Deception with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Two) (17 page)

“Detective Matthews reached the same conclusion with Jerry Peterson,” she replied. “I have a meeting in an hour, but call me if anything turns up with any of the other men.”

“Skinner, Jerkins,” Rilynne called out as she walked back into the homicide office. “Peterson just gave us the name of the three remaining members of the crew. Can you have teams sent out to bring them in? Chances are they’ll be expecting you, so make sure that everyone knows to take extra precautions.”

After watching them walk away, she found Detective Wilcome sitting at his desk in the corner. “Stephen Peterson is ready to be handed over to the Major Crime Unit,” she said. “I don’t think he was involved with Villarreal’s murder, and he has cooperated in giving the names of the other men involved with the home invasions.”

“Good,” he said. “I’ll have someone walk him down. Who do you want to take next?”

“Chances are, Villarreal wasn’t in contact with the second level guy at all,” she said, thinking aloud. “James Peterson spent a good deal of time with him, and he had family to think about instead of just himself. I want to talk to him.”

Wilcome picked up his phone. “I’ll have him brought up.”

Rilynne went back to her desk while she waited for the youngest Peterson to arrive. After quickly flipping through the mug shots for all of the men they had arrested, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She concentrated as hard as she could, but she still hadn’t seen anything when James Peterson was walked in ten minutes later.

James Peterson didn’t come close to matching his brothers intellectually. He also didn’t seem to be nearly as confident when Rilynne walked in.

“Mr. Peterson, I’m Detective Rilynne Evans,” she said as she lowered into the seat across from him. “Do you know this man?”

He looked down at the first picture of Villarreal and nodded.

She slid the picture of him in uniform across the table and waited for a reaction. It took a few seconds for it to register, but his surprise was undeniable.

“This is Officer Villarreal. I understand that you have been working with him over the last year,” she said abruptly. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about his murder.”

He stared at the pictures Rilynne laid out on the table and ignored every question she asked for half an hour before finally breaking his silence.

“This dude is dead?” He looked up at her suspiciously, as if trying to decide it this was a trick.

“Yes,” she replied. “He was shot shortly a meeting that I believe you arranged for him with your brothers.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Jerry informed my partner that it was you who set it up. So what happened?” she asked. “Did you find out after setting up the meeting that he was an undercover officer, and then you tried to stop him before it could get back to your brothers? They really trusted you by putting you in charge of handling all of the money. I don’t imagine they would have been very pleased if they knew you had exposed them to a police officer.”

“So what?” he replied.

“So I bet that you would have done anything to keep them from finding out. Even shooting a cop.”

“No way,” he said adamantly. “I don’t kill no one, especially no cop. All that would do is make you guys come after us harder. Y’all weren’t even close to us before this.”

“Mr. Peterson,” his attorney spoke up. “Not another word.”

“Well, Mr. Peterson, if you didn’t kill him, who did?” she asked.

He shrugged silently.

“Did you ever see Officer Villarreal have any altercations with anyone? Or did you ever see anyone hanging around?”

“Nope,” he said.

“What about the drugs?”

“We don’t deal with that kind of stuff,” he said. “My brothers don’t like it. And I never seen that officer with no drugs neither.”

Rilynne sat back and watched him, considering asking him more. After a few moments, she stood up and said, “That’s all that I need right now, Mr. Peterson. The major crime unit will still have some questions for you, so I’ll have someone walk you down there.”

“Well?” Wilcome asked as she walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

She shook her head. “I don’t think he had anything to do with it. He may not be the sharpest tool, but he was right in thinking that killing an officer would only put the whole police department on their trail. I think he would have been more afraid of going against his brothers and killing a cop than by introducing them to one.”

“Well, what do you want to do now?” he asked, following her back to her desk.

“Matthews is with the other level three guy, right?” she asked.

“Yes, but he doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere,” he explained. “Like the others, he didn’t appear to know that Villarreal was a police officer. So far, we haven’t been able to find a reason why any of them would have wanted to kill him.”

With every passing moment, Rilynne was becoming more and more convinced that Villarreal’s death was not related to the case he had been working. An hour later, she was still sitting at her desk trying to make sense of it all when Matthews came in.

“Major Crimes is going to handle the level two interviews, but they’ll let us know if any connection to Shane comes up,” he said.

“We need to look back over everything,” she said as she gathered the files from her desk. “Let’s have their DNA run against the sample pulled from Villarreal’s fingernails, but it’s beginning to look like his death may have been unrelated to the case.”

After calling the lab and requesting that a DNA sample be collected from all of the men in custody, Rilynne followed Matthews into the conference room.

“Okay,” she said as she laid all of the files out on the table. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

“We know he had been using the house for several months, but we still do not know why,” Matthews started. “We also know that there was some kind of altercation either prior to or at the time of his death that left male skin under his nails.”

“There’s also the cocaine found on him,” Rilynne added. “Which we know was planted on him. Have you received the results of the tests on it yet?”

He shook his head. “We can run up there in a bit to check on it. What else do we have?”

“The beach house,” Rilynne said.

“They were unable to pull any prints from the beach house other than Shane’s,” Matthews responded.

“Not the beach house itself,” she stated. “Someone went through a lot of effort trying to find the journal pages, and they were very angry when they didn’t.”

“So they obviously thought Shane had written something on them that would incriminate them in something,” he said. “Who knew about the journal?”

Rilynne sat back and thought about all of the people they had spoke with. “Well, his partner told us about it. No one else we interviewed seemed to have known about it.”

“At least not before we told them about it,” he said. “Although, we have no idea who may have seen him with it, or who else he may have told about it.”

“There was also nothing in it worth trashing a house for. If something happened that was serious enough that someone was worried about it getting out, it must have either happened after he took the pages to the beach house, or else he didn’t think it was worth writing about.”

Rilynne and Matthews sat in silence for the next three hours, reviewing every detail of the case several times.

“I’m just not seeing anything in here that explains why he could have been killed, let alone who did it.” Rilynne couldn’t help but feel frustrated.

“Let’s go run up to the lab then and see if they were able to trace the cocaine,” Matthews said as he pushed his chair away from the table. After gathering up the files and returning them to her desk, Rilynne followed Matthews to the elevators.

“It’s Scarlett, right?” Rilynne asked the young intern sitting at Ben’s desk.

Her head bobbed up and down enthusiastically. “Can I help you with something detectives?”

“We were looking for Ben,” she explained. “Do you know where he is?”

“Mr. Davis is at lunch,” she said, slowly looking Rilynne up and down. “He should be back any minute, though. Is there anything that I can do for you?”

“Do you know if the results from the test on the cocaine have come in?” Matthews asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I can speak with Mr. Davis about it when he gets back and make sure you get them, though.”

Rilynne didn’t know how to feel about the obvious infatuation that the young intern seem to have developed, but it didn’t sit well with her. She also wasn’t pleased by her obvious attempt to shoo them out of the lab. “That’s all right,” she said politely. “We’ll wait.” She could see Matthews look at her curiously out of the corner of her eye, but she did not return his gaze.

Scarlett seemed slightly affronted by her insistence, but didn’t argue. “We were able to eliminate four of the suspects so far just by blood type,” Rilynne heard her say to Matthews. “Mr. Davis called last night and had samples taken from the suspects that were brought in, so the results should be in by tonight. I collected the samples from the other three men earlier, so we’ll have the results on those back tomorrow.”

Rilynne walked around the room, looking at what the other investigators were working on.

“Waiting for me?” she heard Ben ask from behind her as he walked into the room.

“Of course,” she grinned. “We wanted to see if you had gotten anywhere with the analysis of the cocaine.”

“It took a while,” he replied as he pulled up a file on his computer. “But I finally found a match.” He walked over to the printer and returned with a single page. “The reason it took so long was because of the age of the drugs. The match we found came back from a batch that was confiscated fifteen years ago.”

“Fifteen years? Is there any chance that it’s from a new batch that just has the same chemical break down?” she asked.

“It’s not just a close match,” he explained. “It’s an exact match. It would be close to impossible to have another batch turn up that had the exact chemical break down. This sample was also cut with a baby powder that’s been off the market for nine years.”

Rilynne sighed and leaned back against his desk. She had hoped the cocaine analysis would give them some answers, but it only provided more questions.

“We also ran all of the guns collected at the scene last night, and compared them against the bullets removed from Officer Villarreal,” he added. “We didn’t find a match. As soon as the rest of the guns are brought in, we’ll run them and I’ll get back to you if we find the murder weapon.”

“I heard that you had DNA samples pulled from all of the men last night,” she said grinning up at him.

“I knew you would be asking for them.” He seemed pleased by her expression. Her eyes involuntarily flicked to Scarlett, just briefly enough for her to see the agitated look on her face, before she looked back up at Ben. “I just thought that I would get a jump on it.”

“And that’s why you’re the best,” she said as she ran her hand gently down his arm before walking toward the door. She could see through the reflection on the door that he turned toward her as she left, a smile stretching across his face.

Matthews gave her an amused look as they stepped out of the lab and walked down the hall. She avoided his gaze, struggling to keep the grin off of her face.

“Now what?” Matthews asked when they climbed into the elevator.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” she said seriously. “Eat. We skipped lunch and I’m starving.”

He chuckled at her and rolled his eyes.

“Where would the killer have gotten vials of fifteen-year-old cocaine?” he asked ten minutes later as they slid into the back booth at the diner across the street.

Rilynne had been wondering the same. “Either someone has been holding onto them for all these years, found an old stash, or they gained access to the samples that are in the evidence lock up.”

Matthews shook his head. “All of the samples in lock up from that long ago would have been destroyed after the break down was entered into the system. We should pull up the case info from when the bust was made. There’s a possibility that the dealer could have been released by now. Maybe he or she did manage to hide a stash and has started reselling it.”