Velocity (Karen Vail #3)(77)

“How much is a trace?” Vail asked.

Rustling of papers. “Here’s what Aaron wrote: ‘Looks like enough for identification. I got reproducible fragments at 303, 182, and 82, but below our quantitation limit.’”

“Did he happen to translate that into English?”

“Not enough to get a warrant, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Vail chuckled. “I don’t think a warrant’s going to be a problem, Roxx. I was wondering about the cork. Obviously it’s not one of the fake ones packed with Fentanyl.”

“I’ll make sure he slices it open and checks,” Dixon said. “But he said this kind of minute dusting could be from someone touching it who’d handled powdered cocaine. That said, the elastomer material can retain natural oils, and there weren’t any prints on the cork.”

“All right,” Brix said. “Get back to your interview with Sebastian. We’ll keep working things on our end. Whether Guevara knows we’re looking for him or he’s on a regularly scheduled drug run, we don’t know.”

“Either way,” Mann said, “with Sebastian’s statement, we’ll have enough for warrants. As soon as they’re executed, we’ll turn his place inside out.”

“Too bad you can’t join us,” Dixon said. “Tossing his place would probably be therapeutic.”





52


Vail disconnected the call and took a deep breath of March air . . . far damper than it had been in Napa. Had it been late summer or early fall, the chorus of cicadas and crickets in the nearby thicket of trees would be like a welcome home song. But it was silent now. She turned and headed back to Sebastian, toward—hopefully—more answers.

DeSantos was standing outside the room, touching the screen on his phone. He looked up when Vail approached.

“What’s going on?”

“The nurse needed to adjust something. He wasn’t feeling so good.”

The door opened and Yardley motioned them in.

Vail and DeSantos sat at the table opposite Sebastian, whose face was ashen and his hair slick and stringy from perspiration. He was taking another swig of his Powerade.

“You okay?” Vail asked.

“Better.”

“We won’t keep you much longer.” She leaned both forearms on the table and scooted her butt forward in the seat. “I’d like to go through what happened, what you saw. When you realized there was a problem.”

Sebastian tilted the plastic Powerade bottle and picked at the label with a fingernail. “You sure you want to hear this?”

“I have to wear two hats here. I’ve got my business as a federal agent in pursuit of a missing colleague. And I have to acknowledge that I care deeply for what happens to that missing colleague. I’m doing my best to keep those two hats from interfering with each other.”

“What she means,” DeSantos said with a shake of his head, “is just answer the question.”

Vail gave him a stern look. She didn’t need him acting like her interpreter.

“Robby was already there. They sent me on an errand. At the time, I didn’t think there was anything up. But then when I got back, Robby was surrounded by five guys. Guevara, a top Cortez lieutenant named Ernesto Escobar, and three others I didn’t know. But they weren’t friendlies.”

“Why do you say that?” DeSantos asked.

“Because they weren’t treating Robby very good.”

“Don’t mince words. What did you see?”

“I wasn’t there when it started. But I heard the noise. I hid behind a car. What I saw . . . it was hard to watch, but I knew if I tried helping Robby, I’d either blow my cover or if I played along, they’d expect me to . . . I—I just couldn’t do that.” He closed his eyes. “I wouldn’t have been able to hurt my buddy.” He shook his head, then faced Vail. “I took off, kept a low profile, caught a ride with a trucker out of town. Figured, worse came to worst, I might be able to go back, make up some bullshit excuse for being gone.”

“And,” DeSantos said, “you figured, if Robby’s cover’s blown, yours was probably worth shit too, since you’re the one who vouched for him. They might kill you before they killed him.”

Sebastian didn’t respond. He continued to pick at the Powerade label.

Vail was sure DeSantos’s analysis was accurate, but she didn’t want to move off topic. She swallowed hard. “What were they doing to Robby?”

Sebastian clenched his jaw, looked down at his Powerade. “Yelling at him in Spanish. Working him over. Kicking him. Worse.”

Vail closed her mouth. She couldn’t let anyone in the room see how much it hurt to hear that.

DeSantos placed a hand on her forearm. With a quick flick, she shook it off. She knew he meant well and she appreciated the gesture, but that wasn’t what she wanted to project to the men in the room.

“A guy like you,” DeSantos said, “you’ve got CIs with their ears to the ground. If there’s something to be known about Robby’s . . . disposition . . . they’d hear about it.”

“I’m not going anywhere, not for a couple days. Believe me, I tried talking to the doc. He didn’t want to have any of it.”