FOR FIVE MINUTES, PETE PACED. He heard nothing from inside the trailer. He looked at his watch.
Time was up.
Pete started for the door when it suddenly opened, and Jimmy stepped out, closing the door gently behind him. Pete could see a glaze of sweat on his face, his limp long black hair running down his forehead like tendrils.
At least he’s got his clothes on, Pete thought sourly, wanting this all to be over. He was surprised, and relieved, that Jimmy had come out on his own. He didn’t want to go in there again, and certainly didn’t want to deal with pulling Jimmy away from … whatever he’d been doing.
“Did you follow my rules? I swear to God, Jimmy, if there’s a mess in there ….”
Jimmy looked at the ground. His body was very still. The fidgeting, nervous energy now vacant. “No, man. I didn’t break your rules. Give me my phone.”
“Okay, well … thanks for not making me come get you.”
Jimmy said nothing, just held out his hand. Pete slapped the phone into his palm, watched it vanish into the pouch of the hoodie.
“You better get out of here, man.”
Jimmy nodded, then looked up, meeting Pete’s eyes for the first time. Pete saw tears on his cheeks, mingled with sweat. “I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, so quiet Pete almost didn’t hear the words. “She woke up.”
Pete’s heart stopped. An icy cold flooded his veins. “What? She’s awake?” he said, an urgent whisper.
Jimmy shook his head. “No, no. She … she’s still …. But for a minute there ….”
Pete felt his breath return, his heart resume its life-giving pulse. “Jesus, man, you scared the shit out of me. So, she didn’t see you or anything?”
Jimmy shook his head again. “I better go.”
“Yeah, all right,” Pete said, wanting nothing more in his entire life than for the guy in front of him to disappear forever.
Without another word or gesture, Jimmy turned and began walking, not toward the parking lot entrance, but down the hill, through the brush.
Pete watched him go for a few moments, waiting until he had vanished into the black wet trees, down, down the slope toward wherever he called home. He paced around the trailer, debating whether he should go back in. Make sure things were cool. He figured he’d have to … but some part of him resisted. Felt like he was pushing his luck, or avoiding something he might not want to see.
He debated another minute, standing at the edge of the lot, looking down into the hillside’s wet foliage. Pete thought he heard a car door close, then a click followed by wheels on gravel, as if Jimmy had hopped into his Prius or Tesla, turned it over, and driven away.
Neighbor, my ass. Pete looked back at the dark, silent trailer. “Shit,” he said, saw the frost of his breath.
He’d have to go in.
HE IMMEDIATELY SMELLED THE STALE, sour stink of liquor permeating the trailer’s dark interior. He felt like he’d stepped into the foul mouth of a giant beast, and was now forced to move toward the throat, pray not to be swallowed.
He pointed his light. Saw the bedroom door had been left open. Strike one, asshole. He’d told Jimmy to return everything to how he’d found it.
He went to the open door, flashed his light onto the bed … and froze. His chest constricted, and he stopped breathing.
Holly had been flipped over, face up. She was still dressed. Her eyes were open.
Wide.
“Ms. Pages?” he said, surprised to find his voice shaking. He was equally surprised to look down at the hand holding the flashlight to notice that it, also, was shaking, giving the circle of light a soft tremble as it lay white and flat against Holly Pages’ body. “Ms. Pages?” he said, more loudly. His voice cracked.
The sane, hard-working, husband-and-father part of his brain was trying desperately to understand what he was looking at. Meanwhile, the old Pete, the one who’d run in gangs and done things that should have put him in jail for years, if not decades, knew instantly what had happened. Had known it the second the flashlight had reflected off those open, glassy eyes.
Holly Pages was dead.
“Ms. Pages?” he repeated, soft as a prayer.
He stared down at the body in something akin to shock. Not knowing what else to do, he held a palm over her slightly open mouth, waited for breath to warm his skin. When that breath did not come, he put two fingers on the soft flesh of her neck.
“Oh my god …” he said, feeling nothing but a dead vein beneath his fingertips. “Oh my god …” he repeated and backed away from the bed. Bile wormed in his guts, his mind snapped free from reason, floated untethered somewhere above him, flown from the horror of this reality.
“Oh my god,” he said once more, this time so loudly it shattered the stillness of the room. He turned and pushed through the bedroom door, then the trailer door. He punched it open, let it hang open like a dead, protruding tongue, and ran, terrified, into the chill night.
BY THE TIME PETE’S SUPERVISOR had arrived, the parking lot was filled with police cars, an ambulance, and a few civilian cars belonging to two of the producers, the First A.D., and the director himself.
Holly’s trailer was lit up by spotlights from the squad cars and men and women wearing latex gloves were moving in and out of it in a steady rhythm while blue-suited officers created a perimeter around the entire parking lot.
Pete had called nine-one-one only minutes after leaving the trailer. What else could he do? She was dead, and there was no way he could wait until morning, pretending nothing was wrong. They’d find her eventually and then he’d probably be suspect numero uno.
So, he’d come up with a story. The truth … minus a few details.
I’d been doing a patrol when I heard a noise from the trailers. I went over to check it out, saw the flash of someone diving into the foliage at the edge of the parking lot. I immediately ran toward the point where the—whatever it had been—had vanished into the trees but stopped short when I saw Ms. Pages’ trailer door open. After calling out and getting no response, I went inside to check if anything had been stolen, trailer thievery being common on movie sets. Once inside, I called out again. I saw then that the bedroom door was open, so I went to the rear of the trailer. That’s when I saw her. At first, I tried to wake her, thinking she was drunk. The trailer stank of booze. When I got no response, I turned her over onto her back, saw her eyes were open and knew … I checked for a pulse, got nothing. I then left the trailer and immediately called nine-one-one. That’s all I know.
