Crush - Alan Jacobson [18]
Not surprisingly, Vail was the only woman in the room. All heads swiveled in her direction as she strode to a vacant seat. As she sat down, everyone resumed their conversations. Redmond Brix was standing at the whiteboard chatting with a young male in uniform.
“You must be Karen Vail.”
Vail turned to see a man in his late twenties or early thirties, styled hair and thumbs hooked through the loops in his belt . . . wearing polished chestnut boots.
She extended a hand. “Yeah, that’s me. Don’t tell me I forgot to take off my name tag again.” She smiled sheepishly and feigned a look at her shirt.
“Sheriff Owens mentioned you’d be here. I’m Scott Fuller. Detective Scott Fuller, Napa County SD.”
“Sheriff’s a good man. Small world, actually. He took my class on Behavioral Science at the FBI’s National Academy—”
“I know all about it. I’m enrolled to start the program in a couple months.”
“I’ll see you back in Virginia, then.”
“Do you know anyone else on the task force?”
“Just walked in a minute ago.”
“Well, then let me do the intros.” He turned, stuck his fingers in his lips and whistled. Everyone turned. “This is Special Agent Karen Vail, from the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico,” Fuller said. “She’s here to help us with the wine cave murder.”
“Glad to meet all of you,” Vail said. “Actually, I’m with the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and we’re a few minutes down the road from Quantico, in Aquia. We moved out of Quantico a little over ten years ago. But Scott’s right, I’m here to help. If there’s anything I can contribute, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“That’s Sergeant Ray Lugo, with St. Helena PD,” Fuller said, indicating a Hispanic male as wide in the shoulders as he was in the gut—a refrigerator came to mind.
Vail nodded acknowledgment.
“And you already know Detective Lieutenant Brix,” Fuller said. “He’s the Incident Commander for this . . . uh . . .”
“Incident?”
Fuller frowned. “For this murder.”
The door swung open hard and in walked a petite blonde in a tightly cut short-sleeve blouse and professional knee-length skirt. She strode to the front of the room and took a seat near the head of the oval conference table. Every male head followed her movement, and she behaved as if she knew it.
“And that’s Roxxann Dixon,” Fuller said.
Dixon tossed a thick binder on the table and looked up at Vail. “And you are?”
“Karen Vail, FBI.”
Dixon looked around at the attentive male faces. “And why is the Bureau here?” she asked.
Vail waited for someone else to answer. Meanwhile, she was sizing up Dixon. Was she being antagonistic because she enjoyed being the only female on the task force, or was she merely the inquisitive, controlling type? Light blue eyes with unusually muscular arms and legs for a female, so she hit the weights regularly, and her short sleeves in the cooler weather meant she liked to let everyone know it. She was either into health and fitness and working out, compensating for something, or she felt she needed the bulk to compete with the men in her department. I can relate to that, Vail thought.
“Agent Vail is here on my request,” Brix said. “This case has some unusual elements to it and I think she can help. She’s out here on vacation and was . . . in the vicinity when the body was discovered.”
Dixon nodded slowly. Vail could tell she was doing what Vail had done to her: sizing her up, measuring her potential adversary, determining whether she’d truly be an asset, competition for male attention on the task force, or an extreme annoyance