Crush

“So why didn’t he come back?”

Dixon surveyed the room. “Too bad the maid cleaned the room.”

Vail nodded. She knew what Dixon was getting at: If there had been a struggle, a cop would immediately recognize the telltale signs, but to a cleaner it might look like a messy room . . . or the aftermath of a rough morning of sex. Regardless, what it looked like then—along with whatever clues there might have been—was now lost as far as the information it might have yielded.

“I’ll try to locate the owners, see if we can question the maid. For what it’s worth. Who knows, if it was obvious, things knocked over, she may remember.”

“Fine, do it.” Vail got down on all fours and examined the carpet, looking for trace blood. After making a circuit of the room and finding nothing suspicious, she moved into the bathroom to examine the sink and shower drains.

Dixon hung up and joined Vail in the bathroom. “She’s going to have the maid call me.” She crouched beside Vail. “I’m gonna call Matt Aaron, get a CSI in here to find what he can. If there’s latent blood or prints, he’ll find it. Other than maybe vacuuming, making the bed and running a sponge over the countertops, I don’t think the cleaners do a whole lot till you check out.” She tapped Vail on her knee. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here before we contaminate the scene more than we already have.”

Vail followed Dixon out of the room—took one last look back—then pulled the door closed.

SIXTY-TWO

Outside, Dixon called Brix and asked him to have someone at the Sheriff’s Department issue a BOLO for Robby’s car. They weren’t sure of the license plate, so Vail gave him the name of the rental company and their arrival date. A deputy would chase down the registration. Brix, being briefed on what was going down, also issued a countywide alert to law enforcement officers, across all local jurisdictions, that Detective Robby Hernandez was to be considered missing. It was far short of the time frame whereby they would normally issue such an order, but Brix said he had no problem bending the rules for another cop, especially one he’d come to like.

Before leaving the bed-and-breakfast, Vail and Dixon knocked on the doors of the other rooms, mindful that some of the guests might still be out on the town, at a late supper. Napa largely shut down in the evening, apart from the restaurant scene, and people often ate leisurely dinners that lasted longer than usual.

Vail and Dixon spoke with couples in four of the eight other rooms. No one was around during the time frame Vail estimated Robby might have left the room. No one saw or heard anything unusual. In short, no one had anything of value to offer.

They left Dixon’s card stuck in the doors of the rooms that did not answer their knock, with a note to call as soon as they returned. With that, they got back in the car and headed for the emergency room.

THEY ARRIVED at the Napa Valley Medical Center and entered the emergency room through the ambulance bay. As they passed the nurses’ station, where a woman was talking quickly into a corded red phone, Vail heard the beeps of heart monitors, medical orders and countertalk between doctors and nurses, and the firing of a portable x-ray unit. The composite sounds reminded her of Jonathan’s recent stay at Fairfax Hospital. They weren’t fond memories.

A gurney wheeled by in front of them, causing them to pull up and wait while the staff descended on the patient.

It didn’t take long to find the area where John Mayfield was being treated. Gray and blue curtains were drawn, but three Napa County deputy sheriffs, dressed in black jackets and pants, stood a few feet back from the foot of the gurney. Vail and Dixon badged the three men, then stepped around the curtain. Another two deputies were inside, beside the doctor and nurse, who were dressed in powder blue scrubs. A portable x-ray tube stood off to the side. A stocky physician, presumably the radiologist, was holding up an x-ray to the fluorescent lighting.

“I’ll give this a better read on the lightbox, but it’s pretty clear.” He pointed with an index finger; his colleague, a slender physician, looked on. “See? Here, and here.”

“Set it and release,” the thin doctor said.

The radiologist lowered the film. “That’ll do it.” He looked down at his patient. “Someone did a number on your elbow and knee, Mr. Mayfield.”

“That someone is me,” Dixon said. She stood there, thumbs hooked through her belt loops. Daring anyone to comment.

Everyone in the room turned to face her. No one spoke.

The doctor turned back to his patient. “We’ll get you stabilized, but you’re going to need an orthopedic consult. My best guess is surgery will be required to reduce that tib-fib fracture and repair the torn ligaments, but that’ll have to wait till the swelling’s down. It’s possible, even with surgery, that you’ll have some reduced mobility.”

“Get the violins,” Vail said.

All heads once again turned in their direction.

“I gotta listen to this bullshit?” Mayfield asked.

“Excuse me,” the radiologist said. “You mind waiting out—”

“No,” Vail said, “excuse us. Your patient is a serial killer who’s brutally murdered several innocent people. Still concerned about the reduced mobility of his left arm?”

The doctor pulled his eyes from Vail, took a noticeable step back from Mayfield, and glanced at his colleague. “Well, as I said, I’m going to give these a closer look on the . . . on the lightbox.” He turned and pushed past the nurse and deputies and left the curtained room.

“Shall I call Dr. Feliciano?” the nurse asked.

The remaining physician took a step back himself. His eyes found the handcuffs that were fastened to the gurney. “Yes . . . Dr. Feliciano. Let’s get Mr. Mayfield casted and on his feet. So to speak.”

TWO HOURS LATER, Dr. Feliciano had finished casting both limbs—without incident, and, at his patient’s insistence, without pain killers. Shortly thereafter, Mayfield received an expedited release and was cleared for transport to the Napa jail.

Earlier, while Mayfield was being attended to by Dr. Feliciano, Dixon fielded calls from the maid for the Heartland bed-and-breakfast. She did not recall anything unusually out of place in Vail’s room, but she couldn’t be sure because she cleans four different B&Bs per day, and they all tended to run together. There was one that was in significant disarray, but she thought it was down the road from Heartland. Dixon tried to get her to commit, but the woman could not swear the tossed room was Vail’s.

Dixon also took three calls from other guests at the bed-and-breakfast. No one recalled anything out of the ordinary.

Vail checked with the hospital nurses to make sure a man matching Robby’s description hadn’t been brought in for emergency treatment. He had not been. They called over to Queen of the Valley Medical Center and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Level II trauma centers, which is where Robby would’ve been airlifted had there been a major accident. They, too, had not treated or admitted anyone resembling Robby. The nighttime administrator made a call, herself, to other area hospitals that might have received him. But she came up empty.

As Vail and Dixon drove to the Napa County Department of Corrections, Vail was quiet, replaying in her mind the last conversations she’d had with Robby. Nothing stood out. She’d been preoccupied with the Crush Killer case. He had been entertaining himself, going here and there . . . and she’d been too busy to really listen to what he was saying in terms of what he’d seen and where he had been. Other than visiting the castle, she couldn’t even remember if he’d told her anything about specific places he had visited.

Dixon must have sensed her mental somersaulting, because she reached over and nudged Vail in the shoulder.

“Hey.”

Vail pulled her numbed gaze from the window and turned to face Dixon.

“I’m sure he’s fine. Maybe he just had something to deal with. You said he knew some people out here, right? Maybe he went over there to help them.”

Vail pulled her BlackBerry and called Bledsoe.