The Good Lie - A. R. Torre Page 0,2

counters, rebagged the bread, and washed my hands at the sink, I tried him again.

And just like the first two times, he ignored my call.

At nine forty-five, as I headed to the office for my first appointment, John Abbott failed to show up for his shift at Breyer’s Pharmacy.

There was immediate concern. The man was a tyrant about punctuality, so much so that two junior pharmacists had quit in tears after being subjected to his long and almost violent rants on time accountability. After his tardiness stretched to ten thirty, then eleven o’clock, and repeated calls to his cell phone went unanswered, the three staff members convened at the back of the medical racks over what to do. The line of customers, which had never extended past the adult-diapers section of the aisle, now stretched all the way into herbal remedies. At the front, a man with a bushy white mustache and cowboy hat cleared his throat.

A decision was made to find John’s wife on Facebook and send her a message. With that task complete, they waited another fifteen minutes, then dispatched the most junior and expendable member of the team to drive to his home.

Joel Blanker was twenty-one years old and a pharmacy intern from Little Rock, Arkansas. He liked Dungeons and Dragons, Latin women, and chicken tenders with extra ketchup. As I listened to Phil Ankerly mull over a documentary he’d watched on Ted Bundy, Joel parked on the street and texted the assistant pharmacist to let him know that John’s car was there, parked in the drive behind a white sedan. The instructions Joel received were simple: Ring the doorbell. Ask John if he’s coming to work. Duck and cover if he starts to yell.

Joel began at the one-story home’s front door, his armpits damp from the Los Angeles heat as he listened to the chime echo through the house. After a second ring, and with no sounds from inside the home, he moved around to the carport. Knocking gently on the side door, he waited, then hesitantly cupped his hands to the glass and peered in.

At the sight of the blood and the body, he stumbled back, his dress shoe catching on the carport’s curb. His cell phone skittered across the ground and came to a stop against a support pillar. He crawled across the cleanly swept surface and picked up the phone. Ignoring the fresh spiderweb of cracks across its display, he unlocked the device and jabbed the digits for 9-1-1.

After my second morning appointment, I swung by the Forty-Fifth Avenue gym. My concerns over John Abbott’s voice mail faded as I changed into gym clothes and climbed onto a treadmill. I dialed up the speed and scanned the row of television screens, zeroing in on one that showed a newscaster’s face, the words BH KILLER in bold font under her chin. Settling into a comfortable jog, I kept my eyes on the press conference’s closed-captioning thread, trying to understand what the update was covering. The camera view switched to show a handsome teenager in a button-up shirt and khakis standing beside his mother, a bashful grin on his face as she gripped him around his waist.

“. . . grateful to have him home. Please give us privacy as we spend this time with our son . . .”

I jabbed the “Stop Session” button on the treadmill and grabbed my phone. Despite the halt in pace, my heartbeat increased. Had the latest Bloody Heart victim escaped? Along with most Angelenos, I’d spent the last three years glued to the coverage, following each tragic case from disappearance to death. An escaped victim, especially one in healthy condition, seemed impossible. This was the time frame when a victim’s dead body was typically found, his penis crudely removed, his nude corpse given the same amount of care as a discarded cigarette.

This killer was unique and precise, his expertise proven through six victims. I was stunned that he would be careless enough to allow for an escape. Could this be a copycat killer? A hoax? Or a weak moment in strategy and execution? I unlocked my phone and searched for the latest news article, then glanced back up at the muted television.

“. . . escaped from the BH Killer and ran for miles until he found his way home . . .”

There it was. Confirmation in black and white. How had Scott Harden escaped? I stepped off the machine, hurried through the busy cardio area, and hit the stairs,