Tainted Mind (7 page)

“Ah, Rebecca,” a woman called as she opened the door. “I was wondering when you might come in for your fabric. Oh wait, I beg your pardon.” The woman stopped short a few feet away from Vivi. “I took you for one of my regulars. I apologize.”

Vivi smiled at the stylishly-dressed woman in her sixties. “No problem. They say everyone has their doppelgänger somewhere in the world.”

“That they do. I'm Julie, the owner. Can I help you with something?” She stepped forward and they shook hands.

“Hi Julie, I'm Vivienne. Do you have baby quilts?” Vivi looked around and didn't know where to let her eyes land. The shop was filled with fabric and rows and rows of shelves with everything from needles to books to thread. Even the walls were covered to the ceiling with folded, hanging quilts.

“To make or to buy?”

“Definitely buy.” Vivi turned back to Julie.

The woman smiled at Vivi's self-deprecating comment. “On this wall here,” she said, pointing to a line of quilts hanging along the back wall. “Most are locally made. But we do carry a few from Amish friends I have. Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?”

Vivi answered that it was a girl and Julie spent the next several minutes walking her through some of the quilts that might fit what she was looking for. Finally she settled on a soft-colored quilt of green and lavender.

“I assume you want this wrapped?” Julie asked as they headed for the counter.

“Please,” Vivi answered, looking around the store. “Have you been here long?” she asked, making conversation as Julie went about taking care of her purchase.

“Yes, nearly forty years.”

“Wow. And have you always had this shop?”

“More or less. I opened it about thirty-six years ago.”

“That's impressive—to keep a small business going so long. Is it hard in a town of this size?”

“It has its ups and downs to be sure. The fall is always a big season for us. We get a little bump at Christmas and on the weekends when all the folks come up to their weekend homes. Though I have a string of regulars that kind of smooth things out for me. Not every business is so lucky.”

“Like Rebecca?” Vivi commented, her eyes still surveying the larger quilts hanging on the wall behind the counter.

“She's sort of a regular. Lives up here in the wintertime. She's a costume designer in New York City and spends her winters up here doing her own projects.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is if you don't mind the cold and snow.”

“It must be hard for the other businesses that might depend more on the tourists? Is there a lot of turnover?”

“About as much as you would expect,” Julie replied, turning back to the counter and placing the beautifully-wrapped quilt on the counter. “The jewelry store does reasonably well, the bakery does good business. The Tavern has been doing well for several years. But we used to have a chocolate shop, a few more cafes, and a local grocery store down here. Anything that is too overpriced for the locals doesn't last long. The weekenders’ money is good, but not usually good enough to sustain a business on its own.”

“The bane of small-town economics, I suppose,” Vivi responded as she signed her credit card receipt.

“You're not from around here?” It wasn't a real question but Vivi answered anyway.

“No, Boston. But I travel a lot and spend a lot of time in small towns all over the country. I like them. I think it's kind of nice to know most of your neighbors.”

“Whether you want to or not,” Julie added with a smile.

“There is that,” Vivi conceded. “Now, if I want to mail this somewhere, I know I saw a post office.”

“Go to the end of the street, turn left, and it will be on your right. I don't have a large selection of cards, but if you want a great baby shower card, Madelyn across the street has some fun ones.”

Vivi thanked the woman and, taking her advice, jogged across the street and bought a card to send with the quilt. Once that errand
was complete, she headed to the post office and sent off the entire package. Realizing how close she was to the police station, she opted to stop by rather than call Ian to check on her clearance.

“Officer Granger,” she said, walking into the main office.

“Dr. DeMarco,” he answered, standing as she walked toward him. He was young, probably not even twenty-five, and his tall, gangly body hadn't come anywhere close to filling out yet. Still, his soft brown eyes were kind and inquisitive, and his eager but sweet demeanor made him easy to like on sight.

“How are you today?” he asked.

“Well, thank you. Is Deputy Chief MacAllister in?” she asked, reverting to his title in his workplace.

“I'm in here, and call me Ian, everyone does,” came a voice to her right. Officer Granger made a motion to a door that was open a crack. She walked over and peered in.

“Is this a good time?” she asked. He looked up from his paperwork and she was caught again by the color of his eyes.

“You're our Hail Mary on this murder, any time is a good time for you,” he answered.

“I was out running some errands,” she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “Met two very helpful shopkeepers, by the way,” she said as an aside. “And I was walking through town so figured I would stop by and check to make sure you have what you need from Kathryn before I head down to Riverside?”

“I do, thanks for checking. You're good to go. What errands did you run?” he asked, closing a case file on his desk.

She must have given him a funny look because, really, it was an odd question.

“There's not a lot of shopping to do in town. Call me curious,” he shrugged. She took a few more steps into the room and stopped next to the chair in front of his desk.

“Or call you an investigator,” she suggested with a lopsided smile. “One of my cousins is having a baby, and the shower is next weekend. I'm going to be the godmother but can't make the shower, so I popped into Julie's quilt shop and picked something up to send,” she explained.

“Glad you found something and sorry you can't make the shower. It's not this case is it?” Ian sounded concerned and, again, she was struck by how novel it was to work with someone who seemed to care about her, not just her skills.

She shook her head and took a seat. “No, it's a long story I don't want to get into, but I wasn't going to attend anyway. The only thing this case is taking me from is a random journey through the Finger Lakes.”

“Well, glad to hear it. Are you headed down to Riverside now?”

She nodded. “Any hits from the missing persons database?”

He shook his head. “I'm not sure they're running the picture you came up with yesterday through everything they could be running it through. Backlogs, all the time. Anyway, I have a couple of things I need to do this afternoon, and then I'll meet you down at the hospital. Once you're done, there's a good Mexican restaurant in town. We can pop over there and you can fill me in.”

Vivi frowned. He wasn't exactly asking her on a date. In fact he wasn't asking her anything. For a moment, she thought to protest but then realized how petty that would be. She did need to eat.

“Fine, sounds good. Although I may be a while. Why don't you come around six-ish?” she suggested, rising from the chair.

He nodded and stood, following her lead. “Be careful,” he said as she headed toward the door.

His concern reminded her. “Thanks for calling Rob last night,” she said, turning back. “It was nice to have dinner waiting.” Ian shrugged in response but said nothing. She studied him for a moment, acknowledging to herself that the man before her was probably more complex than the average male. And she found that interesting. More interesting than a professional colleague should.

“I'll see you at six,” she reaffirmed before turning and walking away.

*   *   *

Ian paused at the door to the morgue and watched Vivienne through the small window. She sat, very still, on a stool beside the table that held the bones of their Jane Doe. Vivienne's hands were folded in her lap and she looked to be lost in thought as she gazed at the skeleton. Something about her stillness bothered Ian. He didn't believe in ghosts, but watching Vivienne, it was almost as if she was in deep conversation with someone, if only herself.

He gave the door a soft knock to let her know he was there, then stepped inside. Vivienne's head swung up on his entry, but other than that, nothing about her moved. He paused several feet away from her and tried to read her expression.

“I'm not going to like what you've found today, am I?”

She pursed her lips. “I don't know that I've actually
found
anything.”

He glanced at a box that looked to be filled with evidence bags, slides, and other objects. “Um, it looks like you found a lot,” he countered.

“I collected a lot of things, but I don't have the equipment here to know if what I collected will tell us anything or is meaningful in any way,” she clarified.

Ian's eyes lingered for a moment on the box before he turned them back to Vivienne and spoke again. “Granger will be by later tonight to pick up the samples and drive them to the lab in Albany.” Ian watched as she nodded. Her own gaze turned to the box and then back to the bones. “But that's not what's bothering you, is it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It's too early to be bothered by much of anything other than the fact this woman was murdered.”

“Vivienne,” he said, trying out her first name. “Something's on your mind. I can see it in your expression, in your body language. And it has nothing to do with the evidence that may or may not be in that box.”

She gave him a ghost of a smile. “I think you're a better cop than you think you are.”

“I think, after all the time I spent doing the things I did, I got pretty good at reading people,” he responded, careful not to show how close to the target she'd come in her assessment of him and his own self-doubt.

“Fair enough,” she conceded. Again, her gaze swung back to the bones.

“Vivienne.”

She sighed. “You're not going to like it and it's all speculation anyway.”

He stepped forward, saying nothing, but coming close enough to examine the body himself.

“You see these marks here and here,” she said, pointing to the marks she'd noticed the first time she had viewed the body. There were two on each wrist, two on one ankle, and three on the other.

“Shackles, you said.”

She nodded. “But these kinds of shackles aren't something you would use for an impulse kill.”

“So the perpetrator planned the attack.”

“In all likelihood, yes.”

“But that's not what's bothering you.”

She shook her head. “He—and while it could be a she, it's more likely to be he so I'm going to use that pronoun—he not only planned the attack but prepared for it. It's pretty safe to say this young woman wasn't local, so he probably either lured her here or brought her here himself.”

Ian was following her so far. “Which means he might be local.”

“Maybe, but he could be a weekender. He could also be someone who has access to facilities up here. But he is someone who is, at the very least, familiar with the area.”

“And that's what bothers you?”

Vivienne frowned and shook her head again. “No, what bothers me is that I don't think this was his first kill.”

C
HAPTER
6

IAN BLINKED AND TRIED TO TAKE IN
what he was hearing. “You think we might have a serial killer? Here? In Windsor?”

“That's not what I said,” Vivienne jumped in.

His mind was racing and he couldn't get past his first reaction:
impossible.
But still, he forced himself to stop the objections. Studying the woman in front of him, he took a deep breath.

“Okay, tell me what you think and why,” he said. While he may know his town, he had no problem acknowledging that she knew a hell of a lot more about this sort of thing than he did.

She eyed him for a long moment before deciding to speak. “In my opinion, this kill wasn't personal, not in the sense he was going after this specific woman. He was definitely going after someone, but I doubt it was her.”

“Meaning?”

“We've already established that this kill wasn't an impulse kill. It was planned. Which means it was either personal to the victim—something he planned for her—or it was the kill itself that was personal, personal to him.”

“And?”

Vivienne glanced down at the body and he saw the sadness in her eyes, grief for their unknown victim. She sighed. “When a kill is personal to the victim, the whole process is personal. He would have planned everything out, from his initial contact to the way she was killed to the disposal of her body.”

Ian shifted, moved a little closer and examined the body again. “But the disposal couldn't have been planned. Or at least not for long. No one could have known that the storm that washed away
that part of the road was going to be as strong as it was or that that specific section would wash away when it did,” he said.

“How long did it take to fix?”

“I looked into that this morning. Because it was such a big washout, the crews went to work the next day. It took a few more days to clean up and get everything back in order, but the time between when it washed away and when the road was repaved was only six days. Could that have been enough time to plan and execute the killing
and
dispose of the body?”

Shaking her head, she spoke. “Unlikely. With the setup he probably had—finding a location and setting it up with the shackles and whatever else he might have had, not to mention finding the victim and taking her—it would likely take more than six days.”

“So then he just took advantage of a situation to dispose of her and that means the kill wasn't about her at all but was just a kill for the sake of killing?”

“A kill for his own personal gratification,” Vivienne clarified. He could see the subtle difference she was pointing out, but killing for gratification was so far outside of his reality, he had a hard time accepting that difference.

“And because the kill provides him some personal gratification,” Ian all but choked on the word, “and it isn't specific to this victim…” His voice trailed off, unwilling to finish what he was saying.