Chapter 9 - The Second Phone
Marco lunged for the phone.
Ricardo caught his wrist first.
“Sit down.”
Marco’s face hardened. “You don’t want to do this.”
“No,” Ricardo said. “You don’t.”
Detective Torres entered with two officers.
Marco looked around and laughed once. “You brought cops into your house?”
“For my son? I’d bring the whole city.”
Torres took the phone.
Marco demanded a lawyer.
He got one.
What we got was worse.
The message came from a prepaid number used only twice. But the phone showed a second encrypted messaging app hidden behind a calculator icon.
Torres couldn’t open it without a warrant.
Ricardo nearly broke the table arguing about the delay.
I took Leo upstairs.
In his room, he handed me a crayon drawing I hadn’t seen before.
Sofia. Leo. A blue car.
And a woman standing near the car.
“Who is she?” I asked.
Leo pointed at the yellow hair.
“Auntie.”
Ricardo had no sister.
“Which auntie?”
Leo whispered, “Mommy’s friend.”
He pointed to a little black square in the woman’s hand.
A phone.
Then he said a name.
“Miss Evelyn.”
My heart stopped.
My mother’s name had been Evelyn Vance.
She had died when I was seventeen.
I carried the drawing downstairs.
Ricardo looked at it, then at me.
“You never told me your mother’s name.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
Victor went pale.
“It matters,” he said.
“Why?”
He looked at Ricardo.
May you like
Torres warned us not to turn one message into a conviction. Ricardo hated that answer, but evidence did not care about grief. Neither did the law. I watched him struggle with the fact that wanting someone guilty was not the same as proving it. For a man used to giving orders and seeing them obeyed, waiting for warrants may have been the hardest punishment in the room.
“Because Evelyn Vance worked for Sofia.”
