by Jenn Vakey
Ben started to chuckle, but quickly grabbed his ribs. “Did you really just pull a knife out from between your breasts, detective?” he asked, looking quite amused.
“It’s not like this dress has pockets,” she chortled.
“Why didn’t you just use it to cut our ties off earlier then?” Ben was not hiding the look of puzzlement on his face. “Then we could have just jumped her when she came in, and avoided the whole loony wedding.”
“I had it taped to my thigh,” she explained. “It was impossible to reach by myself with my hands bound, but I knew she wouldn’t find it there when she searched me.”
Ben stopped walking and faced her. “How did you know she was going to take you?” He looked more serious than Rilynne had ever seen him. She knew she would not be able to give him the same sarcastic answer that would make people just stop asking. “I got in her head,” she said simply. It was as close to the truth as she could give him. And although he seemed to want to push it further, he did not.
“Why did you put yourself in that position? And why didn’t you call for backup?” They were valid questions, although not ones she really wanted to get into. She knew by the determined look on his face that if she didn’t, though, they might be standing there all night.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before starting. “Thirteen months ago, I lost someone I cared about because someone I trusted…” she searched for the right words, but couldn’t find them. “…stabbed me in the back. It is not an experience I wanted to have to live through again. If I had involved back up to grab her instead, it could have gone wrong. I wasn’t willing to take that chance.” As she had hoped, that was enough to stop the questions, for at least one night.
“So are you going to be putting the breast knife in your statement?” he asked as he started walking again. Rilynne just smiled and followed him. “You know,” he added. “I could have reached the knife for you if you had asked.”
She raised an eyebrow, unable to hide the smile on her face. “Oh really? You would have been willing to do that, huh?”
“Hey,” he said puckishly. “If it would have helped us get free I would have gladly done it. Where was it you said, the thigh?”
“Well,” she said, feeling her cheeks growing warmer. “I will remember that for next time.”
“Next time?” he stated exasperatingly. “There better not be a next time.”
They walked silently into the police station, ignoring the astonished look on the passing officers faces, and went straight to the detectives office.
When they passed through the doors into the conference room, everyone fell silent to take in the sight. Rilynne looked down and realized how odd it must actually look. Ben was badly bruised and in a blood covered tuxedo, and she was wearing a bridesmaid dress, also splattered with blood, with no shoes and her gun in hand.
“What the hell happened?” Wilcome stood up, making it across the room in what seemed like three long strides. He took Rilynne’s gun from her and pulled up two chairs before yelling for an officer in the hall to have an ambulance dispatched immediately.
Rilynne started before Ben could say anything. “I was walking home to change my shirt and she must have sneaked up behind me.” She could see Ben looking at her, but she refused to take her eyes away from Wilcome. “The next thing I knew, I was tied up in a dark room with Ben, and Nicole was telling us to dress for her wedding.”
“Where’s Nicole now?” Matthews asked from across the room.
“Dead,” Rilynne answered.
“She’s in the mausoleum at the back of the cemetery,” Ben added.
“And by wedding, you mean…” Detective Wilcome didn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence. Rilynne stepped in to save him the trouble. “I will tell you all about it later. Although I’m sure you will be able to figure it out yourself once you see the scene.”
It took mere minutes for the ambulance to arrive, but by then half of the detectives had already left for the mausoleum. Detective Wilcome was on the phone with the mayor, informing him the killer had finally been stopped. He was adamant about riding to the hospital with them, but after Rilynne insisted he had better things to do with his time than fussing over them, he submitted to staying at the station.
While the paramedics checked out Ben, she sat back in her chair, trying to take in the events from he past few days. It hadn’t quite set in that the chatty, sweet girl from downstairs had actually been a sadistic killer in hiding. The saddest part had been what had led her down that path. Had she been able to grieve openly for her lost love, things might have turned out differently. “Seriously, worst rule ever,” she announced. Though it had not been directed at anyone in particular, Wilcome looked up and nodded with his all knowing eyes. She ignored the perplexed looks she received from everyone else in the room, and let her heavy eyelids drop.
“Here,” she heard from above. She opened her eyes to see Detective Matthews looking down at her. “This is yours. It was brought in by a couple of kids about twenty minutes after you left. You must have dropped it when she grabbed you.” She reached out and took the purse out of his hand. “You had us a little worried there; don’t let it happen again.” He gave her a warm smile and walked back to his desk.
“We are ready,” the paramedic said to her as he helped her from the chair.
* * *
“How were you up and moving around?” she asked as she sat down in the chair next to Ben’s bed. “Three cracked ribs, a fractured wrist, and some internal bleeding. Not to mention half of your body is covered in bruises.”
Rilynne had been listening to the doctor talk to Ben from her bed on the other side of the curtain. She had noticed that he seemed to be in a little bit of pain, but he had not shown any sign of being injured as badly as he actually was.
“I’ll live. Are you okay?” he asked at the sight of her in a hospital gown.
“Just a minor concussion from when she knocked me out,” she replied, rubbing the back of her head. “And a few bumps and bruises from being tossed around in a trunk. But seriously, what did she do, hit you with her car?”
Ben tried to pull himself up, but quickly decided against it. “No, she used a bat for a good deal of it. Those boots of hers did a decent amount of damage too, though,” he added. He reached out for the water on the tray stretching across his bed, but stopped abruptly just short of reaching it. After taking a deep breath, he raised his left hand to reach for it instead. “Here, let me,” Rilynne said when the water appeared to be just out of his reach. “When are they coming in to put a cast on?”
He took a long sip out of the straw Rilynne had placed at his swollen mouth. “Hopefully soon,” he said. “I keep forgetting and trying to use it.”
“I don’t get it,” Rilynne said. “Nicole wanted you to play a part in her delusional fantasy. Why did she beat you senseless? She could have killed you. And although she tortured them in different ways, she never beat any of the other men she had taken.”
“She told me she wanted me to do something for her,” he seemed to be searching for his words, “and if I did what she asked, she would let me go when everything was done. When I said no, she kicked me. When I continued to say no to her, she switched to the bat, hitting me every time I refused her. Finally she just lost it and kept hitting until I guess she knocked me out.
“Sometime later I came to and she was gone. I thought at first she might have beaten me blind because it was so dark. She came back in several hours later raving about how things were not supposed to be like this, and said it was my fault. She started in on me again, which is when she broke my wrist,” he held it up.
“That must have been when you were moved to the top of the suspect list,” Rilynne stated casually. “She actually made a bit of a scene in front of the district attorney about how absurd it was.”
“Really? I was your number one suspect? You didn’t really believe that it could have been me, did you?” He searched almost longingly f
or an answer on her face.
“Honestly no, I didn’t want to believe it. Everything did start to point towards you, though. The victims were altered to look like your brother, and your brother rented the cabin a dozen times in the two years leading up to his death. Not to mention you had access to all of the victims’ information prior to their abductions, and the trace on your tires and the carpet fiber showed that your car was used for at least one of the abductions. But I wouldn’t have believed it until Derek Hartley himself told me that it was you.”
He looked puzzled. “How was I connected to the victims?” he asked. Other than the task force and the district attorney, no one had been told how the victims were connected, because Ben had disappeared before they could start interviewing people. “All of the victims had been part of police reports. They were either witness to a crime, a victim of one, or the suspect. You had worked on all of them, along with a handful of other people.”
“So, did everything short of Derek Hartley’s statement point to me?” he asked, sounding slightly shocked.
“Well, they still couldn’t figure out how you would have been able to get into Hartley’s apartment and mine without having access to the keys,” she said.
He looked at her even more perplexed than before. “But you know very well I could have gotten into them without a key. You saw me get into yours in a matter of seconds.”
She gave him an impish little grin.
“You didn’t tell them, did you?” he asked.
“They had enough evidence against you without my help,” she explained.
He gave her a look of surprise and admiration.
“Why do I have a feeling work is going to be a little awkward for a while, you know, with people believing I was a serial killer?” he asked.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about there. With the exception of one of the officers, no one was ready to take that leap without absolute proof backing it up. You have a lot of friends in the department, and a lot of people who stand behind you.”
“So really, with all of that evidence stacking up against me, you still didn’t think it was me?” he asked suspiciously.
Rilynne looked down, her gaze trained on the floor. “No,” she said simply. After a few seconds, she looked up to see his reaction.
He just grinned and closed his eyes. Rilynne thought he might have fallen asleep until he spoke again a few minutes later. “Why did you lie to them?” he asked.
“Lie to who?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.
He pulled himself up and looked her in the eye. “At the station you told them you were just walking home and she snuck up behind you. Why did you lie?”
Rilynne felt almost uncomfortable holding his gaze, but knew she couldn’t look away. “So I should have told them I willingly put myself in danger, without backup, and let myself get taken by a serial killer we still were no closer to finding? How do you think that would have gone over?” His eyes were searching her face, but he did not answer her. “Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.
“I knew you must have to had a reason no to tell them. You just saved my life. I wouldn’t turn right back around and call you out for not being completely honest,” he said, finally looking away. “Although, I still think it was a foolish risk to take. You could have died.”
“So could you.”
Ben pulled his hand up to his face, dragging it across his discolored chin. “So when you said someone you cared about stabbed you in the back, you weren’t talking metaphorically were you? All those scars…” he trailed off, seemingly unable to continue.
Rilynne felt a catch in her throat, but pushed through it. “Yeah,” Ben’s jaw tightened as she said it. “I got home one night and had barely gotten my shoes off when I noticed something was wrong. The lamp in my living room was knocked over and the coffee table had been broken. When I went into the hall, I found that several of the pictures on the wall had been knocked off and the glass was shattered on the floor. The bedroom,” she took a deep breath. “The bedroom was covered in blood. I called for backup, and was just about to enter the room to look for…” tears started to roll down her cheeks, and she found herself unable to finish the sentence. “I had this pocket knife I kept on a shelf in the kitchen. It had been my dad’s before he disappeared. It was still sticking out of my back when they found me.”
“So, the man in the picture?” he asked.
“Christopher, my husband. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. He came back two days early from a business trip to surprise me.” The tears were flowing freely from her eyes, but she did not care.
“I had been investigating the suspected death of a woman a few doors down,” she explained. “Her husband had come home to find blood covering their kitchen and one of the kitchen knives missing. We searched, but never did find her body. He was our top suspect for a while, because he had a history of domestic violence, but he had an airtight alibi. We did discover, though, that she was having an affair,” she said. “My guess is that he wanted to add another victim to try to take the focus off of the affair, which would inevitably lead us right to him. I was supposed to be working late, but had to go home to feed my dog and I interrupted him. He had just managed to get away before my backup arrived.”
“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
The 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.”