It seemed that I should be able to blink a few times and wake myself up from this dark, shaky nightmare. When I finally accepted it, I felt an overbearing sadness for something so permanent, so final.

I didn’t really know Beverly.

But she was a real person, with a real family, and real dreams, and a real life, and now…

She was gone.

I tried to make sense of it as I sat alone in the bedroom Monday morning. Randy had picked Keith up to go to a pre-meet practice, and Keith had kissed me on the way out the door. The feel of his lips against mine had been strange but comforting in a way he couldn’t imagine, and I almost broke down in front of him right then. But I held it together and waved goodbye, then slumped back into bed after he left.

I lay back in the bed, opened Twitter, and searched for Ryan. He hadn’t posted since last week. I wondered where he was and what he was doing right then. His show in Dallas was coming up in a few days… Had he left already? Was he still at his hotel?

I’d looked up everything I could about Baker & Pikensy. Beverly had interned there out of law school and had worked at the firm for her entire career. I couldn’t find any evidence that she’d worked on Amanda Strager’s sexual harassment case, though I had found a picture of her smiling next to Hooks’s lawyer. And then I found another article that made me pause.

LAW FIRM DROPS HOOKS FOLLOWING SECOND ASSAULT CHARGE

Another one?

That and the fact that he’d been at the apartment on Saturday night—somebody needed to tell the police.

But certainly not me?

That was problem number one. I couldn’t very well go in and talk to the police, not after what I’d done. I had a bag full of cash in my bathroom, cash that did not belong to me, and only an idiot would walk into a police station to talk about it.

But could I keep quiet about this?

If only there was a way I could—

Of course there was a way!

I grabbed my phone and did a quick search for anonymous tip Chicago police.

The first thing that came up was TXT2TIP. All I had to do was compose a text, and it would be sent anonymously to the police. It was worth a try. Taking a deep breath, I typed out a message:

Ryan Hooks was at 115 W. Oak Street on the night Beverly Brighton was murdered. He was also there one week prior. I witnessed this myself.

I hovered over the Send button for a moment before clicking it.