Tainted Mind

by Schultz, Tamsen

  “Down to the type of shackles,” Ian answered.

  “Sorry about that,” Nick commiserated with Ian. “Are you going to call in the FBI?”

  Vivi turned around at that and almost bumped into Ian who was standing right behind her. Startled at his closeness, she looked at him, then at Nick, who gave her a crooked grin, then back at Ian, who shrugged.

  “I was admiring your backside, luv. Deputy Chief MacAllister thought maybe I shouldn't.”

  Vivi's eyes went back to Ian, who looked a little embarrassed, then back again to Nick, who was grinning openly now. She sighed.

  “Be nice. I'm going to take a shower and then we can head to the station to start the geographic analysis.” She gave each man a pointed look before disappearing into the bathroom. She wasn't sure about the wisdom of leaving both men in the same room unattended, but what could she do? Ian might not like Nick ogling her, but Nick was only doing it to egg him on. And, once he got over his juvenile need to needle Ian, it might be okay to have Nick on their side. He was good. Really good. And maybe removing herself from the room—removing the pawn, so to speak—would actually be a good thing. She hoped.

  When Vivi re-entered the room in jeans and a lightweight sweater with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, both men were almost where she'd left them. Ian stood, leaning against the wall beside her luggage, arms and ankles crossed. Nick was in the same chair, a file open on his lap.

  “Ready?” she asked, pulling on her boots. Ian shoved away from the wall, Nick swung his feet down and unfolded his lean six-foot-two frame from the chair. “Can you gather those up?” she added to Nick, with a nod to the files. “You have yours in the car, right?” she said to Ian. He nodded.

  “I haven't eaten, Viv darling. The man who runs this place gets up at some god-awful hour and I didn't have a chance to sneak out before then,” Nick complained.

  Vivi looked at Ian in silent question. He smiled and nodded. “Come on,” she said, ushering everyone out of her room. “I know just the place. I'll even let you order.”

  * * *

  “I hate that man. Hasn't he ever heard of a sense of humor?” Nick demanded as they exited Frank's Café.

  “Oh, I don't know,” Vivi grinned at Ian. “He has his own charm.”

  “Of a snake, darling. Although, I will grant he makes good coffee,” Nick added, taking a sip.

  Vivi glanced at the two men walking with her as they crossed the street. They were so different in almost every way, from looks to approach, that the case was bound to stay interesting. She was pondering how Carly, Marcus, and Wyatt would take to Nick, and he to them, when she heard a familiar voice.

  “Dr. DeMarco!”

  Vivi stopped so fast that Nick, still grumbling about Frank's treatment of him, bumped into her shoulder.

  “Daniel?” A sinking sensation hit her stomach as she looked at the young man in front of her. And it was heightened by Ian's muttered curse behind her. It didn't take a genius to know why Kathryn's son was standing before them.

  “Hi?” Daniel said. Vivi had known him for so long that, especially when he looked at her the way he was looking at her now, chagrined but hopeful, she sometimes forgot he wasn't a boy anymore.

  “Vivienne,” Ian warned, as if he could change what was coming.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked the young man.

  “Well, I,” Daniel shuffled his feet a little bit, and in the sunlight, Vivi noticed that he had golden streaks in his blond hair, just like his mother. “I have a break in my studies and my mom mentioned you were up here working on a case. I thought maybe I could, you know, help out.”

  Vivi arched a brow.

  “I mean, you know, if you need it or anything.”

  She sighed and looked at Ian. After a moment, he threw up his hands. “Sure, why not.” His tone was not exactly pleased, but turning down the governor's son would not be a good political move.

  “Daniel Westerbrook, Deputy Chief MacAllister and Agent Nick Larrimore. Nick, Ian, this is Daniel, one of my students.” She didn't point out his parentage; Daniel wasn't the kind of kid to ride his mother's coattails and his mother wasn't the kind of woman who let him. But, on that point, Vivi thought, the less said the better.

  “Come on,” she said as she began walking again. “We're headed to the police station to meet with the other officers and review some files. I'll go over the physical evidence with you this afternoon and maybe we can go back to the lab and I can introduce you to Dr. Sameer Buckley, one of my former students, as well.”

  A few minutes later they all stepped into the police station. Carly and Marcus were on their feet before the door closed behind them, eager to get going on the case.

  “Wyatt?” Vivi asked.

  “On patrol with one of our part-time officers,” Ian answered.

  “How many do you have?” Daniel ventured.

  “Five full-time officers and four part-timers,” Ian answered. “Though Vic Ballard, our Chief, is out of town for a couple of weeks,” he added.

  Vivi let Ian make the introductions. Then he directed Carly and Marcus to clear out one of the upstairs rooms to work in. He introduced Vivi, Nick, and Daniel to Sharon, the police receptionist and dispatcher, before heading out to his Jeep to grab his files. When he returned, he handed the files to Sharon, asking her to make copies for everyone.

  They left her to make the copies and trucked upstairs. Vivi figured Ian's decision to move them off the main floor was a strategic one. There was space on the first floor, but what was there was easily accessible to anyone who might wander in off the streets.

  Before she entered the room upstairs, Ian held her back. They were alone in the hallway and she saw the doubt in his eyes.

  “Any words of advice?” he asked.

  She wanted to touch him, to reassure him and tell him he'd be fine. But the situation wasn't conducive to that. There was a room full of people waiting for him to tell them what to do. And at least one of them was waiting for him to mess up.

  But despite not being able to reassure him the way she'd like to, Vivi knew he'd be okay. Ian would be good at this, of that she was certain.

  “It's like planning a mission, Ian. That's all there is to it.” Not that she'd planned any military missions herself, but using common sense, she'd wager that they had a lot in common with murder investigations. Both required a thorough examination of the facts and the people involved; both required a plan to get from point A (where they were) to point B (finding and catching the killer), and both required a plan B and probably a plan C.

  He seemed to think about what she said as if he'd never thought of it that way before, then gave a bob of his head and turned to enter the room.

  “Carly, thanks for picking up the map,” he started, with a nod to the large map of the United States that now hung on a board at the front of the room. Sharon walked in at that moment and handed him the stacks of correlated pages.

  “Perfect timing, Sharon. Thanks.” She nodded and left room to return to her post. Handing each person a complete set, Ian moved back to the front of the room.

  “We all know the basics,” he said, taking two small red pins and pushing them into the area representing Windsor. “We have two bodies here that appear to be victims of the same killer.” He paused to look at the board, then turned back to the room.

  “In the first stack of files are the nine women that Vivienne identified as being similar to our victims. Three are confirmed dead and six are missing. In the second stack,” Ian said, holding his up, “are the women I found. I'm not as experienced as Vivienne in this, so my parameters were probably wider than hers. I found four confirmed dead and eleven missing.

  “Now, what I would like to do is figure out how many, if any, Vivienne and I found in common. Then we'll get all those women up on the map. We need to mark where they went missing from and, if there was a body, the dump site of that body. Once we have them all up on the board, we'll split up and take a look at what we ha
ve from a geographic perspective and then dig deeper into the cases themselves.”

  Ian looked around the room and everyone nodded. His eyes landed on Vivi's, and she allowed herself a small smile for him.

  “Once we have more information on the individual cases, we'll reconvene and talk about each—see if there are any we all agree canbe weeded out. When we have a final list, we can begin contacting divisions responsible and see if we can get some more extensive case files.”

  “And what about the FBI? Aren't they usually called in on serial cases?” Marcus asked with a glance at Vivi. Ian also looked to her. This wasn't his strength; he had no experience in this area and wasn't hesitant to ask her to step in. She turned to Ian's colleagues.

  “Yes, the FBI can handle serial killer cases and generally does if the killer has crossed state lines. If the killer is local, they will usually wait to be invited in. But we aren't there yet. We may get there, maybe even by the end of the day. But right now, we have two bodies and what we think might be a multiple killer, but we don't know and we don't have any more evidence to point toward it. That's what we need to do today. We need to look through these files and see if we're going in the right direction or if maybe this whole idea is way off base.”

  “You don't think it is,” Carly pointed out.

  “I don't,” Vivi conceded. “But I've been wrong before. Quite recently, actually. And while I don't discount intuition, I don't want to base an investigation on it.” She glanced at Ian, who was watching her, then gestured for him to take over again.

  “Okay folks, let's get to work,” Ian directed.

  Twenty minutes later, they had eighteen pins in place—the two women found in Windsor, plus sixteen more. Out of the sixteen, eight were women Ian and Vivi had both identified as potential victims—three were confirmed dead and five were missing. The remaining eight were ones that either Vivi or Ian identified, but not both.

  Everyone sat back and studied the map. The pins were spread across the US. Two in Windsor, two each in Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Savannah, one each in Miami and LA, and three each in New Orleans and Boston.

  “Well, they're all urban vacation spots,” Marcus offered.

  “Except Windsor,” Carly pointed out.

  “You're kind of a vacation spot but not urban, and it's a good point, Carly, that Windsor is definitely the odd duck out on this map,” Vivi said.

  “So that tells us something, right?” Ian said.

  “It tells us that this area probably means something to him. The other cities were probably cities of convenience,” Nick interjected.

  “So he probably travels?” Carly asked.

  “Yes, but most people do these days,” Vivi answered.

  “But not usually with shackles or whatever he's using to restrain his victims,” Ian pointed out.

  “Fair enough.” Vivi turned toward Ian as he pulled his eyes from the board. “Ian?” she said, a signal that he needed to tell his team what he wanted them to do next. He gave a sharp nod, then spoke.

  “Okay, Carly and Marcus, dig into what we have in the files and see what you can find. See if you think we can, or should, eliminate any of these women. Wyatt, work with Nick on Jessica Akers and Rebecca Cole. Look into their phone records, last movements—see if you can find any connection between the two women or anything they shared that might put them both in the sights of this killer. Vivienne?”

  “I think Daniel and I will head up to Albany to meet with Sam and go over the evidence again,” Vivi said.

  Ian nodded and followed them down the stairs. “Can I talk to you a minute?” He gestured with his head toward his office. Vivi glanced at Daniel who was watching them much like his mother might.

  “Daniel, why don't you head out to the car? You can drive. I'll be out in a minute,” she said.

  He gave her a look of glee that told her he knew as much about his mother's matchmaking hopes as she did. She gave him a pointed look back and he had the good sense to turn around and leave. Following Ian into his office, Vivi perched on the edge of his desk. He picked up a pen and rolled it between his fingers. Then, setting it down, he tapped his fingers on his desk before looking up.

  “Rob is booked tonight and for the next several nights. I assume Nick's going to need a place to stay. Why don't you stay with me?”

  His expression was so intensely neutral that it told her more than any other look might. He had made light of his nightmares earlier, but she was under no delusions that he wasn't bothered by them. And, by asking her to stay with him, he was inviting her into his nighttime hell. It might not have happened last night, but the more often she stayed with him, the more likely it was that she would see him fall apart. Not an easy thing for a man like Ian to stomach.

  And yet, he'd asked. It confirmed what she already knew, that their night together was more than a one-night stand. They'd seen too much of each other in those hours to think it was just about the sex. What it was, or where it was going, she didn't know, and she doubted Ian did either. But he seemed willing to see.

  When she nodded, he let out a small breath, a tiny but unmistakable sign of relief.

  “When can we expect you back?” he asked.

  Vivi looked at the clock, it was close to lunchtime, though it hadn't been that long since they'd had their late breakfast at Frank's Café. “We'll be back around five. After we reconvene here, I'll head to The Tavern and pack up. Work for you?”

  They agreed and she left to meet Daniel. He was waiting for her—hands in his pockets, grin on his face. In many ways, he was just like his mother.

  “So, you and the Sheriff?”

  “He's the Deputy Chief of Police, Daniel.”

  “So, you and the Deputy?” He grinned wider and followed Vivi as she started walking down the street toward her car. She got about ten feet before remembering she'd told Daniel he should drive.

  “My mother will be very happy to hear about this,” he said.

  “Have you eaten lunch?”

  “What?”

  She repeated herself. When Daniel shook his head, she turned around and started walking back toward Main Street.

  “You're changing the subject, Dr. DeMarco.”

  “I'm getting some ice cream before we go.” It wasn't lunch, but she needed something to distract Daniel.

  “I'm lactose intolerant,” he said.

  She gave him a look as she pushed the door open to What's The Scoop. “They have sorbet.”

  “You're avoiding me,” he pointed out the obvious.

  “I don't have to avoid you, Daniel. I'm your professor—and the only reason you're on this case, I might add. You're brilliant, cute, and I love you to death, but if you bug me about Ian, I'll sic Nick on you.”

  “Oh, hello again.”

  Vivi turned to see the young woman from the day before, emerging from the back with a smile. Leaving Daniel to ponder her good-natured attempt to get him to back off, she moved to the counter.

  “Meghan, right?” Vivi asked.

  The girl smiled and nodded. “Thanks for coming in again. I heard about that poor woman up on the Mayfield's land. Are you helping Mr. MacAllister with the case? Not that he couldn't handle it on his own,” she hastened to add, “but it would be nice if he had some help since he's always helping everyone else.”

  “Yes, I'm working with him, so you may be seeing a bit more of me. I'm Vivi DeMarco, please call me Vivi,” she said as she shook Meghan's hand. “And while I'm sorry to be here for the reasons I am, I'm glad to have the chance to come back. Your wild blackberry ice cream is amazing,” Vivi added. Meghan smiled at the compliment.

  “I'm working with Deputy Chief MacAllister too,” Daniel interjected, stepping forward and holding out his hand. Meghan eyed him with curious suspicion but held her hand out and shook his. “I'm Daniel Westerbrook. One of Dr. DeMarco's students.”

  Meghan turned a questioning look to Vivi. “I have a few PhD students I take on. Daniel is one of them. He lives in the a
rea, so he offered to come down and help,” Vivi explained.

  The young woman's blue eyes swiveled back to Daniel. “Meghan Conners.”

  He might not be as subtle as Ian or some other older man, but Vivi recognized the look in Daniel's eyes. And smiled.

  “What can I get for you both?” Meghan asked.

  Vivi ordered her wild blackberry while Daniel ordered chocolate sorbet, chatting with Meghan all the while. By the time they got back to Daniel's car, he'd dropped the subject of her and Ian altogether, just as she'd hoped, and they spent the time it took them to get to Albany in the more interesting pursuits of university gossip and a discussion of the possibilities of the case.

  But the drive back from the labs was much less engaging. After spending three hours with Sam, they were mostly silent on the nearly forty-five minute drive. What Sam found, or didn't find, was weighing on their minds, and approaching Windsor and the police station made the whole situation more real again. They knew what they had and what they didn't. And while knowing—even knowing what they didn't have—was usually better than not knowing, it also had a way of taking away some of the hope. Hope that maybe they'd find something that could be used to stop a man who kidnapped, tortured, and killed young women.

  CHAPTER 13

  IAN LOOKED UP FROM HIS DESK, from the files he'd been poring over, when he heard the door to the station open. He could see Sharon gathering up her things and getting ready to switch the dispatch over to county before heading home for the night. As he watched her, Vivienne and Daniel came into view. He'd sent Marcus out on patrol, but Wyatt, Carly, and Nick were still upstairs. Rising from his seat, Ian glanced at the calendar on his desk. For everyone's sake, especially the women who might become the targets of their killer, Ian hoped they could wrap things up quickly.

  He met Vivienne and Daniel in the lobby and, after locking the doors behind Sharon, the three of them trudged up the stairs. Carly and Wyatt looked up expectantly, while Nick only spared a glance before returning his attention to the phone call he was conducting. The man hadn't been half bad after Vivienne had left. He'd been head down, nose to the grindstone most of the day—his superficial, irritating charm only making an appearance when trying to cajole information from people. Like the phone records he was currently trying to sweet-talk out of someone at the phone company. They had obtained the warrant, so his request wasn't out of the blue. And both Jessica Akers and Rebecca Cole had used the same provider, so that made things a bit easier. But given that Jessica's last call was over three years ago, the phone company was giving them a two-day ETA on her records. Nick was trying to knock it down to twelve hours.