It was late and I was drinking alone on my balcony, feet up on the railing, gazing out across the empty black expanse that was the Pacific Ocean. The night air was cold, laced heavily with salt brine. The moon tonight was hidden behind a heavy layer of stratus clouds. A 12-pack of Bud Light was sitting on the balcony between my feet like an obedient dog.
Good doggy.
It was the first beer I had bought in six months. Hell, the first I had tasted in six months.
And it tasted heavenly.
Too heavenly.
I was in trouble.
Twenty-one years ago my mother had been murdered. As a ten-year-old boy, I had found her dead in her bedroom in a pool of her own blood. Her throat had been slashed and she had been raped. Her murderer was never found. A cold case, if ever there was one.
Six months ago my father handed over a packet of forgotten photographs of my mother, taken on the last day that she was alive on this earth. Other than being of obvious sentimental interest to me, the photos contained the one and only clue to her murder. At least, I hoped.
The clue: a random young man in the background of three of the twenty-four photographs. In the three photographs, he appears to be stalking her-at least that’s what my gut tells me. And I’ve learned to listen to my gut.
I drank some more beer. I prefer bottles, but cans leave less evidence-no bottles caps showing up in seat cushions, for instance-and less evidence is what I preferred, at least for now.
From the glass patio table, I picked up one of the three pictures of the young man in question; the young man who may or may not have been stalking my parents; the young man who may or may not have murdered my mother.
That’s a big leap, I thought.
True, but a big leap was all I had.
I angled the picture until it caught some of the ambient light from the street below. There he was, holding a freshly caught sandshark, standing behind my parents, themselves standing on the Huntington Beach pier. His hair was ragged and longish, bleached blond from hours in the sun and salt. He was wearing a red tank top and longish shorts, although not as long as the shorts kids wear today. His right leg was tanned and well muscled, although I could only see a fraction of it. My father obscured the rest of his body. Thanks, dad. Asshole. The young man was laughing at the rabbit ears my mother was not-so-secretly giving my father.
I set the picture down again. Inhaled deeply, looked up at the swirling mass of clouds above.
He had taken an interest in my mother, that much was evident. Probably because my mother made him laugh. Probably because she was a striking woman. Perhaps she had fascinated him. Perhaps he had always fantasized about being with an older woman. She was a striking woman. He himself was good-looking and muscular in that surfer sort of way. Whereas I was muscular in that strong-looking way.
The beer I was holding was miraculously empty. Wasn’t sure how that happened, barely even remembered drinking it. I opened another.
My mother’s case had been thoroughly investigated and was later shelved due to lack of evidence. Hell, lack of anything. I remembered the homicide detective. A good man who was deeply troubled by my mother’s murder. During his investigation, he had spoken to me often, once or twice even taking me out to get ice cream. I think he knew my father was an asshole.
But now I had these…
Pictures. Evidence.
Something.
I finished the beer, placed the empty tin carcass on the glass table and popped open another one.
I had grown up in a tough part of Inglewood. We had been poor in those days, my father was fresh out the military and not very family-oriented, if his nightly liaisons with the neighborhood whores were any indication. By the age of ten, I had witnessed a half dozen murders and more robberies than I cared to count. Growing up, I thought bullet-riddled bodies lying on street corners were sights that all school kids saw on their way home from school. Probably not the best neighborhood to raise a kid and my mother knew this. To escape, she took me to the beach any chance she had. She loved Huntington Beach, especially the pier. We would sit for hours overlooking the ocean. Sometimes I would fish, but mostly we ate ice creams and I told her about my day.
The same pier she was at in these pictures. The same pier I could see from my balcony.
Another empty can of beer. How the hell did that happen? I opened another and pondered this mystery.
Later, when the 12-pack was finally gone, I gathered up the empty cans in a trash bag and deposited the whole thing down the trash chute, and unwrapped a candy mint and lay down on my bed. My bladder was full. The ceiling spun. I awoke the next morning with the mint stuck to my forehead. Nice. My bladder was even fuller.
Between my thumb and forefinger, held in a sort of vice-like deathgrip, was the picture of the young man standing behind my mother.