Delusions With Murder: A Rilynne Evans Mystery (6 page)

“Thank you.  It is what I love to do, and I push myself to be the best.  Did you always want to investigate crime scenes?”

Ben’s jaw seemed to tighten slightly as he dragged his knuckles across his chin.  “No, during my freshman year of college someone close to me was murdered, and the case was solved just off of the forensics.  After that I knew I wanted to be able to help put the people behind bars who deserved it, so I changed my major.”

Although he spoke with a carefree tone, Rilynne knew she should not push the topic.  It wasn’t until she spoke again that his jaw relaxed and his hand fell back by his side.  “What was your original major?”

“I wanted to be a surgeon.”

B
en insisted on walking Rilynne all the way to her apartment door again.  It was nearly one thirty before she crawled into her bed.  Having been up for close to forty-eight hours, it took her no time at all to drift off. 

Though Rilynne wanted a peaceful, relaxing night sleep, it was not what she got.  From the moment her eyes drifted closed, blood spattered scenes inundated her dreams. 

She had been running around the lake when she saw a bright red door in the middle of a tree trunk that had to have been twenty feet around.  Wondering why a tree needed a door, she opened it and entered to find herself in the station house.  Although it seemed to be the middle of the day, there was not a soul to be found.  What she found instead was a pile of men’s legs that had been cut a few inches above the knee.  She could see something on the leg at the top of the pile that looked like a handprint in blood.  All she could think was there was finally a good piece of evidence.  She ran up the stairs to the forensics lab to see if anyone there could help.  Like the other floors, it was completely deserted.  All of the forensic supplies seemed to have been put up, also.  The only thing that was lying out was the bag of yellow, heavy-duty kitchen gloves sitting in the middle of the evidence table.  She would have to process the leg herself. 

She searched around the room for everything she would need before sprinting back downstairs.  She was just rounding the corner leading to the pile, when she heard something behind her.  She dropped the items in her arms and reached for her gun.  She saw a dark shadow dart past her out of the corner of her eye.  She could feel her heart hammering in her chest.  All she wanted to do was run, but she knew this was her chance to find out who the killer was and running was not an option.  She saw the figure tear past her again, but this time she fired. 

It was like a scene from a cartoon.  The figure was thrown back nearly twenty feet down the hall, leaving a trail of blood.  With her gun still directed at the crumpled body on the ground, she slowly made her way down the hall.  “Why are you doing this?” he was repeating it as she approached.  With her foot, she rolled him over onto his back.  The moment her eyes settled on his face, she dropped to her knees.  Her gun had vanished from her hands as they reached out and covered the gaping chest wound.  “Why did you do this to me, Rye?”

“I didn’t know it was you.  I swear I didn’t know it was you.  I’m so sorry, Christopher, I’m so sorry.”

Rilynne sprang awake with tears rolling down her face.  She sat on her bed shaking fiercely for several minutes before she could will herself to lie back down.  It was another several minutes before she had the courage to close her eyes again.

*     *     *

Rilynne took her copy of the binder and a large cup of coffee and sat down at her kitchen table.  She was impressed with the work Ben had put into them.  Not only did it have detailed photos from the scene and the forensic reports, it also had the details they had learned about the victim’s life, a map showing the victim’s route from the bar to his girlfriend’s apartment, then to his own, and a digital copy of the interview with his girlfriend.

She had just started flipping through the photos of his apartment when there was a knock at her door.  “It’s open,” she called without looking up.  Her mom always got onto her for leaving her door unlocked, and even more for just calling for people to come in without checking to see who was there.  Though she knew the kind of people who were in the world, and the horrible things they could do, she never seemed to worry about something happening to her.  It helped that she carried a gun.

“Hey, thanks for getting me home the other night,” Nicole said walking in and heading straight for the kitchen.  She grabbed a mug off of the hook and poured herself a cup of coffee, then took the seat next to Rilynne.  “What do you have there?”

“It’s a binder Ben put together for the team.  It’s pretty cool actually.  He seemed to put a lot of work into it.” 

“Really?” she said looking over at it.  “Huh, I’ve never seen him do anything like this before.  He must be really trying to impress someone.”

“Well, it will probably work.  He definitely went out of his way.”  Rilynne left the binder on the table and got up to refill her coffee.  “Do you want anything while I’m up?”

“Do you still have any chocolate left?” Nicole asked hopefully.

Rilynne chortled, “Is a freezer complete without a bag of chocolate?” 

Rilynne shifted the pizzas and frozen dinners around and grabbed the bag of mini-chocolate bars, and tossed them across the kitchen to Nicole. 

“Chocolate really is the perfect breakfast,” Nicole said as she bit into a dark chocolate bar.  She was flipping through the pictures when Rilynne returned to her seat.  “It’s scary that this happened just upstairs.  The perpetrator must be very fearless to take someone from the same building as one of the detectives on the unit.  He must be making a statement.”

Rilynne had been thinking the same thing.  Anyone who had been watching the building would have known she was living there.  The fact that it was the apartment directly above hers, which was the one apartment Rilynne was sure to hear any kind of struggle, meant it was not just a coincidence; it was a challenge.  The only question was, who was the challenge for?  The perpetrator was either challenging himself, proving he was good enough to get away with the abduction right under the police departments nose, or it was a direct challenge for the detectives.

“I think it was a challenge for me,” Rilynne found herself saying aloud.  She had been thinking it since she discovered the address of the scene.  After giving it quite a bit of thought, it was the only scenario that made any sense.

“Why would it have been a challenge directly for you?” Nicole asked as she shoved another chocolate bar in her mouth.  She was peering over the binder, examining Rilynne’s face.

Rilynne was afraid to say it out loud.  If she was right, it meant Derek Hartley was only taken because of his proximity to her.  In a way, that would make her responsible for his fate.  Although she did not know him, he had a life and people who loved him.  She almost couldn’t bear the thought of him losing his life because of her. 

“I found the last body, and much quicker than any of the other ones were found.  He would have seen it not only as an accomplishment to get away with it right above me, but it’s his way for saying that no matter how close I am to it, I will never catch him.  That was his big mistake, though,” Rilynne said, taking the binder back from Nicole.

Nicole seemed shocked by Rilynne’s cold tone.  “What do you mean?  How was it a mistake?”

“Because, now nothing will stop me from catching this guy.”  If the killer had expected to rattle Rilynne’s nerves, it worked.  But it was not going to lead to the outcome he was likely hoping for.  She would not let anything stand in her way of finding Derek Hartley before he was killed, even if she had to allow her secret to be exposed.

R
ilynne’s run to work seemed to take no time at all.  It was just after seven when she walked out of the locker room and headed for the conference room. 

Detective Wilcome was the only one to arrive before she did.  He appeared to have just opened the boxes when she stepped through the door.

“What are these?” he asked, looking at the piles of binders.  He picked the top one up and opened it to the middle.

“Ben Davis put them together for us.  They have all of the photos from the scene, the reports from the crime scene investigators, a map of the victim’s route the abduction night, and…” she trailed off as she stared at the map over Wilcome’s shoulder.  His gaze jumped from the page to her, and then followed her eyes back to the map in his hand. 

He waited for a few moments for her to start talking again, before he finally spoke up.  “What is it Evans?”  He did not look back at her, but instead scanned the map trying to see what she had found.

“The grocery store-” she pointed to the store on the map that was directly across the street from her building, “-has an ATM.  It is not against the wall like most are; it has a clear view of the street through the front window,” she stated looking up at Wilcome.

Wilcome dropped the binder in front of him and reached for the phone in the middle of the table.  “Good work Evans,” he said as he started dialing. 

Rilynne took a seat at the far end of the table, and closed her eyes.  She could not help but feel a twinge of excitement.  The location of the ATM in the grocery store placed it directly across from the front door of her building.  The perpetrator may have been able to disable the cameras in the building, but it was not possible for him to have tampered with the ATM camera.

She let a grin sneak across her face before clearing her mind.  She concentrated on the photograph of Derek and Emily she had been staring at all morning.  Derek was not looking at the camera, but instead he was focused on Emily.  There was a look of pure love and desire in his eyes.  They had been dating for two years, and judging by his search history on his home computer, he had been shopping around for a ring. 

Rilynne focused on that degree of love; the strong feeling that you cannot live without the other person.  There was truly no feeling like it, which gave Rilynne something strong to concentrate on.

It did not take more than a few seconds for her to start seeing flashes. 

The room was still dark.  While Derek still looked a little groggy, he seemed to be more alert than he was the day before.  He appeared to be in a great deal of pain, but he was fighting through it, trying to get out of the bed he was laying in.  A sheet was pulled up to his waist, but judging by the shadows, it was clear something was not quite right. 
Rilynne’s heart sank.  She knew the leg was always removed the first day, but the fact it had indeed already happened was upsetting.

Through the darkness, she could just make out the room.  It was small, couldn’t have been more than eight-by-eight.  The bed, a worn looking single, was pushed into the corner.  The bedside table had something shiny sitting on it.  It was a bedpan.  Other than a chair pushed in the opposite corner, there was no other furniture in the room.  The only light in the room was coming from a small window at the top of the wall above the chair.

Derek had just managed to pull himself up and swing his remaining leg off the edge of the bed when more light entered the room; a thin line of light flooded in from under the door at the foot of the bed.  An expression of pure panic crossed Derek’s face as he began to search around the room for anything he could use.  He grabbed the bedpan and hid it behind his back as the lock clicked in the door.

“I’m amazed you can sleep at a time like this, Evans?”  The room vanished from sight just as the door swung open, revealing a dark figure, and the conference room came into focus.  As a wave of frustration swept over her, she looked up to see Detective Butcher glaring down at her in a disapproving manner.

“Sleeping is the last thing on my mind right now, Brenda,” she said as nicely as she could, despite the building resentment for being disturbed right before seeing the perpetrator’s face.  She withdrew her gaze from Butcher’s face and saw nearly everyone had arrived.  Unlike Detective Butcher, the other detectives were occupying themselves with the binders on the table.

“When I get stuck, it’s easier for me to get back on track when I shut everything else out and run through all of the details in my head.”

Rilynne did not wait for Detective Butcher to respond before crossing the room to the map tacked to the wall.  The placement of the window in the room struck her as odd.  There was only one reason for a window to be so high on a wall; it was a basement. 

“Basements are not standard in homes built in the city are they?” she asked Detective Matthews.

“No, they would have to be special built.  Why, what are you thinking?” he asked while examining the map also, trying to see it through her eyes.

“The bodies are not showing any sign of physical restraint, so either they are being chemically restrained for the whole week, or they are being held in a place where they can be easily contained.  I don’t see the point of keeping the men for a week if they were going to be incapacitated the whole time.” She paused for a moment to contemplate the best way to get her point across.  “The easiest way to contain them would be to keep them in a place with limited points of entry.  A basement would be a good place; they have one way in, and the windows are high and would be almost impossible for someone who had just had a leg amputated to get out of.  They would also provide a kind of built in soundproofing to prevent the neighbors from hearing any cries for help.”