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  Four minutes earlier, DeSantos had received a call from ASAC Yardley telling him that Antonio Sebastiani de Medina had surfaced and was being debriefed at the DEA’s facility at Quantico.

  Vail showed her creds and was admitted to the base. DeSantos zipped along the road past the FBI Academy and five minutes later pulled into the parking lot of the DEA’s decade-old training academy complex.

  Inside, after being informed that they were on the premises, Peter Yardley walked out into the hallway. “He showed up at the front gate. No ID, no money, and he hadn’t eaten in two days. Apparently he babbled enough credible information that the guard got me on the line.”

  “Can we see him?” Vail asked.

  “He’s had a rough go of it. Normally, I’d say we should give him some time. But—”

  “We don’t have that luxury,” Vail said firmly.

  Yardley frowned. “No, we don’t. Follow me.” He led Vail and DeSantos down a long corridor. The building still had a new construction feel to it, even after a decade of use. Multicolored blue, red, and gray industrial carpet led up to glass administrative doors. “Undercover agents are not normally debriefed at the Quantico facility,” Yardley said. “It’s used primarily for training, but he was in a bad way and I didn’t want to risk transporting him. The nurse has him hooked up to fluids and he’s perking up. But we haven’t gotten a whole lot out of him yet.” Yardley pushed through a wooden classroom door and held it open for them.

  Inside, a trim-bearded man with an olive complexion sat at a table with an IV snaking from his left hand.

  Antonio Sebastiani de Medina.

  “I’m Karen Vail,” she said. “This is Hector DeSantos.”

  Sebastian’s gaze flicked between them. “You’re Robby’s girlfriend,” he said softly.

  “Do you know what happened to Robby?”

  Sebastian sucked in a healthy dose of air. “I know what happened, yeah. But—”

  “Tell me.”

  Sebastian’s gaze moved around the room, then came to rest on the ceiling, as if the answers were printed on high. “We were undercover. I’d gained the trust of César Guevara, a lieutenant in the Cortez cartel. Things were going good. Robby was a godsend because the agent I was working with had an accident and I was afraid that’d fuck up everything we’d worked for.” He looked at Vail. “But he took a liking to Robby right away. Robby’s a natural UC. He’s got a sixth sense for it. Guevara’s not an easy mark.”

  Vail scrunched her lips into a frown. “I noticed.”

  “But the asshole bought it. Robby got him talking, and he started taking us inside his operation, how they operated. And I thought we were finally going to blow it all wide open.” He stared off at the table a moment. “Then it all went to hell. Somehow our cover got blown. I don’t know how,” he said with a shake of his head. “We were so careful.”

  Vail cleared her throat, then took a seat at the table opposite Sebastian. DeSantos remained in the back of the room, beside Yardley. “I’m afraid that might’ve been my fault.” She proceeded to explain what had happened, then sat back, her eyes in her lap. Embarrassed. “I’m deeply sorry. Obviously this isn’t what I wanted to happen.”

  Sebastian chewed on that a long moment, then said, “Jesus Christ, of all our goddamn luck.” He sucked in some air, took a swig of Powerade, made a show of swallowing it. Then he set the bottle down harder than necessary.

  Vail figured he was considering if he was going to go off on her and stop answering her questions. No doubt wondering how this FBI agent had destroyed months of high-risk, hard-won work.

  But instead, Sebastian waved a hand. “Wasn’t your fault, Karen. Just the way it went down, is all. Besides, how can I get angry at you? Robby thinks you’re the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  “Do you think—” Vail had to choke back the emotion threatening to tighten her throat. “Is it possible he’s still alive?”

  Sebastian looked away. He seemed to follow the IV tube from his hand up to the bag hanging from the stand. He answered without looking at her. “Years ago, a friend of mine once told me that anything’s possible. So, yeah, I guess it’s possible.”

  DeSantos walked up to the table and took a seat beside Vail. “Sebastian. We know this was an op that’s been in process since ’06. What’s the objective?”

  “What do you know about César Guevara?”

  “CFO of Superior Mobile Bottling,” Vail said. “Superior does mobile bottling for the greater wine country in northern California. Big operation.”

  “Guevara is more than the CFO,” Sebastian said. “And Superior is more than a mobile bottling company. They’ve become a major arm of the cartel.”

  This just keeps getting worse. “You’re kidding,” Vail said. “How so?”

  “Brilliant operation, actually. It wasn’t until a few days ago that we got a handle on what they were doing. Guevara outlined everything for Robby and me.” He leaned both forearms on the table, seemingly infused with a renewed sense of energy. “That bottling deal. Yeah, it’s a business, and yeah, they make good money on it. But its real purpose is to function as a front for a major smuggling operation. They need contracts with area wineries to keep their bullshit business running, which gives them the cover to do what they’re really in business to do: bring huge amounts of illicit drugs into the U.S. from Mexico.”

  “Using the rigs?” Vail asked.

  “Yeah, but there’s more to it than that. A lot more.” Sebastian took a long gulp of Powerade. “There are a few aspects to it. First, you got the corks.”

  A shiver sparked across Vail’s spine. I knew there was something going on with that. “The synthetic corks.”

  “Right. They truck in tons of them across the border. Only about a quarter of them are legitimate. The rest are hollowed out, then Fentanyl powder is compacted into the core. Fentanyl’s unusual for Mexico, because they typically only move coke, meth, heroin, and their cash crop, marijuana.”

  “How much Fentanyl can they possibly fit in a cork?” Vail asked. “Hardly seems worth it.”

  Sebastian shook his head slowly, either disgusted at her ignorance or annoyed that she interrupted him. “Fentanyl powder is extremely potent. One gram can be cut into a thousand units, or tablets, or whatever. That’s a thousand-fold return on your money. But these corks don’t hold one gram, they hold about four. And if you’re transporting a million corks in a semi, that’s a lot of fucking money.”

  Vail tilted her head. “Isn’t that detectable?”

  “They seal off the cork, which is a chemically treated silicone shell, to help keep the drug scent from being detected by CBP dogs at checkpoints.”

  “And,” DeSantos said, “NAFTA opened the door to allow Mexican trucks to cross the border into the U.S. It got worse last year because of the treaty Mexico strong-armed us into signing.”

  “What treaty?” Vail asked.

  “There was pressure to allow Mexican truckers to travel on U.S. roads,” DeSantos said. “It became a huge trade issue, and the Mexican government made a big deal out of it. U.S. unions didn’t want Mexican trucks transporting product that could be transported by union drivers. Others thought Mexican trucks weren’t inspected as often and posed a safety danger to American drivers.”

  “I remember reading something about that.”

  “They negotiated a compromise,” DeSantos continued. “They carried out an experimental project with a small number of Mexican trucks traveling on U.S. freeways. They found that Mexican truckers got into fewer accidents than their American counterparts. The findings were challenged because it was such a small sample size and because those Mexican trucks went through more rigorous inspections than normal since they knew they’d be part of this study. But because of political pressure, they expanded the program.”

  “And because of that,” Yardley said with a tinge of hardness, “the volume of Mexican trucks on U.S. freeways increased exponentially. Customs and Border Protection can’t pos
sibly inspect all of them. Guevara capitalized on that. And he took steps just in case.”

  “Like hiding the drugs inside the synthetic corks,” Vail said.

  Sebastian took another gulp of Powerade. “Yes. But that’s not all. It wasn’t just about the corks. These cartels, they’re flush with money and time and imagination. They worked on ways of maximizing what they were doing while still taking advantage of the front of being a mobile bottler. And they came up with liquid cocaine.”

  Vail leaned forward. “Liquid cocaine?”

  “That’s what they transport in the wine bottles. Cocaine hydrochloride is soluble in alcohol or water. Cortez uses alcohol because it’s easy to recover the drugs. You heat it to 50 degrees Celsius, or just let it sit out in the sun. The alcohol evaporates, leaving the coke.”

  Vail shook her head. “Damn.”

  “Damn effective is what it is,” Sebastian said. “There are about eight thousand grams of coke in a case of wine. And if you’ve got a semi full of cases, that’s a huge amount of contraband being moved around without being threatened or even challenged.”

  “Brilliant,” Vail said. “They can move the cocaine around the country under the cover of shipping cases of wine, and short of opening the bottles and testing the liquid, we’d never be able to detect the drugs.”

  “Exactly. Even the random screening they do at certain border ports of entry can’t pick it up. We generally use fluoroscopy, and fluoroscopy can’t detect liquids containing illicit drugs. And if it’s sealed inside a bottle, drug-sniffing dogs can’t pick it up, either. So we’ve experimented with CT scans—computerized X-ray tomography—to measure the mean opacity of what’s inside the bottles. Differences in the opacity of dissolved drugs can be detected without having to open the wine and destroy the product if it’s legit.

  “But it’s extremely expensive to deploy these CT machines. You’d really need a hospital nearby to make it work. But Guevara’s already found a way around it. That liquid cocaine, it’s got what’s known as X-ray attenuation. The way he explained it to me is that when a case of wine contains identical liquid contents, the bottles have the same mean attenuation when scanned with the CT equipment. If the attenuation readings of some bottles differed from the others, that’d set off a red flag. Filling the bottles with liquid cocaine gets around that.”

  “So he’s a smart shit,” DeSantos said.

  “All these cartels are. You’d be surprised at the stuff they come up with. Baseball hats made of cocaine, chocolate bars, decorative globes, jet engine turbine gears—anything that can be innocently imported is a potential gold mine for them. It’s only limited by their creativity.”

  Is that what John Mayfield was referring to when he said there’s more to this than you know? But how is Mayfield connected to Guevara? And what’s that got to do with the murders in Napa? Ray Lugo? And the Cortez cartel? C’mon, Karen, add it up.

  “Then there are the labels,” Sebastian said.

  “Labels?” Vail asked. “How can there be drugs in the label of a wine bottle?”

  A thin smile crept across Sebastian’s face. “The adhesive that holds the label on the bottle is actually black tar heroin. Very sticky and an ideal glue. The label itself is made of LSD blotter paper. It’s so fucking potent they have to cover it with a plastic film so they don’t get it on their hands. And because it’s so potent, one wine label can be sliced into multiple small pieces that are placed on the tongue. It dissolves, giving the high. Again, well thought out. Maximum yield.”

  Vail ruminated on that for a moment, then jumped from her seat. Sebastian flinched. “Sorry,” Vail said. “Would you excuse me for a few minutes? I’ve gotta make a call.”

  DeSantos leaned back and looked at her over the top of his tiny glasses. His face said, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  But Vail had an idea by the tail—and she needed to firm up her grasp before it had a chance to escape.

  51

  Vail pushed through the door while simultaneously pulling out her BlackBerry. Dialed Roxxann Dixon.

  “I’ve got something, Roxx. You in a place you can talk?”

  “I’m sitting in the conference room with the task force.”

  “Perfect. Call me back so you can put me on speaker.”

  Seconds later, her phone buzzed. “Okay,” Vail said. “I think I’ve put a lot of this shit together. All these parts that were dangling out there, things I couldn’t add up because they didn’t seem to make sense. I think I’ve got it. Or most of it.”

  “Go on,” Brix said.

  “All of Mayfield’s murders, I had such a hard time profiling him, because the more information we got the less sense it all made to me. Because male serial killers don’t kill for profit. Right?”

  “That’s what you kept saying,” Dixon said.

  “One thing I’ve learned is there are exceptions to most of what we think is behavioral fact. There are general guidelines and tenets, but people are different. Circumstances are different. And when two converging powers find one another, they discover they have desires and needs that come together in a symbiotic relationship. That’s what we’re talking about here. Symbiosis.”

  “Karen,” Austin Mann said, “you’ve lost me.”

  “John Mayfield killed because it filled a psychosexual need. He marked the bodies the way he did, severing the breasts, slicing the wrists, yanking off the toenail. He did those things for reasons he wasn’t consciously aware of. He did them because they comforted him. And that made sense to me. It fit our paradigms of serial killer behaviors. But then he also did things that didn’t make sense, that didn’t add up. It was almost like he was a schizophrenic killer. The male victim, for one. That didn’t fit.”

  “And you’ve figured it out,” Gordon said.

  “I think so.” Vail thought another moment, then continued. “It seemed at times like he was killing for a profit motive, while at other times the victims appeared to be unrelated. So here’s what I think was going on. John Mayfield was a bona fide serial killer, with classic childhood pathologies that shaped him into what he became: someone who was selecting victims that reminded him of his mother. But there was more to this than just the classic serial killer behavioral patterns. He was working with César Guevara. This is where the symbiosis comes into play.

  “Mayfield was a psychopath, but the reason why some of his victims didn’t match his ritual was because he was killing vics chosen for him, by Guevara. And they used his behavioral murder patterns as a cover to divert attention from the Guevara-ordered killings, so no one would suspect they were contract kills. And we fell into that trap.”

  “But what’s Guevara’s role?” Gordon asked. “Why did he choose these particular victims?”

  “Guevara’s a lieutenant with the Cortez drug cartel. They smuggle liquid cocaine in wine bottles all over the country. Heroin and LSD in the labels. And the synthetic corks—they have ultra high potency, very expensive Fentanyl hidden within them.”

  “That’s why,” Dixon said, “Superior almost exclusively uses synthetic corks—because they can hollow them out and fill the inside with drugs.”

  “Right. And they have the license to do all this because of their company, Superior Mobile Bottling. Key to Superior being able to do its thing is the bottling contracts it has.”

  “Because it’s a front,” Brix said.

  “And because the Georges Valley AVA board is unique in that it negotiates bulk contracts for its member wineries. If Superior gets that contract, they bottle, label, and ship a shitload of cases of wine. That gives them the cover, should DEA or ATF or CBP question it, to be handling a large volume of wine shipments.”

  “That’s goddamn ingenious,” Brix said.

  “Yes.” Vail started walking down the hallway toward the building’s entrance. “So look at our vics. Victoria Cameron, Maryanne Bernal, and Isaac Walker were AVA board members, or affiliated with board members who were decision makers on this bottling contract. A
nd Victoria and Isaac, through his partner Todd Nicholson, were opposed to Superior’s contract renewal. Bang, they turn up dead.”

  Vail flashed on something Robby had said to her: that if she dug some more, she’d find something that provided connections she wasn’t expecting. It seemed like a generic pep talk at the time, but now in the context of all she had learned, he was trying to key her in on important aspects to her case.

  “But Ian Wirth wasn’t killed,” Dixon said.

  “Wasn’t killed yet,” Vail corrected. “Remember, we found Ian Wirth’s home address in Guevara’s house. Wirth was going to be Mayfield’s next victim.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Mann said. “You’re saying John Mayfield was a contract killer.”

  Vail pushed through the doors that led into the parking lot. She squinted against the bright sun, which was analogous to what she was feeling: that she was suddenly enlightened as to what this case was all about. “A contract serial killer. First of its kind, far as I know.”

  “That explains Ray’s state of mind,” Dixon said. “He seemed so tightly wound at times. We took it as the same stress we were all feeling. But he’d internalized it. He took each of those murders hard because he felt partially responsible.”

  “Regardless of the circumstances surrounding his wife and son, if Ray was aiding and abetting John Mayfield in any manner, that wouldn’t be far from the truth.”

  “That also explains why Ray felt so strongly that Miguel Ortiz was not our guy,” Brix said, referring to an illegal vineyard worker who was, for a brief time, suspected of being the Crush Killer. “Because of Merilynn’s description, he knew it was a physically large Caucasian male, not a Hispanic.”

  “But what about the other vics?” Mann said. “Ursula Robbins, Dawn Zackery, Betsy Ivers. And Scott Fuller.”

  “Ivers was one of Mayfield’s first kills in the region.” Ivers’s body was found in 1998 at Battery Spencer, near Golden Gate Bridge. “No relation to Superior or the bottling contract. Just the victim of a serial killer. Zackery was 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.”