Betrayal with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Three) (19 page)

“Is there a magic food out there that can get me released?” he asked as he pushed himself up in the bed.

“You do know that you were shot, right?” she asked, unable to keep the grin off of her face.

“That was yesterday,” he replied. “I’m ready to get out of here.”

“You never were one to sit back and just allow yourself to heal. I wonder how much time they’re going to make you take off this time.”

His eyes widened as he pulled himself the rest of the way up. “You didn’t tell them, did you?”

“You mean tell them that you were shot?” She didn’t even try to hide the amusement in her voice. “Even if I hadn’t, I’m sure Summers had it around the entire station within five minutes of me hanging up. You should have heard Wilcome when I called him, though.” She sat down on the edge of his bed, pulling her feet up underneath her. “He didn’t seem to know what to think about it. After the initial shock over how I could have let you get shot, he was actually quite impressed with how you handled yourself. You should probably call him,” she added. “I told him I’d keep him informed on your progress. I’ll be honest, I’m failing miserably.”

“I might as well,” he said. “It’ll give me something to do to help pass the time.”

“It won’t kill you to relax for one day,” she said, patting his feet under the sheets. “Dr. Cahill said you should be ready to be released tomorrow morning. Wooldridge will be here today to take Melissa and Sarah back, so we can actually head home after you’re released.”

“Sounds good to me,” he replied as he laid back and reached for the television remote. “As far as I know, no one there wants to shoot me.”

A
nticipation built as she made her way back to the station.

“I put Melissa Roberts in room one,” Byman said when she walked through the doors. “Sarah Bennett is in room two. Who would you like to speak with first?”

After a few moments of consideration, she answered, “Melissa.”

Melissa’s bloodshot eyes turn to the door when it opened. Other than the hair-which was much shorter and darker than the pictures-she looked just like the images Rilynne had seen. Her expression was that of pure panic as she bounced nervously in her seat.

“Do you know who I am?” Rilynne asked as she dropped down into the chair across from her.

Even before she nodded, Rilynne could tell by the guilt on her face that she did.

“So I’m guessing you know what I do?”

Again, she just nodded.

“Chief Wooldridge will be coming in to do an official interview with you, but I wanted to get some answers myself, if you don’t mind,” she said as she pulled out a file. “What can you tell me about this man?”

Melissa picked up the picture of Mifflin that she slid across the table and looked at if carefully for a few moments before handing it back.

“I don’t know who that is,” she said softly.

Rilynne studied her frightened expression carefully as she leaned back in her chair. “This is Detective Lamar Mifflin,” she went on. “He was my partner until he was killed and framed for the deaths of you and Christopher. His safe and accounts were then cleaned out, and that money was used to set up your new life in Brooks Hollow.”

The look on Melissa’s face was somewhere between confusion and panic.

“No,” she said firmly. “We didn’t have anything to do with this. I won’t deny that we set it up to look like we had both been killed, but that was it. We didn’t kill anyone in the process,” she insisted. “We just wanted to start over.”

As much as she wanted to tie Mifflin’s death to Melissa, Rilynne couldn’t help but feel as though she was telling the truth.

“I’ll tell you exactly what we did,” she continued, “but you have to believe that we’re not responsible for that man’s death. I know that it was crazy, but if my husband didn’t think that I was dead, he would have come after me and killed me himself. After Christopher asked for a divorce and you attacked him, he didn’t see any other way out. So…”

“I’m sorry,” Rilynne interrupted her. “What are you talking about? Christopher never let on that he was at all unhappy with our marriage, let alone ask for a divorce.”

“He told you four weeks before we set up the scene in my house, and you left him with a busted lip,” Melissa said as she tensed up with anger. “He said that with your temper it would only get worse once he actually filed the papers.”

Rilynne stared at Melissa in utter disbelief, not knowing whether to be angry, or feel sorry for her.

“Christopher busted his lip playing in the department football game,” she said gently. “He was hit from the side by Detective Ramos and lost his helmet as he was going down. By the time the other guys realized it, there were already three men on top of him. He was actually lucky he only came out of it with a busted lip. And I assure you that Christopher never approached me about a divorce. If he had, I would have been hurt, but that would have been the end of it.”

Melissa seemed to be fighting an internal battle as she processed all of the information she had just been given.

She considered letting Melissa have more time to absorb everything, but the urge to continue was too strong. “Christopher admitted to me that he ran into Detective Mifflin the day after he faked his death and stabbed me in the back,” she started.

“He what?” Melissa asked, as her eyes grew wider.

“Yes, that’s right,” Rilynne said coldly as she turned around and lifted her shirt, showing Melissa the knife scars. “I walked in on him before he was finished covering our bedroom in blood, so he stabbed me seven times in the back, actually leaving the knife stuck in,” she said as she sat back down. “The following day, he ran into Detective Mifflin and lured him to his car. Now, he didn’t elaborate on the events leading up to actually killing him, but I can speculate from the evidence left behind. He murdered Detective Mifflin, dressed him in his blood soaked clothes, put on his wedding band, and buried him outside of Madison. He did all of that after pulling every tooth from Mifflin’s head, so they couldn’t be used to identify him. Around the same time, he somehow transferred the recording from Mifflin’s cell phone to the one he had been using to communicate with you, and emptied out his accounts and safe. Mifflin instantly became the number one suspect for your ‘murders.’”

When she finished, Melissa looked as if she was going to be sick.

“Why don’t you tell me how you went about faking your deaths,” Rilynne said.

Melissa took a moment to gather her composure before answering. After taking a deep breath, her confusion seemed to have been replaced by anger. “It was his idea,” she said, stressing on ‘his’. “For four weeks we drew blood and stored it. When we had enough, he covered my kitchen in it. I hid out at Sarah’s house for a week before he brought me here. A week after that, he went back to finish it. He was gone for two days and when he came back, we started looking around for a house. We didn’t have a television for the first several months, so I didn’t see any news coverage about our deaths. I guess by the time we had one set up, the story had died down.” She took a breath and looked Rilynne in the eye. “I swear I didn’t know that you were attacked, or that anyone had been killed. I would have never gone along with it if I had. I need to talk to my husband,” she stated. “I need to hear it from him.”

“Your husband?” Rilynne asked curiously. “You and Christopher are married? You know it’s illegal to get married when you’re, in fact, already married.”

“We have both been declared dead,” she said, though she seemed to know that her argument wasn’t valid as she made it.

“Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, but Christopher was declared dead last night,” she said. “This time for real.”

“You killed him?” she exclaimed as she jumped from her seat.

“No,” Rilynne said calmly. “I was actually tied to your oven with a gun to my head at the time. He shot a forensic investigator working on the case, and was shot in return. Unfortunately, Christopher didn’t survive his injury.”

Rilynne couldn’t get a read on Melissa in that moment. While she was outwardly furious with everything she had just learned, there was also something hidden behind it that took Rilynne several minutes to recognize. Of all the emotions she could have expected from Melissa, relief wasn’t one of them.

“It wasn’t as easy as you thought, was it?” Rilynne asked. “Starting over with a new identity and going on the run; it’s harder than you thought it would be, isn’t it?”

She nodded and looked up at Rilynne. “I’m so sorry,” she said firmly. “I was selfish and never considered that Christopher wasn’t being honest with me. I never in a million years could have thought he would attack you, or that he was even capable of killing someone. I feel like such a fool.”

“You shouldn’t,” Rilynne said quickly. “You’re not the only one he deceived. I wouldn’t have thought him capable of anything that he did. Some people are just really good at fooling people, and apparently he was one of them.”

“I know what I did was wrong, and I’m prepared to face the consequences. I just want it to be known that I had no knowledge of anything that Christopher did beyond our original plan.”

Rilynne nodded and placed the photos back in the file. “In addition to what we’ve talked about, they’re also going to want to talk to you about the insurance fraud.”

“What insurance?” Melissa interrupted. Rilynne’s first instinct told her that Melissa was lying to protect herself, but the look on her face said something different.

“Christopher told me that he faked his death to receive the two million dollars from his life insurance,” she said, carefully watching Melissa. “Because it’s already been paid out, there will be charges filed for insurance fraud.”

Melissa didn’t respond, but the anger on her face said enough.

Rilynne picked up the file and walked out without either of them saying another word. As the door shut behind her, she was left with a mix of emotions. Not wanting to be affected by them, she shook them off and pushed open the second door.

Sarah didn’t say a word when Rilynne sat down across from her. Instead, she glared at her, the same look of hatred she had been giving her for years. Rilynne folded her arms and stared back at her, not knowing what to say.

“This is all your fault,” Sarah said, breaking the silence after several minutes.

The tension was so thick in the room that Rilynne could almost feel it as she took in a quick breath.

“How did you come to that conclusion?” she asked, fighting off the urge to reach over the table and slap her. The comment itself didn’t surprise her, though, because blaming her seemed to be Sarah’s favorite thing to do.

“I told him it was a mistake to marry you,” she said coldly. “If he had just listened to me and waited for someone better, none of this would have ever happened.”

Rilynne was baffled by the arrogance coming from her. “Explain to me how it’s my fault that your brother chose not only to fake his death, but murder someone in the process? Wouldn’t it have just been easier to file for divorce?”

“Stop being so dramatic,” she snapped angrily. “Don’t you dare try to justify that man shooting and killing my brother by saying he was going to kill you. He would never murder anyone, and you know it.”

Rilynne opened her mouth to respond, but closed it again without a word as she stared dumbfoundedly across the table at Sarah. It was several seconds before she finally found her words.

“Christopher murdered a man named Lamar Mifflin, dressed him in his clothes, knocked the teeth out of his head, and buried him along with his personal belongings. He then proceeded to frame Detective Mifflin-that’s right, he was a detective-for both his and Melissa’s deaths. And before you try denying it, he told me himself that he did it.”

With each word, she felt the anger building inside of her again. She couldn’t remember anytime in her life where she had ever felt as angry as she had the past two days.

“You’re lying,” Sarah replied abruptly, but the look on her face told Rilynne that she knew it could be true.

“You know that this isn’t an official interview and you don’t have to tell me anything, but I just want to know why,” Rilynne said as soothingly as she could muster. “All Christopher had to do if he wanted to be with someone else was file for divorce. Why would he go to the extreme of faking their deaths, stabbing me, and killing my partner? It doesn’t make sense why he did it, or even more so, why you went along with it? Weren’t you even concerned about what could happen to your daughter?”

For the first time, the gravity of the situation seemed to have hit her.

“I’ll tell them anything they want to know,” she said. “Just please don’t let them take my baby.”

“I’m not in any position to make a deal with you, Sarah,” Rilynne said as she watched the tears starting to roll down Sarah’s cheeks. “But I’m sure Chief Wooldridge will visit the subject with you when he arrives later today.”

She took one last look at Sarah before leaving the room. She could just make out the desperation on her face as she stared blankly at the table.

“Chief Wooldridge should be here in a few hours to do the official interviews,” she told Byman and Sheriff Stigent who were sitting in the desk just outside the door. “I’m going to head back to the hospital and check on Ben. If he gets here before I get back, can you have him call me?”

They nodded in agreement and she walked out of the station.

*

“I asked for the magic food for quick recovery, but they were all out,” she said as she pushed the tray over his bed. “I guess you’ll just have to settle for this.” She placed the takeout box on the tray and sat down on the foot of the bed.

Ben’s eyes widened as he popped it open. “A steak and baked potato? I would have been fine with a cheese burger.”

“You were shot; a steak sounded like a much better meal,” she said, handing him the silverware out of the bag. “Just don’t tell your doctors. I don’t think they would be too pleased.”

“Are you not going to eat?” he asked as he slid the knife into the medium rare steak. Rilynne watched as the juices spilled out.