Crush Page 4

  “You mean the dead body?”

  “The dead body,” Vail said.

  “And just what reaction would you be talking about?”

  I hate playing games. “You tell me. Seemed to affect you.”

  “Yeah, it affected me. It was brutal. It just got to me.”

  Vail said, “Bullshit. You’re a homicide detective. You’ve seen bad shit before.” Vail decided to venture forward with what she really wanted to know. “I had a hard time sleeping last night. I kept replaying what happened in the cave, and I kept coming back to your body language, the look on your face when you saw the woman, the severed breasts—”

  “I’m sorry my reaction bothered you. I hope you’ll sleep better tonight. Now, is that it?”

  “I’m curious—did you find the breasts at the crime scene?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what the killer did with them—and why? Because I do.”

  Brix’s facial muscles tightened. “We’ll figure it out, thank you very much.”

  “I sure hope so, because knowing what that means is important. Here’s another important question: Have there been any other murders like this one?”

  Brix snorted. “If there were, you’d know about it. A murder in the Napa Valley—with the woman’s breasts cut off? Jesus H., it’d make national news.”

  Vail’s eyebrows rose. “National news, really?”

  “You know anything about this region, Agent Vail?”

  “About as much as the average FBI profiler from Virginia visiting the area for the first time.”

  “Yeah,” Brix said with a chuckle. “I’ll translate that into ‘not much.’ So here’s the deal. Napa’s economy is a huge revenue generator for the state. Heck, even for the country as a whole. Aside from Disneyland and Disneyworld, Napa is the third most visited place in the country. See where I’m going with this? If anything happened to jeopardize that kind of tourism, that kind of money—you tell me: Would there be a lot of media coverage? Would all the stops be pulled out—at the state or federal level to investigate and figure out what the hell’s going on?”

  Vail chewed on that one.

  Robby said, “I see your point.”

  “That’s assuming,” Vail said, “that the good people of Napa want the media crawling around here. The national headlines. Would put a huge dent in the local trade to have a serial killer plying his trade in town. I did a little reading on the plane. You’ve still got some mom and pops here, but you’ve also got a lot of multinational corporations that have been buying up wineries. Billions of dollars at stake. See where I’m going with this?”

  Brix’s eyes narrowed. He stared long and hard at Vail, then said, “Always good to visit with colleagues from outta town. Remember, drinking and driving is against the law ’round here. And the California Highway Patrol ain’t as friendly as I am.”

  With that, he stepped around them and headed into the parking lot.

  SEVEN

  Vail pulled out her BlackBerry and started playing with it. They were still standing at Peju, Redmond Brix having disappeared into the parking lot.

  “What are you doing?” Robby asked.

  “Finding out where the local morgue is.”

  Robby placed both hands on his hips and craned his head around. “Karen, we’re here on vacation, remember? In fact,” he said as he consulted his watch, “you have a mud bath and massage in Calistoga in a couple hours. Paid in advance. You don’t want to miss that. If nothing else, after Dead Eyes and Yates, you need it.”

  Vail glanced up at Robby. “We should be fine. Plenty of time.” She turned and headed off toward the parking lot. “Let’s go.”

  They arrived at the Napa County morgue on Airport Boulevard about twenty minutes later. The morgue was located on the ground floor of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department, a recently constructed state-of-the-art building built of stucco and stone. With a round, windowed rotunda projecting up like a sentry over the complex, it had the majestic feel of a high-end winery, not unlike the architecture of the structure that housed Peju Province’s tasting room. But the triad of American, state, and sheriff’s department flags flapping out front set the record straight on the building’s true purpose.

  Through the front door, a cylindrical lobby sported butterscotch walls with strategic lighting every few feet. On the floor, tan tile surrounded inner concentric circles of dark chocolates and gray greens, moving centrally toward a star emblazoned with the words “Napa County Sheriff’s Dept.” Directly above was an atrium that rose the equivalent of another story, with skylights along its periphery.

  Vail glanced to her right, where there were two marble-topped oak counters with tri-panes of bullet-resistant glass.

  Robby followed her gaze. “You don’t expect them to look at your creds and take us back to the body, do you?”

  “Couldn’t hurt to try.” Before Robby could protest—and no doubt point out that it could, in fact, hurt to try—Vail walked up to the counter and engaged the clerk behind the glass.

  “I’m Special Agent Karen Vail with the FBI,” she said, holding up her credentials. She could see the reflection of her brass badge in the glass. “This is Detective Roberto Hernandez. We need to take a look at the body that was found last night at the Silver Ridge wine cave.”

  The woman squinted, then said, “I didn’t realize the FBI is involved.”

  “We’re the ones who found the body.” Not entirely true, but it sounded good.

  “You—uh—I thought—”

  “I’ve got this,” a graying, buzz-cut military-looking man in the background said. He stepped to the glass, dressed in a green uniform and tie and a taupe shirt. A brass star was pinned over his left breast. And bars on his shoulder. A person of authority. Uh oh, Vail thought. Now I’ve done it.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  She told him. “I’m a profiler—”

  “I know who you are,” the man said.

  Vail glanced at Robby, who didn’t look pleased. He no doubt sensed trouble, and was watching his vacation slip away into a morass of politics and hard-headed cop testosterone.

  “Yeah, that’s good,” Vail stammered. “So, like I was saying, we’d like to take a look at the body, if that’s—”

  “You taught that class at the Academy, didn’t you?”

  Vail felt herself take a step backward. “I teach at the Academy, that’s right.” Then she grabbed a peek at his name tag and put it all together. This guy was the sheriff and he must’ve gone through the FBI’s National Academy, a program run by the Bureau to educate law enforcement leaders from all over the world on ways to raise their department’s standards, knowledge, and interagency cooperation. The highly respected eleven-week course has graduated over thirty-six thousand law enforcement professionals in its seventy-five-year existence.

  “You were in one of my classes, at the National Academy,” Vail said. A statement, not a question . . . feigning recognition. Who doesn’t like to be remembered?

  “Yeah, couple years ago. Damn good program, I gotta say. Your class on behavioral analysis was one of the more intriguing.”

  Vail smiled and turned to Robby, who looked like a guy who found himself the butt of a joke. He was not enjoying this.

  “Thank you, thank you very much. That means a great deal to me. I like to think that being a profiler is one of the best jobs at the Bureau.” That is, when serial killers aren’t trying to kill me. “It’s very rewarding, particularly when we can help catch an UNSUB who—”

  Robby cleared his throat.

  “Right—well, in any case, Detective Hernandez and I would really appreciate if we could see the body of the woman who was brought in last night. Sheriff—”

  “Owens. Stan Owens. Call me Stan.”

  “Right. Sheriff—Stan—if we could have a few minutes, we won’t bother you about this again.” A promise she might not be able to keep, but again, it sounded good—and judging by the look on Owens’s face,
he seemed to like the idea, too.

  “I don’t suppose it’d hurt anything,” he said, then nodded to the legal clerk beside him to make it happen.

  Owens swiped his electronic proximity card over the sensor, then led Vail and Robby downstairs and into the morgue conference room on the first floor. There was an ovoid conference table surrounded by high-backed, burgundy office chairs. There was a periodic table hanging in the corner of one of the long walls, a TV/VCR setup mounted on the wall, and a large whiteboard.

  Owens walked over to the whiteboard and slid it to the left, revealing a window into the morgue. Behind the glass and to their right stood two lab-coated technicians in front of a gurney that was parked by a stainless steel dissection table, above which was suspended a large scale for weighing resected organs. The sheriff pressed a wall-mounted intercom, and the woman behind the glass looked at him.

  “Dr. Abbott, we’re here to see the murder victim brought in last night. This is Special Agent Vail and Detective Hernandez.” Owens turned to Vail and said, “Dr. Brooke Abbott.”

  Brooke Abbott wore a clear face shield, a Tyvek biohazard suit, disposable booties, and latex gloves, and was up to her elbows in—well, she was in the middle of an autopsy. But it was the body on the adjacent table that Vail and Robby had come to see.

  Abbott handed the scalpel to the technician. “Continue just like I showed you. I’m going back to Jane.” Abbott shuffled to her left, to the adjacent table, and, with the movement of a gloved hand, indicated the corpse. “Meet Jane Doe.”

  Owens moved his hands to a small remote control box to his left. He shifted the levers and the image on the closed circuit monitor above his head zoomed and rotated. “No ID yet?” Owens asked.

  Abbott turned to the window. “Should have something soon.”

  Vail stepped closer. They hadn’t gotten too far into the procedure, because the Y incision had not yet been made. That was good—she’d wanted a look at the body under better conditions—on a table, in an optimally lit environment.

  “What can you tell me about her?” Vail asked. She craned her head toward the monitor and tried to orient herself.

  Abbott tilted her head. “From the cursory exam, I’d say late forties, but fit and with good muscle tone. Well maintained teeth, evidence of facial makeup.”

  “So she cared about her appearance and was not a vagrant or high-risk victim.”

  “Fair assessment.” Abbott nodded at the body. “But there is something a bit bizarre, right up your alley, I’d imagine. Look at the feet.” Abbott angled her headlamp and brought up a magnifying lens. “Second toe, right foot. Nail’s been ripped off the bed.” She pointed with a probe.

  Vail moved closer to the screen as Owens maneuvered the lever. “Are those tissue tags on the nail bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Definitely ripped off postmortem.”

  “Exactly.”

  Vail moved away from the monitor, trying to get a better view. “Can we come in? It’s really difficult doing it this way.”

  “For evidence control—”

  “I understand, Doctor. But I need to see nuances that might not be picked up by the camera.”

  Owens nodded. “Fine with me.”

  Abbott shrugged. “Send her in. Just her.”

  Robby waited in the conference room while Owens took Vail into the corridor, out through a door into another hallway that opened to where the bodies were off-loaded into refrigeration units, and then into the Clean Room. Vail slipped into a Tyvek suit, then donned a face shield and gloves.

  Owens pointed the way into the Dirty Room. “Go past the scrub sink and around the bend. That’ll take you directly into the morgue.” Owens left her to return to the conference room, and Vail followed his instructions.

  Morgues all have a familiar look and smell. They’re never cheery, sometimes downright depressing, always chilly, and often utilitarian. In keeping with the overall building, however, this morgue was the most spacious and technologically advanced facility Vail had seen.

  She walked into the large room and crossed the shiny taupe floor toward the far wall, where the gurneys were docked. To her right, on the other side of the window, stood Robby.

  Robby leaned close to the glass. In a filtered voice, through the intercom, he said, “So we’ve got severed breasts and a torn-off toenail.”

  “You’re looking for the behaviors,” Owens said, standing to his right. “What’s it called?”

  Vail leaned back from the body. “Ritual behavior. The things the killer does with the body that aren’t necessary for the successful commission of his crime. They’re unique to each particular offender. He does them repetitively, and he doesn’t change them—so you’ll see them in every one of his kills.” She looked to Owens. “If this UNSUB has struck before, it’s likely these ritual behaviors will help us link his victims.”

  Owens was nodding. “Hate that. If you don’t use this stuff regularly, you forget it.”

  “There’s a lot to it,” Vail said. “And we’re always learning more, expanding our knowledge base.” She nodded at Abbott. “Anything you can tell us?”

  “I haven’t gotten too far into it—uh, I mean her—but both wrists were sliced. Very sharp utensil, which is . . .” She reached beneath the stainless autopsy table to a lower shelf and lifted a plastic-wrapped and evidence-labeled knife. “This.”

  Vail didn’t take it, but she visually inspected it.

  “Must’ve brought it with him,” Vail said. “Not the kind of thing you find in a wine cave.”

  “Definitely not,” Owens said through the intercom.

  Vail turned back to the body. “Anything else?”

  “Knife was found beneath the lower back. He wanted us to find it.”

  “Apparently. COD?”

  “Asphyxiation, actually.” She moved the light to the woman’s neck. “See?” Abbott pointed with a gloved index finger. “Hallmark injuries to the lower jaw. Man strangs. The victim was moving her head back and forth, producing those abrasions. If I had to guess, he used a blunt object, possibly even a forearm, like a bar arm, to crush her trachea.”

  Vail looked over at Robby, who was craning his neck to look at the monitor. “Crush her trachea?” he asked.

  Vail leaned in for a look. “That’s a new one. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. Usually the offender uses manual strangulation, or a ligature. But crushing the trachea . . . that’d take an awful lot of force. I mean, there’s a lot of tissue there. You’ve got the thyroid and cricoid cartilage in front of it and the spinal column behind it. And the trachea itself is pretty tough cartilage.”

  Abbott was nodding. “It was a very violent act.”

  “Was a device of some sort used—a bar or pipe?”

  Abbott looked down at the body, considering the question. “I’m not sure. There are no tool marks. I’ll look to see if there are any traces of metal or paint embedded in the skin, but I didn’t find anything unusual during the initial exam. Then again, I couldn’t guarantee you’d find anything. Especially if it’s wrapped in something.”

  Vail leaned forward and looked at the eyes. “Petechial hemorrhages?”

  “Yes.”

  Vail nodded. Makes sense. “Any scrape marks on her back?”

  Abbott stepped back, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, there are. Upper back and the parietal region of the skull. Pretty deep, actually.”

  “He pushed her against the cave wall as he cut off her air supply. And the lips—inside, indentation marks?”

  “You mean from cupping her mouth?” Robby asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Let’s check.” Abbott gently parted the lips and rolled the upper portion into position. Shined her light. “Yup.”

  “Okay, so he confronts her face on,” Vail said.

  “So he might’ve known her,” Robby said, “or sweet-talked her, to get close enough.”

  Vail nodded. “Reasonable conclusion.”

&nbs
p; “So what do you think is going on?” Owens asked.

  “Hard to say,” Vail said. “Not enough information to formulate an opinion.”

  “Best guess?”

  Vail looked back at the body. She understood the desire of cops to know what she was thinking, but she also hated being pressured into drawing conclusions before there was enough information to make an accurate assessment.

  But it did give her the opportunity to ask a question for which she still wanted an answer. “Have there been other murders like this one?”

  “If there was a woman murdered with her breasts cut off, even you would probably have heard about it, all the way at Quantico. You gotta realize we don’t have many murders here. About two a year. That’s it. Been that way far back as I can remember.”

  Vail looked over at Robby through the window. “And you think Vienna is quiet.” To Owens: “Sheriff, right now, all I can say is the guy is likely intelligent, organized, and confident. More than that will have to wait.” Vail turned to Abbott. “Thanks for the look. Technically, I guess, I wasn’t here.”

  She found her way back down the hall to the conference room and pushed through the door. She pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to Owens. “If you find anything else we should know about, would you give me a call?”

  Owens took the card. “Sure thing. But . . . and I probably should’ve asked this up front . . . how are you involved with this case?”

  Robby cleared his throat. “We’re not.”

  “But we found the body in the cave,” Vail said. “We secured the scene until Lieutenant Brix could get there.”

  “Redd Brix?”

  Robby said, “Yeah, know him?”

  “Not many people in this town don’t know Redd.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be too cooperative,” Robby said.

  “He doesn’t like outsiders looking over his shoulder. Can’t say I blame him.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” Vail said, “but a killing like this could be a big problem. And with only two murders a year, you guys may not be . . . equipped to handle this type of thing. Nothing to be ashamed about, it’s just a matter of getting some help from someone who’s been down this path before.”