Rilynne took a deep breath, trying to figure out exactly how to get the conversation on track. She knew that Matthews had been very close to Villarreal, and she couldn’t just outright accuse him of having an affair. She would be lucky if he even let her get that sentence out before leaving.

  “So, you have an apartment and a house of your own, why would you sneak into a vacant house?” she asked, hoping to get the ball rolling.

  “Privacy,” he replied bluntly.

  “He had an apartment that was just for him. How much more privacy would you need than that?”

  Matthews leaned against the wall, rubbing his hands over his face. “I’m sure that the crew knew about his apartment, so he wouldn’t have wanted to do anything case related or anything that could expose him. Maybe he was working on the case here.”

  “Then why wouldn’t he have mentioned it in his journal?” she asked.

  “Well,” he said, pausing to think. “He was breaking into a vacant house. That’s not something that most officers would really advertise.”

  “That raises another point,” she stated. “Why would he risk his career by trespassing. We know it happened at least four times. If it were me, it would have to be something really important to make me want to risk everything like that.”

  “What would be important enough?” he asked.

  Again Rilynne found herself trying to find the best way to get her ideas across. “There’s money,” she offered. “But I don’t think Villarreal was dirty. Top of the list would have to be family. A person will do just about anything to protect people they love.”

  Matthews pushed himself off of the wall and walked toward the stairs. “I’m going to walk around for a bit,” he said. “I need to try to clear my head.”

  Rilynne sat down against the wall and closed her eyes. “It all starts with the house,” she mumbled to herself.

  “Don’t I mean anything to you?” She heard a woman yelling. Villarreal was sitting on a blanket next to the lake. “Of course you do,” he replied calmly. “I’m doing this for you.”

  “You’re leaving me for who knows how long!” she yelled. “How’s that possibly for me? I don’t want you to do it. Tell them no!”

  The scene changed and Shane was leading a blindfolded Jane down a sidewalk. “Where are we going?” she said, bracing his arm tightly. Rilynne could feel the excitement building with each step. “It’s just a few more feet. I promise you’re going to love it,” he said animatedly. They rounded the corner and he stopped abruptly. After looking around excitedly, he pulled the blindfold off of her. She turned to face him looking entirely confused.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  “Do you want it?” He smiled down at her, excitement coursing through his body.

  The scene changed again into the flower pedal and candle filled room. He crossed the room toward the blanket that had been placed on the floor, and picked up a glass of wine. After taking a sip, he crossed the room and entered the kitchen.

  “Hello, lover,” a gentle voice called out from behind him. His heart began to race as excitement flooded through him. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he said, setting the wine glass down next to the purse. The excitement that had been building within him only grew when he turned around and his eyes fell upon her face.

  Rilynne jumped up as her eyes flung open.

  “Matthews,” she called out. A few moments later he came stomping down the stairs.

  “Did you find something?” he asked.

  “What’s the only thing that Shane loved enough to break into a vacant house for? You said it yourself; he was a good, honest cop. Love really is the only thing that will make you risk it all.”

  She watched the color leave his face, as the thought seemed to sink in. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before turning and putting his fist through the wall. Rilynne was so shocked that she couldn’t seem to get a word out, but she had a feeling he was glad for it.

  “We need to be sure,” he said as he started for the door.

  The ride back to the station was so silent that it left Rilynne uneasy. She had seen Matthews upset before, but never for anything like this.

  After parking just outside the front doors, they walked without a word up to the office and found Detective Wilcome sitting at his desk.

  “We need a word,” Matthews said dryly.

  Wilcome looked from Matthews to Rilynne, then headed for the conference room.

  After shutting the door behind them, Rilynne dropped down in the nearest chair and waited for Matthews to make his request.

  “We need to have the DNA sample from under Shane’s nails run against the police database.”

  Wilcome’ eyes shifted quickly from him to Rilynne, as if hoping she would tell him it was just an ill-humored joke. She could see the wheels turning in his head as he looked back to Matthews. “Who are you wanting to compare it to specifically?”

  “Julio Vega.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  After the Pirate Killer case, every member of the Addison Valley Police Department was required to provide a DNA sample for a database to prevent a situation similar to the one they had with Nicole Benson.

  Rilynne sat with Matthews in the conference room while they waited for the results from the comparison. Although it didn’t take more than thirty minutes, it felt as if they were sitting there for hours. Rilynne spent the majority of it studying Matthews. He seemed to be working out something in his head, and was growing more sullen with every passing moment. He was a statue, not moving an inch until Ben walked into the room.

  “What have you got?” he asked as he reached for the report in Ben’s hand.

  “Vega’s DNA is a match to samples taken from Villarreal,” he said.

  Matthews dropped back down in his chair and ran his hands over his face.

  “You don’t think we have another one, do you?” Ben asked Rilynne. “Surely we don’t have another member of this department involved in a homicide.”

  Rilynne didn’t know exactly what to say, or even what to think. Matthews seemed to be trying to put the pieces together himself, so she sat back and waited for him to finish. Ben placed his hand gently on her shoulder before leaving them alone in the room.

  While Matthews continued to mull over things in his head, Rilynne closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on Julio Vega.

  Vega was pacing around what seemed to be a motel room. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing scratches running down his forearm. The look on his face was that of worry, but that wasn’t the emotional feeling that was passing over her. She felt only guilt, devastating guilt.

  “Where do you want to start?” she asked Matthews as she opened her eyes. “Should we call Vega in?”

  He leaned back in his chair for a moment before shaking his head. “We need to look over everything again,” he said. “And we need to recheck his alibi. I’ll have all of his reports pulled up from the window around the time Shane was killed. We need to make sure that he was actually present at all of them. The only thing we know for sure at this point is that he had some kind of altercation with Shane the day he died.”

  Rilynne thought back to their initial interview with Vega. “Do you think that could have been what he was hiding?” she asked Matthews. “That he had seen him the day he was killed and they had a fight?”

  Matthews shrugged. “He was definitely holding something back,” he said. “The question is, was he just guilty for having a row with him, or was it’s something more. I just want to make sure we have everything covered before we bring him in.”

  “So, lets work this out,” she said as she spun her chair to face him. “We know that Vega was in an altercation with Villarreal sometime on the day he died.”

  “We know that Shane met with the Peterson brothers around eleven,” he said. “He was with them for around fifteen minutes.”

  “Officer Vega went on shift at two,” she added. “Neither of the Peterson boys stated that Villarreal seemed to be at all perturbed during their meeting, so chances are he met with Vega between the time when his meeting ended and Vega’s shift started.”

  “First thing we need to do is verify Vega’s alibi. We need to do it quietly, though,” he stated. “The last thing that we need is for it to get out that we’re looking into another member of this department. We still haven’t fully recovered from last time.”

  Rilynne pushed her chair back from the table. “I’ll start sifting through the call logs and reports from his shift, but you know where we need to start looking.” She looked back at him, but his eyes were trained on the report still in his hands.

  “I know,” he said. “We need to be sure first.”

  She left him sitting in the conference room and walked toward her desk. Looking around at the relaxed expression on several of the other detectives’ faces, she could tell that word of where the direction of their investigation had shifted had not yet gotten around.

  It took some time to read through all of the reports that had been filed by both Vega and his partner the day Villarreal had been killed. Even for a Saturday, it had been an abnormally busy day. Vega and his partner barely had time to squeeze in a lunch break between the back-to-back calls. Unless both men had falsified reports and Vega had left, leaving his partner alone on some calls, it would have been impossible for him to be at the house during the time Villarreal had been killed.

  “His alibi is air tight,” she said as she walked back into the conference room.

  He nodded. “How would you go about this?”

  She sat back in her chair and thought about it for a few moments before a smile popped up on her face.

  “You have a plan?” Matthews asked.

  “I have a plan,” she said confidently. “The first thing we need to do is get Julio Vega in here and make sure that his phone is turned off.”

  A level of comprehension seemed to pass over his face, and he smiled. “I’ll follow your lead. Should we pick him up ourselves?”

  Rilynne nodded as she stood up. “We’ll have to. The last thing we need is for it to get around the department that he’s a suspect. If we bring him in, we can attempt to make it look like he’s just helping us out.”

  “How are we going to keep him here long enough to take care of what we need to do?” he asked as they walked toward the elevator.

  “We’ll start with pushing the right buttons,” she said. “Call him out on the guilt that he has been feeling. If he and Villarreal were as close as everyone believes, we shouldn’t have any trouble getting everything out of him that we need.”

  They waited in the station lobby for half an hour before Vega walked in for his shift. “Did you find anything?” he asked when he spotted them. “Was one of the men from the home invasion ring responsible?”

  “No,” Rilynne said. “We were able to clear all of them. We’ve had something else pop up, though, and we were really hoping that with how close the two of you were, you might be able to shed some light on it for us.”

  He looked for a moment like he wanted to question it, but just walked with them toward the elevator. Because Vega was a member of the department, Rilynne led him into the conference room instead of an interrogation room. As he took a seat, Rilynne could just make out a slight flicker of panic in his eyes.

  “We’re going to need your cooperation if we’re going to solve Shane’s murder,” Matthews said. “It may not be easy, but I have a feeling you will want to do everything you can to bring in his killer.”

  Vega seemed to know what was coming. He closed his eyes and let all of the air leave his lungs before slowly nodding. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Matthews said confidently. “We put it all together when the DNA under his fingernails came back to you.”

  “I swear I didn’t know,” he said. “If I had any idea, I would have said something. I honestly thought his death had been related to the case, and was just really bad timing.”

  “I understand,” Rilynne said.

  “What do you need me to do?” he asked.

  “Just wait here until we get back,” Matthews answered. “And your phone.”

  Vega pulled his phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table without hesitation. “I don’t care what happens to me,” he said. “I’ll take responsibility and accept whatever I have coming to me. Just don’t hurt her. It was my fault, not hers. She was just hurt and upset.”

  *

  Rilynne stood behind Matthews as he rang the bell. She was about to ask if she could have gone out when the door finally opened a few minutes later. The woman standing in front of them did not resemble to one they had spoken with just days before. She was wearing a soft colored sundress with her hair pulled up in a bright yellow bandana.

  “Todd, Detective Evans, did something happen?” If she had attempted to hide her surprise, she failed.

  “Yes,” he said gently. “Do you mind if we come in?”

  She turned around and looked into the house before hesitantly waving them in. “Please have a seat.” She ushered them quickly into the sitting room. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thank you. Please sit,” Matthews said. “We’ve had a break through in Shane’s case.”

  She lowered herself down in the chair and pulled her hand up to her chest. “Did you make an arrest? Do you know who did it?”

  Rilynne nodded. “Julio Vega is currently in custody.”

  “What?” Jane jumped from her chair. “No, Julio was Shane’s best friend. There’s no way he was responsible for his death. You’ve made a mistake.”

  “We found Julio’s skin under Shane’s fingernails,” Matthews explained. “It looks like they were fighting about something, resulting in Julio getting scratched. He still had the marks on his arm when we brought him in. Either then or sometime later that night, Julio lured Shane to the vacant house where he shot and killed him.”

  “Officer Vega was brought into the station earlier today, and he’s currently being interrogated. Because he’s an officer, chances are pretty good that he could be facing the death penalty,” Rilynne said. “The courts always take officer-on-officer violence much more seriously. So you can be rest assured that he’ll pay for this.”

  Jane sat back down in her chair, shaking her head violently. “No!” she exclaimed. “You’ve got this wrong. Julio wouldn’t do that. It doesn’t matter whether they were arguing or not, Julio would never do what you’re saying. I just know he wouldn’t.” Jane seemed to be wrestling with her thoughts as tears started rolling down her face.

  “I wouldn’t have thought so either, Jane,” Matthews said. “But all of the evidence is pointing toward him, and we can’t find another explanation for it. Unless something turns up that unequivocally rules him out, we’re going to have to charge him.”

  “I did it!” she yelled as she rose again to her feet. As the words left her lips her expression changed from anger to panic. “You already knew that, though,” she added when neither of them seemed surprised.

  “It wasn’t hard to figure out,” Matthews said. “I can’t say I understand it, though. Shane loved you more than anything.”

  “Why don’t we go down to the station and we can get this all cleared up,” Rilynne said. “I’m sure that Julio would like to be released.”

  Jane nodded and walked with them toward the door. “Make sure he knows I didn’t let him take the blame.”

  *

  “Has she been read her rights?” District Attorney Greene walked up behind Rilynne as she watched Jane Villarreal through the viewing window.

  “As soon as we got here,” she replied. “We asked if she wanted us to call her attorney, but she declined.”

  “What’s her state of mind?”

  Rilynne turned around and leaned against the window. “She’s hard to read. She seems more concerned that Julio Vega could face repercussions than the fact that her husband is dead.”

  “Has she said why she did it?”

  “Not yet,” Rilynne said. “Matthews wanted to let her sit for a little bit before we continue the interview. I think he needed a little time to let it all sink in, also. He and Katy were both very close to the Villarreal’s. Are you going to sit in on the interview?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll watch it from here. If she’s unstable, my presence could cause her to shut down, and with no physical evidence, we’re going to need a confession.”

  “Lets get this over with,” Matthews said as he walked past the door to the observation room. Rilynne followed him and took a seat in the interrogation room across the table from Jane.

  She was strangely calm given the situation at hand. She even went as far as to give Rilynne a brief smile when she sat down in front of her.

  “Okay, Jane,” Matthews said as he took his seat. “Why don’t we start at the beginning? Tell us about the house where Shane was killed. What was he doing breaking into a vacant house?”

  “Shane had spoken with a realtor several months ago about buying it. He watched her put the combination in the lock box when she showed it to him, and took me later that night. After that, we started meeting there once a week instead of going to a motel,” she explained calmly. “Shane felt guilty about breaking in, but it became our place. He was determined to buy it as soon as his assignment was over.”

  “What happened on the twenty-fourth when you met him there?” Rilynne asked.

  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.