“CHP was nearby,” Lugo said, hanging up his phone. “They’re about to pick up the package at Silver Ridge. I told him to take photos before he picks it up. But you think—should we call in EOD, at least alert the HDTs we may have a job for them?”
“HDTs?” Vail asked.
“Hazardous Device Technicians,” Dixon said. “They handle all suspicious packages for the Explosives Ordnance Division.”
Although this offender had not yet shown any proclivity toward bombs, it was always an option for your friendly neighborhood narcissist looking to grab attention. Vail was about to weigh in when Dixon spoke up.
“Let’s first see what the package looks like before we call out the troops.”
A moment later, they had their answer: A photo came to the sheriff’s department in an email from the officer on-scene. The phone rang and Lugo picked it up. “Yeah, patch her through.” He covered the receiver and said, “The officer’s on the line. Putting it on speaker.”
“Hello? This is Davina Erickson with CHP. I just sent you a photo—”
“This is Roxxann Dixon, Major Crimes Task Force. We’ve got the photo.” She bent over the laptop and scrutinized the image. “Looks like a USB flash drive. Is that what it is?”
“Yes, ma’am. Secured with masking tape to the Silver Ridge landmark sign.”
“Okay,” Dixon said. “Carefully remove the tape and preserve any fingerprints that might be on it. Secure the area as a crime scene. I’ll send a CSI to document it. But get that flash drive over to us as fast as you can.”
“Lights and siren, got it,” Erickson said. “Do you want me to leave before the scene is secured?”
Brix snapped his handset shut, then turned toward the speaker phone. “This is Lieutenant Redmond Brix. St. Helena PD just dispatched an officer to secure it. Soon as he arrives, get that flash over here.”
“Ten-four.”
Lugo disconnected the call.
Vail rose from her seat and paced. In a matter of minutes, they would have some answers. And hopefully some way of tracking the offender. But no matter what information they obtained from that flash drive, it would be more than they had now.
She glanced at the clock: 4:05. Less than three hours before she was supposed to walk out the door, officially on vacation. How the hell am I going to do that? Can’t deal with that now. She turned away. “Anyone know how USB drives work?”
Agbayani looked up from his pages of notes. “Beyond the obvious, you mean.”
“Yeah,” Vail said. “Like what can we tell from the device?”
Lugo lifted the receiver. “I’ll call down, see what the geeks can do for us.”
As Lugo made the call, Agbayani held up his notepad. “Did anyone happen to notice when Maryanne Bernal was murdered?”
Dixon held up a hand in a gesture that said, of course. “About three years ago.”
“And . . .” Agbayani said, as if they should all suddenly “get it.” When no one replied, he said, “That was around the time the Georges Valley AVA board was discussing Superior Bottling’s first contract. Right? It’s now up for renewal. The initial term was three years. Maybe Maryanne was against it back when she was on the board.”
“And she was killed because of her opposition to the contract?” Vail asked.
Agbayani nodded.
“I’ve got a problem with that. It just doesn’t fit. Roxxann and I have been through this. Serial killers don’t kill for money, they kill because it fulfills a psychosexual need that’s rooted in their past.” Actually, male serial killers don’t kill for profit. For now, she was comfortable rejecting the possibility the killer was a woman. But if the offender was a man, it could mean they were seeing something different here. She had to be more flexible in her thinking.
“Still,” Agbayani said, “I think we should look into it.”
Dixon pulled her phone. “I’ll call Ian Wirth, ask him about Maryanne and see if that was the case.”
“I’ve got an answer for us on the USB device.” Lugo leaned back in his chair and swiveled to face everyone. “We can track the device to a particular PC, maybe get a set of prints off the keyboard and desk if they haven’t been used. But it doesn’t give us a location, so unless we know where that PC is located, it won’t tell us where to find it.”
“So in a legal sense, if we know what PC he used, we can prove it in court by tracing the USB to a specific PC.”
“Yes. According to Matt Aaron, when a flash drive is inserted into a PC, Windows logs it and writes a little bit of code to the drive to make a record of the device. This ensures the operating system doesn’t get confused when you insert or remove it. It also records successful file transfers and even the file transferred and when. He also said the drives have serial numbers embedded in them as well as the manufacturer, model, and device characteristics. So once we get the UNSUB’s file off it, maybe we can trace it, see where he bought the flash.” He tossed his pen on the table. “As if that’s gonna do us a whole lot of good. Other than wasting more time.”
The conference room phone rang. Lugo looked at it, then sighed and leaned forward to pick it up. He listened a moment, then said, “Erickson just delivered the flash drive. Aaron’s got it.”
Vail leaned both elbows on the desk and ran fingers through her hair. This has to be it. For me, at least, time is running out. Just like it could be running out on the next victim.
MINUTES PASSED. The room phone rang. Lugo answered it, listened, then told the caller to hold.
“KNTV’s downstairs. They’re ready to go. But they want to know what the story’s about so they can set up the shot.”
Brix and Dixon shared a look. Vail knew what they were thinking. All the pieces were in place and things were coming to a head.
“Have them set up in the second floor lobby,” Dixon said. “Tell them there might be a wait because we’re engaged in sensitive negotiations. But we think it’ll be worth their while.”
After Lugo relayed the message and hung up, the tone from Outlook indicated a new email had arrived. He slid his chair forward and checked out the message. “Aaron sent us the document. It’s a PowerPoint file.”
“Can you put it up on the screen?” Vail asked.
“Yeah,” Lugo said. He thumbed the white remote control to his left and the screen unfurled from the ceiling. He pressed a couple of buttons on the laptop, the projector flickered to life, and the Windows desktop appeared on-screen. Lugo double-clicked the PowerPoint attachment and it opened.
“Napa Crush Killer” appeared in bold letters on the first slide.
“May I?” Vail asked.
Lugo handed over the remote and Vail advanced to the next slide: a list of nine names.
Vail felt a pounding in her head. “Holy shit. If this is real, he held up his end of the bargain. Which means we need to, also.”
Dixon pointed at the screen. “Ray, print this page.”
Lugo was staring at the screen, but didn’t move.
Dixon looked over at Lugo. “Ray. Print the list.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” His mouse movements appeared on-screen as he sent the page to the printer.
Vail scanned the list: there were names missing. It was incomplete—but she would worry about that in a minute. Next slide. A video file was embedded. “Double-click that,” she told Lugo.
Lugo’s mouse pointer skidded across the screen and found the image. The video jumped to life. Onscreen: a shaky, dark, grainy, moving image of a lifeless woman.
“Oh, shit,” Agbayani said. “Don’t tell me this is what I think it is.”
Vail rubbed her forehead. It was exactly what Agbayani thought it was. She wanted to divert her eyes, but she couldn’t. This was her job, what she signed up for. And unfortunately, watching videos of an offender’s handiwork was becoming a more frequent occurrence.
“Audio,” she said, her voice coarse, strained. “Is there audio?” Lugo pulled his eyes from the screen and pressed a button.
&n
bsp; Sound filled the room’s speakers. But the offender wasn’t speaking. His breathing could be heard, rapid. The bastard’s excited. He’s loving this. “Son of a bitch.” Vail realized she was balling her right fist so hard her knuckles hurt.
The camera panned down and showed what looked like a hand—no, a wrist. Blood oozing. It ran a few more seconds, then ended.
Without a word, Vail pushed the remote to the next slide. Still photos of other victims she did not recognize. She paged through them, stopping long enough at each photo for everyone to get a look at the victim’s face. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Not all the vics are accounted for,” Dixon said. “But there are plenty we didn’t know about.”
“No names on the pictures,” Brix said. “There’s no way for us to match up those photos with missing persons, unsolved cases. Shit, we don’t even know if these vics are from California.”
“I only recognize Dawn Zackery and Betsy Ivers,” Vail said. She was reluctant to broach the subject, but sooner or later, someone would. “No photo of Fuller.”
No one commented.
Finally, Vail said, “Okay, so we’ve got some questions that need answers. Let’s keep the line of communication open with him. We should send him an email so he knows we’re going to keep up our part of the deal and ask him who the hell these other vics are.” She looked at Dixon for approval.
Dixon appeared distracted, staring at the screen and not responding. Finally, she said, “Do we want to do that? I mean, he didn’t keep up his part of the bargain. We said all vics. We wanted a list of all his vics. He didn’t give us that.”
“You want to argue with him?” Vail asked. “At this point, I think that’s the wrong move.”
Dixon sat back hard. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”
Vail looked around at everyone’s body language. They were slumped in their seats. All were looking off, lost in thought. “Hey,” Vail said. “This is good. We’ve got a lot more than we had an hour ago.”
Failing to get a response, she pulled her BlackBerry and began composing a reply:Thanks for cooperating. We need time to go through this. As promised, reporters from the press and kntv are here. We’re calling the mayor and will keep up our end of the deal. There’ll be something on the 11 o’clock news and a front page article in tomorrow’s paper. We need your help with something. We’re confused because there are victims we don’t know about and we can’t match their names to their photos. And I’m sure you can enlighten us as to why victoria cameron, ursula robbins, isaac jenkins, maryanne bernal, and scott fuller aren’t on your list. Please reply to this email or leave us another flash drive. Thanks again for your cooperation.
Vail read the proposed message to the task force members. “Comments?”
Lugo turned to her, slowly. His face was hard, his jaw set. “I hate this fucker. Why are we sucking up to him? That email sucks. We should tell him to go fuck himself.”
“Ray,” Vail said calmly, “this offender is a narcissist. We’ll get more by being subservient to him, by showing him respect and deference. Our goal, our only goal, is to catch the bastard. If we piss him off and he cuts off communication with us, we may not have another opportunity to achieve our one and only objective.”
“Send it,” Dixon said. She looked over at Brix, who nodded agreement.
Vail said, “I’m emailing this to you, Ray. Send it through Outlook, like you did before.”
“But he didn’t like that—”
“I want his response coming to you guys. In a little while . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. “I just want the communication to go to the sheriff’s department mail server, not my BlackBerry.”
Brix sighed deeply, then pushed himself from his chair. “I’ll call the Mayor. And Congressman Church. And Stan Owens. We’ll all need to huddle on this media story. I’ll tell the reporters we’ll have something for them around nine. Roxx, as lead, I think you should be the face of the investigation. Agreed?”
Dixon nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
Brix pulled his phone to make the calls. Vail looked at the screen, where the image of an unnamed woman lay. The mask of death draped across her face.
FORTY-EIGHT
Burt Gordon walked into the room and nodded at the people who looked up. “I handed off the Guevara surveillance to a couple guys from NSIB. But I have doubts about him being our UNSUB.” He glanced at the screen, then froze.
“Hate to say it,” Dixon said, “but it’s beginning to look that way.”
Vail felt like saying, “I’ve always had doubts about him. It just doesn’t fit.” But she didn’t. She’d already voiced her opinion. And she hadn’t had anything better to offer.
A call came through on the room phone. Lugo picked it up, then pressed a button. “It’s Aaron.”
Matthew Aaron’s voice filtered through the speaker. “Redd, you there?”
Brix, leaning against the wall, said, “We’re here, Matt. Got anything for us?”
“You’re not going to like it. We’ve traced the flash drive to a PC right here at the SD.”
Brix pushed away from the wall and walked closer to the phone’s speaker. “What?”
“I watched the cybergeeks do their thing, and they’re sure about it. I’ve had them lock down the room. I’m gonna go over there in a minute and start dusting.”
Brix shook his head. “How can that be? It’s a secure facility. You need a prox card—”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. Turns out there was a prox card lost about three weeks ago. Shil-ray Simmons. I just talked with her, took her to task, questioned her pretty hard. She said she thought she just misplaced it and was afraid to report it lost. Nothing was missing, nothing was reported stolen in the building, so she figured it’d turn up, that it was just misplaced in a drawer somewhere.”
Brix’s face shaded red. “What the hell was she thinking? Evidence could’ve been tampered with, cases could’ve been compromised.” He leaned a hand on the wall. “And what were you thinking, questioning her? You’re a CSI, Matt.”
“I was just trying to help. I uncovered the missing card, didn’t I?”
Brix swiped a hand down his face. “We’ll discuss this later. Have they deactivated the stolen card?”
“Already done.”
“Fine. There are database records entries for every swipe each card makes. Get a printout of that log. Which doors, which times, which days.” He motioned to Lugo, who clicked off the call.
“So our UNSUB’s got someone on the inside,” Vail said. “Or he is someone on the inside and he used Simmons’s card to cover his tracks. He had to know sooner or later the card would be reported missing.”
Brix nodded. “Ray, have Lily in HR print us out a list of all county employees. I want to know everyone who’s had access to the sheriff’s department facility. Include contract workers. Everyone.”
Lugo made a note on his pad. “And you want this tomorrow, I take it.”
“No,” Brix said with a tight mouth. “I want it today.”
“And have them pull the surveillance video for the past week before it gets overwritten,” Dixon said. “We’re gonna have to go through it all, correlate it with the doors that card opened, see if we can ID the fucker who stole it.”
“They already pulled the video when Karen got that letter,” Lugo said.
“That may be all we need,” Agbayani said. “Have Aaron look at the date the PowerPoint document was created and last modified. That’ll tell us when the UNSUB was in the building.”
“Yes, yes,” Brix said. “Perfect. Then match it up with the swipes of that prox card. And find out what’s taking them so goddamn long with that video. Did they find anything or not? Got all that, Ray?”
Lugo tossed down his pen. “Yeah. Got it.” He swung his chair around, rose, and walked out of the room.
Dixon watched him leave, then said, “Is it me, or has he been on edge lately?”
Brix walked to the whiteboard. “We’ve all be
en on edge. With everything that’s gone on this past week, I think we’re holding up pretty goddamn good.” He waved a hand. “Ray’ll be fine. Besides, we’ve got other things to worry about. We don’t know for sure this card was used by our UNSUB. But it’s highly probable. Now I’m assuming no one on the task force is our guy. But that still leaves a lot of county employees, a lot of ’em in this building, who could’ve palmed that card. So from this point forward, no one’s to share any information with anyone. Have it go through me. I’ll control all info in and out. So don’t leave any important papers lying around.”
Vail snapped her fingers. “That’s how the offender got my phone number, how he started texting me. Those sheets you printed up and gave out with everyone’s cell numbers. He was here, in this room.”
Crush (Karen Vail Series) Page 36
