Chapter 3 - The Cold Blood
The stranger on the phone identified himself as Detective Miller of the Austin Police Department.
He asked me to come down to the station immediately to identify my mother's body.
I hung up the phone and stood frozen in the parking lot of the rundown apartment complex.
I had come to Austin to punish my mother, but someone else had beaten me to it.
I put Maya into the rental car and locked the doors, my mind spinning with terrifying possibilities.
If someone had murdered my mother, they might be coming for my daughter next.
I drove to the police station and left Maya sitting safely in the lobby with a female officer.
Detective Miller led me down into the freezing basement of the city morgue.
He pulled back the metallic sheet, revealing my mother's pale, lifeless face.
There was a single bullet hole perfectly centered in her forehead.
This was not a random robbery gone wrong.
This was a professional execution.
The detective asked me if my mother had any known enemies or financial troubles.
I laughed bitterly and told him she had been stealing thousands of dollars from me for years.
Miller wrote that down in his notepad and gave me a very strange look.
He revealed that they had searched her house and found no money, no jewelry, and absolutely no luxury items.
My mother's house had been completely empty, as if she had been preparing to flee the country.
I realized with horror that Evelyn was not keeping my money for herself.
She had been paying off a massive, dangerous debt to someone deeply terrifying.
The detective handed me my mother's personal effects in a clear plastic bag.
Inside the bag was her cell phone, her car keys, and a crumpled piece of paper found in her pocket.
I unfolded the paper and recognized my own handwriting from my Dallas office.
It was a printed schedule of my exact flight itinerary to Austin.
The killer knew exactly when I was arriving in the city.
May you like
And written in red ink at the bottom of the page were three chilling words.
The father knows.
