which is killing his victim. In other words, it doesn’t result in the victim’s death, and it doesn’t help him avoid being caught. So it really has no relevance to anything—except that it’s deeply significant, and symbolic, for the killer. It feeds a deep-seated psychosexual need.”
She glanced over at Fuller, whose mouth was twisted and his gaze elsewhere—in his binder, to be exact.
“What I can tell you,” Vail said, “is that it’s my strong opinion this UNSUB has killed before.”
“How do you get that?” Dixon asked.
“Forget, for a moment, the other body we unearthed. If we just look at the wine cave kill, there were no hesitation marks with the blade. He strangled the vic, then sliced her wrists to allow the blood to drain. He then severed the breasts and removed the toenail. Very organized, efficient approach.” Vail curled some red hair behind her ear. “Something I think we all need to consider is that the key to this case could be access.”
“Access?” Brix asked.
“When you’re dealing with a murdered prostitute or druggie, you’re generally talking about publicly accessible places. But this is a cave, a wine cave that costs money—a lot of money—to get into. So we can narrow our offender pool of suspects by looking at who has access to the cave. This is an isolated location with a limited list of potential suspects.
“What’s more, statistically speaking, we can eliminate women, because with extremely rare exceptions, they’re not serial killers.” She paused a moment to gather herself; painful memories bubbled to the surface, but she forced them down. “And our killer is probably in his twenties or early thirties. Again, that’s going with percentages.” Vail looked around. She had everyone’s attention. “Another way we can narrow the offender’s age range is to assume this offender is physically fit. He’s able to efficiently subdue his victim, without her making much, if any, noise. And then crush her windpipe. So, again, we’re looking at a younger person.”
“Ray,” Brix said to Sergeant Lugo, “get with the Silver Ridge admin people and get their guest list. The people who go on those tours, whether it’s daytime or nighttime, pay a fair amount, so they’ll have used credit cards. Roxxi, make sure Ray has the search warrant he’ll need for that list. And their employee roster, past and present. Then narrow it down using Vail’s parameters.”
They both nodded. Brix made a note of their assignments on the whiteboard. “And, as Incident Commander, I’m naming you lead investigator. That good with you?”
Dixon looked up, appearing both surprised and pleased. “Yeah, I’m good with that.”
Fuller leaned back in his seat, his mouth making contorting movements. Vail didn’t think he was particularly thrilled with Dixon’s assignment.
Brix wrote it on the board.
“Something else to keep in mind,” Vail said. She waited a beat for Brix to turn around. “It’s likely the offender knows the cave and has been there before.”
“How can you make that assumption?” Fuller asked.
“It’s a much higher risk for him to take a victim somewhere without knowing what—or who—he’s going to find there. It’s reasonable to assume, for now, that he had intel on the location, so that suggests some connection to the winery. If he knew anything about that place, he knew they conducted nighttime wine cave tours. He wanted that body found, he wanted maximum impact and shock when that tour came through. That suggests he was familiar with the winery. He’d either been there before or worked there in some capacity. So first order of business would be to look at the workers they have on staff.”
Lugo spoke up. “That’s a minefield if we go down that road.”
“How so?”
“Migrant workers make up a significant percentage of the Napa Valley work force—they tend the vineyards, pick the grapes. A lot of them are illegal, and they move around. And they’re undocumented.”
“That makes our job a bit harder,” Vail said. They mulled Lugo’s comment a moment before she continued. “There is one caveat I should point out.”
“‘Caveat’? As in a ‘save my ass’ exception?” Fuller asked with a chuckle.
“This isn’t about my ass and it’s not about me,” Vail said. “I’m just telling you there’s a potential exception to consider. Nothing is foolproof, especially behavioral analysis.” She stared down Fuller, then continued. “So as I was saying. There are some killers who engage in high-risk kills because it’s all about the thrills. So they partake in high-risk behavior—which goes against what I just said about him having prior knowledge, or intel, about the cave.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier,” Brix said.
Vail nodded in conciliation. “One thing that may help is that serial killers don’t wake up one day and start killing. They learn, through trial and error, what works and what doesn’t. What feeds their inner fantasies best. They experiment, learn how to stalk, how to kill. During this time, the killer is developing his interest in killing.”
“How does this help us?” Dixon asked.
“His early killing career will likely comprise failures, victims that fought back and required either more force or greater resourcefulness on his part to be successful. So his early murders will be unsolved crimes; we can look for unsolved murders in the region. But they’ll be tough to link to our UNSUB because his MO won’t look like it does now, because he wasn’t the same killer he eventually became. He may even move to another community, once he’s learned what he needs to learn to kill efficiently. We’d need to know particulars of the case, especially behaviors he engaged in with the body. Those behaviors, the ritual behaviors I mentioned a few minutes ago, don’t change whether it’s his first kill or, God forbid, his fiftieth.”
“So are you saying we expand our search?” Brix asked.
“We should contact all local police and sheriff departments within a reasonable radius to find out what unsolved female murders they’ve had in, say, the past twenty years, with ritual behaviors like the ones we’ve found here. The severed breasts, the toenail, and the slicing of the wrists.”
“Only female?”
“As I said, almost every serial killer is male,” Vail said. “Most victims are female. But not always. Some serial killers, if they’re gay, will kill other males. And some will kill males because they’re in the house and they’re obstacles to getting to the chosen prize. So they blitz-kill the male, get him out of the way, then have their way with the woman.”
“I think we’re gonna need some help if we’re expanding our potential suspect pool,” Lugo said.
“We can use the resources of the Bureau to help in this search. It’s not a panacea, but it’ll give us a good head start. It’s called VICAP, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.”
“Robert Ressler,” Fuller said. “He started VICAP.”
“Correct,” Vail said. “Anyone here know what VICAP is?”
Only Fuller and Brix raised their hands.
“It’s a central databank maintained by the FBI. Police departments send in reports on crimes in their jurisdictions, and we can sort and search the data based on unique qualifiers. So we can plug in certain parameters involving a crime and see if the same characteristics have been found in other murders in other states. Like the toenail. That’s an unusual characteristic of this killer. If we also find it in the VICAP database regarding a case down in Los Angeles, we might be able to link that murder with the ones up here.”
“Great,” Brix said. “You’ll take care of that?”
“Today. But understand its limitations. The database is only as good as the info it gets from PDs across the country. If they don’t take the time to fill out the form and submit it to us, VICAP will never know about it.”
“We’ll take what we can get,” Brix said. He turned to the board and wrote “VICAP: Vail.” Over his shoulder, while writing, he said, “If we start to zero in on a suspect or suspects and we need help, we can tap the NSIB— that’s Napa Special Investigations Bureau,” he said to Vail. “They’ll help us out with surveillance. They’re part of the standing task force, and they’ll do their part when needed.”
“Something else, before I forget.” Vail looked at the photo of the victim on the screen. “Can you advance it to the autopsy photos? A close-up of the neck.”
Fuller pressed the remote and found the picture Vail wanted.
“There. See the marks on the neck? Your coroner, Abbott, she said the UNSUB used an object, like his forearm, across the neck to choke the victim. Sergeant,” Vail said to Fuller, “can you stand for a minute?”
Fuller smiled sheepishly, slid back his chair, then rose. Vail led him over to the nearby wall and spoke to
