Five Stories

Thankfully, I did have a solid group of people around me. Will, Midge, Doll, and Jenn. And that was before we ever started dating. It's part of the reason she liked me to begin with.

"You came all the way out here, stay for dinner," I offer.

"I can't. Just wanted to see what I was buying. Let me know what you decide."

Justin shakes my hand and leaves the garage. He steps into his expensive rental car and drives down my dirt road. I laugh out loud when I imagine him complaining how dirty his car just got.

--

That night, I tell Jenn about the offer. She's skeptical like me. Skeptical in the sense we'll find anything to contradict the official story of Meg Fontaine's death. We print off everything Justin got us and start taping it to the white board little by little. Jenn's investigative persona returns as she helps me. She misses it more than I do, so she got her PI license as well a few months ago.

Justin couldn't get much from RHD, but I know the investing officer was Detective III Holly Roland. She ruled it an accident after six days. Justin gave us a picture of her business card and it's on the board next to the results of her findings.

The first PI he hired was Herald Porter. He ruled it an accident, but it took him three weeks. His findings aren't extensive, and I believe he had a predetermined answer and padded out his paycheck. This guy was useless.

The second PI is Drake Rose. His investigation lasted a week, but he seemed to be more proactive. He created an entire chart of personalities connected to Meghan. There is some crossover, but some new names as well. Kenneth Taslim, the stunt coordinator. Fabian Prince, the director of the show.

Drake did some great work in a short amount of time, but then he seems to have merely stopped. In fact, he sent over all of his efforts and went dark two weeks ago. Why? There are a lot of big players here, so I'm thinking he had some external pressure he wasn't comfortable having on his back.

I've played the voicemail dozens of times.

"You had your chance. People will tell five stories about you. Which one is true? Mind the gap."

The voice distortion is unnerving all on its own. What happened two days later compounds the eeriness. Jenn and I take turns holding Krista while compiling what we have on the board. Justin provided us with pictures of the harness, the ropes, the mat, and Meg's body face up with a halo of fresh blood around her fractured head. She landed on her back and didn't die immediately. She suffered for three hours in the hospital before expiring. The kids were kept out of the room when we put those pictures on the whiteboard.

"The rope didn't break, her harness did. She missed the mat by two feet," I say to myself. A tape measure was used to show the distance from where her body landed in relation to the mat. "Two feet."

I play the tape again. She had her chance to do what exactly? Five stories? Is that just the fall, or is there something more abstract going on? Mind the gap. That phrase itself is a warning. It alerts people of a change in elevation. Even a five-story change.

I put the pictures on the board showing the top of the building looking straight down. The mat is visible with the safety crew. The next picture is from the mat looking straight up. I play the tape again.

I focus on the harness. It wrapped around her waist and thighs, creating three points of contact. If one broke, she'd still be safe. She wouldn't be rappelling as she planned, but there would be enough time to get her down safely. All three snapped in quick succession. The metal buckle of the waist harness broke. Stranger still, the legs snapped not where they secured to her thighs, those were still fastened. The material itself tore behind her thighs. She had a belay in the event she lost control of her brake hand. It's a running line from a fixed point, meaning if someone at the bottom held the rope, she wouldn't move because the rope would stop running.

Justin sent me the fall itself. Her harness broke on the third take of the same stunt. Almost immediately after jumping she began to experience difficulties. The belay wasn't stopping the rope, but it ceased running shortly after she threw her brake hand behind her. The sudden jerk of the stop broke the harness. The buckle of the waist snapped, and all her weight was supported at her legs. They tore the moment they were taut. There wasn't much sway left or right, but she tumbled out of the harness and completed two full rotations before landing on her back.

I wince when I hear the thud of her body slapping the pavement. The crew starts screaming, and medical rushes to her. Someone is shouting for the cameras to cut, and it finally does after a hand is shoved straight into the lens. Not before it looks over the shoulder of the medical crew, and I watch Meg cough up blood while in too much pain to scream.

"Jesus," Jenn says from behind me. I wasn't aware she came into the room. I lower my laptop screen in case Nathan snuck in with her. "They're in bed."

"Police cleared it as an accident. All three straps though?" I ask, and she sits on my lap. She leans her body against mine, and I roll the computer chair away from the desk.

"We taking the case?" Jenn asks, and I sigh. I'm not sure yet. "You've done more with less."

"I don't know. I kind of want the case, but that's just more time away from Krista. I stayed at home with Nathan until Derek gave me the Katie Grossman case," I say.

"I'll tell you what, we all go," she says, and I laugh. "I'm serious. My niece lives in LA. My brother Yoshi's daughter." Yoshihito Ito, her eldest brother who is a retired Navy SEAL. "We can visit family and you can work."

Jenn's family is huge. She has four siblings, each with three or four kids. Jenn is the youngest, so her oldest niece is only a few years younger than her. Most of her nieces and nephews have kids. Her mother has an extended family in the United States, and her father has an extended family in Japan. Her parents met in the military. Jenn's mother was a fighter pilot in the Marines, and her father was a Japanese naval officer. I'm honestly not sure which of the two scares me more.

I have a brother and sister, two nephews, and a handful of cousins I've meet once or twice. That's it.

I watch the video of the fall and pause it after the thud. I can't watch her coughing up blood again.

"That's someone's daughter," Jenn says, and I think about my own. Even if I thought the case couldn't be solved, that would be enough for me. I kiss Jenn and pick up my phone off the desk. I dial Justin's number off the card and place the phone to my ear.

"This is Chase Kramner. I'll do it."

--

Friday - September 18, 2020

Justin arranges our flights and offers us a hotel, but Jenn talked to her niece who agreed to let us stay at her place in LA. I accept his offer for a rental, and we manage to get a toddler and an infant through air travel with minimal aggravation. I carry Krista while Jenn holds Nathan's hand as we navigate our way out of the terminal and into baggage claim at LAX. The bag carousel doesn't start moving for another half hour, and in the meantime, I leave to get the rental car situated. By the time I get back, Jenn has our bags on a cart.

We get the kids in the car first, and then put the bags in the back. Justin reserved us an SUV, and the Enterprise provided us a black Jeep Renegade. It looks small, until you're tossing bags into the back. Deceptively large cargo space, and I slam the hatch shut with ease. I sit in the seat, and I immediately feel taller compared to my own vehicle. I make a mental note to price one out later.

"GPS is set up," Jenn says, and holds onto the phone as I pull out of the space. There is nowhere to put the phone, so I keep my opinion to myself. Both of our cars have a phone holder on the dash, but she always insists on holding the phone when I need to follow directions from the device. It'll tell me to turn, then she'll tell me to turn as if the phone isn't connected to the car's audio, and I tell her to put the phone on the goddamn dashboard!

"Where in LA is she?" I ask. I use the camera and the mirror to back up out of the space.

"Bunker Hill area. She says she's really close to Angel's Flight," Jenn replies. "About forty minutes."

Fuck LA traffic. Fuck it in every way possible! I thought DC was bad, this is unreal. We're not even halfway there by the time we've spent an hour on the road. Unlike most metro areas where there is rush hour traffic to and from work, LA traffic never stops. I tap my forehead on the top of the steering wheel and groan.

"Calm down," Jenn says.

"I'm calm, just annoyed," I say. I look in the rearview and see Nathan snacking on a bag of carrots while Krista is napping. Jenn hands me a bag of carrots as well so I shrug and tear open the bag with my teeth. "Just starting to get hangry."

"Emmie warned me it might be bad, so I packed accordingly," Jenn says. She opens a small cooler of snacks she bought in the terminal. She treats herself to a cup of fruit and eats it with a toothpick. I rub my leg which is starting to cramp from keeping pressure on the brake for so long. "You good?"

"I'm fine," I say.

"When's the last time you put on lotion?" she asks.

"Jenn, stop. I'm fine," I say more forcefully.

Every few hours I put lotion on the stump of my amputated left leg. I haven't done that since right before we got off the flight. I can feel the burning itch, but I'd have to take off my prosthetic to scratch it effectively.

"If you need it, just put it in park and we'll do a Chinese fire drill. Not like we're going anywhere," Jenn says, and looks at the parking lot pretending to be a road.

"You doing good bud?" I ask Nathan and turn my rearview mirror toward him. I notice he has headphones on and Jenn's tablet leaning on his thighs. "You know I hate it when he plays with that."

"What's the alternative right now?" Jenn asks. "He's quiet and he learns about technology."

"No, he's learning to tap his fingers on a screen. Every study ever has shown children who use touch screens at a young age have delays in developing basic motor skills. They found out two-year-old children couldn't stack a block on top of another block."

"It's not his babysitter, it's just for the drive," Jenn says.

I prefer to limit the kids access to technology. Nathan rarely watches television, and I never give him my phone. Mostly because toddlers break things and smart phones are expensive, but we have ten acres to play on. He doesn't need it. I explained it to Jenn this way; when a child receives a toy that comes in a big box, the child is likely to play with the box more than the toy.

This is one of the few things we fight about. Jenn is more accepting of Nathan playing with the tablet or watching TV than I am. She'll never admit it, but she's less patient than me, and more likely to reach for the easy answer. After he was born, she was still finishing the last years of her career for her pension, so I was the house husband. Nathan and I had developed a routine that Jenn needed to learn when she retired from the police, and she didn't agree with my technology embargo. At least not until her taking her phone away to get his attention ended up causing the worst meltdown he ever had. You'd think he was a crackhead, and she took his pipe. It soon became a rare privilege.

We finally break through the traffic and get off 110 and into Bunker Hill. The GPS directs us to Grand Avenue. Jenn starts calling her niece, and excitedly lets her know we're around the block.

"She'll tell us where to park," she says once off the phone. Jenn's eyes start scanning the street for a familiar face, and she jolts up when she sees her. "There she is," Jenn says, sticking her head out of the window. "Emmie!"

"Auntie!" Emmie shouts back. I slow the car to a stop, and they hug through the window. "Parking's around the corner on Hope Street. I already told the building I'll have a guest. We just need to register the car."

Emmie jogs in front of us to the parking area and grants us access with a fob on her key ring. Jenn's wife intuition goes off, and she flicks my ear.

"What the hell?" I ask.

"Stop looking at my niece's ass."

We park the car and start unloading, Jenn fully embracing her before she opens the back door to get Krista out of her car seat.

"Oh my God! She's so beautiful," Emmie says, and takes her from Jenn. "Krista is for Grandma, right?"

I finish helping Nathan out of his seat and walk with him around the Jeep. Emmie hands Krista back to Jenn and crouches in front of Nathan.

"Nice to meet you Nate. I'm not your aunt, I'm your cousin. Confusing, I know," Emmie says. Nathan asks her for a high five, which she gleefully returns.

Esmerelda "Emmie" Ito is a dizzyingly beautiful woman. Jenn informed me her brother married a Mexican woman while serving in the Navy in San Diego. Petite Asian frame but with Latina accentuations at the curvy parts. Golden tanned skin with light makeup if any. Dark hair contained in a tight braid that swings across her rear. Jenn flicked my ear earlier, but it's hard not to look when she's wearing tight volleyball shorts, a loose shirt that hangs off one shoulder revealing her bra straps, and flip flops showing her recently painted green turquoise toenails.

Thus far her personality is bubbly and excitable. However, her last name is Ito, so I know she has a mean streak a mile long. I hope I never find out what sets that off.

"You must be Chase," Emmie says, standing up from her crouch. I extend for a handshake but get an awkward half-hug. She squishes my hand between our chests, and I don't wiggle a finger in fear I'm accused of something. My hand could easily get lost in there. "So great to finally met you. The man who made this woman want to have kids."

"Sorry I wasn't cranking them out in my twenties like everyone else. Your dad wasn't even in his twenties when he started," Jenn says, playfully slapping her arm. Or trying to make her let me go, which she thankfully does.

Jenn is the youngest of five. Emmie who is twenty-six, is the youngest from Jenn's brother, who is sixteen years older than her. When it comes to kids, Jenn is the outlier of her family. I think it has something to do with Jenn being the only one of her siblings to be entirely raised in the United States. Her older siblings were all born and raised mostly in Japan. Her parents had four kids in quick succession, then waited a decade before Jenn was conceived as a camping accident.

"Anyway, let's get your stuff upstairs. I can have the doorman bring a cart," Emmie says. Part of me wants to be the man and refuse the service. The other part knows I only have one leg, so I accept the help. "Might be a little small for you guys, but better than paying LA hotel costs."

Our hotel is covered should we need it, which I assume we probably will. A big apartment in LA is still less than 1000 square feet. For three adults and two children. I tried talking logistical sense before she suggested her niece. As the husband, I'm often right in the end, but too scared of the wrath for mentioning I was right.

I wonder what Emmie does for a living, because I know an apartment in this part of LA is nearly $3000 a month for a one bedroom. Comfortable common areas. A full gym with exercise classes. Roof patios with seating and grills.

"How's work?" I ask as a roundabout way of asking what she does without having to directly ask the question.

"Lot of travel recently. I was in Bangkok back in April," Emmie says.

"Bangkok in April? Songkran?" I ask, and she beams in delight.

"Yup," Emmie says with a large grin. "Probably the most fun I've ever had."

"Alright nerds, what is Songkran?" Jenn asks, feeling left out of the conversation.

"Songkran is Thailand's new year holiday. Part of the tradition is washing away the previous year to start fresh. In practice, the entire country basically turns into the world's biggest water fight," Emmie says, barely containing herself she had so much fun.

"What were you doing there for work?" I ask.

"Photography," she replies.

The elevator takes us to the fifth floor, and she leads us and the cart to her door. Once inside, I know Jenn will last at most two days before we get a hotel. It's doable for a single woman. Not for us. Emmie must be a frequent customer of IKEA, as most of her furniture appears to have been purchased there. Her kitchen leads me to assume that like Jenn, she has fallen under the Rae Dunn curse. Simplistic, minimalist designs with thin lettering, either annotating what goes into the container or on the plate, or single words on coffee mugs like Love, Brave, or simply Coffee. Women literally line up outside of Marshal's and Home Goods an hour before opening to be the first to get the latest seasonal items. They also occasionally get into Black Friday level brawls.

The pictures on the walls are mostly self-portraits. Emmie is on the beach. She's leaning off a pier with her hair perfectly blowing in the wind. On her building's roof patio with a view of the city. Don't tell me she's an Instagram model.

"I love the Rae Dunn," Jenn says, and wanders off the compare her collection. She loves them, but our bank account does not. Unless you count the resale market, they're not particularly expensive, but volume, volume, volume.

"If you need space to work, the common areas have Wi-fi, just get the password from the front desk. I still need to get the air mattress set up. My neighbor's baby recently outgrew the crib, so we can go next door and get it tonight for Krista. It'll be tight, but we'll make it work. I'd let you use my room, but I've moved my office in there for the time being. Still need to work."

"Don't worry, we'll be fine," Jenn assures her. I push the cart more toward the center of the room and look at her sliding glass door. She has a small patio, and I let Jenn know I need to make a few calls before stepping outside.

I call Justin Fontaine, and he answers almost immediately.

"You in LA?"

"I am. My wife wanted to visit family, so we're staying with her niece for now. On the flight I made a list of people I'd like to interview, but I might need some muscle to get onto the set of the show. The producers are ghosting my calls."

"Anyone in particular?" he asks.

"Terry Opal," I reply.

Terry Opal is the showrunner and executive producer who oversaw the entire production of the show Scarlett before production was indefinitely postponed. The show centered around a femme fatale type character who is a professional thief who works with a rogue FBI agent who investigated white collar crimes. Displeased with the many criminals he couldn't put away he works with Scarlett to achieve his own justice by stealing from them. It explores both the heists and their building romantic tension.

"One of his PAs used to work for me, I'll see if I can get his schedule through her," he says. "Maybe you can ambush him at lunch or something." That's not a bad idea. Almost wish I thought of it.

"The stunt coordinator I'm talking to first thing tomorrow," I say. "Several witnesses of the fall. Medical staff on set. I got a full day."

Justin and I end the call, and I immediately call Jo.

"Packing my bag now. Local cops were happy with the results," Jo replies when I ask how long she'd be.

The cops one county over asked for our help in tracking down over two dozen people with outstanding arrest warrants. Mostly failure to appear in court for DUIs or assault charges. Jo's plan to find them was brilliant. She told me she got the idea from a news story she watched on Youtube. She advised the police to send out letters to their last know addresses, stating they had won a free television and needed to arrive in person to claim their prize. They set up the sting at the local movie theater and dressed up the front to make it look like a legit sweepstakes. They checked in at the lobby, which also confirmed their identity, skipped into the theater and into a free pair of silver bracelets.