The last call

At 3 a.m., I got a call from my best friend Emma saying she heard something in her house and was scared. So, I got out of bed, jumped in my car, and went to her place as fast as I could. By the time I arrived, it was 4:51 a.m. I looked in the mailbox for the spare key that had always been there for as long as I could remember, but shockingly, it wasn’t there.

I called Emma and told her that if she didn’t come downstairs to open the door, I wouldn’t be able to get in. She hung up, and I could see her shadow coming to the door. I waited outside for about 20 minutes, but she never opened it. I ended up calling her again to ask what was taking so long, but there was no answer. I called about 11 times and still didn’t get a response. By this time, I was very annoyed because I had been waiting outside in the cold, at night, for nothing.

I found it odd because we had been talking less than 20 minutes ago. I thought she might have fallen asleep on her way to unlock the door, so I turned around to head back home. As soon as I turned my back, I heard three consecutive gunshots.

Panicked, I ran inside and saw Emma dripping with sweat, holding a gun. She was shaking and breathing heavily. There was a man lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

For the next five minutes, I was frozen, unable to speak, completely traumatized. As I stood there trying to process what was happening, a bunch of police officers, the SWAT team, and the FBI stormed into the house. Everything happened so fast, and I had no idea what was going on. The FBI handcuffed Emma and me, put us in the back seat of a car, and took us to an interrogation room.

I was furious with Emma and couldn’t even look at her. She tried talking to me, but I quickly made it clear that our 10 years of friendship were over the moment she pulled that trigger. When the police officer came to speak to us, I immediately told him I had nothing to do with it. Luckily for me, there was no sign of my DNA anywhere in the house, so they believed me.

The officer then started questioning Emma. She explained what happened: she had heard a noise downstairs and was scared, so she called me. When I arrived sooner than she expected, she forgot to tell me she had removed the spare key. After I called her, she went downstairs to unlock the door and froze when she saw a man standing in the kitchen, opening the fridge. Panicked, she grabbed the gun in her purse and shot him twice in the back and once in the leg.

The officer stopped her and pointed out something strange—the man she shot was in all the pictures in her house. That’s when Emma realized she had just shot her husband. She explained that it was late at night, and her husband had been doing Uber Eats and DoorDash to clear his mind. He was wearing a black ski mask and a full winter ensemble because of the cold, so she didn’t recognize him.

The police told us to go home, but Emma had to return to court at 10:45 a.m. the next morning. I was confused about why they let her go after she had just killed someone, but I kept my mouth shut. Daniel, one of the officers, gave me a ride back to my car at Emma’s house.

A few days later, Emma called me. I had been avoiding her since the incident, so the conversation was awkward. She told me all charges had been dropped because she didn’t know it was her husband. It didn’t make sense to me because she didn’t even have to pay a fine. After the call, I texted her to let her know our friendship was over and blocked her on everything.

“So, officer, do you have everything you need? All the information is correct,” I said.

The officer sighed. “Yes, I think that’s all I need. Thank you, Miss Evergreens, for your time. Don’t forget, this is a private investigation into Emma’s husband, so you can’t tell anyone.”

“Okay, great. I promise I won’t,” I replied.

“Wait, one last thing,” the officer added. “If Emma’s husband was used to coming home late, why did she think it was someone else? This story isn’t adding up.”

“I don’t know. Do you think she planned it?” I asked.

“I’m not sure yet, but we’re going to find out,” he said.