Authors: Alan Jacobson

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Vail 01 - The 7th Victim (43 page)

BOOK: Vail 01 - The 7th Victim

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GIFFORD ARRIVED AT THE OP CENTER thirty-five minutes later, moments after everyone had left. Vail had just finished running another copy of the case file when the door swung open and Gifford walked in. His black raincoat was open, his hands shoved deep into the pockets. He had a direct line of sight of Vail, who stood with her hands on the lid of the copier. The case file was splayed open. She turned and headed toward him, hoping he would not see what she had been duplicating. It would require an explanation, and what she needed were answers, not more questions.

“Sir,” she said, meeting him ten feet from the copier. “Frank said you wanted to see me.”

“I texted you. Never got a response.”

She pulled the BlackBerry from her belt and inspected the display. “Never came through.”

He stood there, looking down at her. “Uh huh.” He turned and looked around the converted living room/dining room and nodded approvingly. “Nice setup.”

“Bledsoe’s a pro. He runs a tight ship.”

“Evidently not tight enough.” Boom. Direct hit.

Vail stood there awkwardly, wondering if she should sit or keep standing. She had never felt intimidated by Gifford before, but now was different. He came here to talk with her, the revelation about Linwood fresh in his mind. The
Herald’s
allegations, for which he had to answer, no doubt at the forefront of his thoughts. For the moment, she would let him call the shots.

He took a seat at the closest desk, which was Sinclair’s. He lifted the basketball, which stood on a small stand, and rolled it around with his fingertips. “Signed by Jordan?”

Vail nodded. “Bubba Sinclair’s. He keeps it here for good luck.”

“Hmph.”

Just that, an indirect swipe at the task force, as if to say “a lot of good it’s done you.” But he kept his comment to himself, which was fine with her. She didn’t need any overt sarcasm to piss her off. In her current state, she didn’t know how she would react, and the last thing she needed was to fly off the handle at her boss.

Still holding the ball, rolling it with his fingertips, his eyes watching it spin, he leaned back in the chair and said simply, “So, was it true, that Linwood was your mother?”

“Yes.” Short answer, to the point. Less trouble that way.

“Hmph.” He stopped rolling the ball and peered over the top at Vail. “Was it true, that you had an argument with her the night she was murdered?”

“Yes.”

Gifford nodded. “And you didn’t see fit to mention this when we were standing in front of her house?”

“No, sir.”

“Why the hell not?” His voice was loud, his brow bunched.

Vail cleared her throat. “Because if I told you about it, you would never have let me view the crime scene. And, because it’s irrelevant. I didn’t kill her.”

He leaned forward in the chair, the springs squeaking with the shift in his weight. “Agent Vail, that has to rank with one of the stupidest things you’ve ever done in your career.”

“Yes, sir. I told Bledsoe and Hernandez—”

“Oh, do they outrank me now? I’m your boss, Vail, and you seem to have a knack for forgetting that lately.”

“Sir, I only meant to help.”

He rolled the ball some more. “Help. Well, I sure need that now, don’t I? Director Knox is on my case. The goddamn director called me this morning and set a meeting for this afternoon. You know what that means? It means my ass is in the sling. My job is on the line.”

“I didn’t mean to involve you. It’s Hancock—”

“Hancock! Yes, it is Hancock who’s the problem, isn’t it? The same guy I told you to back off of, to leave alone and let hang himself.”

“Sir, he went to the media to deflect attention off himself. The task force leaned on him, he’d had an affair—”

“I know all about the affair. When Thurston mentioned it in the car after we left you, I was the one who pushed him to call Bledsoe and tell him.” Gifford put the basketball back down on the stand, stood up, and faced the wall. “We issued an official denial to the story, of course.” He buried his hands in his pockets again. “I don’t know where this is going to lead, but I can tell you one thing: it’s not going to be fun. For any of us.” He turned to face her. “I got seventeen calls from the media this morning. After the
Herald
broke the story, everyone in the country picked it up. A buddy of mine at New Scotland Yard even heard about it. What’s bigger than the FBI covering up the fact that one of its profilers is a serial killer?”

“With all due respect, sir, you’re not the only injured party here.” She suddenly felt empowered, fed up by the fact that the entire focus was on him. “I’m the one they’re saying brutally murdered seven innocent women. How do you think that makes me feel?”

Gifford did not say anything. He looked away, kicked at an exposed power cord that ran along the carpet to the computer on Bledsoe’s desk. “There’s only one way to solve this problem.” He looked up at her.

“Find the killer,” she said.

Gifford walked past her and grabbed the doorknob. “Find the killer.”

Vail watched him walk out and stood there wondering if that was his unofficial way of telling her to pull out all the stops . . . or merely a self-affirmation that they needed to find the person responsible for making his life a living hell.

As she stood there, she realized it did not matter. Dead Eyes had targeted her, broken into her house, and violated her space. Now he was helping dismantle her career. She needed to find this guy soon, before he killed her—from within.

Now it was personal.

forty-seven

T
he weather turned for the worse in the space of an hour, with dark storm clouds and high winds moving in as temperatures plummeted. After having spent the past three hours with Jonathan, Vail sat in her study, fingerprint powder still splashed across the door frame. Though she did not plan on staying at her house long, her presence there was enough to satisfy her need to show the killer she would not be driven from her home. Nevertheless, her Glock sat on her lap, ready for action.

The phone had not stopped ringing. News stations and reporters from all over the country, all wanting her take on the accusations made by the unnamed source. She wanted to tell them everything, tell them they were chasing lies, pursuing bad news, being led astray by a manipulator whose only intent was to deflect attention off himself.

But she would not dare say any of that. Her life was in a precarious place right now, and the best course to follow was to keep her mouth shut. In situations like hers, no one got into trouble by saying nothing.

The phone rang again and the machine snapped on. She had turned the volume up so she could listen from the study, screening the calls in case it was one she needed to take. But it was another reporter, this one from southern California. She sighed and turned back to the Dead Eyes file. This copy she would carry with her wherever she went. But she knew it was a ridiculous precaution: too little, too late. The damage had already been done.

As she sat there, she began thinking the connection between her and the UNSUB had to go back to her relationship with Eleanor Linwood, Dead Eyes’ seventh victim. Her biological mother was the focal point of the killer’s rage, it seemed. That much had been evident by the violence imparted to Linwood’s face and body. Assuming Hancock was not involved. And as much as she wanted to believe he was the one responsible, something told her deep down that he was incapable of such fury. She had pushed him quite hard, challenged him and his abilities many times over. And not once had it caused him to come after her. Overtly or covertly. There was the threat, recently, at the op center, but she wrote that off as merely a tangle of testosterone and ego. Not nearly the same motivator as a love affair gone sour with all the emotions—anger, betrayal, rejection—that accompanied it.

But he had blamed Vail for destroying his career. Again, not as strong as breaking off an affair . . . yet it did seem to have caused him significant embarrassment. And it did have over six years to fester. . . .

She rubbed at her eyes, then consulted her watch. Time to get back to Robby’s. As she gathered the papers together, her phone rang again. This time it was a fax signal. On cue, her OfficeJet woke up and began receiving the transmission. She looked at the display and recognized the station identifier as one belonging to the profiling unit.

Finally, the cover page emerged: there was a handwritten note from Del Monaco indicating the geographic profile was to follow. Her heart seemed to thump faster as the pages rolled out. She struggled to read the text as the paper exited the printer.

Realizing it would be a long document, she walked out of the room to grab a Scharffen Berger mocha bar. Dark chocolate settled her nerves or at least seemed to mollify her agitated state whenever something was bothering her.
These days, I should keep a box of these things in my car.

She heard the fax beep, signaling the end of transmission, and ran into the study. She pulled the stack of pages from the OfficeJet and called Bledsoe. “I’ve got the geographic profile,” she said. “Can we get everyone together in a couple of hours to discuss it?”

He said he would, and like a kid who’s just returned from trick or treating with a full bag of candy, she dove into the report.

forty-eight

T
he task force op center was blanketed in snow. It had been falling for the past two hours, the white powder sticking to the asphalt and making driving a challenge. Rather, the challenge was driving without skidding into a tree or another car.

Vail grabbed her leather satchel, then got out of the car, shooing the falling snowflakes from her face. She stepped onto the snow-packed cement, but slipped on a slick of ice and caught herself before going down. A sharp, electric shock shot through her left knee.
Just what I need.
She took the next several steps to the front door slowly, then gingerly wiped her shoes on the bristle mat—each slight movement intensifying the pain—and entered the house.

Del Monaco was already there, standing beside Bledsoe, pointing to a page of the report. His copy was in full color, which made the 3D diagrams and maps easier to evaluate. Vail’s fax was a third-generation copy, the colors translated into dark and darker gray tones. She limped in and walked over to Bledsoe.

“What happened?”

“Slipped on the ice.” She pointed to the report. “Helpful, huh?”

BOOK: Vail 01 - The 7th Victim

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