He appeared to be downright giddy. “Well, Sherri Wilcome and my Katy have been friends for years, and meet every Thursday for a girls night out,” he explained cheerfully. “After their dinner last night, the ladies went out and Sherri told Katy how wonderful she thought it was that the department had changed the fraternization rules which allowed, let’s see, how did she put it,” he paused trying to recall. “Ah, ‘that sweetheart Ben to find such a quality young woman’. And, according to Sherri, you make a very cute couple.”

  Rilynne felt her cheeks growing warm again and couldn’t seem to come up with a response.

  “I thought we were partners, Evans,” he said sarcastically. “Partners share stuff like this. I’m pretty sure it’s in the partner rule book.”

  “Ben and I are friends,” she said. “Just friends.” She couldn’t get anything else out, so instead just dropped her head down hard onto her desk.

  “Personally, I never agreed with the no-fraternization rule,” he said more seriously. “It can be hard to find someone outside of this line of work who understands how demanding it is. The hours alone are enough to ruin a lot of relationships. And if you were to date anyone within the department, I couldn’t think of anyone better than Ben Davis. Despite some…” he trailed off trying to choose his words carefully.

  “Youthful indiscretions,” Rilynne offered, looking back up at him.

  “So he told you about that.” He sounded relieved. “Yes, despite his youthful indiscretions, he has grown into a very well rounded individual. And surprisingly modest given his circumstances.”

  Rilynne looked at him quizzically, but when she opened her mouth to ask what he meant, he abruptly stood up. “But enough about that,” he said. He turned and hurried to the conference room, leaving Rilynne sitting at her desk, utterly befuddled.

  “You look downright confused.” Ben walked in the door behind her and sat on the edge of her desk.

  “I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t,” she said, peering up at him curiously.

  “What did I do?” He looked almost scared as he stared down at her.

  “I have no idea,” she said, only more curious then before. “What can I help you with?” she asked, changing the subject.

  He gave her one last suspicious look before handing her a report. “The sap is from an American Smoketree,” he explained. “I’m still waiting for the results from the trace that was in it, but since the tree isn’t one of the most common in the area, I thought I would come tell you now instead of waiting. I can also tell you that the trace isn’t something that would be found in nature, so you’re looking for a tree within the city limits. With the amount of sap found, I would expect to see damage on the trunk.”

  “Well that should make it easier to tie him to a scene when we find one,” she said, reading over the report. “This is great, thanks.”

  “What happened to you?” he asked, sounding a little alarmed.

  She reached up and pulled her hair back down over her jaw, only to find that his eyes were not focused on her face, but on her shoulder.

  “Oh great,” she said, looking down to see a streak of red peeking through her pale blue shirt. She pulled the collar of her shirt aside to find her bandage had come un-taped. She quickly unbuttoning her shirt, slightly shocked that Ben didn’t even attempt to look away as she did so, and threw it in her bottom desk drawer. “It’s a good thing my undershirt is black,” she said, moving the strap to the side and pulling off the rest of the dislodged bandage. “I wouldn’t have been too happy to ruin two shirts at once.”

  “So, are you going to explain that?” he asked not taking his eyes off of the four inch wide scrape running across her collar bone and down her arm. “It looks like someone took sandpaper to you. And you scraped your face.” He reached up and tucked the hair behind her ear before turning her chin to get a better look. He gently ran his thumb over the small scrap, sending a shiver through her.

  “It’s just a running injury,” she said when he released her chin. She reached into the open drawer and pulled out a first aid kit and a clean shirt.

  “What, did you run into something?” he asked, taking the first aid kit out of her hands and opening it. He grabbed a package of gauze and a roll of medical tape out before handing it back to her. “And do you often find yourself in need of a clean shirt at work?” He looked down into the open drawer to find two more clean shirts.

  “What makes you think that I ran into something?” she said defensively. “I could have fallen, or something else not so embarrassing.”

  “Did you?” he raised his eyebrow. He placed the gauze gently against her shoulder and taped it firmly in place.

  “No, I ran into something. It was dark,” she admitted. “So it wasn’t really my fault.”

  He looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to tease or lecture her.

  “Well, that should teach you that you shouldn’t run in the dark. Tell me that someone was around with a camera,” he chuckled. “Or at least describe it in great detail.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said as she stood to put on her new shirt. “Am I going to be teased about everything today?”

  “What else are you getting teased about?” he asked curiously.

  Instead of answering, she shot him a ‘do you even need to ask’ gaze.

  “Ah,” he said, catching on quickly. “I take it Detective Wilcome is giving you a hard time about our dinner last night?” He seemed almost pleased by the realization.

  “And Matthews.”

  “How does he know?” he asked.

  “Well, apparently Sherri Wilcome and Katy Matthews are very good friends, and we were the topic of their girls night conversation last night,” she explained. She finished buttoning her shirt and sat back down.

  He just smiled at her.

  “And according to Matthews, Sherri Wilcome thinks that you’re a sweetheart,” she tried to redirect the conversation.

  He sat up straight and flashed a prideful smile. “Well, that’s because I am.” After pushing himself off of her desk, he winked at her and walked toward the door. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out what the trace is,” he called back over his shoulder.

  After he disappeared through the door, Rilynne’s mind drifted back to the comment that Matthews had made. “Modest given his circumstances,” she said under her breath. She sat pondering his meaning for several minutes before finally getting up and walking into the conference room.

  “What did you mean modest given…” She trailed off when she realized he was not alone in the room.

  “We just got the phone records in,” Matthews said, holding up the stack of papers in his hand. “Grab the map on the corner of my desk and we can get these charted.” Rilynne followed the tech out of the room, and picked up the folded city map off of the far corner of Matthews desk.

  “So, what did you mean by modest given his circumstances?” she asked when she walked back into the conference room. He took the map and laid it down across the table.

  “Here, you take these,” he said as he handed her half of the stack. “It doesn’t give us exact locations, but we’ll have the cell towers that the calls pinged off of. If we can find areas that he frequented, we might be able to narrow down our search area.”

  “You’re going to completely ignore my question, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “That was my plan,” he responded, not taking his eyes off of the map.

  She opened her mouth to counter, but knew that no matter how she argued, chances were she wouldn’t get anything out of him. She gave him one last frustrated look before directing her attention to the papers at hand.

  “Okay,” he said, placing stickers on the map. “These are the locations of all of the cell towers in the city. First lets find out which towers were hit and how often; then we can map out each service area and try to narrow down locations that he could have been.”

  It took them only five minutes to mark down all of the phone calls made.

  “Let’s start with the most frequently used towers first. This tower was used thirty-two times over the last two months. And-” he said, pulling out a compass and drawing a circle around the dot, “-it covers this area. What do we know that’s in this area?”

  “That’s his undercover apartment,” she said, pointing to a cross street within the circle. “What do we have next?”

  “This tower was hit eight times,” he said, drawing another circle. “And I think that’s the location where he was meeting the perpetrators to collect the stolen items and hand over the money. Next would be this one,” he said as he drew a third circle. “This one tower only covers a few residential neighborhoods on the edge of the woods,” he said. “And this house-” he pointed to a house within the radius, “-is the vacant house that Shane was found in.”

  Rilynne reached down and picked up the reports. “They show four calls pinging off of that tower in the last two months. I think we need to go back to the scene. If he was making frequent visits to the house, he might have hidden his journal there.”

  *

  The house was still taped off when they arrived. Other than the blood, which had not been cleaned up, the house was empty.

  “I’ll start up stairs,” Matthews said, not pausing to look around.

  When he disappeared onto the second floor, Rilynne leaned against the wall opposite the blood spatter and closed her eyes, concentrating on Villarreal and the house. After nearly ten minutes of not seeing anything, she gave up and started pacing around the room.

  “Okay,” she said aloud to herself. “If I was going to hide something, where would I start?”

  She stepped into the large kitchen and began opening all of the cabinets and drawers. Other than some warrantee paperwork for fixtures in the house, they were empty. She was just making her way into the living room when a voice came from the top of the stairs.

  “Up here,” Matthews called out. Rilynne took the stairs two at a time and found him pulling a vent cover off of the wall in the first bedroom. “There’s something in here,” he grunted.

  He tossed the cover to the ground and reached his hand up through the open hole, pulling out the worn maroon journal. As he flipped it open and thumbed through it, Rilynne saw a look of relief pass over his face. “Yeah, this looks like it. Let’s head back to the station.”

  Rilynne started reading as Matthews backed out of the driveway.

  “Wow, he really was thorough,” she said. “It looks like he wrote every detail in here, no matter how insignificant. Apparently Peterson is allergic to blueberries,” she grinned.

  “Flip to the back and see what it was that made him think he was getting close to closing the case,” he said.

  Rilynne flipped to the last page that had been written on and paused. “There are pages missing. It looks like four pages have been torn out. The last entry is dated a week before his death.”

  “He must have thought that his cover could be in danger,” Matthews said. “I’ll turn around and we can go search the rest of the house.”

  “No,” Rilynne said quickly. “We can send a forensic team out to look, but I doubt that he would have hidden them in the same place as the book. We should start working through this and see where we can get with his assignment. There might also be a hint in here about where we can find the other pages.”

  Rilynne was still reading the journal when they walked into the station.

  “I’m going to go swing by the lab and see if they have identified the trace,” Matthews said as they stepped into the elevator. “I’ll meet you in the conference room.”

  Chapter Five

  Rilynne had skimmed through half of Villarreal’s journal by the time Matthews walked back in. “Tell me you found something?” he asked wishfully.

  “So far it appears that he put anything of importance in his reports,” she stated. “He did write some theories down, but he proved all of them inaccurate a page or two later.”

  He leaned against the table, folding his arms in front of him. “Does it say who he was meeting at the house?”

  “Actually, there’s no mention of the house at all. At least not in the first half,” she said, setting the journal down on the table in front of her. “Was Ben in the lab with the results of the trace?”

  “It was a mix of a heavy duty motor oil and aluminum shavings. I asked Steele and Tylers to look into it and see where he would have been able to pick that combination up,” he said. “He seemed a little disappointed that you weren’t with me,” he said pointedly.

  “Steele or Tylers?” She kept her gaze firmly on the journal. She could feel his eyes on her, but pretended to read. “That would be Ben Davis,” he answered.

  “That’s probably because I’m always the one to go up there,” she said, stressing on ‘always’. “When’s the last time you went to the lab when you weren’t going with me?”

  “Mhmm,” he mumbled as he laid the map back down on the table. “We know from the trace that was put on the bills where the ones that weren’t deposited in the account were spent. We can use that list to try and narrow down Tylers and Steele’s list when they have it.”

  She sat the journal back down. “Wouldn’t some of the bills have been handed out to other customers to make change? That could spread them out all around the city.”

  “That’s why Villarreal was making all of the payments in fifties and hundreds,” he explained. “That lessened the chance that they would be passed from hand to hand. So if we plot the places that they were used, we can see if any of the locations are near somewhere Shane could have picked up that trace.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take the journal then if you want to work on that. I’ll let you know if he mentions any places that he visited or thought were relevant to the case.”

  After another hour of reading, Rilynne came across something that struck her as odd.

  “I think I may have something here,” she said. Matthews sat the stickers he had been using on the map down and walked over to her. “He said that he felt someone was betraying him.”

  “Does he say who it was?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I read forward a little, and he doesn’t mention it again. He doesn’t even say why he felt betrayed. It was just a one liner at the bottom of this page.” She held it out and pointed.

  “Of course he wouldn’t add details. That would just make it easy for us.” Rilynne could tell by his tone that he was getting frustrated.

  She pulled the journal back in front of her and picked up where she had left off. Unlike his copies of the reports that she looked through, reading the journal made her slightly uncomfortable. Villarreal had included not only things having to do with the case, but also his own feelings. Rifling through a person’s life, even after their death, always left her with an uneasy feeling. It was almost like reading someone’s diary, and in Villarreal’s case, it actually was.

  His decision to take the assignment had been harder on his marriage than anyone had mentioned. He had written that prior to telling his wife he would take a desk job after the assignment was over, she had been talking about divorce. Every time they had arranged a meeting after that, however, he seemed to grow more and more cheerful. He had even mentioned renewing their vows.

  “Wow,” she found herself saying aloud. “He really loved his wife.”

  “He was very devoted to her,” Matthews said. “He told me that he knew after their first date that he was going to marry her. I think he would have proposed then if he could have.”

  “She was very lucky to have him for as long as she did. Most women aren’t lucky enough to be loved to that degree.” She couldn’t help but let her mind drift back to the night that Christopher had proposed.

  He had picked her up for their year and a half anniversary and taken her out for a night of miniature golf and bowling. After letting her win a round of golf, they had gone to the bowling alley next door. He had arranged with the manager before hand to change the pictures that popped up on the screen so when she bowled her first strike, his proposal flashed on the monitor in front of her. When she turned around, her jaw nearly on the floor, she found him down on one knee. It was something even she had not seen coming, but it made her happier than she could have ever imagined.

  With a long sigh, she returned her focus to the journal.

  “Check this out,” she said a few minutes later.

  Matthews walked over and took the seat next to her, kicking his feet up on the table.

  “Did you know that he had a beach house?” she asked. He shook his head and waited for her to continue.

  “It looks like he inherited it about four months ago from his uncle. Judging by this he hadn’t even told his wife yet. He was planning on fixing it up as a surprise for her. ‘The perfect start to our future,’” she read aloud.

  “Did he write down an address for the house?” he asked.

  She flipped through the rest of the book before shaking her head.

  “County records should have something,” he said. “If no one knew about it, he might have hid the journal pages there thinking they would be safe. I’ll see if I can find something. Does it say what his uncle’s name was?”

  “Yeah,” she paused. “He called him Uncle Mike. He didn’t give a last name, though.”

  “Let me know if you find anything else in the journal.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I’ll find the address for the beach house so we can check it out.” He left the conference room with her still sitting at the table.

  It took her three hours to make it to the last page in the journal. “I figured it out,” she read aloud to Matthews as she walked out toward his desk. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. The ring leaders have to be…” She dropped the journal down on her desk. “That’s where the page ends. It looks like he either solved the case, or was getting really close. We need to find those missing pages. Did you have any luck tracking down the address of the beach house?”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t very hard,” he replied. “He added it to his home owners insurance policy. They were able to give me the address.”