Auto Erotic
1 – Exhausted
Officers Britt Kinzley and Braden Jorgenson are rolling the residential streets of Joy View, Illinois. Kinzley is behind the wheel of the squad cruiser, locked in, maintaining awareness of her surroundings. Jorgenson is leaning back loftily in the passenger seat, aloof and talkative, gesturing and shifting gaze between his partner and the road ahead in spasmodic non-structure. “And this son of a bitch just takes off! I mean, he bolts like a libtard cuck at an NRA rally! And I’m hauling ass after him, hopping all kinds of fences and shit. But this guy’s like the motherfucking T-1000 doing hurdles! I’m holding my own though y’know but-”
Kinzley interjects sardonically. “T-1000? Like those old calculators?”
Jorgenson stares at her with a curled right upper lip, flared right nostril and raised right eyebrow, a mesh of puzzlement and disgust. “That’s a TI-80. You’ve never seen The Terminator??”
Kinzley shakes her head. “No, I missed that one.”
Jorgenson blinks and shakes off her blasphemous response. “What the fuck, Brittany…well there’s like ten of those motherfuckers, but the sequel has this liquid guy who can like transform into shit and-”
She interjects again, grinning shrewdly. “Oooh, Transformers, I have seen that one.”
He throws up his hands in defeat and lets them fall. “Jesus fucking Christ, Britt, I’m not talking about the goddamn Transfor-.” This time the crackle of the car radio interrupts.
Attention all units in the Northwest residential area, we have reports of a possible 10-59 in progress on the two hundred block of Longwood Avenue. House number 2-7-9. Available units, please report to the scene.
Kinzley snatches up the boxy microphone device and pulls it to her lips, straightening the length of its coil. “Copy. This is Officer Britt Kinzley. Unit 717 is in route. Five minutes out.” She hangs the talk box back on its clip, flips on the roof lights, fires up the car’s howling siren and punches down on the accelerator.
Jorgenson claps his mitts together. “Alright, let’s fuckin’ go!” He grabs a pack of Nicorette gum from a panel along the inside of the passenger door. The crinkle of the inner foil packaging somehow overtakes the wail of the siren, pinging the high frequency receptors in Britt’s ears; she winces. He pops out two pieces, lobs them into his mouth and chews at them with wide sloppy smirking chomps. He is a jolly cow with its cud. His eyes are agape and ablaze. “I’ve never been on scene for a fire.”
Britt sustains focus, masking the ball of worry rolling up in her guts. “I haven’t either…”
Blazing down Seventh Street, she whips a left onto Longwood Avenue and clicks off the siren as they hit the final trafficless stretch. She leans forward and narrows her gaze ahead. “I don’t see any smoke.”
Jorgenson mirrors her action, scanning the houses rushing toward them. “Yea, what the fuck?” As they close in on the dispatched address, they spot the shimmering candy-apple gleam of a fire engine parked along the curb; no other emergency vehicles have arrived yet, though a swelling crescendo of wailing sirens is closing in around them.
Britt brings the squad car to a jerking halt, and the officers come barreling out, endorphins leading the charge. As they reach the edge of the driveway, they are met by two uniformed, unmasked. unhelmeted firefighters: one blonde (carrying an axe that has clearly been put to use a time or two), the other, brunette, both easily over six feet tall and two hundred plus pounds. They look like they could be a WWF tag team in the ‘80s. The Firefighters…too on the nose…The Flaming Dudes…ope, no…Blaze Brothers…sure, that works. Their skin is sheened with sweat, but not one produced by exposure to extreme temperatures; the strained, vacant looks of color-bled perplexion on their faces render an ominous portrait. The walnut-haired fireman speaks first, “Evening, officers. I’m Firefighter Greyson, this is Firefighter Atkins.”
Jorgenson jumps in. “Good to meet you fellas. I’m Officer Jorgenson, this is Officer Kinzley. What do we got goin’ on?”
Greyson continues. “We’re gonna need to tape this off…Next door neighbor over here called in what she thought was a fire starting up in the garage. We didn’t see any smoke upon arrival. As we exited the truck and approached, we did see some buildup inside the garage through the upper left window. Atkins was ready to break the back door in, but it was unlocked. When he opened it, the haze started rolling out and we could hear a motor running and noticed a car inside. That’s where the smoke and sound were coming from, and then, it cleared a bit more and…we saw the bodies.”
Britt’s turn to jump in. “Bodies??”
Atkins takes a reluctant step forward. “I went in first and headed straight to the car to turn off the engine. There’s a…a male and female in the back seat…both look pretty young…maybe high school…both naked.”
All the excitement and enjoyment that Officer Braden Jorgenson had been experiencing suddenly turns on its head, flipping in an instant to revulsion and dread. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Britt Kinzley swallows a cue ball while choking out her reply. “Oh god, are you thinking—gulp—”
Greyson steps in to let her gather herself. “It’s hard to say for sure, but the body positioning certainly makes it look one of two ways.”
Jorgenson is serious now. “I’ll get the perimeter set up. Britt, will you radio in the details?”
“On it.”
The four emergency responders move with diet haste—swift but not rushed—each affixed to their task at hand, not concerning themselves with theories or queries about the bizarre circumstances at play, or the oncoming obsessions their peers will face regarding all the plausibilities and their relationships to the two ‘cides…sui and homi.
2 – Which ‘cide Are You On?
Detective Garrett Sanders is at his desk, hunched over the keyboard of his computer; index fingers curling out from his loosely closed fists cautiously poke at the keys like R.L. Stine at his typewriter. He is feeding in new information to the ongoing report regarding two deceased teenagers discovered in a precarious, possibly ritualistic placement up on Longwood Avenue.
Sanders looks up to find a young, clean-shaven detective with cropped, oily black, slicked-back hair, wearing a royal purple tie and suspenders set, approach holding up two hefty manilla folders. “I got family, friends, neighbors, teachers, classmates, coaches, coworkers…” He tosses the folders onto Sanders’s desk. “…anybody on any kind of speaking terms with both kids.”
“Excellent. Nice work, De Costa. Got a preference?”
Detective De Costa looks down to the desk, already placing his hand on the folder labeled JONATHAN SANDOVAL and sliding it back into his grasp. “I’ll go with Romeo.” He meets Garrett’s gaze again. “I have a daughter…little too close to home.”
“Understandable.” Sanders—thinking of his own nineteen-year-old daughter—spins the remaining folder his way and reads SAMANTHA HACKETT before perusing through it for just a moment. “Alright, let’s get to it.”
An unmarked smokestone squad sedan cuts through the periphery of Joy View forestry and makes its way onto Sentinel Bridge into Havenside, Iowa, spanning the distance in about forty seconds. On the other side of the Mississippi, the sedan stays in its lane and veers to the right onto Riverbend Road for just two blocks before turning left and briskly ascending the mile long incline that leads off Bradley Drive.
“So, you, uh…got any theories?” The voice from the passenger seat is that of Garrett Sanders’s current partner (of three months) Detective Nic Bostrom, a crude cruiserweight with a crew cut.
“I don’t really do theories, Bostrom. I prefer to let evidence speak.”
Bradley Drive’s slope plateaus and Bostrom retorts. “Huh…ok…well, I think somebody put ‘em there. Forced ‘em at gunpoint to strip, sit in the car and start it, then closed ‘em in. Probably just a wrong-place-wrong-time encounter with some sick fuck.”
Sanders had stopped paying attention after he heard Bostrom say ‘I think’.
The cruiser hangs a left on Merchant Street, rides five more blocks at ten under the speed limit through a network of grand, large-scale homes, pulls down the runway-strip driveway of an opulent three-story stone dwelling and parks near the dried, reedy remnants of a winter-beaten sunflower patch.
“Keep your theories to yourself in there. These people don’t want to hear any of that.” Sanders, manilla folder in hand, opens the driver-side door and steps out. Bostrom follows suit from the passenger side.
“Cut me some slack, I’m not gonna say anything in front of the parents. What do you take me for, a fucking idiot? An asshole?”
Sanders pauses to look his displeasing partner in the eyes. “The jury’s still out on that, Bostrom.” He continues toward the front door, Bostrom tailing ten or so feet behind. Sanders waits for him to catch up on the stoop, then rings the doorbell.
“Listen Sanders, I’ve gathered that you don’t really like me a whole lot, and I suppose that’s ok, as long as you’ve got my back and all that. At least on the clock.”
Sanders continues to stare ahead as he replies. “If I didn’t do the things I’m supposed to do around here, I wouldn’t still have the badge twenty something fucking years later. Just worry about the goddamn job, kid.”
Bostrom nods in a head-cocked fashion and turns back to face forward with Sanders.
The front door opens, slowly revealing a tall, handsome, reluctant, sandy-brunette man in his twenties, rocking a University of Iowa t-shirt, with a black leather rope looped through a guitar pick and a wire-wrapped shark’s tooth around his neck. “Can I help you?”
Garrett Sanders speaks firmly, but solemn, holding out his badge in plain view. “Hello, I’m Detective Sanders. This is my partner, Detective Bostrom. We’re from the Joy View PD. We were hoping we could have a word with a Sandy or Shawn Hackett.”
“They aren’t home right now.” He is slow and somber.
Bostrom pipes in. “Any idea when they might be getting back?”
“Um…not sure. Sometime after two.”
Sanders steps back in. “Are you part of the Hackett family, young man?”
The solemn man nods dourly. “Stephen…Sam’s brother.”
“Nice to meet you, Stephen. I’m very sorry for your loss. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”
A hesitant moment. “Sure. Come on in.”
The inside of the home is a feng sui fortress; the foyer reaching up twenty feet to a captivating stained glass skylight roof which casts a hundred translucent spears of bolting color down into the glistening mahogany floor. The detectives follow Stephen to the left into the next room, a large, open parlor with intricately woven carpets and oddly stretching, velvety lounge furniture.
“You can have a seat wherever.” He lurks toward the well-stocked bar along the wall between two floor-to-ceiling windows. “Would you like something to drink?” He takes hold of a fifth of Blanton’s single barrel whiskey and fills a glass up to an inch below the rim.
“No, thank you.” Sanders is the one to speak during this questioning. “How old are you, Stephen?”
He downs the drink with exhausting gulps and begins to pour himself another. “Twenty-two.”
“Do you live in this home?”
He takes a quick gulp, tops off the glass and heads for an open, tall-back chair with gold trim. “No…I’m over in Iowa City at the dorms, currently.” He sits and begins to take a slow, drawing drink.
“U of I…nice. I was a Hawkeye, myself. What are you studying?”
A brisk chuckle hops from lips to liquid, setting off a mini whiskey mortar. “Ha…uhh…” He wipes away the back spray from his face. “…biomedical engineering…buuut I’m failing harrrrd, haha.” He pulls down another large swallow.
“Hey, college is tough, and that sounds like a difficult program. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to understand stuff like that. Just keep at it.”
A swig and a scoff.
“Now, Stephen, can you tell us a bit about your sister…anything you can think of that might point us in the right direction? Places she goes, people she spends time with, things like that.”
“Well…I know her boyfriend was the guy in the car with her.”
“Jonathan Sandoval?”
“Yea, John. She was spending a good amount of time over in Joy View with him from what I understand. We kept in good touch, but she didn’t keep me filled in on all the details of her life.”
“Did you ever meet John?”
Stephen smirks. “Oh yeah. He was an alright dude. The first time I met him was here, last May, fucking finals week. All our parents were away on various trips. Sam and John thought they would take a trip of their own. They dropped a bunch of acid and kind of lost their shit a little bit…started fucking around with the medieval weapons in the other room…” He tosses back a non-committed pointing gesture over his shoulder. “…and John dropped a Norse axe onto his baby toe…” He makes a quick chopping motion with his hand and a swift whistling whisp with his teeth and lips. “—fffftttthh—clean off. You don’t realize how much blood comes out from just a little toe.” He shivers slightly and takes a drink. “Anyway, she called me freaking the fuck out. I jumped in the ‘Vette and it took me about thirty minutes to get here. They seemed a bit sobered up by then. And they at least had enough sense to wrap his foot up with towels and put the toe on ice, but Jesus Christ the room looked like Pollock in a Heinz factory. Thank God we have tile in there.”
“Did you take him to the hospital?”
“Yeah, we all rode over to Grace Point. Told them it was a kitchen accident. One of those sharp ass Senzo knives got bumped off the counter and did its thing. They had to let his parents know since he was a minor, but they seemed cool about it. Accidents happen.”
“How did that situation make you feel about John…about their relationship?”
“I mean, he seemed like a good guy and Sam really liked him. It seemed like they made each other happy. They were just being kids. Kids do stupid shit. She called me because she knew that I would understand that.”
“How do you think your parents would have reacted to that situation?”
He takes a moment to ponder this question, swirling his glass hypnotically. “I’m not really sure…I know what they would have done to me in that situation.” He sneers and throws back another swill, finishing the drink, and before Detective Sanders can ask his next question, Stephen Hackett stands and continues. “Sorry, I’m not really feeling all that well and I’m kind of grieving here and, unfortunately, I need to get ready for my day still. You can come back later or contact my parents by phone. Let me show you to the door.”
Sanders and Bostrom quickly glance at one another and stand to move, back into the foyer toward the front door. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Hackett. Please let your parents know that we came by and that we’ll be in contact.”
“Sure thing. Have a good day, gentlemen.”
“You too, son. I’m sorry again for your loss.”
The door is shut by the time the detectives feel the warm light of the sun.
Back across the Mississippi, in northwest residential Joy View, Detectives Frank De Costa and Lance Wilmington (who looks like a cross between Caleb Williams and Andy Samberg) are riding a route similar to that of the officers on scene for the initial discovery. The roads lead back to the point of origin for this whole sickening ordeal—the garage—along with its adjacent home, which the detectives are gliding toward.
“Somebody put them in there, right?”
“Oh yeah. Without question.”
“Shit is super fucked up.”
“Yeah bro, sick ass motherfucking people in this world.”
De Costa parks the gold, unmarked sedan along the curb and grabs the folder of intel. The detectives exit and approach the home’s entrance, eyeing the garage, all its doors and windows open wide as possible, ventilating any toxic fumes and trapped spirits.
The detectives scale the splintering grey, weather-worn slats of the imploding three-step porch in tandem, pausing together in front of the door, taking badges in hand.
“Fuck. I hate this part.”
Wilmington breathes deep and exhales. “Yeah…me too.” He rings the doorbell.
They wait…
The inside door opens slowly with an unnerving creak, revealing a meek, middle-aged woman with anguished amaranth eyes behind the netting of the outside screen door.
De Costa speaks. “Good day, ma’am. Are you Clara Sandoval?”
The morose mother nods.
“Hello, Mrs. Sandoval. My name is Detective Frank De Costa. This is Detective Lance Wilmington. We’re from the JVPD. We are investigating your son’s case…”
Wilmington drops an adlib. “Very sorry for your loss, ma’am.”
“…would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”
Clara presses her palm against the mesh to crack open the screen door and turns back into the home when De Costa takes hold of its splitting wooden frame. The detectives follow her inside into darkness…a prodigious, swallowing darkness. Vague outlines of metallic rectangles hide along the walls, reflectively flashing some distant lumen, keeping the forms within them in shadow. It is daytime, but from inside this house, one would never be able to tell. Every blind is shut. Every curtain is pulled. The only founts of light within sight are an array of rollicking candles and a modest television in the living room displaying what appears to be an old, grainy home video of a child’s birthday party. The lighted picture box shows a torrent of children in swirling conical party hats wildly bounding around the mis en scene, but the focus remains on a tender-eyed young boy with an ecstatic gappy tooth grin. When the detectives enter this room, Clara is standing six feet back from the flickering screen, bathed in its harsh analog glow. A gauntlet of emotions runs laps across her face. The men keep a quiet, reverential distance until static on the screen breaks her loose from the A/V’s grip with a spasmodic quiver.
“Pardon me…” She continues to move through the cave-like living room, around the corner and through to the kitchen, faintly lit with dull, overhead, incandescent lighting. “…Can I get you gentlemen something to drink?”
“No, thank you, ma’am. We’re okay. If it’s alright, we’d just like you to tell us a bit about your son…anything, really. Anything could help our investigation.”
She nods and holds out a presenting palm, gesturing for the detectives to have a seat at the table before glumly sinking into a chair across from them, her eyes dyed the color of raspberry lemonade. “…What sort of things would you like me to tell you?”
“Well…things like…interests, hobbies…notable friends, girlfriend, classmates, teammates…maybe rivals…anything you can think of.”
A wince of emotion washes over and away in a wink of a moment. “Johnny has a lot of friends…and his girlfriend…Sammy…”
“Sammy. Samantha? Hackett?”
Clara nods, face tightening again and the detectives look at one another.
“They’ve been together about a year…she comes over a lot…I don’t think her parents like…or…I don’t even know if they know about Johnny…”
“What makes you say that?”
“…just a feeling…she doesn’t speak about them much…they seem to be away a lot…working often…”
“Would you say she’s been neglected?”
“I don’t think I would go that far…she’s certainly cared for…fed, clothed, housed… I would say that she is a very independent, self-sufficient young woman.”
“Okay…back to John. Had he been dealing with anything or anyone particularly difficult recently?”
“I don’t think so. He does great in school, has lots of friends…he did mention in passing a couple times having issues with some guys on the baseball team…little altercations, nothing serious, I don’t think…”
“Do you happen to know the names of any of those guys?”
“No…but Coach Martin might…”
De Costa thumbs through the folder. “Peter Martin? JVHS baseball coach?”
She nods.
“How are things at home? Any troubles? What about John’s father, where’s he?”
“…That piece of shit hasn’t been here in three years…fuck if I know where he is…as for at home, we do just fine…”
“Ok…what about John’s relationship with Samantha? Any fights, break-ups, issues with ex-partners, anything like that?”
“…There is one guy…from Sam’s school…an unrequited sort of thing…I think they grew up together maybe…he would call and text her just, too much…it got to be upsetting for John…I think she tried to tell him not to contact her so much, but he never really listened…”
“Did any of this ever lead to any altercations?”
“I’m not sure…”
“Do you know this guy’s name?”
“I think it’s Scott or…something like that…”
“Okay…is there anything else you can think of…anything at all that might be beneficial to the investigation?”
“…I don’t know…I’m sorry…”
De Costa and Wilmington share another look.
“That’s quite alright, ma’am. You’ve been incredibly helpful.”
The detectives stand in unison.
“Thank you for your time and again, we are incredibly sorry for your loss.”
Anguish remains as Clara Sandoval rises to lead the officers out.
The three float back through the flashlit darkness to the front door where the detectives break off and harpoon back into the light of the day.
“Call Sanders and give them a heads up on the obsessive friend.”
3 – In the Name of Fathers, Coaches and Holy Ghostes
BODIES OF TWO LOCAL TEENS FOUND
The bodies of two deceased local teens, 17 (Havenside, IA) and 15 (Joy View, IL)
were discovered in a garage on the northwest side of Longwood Avenue in Joy View
late Tuesday evening. No other details have been made public at this time. Joy View
Police chief Dennis Handerson ensures that the department is fully investigating the
situation. More details will be made available when we receive them.
A copy of the Havenside Herold is folded, resting on the corner of a worn maple desk, the brief, unsettling blurb set prominently in view next to the jumbled words of a different feature story. The desk is in a comfy, open office, crammed with cabinets and bookshelves; the walls are lined with various academic and military service accolades—including medals and a master’s degree in education—to go along with an array of crucifixes and varying Catholic insignia.
Sanders and Bostrom are seated across from a hefty, blue-eyed, white-haired, white-collared priest; demeanor calm, hands folded in front of him on the desk.
“Samantha was a very bright student and a wonderfully warm presence in our halls…it is an absolute tragedy, what has transpired.”
“Were you close with Samantha at all?”
“As close as I am with all my students, faculty and parishioners. St. Anne is a family, and I am a father to my flock.”
“Ok…did Samantha have any…competition, enemies or anything like that?”
“Anybody ever mess with or bully her?”
“No. She was kind, compassionate, very well liked, a straight-A student, on the basketball and cross-country teams, a member of the parish choir…”
“She never had problems with any of her classmates or teammates?”
“None that I was ever made aware of. On the contrary, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“Samantha was a problem solver and a peacekeeper. And truly, people loved her.”
“What about someone named Scott? Something like that? Supposedly a lifelong friend who there was some tension with?”
Principal Father Patrick Foley’s face twists in benign confusion. “Scott, Scott, hmm, no… She is friends with a boy named Stuart…Stuart Granger.”
“Is Stuart seventeen as well?”
“Yes, also a senior.”
“And you never witnessed any issues or strange behavior between the two of them?”
“I did not.”
“Ok…We still would like to speak with him. Could we possibly get his parents information from you?”
“Certainly. Sister Agnes can provide you with that before you go.” He presses a button on his desktop office phone and lifts the receiver to his ear. “Sister, could you please write down the Granger family’s contact information for the detectives?…Thank you.” He hangs up.
“Thank you for your help, Father…” Sanders stands first and shakes the seated priest’s hand. “…We’ll be in touch.”
Bostrom follows suit. “Thank you, Father.”
Principal Father Foley watches the two detectives exit before turning to work on his desktop computer.
A large crucifix hangs on the wall above and the Christ on the cross appears to be looking down upon the priest with pained, saddened eyes.
Detectives De Costa and Wilmington step across the fresh cut koosh of outfield greenery on one of JVHS’s four diamonds, making their way toward the infield, where there is action: someone younger is pitching from the mound to someone catching behind home plate and an older individual with a digital tablet device is speaking firmly to the pitcher.
When the detectives have reached the short stop’s zone, the adult hollers a halt to his players. “Alright boys! Nice work today. Ice up and be ready for practice at eight.”
“Thanks, Coach.” The boys nod and hustle off with muddled rapidity.
When the three men converge at the mound, introductory pleasantries abound with handshakes all around.
“Thank you for meeting with us, Mr. Martin.”
“Of course. I feel…just awful…and sick about what happened…John was a really great kid, a great player, and a team player, got along well with everybody.”
“His mother mentioned something about conflicts with some of the guys on the team.”
Coach Martin falls into a fleeting moment of inward reflection. “Hmm…yea, she might be talking about last May…regionals against Arborsville…away game. We were up four to two in the nineth. John walked two guys, hit the third and pitched a walk-off, three-run triple to the fourth…some of the guys were pretty pissed, but what do you do? That’s the game.”
“And there was an altercation?”
The coach shifts and scratches his stubble compulsively until the word flow breaks through his reluctancy bulwark. “Two of the other guys on the team were giving him a real hard time on the bus ride home. The back and forth got heated and some fists did fly. But everything was smoothed over by the time we were back in Joy View.”
“Could we have you go ahead and get us the info for the two boys’ guardians? We’d like to grab a word with them.”
“Sure, no problem. If you’d like to follow me over there to the sports complex, I can grab you a copy of the school directory to take with you.”
“Okay, let’s do that.”
The detectives follow the coach toward the sports complex, and we begin to billow upward into the cerulean sky like an unleashed spirit on a sun bound quest.
4 – Trend Lightly
Back in the JVPD offices, Sanders is going over notes, documentation, evidence…preparatory detective stuff.
Bostrom approaches his own desk next to Sanders’s carrying a print-out. “Both tox reports show positives for psylocibin, alcohol, and something called 4F-MDMB… Binaca?…what is that?”
Sanders looks up for a moment— “Synthetic psychoactive shit…”—then drops back into frantic paper perusal.
“Hm, looks like the lovebirds were partying again.”
Sanders’s desk phone rings and he answers before the first chime has a chance to finish. “This is Sanders.” He listens for a moment then plucks up a ballpoint pen in his left hand and a cube of pink post-it notes in his right. He scribbles more furiously than a tweaker scratching arm skin away, pulling off and sticking four ink covered squares onto a scrap sheet of lined paper on the desk before setting down the pen. “Alright…okay, thank you, Sharon.” Sanders sets the receiver back into its hub.
Bostrom has paused his own work and is staring at Sanders.
“Sandy Hackett called that station. She doesn’t want to come in, but she did find a sheet of paper with some of Samantha’s logins and passwords, including iCloud credentials.”
“Ok, so, if forensics can’t crack the phone, we can access the data through the cloud? Like, on a browser?”
“No need to wait on forensics. I’m gonna put Nache on data download and compilation while we talk to the Granger kid.” He lifts the receiver back to his ear and taps three digits.
“Sounds good.”
Sanders speaks into the phone. “Hey Nache, I have login credentials for an iCloud account tied to a possible homicide that I need you to comb through and compile…yes…we’re about to head over to interrogation. I’ll drop this off with you on our way there…yep.” He hangs up again and hops to his feet before Bostrom. “Let’s head that way.”
The sun is falling off to the west. The breeze is crisp. Celestial luster blankets the tidy, middle-class road in oranges and umbers, leading De Costa and Wilmington to a modest, eggshell home with a fenced-in front yard, where a teenage boy is playing catch with who can be assumed to be his father.
“Hello, fellas. Paul and Kevin Mills?”
“That’s right.” The father, Paul, holds back his upcoming throw and instead pulls off his mitt to shake hands with each detective.
“Detective Wilmington.”
“Detective De Costa.”
“Nice to meet you gentlemen. So…what’s happening here?”
“We’d just like to ask Kevin a few questions pertaining to Mr. Sandoval.”
Kevin Mills has made his way over to the three adults. “What do you wanna know?”
The three men turn their eyes to him. De Costa speaks. “Well, first off, we heard you and Johnathan got into a physical altercation on the team bus last May.”
“So what? You never get into with your buddies or your teammates? I’m sure you two have slapped each other up a bit before.”
Paul swings the mitt he now holds and whacks Kevin upside the back of his head with it. “Watch your fucking mouth, kid. That ain’t how we speak to the law.”
Kevin winces then grimaces. “He blew the game to fucking Arborsville. We were all pissed. Me and Jesse just happened to be the only ones with balls enough to speak on it.”
“Did you guys continue to have issues after that incident?”
“Nah, season was over at that point. By the time we started up summer practices, all that shit was highway under the overpass.”
“Same go for Jesse?”
“He stayed civil, but Jesse never really liked John much in the first place.”
“Why was that?”
”Something over a girl way back that Jesse just never got over. Stupid shit. But he never wished harm on him or anything like that…I didn’t either…God, it’s so fucked up what happened to them…”
As if reality has only just now revealed itself to him, Kevin Mills begins to tremble, and tears start to escape from their lower lid prison in rapid succession. Paul takes his son into a one-armed embrace. “C’mon, bud, let’s head in…” Paul’s pupils pan to the detectives. “Sorry, we…”
“It’s alright. This is a tough situation. Thank you both for your time and cooperation.”
As Kevin is being ushered toward the house, he continues to mumble. “…just like the trend. They set them up like the trend…”
Wilmington’s sensitive aural range tunes to the distressed rambling. “Wait, what’s that?”
The father and son continue moving to the house and the ranting continues. “…just like the goddamn trend…”
Wilmington, practically hollering out. “What trend?? What do you mean??”
Kevin enters the house, still muttering. Paul is close behind, turning to share one more look of faint regret with the detectives as he closes the door.
The details of this case—such as the body placements—had not been made public, but rumors of the disturbing demises and possibly ceremonial circumstances involving two regular ol’ run-of-the-mill local kids leapt from the right lips and made way around town in no time at all.
5 – Trender Bender
Sanders and Bostrom enter a harsh-lit alabaster cube furnished only with a table and four steel folding chairs that would be perfect in a TLC match.
Stuart Granger, a husky teen with glasses and connect-the-pox acne, stares at nothing, looking somewhere between broken and vacant. He is seated next to a horseshoe-haired man in a suit with a scatter of paperwork laid in front of him.
Bostrom hangs back against the wall while Sanders sits and is the one to speak. “Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for coming in.”
“No problem. Terrible what’s happened to those kids. My client will help wherever possible.”
Stuart does not blink.
“Good to know…So, Stuart…how long have you known Samantha Hackett?”
The disconcerted young man takes awhile to find words throughout. “…We’ve been friends since kindergarten.”
“That’s a long time…Were you two ever more than friends?”
“…No.”
“Did you ever want to be?”
Stuart’s eyes finally move, casting toward Sanders in disdainful consternation. “…What are you getting at?”
The lawyer puts a hand on Stuart’s arm to reel him in.
“We’re just asking standard questions here, Stuart.”
“…She’s my best friend.”
“What about when she started seeing John Sandoval? Did you stay close?”
Vexation within the boy ices over. “…She said I needed to give her space, that we were still friends, but we couldn’t be as close as we had been.”
“How did that make you feel?”
The anger thaws into pain. “…Upset…it wasn’t fair.”
“Did you have a hard time giving her the space she asked for?”
“…At first…until she blew up on me…told me to fuck off and stop contacting her ever at all…I couldn’t understand why…I was always a good friend…I would have done anything for her…and now she’s gone.” Tears are spelunking down the pimples and craters of his cheeks and base jumping off into his lap.
“Did you ever think about hurting either of them?”
This question is a surprise left hook, knocking Stuart Granger upright with a shock that melts into genuine hurt. “…Never…I would never do something like that.”
“And are you aware of what happened to them? Specifics?”
“…Only rumors.”
“And what are the rumors you’ve heard?”
Stuart takes momentary infinities to produce the rest of his answers. “…That someone killed them and set them in a pose like the TikTok trend.”
“What TikTok trend?”
“…The Auto Erotic ASSphyxiation Challenge.”
“And what is that?”
“…It’s a trend where people pretend to have sex or jack off in a running car inside an enclosed space and then pretend to asphyxiate.”
“Please elaborate.”
“…Well…like auto erotic asphyxiation…the David Carradine shit…people like, choke themselves out with a belt and masturbate…it’s supposed to make things more intense or something…”
“I’m familiar with that. I would like you to tell me about the TikTok trend.”
“…Well, people pretend to start up a vehicle in a garage or wherever and then fake sex or masturbation before faking death.”
“That is…quite strange.”
“…Yeah…fucking internet.”
“So, the assumption floating around is that someone killed them, positioned them in John’s car inside the Sandoval garage, started up the engine and closed them in…as, what, some kind of sick homage to a stupid internet trend?”
“…I don’t know…I guess…”
“Well, Stuart, we know that that’s not the case, because even before autopsies and tox screenings, initial views of the bodies presented clear evidence of carbon monoxide poisoning and asphyxia.”
Stuart’s face is awash with a grab bag of negative emotions. “…You mean…they were still alive when they were put in there?”
“We’re not sure someone did put them in there at all…but we do know that they were alive in that garage while the car was running.”
“But…” The dam collapses. Stuart has no defenses left. He trades in the rest of his words for uncontrolled sobbing.
The decorative piece moonlighting as an attorney finally steps in, opening his bullshit chute again. “That’s gonna have to do for now, detectives. My client is in no shape to be doing this, and I think you have all you need.”
“Alright, gentlemen. Thank you for your time.” Sanders stands and steps aside, next to Bostrom, to usher the gormless man and dolorous boy out of the room.
Detectives Sanders, Bostrom, De Costa and Wilmington are each at their desks, arranged in mirrored and parallel placement near one another. Bostrom is on his phone, scrolling through a glut of videos amassed by typing ‘#autoerotic’ into the search bar of the TikTok app. Dozens, hell, hundreds of similar setups and presentations: all in a confined vehicle within an enclosed space, people pretending to pleasure themselves or their partners, all presented in humorous, tongue-in-cheek fashion, often sped up for added effect. And, as with any good trend, one specific audio track is shared across them all, which features a hokey sound effects kit recording of a car starting and running over top some clean, finger-picked Midwest emo music, all under a lo-fi sound clip from Kill Bill 2 in which David Carradine and Uma Thurman’s characters are having some benign discussion about truth and euphoria. Somewhere after swiping past the third video, Wilmington and De Costa make their way over to join in the viewing.
“This is fucking weird, man. What the fuck is wrong with people?”
“It’s not our place to judge what the youth derives entertainment from, only to uphold the laws that it sometimes encroaches upon.”
“Yeah? Well, this shit is starting to encroach upon my stomach…or maybe that’s the el pastor (he makes a poor attempt to roll the ‘r’) burrito…I’ll be back.” De Costa grabs up the folded sports page from his desk and heads out of view.
“Yeah, I’m not liking the implications here…if someone went through the trouble of doing such a fucked up thing to those kids, what’s to stop them from doing it again…or to stop someone else from doing it to someone? We need to find whoever did this and tamp them the fuck down…asap.”
The phone on Sanders’s desk rings and, again, he has the receiver plucked up before a full ring. “Sanders…yeah?…really?…ok, we’ll be right over.” He hangs up and looks to Bostrom and Wilmington. “Nache’s got some answers for us.”
“Did he say what?”
“He’s gonna show us. Somebody go tell De Costa to clench those cheeks. We gotta go see what he found.”
Inside a dark room, lit only by the cold blue of computer monitors, a cropped curl-mopped brunette with a cragging smile is sitting anxiously when the detectives knock and enter.
“What do you got, Nach?”
“Ok fellas, so, I think I have a nice, tight little timeline laid out here with text messages and then thee finale, our ‘smoking gun’ so to speak? Smoking pipe? Anyway…I went through Sam and John’s text exchanges for the last two months and you can see here, shortly after my entry point, they start sharing the auto erotic trend videos with each other, both getting a real kick out of the whole thing, both expressing interest in participating in the trend…Then, you can see here, three days before the incident, they are discussing Ms. Sandoval being away that coming Friday night and a desire to acquire some ‘booze and shrooms’…”
“Based on the toxicology report, I’d say they succeeded in that.”
Bostrom cracks a snort at De Costa’s quippy observation.
Sanders and Wilmington retain focus on Nache and he continues. “…Their last texts to each other were just after noon-thirty: ‘Got the goodies. When will you be on your way?’ then ‘Ok baby, I’ll be over around one’ then a back-and-forth heart emoji exchange. From there, let’s assume they are together at the Sandoval home, enjoying one another’s company amidst the magnifying mire caused by a bad mix of hallucinogens and depressants, and then at some point, someone has an idea…”
Nache uses a touchpad mouse to move a cursor across the tiny squares of photos and videos in the camera roll on screen, and lands it over the last thumbnail, a video file. He double clicks, pulling open a large black rectangle over the screen. Nache hits the space bar, and the black dissipates into the visual of a hand pulling back from center frame, revealing Samantha Hackett pushing away from the dashboard, collapsing into the backseat and into Jonathan Sandoval. Both are naked and visibly intoxicated. The detectives hold their lips stiff and attempt to remain stoic and unbothered as they watch the two teens engaging in upsetting adult acts, which, thankfully, are mostly obscured by the front seats.
After what has already been too long, Samantha stops and speaks in a slurred, stirring vocalization. “If you’re a man, you’ll turn that key for real, then cum for me before it’s too late.”
Stoicism starts to break under weight of realization, and the detectives watch an inebriated Jonathan think and sway for a moment before firming up and diving over the seat toward the ignition. He turns the key, fires up the engine, and falls back into Samantha with animalistic intent. Nache begins to scrub forward on the video, past all the gratuitous bits.
Around the twenty-minute mark, movement in the backseat has slowed dramatically and is barely noticeable in the haze. By the forty-minute mark, dirty white exhaust has fully overtaken the frame, accompanied only by the ominous purr of the car. The video continues this way until just after one hour and nineteen minutes, where it cuts.