Delusions With Murder: A Rilynne Evans Mystery (25 page)

“And Christopher?” he asked hesitantly.

“We never found his body.  Judging by the amount of blood, though, they said it would have been nearly impossible for him to have survived without immediate medical attention.”

“But you caught the guy who did it?” he asked.

“No,” she said bitterly.  “When they went to arrest him, he was gone.  He had packed up his clothes, cleaned out his safe and accounts, and just vanished.”

Ben reached over and took her hand in his.  She knew of all the people she could talk to about it, he was one of the few who actually understood the pain she was feeling.  After several minutes, she regained her composure.  “He was my partner,” she said bluntly.  Although Ben had not asked, she knew he wanted to.  She looked up to find him staring down in utter disbelief, and she knew why.  Your partner is supposed to be the person you can trust your life with. 

It was only when the doctor came in to put Ben’s cast on that he let go of her hand.  Rilynne was grateful for the interruption.  By the time he was finished, she felt much more up to holding a conversation.

“So what was it Nicole was asking you to do?” she asked, having just realized he had not told her.

“She wanted me to get you for her,” he said.  “She told me to call you and tell you I got away and needed you to come get me.”

“Why didn’t you just say yes?”

“It’s like you said, I wasn’t willing to take that chance,” he said admiring the doctor’s handy work on his arm.

She knew it was hypocritical to argue with him, but she couldn’t help herself.  “She could have killed you,” she snapped.

“She could have killed you, too,” he snapped back.  Raising himself up, he looked her in the eye more firmly than he ever had before.  “She already had me.  I wasn’t going to give her you too.”

Something about the look on his face told Rilynne not to press the subject.  She had never seen this side of him before.  For someone who never liked to be anything other than in complete control, she was not used to someone else taking such a stand, and leaving her so submissive.

“So who was the officer that actually thought I was the killer?”  Ben asked after a few minutes of tense silence.

“Oh, it was Officer Ross.  He actually seemed fairly certain it was you,” she replied.

Ben threw his head back and laughed.  “Yeah, that doesn’t really surprise me.”

“Why?” Rilynne asked.  “What did you do to him that would make him think you could actually be butchering people?”

“Well, we had a little bit of a disagreement last week,” he said slyly.  Rilynne was just about to ask him for more details when she got her answer.

“Breaking in our new detective I see,” Officer Ross was leaning against the lamppost in front of the building next to hers, cigarette in hand.  “She looks like she would be a bombshell in the sack.  Let me know when you are done, I would love to take a shot at that.”

Ben did not say a word to him, or even acknowledge he had seen Ross until he was directly in front of him.  Without a word, Ben’s fist swung up and landed just under Ross’s left eye.  If the lamppost had not been beside him so he could catch himself, he would have landed flat on his back.  Instead, he was able to collect himself quickly, and managed to get just the right grip on the collar of Ben’s shirt to slam his head into the post.

With the blood running down the side of his face, which was already visible discolored, he just stared at the officer, who was nursing his own bruised face.  “She’s a member of our department.  Show some respect.”  With that, he turned and walked away.

“A little bit of a disagreement, huh?” Rilynne asked with a grin.  “I’m guessing it also had something to do with what the attorney was going after you for in court?” she remembered that his bruises were quite visible in his court suit, and he had been so hesitant to tell her why he was attacked on the stand.

“How did you…” he trailed off looking confoundedly confused.

She gave him a warm smile.  “I’m a detective.”

Chapter Twenty

T
he tension was still running high in the station two days later when Rilynne went in.  Although everyone was celebrating that the killer who had been evading them for over a year was finally off the streets, it was still a major blow that it had been someone they all knew so well.

“What are you doing in today, Evans?  I thought I told you to take the week off,” said Wilcome when she walked into the office.

“Right, like I was going to do that,” she said, setting her bag down on her desk.  “What on earth would I do at home for a week?  Besides, I’m sure there’s still a lot to do before we can get this case closed.”

Wilcome looked like he wanted to argue, but just shook his head before motioning her towards his desk.

He reached into the box that was sitting on end and pulled out an evidence bag containing what looked like an old book.  “We found this in the mausoleum.  It looks like Nicole started keeping a journal after Justin Davis died.  I haven’t had a chance to look through it yet.  You can start here if you want,” he said, holding it out.

Rilynne grabbed the book and headed back to her desk.  She was only a few pages in when she heard a familiar voice coming from just outside the door.  When she peeked out, she found Ben showing off his wounds to a group of officers.

“Now, I know you were told to rest for two week before returning back to work,” she said, leaning against the doorframe.  He turned around and smiled.  “You are one to talk,” he said.  “You were told to take the rest of the week off, and here you are.”

“Yeah,” she said defensively.  “But you were ordered by a doctor.  Mine was just a recommendation.”

He shot her a look somewhere between disbelief and amusement. 

“Oh shut up,” she said with a grin.  “Do you really think I could sit home while we still have all of this to go through?  Besides, I just had a little bump on the head.”

“What, did you get tired of putting your apartment back together after Nicole trashed it?”

“I know,” she groaned.  “I really need to get to that.  I just really don’t want to.  It was bad enough having to unpack everything once.  Then it all gets thrown into a big pile and I have to do it over again.  It’s just not on the top of my list of things I want to do right now.”

“Uh huh,” he said before motioning to the tattered book in her hand.  “What do you have there?” 

Rilynne thumbed through it. “Nicole left a journal.  I’m reading it looking for anything important.  It’s not something I’m really looking forward to, to be honest.”

Ben took the book and opened it to the middle.  After a few seconds of reading, he closed it again.  “Wow, she really goes into detail there.  That just said how she was dressed like a clown when she lured the second victim.  See,” he said handing the book back.  “That is why you never trust a clown.”

“I haven’t even made it that far.  I have a feeling I’m going to have nightmares after reading it, though.”  In fact, she knew that she would.  It would be inevitable after delving that deep in Nicole’s mind.  “So what are you doing here?” she asked.

“Honestly, I thought I might actually die from boredom if I sat home any longer.  Not to mention I was pretty curious about what y’all were finding out,” he said.

“Well, I can’t help you much there.  I just got in a little while ago myself.  But, I have been wondering something,” she said.  “You knew didn’t you?  I mean, about your brother and Nicole.  You knew they were involved.”

Ben took a deep breath, dragging his knuckles across his chin.  “I knew they had been seeing each other for a while before he got sick.  I didn’t know they were talking about marriage, though.  Actually, to me it seemed that is was nothing more than a fling to Nicole.  Especially since she seemed to have moved on so quickly after Justin passed.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to get her in any trouble.  Besides, how was I to know it was relevant to the case?  Justin died before he had his leg amputated, and he was only bald that last month,” he explained.  “I feel pretty foolish now, though.  Especially with how clean the crime scenes were.  I don’t think anyone would be able to leave a scene as clean as someone who investigated them for a living.”

He did have a point there.

“Well, I will let you get back to work,” he said.  “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.  Even if it’s just helping you get your place reorganized.  I would hate to actually die of boredom after you went to the trouble of rescuing me.”  He gave her one last warm smile before walking back over to the group of officers.

Rilynne was still smiling when she dropped back down in her seat and opened the journal back up. 

Ben had been right; Nicole really had gone into great detail.  In addition to the bereavement she was feeling after her loss, she had expressed a great deal of resentment towards the department.  She had spent several pages ranting about the unfair rules that were set up to try to keep her and her soul mate apart.

Ben, who had sat down in a chair in front of her desk, found that bit quite amusing.  “She didn’t seem to care at all that it was actually her fault that rule was enforced in the first place, did she?” he asked, shaking his head.

“You have to admit,” Rilynne said casually.  “It is a pretty stupid rule.”  Although she could see Ben look up at her, she kept her focus on the page she was reading.  It wasn’t until after she started to feel her cheeks growing warm that Ben looked away and answered her.  She had a feeling he had actually been waiting for such a reaction.

“Yes, it is,” he said simply.

Ben went back to the crossword puzzle on his tablet as Rilynne continued reading.

“This is interesting,” she said a few minutes later.  “Apparently, it was a complete coincidence the first victim had been from a case she had worked.  She had seen him walking his dog, and the way he walked reminded her so much of Justin that she just grabbed him.  It wasn’t until later that afternoon that she realized she had worked his vandalism case just two days before.  She panicked, and decided to place the first card at the scene when she was called to investigate it.  She thought it would throw any suspicion off of her as a suspect, which for some reason she doesn’t mention, she was sure she would be.  She had actually intended to keep him, but when he died she decided to continue with ‘the game’ as she called it.”

“Does it say why she waited such a long after him before taking the second victim?  Or why they were all a month apart after that?” he asked.

“Well, from what I can tell, she was not really delusional when she took the first victim,” she explained.  “But during the four months after his death, she seems to have just snapped.  She had convinced herself by December that she had actually gotten Justin back during the week she had the victim.  She wanted to recreate it, so she started looking through her past cases to find men that would work.  It doesn’t say why they were all a month apart after that, though.”

“Interesting.  So what was the significance of the final meal?”

Rilynne flipped a few pages back in the book.  “Apparently, it was the only thing she knew how to cook.  She made it for your brother on every special occasion while they were dating, and at the end she said it was one of the only things he could keep down.”

“Does it say why she did it, or why she used these men?” Detective Wilcome asked walking up behind her.

“To punish us,” she said frankly.  “Some part of her knew these men were not actually Justin Davis, so she decided to use the pattern set by the first victim with all of the others.  She wanted to get back at the department, because she blamed it for Justin’s death.”

Ben sat upright.  “How is this department in any way responsible for my brother dying?” he asked.

“She says if they had been able to make their relationship public, she would have been able to gather support for Justin, prompting him to have the surgery to remove his leg.  She said he would not discuss the matter with anyone, and since she was not able to without losing her job, he did not get the push needed,” Rilynne summarized the pages.

“That is ridiculous.  Justin was a fighter, and was determined to beat his cancer.  He honestly thought he would be able to get through it without having to lose his leg.  No one would have been able to convince him otherwise,” Ben said.  “Furthermore, if she had felt so strongly at the time, she would have gladly risked her job rather than let him die.  The truth is, she supported him when he made his decision, and actually thought right up until the end that he would be able to beat it.”

“It was just guilt then,” Rilynne said.  “She felt so guilty about not pushing him more herself, but she couldn’t face it so she picked someone else to blame.”

“Good,” Detective Wilcome said.  “At least now we have a reason.  It is a disturbing reason and it’s not going to go over well with the public, but it’s still a reason behind the killings.  Let me know when you have more.”

“I would recommend getting cadaver dogs out to the cabin,” she called out to him as he started walking away.

He turned back around to her, waiting for an explanation.  “She said she wanted to keep the legs close, so after his amputation, she could transplant a healthy limb.  It doesn’t say where she put them, but the cabin would probably be a good place to start,” she said.  She looked not at Detective Wilcome, but at Ben sitting in front of her.  He just closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  “Sorry,” she offered softly.