by Jenna Baker
REEL
Sharpe
Jenna Baker
Copyright © 2014 Jenna Baker
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0615981739
ISBN-13: 978-0615981734
Cover Design: Lauren Borgersen Ras
Copy Editor: Emma Greenstein
DEDICATION
For Brandon, who always pushed me to follow my dreams
Chapter 1.
I had seen a lot of things in my last eight years as a reality television producer. I’d seen contestants share their first kisses and first crushes. I’d seen them break up, make up, conquer their fears and face their enemies. The list went on and on. But tonight was going to top everything. Tonight I was about to see my first dead body.
My latest assignment was a cable show called Murder Live! , about real life detectives investigating homicides. According to the LAPD, most murders were solved within the first forty-eight hours of discovery, so we’d film the cops as they pulled together the evidence to try to solve the case. If they could do it in forty-eight hours, we had our story, if they couldn’t we’d move on to the next case. We’d interview the good guys, the bad guys and hopefully end up with an hour’s worth of television to entertain the masses.
The show was scheduled to begin production in the morning, so when my producer Lenny dialed my cell phone in the middle of the night, I was more than a little agitated.
“Sharpe, hi. I’m not waking you up, am I?” Lenny asked. Sharpe was actually my last name, but it was a name that stuck, and almost no one called me Victoria anymore.
“Actually…” I began, sounding groggy.
“Doesn’t matter – we have an emergency. You’ve got the first murder, kid, so I need you to get over to Receda right away.”
“Wait, what?” I looked at the clock. It was just after midnight. I had only been sleeping for half an hour. “Can’t I handle this in the morning?”
“The morning? What are you going to do – recreate the murder scene? Get off your ass, Sharpe, and get out there. I already called the crew – they’re meeting you at the site.”
Lenny gave me the address, which I managed to jot down on a notepad before he hung up. I kicked my feet out of bed and sat up. My apartment was dark and relatively quiet save for the couple I could hear laughing in the hot tub in the courtyard below. I flicked on the lamp on my nightstand and breathed in.
I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light. The fluorescent lighting never did much for my pale skin. As I looked at myself in the mirror my blonde hair looked green. My eyes had lovely purple bags under them, and their blue hue was overshadowed by redness. “Looking good, Victoria,” I mumbled to myself and reached for my toothbrush.
Despite my exhaustion and sour mood, I was pretty excited about this show. When I was younger I’d actually fantasized about becoming a cop. I pictured myself with a smoking hot body and a fitted cop uniform hugging me in all the right places. I’d ride a motorcycle, of course, and when I’d remove my helmet to shake out my long blonde hair everyone would stop to watch. I would be known around the station as “one tough chick,” and a night alone with me would be considered the stuff of kings.
It was a nice dream except that I wasn’t a big fan of violence. The only fights I’d ever been in were with my sister, and those were just hair pulling and bra snapping. I couldn’t picture myself getting angry enough to actually harm someone else – even if they did deserve it.
The other flaw in the plan was that the body I had envisioned in my pre-pubescent years hadn’t quite materialized. I had the blonde hair, but it was mid-length and usually looked like a disaster. As for my perfect figure, my breasts probably protruded about as much as my stomach did, which meant they were too small and my waist line was too big. I decided that this was not the time to dwell on my shortcomings - I needed to get dressed.
I didn’t know what the temperature was outside, so I opened my bedroom window and breathed in the smog-filled air. My apartment was located right next to the 134 Freeway in North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. The “Valley” got its name because it was a low lying area between the surrounding canyons. The geography allowed it to act as a retention hole for all the smog and pollution coming off the freeways. As a result, my sky was perpetually yellow, and every morning I would have to listen to weather forecast to determine whether or not I could breathe that day. One of the other joys of living in the Valley was that the hot air got stuck in the “pit” so our temperature was always about twenty degrees hotter than it was everywhere else. When it was a perfect eighty degrees in Venice Beach, the Valley was baking at a sweltering one hundred. At this early hour it still felt pretty cool, so I threw on a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. I put my hair back in a ponytail and headed out the door.
Two minutes later, I was in my 1992 Miata cruising down the 134 freeway. I had bought the car used and was later informed by my mechanic that it had alignment problems that couldn’t be fixed. If I didn’t grip the wheel with two hands, it would veer off the road. I learned that lesson the hard way after taking my hand off the wheel to apply mascara and ending up on a woman’s lawn. Yet, despite its faults, it was a convertible and I loved it.
As the cool night air blew through my hair, I picked up the phone and dialed Mac, my camera man.
“Hey, stranger.” Mac answered.
“Can you believe this?” I said into the phone, fighting to be heard over the wind. “It’s one in the morning. We haven’t even met the detectives we’re working with and they’re sending us out to shoot a crime scene?”
“You know how it is, Sharpe – we just have to document it. We can’t control when it happens.”
“Come on, Mac, don’t get smart with me. This is bullshit, right?”
“Okay, okay, it’s bullshit. Where are you?”
“Ten minutes away.” I said.
“I’ll be there in five.” Mac said.
Mac’s real name was Hank, but we called him Mac because he was a real-life MacGyver. No matter how hopeless things may have seemed, Mac was forever pulling some magic tool out of his pocket to save the day. Once, Mac and I were in Texas in a swamp in the middle of nowhere and the camera kept fogging up from the extreme heat. We were on a time crunch and losing light, but Mac saved the day when he whipped out a hairdryer and battery pack and used it to defog the lens. Then there was the time in Vegas when we were following a couple embarrassed by public affection who would only kiss underwater in the hotel pool. We needed a kiss on tape as it was an essential element of the show so Mac put together a watertight camera case made out of garbage bags and plastic drink cups. Needless to say, we got the shot. Mac was a good guy to have in your corner, and given that we were getting thrown into this headfirst, I was going to have to lean on him for help.
I slowly drove down a residential street trying to find the house number Lenny had given me. I saw an unmarked yet very obvious cop car halfway down the street and Mac’s car parked next to it. The house was a small one-story painted mint green. It had a carport with a beat-up Oldsmobile parked under it, and there was a cat rummaging through one of the trash cans. The exterior house light was on and cast a yellow hue on the already brown front lawn.
I took a deep breath and held it in. I needed to process what was really happening here. I was about to see a murder victim. Normally, I would have days of extensive interviews and conversations with the detectives that would give me a clear idea of what to expect. Instead, here I was – a deer in headlights about to see my first corpse. I felt like I was in a dream and wished I was. At least I’d be sleeping.
I heard a loud rapping against my window and jumped – letting out my breath in the process. I smiled once I realized it was Manny, my sound operator.
“Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?” Manny sang.
“Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” I chimed in; trying to act like seeing my first dead body was just business as usual for me.
“Hey chica, how you been, baby?” Manny asked as he slapped me on the arm.
“Pretty good,” I told him.
Manny was someone I had worked with quite a few times in the past. He was Hispanic and relatively short, but thick with muscles from constantly carrying boom microphones and heavy equipment. His legs were covered in tattoos, and he wore his long hair in a tight braid down his back. He was really mellow, probably because he was generally high, but he never complained when I worked him long hours so we got along well.
Mac walked up behind Manny dressed in his usual garb, which consisted of a beige safari shirt tucked into a pair of breakaway pants that could convert from pants to shorts with just the pull of a zipper. On his waist, he wore his trusty fanny pack filled with tools and gadgets, and on his head he wore a fishing hat with lens cleaner solution and wipes wedged in the band. His pockets were filled with a tape measure, a light meter, a mag light, and several pens. He also had a secondary fanny pack around his waist that contained sun block and a change of clothes. Most men would have looked ridiculous in this getup, but with his rugged good looks Mac managed to pull it off.
“Packing light?” I asked as I looked him up and down.
“The detectives are over there.” Mac pointed. “They’re getting anxious.”
“Okay, I’ll go talk to them while you guys get the equipment ready.”
I turned toward the detectives’ car and tried to psych myself up – it was time for me to flex my producer muscles. I’d been working in the business for a while now and I liked it, but deep down I knew I wasn’t all that good. I’d actually landed in TV through my mother’s connections. Evelyn Sharpe had been the host of LA Incorporated for eleven years. It was a nightly show that came on just before prime time and featured all the latest Hollywood buzz and gossip. She’d met every star there was, had been a correspondent on every red carpet imaginable, and was absolutely stunning. She had actually gotten me my first job while she was interviewing the stars of a hot new reality show called Lethal Injection. The premise was that eight contestants were injected with poison, and they had to compete in challenges in order to win the antidote. I was hired on as an assistant to one of the producers. The show never made it to air because a contestant nearly died, but at least I got my foot in the door. Eventually I became an associate producer, then a segment producer, and slowly I worked my way up.
It was going to take a little acting on my part, but I needed to convince these cops that I knew what I was doing. I walked over to the Taurus, knocked gently on the window, and smiled. Inside, the two detectives said something to each other, then opened up their doors. They were both Caucasian, and I noticed that one was significantly larger than the other.
Their names were Detectives Reid and Flanagan. Lenny had given me a rundown on each of them, but in my groggy state their names were all I managed to remember. Detective Reid was tall and fit with brown hair and angry creased eyebrows. Detective Flanagan was probably two hundred and fifty pounds, and if the name Flanagan hadn’t tipped me off to the fact that he was Irish, his pale skin and strawberry blond hair certainly did. He was dressed in a wrinkled button-down shirt that came untucked as he stood up. Before he greeted me, he pushed his shirt down into his pants and adjusted his package at the same time.
“Victoria Sharpe.” I said, reluctantly holding out my hand.
Flanagan shook it while Reid glared at me. “We’ve been waiting an hour for you to show up,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” I said, a little flustered. “We came as soon as we got the call.”
“I don’t want to hear excuses – let’s go inside,” Reid ordered.
“I’d like you to know that I am very excited to be working with you both,” I said, still trying to make nice.
“Just shut up and let us run this, okay?” Reid said.
Whoa. I knew it was late but this guy was in a really bad mood. I would allow him a little leeway but not too much. He needed to know who was boss around here. “Sure, detective, we can go inside but not before you give me some background on what we’re going to see in there,” I warned.
“Gunshot victim. The neighbor heard the sounds, called us. She looked in the window and saw him on the floor – we already checked him – he’s dead. Now let’s go.”
Mac and Manny came up behind me carrying their equipment, and we headed towards the house. I was starting to become convinced that this was a dream. I was not used to, nor did I appreciate, having participants railroad me. This was my set, my shots, my show. I needed to get some control here.
At the front door I stopped and turned to Detective Reid. “We’ll go in first.”
“Like hell,” he answered back.
“You’ve already been inside – there’s no danger and I need my shot. We’ll go in and secure an angle on the front door. When I give the okay I want you two to walk in and discover the body.”
Reid started laughing. He looked at Manny. “Is she for real?” Manny shrugged. “Honey, we call the shots around here, okay? Not you,” Reid barked.
This guy was starting to annoy me. I understood he was a big macho cop and the male ego was involved, but the fact of the matter was that my ass was on the line to get the shot. I only had one chance to get this right, and I would be damned if he was gonna ruin it.
“Look, it’s late. I don’t want to sit here and argue – let’s just get this over with.” I turned to my crew. “Come on, guys – let’s go.”
I turned to the front door and twisted the knob.
“Stop!” Flanagan yelped. “There could be fingerprints on that knob, lady!”
I quickly pulled my hand off the knob. Everyone was staring at me. “Sorry,” I said meekly. I pointed to Reid and Flanagan. “You two stay back and when I call you, come in. Try to look surprised – like you’re discovering the body.”
I pulled my sleeve over my hand and turned the knob. I stepped inside. Instantly I felt my feet give out, and before I knew what was happening, I was sliding across the floor. I looked down and was horrified - I was sliding in human blood! I felt my breath catch as I sailed across the room. I slammed against the opposite wall hard and fell face down on the floor. I lifted my head up to see the victim lying next to me. The back of his head was six inches from my face. I took in a deep breath and started choking on it. “Huuuhhh” was the only sound I could get out.
I scurried to get to my feet but kept slipping and flailing in the blood. “Somebody help me, please!” I finally got to my feet and sprinted towards the door and right into Detective Reid. I threw my arms around him, shaking. “He’s after me! He’s after me!” Obviously I had seen too many horror films, because I was certain the dead man was going to turn to me and sprout fangs.
Detective Reid pushed me off him and held my shoulders. “Get control of yourself!” he commanded. “You realize you just desecrated a crime scene, right?”
“I am covered head to toe in someone else’s blood! Do you think I give a shit!?” I said, panic-stricken.
“Why didn’t you tell us there was blood in here, man?” Manny asked Reid. He was a mellow guy, and his tone didn’t carry to same impact as mine. Suddenly, Manny slipped and fell straight on his back into a pile of the red goo.
“¡Dios mio!” Manny called out, this time with more forcefulness.
Mac was still holding his camera, but with all that was going on he didn’t know where to shoot. He was jerking the camera around in quick movements between me, Manny and the dead guy.
“Son of a bitch!” Manny cursed as he struggled to get to his feet.
I turned to Mac. “Shut off the camera, would you?”
Detective Reid still had his hands on my shoulders, and I think they were the only thing holding me up. He glanced calmly at the three of us,
then turned to Flanagan.
“I’d give the guys a C – the chick gets a D minus.”
“I’d give her a D plus. I mean she didn’t puke, right?” Flanagan said, smiling.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
Flanagan suddenly burst out laughing. Reid smiled, and before he could help himself, he started laughing out loud too.
“How can you be laughing? There’s a dead man in the corner!” I said, pointing to the victim. Suddenly the dead guy’s eye snapped open, and he smiled.
“Jesus! He’s alive – he’s alive!” Manny announced.
“Holy cow!” I ran out the door with Manny following me. I was half way across the yard when I heard the din of laughter. I looked back to see Detective Flanagan doubled over, gasping for breath as he roared with laughter. Reid had his hand over his mouth, trying to choke back his chuckles. Mac was standing with the guys. He had put the camera down – finally getting the joke.
I turned back to them, furious. The dead guy was now standing next to Reid, also laughing. “You guys think this is funny?” I demanded.
“Consider this your hazing period.” Flanagan mocked.
I was mad. They humiliated us, and now they were laughing about it. Not only that, I was wearing a new pair of jeans that I was going to have to throw in the trash. I felt my face getting red and hot. Reid walked up behind me and turned me around.
“Don’t get all bent out of shape. We wanted to show you how things operate around here. We never thought you’d burst in there like that – that was just a bonus.”
“You ruined my new jeans, you know.”
Reid looked down at the blood stains on his shirt. “I think we’re even.”
Flanagan walked over to me. “Look, we just wanted to scare you a bit, let you know whose boss. I know you’re used to calling the shots, but at a crime scene we’re in charge. You can’t just barge in there, honey, and you sure as hell can’t tamper with evidence like that.”
“You’re a jerk. You both are.” I told them. “Come on guys, let’s go.”
Manny turned to Flanagan. “Not cool man! Not cool!”
I charged towards my car with Mac and Manny following behind. I got inside and didn’t look back. I would deal with this in the morning.
Chapter 2.