by Jenn Vakey
Rilynne picked up the phone. “It is still worth a shot.”
It took an hour for the tech to finalize the report and hand it to Detective Wilcome. “I don’t know how this is going to help anything,” he said reading over it. “The only thing it has listed here is a fragrance. Who doesn’t use one in their car these days?”
“Does it limit it to a specific scent?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s peaches.”
“Are you sure?” she grabbed the report out of his hands. There had to be several different manufacturers that made peach scented products for cars. All they would have to do was prove that it was a different one, she thought to herself.
“The soil samples from his tires are also a match,” he handed her a second report.
After reading through both reports three times, she dropped them on her desk and reached for her bag. “I’m going home,” she said.
Chapter Sixteen
When her alarm went off, Rilynne flung it against the wall. Despite having already been awake for nearly an hour, she could not drag herself out of bed. Instead, she stared at the spot on her ceiling that looked oddly like an elephant, and thought about what the day would bring.
As much as she hoped something would come up unequivocally clearing Ben, she knew deep down it was a pipe dream. With everything pointing directly at him, it would take a miracle for the investigation to change.
Raindrops were pelting her face as she ran to the station, but she didn’t care. I never should have come here, she kept repeating to herself. With each step she took, the more sure she was that she was ready to move on. By the time she stepped out of the rain and into the station house, she had made up her mind.
After she changed, she went searching for Detective Wilcome to tell him her decision. She had just stepped out of the elevator when he came rushing out of the room.
“Evans, let’s go,” Wilcome called out, moving towards her quickly with a file in his hand. “The hospital just called and Derek Hartley has regained consciousness.”
He had already passed her and stepped into the elevator before his statement registered.
“He is awake?” she asked. “Is he talking? Does he remember what happened?”
“Dr. Abrams says he’s alert, and talking. We will not know until we get there if he recalls the events of his abduction.” He seemed antsier than she had ever seen him.
The ride to the hospital was quiet and tense. Rilynne knew what it would mean when they got there. As soon as Hartley fingered Ben as the person who had abducted him then it was all going to be real. There would be no arguing it at that point. The search for Ben Davis would turn from a search and rescue to a full-scale manhunt. This would be the second time someone so close to her turned out to be a monster, hiding right under her nose.
“Dr. Abrams,” Wilcome reached out his hand. “How is he doing?”
“Remarkable, actually,” he said. “I have found that with this level of trauma, most people with not have any recollection of the events leading up to it. Mr. Hartley seems to recall a good deal of it.”
“Good,” Wilcome said. “I do not want anyone in that room who is not essential. How many people know he’s awake?”
“Just one nurse and myself. And before you ask, the nurse who leaked to the press that he was alive has been let go. We are also going to be moving him to a private room on the psychiatric floor. It is a locked floor, so it will provide the most privacy, as well as protection.”
Wilcome and Rilynne walked into the room to find Hartley sitting up on his bed being force-fed Jell-O by Emily.
He looked surprisingly healthier than when they were there last. The redness of his sun-scorched skin had faded into a warm tan. His eyes, which had been deeply sunken, were now more like the eyes Rilynne had seen passing her in the lobby of her building.
“Mr. Hartley, I’m Detective Wilcome, this is Detective Evans, and we have been working on your case,” he pointed back to Rilynne who was leaning against the wall. He was about to speak again, but Derek spoke first.
“I know you,” he said bluntly, his eyes set firmly on Rilynne.
“I live in the apartment below yours,” she said gently. “We have seen each other in passing.”
“We know you have been through a lot, so we want to make this quick,” Wilcome jumped back in. “Here are some photos we would like you to look at,” he said, laying out six photos of different men on the table going across the bed. “Can you tell us if the man who took you is here?”
Derek barely looked at the photos in front of him before quickly answering, “No.”
“Are you sure? Take a good look, and…” Rilynne jumped in before he could even finish his thought.
Derek didn’t look back at the pictures, but instead pushed the tray away looking angry. “No, you don’t understand. I wasn’t taken by any of these men. I was taken by a woman.”
Chapter Seventeen
Rilynne was hit with simultaneous relief and panic. While this statement meant Ben was not the killer they had been searching for, it inevitably meant that he was to be the next victim. As hard as she tried, Rilynne could not force herself to remain standing. She dropped down into the chair at the foot of the bed as her emotions slammed her from all sides.
Detective Wilcome, while still able to maintain his composure, seemed to be fighting the same battle within. His also appeared to contain frustration that the road they had been running down during the entire investigation had just been demolished by one word: woman. “What can you tell me about this woman? Can you describe her?” he asked, pulling out his notebook.
Derek seemed to be getting more and more frustrated with the situation. Instead of answering Wilcome, he turned to Rilynne. “Why don’t you tell him?” he asked with a look of almost bitterness in his eyes.
Rilynne was taken aback by his question, and didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Had the perpetrator been talking to him about her when she had him? The look in his eyes made her think he blamed her. Had she told him the reason he had been taken, and all the suffering that he felt, was because of her? It was the thought that had stuck with Rilynne since he was taken, though she did not want to hear that it was true.
“I saw you that night when I was leaving to pick up Emily,” he said. “You were walking through the lobby just in front of me. You were walking with her.”
Rilynne’s eyes widened as she shifted her gaze quickly from Derek to Detective Wilcome. He had been watching her, not Derek, during the conversation but did not appear to know what was going on. She didn’t waste time explaining. She shot up out of her seat and pulled out her phone as she ran through the door.
“What the hell is going on, Evans?” Wilcome called out after her.
“Pick up, pick up,” she was yelling at her phone when they reached the elevator. Finally she heard a voice on the other line. “Matthews, lock down the station. Do not let anyone out until we get back. Post a couple officers outside the doors, and spread everyone else out in the building. It is Nicole Benson. We have to find her.” She had been looking at Wilcome as she spoke to Matthews, as if to explain it to him as well.
“If she has heard that Hartley is awake, she will have already run,” Wilcome seemed to have caught up. “We need to figure out where she would go, and what her tie is to Justin Davis. Call it in. I want every officer in the city looking for her and her car. Make it clear that I don’t want her to know we are onto her, if at all possible. Matthews will have it covered at the station right now, we will head to her apartment to try and get some perspective.”
The drive to the apartment building seemed to take three times as long as it should have. Rilynne had called the landlord on the way, so he was waiting for them in the lobby with the key to Nicole’s apartment when they walked in. Waiting next to him was Detective Tylers with their search warrant. “I want you to stay in the here, and call me if she comes in,” she told the landlord. “Do not let her know we a
re looking for her, or that there is anything out of the ordinary going on.” They ran towards the stairs, leaving him looking both shocked and concerned.
Like Derek Hartley’s, Nicole’s apartment was the same layout as Rilynne’s. Wilcome and Tylers started in the kitchen and living room, while Rilynne headed to the bedroom. After emptying all of the drawers and finding nothing, Rilynne started in on the closet. She had put in cube units with fabric drawers for extra storage space. To Rilynne, it just seemed to make the closet look smaller. She had dumped out and gone through about half of the drawers when something struck her as odd. It wasn’t the units that were making the closet look smaller; the closet was actually smaller.
Trying to remember the size of her closet, she stood up and stretched her arms out to her side. No, that seemed to be right. The length to the back wall, however, seemed to be a little over a foot less than Rilynne’s. She walked out of the bedroom, and opened the hall closet, which was on the other side of the wall from bedroom closet. The hall closet was the same size as Rilynne’s. She grabbed the hammer off the top shelf, and ran back to the bedroom.
The sound of her knocking holes in the wall drew Wilcome and Tylers into the bedroom. By the time they found her in the closet, she was throwing large chunks of sheetrock onto the floor.
“What did you find?” Wilcome asked, climbing over the rubble to get a better look.
“It’s Justin Davis,” she answered, handing him a picture that she yanked off of the wall. The sight before her was shocking. Nicole had built a false wall to hide a shrine she had made for Justin. There were dozens of photos of him, including several of the two of them together. “It looks like they did know each other, and were very close judging by these,” she handed him a picture of them kissing, and a receipt for an engagement ring that Justin had purchased.
She dropped down to the floor, letting the hammer fall to her feet. “Ben must have known they were involved. That’s why he’s always so weird when it comes to her and other men.” She thought it had been some sort of jealousy showing through, but it was much more than that. From all outward appearances, the woman whom his brother loved seemed to waste no time in getting over his death. “How could no one else have known they were involved?”
“He worked for the department before he got sick and had to take leave. They would have both lost their jobs if anyone had found out,” Tylers explained.
“That really is the stupidest rule,” she expressed, perhaps a little louder than she had intended. “She loses someone she loves, and can’t grieve openly because she would risk losing her job. Instead, she finds other ways to deal with her pain, and we end up with the worst serial killer any of us have ever seen. Tell me how that’s better than just letting people date who they want to date?” Wilcome did not answer her, but instead seemed to be studying her. She jumped up quickly and moved back to the shrine. “There has to be something in here that will tell us where she took Ben. She can’t use the cabin anymore, so there has to be somewhere else of importance. I just need to think,” she announced as she turned to leave the closet.
Wilcome appeared to be lost in his own little world, not really paying attention to fact that she walked past him. She crossed the room, grabbing the picture of Ben and Nicole from the Christmas party the year before, and dropped down in the small nook between the edge of her dresser and the wall.
She needed emotion, and it was the one thing she had plenty of at the moment. She closed her eyes as tight as she could, and concentrated on the two people in the picture. She didn’t care which one she found, she just needed one of them. All she could see was dark. Try harder, she told herself. It has to work, just try harder. Still, there was only dark. She was just about to open her eyes again, when she heard a sharp clicking. Click, click, click… finally on the fourth click there was a spark of light. Through the immense darkness, she could just make out his face. There must have been a draft, because the flame on the lighter he was holding in his bound hands was flickering.
She looked around for any hint to where he could be, but could only make out Ben himself. He had blood running down the side of his face, and his right eye was nearly swollen shut. Plastic zip-ties bound his hands in front of him. She panicked as she tried to look down. The light was not showing what she wanted to see. Move it down Ben, she was screaming in her head, knowing deep down that he could not hear her. The flame was failing, trying to go out. The moment the light vanished, she saw what she wanted, his legs bound in front of him, both of them.
Rilynne’s eyes shot open at the sound of Wilcome’s voice. “Why take Ben? She had to know that taking him could lead us to her. Looking into Ben’s disappearance would lead us straight to his brother. It would have only been a matter of time before we connected him to her.”
Tyler was still in the closet, boxing up all of the items in the shrine. “Unless she wanted to try to pin the entire thing on him. It probably would have worked if Derek Hartley had not woken up. Everything pointed to him. We knew the perpetrator was someone who had access to all of the victims through the department. We had just found the cabin, which after just a little digging would have led us to him. It would have looked like he just ran for it when we started to get close.”
“So has she been setting him up as the fall guy from the beginning?” Rilynne wondered aloud. “They are so close, though, that doesn’t make sense. Nicole thinks of Ben as brother, she told me herself. They actually would have been family if Justin hadn’t died. Why would she go after the closest thing to family she has left?” Rilynne asked, but neither of the men could answer.
They packed up the last of the items, and Wilcome and Rilynne headed back to the station. Tylers set himself up in the security office, in case Nicole decided to make a trip home. The three blocks from her building to the station took no time at all. Two officers were sitting at the small table near the front doors, as if just relaxing on their break. Due to the amount of sweat collecting under the collar of the one closest to her, Rilynne could tell these were the men Matthews had set outside to watch for Nicole on the street. Wilcome had noticed it too. “Williams,” he said after stepping through the doors. “Grab three waters and go join them outside. After about five minutes, send Carter in,” he called to the female officer who was sitting at the closest desk.
They met Detective Matthews in the conference room. “We have searched the building, but she’s not here. Ochoa said he saw her heading down stairs about ten minutes before we got your call. Are you sure it’s her?” he asked, almost hopefully.
Rilynne slid the box down the table towards him. “Yeah, it’s her. Something in this box has to tell us where she would have taken Ben. She used the cabin because it had meaning to her, and connected her to Justin. Everything with her is ritual; she would not just pick a random place.”
“Everyone in here now,” Detective Wilcome yelled through the office. He waited until the last chair was filled to speak again. “As I’m sure you know, Derek Hartley has woken up and informed us Ben Davis is not the killer. The perpetrator we have been looking for is Nicole Benson.”
There was a mixed look of emotions showing on the faces around the table. While everyone seemed to be relieved that Ben was not the killer, Nicole was just as known around the station. It was like switching from poisoning to drowning; in the end you still had the same result.
“This is the stuff we collected from Nicole’s apartment. Our number one priority right now is to find out where she’s holding Ben. Rodriguez, Donovan, and Steele, I want you to look at Nicole’s financial statements, and map every single charge. Also look into Justin Davis’s statements for the years leading up to his death. I want to know every place they went together.” They rushed out of the room without waiting for the rest of the assignments to be handed out.
“Davidson, Tylers, and Johnson, start going through these pictures. I want to know where they were taken. Focus first on the ones that have Justin Davis in them.” He tossed them the large st
acks of photographs they had collected from around her apartment.
“Everyone else,” he continued as they walked out, “Look through everything. There has to be something in here that can help us find her. I also want her desk in the lab looked through. Talk to all of the techs and see if anyone has any idea where she would have gone.”
“I will see about tracking her car or her cell phone,” Detective Butcher said. “Her car is newer, so there is a good chance it has a tracking system in it. And if her cell phone is still on and with her, the carrier should be able to provide us with a location.”
“I found her address book when we were at her apartment. We can start by calling everyone in the area. Someone might know where she is, or where she could be going,” Rilynne said.
“Good, although I want teams sent out to interview them instead of bringing them here,” Wilcome replied. “I don’t want anyone tipping her off if we can avoid it. Start calling anyone listed who isn’t in the area. I want to know everything they know about her, and any place they may have visited together. And make sure to inform them of the consequences of interfering with a police investigation. If anyone tips her off, I will be seeking formal charges.” He had a tone about him that told Rilynne that would be the least he would do.
Rilynne was surprised by how thin Nicole’s address book was. For someone who has seemed so sociable, she did not have many people listed. This could have been due to the fact that she appeared to have had torn several pages out.
Rilynne and Matthews took the first three names on the list.
The first, Abby, was an old classmate of Nicole’s. She said that although they had been very close while at school, she had not spoken with Nicole in two years. She did tell them, however, that Nicole had been dating Justin about six months the last time she had seen her. From what she had seen, they were a very happy couple, and Nicole had been crazy about him.
