“But it’s extremely expensive to deploy these CT machines. You’d really need a hospital nearby to make it work. But Guevara’s already found a way around it. That liquid cocaine, it’s got what’s known as X-ray attenuation. The way he explained it to me is that when a case of wine contains identical liquid contents, the bottles have the same mean attenuation when scanned with the CT equipment. If the attenuation readings of some bottles differed from the others, that’d set off a red flag. Filling the bottles with liquid cocaine gets around that.”
“So he’s a smart shit,” DeSantos said.
“All these cartels are. You’d be surprised at the stuff they come up with. Baseball hats made of cocaine, chocolate bars, decorative globes, jet engine turbine gears—anything that can be innocently imported is a potential gold mine for them. It’s only limited by their creativity.”
“Then there are the labels,” Sebastian said.
“Labels?” Vail asked. “How can there be drugs in the label of a wine bottle?”
A thin smile crept across Sebastian’s face. “The adhesive that holds the label on the bottle is actually black tar heroin. Very sticky and an ideal glue. The label itself is made of LSD blotter paper. It’s so fucking potent they have to cover it with a plastic film so they don’t get it on their hands. And because it’s so potent, one wine label can be sliced into multiple small pieces that are placed on the tongue. It dissolves, giving the high. Again, well thought out. Maximum yield.”
Vail ruminated on that for a moment, then jumped from her seat. Sebastian flinched. “Sorry,” Vail said. “Would you excuse me for a few minutes? I’ve gotta make a call.”
DeSantos leaned back and looked at her over the top of his tiny glasses. His face said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
But Vail had an idea by the tail—and she needed to firm up her grasp before it had a chance to escape.
51
Vail pushed through the door while simultaneously pulling out her BlackBerry. Dialed Roxxann Dixon.
“I’ve got something, Roxx. You in a place you can talk?”
“I’m sitting in the conference room with the task force.”
“Perfect. Call me back so you can put me on speaker.”
Seconds later, her phone buzzed. “Okay,” Vail said. “I think I’ve put a lot of this shit together. All these parts that were dangling out there, things I couldn’t add up because they didn’t seem to make sense. I think I’ve got it. Or most of it.”
“Go on,” Brix said.
“All of Mayfield’s murders, I had such a hard time profiling him, because the more information we got the less sense it all made to me. Because male serial killers don’t kill for profit. Right?”
“That’s what you kept saying,” Dixon said.
“One thing I’ve learned is there are exceptions to most of what we think is behavioral fact. There are general guidelines and tenets, but people are different. Circumstances are different. And when two converging powers find one another, they discover they have desires and needs that come together in a symbiotic relationship. That’s what we’re talking about here. Symbiosis.”
“Karen,” Austin Mann said, “you’ve lost me.”
“John Mayfield killed because it filled a psychosexual need. He marked the bodies the way he did, severing the breasts, slicing the wrists, yanking off the toenail. He did those things for reasons he wasn’t consciously aware of. He did them because they comforted him. And that made sense to me. It fit our paradigms of serial killer behaviors. But then he also did things that didn’t make sense, that didn’t add up. It was almost like he was a schizophrenic killer. The male victim, for one. That didn’t fit.”
“And you’ve figured it out,” Gordon said.
“I think so.” Vail thought another moment, then continued. “It seemed at times like he was killing for a profit motive, while at other times the victims appeared to be unrelated. So here’s what I think was going on. John Mayfield was a bona fide serial killer, with classic childhood pathologies that shaped him into what he became: someone who was selecting victims that reminded him of his mother. But there was more to this than just the classic serial killer behavioral patterns. He was working with Cesar Guevara. This is where the symbiosis comes into play.
“Mayfield was a psychopath, but the reason why some of his victims didn’t match his ritual was because he was killing vics chosen for him, by Guevara. And they used his behavioral murder patterns as a cover to divert attention from the Guevara-ordered killings, so no one would suspect they were contract kills. And we fell into that trap.”
“But what’s Guevara’s role?” Gordon asked. “Why did he choose these particular victims?”
“Guevara’s a lieutenant with the Cortez drug cartel. They smuggle liquid cocaine in wine bottles all over the country. Heroin and LSD in the labels. And the synthetic corks—they have ultra high potency, very expensive Fentanyl hidden within them.”
“That’s why,” Dixon said, “Superior almost exclusively uses synthetic corks—because they can hollow them out and fill the inside with drugs.”
“Right. And they have the license to do all this because of their company, Superior Mobile Bottling. Key to Superior being able to do its thing is the bottling contracts it has.”
“Because it’s a front,” Brix said.
“And because the Georges Valley AVA board is unique in that it negotiates bulk contracts for its member wineries. If Superior gets that contract, they bottle, label, and ship a shitload of cases of wine. That gives them the cover, should DEA or ATF or CBP question it, to be handling a large volume of wine shipments.”
“That’s goddamn ingenious,” Brix said.
“Yes.” Vail started walking down the hallway toward the building’s entrance. “So look at our vics. Victoria Cameron, Maryanne Bernal, and Isaac Walker were AVA board members, or affiliated with board members who were decision makers on this bottling contract. And Victoria and Isaac, through his partner Todd Nicholson, were opposed to Superior’s contract renewal. Bang, they turn up dead.”
Vail flashed on something Robby had said to her: that if she dug some more, she’d find something that provided connections she wasn’t expecting. It seemed like a generic pep talk at the time, but now in the context of all she had learned, he was trying to key her in on important aspects to her case.
“But Ian Wirth wasn’t killed,” Dixon said.
“Wasn’t killed yet,” Vail corrected. “Remember, we found Ian Wirth’s home address in Guevara’s house. Wirth was going to be Mayfield’s next victim.”
“Hang on a minute,” Mann said. “You’re saying John Mayfield was a contract killer.”
Vail pushed through the doors that led into the parking lot. She squinted against the bright sun, which was analogous to what she was feeling: that she was suddenly enlightened as to what this case was all about. “A contract serial killer. First of its kind, far as I know.”
“That explains Ray’s state of mind,” Dixon said. “He seemed so tightly wound at times. We took it as the same stress we were all feeling. But he’d internalized it. He took each of those murders hard because he felt partially responsible.”
“Regardless of the circumstances surrounding his wife and son, if Ray was aiding and abetting John Mayfield in any manner, that wouldn’t be far from the truth.”
“That also explains why Ray felt so strongly that Miguel Ortiz was not our guy,” Brix said, referring to an illegal vineyard worker who was, for a brief time, suspected of being the Crush Killer. “Because of Merilynn’s description, he knew it was a physically large Caucasian male, not a Hispanic.”
“But what about the other vics?” Mann said. “Ursula Robbins, Dawn Zackery, Betsy Ivers. And Scott Fuller.”
“Ivers was one of Mayfield’s first kills in the region.” Ivers’s body was found in 1998 at Battery Spencer, near Golden Gate Bridge. “No relation to Superior or the bottling contract. Just the victim of a serial killer. Zackery was
