Tainted Mind (40 page)

Her mind raced through what they knew and she grabbed her cell.

“Viv?”

Ignoring Nick, she dialed Ian. When she didn't get an answer, she hung up and called Sam back.

“Sam,” she said without preamble. “We sent you some pictures of Schuyler's injuries. Can you run them by your team and see if we can get an idea of what might have caused them?”

“I can tell you right now they were caused by someone's hands. And small hands at that,” he answered.

“Hands the size of Meghan Conners?” she asked.

Sam paused for a second then answered. “We'll run some comparisons, but I'd say that's a possible scenario.”

“You think it was Schuyler who went after Meghan, don't you?” Nick asked after she hung up.

“I think it's definitely something we need to look into. Did you see Ian this morning? He needs to know this and decide if he wants to ask NYPD to search Schuyler's home and office.”

“I ran into him, the felons, and Travis at Frank's this morning. He was waiting for the evidence from Joe Adams's apartment to arrive before heading up to Albany. The four of them were having breakfast together.”

Vivi tried Ian's cell and, again, no answer. Tapping the phone on her hand, her mind raced. Something
was
off; something didn't fit. And then she knew.

“Shit.” She headed into the living room and began going through the files.

“What?” Nick said, following close on her heels.

She focused on what she now realized had been bugging her all along. She pulled out photo after photo of the victims and lined them up on the coffee table. When she had nine photos out, she stepped back. Her heart sank and she felt ill. They'd been wrong, very wrong.

“What do you see, Nick?” she asked, pointing to the pictures. Some were photos of discolored flesh, others were of clean, white bones. All of them were wrists. Nick leaned down to take a closer look. He picked up one after the other and, after examining the last, looked up.

“I should have caught it sooner, Nick. Hell, I was even the one to noticed it in the first place,” she said.

“Viv.”

“Whoever did this to these women,” she said, gesturing to the photos, “he never, not once, used handcuffs. With the exception of our first victim, without fail, he restrained them with shackles, Nick. Thick, metal shackles. Whoever killed these women is still out there.”

C
HAPTER
29

“WE NEED TO FIND IAN,”
Vivi said, calling out to Nick from the bedroom. Tugging on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, she glanced down at her boots. On any other day she wouldn't think twice about pulling them on, but she was beginning to feel a sense of urgency. And she'd been around long enough to know not to ignore her intuition. Casting her boots aside, she slipped on a pair of sneakers and, after checking her weapon, she strapped on her ankle holster and slid the gun inside. She hoped she wouldn't need it, but she'd rather have it and not need it than the other way around.

“I'll drive you into town, and we can check for Ian at the station, then head to Frank's. In the meantime, you can keep trying to reach him on his phone,” Nick said.

She tried two more times on their drive in; it wasn't like Ian to not answer. But then again, if he was back out on patrol for some reason, there could be any number of explanations for why he wasn't answering, from being in a location with no coverage to being in the middle of something else—like dealing with a car accident or policing his town.

All three officers were at the station when they arrived, but none of them had seen Ian since he'd gone off with the twins and Travis for breakfast. Walking down Main Street toward Frank's Café, Vivi called Naomi.

“Are you guys still at Frank's?” she asked.

“Uh, no. Brian and I are here at The Tavern working. Ian went with Travis to scout some of the local farms. He said he had a few hours before the evidence from Joe Adams's apartment arrived, and it was a nice day, so they headed out somewhere. Why?”

“Because I can't find him,” Vivi said and then told Naomi her new belief that Joe Adams was not the serial killer and that they needed to keep looking.

“Call Travis, and in the meantime, I'll try to track Ian's cell. If it's still on, I should be able to find it.”

“Is that legal?” Vivi paused.

“Do you really care?” her cousin countered.

“Just let me know,” she replied.

“I will. And by the way, you should know we had a very interesting breakfast with Deputy Chief MacStudly. He kind of likes you, you know. As in, I think he'd like to take you to the church, if you know what I mean.” Vivi could hear the grin in her cousin's voice.

She also had no problem envisioning her cousins interrogating Ian on the subject. She felt a little bad for him, but then again, he had chosen to go with them to eat, so he'd gotten what he'd deserved. And there
was
a little girly part of her that liked hearing what Naomi said.

“Nice, Naomi. I'm glad to hear your interrogation techniques are still getting you results. Now, please go find him, so I can check to make sure he hasn't gone into hiding from you all.”

Naomi laughed. “Not hardly. He doesn't hide from anything. But I'm on it. I'll call you back as soon as I have anything.”

Vivi and Nick headed back to the station, calling Travis on their way and not getting an answer. When they arrived, they updated Wyatt, Marcus, and Carly. None of the information they'd accumulated upstairs had been removed, so they all made their way back up to see if, on what felt like their thousandth viewing, they might discover something new.

She stared at the information on the board, intentionally focusing not on the images of the women, but on the data scribbled on the white background. Sometimes she could find patterns this way. Something fluttered in the back of her mind when she let her eyes fall on the date the second victim disappeared. She couldn't quite grasp it though and was moving on to the third when her cell rang.

Travis's number popped up and while she was glad to get ahold of at least one of the men she was looking for, she wished it was Ian on the other end of the line. She hadn't bothered to ask Carly or any of the others to try and trace Ian through his car since she knew he
was with Travis—at least in talking to her old, family friend, she might get the information she needed.

“I just saw you called. I left my phone in the car when I stopped to take some pictures. What's going on?” he asked after they'd said their hellos.

“Naomi said you and Ian went off together to look at some potential sites. Is he with you?” she asked.

“No, he's not. I dropped him at the hospital. Have you tried his cell?”

“Yes, and he's not answering.” Frustrated, she let out a deep sigh. “I've called him three times in the past forty minutes,” she added.

“It's probably only been a few hours since you've seen him, so please tell me you aren't pining for him already. You hardly know him all that well, anyway,” he responded. “I know you better.”

Surprised at Travis's interpretation—or misinterpretation—of the situation, Vivi paused for a moment before answering.

“We've had some evidence come in that changes things for the case we're on, and I need to find him. What time did you drop him off at the hospital?” She kept her voice intentionally cool, reminding Travis that there were bigger issues at stake than her love life.

She heard Travis sigh and knew he felt bad. “Sorry, Vivi. That was uncalled for and I know you better than to think you'd act like some love-sick teenager. It's been a long few days. I dropped him off about fifteen minutes ago. Maybe he's in a location where he can't use his cell?”

She ended the call quickly, not wanting to get into a longer discussion with Travis at the moment. But as she turned her attention back to the board, his words kept floating in her mind.
You hardly know him all that well anyway. I know you better.

Like gears coming together, thoughts suddenly began to fall into place. She looked at the dates of the victims again. Victim one, raped and strangled in southern Maine—July. Victim two, June of the next year. By the time she reached victim six, she felt like she was going to throw up.

“Viv?” Nick said from beside her. She looked away from the board. Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing and was now staring at her. She opened her mouth to say something and
was, thankfully, cut off by the sound of her own cell. She wasn't ready to voice her thoughts yet. She wasn't ready to let herself even think them.

“Vivi?” Naomi's voice cut through the haze.

“Yeah?”

“I have Ian's cell at some farm out about four miles as the crow flies from his house. I pulled up the satellite maps and it looks like there's a barn there. It looks to have been built recently and not at all the kind of place Travis said he was looking for, so I don't understand what Ian would be doing there.”

Vivi's heart sank. “Can you tell if his phone is moving?”

“Not if it's moving a couple of feet here or there, but if he moved more than, say, thirty feet or so, I would see it.”

“And has it? Moved?”

“Vivi, what's going on? Is something wrong?”

“Just answer me. Has his phone moved since you located it?”

“Uh, no.”

When she'd lost her brother and her parents in the same day, there had been no fear, just the searing pain of loss and sorrow because it had all come as a surprise. But she knew that what gripped her now was an entirely different kind of emotion, a sense of panic and terror she had never, in all her life, experienced before. Because she knew very well what could happen next.

Think
, she ordered herself. Forcing in a deep breath, she tried as best she could to focus. There could be any number of reasons Ian's phone wasn't moving, but of the two that came to mind, neither were any good. Either the phone was on Ian and Ian wasn't moving, or the phone had been tossed. That it was simply lost wasn't a viable option in her mind, since she knew he clipped it to his belt and it would never just fall off.

“Okay,” she took a deep breath. “Give me a second.” Turning to Nick she motioned to his cell. “Call Jesse Baker at Riverside hospital and see if Ian is there.” Without question, Nick did as she asked. While he was on task, she returned to her call with Naomi.

“Naomi, can you tell me where Travis's phone is?”

“Uh, sure, but why?” Vivi heard the question even as she heard Naomi clicking away on her keyboard, but her attention was on Nick whose eyes kept darting in her direction.

“Thank you, Jesse. No, everything is fine. Yes, please do let us know if he shows up.” Nick ended the call and looked at her with a shake of his head. “No, he hasn't been by since we left yesterday.”

“Vivi?” Naomi brought her attention back to the phone. “This is really weird but Travis is with Ian. Or, at least according to what I'm seeing, their phones are together. I mean, I know they're supposed to be together, but Travis is looking to scout locations for a Revolutionary War–era movie. What would they be doing in a barn made of corrugated metal?”

That was the question Vivi didn't want to think about.

*   *   *

“Viv, talk to me,” Nick ordered as they followed the directions to the barn Naomi had sent them. Marcus, Carly, and Wyatt were in the cruiser behind them. Vivi felt a sense of urgency to the core of her bones, but at her orders there were no sirens. If Travis and Ian were in there, she didn't want to make the situation worse by ratcheting up the tension. Nor did she want to give Travis any cause to do what she was certain he intended.

“It's Travis we're looking for, Nick. He's the one who killed all those women, the one who went after Ian last week.” God, it hurt to say those words. She could feel Nick's doubt, and she could hardly blame him. She hadn't quite wrapped her mind around it either, but she knew she was right.

“Travis?”

“Yes, he said something to me on the phone a little while ago. He said he knows me better and that I hardly know Ian at all.”

“He has a point, Viv. It seems an awfully big leap from that to him being a serial killer and Ian being in danger. And you do think Ian is in danger right now, don't you?”

“I do. I think Travis is obsessed with me and is going to do something to Ian I don't even want to consider, because he knows how Ian feels about me, he knows what we mean to each other. And, as to the other, as to being a serial killer, his words kept bothering
me, and then when I looked at the dates the victims had all gone missing, I realized that, for those I could remember, Travis and I had had very similar arguments just before each of them.”

“As in, you would do something, the two of you would argue, and then he'd go out and kill someone?”

“I think it's probably more complex than that, but that's what I'm working on right now. I think after every argument he'd go out and kill someone who looked like me.”

“Because he couldn't have you. Or control you.” Nick went silent for a moment as he sped along the country road, driving like he'd lived there his whole life. “I might be able to buy that, but tell me why the arguments would spur the behavior? ”

“The only two things Travis and I ever argued about were men and me doing things he didn't agree with, usually things that took me away from Boston.”

“Away from him and out into a world he couldn't control, which left him feeling helpless and impotent.”

“That's my thinking.”

“Viv, you know this all still sounds a little crazy. Not that you may not be right, but if you are, it's going to devastate your family.”

“I know, Nick. Believe me, I know. I can't,” Vivi paused and intentionally reined her emotions back in, “I can't think about that right now. Right now, I just want to be sure Ian is okay. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. But if I'm right, the conversation Ian had with Travis and the twins this morning could have pushed Travis over the edge.”

“What conversation was that?” Nick asked, pulling onto the long, gravel driveway that would take them closer to the barn.

“Naomi said Ian was talking long term, maybe even marriage. If it is Travis, he's already taken a shot at Ian, and that was just because we decided to stay in the same house. If his mind is so tainted, so unhinged, that he'd do that, I don't even want to think about how he might handle the idea of me getting married.”