Vail 02 - Crush (29 page)

Silva rose from his seat. “Hey, that’s my phone—”

“Is it?” Vail pressed a button on her BlackBerry and seconds later the Sanyo went quiet. “See, I just dialed 555-4981—”

“Okay,” Silva said. “I get what you’re doing.”

Dixon hiked her brow. “Really. What were we doing?”

Silva sat down slowly. “She—well, she called my number.”

“That’s funny,” Dixon said. She slid the papers in front of her and placed an index finger in a specific spot. “That number, 555-4981, appears on Scott’s phone logs. Every day, in fact.”

“Yeah, so what?”

Dixon leaned forward on her forearms. “Well, you looked at this phone log not a minute ago and said you didn’t recognize any of the numbers. And a minute before that, you said you weren’t that close with Scott anymore, yet according to these logs, you talked to him pretty regularly.”

“Obviously, I misspoke. It’s really early. It’s not even—”

“Not even light out, yeah, you told us.”

Come on, Brix,
Vail thought.
What’d you do, fall asleep out there?
Then the door opened.
Finally.
Vail leaned over and listened while Brix spoke softly into her ear. She nodded, made a point of raising her eyebrows, then thanked Brix. She glanced at Silva, just enough to get his blood pressure moving north, then stepped toward Dixon and whispered something to her. Dixon, too, nodded.

Silva looked from Dixon to Vail before settling back on Dixon. “Am I in some kind of trouble? Do I need a lawyer?”

“Nah,” Dixon said with a wave of her hand. “We’re just looking for answers and we could use all the help we can get. We like it when things fit together, and some things just aren’t fitting together.” Dixon let her fingers rest on Silva’s forearm. His gaze moved down to her hand. “Walton, there’s something else you can help us with. There was some scorched dirt mixed with a chemical residue near the cottage behind your house. We brought it to the lab for analysis and found that it contains a very specific substance called Class A foam.”

“Thanks for the chemistry lesson,” Silva said. “Can I go now? I’m really tired and I’ve got a full day ahead of me.”

Cool under pressure. Interesting. But he realizes we’re heading in a direction he doesn’t want to go
. “Yeah,” Vail said, “I think you can go.”
Not just yet, however . . .

Dixon tightened her hand on Silva’s forearm in case he was going
to make a move to get up. “I’ve just got a couple more questions, if you don’t mind.”

Silva tilted his head in annoyance. “What?”

“Well, here’s that thing I mentioned earlier, the thing I said you could help us with. That same Class A foam found around your cottage is only used in fire extinguishers. And, see, manufactures put specific markers in their branded chemicals so they can be forensically distinguished among one another. And that exact foam was the one found at the arson scene where a woman was nearly burned alive.”

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“I’m sorry,” Dixon said, sitting back. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. What did you think I was implying?”

Silva looked from Dixon to Vail. “I think it’s time for me to call my lawyer.”

“Did you do something wrong, Walton? Do you need an attorney?”

“You tell me.”

Dixon turned to Vail. “Do you think he needs an attorney?”

Vail unfolded her arms, pleadingly holding out her hands. “We’re just looking for help, trying to figure out who killed Scott. Did you kill Scott, Walton?”

He sat back in his chair. “Are you out of your minds? Scott was my friend.”

Dixon nodded sympathetically. “Judging by how often you talked on the phone, I can see that. What did you talk about when he called you?”

Silva leaned his chair back on its two rear legs. “Stuff. You know, the market, where I saw things going.”

“The stock market?”

“That’s what I do. Securities, equities.”

Dixon nodded. “Right. But, see, nothing’s been going on in the market lately. Volatility mostly. Goes up, then down, then up. But you had this long conversation with him on the ninth. What was that about?”

“How am I supposed to remember what we talked about?”

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

Silva looked up at the ceiling. “I have lots of conversations every day. I can’t remember what they’re all about.”

“This one I think you’d remember. Because it was right before the fire. And then you spoke again, right after the fire.”

Silva let the chair fall forward onto all four legs. “Why do you keep asking me about this fire?”

Dixon leaned in close again, glanced back at Vail, as if she wanted to have a private conversation with Silva, out of the earshot of her partner. “Can I be totally honest with you, Walton?”

The man squinted. “Please.”

“We did a preliminary rapid DNA screen on that foam. It’s the latest in DNA technology, and it’s not a hundred percent accurate—but it’s close. The lab will be doing a more comprehensive test, but that’ll take a few days. But the rapid screen, it showed your DNA mixed in with the Class A foam. You so much as breathe in the same room and it’ll pick up your DNA. And, see, that foam was identified as an identical match for the one used in the fire. The arson.”

Silva slapped the table. “Now wait a minute—”

“Calm down, Walton. Before you get upset, I have good news for you. I know it sounds like the evidence implicates you as the person who set the fire. But that’s not what we’re getting at.”

“What are you getting at, then?” Silva asked.

“Well, Scott’s death.”

Silva rubbed his face with both hands. “I’ve had enough. I think I need an attorney.”

“For what?” Vail asked. “We’re trying to help you here. You bring in an attorney and the DA will, for sure, file charges against you. We don’t care about the fire, you hear? We just want to find Scott’s killer.”

“And I told you. I can’t help you there.”

Vail stepped up to the table. “Sure you can,” she said in a lilting voice. “We know Scott set the fire. He told us that shortly before he was killed.”

“He did? Why—”

“Why he told us is unimportant. The point is, he did. But—can we—can we keep talking here, Walton? Because we know you didn’t set the fire.”

“Fine. So what is it you want?”

“Well,” Vail said, “we just want to know why Scott set it. If we can
figure that out, it may lead us to his killer. And that’s all we’re interested in.”

“So I tell you what I know about that, and I can go. Right?”

Vail turned to Dixon. “Yeah.”

Dixon shrugged agreement.

Silva chewed on this a moment, not saying anything, but his eyes were roaming the room, thinking, working it through.

Finally, Silva leaned forward. “It was nothing, really. At least, my part wasn’t that big a deal. Scott wanted to set this fire, like he told you, but he didn’t want anyone getting hurt. So he asked me how he could control the fire so it wouldn’t spread.”

Atta boy. That qualifies.
“Why would you know anything about that?”

“My dad was a chemical engineer at Dow for forty years. I asked him some questions one day. He’s retired and gets bored easily. So I asked him how to do a controlled burn if all you had were household supplies lying around. He was all too happy to help me out. So, yeah, it was Class A foam. It prevented the fire from spreading, just what Scott wanted. That’s the extent of my involvement.”

“The scorched dirt near the cottage,” Dixon said. “Did Scott do a test run? Just to make sure the foam would work?”

Silva’s eyes flicked between Vail and Dixon. “Yeah. Scott was testing it.”

“I’m sure Scott told you why he wanted to do this, to set this fire.”

“All he told me was that an FBI agent was causing problems. She wanted to go public with this killer you people are after, and he couldn’t let that happen.”

“Couldn’t let it happen, like silence her? Kill her?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I figured he just wanted to scare her.”

“Because it would destroy the tourism industry?” Dixon asked.

“The tourism industry?” Silva chuckled. “Heck no. He was worried about Congressman Church.”

Dixon leaned forward. “Worried how? Why?”

“The congressman is going to run for governor.”

Dixon sat back in her chair.

Vail’s anger vanished like an extinguished candle. Her focus was immediately laser thin on Silva’s words. And it wasn’t good. She’d totally missed that one.

“So what if the guy wants to run for governor?” Dixon asked. “He’s a politician.”

But Vail suddenly got it.
If Church is in office, he takes his cadre with him. And he wouldn’t be the first California governor to win the United States presidency.

Silva spread his hands, as if even an imbecile should understand. “If he’s elected governor,” Silva said, “he takes his people along for the ride.”

Vail was exhausted and felt weak, spacey. She needed caffeine, calories, and glucose for her brain to burn. But she couldn’t walk out now. “Okay, Walton. I think I’m seeing this come into focus. Why don’t you spell it out for me. Church—Congressman Church—is going to run for governor, and what happens then?”

“Scott would get a high-level law enforcement position, like Deputy Director of Homeland Security, I’d get Commissioner of Financial Institutions, and Tim would be his Chief of Staff.”

“Tim,” Vail repeated.
The “surprise” Dixon referenced earlier.
“Timothy Nance?”

“Yeah.”

Dixon said, “And if Special Agent Vail, that FBI agent who was threatening to go public with this killer, went to the media, it’d hurt Congressman Church’s chances?”

“Well, yeah,” Silva said, as if it were obvious. “Any negative publicity would be a bad thing. Things get blown out of proportion in political campaigns. This serial killer happened under his watch. They’ll say he didn’t do enough to protect the People, didn’t come down hard enough on the police to find the guy. Of all his territory, Napa is his top cut, the prime rib of his district.”

“Okay, Walton.” Vail nodded casually, as if it was all just a misunderstanding. No big deal. “I think we’ve got the picture. Get that agent out of the way, and the problem is eliminated.”

“That’s about it.”

“But,” Dixon said, “you didn’t think ‘elimination’ meant death.”

Silva looked from Vail to Dixon.

He thrust his chin back, as if Dixon’s comment was a most absurd conclusion. “Of course not.”

“All right, Walton. Thanks so much. That does help.” Dixon pulled a pad and pen from a drawer beneath the table and slid it across to Silva. “Go ahead and write all that down, starting with Scott planning the fire and what he wanted to accomplish. Don’t leave anything out. When you’re done, you can go.” She rose from her chair. “Thanks again, Walton. You’ve really put this whole thing into focus for us.”

Silva was already busy writing. Dixon walked out, following Vail into the conference room.

“That was a pleasure to watch,” Brix said.

“I like that Class A foam shit,” Robby said. “That chemical marker stuff was brilliant.”

Brix laughed. “That rapid screen DNA was even better. Where did you get that?”

“That was good, wasn’t it?” Vail said. “We thought of it right before we went in.”

“Good work, Roxxi,” Brix said. He sighed, rubbed his forehead. “So now we go pick up Nance, hopefully get his confession and wrap this thing up.”

Vail turned to the monitor and watched Silva put down the pen. “I’ll be right back.” She headed into the interview room, glanced at the pad, and asked Silva to sign the bottom. After he scrawled his name and handed Vail the pad, he said, “Can I go now?”

“Absolutely. We’ve got a car and driver waiting outside for you.” She extended a hand and Silva took it. “Thanks for your cooperation. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Karen Vail. Special Agent Karen Vail. FBI.”

Silva’s hand went limp. “You—”

“Yeah, that’s me. And yes, I’m fucking pissed.” She forced a smile. “But it’s been great meeting you, Walton. Have a pleasant stay in lockup.”

Vail walked out and joined Robby in the conference room.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

She looked over at the monitor, where Walton sat, grasping his hair with both hands.

Before Vail could respond, her BlackBerry buzzed. As she pulled it from her belt, Brix’s and Dixon’s phones chimed. She glanced at the display. A text message.

And another body.

W
alton Silva kept bemoaning that the sun had not yet risen when he was roused from bed. The task force members couldn’t have made that complaint because, as they gathered around the fresh crime scene, the sky was brightening in the east, silhouetting the vineyard-tipped hills against pale yellow hues.

As Vail and Robby huffed up the steep rise, something that had been bothering Vail on the ride over continued clawing at her thoughts—but her brain function was fuzzy with sleep deprivation, and it took a while to fight through the fog.

“If this is the work of our Crush Killer, he can’t be in Virginia,” Vail said to Robby.

“That’s a big ‘if.’ Let’s first see what we’ve got, then we can draw some conclusions.”

Vail looked over at Robby in the rising brightness. “That’s something I would say, with some food in my stomach and sleep under my belt. You’re absolutely right.” She grabbed a peek at her watch, then said, “There’s no reason for you to be here. You can go grab some shut-eye.”

“As soon as we get a look at the body, figure out whether or not this is the same asshole, I’ll take off, let Bledsoe know what’s going down, and hit the sack.”