Delusions With Murder: A Rilynne Evans Mystery (22 page)

“If you are referring to Ben Davis, she kidnapped him yesterday morning,” Rilynne said almost resentfully.  “It would appear that she has actually been setting him up as a fall guy in case we started getting close to identifying her.  Is there any place she talked about, somewhere that would hold great significance for her that she might go to if she felt cornered?”

“Well, let’s see,” he said flipping through the pages.  “She did speak often of a cabin that her husband would take her to.”

“The cabin was burned down by her several days ago.  We need to know if there was any other place she and Justin Davis would visit,” Matthews said.

He continued thumbing through the pages, but quickly shook his head.  “That was the only place she ever talked about.”

Rilynne leaned forward.  “We need to know about her mental state,” she explained.  “Justin Davis had been dating Nicole for about a year and a half prior to his death, and although it looks as through he was considering proposing, they were not married.  No one at the station, where she has been employed for the last five years, even knew they were dating.  Now since you appear to be the only person she has been confiding in, we need your help to understand what is going on in her head.  If we can do that, it might help us find Ben Davis before he becomes her next victim.”

“Marie, I’m sorry-Nicole, was extremely depressed when she first started coming in for sessions.  Although she tried to hide it, I could see a lot of anger hidden just under the surface.  She said that she feared allowing herself to grieve could cost her position at work, so she had been internalizing it.  I impressed upon her the importance of finding a way to deal with her grief instead of pushing it aside.  I suggested she take up a hobby, or an activity that allowed her to express her emotions in a healthy way.  I had suggested writing, or perhaps creating a scrapbook to preserve her memories.”

Detective Matthews laid out several photographs on the desk.  “We found this hidden in a secret cubby at the back of her closet,” he pointed to the pictures of the shrine.

Dr. Gamboa didn’t seem to know what to say.

Rilynne continued, “Did you notice any change in her behaviors or mood?”

“Actually yes,” he answered.  “About a month into our sessions, she started to appear a little happier.  In fact, on…” he looked through his notes, “… August twentieth, she seemed positively happy.  She said she had found a way of keeping Justin alive.”

“That is the day after she took the first victim,” Rilynne said to Matthews.  She looked back at Dr. Gamboa, who was beginning to look a little sick.  “How was her emotional state after that point?”

“Well, by the next session a week later, she had sunk back into the depressed state she was in when she first sought help.  After that, her mood became lighter.  She did say once that ‘Justin would never truly be gone’.  I had taken that to mean she had found a place in her heart where he would always be, but given this new information…” He let himself trail off.  “I should have seen this.  She never showed any sign of being capable of harming anyone, though.  And even if she had, of all people, Ben Davis would have been the last on the list.  She always spoke of him very lovingly.”

“So she has been trying to keep Justin alive through surrogates.  Everything has been the same from victim to victim, to the last detail,” Rilynne said.  “What will happen now that her routine has been forced to change?”

Dr. Gamboa took another long breath.  “One of two things will happen,” he explained.  “Either she will break down and panic, along with a sense of self preservation will take over, more than likely causing her to flee, or she will sink deeper into a delusional state.  If that happens, she will do anything to keep her fantasy going, eliminating anything that endangers it.  This will make her extremely dangerous.”

“Thank you, Dr. Gamboa,” Matthews said, rising from his chair.  “If there is anything else you can think of, or if you hear from her at all, please call us immediately.”

When they walked out of his office, Rilynne couldn’t help but notice how shaken Dr. Gamboa was.  She understood why; it was a major blow to realize something so substantial had slipped right past you.

“What do you think?” Matthews asked her as she slid into the car.

“I think if she intends to flee, Ben will only hold her back.  She would have gotten rid of him as soon as she realized we could be onto her.  If Dr. Gamboa was right, and she does care as much about Ben as she had led him to believe, there is a chance she could just let him go,” she said.

When the car came to a stop below a red light, he turned to face Rilynne.  “Be honest, what do you think the chances of that are?”

Rilynne thought about it for a moment before answering.  “If she was going to release him, she would have done it by now,” she said solemnly.  “The only chance Ben has is if she’s truly in a delusional state, and he plays along.  Either way, we have to find him soon.”

“You know Nicole,” he said.  “And you are a good profiler.  So, let’s run through it.  There has to be something that can help us find them.”

Rilynne looked over at Matthews with a sense of admiration.  A lot of officers, even some of the detectives she worked with, did not respect the field of profiling, saying it was no more than guessing.

“Well, Nicole was not only taking the men and shaping them into images of Justin Davis, she was using them to keep him alive for her on an emotional level.  She called Derek Hartley Justin, which says she actually believed the victims had become Justin.  This would show that she was sinking into a deeper delusional state,” she stated. 

“Then why kill them?” he asked.  “If it was her way of having Justin Davis back, why would she kill and dismember them.  Wouldn’t that just mean losing him again?”

It was a valid question, which Rilynne simply could not answer confidently. 

“It would have had something to do with the first victim,” she thought aloud.  “She did not intend for him to die.  He had an allergic reaction, which would have shattered what ever fantasy she hade built around him.  Something about that moment shaped how she saw the men after that.”  She tried, but could not think of a valid hypothesis of what satisfaction the killing aspect could provide.

“A part of her still remained tethered to reality, however,” she continued.  “She was always meticulous about cleaning the scenes, and was able to successfully keep herself hidden from the investigation.  She also managed to hide her emotional state from everyone, including her therapist.  If she was truly, completely invested in her delusion, it would have been too hard and something would have slipped.  This says that on some level, she’s aware of the truth about the situation.  If she continues to teeter between realities, it will make her incredibly unstable.  Dr. Gamboa was right, if someone pushes her to believe her fantasy is not real, it could be catastrophic.”

They had just pulled in front of the station as she finished her thought.  “Hopefully they found something going through Nicole’s belongings,” she said, stepping into the elevator. 

When they walked into the room, she could tell they had not made much progress.  There was a large map tacked to the back wall that had close to fifty pins stuck on it.  “What is this?” she asked Detective Steele, who was adding another one.

“These are the locations we have managed to identify on the photographs, and the ones that were visited by both Justin and Nicole,” he explained.  “The blue ones seem to be visited only once, and the red ones were frequently stopped at.”

She looked over the locations that had been marked.  Most of them were restaurants or stores.  They were not locations Nicole would be able to successfully hide someone.  There were a few gas stations listed, which could give them a general area to look at, but it still did not give them a viable location to start searching.

“Have we gotten anything from the rest of the people in the address book?” She pulled up the chair next to Detective Wilcome, who was sitting alone in the corner.

He shook his head.

“She has had him for thirty-three hours now, and we are still no closer to finding them.  If we don’t find out where she’s keeping him soon, we are not going to find him alive.” Rilynne could feel herself starting to panic, so she took a long deep breath.  “I have to clear my head.” She stood up and walked back to her desk.

Holding the picture of Ben and Nicole, she leaned back and closed her eyes.  Come on, come on, she repeated to herself. 

In front of her was the street just outside.  The sky was cloudless, with the sun shining bright above her.  She looked from side to side, but saw no one around.  She took a step forward and was in front of the hardware store.  The antique clock hanging just below the sign read a minute before four-thirty.  Looking down, she saw a shadow that did not belong to her.  Before she could react, her head felt like it had been split in two.  Suddenly she was looking at herself, not through her own eyes, but from someone else’s.  She was dragging her limp body into the alley just beyond the storefront, and into a waiting car. 

Her breath came quickly as her eyes flew open.  She looked down at her watch; she had fifteen minutes.  The panic she was feeling was pushed aside by a sense of urgency.  She thought for a second about what to do, then grabbed her water off her desk and poured it down the front of her top.

“I’m going to run home and change my shirt,” she called out to Detective Wilcome.  “I’ll be back in about thirty minutes.”

After making a quick stop in the locker room, she ran out the front door.

The street was just as she had seen it, bright and empty.  The anticipation inside of her was almost overwhelming.  She put all of her strength into looking as relaxed and casual as possible.

When she saw the hardware store in front of her, she had to fight the urge to reach for her gun.  This is the worst idea you have ever had, she said to herself.  She shifted her gaze down to her shadow stretching out in front of her.  When the shadow suddenly split into two, she pushed her eyes closed.

Through the darkness she could just make out a door.  She moved her foot forward, but as it touched the ground, it was greeted by searing hot pain.  She looked down to see a wooden floor stretching out in front of her.  She took another step, but again was met with the same, familiar pain.  She looked back down to her feet to find the floor covered in something: broken glass.  “No!” she yelled aloud.  “Not here, not now!  I have somewhere else I need to be.  Somewhere important.”

She closed her eyes, and opened them when she heard the sound of bells ringing around her.  She was back in the stone room.  Now the walls were lined with beautiful flowers is all shades of pink.  The floor had also been littered with fresh flower petals.  There was someone standing at the end, but she couldn’t quite make out the face.  A breeze blew past him, causing his dirty blonde hair to dance around his face.  “Ben,” she called out as she started making her way towards him.  As she grew closer, however, she saw it was not Ben standing before her; it was Justin.

He was dressed in a crisp tuxedo, with a smile that warmed her from the inside.  It was the same smile that would cross Ben’s face.

“Where are we?” she asked him as she stepped slowly closer.  He did not move, or give any sign he had heard her.  In fact, he was standing almost uncomfortably still, as if he were nothing more than a store mannequin.

“Justin?  Can you tell me where we are?  Or where your brother is?” she asked.  “I’m looking for Ben.  He’s in danger and I need to find him.  I have to find him.”  She pleaded for him to answer her, but he still did not move.  She inched closer to him, but as she was about to reach out to grab him arm, a loud crack came from behind her.

She reached for her gun, but it was not in its place on her hip.  Its absence did not slow her, though, as she ran towards the door in the corner.

As she pushed her weight against the heavy door, it let out a high-pitched scream that made her want to grab her ears.  Still, she pushed harder.  As the door slowly opened, something started flowing through it.  Suddenly, she was pushed back away from the door by hundreds of balloons that were now rushing through like a sweeping river, each as red as freshly shed blood.

Rilynne’s head was reeling when she opened her eyes again.  She appeared to be in the same room she had seen Ben in earlier, though there was now oil burning lanterns placed around it providing light. 

“Ben?” she called out, trying to look around.  Although there was some light, it was still very dim, and it was taking her eyes a minute to adjust.  She tried to stand up, but found both her hands and her feet bound.

“I was beginning to think you were going to be out all night,” she heard from just behind her.  “Well, I’m assuming it’s night.  It’s so hard to tell in here.” 

She pulled herself to a sitting position and looked around, trying to find where the voice was coming from.  She found him about six feet from her, leaning against the wall in the back corner.  Even through the shadows, she could see he had been badly beaten.  “I guess you have figured out by now that it’s Nicole?” he asked dryly. 

“Yeah, Derek Hartley woke up this morning and told us.  Then we found the shrine she had built for your brother in her closet,” she explained.

“And you still let her get the slip on you?  I’m a little disappointed.  Was she hiding out in your apartment waiting for you?” Rilynne couldn’t help but notice the tone of dread behind his voice.