Killing Ruby Rose (6 page)

I exhaled a little.

“This theory is also substantiated by the fact that LeMarq did not transport the young girl in his van. There were no hairs or fibers found in his vehicle, which leads us to believe that the unknown suspect, who lured both LeMarq and Ruby to the warehouse, also kidnapped the victim and used her as some sort of bait for both of them.”

I felt my mom tense up. “Excuse me, Detective—
bait
?”

“That’s right
…
bait.” Martinez continued staring me down, not even bothering to look at my mom. “Why do you think someone would want to lure you there?”

“Detective, she is not going to answer that.” Mom slung a hand over my lap like we were in a car and she’d slammed on the brakes.

He knew I was hiding something. He wasn’t as dumb as his muscles made him look.

“Detective,” my mother said, “I want to know
who
sent
that
text
. I need that man caught.”

The heat from her laser glare must have gotten to him, because he finally took off his stupid leather jacket. As he draped it over his leg, I noticed a tattoo on his right forearm. It looked like the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor Marine Corps symbol. Dad had that same exact tattoo, in the same exact place. I knew they’d been partners sometime before I was born, but matching tattoos? Maybe it was a common Marine thing—

“I’m working on that, Jane,” he said, finally directing his focus to her. There was a venomous quality to his voice now. And he looked at her in a way that felt—inappropriate. Like he knew her better than I thought, and this wasn’t the first time they were having a fight.

“Are you
working on it
with the same intensity as the department is
working on
finding my husband’s killer?” she said in a raptor-like pitch. It startled me. Something strange was happening to my mom. “Sergeant Mathews tells me that Jack’s case has gone nowhere. It’s unacceptable—”

“Jane, relax.” He cut her off and stood with his hand up to her, as if he was blocking out her deathly atomic waves. “You know the department is committed to finding out what happened to Jack.”

She rose to face him. She wasn’t going to let him have the upper hand in anything, and certainly not in elevation—not with those heels.

I was wondering if he was going to bring up anything about the art show (since I wasn’t going to)—or if I was legitimately delusional and waiting in vain—when my phone vibrated in my back pocket. My mom was standing in front of me, blocking me from Martinez’s view, so I risked taking a quick look.

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.

CHAPTER 6

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:

Hey, it’s Liam. Hope u dont mind Alana gave me your #. Just wanted to make sure ur ok. & I wanted to tell u something. Call me.

I didn’t mind. Actually, I couldn’t stop the rising feeling of totally not minding. If a girl could shoot and kill someone, then pass out on the cafeteria floor like a lunatic, and this guy still wanted to talk to her, he couldn’t be so bad. His abs didn’t hurt his case, either.

The phone vibrated a third time.

I scrolled down to the rest of the texts, all from the same number. There were six of them, and I opened the first:

Check the Channel 3 news. You didn’t listen, and you didn’t save her.

The second and third and fourth—all said the same thing.

My heart palpitated. I switched on the news. Across the bottom, the scroll read:

Unnamed Teen Girl Found Dead Near Ninth Street.

All the warm and gooey feelings I’d had thinking of Liam and his ocean-blue eyes evaporated. A girl was dead. And it was my fault.

Something hardened in my chest. Like a cocoon had wrapped itself around my heart. And the darkness I’d worked so hard to dispel after losing Dad filled my mind. Guilt, sadness, anger, and despair all swarmed inside.

A normal person would cry at a time like this. Go running to Momma, to my dad’s “trusted” friends at SWAT, and plead for mercy and help. But I was never normal, and definitely not in the mood for pleading. I was in the mood to find out who was doing this to me. And why.

I replied to the message:

Who are you?

Ten seconds later, the message came back undelivered.

I chucked off my comforter and slid to my knees beside my bed. No, not to pray. To reach underneath my box spring. I felt for the handles of my locked chest, pulled it out, and lined up the numbers of the combination until it clicked open. I hadn’t opened the chest in weeks, foolishly trying to forget that it existed.

I rummaged through the case files I’d copied off my mom’s desk until I found my notebook. I preferred paper notes just in case—I knew from my mom’s trials that
nothing
digital
ever
disappears. And I wasn’t going to be one of those defendants dumb enough to Google “how to catch a killer.” No, I could easily burn these notes if I had to. And I always used my dad’s computer for hacking into official criminal databases and evidence logs. I even had his access codes to get into higher-level police files. They were all neatly written on a laminated card he kept “safe” in his safe. Stupid bureaucracy hadn’t even managed to shut down his accounts yet.

Thumbing through pages of comments, charts, and surveillance logs, I ran my finger over the name of each predator I’d been secretly following. All five of them—aka my Filthy Five. LeMarq was the first one I’d set my sights on.

The wind howled outside my window, and the branches of the orange tree scratched at the glass. I checked to make sure no one was there. Of course not—the creepy scraping noise was just part of a normal SoCal morning storm, not someone messing with my mind. Definitely not the spirit of the girl I should have saved.

The condensation from the night’s rain on the windowpane distorted the world outside. And the images on the television next to the window distorted my world inside.

Television crews lined the Ninth Street crime scene. For some morbid reason, they kept replaying the coroner wheeling out the black body bag. I had never hated my high-def flat screen so much. At the moment, I didn’t exactly want to “feel like I was there.”

The police hadn’t released the girl’s identity yet, so the news team resorted to zooming in on the moment when the wind picked up and an unzipped portion of the body bag rose, revealing a blonde head. As the reporter went wild with excited speculation on who the victim might be, I couldn’t help but wonder why they had to look like me, and what this guy was trying to tell me.

I felt like going on TV myself and warning every blonde-haired, gray-eyed girl in California to stay inside until I figured this out. But surely Detective Martinez or one of his chest-beating cohorts would see a pattern, and the public would be alerted to the profile of the victims. Or maybe the zombie media would figure it out on their own.

I could only hope the police didn’t disclose my involvement. If they found out, the press’s cycle of harassment would start all over again. A slimy paparazzo named Sammy tirelessly followed me around after Dad’s death—he liked to call me the number-one victim of that senseless murder. More like I was the number-one victim of Sammy’s invasion of privacy and national-exploitation tour.

I heard Mom stirring downstairs. Most likely making herself a pot of coffee, working on her usual three hours of sleep a night. I couldn’t afford her barging in, and I certainly didn’t want to talk to her about another death. I had to get out of here and find a safe place to gather my thoughts—alone.

The Pier.

I grabbed what I needed, and restashed all the evidence against me. After stuffing my notebook in my backpack and kicking my pirate’s chest back under the bed, I headed to my bathroom to brush my hair and teeth.

I tried not to pay too much attention to that sickly looking girl in the mirror. Instead, I tried to look past her, to the open window, where I knew my spot under the Pier and its fresh after-rain breeze waited to wash away the dark lines and puffy skin around my eyes. But just the thought of puffy eyes made me think of my mom (not because we look anything alike, because we don’t) and her admission of guilt in her office yesterday.

As I began to make progress on the rat’s nest I sometimes called hair, I also wondered why she hadn’t come up to see me last night. She said she would get dinner and we’d “talk some more.” Typical Jane Rose. All promises—no follow-through.

Maybe, so she would start to care more about me than her career, I should start campaigning for Bill Brandon and leaking information to his campaign muckety-mucks on her inability to keep promises. The days of family breakfasts in bed and picnics at the beach had ceased well before we lost Dad. Right about the same time that she formally declared her ambition to run for District Attorney the first time, she unofficially stopped being a wife and mother.

I slammed down my brush a little harder than I intended to and frowned at the state I was in. Hardly my finest hour in the looks department. Even after a little mascara and blush, I still didn’t want to see the girl in the mirror. Not even my mom’s old pageant tricks of making myself “look better in order to feel better” were working. I needed a few moments with my oldest and dearest friend: Gladys—aka my shoe closet.

I rounded the corner of my bathroom and opened the door to the other “wing” of my bedroom. Clicking the light switch on, I watched the heavenly fluorescent light shine luminously on her walls. Happy to see me, too, Gladys and all her Pips stood at attention for my entry—except for my tan Dolce & Gabbana Catwoman boots, which had to be neatly hung to avoid damage or creases. I had to take care of my Sleeping Beauties.

“Gladys, I need help.” My words echoed into the space. Sometimes it really paid to be an only child. This room had been meant for my sister or brother, but when they never happened, Dad knocked down a wall to give me a playroom. I was never really into toys—just shoes. I know. Weird. Dr. T told my mom I would likely grow out of it. No such luck. Dad thought it was funny. Mom thought it was expensive—but better than guns. And how could she blame me? She’s the one who’d taught me everything I knew about high-fashion footwear. Shoes were “our” thing. Or at least they used to be.

“I’m going to the beach—and then to sucky school—but I need to be able to move,” I said as if Gladys might talk back.

I walked around the shelves Dad had handcrafted just for me and the Pips, until I found them. My Juicy Couture Platino Metallic Gladiator Sandals named Hermes. I plucked them off the shelf and took them back to my room to get dressed, throwing on some yellow leggings, a Roxy hoodie, and my Spy sunglasses. I knew there was no sun, but like my shoes, they provided emotional support.

I slung my backpack over my shoulder and took a deep breath. A Courage Breath for the day—I didn’t ignore everything Dr. T taught me.

Now I just had to sneak out without Hawkeye Jane catching me. I slithered down the stairs, into the garage, and into Big Black. For the quickest escape, I hit the garage-door opener at the same time as the ignition. It was already 6:00 a.m., and I only had eighty minutes before school started.

After sitting in the dry sand under the Pier for fifteen minutes, no effective thinking had taken place. Instead, I watched the light shift over the pink-and-purple horizon. Surfers lined up for their turns on the larger than usual sets rolling in. I hadn’t surfed since Dad had died. It was
our
thing. And I missed it.

We’d sit out past the break waiting for the waves, and he’d tell me stories about combat as a Marine. About how hard it was to come back from the atrocities he’d witnessed as a soldier abroad. About the dangers still looming at home. About the line between right and wrong.

He’d called this beach his shoreline. He wanted to believe that—whatever he did—he’d always make it home, back to what was
sure
. His sure things included his integrity, his country, his freedom. His very own shoreline.

He was a broken record about me finding my own shoreline, about preparing myself for the moments in life when I’d be tested. There were times when his training and instruction felt like he was dragging me out into the deep waters of what my mom not-so-affectionately called his Post-Traumatic Stress Paranoia. Both in his time as a Marine and a police officer, he witnessed violence that most people can’t even stand to watch on TV. So her words had merit, especially in the year leading up to his death. But now—his warnings and preparations didn’t seem so crazy. In fact, it seemed like he might have known something (or
someone
) was coming.

Which made me wonder where my shoreline was anymore.

I grabbed my notebook and began OCD-organizing what was on my mind.

Problem 1: A girl is dead because I didn’t respect the warning.
I
let her die.

Dilemma 2: Whoever lured me to LeMarq is still toying with me. Trying to torment me. Or kill me.

Predicament 3: I lied to the police about following LeMarq, and somehow Detective Martinez knows it. If he finds proof of my strange stalking habits, he’ll argue that the LeMarq shooting was not, in fact, “legally justified.” He’ll claim that I had malice aforethought, intent, and motive—and that it was murder in the first degree.

Disaster 4: My mom cheated on my dad—with the one man in a position to take me down!

Mess 5: Mom’s campaign opponent, Bill Brandon, is on a witch hunt to destroy the whole Rose family, and he doesn’t mind using me to do it.

Catastrophe 6: I am a killer.

“Ruby!” A voice jerked my nose out of my notebook. “Hey, Ruby.”

I looked up to find a half-naked Liam Slater jogging toward me through the sand with a surfboard under his arm.

This had to be some kind of psychotic delusion. Like my subconscious desires had fought to the surface. Or maybe I’d watched one too many episodes of vampire shows with shirtless immortals.

“I was hoping I’d see you here today,” Liam said, a little out of breath. His unzipped wet suit hung dangerously low on his waist, exposing the muscular V-line in his hips that most girls would pay good money to see. His shaggy hair dripped salt water over his bronzed and chiseled eight-pack. Suddenly, I had a new problem—

Crisis 7: Acting like a total idiot in front of Liam Slater.

“I never heard back from you,” he said as he sat down next to me. “Are you OK?”

“You hoped to see me? What made you think I’d be here?” I asked, semiviolently shutting my notebook like it contained national secrets.

“I’ve seen you out here before,” he clarified. “My boys and I hit this spot before school occasionally for a session, and I’ve seen you here a few times
deep in thought
. I just never got the guts to actually come over and talk before.”

“Really?”

“Really
what
?” he asked with a half smile.

“Really, you surf here? Really, you’ve seen me here? Really, you didn’t have the guts to talk to
me
?” I was shocked by all three implications. Sure, I could be shortsighted and socially unplugged sometimes, but I couldn’t have missed
him.