She wasn’t pretty.

She sat quiet and across the tracks. On San Fernando Road, north of Colorado. On the wrong side of the 5. All innocent between a cheap tile store and three rotten mechanics.

She had a lone black brick wall facing west that was hot to the touch by four p.m. There were no windows. Only a small sign. And a gutter. A sun-bleached, rusted-out reservoir thirsty like the rest of us.

She wasn’t pretty but she was ours.

Jiles called her The Damned Lovely. He never told us why but didn’t much need to, either. We all had our theories. Jiles used to be a cop. He aged out and they kicked him to the curb. His wife told him he needed to get out of the house. Said he needed to stop drinking and take up a hobby. So he opened a bar. Set up shop for his team. Someplace the men and women in blue could deflate. Bang around cases with a ripe shot of booze. A place for the soldiers to sing. A room for heroes to mourn. Away from the cameras and glare of backstabbing headlines. Where really, Jiles could feel like a cop again. Where everyone knows your name, rank, and demons.

It was dark.

It was dank.

And it was my kinda slice.

It wasn’t just a cop bar. The Lovely had character. And history. Eleven black-padded stools with their own personalized bruises and dents. There was a worn-out, stained mahogany bar with the perfect brass rail and a soft cushion for our arms. There were wood stains. Water stains. Stains inside and out. Initials, hearts and skulls etched with knives. Memories and heartbreak slashed in wood.

Around the edges were seven private booths with updated red padded benches that looked tight and outta place. Like a bad eye job on an aging starlet. They made the place look better and I guess prettier, but a little crooked, too. Jiles said it kept asses in the seats and whiskey flowing so we best shut up about ’em.

There was even a battered piano in the corner because of course there was. And a piano man who came around some Thursday nights we called Billy. No one knew his real name cuz he wouldn’t tell us like he was embarrassed or some shit. But most of the time we hit the Seeburg, which Jiles had paid extra for. A vintage 1963 Chrome Seeburg SC1 Stereo Hi Fi he put some real money into so we could tap the old school classics on vinyl. Sam Cooke. Nina Simone. Otis Redding. Lou Reed. Wilson Pickett. Carole King. Joe Cocker. Roy Orbison. Jackie Wilson. Tina. Bowie. Janis. Smokey. He wanted rhythm. And horns. Brass. Soul and all its beautiful parts he claimed were for us.

We weren’t unhappy.

We weren’t depressed.

We were hardpressed.

That was our handshake. Our secret bent. Our hey we’re not alone after all when the door cracked early at eleven a.m. Or when the sun seeped in, trying to distract us at three in the afternoon. After all, we were deflecting tomorrow together.

We were bound by our fix. Cocktails. Spirits. The grape. Hops and IPAs. Glowing ambers. Frosty glasses. An endless reservoir of old school booze and the bliss of that second sip. When the splash sits just right. Drowning out the poison of our real life. The inbox. The monsters at work. The kids. The latest STD. The drive at five. The tomorrow grind. Pick your poison cuz we got the fix for tomorrow.

After all, this wasn’t Los Angeles. No, ma’am. This was Glendale.

This wasn’t even close to Hollywood.

This was fuck you and your tasty Santa Monica oxygen. Your perfect ocean sunsets.

Your pretty Venice tans and Abbott Kinney gloss.

Your Beverly Hills’s plastic faces and dark money.

Your WeHo happy Sunday Fundays.

We never made it that far west…

No. This be Glendale. The land of Chevy Chase Boulevard. That hurricane of car dealerships and sparkling ribbons promising the American dream. Oh, and while you’re here—have you been up the street? It’s the Americana! The Grove without a soul. Without the gloss but all the function and cheaper parking. Just take San Fernando Road, that endless pipe to nowhere.

Glendale. That bland ugly open secret, where nothing ever happens. Nothing wild. Nothing wonderful. Wedged between the trendy boulevards of Silverlake. The Los Feliz hills. The cute bungalows of Atwater Village. The historic Pasadena mansions. The Santa Anita horse track. The JPL. Roofs with a pulse. With history and feeling.

Glendale. That tasteless grid of flat streets and relentless, punishing sunshine in search of a soul. The shrug of a last resort: I mean, I guess we could live in Glendale…

Glendale. My home for nine years. I’d accepted this. Like some kinda dull splinter. Like one of these days this pain would figure itself out. Take a page from her neighbors and stop being such a sad sack single kid with cooler cousins named Echo Park and Silverlake and Mount Washington. If they can do it, why can’t we? Why can’t we, fellas? Because, cous’, you be Glendale…

Glendale. That ugly chore we’re gonna fix up one of these days.

 

 

Monday, July 6th, 2:04 p.m.

 

It was only two p.m. Worse, it was a Monday, two p.m.

But I needed a burst.

When I stepped inside, Pa hit me with a nod. Ah, Pa. The soft soul at the bar with stringy shocks of white hair and an unquenchable thirst for Beefeater on ice. I’m guessing three hours of drinking and the old coot probably hadn’t nudged from his perch or even thought about takin’ a piss. He had a crooked smile. Dirty glasses and rank breath. Pa was a disgraced surgeon outta Eagle Rock. A lonesome kind man with an ugly past and if I had to guess, very little love left in his life. But he was a welcome fixture in the joint. Small, soft and gentle, content with his failure. You could always lean on Pa for a piece of kindness or a burst of something brighter.

And then there was Jewels. Thank god for Jewels. She was twenty-three. Skinny as a pin, with a neck like a flamingo and long black hair. Sleeves of tattoos with demons and flowers and pyramids she had to regret by now. Jewels spun jewelry. It was garbage. Globs of metal and jade for hundreds of bucks a piece. Who the hell was she kidding? No wonder she was slinging a tray six days a week. She was a scrappy love. Forced to put up with us. But Jewels kept us straight. Jewels smelled pretty and reminded us to be kind to each other.

Jiles was standing behind the bar. Jiles was our king. He was sixty-seven years old. A tough and bruised retired cop who probably had to put up with entitled knobs like me growing up. Bustin’ heads in the San Fernando Valley for thirteen years. He failed backwards and transferred to Central LA. Worked Homicide for twenty-two years after that. Twenty-two years scraping bodies off the ground. Knocking on doors, spilling pain to strangers. Tangling with the worst demons in the city. You could see it behind his eyes sometimes. The darkness he’d seen. But he kept his cards close and never complained. Still, I’d wedge in when no one was around and press out some of his war stories. You could smell the pride buried deep.

Yeah, Jiles was our king.

Hardened, wise, and uncompromisingly loyal.

Jiles liked me. I have no idea why. He had a room in the back and cut me a deal. I even paid rent. Just sixty bucks a month with a few commercial breaks cuz sometimes an off-duty detective would drag in a perp and untangle the lies. We called it “the box.” Two chairs, an ’03 phone book, and no cameras. Where the truth spilled out. It wasn’t right. It was antique. History happening now. Old school justice even I was surprised still existed…

Anyway. The box smelled sour. The box had no windows. There was a desk and four ugly grey walls. But it was quiet. And it was mine. The rent was cheap. And the booze close by. So I could bury myself for hours on end. Just me and Benny, my scratched up 2012 MacBook Pro. My feed to the world at large. My cohort. My therapist. My reflection. My only true asset. All that I aspire to be jammed into a sliver box. I named him Benny after my all-star friend in high school. Benny was the kid with promise, the guy we all wanted to be. Benny was the man who OD’ed on fentanyl and reminded me to live better now.

I landed at the bar and ordered a Bulleit bourbon from Jiles. Two fingers. Neat. I picked up the newspaper at the bar. Jiles still got the LA Times hardcopy. Bless him.

Dodgers intel.

Calendar drivel.

The City Hall fires.

Business blah.

California crazy.

Pa read her cover to cover. Jiles pinched pieces. Jewels could care less. I usually hit the front page and the sports. Crumpled and wet by eleven a.m. Shredded by two. Soggy and recycled by four. Rinse and repeat.

Jiles dropped off my pal. Cheers. Heaven, here we come.

I caught a piece of the Rooster in my glass’s reflection. That pale thirty-something mystery in the black hoodie we called the Rooster cuz two years in, no one knew his real name. Be we knew that rooster decal on his computer. And crack of our dawn, he was steady, day in day out. The ultimate outcast. A man with an ugly crutch for Diet Coke with no ice. A man who spoke to no one, crouched in a back booth behind his stickered up PC. We all had our theories. On his name. Where he came from. What he did. Who he had kidnapped and kept bound in his basement this very moment. Most of us figured he was a demon on the web, making the world an e-scarier hell. Jiles earned some actual cred and discovered the Rooster worked as a dedicated day trader. It made sense in a lot of ways. Where he got his cake. But the screen was lit well beyond market close, so none of us really bought the angle. As the full story, anyway. At the end of the day the man kept to himself, paid his bill, and Jiles was more than okay keeping him around.

“It’s a free country, right?”

Or as Slice would say, “Because you just never know when you’re gonna need a friend to hack the shit outta someone, eh, Jiles?”

That was Slice. Slice was an original. An opinion man. A sidelined ex-cop with a dirty past and toothy snarl. A sneaky bastard with a decent heart who liked to ply us with dirty stories and pizza at one a.m. It worked. Jiles had met him on the beat in ’94. Told me Slice was a wreckin’ ball back when, but the soldier crossed one too many lines and they kicked him to the curb without a pension. Jiles went easy on him. They buddied up. I’d still never got the full story. No matter how many times I tried to weasel out the truth the copper would shake me loose. He was the kind of drunk who was broken to the core but flashed an infectious Jack Nicholson smile so you still ended up inviting him to the party. Yea. Everybody loved Slice. But nobody trusted the man. Including me.

I took a sip and checked my phone. Waiting for the screen to siiiing. Praying. Hoping.

She held her ground and I lost the fight.

The empty telephone. Reminding me, I had no excuses. To be in a better place. To be successful.

I was an American.

I was white.

I grew up safe and surrounded by love.

There was money for birthday parties and proper schools.

I had a college degree in communications.

I’d traveled to Southeast Asia. Seen Europe. Touched down in South Africa. I had a sweet girl who liked to cook and wanted a ring. We had an apartment in West Hollywood with good light.

I’d found a marketing gig early and wrote ad copy for seven years. Logos. Corporate promos. Internet ribbons. Microcopy drawl. Quippy garbage that paid the rent and then some.

I was on the right track.

Until I broke. Crashed the cart and pulled the plug on my world of California lies.

Staring at those smiling faces across a Doheny dinner table that night.

The masquerade of happiness.

The Instagram sham.

There was no substance. No truth. No intent for anything more than gain.

I had sealed the truth for years. Locked and bottled that depression south, convinced I could kick it. Convinced the gnaw would pass.

Things are great, I kept saying. Things are great.

But something about those faces on that very Doheny night popped the cork and shattered the glass. I called it out. I let it rip ugly. These weren’t my friends. They were assets. Nothing more.

This wasn’t love. This was compliance on rails.

I needed something pure. Something with purpose and mine all mine. That I truly adored.

So I quit the girl who liked to cook. Lost the apartment with the light and moved to Glendale. Where it was cheaper. Where there was no good light.

And worst of all. I was compelled by a force inside my bones to write something real. Something long and from the heart. Something maybe even wise.

This, more and more it seemed, may have been a grave mistake.

It was in no way working out.

Still, I refused to believe in misery. An honest rut is all. It’ll turn around soon. It has to. Because when you’re going through hell in Glendale, keep going. Right?

So. Soldier on. Live with intent and drown those voices out.

Drown. Them. Out. Soldier!

Swish. Swish.

A red Trojan alpha bro was swipin’ right at the bar. Americana run off sipping a sea breezer with a skinny lime. Slice and I shared a healthy glare of disdain when Jewels crossed behind me and nodded to stool 9.

“She’s baaaack,” Jewels cooed.

And there she was. Hiding her green eyes under a black felt fedora and a worn-out paperback of To the Lighthouse. She had dark brown hair pinned low at the back. Wore a simple tight white V-neck tee exposing that soft skin around her collarbones. She sat straight. With her legs crossed in black jeans that pinched in at her waist exposing a band of flawless smooth lower back. She kept her face down. Never spoke to a soul beyond ordering a drink. And never looked at her phone. Not once. Not once had I seen her look at her phone. Instead, she just buried her eyes in that book. Drowning out the world with a Negroni and Woolf’s words like some kinda mystery from a different era. She’d been in four times now by my count. And it was consistent. Early in the afternoon. Same drink. Same book. Alone. Like an oasis in this godforsaken Glendale desert.

I’d already plied Jiles for credit card intel but the unicorn paid cash.

I rehearsed my ways in.

Hard to believe Virginia Woolf was only fifty-nine when she walked into that river…

There’s no WAY you live in Glendale…

They say the Negroni was created by a Count in Florence looking to spice up his usual cocktail…

I could never pull off wearing a fedora like that…

Drivel.

Desperate rank sure to piss her off. I mean, how was I supposed to compete against the Woolf?

Jiles snickered wise, but I didn’t care. I was hooked hard and caved after watching her for an hour and twenty-seven minutes. Hopped off my stool and crossed behind her. Hoping to catch a scent of something as magical as she looked. It paid off when I caught a piece of something simple and sweet and beautifully feminine.

When I got back to my stool, I tried not to stare and failed magnificently. She pulled a worn-out denim shirt from her bag and wrapped the sleeves around her waist. Closing the gap on that lower back.

She had to know I was watching her. The way she shifted her legs. Spinning that black straw on the bar, clawing it round like a cat with her thin, slender fingers. Those polished nails.

She loved it.

Or did she? Maybe she just liked to read.

Or maybe she wants you to talk to her.

Or maybe she wants to be left alone in peace.

Roy Orbison cooed from the jukebox, singing for a better tomorrow.

No shit, Roy. Maybe tomorrow…

The Trojan stain put down his phone. Swilled his vodka cran and chewed crude on some ice cubes, taking in the room. Clockin’ that fedora now.

“Virginia Woolf, huh?”

Fedora piss-off smiled. Nearby, Slice grinned on his stool.

Round 1.

“To the Lighthouse? What happens at the lighthouse?”

It all burned.

“Lemme buy you another drink and you can tell me what’s so special about this lighthouse, anyway,” he blathered. “What is that…Campari?”

“No, thanks,” she said softly.

She spoke. I was enthralled, hoping for a few more magical syllables but the Trojan kept barking.

“Come on, you look like you could use some company instead of that stupid old book.”

He left me no choice.

“I think she just wants to read…”

Fedora craned her face my way, curious.

The Trojan twisted.

I held my ground and stared down his ugly red University of Spoiled Children sweatshirt.

“Just sayin’, man. Look at her body language. I don’t know this woman, but I know this—see her fingers? Those little white tips at the end. Pressing into the table like that? That means she’s uncomfortable. They weren’t like that before you started barking at her.”

She flashed a sweet smile my way. Like she might have been impressed or possibly even thankful.

“I don’t remember asking you.”

I could feel his fight-boner starting to grow—

She smiled and mouthed the words, Thank you, rattling my heart some. Then, she turned back his way.

“I’m really just trying to read.”

“See? Just leave her alone.”

The Trojan stood up and walked towards me, barking his way down the bar. Fedora squirmed. Those fingertips still burning white.

Maybe tomorrow, Roy belted.

Eat shit, Roy. Maybe NOW you prick.

I barked back.

I took my swing and cracked his jaw.

The world went cold and slooooowed way down.

His fist ripped into my gut. I doubled over, and then his fat fingers slammed into my nose.

Blood hit the bar. Blood sprinkled the limes.

Slice cackled.

Pa groaned.

Jiles roared.

Fedora smiled sweet.

I hit the ground fast and hard.

But I was a hero.

For a moment. I was her goddamn hero.

And then my world smashed to black.

 

 

Monday, July 6th, 5:19 p.m.

 

Pa’s gin-soaked breath blew in and dredged me back to life. The disgraced doc smiling victorious all up in my face.

“There he is.”

I pushed a bag of ice off my nose and sat up, finding myself in the box with Slice and Pa staring down on me like a cheap piece of entertainment.

“Didn’t know you had it in ya, Sammy.” Slice chuckled and held up his soft worn-out fists like a prizefighter. “Keep those elbows up next time, champ!”

I could still taste the blood in my mouth.

“You okay, slugger?” Pa genuinely wanted to know.

“Yeah.”

Then I remembered her. The Fedora. The Woolf.

“She still here?”

“Don’t think so,” Pa offered softly.

I said thanks and got to my feet, pushing outta my corner back towards the bar where Jiles was still mopping up the wreckage.

“You’re alive.” He looked mad as hell but like he understood the greater good.

I scanned the bar but only found the usual slugs. Jiles pegged the glance. He knew.

“She’s long gone.”

I pretended it all made sense.

“She said to say thanks.”

“You talked to her?”

“Yeah.” Jiles shrugged it off like no big thing.

“And?”

“She asked your name and I told her.” He shrugged again.

“That’s it? You get her name?”

Jiles looked annoyed, like he shoulda thought of that. Or shouldn’t have to at all given he was cleaning my blood off his limes. “All happened pretty quick, Sammy. There wasn’t a lotta talking.”

I looked around, trying to remember her. Trying to play it all back.

Then, Jiles remembered something and pulled that denim shirt of hers from behind the bar.

“She forgot her shirt. Or maybe she just didn’t want it anymore.”

I could see the bloodstains. My bloodstains soaked into the fabric as I took hold of it. The blue denim was soft and worn thin. It had snap buttons running up the middle and on the cuffs. The elbows were worn down. Like one of those shirts you just can’t throw away. Wash after wash. Year after year.

“She put it under your head when you were out cold on the floor. Kinda nice of her,” Jiles added.

I couldn’t stop staring at those stains like we were bound by fate now.

“What happened to that frat boy?”

“We kicked him to the curb,” Slice bellowed as he straddled back up to the bar. “That chump learned his lesson. Won’t be coming back here.”

My face swelled fierce. I bought the lie.

Jiles handed me a Bulleit. “Take it outside next time, bruiser.” Then he smiled like an older brother.

“I got one punch in, Jiles. One good one,” I muttered. “Never done that before.”

I swallowed the liquid gold with pride. Holding that shirt in my hands, catching the scent of a woman. I wanted to drown in that smell. And planned to all alone. But right now, I held my head high.

My first fight. Ever.

I went down swinging. I went down noble.

She had to be impressed.

She had to come back.

 

 

Tuesday, July 7th, 9:06 a.m.

 

“You don’t look so good,” said Nick.

Nick was an asshole. But Nick was an asshole who paid his share of the rent on time, so was worth the pain and dirty dishes. Nick felt better than the world. Entitled just for landing. This man was gonna be rich someday.

Guaranteeeed.

Nick bought good hipster coffee. He liked to TALK. Gab empowered radical right-wing bent. Conspiracy-infused intelligence. We sparred incredulous:

“How can you be so stupid?”

“How can you be so naïve?”

Rinse and repeat. Coffee coffee coffee. Three dirty cutting boards for one egg and some spinach, which he wouldn’t clean for days so it fell on me. I buried the pain.

He could tell I was in a bad way and dug in his hooks but there was no way I’d tell him about the girl. My hero moment. That belonged to ME.

“I had a rough night.”

I blamed the booze.

“You’re all cut up and bruised…”

I blamed the booze and some crooked concrete.

Nick told me I drank too much.

Nick was spot on.

Nick suggested I get some exercise.

Nick was spot on.

I needed to get away from Nick’s logic. I wanted to lock myself in the box but my reality alarm smashed back hard. The voices calling out:

 

(The money’s running out, Sam.)

(The money’s running out, Sam.)

(The money’s running out, Sam.)

 

So instead I vacuumed out my wimpy Chevy Volt. Punched the ignition. Lit up the app. Strapped on a smile. Five stars shining bright. Welcome to my pain…

 

 

Thursday, July 9th, 11:13 a.m.

 

Hi, Margaret?

Hi, Derek?

Hi, Hon-ji?

How long have I been driving? Oh, about a year.

Too hot? Got it.

Too loud? On it.

Too cold? For real? It’s like ninety-five degrees outside?! You got it!

Woodland Hills? [in six o’clock-traffic?!] Sounds good. Would you like a water?

Are you kidding, who doesn’t like soft rock?

Please, do not vomit in my car.

Well, the GPS says to go right…

Do not vomit in my car. PLEASE.

I’m not TRYING to go around but the road is literally closed so…

That’s weird…I was waiting at that address…the one you entered!!!!

Don’t puke!

SMILE. Soak it up and EARN those five-star bourbons.

One day I’ll strike it rich…you’ll see, Dad. One day.

 

 

Friday, July 10th, 3:19 p.m.

 

You need to think bigger.

 

I was back in the box, staring at the screen. Blinking cursor. Cursed blinking. All that white. What the hell am I going to write now? I’d already put it all out there. Seventeen months. 102,133 words. My novel. An epic psychological narrative about a man reeling from heartbreak who reclaims his life as a vigilante.

It never took off.

That’s what my agent Daphne told me. The only agent in town who’d even consider reading me cuz she went to college with my old man.

It’s too dark.

It’s too small. You need to think bigger. You need to excite a wide audience.

It’s not supposed to be for a wide audience. It’s supposed to be good.

What’s something only YOU can write? What’s original to YOU? What do YOU have to say about the world?

I’m thirty-five years old.

I weigh one hundred sixty-three pounds.

I’m five feet nine inches tall.

I grew up in Oregon surrounded by loving parents.

I spent the best seven years of my prime writing ad copy and living with a girl I was supposed to love.

Now, I live in a shoebox apartment with a soulless fascist in Glendale.

I had opportunity.

I squandered my privilege.

Sam I am.

And now I was tapped. Burnt with nothing left in the tank. Come on, Benny. Sing to me. Just one. Just one compelling idea.

Sinkholes. Maybe. Where do they lead? Who falls in?

Blinking Cursor. Custard. Cucktard.

I could hear Joe Cocker wailing about friends from the other room. A little help from my friends, right, Joe? Waxin’ poetic on someone else’s words. Tsk tsk. See, but Joe had an angle. Joe could sing.

Forget original.

I’ll just be me.

…I need the Bulleit

You need NO Bulleit.

I need water.

You need protein and a tan.

Cancer with a spin. Good cancer?

Mercy.

No, I really do need water. I stood up and cracked the box.

 

 

Slice hit me up with a toothy snarl at the bar. “Jesus. You been in there this whole time? Christ, kid. Why don’t you go write at a Starbucks or something.”

“I DESPISE Starbucks.”

“How can you despise Starbucks? All that green. And they got those Frappuccinos.” The old man licked his lips like a bad commercial.

“There’s no soul in a Starbucks, Slice. I can’t write someplace without soul.”

“So you stick yourself in that rat hole all day? That place is poison. There’s blood on that table. Literally. And you got no oxygen in there, kid. You gotta breathe. No wonder you’re all jammed up.”

“I’m not jammed up, I’m pushing through a block.”

“They got a new Coffee Bean on Colorado. With one of those cozy outdoor fire pits. How’s that for your soul, Sammy?” Slice cackled and even Pa chuckled at my expense, listening in as he sucked back the Times.

“What’s the latest, Pa?”

“Dodgers are down again. Three straight.”

I got tight. “We still got a lotta months left.”

Slice cut in. “Bellinger’s broke.”

“Don’t say that.”

“They oughta juice.”

“Please!”

Pa was feeling gracious and changed the topic. “Your nose looks better.”

Jiles was deep into the California section. I asked him for water. He piled ice into a pint, hosed it down with tap water, and handed her off. It tasted important.

Cold and necessary.

Maybe something about Demons. Priests. Demon Priests. Who fall down a sinkhole?

Jiles went back to his section and shot me a look.

“What?”

“You read the paper today?”

“No…why?”

Jiles crunched his brow like he’d read something uncomfortable. Jiles had been a cop for twenty-five years. Jiles didn’t get uncomfortable easy. He looked me in the eye and told me to sit down. Then he handed over the paper. The headline blasted:

 

3RD WOMAN ABDUCTED IN EAST LOS ANGELES

Authorities have released the name of the woman abducted Monday night in Glendale as Josie Pendleton. The 22-year-old Pasadena native was found strangled to death in a stolen Camry—

 

Josie Pendleton?

I stared at the picture of the woman and ran it down. I knew the face. But who was Josie Pendleton? The dots weren’t connecting. There was a shot of a beige Camry. The yellow tape and first responders. A dark red stain in the back seat. A smashed fedora in the corner, broken on its side.

The Fedora. The Woolf.

I stalled out. Like something choked me from inside. Jewels crossed behind me and caught the spread.

“Oh my god. That’s that girl who was…”

Even Slice got oddly quiet. Pa, too. Curious and still. My eyes drilled down on the article, desperate for information: Josie Pendleton was last seen on Monday, July 6th. Monday? That was my hero Trojan day. She was found by a jogger early Tuesday morning and had been strangled in the back of the stolen Camry. Authorities believe she was sexually assaulted but were awaiting autopsy results. Detective Lou Pinner of the Glendale Police Department was running point on the investigation.

Jiles handed me a Bulleit on the house. I wanted the skinny on Pinner.

“You’ve met him. Big, fat bald guy. With the crooked glasses…Angry most of the time. Obnoxious as all hell but a damn good detective.”

Of course. They give it to the ugliest, messiest trainwreck of a cop, Lou Pinner.

“If you want, I’ll talk to him. See what he can tell us.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I nodded and tried to hold my feelings together. But breathing got hard. Jiles nodded back, almost worried, like he’d babysat this face before.

My world started spinning. Josie Pendleton. Her name was Josie. Those fingers. Those lips whispering thank you my way. That fedora. To the Lighthouse. She was here. She was just here. Now she was never coming back. I still had her shirt. My eyes were about to break. I needed oxygen. I needed to escape. I stepped off the stool and made a break for the door.

Outside, the heat off the concrete hit me hard in the face. I stared at the train tracks.

“I never even talked to her.” I said it out loud. Quiet but out in the world. “I never even talked to her.”

My face cracked with pain. Eyes breaking. Tears pouring out. I never even talked to her. Like I had all the time in the world, like maybe tomorrow. Who was she? I didn’t even know her. Think about her family. Think about her mother. Her father. Brother. Sister. Friends. Her lovers.

You got no grieving rights.

But I had to know more. I had a new rash. A new itch to scratch. Inside, burning bright, determined to know everything there was about Josie Pendleton.

Who was this girl?

 

 

Friday, July 10th, 3:58 p.m.

 

J-O-S-I-E P-E-N-D-L-E-T-O-N

 

Back in the box.

Armed with a fresh Bulleit I hit up Facebook for intel on Josie Pendleton. Turns out we shared one mutual friend. A girl named Allison Hager. Whothehell is Allison Hager? Pin it. I’d circle back but meantime: Josie was a SoCal native. Grew up in South Pasadena and, according to her homepage, she lived in Eagle Rock and attended Pasadena City College. Her public profile was lean. Personal details scant. The pictures were mostly reposts of assholes smiling proud over dead lions and other cruelty to animals banners. Oceans of plastic. Save the world stuff. Along with some events connected to her college art fair. But that was about it.

Her Instagram account had been frozen and Twitter was a bust. She wasn’t on LinkedIn. A Google images search turned up a bunch of shots of her at what looked to be some kinda charity event for an organization called Backyard Dreams. And there was a spattering of other pics. Smiling at a charity run. Wrapped in the arms of her friends at a high school party.

Smiling. Beaming with life.

I stared at her denim shirt lying on my desk and pulled it close to my face, smelling it like a piece of treasure. Sweat and perfume fused right. I hoisted it up high and the sleeves dropped down on either side. Swinging all lifelike.

I thought about her skin inside those sleeves.

Then I laid the shirt out on the desk carefully, gazing at the only tangible piece I had left of her.

I needed more. So I dug into Allison Hager. Based on our lack of mutual friends, I ruled out any high school connection. Same with college. And on account she looked almost ten years younger. Or maybe she just aged right. Better. Wait, was she the obnoxious girl I met at Andrew’s play three years ago? Or was it at the Barnsdall wine tasting event? I volleyed the theories until there was a knock on the door and Jiles stuck his head in.

“He’s here.”

 

 

Detective Lou Pinner landed large and sweaty at the bar. Pinner was fat. He wore broad glasses that were too wide for his face and deflected his eyes. He looked like an angry lost man who ate too much meat and boozed big.

Jiles squeezed him for details with a fresh pint and his word we wouldn’t tweet or talk to the press. Slice, Jewels, and I were already leaning in for details on Josie’s case.

“Sonofabitch stole some lady’s car outta Eagle Rock. We don’t know where he abducted her but looks like he raped her in the back seat. Put a plastic bag over her head then strangled her with an extension cord.”

It was ugly concise. Jewels peeled off. Guess she’d heard enough. But Jiles didn’t skip a beat and fell back into step.

“Got any leads? Witnesses?”

Pinner grunted. “Nothing so far. No actionable prints. We’re still sourcing traffic cams, ATMs. And running DNA…so far no hits in the system. But…we think there’s a connection to two other recent murders.”

“What other murders?”

“Girls. All in their early twenties.”

Slice chimed in. “Like some kinda serial killer? In Glendale?!” I had to agree. It sounded impossible. But Pinner didn’t flinch. Just shrugged it all off.

“The morons down at the station are calling him the Glendale Grabber. So far he’s targeted three random women on the east side, if we include Josie Pendleton. All of them in their early twenties. Same MO. First he steals a car, abducts them at night, then rapes them in the back seat and finishes them off with a bag and the cord.”

“The Glendale Grabber? What kinda stupid name is that?” Slice shot me a look. Amen, Slice.

“What’s the time spread?” Jiles asked.

“First murder was May 4. Natalie Johnson—nursing student working after hours. Just moved out from Ohio. The other, Janet Pacci was abducted on June twenty-third on her way home from a shift at Burger King around nine p.m. No witnesses. They found her crumpled in the back seat of a stolen red Toyota in a parking lot off Fletcher and San Fernando.”

Slice hung off every word, charged at this local development. Pinner slammed back his pint and his phone chimed with a text. He glanced at the screen, all impatient.

“You said you had something, Jiles?”

“Josie was here the day she was killed.” The cop sparked up from his phone, intrigued. “She was getting hassled by some guy until Sammy the bull in shining armor over here stepped in and got his ass handed to him.”

Pinner twisted my way, trying to square it. Slice jumped in, eager to lay out the sordid tale that ended with him and Pa pulling my broken face off the floor. The fat cop howled with laughter like some kinda drunk hyena. “Anyone get a picture of this guy?”

We all chimed no.

“He pay with a credit card, Jiles?”

“I’ll check.”

“We’ll run it down. But honestly…doesn’t feel like our guy. Whoever killed these girls was sick. Back alley peeper scum. Not some college punk.” He swallowed back the rest of the pint. Lumbered off the stool and made for the door. “Gotta go. Autopsy results on Josie just came in. Thanks for the beer, Jiles. Send me that guy’s name.”

“Can I come with you?” The words just spewed out. I’d never seen a dead body before and I didn’t want to begin with Josie Pendleton. But I didn’t have a choice. I’d never see her again. This was my last and only shot. And something dark and unhealthy inside me compelled me to step up.

The fat man stopped and looked me in the eyes, searching to see what kind of sick person wanted to see this murdered girl on a slab.

“I’m…I’m going to write an article about her.”

“You can’t write shit,” Pinner barked. “This is an open case.”

“Not now,” I countered, “but after you find the guy…I’m gonna write an article about it. I’ll write about you, too, if you want.”

I prayed his ego would cave but Pinner shook his head. All dubious.

So I pointed at my broken face.

“I didn’t even get a chance to talk to her.”

He shot Jiles a look.

“He’s good people, Lou,” Jiles remarked. “Trust me. The kid wants to be a writer. Show him the thing. Show him how the world really works.”

This brought Pinner an ugly kind of joy. “Think you can handle it?”

I felt a push deep in my gut.

I did not.

I was terrified. “Of course.”

The cop grinned like a bully in a schoolyard.

“Better make me a hero,” he said as he pushed open the door. “C’mon. Get in the car.”

 

 

Friday, July 10th, 4:39 p.m.

 

Red lights flared and the alarm screamed as Pinner stormed through the metal detector, waving at a security guard he called Gordon.

“He’s with me.”

Gordon sized me up some.

Gordon was black with a smooth cracked face that had to be over seventy years old.

Gordon looked frail for any kind of security detail but you could tell he’d been at this gig a long time. Guarding ghosts and their shells. He caught my wide eyes. The short steps. He looked at Pinner.

“Tosser?”

Pinner nodded and Gordon smiled, like they were in on some kinda inside joke. “Well,” the guard added, “welcome to the Los Angeles County Coroner.”

I pretended not to care or understand as I emptied my pockets into the red plastic basket and passed through the gates of the morgue.

Pinner laid it out.

“We call first timers tossers cuz they always toss up their lunch.”

“Swell.”

“Be sure to check out Skeletons in the Closet on your way out,” Gordon chimed in.

“Skeletons in the closet?”

Pinner shook his shoulders. “They got a gift shop now. Body bags. Crime scene tape. Any chance to make a county buck.”

Pinner stormed down the hallway without waiting as I scrambled to collect my phone and wallet. I nodded thanks to Gordon and marveled at how simple and quiet his life seemed. Standing guard above the shelves down below.

We hit the elevator.

We went down.

I felt that push in my guts again.

The doors opened.

The hallway was bright. Brighter than I expected.

The air smelled raw. Ugly and still.

Pinner grinned.

“You okay?”

I shrugged it off, all no big thing. On its face the joint was no different than a hospital. Sterile. Bright. Some people ambling around in scrubs. Looked like scrubs, anyway. There was no smell of death. There was nothing profound or touching or at all intriguing. Just sterile calm. A hallway filled with sour sadness and the spirit of rot.

Pinner rounded a corner and we walked into examination room 3A. The sight of the shelves hit me hard. Those steel covered human filing cabinets. Stacked on top of each other. Just as I’d expected but still my mouth slipped open a bit, taking them in.

“Hey, Marge.”

Pinner spoke to a woman slouched over a sink washing something I didn’t want to see with one of those huge wobbly overheard faucets that looked like they were going to blast out of control at any time.

“Hey, Pinner.” She turned to dry her hands and saw me. “Jesus. On this one?”

“Relax. He’s good.”

“Good how?”

“Trust me, Marge.”

“Is he an actor?”

“I’m not an act—”

“It doesn’t matter what he is. He’s with me. He’s good to go. Come on, let’s do this.”

Marge huffed away and pulled a file from a wall holder. She shoved it in Pinner’s chest and stepped up towards those damn steel shelves. Then threw her weight into the handle and hauled it open.

The feet came sliding out first. They looked almost soggy and blue as they came ripping towards us. The rest of her naked body followed suit and lodged tight with a click that sent a shimmer through her, jostling her skin and breasts as if there was life in there still.

But there wasn’t.

And there she was.

Josie Pendleton.

Still. Silent. Naked and dead.

I stepped back like this was all some big violation, some big car accident of a mistake. I had no right to see her like this.

Pinner’s eyes bore into me like that massive frail ego of his was on the line and screaming, I vouched.

I muscled up and stepped forward.

Her mouth hung slack and open. Her lips purple. Soft and saggy. Abandoned. Her eyelids were shut but there was a gap under her right side exposing a piece of her yellowing eyeball. I got a bit closer and stared at her skin. The light made her look almost green. You could see the veins in her breasts, broken and starting to rot under her skin. There was a tattoo on her upper right thigh. Some sort of a cloud shape with a hand and an arrow piercing through it. I needed to remember it. Carbon copy this image. This privilege. This part of her…

Staring at her naked body felt wrong.

It felt like a betrayal.

I looked away but it burned my memory like a sin. I felt that push in my guts. Something deeper and stronger inside me pushed back. Like I was here to help her.

Pinner crouched closer to her throat, eyeing the blue and purple bruises, curious.

“Premortem bruising from suffocation.” Marge said flatly.

“Same cord?” he asked.

“The ligature patterns match but we didn’t find any black fibers like the others.”

Pinner kept it in neutral like nothing more than a math problem. “And these? Defensive wounds?” He motioned to three dark red scratches on her arm—like someone’s fingernails had raked her forearm.

“No. Those are older. Based on the scabbing, I’d say about three days before she was killed. But we didn’t find any trace DNA in the tissue.”

“Three days?” I barked at the inconsistency. “I thought this was a random attack?” They looked surprised to hear my voice, or that I was even there.

“There’s more on her back, too,” Marge carried on, then rolled her over like Josie was just some hundred-pound loaf of bread. Someone’s fingernails had raked at her soft flesh, leaving a collection of crimson scratches across her back.

“So she was bangin’ Wolverine? Doesn’t track with our timeline.” He scanned her file, uninterested.

I played it through in my head, trying to catch up to with the game. “So someone else did those?”

Marge just nodded.

Pinner kept at the file. “And she was raped? Like the others?”

“Yea. SAK’s already been sent to the lab but…I didn’t see any semen. And there was considerably less tearing.”

I burned inside. Buried it down. But Pinner perked up at this headline.

“So he wears a rubber this time?” The man twisted his head, curious.

“Comb turned up some disparate hairs,” she added. “We’ll run ’em, see if they match the other two.”

“Maybe it’s not the same guy,” I said.

“Or maybe he’s just getting smarter,” Marge pointed out. “Covering his tracks.”

Pinner wasn’t sold. He stared at her body and a sliver of emotion pushed through his face. His thin lips growing tight. I could tell he was grinding his teeth. So the fat man was human, after all.

I fell into step and looked at her broken shell. Pinner caught my gaze. “You wanna touch her? Go ahead.”

“Chrissake, Pinner,” Marge rightly objected.

This was way wrong. But this was also my only chance. I reached out and touched her fingers. They were cold and felt almost wet. Steel waves shot up through my arms. Rippled down into my gut. I buried the push. The push pushed back.

“Ya tosser.”

And then Pinner smiled like he’d won some ugly bet, watching my guts spray all over that steel sink.

 

 

Monday July 13th, 3:06 a.m.

 

They weren’t nightmares.

Those images of Josie’s slack mouth. Those cold fingers crawling along my skin. Her body surrounded by darkness. The denim floating without a head.

They were just flashing and spinning inside me. Smashing to the surface any chance they got.

I refused to be haunted.

No.

I was absorbed, that was all. And it was too damn hot and the AC hissed every nine seconds, so I stared sweaty at the ceiling in bed letting the drips hit the pillow. I stared alone. Stirring. Swirling. Like the more I thought about her, the more alive I became and refused to sleep.

I dressed and drove to Fred 62 in Los Feliz, smashing a black and white milkshake.

Three a.m. medicine.

Tomorrow was a new day.

Tomorrow I’d flush this crush and start fresh.

 

 

Monday, July 13th, 11:19 a.m.

 

Tomorrow ranked worse.

Josie’s obituary flashed fierce in the California section.

 

Our hearts are broken…

It is with the utmost sadness…

A beautiful soul…

A life cut short…

 

In lieu of flowers I had to do something with this pain.

 

 

Wednesday, July 15th, 12:04 p.m.

 

Broken souls in dark clothes crowded the Forest Lawn grass around Josie’s coffin. The punishing California sun flared. It was hot and sad.

I stood far back in the shade of an oak tree. The ultimate outsider. A peeping tom with noble intentions. A hundred sixty-three people surrounded the box. Josie Pendleton was dearly beloved.

I searched for a familiar face and came up empty. I couldn’t tell who her parents were, though suspected her father was the sixty-five-year-old looking guy at the front in a heavy wool suit. Punishing himself in the heat. His expression stone cold, old school stoic. The kind of man who was saving the pain for later. All for himself, alone. Clasping his elbow was a tiny and tidy conservative looking woman in her late fifties. She wasn’t crying now, but even from far away I could see she’d been at it for days. The mother. Wiped clean from anguish. Bone dry.

A minister garbled out some bullshit about God. As if Josie might be better off with him now. Ranting and pretending like she wasn’t rotting inside that box only fifteen feet away.

Him. The collared hypocrisy.

Next up was a twenty-something girl in a spaghetti strap dress clinging to a guitar and a plastic red stool. She perched herself down near the flowers and started strumming some melody meant to destroy people’s hearts. It worked. Something about angels and love and always being together. C minor pain. This wasn’t a celebration of life. This was a cruel reminder of the monsters among us.

The service broke up and people ambled around the green, so I figured this was my window of opportunity. I stepped out of the shade and walked towards the congregation. Head hung low.

I kept sad and played the good soldier. No one paid me much attention. But I wanted them to see how I understood. How I felt a fraction of their pain. Hungry for just a slice of empathy I knew I didn’t deserve…

I stared at the beautiful flowers.

A woman with fierce bangs and big red lips locked on me, looking lost, and she wrapped me in a hug like some crazy aunt. She moved on, her work complete. I ambled undercover and caught the gaze of a woman staring at the flowers. She looked about thirty. She looked like a skinny sea gull, ruffled up in the flock with gangly long stems, blinking hopeful and lost.

Wait.

It was my Facebook amigo. Allison Hager. Who the hell was Allison Hager? Mike’s friend—? Coachella—? From the Lovely—? I rolodexed hard but came up empty. Nevertheless, I had a lead. I had an opening. It was time to dance.

“Allison?”

“…Sam?”

I opened strong with a hug. Wrapped her tight, and she doubled down with a tight squeeze in what felt like ripped yoga arms. I held on for a moment too long in part because I wanted to be on Team Josie Sad, in part because I hoped maybe holding onto this woman might shake some memory loose. And if I’m being honest because she smelled so damn pretty. Blindsiding me, reminding me, I really do need to hug people more often.

She stepped back and looked me in the eye. We rocked the appropriate sad-doesn’t-this-suck-we’re-here looks then I bled into the awkward defense maneuver.

“It’s good to see you. Been forever.”

“How’ve you been?! I didn’t know you were even friends with Josie…”

I shrugged and shaded the truth. “We weren’t all that close but I was…well…I really wanted to be here.”

She shook her head like it was too awful to even comprehend the events that led us to this graveyard. I volleyed it right back as if I had the right to.

“That’s sweet of you. Are you coming to the reception?”

“Are you going?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Where is it again?”

“Her aunt’s house in South Pas’.”

“Right.” I pulled out my phone—aka the bait. “My car’s getting worked on…I guess I could Uber there.”

“Oh.” She looked surprised and caught off guard. “Well…I’m driving. I can take you.”

“You sure?”

“Yah. We gotta catch up…I wanna hear all about Karen. I haven’t talked to her in ages…How is she?”

Bam! KAREN. Crystal now: Allison and Karen. The connection made. The world’s foremost perfect sister. Karen had perfect teeth. A perfect husband. A perfect life. A nurse mending souls and making the world a better place. A genuinely kind and beautiful person. I hated her. But mostly, really, I loved her. She was my younger sister, after all. I hadn’t talked to her in a while, either. I was sure she was fine. She always was.

“I haven’t talked to her in a while, either. I’m sure she’s fine. She always is.”

“I miss her. Is she still in Portland?”

“Yup. Still with Paul. Workin’ at the hospital.”

“She’s the best. And what about your parents? Everyone good?”

My parents were good. Better than good. They did everything right. Provided means. Taught me manners. Filled me with twenty-first century promise.

You can do whatever you want in this world, Sam.

Work hard play hard, son. My father hounded the mantra which only made my current slump all the more distressful.

They failed to understand my creative fueled U turn. How could you pull the plug? After all that hard work. Abandon your paycheck. Your health insurance. A pretty girl who cooked. I was an island to them now, drifting further and further away from reason into a sea of trouble.

But they were good, I assured Allison.

She smiled, happy to hear it.

And I smiled, buzzing victorious. It was probably wrong. But I had a lead. An asset in Josie’s world, and one I intended to heartlessly exploit.

 

 

We hit the 110 speedway, snaking out the east side of downtown towards South Pasadena. Allison drove her tight grey Audi fast like she knew the bends well. I gave her the boring scoop on Karen. Happy fine. She hammered me with questions about my own life since I quit advertising. I lied my ass off bandaging my failure with fake gigs. Magazine articles, upcoming potential TV shows and important deadlines. Padding my ego just long enough til she got quiet and I could ask her about Josie.

“So, how did you know Josie?”

“We volunteered at Backyard Dreams together.”

“Backyard what?”

“It’s a charity. They fix and design playgrounds for kids with disabilities. We worked a lot of the same events. Like fundraiser galas. Charity walks.”

“Sounds noble.”

Allison shrugged it off, like she didn’t want the props. “How did you know her?”

“I met her at The Damned Lovely.”

“You mean that nasty dive bar in Glendale? I went there once.” The girl winced. “That place is creepy weird.”

Eeeasy, Allison. I smiled bright with defense. “I live nearby so I like to grab a drink there once in a while.”

“Why was Josie there?”

“Probably why most people go to a bar. Grab a drink. Actually, she was reading a book at the bar.”

“Wait. Josie went to read in that dump?” I shrugged the truth. “That doesn’t sound like her. When was this?”

“She was there a bunch. Last time I saw her was on the day she was, you know…” I trailed off, unwilling to voice the obvious.

Allison gripped the wheel and I could see her fingers clasping white and tight. “So…wait. That’s where she was coming from the night she was killed?”

I shrugged, compliant.

“You were one of the last people to see her alive?”

“It was earlier in the day, but I guess in some ways.”

The car weaved right, like she was having a hard time staying in the lane. “What did you guys talk about?”

“We didn’t really talk much. Like I said, she kinda kept to herself. I mean, I…” Her eyes dug in. “Some guy was buggin’ her and I told him to back off.”

“What guy?”

“Some frat boy asshole. He was hitting on her and I asked him to back off.”

Allison was concerned and I could see her spinning out inside. “Did you tell the police? Maybe that was the guy who—”

“I really don’t think so, Allison. But I did talk to the police and they’re looking into it, but they don’t think so, either. This guy at the bar was a total douche. There’s no way he was a serial killer.”

The Audi swerved outta the lane now. “Serial killer? What are you talking about?” A white Lexus blared her horn from behind.

Shit. Right. No one outside the department knew that.

“Nothing. Nothing. I’m…I just think crazy sometimes.”

She regained control of the vehicle but the air got tight. Allison drove in silence. I tried to take the stink off it all and opened up about Karen and the good ol’ days back in Oregon, but I’d poisoned some kind of well and Allison clammed up hard and uncomfortable.

We parked on a steep side street and walked up to a South Pas mansion on a hill in complete silence.

We stepped inside and found the buzzing crowd of well-dressed mourners sloshing booze and eating hors d’oeuvres. Allison said she was going to use the restroom, disappearing like she was eager to part ways.

 

 

I kept my head down and eyes up. You could feel the old school Pasadena money in the room. Bold fat beams of wood overhead. Old fart art on the wall like rip-off Constables and Degas. Pictures of grandkids smiling on sailboats.

The rooms were filled with healthy, happy people.

I smashed three deviled eggs for fuel. It was time to dig in. Time to investigate. Time for a burst. I slinked to the bar and pinched a glass of the Cabernet on offer. Sweet dark swill, baby.

I looked around the room: fancy suits. Beautiful faces stuck in an ugly present.

I was an imposter.

I was a spy.

I felt glorious.

I was the inner circle.

I worked the room, eager to soak up every piece of Josie’s backstory and caught some shreds of conversation about her Women In Art classes at college. Her love of eighties’ sitcoms. Her passion for charity work. That trip she took to Paris right after college. Her infectious laugh. Nothing but the good.

I caught a framed picture of a teenage Josie clasping a snowboard on a mountain, surrounded by two people I recognized from the service. One of ’em was guitar girl. The other was a tall, good-looking guy I pegged as her brother.

“I took that picture.”

Some whiskey-soaked air blasted my flank. I craned to see the source: a tired and worn-out mouth attached to a saucy Mrs. Robinson smile.

“We were in Mammoth over Thanksgiving weekend. Those three were at each other’s throats the entire holiday.”

“They look happy.”

“I’m Gloria, Josie’s aunt.” Then, she whispered like some kinda conspirator, “The fun aunt.”

“I’m Sam. Nice to meet you.”

“How did you know Josie?”

“To be honest, I didn’t really.” Her eyes got tight but since my ride with Allison I’d rehearsed the new angle in my head. “They say you show up to funerals for the people who are there, not the ones that are gone, right?”

She bought it and smiled saucy again. “Nice to meet you, Sam.”

We kept up the pleasantries. She talked close and reeked boozy. But it wasn’t tragic, it was endearing. My kind of sorrow. She kept clawing at my shoulder with perfect glossy nails like a predator.

“What do you do?”

Goddamn LA. Even at a funeral.

“I’m a writer.”

“What do you write?”

Something about her boozy glare made me feel comfortable enough to tell her the truth. Like my kinda people. “I just finished a book.”

“What kind of book?”

“The unpublished-on-my-hard-drive kind.”

She laughed with a bellow that stung my gut but I wheeled restraint, reminding myself to be professional. On a mission, after all.

“So…tell me about Josie.”

She stared at that picture on the wall, drifting into it. “Josie was a force. That day on the hill…She had just taken up snowboarding. Her brother, David, was outshining her on the slopes but she refused to back down when he dared her to go down the Grand Gully—this nasty black diamond run. So she spilled over the edge of the slope, fearless, completely out of control, and showed him up. And she also broke her wrist. Daring. Bold. Courageous. That was Josie. She wasn’t afraid of anything—” She started welling up with pain and tears, trying to fight it all off with a plastered smile. “They better find this monster.”

“They will.” I reassured her as she drifted off to find something to wipe away her tears.

I ambled through the crowd, hoping to find Allison and buy back some charity. I couldn’t find her and the room was thinning fast. I could feel the glares and stares coming in hard. Who’s that guy? So I called a car and picked up the Volt from the cemetery. But I was charged. Compelled to report back to Benny and the slugs at the bar about the day.

They were gonna love this shit.

 

 

Wednesday July 15th, 6:12 p.m.

 

The Pluckin Strummers were flappin’ when I walked through the door. The City of Angels’ foremost ukulele club. Of all the joints in all the cities I gotta pick the one who hosts the bloody Pluckin Strummers.

Foremost, my ass.

Jiles caught my snarl and smiled. The man loved the Strummers and forced us regs to put up with the scratch every week. How does a badass ex-cop, a man with taste and experience, a man who understands the importance of Sam Cooke, put up with this squeal?

Slice hit me with a collegiate nod. He hated this scratch, too. I ordered a Bulleit and unloaded my tale. He was rapt. The perfect audience. A sucker for an ugly hero. Then I hit the box. I needed to write. I needed to expel my experience.

The players.

The place.

The ride.

The backstory on Josie.

I’d had no right to be there, but it only made it more exhilarating. Soaking up the pain under that cloak of a lie. Pretending to be a member of the broken Josie club. I felt like I belonged.

An hour later, I cracked the box and braved the Strummers. Ordered another burst that slipped down speedy and smooth. I caught Lily on the corner barstool with a stack of papers. Lily was our resident council. We called her Lily the Lawyer cuz she wore floral patterns. Roses. Tulips. Irises. Never lilies. Had to hand it to Slice for that ingenious tag. She came in most nights after nine.

“Heya, Lily.”

“Sam.”

“Working late again?”

She shrugged it off like she didn’t have a choice. Lily was like bad scotch—a little strong and off putting upfront but once she got into your bones quite the delightful presence.

“How’s the little one?”

“Sleeps, shits, and eats.”

Lily was tough, tight, and liked to booze. Rum and Diet Coke with lime. She worked cases hard through the night with an office three blocks down, and a luckless stay-at-home-husband who looked after their kid. We got the feeling she didn’t take to being a mom much. We got that feeling because she told us last Christmas when Jiles bought us a round and we all got drunk singing “Silver Bells” together. Lily was cold and fierce and I adored her. She floated me gigs once and a while. File this. Write some copy. Paralegal blather that paid straight.

The Strummers broke the set. Slice and I burst some claps.

“Hey, Lily, how can we get Jiles to stomp out the Strummers?”

“I’m sick of that jukebox. You need to open your mind to new things, Sam.”

I nodded to her stack of files. “How’s the law?”

“She’s a bear.”

“Got anything for me?”

“Maybe in a few days.”

“You know where to find me.”

I swilled my drink dry and felt my reality piss back in with a whisper. The money’s running out, Sssssammy.

I hadn’t hit the Volt in days. I needed to earn some cake. I ordered one more shot of Bulleit, slammed her back, and pulled out my car keys.

Jiles shot me a crooked look.

I blamed it on the Pluckin Strummers.

 

 

Thursday, July 16th, 3:11 p.m.

 

Hi, James? I’m Sam.

Hi, Rebecca? I’m Sam.

Hi, Yolanda? I’m Sam.

I drove and slept and ate and dreamed of Josie on the slab.

Rinse and repeat this punishing obsession.

 

 

I hit the box. The silence was strict. The bar was empty until eleven. I needed product. I needed pages. I needed content. I needed a goddamn idea. The tank was dry so I wrote about Josie. About her funeral. The faces and pain. The uncomfortable delight derived from it all. I steered clear of the booze. I called it discipline.

I drove and slept and ate and dreamed of Josie on the slab.

I hit the box.

I wrote scratch.

I was a hack with discipline.

Rinse and repeat.

 

 

Monday, July 20th, 3:13 p.m.

 

Finally, Pinner rolled in and grunted hello to Jiles. He saw me and shot over a cold look. He could tell I was hungry for an update and needed to feed.

“Where you at on the case, Lou? I haven’t heard from you. There’s nothing online. It’s like nobody cares, like they’ve just moved on to some other—”

“Jesus, Sammy, let the man sit down first. Back off a little,” Slice barked.

“Back off? I’ve been backed off for like a week. Even I know the chances of solving a homicide after forty-eight hours without a lead suspect only get worse and worse. I mean, I figure you got someone you’re looking at, right?”

“Go fuck yourself, Sammy,” Pinner snapped.

Jiles stepped over with a glare that screamed louder than words. It wasn’t nothin when Jiles stepped up. I could tell he understood the look behind Pinner’s face. Attuned to the pain.

“Trail’s cold kid.”

“Already?”

Pinner swallowed his lager and laid it out. “Rape kit’s a bust. We’re still waiting on the DNA but no matching prints. Forensics take time. But there’s no witnesses. We’ve been all over it. Checked cameras within a three-block radius of where we think she was abducted. We checked cameras outside her apartment. Up the street. Down the street. We checked all of it. It was a random attack. All three of them were. You know what random means? It means there’s no pattern. Whoever this guy was, was smart cuz he picked an area that had no cameras. No pedestrians. No trail.”

“But what about those scratches?”

“What about ’em? She wasn’t killed by some crazy ex-boyfriend. We already cleared it. Talked to her family. Friends. Checked her phone records. She wasn’t seeing anyone. Nothing regular. Forget the scratches. That happened three days before she was murdered…” Pinner’s nails dug into the bar. He pushed off hard and lumbered into the pisser.

Jiles waved me over. “He’s into it, Sammy. You gotta trust him. Pinner’s good. Sometimes these things take time.”

“I just think there might be more to go on—”

“Cuz you don’t know what it’s like,” Jiles snapped. “These are the hardest ones. Attacks like these? We have to go on evidence. Evidence a bunch of morons on a jury can’t push back against. So we work the DNA. Fingerprints. Cameras. Witnesses. Without those? We gotta cast wider. Look at motive. Drill down on lovers. Ambition. Cash. She drops—who stands to gain? When that runs dry, we’re in real trouble. Because now we got a predator. We know these guys, they’re a species. A type. Something in their brain, like a switch snapping circuits on and off, on and off and it’s all they can see. Wired tight, fixin’ a target. Brunette. Soft brown eyes with tight tits. And inside, this monster says: THAT ONE. They think about her. They follow her. They jerk off to her. It’s all they can do until they snap and say now. Now I need the skin. With any luck they get impatient. And leave a trail. But the good ones know better. They cover their tracks. They know the roads we’ll take. So they lay in wait. Quiet. Which means it’s harder to source. We get spun around. Running leads that feed into nothing. And then guess what happens?”

“What?”

“Another one drops. Only now this one burns bright. Worse even. Just when you think it wasn’t possible but now we got another one and she was only fourteen and he ripped her into pieces with a Cutco breadknife.

“And then another.

“And then they stack and stack and something inside us cracks so we pound booze and weave home willing ourselves, PRAYING—praying on all fours, on our cold bathroom tile, alone, where our wife won’t catch us, where PLEASE GOD our kids won’t witness the pain we’re in—rambling for a break, a lead, a tell, any goddamn thing, praying into some godless space that maybe tomorrow…maybe tomorrow we’ll ache a little less. Just a little less and find these monsters.”

Jiles stopped talking and took a deep breath, like he needed to step outta something dark, and I could hear the air spewing out of his nose. “So back off, a little. He’s workin’.” Jiles stepped away to fix a Manhattan for table twelve.

It was speeches like these, bursts of his past and little shrugs of hard-fought acceptance, which reminded me why I loved this man so much.

Pinner lumbered back to the bar. The poor bastard was run tight. Like he was burning underneath. I skated the case and talked Dodgers. It all felt soft and sad. Pinner was a dick, a contemptible glutton with terrible morals, but even I felt bad for the guy. After all, he stood up for something that still mattered.

Justice. Old school, beautiful justice.

We didn’t talk about Josie.

I bought him some more booze.

 

 

Tuesday, July 21st, 4:55 p.m.

 

Life pressed on.

Word went public about the Glendale Grabber. The world’s worst named serial killer. Three girls so far.

My fixation only festered.

That denim shirt burning bright.

Those scratches.

Three days before the attack.

Whothehell scratched her like that?

Maybe in my heart I knew it wasn’t connected to the murder. But somehow I didn’t care. I wanted the truth. Even if it was just some guy she was sleeping with, I felt compelled to know who. Who got the goods? Who got to touch her warm skin?

This was a private obsession.

My envy was disgusting and I was more than okay with that.

I refused to clean it up. To tailor the edges.

This was pure. And I was going to dig deep into the root of my obsession because it was mine alone. I mean, I needed something to believe in. Something to wake up to. Something to want.

I took action and texted our Facebook friendly Allison Hager.

I opened formal. Despite the circumstances it was great seeing you the other day. Wanna grab drinks sometime?

Those three promising dots flared instantly.

 

Love to! when/where?

 

How about the Damned Lovely? I was gonna go there in honor of Josie. Maybe this Thursday at 8?

 

k

 

She hit me back with a “k.” The lowest common denominator of digital communication. Maybe she was driving. A moment with her boss. On a call. I gave her the benefit of the text doubt.

 

Look forward to it.

 

 

A smiley face rebound. An uptick of respect. This was victory.

 

 

Thursday, July 23rd, 7:56 p.m.

 

I decided early on it was important not to sleep with Allison Hager.

It would only complicate things.

I needed to think straight with intention and boozy charisma.

I was pretty sure she didn’t want to sleep with me either, but then again, those three dots popped up so fast I couldn’t help but smell a whiff of want.

The door slipped open wafting heat and sunshine, and Allison rolled in wearing a slim red sundress and a loose ponytail. She had broad shoulders and seemed taller than the last time we met. Formidable. Her collarbones were on magnificent display. I played it cool like, like I didn’t want to devour every piece of her, and we smiled like friends as I offered to buy her a glass of wine.

“I think I need something a little stronger. They make a good rusty nail?”

This was going to be harder than I thought.

“The best.”

Jewels rolled up to our table, sizing up Allison. She shot me a look, almost surprised I was sitting/knew/able to talk to a woman like the one so poised sitting across from me but god bless her, reserved her comments for later.

We ordered up. Settled in with that awkward look in the eye ready for battle. I flared more lies about my any-minute-now successful writing career and steered back to tangibles like my annoying roommate and appetite for Cronenberg films in December.

“How long have you been out here?”

“Like seven years,” she said.

We danced the veritable LA checklist. Zip codes, jobs, and whether we’d come to terms with living in this beautiful beast.

Lou Reed’s voice bubbled out into the air calling it a perfect day, and Allison looked a little confused like she knew the song but couldn’t place it.

“Lou Reed.”

“Is that who this is? I know this song, but I didn’t know the name, you know? Like I’ve heard it before but…”

“If you’re ever looking for music that can ignite something inside you, I highly recommend Lou Reed.”

She smiled skeptical.

“Seriously. His Transformer album is astounding. I mean…at first it sounds, kinda awkward and glam but then, it gets into your bones. Listen to it loud and alone and when you want to just break away from something. It’ll move you, trust me.”

Allison smiled. She had a dimple on the right side of her chin. But it didn’t peek out when she laughed, only when she was mildly confused about something, like she looked now. Curious. Like—why the hell are we listening to Lou Reed in this nasty bar, anyway? Then, as if she couldn’t contain it any longer, her eyes danced around the tired room and sad faces.

“So…this is where you met Josie?”

“Yeah. She came in from time to time. Sat at the bar. By herself usually.”

“She came here all alone? That’s so weird.”

“Why?”

“It just doesn’t seem like her.”

I shrugged. “She usually read a book at the bar.”

Allison shuddered a little like none of this made any sense. So I pounced.

“This might sound kinda weird but when she was here, I noticed she had some pretty big scratches on her arm. Like three big ones right on her forearm—” I dragged my hands across my arm to indicate the pattern and severity.

She shot me a confused look. “Scratches?”

“Yeah. They looked pretty deep…I just got to wondering…was Josie in any kind of trouble?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Do you know who might have scratched her like that?”

“I have no idea.”

We stewed in that oddness, staring at each other. Allison squirmed, uneasy at the line of questioning. But then she tilted her head, like some jagged memory came flooding in.

“I guess she had been acting kinda weird lately. At the charity, I asked her if anything was wrong and she skirted the question, but I could tell something was bothering her so I didn’t let it go.”

“What did she say?”

“She played it off like I was crazy to even ask. Except…at one point, she looked sad. Like, off. She turned and said the weirdest thing. She said: ‘This place is rotten.’”

“What place was rotten?”

“The charity. She said Backyard Dreams was rotten. When I asked what she was talking about she got pretty cagey—didn’t wanna get into it. That was all I could ever get out of her. It was so strange. I mean. They fix playgrounds for kids. What’s so rotten about that?”

“Wait, you think this has anything to do with what happened to her?”

“I don’t know. I guess not. I mean, the police all say it was this crazy rapist on the loose.”

“Yea, but did you tell them? Maybe there’s more to it, maybe she discovered something and someone found out and so they pretended to kill her like this guy’s been doing…”

I trailed off cuz Allison stared at her rusty nail with wide sad eyes that suddenly filled with tears. She sat there frozen, letting them well up and break, flooding down her cheeks. Then she looked at me, coldly.

“Why are you asking me these questions, Sam? Why did you want to have drinks with me tonight?”

Over at the bar, Pa and Slice caught her sharp tone. Even Lily looked up.

“I wanted to see you.”

“To talk about Josie?”

“Not just Josie. I didn’t mean to upset you—”

“Why did you want to meet me here?”

“I seriously like this bar. I thought it would be nice to…I don’t know…honor her a little.”

“Honor her. Here? This place is depressing. What happened to Josie was sad and horrific and I don’t understand why you’re talking about scratches on her arm, why you’re asking me about her…”

“I’m sorry.”

Allison’s eyes bore into me. Like they’d figured out some ugly truth. “Did you even know her?”

Fuck it. Time to bleed the truth. “No. I never even talked to her. I hardly said one word to her. I sat here and stared at her, wondering what kind of person she was. Who she was in this world…Then some guy started hitting on her and something in me snapped so I stepped in and my got my ass handed to me. I’d never even been in a fight before, but I felt proud of myself for the first time in a long time, like I’d done something meaningful. I never saw her again. Kept hoping she’d come back here and then I heard she’d been killed. That’s when I got sucked up in all this, and to be honest, I just haven’t been able to put it away or think about much else.”

“There’s nothing about this place that honors who Josie was or what she stood for in this world.”

“It’s not just her, I wanted to see you too, Allison.”

She grabbed her purse, and stood tall. “I don’t believe you.”

She crossed past the listless seals soaking up the drama at the bar and burst outside.

The room got quiet.

Lily straightened up and represented, “She’s got a point, Sam. She was friends with the woman and all you wanna do is talk about her murder. What do you expect?”

Slice chimed in, “Yea, why do you care so much? You didn’t even know this girl.”

“Because I wanted to know her, Slice. Because I didn’t get a chance to know her. Why’s that so hard for people to understand?”

“You had your chance when she was sitting right there at the bar and you let it go. You’re just bitter that you didn’t do anything about it sooner.”

“The hell I didn’t! When that chump was hitting on her I was the one who stepped up.”

“The guy knocked you flat on your ass, Sam. You weren’t some hero, some knight in shining armor. You just feel guilty—guilty that you sat there and ogled her, hiding in that back room instead of manning up and speaking to her. It’s your own fault. You can’t take it back. And now, she’s dead. That’s that. So let it go already, get on with your life. You can’t go back…”

I wanted to scream and kick Slice in the face for being right. But instead I walked outside into the heat and hit the tracks along San Fernando. I walked angry and lost. Like I should have been ashamed of my obsession, but instead, instead in that stifling dry heat, walking along those train tracks with no destination in sight or mind, felt an unyielding conviction that Josie Pendleton’s murder was not just a flittering fancy but rather a defining cornerstone that had the potential to redefine my life.

I needed to know more about this rotten charity.

 

Friday, July 24th, 9:12 a.m.

 

I swilled some coffee and three ibuprofens for breakfast. My head was in a vise but I refused to let it rule the roost. The apartment wouldn’t get hot for another two hours and with Nick magically out, I chose to work from home.

I spooned peanut butter and fired up Benny and began digging into this charity online.

Backyard Dreams was created by an entertainment lawyer named Glenn Royce who had a four-year-old nephew named Cole. Some negligent doctor botched Cole’s welcome into this world and the poor kid missed his first burst of oxygen. One day Glenn took his nephew to some swings in Burbank and the lil’ tike slipped off the strap, and smashed his cheek in half. His lawyer uncle pegged an opening and with the winnings from the lawsuit against the city, opened a charity that worked to fix all playgrounds for special needs kids. What I pegged as nothing more than a feel-good romp for rich white folks looking for a tax break was actually a pretty decent racket. They had expanded all over the city—slapping bucket style seats on swing-sets and wheelchair accessible ramps. The board of directors was made up of glossy celebrities looking to pin their name, and excessive earnings, onto something that made them sleep smooth past midnight.

They seemed to be pushing the needle in the right direction and I could see why Josie would want to help their mission.

There were no ugly headlines. No breaking scandals, no shady secrets exposed. Just fundraising balls with has-been low-grade celebs. Charity walks. Galas. They were making good money and putting it back into the parks so damaged kids could swing safe. A venerable hats off…

So what was so rotten about that?

According to their website, a woman named Susan Glasser ran the day-to-day operations. I grabbed my phone and called Miss Glasser. She sounded tired and overworked like the rest of the world, especially put off by the cold call interruption.

“I’m sorry, but why are you calling?”

I planted my ace up front: “It’s something I’ve been putting off for too long, figured I’d stop dragging my heels and”—injecting some legit enthusiasm—“start today…Do you have a need for any volunteers?”

Miss Glasser perked right up. “Oh yes. Yes, for sure.”

She tested the waters on skills and schedules. How I could be of most help. How best to pluck my time. She told me they’d been downsizing and just moved offices from Beverly Hills to North Hollywood. I bent the truth and told her I lived in the neighborhood. She said there was a lot of grunt work still to be covered. Unpacking boxes. Putting up shelves…She let the request hang long and hard.

“Happy to help in any way that I can.”

She wolfed up the bait and we were suddenly best friends.

I shaved smooth and showered. Stole three of Nick’s bagels, slapped on a collared shirt, and hit the Volt.

I was going in.

 

 

Sunday, July 26th, 2:06 p.m.

 

Backyard Dreams had an office in North Hollywood off Lankershim. Deep in the valley of displaced dreams and runoff satisfaction. A cross-section of start-up families, second gen’ immigrants, and struggling actors. A land of faux happiness you could smell driving down the main strip. I mean, does anyone move to Los Angeles, California with dreams of living in North Hollywood?

I rolled up to an ugly beige building with eighties’ stucco and clay tiles on the roof. Walked up some stairs to the second floor and rapped on 206. A woman on the weathered side of forty-five opened the door and I pegged Miss Glasser for what she was. Tired and spent. She greeted me with a wary handshake and a distrusting smile. Who could blame her? I mean, who the hell picks up the phone on a Tuesday morning, hears from someone who says they just wanna help, then actually shows up an hour later with some freshly stolen bagels and a smile.

A man with an undercover bent.

A man with a zeal for intel.

Me. All glorious me, now.

She welcomed me inside the space. We waxed pleasantries. We danced courteous and well intentioned. Smiling. I needed to be patient and play the long con if I was gonna find out what was so damn rotten here.

“Put me to work, Miss Glasser…I’m all yours.”

She showed me around the office. It was smaller than I expected. And, frankly, not as nice given the scope of their celebrity rolodex chippin’ in all that cash. She made excuses for the state of affairs and I pretended to care. There were boxes lining the walls. Paintings parked against the walls.

This is going to suck.

She showed me around and got right to it.

“What I really need help with is getting this place organized. The kitchen. Unpacking Glenn’s office. Oh, and hanging some of these frames so I can get them off the ground. I’ve marked spots on the walls where I want them with that blue tape. Think you could do that?”

“Of course.”

She was already digging out a hammer from a toolbox and showing me which frames went where until a phone rang in the distance, so I seized the opportunity.

“Looks pretty straightforward. I’ll just jump in and if I have any questions, I’ll come find you.”

“Okay, great. Great. And thank you,” she muttered, like oddly reassured.

Glasser seemed genuinely relieved as she hustled off to get the phone. I grabbed the hammer and one of those picture-hanging hooks. The first framed photo was a shot of a large man in bold black glasses celebrating with a bunch of broken smiling children at a ribbon cutting ceremony. I recognized the guy from my research—Glenn Royce—the founding lawyer.

He looked rich.

Happy and genuinely fulfilled. I hated him immediately.

I hammered the wall and hoped for the best. This was me making a charitable difference, baby.

Next up was a poster-sized picture of a large crowd of volunteers at a fundraising walk. People filled with pride, making the world a better place—

Josie.

There she was. Smack in the middle. Smiling. Ripe with life.

Her arms wrapped around some fellow volunteers. She looked happy. Proud. Beaming like I’d never seen before, and it knocked me on my ass. I stumbled back, tripping over a metal lamp, sending us both crashing to the ground.

Glasser came bounding around the corner with a terrified look on her face, as I scrambled to get on my feet. She furrowed her brows, rightly wondering just who the hell did she entrust this office to, anyway?

“Sorry. Tripped on the cord. All good.”

I bumbled up and tried to steer her eyes towards my formidable work hanging on the walls so far. “Look good so far?”

“Yes. Fine. Good. Good.”

Glasser approached the wall and leveled off each corner as if she needed to put her own stamp on them. Marking her territory but still wary.

“Are you going to be alright back here?”

“Right as rain, Miss Glasser. Seriously, I just tripped is all.”

“Okay.” She lumbered off, uneasy.

The instant she disappeared, I locked back on that image of Josie. A wave of emotion smacked me and that dry crackle in the back of my throat swelled. This girl staring back at the world that destroyed her.

So, what the hell was so rotten about this place, Josie? And just how the hell was I gonna find out?

There were stacks of boxes at the foot of a built-in filing cabinet in the back corner of the room. I skipped the lids off and flipped through the beige folders. Gala invite lists. Manuals and warranties. Donor lists. Associate holdings. Certificates. Insurance statements. City permits.

Dreck.

It immediately occurred to me how insurmountable and poorly strategized my plan was. What the hell I was expecting to find? A secret red dossier labeled Rotten Holdings? I needed backstory and understanding of the ins and outs of the charity. I was gonna have to dive deeper, suck it up with my new pal Glasser, and suspected those bagels were my ticket in.

 

 

Glasser smashed a quarter of her bagel unwilling to wait for it toast properly. I couldn’t tell if she loved the taste of it or loved the fact that someone finally brought her something. Anything. The woman seemed starved for attention. Recognition. Respect. And apparently a cinnamon and raisin bagel did wonders for her loneliness.

I pegged her for an aged-out actress. Yeah. A college theater major with a bucket of commercials under her belt who never even came close to success. Someone who desperately needed to pivot against those tireless auditions and incoming wrinkles. Those untenable leads. Those fading bit parts. The hustle run ragged and flat flat broke. Crying on the inside of her car, locked in 101 traffic. The Lankershim runoff type. Yeah, you could smell the noble tragedy on her.

But I played positive. After all, she turned it around. She found purpose in a charity. What’s so terrible about that? When she asked me about my own life, I began throwing out the usual bent on my successful writing career. Making it work so far!

She volleyed it back with her own tale. Miss Glasser was long divorced. No kids. Just a green parakeet named Montgomery. She crooned on about Montgomery’s magnificent plumage. I rocked a marvelous job of pretending to care until a quiet down beat enabled me to lob out a baited hook.

“How many people does it take to run an outfit like this?”

“Glenn hired me to run day to day operations so I’m kind of in charge of it all. But we have a stable of regular volunteers who chip in. Accountants. Student interns. Lawyers. Friends of friends. Favors! You’d be surprised how generous people can be with their time when you ask them to help for a good cause.”

“In LA? Yeah, that kind of does surprise me,” I joked.

Glasser smirked. The joke didn’t land. I was tired of trolling and went for the goods.

“Have there been any problems at the charity recently?”

She looked at me wide-eyed like a goose. “Problems?”

“I thought I read a while back about some scandal here? But I might be mixing that up with some other charity. I do a lot of research for my writing.”

“We had one bad apple—a teenage volunteer who was stealing our petty cash. He wasn’t very smart. I caught him red-handed in the office. But that was two years ago.”

“Hmmm. Yeah no, that wasn’t it. For some reason I thought I heard about this charity in the news recently.”

Glasser shifted in her seat, like I’d pressed a fresh bruise. She looked at the floor and spoke slowly. “Well…that’s possible. Have you heard about this…Glendale Grabber?”

I played it cooool and neutral. “Sure…why?”

She got awful quiet and I got awful happy.

“One of the girls, she…she volunteered here. Josie…she was a lovely girl. It’s been very sad for our team…”

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry. Josie—yes, of course, I mean, I read about her.”

“We were all so devastated. She’d been helping out for about a year and a half. She was a real gem.”

Glasser welled up.

Shit.

The hook ripped too hard and I was dragging her down. I tried not to dwell on this collateral damage. I tried to think about Josie screaming for help, for justice from the grave. And I, her unyielding soldier.

It didn’t work.

Glasser kept crying. Deeper now. Heaving hard for oxygen. Like this was almost her first time letting it out. She apologized for crying and I legit burned inside to see her so cut up.

“I’m sorry. It’s just been hard…how could someone do something so horrific…?”

“I know it’s terrible. Horrible.”

I nodded and before thinking better of it, reached out my hand in condolence, putting it on top of hers. The gesture caught her off guard, like she’d not been touched by someone that way, or anyway, in far too long a time. She looked at me with quiet and awkward appreciation.

“I’m sure the police are on it and are going to find this man soon,” I reassured her. We chewed bagels in silence. I gingerly powered on.

“I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been for you.”

“For Glenn, especially. He was absolutely devastated. Broken. We hosted a beautiful brunch for all the volunteers who knew her. It was touching how people came together. Celebrating her life.”

“Glenn…the founder?”

“That’s right. He’s a wonderful man. A visionary. Glenn was only twenty-eight years old when he started this charity. He cobbled together an army and look what we’ve accomplished. Fourteen specialized playgrounds in LA County, all started in his basement, and look at us now…”

She looked around the room as if to take in some kind of splendor of this NoHo shell.

“Glenn’s been a wreck, to be perfectly honest, but we’ve all been there for him. That’s part of the reason why this move has been so hard. Usually I’d have Glenn to weigh in but he’s so been so crushed. I couldn’t even get him on the phone for days.”

“Tough stuff.”

“I couldn’t really blame him, given how awful and sad it is…But I mean, at the end of the day, he’s the one who has to make all the decisions. Pay the bills. I couldn’t even pay the moving company on time.”

As we finished up our bagels, Glasser pointed to three cans of midnight blue latex paint looming in the corner next to a roller and brush in a tray like a ticking time-suck grenade.

“Sam, are you any good at painting?”

My guilt for dragging her down took over my scorching hatred for all things manual labor.

“Any good? I’m like a goddamn Bob Ross, Miss Glasser.”

She hit me with another pigeon blank stare. And as the joke blew cold, I quickly realized I’d be stuck here in hell for hours with that paintbrush in my hand.

 

Tuesday, July 28th, 3:11 p.m.

 

I was a devoted bastard.

The kitchen was painted.

File cabinets filled.

Pictures hung.

Windows cleaned.

I burned up two more afternoons helping Susan Glasser establish Backyard Dreams’ new office in NoHo. Part of me felt rewarded for giving back to the community—offering my services to help prop up a good charitable cause. The other—and let’s be honest, way larger—part simmered with fury.

I had nothin’.

On the third day I even plied this woman with Proof bakery’s orange and cranberry scones and the most delicious goddamn croissants at four bucks a pop, but was still nowhere closer to understanding what Josie found to be so sordid about the charity. By now my snooping game was sharp. I’d rifled through entire stacks of any and all documents that might source this reputed shadiness—bank statements, insurance papers, lawyer correspondence. I’d even managed to discern when lil’ miss Suz’ pushed back her metal chair to come find me, easily covering any trail of suspicion. What’s more I smashed this poor woman with endless questions about the ins and outs of the operation. Needling for any kind of breach or misdoings. And all I had to show for it was a mountain of volunteered goodwill.

By day four, she had me putting together the big cheese’s office. Glenn Royce, aka Mr. Charity himself. A man with a beautiful family who, by the looks of the pictures I placed on his desk, vacationed regularly in Hawaii and had a successful law firm outside of these walls. A man evidently waaay too awesome for grunt work. A man with an ass-heavy new wood desk that I was stocking back up. Lining the top drawer with his beloved silver pens and daughter’s adorable homemade bookmarks.

I was fried and ready to call off this demented search until I found it.

Lodged inside a worn-out Tom Clancy paperback called Rainbow Six.

A picture of Josie.

Her arms were crossed against her bare breasts, as if protecting against the sudden offensive lens. The side of her back twisted away from the camera, exposing a few perfect ribs couched in a swirl of bedsheets. Her eyes sparkled—half-smiling, half-incensed at the breach of privacy. Like she didn’t want the picture to exist but was flattered that whoever took it, whoever she was with, insisted this perfect woman, this moment, be captured.

I stared. Transfixed. My obsession uncaged. But what the hell did it mean?

It meant Glenn was fucking Josie. Why else would he have the picture hidden in his desk? Maybe, I’d been staring at this puzzle all wrong. That it wasn’t the charity that was rotten, it was the host. The man behind the curtain. Glenn Royce was the scratcher. The man who took her down. She was in bed with him and—

WAIT.

Roll it back.

I could hear those blowhard ex-cops at the bar, wailing in my skull. Doesn’t mean anything. What do you really know? How do you even know it’s Glenn’s picture?

Likelys don’t count with a jury.

Evidence. Cross them t’s, kid.

How do you know that it was his Tom Clancy book? What if he found it? What if he bought it at a goddamn garage sale? What if Glasser tossed the book inside his desk accidentally cuz she was the one behind the lens?

What ifs rippin’ through my head.

Buzzing on the inside, I jammed that paperback and its piece of treasure in under my belt and told Glasser I had to split. Pronto. She seemed confused, like I’d broken some unspoken grunt work covenant.

I felt bad about that.

But I was emboldened with a compass pointing directly at Glenn Royce. Because no matter those damn cops’ voices in my head, something inside my bones told me I was right.

Glenn was the scratcher.

 

 

I turned on my app and picked up a ride on my way home to earn back some of the cake I’d spent on Glasser. Thankfully, my customer wanted nothing to do with me and sat silently in the back allowing me to plug into this discovery. These crosshairs aimed at Glenn Royce. The founder of the charity. The big lawyer cheese with the corner office. Here’s what I knew so far about Glenn:

The man was wealthy.

The man was smart.

Put those two together and you have a specimen who soars with desire in the eyes of a woman.

Add to that: he started a charity. Major bonus points.

People follow those they believe in, and here was a man who’d built an empire of diligent soldiers to lend their time to his charity.

The man had sway.

The man also had a wife and kids.

And now I had a theory: Glenn and the softness gone rotten.

It all lined up.

Motive.

He’s a cheating bastard.

He swoons and makes promises.

She deserves better and knows it.

He stalls so she presses.

He squirms. He panics.

He needs to shut. It. Down.

He clocks the press.

He needs a piece of the puzzle: a stolen car.

He finds a hot ride. Woos her into the back seat. Smothers the problem and takes off to make it look like the killer was the Glendale Grabber.

I was rapt with direction.

I needed to test my put-together on the professionals.

Those drunk slugs at The Damned Lovely.

 

 

Tuesday, July 28th, 4:19 p.m.

 

I burst through the cage, happy to announce my victorious return.

“What’s got you so charged?” Pa had to ask.

I laid out the case. The photo. My lusty loin theory.

The drunk buzzards poked holes: You think she was banging him based on a picture? You don’t even know who took it. Or who it belonged to. That’s not investigating…that’s just a guessing game.

Lily cooed from the corner. “Conjecture, conjecture, conj—“

Now Jiles chipped in his two cents. “It’s not evidence, kid. Haven’t we taught you anything?”

“She had scratches on her arm and back which, according to the morgue chick at least, happened a few days prior to the murder. She was obviously in a fight with someone. Plus she told her friend there was something about the charity that was rotten. Maybe that ‘something’ is the founder, the guy who started it all. After she was killed, Glasser said Glenn was especially cut up and she couldn’t even talk to him. I’m just saying—maybe she wanted more. Maybe she threatened to squeal, expose him for the pig he is…So he dresses it up. Gets his paws on a stolen car. (Not impossible!) Woos her into the back seat and terminates the problem by mocking it up like the Glendale Grabber.”

It got quiet. They just looked at me. Unimpressed, like all their hard work, those many stories, those lessons of police work thrust upon their apprentice, had been wasted.

“It’s thin, Sammy,” Slice said.

“Slice, didn’t you always say the best piece of evidence is smarts and instinct?”

“Was that me?” He chuckled ugly. “Maybe, kid. Maybe.”

They all shrugged and went back to sippin’ their bliss.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d stumbled onto some version of the truth. Now, I needed to prove them all wrong.

I needed evidence.

I needed a confession.

I slipped off the stool and made for the exit. It was only Pa, perched in the corner with his icy gin and glassy stare, who offered a sly grin, like he might just believe me. Like he wanted to, anyway.

 

 

Tuesday, July 28th, 5:55 p.m.

 

Glenn Royce lived in a huge white house at the corner of Hesby and Laurelgrove in Studio City. Pinner texted me his address, no questions asked. God bless that immoral cop.

I hit the Volt and drove by, hoping to get to his home before the lawyer did.

I figured I’d sit and watch the house. Found a shady spot under an oak tree with a decent view. I perched, happy to wait and watch, like a bona fide stakeout, sipping coffee from the shadows…

The bona fide stakeout sucked.

I had no coffee.

The booze was wearing off and I needed to piss. A time-sensitive issue that crept up against me, so I drove to a park and found a dark corner. Felt pretty rotten on the inside. I was that guy: the boozer pissing in a park beside a playground. I couched my dilemma in the strength of my mission. Doing right by Josie. At least I tried anyway.

I hit a Starbucks on Ventura and drank some burnt swill. It gave me a second charge and I circled back to Glenn’s, parking across the street under my oak tree. Pretty soon a sparkling black Land Rover pulled into the driveway. But it wasn’t Glenn Royce behind the wheel. It was his wife. I recognized her from his family pictures on the desk. She skipped out of the driver’s seat wearing tight green yoga pants and a sweatshirt that hung off her body, exposing her shoulders.

She looked rich.

Better than.

Like she belonged to some higher class of people.

She grabbed a couple of Whole Foods paper bags from the trunk then bounced inside the massive house. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was the kind of woman who didn’t care about bringing her own bags to Whole Foods. Or maybe she just plain forgot her them. Happens to us all, right? Or maybe not. And that’s why Glenn was cheating on her. Because she was the kind of woman who refused to bring her own bags or even pack her own groceries. That kind.

I could see pieces of the kitchen from my car and watched her unpack the food.

I felt pretty dirty about it, too. Watching her like some kind of peeping tom. Probably on account that I was.

Forty-seven minutes later a white Land Rover pulled into the driveway. Wait. Matching cars? His and hers. Now, that’s some stinky cheese right there.

Glenn got out of the driver’s side and came around to the back passenger door. He opened it, unclipped a child’s seat, and let his daughter out. The little girl hustled to the house, clasping a worn-out lunch bag and water bottle, waiting for her dad to unlock the door. Glenn grabbed a computer bag from the back seat and then disappeared inside the house.

Kids.

Why did he have to have kids?

That cheating prick. It was one thing to cross the line with a wife you’ve grown to hate but kids messed it all up. Kids made cheating sad and ugly.

Inside he kissed his wife hello. They spoke with each other, cordially. Emotionless. Paint by numbers how-was-your-day drivel with their daughter circling round for attention and food.

This continued for an agonizing stretch of time. I was about to call the mission a resounding failure until Glenn emerged in a fresh shirt with some skip in his step looking like he was about to escape his domestic jail. Sure enough he sprung out of the house and sped away in his car.

I stayed on him.

 

 

Tuesday, July 28th, 7:29 p.m.

 

Of course he went to Firefly.

That honeypot of wannabe actresses, divorced men, and flaky souls with a spirit of opportunity. I’d seen Denzel there years ago. He was surrounded by a gaggle of long-legged blonde women. They looked ill intentioned. They looked hungry for something better. Basking in that glow of Oscar attention.

Glenn valeted his ride and hit the bar. I circled the blocks looking for a free street spot and finally found one on Ventura in a different damn time zone. The fundamentals of the LA struggle.

I pulled that picture of Josie from my pocket. Stared at her face and tried to focus on my plan. Namely that I didn’t have one. How do you ask someone if they committed murder? I hadn’t a clue. But. I had spent well over a thousand hours boozing with ex-cops pulling stories and figured I’d wing it.

As I stepped inside, I was hit with those curious disappointed faces. The LA twist. Who’s that walking in and how can they help? Like a bunch of bleeding soldiers looking for a medic. That red cross of possibility and hope dashed with a sad realization that I was nobody famous.

But I’ll give it this: the place was packed with pretty faces. Maybe it was the dim lighting bouncing off the caked-on makeup, or maybe I’d been spending too much time at Glendale’s finest Damned Lovely surrounded by weathered, broken souls. No wonder Denzel came here. These people sparkled beautiful. I looked around, wondered if he might be around, joining the rest of the crowd looking for someone more glossy, more interesting, more powerful than myself.

Stay on target, you dolt.

Justice for Denim.

I saw Glenn yucking it up at the bar with a forty-something shlub in a heavy polyester suit. They were drinking Bud Lights. Of course they were.

There was a barstool beside Shlub. I plugged the gap—waving at the bartender for attention as I hit the stool.

I was close. Within range and buzzing inside now.

I could hear them yappin’ about some Republican victory in the state senate. Respectable first round Bud Light talk.

I went all in and ordered an old fashioned. It was a spectacular tragedy. Crushed ice with some citrus sweetener. I wanted to scream and teach this twenty-one-year-old out-of-work-actor-excuse for a bartender how to mix a proper drink but stifled my rage, careful not draw too much attention to myself.

So I lay in wait. Sipping the watered-down muck with disdainful swallows. Glenn and Shlub ordered a second round. Shlub said he saw someone named Teddy and moved off like he was eager to score a bump of coke. Glenn pulled out his phone and hit Twitter.

It was time.

My heart pounded.

I activated the voice recorder on my phone, hoping the ambient noise wouldn’t drown out my premiere interrogation.

I shot a glance at Glenn. He looked older in person compared to all those beach pictures in his office. Cracked skin around his eyes. In need of a shave this Tuesday soir.

He felt my eyes and nodded courteously.

I feigned surprise.

He clocked it.

I jumped.

“Are you…are you Glenn Royce?”

He looked at me, uneasy. Racking sense and coming up empty, almost on guard now.

“That’s so weird. I’ve been volunteering at Backyard Dreams recently.”

Glenn lit up, genuinely impressed. “Oh, thanks.”

“Crazy running into you like this. My name’s Sam. I’ve been helping Susan at the new office in North Hollywood. Hanging pictures. Paintin’ the kitchen. Navy midnight blue…”

“Wow. Thanks for putting in some time and helping out. Nice to meet you, Sam.”

“You’re welcome.”

I sat quiet. Let him feel in control.

Glenn saw my glass running low. He signaled the bartender and offered to buy me another drink. I graciously accepted.

He glanced at the Dodger game shining on screen in the corner and I figured to keep things smooth to open, the way Jiles preached.

“You a fan?” I nudged.

“For sure. You?”

“More like an addict.”

“Great, then maybe you can tell me what the hell is goin’ on with Bellinger? Kid is looking OFF.”

“Three games without a hit and four unforced errors this last week.”

So we yapped Dodgers and the game. I wasn’t supposed to like this guy but he wasn’t making it easy.

Nearby a customer, some fat guy in a tight T-shirt, was cursing at a waitress. We scoffed and found common ground in the unspoken laws of civility. Now’s about the time I started hearing Jiles scream in my ear:

You gotta warm him up.

Let him in.

Gain some trust.

Then pivot.

Catch his ass off guard. Flat-footed.

Once you’ve got him on your side, smash him with a couple of hard-hitting accusations.

Pow! Pow! A one-two shot of I know the truth and you’re going to squeal, son.

“It’s actually kind of sad how I heard about your charity.” He looked at me, curious. “Josie Pendleton was a friend.”

Glenn shifted uneasily.

Glenn got cold.

Glenn glared like he was searching for something, but I iced him with naivety.

“You must’ve known her, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” he muttered.

“Sad what happened.”

“Really sad, Sam.”

I let it all sit there in the open. He stared at that floor with a steel-shut gaze. Sucking back some hard feelings.

“Susan said you hosted a nice brunch for her.”

“About the least I could do. She was a very special…very…beautiful person.”

“Were you having an affair with her?”

Pow!

His jaw clenched down tight. “Excuse me?”

“I saw the picture.”

“What picture?”

“The one of her half naked in bed. The one inside that Tom Clancy novel I found in your desk. You know, the one next to the pictures of you and your wife and your kid all smiling together in Hawaii.”

The man squared up. Looked cold now.

“Who are you?”

“I’m just a guy who knew Josie Pendleton. Who saw her murdered body on a steel shelf at the morgue. Who doesn’t believe she was killed by some random rapist, so I’m doing something about it.”

“Are you a cop?”

“I’m flattered you think so. But no. “

“You think I killed her?

“Did you?”

He looked about ready to slug me but instead gave into something sad and darker somewhere inside him. “I was in Buffalo that night, you asshole.”

“But you were having an affair with her?”

“No.”

“Then how do you explain that picture, Glenn?”

And it was like that stain inside him bubbled out again. “Because I wanted to. For Josie? I was willing to throw it all in for that girl. But she refused. So I pinched her phone one day, found that picture and sent it to myself. Kept it hidden at work.”

He took a long sip and looked like he got sucked into some more memories. “She said she wouldn’t let me destroy my family like that. My life…”

We sat there for a while, and I was afraid he was gonna shake off, so I kept pressing, just hard enough.

“Josie said there was something rotten about your charity.”

“You’re looking at it, buddy. She hated what I was willing to do to my wife and daughter. Said I was rotten for it. Despite all that I stood for. What Backyard stood for.” He sized me up. “Why don’t you think Josie was killed the way they’re saying?”

I told him about the scratches on her arm and all over her back. He looked angry. Jealous, almost. “Wasn’t me. I would never scratch Josie. She was too damn beautiful. I mean who would want to mess that girl up with scratches? Right, Sam? She obviously set the hook in you, too, pal, didn’t she?”

I nodded. Not that I owed the man an explanation but that we understood one another.

“I’m not surprised, though,” he carried on. “I could tell there was someone else in her life. Someone she was probably seeing. She kept getting calls and texts but wouldn’t tell me who it was. I pressed her but, who am I to tell her to be honest. She deserved whatever privacy she wanted so I left it all alone. Until I didn’t and stole her phone but there weren’t any texts I could find. Either I was dreaming it or she was using those snap messages that disappear…But if you ask me, she was involved with someone else out there. Maybe he scratched her up.”

“Maybe he killed her, too.”

“Either way, she’s gone. Nothing we can do about it.” He sucked back his beer facing that fact, then turned to me, curious. “You went to all this trouble—volunteering at my charity and following me here tonight all because of some scratches?”

I nodded, all pitiful.

“Yeah, Josie had a way of doing that to people.”

“I didn’t even really know her all that well.”

“Case in point, my friend.” He went back to watching the baseball game. “I’ve never told anybody about her. About how I fell for her. Not one person…feels kinda good.” He slammed back the rest of his drink, dropped a fifty, and left without saying goodbye to his friend.

 

 

Tuesday, July 28th, 8:55 p.m.

 

I walked back to my car, enjoying the dank cold air. But that was about it.

I’d gotten it all wrong.

The man was bereft. She wasn’t the one putting on the pressure.

She was pushing him away. And the man had a solid alibi. He was in Buffalo. I would find out for sure if he was truthfully in Buffalo somehow, but I mean who lies about being in Buffalo?

Still someone laid a hand on her.

I needed to reset.

I needed sleep and a good meal. Protein and kale.

So I decided to grab a burst at The Damned Lovely instead.

This, my chorus.

 

 

Tuesday, July 28th, 9:44 p.m.

 

I crossed the tracks and rattled in hard.

I smiled and flexed my failure with pride. Yeah, yeah. I was off the mark. You win. I faltered and flailed and my monster’s still at large. Bottoms up. But I’m still one step closer to the truth, ya jackals.

The Rooster stopped clicking and looked up.

Lily raised her glass.

Jewels flashed a smile.

The denim wailed.

And Slice bought me a round. “Stay on him, Sammy. Stay on your monster.”

You’re damn right, Slice. Imma stay on that monster…