Chapter 39
Pepper felt himself coming around, the pain in the back of his head throbbing like a beating heart. He tried to open his eyes, the bright white light making him close them tightly again. He turned his head to the side to avoid the direct glare, and tried to peer out through little slits. As his eyes started to focus, he was able to slowly open them more, the overhead fluorescent lights giving everything an institutional glow. He was looking at a pair of metal shelving units standing against a concrete block wall. The shelves were filled with bottles, jars, and various plastic trays. Beside them, he spotted a curved hunting bow hanging from a nail. He saw a window at the top of the wall above the shelving unit, noticing it was covered from side to side with white film.
He looked back at the bow, piecing together where he was and what had happened. He tried to move, but couldn't. He lifted his head and looked down at his arm, strong plastic zip ties securing his wrist to the side rails of what looked like a hospital bed. He tried to move his leg, but that didn't work either. He looked further down, seeing another couple of sizable zip ties wrapped around his ankle. He flipped his head over to the other side, seeing the zip ties securing his arm and leg on that side too.
Looking past his own bed, he saw Shauna lying on a regular double bed a short distance away across the room. She appeared to be sleeping, and as he looked closer, he breathed a sigh of relief as he noticed her chest moving up and down rhythmically. She was fully dressed in a black jacket and pants with a light blue blouse beneath. Her black shoes were still on her feet.
"Tee, are you all right?" Pepper heard the voice first as McTavish rushed up next to the hospital bed, his eyes darting back towards the door of the room as he reached out to the bindings around Pepper's wrist.
"Ian, thank God. You've got to get us out of here." Pepper craned his head, trying to look around. "Where's Drummond? You'd better hurry."
McTavish started laughing, stepping back and looking down at Pepper. He crossed his hands over his chest. "Now why would I hurry, we've got lots of time."
"What?" Pepper said, continuing to strain his neck in an effort to look behind. "C'mon, Ian. Get us out of here."
McTavish watched as Pepper struggled to free himself, and then he started to sing. "A candy-coloured clown they call The Sandman, tiptoes to my room every night." He stepped over next to Pepper, holding his hand over Pepper's face as he slowly rubbed his fingertips together, an evil smile on his face. "Just to sprinkle stardust, and to whisper, everything will be all right."
Pepper stopped pulling at his binds, his heart thumping in his chest as he looked at McTavish. "You...you??"
"Yes, me. Excellent police work, Detective Pepper."
Pepper stared at McTavish's smiling face, stunned. "But how?.why?"
"The how was the fun part."
Pepper looked around the room, and then up at the covered windows. "But Drummond, where's Drummond? Is he in this with you?"
"Currently, I'd say Robert Drummond is sleeping on his basement floor, courtesy of an injection I gave him."
"But his house, the film on his basement windows, the fluorescent lights," Pepper said, looking around at the room once more.
"The good professor has his own little project going on in that basement of his. That's why he got pissed off when Caruso started with the search warrant business. I broke into his house right after we started the surveillance on him and found a tidy little grow-op he's got going. It looks like it's just for his own personal use, but he's got an impressive little setup there."
Pepper looked over, his mind reeling, unable to comprehend what was happening. Question after question was running through his head. "Him being at the party on Broughdale, how did you arrange that?"
McTavish chuckled. "That was just blind luck. I had no idea the guy was there at all. The more we found out about him, the more I knew he was the perfect patsy to help string things along."
"That visit you made to Toronto, and that interview with that woman in Waterloo-was that all bullshit?"
"Surprisingly, that was all true. Just in case Caruso checked back with her, I didn't change a word of what she told me." He held his hands out to each side, palms up. "Why would I? It just put him even more under the microscope."
"The car, Drummond's silver car. How the hell did that work? Your car's black?"
"It's amazing the choice of vehicles we have at the impound lot. I simply told the guys I had to check something out with a certain car, and I had it back within a few hours-they didn't even make me sign it out. It just so happened Drummond had the same colour of car as the one I took. Like you said yourself, it seems like every second car is silver nowadays." McTavish's expression, which had been benign, now turned angry. "I wasn't counting on that fucking old bag on Cheapside Street having her eye on everything twenty-four hours a day. It was lucky for me that she screwed up on the licence plate."
"That invoice slip."
"Forgetting to pick that up was the first mistake I made in all this. Thank goodness I purposely made my printing messy. Chin would have noticed it right away."
"Bartolucci, how did you hook up with that kid?"
"It was just like he told you. We met on that website, and when he ended up telling me he went to Western, I thought he'd be perfect for being my little supplier, if you know what I mean."
Pepper's mind was going like crazy, trying to figure things out. "The roofies you left for him behind that book at the library. How did you get that perfume bottle there with that note for us the second time without showing up on the security footage?"
"I had left it there before you even went the first time. Once I found out the kid was starting to talk, I knew he'd spill it all. So I put the note there even before you and Wallace went to check out the original hiding spot-the bottle was there all along while you guys were just a few rows away."
Pepper shook his head, remembering how Caruso had said The Sandman was one step ahead of them at every turn. "That call tonight to lure me out to Drummond's house, just when I'd found out Shauna was missing, how did you manage that?"
"I've had a transponder on your undercover car and on your own car for a few weeks now. And one on Shauna's too." McTavish reached over and picked up his cell phone, holding it up for Pepper to see. "It's amazing how good these apps are nowadays. I was able to follow your every move, including when you drove into the parking lot looking for her car, and that little detour you made to check out her place. That is a lovely little house she has there, isn't it. I love the way she's decorated it." A shiver went down Pepper's spine at the thought of McTavish breaking into Shauna's house. "She does have such a nice collection of lingerie, too. All that silk and satin. I even managed to find a little souvenir to remind me of my visit." He reached over to the shelving unit and picked up a pair of pink lace panties, dangling them from his index finger for Pepper to see. Seeing the anger in Pepper's eyes, he shrugged his shoulders and tossed the panties back on the shelf. "It's too bad redheads aren't my thing."
Pepper was breathing raggedly, trying to figure a way out, knowing at a minimum he had to keep McTavish talking and away from Shauna. "The song lyrics. I know that's not your kind of music. Why did you put them on those notes?"
"I knew that you and Wallace would nail those song lyrics right from the get go. And I knew that if you guys did that, Caruso would make you lead detectives on the case. Things worked out exactly as I planned."
"But...but why us?"
"It was so much fun to watch you two struggle to try and figure everything out from those song lyrics-and I threw those coded messages in there for Wallace's benefit-I knew it wouldn't take him long to figure them out."
"Those messages: I WILL HURT YOU, A DAY WILL COME, and YOU WILL FEEL MY PAIN. Who was that message for?"
"For you, of course."
Pepper just looked at McTavish, his brain spinning. "But Ian?why?"
McTavish walked over and drew back a curtain covering the wall behind the head of t
he bed that Shauna was lying on. Pepper looked over, seeing the entire wall covered with copies of the same picture-there had to be at least a hundred of them, all the same-a younger-looking McTavish with his face pressed up against the cheek of a pretty blonde girl, both of them smiling into the camera. Pepper felt a shudder go through him as he looked at the seemingly endless array of the same picture, the girl looking remarkably like all the girls that had been murdered-the face of a girl he recognized immediately.
Pepper had dated Victoria Underwood in the fall of his second year at Western. He'd known at the time that she had dated McTavish a couple of times previously, but she'd told Pepper she'd broken it off with McTavish a number of weeks previously, telling him that McTavish was 'too clingy'. Pepper had dated her exactly three times before Christmas of that year, taking in a couple of movies and sharing a pizza one time. They'd kissed, but that had been it. Her parents were taking her on vacation to the Caribbean over the Christmas Break and she and Pepper were supposed to attend a New Year's Eve party together when she returned. While away, she'd died in a boating accident in Aruba, her small boat capsizing after striking a reef while she'd been out doing some snorkelling in the usually quiet waters. Pepper had been shocked and saddened when he'd heard the news, attending the funeral for her shortly after the family's return. He remembered seeing Ian there too, looking solemn and pale. As time passed, he'd gotten over it, and as the years continued to pass, he'd almost forgotten about her. "Ian, I don't understand. Vicky died in that boating accident all those years ago."
"It wasn't a boating accident," McTavish said, his eyes misting up as he looked at the wall of pictures and then back at Pepper. "I followed her down there. I saw her when she was alone on the beach that day and tried to talk some sense into her. She didn't understand that we were meant to be together. I told her to stop seeing you, and that you would only hurt her in the end. She pushed me away, telling me to leave her alone." McTavish paused as he looked over at Pepper, an angry tear trickling down his cheek. "If it wasn't for you, we'd be together today-I know it."
The pain in the back of his skull had Pepper's head buzzing, and he just looked a McTavish, not believing what he was hearing. "What?what happened?"
"She wouldn't listen to me, wouldn't listen to what I knew was right for us. When she tried to push me away again, I got angry and hit her-I don't know what came over me. She fell to the ground and her skirt slid up her legs. I took her, right there on the beach, gave her what she needed, what they all need." He stepped over to the row of torn panties hanging from the pegs on the wall, pointing to a pair of shredded white panties at one end. "These are hers, she was the first."
Pepper's chest was heaving as he looked at McTavish, wondering exactly who this man really was that he'd known all these years. "Did you kill her too?"
McTavish slowly nodded, the memory still haunting him. "Yes, when I took her, we were right at the water's edge. She struggled, so I pushed her out a little further. I held her head under the water as I made love to her. Even beneath the water, her eyes were open and looking at me as she struggled-when I was finished, she wasn't struggling anymore."
Pepper looked at McTavish, almost afraid to ask anything more, but he had to know. "But the report of the boating accident??"
"I realized what I'd done, so I took Vicky out in her boat and rammed it into the reef. I used an extra pair of flippers and a life jacket and swam back to shore. They found the boat a few hours after, and her body washed up on shore the next morning. The autopsy said she'd drowned. I was already back home by the end of that day, but I've kept these ever since." He reached up, letting his fingertips brush back and forth over the shredded piece of silky fabric.
Pepper looked at the other pairs of panties, all of them torn and in tatters, knowing they had come from Yvonne Redmond, Alicia Skinner, and Nicole Fletcher. "Why? Why now after all these years?"
"I've hated you for a long time, Pepper. All these years, it made me sick to see how much everybody likes you. The Golden Boy who can do no wrong, instead of the pathetic meddling prick who fucked up my life. I wanted to see you screw up, to see you make an idiot of yourself trying to solve a case that was beyond you." McTavish paused as he looked down at Pepper, the hatred burning in his eyes. "And I couldn't stop thinking about how I felt at that exact moment with Vicky. Seeing that look in her eyes as I took her, knowing that was the happiest moment of my life.
"After I discovered the Reaper website and was contacted by Rico, I knew I had the perfect opportunity to make it come true all over again. And setting it up so that I got to watch you and Wallace bumble your way through the case was icing on the cake. I guess you could say I got my cake and got to fuck it too."
Pepper was absolutely floored, having never seen even a hint of this side of McTavish in all the years he'd known him. He'd known him to be moody at times, but this? "Is that why your wife left you? What did you do to her?"
"She didn't like it rough like I did. She fought back, and I didn't like that. I had to hit her a few times to keep her quiet, but she was stronger than I thought. I tell you, Tee, woman can scratch pretty good." He reached up to the side of his face, and Pepper realized that must have been why he'd taken the leave of absence right after his wife left him, to let those scratches heal. "The stupid bitch should have just laid there. That would have been so much better. I like it when I can do whatever I want." McTavish turned and looked over his shoulder at Shauna, his lips turning up in a twisted smile.
Pepper looked past McTavish to Shauna, the terror almost choking him. "Leave her alone, Ian-she doesn't look anything like Vicky."
"That's true," McTavish said, his eyes lingering on her red hair. "But she is yours-so now I want to take from you what you took from me."
Pepper looked at the sick smile on McTavish's face, knowing he believed he was justified in everything he'd done. "Ian, nothing happened between Vicky and me. We just dated a few times. Don't do this, Ian. I know you. I know this isn't like you. We can talk to someone, it'll be okay." As Pepper talked, he kept pulling at the zip ties holding his arms, his efforts useless. They just dug deeper into his skin.
"I knew you'd start talking like that." McTavish turned and stepped over to one of the shelving units, reaching forward and coming back with a strange-looking device in his hand.
As he came closer, Pepper saw the red ball and black leather straps. "Ian, don't. I'm begging you-please leave her alo-" His words became muffled as McTavish pressed the ball gag into his mouth. Pepper struggled, moving his head from side to side, but McTavish was too strong, pulling the straps behind his head and securing the gag in place. Pepper continued to plead, but only muffled sounds could be heard.
"That sound is still annoying. I normally like peace and quiet in my operating theatre, but I want to keep you awake to see what I'm going to do to her. So let's put on a little background music, shall we?"
With that sick smile still on his face, McTavish sympathetically patted Pepper's cheek before stepping over to a different shelving unit. Within a few seconds, music started playing, the volume low but the sounds easily discernable. Pepper immediately recognized the haunting instrumental prelude to Echo and The Bunnymen's song 'The Killing Moon'.
"There, a little background music to work by. I'm sure you know that one," McTavish said as he stepped over to the foot of Pepper's bed. "I think it's most appropriate, don't you?" Pepper didn't even make an effort to answer, knowing it was useless with the ball gag. He watched as McTavish moved to the side and looked through a small video camera sitting on a tripod he hadn't noticed before. As McTavish crouched down to look at the image, Pepper saw that it was directed right at the bed on which Shauna was lying. Apparently satisfied, McTavish stood up and hit the record button on the camera, the red light coming on.
He casually walked over to one of the shelves and reached forward, turning around and facing Pepper as he pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves. "She'll be waking up soon," McTavish said, nodding toward
s Shauna, "so I think it's time to get started." He walked over to the shelving unit near her and took a jug of bleach off the top shelf. He took the lid off and Pepper cringed as McTavish sniffed from the open bottle. "Don't you just love the smell of that, so clean, so pure. We'll be using that soon enough." He set the cap back on top of the jug, before returning it to the shelf. He turned back to Pepper, holding a syringe in his hand. "I think you can see all right from there, can't you?" Pepper tried to move his arms and legs again, but it was useless, the zip ties held firm. "Good. Well, Detective Pepper, I'm sorry I don't have any popcorn for you, but why don't you just sit back and enjoy the show."
Wide-eyed and shaking, Pepper could only watch as McTavish turned and walked towards Shauna.
Every Breath You Take Page 70
