, “I suggest a recorded statement. His handwriting’s paw. I mean, poor.”

Gordon stared at her. “I’ll get you a pad and pen and you can give me your statement. I suggest you leave out that bullshit about your dog.” He hobbled off toward the now doused but still simmering structure.

Dixon watched him until he walked sufficiently out of range, then said, “What kind of bullshit is that? Thinking I had something to do with this. He pissed me off.”

Robby rubbed his eyes. “Not your fault. Karen’s got a way of rubbing off on people.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Vail said. She then shivered, grabbed a blanket the paramedic had given her earlier and wrapped it around her shoulders. “My backup piece was in there.”

“Yeah, well, it’s probably toast.” Robby winced. “Sorry.”

“Better it than me.” Vail wiggled her fingers at him. “Can I have your phone? Mine’s now an expensive paperweight, assuming they ever find it.”

Robby handed her his cell. She dialed Thomas Gifford’s direct line and left him a message, briefly telling him what happened, knowing he wouldn’t get it until he arrived in the morning. That was fine—there was nothing for him to do, but if she didn’t keep him informed of a potential attempt on her life, he would not be pleased. She handed Robby back the cell, rewrapped the blanket, and said, “So . . . no clean clothes and no place to sleep.”

“You guys can stay with me,” Dixon said. She gave Vail a quick once-over. “You’re a little taller, but I’ve got something you can wear until you can go shopping.”

“Guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow,” Robby said.

“Hey, let me borrow your phone again.” Robby handed it back to Vail, and she began dialing. “Who are you calling?”

“Jonathan.” She glanced over and saw Robby look at his watch, no doubt doing the time calculation. “I just need to hear his voice,” she said. “He’s a teen, he’ll fall right back to sleep.” But he didn’t answer. His cell went straight to voicemail. She listened to his recorded greeting, grinned, then left a message, told him she loved him, and that she’d call him when she had a moment.

As Vail handed her phone back to Robby, Dixon yawned wide and loud, then said, “Let me go write up my statement, then we can get the hell out of here.”

After Dixon walked off, Vail cuddled into Robby’s chest, watching the firefighters mill about, rolling hoses, packing air tanks, and stowing tools.

Gordon’s question echoed in her thoughts: Any idea who’d want to kill you? It was a question for which she had no rational answer.

Yet.

TWENTY-ONE

Someone was shoving her. Pushing her shoulder. What. Who—

It was Robby, lying beside her in the double bed of Roxxann Dixon’s guest bedroom. Because of Robby’s breadth and the mattress’s small size, they were jammed up against one another most of the night. That is, once Vail stopped hacking and fell asleep sometime around 1 a.m.

Robby was handing her his cell phone. “Your boss.”

“I didn’t even hear it ring.”

Vail pushed herself up on an elbow—and launched into a coughing fit. She rolled out of bed, hurried into the bathroom, and spit up a glob of soot-infused mucus. She swallowed some water, leaned on the sink a moment, then turned. Robby was standing there.

“You okay?” Robby asked.

“Peachy.” She took the phone, cleared her throat, and said, “Yes, sir.”

“You sound about as good as my eighty-year-old father,” Thomas Gifford said. “Smoked two packs a day for fifty years.”

“Thank you, sir. That’s good to know.”

“I got your message. Thanks for keeping me abreast of the situation. Wish you’d called me at home—”

“There was nothing you could’ve done. With the time difference, I would’ve woken you. No point.”

“True. Okay, here’s what I’ve set in motion. Art’s been in L.A. testifying in that Blue Lake Killer case. He was due to fly back to Quantico this afternoon, but I had him switch flights. He’s gonna stop off in Napa on his way. Just a quick visit.”

Art Rooney was a sharp profiler, someone Vail respected, and the person to whom Gifford assigned most of their serial arson cases. His input could only help.

“But this is not a serial,” Vail said.

“You sure?”

Actually, she had no idea. “I’ll check on that. I never asked.”

“Do you need any medical attention? Are you okay?”

“A paramedic worked on me, I should probably follow up with someone here.”

“Good. Do it. I’ve also made arrangements for you to get a new phone. An agent from the Santa Rosa Resident Agency is picking up Art at the Napa Valley Airport, so he’ll give the phone to Art, who’ll give it to you. A new badge will be overnighted to you. Which brings me to the next item.” He waited a few seconds before saying, “Do you think this fire was targeting you?”

“Hard to say at this point, sir. No obvious suspects.”

“Fine, keep me posted. And . . . I feel like I’m always saying this to you, but . . . be careful, will you?”

What, no “arson magnet” comment?

“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

HAVING ATTEMPTED to make herself presentable in Roxxann Dixon’s clothing, and despite Dixon’s claim she had something that would fit, Vail appraised herself in the mirror and frowned. It was hard enough for a woman to put on work attire each day and feel good about herself. Wearing someone else’s clothing—particularly with the figure of a Roxxann Dixon—made it more maddening.

But the reminder crept into her thoughts again—she survived the fire and that was all that mattered.

Robby came up behind her, pecked her on the neck, and, dressed in the clothing he’d worn yesterday, told her she looked great.

Why do women always want to hear such drivel? Because it makes us feel better. She knew she didn’t look great, but those simple words, uttered by her boyfriend, lifted her spirits. How strange the human psyche.

They met Dixon in the kitchen, grabbed some cereal for breakfast, and went their separate ways. Robby headed to the Napa outlet stores to put together a wardrobe for both of them, armed with Vail’s instructions on where to shop and what sizes and styles to buy. He seemed a little out of sorts, but she told him to find a clerk about her age and ask her opinion. It was the best she could do given the circumstances. Besides, it was only a few outfits. Chances are, he’d find some blouses and pants that fit decently. Generally she wasn’t that difficult a fit. That is, when she wasn’t trying to look good in clothing worn by a woman Detective Agbayani had referred to as “Buff Barbie.”

Vail and Dixon headed for the sheriff’s department, but Vail wanted to stop first at the bed-and-breakfast to poke around in the light. Since the meeting was scheduled for ten, they had a little time to peruse the grounds.

As they approached the driveway, Vail said, “So it seemed like you knew Eddie Agbayani.”

Dixon chuckled. “Yeah, you could say that. We dated for a year, but we ran into some problems.” She hung a left into the bed-and-breakfast’s parking lot. “It was good for a while, but there was always an edge to our relationship. Still, we love each other. It’s hard. We hit a wall when we ran into some . . . dominance issues.”

Dominance issues. Vail wondered who was the aggressor, but from Vail’s observations, and the greeting Agbayani had for Dixon when they saw each other, she figured it was probably Agbayani’s insecurity with their relationship that caused the problems. Male testosterone and ego getting in the way. As Vail pushed open her car door, she realized that wasn’t necessarily a fair assessment. What did she really have to go on, anyway? It was hard for her, as a profiler, to refrain from making psychological assessments off the clock. The constant analysis, the evaluation of body language and vocal tones and facial tension sometimes made it tough to sit back and casually converse with someone.

“When did you two call it off?” Vail asked.

“I called it off, not we. I’m not a typical woman, whatever that is. I’m headstrong, I know that. And sometimes we clashed because Eddie likes to call the shots, too. We had a balance for a while, but it shifted when I started spending more time at the gym than with him. I just, I had a couple stressful cases and working out helped settle my mind, put things in perspective.

“So I guess some of that was my fault. But toward the end we were always at each other’s throats, and I felt it was best we took a rest.” They got out of the Ford and headed down the gravel path. “It’s been hard. I’ve missed him a lot. But time passes, distance opens up between you, and before you know it . . .” She shook her head. “It’s been almost four months.”

That coincides roughly with her shift from Vallejo PD to the district attorney’s office. The smell of burnt wood and gasoline sat heavy on the air like cheap perfume, and made Vail’s nostrils flare. “Wonder how long till this stench dissipates.”

Dixon scrunched her nose. “Probably not till they bring in a demo crew and get this shit out of here.”

Approximately a quarter of the structure was still intact, no doubt due to the fire department’s rapid response. What was left was charred charcoal black, a ghostlike shell with fragments of flowery wallpaper stuck to odd-shaped wall fragments untouched by flame but doused by water.

Vail walked the periphery, stepping carefully through the ash that carpeted the ground. Dixon’s shoes were half a size small, which made them uncomfortable, but not unmanageable. Still, Vail was aware of each step she took.

She stopped beside Dixon, who had her hands on her hips, surveying the lay of the land: Off to the left, there was another building, once a garage that had been converted to the more lucrative Cabernet Truffle Room, as noted by a hand-painted sign above the door. A larger, two-story structure extended perpendicular to it, deeper into the wooded area, containing another four rooms.

At her feet lay the charred Hot Date sign that had hung on their door only a couple of days ago. Ironically, the painted flames were nearly burned away, reduced to ashes, much like the promise of her vacation.

Vail mused at the luck of their having taken the one solitary room, tucked away in its own building. If the aim of the arsonist had been to harm her, and she and Robby had been booked into the Cabernet Truffle Room, some of the other guests might not have survived.

Vail shook off the thought, then started coughing again. Too much residual smoke still riding on the air. She headed back to the Crown Vic, hacking away, with Dixon behind her.

They drove a mile down the road, before Dixon pulled over beside a large rolling vineyard. Vail got out and coughed long and hard, bent over at the waist and holding onto the wire fence that separated the vines from the roadway. A moment later, the spell subsided. She stood up, cautiously took a deep breath of the fresh air, then blew it through her lips.

She got back into the car, her forehead pimpled with perspiration. “Well. That was great fun.”

Dixon eyed her. “You okay?”

“Couldn’t be better.” Vail nodded at the road ahead. “Let’s go.”

THEY WALKED INTO the conference room and took their seats. Absent were their guests from yesterday, save for Timothy Nance. Sitting off to the side, his face was tight, etched with concern. His tie was pulled to the side, and he looked like he hadn’t slept much. Vail knew how he felt.

Brix walked in and strode to the front of the room, dropped his thickening binder on the desk and put his hands on his hips. He, too, looked frazzled. His hair was hastily combed, his uniform was not as crisp as it had been and he had dark, loose skin beneath his eyes.

He put his teeth together and whistled loudly. Everyone came to order. “Okay, I’m really pissed off at the night’s events. Someone’s targeted us, people, and I intend to find out who. It’s no secret I’ve had a problem with Special Agent Vail and her . . . attitude and methods . . . but she’s one of our team, and we don’t gotta like everyone, we just have to work effectively with them. If someone takes a swipe at her, they take a swipe at all of us. So I want to catch this fucker. And I want to catch this goddamn serial killer. And I want to do both sooner, rather than later. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

He looked around, making eye contact with Lugo, Dixon, Fuller, Vail—holding her gaze a few seconds longer for acknowledgment—which she gave him with a slight smile—before coming to rest on Tim Nance.

Brix looked down at his hand, which held an envelope and a FedEx overnight pack. “Karen, these are for you. Front desk clerk gave them to me.” He passed them to Nance, who handed them off down the line toward Vail. “I’ve been in contact with Karen’s boss and we’ve got an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent on his way to pay us a visit. Karen, you want to fill us in?”

Vail laid the envelope on the table in front of her and glanced at the airbill on the FedEx package. “The BAU has two ATF agents in an Arson and Bombing Investigative Services subunit that we started twenty years ago. They were trained as profilers and primarily work ATF cases but they consult on all serial murder cases because, well, because they’re really good profilers.” She grabbed the tab, ripped open the package, and slid out her new badge. “Special Agent Supervisor Art Rooney is the guy who’ll be here sometime today. His input will help us, I’m sure.”

“He’s actually here,” Brix said. “He and Detective Gordon are at the site right now, taking a quick look around.”

Brix lifted the wall phone and punched in an extension. “Yeah, it’s Brix. Send in Matt.” He replaced the handset, then said, “Before Gordon and Rooney arrive, I’ve got a few updates for you. First, we’ve got an ID on the body we excavated from the collapsed wine cave.”

The door opened and in walked a lanky, balding man in a lab coat. Matthew Aaron stepped in and Brix introduced him to the attendees.

“Well,” Aaron said, clapping his hands together. “This was a very challenging case because of the state of decomp of the body. Dental x-rays didn’t give us any hits and missing persons reports were a dead end because we lacked identifying characteristics to establish a match. And since the body wasn’t prepared for burial, most of the flesh was a goner long ago.”

“But,” Aaron said, raising an index finger, “the skin on one of her hands was partially preserved, for some reason. Still, I couldn’t figure out how to lift a fingerprint we could put in the system. Then I remembered this case I read about involving a 1948 military plane crash.

For decades, one of the victims went unidentified. They tried everything, including DNA. But a George Washington University forensic science professor soaked the man’s hand in a chemical they used to ID Katrina victims. Eventually, he was able to rehydrate the skin and secure a print from the index pad.”

“And . . .” Brix said.

Aaron smiled and leaned back. “And that’s what I did. And presto. We have an ID.”

Brix raised his eyebrows, asking the question silently.

“Oh—the victim’s name is Ursula Robbins.” Aaron reached into his deep pocket and pulled out a notepad. Flipped a page and said, “Robbins went missing and was presumed dead a little over two years ago. No children, early fifties. I’m working on getting a photo for all of you. All I know is she was the chief executive of a winery in the Georges Valley District.”

“Okay,” Brix said, “Ray, that’s yours.”

“A few more things, then I’ll be out of your way,” Aaron said. “About that toenail thing—very interesting, actually. I’ve never seen that before. But it takes a few years for a buried body, one that’s not prepared or preserved in any way, to skeletalize completely. By that I mean for it to turn completely to bone, no soft tissue left. Nails are protein, keratin to be precise, like hair, so they stick around for a while. In this case, your victim had nail polish on her toes, preserving them and keeping them intact. Otherwise, once putrefaction gets underway, the skin on the hands and feet can slip off intact, a process called degloving.”

“Degloving, cool,” Fuller said.

Aaron looked over at Fuller and squinted confusion. “Yeah, okay. Well, the fact that the victim used nail polish means the other nails remained intact.”

Vail said, “Hang on a minute. We don’t know if the victim put on the nail polish or if the killer did it. If the killer has some knowledge of forensic anthropology, he might’ve known the skin and nails would slough off, so he put the nail polish on to keep all the nails intact—except for the one he pulled off.”

Brix lifted his eyebrows. “I’m not sure what to do with that. Let’s keep that in mind. Our UNSUB might have a knowledge of forensic anthropology. So he could be a pathologist.”

Vail shrugged. “Possible. Or a forensic scientist.”

A few heads turned toward Aaron.

Brix pointed at Lugo. “Ray, you’ve got that too. Get some help if you need it. Run all the people in the area who’ve had training in those fields. Including the ones in our office.” He glanced at Aaron. “See if any have a record—mental illness, drug habits, propensity toward violence—”

“Got it,” Lugo said.

Fuller said, “We already know that these two vics, and the one in Vallejo, were done by the same guy. If we can find some commonalities in these three women’s victimologies, I say we got this UNSUB.”

Vail scrunched her face. “Well . . . let’s just say that these vics are probably done by the same guy and that evaluating the victimologies might help us identify him.”

Fuller rolled his eyes, as if to say Vail’s comment was merely a difference in semantics.

“But I come back to access,” Vail said. “Access might be the commonality we’re looking for.”

There was a knock at the door. It swung open and in walked Burt Gordon, followed by Art Rooney. Vail couldn’t help but smile. Seeing Rooney in this setting gave her a sense of warmth and comfort.

Brix nodded at Gordon and said, “Take a seat, gentlemen.” As they were complying, he turned to the whiteboard and wrote “Vic 2 Ursula Robbins-Ray Lugo.” He spun back to the conference table and said, “I want to thank Special Agent Rooney for taking the time to help us out.”

“Karen Vail is a very valuable member of our unit,” Rooney said in his southern drawl. “If someone tries to fry her ass, it really pisses me off. Since I’ve spent nineteen years studying arson and bombings, I think it’s fair to say there might be something I can offer that’ll help identify the type of person who did this.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Fuller said. “But why are you here? I mean, don’t you deal with serial arsonists? Looks likely he might’ve only set this one fire.”

“Only one fire,” Rooney said. He nodded slowly, as if he was considering Fuller’s point. “I see where you’re coming from. After all, it’s just one fire, why make such a big deal over it. Right?” Rooney grinned broadly, leaned back in his chair. His military style crew cut, chiseled features and trim body gave him a formidable appearance. He didn’t need to act intimidating to be intimidating. “What’s your name, son?”

“Scott Fuller. Detective.”

“Good to meet you, Detective. I can certainly understand your confusion over the need for me to be here. And I don’t think any less of you for asking such a misinformed question. So let me answer you, so you won’t make the same mistake again.” Rooney slowly rose from his chair. “I am with the ATF. That stands for Alcohol. Tobacco. And Firearms. See, we deal with alcohol—this here’s wine country, so you might think there’s a connection there. But no. No, that’s not why I’m here. And then there’s tobacco, and, clearly, tobacco’s not why I’m here, either. So we get to the last letter in the acronym. Firearms. That covers bombs, incendiary devices, terrorism related offenses, and criminally set fires.” Rooney grabbed the back of the chair with two large hands. “Now let me ask you something, son. Where did you hear the word ‘serial’ in that description?” He narrowed his eyes, kept his gaze fixed on Fuller, who was staring back, his jaw set, lips tight and thin.

Vail shared a glance with Rooney. She was thinking: Man, I wish I could do that as well as you can. Her look said: Boy, I’m glad you’re on my side.

“So,” Rooney said. “Let me get back to where I was headed. I’m an ATF agent, but I’m also trained as a profiler. That’s important because the FBI has no jurisdiction over arson, but obviously it falls right into the sweet spot of the ATF’s authority. For Detective Fuller’s edification, that would be the ‘firearms’ part.” He walked to the whiteboard and motioned to the marker. “May I?”

Brix handed it to him. Rooney uncapped it, and moved to a blank area on the board. “Let me give you some background on the type of person who is most likely to have committed this crime. Problem is, there haven’t been a whole lot of studies done on arson. But we’ve been able to pool all our knowledge based on the studies and offender interviews that have been done, and we’ve arrived at a typology of arsonists. It’s based primarily on motivation, the motives behind the crime. Now we’re categorizing this fire as arson because it meets the three established criteria.”

Rooney held up a hand and ticked off each item on a finger: “First, property has been burned; second, the burning is incendiary and a device of some sort has been found at the scene; and third, the act was committed with malice, with the intent to destroy. I’ve been to the crime scene with Detective Gordon, and based on what we saw there and what he saw last night, this officially qualifies as arson.” He swiveled toward Gordon and said, “Is that right, Detective?”

“Yes, it is.”

“So here’s what we know,” Rooney said. “Shortly after Detective Hernandez left Agent Vail alone, the place went up in flames. We found a gas can in the back, in a well-concealed area that’s not visible from another room, the parking lot, or adjacent property. We found a cigarette lighter, likely used to ignite the trigger—the gasoline. But we also found something that we can’t explain.” Rooney nodded at Gordon.

Gordon scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, it’s damn strange. There was a well-defined area around the structure, which served as a barrier to the blaze.” He stopped for effect, then said, “And what looks like some sort of fire retardant chemical on the ground was laid out along the periphery.”

Dixon tilted her head and asked, “So you mean he meant to stop the fire at the one building?”

Gordon nodded. “That’s what it looks like. And no, nothing special about the chemical used. We’re still looking at it in the lab, but I think it’s widely available Class A foam, from fire extinguishers. It’s used to contain small brush and grass fires by creating a fire break.”

“So,” Rooney said, “armed with that knowledge, let’s talk about what we know about the people who start these fires. We classify them according to their motives: vandalism, excitement, revenge, crime concealment, profit, and extremist. All are self-explanatory.”

“Excitement?” Dixon asked.

“They get off on setting fire. They’re seeking thrills, attention, recognition, even sexual gratification—but the sexual component is pretty rare.”

Dixon said, “So are you saying we need to investigate each of these potential motives so we can eliminate them as possibilities, then narrow our suspect pool to those who are likely to have the remaining motive?”

“That’s one approach,” Vail said. “But rather than running in six different directions while still trying to zero in on this wine cave killer, I think we can logically eliminate crime concealment and extremist. There was no other crime he could’ve been trying to hide. Unless someone is aware of something, I don’t see a social, religious, or political conflict. Is there anything you know of I’m not seeing?”

“Nothing I’m aware of,” Brix said. He looked around. No one offered up anything.

Ray Lugo said, “If there was a profit motive, why just burn down the one structure?”

“Doesn’t make sense, I agree,” Rooney said. “Still, be worth looking into the owners, see if they’re in financial distress. Do they have a business partner with a beef? Have there been offers to buy the property that’ve been rebuffed by the owner? Anyone who’d stand to benefit by burning down the structure? An architect or contractor who was talking with the owner about a remodel the owner didn’t want to do? All this needs to be ruled out. Remember, the offender doesn’t think he’s going to get caught. He doesn’t think he’s leaving any clues for us.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Vail stopped, then shook her head. “Why would he go to such efforts to ensure the other structures wouldn’t also get destroyed?”

“An important question, for sure, but one we can’t answer right now,” Rooney said. “We’ll eventually know the answer, but for now it’s another thing to stick up on the whiteboard.” He turned and wrote “Arson,” then, below it, listed the question Vail had asked. “Another thing to keep in mind is that I’ve given you a very basic primer on arson—a number of those categories we discussed have subcategories. And then you have mixed motive offenders, too. But let’s keep it simple for now and expand as you gather more information and eliminate other factors.”

Fuller leaned forward, both forearms on the table. “Since you’re a profiler and your job is to profile, how about telling us who we should be looking for?”

“That’s really putting him on the spot, Scott,” Vail said.

Rooney held up a hand. “No, no. That’s a fair question, Detective.” He folded his arms across his chest and thought about it a moment. “If we go with the percentages, we’re looking for a younger white male, between eighteen and thirty, with a generally poor marital history. That suggests this UNSUB has a history of unstable interpersonal relationships. And a guy like this will have average or higher intelligence, and between a tenth- and twelfth-grade education level. There’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll have one or more tattoos.”

“Will this guy have a sheet?” Brix asked.

“Highly probable. You’re looking at about a 90 percent chance he’s had a felony arrest and better than 60 percent chance he’s had multiple felony arrests. So, yeah, that’d be a good place to start: known offenders with potential motives for wanting that structure—or Agent Vail—in ashes.”

“Speaking of which,” Vail said, “were you able to tell anything about the front door?”

“In what way,” Gordon asked.

“I’m not sure, but it may’ve been jammed shut. I couldn’t open it.”

“There wasn’t much left of the structure, let alone the front door. But we can go back over there, take another look. You sure about it being jammed?”

“I was pretty freaked. The knob was very hot. Burned my hand.” She stole a glance at her palm. It was red and it hurt, but nothing serious. “I’m not sure, but I couldn’t open it.”

“Check it out,” Brix said to Gordon. “Anything else on the profile?” he asked Rooney.

Vail said, “There’ll probably be a history of some form of institutionalization. Not just prison—orphanages, juvenile homes, or detention, even mental health institutions.”

“But,” Rooney said, “unlike serial killers, a majority of arsonists come from intact and comfortable family units.”

“That makes me feel real good,” Dixon said. “Something went wrong somewhere.”

“Here’s something else you won’t like,” Rooney said. “Nationwide, law enforcement has a clearance rate on arsons of only about 20 percent, give or take. So we’ve got our jobs cut out for us.” He handed the marker back to Brix, then walked toward his seat. “If we find out this guy’s set other fires, there’s more to this equation, because then he’d be serial, and that brings in some other trends that’d help us catch this guy.”

“Like what?” Fuller asked.

“Like most serial arsonists walk to the scene of the fires they set, and they usually live within two miles, so they’re familiar with the neighborhood. About a third stay at the scene and a quarter of them go somewhere nearby where they can watch the fire department do their thing. Forty percent leave the scene.”

“But,” Gordon said, “almost all return to the scene from twenty-four hours to a week afterwards. So we’ve got an undercover watching the area to see if anyone comes by.”

“In case anyone’s wondering, the other guests have been placed at other B&Bs,” Brix said.

“We’re assuming,” Rooney said, “that we’re dealing with an honest to goodness arsonist. But if the intent was pure and simple, kill Karen Vail, then a lot of this goes out the window.”

There was quiet while everyone considered that.

“Any questions?” Rooney finally asked.

Fuller leaned back and stretched his arms upward. “Yeah, I’ve got one. How long are you gonna be in town?”

“I’m not. I’m headed to SFO for a flight back to Quantico. But I’m reachable on my cell.” He waited a minute, looked around the room, and saw there were no questions. “Karen, will you walk me out?”

While Vail rose, Rooney reached out to shake Gordon’s hand. “Pleasure, Detective. Please, keep me in the loop. You need something, anything, ATF will get it for you.”

“Appreciate that.”

“Oh—one more thing. An agent is on his way over from the San Francisco ATF Field Division office. I’d really appreciate it if you’d include him on your task force. Name’s Austin Mann.” He consulted his watch. “Should be here any—”

He stopped at the rapping of knuckles against the door.

Brix yelled out, “It’s open.”

The door swung in and revealed a suited man of average height, but heavy around the shoulders and thighs. He stepped in and nodded at Rooney. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“This is Agent Mann,” Rooney said. He then proceeded to introduce everyone in the room to him.

Vail couldn’t help but notice Mann had scarring on the left side of his face and a prosthesis—an artificial left hand. This was odd, to say the least. Vail would have thought such a condition would result in a forced retirement due to medical disability. Then again, she knew of agents with severe injuries who were permitted to remain on the job—but that was rare and usually due to their exceptional service records.

However, there was one thing she could be reasonably sure of: An ATF agent missing an extremity meant it had been blown off while defusing an IED on the job.

Mann turned to face her. “You’re Agent Vail?”

“Karen, yes. Good to meet you.”

“Karen was just about to walk me out to the car. You okay here?”

“They can get me up to speed.” Mann extended his right hand and Rooney took it. “I’ll keep you posted once you get back.”

Vail slipped the new FBI badge onto her belt, grabbed the envelope from the table and left the room with Rooney. As they cleared the front door to the building, Rooney reached into his inside suit coat pocket and handed her a new BlackBerry. “It’s activated and ready to go. Same number.”

She turned it on and waited as it booted up. “Thanks.”

“Watch that kid in there. Fuller,” Rooney said. “I’ve seen his type, knows it all, young buck who’s gotten where he’s at because of favors or nepotism or both. Book smart, street dumb.”

Vail marveled at Rooney’s ability to read people. She knew he was good, but that was impressive.

“He bugs me,” Rooney said. “Could be trouble.”

“Noted. What do you know about Austin Mann?”

“Hell of an agent. Loyal to the job like guys aren’t loyal anymore.” He nodded at the Bureau car down the street, headed toward them. His ride to SFO, Vail surmised.

Rooney said, “You noticed the prosthesis, I’m sure. Got it OTJ, defusing a bomb. Lucky that’s all he lost. I worked with him years ago in North Carolina. I was there when . . . when it happened. I hope you never have to see something like that. It was awful. A guy like that, tough as they come, squealing like a pig.” He shook his head. “Anyway, he took this assignment in Frisco and he’s been good. He’s been happy.”

The dark blue Crown Victoria pulled up to the curb.

“Is it a prosthetic hand, or his whole arm?”

“What?”

“Agent Mann’s prosthesis. How extensive is it?”

Rooney’s eyes narrowed. “Hand and forearm. Why?”

Vail stood there thinking a second too long.

“Karen, what is it?”

She laughed and waved a hand. “Nothing. Just tired.”

Rooney placed a hand on Vail’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “I want you to get back to Quantico in one piece, you hear? No more fires or other shit you seem to get yourself into.”

“Are you implying something, Art?”

“Implying? Hell, no. I think your record speaks for itself.” He stepped off the curb and opened the door. “See you back home soon.”

TWENTY-TWO

Vail watched the BuCar swing a wide arc in the street and head off down the road. She liked Rooney, and because she was about a dozen years younger than he, she sometimes thought of him like an older brother. She never felt that way about anyone in the unit—or anywhere else, for that matter.

But Austin Mann’s prosthesis began to bother her. When crushing a trachea, the “bar arm” move would be vastly more efficient if the offender had a hard prosthetic forearm. She would have to look into that. Carefully. One of her mentors had just vouched for the ATF agent. One thing she did not want to do was investigate a fellow LEO—a man with a distinguished service record—and have it get back to Rooney.

She turned to head back into the building, realized she was still holding the envelope Brix had given her, and turned it over. Agent Karen Vail was printed in black laser ink. She tore it open, and, while starting up the two flights of stairs, began to read:

Hey there, Agent Vail. You don’t know me, but I’m betting you wish you did. I know you’re a profiler who’s been brought in to catch the guy who killed that woman in the wine cave. And I know you’ve found the one in Vallejo and the one in that old Black Knoll Vineyards cave. That was a nice touch, actually, don’t you think? They’ve talked for years about getting at that vintage wine that was supposedly buried there, so I figured they’d eventually find my handiwork. It just happened sooner than I figured. I wanted it to be a total surprise, like, out of the blue, a holy shit moment, where everyone freaks out and says, “Oh, my god, another woman’s been killed by the same guy!” Ah, so the first question might be, am I a guy, or am I a woman? I’m not going to tell you. I’ll let you figure it out. I’m sure by now you’ve already got your theories. I’m sure you’re all thinking about me, talking about me. You, and Lieutenant Brix and Detective Fuller, Investigator Dixon, and Sergeant Lugo, and whoever else you’re going to bring on board. The more the better. You’re going to need it. But I’m wasting your time, and it’s not right to waste taxpayer money. So here’s the deal. I’m willing to work with you, but under some conditions. Are you sitting down?

No, Vail was definitely not sitting down. She was, at the moment, flying up the second flight of stairs, then bursting through the front doors, swiping her prox card, sprinting toward the task force conference room, and then—inside and out of breath, coughing like a two-pack-per-day smoker—holding the letter out in front of her.

All heads turned toward her—how could they not, she was hacking away and no one could hear anything else.

“You okay?” Mann asked, rising from his chair and helping her to her seat. Brix handed her a cup of water from the cooler in the corner.

Vail, holding the letter out away from her to protect it from trace contamination, took the drink from him with her other hand and did her best to swallow between coughs. As the spasm passed, she held up the letter and envelope and said, “I need a pair of gloves. Letter from the offender.”

Lugo reached into his pocket and rooted out a crumpled latex glove and handed it to Vail, who pulled it on.

“I’ll need to give Matt Aaron my prints as an exemplar. I was holding the letter before I realized what it was.”

Vail would be the only one to handle the letter for the moment, and only with her gloved hand. “We should obviously dust it in case the UNSUB handled it. There might be contact DNA on the paper or in the saliva on the adhesive of the envelope. Can your lab run DNA?”

“We’ve got it covered,” Dixon said. She wiggled her index finger at the letter. “What does it say?”

Vail read it to them, up to the point where she had left off. She then continued: “I want you to release news of my work to the media. You will refer to me as the Napa Crush Killer. Get it—the crush of grapes, the crush of the windpipe—I figure it’s a fitting name. Here’s what else I want from you.

“To show me you’ve agreed to my demands, you will have the newspaper publish a front page article about me. Use my name in the headline. Do that and we’ll talk about the rest of my demands. Oh—I know, I have to give you something in return. I’ll stop killing. Okay? Is that fair? I thought you might think so. Tomorrow’s Napa Valley Press—and post it on the Press’s website, on their home page, lead story, by noon today.”

“Where did that letter come from?” Dixon asked.

Brix lifted the room phone. “Good question.” Into the handset, he said, “Someone took possession of an envelope addressed to Special Agent Karen Vail last night or this morning. I need you to ask around to find out who dropped it off.” He listened a moment, then said, “That’s right. Check the surveillance tapes, get back to me ASAP. It was left by the killer we’re tracking . . . yeah, that’s right. He was in our goddamn building.” He slammed the phone onto the wall receptacle. “Christ.”

“He was here,” Lugo said, “right under our fucking noses and we didn’t even know about it.”

“Pretty ballsy,” Dixon said.

“That fits,” Fuller said. “A narcissistic killer feels invulnerable to getting caught. He’s better than everyone else. Superior. There’s nothing we can do to catch him. Isn’t that right, Vail?”

Vail nodded slowly. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

“So the question is,” Dixon said, “What do we do about his demands?”

Mann said, “One of many questions. Is this UNSUB the same guy who set the fire? All to get attention?”

Vail looked at Mann, examined his demeanor and body language. If he was the UNSUB, he wasn’t giving anything away.

Dixon sat forward. “If he’s the same guy, why would he send Vail a letter if he jammed the door to kill her? She’d be dead if he was successful.”

“We don’t know for sure the door was jammed shut,” Brix said.

“And maybe he was hanging around the periphery, knew she survived, and left the letter after the fact.”

Dixon nodded slowly.

“So,” Mann said. “Back to my question. Same guy?”

Vail hiked her eyebrows. “Entirely possible. Though there isn’t generally a crossover between arson and serial killers. Then again, the longer I’m in this business, the more I’ve come to realize we can’t blind ourselves to new and previously unseen, or unidentified, behaviors. Just because we haven’t observed something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s something we’ve discussed many times at the unit. We want to pigeonhole offenders into our neat categories, but there are some who lie outside our observed patterns. This Crush Killer could be one of those.”

“Back to the other question, then,” Dixon said. “Do we go along with what he’s demanding?”

“Yes and no,” Vail said. “I suggest we do just enough to keep the line of communication open. We negotiate. But the bottom line is we keep him talking to us. The more we learn about him from his communications, the better it’ll be for us. At some point he’ll give us something he’s not aware he’s giving us. And that could lead us to him.”

Brix looked around the room. “Comments?”

Fuller shrugged. “Vail was pushing for us to give this to the media, which would’ve been a disaster for the community. And instead of doing that, the guy contacts us.”

Dixon said, “What are you saying, Scott?”

“That maybe it’s not always best to listen to what she’s telling us to do. Before she got here, we did just fine handling murders.”

“You have, what, two murders a year?” Vail paused, realizing she may have inadvertently insulted them. She bowed her head and said, “Look, I’m only here to help. You can take my advice, or not.”

“Help,” Fuller said. “Now we have an arson to investigate, too. That kind of help we don’t need.”

“That’s not fair,” Lugo said. “She didn’t ask to almost be burned alive. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that we’re all here for the same reason. To catch this goddamn killer. Because I don’t know about you, but I think this is a big fucking problem. And if we’re not careful, this guy is going to go on a spree and then we won’t have control of anything. But we’ll have a lot of uncomfortable questions to answer.”

Vail didn’t agree with the “spree” terminology, but the sentiment behind Lugo’s comment was accurate. She decided to sit back and not force the issue; let them come back to her.

Timothy Nance, who had been stealthily observing the discussion, stood up and approached the table. “Congressman Church is very concerned about what’s going on. I don’t want to report back to him that his own Major Crimes task force is at odds about what to do. I need to tell him we’ve got things handled, and that you people are all on the same page and that you have a valid plan of attack. Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me the FBI’s had a lot of experience dealing with serial killers. And this guy is a serial killer, am I right, Agent Vail?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I would like to see us seriously consider what she has to say. Let’s talk about it. Debate it. But in the end, I want what we decide to make sense, and leave the politics and egos out of the equation.”

Vail silently applauded Nance’s speech. Perhaps she had the guy pegged wrong. Perhaps he was merely providing the political voice his boss needed and expected.

“Okay,” Brix said. He approached the whiteboard. “This is what I want to do. We’ve got two investigations going, the murder and the arson. I want to make sure we handle both properly, but I don’t want one interfering with the other. So we’re going to split the task force: Gordon, you and Mann will run the arson investigation. If you need bodies, let me know and I’ll assign some people. Whatever you need, I’ll make sure you get it.”

“I think between us and CalFire, we’ll be fine.”

“Good. Check in with me regularly in case the two crimes were both committed by the same asshole. The rest of you, you’re staying on the Crush Killer with me.” He turned to his right, where an overhead projector arm was mounted to the desk. “Karen, bring that letter over here. Let’s look at these demands and figure out how we’re going to reply.”

DIXON SWUNG THE CAR along the curving road that led from the sheriff’s department building to Highway 29, headed toward downtown and a quick lunch.

Before leaving, Vail had suggested they meet only a portion of the killer’s demands. They would know in a short time whether it satisfied his needs. There was debate—Lugo thought it best to give him what he wanted—if he truly stopped the killing, that would accomplish their goal in the short term while they continued to search for him.

But Vail insisted he would not comply—he would kill again, because he had to. Even if he honestly intended to honor his agreement, he couldn’t. Killing, to him, was a deeply seated psychosexual need, one that he wasn’t fully aware of. So his offer was not valid. Instead, Vail stressed that the goal was to keep him talking with them. And what she devised was designed to do just that. It also risked angering him in a way that could trigger another murder. But there was nothing she could do about that. Because if they didn’t catch him, there would be many more murders, not just the one she may or may not have instigated. They had to keep him engaged and talking with them.

Lugo continued his objections, however. He said that if they don’t give the killer what he wants, what’s stopping the guy from calling up the TV station, identifying himself as the Napa Crush Killer, and telling them about Victoria Cameron’s murder? The story would be assigned to a reporter, who’d follow up with the speed of an Olympic sprinter. They’d make a few calls and it would be a national story in the space of an hour. So they may as well try to get a deal out of it, he reasoned, because maybe, just maybe, he would honor his word.

Vail couldn’t help but shoot him down. If the killer was going to contact the media, she explained, he would’ve already called them. But there was no fun doing it that way. He wanted to force their hand, have the story come from them, from a police department acceding to the demands of a killer because they were helpless against his genius. With narcissistic killers, they needed to feel that others recognized their superiority.

Lugo steamed silently. And Brix decided they would go forward, for now, with Vail’s plan.

They filtered into the parking lot, with Brix, Fuller, Lugo, Mann, and Gordon going their separate ways.

“We’ve got forty-five minutes,” Vail said, as Dixon accelerated onto 29. “By the time we finish lunch, I have a feeling we’ll know if this was the right way to go.”

JOHN WAYNE MAYFIELD sat in his vehicle, eyes on his cell phone clock, which he knew was accurate. When the digital display read 12:00, he headed into the Java PC cybercafé in downtown Napa. There were no surveillance cameras—he had already checked.

He bought a fifteen-minute pass in cash, logged in, and went to the Napa Valley Press website. Scrolled down, then up, and down again. Refreshed the page. Nothing there about him. He glanced at his phone: 12:05. Navigated to a different website, then back again to the Press. And there it was.

The headline read: Napa Crush Lays Down Roots in Community.

What?

He read the teaser paragraph. It said something about a startup company that was launching a new soft drink that had roots in the valley, a rebirth of the wine cooler—

He fisted his right hand and was shaking it, holding back, wanting to pulverize the monitor but knowing that would draw attention—and possibly the police.

Instead, he shoved his curled fingers into his mouth and bit down. Waited for the anger to subside. Finally, he calmed enough to turn his attention back to the screen. There had to be something here. Why else would they post this article if there wasn’t information contained within to address his demands?

He read the article, looking for an embedded message of some sort. Then he found it: a quote attributed to Karen Vail, the company’s director of marketing and promotion. “We thought long and hard about how to launch this product, and we had demands that we couldn’t comply with. But we’re willing to work with the local leadership to show them how much we respect them and their abilities. We’re looking for ways of working with them so all parties can be satisfied. Anyone interested in contacting me can do so at NapaCrush@live.com.”

Mayfield logged off, rose from his chair and walked stiffly toward his vehicle. He had to get out of there before he did something people would notice. He drove down the road, reached beneath his seat, and pulled out a case. With one hand, he flipped open the lock and lifted the lid. Gleaming knives were nestled in soft velvet holders, blades down, ready to be used.

He had a victim he’d marked for killing, and there was a date by which he had planned to act. It was still a week off—but doing it now would be dramatic. And it would send a powerful message to Karen Vail, FBI profiler and “director of marketing and promotion.”

The concept of sending a message appealed to him. Figuratively—and literally. He pulled over to the side of the road as cars sped by. Tourists and wine aficionados out for a memorable time on the town. I’ll do my bit for making it memorable, no need to worry.

He reached into his pocket and extracted a disposable cell phone. He turned it on and waited for it to find its cell service. Then he went about his business.

He shoved the phone back in his pocket, yanked the gearshift back into Drive, and returned to the highway. I’m in promotion, too, Agent Vail. Of my own services and handiwork. So be prepared, because sooner or later you’ll want to make me happy. You’ll come around. You’ll have to.

He reached over, then removed one knife from the case and lifted it toward his face. The bright sun glinted off the highly polished chrome.

Promote this, Agent Vail.

FOLLOWING LUNCH, Vail and Dixon were killing time, awaiting word the UNSUB had gotten the message. An email, a phone call to the sheriff’s department. Something.

“I’ll give you a tour of Silverado Trail,” Dixon had said. “Beautiful road.”

As they passed notable wineries, Dixon played tour guide: Hagafen Vineyards—“an award winning kosher winery”; Regusci—“they fooled the Feds by operating secretly during Prohibition to produce bootleg wine”; and, “There, coming up on your left, is Baldacci Family Vineyards. Their vines go back ninety years and give some of the best Cabernet—”

“It’s 12:24, Roxxann.”

Dixon glanced over at her. “I’m just trying to take your mind off it.”

Vail’s elbow rested on the window frame while she rubbed at her forehead. “He’s seen it by now.”

“Probably,” Dixon said. As she drove past Baldacci, she said, “What do you think will be his next move?”

“He probably knows the sheriff’s department is on alert, monitoring the entrance and lobby area. Watching for him. Let’s hope he reads the article and sends me an email.”

Just then, Vail’s BlackBerry buzzed on her belt. She leaned left and pulled the device from its holster. “He just texted me.”

“Texted?” Dixon asked. “How is that possible? You didn’t put your cell number in the article.”

Vail stared at the screen. Her body had broken out into a nervous sweat. “I don’t know,” she heard herself saying in response to Dixon’s question. Because she didn’t know—but it would be something she’d have to think hard about. Her larger concern at the moment, however, was the message she received.

She closed her eyes. “He said we didn’t comply, so we should expect a new victim in the next few hours. And to expect a surprise.”

“I don’t like surprises,” Dixon said.

Vail didn’t reply. Her mind was flooded with emotions ranging from fury to guilt to anxiety-ridden frustration.

“We knew the risks,” Dixon said. “You can’t feel responsible for what this asshole does.”

“I know that intellectually, and I still feel it was the right way to go. But when I stare at the next woman’s mutilated body, I can’t help but ask myself if it needed to happen. Was I responsible?”

“The guilt. Comes with the territory, I guess. A perk of the job.”

Vail sat back. She thought about the killer stalking his victim. If he was organized, as she was sure he was, he would’ve already had his next target chosen. He might have been stalking her, waiting for an excuse to strike. And she just gave it to him.

Yes, this emotional torture did come with the territory. Vail knew the risks. But to remain effective on the job, she had to tell herself that this was the right thing to do, that the goal of catching the offender before he killed on a grander scale was more important than this one life.

It didn’t help. And there was nothing she could do now but wait for the call.

IT CAME EXACTLY three hours later. Brix sent a text message blast to the task force members that was as chilling as it was short:

new vic. meet me.

And he gave them the address.

Dixon made it there in ten minutes, driving the speed limit—keeping it a low profile approach, at Vail’s urging—despite her desire to floor it, lights blazing.

When they drove up, Vail noted that the parking lot to Crooked Oak Vineyards in the Georges Valley District was full of unmarked county vehicles. Even Lugo was in a plain vanilla white Chevy Impala. Vail and Dixon got out and walked past the parked cars, looking for their comrades. Approximately a hundred feet away, amidst an adjacent, well-kept vineyard, they were all huddled around something, their heads down, hung low. Looking at a body, Vail surmised.

But as she and Dixon got closer, Vail was not prepared for what she saw.

VAIL STOOD OVER THE BODY trying to process what she was seeing. But no matter how hard she tried to focus, she couldn’t hone in on what she was feeling, what she was thinking. Come on, Karen. They’re all looking at you—to you—for answers.

But I’ve got nothing.

“Karen,” Brix said again. She barely heard his voice, off in the distance. Then a hand on her shoulder. “Karen, what’s the deal?”

Vail kept her gaze on the victim. On the male body that lay before her. The right shoe and sock were removed. And the second toenail had been forcibly extracted.

VAIL KNELT BESIDE THE BODY. Buying time. Trying to figure out what the hell was going on here. “Forensics?” she asked.

Lugo said, “On the way.”

“This vic, he’s a guy,” Brix said.

“Yeah, I got that. Thanks for pointing it out.” Vail tried to push the confusion from her thoughts. She needed to focus. Look at the body. See it. See the behaviors. Her mental checklist said: right second toenail missing. Breasts—or where they would be had the victim been female—had been sliced away. Bruising over the neck, so they would likely find a crushed trachea. There was linkage to the other murders—the toenail was a detail only those on the task force knew about. And the coroner.

“We’ve got linkage,” she said, hoping that talking aloud would help put it together and bring her to a logical conclusion. “The toenail, the . . . breasts, and the COD—I think we’re going to find out his trachea was crushed. Just like the others.”

“But the others were women,” Brix said.

Vail fought the urge to respond with a sharp retort. Brix was merely looking for answers, and it was anger at her own inability to mentally process this victim that was threatening to bubble to the surface.

“I don’t know,” Vail finally said. She looked up at everyone. They were huddled over the body, looking down at her. “I don’t understand it.”

They seemed to slump en masse. Or maybe she was projecting her sense of inadequacy onto them. Imagining their disappointment. Perhaps she was giving herself too much credit and they were thinking nothing of the sort. They were professionals. Cops, investigators. This was their business.

But they hadn’t dealt with serial crime. Not like this.

And, Vail suddenly realized, neither had she.

TWENTY-THREE

Vail looked over the immediate vicinity: well-pruned rows of leafy grapevines stretched a few football fields into the distance, leading up to tree-dense mountains that rippled the muscular countryside.

The new victim was nestled in the gently concave dirt floor of the area between the vines, with a dark blood puddle pooled beneath the body, the liquid having largely been absorbed into the porous earth. Vail closed her eyes and cleared her mind. “It’s not unheard of for a male to be a victim of a serial killer,” Vail said. “But like I told you yesterday, there are specific circumstances. Usually it’s a killer who targets homosexuals. Or the offender takes out the male in the house to get at his real target, the woman. But when he kills the male, he does it in the quickest way possible and he doesn’t engage in postmortem activity with the body. The behaviors—the things he leaves for us at the crime scene that we see with the female—just aren’t there.”

Everyone stood there, silently absorbing Vail’s analysis.

“Okay,” Brix said. “So let’s figure out what we have here. Same killer, right?”

Vail opened her eyes. “Looks like it, yes.”

“He killed again, right after we spurned his demand to go public,” Brix said.

“Not to mention the text message,” Dixon said.

Fuller asked, “What text message?”

“Karen got a text message,” Dixon said, “about three hours ago, after the article was posted to the Press’s website.”

Brix shot her a look. Vail interpreted it as, Why weren’t we told about this?

“There was no point in notifying everyone,” Dixon said. “There was nothing we could do but wait for something to happen.”

“Well, something happened,” Fuller said.

Vail stood up. “You’re the one who reads all the profiling books, Wonder Boy. What do you have to say about this?”

Fuller’s face flushed the burgundy side of Cabernet. His eyes surveyed the faces of everyone, who were now looking at him, as if they were expecting an answer. “I—the texts don’t address this.”

“I can tell you this,” Vail said. “His actions fit those of a narcissistic killer, and I think it’s important we start treating him like one. It’s entirely possible this kill was meant to get our attention, a response to our decision to reject his demands.”

“Your decision,” Fuller said.

“My decision,” Brix said. “We discussed it, and based on what we had, I felt this was the way to go. No one has all the answers. But goddamn it, we’re doing the best we can.”

“I need some time to digest this,” Vail said. “For now, let’s get back to basics. First off, I don’t think the victim was killed here.”

“Why not?” Lugo asked. “The body’s here, and obviously the blood drained underneath it.”

“Yes, the blood,” she said, motioning to the soaked soil. “So it’s safe to say this is where the cutting was done. But assuming the guy’s MO hasn’t changed, we’ll find that the trachea was crushed. Like I demonstrated back at the sheriff’s department, he’d need to force the victim up against a wall using his forearm, remember? That’s his MO, and it’s worked well so far, so no need to change it. But there’s no place for him to do that here. So I think he was killed somewhere else, somewhere close, then brought here and sliced and diced.”

Dixon said, “But we’ve got something new here. It’s a guy, which means, theoretically, at least, he chose a victim that wasn’t as easily subdued.”

Vail nodded. “That’s part of what bothers me. Why he suddenly changed. Could mean our UNSUB is extremely confident that he could overpower his victims. He’s either skilled in some form of martial art that enables him to efficiently control or debilitate an individual, or—”

“He knows them,” Brix said.

“Exactly. He knows them, so they don’t see him as a threat. Could also be he’s a person of authority or standing, so he can get close without someone seeing him as a threat.”

“If that were the case,” Brix said, “how does that fit with the wine cave at Silver Ridge?”

“Hard to say at this point. Someone of authority in a place like that would stand out, the employees would tend to remember him. Unless, of course, it’s someone they’re accustomed to seeing there.”

Brix stared at her.

Vail figured he thought that comment was intended for him—which it was—but only as a jab, not because she thought he was the offender.

“This guy could be changing his appearance, too,” Lugo said. “He may’ve worn a uniform for this kill, but regular clothing for the wine cave murder so he wouldn’t stand out.”

“Uniform,” Fuller said. “You saying it’s a cop?”

Lugo squinted at his colleague. “Lots of people wear uniforms, Scott. Gas, electric, water department workers, security guards. But yeah, it could be a law enforcement officer. Why not?”

“We’ve got nothing that says it’s a LEO. That’s why not.”

“A bigger question,” Vail said, “is how he got my cell number. The only place that’s listed—other than at the Bureau—is at the sheriff’s department. If it’s not a cop, it could be support personnel.”

Lugo nodded. “I’ll get a list, see if it leads anywhere.” He started to turn, then stopped. “What about data backups? Where are they kept?”

Brix raised his brow. “Don’t know. But that’s a good point. Check it out.”

“Who found the body?” Dixon asked.

Brix knelt and pointed at the ground, where paw prints were evident. “Dog must’ve smelled the blood and tracked through it. When he went over to that house out there,” Brix said, indicating the structure where they had all parked, “he had blood all over his paws. The owner freaked out, thought her dog was hurt. She cleaned him up and saw it wasn’t coming from him. She called 911 and dispatch called me. I’ve already spoken to her about the importance of not telling anyone about this.”

“Did she seem cooperative?” Vail asked.

“I was pretty firm about it, gave her a little incentive.” He used his fingers as imaginary quotation marks. “I don’t think she’ll be a problem.”

A loud whistle came down the long dirt row between the vines. Trudging toward them with his thumb and middle finger between his lips was the tall and thin CSI, Matthew Aaron. He stopped a few feet from the body and looked down. “Looks like we’ve got a freaking party here. Sure you don’t want to extend the invitation? I think we need more bodies trampling through my crime scene.”

“Just do your thing and let us know what you find,” Brix said.

He surveyed the immediate area, then chose a spot to set down his toolbox. “I’m gonna need each of you to retrace your steps outta here. And stop by the lab at some point today so I can get castings of each of your shoes.”

As they moved out of the vineyard and back to the parking lot, Vail’s phone rang. It was Frank Del Monaco.

“VICAP?” Vail asked.

“VICAP,” Del Monaco said. “So here’s the deal. The toenail thing is unique as far as the database is concerned. So either no one thought much of reporting a missing toenail, or none of the murders that involved a missing toenail were submitted to VICAP. Or these are the only kills this UNSUB’s committed.”

“Makes sense, because I’d never seen or heard of it before.”

“And I’m looking into that other thing.”

Vail joined the knot of task force members, who had congregated around Brix’s vehicle. “What other thing?”

“Rooney asked me to look into something. He was at the airport, dialed me up and said I got to look into some guy you’re working with. A Detective Scott Fuller.”

Vail was standing five feet away from Fuller. She glanced over at him to see if he’d heard his name. She couldn’t tell. “Hang a sec.” Vail moved off a few paces and said, “What exactly did Art want you to look into? And why? The guy’s a bit of a showoff, trying to impress everyone with his knowledge. But he’s harmless, nothing I can’t handle.”

“Rooney was a little more concerned than that. You know how he is. Someone crosses him, he goes for the jugular.”

She made a mental reminder never to get on Rooney’s bad side. “Okay, but what’s there to look into?”

“He sent me on a fishing expedition. Anything and everything I can find on the guy.”

Vail glanced over at Fuller. “I think he’s overreacting.”

Del Monaco laughed. “You want me to tell him that when he gets here?”

“No,” Vail said a little too quickly. “Leave it be. I don’t know what he saw, but I assume something caught his attention.”

“Yeah, and he might’ve been right. A sealed record. Have no idea what it is, but I’m on it.”

“Could be nothing.” Or, it could be something. “Keep me posted.” She ended the call, put away the phone, and stood there observing. The late afternoon wind blew her hair back off her face. What was it Rooney saw that she hadn’t seen? Was it something obvious, something she should’ve recognized, or merely a feeling he’d gotten in their brief interchange in the conference room?

Whatever it was—or wasn’t—she would keep her eyes open, but carry on until she heard otherwise. There were too many things she had to deal with, and this, at the moment, seemed like a distraction.

She walked over to the others and got the sense they were still talking about the new victim when her phone rang again. It was Robby.

“Hey there. What’ve you been up to?”

“Went to the outlets and did some fabulous shopping, bought you the most marvelous clothing and a dear—”

“Robby, the gay thing doesn’t work for you.”

“No? Fine. I got you some clothes. Hope you like ’em, but I gotta say it was a bit of a crapshoot.”

“Much better,” Vail said. “I’m sure whatever you got will work for another few days. And what about a place to stay?”

“I booked us into this darling inn with a wonderfully frilly duvet and cherry—”

“Robby?”

“Cut it out, right?”

Vail rubbed her eyes with thumb and index finger. “Yeah.”

“Okay. I got us a room at the Heartland B&B in Yountville, a few blocks from downtown.” He gave her the address. “Meet me there in an hour? Or do you want to go straight to dinner? There are a few nice looking restaurants downtown, within walking distance.”

“Works for me. I need to get out of these shoes. I’ll meet you at the B&B, do a quick change, and then we can pick a place to eat.”

She shoved the phone into its holder, then walked over to Dixon. “So what’s the deal?”

“Aaron is still with the body.” She glanced at the setting sun. “But he’s gonna need some fixed lights brought in if he’s gonna be here much longer.”

Lugo closed his phone and said, “He said he’ll be done in about twenty. He needs someone to hold the lantern for him.”

“Unless you think he could be our UNSUB, I’ll do it,” Vail said. “I’ve got some time to kill before I can get into my B&B.”

Brix slammed his trunk closed and said, “I’ve known Matt a dozen years. If he’s our guy, he’s fucking got me fooled. But if you’re concerned about it—”

“I can handle it.” She flashed momentarily on her recent romp with the Dead Eyes killer, but pushed it from her mind. She couldn’t do her job effectively if she let things like that change the way she operates.

“Good,” Brix said. “I’ve got a car arranged for you at St. Helena PD. A green Ford Taurus that was used by its investigator before the position was canned. It’s yours. I’ll have Aaron drop you off there when he’s done. Keys will be in a magnetic case in the driver’s wheel well.”

Vail nodded her thanks, wished everyone a good evening, then headed out to the vineyard to assist Aaron. As it turned out, it was to be the start of an unexpectedly dangerous evening.

TWENTY-FOUR

John Wayne Mayfield stood on the hillside, Carson binoculars pressed against his face, watching the police try to make sense of his latest job. He couldn’t make out fine details of their facial expressions at this distance—and in the fading light—but he could get a sense of what they were thinking and saying by their body language.

And they didn’t look happy.

But he had warned them. He told them what would happen. Did they not believe him? Next time they had better listen or he’d make them pay again.

As he crouched and watched them debate what they had found, he realized that maybe he hadn’t been convincing enough. Maybe he needed to speak louder for them to hear him.

AS THE LAST of the task force members drove off, Vail watched a car pull up behind Matt Aaron’s vehicle. At the wheel was Austin Mann.

“I’ll be right back,” Vail said.

“Wait—where are you going? I need you to hold—”

“I’ll just be a couple minutes,” Vail called back, and continued down the path toward Mann.

Mann slammed his door and maneuvered around the car. “I just got the text. Who’s the vic?”

Vail stopped, blocking his path, and shoved her hands in her rear pockets. There he was, only a dozen feet away now. Prosthetic arm at his side. Vail pulled her gaze from the device and looked Mann in the eyes.

“Glad you’re here.” She had to handle this carefully, tactfully—a laughable thought. If there’s one skill Karen Vail never could master, it was the art of diplomacy.

“Who’s the vic?” Mann asked again, craning his head around her, toward where Matt Aaron was bent over the body.

“You sure you don’t know?”

Mann swung his gaze to Vail. “Huh? Should I? Who is it?”

“It’s a male. No ID yet.”

Even in the fading light, Vail could see his eyes narrow. “So why should I—” He stopped. His body stiffened, and he seemed to lean back, away from her. Staring at her.

Vail did not speak. She remained still herself, measuring Mann’s response. A brisk wind whipped through her shirt. Damn, it’s cold.

“Vail,” Aaron called out. “Get your ass back over here!”

Vail ignored him. She looked at Mann.

“Well,” he finally said, “go ahead. Ask.”

Vail folded her arms across her chest. She did it for warmth, but it served the dual purpose of exhibiting body language of someone in charge. “Where were you when each of our victims was killed?”

“That’s not the question you want to ask me, Agent Vail. I’ll give you another shot. Ask your question or get the fuck away from me. Now.”

“Did you kill Victoria Cameron?”

“No.”

“Did you kill Ursula Robbins?”

“No.”

“Did you kill Maryanne Bernal?”

“No.”

“How about the vic lying out in the vineyard behind me?”

“No. Satisfied?”

Vail snorted. “Not really.”

“You’ve really got a set of balls, you know that? To question a person who’s given his life and career, hell, his goddamn left arm for the job—you really think I could be your killer?”

Vail ground her teeth. “I have a job to do, Agent Mann. And part of that job is to look at this case logically, without bias. Our victims were killed by a crushing blow to the trachea. The coroner can’t rule out the use of a tool or appliance. Something that’d make crushing the trachea—normally a tough thing to do—much easier. Then you walk in with a prosthesis. And yeah, I’m thinking, shit, that’s pretty obvious. Too obvious. But I have to look into it, you hear me?”

Mann stared at her but did not reply.

“It’s nothing personal. In fact, someone I respect a great deal vouched for you.”

“You discussed this with Rooney—”

“No,” Vail said. “I didn’t. I’ve thought about it. I couldn’t rule it out in my mind, beyond saying ‘He’s a great agent and great agents don’t do this type of thing.’ Well, that doesn’t cut it when time comes to present my case. You know that. Don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“So again. Nothing personal. Got that?”

“Yeah.”

“So as to where you were—”

“I was out of town when you found Victoria Cameron’s body. On ATF business. You can ask my partner, if you want.”

“When did you get back?”

“We flew back from New Mexico yesterday morning. Two days after Mrs. Cameron was killed, if I’m not mistaken. Check it out with my partner. We were together just about every minute of the five-day trip.”

“Vail!” Aaron said. “Now or never—”

“You insist it’s not personal.”

“It’s not,” Vail said. Where’s he going with this?

“Have you brought this up to the task force? Have you or anyone else looked into other men in the vicinity who have prostheses? Because if you really think this makes it a slam dunk”—he held up his left arm—“then you would’ve checked into that. Did you?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. So don’t fucking insult my intelligence.”

Vail sighed. “I’m sorry. Honestly, I meant no disrespect.” She extended a hand. Mann looked at it a long moment, then turned around and got back into his car.

MATT AARON DROVE UP to the police department, in the heart of downtown St. Helena, a one-story shared-use structure that also housed City Hall. Aaron pulled to the curb and dropped off Vail in front of the building.

Vail opened her door. “Thanks for the ride.”

Aaron didn’t bother turning to face her. “And thanks so much for your help.”

She could tell he didn’t mean it. Sarcasm. A dose of her own medicine.

Vail swung the door closed, but Aaron drove off before it had completely shut.

She pushed through the police department’s front door and walked into a small anteroom separated from the rest of the office by a pane of bulletproof glass. She spoke to the community service officer and explained she was going to be taking the Taurus. The CSO told Vail where it was parked, then gave her directions to downtown Yountville.

As Vail pushed through the doors, her BlackBerry rang. It was Rooney. Oh, god. Please tell me Austin Mann didn’t call Art. That’d suck big time.

“Karen, listen, we got some shit on Fuller. I had Frank look into it while I was in the air, then when I went wheels down, he called me.”

Fuller. She shifted her brain out of panic mode and back to business. “Fuller, yeah, I know. Frank told me there was a sealed record.”

“Not just a sealed record. Not by a fucking long shot.”

Vail found the magnetic storage container, then unlocked the door and settled herself into the seat. The sun was now long gone and the air had taken on a typical March chill. A gray cast hovered in the sky, billowy clouds barely visible in the charcoal sky above.

“What was it?”

“Juvie record, Fuller was convicted of—wait for it—attempted arson. He was pissed at his teacher, so he set a school storage shed on fire. Janitor was on-site and saw Fuller, did a sketch, and picked him out of a lineup.”

“Arson.”

“I knew there was something about the kid.”

“He’s the sheriff’s stepson, you know that.”

“I don’t give a shit. I’m sure the sheriff knows about this. And here we’ve got an arson in his town and he doesn’t tell us about Fuller’s history?”

“That’s a fine line, Art. Asking a father to rat out his son.”

“Hey, the fucker tried to kill you, Karen. This goes way beyond family. This kid’s a killer.”

“Okay, I’m with you on this. What now?”

“I want you to steer clear of it. I’ll call Mann and have him coordinate with an agent in the San Francisco office. We’ll handle this internally. I don’t want Owens finding out, tipping off Fuller, and giving him a chance to cover up evidence, or bolt or whatever the hell he’ll do. Wish I hadn’t flown back.”

“We can handle it from here.”

“Not we, Karen.”

“Yeah, okay.” She depressed the brake pedal, then shoved the key in the ignition. A pair of headlights came on a few dozen feet behind her. She flipped the rearview mirror into night mode and pulled out of the parking lot, headed right, down Highway 29 toward Yountville. “Keep me posted, okay?” Rooney did not reply. She looked down at her BlackBerry. It had dropped the call. Didn’t matter—she was sure he, or Mann, would let her know what was going down, and when.

Vail sighed. She had thought Fuller was annoying—but harmless. It now appeared she was wrong. Not that she was never wrong—but it didn’t happen often, which was a good thing—because in her profession, being wrong often met with disastrous consequences.

She was looking forward to seeing Robby, to sharing a glass of wine with him and unwinding, telling him about Fuller. She was grateful that Rooney was such a hound dog with an acute intuitive sense.

So much had happened in the few days since they had arrived. And this was supposed to be a time for her to get away from the stress of the past couple months.

As she drove along 29, she thought about where she’d like to take her real vacation. But when would she go? She couldn’t leave Jonathan again, certainly not right away; that wouldn’t be fair to him. And they will have burned through Robby’s vacation time. She’d gotten so caught up in the hunt—in the need to help—that she had selfishly, and foolishly, pursued this case at Robby’s expense. This was supposed to be their time together, and she had ruined it. And at the moment, she wasn’t even sure she had done the community any good. Like Gifford had said, she seemed to be a magnet that frequently sent the Shit-Happens Meter off the scale.

Perhaps she and Robby could steal a weekend here and there for an overnight or two. Maybe the Red Fox Inn in Middleburg—she’d forgotten about that place. Close to home, but far enough away that it would provide a needed change of scenery for both of them.

Vail was surprised at how few cars were on the road. She knew most wineries closed around 5 p.m., so the tourists were probably back at their bed-and-breakfasts, dressing for dinner and a relaxing night out—something she would be doing very shortly, as well.

Her headlights hit the sign ahead that announced Calistoga would be coming up in fifteen miles. Calistoga? Her Napa geography was fairly poor, but she remembered Calistoga being toward the top of the map—farther down the road, after St. Helena—meaning she should’ve turned left onto 29, not right.

She slowed to see where she could make a U-turn, but headlights in her mirror caught her attention. Same ones she saw a few moments ago when leaving the police department? Impossible to say—and normally she wouldn’t give it much thought. But last night someone—Fuller?—had tried to turn her into a french fry and today a serial killer texted her phone. Her sense of awareness, always pretty good, was heightened. Paranoid? Realistic. Someone might be following her. She wasn’t about to let whoever it was have the upper hand again.

A few yards ahead was Pratt Avenue. Without signaling, she hung a sharp right onto the narrow, two-lane road and accelerated, coming up quickly on Park Street. Swerved right again, then made an immediate left onto Crinella Drive. Residential.

Glanced up, saw nothing—no headlights. All that for nothing. She felt her heart rate moving at a good pace. Nothing like a little scare to get the blood pumping. She followed the road as it curved right, keeping an eye on her mirror, just in case. If nothing else, it’d be a long way around to getting back onto 29 in the correct direction.

Parked cars populated driveways and lengths of available curb space. To her right, a portable basketball standard stood poised for action, sandwiched between neatly placed garbage and recycling containers.

She followed Crinella as it proceeded straight, then hooked right again. Perfect, a circle. She would stay on it and loop back onto Park, then get back onto 29. Of all things—a detour when she desperately wanted to meet up with Robby and relax. If she told him about this, he’d laugh at her. Then again, given all they’ve been through lately, he probably would not find it amusing.

After turning right onto Park, she took a couple of deep breaths to slow her pulse rate. This can’t be healthy, she thought. Doesn’t stress kill? A totally different kind of serial killer. One I’d never be able to catch. She chuckled at the absurdity of her thought, how the mind turned to humor at strange times.

As she passed the opening of the Crinella loop, she caught a glimpse of a car sitting at the curb ahead of her, its headlights burning. So what? It’s just a mother who’s running to the store for milk. Waiting for me to pass so she can turn onto Park.

Vail continued along Park, headed toward Pratt. Looked in her side mirror. The car had turned onto Park but was several dozen feet behind her. But what if it’s not an innocent resident?

She reasoned most people would turn left here, to get to the main drag, Highway 29. So she turned right, down toward a darker area. If the other vehicle stayed with her, the chances were greater its occupant was trailing her. She would then call Robby, have him drive toward her. Enough of this shit.

As she crossed a set of railroad tracks, Vail wished she had Stella with her. She didn’t know her way around—especially in the dark—and the Taurus wasn’t equipped with an in-dash GPS. She then realized she should’ve headed back to 29, a road she had been on and which was a main thoroughfare. Then she could have gone back to the police department.

As she mentally kicked herself, the two pinpricks of bright light appeared in her mirror. The car had turned right and was now behind her again. She accelerated hard, took it up to seventy for the next half mile as the road doglegged left. This had to open up somewhere, spill onto another road. If not, she’d need to find a street to turn around, then head back toward whoever was following her. She pressed her left forearm against her waist and felt her Glock.

While she mulled her options, Pratt dead-ended at what looked like a main road a hundred feet ahead. She remembered looking at the map when they were planning the trip and seeing another artery that paralleled Highway 29. Silver-something. It was the road she was on earlier today with Dixon.

Yellow traffic sign: Narrow Bridge. She slowed hard, then crossed the two-lane cement-walled overpass. Street sign—Silverado Trail. Yes, that was it.

She turned left while sneaking a peak in her mirror. No one there. No lights. Was he still behind her, running silent? She accelerated hard through the turn and brought the Taurus up to sixty, alternating her gaze between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. She flipped the signal bar forward and threw her headlights into the brights setting so they illuminated a wide arc on the asphalt ahead. They also stretched upward, reaching the lower branches of the tree-lined road.

She pulled out her BlackBerry and struggled to navigate to Robby’s phone number. But because this was a new phone, none of her contacts were loaded. She’d have to go into her call history, to when he had called her. That’s all she needed—to get into an accident by dividing her attention among three different tasks. But no one else appeared to be on the road, which was good. If those headlights appeared again, she would have to take action.

And as luck would have it, a few seconds later when she glanced up, she saw those fucking headlights appear in her mirror, turning onto Silverado from Park. She thought of texting the killer back on his number—but she had to keep her head about her. What would that accomplish? If it wasn’t the Crush Killer following her—if it was Fuller, for example—she could set in motion a series of events that would be potentially disastrous. If she had her original phone, she could call Fuller and find out if it was him behind her.

Up ahead—a turnout. She cut her headlights and downshifted into low. The car lurched hard as it abruptly dropped into third gear. Vail yanked hard on the wheel, screeching round the bend onto a narrow, unmarked road—without applying the brakes. She wanted to give her pursuer the illusion her car had disappeared from existence. Beamed away into thin air—neat trick if it were possible, but this should work fine, too.

Vail swerved onto the narrow side street, regained control of the vehicle, then hung an abrupt U-turn, using the skills she had learned in the tactical driving course at the Academy. She brought the car around facing Silverado Trail and pulled hard right against the soft shoulder. Cut her lights and disabled the interior dome light—in case she had to exit the vehicle.

She sat there and counted. Based on the distance the car was behind her, she figured she had no more than four seconds before it would pass her. But she was ready.

The Taurus was in neutral, her foot off the brake and her head ducked down low to prevent the driver from seeing her—in case he was looking in her direction when he passed.

There! The car zoomed by, its headlights off now. Speeding, no doubt looking for where she had gone. Keeping her own lights off, she pulled the Ford into drive, accelerated hard and went into pursuit mode.

He was traveling fast—but with a dark dashboard, she could only guess at the speed. What mattered was she was losing ground. She glanced up—saw another car behind her—and ignored it. Focus on the task ahead.

She depressed the accelerator. The engine downshifted, hesitated, roared, surged. But the vehicle ahead was still expanding the distance. The roadway curved left, then right.

He blew through the flashing red, and with a quick glance at the intersecting street, Vail followed suit.

She wasn’t sure he was aware of her presence; in the near-total darkness, she didn’t think he’d be able to see her. He wasn’t driving evasively; he was driving as if he was pursuing, searching. Wondering where the hell she had gone. Whoever he was, he was clearly motivated to find her.

I’ll bet you are, asshole.

An oncoming truck was approaching in the opposing lane. In the glow of his headlights Vail could now see the silhouette of the driver of the car in front of her: a male, rotating his head from side to side. Looking for her, no doubt. His vehicle had the shape and smooth, curved lines of a Chrysler.

The light from the truck was a mixed blessing: It illuminated her pursuer, but it would also lay her bare as well, should he look in his rearview. And he must have done just that—because he suddenly switched on his headlights and slammed on the brakes.

Christ! The oncoming truck was passing her the instant Vail had to swerve left into his lane to avoid smashing into the Chrysler. She narrowly cleared the truck’s rear and was now driving in the opposing lane.

Heart pounding hard in her ears. Bam, bam, bam. Calm yourself, Karen. Focus!

She reached for the switch to turn on her headlights—but the Chrysler swerved into her, pushing her Ford further left. Onto the shoulder.

Vail tightened her grip on the wheel and leaned right, as if that would help pull the car away from the oncoming tree line.

The two vehicles were of similar size and mass, so Vail had only one option available to her: She slammed on the brakes. Screeching tires . . . ripping scraping metal as her front fender tore along the left side of his sedan.

The Chrysler braked before she was able to clear the rear of his car. She yanked her wheel hard right and accelerated. Her engine groaned in protest.

But Vail had leverage on her side and the Chrysler whipped into a violent counterclockwise spin. He swung around and smashed into her left front fender, and they careened to Vail’s right, off Silverado Trail, and slammed through the wire-and-wood fence. She struck a divot in the shoulder and went in nose-first, but the Chrysler hit the gully at an odd angle with greater force and flipped trunk-over-hood. It tumbled backward before coming to rest upside down. Vail’s Ford wedged itself in the furrow, at the edge of a vineyard.

Holy shit.

She took a deep breath and seized into a coughing fit. Grabbed the dashboard to calm the spasm, then steadied herself. Eyes blurry with tears. Head aching.

She forced herself to assess the situation: Airbag did not deploy. Front end lodged in some kind of ditch. And it was dark.

She turned on her headlights; the lone working lamp illuminated a portion of the vineyard ahead of her. She caught a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror, which was cocked at an odd angle. She had a gash on her forehead above the left eye. Fuck it. Get out of the car and find the asshole who did this to you.

Vail pushed the driver’s door open and tumbled out of the Ford. A few yards off to the right, nestled among the vines, was the Chrysler, spouting a fog of smoky steam from the front grill. She pulled her Glock—which she should’ve done before exiting the Ford—and scrambled toward the overturned car, the pistol out in front of her.

Vail shooed away the smoke and peered through the windshield, which was diffusely lit by the brightness from her headlight. But it appeared to be empty. She swung around and fired a round into the lamp, throwing her—and her pursuer—into charcoal darkness. She then headed off in the opposite direction. If her pursuer was nearby, she didn’t want him to have the advantage of seeing her. The risk of him hearing her gunshot, and thereby locating her, was fairly low. Unless he saw the muzzle blast, it was more difficult to pinpoint location based on a single shot you were not expecting.

Vail moved around the upended vehicle, encircling it, looking for signs of where its occupant could’ve gone. Just about impossible in the near-darkness. But out of the corner of her peripheral vision, she caught something—the blur of motion, perhaps, along with the rustle of leaves. She ran toward the object, her Glock firmly clasped in both hands out in front of her.

As she neared the approximate location, she sensed something slip past her, a row to her left. She dipped to the ground, rolled beneath the lowest hanging vines and cross-wires, then rolled through to the adjacent aisle. There—ahead, maybe thirty feet in the darkness, her brain combined the vague blur of motion with the shift of dirt being displaced by shoes.

Vail pushed forward, a bit more cautiously, sensing that her quarry had stopped moving. She felt the brush of nascent grape leaves against her cheek and she nearly unloaded her weapon into the unsuspecting vine. But she regrouped and kept moving down the aisle.

Absent a nearby city and a visible moon, there was scant external light. There had been times in her career when she wished she had another fully loaded magazine; at other times, she longed for the easy reach of her weapon—any weapon. Now all she wished for was her Maglite.

Something to the left—movement. She turned in its direction, brought her Glock up, and felt the rush of air by her cheek before a powerful punch exploded into her temple. She fell backward and went down, falling against a mess of vines and supporting cross-wires—which, although rough, served as a cradle. She lay there a second, dazed, until—somewhere off in the distance—she heard rustling leaves, then felt something swipe at her left arm, knocking the Glock from her grip. Two hands grabbed her by the blouse and yanked her up out of the tangle of branches.

Vail focused her eyes and saw the face of her pursuer. But she did not let the revelation of who it was delay her response. She brought her knee up hard, into Scott Fuller’s groin, then, as he doubled over, she cupped her right fist and slammed her hands down onto the back of his neck. Now it was his turn to go down.

“You prick,” she said, standing over him. “You fucking tried to kill me!” She thought of kicking him in the face, which would likely loosen a few teeth as well as render him unconscious—but she needed answers first. “I know about your juvie record, the arson,” she said.

“You don’t know shit,” Fuller said between clenched teeth. He fought off the pain but rose into a stooped posture.

“I know it’s enough to get you booted off the force. A cop convicted of arson as a teen investigating an arson committed against a federal agent that cop didn’t like? Sounds pretty fucking bad, Scott.”

She stepped to her left, hoping to come across her pistol before Fuller rushed her—or worse—pulled his sidearm. On her second step she felt a hard crunch. As Fuller moved toward her, she brought the weapon up and swung it in line with his chest. “Where were you the night of Victoria Cameron’s murder?”

He did not raise his hands. Did not flinch. “Fuck you. I don’t owe you any explanations.”

“Did you set the fire to my room?”

A broad smile spread his lips.

“I guess that’s my answer.”

“Go pound sand, Vail.”

“Fine, you don’t want to talk to me, you can face your stepfather. I doubt the sheriff will be happy to hear my theories. Because pretty soon, we’ll have all the evidence we need—”

That was all she got out—because in the next moment she felt a sharp prick, followed almost immediately by a dizzying sway. The ground moved beneath her. She lost her footing. And all went black.

TWENTY-FIVE

An acrid scent stung her nose. A sour taste coated her tongue. A chill blew across her face. And her back felt wet.

Vail opened her eyes, but saw nothing. No, not nothing—she tracked left and right, and saw stars. She was lying supine, looking at the sky. She started to sit up—but a wave of nausea hit her like a bad flu. Vail lay back down and wondered where she was, why she was on the ground. She turned her head left—saw vines—and realized she was in a vineyard.

How? Why?

To her right she saw more of the same. Darkness. Flora. And a pair of boots. But not just any boots; they looked like the ones Scott Fuller wore. Fighting the dizziness, Vail forced herself onto her right side to get a better look, pushing up her torso with her left hand, slowly, into a sitting position. That’s when she saw it.

Fuller was also on his back, and though it was dark, she could tell he was not moving. Incapacitated, like her. Her senses were slowly returning. Her head hurt and she brought a hand up to her temple. It felt bruised, swollen.

Something was irritating her nose. It was a scent she knew all too well. Blood.

Reached for her Glock. Not there. Oh, this is not good. Weapon gone, unconscious in a field, blood somewhere nearby, and no fucking idea how I got here.

“Scott, wake up,” Vail said. She shut her eyes, trying to will away the dizziness. She leaned forward and got onto all fours, then began feeling around in the dirt, searching for her missing Glock.

Wait. I was following another car. Headlights. . . .

Felt around. Nothing. She swung around in another direction, to the right, trying to keep some sort of directional sense as to where she was going so she didn’t double back on herself.

Car tried to force me off the road. Went into a ditch, it flipped—

Still failing to locate her pistol, she hung another right turn and crawled back toward her starting point.

Fuller. Fuller in the other car. He tried to run me off the road. Rooney—sealed arson record on Fuller. Bastard.

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 body?

“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.”

“So what are you saying?” Robby asked. “That this isn’t our offender?”

Vail shook her head. “I’m not saying that.”

“He could’ve been trying to make it look like you killed Fuller,” Dixon said.

“Why would he do that?”

“I’m not saying he did.” Dixon turned to Vail. “But how else would you explain what he did?”

Vail picked up the sterile urine specimen container Marcus had set aside. “If the UNSUB’s motive was merely to fuck with our heads, show us he’s in charge, then it doesn’t matter how he kills Fuller. He was taking a big risk by following us, by entering this vineyard. Even though it was pitch black out, either of us could’ve heard him. But the way a narcissist thinks, he figures he can do this stuff and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. Killing one of us is a big deal. The more shit he does like this, the more it starts to add up and it becomes more difficult for us to contain the fallout. I mean, he killed a cop—the sheriff’s stepson. If he knew the relationships, then his choice was purposeful.”

“He couldn’t lose,” Robby said. “The sheriff’s stepson, a sergeant, or an FBI agent. Either way, that’s big shit.”

Vail was about to respond when Stan Owens appeared behind them. Brix was trailing a few paces back. “Stan,” Brix called out. “Stan, think about this.”

Owens stopped a few feet from Vail—a bit further than normal conversation typically occurs. But Robby was at Vail’s left elbow, and Owens no doubt remembered his recent encounter with the large Vienna detective.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Sheriff.”

“That right?” Owens said. “I don’t know what happened here, but I will find out. I don’t care what it takes, but I’ll make sure you go down for this—”

“Stan,” Brix said. “Stan, you’re not seeing things objectively.”

Owens spun on him. “I’m not? Well, you tell me what happened here. Vail’s here, my son is here, she’s already shown contempt for him, with plenty of witnesses—”

“I show contempt for a lot of people,” Vail said. “When they deserve it. Doesn’t mean I meet them in a deserted vineyard at night and shoot them.”

Owens turned fully back to Vail and set his jaw. “If you did this, I will personally come after you and do to you what you did to Scott. Count on it.”

“Threatening a federal agent isn’t smart,” Vail said. “And it sure as hell isn’t productive. Whoever did this—and it’s likely our offender—is still out there.”

“Convenient, isn’t it? Some guy knocked me out and killed the other guy, then disappeared. They made a movie about that once.”

“The Fugitive,” Vail said. “Based on a real case. Dr. Sam Shepard was arrested and convicted for the murder of his wife.”

“They caught him and we’ll catch you, too.”

“Here’s the thing, Sheriff. Shepard was innocent. Someone really did knock him out and kill his wife.”

Owens frowned and was about to reply when Brix clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon. We’ve got work to do.”

As he led Owens away, Vail turned to Robby and Dixon. “If this is our offender, we’ve gotta catch him. He’s getting bolder. And if we don’t do something to stop him, we may not have a choice.”

“Go public,” Dixon said.

Vail nodded. “Give him what he wants.”

TWENTY-SIX

Ninety minutes later, the task force was convened at the request of Redmond Brix. Vail had already given her statement to Brix about the shooting and met with an agent from the Bureau’s Santa Rosa Resident Agency to swap out her Glock. Her spent weapon—the one that might have been used to shoot Fuller—was placed in a chain-of-custody evidence bag. The agent provided Vail with an identical replacement.

Afterwards, in the ladies’ restroom, Vail and Dixon splashed their faces with cold water. Dixon pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and wiped her face.

“You feel well enough to go in there?” Dixon asked.

“I’m not going to let you or anyone else try to defend me. I’ll stand up to anything anyone wants to throw at me.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

Vail leaned over the vanity, close to the mirror, and looked at her swollen temple. She gently blotted it with the wet towel. It was extremely tender to touch. “We need to look into Fuller’s background, who he knew, who his friends were. We need a search warrant for his place and any known places he might’ve stored things. If we can establish a link between him and the arson, we can close that case without bias.”

“Better if I ask for those things. I don’t know if your opinion—or requests—would carry much weight with the task force right now.”

“I agree.”

Dixon balled up her fist and crumpled the paper towel, then tossed it in the waste bin. “Let’s do it.”

Mann, Gordon, Dixon, Brix, Lugo, Nance, and Vail were seated around the conference table. Brix had scared up a sheriff’s department shirt and a pair of uniform pants for Vail to wear so her blood-smeared clothing—rather, Dixon’s blouse and pants—could be forensically tested. Given the late hour and circumstances, Robby was permitted to sit in on the meeting—which Brix promised would be brief and productive.

“You okay?” Lugo asked Vail, as he took his seat.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking, Ray. I have a feeling my friends in this town are dwindling in numbers.”

“I didn’t realize you had friends,” he said.

Vail wasn’t sure how to take that. Lugo was probably joking, but she was tired and hungry and still wasn’t completely back to herself—no doubt the drug she’d been given wasn’t entirely out of her system.

“All right,” Brix said. “I, for one, am going to miss Scott. Out of respect for him, the sheriff, and his family, we’re going to put everything we’ve got behind this. If Karen and Roxxann are right, this is the work of our UNSUB. I’m not so sure of that, but I don’t have a better explanation just yet.”

“I think,” Dixon said, “we should make every attempt to clear Scott’s name. Let’s look into his background, the people he knew, who his friends were. I’ll get a search warrant for his place and cell phone and financial records and any associated locations where he might’ve stored his stuff.”

“I’m not a cop,” Nance said, “but seems to me we’re investigating Scott instead of investigating who killed him.”

Vail had to fight to keep her eyes from closing. Now that she was sitting, her lids felt heavy. If she could just close them for a few minutes—

“We’ve got two issues here,” Brix said. “First is who torched the B&B and tried to roast Karen alive. Second is the Crush Killer, who may or may not have killed Scott.”

Dixon clicked her pen and scribbled a note on her pad. “If we can rule out an obvious link between him and the arson, we’d go a long way toward clearing his name.”

Nance spread his hands, palm up. “Sounds to me like you’re trying to find a link, not rule one out.”

“Depends on how you look at it,” Vail said. She felt like her speech was slow, possibly even slurred—but no one seemed to be reacting, so maybe it was in her mind. She pressed on. “We’re just trying to get at the truth. Wherever it leads”—she shrugged—“is where it leads. It’s our job at this point to collect evidence, not interpret it. Interpretation will come soon enough.”

“Hopefully,” Dixon said, “our digging will lead to someone else, in which case we clear Scott’s—Detective Fuller’s—name.”

Nance shook his head. “Witch hunt, that’s what it is. Twist it any way you want, that’s all it is.”

Dixon tossed down her pen. “Look, Mr. Nance. You’re here as a courtesy. As lead investigator, whether or not you’re allowed to remain is my call. But let’s get something straight. My generosity only goes so far. You need to understand that this is our investigation and we’re going to run it professionally and efficiently. We’re keeping you in the loop, but you don’t have a say in what we do and how we do it. I’m not even sure why you care so much about how we handle Detective Fuller’s death investigation.”

“I care because Stan Owens is a friend of the congressman. I care because it’s the right thing to do.”

Dixon spread her hands. “Then let us do our jobs. We’ll figure out what’s going on. No one in this room is out to pin things on Detective Fuller or tarnish his reputation in any way.”

His eyes flicked over to Vail. “I’m not so sure about that.”

Vail heard Nance’s comment, but it wasn’t registering. She needed to go lie down. But first, she had to bring a matter to their attention. “There’s something else we should look into,” she said, keeping her eyes on the table in front of her. “Because of the way our victims are killed, we need to question those men in the area who have amputated upper limbs, who wear prostheses.”

All heads rotated toward Austin Mann, who did not react. His gaze remained firmly on Vail.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I’ve already had this discussion with Agent Mann. He’s alibied.” She glanced up and saw a mix of surprise and anger on the faces of her team members. Fuck it. I had to come clean. It had to be said. She brought a hand to the back of her neck and squeezed. “It’s a bit of a long shot, but if we’re being thorough, it shouldn’t be overlooked. We need someone to follow up on this. Compile a list. Limit it to those men living within a seventy-five mile radius. That’s a bit broad, but it’ll eliminate error. If the list is too long, shorten it to fifty miles. Eliminate anyone younger than twenty-five and older than forty.”

Brix cleared his throat. “I’ll see if I can get someone from the Special Investigations Bureau on this.”

Vail rose unsteadily from her chair. “I’m not feeling so great. I’m going to lie down for a few minutes, try to shake off this fog.”

“Shift Change Room’s right down the hall,” Brix said. “Flip the sign to ‘occupied’ and no one’ll bother you.”

“I’ll be back,” Vail said. “Hopefully soon.”

JOHN WAYNE MAYFIELD fingered the pay-as-you-go phone—one of three he owned, none to be used more than once—and thought about what he would type.

It had gone exceedingly well with Vail and Fuller. He had been behind the car that was following Vail, before he realized the driver of the other vehicle was Scott Fuller. That was when an alternative plan began to take shape. He had the drug and syringe in his toolkit. Though he had never used it, he lived by the Boy Scout principle: Be prepared.

And so he was. He backed off his pursuit but remained close. Having Vail and Fuller tangle and force one another’s collision facilitated his plan. In fact, it worked out better than he had sketched it out in his mind.

Fuller’s death was the type of devastating loss that would put them back on their heels, keep them on the defensive. He would’ve loved to hang around and see their reactions when Vail awoke and tried to explain what had happened, how Fuller ended up murdered while she . . . slept, taken out by an unseen assailant. He wondered if they believed her.

But he had better things to do with his time than stick around just to see how they handled Karen Vail. More stunning things, things that would have vastly greater impact. Because he was just getting started.

He looked down at the phone and typed out a text message.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Vail’s trip to the Shift Change Room turned into a four-hour nap—still the result of the residual effects of the drugging. When she awoke, Dixon was standing over her with Dr. Brooke Abbott at her side.

A slice of light fell across her face. She squinted against the glare, then held up a hand to shield her eyes.

Vail blinked several times. “Roxxann.” She sat up on the bottom bunk, but a rush of dizziness struck her like a sharp wave on a small dingy. She stuck out an arm to grab onto something. Dixon grabbed Vail’s arm and caught her, held her steady. “Sorry. I guess whatever drug he used is still in my system.”

Abbott chuckled. “That drug is BetaSomnol. Based on the tox screen we did from that blood sample the medic drew from you, and doing a little guesswork—because we don’t know how long you were out before you called for help—it’s likely you were injected with fifteen milligrams. Enough to put down someone your size and weight for about twenty minutes. That’s a pretty hefty dosage. No wonder you’ve had lingering dizziness.”

“I’ve never heard of this. Beta—”

“BetaSomnol. It’s a super quick next-generation sedative, a mixture of a benzodiazepine—a drug like valium—and an antipsychotic.”

“Who would have access to it?”

“Not many people. It was developed for use in ERs and mental institutions, where they need fast-acting preparations to quickly put down a thrashing, violent patient. BetaSomnol is gradually replacing the traditional mixture of Haldol and Ativan, which are just too slow. And when someone’s doing his best to take out your eye, you want him down PDQ.”

“Is the tox screen you ran definitive?” Dixon asked.

“I’ve sent it out to a reference lab for a quantitative analysis. They’ll do a high-sensitivity screen for several hundred licit and illicit drugs, as well as alcohol. Once we get that back, we’ll have a definitive result. But that’ll take days, maybe weeks.”

Vail rubbed at her neck. “Any lasting effects of this BetaSomnol?”

“The drug metabolizes fairly quickly, so I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll be fine.”

Dixon stifled a yawn, then consulted her watch. “So the obvious question would be, where did the drug come from?”

“BetaSomnol is a pretty new product, so there’s limited distribution.”

“Perfect,” Dixon said. “We should be able to find out fairly easily if any hospitals within a hundred miles reported a theft.”

“Of fifteen milligrams?” Abbott asked. “If you’ve got access to these drugs, you could easily siphon off a few milligrams here and there and no one’d be the wiser.”

Vail slowly swung her feet off the bed. “True—but you’re missing the point. Theoretically, someone who’d have access to the drug would have to work there, as an employee or contractor. More than that, these drugs are locked away. They’d likely have to hold a position that gives them access. Again, theoretically, that narrows our suspect pool.”

Abbott nodded. “I’ll get right on it. I’ll let you know what I find out.” She turned and pushed through the door.

Vail leveraged herself off the bed, squared her shoulders, and faced a small mirror that hung on the adjacent wall. She ran her hands through her hair, turned her face to the side, then shook her head. “I look like shit.”

“You had a car accident, went toe-to-toe with Scott Fuller, then got injected with an antipsychotic cocktail. Not to mention it’s four-thirty in the morning. How did you expect to look?”

“C’mon, you know none of that matters. We can rationalize all we want, but is it ever okay for us not to look good?”

“I was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Only thing that’ll make me feel better is a hot shower, a comfortable bed. And Robby’s body beside me.” They walked out of the Shift Change Room and headed down the hall. “Speaking of Robby, where is he?”

“He’s been working with Brix and Lugo.”

Vail felt a buzz on her belt. She dug out her BlackBerry and blew off the dirt that had no doubt come from rolling around in the vineyard. Looked at the text. And stopped in midstride. She felt dizzy again—only this time it was not from a next-gen drug. It was raw fear. “Oh my God,” she muttered.

Dixon stopped beside Vail and looked over her shoulder. “What is it?”

Think, Karen. Calm down. What do I do? How do I—stop. Breathe. Concentrate. She wiped at her eyes with two fingers. “Get Robby,” was all she said.

Dixon ran off. Vail dialed Jonathan. It went right to voicemail. “Fuck!” She hung up and scrolled to speed dial looking for Paul Bledsoe’s number. But there were no speed dial entries. Damn it! Think. What’s the number? 703 . . . come on . . . She pressed her eyes shut and it came to her. Punched it in, hit Call.

Bledsoe, a friend and homicide detective with Fairfax County Police Department, answered on the third ring.

“Bledsoe, it’s Karen. I know it’s early—”

“Fuck, Karen, I was up half the night. I finally fell asleep sometime around three. What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty, your time.”

“Seven—what do you mean, ‘your time’? Where are—”

“California, working a case. I need your help.”

He moaned. “Today’s my day off. Call me back in a few hours—”

“No! Get your ass out of bed. He’s targeting Jonathan—”

“Jonathan? Who’s targeting—”

“Shut up and listen to me. Throw on your clothes and get ready to leave. I’ll call you back in thirty seconds and tell you where you’re going.” She disconnected the call.

Vail stood there staring at the text message, her pulse pounding in her head. Whoever you are, you goddamn fucking bastard—

“Karen!”

Robby came running down the hall.

She pointed at him as he approached. “Have someone look up the next flight out to DC.”

“DC? What’s wrong?”

“Jonathan.” She held up a hand. “Please, just do it.”

Robby pulled his phone and started dialing. Vail pushed Talk on her BlackBerry and waited while it rang. Bledsoe picked up.

“Bledsoe, I’m putting you on speaker. I’ve got Robby here, too, and Roxxann Dixon, an investigator I’m working with.” She pressed a button on her phone then held it out. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Bledsoe said, his voice filtered and tinny. “Now what the hell’s going on?”

“Start driving toward Jonathan’s school. Lincoln Intermediate, you know where it is?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Just get in the car and I’ll explain.”

The crank of an engine turning over came through the speaker. “Already in the car, on my way.”

Robby ended his call and stepped closer to Vail and Dixon.

“I just got a text from a serial killer we’ve been tracking here in Napa.” She played with the device’s joystick and brought up the message. “He said, and I’m quoting, ‘I’m watching a very interesting young man. Reminds me of a young Karen Vail. He’s on his way to school right now. Lincoln Intermediate is a lot nicer than the school I went to, which was a real shit hole. I’ll be sure to say hi to Jonathan for you. Hope you enjoyed your little nap. A nap in Napa. LOL.’”

Dixon and Robby exchanged an uneasy glance. “Did you call Jonathan?” Robby asked.

“Went right to voicemail. He turns his phone off because the school confiscates it if it so much as vibrates.”

“Well that worked out great,” Bledsoe said. “Smart rule.”

“I’ll call the school,” Robby said, flipping open his phone. “Have them go into lockdown.”

“They can’t go into lockdown before school starts,” she said. Into her phone: “Bledsoe, you’ve gotta find him—”

“I’ll find him, Karen. I’ll be there in ten. I’ve got it handled, okay?”

No, not okay. That’s not quick enough. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.” She hung up, then leaned back against the wall and sank down to the floor.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Robby’s cell phone was clasped in his left hand as he knelt in front of Vail. He lifted her chin with a finger. “Karen, look at me.” He waited until her eyes met his. “It’s going to be okay. Bledsoe knows what he’s doing.”

She took a deep, uneven breath. Rage was building beneath the surface. Anger at having been so close to this killer, at having him over her shoulder—he touched her—and now, several hours later, he was within striking distance of her son.

He could’ve killed me, but he didn’t. Now he’s flown across the country. Why? Control. Power. That’s an awful lot of effort to go through to show her he’s running the show. Unless he intends to kill Jonathan.

She pulled herself to her feet, shook off Robby’s attempt to help her.

“Karen,” Dixon said. “There’s nothing you can do but sit and wait. Let’s go down the hall, get a cup of coffee.”

Vail ground her molars. She knew Dixon was trying to help, to help her pass the time until Bledsoe called with news. Of what? That Jonathan was safe? Or—

She pulled her gun and swung her arm, backhanding the window in the door to her right. The glass shattered with a crisp, jolting crash.

“Jesus, Karen.” Dixon grabbed her hand and forced the Glock toward the floor. “Calm the fuck down, will you?”

Vail yanked her hand free. “Goddamn bastard. No one threatens my son!”

Robby held up a hand. “Karen, look at me. Karen—” He waited while she focused on his face. “Put your weapon away.”

Vail ripped open her fanny pack and shoved the Glock inside. “I swear, I’m gonna kill this guy. If he touches Jonathan, I will castrate the fucker.”

“I hear you,” Robby said.

“Then I’m going to put a bullet in his deranged brain.”

Robby drew her close and enveloped her in his large torso.

“After he begs for his life,” she mumbled into his chest.

Robby stroked her hair. “That’s only if I don’t get to him first. I won’t be so nice about it.”

Lugo and Brix were walking down the hall toward them. Brix said, “We heard a window—” His eyes followed the door down to the floor, where shards of glass had landed. “What the hell happened?”

“Bats,” Dixon said.

Brix looked at her, then at Robby. “Bats?”

“Bats. Their sonar got fucked up.”

Brix took a step to his left, saw Vail huddled in Robby’s arms. “What’s going on?”

“UNSUB says he’s in Virginia,” Dixon said. “He texted Karen. He’s at her son’s school.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I need to go,” Vail said. She craned her neck up toward Robby. “When’s the next flight?”

“There’s a six-twenty-five out of SFO,” Lugo said.

Robby shook his head. “Even if you left now, you probably wouldn’t make the flight. Besides, it won’t even get there till almost six, and that’s if there are no delays. Then you have to get out of Dulles in rush hour.”

“I don’t care. I need to do something—”

“You called Bledsoe. He’ll handle it—if there’s even something to handle.”

Vail’s BlackBerry rang. She shoved Robby aside and fumbled the phone from her belt. Bledsoe’s number. “Yeah.”

“I’m on-site. Everything looks okay. I’ve got six officers en route, should be here any minute. We’ll comb the place, make sure everything’s cool. Then I’m gonna put someone on Jonathan, shadow him till you catch this guy. Good?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “Good. Thanks, Bledsoe. You’re the best.”

TWENTY-NINE

Dixon and Vail sat in the break room around the small round table, on formed, yellow plastic chairs. D Vail clutched a cup of hot tea.

Robby walked in and took a seat. He placed a hand atop Vail’s. “I also asked Lugo to do a search for flights out of SFO that’d arrive in the DC metro area by morning. Just to see if it’s even possible. Virgin has one, a 9:35 p.m. departure, arrives Dulles 5:30 a.m. I mapped out the timeline and it works out.”

Vail bowed her head. “So he could be there.”

“Yeah,” Robby said. “If not him, an accomplice. Impossible to say.”

“Call Virgin. Find out if they had anyone on that flight who looked suspicious.”

Robby tilted his head. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Just get a passenger manifest and we’ll check ’em all out ourselves. And see if they’ve got any videotape of the terminal that we can examine.”

“Already done. Lugo’s calling the airline. And he’s requesting video from SFO’s security cameras, in case one of them caught the offender.” Robby fought off a yawn. “Before it records over.”

Dixon flipped her notepad to a clean page and clicked her pen. “Okay. Let’s take a step back and look at this. You two have a personal stake here. But we can’t let our feelings cloud our thoughts, affect our opinions.”

Vail warmed her hands on the sides of the mug. “He let me live, then he went after my son. All the way across the country?”

“A lot of effort just to scare you,” Dixon said. “Killing you would’ve accomplished the same thing if he was after control, to show his superiority.”

Vail’s phone buzzed, followed a second later by Dixon’s. Vail figured it was regarding the same issue. They both answered simultaneously.

At the other end of Vail’s call was Bledsoe. “I just wanted you to know I saw Jonathan and he’s fine. He’s in the classroom. School just started and I’ve got them in lockdown. There’s an officer posted outside and he’ll be Jonathan’s shadow until we put this scumbag away. Okay? You can stop stressing.”

“Why do you think I was stressing?”

“You don’t really want an answer to that, do you?”

“No. And—Bledsoe . . . thanks. Unfortunately I don’t have much info on this killer.” She told him what she knew, then said, “I assume you’ll want the unit’s help on this. If the offender’s now in your neck of the woods, you should pick up the investigation. Bring in Rooney and Del Monaco.”

“How about we just leave it at Rooney?”

Vail chuckled. “Do me a favor and touch base with Gifford, let him know what’s going on, okay?” Vail thanked him again, then hung up.

“I assume he found Jonathan,” Robby said.

“He’s fine. They’re locked down. Bledsoe posted a cop.”

Robby reached across the table and took her hand. “You okay?”

“Better. But I won’t be ‘okay’ till we catch this bastard.” She nodded at Dixon. “What was your call about?”

“Gordon and Mann are on their way in with a person of interest. They ran Fuller’s LUDs and cell records. One number in particular kept coming up, and the two of them had some long conversations the morning of the fire. Number belongs to Walton Silva, a buddy of Fuller’s. They went to his place with the K9 unit and got a hit outside an old cottage in the back.

“So they requested a warrant, and in the meantime they woke him up, gave him the bad news about Scott, and asked him to come down to the station to help us out. Once he was on county premises, they took his phone—gave him some bullshit story about new county guidelines because some workers in the building have pacemakers—and then executed the warrant on his wife. Searched the cottage and found chemical residue that looked and smelled like what was used around the building.”

“Until the lab can make a definitive match,” Vail said, “we don’t have much.”

“We can sweat him,” Robby said.

Dixon flipped her notepad closed. “That’s the plan. But there’s a little twist.” She looked at them. “Good, you’re sitting. There were also calls to another number on Fuller’s cell logs. And on Silva’s. Right after Fuller talked to Silva, Silva called this other number. Every time. Care to guess who the number belongs to?”

Vail shrugged.

Dixon rose from her chair. “I’ll let it be a surprise. C’mon, let’s go. You’re gonna want to see this.”

THIRTY

Vail and Robby made their way through the maze of corridors and into the task force conference room where Brix sat, waiting. On the wall-mounted television screen was the image of a man, shown from an angle above eye level.

Brix motioned to the monitor. “Meet Walton Silva. A thirty-one-year-old investment banker with Rutledge Warren Stone. He’s a newbie in the firm.”

“Does he know why he’s here?” Dixon asked.

“I told him we needed help finding the guy who killed Scott Fuller, that we’re all pretty shaken up about it, and that Sheriff Owens was on our backs to solve it quickly.”

Dixon folded her arms. “Good.”

“Mind if I do this with Roxxann?” Vail asked. “One of the things we do in the profiling unit is teach interview techniques.”

Brix’s jaw moved from side to side. He was considering the request. “Roxx, you’re lead investigator. Your call.”

Dixon pulled her attention from the television monitor. “We work well together.”

“What’s your plan?” Brix asked.

Vail tilted her head. “We’ll need a printout of Fuller’s mobile calls.”

Brix reached over to the table and grabbed a manila folder. “It’s all in here.”

Vail snuck a look inside, then nodded. “Good. You got Silva’s cell?”

Brix dug it out of his pocket. Vail slipped it into hers.

“I think we should keep it cordial for as long as possible,” Vail said.

“Brix, when you see me pull out my BlackBerry, give me a minute, then come in and whisper in my ear. Nothing funny or cute.”

A smile thinned Brix’s lips, then he nodded knowingly. “I like that.”

“I thought you might.” Vail glanced over at Silva, then turned to Dixon. “Let’s do this.”

Moments later, after a brief strategy session in the hall, Vail and Dixon entered Interview Room 2, a small, six-by-eight room containing a square table topped with the same taupe and gray faux marble found in the conference room. Two black chairs. And that was it.

The size of the room injected Vail with an instant dose of claustrophobia. Her eyes did a quick once-over of the space, her mind measuring it and adding it up and knowing it was small, but willing her brain to think it was plenty big, with enough air. She stood beside the door, ready to make a quick exit if the need arose. I can do this. No big deal.

As Vail struggled with her unfounded anxieties, she looked over at Walton Silva, who was occupying one of the two seats in the room. Silva wore well-tailored sweats that probably never saw the inside of a gym.

Dixon introduced herself, then nodded at Vail and said simply, “This is my partner. Can we get you anything to drink?”

“Any reason this had to be done now?” Silva made no attempt to stop his yawn. “It’s not even light out yet.”

Dixon sat down opposite Silva. “The sheriff is really upset about his stepson. He’s busting our butts. He’s called everyone in. We don’t want to let him down. And we’re hoping you can help us.”

Silva yawned again. “I’ll help you anyway I can. But what can I do?”

“We need to know about Scott. We knew him around the station, but friends always know us better than our coworkers.”

Silva shrugged.

“You’re with Rutledge Warren Stone, right?”

“I started there about a year ago.”

“How’d you do when the market tanked?”

“Like everyone else who had money in the market, I guess. I may be an investment banker, but I didn’t have a crystal ball. I took a bath.” His gaze drifted to Vail, who was standing still and quiet, across the room and to Dixon’s right, Vail’s shoulder beside the door. Back to Dixon: “But what’s that got to do with Scott?”

“How close were the two of you?”

Silva lifted a shoulder. “We went to school together, hung out, that sort of thing. We kind of lost touch when I left for college. But as soon as I moved back to town, we started talking again.”

“Scott was a good guy, wasn’t he?”

Silva sucked his left cheek, paused a moment, then said, “Yeah.”

“Did you two see a lot of one another?”

“About once or twice a month. We’d grab a beer when he got off shift. But we weren’t as close as we were before I left.”

“So you weren’t that close.”

“Nah, not like we were.”

“Let me show you something, Walton. It’s something Lieutenant Brix gave me a few minutes ago, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Maybe you can help me understand it.”

“Sure.”

Dixon splayed open the manila folder Brix had given them, then turned it so Silva could see it. “These are phone logs for Scott’s cell phone. Can you tell me if you recognize any numbers on it?”

Silva pulled the sheets closer and looked them over. His eyes seemed to hover a bit, then he moved on down the long list. “No, nothing that looks familiar.”

Vail was moving now, catching Dixon’s attention. Dixon glanced over her right shoulder at Vail as Vail punched in a number on her BlackBerry. Dixon turned back to Silva.

“You sure about that?”

Silva shrugged again. “Yeah.” He looked at Vail and said, “I thought you’re not supposed to use cell phones in this building.”

Before Vail could answer, a musical ring tone sounded: the unmistakable strains of “Stairway to Heaven.” Silva’s eyes widened. Vail produced a thin-form Sanyo from her front pocket and held it up. A small red LED flashed on the top of the device.

Silva rose from his seat. “Hey, that’s my phone—”

“Is it?” Vail pressed a button on her BlackBerry and seconds later the Sanyo went quiet. “See, I just dialed 555-4981—”

“Okay,” Silva said. “I get what you’re doing.”

Dixon hiked her brow. “Really. What were we doing?”

Silva sat down slowly. “She—well, she called my number.”

“That’s funny,” Dixon said. She slid the papers in front of her and placed an index finger in a specific spot. “That number, 555-4981, appears on Scott’s phone logs. Every day, in fact.”

“Yeah, so what?”

Dixon leaned forward on her forearms. “Well, you looked at this phone log not a minute ago and said you didn’t recognize any of the numbers. And a minute before that, you said you weren’t that close with Scott anymore, yet according to these logs, you talked to him pretty regularly.”

“Obviously, I misspoke. It’s really early. It’s not even—”

“Not even light out, yeah, you told us.”

Come on, Brix, Vail thought. What’d you do, fall asleep out there? Then the door opened. Finally. Vail leaned over and listened while Brix spoke softly into her ear. She nodded, made a point of raising her eyebrows, then thanked Brix. She glanced at Silva, just enough to get his blood pressure moving north, then stepped toward Dixon and whispered something to her. Dixon, too, nodded.

Silva looked from Dixon to Vail before settling back on Dixon. “Am I in some kind of trouble? Do I need a lawyer?”

“Nah,” Dixon said with a wave of her hand. “We’re just looking for answers and we could use all the help we can get. We like it when things fit together, and some things just aren’t fitting together.” Dixon let her fingers rest on Silva’s forearm. His gaze moved down to her hand. “Walton, there’s something else you can help us with. There was some scorched dirt mixed with a chemical residue near the cottage behind your house. We brought it to the lab for analysis and found that it contains a very specific substance called Class A foam.”

“Thanks for the chemistry lesson,” Silva said. “Can I go now? I’m really tired and I’ve got a full day ahead of me.”

Cool under pressure. Interesting. But he realizes we’re heading in a direction he doesn’t want to go. “Yeah,” Vail said, “I think you can go.” Not just yet, however . . .

Dixon tightened her hand on Silva’s forearm in case he was going to make a move to get up. “I’ve just got a couple more questions, if you don’t mind.”

Silva tilted his head in annoyance. “What?”

“Well, here’s that thing I mentioned earlier, the thing I said you could help us with. That same Class A foam found around your cottage is only used in fire extinguishers. And, see, manufactures put specific markers in their branded chemicals so they can be forensically distinguished among one another. And that exact foam was the one found at the arson scene where a woman was nearly burned alive.”

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“I’m sorry,” Dixon said, sitting back. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. What did you think I was implying?”

Silva looked from Dixon to Vail. “I think it’s time for me to call my lawyer.”

“Did you do something wrong, Walton? Do you need an attorney?”

“You tell me.”

Dixon turned to Vail. “Do you think he needs an attorney?”

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.”

Silva was already busy writing. Dixon walked out, following Vail into the conference room.

“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.”