Jessie Humphries - Killing Ruby Rose

Step 1: Gain trust.

“Home alone, are we?” Martinez asked.

Step 2: Open with an easy question.

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure my mom would have your badge if she knew you were here questioning me without her presence or consent.”

“Whoa, there’s no interrogation here.” He held up his hands. “I only wanted to make sure you’re fine and that everything is on the up-and-up.”

Step 3: Reveal suspicion.

“Well, now that you know I am fine and things are looking up, you can go.”

He studied me, his eyes trailing up and down my body as if looking for physical evidence. He moved closer. “I know what you’re doing, Ruby.”

Step 4: Make an accusation to invoke admission of guilt.

My facade of confidence faltered for a second. But if he really knew what I was doing, he should just arrest me already.

Liam finally stepped between us. “I think you’d better leave now.” He didn’t take my hand or put his arm around me, but his closeness steadied me.

Martinez’s dark eyes left mine and narrowed on Liam. “Young man, you’d better be careful who you talk to like that.”

Step 5: Use physical intimidation.

Liam was bigger than Martinez, but his eyes still dropped as the detective moved even closer, erasing the space buffer between us.

“Do you still have the number I gave you?” Martinez asked, maybe ten inches from my face.

Step 6: ???

“No.” I pulled back my head. “My mom has it. You saw her take it.”

“Here it is again, then,” he said as he slid it into my hand and held it there a moment. “You just might need it one of these days. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I replied, totally not understanding, but hoping my compliance would make him let go, even though I knew he was waiting until I made eye contact. Damn, I didn’t want to. But I wanted him gone. So I looked him dead in the eyes.

He blinked in acceptance of my token offering of surrender, and finally let go. He took one last look at Liam. “Remember what I told you.”

As soon as he crossed the threshold, I slammed the door. We waited for a few minutes, listening for the sound of his car starting in the distance and then pulling away. I wondered how he even got past our gate.

“What the hell was that?” I asked myself, trying to wipe away the feeling of his hand on the back of my shorts. “When I tell my mom about this, she is going to freak.”

Liam was strangely quiet. “What’s up with you?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing,” I said. “It kind of looks like something . What’d he say to you before I came down?”

“That guy, he just…” He avoided my eyes, and grabbed the door handle. “Never mind. C’mon, I think we both need a fat milkshake after that kind of police terrorization.”

“Fine, just let me go get my backpack.” I turned to go, but I could tell Liam was shaken. Detective Martinez must have gotten to him before I came down. And I couldn’t help but wonder if sharing my research with Liam had been a big mistake.

Over the consumption of salt, fat, sugar, and near-illegal amounts of complex carbs, I continued to tell Liam the reasons why I couldn’t go to the police about everything that had happened. Most of them had to do with Detective Martinez. My mom said he was dangerous and not to trust him. Their affair ended badly. Of course, I was still waiting for that “talk” with her for more details on their past. But this much I knew: I didn’t like Martinez. If he could betray my father so deeply, then he could betray me if I confided in him about my Filthy Five.

Liam agreed we couldn’t trust him but tried to convince me maybe there was another friend from Dad’s SWAT team who would help. But I didn’t want to talk about my dad, or his department. I couldn’t go there. Not yet. They’d let me down and failed Dad by letting him die. All without giving me any kind of reasonable explanation.

Even Mathews, Dad’s so-called best friend and right-hand man, had ignored me since that terrible night. The dude (Dad’s replacement, by the way) had never even come to see me. And he used to be like a second father to me. In fact, he was the one who’d given me Smith for my Sweet Sixteenth. He said the laser sight would help me stop shooting like a girl. He used to love to tease me. Now, apparently, he loved to pretend like I didn’t exist.

I had no friends in SWAT.

Liam never really told me what Martinez had said to him before I came down. He only alluded to Martinez warning him to “be careful” with me. I didn’t press him because I had a feeling about what Martinez was really trying to do: use Liam against me. And yet Liam was inexplicably still here, despite the risks of being associated with me, enjoying a greasy picnic on the beach. Intermittently smiling and touching me, with a gentleness I’d never experienced.

“Did your parents say anything to you this morning?” I asked.

“My mom just asked why I came home so early. I told her I’d had a hard time sleeping and wanted to be in my own bed. She was cool.”

“What did your dad say?”

“I haven’t seen my dad in years,” he said quietly. “But since he was a drunk, I’m sure he wouldn’t have noticed or cared anyway.”

“Oh.” I paused, not meaning to bring up a hard subject. So he had lied about his “rich dad” ransoming us. “My dad drank a lot, too. But he noticed everything. Even when he was tanked, he could hear the scurrying of a cockroach. If he’d been here, I wouldn’t have had a chance of sneaking in like I did this morning.” I couldn’t believe I was talking about Dad again. I hadn’t been able to do this with anyone yet. At least, not without breaking down, cracking up, or shutting off. Maybe because I was trying to comfort Liam, it was OK.

“My dad was a mean drinker,” Liam clarified.

“My dad could be mean,” I countered. “He and my mom used to argue like a couple of rock stars in a hotel. Headphones came in handy on nights like those.” In hindsight, now that I knew about the affair, maybe it explained why he was so angry with her for so many years.

“Yeah, well, I wish arguing was all my dad used to do.” Liam pulled his hair over his ear again, and I longed to reach and out and touch him, reassure him. His dad must have given him that scar.

“I’m sorry,” I said, panicking a little. I wasn’t used to having real conversations about real things. I had trained myself to never talk about anything meaningful. Maybe Liam was right and I was completely unapproachable. “I never meant to bring up painful stuff—”

“It’s OK, Ruby.” He took my hand and soothed me. I must’ve had that about-to-self-destruct look on my face. “Before the sun goes down, let’s have a look at those files in your backpack.”

I looked up to the horizon. The sky was lit up like a melting bag of Skittles. Pinks and purples blended with yellows and oranges. We didn’t have much time left before the light went.

I let go of Liam’s hand and rummaged through my bag. “There are three guys left on my list,” I said, laying the files out on the blanket in front of me, like we were just two teens about to do some homework. “I’m pretty sure Mr. D. S. knows about my Filthy Five list—or he at least knows I was following these guys and is trying to set me up to kill them all.”

“Yeah, it seems that way.” Liam nodded. “But why?”

I thought about it for a second. A theory was taking shape, but it had some serious holes.

“I think it has something to do with my mom.”

“Uh-huh.” He egged me on.

“No one has ever told me anything about what happened to my dad. Not even his best friend, Sergeant Mathews. I have no idea if it was a drug bust gone wrong, a robbery, a hostage situation, a terrorist attack…nothing. I only know that he was ambushed on Grissom Island, up the coast in Long Beach. That’s it.” I stared up the shoreline. Even though it was a little more than fifteen miles away, the lights of the busy harbor twinkled in the distance. “What if someone is trying to hurt my mom? Someone she put away or double-crossed or whatever. Step one: Kill husband. Step two: Send only child to jail. Step three: Destroy her career.”