Tainted Mind (36 page)

“We already knew they were in all three locations, so this isn't new. Who else do you have?” She dismissed them, and though Ian had already cleared Brian, the other two were still in the running as far as he was concerned. A look at Nick told him they would talk later, and so, choosing his battles, Ian moved on.

“Mike Ross is forty years old and lives in Boston,” he started as he handed her another picture. “He comes from a wealthy family and doesn't seem to do much these days but float around the fundraising circuit and hold a figure-head position at his family's business.”

“Which is?” she asked.

“Wiring, but special wiring used by defense contractors. Not very glamorous, but very profitable,” Ian answered.

“I think I know that name, now. I'm pretty sure Collette, Naomi and Brian's mother, has a friend with the last name of Ross. What do you know of his family?” Vivienne asked.

“Father's name is Christopher, mother's name is Leanne. He has two sisters, Susan and Jenna,” Ian provided. “Do any of those names sound familiar?”

“Yes, I think Leanne Ross does sound familiar, but you could ask Brian and Naomi. Did they say anything about him today in the station?”

Ian shook his head. “No. They saw the photo but they were working mostly on the local potential suspects we have. If he was the same Ross you think he might be, would they have said something?”

Vivienne nodded. “Most definitely. If they recognized him.”

He paused then asked another question. “The Ross family seems to run in different circles than families from the North End, how would the twins’ mom know them?”

Vivienne gave a little snort. “Because their mother is about as Boston Brahmin as you can get. Her family was and is loaded. She was an only child so she inherited everything when her parents died. She's married to Tony, one of my dad's brothers.”

“There's got to be an interesting story there,” Ian said with a smile.

“My dad, Uncle Mike, and Uncle Tony are all cops, and one night Uncle Tony was walking the beat and saw some guy getting a little too aggressive with a young woman. He stepped in, and he and Collette fell in love that night and have been in love ever since. Believe
me, Uncle Tony is the butt of many a family joke, especially since they moved into her family's Beacon Hill mansion after they got married. The twins were raised there. You're right it is a different world than the North End, but there you have it.”

That was a new twist, something unexpected. Not that he thought it would solve the case, but it was possible Vivienne would have encountered Mike Ross at some point in her younger years. But he wasn't sure what to think about the twins not recognizing him if he was a family friend.

“Anything else about him?” she asked.

“Yeah, he applied to the police academy when he finished college. He started but never made it through. We don't have the records yet on why he didn't make it,” Ian supplied.

“If he was there for any length of time, he would at least have a familiarity with weapons,” Nick pointed out.

“Chances are he also hunts. A lot of families like his do,” Vivienne added. “Do we know where he is now?”

“No, I'll see what Naomi and Brian can find tomorrow and we'll go from there. This,” Ian said, handing her the second picture, “is Kirk Hancock. He showed up in our records because he has a military background. He's a former Marine, Special Forces. His record was minimized, but reading between the lines, Nick and I figure he probably does a lot of the same kinds of things I used to do.”

“The kinds of things my brother used to do,” Vivienne added.

“He's not from Boston but since he's been out, he's been consulting with defense companies, two of which are located near Boston. Back at the station you said he looked familiar to you, any more thoughts on that?” Ian asked.

Again, Vivienne studied the photo, frowning. A stray lock of hair fell forward against her cheek. He brushed it back behind her ear, earning him a small smile that shot straight to his chest. He never had any doubts about Vivienne, although he knew they both had questions—about themselves, each other, and them as a couple. But in that moment, all his questions were answered and he knew what it felt like to be certain of someone. The rest they would figure out along the way.

“I feel like I've seen his face before, but not like this,” she said, holding up the picture. In it, Kirk Hancock was wearing a suit, his clean-shaven face smiling at someone with whom he was talking.

“In what way?” Nick asked.

She shook her head. “I don't know. It's the smile I recognize more than anything else.”

“Any chance he was a friend of your brother's?” Nick asked. Vivienne cocked her head and studied the picture again.

“My brother did send me pictures every now and then. If you scruff him up, he'd look the sort Jeff would have worked with. Ian?” she said, raising her gaze to his. He knew what she wanted to say but wouldn't in front of Nick. Lucas would have a better idea if her brother knew Hancock. Acknowledging her suggestion, he took the picture back and said he'd handle it. Before Nick could ask what “it” was, Ian handed her the last picture.

“Lee Grant. Thirty-eight years old. He's a search and rescue professional based out of North Carolina. He has no weapons experience we can find, but he's from the rural south so chances are he knows his way around a rifle.”

“He definitely doesn't look familiar,” Vivienne said with certainty.

“You said that at the station, but I don't want to rule him out quite yet,” Ian said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because,” Nick interjected, looking at the file of information on him. “He's been to a lot of the same disaster sites you have. Has worked with some of the same agencies. Going by this,” he said, holding up the paper, “he's had ample opportunity to get to know you. Whether you know it or not.”

Vivienne's eyes went from Nick to Ian, then back to Nick again before she spoke. “Fair enough,” she said, handing the picture back to Ian. “You're right, I don't know him, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know me. Or think he does anyway. What else do you know, Ian?”

“He travels a lot. There is a SAR training facility in Maine where he teaches, so he's been in the Boston area. All the other areas where the women are missing or dead have all experienced a disaster of some sort or another that would require SAR assistance. We'll work on seeing if we can get anything to line up tomorrow.”

Done with the men in the videos, Ian moved on to the local men, Joe and Schuyler Adams, Timothy Howell, and Simon Willard.

“I think we can rule Timothy Howell out. He's a bit of a creep, but if he taught the workshops on his website, there are more than a dozen of the women on our board he couldn't have had contact with, including the missing and murdered women in Boston,” Ian said.

“How do we know this?” she asked.

“Naomi and Brian pulled up all the cached information from the past several years from his website. He does teach and work all over, but most of the dates didn't line up with anything on our timeline,” he responded.

Vivienne seemed to mull this over before putting the file down and picking up the next. “Schuyler and Joe Adams?”

“Now there's a pair,” Ian said. “Joe's story pretty much aligns with what he told us today. He was in the military, though, right out of high school. Didn't handle it very well and started drinking and doing drugs. He was in and out of rehab for a few years before finally getting clean for good. Since then, he's gone to landscaping school and now runs a small but successful company. He does most of the work himself.”

“Healthy body, healthy mind,” Vivienne commented.

“Avoiding idle hands is probably more like it,” Nick interjected.

“Either way, there is nothing on record about him for the last several years,” Ian continued. “Naomi and Brian dug up some Facebook pages with pictures of him. He doesn't have a page, but he has friends that do. The pictures are all benign—ones of him running the Boston Marathon, fishing with some friends, that kind of thing. No pictures of him drinking or doing anything dumb.”

“Any pictures of him with women?” she asked.

“One, she was petite and blonde. The name tagged was Stephanie Moyer, she's a kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn,” Ian answered.

“So, are you ruling him out?” Nick asked.

Ian shook his head. “Not yet. He has weapons training and access and familiarity with this area. He also travels a lot for his job and, as far as Naomi and Brian could dig, some of his trips aligned with our timelines of missing and murdered women.”

“That's not looking good,” Nick commented.

Ian inclined his head in agreement. Still “not looking good” was a far cry from being a viable suspect.

“His dad is even more interesting. Also military background, but he was Naval Academy and then JAG corps. When he got out, he practiced in Boston and made a ton of money as a criminal defense attorney,” Ian said, handing her another file.

“Joe said his dad's current wife is his stepmother. What about his first wife?” Nick asked.

“She died in a suspicious car accident when Joe was ten. She came from a small town in Mississippi and wasn't exactly the kind of wife an up-and-coming attorney wanted as he climbed the social ranks.”

“What were the circumstances?” Vivienne asked, closing the file.

“By all accounts, she never drank,” Ian started. “Not even socially. According to the report Lucas emailed us, that was actually one of the issues between them. It was hard for him to schmooze at cocktail parties when his wife was a teetotaler. But when she died she had blood alcohol level of .12, way more than the legal limit.”

“Where had she been before that?” Vivienne asked.

“At a house she and Schuyler had rented for the summer on the Cape. All three of them had been down there. Schuyler drove back early with Joe, claiming he needed to work. She followed several hours later but never made it.”

“Any indication she lost it? Maybe got tired of being married to a jerk and stopped by a bar on her way home?” Nick suggested.

Ian shook his head. “A neighbor saw her leaving, waved to her as she drove away. There wasn't time for her to stop anywhere before the accident.”

“And did they go through her things at the house? Did they find any alcohol?” Nick asked, sitting forward.

“They did. She was a juice drinker. There was vodka in her orange juice, both in the carton in the fridge and in the bottle she'd brought with her in the car.”

“And what did Schuyler have to say about that?” Vivienne interjected.

“That she was depressed.”

“That's it?” Nick asked, disbelief clear in his voice.

Vivienne made a little noise to his right. “He's a successful defense attorney. He would know that the less said the better. Let me guess,
he said all the right things, cooperated just enough with the police, indicated his wife had problems other people didn't know about, but acted appropriately shocked at her death?”

Ian nodded. “According to Lucas, who wasn't the investigating officer but knows the guy who was, Schuyler's response was strictly textbook. It seemed genuine in every way, except how scripted it felt. Still, they couldn't gather enough evidence to prove anything, so the case was ruled suspicious and left on the shelf. So to speak.”

“And Joe?” Vivienne raised the next obvious question.

“His father refused to let him be interviewed. And since he wasn't a suspect and was only ten years old, they opted not to press the matter.”

“Any chance the father was covering for the son?” Vivienne tossed the question out.

“That possibility was raised in the report, too. According to people who knew Joe at that age, he wasn't a normal kid. What that means, I don't know. So it's a possibility, but I have a hard time believing a ten-year-old could be that devious. It seems like if a kid his age wanted to hurt his mother, there would be other ways he would do it.”

And he believed that. He wasn't totally discounting the possibility that Joe was involved in his mother's death, he just didn't think alcohol would be how a kid would have done it.

“Okay,” Vivienne said. “What about Simon Willard?”

“Now, he's an interesting cat. If it weren't for his squirrely reaction to Rebecca Cole's name, I would take him off the list, too. He has no record, no documented weapons experience, and Naomi and Brian found nothing to suggest any unhealthy proclivities. Not to mention the fact that he looks like he might have a heart attack if he had to carry someone up the hill to the well we found Rebecca in.”

“But?” Nick said.

“But I didn't like how he reacted, so we're looking into him more. I don't think he's the doer, but he may know something.”

“So that's it on the potential suspects,” Vivienne said, closing the last folder and leaning back on the couch. “What about you, Nick, what did you find today?”

Nick's eyes landed on Ian, questioning what he was allowed to say in front of Vivienne. Ian realized he'd forgotten to tell Nick that Vivienne was aware of at least one of the tasks he'd given him. “I mentioned I'd sent you up on the property to have a look,” Ian said,
giving Nick some guidance on what to talk about, which did not include investigating Vivienne's entire life since entering college.

“A cigarette butt and a shoe imprint. Anyone you know traipsing about your property or smoking?” Nick asked Ian.

“The Caufields hunt up there in the fall, they might have been up looking for a place to put a hunting blind. The father smokes. I can call them in the morning and ask if they've been up recently,” he answered. “What about the footprint?”

“Men's size eleven,” Nick replied. “Even if the Caufields have been up, I doubt the shoe is one of theirs—unless they wear dress shoes?”

That got Ian's attention. Beside him, Vivienne crossed her arms and rubbed her hands as if warding off a chill.

“Dress shoe?” he repeated.

“Yes, not a leather bottom, no-tread dress shoe, but close. I took a cast and have it, with the cigarette butt, in my car to take up to Albany tomorrow. I'd wager it will be something like a boat shoe or a dress shoe with a fine, rubber sole.”