Found With Murder (9 page)

“Does that mean...” he couldn’t seem to get any more of the sentence out.

“No,” Rilynne said abruptly.  “From everything I’ve seen-” Ben flicked his eyes toward her, stunned by her choice of words, “-he wants Kim.  Right now we're just trying to determine why.  If we can understand the reasoning behind that, it will help us to find out who this guy is.”

“There, uh...”  He ran his fingers through his hair.  Rilynne could see he was struggling with more than just his worry.

“What is it, Joe?” she asked.  Even with the steady stream of emotions rotating in his expression, she could still see he was hiding something.  “If you know something that could be important, you have to tell us.”

He dropped down into the patio chair just to his left and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.  A small groan escaped him as he looked down nervously.

“Joe,” she said softly.

Before she could say anything else, he looked back up at her and nodded.  “Before I met Lori, I had been seeing this girl in town.  It wasn’t even anything serious, and I broke it off after that first night you introduced me to Lori.  She didn’t want to let go, though.”

“Is she stalking you?” Ben asked.

Joe shook his head.  “No, nothing like that.  I’ve received a few angry phone calls, mostly after she’d been drinking, but that was it.  The last one was last month after we announced our engagement.  She, um... she blamed Lori for us breaking up.  I tried to explain that she didn’t have anything to do with it, that we were already moving in that direction, but she wouldn’t hear of it.  I guess I can't really fault her logic when you look at the timing, but meeting Lori was just the last in a long list of reasons why it wouldn't have worked with us.”

“Do you think she could have taken Kim to try to get back at you and Lori?” Rilynne asked.

“No,” he said quickly before pausing to think it over.  “I don’t know.”

“I’ll look into it, but I don’t think it’s likely,” Rilynne said.  She was toeing the line, risking saying more than she should, but she couldn’t help herself.  “We know Kim was taken by a man.  He wanted her bad enough to risk grabbing her with dozens of officers around.  If your ex was behind this, it wouldn't be likely that she could convince an accomplice to take such a chance.  The only reason the abductor would have done so was if he was so blinded by his feelings that he took her at the first available moment.”

Her words appeared to be enough to satisfy the guilt Joe had been feeling, though it only seemed to increase the worry in his eyes.  “Well, is there anything else that you haven’t been telling me?”

“No,” Rilynne replied.  “The only thing we know right now is that he's still in town and he has no intention of actually picking up the money.”

He nodded and stood up.  “I should get back in.  Lori will start to suspect something if I keep having private conversations with everyone.”

“Try to get her to sleep, Joe,” suggested Rilynne.  “She isn’t going to make it much longer unless she gets some rest.”

“I...” he hesitated as a mischievous smirk appeared on his face.  “She’ll hate me for it, but I can put a little something in her tea to help her along.”

Rilynne’s eyes widened, but it was Ben who spoke first.  “You’re going to drug her?”  It was hard to tell by the tone of his voice if he was more shocked or amused.

“Just a little antihistamine,” he said.  “She has a prescription she’s supposed to be taking every night, but she hasn't since Kim was taken.  So technically I’ll just be giving her the medicine she’s already supposed to be taking.”

Rilynne groaned and gave him a resigned nod.  “Do what you must.  She can be mad at us after all this is over.  Right now, she can just deal with it and let us take care of her.”

She watched Joe walk back into the house but didn’t move.  As she saw him preparing the cup of tea for Lori, she turned to face Ben and said, “If you ever do that to me, I’ll hurt you.  I don’t care what the situation is; you aren’t allowed to drug me without my knowledge.”

“Okay, I won’t... anymore.”  He was teasing her, but she still wanted to reach over and pop him for his comment.  Before she could respond, though, Ben’s eyes moved from her to the window.  She turned in time to see Joe set the steaming mug down on the
table in front of Lori.  As she picked it up and took a sip, Joe placed his hand on her back and gently started rubbing it.

“Oh, he’s good,” Ben said.  “If Lori’s anything like you, rubbing her back alone would do the job.”

Sure enough, not half an hour later, Lori’s head started to bob until it finally came to a rest on Joe’s shoulder.  When it did, Rilynne and Ben decided it was time to go back inside.

Though it was getting cooler with every passing moment, Rilynne couldn’t bear to face Lori and the list of questions she was bound to ask.

When they stepped into the dining room, Rilynne watched Joe slide his arms under Lori and lift her from the chair.  He carried her with such ease that she wouldn’t have thought she was more than a large pillow.

She and Ben followed them to the bottom of the stairs and waited for Joe to come back down.

“She's asleep,” Joe said softly.  He pulled the door closed behind him and followed them to the living room.  “Thank you, both of you.”  He turned to Ben and gave him a warm smile.  “I don't know what we would do without friends like you.”

Rilynne placed her hand gently on his arm.  “Let us know if you need anything,” she said.  “And try to get some sleep yourself.  Lori's going to need you tomorrow.  We can only put off telling her the ransom didn't get picked up for so long.  She's bound to think the worst.”

“And you don't think that means…”  Again, he couldn't finish his sentence.

She shook her head.  “No, I don't.  He wouldn't have passed on taking the money if anything had happened to her.  I honestly think he made the random call as a ruse to keep us distracted or in the hopes that the roadblock would be removed.  No part of that makes me think it's his intention to hurt her.  That's the point we need to really push tomorrow when we tell Lori.”

He nodded and walked them to the door.

After saying their good nights, Ben took Rilynne by the arm and they walked slowly down the walkway.  “Are you going to move your car?” she asked.

He looked at the black SUV for a moment before shaking his head.  “Let's walk.  Besides, maybe having it parked out front will keep her stalker away, if that's who's been camping out in front of their house.”

“I completely forgot about him,” she said.  “With everything that's happened today, I guess he got pushed to the back of my mind.”

“Yeah, today's been eventful,” he said.  There was a note of hesitation in his voice.  He was bracing himself for where the conversation could turn, she could tell even without looking at him.

Rilynne considered it for a brief moment, but decided it was best saved for another time.  “We need to figure this out,” she said as they turned toward her house.  He looked perplexed. 
“With Kim.  We need to figure out who could have taken her.  When you got that call, I thought… I can't.  I can't go through that again.  We have to find her.”

“Well then let's lay it all out,” he said.  “We'll play the game.”

She nodded before giving a shutter.  It was much colder than it had been during their walk hours before.  Ben pulled his hand from hers and wrapped his arm around her.

“So where do we start?” he asked.

“Well…”  She thought a moment before continuing.  “Lori gave us a long list of people to look into.  No one has a record, and we haven't turned anything of significance up.  Although when this is all over, remind me to talk to Lori about Mrs. Allen in their play date group.  She’s running a swingers group out of their basement.”

Ben fought off a smile as he slowly shook his head.  “Have you seen anything else in regards to the people on the list?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “Nothing that would lead me to believe they could be involved.  I   also didn't feel anything close to what I felt from the one I had that night.  There were so many things flowing through him.  It wasn't until later that I really realized it.  At first all I could feel was that overwhelming joy he had.”  She still felt ill thinking about it.  “When I thought back, I was able to focus on the other things.  He was sad.  Not your typical, everyday sadness, though.  It was deep within him.  True sorrow.”

“Like from losing someone?” he asked.

“It's possible,” she said.  “I didn't see where it came from.”

They turned again and walked up the walkway toward her house.  “Well, what about the stalker?  Have you seen anything about him?”

It was nice being able to talk to Ben about the things she saw.  Though it had been five months since he told her he knew, it still sent a warm feeling through her whenever he asked about her flashes.  “Just the one,” she replied.  “The night Lori moved here I had a dream that he was in.  I think it was more like a vision within a dream, though.  I was actually him, which only happens during my flashes,” she explained.  “That's how I recognized the pile of cigarettes.”

“Well, what did you see?” he asked.

She thought back to the dream, trying to remember the details.  “He was standing in front of her house when the moving truck pulled up.  He had a present he was more than likely planning on leaving at her door.  When the guys showed up with the truck, he dropped the package and walked away.”

“How did he feel?” asked Ben.  “I imagine he wasn't happy when he saw her leave.  Was he hurting, or anything close to what you felt?”

They stopped just outside the front door.  She twisted her face in contemplation as she considered the question.  “At that point, no.  He was upset but nothing to that level.”

Ben pulled out his keys and unlocked the door.  He pushed it open and stepped back so she could walk in.  “But that was months ago.  Since then, Lori moved across the country, got engaged, and her fiancé moved in.  If he truly felt that they were together, like many stalkers do, he would have definitely been hurt.  I imagine he sees it as her cheating on him.”

“Well, hopefully we'll be able to locate him tomorrow,” she said.  “Matthews will have sent his face out everywhere by now.  He doesn't strike me as a master criminal.  Hopefully someone will get back to us with the location of where he's staying.  I’ve also requested that the car rental companies near the airport in San Antonio be contacted so we know what car to be looking for.”

Rilynne kicked her shoes off, sending them flying toward the wall.  After dropping her purse on the table by the door, she walked straight for the kitchen.  “Beer or wine?” she asked.  He reached down to open the dog kennel but stopped to think about it.  After a few seconds he turned around to face her.  “It's definitely a beer kind of night,” he said.

She thought about it for a moment before agreeing.  She grabbed two of the amber bottles and followed him out through the backdoor.

Rilynne sat on the porch swing and watched Ben try to coax the puppy off the porch.  He looked almost like a child as he hopped around.  The puppy seemed more interested in mimicking him than doing what he wanted.  After several attempts, he finally walked over to pick her up and carried her to the middle of the yard.

It took another several minutes before he got the puppy to cooperate and he could join Rilynne on the swing.

“Well, what else do we know?” he asked.

“The person who took her doesn't care about the money,” she said, handing him a beer.  “That actually says a lot, though.  I don't know what exactly it means, but it’s definitely important.  Even if he was planning on keeping her, I would have expected him to try and take the money.”

“Maybe he knew there was no way he could get away with it,” he suggested.  His eyes were on the puppy.  She was chasing something that was flying around the yard, though Rilynne couldn't make it out through the darkness.  “When you take a cop's kid, the assumption that it can be handled without police involvement goes out the window.”

“It was more than just that, though,” she said.  “He felt guilty that the ransom was even paid.  It honestly didn't feel like he wanted it at all.”

“Hence saying a lot but not understanding it,” he said.  He took a swig from his bottle and kicked the swing into motion.  “How did he know the ransom was even going to be paid?  You said he put the amount as high as he did because he knew Lori didn’t have that kind of money.”

Rilynne thought back to the flash she’d had.  “He has a police radio.”

“And Wilcome called it in as soon as we got back into town,” Ben added.  “He considered the possibility that the kidnapper might be listening in, and thought it might get him anxious enough to make a mistake.”

“It’s smart,” Rilynne said.  “No one considered the possibility that he never wanted the money, though.”

“Okay, so he felt incredibly hurt, wanted Kim enough to take her from such a risky place, and cared more about keeping her than collecting the ransom.  Have you looked
into the biological families?  The only time I could see myself being that single mindedly desperate was if I was trying to get my child back.”

Rilynne pulled her beer up to her lips but stopped.  He was right.  There wasn't anything Lori wouldn't do to get Kim back.  “The biological father has a solid alibi.  Kimberly, the mother, didn't have any family and Fore insists no one in his family even knows Kim exists.”