Jessie Humphries - Killing Ruby Rose

Shaking the images from my mind, I looked down on the beach for distraction. And what do you know—Jell-O-Shot Taylor and her still nameless sidekick lay tanning in their matching hot-pink string bikinis. I felt a larger than usual amount of spite rise up within me. Not only had Taylor most likely taken the upper hand in the valedictorian race, but she was embracing the seemingly carefree life that I’d never have again. She had a friend to hang out with, time to lie in the sun, and a future full of normalcy. If ending up incredibly successful and somewhat famous on the Real Housewives of Orange County is “normal.” Better than ending up on Cops , though.

Taylor said something, and her friend’s high-pitched laugh floated on the breeze all the way over to slap me in the face. Alana and I used to be like that—happy, silly, naive. I had no idea what she thought happened that night, or what she’d remembered since, but as far as I knew, she hadn’t told a soul about being drugged, bound, and left for dead on a cliff.

I’d tried to call her. I texted her about twenty-five thousand times, with gentle questions like, “What’s up?” or “Wanna hang?” or “Need chocolate?” I told myself she just needed more time. She’d been mad at me before and had gotten over it. After all, we were besties. It said so on the chain necklaces we got in junior high.

“Well, well, well, if it’s not the infamous Ruby Rose.” A thick and greasy voice sludged down my ear. Was he talking with his mouth full of food?

I turned to find an equally repulsive visual. Oily face, shiny bald head, and the unshaven jowls of a chipmunk about to hibernate. He took the last bite of the burrito in his hand and threw the yellow wrapper toward the garbage can about ten feet away. He missed.

I looked down at him in disgust—I mean I literally looked down at him because he was so short.

“Thanks for coming,” I said, swallowing some pride.

“I brought what you asked for,” he said, swallowing down the food and opening his jacket to expose a flat manila envelope tucked into his pants. What did he think this was, some kind of drug deal? The thought of touching that envelope made me want to take a shower in hand sanitizer.

“Can I see them?” I wished he’d just hand them to me.

“Let’s discuss the terms of this deal first.”

“What’s to discuss? You said you’d help me.”

“For a price.” He stared at me like I was an idiot. “You didn’t think this was free, did you?”

“Fine, how much dirty money do you want?” I stared back like he was clearly the idiot.

“I’m not talking money.” He looked at all the girls in bikinis and licked his lips.

“If you think I’m gonna…” I trailed off, incapable of even forming words so vile.

“Relax, that’s not what I meant.” He patted his camera. “I meant some exclusives. I get some pictures of you doing interesting things, and you get pictures of a black van doing uninteresting things. By the way, do you think this black van has something to do with you blowing LeMarq’s brains out?”

“What do you mean interesting ?” I said through clenched teeth.

“You know—you in a bikini doing Tai Chi, you scantily clad in the arms of your hot new boyfriend,” he said through a smile so big the pigeons were likely to crap on it. Then he dropped the smile. “Or a tip the next time a shooting goes down.”

I hadn’t given this snake enough credit. He saw a pattern and knew it would happen again. Maybe he knew it already had.

I nodded reluctantly. “We can work something out,” I said, careful not to agree to anything specific.

He handed me the sweaty envelope, and I quickly took it.

“I knew your dad, you know.” He took off his sunglasses and cleaned them with his dirty shirt. “Long time ago. He was a good guy.”

“How would you know him ?” I asked, seriously confused by how this lowlife could know a legend like my dad.

“He helped me out on a research paper I did in grad school. This was a few years back, before he became Sergeant, before I…got into this.” He put his glasses back over his squinting eyes, like he was suddenly ashamed of himself. “I used to be a real journalist.”

“That’s hard to believe,” I muttered. “So why’d you join the dark side?”

“Money,” he said flatly. “Grad school ain’t cheap.”

And apparently, it’s ineffective at teaching proper grammar . “What did my dad help you with?” I asked.

“Rooting out some interesting cops,” he said with raised eyebrows, like I was supposed to know what that meant.

“OK,” I said, raising my eyebrows in return.

“He made a few enemies back then, but I wasn’t one of them. He scratched my back and I scratched his.” He made another incomprehensible facial gesture. He thought we were speaking in some kind of code and I knew the subtext. But I didn’t.

“They won’t tell me anything,” I burst out, knowing I was changing the subject. “They say my dad died in an ambush, blown up by explosives. But they have no idea who or why. Do you have any more back-scratching buddies left in SWAT?”

He dropped all the wise-guy pretenses. “Sure I do.”

“Anybody say anything about what happened?”

“Sure, sure,” he said. “I still got some buddies in SWAT who talk. Loyal guys. Guys still torn up about it. Yeah, word is someone was causing him problems. A high-ranking special operative—someone with a vendetta. There was a report, an official complaint your dad filed just weeks before…” He stopped to make the sound of a bomb exploding and illustrated it with his fat little hands. “They didn’t tell you this stuff? Not even Mathews, your dad’s replacement? I thought the two of you were close.”

“A report?” I said in half disbelief, half rage. “No one ever mentioned a report! Certainly not Mathews. What did it say?” Could the “special operative” be Mr. D. S.?

“I’m not sure. I never saw it. This is just what I heard from Mathews, off the record. I’m not supposed to…” Uneasy, he started to look around. Like he felt someone watching us. “Look, that’s really all I know.”

“Can you find out? Could you ask Mathews again?” I knew I sounded desperate, but I didn’t care.

“That’s all I got,” he said, nonchalantly running his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if he was checking for lucky leftovers. I had to force myself not to gag.

“I don’t want to talk to you any more than you want to talk to me, but please, if you find out anything else, will you let me know?”

Either I’d said something that amused him or he found some beef jerky stuck in an incisor, because his goofy grin made him look far too satisfied.

“I’ll tell you one thing, sweetheart,” he said, backing away. “Talk to Detective Martinez. He knows more than you think he does. Waaaaaayyy more.”

Sweetheart? Martinez? This loser knew just how to piss me off.

“Why him?” I started to follow the trail of slime, but he held up his hands like I’ll touch you with these greasy things if I have to .

“Remember that corrupt-cop thing your dad and I were working on all those years ago?”

“You can’t mean Martinez? If that was true, he wouldn’t have been promoted to Detective.”

“Let’s just say that Martinez was good at getting in and out of more than just your mom’s panties.” He dropped his chins and grinned. A quick palm thrust would wipe that smug look off his face. “Not long after your dad found out about the affair, he turned Martinez in to Internal Affairs for some ‘misplaced drug evidence.’ Nothing stuck of course. Jack made the move to SWAT, and Martinez made his way up the ladder all the same. That’s the thing about corruption, it’s hard to know how deep it goes. But make no mistake, Martinez’s hands weren’t clean.”