She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “Good. Thanks, Bledsoe. You’re the best.”
TWENTY-NINE
Dixon and Vail sat in the break room around the small round table, on formed, yellow plastic chairs. D Vail clutched a cup of hot tea.
Robby walked in and took a seat. He placed a hand atop Vail’s. “I also asked Lugo to do a search for flights out of SFO that’d arrive in the DC metro area by morning. Just to see if it’s even possible. Virgin has one, a 9:35 p.m. departure, arrives Dulles 5:30 a.m. I mapped out the timeline and it works out.”
Vail bowed her head. “So he could be there.”
“Yeah,” Robby said. “If not him, an accomplice. Impossible to say.”
“Call Virgin. Find out if they had anyone on that flight who looked suspicious.”
Robby tilted his head. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Just get a passenger manifest and we’ll check ’em all out ourselves. And see if they’ve got any videotape of the terminal that we can examine.”
“Already done. Lugo’s calling the airline. And he’s requesting video from SFO’s security cameras, in case one of them caught the offender.” Robby fought off a yawn. “Before it records over.”
Dixon flipped her notepad to a clean page and clicked her pen. “Okay. Let’s take a step back and look at this. You two have a personal stake here. But we can’t let our feelings cloud our thoughts, affect our opinions.”
Vail warmed her hands on the sides of the mug. “He let me live, then he went after my son. All the way across the country?”
“A lot of effort just to scare you,” Dixon said. “Killing you would’ve accomplished the same thing if he was after control, to show his superiority.”
Vail’s phone buzzed, followed a second later by Dixon’s. Vail figured it was regarding the same issue. They both answered simultaneously.
At the other end of Vail’s call was Bledsoe. “I just wanted you to know I saw Jonathan and he’s fine. He’s in the classroom. School just started and I’ve got them in lockdown. There’s an officer posted outside and he’ll be Jonathan’s shadow until we put this scumbag away. Okay? You can stop stressing.”
“Why do you think I was stressing?”
“You don’t really want an answer to that, do you?”
“No. And—Bledsoe . . . thanks. Unfortunately I don’t have much info on this killer.” She told him what she knew, then said, “I assume you’ll want the unit’s help on this. If the offender’s now in your neck of the woods, you should pick up the investigation. Bring in Rooney and Del Monaco.”
“How about we just leave it at Rooney?”
Vail chuckled. “Do me a favor and touch base with Gifford, let him know what’s going on, okay?” Vail thanked him again, then hung up.
“I assume he found Jonathan,” Robby said.
“He’s fine. They’re locked down. Bledsoe posted a cop.”
Robby reached across the table and took her hand. “You okay?”
“Better. But I won’t be ‘okay’ till we catch this bastard.” She nodded at Dixon. “What was your call about?”
“Gordon and Mann are on their way in with a person of interest. They ran Fuller’s LUDs and cell records. One number in particular kept coming up, and the two of them had some long conversations the morning of the fire. Number belongs to Walton Silva, a buddy of Fuller’s. They went to his place with the K9 unit and got a hit outside an old cottage in the back.
“So they requested a warrant, and in the meantime they woke him up, gave him the bad news about Scott, and asked him to come down to the station to help us out. Once he was on county premises, they took his phone—gave him some bullshit story about new county guidelines because some workers in the building have pacemakers—and then executed the warrant on his wife. Searched the cottage and found chemical residue that looked and smelled like what was used around the building.”
“Until the lab can make a definitive match,” Vail said, “we don’t have much.”
“We can sweat him,” Robby said.
Dixon flipped her notepad closed. “That’s the plan. But there’s a little twist.” She looked at them. “Good, you’re sitting. There were also calls to another number on Fuller’s cell logs. And on Silva’s. Right after Fuller talked to Silva, Silva called this other number. Every time. Care to guess who the number belongs to?”
Vail shrugged.
Dixon rose from her chair. “I’ll let it be a surprise. C’mon, let’s go. You’re gonna want to see this.”
THIRTY
Vail and Robby made their way through the maze of corridors and into the task force conference room where Brix sat, waiting. On the wall-mounted television screen was the image of a man, shown from an angle above eye level.
Brix motioned to the monitor. “Meet Walton Silva. A thirty-one-year-old investment banker with Rutledge Warren Stone. He’s a newbie in the firm.”
“Does he know why he’s here?” Dixon asked.
“I told him we needed help finding the guy who killed Scott Fuller, that we’re all pretty shaken up about it, and that Sheriff Owens was on our backs to solve it quickly.”
Dixon folded her arms. “Good.”
“Mind if I do this with Roxxann?” Vail asked. “One of the things we do in the profiling unit is teach interview techniques.”
Brix’s jaw moved from side to side. He was considering the request. “Roxx, you’re lead investigator. Your call.”
Dixon pulled her attention from the television monitor. “We work well together.”
“What’s your plan?” Brix asked.
Vail tilted her head. “We’ll need a printout of Fuller’s mobile calls.”
Brix reached over to the table and grabbed a manila folder. “It’s all in here.”
Vail snuck a look inside, then nodded. “Good. You got Silva’s cell?”
Brix dug it out of his pocket. Vail slipped it into hers.
“I think we should keep it cordial for as long as possible,” Vail said.
“Brix, when you see me pull out my BlackBerry, give me a minute, then come in and whisper in my ear. Nothing funny or cute.”
A smile thinned Brix’s lips, then he nodded knowingly. “I like that.”
“I thought you might.” Vail glanced over at Silva, then turned to Dixon. “Let’s do this.”
Moments later, after a brief strategy session in the hall, Vail and Dixon entered Interview Room 2, a small, six-by-eight room containing a square table topped with the same taupe and gray faux marble found in the conference room. Two black chairs. And that was it.
The size of the room injected Vail with an instant dose of claustrophobia. Her eyes did a quick once-over of the space, her mind measuring it and adding it up and knowing it was small, but willing her brain to think it was plenty big, with enough air. She stood beside the door, ready to make a quick exit if the need arose. I can do this. No big deal.
As Vail struggled with her unfounded anxieties, she looked over at Walton Silva, who was occupying one of the two seats in the room. Silva wore well-tailored sweats that probably never saw the inside of a gym.
Dixon introduced herself, then nodded at Vail and said simply, “This is my partner. Can we get you anything to drink?”
“Any reason this had to be done now?” Silva made no attempt to stop his yawn. “It’s not even light out yet.”
Dixon sat down opposite Silva. “The sheriff is really upset about his stepson. He’s busting our butts. He’s called everyone in. We don’t want to let him down. And we’re hoping you can help us.”
Silva yawned again. “I’ll help you anyway I can. But what can I do?”
“We need to know about Scott. We knew him around the station, but friends always know us better than our coworkers.”
Silva shrugged.
“You’re with Rutledge Warren Stone, right?”
“I started there about a year ago.”
“How’d you do when the market tanked?”
“Like everyone else who had money in the market, I guess. I may be an investment banker, but I didn’t have a crystal ball. I took a bath.” His gaze drifted to Vail, who was standing still and quiet, across the room and to Dixon’s right, Vail’s shoulder beside the door. Back to Dixon: “But what’s that got to do with Scott?”
“How close were the two of you?”
Silva lifted a shoulder. “We went to school together, hung out, that sort of thing. We kind of lost touch when I left for college. But as soon as I moved back to town, we started talking again.”
“Scott was a good guy, wasn’t he?”
Silva sucked his left cheek, paused a moment, then said, “Yeah.”
“Did you two see a lot of one another?”
“About once or twice a month. We’d grab a beer when he got off shift. But we weren’t as close as we were before I left.”
“So you weren’t that close.”
“Nah, not like we were.”
“Let me show you something, Walton. It’s something Lieutenant Brix gave me a few minutes ago, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Maybe you can help me understand it.”
“Sure.”
Dixon splayed open the manila folder Brix had given them, then turned it so Silva could see it. “These are phone logs for Scott’s cell phone. Can you tell me if you recognize any numbers on it?”
Silva pulled the sheets closer and looked them over. His eyes seemed to hover a bit, then he moved on down the long list. “No, nothing that looks familiar.”
Vail was moving now, catching Dixon’s attention. Dixon glanced over her right shoulder at Vail as Vail punched in a number on her BlackBerry. Dixon turned back to Silva.
“You sure about that?”
Silva shrugged again. “Yeah.” He looked at Vail and said, “I thought you’re not supposed to use cell phones in this building.”
Before Vail could answer, a musical ring tone sounded: the unmistakable strains of “Stairway to Heaven.” Silva’s eyes widened. Vail produced a thin-form Sanyo from her front pocket and held it up. A small red LED flashed on the top of the device.
Silva rose from his seat. “Hey, that’s my phone—”
“Is it?” Vail pressed a button on her BlackBerry and seconds later the Sanyo went quiet. “See, I just dialed 555-4981—”
“Okay,” Silva said. “I get what you’re doing.”
Dixon hiked her brow. “Really. What were we doing?”
Silva sat down slowly. “She—well, she called my number.”
“That’s funny,” Dixon said. She slid the papers in front of her and placed an index finger in a specific spot. “That number, 555-4981, appears on Scott’s phone logs. Every day, in fact.”
“Yeah, so what?”
Dixon leaned forward on her forearms. “Well, you looked at this phone log not a minute ago and said you didn’t recognize any of the numbers. And a minute before that, you said you weren’t that close with Scott anymore, yet according to these logs, you talked to him pretty regularly.”
“Obviously, I misspoke. It’s really early. It’s not even—”
“Not even light out, yeah, you told us.”
Come on, Brix, Vail thought. What’d you do, fall asleep out there? Then the door opened. Finally. Vail leaned over and listened while Brix spoke softly into her ear. She nodded, made a point of raising her eyebrows, then thanked Brix. She glanced at Silva, just enough to get his blood pressure moving north, then stepped toward Dixon and whispered something to her. Dixon, too, nodded.
Silva looked from Dixon to Vail before settling back on Dixon. “Am I in some kind of trouble? Do I need a lawyer?”
“Nah,” Dixon said with a wave of her hand. “We’re just looking for answers and we could use all the help we can get. We like it when things fit together, and some things just aren’t fitting together.” Dixon let her fingers rest on Silva’s forearm. His gaze moved down to her hand. “Walton, there’s something else you can help us with. There was some scorched dirt mixed with a chemical residue near the cottage behind your house. We brought it to the lab for analysis and found that it contains a very specific substance called Class A foam.”
“Thanks for the chemistry lesson,” Silva said. “Can I go now? I’m really tired and I’ve got a full day ahead of me.”
Cool under pressure. Interesting. But he realizes we’re heading in a direction he doesn’t want to go. “Yeah,” Vail said, “I think you can go.” Not just yet, however . . .
Dixon tightened her hand on Silva’s forearm in case he was going to make a move to get up. “I’ve just got a couple more questions, if you don’t mind.”
Silva tilted his head in annoyance. “What?”
“Well, here’s that thing I mentioned earlier, the thing I said you could help us with. That same Class A foam found around your cottage is only used in fire extinguishers. And, see, manufactures put specific markers in their branded chemicals so they can be forensically distinguished among one another. And that exact foam was the one found at the arson scene where a woman was nearly burned alive.”
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
“I’m sorry,” Dixon said, sitting back. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. What did you think I was implying?”
Silva looked from Dixon to Vail. “I think it’s time for me to call my lawyer.”
“Did you do something wrong, Walton? Do you need an attorney?”
“You tell me.”
Dixon turned to Vail. “Do you think he needs an attorney?”
Vail unfolded her arms, pleadingly holding out her hands. “We’re just looking for help, trying to figure out who killed Scott. Did you kill Scott, Walton?”
He sat back in his chair. “Are you out of your minds? Scott was my friend.”
Dixon nodded sympathetically. “Judging by how often you talked on the phone, I can see that. What did you talk about when he called you?”
Silva leaned his chair back on its two rear legs. “Stuff. You know, the market, where I saw things going.”
“The stock market?”
“That’s what I do. Securities, equities.”
Dixon nodded. “Right. But, see, nothing’s been going on in the market lately. Volatility mostly. Goes up, then down, then up. But you had this long conversation with him on the ninth. What was that about?”
“How am I supposed to remember what we talked about?”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
Silva looked up at the ceiling. “I have lots of conversations every day. I can’t remember what they’re all about.”
“This one I think you’d remember. Because it was right before the fire. And then you spoke again, right after the fire.”
Silva let the chair fall forward onto all four legs. “Why do you keep asking me about this fire?”
Dixon leaned in close again, glanced back at Vail, as if she wanted to have a private conversation with Silva, out of the earshot of her partner. “Can I be totally honest with you, Walton?”
The man squinted. “Please.”
“We did a preliminary rapid DNA screen on that foam. It’s the latest in DNA technology, and it’s not a hundred percent accurate—but it’s close. The lab will be doing a more comprehensive test, but that’ll take a few days. But the rapid screen, it showed your DNA mixed in with the Class A foam. You so much as breathe in the same room and it’ll pick up your DNA. And, see, that foam was identified as an identical match for the one used in the fire. The arson.”
Silva slapped the table. “Now wait a minute—”
“Calm down, Walton. Before you get upset, I have good news for you. I know it sounds like the evidence implicates you as the person who set the fire. But that’s not what we’re getting at.”
“What are you getting at, then?” Silva asked.
“Well, Scott’s death.”
Silva rubbed his face with both hands. “I’ve had enough. I think I need an attorney.”
“For what?” Vail as
ked. “We’re trying to help you here. You bring in an attorney and the DA will, for sure, file charges against you. We don’t care about the fire, you hear? We just want to find Scott’s killer.”
“And I told you. I can’t help you there.”
Vail stepped up to the table. “Sure you can,” she said in a lilting voice. “We know Scott set the fire. He told us that shortly before he was killed.”
Crush (Karen Vail Series) Page 22
