Betrayal with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Three) (9 page)

“Mom?” Rilynne asked. “What’s everyone talking about? Why’s everyone here?”

“Sweetheart,” she said, stepping toward the table. The room fell silent. “Rilynne, we’re all here to help you.” She could hear the tears in her voice. Rilynne looked quickly around the table again before returning her gaze to her mother. “I had been seeing the signs for years-since you were a child-but I’d hoped that it was nothing more than an overactive imagination. Nineteen months ago, you had been working on a case about a murdered woman, and I guess it just set something off inside of you. It was probably due to your failure to find anything useful. After that, you just seemed to change. Then two weeks later, Christopher was killed.”

“After that, you were a different person entirely. You were withdrawn and wouldn’t talk to any of us. When Mifflin left, you just seemed to lose it. You were obsessed with finding him. When you informed me about you intentions to transfer, I had hoped that it would be good for you,” Wooldridge stated.

“I had no idea what had been going on when I hired you,” Wilcome jumped in. “Being away from everything must have stabilized you, and you returned back to a relatively normal life. That is until you were called back to Bodker when they found Christopher’s body.”

“After that you seemed to enter back into your previous state. Then when no evidence was found, you created some just to give yourself somewhere to look,” Lori said.

She looked around the room, but if she was searching for reassurance, she didn’t get it. Instead, people were looking down to avoid her gaze, or giving her hateful looks.

“We found evidence and it led me to Brooks Hollow,” she said defensively. “Ben told me the trace he found could have come from there. We were in the middle of investigating it when you called me here for this meeting. Just ask him.”

Again, the room was filled with a burst of chatter. This time, there was a stronger note of anger than before.

“Ben informed me that you called him to say you were taking a detour to Brooks Hollow. He was concerned, so he flew up to meet you. A few days later, the owner of the bed and breakfast walked into the room after he failed to pay for the day. This is what she found.” Wilcome slid a stack a photos down the table toward her.

The room in the pictures was identical to the room she had been staying in at the bed and breakfast. The only difference was the color; everything was red. She looked closer and found that the entire room had been soaked in blood.

“What the hell is going on here!” she yelled as she pushed the chair away from the table. “Are you behind this?” she turned toward Mifflin. “It wasn’t enough for you to kill your own girlfriend, but you have to start coming after me. What did I ever do to make you want to take everyone from me that I care about? It took me so long to even reach the place where I could think about dating again, then you murdered him, too. I’ll make you pay for this you bastard!”

“You see what I’ve been saying,” Mifflin said loudly as he stood up. “We need to put her away for our safety as much as hers. She’s already killed two people just to support her delusion. We have to stop her before anyone else is harmed.”

There was a mumble of agreement around the room. Rilynne felt a surge of panic as she threw her chair back and rushed out of the room before anyone could stop her.

When she stepped through the doorway, she found her path blocked by a large, frosted tree. She pushed past it and ran as fast as she could down the snow-covered hill.

“You’ll never change their minds now,” Mifflin yelled out from behind her. “Who’s ever going to take your word over mine. You are crazy, after all. The moment I tell them all about your so-called visions, it’ll be you they go after. I was just running for my life. You killed Christopher and accused me. You told me at the hospital that you were going to kill me, so I ran. No one would blame me for a second.”

Rilynne screamed out of frustration, but didn’t stop running. “How could you do this? Why didn’t you just run? Why did you have to come after me?” she rattled off the questions, not waiting for answers. She had been asking the same question for nineteen months. However, now there was a new one. “Why Ben? He didn’t have anything to do with you; he was no risk to you.”

“I couldn’t let you get close without stopping you,” he said with a note of laugher.

As she ran, it felt like the flesh was being torn from her bare feet. It was the pain in her chest that nearly knocked her over, though. The thought of everyone now chasing her was nothing compared to what she had lost. First Christopher, now Ben.

Another large tree came straight at her, so she spun to the right to avoid it. As she did, she felt a sudden pain spread through her left side.

When she opened her eyes, it took several minutes to realize where she was. She lay on the floor in her room for several minutes-her heart pounding in her chest as the tears soaked her face-before she pulled herself back up on the bed.

“Only a dream,” she said aloud to herself. “It was only a dream.”

She fought the urge to walk across the hall and check on Ben, knowing he was surely sound asleep by now. She also knew how it would look if she were to knock on his door in the middle of the night. Instead, she lay down in the middle of the bed, listening to her heart thumping in her ears. “Only a dream,” she said again to herself. She repeated it several times until she drifted back to sleep.

“
Y
ou’re back!” Nick seemed to be almost unable to contain his excitement when they walked into the station the next morning. “Did you find the fugitive? Is he really here in our town? Dad says I can’t tell any of the guys until your investigation is over, but they’re going to flip when they hear. Who’s this guy?” he asked, motioning toward Ben.

“This is Ben Davis. He’s come up from Addison Valley to help with the investigation any way that he can,” she explained. “Your father asked me to come back in this morning to speak with your detective. Is he available?”

“Yeah, he just got in. I’ll go get him for you,” he said as he jumped up from his seat.

“He’s an energetic little thing,” Ben said as they watched him rush to the second door on the back wall, next to the door leading into Sheriff Stigent’s office. After quickly rapping on the door, he pushed it open and entered. “Looks young too; shouldn’t he be in school?”

“I imagine he’s on a work program,” she replied. “I only had to go to school for one class a day my senior year. It was nice getting out around nine-thirty every morning.”

“I bet. I think I got out just after three. Then I spent at least two hours a day doing my community service. Add that to my after school job, and I was left with very little free time.”

Ben had caught the father of a fellow student attempting to take advantage of his girl friend as she lay passed out in his yard after a party. Instead of filing a report with the police, which would have meant telling his girl friend what had almost happened, he took matters into his own hands and vandalized the man’s house.

In lieu of jail time, he was sentenced with community service, which he completed at Addison Valley Hospital. It was his time there that motivated him to make something of himself and go to college.

Nick emerged seconds later followed by a man who was just over a head taller than him, which said a lot, because Nick had to be just a few inches shy of six-feet. Instead of a uniform, he was wearing an olive green tee shirt and jeans. Unlike his clean-shaven colleagues, it looked like it had been several days since his last shave. The look wasn’t a bad one for his handsome face, though, nor was the untidy look of his short, light brown hair.

“I’m Detective Korey Byman,” he said as they stood up to meet him. “Sheriff Stigent told me to be expecting you this morning, but I’m afraid he didn’t give me much information as to why. Please come on back,” he motioned toward the door he had just exited.

The office was smaller than that of the sheriff, but only just. Both the right and left walls were lined in filing cabinets, leaving just enough room for a desk in the middle.

“Have a seat,” he said as he walked around and took his seat. “It’s Detective Evans, correct?”

“That’s right,” she replied. “And this is Ben Davis.”

“It’s nice to meet both of you,” he said as he extended his hand. “What is it that I can help you with?”

“We believe this man-” she slid the photograph across the desk, “-was here around nineteen months ago. He’s responsible for killing at least two people in Bodker, Wisconsin, and we’re hoping that someone in the area might know where he could be hiding out.”

He examined the photo carefully before looking back at Rilynne. “Sheriff Stigent said that you were from Texas,” he said curiously. “Why are you interested in a case from Wisconsin?”

She could see Ben tense up from the corner of her eye, but continued without acknowledging it. “I won’t lie,” she replied, “This case is very personal for me. The second victim was my husband, and this man was my partner. My husband’s body was found this week, and Ben discovered trace that led us here.”

“Okay,” he said smoothly as he dropped his elbows down on the desk. “Fill me in.”

Rilynne spent the next hour going over every detail of the case, from the first victim to the evidence recovered from Christopher’s body.

“Well then,” Detective Byman said when she finished. “Where do we start?”

“We were talking about it last night,” Ben stepped in, “and we were considering the possibility that Mifflin might have brought the body of the first victim here to bury her. Her body wasn’t found with Christopher’s, and it could explain why Mifflin was here just prior to killing him.”

“Makes sense in a way,” Byman said. “In a small town like ours, there would be less chance of a body being discovered. The distance from the original scene would only help that. We haven’t had a homicide here in almost thirty years.”

“Mifflin transferred trace from a Rocky Mountain Maple and Penland beardtongue to Christopher when he buried him. We know that there are very few places where Penland beardtongue grows naturally, so we thought those would be a good place to start looking.”

Byman nodded along as she spoke. “I’ll call the state police and see if we can get some cadaver dogs out immediately to begin searching. In the meantime, I assume that you had some ideas about where to start searching for Mifflin?”

“We thought we might start with the local bars,” Rilynne said. “He also has the scar on his cheek-” she motioned to the pictures, “-and if he was concerned about being recognized, he might have looked into plastic surgery. Is there a cosmetic surgeon in Brooks Hollow?”

He smirked. “Two, actually. They’re also the town physicians, coroners, and veterinarians-out of a different office, of course. They have a clinic two blocks down. I’ll call and set up an appointment for us to meet with them. As for bars, we have four in town. They’re all small-no more than one or two bartenders-so it’ll be relatively easy to find out if anyone remembers him. I’m pretty sure they’re all the same ones that were working during the time you believe your fugitive came through.”

“That would be great,” Rilynne said, grateful for his willingness to assist them.

“I can take you around tomorrow to speak with anyone you need to. For now, I’m going to get the dogs out to search for your missing body,” Byman said.

“Sounds good,” Rilynne answered. “Here’s my contact information if anything turns up.” She handed him a card, which he glanced at before sliding it into his wallet. “We’re also staying at the bed and breakfast if you can’t reach me on my cell.”

“I’ll call you if we find anything,” he said as he rose from his seat. “Why don’t you come back in the morning and we can work out a game plan.”

Rilynne eyed Nick amusedly as they walked back out onto the street. He watched them carefully, and seemed almost disappointed that they were leaving so soon.

“Where to now?” Ben asked as they walked back to the car.

Rilynne stopped when she reached it, leaning against the closed door to think. “The hotel on the edge of town,” she said a few moments later. “I checked with our bed and breakfast when I checked in to see if he had stayed there while in town, but she had no record of him. Let’s see if he stayed there.”

He nodded in agreement and climbed into the car.

To her dismay, the hotel staff was everything but helpful. It took close to twenty minutes and a call to Detective Byman before they would even agree to search their records. After all of that, it turned out that every room had been booked for back-to-back weddings, and the entire hotel was closed to the public for nearly two weeks. Unfortunately, the time frame Rilynne expected Mifflin to be in town fell directly in the middle of that window.

Frustrated-more with their lack of assistance than the failure to find Mifflin-Rilynne suggested they park the car back at the bed and breakfast and explore the town on foot. To her, there was almost nothing more relaxing than walking around.

Several of the stores they came across surprised Rilynne, like an extreme sports shop with a large surfboard in the window. Others, like the four antique stores they passed, were not surprising at all. Everyone smiled at them as they passed, several even offering verbal greetings. It really was like a small town that had been plucked from a movie.

They had just stepped out of a small coffee shop when Ben’s phone began to ring. Quickly handing Rilynne his steaming cup, he dug into his pocket and pushed it up to his ear.

As he took the call, Rilynne let her mind drift. Although Mifflin had always lived in a large city, she had often heard him talk about packing up and moving to a small town and living a simple life. It wouldn’t have surprised her a bit to find him holed up some place just like this.

“That was Summers,” Ben said as he placed the phone back in his pocket a few moments later and reached for his coffee. Rilynne was almost sorry to let it go, because it had been warming her ungloved hand. “He was asking if he could process Christopher’s shirt.” When Rilynne gave him a quizzical look, he continued. “He said he saw the pictures of it on my desk and thought he saw a few drops that he didn’t feel were consistent with the conclusions that had been drawn so far.”

“How would they not be consistent?” she asked. “Does he think they could be from Mifflin?”

“It’s possible,” he replied. “I found two separate DNA profiles on the shirt, so it’s feasible that they could have come from Mifflin during the attack.”

“I didn’t see any obvious injuries on him when he came to visit me at the hospital the next morning, but I know Christopher was a fighter,” she said. “He wouldn’t have gone easily. Mifflin could have gotten a bloody nose, and it wouldn’t have been noticeable the next day.”

“Well, if anyone can tell us what happened by looking at the blood, it’s Summers.”

Of everyone working in the lab, there was no question that Ben thought the most of Daniel Summers. He was the only person Rilynne had ever seen him willingly accept assistance from on case he was working.

“Did he say anything about the analysis of the blood spatter in the room?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he replied, shaking his head quickly. “He’s still trying to identify what could have left that specific pattern. He’s actually taken it as a bit of a personal challenge since it wasn’t caused by something he’s encountered before. I don’t think he’s pleased with how long it’s taking him, though.”

“ I don’t imagine working off of pictures makes it any easier,” she said.

Ben shook his head again. “At least they took detailed measurements of the room. Whoever processed the scene did a pretty good job, actually.”

Rilynne’s jaw dropped dramatically as a shocked smile appeared on her face.

“What?” Ben asked when he looked up at her.

“Did you just complement another crime scene investigator?” she asked, followed by a quick chuckle.

“I’m not arrogant,” he said. “I give people compliments when they earn them. I just have a specific way of doing things, and how I like them done. Everyone has their own way, though, so it takes a lot to actually impress me.”

“I won’t lie,” she said. “Your high standards are a bit intimidating.”

He stepped closer and bumped her with his hip. “You’re the last person who would ever have to worry about not meeting someone else’s standards.”

She felt her cheeks begin to burn and turned away from him. “Well, I know that I’m awesome,” she said with fake sincerity. “I’m just worried about everyone else. I mean, you don’t want to be
that
guy.”

He didn’t seem to fall for her attempt at shifting the conversation, but didn’t push it further. Instead, he just made a low humming sound, followed by a chuckle.

“Did he say when he should have the results?” she asked.

He shrugged, dropping his empty coffee cup in the trashcan to their left. “I don’t imagine it’ll take him more than a couple days, at most. He can get a little obsessed and will devote all of his time to it until he gets an answer,” he explained. “Have you ever looked through the binders at his desk?” She shook her head, looking over at him curiously. “He has his own blood spatter library. He photographs every scene he goes to and every test that he performs himself. It gives him a good comparison when he’s trying to identify a weapon. Since Christopher’s scene doesn’t match anything he’s seen, he isn’t going to rest until he identifies what was used. I imagine it’ll be the topic of the next convention he speaks at, also.”

“Speaking of conventions, what are you speaking about at the Denver one next week?”

“Do you remember the test that we ran on the fibers pulled from the first Pirate Killer victim?” he asked.

She thought back briefly before answering. “The scent test, right? If memory serves, that test actually identified the fiber as coming from your car,” she chortled. “I think I might have to join you at this convention. I just want to see the look on the faces in the audience when you tell them your test ended up helping to name you as the prime suspect in a serial killer case.”