“Please help me,” said Robert.
-11-
Whitney
WHITNEY DECIDED IT WAStime. Her plan had gone wrong; this was clear. She could not bear the thought of Bobcat in jail. The sweet boy! He had reached for Whitney’s hand when they walked to elementary school, taking her fingers easily, as if she were another mother.
Could Bobcat’s girlfriend be the same woman Whitney had texted?
Was it Whitney’s fault that Bobcat was in jail?
What had happened on the greenbelt?
Whitney grabbed her Kate Spade case from the medicine cabinet. She was tempted to make sure the phone inside it would still turn on, but she didn’t want the location services pinging nearby cell towers. She had to assume there was an APD tech department who could pull the damning messages even if the phone was dead. Whitney didn’t understand any of this stuff! She was not a career criminal, just an overwrought mother trying to keep her children safe—both of them. She might be condemned, but this was the only plan she’d had. Things could not continue. And so—as risky andabsurd as her actions may have been—she had acted. But she had never thought of the girl on the other end of the transaction. She had thought only of her own babies. And now here she was, driving on Manchaca in the middle of the night.
Detective Revello’s house was south of Stassney in an area Whitney called “up and coming” on her website. Whitney found the address she’d obtained by paying a few bucks online. Revello lived in one of a row of identical brick ranchers, maybe worth three hundred, three-fifty at most.
Whitney parked a few blocks away and pulled her sweatshirt hood over her head. As she walked, she removed the phone from the Kate Spade case, approaching Revello’s house from the side. She tossed the phone onto his worn welcome mat, hoping he didn’t have a video doorbell and pretty sure she was out of its line of sight if he did.
This was insane.
She was desperate.
Whitney saw now that she had been deluded, thinking she could fix things. But she couldn’t wait until her son was dead! She was almost out of hope now.
She drove home, reactivating her security system despite her knowledge that the greatest threat was already inside her house.
Whitney thought of Bobcat in a jail cell and felt nauseous. Whatever happened to him over the night was her fault. Whatever Annette was feeling now was Whitney’s fault.
She was a monster.
Was she a monster?
Whitney rubbed La Mer into her face, trying to avoid her own gaze.
-12-
Cellphone Transcript Record
512-XXX-XXXX
MEX
Is this Kobe?
Kobe Nadkarni
Who’s this?
MEX
It’s Joe
Kobe Nadkarni
Why does it say MEX?
MEX
