People. As in Sheriff Owens. The boss.
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. César 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.
“Robby was already there. They sent me on an errand. At the time, I didn’t think there was anything up. But then when I got back, Robby was surrounded by five guys. Guevara, a top Cortez lieutenant named Ernesto Escobar, and three others I didn’t know. But they weren’t friendlies.”
“Why do you say that?” DeSantos asked.
“Because they weren’t treating Robby very good.”
“Don’t mince words. What did you see?”
“I wasn’t there when it started. But I heard the noise. I hid behind a car. What I saw . . . it was hard to watch, but I knew if I tried helping Robby, I’d either blow my cover or if I played along, they’d expect me to . . . I—I just couldn’t do that.” He closed his eyes. “I wouldn’t have been able to hurt my buddy.” He shook his head, then faced Vail. “I took off, kept a low profile, caught a ride with a trucker out of town. Figured, worse came to worst, I might be able to go back, make up some bullshit excuse for being gone.”
“And,” DeSantos said, “you figured, if Robby’s cover’s blown, yours was probably worth shit too, since you’re the one who vouched for him. They might kill you before they killed him.”
Sebastian didn’t respond. He continued to pick at the Powerade label.
Vail was sure DeSantos’s analysis was accurate, but she didn’t want to move off topic. She swallowed hard. “What were they doing to Robby?”
Sebastian clenched his jaw, looked down at his Powerade. “Yelling at him in Spanish. Working him over. Kicking him. Worse.”
Vail closed her mouth. She couldn’t let anyone in the room see how much it hu
rt to hear that.
DeSantos placed a hand on her forearm. With a quick flick, she shook it off. She knew he meant well and she appreciated the gesture, but that wasn’t what she wanted to project to the men in the room.
“A guy like you,” DeSantos said, “you’ve got CIs with their ears to the ground. If there’s something to be known about Robby’s . . . disposition . . . they’d hear about it.”
“I’m not going anywhere, not for a couple days. Believe me, I tried talking to the doc. He didn’t want to have any of it.”
“Then us,” Vail said. “Set it up. We’ll do the meet.”
Sebastian leaned back in his seat. “That could work, I guess.”
“No,” Yardley said, stepping forward.
Sebastian looked up at the ASAC. “All I gotta do is call my guy, let him know—”
“Absolutely not.”
Vail rose from her seat and faced Yardley, toe to toe. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Yardley, a few inches taller than Vail, stood his ground. “Soon as the doc clears him,” he said calmly, “Sebastian will go. He’s worked too hard, too long, to cultivate his CIs. Especially this one, who’s got reliable roots right into the goddamn cartel. We screw it up, guy so much as smells something bad, we may never find a replacement.”
“I realize Robby’s ‘only’ a task force officer, but he deserves 100 percent effort on our part—all our parts—to get him out of danger.”
“Agent Vail, we don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
Body blow to the gut. Don’t take that shit. “Listen to me,” she said, bringing an index finger up toward his face. “With your help or not, I’m going to find Robby. Dead or alive. We owe that to him. I owe it to him. If my fuckup is responsible for blowing his cover, it’s on me.”
“I understand you don’t like it,” Yardley said, “but this is the way we handle these matters. Soon as we can, Sebastian will meet with the CI with regard to the issues at hand and then we’ll get back to you.”
Yardley started to turn away, but Vail grabbed his forearm. “When?”
He spoke while looking down at her hand. “We’ll do what we can, when we can. But how we do it, and when, and what resources we use to do it, is our business, not yours.” He brought his gaze up to hers. “I know you’re concerned about Hernandez, but there are multiple lives at stake. You think he’s the only asset we have in that organization?”
Vail dropped her hand. She was not prepared for that.
DeSantos was by her side. “Look,” he said, both hands out in front of him, fingers spread, a calming gesture. “I can make some calls. Go over your head. Have one director talk to another director. And get that information. Or I can go to my sources and dig up who this CI is that Sebastian won’t disclose. Either way, we will get what we want. Both ways are messy for you.” He shrugged. “Your choice.”
Yardley looked at DeSantos with a tournament-winning poker face. “Fuck you. And you too, Agent Vail.” He turned to Sebastian. “We’re done here.”
Yardley walked to the door and flung it open. “This is a DEA investigation, Mr. DeSantos. Interfere, and I don’t care what juice you can pour. I’ll make sure it goes sour. So if it’s a pissing contest you want, have at it.”
DeSantos returned his poker face, then he and Vail started for the door—but not before Vail glanced back over her shoulder at Sebastian. He was biting his lower lip and picking at the Powerade label.
Vail had a sharp rebuke for him on the tip of her tongue, but held it. As DeSantos had implied, Sebastian abandoned Robby out of fear for his own life. But it was her fault, not his, that Robby’s life was in danger in the first place. And now it was her responsibility to find him.
Before it was too late.
53
They got into the Corvette and DeSantos gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. “You’re doing your best to make my life difficult, you know that, Karen?”
Vail released her grip on the dashboard. “What?”
“I played our hand and I had nothing.”
“What about ‘I’ll call the director’?”
DeSantos brought the Vette to a screeching halt. “Karen.” He licked his lips, looked off into the distance as he gathered his thoughts. “I can’t call the FBI director every time I can’t get what I want. I don’t even work for him—he’s a . . . let’s just say I’ve got a special relationship with him. Bottom line, I bluffed. Yardley called it. That’s it.”
Vail covered her eyes with a hand. Great. “What about working your resources?”
“My resources, my assets and CIs and everything else I use for terrorism-related intel, is valuable shit. I can’t use it for stuff like this. One life . . . I don’t want this to come out the wrong way. But I deal with threats that involve dignitaries or U.S. congressmen, thousands—sometimes millions—of civilians. I can’t burn though valuable assets for this. I just can’t.”
“Wait a minute. Sebastian said something . . . ” She thought a moment, then said, “He may’ve been trying to tell us something.”
“Yeah. He and Yardley told us to go fuck ourselves.”
“No, no. He said he could call up his CI.”
DeSantos looked at Vail. “His phone records. If we can look through the calls he’s made in the past, what, three months—we may have his CI.”
“We’ll never get access to his records.”
“Legally,” DeSantos said. “We’ll never get his records legally. I’ve got other ways.”
“Ways that won’t burn your assets?”
“Exactly.” He shoved the gearshift into drive and stepped on the accelerator. Vail flew back in her seat. Only this time she didn’t mind. As far as she was concerned, the faster, the better.
54
At the Pentagon security booth, DeSantos spoke with the guard while Vail waited in the car. The telephone was lifted, words were exchanged, and a moment later DeSantos was climbing back into the Corvette.
“Give me your driver’s license.”
Vail handed it over, and DeSantos delivered it to the guard. Moments later, they were admitted into the parking lot. And moments after that, Vail was following DeSantos into the lower reaches of the Pentagon.
“No one can know what you see or hear. Are we cool?”
Vail nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.” Her head rotated in all directions. “Where are we?”
“The bowels, where I work. No sarcastic comments, please.”
He stopped at a door, placed his hand on a glass panel, and waited while a yellow light scanned his palm and a beam struck his retina. A computer voice said, “Scanning complete,” the electronic click of a lock released, and DeSantos pushed through the door.
“What’s OPSIG?” Vail asked. She thumbed a fist over her shoulder. “Sign on the door.”
“Operations Support Intelligence Group. We’re a highly covert team. And that’s all I can tell you.”
“That’s all I think I want to know,” she said.
Inside, an entire wall was subsumed by oversize LCD monitors, which displayed satellite imagery and blinking locator beacons. A worn conference table sat off to the side. An air-conditioned breeze whisked by Vail’s ears, neutralizing the intense heat radiating from the wall of screens that buzzed her face as she passed them en route to a chair.
DeSantos sat down on one of the navy seats, placed his hands on a laptop PC in front of him, and stroked the keyboard. He leaned forward and a light from an external device scanned his retina.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m logged in. Now, let’s see what I can do.” He reached over to a button on the table and pressed it. “Hey, man, can you come in here a sec?”
Vail moved to a seat beside DeSantos. “Who’s that?”
“Let’s call him Benny. My personal tech guru. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing half the time. I’m TC.” He glanced at her, must’ve seen her mind unsuccessfully processing that acronym, then said, “TC. Technologically challenged. My former
partner could troll servers and penetrate secure databases like a true hacker. But me? I do Windows. That’s about it.” He struck a key. “When it involves delicate hacking, I need someone who knows how to hide our tracks.”
In walked Benny, a bear of a man with fingers so thick they reminded Vail of bratwurst. She wondered how he was going to navigate the keyboard.
“Whazzup, boss?”
“Have a seat,” DeSantos said. “We’re going fishing.”
BENNY, INDEED, HAD DIFFICULTY manipulating the computer keys—and as a result had to go slow, regularly correcting his mistyped commands. Finally, twenty minutes later, DeSantos retrieved a sheaf of papers from the LaserJet.
“Those are Sebastian’s phone logs?” Vail asked.
He splayed them across the table in front of him. “Cell, home, and work.”
“Scary that you can do that.”
DeSantos chuckled. “This ain’t nothing, my dear. You should see what we’re capable of.”
“Something tells me that if I did, you’d have to kill me.”
Benny chuckled as DeSantos regarded the papers.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” DeSantos said, “believe me.”
Based on what little she had seen thus far, Vail certainly did.
Prior to printing the document, DeSantos had Benny sort the data multiple ways. He filtered out calls that were made to known people in Sebastian’s life: his family members, girlfriend, known acquaintances, and of course, Robby. Established businesses and federal agency contacts were eliminated. And that left calls to individuals or businesses that were unidentified or suspect.
“We’ll go from here, which is a lot more manageable.” DeSantos turned to Benny. “Page three. Do a search and get me the names of all the owners of these phone numbers.”
Benny turned back to the laptop and began poking at the keys. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair, which bent precariously close to the ground. “We’ll have the results in a minute. So,” he said to Vail, “I haven’t seen you around here.”
“I’m with the behavioral analysis unit.”
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