Killing Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series)

by Jessie Humphries

  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.”

  Liam didn’t respond right away, and I could tell he wasn’t convinced. He cocked his head like he was considering the theory. “But why not just kill her? That’s a lot of work—and a lot of killing—for her to remain alive in the end. Plus, I thought you said you looked through your mom’s cases and no one fits the profile of this guy.”

  “That’s true,” I said, throwing a cold fry to a seagull.

  “What if this guy is just some crazy psycho who gets off watching you kill? Like that Jigsaw guy from Saw. He believes these guys deserve to die, too, and he thinks this is some game. Maybe he has a connection to one of these guys and that’s what drew him to you. ”

  Or maybe Liam watched too many movies.

  He flipped th
rough the third file. It was Father Michael McMullin’s. Seven suspected child molestations, two suspected child abductions, and five dropped charges. And that was only in the State of California. He’d been a priest in Michigan and Florida before that. District Attorney Jane Rose’s press release blamed the failure to convict on the witnesses refusing to testify.

  I took the fifth file on Stanley “The Violent” Violet—a sadistic video game genius, porn addict, and lover of small women with even smaller self-esteem. His “alleged” crimes consisted of binding, torturing, and killing innocent college-aged women.

  My dad had dropped Violet with a through-and-through shot to the shoulder seven years ago during a standoff-hostage situation in a mall parking lot. Violet had gotten sloppy and tried to force a freshman coed into his Lamborghini. A search warrant produced four thoroughly bleached trophy keepsakes (small trinkets of nondescript jewelry that couldn’t be linked to any missing person) from presumably four other victims who were never positively identified. His computer game success bought him a media-mongering hotshot attorney who convinced a jury that Violet was “legally insane and incapable of knowing right from wrong” because he thought he was in a video game. He got five years in a mental facility, then the bare minimum in parole supervision in the two years since he’d been out.

  I glanced through the photos. I didn’t have one of those two-foot lenses, so the pictures I’d taken were pretty low quality—mostly shots of Violet going in and out of bars, strip clubs, gas stations, and the odd videogame store. I don’t think either Liam or I knew exactly what we were looking for, but it was better than doing nothing.

  I opened the fourth file. Roger Vay—the worst of the worst. He’d literally gotten away with murder at least a dozen times. He was by far the smartest, slimiest, and scariest offender on my list. He studied his victims. He chose the isolated loners, the irresponsible partiers, and the professionals who worked long hours. By the time anyone noticed they were gone, so was any evidence connecting him to the crime.

  The only reason we knew he was such an accomplished killer was his signature—a unique antique key he would later mail to the closest person in the victim’s life. Each victim had his or her own handmade key. The thought of Vay creeped me out to the core. And how evil to mess with the family’s minds, making them think that if they could just find the locked door to where their loved one was being held, maybe they could save them.

  After years of fumbling around, the police finally figured out the glaring piece of “key” evidence and linked the cases—all twelve of them, spread out over twenty years. They started calling him the Key Killer.

  Finally, someone got the idea to run a search on locksmiths in the criminal database, and they found the only one with an old rape arrest. They closed in on Roger Vay, gathered some damning forensic evidence tying him to the mailed keys, and put him on trial. During Prosecutor Jane’s presentation of evidence, another woman went missing and a copycat killer sent another key. It was enough to create reasonable doubt, and the real Key Killer was set free. The justice system at its finest.

  I stared down at the pictures in the file. Remarkably, Vay looked clean-cut, owned his own small business, and even had a wife and two kids. He also hardly went anywhere, so there were far fewer pictures of him to study.

  “Hey, check that out.” Liam pointed to one of the photos I’d put down. It was of Stanley Violet outside his gas station talking to someone in a vehicle. “See that black cargo van? It’s the same one from this picture.” He grabbed the photo I was holding and slid it next to his.

  I gasped, my heart thumping in my ears. Could this be true? “Oh. My. Mother.”

  “It’s the same vehicle, right? And part of the license plate shows.”

  “Liam, I can’t believe this,” I said, leaning in to him to see the photos better. “I totally missed that. But is that a D or an 8?” I pointed at the plate.

  “Are you blind? First of all, a D looks nothing like an 8. And anyway, it’s neither—it’s a zero.” He was clearly enjoying his breakthrough.

  I squinted at the image, scrunching up my nose as though that would make the image suddenly clear. “It’s definitely a D.”

  “Whatever you say,” he said, imitating my expression. Mother Jane would be dismayed to know that a boy had caught me looking so unattractive. I didn’t care. This was huge.

  “Come on,” I said, shoving the files into my bag. “Let’s get back to my place before my mom gets home. I want to get on my dad’s computer and check the plates.”

  CHAPTER 14

  I didn’t go into my dad’s office very often. Only to do some research on the “official ongoing investigation” into his death, and some digging on the Filthy Five. Otherwise, it had been virtually untouched since he died—his gun case securely locked, the minifridge stocked with Corona Lights, and his dearly beloved semper fi flag hung on the wall. If I didn’t know better, it felt like he might be coming home any minute to skedaddle me out of his man cave.

  This time, as I prepared to do research with Liam, I noticed a large coin on the mouse pad. I picked it up to move it aside and realized what it was—my dad’s Challenge Coin. What was it doing here? He’d always had it on him, and it wasn’t here the last time I’d come in. Had he accidentally dropped it under the desk before he died, and the cleaning lady found it recently and put it somewhere we’d see it?

  “What’s that?” Liam said, as I turned it over in my hand.

  “A coin that everyone in my dad’s SWAT unit had,” I said, trying to remember its significance. “It says ‘Loyalty. Courage. Commitment.’ Though, I’m pretty sure they just used it for bar games. When someone taps it, it’s supposed to alert everyone to a challenge. The last person in the unit to pull out their coin and start tapping has to buy everyone drinks.” I shook my head. “Like they need any more drinking in SWAT.” I put the coin in my pocket anyway. It instantly made me feel closer to Dad.

  I wiggled the computer mouse, and the last program used popped up. The large screen lit up with a photo from my sixth birthday party—my dad and me smiling at each other over a massive plate of sizzling fajitas and fruity drinks with umbrellas. My heart sputtered at the sight. I didn’t remember looking at these photos the last time I was in here. My mom must’ve used the computer, which surprised me since I was under the impression that she hadn’t stepped foot in here since his death. Maybe she missed him a lot more than she let on.

  I closed the files and closed off my heart. No time for weakness now. Instead, I opened the license plate database, silently thanking Liam for not asking me any questions about the picture.

  I typed in the letters and numbers I could see in the photo, filling in all the other fields I could—commercial van, black, standard California plates. Two-thousand-plus hits registered.

  “Stupid overcrowded California,” I mumbled, typing in a few variations. Three-thousand-plus hits came up each time.

  “Dead end,” I said and flopped back in my dad’s oversized desk chair. A hint of musk from the leather and his cologne wafted up, and I pinched my eyes, pretending to feel frustrated, but really feeling like sobbing. If only my dad were here. He would know what to do. He would get his team to track down every lead and protect me.

  “Ruby, are you all right?” Liam touched my leg and made me jump.

  “I’m fine,” I said, feeling stupid.

  “You just looked…” He paused, searching for the right word.

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “I’m good. I’m just not used to having someone around like this. Alana’s usually here to create mindless diversions for me, but not…this.” I gestured at whatever invisible thing hovered between us.

  “Well, get used to it,” he said gently, momentarily holding my cheek.

  Flustered, I looked back to the blurry photo and studied it again.

  “I wish I had one of those huge lenses so these effin’ letters would actually be decipherable. One of those slimy paparazzi guys named Samm
y had one that could probably take pictures of life on Mars. He’s the guy who put most of those pictures of me in the tabloids. He was around here a lot when my dad first died, always saying these creepy personal things about me, baiting me to look at his stupid camera. After LeMarq, he was one of those sniper paparazzi hiding in the bushes at school. He’s a real tool.”

  Liam sat up higher and laughed like I’d finally hit the punch line of a hilarious joke. “It’s not that funny,” I assured him.

  “No, it’s not that. I’m not laughing at you, even though it is pretty ridiculous,” he said with a stupid grin I almost felt like wiping off him. “You just found the answer to the problem.”

  I stared at him. “I didn’t know we were doing math tutoring. Which problem?”

  “Let’s go find this guy Sammy, and he’ll have the photos we’re looking for. If he was watching your every move with his privacy-invading camera, and the guy behind all of this was watching you, too, chances are there are more images out there. Maybe more than a license plate.”

  I sat there speechless, suddenly understanding. Not only would Sammy have photos, but insider information on the “Investigation” of LeMarq, and maybe even my dad’s, too. Somehow these guys always knew more than they should. Like how many times I frequented the 31 Flavors on Main Street for Double Dutch chocolate scoops when I was “depressed.”

  Sure, there was a risk Sammy would take advantage of the fact I was doing my own investigations and asking my own questions. But that was a risk I had to take.

  “Liam,” I said, “you’re a freaking genius.”

  “Rue! I’m home,” my mom yelled just outside the door.

  “Oh, snap, it’s Mom,” I muttered. Like a cat landing on all fours, I stood up, clicked off the monitor, and shut the drawer with my dad’s passwords.

  As my brain raced through how all this would look to her, I decided to play the awkward card. “Liam, she’ll know I’m hiding something by being in here. Just pretend we were making out, OK? That’ll really throw her off.”