by Vakey, Jenn
“Well, hopefully the doctors will have something for us,” Rilynne stated.
The office looked more like a small hospital than a clinic. The waiting room, though small, looked like every emergency room she had ever walked into, down to the white tiled floors. To her right, there was a large electric door that appeared to require a badge to open. Just behind the admissions desk, she could see a hallway with six doors, half with charts on them.
“Hello, Rosie,” Byman said as he walked up to the woman sitting behind the admissions desk. “We have an appointment to talk to Dr. Raab.”
“She’s just finishing up with a patient,” she replied. “You can wait in her office.” Rosie pointed to a closed door at the opposite side of the empty waiting room. She pushed her chair away from the desk and led them to the door, unlocking it and holding it open. “She’ll be with you shortly.”
Detective Byman leaned against the wall while Ben and Rilynne sat in the chairs across from the desk.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” a tall blonde woman said as she walked in a few minutes later. “There has been a nasty stomach bug working its way through town. Good to see you, Korey. Ted was just saying that we should have you and Leann over for dinner.”
“That sounds great, Tricia. Leann has been looking for a reason to make her famous pasta salad,” he replied. “How’s your sister enjoying Florida?”
“She’s making me a little jealous with all her talk about warm weather,” she chuckled. “I think she’s spent nearly everyday since she moved going down to the beach, even during the winter. Personally, I think it’s a little crazy, but to each his own. So, what is it that I can help you with?”
“This is Detective Rilynne Evans and forensic specialist Ben Davis. They came to our little town searching for a fugitive. We were hoping you might be able to assist us,” he explained.
“This man,” Rilynne pulled a small stack of pictures out of the folder on her lap, “is believed to have been in the area nineteen months ago. Because the case he was involved in was nationally publicized, he may have sought the assistance of a plastic surgeon to hide the scar on his face.”
Dr. Raab reached for the glasses on her desk as Rilynne slid the pictures toward her. After putting them on, she picked up the photos and examined them carefully.
“No, he’s never been in for a consult or had any work done here,” she replied a few moments later. “We’ve dealt with quite a few facial scars, but the majority are on women or children. I also don’t recall him ever coming in for any other treatments.”
“What about the other doctor in the office?” Ben asked.
“Dr. Cahill and I always work together on surgical consults, as well as any new patients in the office. I’ll double check with him, but I’m confident that he’s never been in our clinic.”
“Well thank you very much for your time, Tricia. If you think of anything else, please give me a call,” Byman said as Rilynne and Ben rose from their seats.
“Of course. A pleasure to meet you both,” she said as she extended her hand.
Rilynne felt nothing but disappointment when they walked back to the car. While the men entered into a conversation about the up coming baseball season, Rilynne sat back in her seat and searched her mind for the next place to look.
She was so lost in thought she didn’t realize they were back at the station until Ben opened her door.
“Are you going to just sit in there?” he asked with an amused grin. She rolled her eyes and climbed out.
She followed Byman back through the station to his office. After grabbing coffee, they sat around his desk.
“All right,” Byman said. “Where do we go next?” If he felt the same hopelessness Rilynne was suddenly feeling, he wasn’t showing it.
They sat in silence around the desk, each searching their minds for an idea. Occasionally, one would make a sound like they had something to say, but it never progressed past that point. The silence was only interrupted when Ben’s phone rang ten minutes later.
“It’s Summers,” he said to Rilynne as he answered.
“Daniel Summers is another member of our forensic team,” she told Byman. “He’s looking over all of the blood evidence for Ben. He can read blood better than anyone I’ve seen.”
“Hold on,” Ben said loudly, silencing Rilynne. “I’m going to put you on speaker. I’m here with Detective Evans and Detective Korey Byman. This sounds like something they should both hear.”
“Hello all,” Daniel Summers’ voice sounded out across the line. “I compared the spatter to every known weapon in my database, and then used the specs of the cut in the shirt to try and identify any other one it could have been. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything. I then called the coroner and confirmed that there were no visible signs of injury on the bones. If someone were stabbed once, it would be impossible to have that amount of cast off from the weapon. A wound in that area would have bled profusely, though.
“It’s my professional opinion that the victim-sorry Detective Evans-that Christopher Parker was stabbed and his blood was collected from the wound and purposely sprayed across the room to make the scene, for lack of a better word, horrific.”
“When you say ‘sprayed’, how…” she paused, gathering her composure before she could continue. “Do you know how he did it?”
Summers hesitated himself, giving Rilynne the strong feeling that he was trying to consider the best way to tell her.
“It’s all right,” she said firmly. “I just need to know.”
“The closest match that I could find was a child’s water gun.”
Rilynne fought off the urge to be sick as his words floated out of the phone. As the wave passed, it was quickly replaced by an incredible fury.
“So what it looks like, is he collected Christopher’s blood as it drained out, put it in a water gun, and proceeded to spray it on the walls?” She was hoping he would say it was a preposterous theory and must have been something else, but she knew the chances of that were non-existent.
“It appears he bled out on the bed but the blood on the headboard and walls was added manually,” he said in a tone that was more soothing than Rilynne had ever heard. “I spoke with Chief Wooldridge and he’s sending all of the pictures from the first scene to me. I’m going to look over them and see if the same signs are present.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” Byman asked, sounding as though he were going to be sick himself.
“If the first scene was also staged, he would have wanted to cause as much emotional reaction and distraction as possible. If there were a single pool of blood, what happened would have been relatively straightforward,” she rattled off. “By staging the scene, it would have caused confusion and hindered a quick analysis. With this level of staging, though, along with the fact that he used my father’s knife to stab me instead of any other one in the kitchen, and his insistence on going to the hospital and telling me himself that Chris was gone, I would have to say that he’s a sociopath. Only someone who enjoyed watching people suffer could even consider doing something like that.”
Chapter Nine
“Thanks, Summers,” Ben said. “Call me as soon as you know anything else.”
He slid the phone back into his pocket, but none of them seemed to know what to say. After several minutes, Detective Byman pushed his chair away from the desk and walked silently out of the office, closing the door behind him.
“Are you all right?” Ben asked, placing his hand gently over hers.
Her initial reaction was to say ‘yes’ but she knew it would only be a lie. After contemplating an answer for several moments, she finally just shrugged helplessly and dropped her head down on his shoulder.
He wrapped his arm around her, gently brushing her hair away from her face.
“I know,” he said softly. He kissed her gently on the forehead before resting his head against hers. He was still holding her when Detective Byman walked back in ten minutes later.<
br />
“We’re going to head out,” Ben said as he rose from his seat and pulled Rilynne to her feet. “It’s been a long day,” Ben said as Rilynne walked out of the office. When she reached the front desk, she turned to find that Ben wasn’t behind her. Instead, he was still standing in the office talking to Byman. He glanced over and caught her watching him, but it didn’t halt their conversation. As he turned his attention back to Byman, she watched his hand move up to his face and he began dragging his knuckles along his chin.
She stood at the desk watching them for another minute before he shook Detective Byman’s hand and walked toward her.
“What was all that about?” she asked as they stepped out the door.
“Nothing important,” he replied causally. “What would you like for dinner? We could go to the diner again, or try to find something else.”
“I don’t guess there’s any chance they would have a place here that has good Mexican food,” she asked hopefully.
He chuckled and took her by the arm. “Doubtful,” he replied. “Even if they do, chances are it wouldn’t be close to what you’ve grown accustomed to at home. They have a term for the Mexican food that you’ve been eating: Tex-Mex. As I’m sure you can guess, it’s mainly only found in Texas.”
“Eh,” she groaned. “The diner it is, then.”
*
“So let’s look at this from the beginning,” Ben said, watching her flip her food carelessly with her fork. Her appetite seemed to have vanished; instead of eating, she had been playing with the food since the waitress had delivered it. “Let’s play the game.”
Rilynne grinned for the first time since Ben took the call from Summers. The game was actually one suggested to them by Nicole while they were investigating her case. Though she had only recommended it so she could see where the case stood, it was actually beneficial. Since then, anytime they were stuck on a case, they would play it.
“Okay, you start.” She dropped her fork and sat back in her chair, waiting for him to begin.
“All right, what do we know?” he asked. Not waiting for her to respond, he stated, “We know that he was either here or in a place with the Penland beardtongue just before he buried Christopher.”
“The anonymous source I had named this place specifically. We hadn’t released the details about the trace found, so it would be an outstanding coincidence if someone randomly picked a small town that evidence actually backed up,” she interjected.
“Right,” he pondered it for a moment. “What else did the source say? Was there anything else that could help to get us back on track?”
She thought back to her dream and the vision she had when she was at the scene. “He told me all I needed to do was look,” she said without thinking. She panicked, trying to think of a good story in case he asked for more. To her relief, he didn’t.
“Well, that’s a big help,” he said sarcastically. “What else do we know?”
“I don’t know,” she said sullenly. “He made a trip out here just prior to Christopher’s death.”
He nodded. “We considered that he might have been here to dispose of the first victim’s body,” he said. “What if he was here for another reason?” She raised her eyebrow and waited for him to continue. “Whether planned or not, he killed his girlfriend. He must have known that it would only be a matter of time before it was traced back to him. If it were me, I would have been planning to disappear the entire time. Maybe he was out here looking for the perfect place to do so.”
She considered his suggestion. “The only thing that doesn’t make sense about that is Christopher. If he was just going to plan his escape, why kill someone else and make things even worse? The Melissa Roberts case was a big one, but it was nothing compared to Christopher’s. He was connected to the department, and I was stabbed. If anything, it drew attention to him even more.”
“You said that the first victim lived close to you, right?”
She studied his face, trying to see where he was going with this.
“Christopher wasn’t supposed to be home. Maybe he went to your house to try to frame you or Christopher for her death. I would say Christopher because you knew she was having an affair,” he said. Rilynne could see the wheels turning in his head. “You were supposed to be working late, and he was supposed to be out of town. Maybe he went to your house to plant evidence, but Christopher interrupted him.”
“He would have had no choice but to kill him, too,” she stepped in.
“And then you walked in and interrupted him again. He was close with you, which is probably the only reason he didn’t kill you also,” he said. His last statement seemed to not sit well with him, because his hand pulled up and his knuckles dragged across his chin.
“If that’s the case, hopefully he liked it enough to stick around,” Rilynne said.
Ben had a prideful look about him as he leaned back in his chair. Rilynne chuckled softly to herself as she reached back down for her fork. Even with the new theories, she couldn’t force herself to feel anything other than the disgust that was still coursing through her.
Chapter Ten
“Someone better have died,” she called out as she reached for the doorknob. She had been in the middle of the first pleasant dream she’d had in weeks when it was interrupted by a sharp rapping at the door.
Ben stood in the doorway smirking at her, apparently amused by the look of abhorrence she was giving him. “Now I think we have had enough of that,” he said as he handed her the cup of coffee in his hand. “I’m assuming you have your tennis shoes, right?”
She fought the urge to shut the door in his face and climb back into bed as she slowly nodded.
“Good. Get dressed-something warm and comfortable,” he said. “We’re going to take advantage of this beautiful Colorado weather.”
He turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the open doorway feeling utterly confused. After draining her mug, she gave up on the prospect of getting anymore sleep and dug through her bag for the running clothes that she had packed.
After dressing and quickly tidying her hair, she walked downstairs and found Ben waiting in the dining room.
“About time,” he said. “Hurry up and eat so we can get going.”
“Where exactly are we going?” she asked as she sat down at the table next to him.
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied with an impish grin. “Some of us were actually being productive this morning instead of trying to sleep through it.”
She glared at him curiously before turning her attention to the plate he had waiting for her. She had barely finished the last bite when he took the plate and carried it to the kitchen. When he returned, he took her by the hand and led her silently out the front door. Fighting the urge to ask again where he was taking her, she resigned to climbing in the seat of the awaiting car and let him take the lead.
Although the town was tiny, it was nearly an hour before he pulled off the road and let the car come to a stop in a small parking lot in the middle of nowhere.
“The packs are in the trunk,” he said as he stepped out. “I talked to the man at the Park Service station, and he said this was the best hiking trail in the area. I figured you could use a day away from it all.”
“It’s perfect,” she said with a warm smile. “Was it the older man with the scratchy voice?”
He nodded with a curious grin. “Same one you spoke with?”
“Was he as grumpy with you as he was with me?”
He chuckled, pulling the first pack out and handing it to her. “He was a little blunt with me, but I wouldn’t consider him grumpy.”
“Well, he was with me. I think he was concerned that I would disturb the endangered plants, though. He was almost insistent that I have a guide if I went out looking for them,” she explained.
Ben seemed to think that was incredibly funny, because he was still laughing when he closed the trunk and headed toward the entrance of the trail. “I guess that’s one of the d
ownsides to trying to remain inconspicuous. You don’t have people’s trust the way you would with your badge.”
“I sure don’t.”
Although the cold air brushed her cheeks as they made their way down the tree-lined path, the further they went, the less she noticed it.
“It’s so beautiful out here,” she said. There had been a light snow the night before, which left the trees looking like someone had sifted powder sugar down on them. Somewhere to the left of the path she could hear what sounded like a waterfall, but she wasn’t able to spot it through the trees.
“I like the snow,” he replied without turning around to face her. “Believe it or not, I actually haven’t seen much of it since I was a child.”
She stopped for a moment out of shock before continuing after him. “How’s that possible? I mean, I get that it doesn’t snow in Addison Valley, but you do a lot of traveling. How is it that you haven’t gone to an area with snow?”
He shrugged and lifted a low hanging branch up for her to duck under. “Just coincidental, I guess. I’ve been to areas that get snow, but always during the summer. Usually during the winter I end up some place like Las Vegas or Florida. I imagine it’s designed that way, though. There’s less chance of it getting cancelled due to weather conditions, I guess. I was actually surprised when I saw that next weeks conference is being held in Denver. I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the snow much there, though. I’m usually stuck inside most of the time during these things.”
“You’re usually gone for a week at a time when you go,” she stated. “Does it really take you that long to get your stuff set up and present?”
“My actual work takes about two days. It usually takes a day to get everything set up and ready for my presentation, then the second day I speak and spend several hours after sitting down with different cities to discuss how they could implement it within their departments. After that, I sit in on all of the other presentations,” he explained. “I’m always looking for something new, or just a refresh on an old idea.”