Things We Do in the Dark(49)

During opening statements, the crown attorney told the jury that Charles Baxter was stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife. Based on the haphazard entry points all over his torso—sixteen of them in total—the crown argued it was done in a rage by a woman the same height as Ruby. Miraculously, no major arteries were hit. Later, the medical examiner testified that if Ruby had stopped there, and if Baxter had received emergency treatment, he likely would have lived. The charge could have been aggravated assault. Maybe even self-defense, if her lawyer was savvy.

But it had not stopped there. While Charles lay bleeding on his bedroom floor, Ruby walked down the hall to his daughter’s room. She removed one of Lexi Baxter’s ice skates from the closet and brought it back with her into the master bedroom, where she took a seat on the chair in the corner. Ruby put the skate on, laced it up, and then stomped on her lover’s neck.

Boom. First-degree murder.

Charles Baxter was nearly decapitated. And that’s why Ruby Reyes was called the Ice Queen.

“People always assumed Ruby was cold,” Joey said. “But she was the opposite. She was hot-tempered. She could scald you.” She fingered her pendant absently. “But sometimes, she could be warm. On her good days, she was sunshine, and there was nowhere else I ever wanted to be.”

“Do you still love her?” Drew asked. “After everything?”

“She’s my mother,” Joey said simply. “Everything I feel for her is intense, and I feel it all at once. Intense love, intense fear, intense hate. They all swirl together, like … I don’t know, like melted Neapolitan ice cream. The flavors are impossible to separate.”

“It’s okay to feel different things at once.”

She smiled. “You should be a psychologist.”

“Thought about it,” Drew said. “What about you? What did you want to be when you grew up?”

“I never expected to grow up.”

Drew kissed her then. He didn’t think about it, he just leaned over and kissed her. Her lips were salty from the potato chips they were eating, her breath sweet from the orange Fanta they were drinking. She kissed him back, and it felt right, and good, and he couldn’t remember the last time he kissed someone he cared about so much. He loved Simone, but with Joey, it felt like his feelings were on an entirely different level. It was terrifying, and wrong, and amazing, and right.

He cupped her face, his tongue finding hers, and she pressed herself against him, pulling him closer. His lips moved to her cheek, and then her throat, and then back to her lips again as his hand slipped under her T-shirt, his fingers caressing her bare skin. She made a little sound when his hand found her breast, somewhere between a soft moan and a gasp, and his other hand slipped into the waistband of her sweatpants. He had never wanted anyone so much in his life. He lifted her onto his lap, and she straddled him as he lifted up the hem of her shirt.

And then suddenly, Joey pulled away.

“I can’t,” she gasped. She sprang off his lap and fell onto the sofa cushion beside him. When he tried to move closer to her again, she stuck her arm out, blocking him. “I can’t. You only want me because you think you can fix me, Drew. But you can’t. I can’t be fixed.”

“That’s not true—”

“I’m broken,” Joey said. “I’m no good to you. I’m no good to anyone.”

Being the stupid, selfish tool he was back then, all Drew could hear was that he was being rejected. The next day, when Simone asked him if he’d made his decision, he told her he would go with her to Vancouver.

It was the wrong decision even before Simone cheated on him.



* * *



Drew’s phone rings, snapping him out of the memories. It’s Sergeant McKinley. He hits accept, and the call connects through the car’s Bluetooth.

“Hallo, Drew Malcolm,” McKinley says. “Is this a good time?”

“It’s the perfect time,” he says. “I was just going to call you—”

“Hang on, let me go first.” She sounds excited, buoyant, and he can hear her shuffling papers. “You’ll be pleased to know that I finally figured out the full name of Joelle’s friend. The licensing office emailed me a list of the four hundred entertainer’s licenses that were issued in 1998. Let me tell you, that was a lot to sort through, but by approximating her age and restricting her home address to a twenty-kilometer radius around the Golden Cherry, it turns out there were only thirteen licenses issued that year to women performers.”

“Actually, I—”

“Not finished yet. So then I looked them all up in our database and found one that looks just like our Betty Savage. Her name is Mae Ocampo, and it turns out she has a record. The earlier arrests are for shoplifting and public intoxication at a concert—that one actually sounds grossly unfair—and she had one minor drug arrest. But two of the arrests were for assault. The first was dismissed because apparently the other girl started it, but the last one, she broke the girl’s nose and arm. She did three months in jail, which means it wasn’t just her boyfriend who was violent. Mae was, too.”

“I’m glad you—”

“Still not done. Her last known address was an apartment near Humber College, which she shared with two roommates. I tracked them down, and both confirmed that the last time they saw Mae was a couple of days before New Year’s Eve. They didn’t file a missing persons report because Mae often disappeared for chunks at a time without telling them; the word they used was ‘flaky.’ So now all that’s left to do is track her down. She’s out there somewhere, I can feel it.”