Deception with Murder (A Rilynne Evans Mystery, Book Two) (22 page)

Matthews seemed to have heard all he could take. He pushed his chair away from the table and walked toward the door. Just as he reached out to open it, he turned back toward Jane.

“I know you knew how much Shane loved you,” he said. “He would have done or given you anything. You not only cheated on him, but with his best friend. He even forgave you, and you killed him for it. All of this for a man that you yourself would agree wouldn’t have done the same for you. Why? Explain it to me, because I honestly do not understand it.”

“You would be amazed at the lengths people will take for love, Todd,” she said.

Rilynne stood up and followed Matthews out of the room. He walked silently back toward the homicide office, but she knew better than to follow. Instead, she found the district attorney sitting in the observation room.

“Is she trying to build a case on the grounds of being mentally unstable?” District Attorney Greene asked.

Rilynne had to admit that the thought had crossed her mind several times during the interview. With her utter lack of empathy and regret, she could have been easily setting herself up for an insanity defense.

“I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head. “She isn’t behaving the way people normally do when they’re angling for an insanity plea. She just honestly seems to have withdrawn from the situation. She isn’t claiming to have had a breakdown, or being distressed at all. She didn’t even attempt to claim self defense. If anything, she seems to be incredibly overprotective. Her sole concern is Julio Vega.”

District Attorney Greene watched Jane in quiet contemplation. After a few moments, she turned back to Rilynne.

“Was he involved?” she asked. “Do you think that Julio Vega took any part in the murder.”

Rilynne shook her head. “No, his morals may have faltered when he entered into the affair, but I don’t think he would have crossed the line and murdered his best friend. He was up front when we asked him about the altercation, and seemed more relieved than anything when it was uncovered.”

“Have her checked out by an obstetrician before she’s moved to the county jail,” the district attorney said as she walked to the door. “We need to do our part in keeping her pregnancy healthy. The last thing we need is for a complication to arise that could have been avoided. The press would have a field day.”

“I’ve already called for an escort to take her to the hospital,” Rilynne replied. “I have also called her doctor to have all of the records sent over so the prison doctors will have her complete history.”

“Good,” Greene said as she made for door. “I want her to meet with someone to assess her mental health, also. We might as well get it knocked out immediately before she has time to consider trying to go down that road for defense.”

“I’ll call Dr. Gamboa,” Rilynne said. “He was signed on to work with the department after his assistance with Nicole Benson.”

After one last look at Jane Villarreal, Rilynne walked out of the observation room and headed back into the office. Just before reaching her desk, she detoured toward the conference room where Julio Vega was still seated.

“Tell me that it was all a mistake,” he pleaded. “Tell me she didn’t do this.”

“I wish I could,” she said gently as she took the seat next to him. “She admitted to everything.”

He let his head fall to the table with a small thud.

“This is all my fault,” he groaned. “I never meant for this to happen. Shane has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. I keep thinking back to the conversation we had right after his first date with Jane, and how excited he was. He said even then that he was going to marry that woman. When he took his assignment, he asked me to check in on her from time to time to make sure that she had everything she needed. I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen. Jane was his wife.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” she said.

“But I do. I broke the carnal rule. You never get involved with the wife of a fellow officer,” he said. “We’re supposed to have each others backs, not stab them. I made a bad decision, and it resulted in the murder of an officer and my best friend. How do I move past that?”

“You’re not responsible for anyone’s choices but your own. You didn’t kill Shane, his wife did.”

“I’ve never seen him so hurt,” he said. “He didn’t even need me to tell him. He just walked up, and I could see immediately that he knew. I felt in that moment that I wanted to die myself. Do you know the worst part, though?” Rilynne shook her head. “He forgave me. He actually told me that he forgave me for betraying him.”

Rilynne reached up and placed her hand gently on his shoulder. “That should be the best part,” she said softly. “Not everyone’s able to receive forgiveness from their loved ones before they pass.”

“He asked me how I could do it, and I honestly didn’t know what to say. All I could do was tell him it was never going to happen again, and apologize. I don’t think I have ever said sorry so many times in one conversation.” He picked his head back up and looked her in the eye. “How am I supposed to go on?” he asked. “Shane was the closest thing to family that I had. What am I supposed to do now?”

“It’s going to take time,” she said. “Trust me, the guilt isn’t going to be something that will just pass. It’s something you’re always going to have with you. But in time it will lessen, and not hurt as much.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” he stated.

“I am,” she replied honestly. “But you have something that I didn’t have, which will make it easier.”

“And what is that?”

“You have a child to think about. Through all of the tragedy this past week, you can focus on the one good thing that came out of it.”

His eyes shot back up toward her as a look of utter shock passed over his face. “What child? What are you talking about?”

Rilynne leaned back in her chair as her jaw quickly dropped. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” he sounded as if he was on the verge of panicking.

“Jane’s pregnant,” she replied. “She said the baby is yours. You’re going to be a father, Julio.”

A wave of emotions swept over his face, switching from panic to excitement and quickly back again. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“We’re sending her to the hospital to be checked out, but she seems pretty certain.”

“But Shane?” he seemed to be trying to process everything. “Couldn’t the baby be his?”

“Jane said she knows it’s yours, but only a DNA test will be able to say for sure. Would it really matter to you either way?” she asked.

He didn’t even seem to need to think about it before quickly shaking his head. “Either way, I’ll raise it as my own. I don’t need a DNA test.”

By the end of the conversation, his spirits seemed to have been lifted higher than she had seen them. Rilynne left him sitting in the conference room, with the first smile she had seen on his face since they met.

“How’s he taking everything?” Matthews asked as she sat down at her desk.

“He didn’t know Jane’s pregnant,” she said. “I think in a way it’s better that she is, for him at least. It gives him something other than just the guilt to concentrate on. Has it started to get around the station yet?”

“Parts of it. Everyone knows that Jane was responsible for the murder. Wilcome is trying to keep the affair from coming out, though,” he replied. “I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep it under wraps, but we’ll try. Right now, the only people who know about it are the three of us, the district attorney, and Jane and Julio themselves. I talked to Jane and requested that she not tell anyone, and she readily agreed. With her pleading out, the case will be able to avoid a trial. With any luck, we should be able to keep things quiet.”

Rilynne nodded. She knew if the affair did get out, Julio Vega would most certainly face the downfall. In her opinion, he had already suffered enough from his mistakes. “I’ll talk to Ben,” she said. “He doesn’t know about the affair, but he does know that the DNA was a match to Vega’s. If that got out, it wouldn’t take long before people start to make connections.”

“How’s he going to keep it from getting out once the baby arrives?” he asked.

“That’ll actually be pretty easy,” she said. “People will just assume he adopted his best friends child and is raising it as his own. Everyone knew that Vega and Villarreal were as close as brothers. I think people would actually expect it of him.”

“What a week,” he groaned while rubbing his hands over his face.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you how you made the connection to Julio,” she said. “I figured that he was using the house to spend time with his wife, but how did you come to the affair?”

He groaned as he folded his arms. “I was trying to think of any reason that she would have had to kill him, and the first thing that always comes to mind is an affair. I knew that there was no way that he would have been having one, and then I remembered the way that Julio was acting during our interview with him. The DNA was also male, so I knew he must have had an altercation with someone other than his wife. Then I remembered what Clark said about Jane coming to the station to check on the status of the investigation, which, knowing her, she wouldn’t have done unless she had another reason. It just made sense.”

“How are you holding up?” she asked him.

He just shook his head slowly and kicked his feet up on his desk. “You think you know people,” he said dryly. “I never in a million years would have thought Jane capable of killing Shane. I knew she was high strung and a little controlling, but murder? I honestly don’t think I would believe it now if I hadn’t heard it from her myself. Katy isn’t going to take this well. I’d better head home, actually. She’ll never forgive me if she has to hear about it from someone else.”

Rilynne stood up as well and reached for her purse. “I think I’ll go, too,” she said. “My mom’s in town, and I would really like to spend some time with her.”

She left Matthews at the elevator, going up to the lab instead of down. She was ready to step out when the doors open, but was stopped by Ben waiting on the other side.

“I was just coming to look for you,” she said as he stepped in. “Are you done for the day?”

“I’ve been working on overtime just to get this case closed,” he said as he reached for the lobby button. “Now that it is, I have the next couple days off. Why were you looking for me?”

“I needed to talk to you about what you know about the case,” she said. “What we need to do to make sure that no one beyond you ever hears.”

His look of confusion passed after just a few seconds as comprehension set in. “An affair?” he asked.

“You’re smart for a blonde,” she said, grinning up at him.

“Hey!”

Rilynne chuckled as the elevator doors opened to the lobby. “We just want to make sure that Julio Vega’s connection to the murder is kept under wraps as long as possible. He wasn’t responsible for it in anyway, so we feel that he has suffered enough.”

“In other words, you don’t want him to have to deal with the fallout from the other members of the department when it gets out that he was having an affair with the wife of a fellow officer.”

“Exactly,” she stated.

He walked her to her car and pulled the door open for her. “Well, you don’t have to worry about me then. And no one else in the lab even knew that I was running the DNA,” he said. “Is your mom still in town?”

“She’ll be here for about a week, so I thought I would take it off so we can spend time together.”

“It was a little ironic, though,” Ben said. Rilynne looked up at him quizzically before tossing her purse into her car. “I ran a more detailed search on the cocaine that was left on Villarreal’s body.”

“Yeah, Jane told us that it had belonged to his sister,” Rilynne interrupted.

“It didn’t just belong to her,” he said. “It was from the same batch that she overdosed on. The cocaine that was left during his murder was the same cocaine responsible for his sister’s death fifteen years before.”

Rilynne didn’t even know what to say. She leaned against the open door watching Ben try to wipe a small scrape off of the hood of her car. “Thanks for keeping my mom company last night,” she said. “I didn’t feel quite as bad for standing her up on our dinner plans when I realized that she hadn’t been alone.”

“Of course,” he replied casually. “I was pretty startled when she opened the door. I knew you were at work, so I was just going to use the key that I still had to leave the box inside for you. She was apparently on her way out to go for a walk. I don’t know who was more stunned to be honest. Oh, and I should probably give you the key back now before I forget again.”