Jessie Humphries - Killing Ruby Rose

“What is it, Mom?” I asked, pulling the mask away slightly.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, looking at me so hard it felt like she was looking through me.

My heart felt as weak as my lungs. What did she need to tell me now?

“OK,” I said, bracing myself.

Another tear spilled out, and she paused as if forming the words in her mouth pained her. “Detective Martinez is dead.”

Deep down I’d already known, but it did nothing to soften the blow.

I remembered talking to him, feeling his warm blood on my hands as I tried to stop the flow. I looked down at my hands, wondering if they were still stained.

I closed my burning eyes.

“Rue, there’s more,” she said, prompting me to reopen my eyes for another hit. I didn’t know if I could take it.

“The police found Liam with Martinez’s blood all over him.” She paused. “They’ve arrested him for murder.”

It took another three days before they released me from the hospital. This time it wasn’t the IV or the coughing bouts confining me to bed—it was an armed officer standing at my door. My mom said the guard was there for my own protection, but it felt more like he was there for my own imprisonment.

Those three days seemed endless. I went over everything in my head again and again, trying to figure out what I could have done differently to keep Martinez from dying and Liam from going to prison. Where had I gone wrong? I needed to talk to my mother about my involvement in it all, but there was always someone else within hearing distance—a nurse, a doctor, a guard…

After telling me about Liam’s arrest, Mom had explained the investigators’ theory that he had set fire to the apartment complex to destroy evidence. That even though Liam’s motive for the murder was still unclear, his involvement was indisputable. And until he started cooperating with the investigation, he would continue to be the sole suspect. The more she explained, the more guilt wrapped around me—the reason he wasn’t “cooperating” was to protect me.

According to Jane, Liam was claiming ignorance. She rolled her eyes in exasperation and ran her hands through her hair when she recapped his side of the story in press conference bullet-point detail: “Martinez had been shot by an unknown third party, you and Liam went to his aid—hence the blood—you smelled smoke and went after Dr. Teresa, he’d tried to go after you, and someone knocked him out from behind. The next thing he knew a fireman was waking him up in the street outside the apartments.”

At the hospital, I’d mostly just listened while biting my tongue. But once we got home, I knew it was time to come clean. In order to plead Liam’s case, I had to tell Mom the truth. All of it. In the privacy of her office, I dropped every detail, spat out every fact. From me following Charlie LeMarq and the Filthy Five, to Silver’s messages and five forced murders, to going to Detective Martinez with the key.

I wasn’t sure she entirely believed me without any proof to back up my story. No bodies were ever found at any warehouse, harbor, or apartment complex. Well, except for Martinez’s—his burned corpse and gold chain were all that remained in the complex’s ashes.

I told her that Silver had to have been the one to knock out Liam. Of course he was. Stupid-ass Silver and his split personalities had done it again. This was his MO—set us up and then save our skins. But this time, he left evidence that tied Liam to Martinez’s murder. So why didn’t he just kill Liam like he did Martinez? Why ruin Liam’s life when he could take it?

When I brought up Martinez’s cryptic comments about me being brought “back to the beginning” and asked her what Martinez was talking about when he said he’d tried to warn her, she pleaded the fifth. When I showed her the picture of Silver from the art fair, she got that surly look on her face that meant she was going to take a coffee break, or a vodka break, or whatever other kind of break she needed to “think straight.”

I was used to her hiding things from me, just like she was used to me hiding things from her—but under these circumstances it felt unfair. As I opened up, she closed down. Again and again I asked what she knew, but she was a vault of secrets. And I never had the code.

It took nearly all day, several shouting matches, and a few intermittent silent treatments to get out my entire side of the story and answer all her questions. In the end, she hated me for it. I could see it all over her face—the way she grimaced as I shared the darkest details. She didn’t realize that I hated myself for it, too.

But I had to trust and believe she would exonerate Liam. This wasn’t just about me, or my family, anymore. Liam could be put away for the rest of his life just because he’d gotten involved with the wrong girl. I couldn’t let that happen. His mom and brothers needed him.

Silver was the one who needed to pay for his crimes, not me. And certainly not Liam.

Before I went to bed after our long day of disclosure (and nondisclosure), Mom stone-facedly assured me she’d take care of it. But I didn’t know how she could do it with the media working against her. Most of the news outlets, from the local paper to CNN, had already judged Liam guilty—sensationalizing the whole thing for their own profit. Despite the fact that the police hadn’t released even the most basic information from the crime scene (like the facts that Dr. T and the Key Killer were there at all), some of the nation’s best-known criminal defense attorneys were called in on prime-time television to discuss how bad it looked for not only Liam, but D. A. Jane Rose and her bid for reelection. They argued that the only reason I wasn’t in jail with Liam was because of the “abuse of her position.”

Everyone knew I had to be involved; they just didn’t know how. But with schmucky reporters like Sammy roaming around and opponents like Bill Brandon looking for dirt, it was only a matter of time before more damning discoveries were made.

But I believed in my mom’s ability to fix everything—she was powerful, influential, and had an uncanny ability to get what she wanted. I had to trust that she was keeping the police away from me for the right reasons. And yet I couldn’t help toying with the idea of storming into my dad’s old department to see Mathews, or into Martinez’s unit office and demanding that someone release Liam immediately as I revealed the details needed to exonerate him. Surely my sworn testimony would provide immediate proof of his innocence. But every time I thought through that scenario, I saw myself cuffed and escorted to a padded cell where I’d wait until Jane could come parading in to save me.

If worse came to worst, I was prepared to confess to Martinez’s murder myself. I figured the probability of me going to prison for life was already so high that tacking on another murder to my rap sheet hardly mattered.

While Liam had been detained for six days now, the press was lined up and down our street, turning our house into my own personal detention center. Closed curtains, locked doors, and complete isolation. I roamed the house with a frenzied tension that became more unbearable by the second.

The only human contact I’d had all day was when my mom came into my room this morning. She stood at the foot of my bed and cleared her throat to wake me up.

“Ruby, I shouldn’t have to say this, but I am going to make it abundantly clear. Don’t do anything stupid today. Don’t leave this house and don’t talk to anyone. The two guards stationed outside will inform me if you try. Do you understand?”

Barely awake, I nodded.

When I sat up to face her, she was already gone, leaving me in the wake of her Chanel No. 5 perfume. It was like I had taken the role of one of her desperate clients—and she had taken the role of my distant high-powered attorney.