“A limo. Very nice.” Vail let her eyes demonstrably roam the interior of his home. “Guess the mobile bottling business pays well.”
“Good evening, Agent Vail. We’re done here.” He moved back from the door. And it slammed closed in their faces.
26
Vail pushed her head back into her severely reclined seat. They were parked a block and a half away, across the street in a neighbor’s driveway. “That looks like a Hummer limo. What do you think?”
Dixon lifted her head and took a peek. “Yeah.”
“You think his bodyguards are going with them?”
Dixon kept her eyes forward, watching the lights of the vehicle move away from them. “They wouldn’t be very effective bodyguards if they didn’t . . . guard him. Would they?”
“Good point.” The lights faded and then disappeared. “Ready?”
“You sure you want to do this?”
Vail reached up and turned off the dome light. “Are you really asking me that question?” She opened the door and pulled herself off the reclined seat, then turned to Dixon. “Better move it onto the curb. In case the neighbor complains.”
Dixon propped up her seat, started the car, and moved it. Then she joined Vail as they made their way toward Cesar Guevara’s house.
“Karen, I’m gonna say it again. Because you’re not hearing me.”
“I heard you the last three times. Breaking and entering. Not like I’m a goddamn dimwit. I know what I’m doing. You wanna save your ass, stay back. Go take a drive. Pick me up in twenty.”
“You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Then stop reminding me what we’re doing is wrong. But I’m leaving, Roxx. And Robby could be in trouble. John Mayfield’s in a coma. Lugo’s dead. And the only person we know of who knows anything about anything is this asshole. And the goddamn judge won’t give us a warrant. Do you think we’ve got a choice?”
“There are always choices, Karen.”
Vail gave Dixon a hard look. But she kept moving, stepped over the low picket fence, and made her way to a dark side of the house, bordered by manzanita hedges. “If you’re with me, watch my back. And if you see any security cameras, let me know.”
“I didn’t see any when we were talking to him.”
“Me neither,” Vail said, keeping her back against the bushes and shuffling forward. “Doesn’t mean he hasn’t got any.”
“What about dogs? I didn’t hear or see any, but—”
“They’d be on us by now.”
Vail moved to the back of the house and pointed at security lights mounted above the large ivy-covered arbor. “Motion sensors. Follow me.” She made her way in a circuitous route that took them beyond the reach of the infrared lenses. Seconds later, they stepped up to the door without having tripped the sensors. “You don’t happen to have a lock picking kit with you.”
Dixon glared at her—a look Vail could make out as hostile even in the moonlight. “I don’t even own one, Karen.”
“Don’t look at me that way. I don’t own one, either.” Vail examined the glass panels that made up half the wood door. She did not want to enter forcefully, but she didn’t see a choice. She wrapped the bottom of her shirt around her right hand and tried the knob. Locked.
“You didn’t think he’d leave his house unlocked, did you?”
“I learned a long time ago to check.”
Dixon leaned back. “How many times have you done this?”
Vail looked over her shoulder to the left, then to the right. By landscape and architectural design, they were well blocked from any neighboring houses. With her hand still wrapped in her shirt, she thrust her fist forward, through the lowest glass square.
“Oh, Jesus,” Dixon said. Her eyes canted up, then left, right, and back to the house. No movement inside. “Can’t believe we’re doing this,” she whispered.
Vail stuck her left hand through the opening, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Then she wiped the inside knob with her shirt. “Okay. We’re in.”
“And now what?”
“Now we look around. Fast. In case we tripped some kind of silent alarm.”
Dixon closed her eyes. “Oh, that’d be fucking peachy.”
“C’mon,” Vail said, then moved forward. “No fingerprints, okay?” It was an obvious comment, but when you’re working fast and stressing over the fact you’re breaking and entering, it’s easy to reach and touch without thinking first about every action you take.
Had she known they were going to do this, she would have brought gloves. But crossing over the line was not something she planned on doing—ever. Yet in the here and now, it seemed like the best thing to do . . . certainly the desperate thing to do.
Most of the house was dark. A light was on by the entryway, where they’d been standing—legally—about an hour ago. “Look for an office of some kind. A place he’d keep papers, business stuff.”
“Wouldn’t that be at the warehouse?”
“Not necessarily. Depends on the nature of the documents. Does it have anything to do with Superior Mobile Bottling?”
“What exactly is ‘it’?”
Vail moved through the darkness. “Anything related to Robby, Lugo, or Mayfield.” She pointed Dixon toward a room off to her left while she went right. They worked slowly in the dark, until Vail found a flashlight in a drawer in the kitchen. She used it judiciously, holding two fingers across its lens to restrict the beam in case a neighbor could see in through a second- or third-story window.
She pulled her BlackBerry and glanced at the display. She figured they’d broken the seal to the backdoor two minutes ago. How long did that leave them before the police arrived? She had no idea—except that a typical response rate was around nine minutes. But there were so many variables in that figure it was nearly useless to her. Were cruisers nearby when the call came in? Were there private security guards employed by a neighborhood watch group? How far was the closest Police or Sheriff’s Department substation?
Dixon joined her in the hallway. “Nothing. How long do you want to keep pushing our luck?”
“Keep looking down here. I’m going up. You wanna get the hell out, I totally understand.”
Vail took her flashlight up the curving staircase to the second floor. Unfortunately Cesar Guevara lived quite well, and this home had three stories. She would have to move more quickly.
Master bedroom. Bathroom. Checked beneath the four-poster, shone her light behind cabinets, through closets. Guevara was a dapper dresser when he wasn’t working in the warehouse, with dark double-breasted suits that looked like designer cuts. Allen Edmonds and Bruno Magli shoeboxes lined the middle shelf in the cavernous walk-in closet.
This is where she would concentrate her efforts. She grabbed a new pair of black Gold Toe dress socks and slipped them on her hands. It made for awkward groping, but the trade-off was worth it.
She brushed aside his suits, then his shirts, pants . . . looking for a concealed wall safe. Pulled open the drawers of the built-in ebony cabinetry, felt around for a false bottom. Got down on all fours and crawled along the floor, her Gold Toe-clad fingertips probing for a break in the carpet, a concealed seam that might be an invitation to buried treasure. Nothing.
Checked the clock on her BlackBerry. They’d now been in the house nine minutes. At this point, with each passing second, the likelihood of a law enforcement response to their entry bordered on unacceptable risk.
As she started down the stairs, Dixon came running at her. “I got something—but we gotta get outta here. Now. Sonoma PD’s on its way—”
“How do you—”
