probably killed because of me, so to speak. We thought at the time that Mayfield was in Virginia. Killing Zackery was his way of sticking his finger in our eye. Saying, basically, ‘You dumb shits, I’m right here. And I’ve been here all along.’ For a narcissistic killer, which Mayfield was, that’s how he’d do it. Telling us wouldn’t have been as dramatic as leaving us a body. It was the ultimate insult, his way of showing his superiority.”
“And Ursula Robbins?” Gordon asked. “Cameron, Bernal, and Walker weren’t included in that PowerPoint file he sent us. But neither was Robbins, which suggests a connection to the other three.”
“Robbins was a Georges Valley winery exec,” Dixon said. “I think that if we were to dig some more, we may find that she was against the board approving Superior’s
“Very possible,” Vail said. “Or she was merely another woman who matched certain characteristics that a serial killer needed to fulfill his fantasies and psychopathic desires.” She ticked each name off her mental list. “And then there’s Fuller. I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure what happened with him. But I think he was collateral damage. He was following me, with the intent to scare me. Or worse.”
Vail didn’t want to be too harsh on their colleague. Even though she felt he truly meant to kill her, she kept the thought to herself. “But things got out of hand, and we had that car accident. John Mayfield was also following me that night. Why? Who knows. Maybe he followed me more often than we knew. Regardless, that night, he was there. He came up behind me, injected me with a sedative, and shot Fuller with my gun. Maybe he intended to make trouble for me, to throw me off my game. I don’t know.”
“Almost worked,” Brix said.
“People were really pissed at you over Scott’s murder.”
Brix said, “Let’s be glad cooler heads prevailed.”
“Cooler heads and forensics,” Dixon added.
Vail closed her eyes and aimed her face at the sun. “What’s Mayfield’s status?”
“No change. The doc said he’s not ready to be brought out of it.”
“There’s something else we can cross off our list,” Brix said. “How Mayfield got the BetaSomnol that he injected you with. We got the pest control company’s records, the one Mayfield worked for. He paid visits to the Napa Valley Medical Center five times in a four-month span. For ants.”
“Sounds like he got more than ants,” Vail said. “Any thoughts on how the arson figures into all this?”
Burt Gordon, the arson investigator for the Sheriff’s Department sitting on the task force, explained: “I think that’s exactly as we had it figured—that Tim Nance, Congressman Church’s district director, and Walton Silva conspired with Fuller to get you, Karen, off their backs. Permanently.”
“I don’t know if your Bureau buddies told you,” Brix said, “but the Feds found a bungled wire transfer this morning. They traced it to an account that appears to be controlled by Nance. They’re still wading through everything, trying to find other transactions, other accomplices. But he’s toast. So to speak.”
Vail opened her eyes and watched a black sedan pull into the parking lot. “So Nance was taking payments to influence the outcome of an issue due to be ruled on by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Trade Bureau. They were using Nance to buy government legislation regarding the minimum grape requirement for the Georges Valley AVA.”
“If Church became governor,” Dixon said, “Nance, Fuller, and Silva all stood to take major posts in the administration. And you, Karen, threatened the power and prestige that went along with that because you wanted to bring the Crush Killer case public. That would’ve dirtied Church’s congressional district and potentially damaged his chance at being elected governor.”
Brix asked, “What about Robby? How does he factor into all this?”
“He doesn’t,” Vail said. “Not directly. Remember Sebastian? Real name’s Antonio Sebastiani de Medina and he’s a DEA agent. Robby was running an undercover op with him and their target was the Cortez Mexican drug cartel. Cesar Guevara runs their front, Superior Mobile Bottling. So when Robby went dark, and we started looking for him and showing his photo around, I fucked things up big time. One of the people I showed Robby’s photo to was Guevara. Not only was there a connection between me and him—I think I told Guevara he was my friend and colleague—but the photo was one we’d taken in front of the FBI Academy sign.”
“So you blew his cover,” Mann said.
“I blew his cover. Yeah.” Merely saying it caused a stab of pain to Vail’s stomach. “Sebastian escaped. I’ve gotta go back and ask him how it went down, but I suddenly put everything together and wanted to let you know how it all fit.”
“Does he know Robby’s disposition?”
Vail watched an FBI police SUV circle the parking lot. “No.”
“Well, this all makes sense with what Matt Aaron just told us,” Dixon said. “Remember that cork I found at Superior? They finally got around to running it. On the surface, he said that it appeared to be a thermoplastic elastomer. But after swabbing it and putting it through the mass spectrometer, he picked up a trace of cocaine.”
“How much is a trace?” Vail asked.
Rustling of papers. “Here’s what Aaron wrote: ‘Looks like enough for identification. I got reproducible fragments at 303, 182, and 82, but below our quantitation limit.’”
“Did he happen to translate that into English?”
“Not enough to get a warrant, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Vail chuckled. “I don’t think a warrant’s going to be a problem, Roxx. I was wondering about the cork. Obviously it’s not one of the fake ones packed with Fentanyl.”
“I’ll make sure he slices it open and checks,” Dixon said. “But he said this kind of minute dusting could be from someone touching it who’d handled powdered cocaine. That said, the elastomer material can retain natural oils, and there weren’t any prints on the cork.”
“All right,” Brix said. “Get back to your interview with Sebastian. We’ll keep working things on our end. Whether Guevara knows we’re looking for him or he’s on a regularly scheduled drug run, we don’t know.”
“Either way,” Mann said, “with Sebastian’s statement, we’ll have enough for warrants. As soon as they’re executed, we’ll turn his place inside out.”
“Too bad you can’t join us,” Dixon said. “Tossing his place would probably be therapeutic.”
52
Vail disconnected the call and took a deep breath of March air . . . far damper than it had been in Napa. Had it been late summer or early fall, the chorus of cicadas and crickets in the nearby thicket of trees would be like a welcome home song. But it was silent now. She turned and headed back to Sebastian, toward— hopefully—more answers.
DeSantos was standing outside the room, touching the screen on his phone. He looked up when Vail approached.
“What’s going on?”
“The nurse needed to adjust something. He wasn’t feeling so good.”
The door opened and Yardley motioned them in.
Vail and DeSantos sat at the table opposite Sebastian, whose face was ashen and his hair slick and stringy from perspiration. He was taking another swig of his Powerade.
“You okay?” Vail asked.
“Better.”
“We won’t keep you much longer.” She leaned both forearms on the table and scooted her butt forward in the seat. “I’d like to go through what happened, what you saw. When you realized there was a problem.”
Sebastian tilted the plastic Powerade bottle and picked at the label with a fingernail. “You sure you want to hear this?”
“I have to wear two hats here. I’ve got my business as a federal agent in pursuit of a missing colleague. And I have to acknowledge that I care deeply for what happens to that missing colleague. I’m doing my best to keep those two hats from interfering with each other.”
“What she means,” DeSantos said with a shake of his head, “is just answer the question.”
Vail gave him a stern look. She didn’t need him acting like her interpreter.
