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1
Fiona
My name is Fiona Christensen. I’m 27 years old and a former private investigator.
I say ‘former’ because I left my job the day the Richards, California police department filed my cousin’s murder away as a cold case.
Ali was my best friend growing up. She was the wild child, the black sheep of the family. She was into drugs, wild living, and dangerous men – but I loved her no matter what. Even when she was strung out, I sent her money, mostly because I didn’t want her selling herself on the street. I worried for years that I was enabling her, that maybe I would be the cause of her death.
Instead, she died from a gunshot wound in a back alley at the age of 26.
The last thing she’d told me before she died was she had a new boyfriend. A member of a local motorcycle club called the Midnight Riders. She wouldn’t reveal his name, though – perhaps out of fear, perhaps because she knew they were into some pretty rough stuff.
I told the Richards Police Department. I begged them to follow it up, and then I ripped them a new asshole when they stonewalled me.
Turns out that the Midnight Riders basically own the town of Richards. The Police Department was either on their payroll or didn’t have the balls to take them down.
So I turned in my notice, got in my Mustang, and drove north.
I was going to avenge my cousin’s murder all on my own.
What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with a man who might have known the killer… or maybe even been the killer himself.
2
I’d gone to Los Angeles at 24 to be an actress, but surprisingly (note the sarcasm) I didn’t get my big break in the first six months. After my savings ran out, I started looking around for ways to pay the rent.
All my new actor friends were waiting tables or tending bar. I wanted something a little less mind-numbing, a little less cliché, a little more exciting.
I got it from an ad in the back of the LA Weekly, the local indie paper.
No, not that kind of an ad.
It was for a private detective agency.
I started working for a cranky old-timer named Sid. He looked like a cue ball with coke-bottle thick glasses, and tended to make Yogi Berra-type pronouncements.
“I’d like to give ya a raise, kid, but raises are like raisins – they don’t grow on trees.”
“I’d do somethin’ if I could do somethin’, but I can’t do nothin’, so you go an’ do it and quit botherin’ me about it.”
I mostly did surveillance on celebrity cheaters, providing photographs and videos for multimillion dollar divorces. I even got to use my acting chops a couple of times on the job, though those occasions were few and far between.
The work was usually boring. Lots of stakeouts, which might sound cool to the uninitiated, but it basically equated to hanging outside apartments in my car for twelve hours at a time, eating lots of junk food, and almost bursting from not being able to pee.
But I learned mental discipline. And I learned even more from Sid. All of that would stand me in good stead when I went to search for my cousin’s murderer.
Ali died a month after I turned 26. A year later, the detective on the case finally admitted they were filing it away.
I told Sid my plans that afternoon. He was supportive – though in a typically Sid-like fashion.
“Kid, yer dumb as rocks, but yer one up on ‘em, cuz most of them guys are dumb as shit. But they’re mean as junkyard dogs, so just make sure ya don’t get killed. If ya get yer man, come back to see me, ya always got a job here.”
For Sid, that was actually really touching.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.” He paused, then added, “‘Cept for money. A penny saved is a penny I ain’t gonna loan ya.”
