Delusions With Murder: A Rilynne Evans Mystery by Jenn Vakey Page A

her face before clearing her mind.  She concentrated on the photograph of Derek and Emily she had been staring at all morning.  Derek was not looking at the camera, but instead he was focused on Emily.  There was a look of pure love and desire in his eyes.  They had been dating for two years, and judging by his search history on his home computer, he had been shopping around for a ring. 
    Rilynne focused on that degree of love; the strong feeling that you cannot live without the other person.  There was truly no feeling like it, which gave Rilynne something strong to concentrate on.
    It did not take more than a few seconds for her to start seeing flashes. 
    The room was still dark.  While Derek still looked a little groggy, he seemed to be more alert than he was the day before.  He appeared to be in a great deal of pain, but he was fighting through it, trying to get out of the bed he was laying in.  A sheet was pulled up to his waist, but judging by the shadows, it was clear something was not quite right.  Rilynne’s heart sank.  She knew the leg was always removed the first day, but the fact it had indeed already happened was upsetting.
    Through the darkness, she could just make out the room.  It was small, couldn’t have been more than eight-by-eight.  The bed, a worn looking single, was pushed into the corner.  The bedside table had something shiny sitting on it.  It was a bedpan.  Other than a chair pushed in the opposite corner, there was no other furniture in the room.  The only light in the room was coming from a small window at the top of the wall above the chair.
    Derek had just managed to pull himself up and swing his remaining leg off the edge of the bed when more light entered the room; a thin line of light flooded in from under the door at the foot of the bed.  An expression of pure panic crossed Derek’s face as he began to search around the room for anything he could use.  He grabbed the bedpan and hid it behind his back as the lock clicked in the door.
    “I’m amazed you can sleep at a time like this, Evans?”  The room vanished from sight just as the door swung open, revealing a dark figure, and the conference room came into focus.  As a wave of frustration swept over her, she looked up to see Detective Butcher glaring down at her in a disapproving manner.
    “Sleeping is the last thing on my mind right now, Brenda,” she said as nicely as she could, despite the building resentment for being disturbed right before seeing the perpetrator’s face.  She withdrew her gaze from Butcher’s face and saw nearly everyone had arrived.  Unlike Detective Butcher, the other detectives were occupying themselves with the binders on the table.
    “When I get stuck, it’s easier for me to get back on track when I shut everything else out and run through all of the details in my head.”
    Rilynne did not wait for Detective Butcher to respond before crossing the room to the map tacked to the wall.  The placement of the window in the room struck her as odd.  There was only one reason for a window to be so high on a wall; it was a basement. 
    “Basements are not standard in homes built in the city are they?” she asked Detective Matthews.
    “No, they would have to be special built.  Why, what are you thinking?” he asked while examining the map also, trying to see it through her eyes.
    “The bodies are not showing any sign of physical restraint, so either they are being chemically restrained for the whole week, or they are being held in a place where they can be easily contained.  I don’t see the point of keeping the men for a week if they were going to be incapacitated the whole time.” She paused for a moment to contemplate the best way to get her point across.  “The easiest way to contain them would be to keep them in a place with limited points of entry.  A basement would be a good place; they have one way in, and the windows are high and would be almost impossible for someone