Back at HQ, Ralph and I began reviewing the notes everyone else had left on my desk, sorting through what we would be discussing at the meeting that was scheduled to start in less than five minutes.
As far as sedan-owning, six-foot-tall, brown-eyed male Caucasians, we had thousands in the greater Milwaukee area. If you added an inch or two to either side of that and included men whose family members had sedans as well, the number rose exponentially. Gabriele Holdren, the officer who’d gotten the coffee for Vincent last night when I was with him in the interrogation room, was still comparing that list with the tip list-which hadn’t produced anything so far either.
As expected, the four confessions had all been false. Ellen and Annise were still looking into missing persons cases, and Lyrie was on his way back from canvassing the Hayeses’ neighborhood again to see if anyone could tell us the color of the sedan.
Radar had dug up the names of fourteen felons in the area who’d been convicted of violent crimes against women and he’d apparently left the department to follow up on one of them.
A lot of things were in play.
“I’m still curious about the handcuffs,” I told Ralph. “Why didn’t Colleen’s abductor leave a pair for Vincent to use?”
“He had to know Vincent already had a pair.”
“I can’t really come up with any other compelling reason-unless Vincent’s involved somehow.” I evaluated the possibilities. “Vincent had planned to come home just after seven, but at the last minute he called Colleen to let her know he would be late, wouldn’t be getting home until after ten. However, she was abducted just after nine. If the offender had known Vincent’s schedule and been hoping to find Colleen alone-”
Ralph rubbed his chin roughly. “The guy would have taken her before seven, while Vincent was at work, before he was supposed to come home, not after nine.”
I tried to steer myself away from making unfounded assumptions, but I found it hard to keep my thoughts from leaning in the direction of suspecting that Vincent was somehow involved in arranging his wife’s abduction.
“I suppose her abductor could have been in the house already,” Ralph mused. “Found the handcuffs, decided not to leave a pair, not to take the chance that the cuffs could lead us back to him.”
“Yes,” I said. “But that still doesn’t explain how he would have known about Vincent’s last-minute change of plans.”
“After the briefing, let’s have Thompson go back and see if any of the neighbors remember the sedan driving around earlier.”
“And we should have someone interview Vincent again. Find out who might’ve known he owned that pair of handcuffs and who else knew he was going to be working late. Maybe Ellen could go.”
“Or Corsica?” he said.
“Ellen. Not that I don’t trust Corsica’s competence in these sorts of things, but-”
“You don’t trust Corsica’s competence in these sorts of things.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“So, what is it between you two, anyway?”
“She has a tendency to jump to conclusions. More than once I’ve had to redirect an investigation before more innocent people got hurt.”
“I’m sure she took well to that. The redirecting part.”
“Oh, it was just peachy.”
Ralph nodded. Jotted something on a notepad.
As we were finishing collecting our papers, I saw Lieutenant Thorne picking his way toward us through the labyrinth of desks, file cabinets, and business dividers that made up most of this floor of the department. He was carrying a magazine or catalog of some kind.
“We might have something,” he announced. “A connection to the homicide in Illinois.”
“What’s that?”
He flopped the catalog onto the desk in front of me.
“Police tape.”