These days, I do not know what my laugh sounds like. The months following my accident, I used to be self-conscious about my laugh. Maybe I still am a little.

  Anyway, I have my whole house memorized. I know where the corners are. I know exactly where the hallway begins. I know how many steps from my doorway to the corner of my bed. I can navigate my apartment without the aid of my dog, which she appreciates, too, I think. At home, she acts as a dog should. Her favorite game is catch. Often, I feel her natty tennis ball pressed up against my thigh or my hand.

  I often wonder what Betsie looks like, too. She’s a golden retriever. I know that much.

  I was told she has brown eyes, but, more than anything, I want to see into those eyes. I know they have to be intelligent eyes. They have to be. There is an old soul in this dog.

  Now, I read through the police report, taking my time, reading through the lines, so to speak, trying to paint a picture with words—and in my case, with embossed braille. I see—or feel—immediately that this case is unusual, in that many reports have been combined to form one big case. Or, the Big Case, as it is sometimes referred to in the report. The Big Case consists of many missing person reports amalgamated into one, bigger case, especially as the investigators recognized the common thread that linked them.

  No witnesses. No goodbye notes. No money being pulled from the bank. Cars left behind. Bikes left behind. Scooters left behind. Money, wallets and IDs and credit cards, all left behind. It was as if everyone got up…and walked into the ocean, never to be seen or heard from again. And that is another common thread: no word from the missing, as if they had truly disappeared.

  But not quite. In five instances, it was reported that the missing had taken a backpack. In one of the surveillance videos, one of the missing was seen wearing a backpack. In all instances, the missing had donned walking shoes and many of those left behind reported that light jackets and jeans were missing.

  What the hell? I think, as I begin again at the front of the thick report.

  This time, I focus on the witness testimony, although I use that term loosely. None of the witnesses—or those who lived with the missing—were aware of any suspicious activity leading up to the disappearance. Additionally, none of the witnesses were aware if their friends or loved ones had met anyone suspicious recently. None reported that their friend or loved one had changed their habits recently. One middle-aged man, Boomer Thompson, who had disappeared many months ago, had canceled dinner with his son to go for a walk. Two other witnesses—both wives of the missing—reported that their husbands were simply determined to go for a walk. Determined to get fresh air and get some exercise in. In fact, they both used those exact words.

  They were told what to say, I think now, sitting back and stretching my hands, the equivalent of rubbing my eyes. Reading braille takes careful attention, a true synergy between mind and body, fingertips and imagination. I picture each word as my fingers move over them. I picture a lot these days, as I will for the rest of my life.

  Of the ten missing, eight are men. Most are middle-aged, except for one old man in his early seventies, the first of the missing, in fact. Or, rather, the first of the missing that was linked to the Big Case.

  I feel tired, and absently reach for my watch. When one lives in the dark 24/7, one’s circadian rhythm is thrown off. Which is why I must often check the time. It helps to frame the day. I flip open the watch’s protective cover and lightly touch the Braille numbers and raised watch hands. 2:35 in the afternoon. I would have guessed later. Evening, perhaps.

  Still, a nap will do me good. A nap will do the case good, too. A fresh mind sees things differently. I know this from back in the day, back when I worked homicide.

  I lie back on the couch and prop my feet up. There’s no closing of the eyes for me.

  The darkness is already there. It’s always there.

  Always.

  ***

  I dream of a beautiful, raven-haired woman who is holding my hand and watching me closely. She is so, so beautiful. Short hair. High cheekbones. Round, brown eyes. Or are they blue? Or violet? Doesn’t matter. What matters is how she is looking at me. With so much love in those eyes.

  When I wake, I automatically check the time…an hour has passed. As I sit forward, I push up my sunglasses and wipe around my empty eye sockets. Mercifully, my eyelids were repairable. I can still open and close them. I mostly keep them closed—and wear non-breakable, wraparound shades. Goggles, almost. I sleep with them on, often forgetting they’re there. They form and hug my face, and keep people from seeing the horror underneath.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve awakened from a sleep or nap with tears filling the inside of my shades. I pull them off my face and clean them with a finger, then head to the bathroom.

  I feel Betsie plodding behind me. I always imagine her as less formal here in the apartment. Maybe even a little goofy. But outside, I imagine her a proud sentry standing guard.

  I have a trach-cleaning kit ready to go, a kit that I prepare each morning, knowing that it’s stocked and ready to go when the time comes to clean my tracheal tube, which must be done two or three times a day. It’s hell, but it’s my life.

  At the sink, I first remove the latex, foam-padded tracheal tie, which keeps the tube in place around my neck. I next gently remove the tube from my throat. As I do so, I feel mucus come up after it. Once the mucus has been cleaned, I swab the hole in my throat with an alcohol-based pad, and dip the new tube in a saline solution. Once dry, I re-insert the outer tube into my throat, then snap the inner tube in place.

  Then I take a deep breath, and relive the blast again.

  Again and again.

  Chapter Six

  When all you have is your imagination, sometimes, you cannot turn off the movie in your head. Sometimes, it plays over and over and over.

  I worked in the LAPD robbery-homicide division. I mostly worked homicides. I was good at my job. I had a knack for asking the right questions, seeing people for who they were, catching them in their lies, and probing relentlessly until I found a nugget of truth. I was tenacious, I was told. I was quick on my feet, I was told. I was an asshole, too, I was told. Doesn’t matter. The truth was what I sought. The truth was what I found. Doggedly. Persistently.

  The truth. Always the truth.

  I’d been partners with Mitch for a few years. We were a good team. Classic good cop, bad cop. I mostly played the good cop. When I played the bad cop…I played it too well.

  I was better at keeping a level head. I was better at watching the perps closely. I was better at watching body language, hearing inflection, watching eyes shift, fingers jerk, breaths shudder.

  It was a copycat killing. We knew that much. Some punk shot up a comic convention in Los Angeles. Nearly a dozen were dead. The shooter gave himself up and survived. Those in the department were in shock, traumatized, let alone those who survived the ordeal. All hands were on deck.

  We were all working the scene, some of us working overtime, running on adrenaline. Running on anger and confusion and shock.

  Police are people, too. We are not robots. Despite what people think, we have not seen it all. Certainly, I’d never seen anything like this.

  On this day, I was not thinking straight. We knew who the killer was. We knew what he had done. We were all pissed, horrified, sickened. I’d seen the bodies on the smooth cement floors. I’d seen the shots to the head, the back, to the young and old. I’d seen it all…and I wasn’t thinking.

  I should have been thinking.

  Because what I did next changed my life forever—and ended the life of my partner. My best friend.

  ***

  It was an apartment off Los Feliz Boulevard.

  My partner and I were the first to arrive. Two veterans. Trusted homicide cops. Unlike the Aurora, Colorado, shootings, we had not been tipped off that the place had been booby-trapped, wired with more than fifty explosives.

  My instincts were off. I knew it. I was angry. I wasn’t seeing straight, thinking straight.

  The apartment was on the busiest street on Earth. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Still, if Los Feliz wasn’t at least the busiest street in Los Angeles, I would eat my left shoe.

  I was seeing red. And not just from the blood of all the victims. I was taking the assault personally. This was my city, goddammit. How dare you fucking come here and do this to our people? The people I fought to protect.

  No, I wasn’t thinking straight at all.

  But Mitch was.

  I was the first up the flight of stairs. The first down the narrow outer hallway that led to the front door. There was a curtained window next to the door, next to us. The place looked empty. Police instincts. Turned out, it was the last thing I would ever be right about. The place was empty, yes, but not entirely.

  ***

  I’m holding a department-issued Smith & Wesson, my preferred gun. Behind me, Mitch is gripping his Glock 36. We both move along the narrow upper floor hallway carefully. A metal railing is to our right.

  I can hear the ever-present traffic outside the apartment complex. If I have to guess, there are probably a dozen or so units here. The place appears run down. But I know better. This is the foothills leading up to the million-dollar celebrity homes above. These apartments might look dingy from the outside, but I suspect they are big and roomy inside. Not like the one-bedroom apartment I live in. But I’m thinking only about bagging evidence. I’m thinking only about the bodies I have just seen. The young girl. The teenage boy. The mother covering her son. All shot.

  No, not all. Twelve dead, and twenty-seven more wounded.

  So much blood…

  I pick up speed as I move along the exterior hallway. My own apartment has inner hallways. Not this place. This place looks like a beat-up old hotel. But I know better. I have seen enough places in this town to know that sometimes, appearances can be deceiving. These are nicer apartments, camouflaged in grime. Perhaps it’s done on purpose, but I doubt it. Neglect, surely. No one giving enough of a damn.

  These thoughts are all instant and unfiltered. Mostly, I am moving steadily toward Apartment 2F, my weapon in both hands, my partner directly behind me.

  The shooter, once the damage was done, had set down his weapon and waited for the police to arrive. From what we knew, the whole thing had taken less than ten minutes. We have no idea how many rounds had been fired or how many had been shot. Not yet, anyway, although we can guess.

  Below us, a patrol officer appears. A beat cop. Mitch and I are dressed in our finest plainclothes uniform: cheap slacks and a cheaper, long-sleeved, white shirt. It’s a good look, actually. Most perps find the look intimidating. Like Mormon missionaries, minus the bikes and Bible thumping. And there’s no saving your ass from us. At least, not if you were one of the bad guys.

  We duck under the wide window fronting the exterior hallway, a window shielded by dirty, broken blinds. We don’t want someone from the inside taking pot shots at our passing shadows, but, as I said, the place appears empty.

  Truth be known, on that day, I felt compelled to move down that corridor. I felt drawn to that door. Yes, the anger propelled me forward, but something else was going on here, something I hadn’t ever been able to put my finger on. Not then, not now. But somehow, some way, I felt that I had to get into that apartment. I had to take action. I had to do what I did next.

  Which was to reach for the doorknob.

  I didn’t bother knocking and waiting. There were a dozen people laying dead in their own blood and many more writhing in pain, whose lives would be forever altered by this scumbag. I wasn’t giving anyone inside a courtesy knock. Fuck that. Fuck him and fuck anyone inside.

  “Lee, wait!”

  Those were, of course, Mitch’s last words.

  Except, I don’t wait. I turn the doorknob and am surprised to discover that the door was unlocked. I push it all the way open…

  And that’s the last thing I remember.

  Chapter Seven

  Until I wake up in the hospital a day later.

  But I wake up into a world of silence and darkness. I wake up a monster. I wake up friendless, as well. My partner, Mitch, who I was closer to than any of my partners, hadn’t been so lucky. The entire Apartment 2F had been lined with explosives. Not all of them had gone off. Just the ones closest to the door and the window, which Mitch had been standing next to when he reached out to me, reached out to stop me from opening the door.

  He’s dead now, having taken the brunt of the explosion. A random bomb had exploded in the kitchen, too, set off for reasons I never understood. It had blown a hole in the wall and seriously wounded a neighbor, although she had survived, too.

  One death, two injuries. All because I wasn’t thinking. All because I had forgotten my training and abandoned my instincts.

  I sigh, still standing there in the bathroom, expelling air through my freshly-replaced tracheal tube.

  It’s times like this, I want to drink.

  But I don’t, can’t. At least not alone. I can’t risk passing out. I can’t risk vomiting. I can’t risk getting drunk and doing something stupid, like wandering outside without my walking stick, or without Betsie, or even leaning too far over my upstairs railing. Drinking now is never a good idea, although I have had a beer or two with my brother, with his ever-watchful eye on me.

  I continue to hold the bathroom counter, aware I’m standing in front of a mirror I had looked into a thousand times before. Did I have more wrinkles now? More gray hair? My brother tells me I look the same, but is he being truthful? I can feel the wrinkles around the corners of my eyes, but are they noticeable to others? I could only imagine that I have not aged well, not with the stress I’d endured, the pain I’ve felt, the guilt that wracks me daily.

  Then again, half my face is pocked by scars. I touch them often. In fact, I usually wake up in the morning touching my scars, which means I touch them while I sleep, too. I think, in a way, I am fascinated by them. Plus, they feel so…foreign. As if I am touching someone else’s face. And so I awaken each morning, my fingertips running over my temples and eye sockets and cheekbones, reading, if you will, the story of my accident.

  The days following the blast were too hellish to remember in any detail. The fear. The horror. The sick realization. The begging for help. The begging for death. The pain. The treatments. The surgeries. The heartbreak. The loss. The nightmares.

  The darkness.

  The silence.

  Too much to relive, and most of these were memories I would rather soon forget.

  I lower my head, still holding the sink. My life has come into some balance now. Some semblance of normalcy. I have my routines. I have my patterns. I know my way around. I do not get lost, and, just last month, my brother presented me a prototype smartphone. It has a braille plastic cover that I can use to find the apps I needed. Also, I can both send and receive texts and emails—all spelled out in vibrating Morse code.

  Now, throughout the day, my hip will sometimes vibrate, indicating a text message. To date, only my brother has text messaged me, although the captain gave me his personal number, and so did the translator, in case I needed her services again.

  I push away from the counter and wonder again what Rachel the translator looks like, until I realize I don’t care what she looks like. I also realize that I miss her touch and wonder if I will ever see her—or feel her—again.

  I take out my cell phone, and find the braille messaging icon, and proceed to text-message the captain.

  I do, after all, have some follow-up questions regarding the case. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

  Chapter Eight

  Detective Hammer is an old friend.

  He is also a lead detective at the LAPD Missing Persons Unit, which is why the captain sent him over. If memory serves me, the man was damned good at what he did. Additionally, if memory serves me, he often worked with a private dick by the name of Spinoza. A small guy, quiet, who had a helluva past himself. Hammer and Spinoza made an unlikely team, and often worked together on missing person cases. Whether or not they still did, I don’t know. And how I remember the little detective’s name, I’m not entirely sure, either. I guess you can’t forget a name like Spinoza.

  Hammer picks Betsie and me up outside the apartment. As I step into what I assume is an unmarked car, I am greeted immediately with the faintest hint of jasmine. My sense of smell is working at nearly a hundred percent capacity. If I had to guess, I would say maybe at eighty percent. For me, this is damn good news.

  Before I sit in the back seat, I sign, “Hi, Rachel.”

  For a reply, I feel a light touch on the back of my hand. I next sign, “Howdy, Detective.”

  I can almost imagine the stoic Hammer saying, “Enough with the chit-chat.”

  Maybe he had. The car is moving away from the apartment, and down Morton Avenue, a street I walk every day. Next to me, I can feel Betsie panting. Her breath smells ripe. I love her ripe breath, which can often penetrate my damaged olfactory system. As we drive, I imagine the homes whipping past us. The dangling telephone wires. The graffiti. The old bungalows. The schools. The chain-link fences. The out-of-the-way shops, of which Chango is a part.

  We stop and I am certain we are on Alvarado, although Hammer might have turned down Scott Road. Betsie puts a paw on my lap. I love her stinky paws, too; that is, when I can smell them.

  We make the turn and shortly, I feel us coming to a stop. I know the donut shop is the detective’s favorite hangout. I know he also takes a lot of heat for that. Or, at least, he did. Okay, he took it from me. When we come to a full stop, I feel another light touch on my hand. Rachel is indicating it’s time to get out. At least, that’s what I think she is indicating. Either way, I am about to find out.