Jessie Humphries - Killing Ruby Rose

A photo text stared back at me. A girl tied up, gagged, and bleeding from a head wound. This one looked incredibly like me, too. At least, under the gag it seemed like it—blonde hair, pale-gray eyes. The message read:

11800 Ninth Street. This time, no police.

I blacked out the screen. I couldn’t stand to look at it.

Maybe, hopefully, probably, it was a fake. Since the official story about the LeMarq debacle was leaked to the media, I’d received dozens of threatening texts purporting to lead me to more setups. Each time, I told my mom and she’d report it to the forensic-analysis team assigned to my ongoing case. Nothing ever came from any of them. According to my mom, the texts were sent by a series of punk kids from school, a dirty paparazzo, and an insane person who had nothing better to do with his time.

We’d finally changed my cell phone number. It had been three weeks since I’d received anything. Only Alana, Alana’s big mouth, and my mom knew my number.

As Detective Muscle Head argued with my mom, I considered the odds of this message being real. None of the other messages had included photos, certainly not with a girl who looked so similar to me—and just like Riley Bentley. As far as I knew, no one had picked up on that detail yet.

I’d never been warned not to involve the police, either. Something about this message felt different.

“Is something wrong?” Mom’s voice stopped my runaway train of thought. “Honey, are you OK?”

I looked up. She’d called me honey again. I ground my teeth, thinking about how to respond. The text said no police, and yet, a detective was standing right here in front of me. Despite the warning, there was no way I could heed it. If the message was real, that girl needed help.

“No.” I shook my head. “No, I’m not OK.” I turned on my screen so they could see the image. “And neither is this girl.”

Mom grabbed the cell out of my hand like it was a bomb only she could defuse.

“Did this just come through now, Ruby?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Detective…” My mom turned back to Martinez, as though putting the picture closer to his face would help him react quicker. “This needs to stop. Get your forensic team to look into it immediately. If it’s authentic, do something about it for once. I’m not sure how well my office, or your department, can handle another incident .” She motioned for him to leave.

At first he didn’t budge. He stood there, waiting, like a black chess piece eyeing his next move toward the white queen. Then his glare shifted to me. His eyes burned through me in a way that panicked me more than the photo did. Did he blame me for this?

“I’ll have forensics trace the call immediately. Forward it to me, Jane—you know my number—so we can analyze the picture, too,” he said, clenching his jacket in his fists.

My mom started sending him the text and picture. Did she have his phone number memorized? And didn’t he need to take my phone with him? Or did he already have my phone tapped?

“But, Ruby,” he said, moving in my direction and holding out a white card. “Take this. In case you need to talk about anything.”

I looked away from him, trying to remember the research I’d done on what gestures marked deception or guilt. I was pretty sure I was doing all of them: rapid eye movement, hands near mouth, shifting in seat. I felt like the words “guilty stalker” were stamped across my forehead.

As I hesitated, my mom stepped in and took the card instead. “You should go now.”

He stared her down for a good five eternities before leaving without another word, a potent trail of spicy aftershave following in his wake.

My mom threw my phone on the couch next to me and started rubbing her temples. She was definitely hiding something from me. I’d picked up a subtext in her fiery conversation with Detective Martinez. I was so busy keeping my secrets hidden that I’d almost missed hers.

“Mom, what’s your deal with him?”

“Let’s finish this conversation later. I need to make some phone calls.” She made a dignified dash for her desk, like there was a VIC (only not a victim—more like a Very Important Conversation) that couldn’t wait. “Go rest. I’ll get some dinner delivered and we can talk then.”

“OK, but what was that thing you were going to tell me before he got here?”

She finally looked up, and I watched the blood drain from her face.

“If it’s about my case, I think I deserve to know what it is.”

“You’re right,” she said, closing her eyes in defeat. “You do deserve to know.”

Instead of coming to sit next to me, she took her place behind her desk.

“I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to get it out,” she said. “Before you came into our lives, I…had an affair. With Detective Martinez. It was the greatest mistake of my life, and not a day goes by that I don’t regret it.”

My stomach dropped along with my jaw. Why did it feel like she just admitted to cheating on me ?

“And you’re telling me this now because…?”

“Because, Ruby, it matters!” she snapped. “Things ended very badly between us. And now that he’s the lead investigator on your case…let’s just say he could make things very difficult for us.”

I stared at the floor, not knowing what to say or think. All I could think about was my poor, loyal, dead dad.

“Believe me, I never wanted to burden you with this,” she said, anger and guilt constricting her voice. “Damn it, I just needed you to know that you can’t trust Martinez. Anything he says or does is dangerous.”

She got up and crossed the great divide between us.

“Ruby, words can’t express how sorry I am for my mistakes,” she said, sitting next to me and pulling my chin up to face her. “But it was a long time ago and I need you to know I’m doing everything I can to make it right, OK?”

“OK,” I parroted back, and turned away. Just when I thought she was making efforts to tear down the wall between us, it had grown even taller. Who was this woman? Was she ever the mom I thought she was? Had I deluded myself into believing we were ever a happy family?

“Why?” I asked feebly, too shocked and hurt to muster the emotion of anger quite yet.

“Why what ?” She playacted that she was confused by my question, as if I had posed an irrelevant math problem.

“Why’d you cheat on Dad?”

She put her head in her hands. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Maybe even after all this time she still didn’t understand it herself.

It took a few minutes for her to gather herself, and I let her. My usual MO was to react impulsively, aggressively. But right now, I felt stunned.

“Go lie down for a while.” Not a request. “I’ll get some dinner and I promise, we’ll talk some more. But for now, I need to make sure this text you received is handled.”

“Fine.” I grabbed my phone and left her office. I didn’t want to be near her anymore.

As soon as I got to my room, I threw down my phone and crammed the pillow over my face, no longer wanting to hear my mother’s cold voice in my head, or hold the girl’s image in my hand, or taste the tears running down my cheeks.

My phone’s vibration from my bedside table woke me up. Disoriented, I grabbed for it and cracked an eyelid to check the time. Five a.m. What the…?

I rolled over and rubbed my lids to try to un-paste the contacts from my eyeballs. I never fell asleep with them in—and this inability to blink without burning pain was why.

My phone vibrated again. I rubbed hard enough that one eye was usable. I had ten text messages! Three from Alana, each one increasingly more agitated by my radio silence, and the rest from two different unknown numbers. The first unknown number read: