Deception with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Two) (21 page)

Jane took a deep breath before starting. “Shane called me and told me to meet him there, that he needed to talk to me. I could tell by the tone of his voice that something was wrong, so I thought he must have hit a snag with his case. I knew when I walked in that it was something else, though, because he looked furious,” she stated. “He said that after he left his meeting that morning, he saw Julio and I walking down Main Street. He followed us and after I left, he said he confronted Julio.

“I begged him not to take that stupid assignment. I told him I wanted a husband who was going to be here with me, not one that I only get to see once every week or two. He said it was something he had to do and I should just support him. I tried to make it work for months, but I wasn’t happy. Julio had been coming over to check on me every few weeks and we started spending more and more time together. It felt great to have someone with me, someone who was willing to risk everything just to be with me. At first it was just harmless flirting, but before I knew it, I found myself growing excited when I knew I would get to see him. Then one night we crossed the line, and I knew there was no going back,” she stated.

“How long has the affair been going on?” Matthews asked.

“Nine months,” she said. “I told Shane right after it started that I wanted a divorce. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I didn’t want to live a double life like that. He apologized for pushing me aside for the job, and told me that he would take a desk job as soon as the case was over so we could start a family. I knew then that I couldn’t go through with the divorce while he was still undercover, because it could cause him to make a mistake that would cost him his life. I didn’t want that; you have to believe that I never wanted him dead!”

Rilynne heard Matthews let out a low groan. When she looked over at him, it seemed as though he wanted to throw something.

“If you didn’t want him dead, then why did you kill him?” she asked.

“He was so angry. I’ve never heard him yell like that before,” she said. “He said he didn’t understand how I could have done that, and with his best friend. I told him I had never wanted him to leave, but he made that choice. He was also the one who asked Julio to make sure I was taken care of while he was gone. This only seemed to make him angrier. After yelling for nearly an hour, he finally just sat down in the corner. I thought for sure he was going to just get up and leave, but after about fifteen minutes he clamed down.”

Rilynne glanced back over at Matthews. With how much blame Jane was placing on her husband, she didn’t know how much more of it he would be able to take.

“What happened after that?” Matthews asked.

“He told me he forgave me,” she said dryly. “He said it was his fault, and he would never leave me like that again. He said the department had a good counselor we could see, and we would be able to work through this. He told me he loved me more than anything, and he still wanted to start a family with me.”

Rilynne leaned back trying to make sense of what she was saying. If he had forgiven her, then what reason would she have had to kill him? Matthews seemed to be thinking the same thing, as they both sat in silence and watched Jane sipping on her glass of water.

“You told him you were leaving,” Rilynne said abruptly. “He wanted to work things out, but you told him you were going to leave him for Julio Vega.”

Jane nodded and took another sip of her water. “I told him he still meant a lot to me, but that I had fallen in love with Julio. I told him I had been waiting for his assignment to end, but I did want to pursue a divorce. I thought he was going to put his fist through the wall. He was yelling about Julio, and how he was supposed to be his friend. He told me he wasn’t going to let me throw away everything we had over an affair. He said we were supposed to be starting a family, and he wasn’t going to let me just walk away.”

“What happened next?” Rilynne asked.

“He was going on and on about starting a family, so I told him it was too late. He stopped yelling and slid down to the floor, just staring at me,” she said. “I didn’t want to tell him, but he didn’t leave me with much choice. I told him I had just found out two weeks before that I was pregnant.”

Rilynne’s jaw dropped as she glanced over at Matthews and found him looking completely stunned. “Who’s the father?” he asked abruptly.

“Julio,” she said. “Shane and I hadn’t been able to see each other the month that I conceived.”

“So you told Shane you were pregnant by Julio, and you were going to leave him. How did he react?” Matthews asked.

“How would you have reacted?” she asked, almost cynically.

“There’s still one thing that I’m not understanding,” Rilynne said. “You were the one having the affair, and you were leaving him; how is it that he was the one who ended up dead?”

Rilynne halfway expected Jane to try and claim self defense, stating that Shane had tried to attack her. Had she not seen the actual shooting herself, she might have believed it if she had. But as she sat waiting for Jane to continue, she thought back to the flash that she had when they found Villarreal’s body. He had been standing with his hands raised and his back against the wall.

Then she thought back to the dream she had a few nights before.
“Stop. Don’t do this. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“What were you worried about him telling people?” she blurted out. Through the corner of her eye, she could see Matthews looking at her quizzically, but she couldn’t pull her gaze away from Jane. For the first time during the interview, she looked both confused and worried.

“He was going to tell everyone what Julio and I had been doing,” she said, looking more troubled than before. “I know what happens to police officers who betray their own. While he couldn’t have been officially reprimanded, it still could have destroyed his career. Once it had gotten around to the other officers, he would have lost everyone’s respect. I have heard of officers ignoring distress calls after things like this. I couldn’t let anything happen to Julio.”

“Tell us what happened while you were at the house,” Matthews said. “Where did you get the gun?”

“I got it while I was in college. I was almost mugged one night, so my boyfriend at the time gave it to me. After Shane took his assignment, I began carrying it around in my purse just in case his cover was blown and someone came after me. I had it with me when I met him at the house,” she explained.

“Describe the events leading up to his death,” he said. Rilynne glanced quickly back over at him. He didn’t have the same caring look that she had grown accustom to. It had been replaced by something more resembling repulsion. She couldn’t help but wonder if Katy would get her way the next time she asked him to take a job off of the streets.

“He was going on and on about how he was going to tell everyone what had happened. I panicked and reached in my bag for the gun. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but I knew I couldn’t let him tell anyone. Julio could have ended up dead, and I wouldn’t let my child grow up without a father,” she said. The look on her face said that she honestly believed what she had done was justifiable. “I pointed the gun at him to scare him and he stopped yelling. He told me he wouldn’t tell anyone; he promised. I knew I couldn’t take that chance, though, so I shot him twice. He fell, then after a few moments he tried to reach for his phone, which was laying on the floor near the door. He managed to drag himself a little bit toward it, but I shot him again. He didn’t move again after that.”

Rilynne was completely shocked by the lack of emotion she was showing. She had worked cases where the spouse was the murderer, but she had never seen someone show not even a hint of regret. There wasn’t even a touch of anger, which usually replaced the remorse during the past cases she had worked. Jane Villarreal seemed to be completely void of emotion. She wasn’t even showing concern over what would happen to her or her unborn child due to her actions. In all of the interviews Rilynne had done, even for random killings where the murderer didn’t know anything about the victims, she had never come across someone so cold. Deep down, she hoped that Jane was simply in shock over the events of the last week, and not as heartless as she appeared.

“What did you do after you fired the third shot?” Rilynne asked.

“I didn’t know what to do initially. I thought about calling Julio, but I knew I couldn’t make a call from the house or it could be traced. I also didn’t want him to know what had happened so he couldn’t be held responsible in anyway,” she stated.

“After that, I went through the entire house and wiped down every surface. A vacuum had been left in the hall closet, so I vacuumed all of the floors. I knew the neighbors would have heard the shots, so I waited until enough time had passed before leaving. I made sure to take everything with me, including the vacuum cleaner. After taking the bag out, I left that on a curb on the other side of town, and it was gone the next morning when I checked. The gun I tossed in the lake.”

Matthews seemed to be as just shocked by her forwardness as Rilynne was, but she knew better than to question it at this point and risk her shutting down before they were able to get all of the details. “What about the cocaine?” she asked. “Did you have that on you as well?”

“No,” she said. “I went back in the middle of the night with that. I thought that it would be a good way to redirect the investigation away from Julio and me. Anyone who knew Shane would have known that he was very against drugs. I knew it would be obvious that it was planted, and it would look like someone who didn’t know Shane at all had done it.”

“Where did you get them?” Rilynne asked. She considered explaining that they were fifteen years old, but didn’t in case Jane hadn’t worked alone.

“I found them right after Shane and I were married. I was going through some of his old boxes when we were moving them into our house, and found the vials tucked into a teddy bear that had belonged to his sister,” she explained. “I never had any intention of doing anything with them, but decided not to tell him I had discovered them. When I got home, I remembered they were there and decided to put them to use.”

Matthew looked like he wanted to just stop the interview there, but asked one more question. “What about the beach house? I’m assuming it was you who trashed it.”

She nodded quickly. “I was worried after you told me he had been keeping a journal that he might have written something about my affair. I went through the lock box he kept under the bed, thinking that he might have hidden it in there. Instead, I found some documents relating to a beach house he had inherited several months before. I can’t believe he hadn’t told me about it.”

Rilynne fought the urge to laugh in her face. She was outwardly upset about the fact that her husband had been keeping a secret from her, when she herself had been having an affair and was currently pregnant with another man’s baby.

“I figured that if I didn’t know about the house, chances were no one else did,” she continued. “Knowing Shane, that would be the perfect place to hide something. I drove out there and tore the place apart, but I didn’t find the journal anywhere.”

“The journal itself was actually hidden in the same house where you killed him. He had torn out the last few pages, though, and those he did take to the beach house. They were hidden behind a floor board,” Matthews said coldly.

“Ah,” she said. “The monkey ones I’m guessing. They were pretty cute, actually. You should have seen what he paid for them.”

“They were cute,” Rilynne said. “According to his journal, he was fixing it up for you, doing all of the work himself. He was going to surprise you with it as a gift on the day the two of you got pregnant. He seemed very excited about it.”

She smiled a warm smile that made Rilynne sick to her stomach.

“That’s so sweet,” she said with a raise of her voice. “And that’s totally something he would do.”

Matthews closed his notebook and leaned back in his chair. “Let me ask you something, Jane,” he said as he folded his arms. “Why are you telling us all of this? And why didn’t you request representation? You obviously put a great deal of thought into this, and you were incredibly smart about it. So why did you give up every detail as easily as you did?”

“Because of Julio,” she said bluntly. “I knew if I didn’t take responsibility for my actions that he could end up getting pulled into it. I know I didn’t leave any evidence behind, so if I denied it, we could both be charged. I didn’t want there to be any doubt that I acted alone. Julio didn’t even know I was involved. If I had to guess, he didn’t even know Shane confronted me about the fact he knew we were having an affair. It has been weighing on him, I could tell. I knew I couldn’t tell him that Shane had spoken with me about it, though, because I didn’t want him to suspect for a second that it could have been me. We may have been having an affair, but he has strong morals, and he’s a good cop. I know if he had discovered it was me, he would have turned me in without a second thought.”