Tainted Mind (23 page)

“Isn't there something about ‘the fruit of the poison tree’ or something like that?” Ian pointed out.

Vivienne bobbed her head. “Yes, but as long as the information they give you wasn't gained through illegal means, you can still use it for evidentiary purposes.”

“But you just said the border for them is fuzzy.”

“But they are also adept at skirting the right side of the line,” Travis added.

Ian regarded everyone at the table, then threw up his hands in defeat before pointing a finger at the twins and issuing a warning. “Fine, go ahead. But if you do anything, and I repeat
anything
, to screw up this investigation, you will regret it. You aren't the only ones who
know how to skirt the law.” He fixed them both with a hard look. Naomi's eyes went to Vivienne, Brian looked at him in surprise.

“Wow,” Brian said with a glance at Vivienne. “I think you may have found a good one this time, Vivi.”

“It's kind of hot when he goes all Ranger on us,” Naomi added with a wink and a grin.

Vivienne shot Ian an apologetic look. He wasn't quite sure what to say. Usually men cowered when he spoke like that. Her family laughed it off.

“On that note, I think you should look at the houses around where Rebecca stayed,” Brian picked up from where Ian had cut him off. “From the images I saw, there are a couple of other houses on the street, but they are tucked back and probably wouldn't have noticed much. However, there are two houses, one to the south and one to the east, that sit up on hills and have good views of the place she was staying.”

“You don't actually think they might have seen something? It's about as likely as someone from the road seeing something,” Ian said. All this cloak and dagger stuff—Ian couldn't believe what he was hearing. Or not hearing. Because what he wasn't hearing was a good lead.

Brian and Naomi shared a look. “Take it for what it's worth,” Naomi finally said.

Ian looked to Vivienne. She was watching her cousins with a contemplative look, a small frown touching her mouth. Huh.

“Vivienne, we should head out.” Ian rose from his seat and reached for her empty plate to bus the table. She looked up at him, then murmured her assent. Ten minutes later, after quick goodbyes and promises to keep in touch, Ian and Vivienne were headed out of town.

“What's the story with the ‘tip’ from Brian and Naomi?” he finally asked. Remembering the look the twins had shared and Vivienne's concentration on their suggestion, he knew he must have missed something. Like something they weren't saying.

“Shit,” he continued, not waiting for Vivienne to answer. “They know something about those houses, don't they?”

Vivienne bit her lip, then inclined her head. “Probably.”

“Do I want to know?” Did he want to know what they knew or how they knew it? “Never mind,” he said with a shake of his
head. “I'll—I guess I'll just look into it. Canvassing the neighborhood is a routine procedure, one we hadn't thought to expand beyond those closest.”

“I think that would be a good idea.”

“Your cousins are good at what they do?” They left the Taconic Parkway and merged onto I-90, headed toward Boston.

“Very.”

“So I should listen to them. What they say and what they don't?” he asked.

Reluctant acceptance tinged her answer. “Probably.”

C
HAPTER
15

IAN THOUGHT HE WAS USED TO SCRUTINY.
After being in some of the places he'd been and doing some of the things he'd done, he was pretty comfortable with it all. But walking into the Boston Police Department headquarters made his skin feel tight and his fingers twitchy. He didn't have to see everyone to know he and Vivienne were being watched as they made their way toward the back of the main room, a large, open space filled with desks and cops.

When they reached the back, Ian was glad to see they were headed into an office. An office with shades drawn and the door closed. The scrutiny would continue, but he wouldn't have to see it, at least not from all directions.

“Come in,” a gruff voice called out in answer to Vivienne's knock. She cast Ian a look before opening the office door and stepping inside. Following closely on her heels, Ian shut the door behind him and got his first look at Lucas Rancuso.

Wearing a jacket and tie, he sat behind a desk, hunched over some files. He looked up as they entered, and a lock of thick, black hair fell into his eyes—eyes lined with dark circles. He considered the two of them for a heartbeat before rising.

Now, Ian wasn't a tall man, but he wasn't short either. Rancuso, on the other hand, was a giant. Easily six and a half feet tall, he towered over Vivienne who had wordlessly stepped forward and into a hug.

“I'm sorry I didn't call,” she mumbled. A look of pain crossed the big man's sharp features, but he shook off her apology. Then he turned his eyes to Ian.

“Ian, this is Detective Lucas Rancuso. Lucas, this is Deputy Chief Ian MacAllister from Windsor.”

As Rancuso studied him, Ian studied the detective. After the initial surprise at the man's size waned, Ian took in his rumpled clothes and gaunt features, factors that made Rancuso, who was probably only a few years older than Ian, look much older. No doubt, he was an imposing man, but he was also, clearly, running on fumes. Ian stepped forward and offered his hand, and after a beat, it was received in a firm shake.

Gesturing to them to take the empty seats in the room, the detective rounded back behind his desk and sat. Placing his hands flat on his desk, he spoke. “So, you want to look at a couple of my cold cases?”

Ian nodded and rattled off the names of the three women they were interested in, though he knew both Vivienne and Carly had covered this in their conversations with Rancuso as the case officer. And the detective wasn't really listening anyway; he was not so subtly taking Ian's measure.

Not taking his eyes off of Ian, he leaned back in his chair and said, “Tell me what you know and what you think.”

The drill wasn't new and Ian easily tapped into his training to deliver a succinct, complete report of what they had found, what they were looking for, and what they thought the likely outcome was going to be.

“You're former military, aren't you?” Rancuso asked when he was done.

Ian gave a short nod. “Ranger, twelve years.” An unreadable look passed between Vivienne and her friend.

“So you think it's a serial killer?” Rancuso sat forward and placed his hands back on his desk.

“I don't want to, but yes, we think it's likely, Detective,” Ian answered.

Rancuso studied him again for a long moment, before picking up some files. “Call me Lucas, and I'm glad. Not that there might be a serial killer out there,” he clarified, “but that you think so. When these three women went missing,” Lucas handed the files to Ian as he spoke, “I warned Viv about it. I didn't like it. We only found one
body, and then it stopped so we didn't officially take the serial killer position on the cases. But I always thought it was likely.”

“What bothered you most about these cases?” Ian probed.

“Other than the fact that they all looked like Viv? Were professional women like Viv? Were the same age as Viv? And that two of them went missing from places Viv frequents?” Vivienne made a half-hearted sound of protest at his side. She'd obviously heard all this before and had dismissed his concern, but now that Lucas had a second chance, he wasn't going to let it go.

Ian was starting to like the guy. “Other than that.”

“It was three women in a six-month time frame. The similarities in the victims were too strong to ignore, but there were also other things.”

“Like?” Ian prompted.

“Like, all three women had multiple phone calls to a burner cell phone in the few days leading up to their disappearances. Different numbers for each woman, but the same pattern. Two of the three mentioned to friends that they were seeing someone new, but no one had any details about who this new person was. The last one went missing walking home from a restaurant where she was attending a big office holiday party. The second went missing after giving a lecture on Emily Dickenson at the university. And the first woman? Also on her way home, from a fundraising event for the children's hospital.”

“All public places where it was easy for someone to blend in,” Ian finished. He sat back in his chair and thought about his two victims, Jessica and Rebecca. They didn't have enough information about the final movements of the women, but he could easily see the similarities. Jessica was a nurse at a busy emergency room in New York City and Rebecca worked in theater—both places a man could hide in plain sight. As for the burner phone calls, he'd be sure to look for those when the phone records showed up.

“This isn't all you have, though, is it, Lucas?” Vivienne asked with a gesture to the files Ian held. Lucas shook his head.

“No, we have boxes down in storage. It all happened nearly two years ago, and with no movement on the case, we boxed everything up and took it down to the crypt.”

“Can we have access?” Ian asked.

“I
have
access,” Vivienne pointed out.

Lucas shot her a look. “I'll give you all the access you need. We can have the paper files copied for you to take, and we'll send you anything we have that's electronic. Between the two, you'll have all the lab and evidence reports including the autopsy results. But there are hours of video in the boxes too. We can copy those, but it might take a little more time.”

“I want to know more about the videos you have, but I also want to hear more about how the one body was found.” Ian sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

“Fluke, as usual,” Lucas answered. “She was the first to go missing and the only body we found. She'd been dumped in Walden Pond, out by Concord, about ten miles from here. A man brought his dog by a few days later and played a little water fetch with him—which isn't allowed. The dog stirred things up enough that the body floated up.”

“Powerful dog,” Ian commented.

“He was a big boy, about a hundred and twenty pounds, but more to the point, he happened to be charging in and out of the water right where we think she must have been dumped.”

Ian frowned and nodded. “Of course, the perpetrator couldn't very well bring a boat into the state park, not to mention how obvious that would be, so he had to dump her relatively close to the shore.”

Lucas nodded. “She was only about twenty feet out, but the pond isn't that deep. She was weighted down with rocks tied to her ankles and wrists, but two came loose. And then, with the help of a rambunctious dog, the jostling was enough to bring her close to the surface. Once the guy recognized what he was seeing, he called it in right away.”

“And they say the only kind of real luck is bad luck,” Ian said.

Lucas grunted. “Too bad her body didn't tell us enough about who killed her though.”

Ian concurred with that. “What about the videos?”

“We have video surveillance from various spots around the university lecture hall, as well as from the fundraising event—not inside the event, but it was at a hotel so there were cameras in the lobby and out front by the valet parking. We don't have any video from the office party, but there are traffic cams on the two corners nearby, so we have that footage as well.”

Ian was impressed. “How many hours?”

“A little over a hundred, total.”

Okay, he was less impressed.

“And someone's been through it before?” Ian asked.

Lucas wagged his head. “Yes, but we were pretty short staffed about that time. I'm not saying we would have missed anything obvious, but it's possible that if there was something subtle it might not have caught our eye. We also had three different techs reviewing the footage.”

“So, if John Doe Murderer showed up in all three as a regular looking guy out for a nighttime stroll, he probably wouldn't have been noted,” Ian commented.

Lucas's jaw clenched as he shook his head. “I wanted to put the same person on it, but the captain had other plans.”

Ian knew a thing or two about not getting what you wanted from a superior.

“So, can we?” Ian said, rising from his seat. Vivienne had been unusually quiet during the meeting, but she stood as well. Rancuso took the lead as the three made their way down to the evidence lockers, signed in, and began the search for the evidence.

Forty-five minutes later, Ian was leaving the copy room with his last stack of papers. The videos would take some time because they had to be done by a tech in the evidence lab and Ian and Vivi would have to sign the evidence out then be at the mercy of finding a tech with the time.

“Does he know?” Ian heard Lucas's hushed voice as he came closer to the table holding the evidence box. He slowed his steps.

“No,” Vivienne answered. “Of course not.”

He heard Lucas let out a long breath.

“So, how are you? Really, Viv?”

Ian stopped walking, waiting for her answer. “I'm okay. Well, not okay, but better than you might think, better than I was. What about you? I am sorry I didn't call, Lucas.”

“I'm fine,” the man responded.

Ian recognized the universal male brush-off tone.

“I thought you were going to take some time off,” Lucas pressed.

“I was. I did. A little over a month.”

“Wow, a little over a month. I thought the plan was the whole year.”

The sarcasm in Lucas's voice was plain as day. This was news to Ian—Vivienne had never mentioned taking an entire year off. He frowned and wondered why.

“We both know a year would never have worked. And besides, what could I do? I
found
a body, Lucas,” Vivienne said.

“You could have left it to the police like most normal citizens do,” came his dry reply. “But then, of course, you met Mr. Highlander.” Given what Nick had intimated the day before, Ian figured that at some point there must have been something going on between these two. But Lucas's voice held more amusement than sarcasm, and no jealousy that Ian could detect.

“I'm
not
talking about Ian with you.”

“Of course you will. You always do. Maybe just not today.”