Obsession With Murder

by Jenn Vakey

  Ben nodded.

  Rilynne wasn’t sure she should be the one to ask the questions, because she didn’t know how she would respond to some of the answers, but she pushed through.

  “What’s the first thing you remember after the accident?” she asked.

  Ben leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes. After a couple seconds, he opened them again and spoke.

  “I was a little out of it when the car finally came to a stop,” he said. “I remember a loud crack, then a little while later my door opening and someone helping me out. I thought it was rescuers or someone just trying to get us out of the car. I kept saying they should leave me and check on you, but we just kept moving until we made it back up to the road. I tried to go back, but I got pushed into the backseat of a car. I blacked out around then. I don’t know if it was from the pain or if she gave me something. When I woke up I was in that house.

  “I didn’t really know what to think at first. When I saw Nancy walk in a little while later, I knew I was in trouble. I tried to get up, but my leg was in so much pain. I don’t think she had reset it at that point, but I was afraid to look so I can’t say for sure. She started rambling on about how she managed to finally get me out from under your thumb, and how we could finally be together. I asked what she did to you, and she said I didn’t have to worry about you anymore, because you were gone. Before I could question it, she held up your gun. I pretty much just shut down after that.”

  “You saw my gun?” she asked. “Are you sure it was mine?”

  He nodded, puzzlement overtaking his face.

  “Do you know what she did with it? We searched the house, but it didn’t turn up.”

  Ben laughed and grinned. “I’m sure the department will forgive you for losing it,” he stated, amused by her apparent concern. “Being knocked unconscious during an accident and waking up with amnesia is a pretty good excuse.”

  After a few moments of staring at her face, his expression quickly changed.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Rilynne let out a slow groan. “That crack you heard,” she started, trying to figure out exactly what she was trying to say. “There was a woman who stopped to check on us after the wreck. Nancy shot her.”

  Ben didn’t seem to know what to say. He just closed his eyes and dropped his head down on the pillow. Rilynne didn’t need to ask what was going through his mind. He already blamed himself for her getting caught in the middle of his mess. There was no doubt that he would carry the guilt of this as well.

  Rilynne raked her fingers gently through his hair as she leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek. She didn’t know what to say. More than anything, she just wanted to stop talking about it right there and for them to go on pretending that the entire event never happened. If only it were that easy.

  “Did you ever see anyone else in the house?” she asked.

  Ben furrowed his brow as confusion once again took over his face.

  “Are you saying she didn’t do this alone?” he asked, not stopping to first answer her question.

  “Nancy said something at the house when we found you that leads us to believe another person was involved,” she replied. “We don’t know the extent at this point, but it seems that someone might have at least pushed her to the point of taking you. She referred to them as a mutual friend of yours, and it appears this person fed her delusion until she cracked. Did you see anyone, or did you ever hear her talking to or about anyone?”

  Ben thought it over for a moment before shaking his head. “I was pretty out of it, but she’s the only person I ever saw. The only thing she really ever talked about was the life she saw us being able to have.”

  As he spoke, the nurse came in and put something in his IV that made his eyes instantly look heavier. It was only a few minutes later before he was completely out again. Rilynne was glad for the timing. She’d gotten everything she needed from him, and she wanted him to be able to rest without thinking about it. She would have given anything to be able to do the same. Instead, she moved to the chair next to the bed and watched him in silence while everything that he’d been through invaded her thoughts.

  Rilynne knew how she felt with just the uncertainty over what had happened to him. She couldn’t imagine what he had thought or felt when he was told she was gone. Even the level of pain she felt when she was told Christopher had likely been killed was nothing compared to what she would have felt if she were in Ben’s place. She couldn’t honestly say that she would have had the will or strength to survive.

  She was still sitting in the same place when the dinner trays were brought in several hours later. Ben woke just long enough to eat before he was given another dose of painkillers which had the same effect as before. As much as she would have liked for him to be awake where they could just spend time together, Rilynne knew his body needed the rest so he could heal. Even with the assurance from the doctor that they’d managed to fix his leg so it would be like it was before, she knew he still had a long road ahead of him. More than just the physical therapy he was looking at, she was sure he’d be miserable just with the fact that he wouldn’t be able to work. Even when he was shot, he had to be ordered to stay home and out of the lab. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind he was going to face the same when he was released from the hospital. Wilcome was going to have to force him to stay out of the station.

  After tidying up, Rilynne sunk down into the most comfortable chair in the room. The nurses didn’t even bother to tell her to leave like the night before. She was sure at that point that word had gotten around that it was a pointless battle, with no chance of success at the end. Other than the occasional nurse popping in to check on Ben, she wasn’t disturbed at all until well after dark.

  “Were you able to get anything out of her?” Rilynne asked, pushing herself up in her seat when Matthews quietly slid the door open and stepped in.

  The look on his face was an answer enough. Before she could even begin to feel relief at the fact they were getting somewhere, his expression reignited the knots within her that had finally disappeared.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Did something happen? What did she say?”

  His eyes shifted to Ben, who was still sound asleep in bed, then motioned her out of the room. After standing from her seat, Rilynne reached out and tucked the blanket up around Ben before following.

  “How bad is it?” she asked, tired of hearing bad news. Her mind raced as she considered everything that could possibly come out of his mouth. It made her head hurt.

  Matthews groaned and roughly dragged his hands across his face. He didn’t want to tell her; she could see it all over his face.

  Her heart was racing, and she was just about to ask again when he finally let his hands fall back down and he answered.

  “Ross.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You’re joking!” she gasped. Of all the things she could have imagined him saying, this wasn’t even on the list. “I know there’s bad blood between Ben and Ross, but how could he have had anything to do with this? I understand he blames Ben, but setting him up to be taken by a stalker is a little extreme. How would he even know about Nancy in the first place?”

  Rilynne didn’t have any good feelings toward the former officer, having just as many issues with him as Ben had, but she still couldn’t picture him being behind Ben’s abduction. As she thought more about it, though, the easier it was to believe. She and Ben had played a part in him being let go from the department, but not before Ben was given the opportunity to meet with him in the boxing ring. In the end, Ross had to be taken to the hospital while the department treated Ben to several rounds at the bar. From the time she had moved to Addison Valley, things had been only growing worse between them.

  Matthews didn’t seem to think her questions warranted an answer, because he just stood back and waited for her to speak again.

  “How involved was he?” she asked. “Did he just plant the notion in a crazy
girl’s head, or was he actually part of the planning? Or was it even more than that? I was wondering how Nancy managed to get Ben up the stairs in her house with a busted leg. It wouldn’t be impossible, but having a second pair of hands would have definitely made it easier.”

  He shook his head. “We don’t know the full extent yet,” he stated. “From what she has said so far, they spoke a lot about Ben and he told her repeatedly that they were perfect together. It would also appear that he gave her the idea that Ben was trapped in a relationship with you that he didn’t want to be in. Tylers and Steele are trying to get more out of her, but I just had to get out of there. I already reached the point of wanting to hunt him down myself. I have a feeling if I was in there to hear the rest of it, I might actually act on it.”

  She was still in a level of absolute shock. “How did you even find out?” she asked. “Surely she didn’t just decide to break and give his name. She still thinks she was in the right with all of this. I imagine at this point she expects Ben to walk out of the hospital and tell everyone she was just doing what he wanted, and she’ll walk away from all of this without any trouble.”

  He nodded in agreement. “She’s pretty much claimed exactly that. We gave up on trying to convince her otherwise. Dr. Gamboa is coming in tomorrow morning to talk to her and see if it will be possible to break her from this delusion. As for Ross, her talking wouldn’t have helped us at all. He didn’t give her his real name. Given that, we can assume it was his plan from the beginning to get her to do something illegal. We were only able to track him down because we found tape of what appears to be their first meeting at Travis Bar. Lucky for us, the owner doesn’t erase any of the surveillance footage, because the encounter was a little over a year ago. You could still see the bruise on his jaw that Ben gave him in the ring.”

  “How on earth did you find it so fast?” she asked, trying to work it out logistically in her head. No matter how she went about it, she didn’t see any way they would have possibly found it in less than twenty-four hours.

  “Luck,” he stated simply. “We knew by her credit card receipts that she went there a lot. Starting from that little tiff the two of you had that night at the bar, which we did manage to get nice video of,” he stated with an amused grin, “we started focusing on the times that we knew she was there. The plan was to go back if we didn’t find anything and look at all of the days we knew she was away from Lewis manor, but we managed to find what we were looking for pretty quick. Butcher called us over as soon as she saw Ross approach her at the bar. When presented with that, she broke down and told us all about it. I think she actually believes us talking to him is only going to help strengthen her case.”

  “I take it you haven’t mentioned to her that he gave her a fake name, and that he actually isn’t friends with Ben at all?” she asked. She glanced back at Ben through the window to make sure he was still asleep before turning her attention back to Matthews.

  He shook his head. “We’re holding on to that one for now. Once we’re sure we have all she’ll tell us while still believing he’s going to have her back, we’ll offer that one up and see what else we can get out of her.”

  “Make sure I’m there for that one,” she stated. “I want to watch the look on her face when she realizes he was just playing her. That is, if she even believes it at all. Knowing her, she’ll probably claim it’s just me twisting facts to keep her and Ben apart.”

  “Whether she gives him up or not, it’s clear that Ross has been planning this for a while,” Rilynne stated. When she thought back to what was going on a year before, all the doubt she still held on to floated away. He’d been very vocal with his belief that Ben and Rilynne had been responsible for him losing his job. He had even tried to file a wrongful termination suit against the department. He was sure to want revenge. “Where are you with bringing him in? With her killing someone during the abduction, he has to know he’s looking at some serious charges.”

  He shrugged helplessly. “He sold his house a few months back and had been staying with his sister in town. Wilcome talked to her this afternoon and she stated that he up and left earlier this week, claiming he got a job out of town and he’d call her as soon as he was settled. His credit cards have been closed out and his bank account has been completely emptied. From what we can tell, he took off as soon as word got out that Ben was missing. At this point, though, I don’t know what we can charge him with unless Nancy says he was actually involved in the plan to abduct him. That is unless Ben was able to remember anything about him being involved.”

  “He never saw anyone in the house other than Nancy,” she said, dryly. She knew he was right. All they knew at this point was he had told an unstable woman that the man she wanted held the same feelings toward her. The only hope they had of actually prosecuting him would be if he’d helped with the planning in any way. With Nancy as headstrong as she was, she wasn’t going to hold her breath.

  “Has District Attorney Greene been in to talk to Nancy yet?” Rilynne asked, leaning against the wall to take some of the pressure off of her feet. She wore only a pair of thick socks one of the nurses had given her, but they did little to ease the discomfort. When this was all over, she was determined to sit down and stay off of them for at least a week. That wasn’t likely to happen with Ben as immobile as he was, but she was still holding out hope.

  He shook his head. “She’s been in talks with Wilcome, but she hasn’t stopped by yet. I imagine she will tomorrow.”

  Rilynne chuckled to herself, leaving Matthews with a mildly confused look.

  “She must be growing tired of us by this point,” she said. Matthews seemed to mull it over for a moment before smiling himself. “Both Ben and I have been accused of murder, we disappeared during one of those investigations, and now we’re center of another. I can only imagine her reaction when she first got the report that we were involved in this mess.”

  As she tried to picture the district attorney’s face when hearing the news, the smile on her face only grew. There was no way she was anything other annoyed. While they closed a significant number of cases, which in turn looked good on her, the trouble they were often wrapped up in was more than nearly anyone else in the department... combined.

  “One thing I know for sure is she isn’t going to let Nancy off easy with this one,” Matthews stated. “Even with her filing an insanity plea, which I’m sure her attorney will insist she do, Greene’s going to want to make an example of her. We’ve had too many instances of people going after one of our own over the past couple years. She wants to make a statement that if someone tries it, it won’t be treated lightly.”

  Rilynne thought it over, and she had to agree with him. Just in the time she had been in Addison Valley, this was the sixth case that she could remember. While most of them weren’t actually committed due to the person being connected to the department, it was something everyone wanted to put an end to. Their focus should be on protecting the citizens of Addison Valley, not worrying about themselves.

  “Katy must be losing it right now,” she said, remembering how Matthews’ wife reacted any time there was an officer related situation. “How much longer do you think you can keep her calm before she declares enough is enough and makes you take a desk job?”

  He groaned and kneaded the back of his neck with his fingers. “I honestly don’t know. She hasn’t instigated the talk yet, which might actually be a good sign. Or a very bad one. I didn’t know how having the girls would change things. It will either make her come on even stronger, insisting I take myself away from the danger for the sake of our children, or she will just focus on them and ignore it as much as she can. We’ll see over the next day or two which path she decided to take. Speaking of that wonderful wife of mine, I should probably head home. I might just make it before she manages to get the girls down for the night. I’m going to owe her a vacation after this last week. She’s been left having to care for the kids herself while I spent most of my time in the
office.”

  “Give them both a kiss for me,” Rilynne instructed. “And thank Katy for the chicken she brought over. It was delicious. She’s going to have to give me that recipe sometime. Ben will be sorry he missed it. Who knows what that crazy woman was feeding him. She doesn’t really strike me as the cooking type.”

  “You’re one to talk,” he smirked, starting down the hall. “And good luck with getting the recipe out of Katy. I can’t even get her to tell me what she put in it. She’s also smart enough to wait until I’m out of the house before she makes it. I don’t even have the chance of spying on her to try and figure it out.”

  Rilynne waited for him to disappear beyond the doors before turning and walking back into the room. She kissed Ben gently on the head, and then climbed onto the cot the nurses had brought for her to sleep on. Ben’s soft snoring filled the room as she stared up at the white ceiling panels above. She hated hospitals. With as much time as she’d spent in them over the last few years, Rilynne decided they were now her least favorite place in the world. As she slowly started to drift off, she considered just how much it would cost for them to build a faux hospital room on their property, so they could just have a doctor come to them whenever needed. With that, they would never have to step foot in a hospital again, or at least not as a patient. It was a silly thought, but the last she had before everything finally went dark.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Where’s your costume?” Rilynne asked, staring at Matthews as he stood on her doorstep. “You can’t come to a Halloween party without a costume. I thought I made that pretty clear every time we talked about it for the last month. If I didn’t know you would actually consider it a treat, I’d refuse to allow you in.”

  He rolled his eyes and pushed past her carrying a large box of food. “Relax,” he said. “I didn’t have time to go home after I left the station. Katy’s bringing it when she comes with the girls. Wait until you see them. It took her two months to find the costumes she wanted, and I don’t think she could have found anything more perfect.”