by Lori Ryan
“William,” she used his first name on purpose, even though in the office, she’d always addressed him more formally. “Is this about Victoria? Can you talk to me? Tell me what’s going on?”
Her voice was shaky and she swallowed, trying to steady her nerves. He didn’t answer, but she could hear him speaking under his breath.
“It has to happen.” She wasn’t at all sure that’s what he said, but she thought that was close. Something about something needing to happen. And maybe something about it being time?
“William, I knew Victoria. Remember? She and I used to spend the summers together at the Cape?” It was too bad Victoria was there most of the time with a nanny since William worked so much, but Carrie thought she needed to jog some memories. She struggled to find one that included Tyvek. He had come up many weekends. “Remember the time we had the barbecue at my parents’ house and Victoria chipped her tooth because she kept joking about biting into a clam shell?”
He seemed to slow the car for a minute and she thought she had him. “And,” Carrie laughed a little at the memory, but it had a nervous quality to it she couldn’t quite hide. “we were messing around and then Warrick tripped and fell into Vicki when she had the clam in her mouth—”
“Enough!” He roared and the sound filled the car with a heavy weight as Carrie jumped. The shackles on her wrists bit the skin as she jerked in response to his sudden growl. “This has to happen. It’s the only way to make Staunton pay for what he did to my Vicki.”
He went quiet again, the soft muttering under his breath the only sound as Carrie closed her eyes and felt tears slip down her cheeks. She kept her eyes closed as her breathing began the erratic pace she remembered from childhood. The one she’d get when she tried to hold back tears and couldn’t. When she’d cried so hard she hadn’t been able to catch her breath.
She felt the pattern of the car’s movements change and knew he was no longer driving aimlessly around town. They’d entered the highway, their speed picking up. He was taking her somewhere now. She’d lost the chance to try to slip away.
Chapter 23
Jarrod found Reggie waiting for them in the lobby of the shelter, the panic on his face clear. They hadn’t told him they suspected Tyvek was behind the deaths of the homeless men and Dr. Coleman, but it must not have been hard to put two and two together.
“You think it’s William? He has Carrie with him. They walked out together over an hour ago, but no one knows where they were going. Do you really think he could hurt her?” The man’s questions came a mile a minute and Jarrod put a hand up to stop him. On the outside he was calm. On the inside, his training and experience were barely keeping a reign on the emotions swirling inside him at the thought that Carrie might be hurt, or worse.
“Let’s go talk in your office.”
Reggie nodded and led the way, Jarrod and Cal exchanging grim looks as they followed.
They shut the door and all three sat. Jarrod leaned forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped. “Were you expecting William Tyvek here today?” Some part of him still hoped they were wrong. Maybe Carrie had a legitimate reason to be out with Tyvek and they had the real criminals back at the precinct.
“No. He rarely comes by the shelter for anything.” Reggie wiped sweat from his brow. “The receptionist said they just walked out of here together, but didn’t say where they were headed.”
“I’m going to go speak to her,” Cal said. “Was it the young lady we saw out at the desk?” Cal stood and gestured over his shoulder.
“Yes,” Reggie nodded. “Kim. You can let her know I said she should cooperate fully.”
Cal nodded and walked out.
“Okay, so tell me what you know about Tyvek.” Jarrod had to gather as much information as he could at this point. They had patrol officers scouring the street for his car, but he needed to try to read the man’s mind and figure out where he would bring her. “Everything you can remember about him. Has he acted strangely at all lately? Said or done anything unexpected or that made you stop and think?”
Reggie shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. He made his typical donation at the gala. He attended without a date, as he always does. He left early, but that’s standard for the last few years as well.” He looked at Jarrod. “I don’t know. I just can’t think of anything that can help you here.”
“Okay, that’s all right, let’s just think it through. Who did you see him talk to at the Gala?”
“A lot of people. It’s a business event for him. He talks to anyone he’s got a deal in the works with or wants to have a deal in the works with. He talks to the competition. He sizes up everyone. Even companies you’d think have nothing to do with his business. That’s the thing about Tyvek. You’d think he would only talk to the people from the medical companies and stuff, but he’s always on the lookout for other business ventures. He’s got his hand in a lot of businesses. He funds things for other companies. There’s really so much more to him than you see if you just look at his company.”
Jarrod nodded and rose. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with Reggie. Reggie simply didn’t have any information to give them. He had a feeling he knew who might, though. “Thank you, Reggie.” He handed Reggie his card, even though he’d given it to him in the past. He wanted all his contact information fresh for the man. “Call me if you hear anything from Carrie or if you think of anything.”
He got a quick nod from the man before heading down the hall back toward the lobby. Cal saw him approaching and wrapped up with the receptionist before falling in step with Jarrod as they walked out of the center.
Jarrod paused on the steps. “Reggie doesn’t know anything.” His eyes scanned the area, as though there might be some clue in the air around them. There wouldn’t be. Tyvek and Carrie had vanished without leaving a clue where they might have gone.
“Neither does the receptionist. She said Carrie walked out of her own volition. She didn’t see a weapon and Tyvek’s hands weren’t on Carrie. All Carrie said was she had to leave and she’d be back soon.”
Jarrod’s chest tightened again. He couldn’t figure out why Tyvek would take Carrie, but he didn’t like it. The man had shown that he was willing to kill to achieve his goals, whatever they might be. “We need to talk to Staunton again. Maybe he has some idea where Tyvek would take her.”
They were already moving toward the car as Cal answered. “We need to figure out what his motive was in taking Carrie. I just don’t get it. Does he think taking Carrie would hurt Staunton in some way?”
Jarrod shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Could Carrie and Staunton be more than old friends? Could there be more to their relationship than that?” Cal looked almost apologetic as he asked and Jarrod knew why. The words hit Jarrod like a ton of bricks.
Hell no, he wanted to say, but couldn’t. He had no claim on Carrie. If she were involved in some way with Staunton, it was her business. He told himself that, but his brain was grunting all kinds of caveman mine crap at him.
Jarrod shoved aside the thoughts as he hit the lights and gas pedal. They needed answers.
Chapter 24
“Let’s get them in the same room.” Cal said as he and Jarrod took the steps to the precinct two at a time and headed up to the third floor.
He knew what Cal was thinking. Warrick Staunton and Jonathan Simms were their best shot at figuring out what the hell William Tyvek was doing. They needed to get all the information out in the open. Jarrod instructed one of the patrol officers assisting major crimes that day to bring Simms and his lawyers to one of the less formal interview rooms, while he and Cal headed to get Staunton and his lawyers. The room was used when they wanted to set an interviewee at ease, and was typically reserved for either children, or someone coming in as a witness, not a suspect.
“Come with us,” Jarrod said, after he’d opened the door to the interrogation room. The lawyers were pacing the room, but stopped now and opened their mouths to protest his orde
r. Warrick Staunton raised a hand at them.
“What is it? What’s happened?” He looked between Cal and Jarrod and there was genuine concern on his face. Jarrod’s opinion of the man went up a notch.
“We think Tyvek has Carrie Hastings,” Cal said and Jarrod felt the panic surge in his gut again. He shoved it aside. He didn’t have time for that shit.
Staunton’s face went slack with shock. “What? What do you mean has her?”
“We don’t know for sure. He’s not responding to any attempts to reach him,” Jarrod said as they walked down the hall, the lawyers attempting to keep up behind them. “And he was seen leaving the shelter with Carrie an hour ago.”
“Right in here,” Cal said, opening the door to the room Jonathan Simms had been shown to. They quickly recapped the situation for him.
“Tyvek seems focused on you, Warrick.” Jarrod wanted to get Staunton’s take on things without influencing his answers, if that was possible.
“I don’t understand it. I mean, I get why he would hate me, why he would blame me for Vicki’s death. I told you that before, but I don’t get why he would do this now, after three years. Or why he would do anything to hurt Carrie.”
“Do you think he’d really hurt her?” Jonathan asked, sinking into a chair. He shook his head at the men in disbelief, but Jarrod could also see plain shock there.
“We don’t know. There have certainly been enough deaths involved with this case. If he’s behind it, he hasn’t demonstrated a whole lot of mercy. Then again, he knows Carrie personally. So far, he’s had other people doing his dirty work.” Jarrod looked at Warrick.
“Can you think of anything that could have set him off? Anything that would have made him target you in the last year, instead of coming after you right after Victoria’s death?”
Warrick shook his head and looked to Jonathan. “I just don’t know.”
Jonathan looked miserable when he answered. “When I talked to him about the drug eight months ago, he only seemed interested in it for the money. He seemed to want to develop it for his company.”
Warrick sat up. “What? What the hell are you talking about? You talked to William about SP-1090?”
Jonathan nodded and had the decency to look ashamed. “I’m so sorry, Warrick. I only went to see him one time. He had approached me at a conference after we’d had some initial failures with the drug. Said he would take over the project if Simms cancelled it. He had connections with the FDA. They said he could bring the drug to market if he got it through the trials without the adverse effects. That they’d give Tyvek Technologies a shot at it if we could perfect the trials in the lab.”
“Christ, Jonathan! No way in hell they would have let that happen! People died during the trials. He told you what you wanted to hear and you bought into it.” The look on Warrick’s face said it all. This was an enormous betrayal by Jonathan. Simms Pharmaceutical was a family company. Going outside the company with something like this was disloyalty at its lowest.
Jonathan rushed to explain himself. “I only met with him once about it. We talked and came to an agreement where I’d transition to them and continue my work on the drug over a period of a couple of months. I changed my mind within hours and told him. He seemed to understand when I told him I couldn’t go through with it.”
Warrick was up and pacing the room now, hands raking through his hair as he alternated between shaking his head as he prowled the room and stopping to stare in horror at his uncle. “Did you bring him the data? The specs? Jesus, Jonathan, did you give him the formula?”
“No,” Jonathan waved his hands in front of him as if he could erase what had happened. “I swear, Warrick. I showed him the formula, talked a little about the data. I didn’t let him keep copies of anything. I just…” he let his hands drop to the table, where he laced his fingers together, almost as if in prayer. “I just wasn’t ready to give up on the drug. But then I realized I couldn’t do it that way. I couldn’t take the drug someplace else. I backed out, but he didn’t have any of the data, I swear.”
Warrick stopped and rubbed his hands over his face, before letting them fall to his sides. “If he saw the formula once, he wouldn’t have needed it in print.”
“Is that true?” Jarrod looked from one man to the other. “Would he have been able to recreate the drug after seeing the formula?”
Jonathan hung his head in answer, but Warrick voiced the information they needed. “Yes. Tyvek is a businessman, but he was a scientist first. He would have had that information etched in his brain.”
“I’m sorry, Warrick.” Jonathan turned to the detectives. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea he would…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Who would have thought Tyvek would take this information and do what he’d done with it? It was inconceivable. Even if Jonathan had been wrong, and had likely violated confidentiality agreements with his company, he could hardly have seen something like this coming.
Jarrod turned to Warrick. “Let’s just focus for now on where he might take Carrie. Can you think of where he would go with her?”
“Would he go back to the cabin?” Cal asked.
Jarrod shook his head. “I doubt it. He wanted us to find Alan Sykes. He has to know that’s compromised now. We’ll have Sheriff Morris take a look or send someone out there, but I don’t think he would head there.”
“I have no idea where he’d take her,” Warrick said. The lawyers seemed to have given up trying to get their clients not to talk. They sat silently watching the scene unfold.
“We’re running a list of properties he owns, but there are a lot of them.” Cal looked at Jarrod and Jarrod knew what he was thinking. They had nothing to go on. No way of tracking Carrie. Her cell phone had been in her office and Tyvek’s seemed to be turned off. Stephanie was trying to tap into video feeds from around the shelter to see which direction he’d gone. So far, she had early images of him driving at several locations around town, and Carrie wasn’t spotted in the car with him.
“Warrick, can you think of any of his properties that are remote? Does he own a vacation home he might have brought her to?” Jarrod asked.
Now one of the lawyers spoke up. “No, that doesn’t make sense. He’s focused on Warrick. If he’s taken Carrie, it’s linked to Warrick in some way. The location would be linked to him as well.”
Jarrod nodded. The lawyer had a point. “Do you have other properties in this area?”
Warrick shook his head. “My home and the cabin. I have a place in Italy.”
“We have people watching the airports,” Jarrod said. “What about the drug? Would he need space to manufacture it?” Jarrod looked between both men, not know which one would be better able to answer the question.
“Yes,” Jonathan nodded. “A lab.”
“But he has access to plenty of those,” Warrick said.
“Would he be able to manufacture it at one of his labs without people knowing what it was?”
“Not really. He’d either need to have people in on it or he would have to have a hidden lab.” Warrick looked up and over at Jonathan as if something had dawned on him. “Or an abandoned lab.”
“What does that mean?” Cal cut in, asking exactly what Jarrod was thinking.
“We have a lab we no longer use. It’s twenty minutes outside of town,” Warrick began. “We outgrew the space two years ago, but have held on to the land. The lab and old office buildings are still there. We simply don’t have a use for it right now, but the property has value.”
“Is it secured in any way? Patrolled?” Jarrod asked.
“Not patrolled, no. We have a security gate.” Warrick crossed his arms. “Alarms on all of the buildings.”
“Is it possible Victoria gave Tyvek those codes?” Jarrod prompted, reminding Warrick of the conversation they’d had about Victoria sharing codes with her father earlier.
But Warrick shook his head. “No. The codes were changed routinely until the building closed. We changed them every
month, at a minimum.”
“Until the closures?”
“Yes. And that was two years ago.” Warrick didn’t have to say it. Jarrod knew that was after Victoria’s death.
“Sykes was with the company then. He would have had them,” Jonathan said, quietly.
Chapter 25
She’d recognized where they were as soon as Tyvek got her out of the car. Walking hadn’t been easy after lying on the floor of the car in one position for so long. He’d shoved her along in front of him, holding the gun on her the whole time. There were woods behind the building, and she thought if she could just get away from him, maybe she could lose him in the woods. But there was no chance to run. Her only thought was that he’d shoot her in the back if she did, and that thought terrified her. Would anyone even find her out here?
Now she sat on a chair, her wrists and ankles bound to it with the same chains he’d had in the car. William left the room and she heard the echo of his footsteps down the hall. The silence in the building was eerie and spoke volumes about the remote possibility that someone would stumble upon them and help her. There wouldn’t be anyone coming here to help. She had to come up with a way to help herself.
The chains were tightly clasped around her wrists. There was no way she could pull her hands loose. And even if she did, she’d never get her feet out. She tried to slide the chair toward the door and made it ten feet or so before William came back. He didn’t comment on her changed position. In fact, he barely glanced at her.
Carrie struggled to remember little details about Victoria. It was all she could think to do. If she could come up with enough memories of Vicki, maybe she could make William Tyvek see Carrie as Vicki’s friend and he wouldn’t hurt her. “Victoria’s favorite ice cream was the Cowabunga Crunch at JT’s on the Cape. She used to talk about it during the winter when we couldn’t get it.”
He paced in front of her as she spoke.
