Crush (Karen Vail Series) Read online

  “You named your GPS?”

  “Better than saying ‘it,’” she said. She handed Stella to Robby and put the Murano in gear. “So how do you want to play this?”

  “This is your show, Karen. I’m just along for the ride.”

  THEY ARRIVED AT PEJU PROVINCE, drove down the tree-lined driveway, and pulled around the circle into the parking lot. They walked through the metal archway and entered the winery grounds, which were meticulously landscaped with a variety of shrubbery, lush grass, multicolored flowering plants, man-made reflecting pools, and mixed-media sculptures. They crunched along the curving, decomposed granite trail past a triangular white marble female figurine, then entered a paved path that led past a stucco and stone-faced two-story building with a pointed, weathered copper roof.

  “Beautiful grounds,” Vail said.

  “Cool sculptures.” Robby pulled on the wrought iron handle affixed to the oversize wood doors and they entered a gift shop area.

  “Are you here for a tasting?” a smiling woman asked.

  Vail held up her badge. “We’re here for some answers.”

  The woman’s face drooped faster than a Vegas slot swallows a quarter.

  “It’s okay,” Robby said, holding up a hand. “We’re looking for Lieutenant Brix.”

  “He’s in the tasting room,” she said, still looking a bit rattled. “Follow me.”

  Robby leaned down by Vail’s ear. “Jesus, Karen, cool your jets. You nearly gave that woman a heart attack.”

  “I get this way when my internal alarms go off.”

  “This isn’t our case, remember?”

  The woman stopped in a large, high-ceilinged room containing a wall-sized dome-shaped stained glass window depicting the three Greek graces. Several Brazilian cherry cabinets and tasting bars lined the room. Sommeliers were pouring from red-topped wine bottles. And a man was yodeling.

  “Is that guy yodeling?” Vail asked, nodding at a blonde-haired sommelier with a guitar strapped across his shoulder and scratching out a rhythm with a coin against a ribbed credit card.

  “Not sure,” Robby said. He listened a moment, then said, “Actually, I think he’s rapping now.”

  Just then, the tasters huddled around his counter began clapping. And Vail caught sight of Redmond Brix. And Brix caught sight of Vail.

  He stopped clapping and pushed past the customers to meet Vail and Robby. Poking a thumb over his shoulder, Brix said, “Guy’s a trip, isn’t he?”

  Robby glanced back at the happy guests, who had pulled out their credit cards to buy wine. “Customers seem to enjoy his show.”

  “They make some damn fine wine here, too. Now, what is it you want?”

  Direct, Vail thought. Good. I like direct. But I’m not going to play that hand. She got her first look at him in the light. His face was leathery and lined from too many years spent in the sun. From policework? Possibly, but not likely. “Your name,” she said. “Brix. We passed a restaurant a few miles back called Brix. You own it?”

  “Brix is a wine term. A measure of sugar content in the grape.”

  Vail stifled a laugh. “So your ancestors named themselves after sweet grapes?”

  Brix fixed his jaw. “Name used to be Broxton. My great grandparents, Abner and Bella, lived in the old Chianti area of Tuscany and grew grapes for a living. Bella thought they were working too hard for too little and heard about a wine region in California. She wanted to move, but Abner resisted. She finally convinced him to go, and they sold their land and came here and bought a vineyard. They planted Sangiovese and Chianti vines they’d brought from Italy, and hit it big. Bella disappeared five years later. Never found her. Abner changed the family name from Broxton to Brix to honor Bella, since she was the reason they moved to Napa. And she was a very sweet woman.”

  “So I guess you don’t own that restaurant,” Robby said.

  “No, I don’t own that restaurant.”

  Vail tilted her head. “That’s a very . . . sweet story.”

  “Yeah, I think so. Now, you didn’t come over here to ask me about my name. What is it you really want?”

  “Answers,” Vail said. “About the murder.”

  “Why did I know I hadn’t seen the last of you two?” He turned and pushed through the large light-ash doors a dozen feet to his right. They exited the copper-topped building onto a wide footbridge that spanned the man-made pond, then stopped a few feet away, where the sun was breaking through the clouds.

  Brix folded his thick, hairy arms across his chest. “Talk.”

  “Your reaction to what you saw in the cave—”

  “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.