Crush - Alan Jacobson [36]
Coroner’s report: “. . . thirty-five-year-old woman, brunette, 157.5 cm. Apparent homicide victim. COD looks to be crushing wound to the trachea; fractured hyoid bone. Bilateral breast tissue excision, with well-defined margins suggesting a sharp knife or scalpel . . .” Vail skipped a bit but came across the item that brought her here: “the toenail of victim’s right second digit is missing, apparently forcibly removed due to . . .”
Vail thumbed through the rest of the file. No known suspects identified. No witnesses to the murder. No forensics other than tire tracks lifted nearby that might or might not have been from the assailant’s vehicle. The pattern matched that of a mass produced tire from a major brand manufacturer. Over a million of these tires were sold in the Bay Area proper during the previous three years. Victim ID was Maryanne Bernal. Served for three years on a nonprofit board. Executive director of Falling Leaf Winery in the Georges Valley District. Employees all cleared. Not married, no known enemies, no disgruntled boyfriends.
Vail closed the folder.
“Not much help,” Lugo said.
“Actually, that’s not entirely true.” Vail joined the three of them by Agbayani’s desk. “This is further proof this offender has killed before. It allows us to begin creating a geographic kill zone, a geoprofile.”
“That helps us how?” Dixon asked.
“Well, right now, it doesn’t help us at all because our sampling size is too small.”
“The more victims the better,” Lugo said.
“In a warped sense,” Vail said, “yes. So . . . Maryanne Bernal. What do we know about her?”
“Last seen leaving a house she was renting in Northgate—”
“Northgate? Where’s that?”
“In Vallejo.”
“She worked at a winery in Napa and lived in Vallejo?”
“Not unusual,” Agbayani said. “Relatively quick off-hours commute. Prices are better. She may’ve had the house before getting the Napa job.”
“Okay,” Vail said, accepting that explanation. “What else?”
Agbayani continued: “We don’t know where she went after. Far as we could tell, she didn’t visit or talk to any of her friends after leaving home. She more or less disappeared from the living. At some point, her path crossed with the killer’s, and that was it. We were never able to establish any kind of suspect list based on where she worked or people she knew. She didn’t date much and didn’t have any arguments with anyone.”
“We now know this is a serial offender case,” Vail said. “They’re almost always stranger-on-stranger crimes, so Maryanne probably didn’t know the killer, not well. She may’ve met him somewhere, someplace meaningless to her . . . standing in line in the bank, at work in passing. Meant nothing to her, but she was suddenly on his radar. He either took her soon after or followed and tracked her for awhile. Given that this guy appears to be an organized offender, he probably planned his attack on her.”
Agbayani sat down heavily. His chair creaked. “Well, I’m glad we’ve got some activity to work with on this. Maybe we’ll catch this fucker.”
Vail’s phone rang. She pulled it from her belt and checked the display: Robby. “Excuse me, I’ve gotta take this.”
VAIL ANSWERED THE CALL as she headed back out to the parking lot the way she’d come. “Hey, stranger.”
“How’s your day been?”
Vail sighed. “I’m working. Learned some stuff about the wine industry you’re not likely to get from one of the tastings we had planned.”
“Yeah?”
“And you?”
“Oh, been tooling around, visited a few wineries. Took a tour of this castle winery, pretty cool actually.”
“Tell me about it over dinner. Wanna meet around six?”
“I can do that. Want me to pick you up?”
“I can get someone to drop me off. Where do you want to meet?”
“Back at the B&B. We’ll go from there.”
There was a noise over her shoulder. Dixon and Lugo walking toward her.
“Gotta go. See you later. Miss you.” She ended the call and reholstered her phone. “So, good work, Ray. This is an important discovery.”
“I’d much rather find already dead bodies from