Crush - Alan Jacobson [55]
No, Vail was definitely not sitting down. She was, at the moment, flying up the second flight of stairs, then bursting through the front doors, swiping her prox card, sprinting toward the task force conference room, and then—inside and out of breath, coughing like a two-pack-per-day smoker—holding the letter out in front of her.
All heads turned toward her—how could they not, she was hacking away and no one could hear anything else.
“You okay?” Mann asked, rising from his chair and helping her to her seat. Brix handed her a cup of water from the cooler in the corner.
Vail, holding the letter out away from her to protect it from trace contamination, took the drink from him with her other hand and did her best to swallow between coughs. As the spasm passed, she held up the letter and envelope and said, “I need a pair of gloves. Letter from the offender.”
Lugo reached into his pocket and rooted out a crumpled latex glove and handed it to Vail, who pulled it on.
“I’ll need to give Matt Aaron my prints as an exemplar. I was holding the letter before I realized what it was.”
Vail would be the only one to handle the letter for the moment, and only with her gloved hand. “We should obviously dust it in case the UNSUB handled it. There might be contact DNA on the paper or in the saliva on the adhesive of the envelope. Can your lab run DNA?”
“We’ve got it covered,” Dixon said. She wiggled her index finger at the letter. “What does it say?”
Vail read it to them, up to the point where she had left off. She then continued: “I want you to release news of my work to the media. You will refer to me as the Napa Crush Killer. Get it—the crush of grapes, the crush of the windpipe—I figure it’s a fitting name. Here’s what else I want from you.
“To show me you’ve agreed to my demands, you will have the newspaper publish a front page article about me. Use my name in the headline. Do that and we’ll talk about the rest of my demands. Oh—I know, I have to give you something in return. I’ll stop killing. Okay? Is that fair? I thought you might think so. Tomorrow’s Napa Valley Press—and post it on the Press’s website, on their home page, lead story, by noon today.”
“Where did that letter come from?” Dixon asked.
Brix lifted the room phone. “Good question.” Into the handset, he said, “Someone took possession of an envelope addressed to Special Agent Karen Vail last night or this morning. I need you to ask around to find out who dropped it off.” He listened a moment, then said, “That’s right. Check the surveillance tapes, get back to me ASAP. It was left by the killer we’re tracking . . . yeah, that’s right. He was in our goddamn building.” He slammed the phone onto the wall receptacle. “Christ.”
“He was here,” Lugo said, “right under our fucking noses and we didn’t even know about it.”
“Pretty ballsy,” Dixon said.
“That fits,” Fuller said. “A narcissistic killer feels invulnerable to getting caught. He’s better than everyone else. Superior. There’s nothing we can do to catch him. Isn’t that right, Vail?”
Vail nodded slowly. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“So the question is,” Dixon said, “What do we do about his demands?”
Mann said, “One of many questions. Is this UNSUB the same guy who set the fire? All to get attention?”
Vail looked at Mann, examined his demeanor and body language. If he was the UNSUB, he wasn’t giving anything away.
Dixon sat forward. “If he’s the same guy, why would he send Vail a letter if he jammed the door to kill her? She’d be dead if he was successful.”
“We don’t know for sure the door was jammed shut,” Brix said.
“And maybe he was hanging around the periphery, knew she survived, and left the letter after the fact.”
Dixon nodded slowly.
“So,” Mann said. “Back to my question. Same guy?”
Vail hiked her eyebrows. “Entirely possible. Though