Blurred Read online

  Blurred

  Peter Fugazzotto

  Copyright © 2021 by Peter Fugazzotto

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by Lynne Hansen Art

  Also by Peter Fugazzotto

  The King Beneath the Waves

  The Witch of the Sands

  Black River

  Five Bloody Heads

  Into Darkness

  Alien Infestation

  The Rise of the Fallen

  The Cellar

  Skin

  The Roots Have Dug Into My Heart

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Free Book Offer

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Stuck in traffic and running late to the movie premiere, Phil Waterston allowed that nagging doubt to seep back into his head.

  He had not taken a real photograph in years. Not the kind from the frontlines that had won him a Pulitzer. Not the kind that spoke to his soul. Not a single image that peeled back the veneer that masked the world.

  Hollywood celebrity photos did not count.

  But taking meaningless photographs had been his choice. They were the only types of images he could capture after Samantha had died. The only photos he could shoot and still preserve his crumbling sanity.

  Phil knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up the charade forever. His life was slipping by and he had lost his direction. He needed to take photos that had meaning, ones that made people pause and contemplate their own lives. But he knew taking those photos would create a rip in the veil that hid his guilt and grief over the death of his wife and force him to expose a part of his inner self that he was afraid of. He was not sure he was ready to face that part of himself.

  He squeezed the Corolla’s steering wheel until his knuckles whitened. The highway stretching ahead looked like a stuttering river of metal, cars barely moving, lurching and stopping. The guy in the white Audi in the left lane had his turn signal on. Incessantly on. So much so that even when Phil looked away it was burning a ghost image into his sight. The driver wanted to edge in, but Phil’s lane was creeping even more slowly. Didn’t the other guy see he was not really going to get ahead?

  The lines of cars crawled, pulsing metal, wavering in the heat of the exhaust. Southern California hell. Shadows began to lengthen on the golden hills to the east, unavoidable pools of darkness spreading towards Phil and creeping towards the ocean.

  He felt as if he had entered a mirage, as if the scene around him was a shimmering illusion, some strange horrible heat dream.

  Still that turn signal flashing.

  “Fine, fine, go ahead,” Phil barked in the direction of the guy with his turn signal. What difference did it make at this point? He had not planned for the traffic on the 101 to be this bad. He should have known better.

  The other guy eased his car in front of Phil and waved. And still kept his turn signal on. Flash. Flash. Flash.

  Phil touched his phone screen.

  4:45.

  The movie’s red carpet opening started in fifteen minutes and, with the way this traffic looked, he was minimally twenty minutes away. And parking would be a nightmare in that part of town. Maybe he could catch a few shots of the celebrities afterwards but that meant sitting outside the theater for three hours, and any good photos already would have been delivered to the outlets.

  So, unless someone leaving the opening was drunk or had a wardrobe malfunction or threw a punch at one of the other paparazzi, Phil was wasting another evening. More than wasting his evening. Wasting his life. With another meaningless shot.

  Maybe he needed to apply for that community college teaching gig. How far he had fallen. What next? High school portraits? And to think he had won a Pulitzer.

  The guy with the turn signal honked at a car in the right lane. He was trying to make the upcoming exit. Maybe the guy was not such an idiot after all. The mountain road might be faster. Phil laughed. It couldn’t be slower. Even so he doubted he would make the opening of the performance in time but maybe one of the celebrities was also caught in traffic, maybe they were running late too. He glanced at the exit ahead. The mountain road might give him a few extra minutes. The sooner he got to the theater the better the chance of getting a photo he could sell. And he needed the money.

  As the Audi slipped into the other lane, Phil jutted into the space left open. Once, twice, and then he followed the Audi along the shoulder and fifteen seconds later, raced off the exit ramp.

  Phil tracked behind the other guy, that annoying turn signal still flashing. He followed him right, left, and right again until they hit an intersection where the cross-traffic roared at highway speed. The other guy edged, crept, and finally bolted into the intersection. His car engine whined through his gears as he found the open mountain road.

  Phil was not so bold at the intersection, waiting, hunched forward, looking left, looking right, his car shuddering with every passing 18-wheeler. Eventually he saw enough of a break in flow of cars and gunned the gas and he too was on the open road.

  4:50.

  Maybe he did have a chance to make the movie opening. If he risked parking in a red zone. Or if everything was running behind schedule at the theater. Surely everyone else must have been caught in that traffic too.

  He pressed down harder on the gas pedal. The bushes and grasses along the side of the road blurred. The engine hummed. He smiled.

  As he climbed the mountain road, he glanced to the west. Light sparkled on the Pacific, and even here he tasted the salty sea. The edge of the world and he raced along it. He soaked in the thrill of the chase.

  For a moment Phil no longer drove on the outskirts of Los Angeles and instead imagined himself once again perched on a tank rumbling through the smoking streets of Baghdad, or clinging to the roll bar of a battered Toyota pickup in the mountains of Afghanistan, or leaning out the window of a white UN SUV as they drove through a refugee camp, camera in his hand, eyes open to the world. Looking for that photo.

  Once, his life had meaning.

  Not chasing celebrities.

  The mountain road opened before him.

  Maybe he would get to the movie premiere on time.

  But as he turned a sharp corner, a truck crawled up the hill ahead of him. A ghost of black smoke clung to its bumper. A slow beast eating the asphalt. Phil eased his foot off the gas and tapped the brakes.

  “Fuck!” He slammed his fist into the dashboard. Ahead, chicken feathers flew out of the cages on the truck bed. He would never get there on time at this pace. He veered left, crossing the center line, saw the plunging cliff and an oncoming car, and cut back sharply into the choking exhaust behind the truck. Too many turns ahead. He was not willing to take the risk. Not on this mountain road. Too many cars coming the other way. Not going to risk his life for a nip slip photo.

  4:52.

  4:54.

  With each passing minute all hope of making the opening on time was lost.

  Phil considered pulling off the road, to at least ge
t out of the acrid exhaust, and text Justine to see if she had any other leads. Suddenly a sports car swelled in his rear-view mirror. A burst of yellow, headlights flashing, windshield reflecting the endless sky. A Bugatti. It peeked once, swayed back, and then roared past Phil into the oncoming lane and vanished around the truck.

  4:55.

  A horn bellowed, tires screamed, and a percussive boom shook Phil’s windows.

  His stomach muscles tightened.

  A Prius, front headlights and bumper smashed, had come at a stop in the middle of the road facing him. The driver’s eyes and mouth opened wide, his screams muffled behind the windshield.

  Phil slowed and pulled his car into a gravel turnout. Skid marks painted a path off the mountain road through a torn metal guard rail. Black smoke twined out of the canyon.

  That fucking Bugatti. He needed to see if he could help.

  He was halfway out of his car when habit took over. He grabbed his camera from the case on the front seat and looped it around his neck and shoulder, then sprinted across the road, heart pounding. He stared down the canyon slope. The Bugatti hung in the trees twenty feet from the roadway and a hundred feet from the boulder-strewn valley floor.

  The two guys from the truck ran up alongside Phil.

  “He was driving like an idiot. On these roads!” The trucker crumpled his cap in both hands.

  “Oh my god, oh my god,” said the other one, his belly bulging and heaving against his stained t-shirt. He panted hard, unable to catch his breath.

  “Call 911,” ordered Phil. It was all coming back; the rush, the surge of adrenaline, the same jolt of electricity in his blood, the goose bumps on his skin, the addictive high that had been his companion all those years as bullets screamed over his head, chopper blades stuttered the sky, and the metallic smell of blood flooded his nostrils. He hated the feeling but he welcomed it. Because it meant he was alive.

  And Phil needed to feel alive again.

  Fire suddenly flared out of the Bugatti. The stench of gasoline wafted, and Phil gagged for a moment.

  “Shit, someone’s trying to get out!” The fat guy pointed.

  A bloody hand reached through the twisted metal of the door.

  Old instincts from his years in the middle of conflict drove him forward. He stepped over the mangled guardrail. The hillside was steep, slippery with loose stones and sand. He clutched at bushes and low hanging branches as he carefully descended. His camera bounced off his ribs. The wind shifted and the black smoke cloaked him, burning his eyes, making his lungs itch. His foot slipped, he fell onto his seat, and slid down the slope until his furrowing heels stopped him just below where the car perched in the limbs of a tree.

  The smoke was thick, turning the sun blood red. Far below in the valley, he heard ululating sirens.

  He crawled back up towards the car. Heat from the flames seared his face and his eyes watered.

  The bloody hand reached out again. Then a face pressed against glass. He recognized the driver. It was Tyler Z, a once-famous child star now relegated to the B list, known lately only for his rehab reruns.

  Phil hesitated. He should be pulling Tyler Z from the car. But this was his chance. This was a month’s rent, maybe even three months. But more than that - to capture that moment where the line between life and death blurred, to tear back the veil. No one else would have this photo.

  One quick shot, and then he would pull him from the car. He swung his camera around and brought it to his eye.

  Tyler Z, bloody, in the wreckage of his car, framed in flames, one hand stretched out, eyes full of a terror no one else could see, desperate to escape the trajectory of his life, to be pulled from the burning ruins of this world.

  Phil hesitated again. The man was reaching out for help. That desperation made him suddenly recall Samantha in her hospital bed and a pang of guilt pinched his heart.

  But this was the perfect shot.

  As Phil snapped several shots, tendrils of smoke writhed like black worms, and Phil swore for a moment he felt something solid tap his chest as if warning him. He shuddered. He had enough photos.

  He spun his camera to his back, and crawled towards the car. “I’ll get you, buddy! Hold on!” The car hung low in the tree, the door within easy reach.

  But Phil had waited too long. The tree branch that held the car cracked like a thunderclap and the car plummeted.

  The twisted metal coffin shot down the canyon wall, hit the floor, and exploded in a blinding ball of fire. Tyler Z was gone.

  The image of the celebrity’s outstretched hand and terrified face lingered in Phil’s sight, a ghostly imprint, and then it vanished, burned away by the flash of light from the explosion, and when he turned up the hill to climb out of the canyon, a black spot in the shape of the explosion filled his sight, the afterimage of the flames twisting like black worms.

  Horror descended on Phil.

  He should not have taken the photo. He should have done more to save Tyler Z. But he had taken that picture in the moment before death, and he knew what he needed to do next.

  Get out of the canyon, climb back into his car, and find Justine. He had a photo to deliver. A photo that as horrifying as it was would mean something, a photo that walked the thin line between life and death.

  2

  Phil dragged himself up the hillside, hurried past the shocked truck drivers, and jumped into his car. He pulled a screeching U-turn and was speeding down the mountain road as the first of the emergency vehicles with their flashing lights flew by from the other direction.

  His heart raced, a thin layer of sweat making his shirt stick to his back. The damned black writhing worms, the afterimage from the explosion floated in the corner of his vision. He blinked and wiped at his eyes, but it remained. He suddenly noticed blood streaking the back of his hand. He glanced in the mirror. His face was cut. Probably from tearing through the bushes trying to get at the car.

  The image of the car falling replayed in his mind.

  His chest tightened. He should have stayed. Given a statement to the police. That would have been the right thing to do.

  But what difference would that have made? Tyler Z was dead, and they’d have questioned him about how he had time to take a photo but not pull the man out of the burning vehicle. Too hard to explain the choices he made in that moment, his photographer’s instinct, or how quickly everything turned and how the car and Tyler had been there one second and gone the next. What he should have done wouldn’t have mattered. Tyler Z still would have died.

  If he stayed, the police would confiscate his camera, probably use the photos he’d taken as evidence. Anything to punish him for not pursuing the futile. Even if he had not taken the shot, the car still would have broken out of the tree. How could he have prevented a ton of burning metal from sliding down the hill?

  Tyler Z’s death was inevitable. Nothing could stop death when it had made up its mind. And the only good that might come out of it was the photo, the essence of a man captured in his moment before death. Tyler Z would be immortalized.

  This was the kind of photo he had captured before, the one that held deeper meaning.

  The police wouldn’t understand.

  He needed to get the photo to Justine.

  The world needed to see the image.

  Maybe now he was once again ready to take photos that walked the edge between life and death, ones that allowed people to look beneath the veneer of life.

  He had been scraping by the past three years, ever since he came back from the last assignment in Kabul. He had flown back into Los Angeles and retreated to a motel near Koreatown for a month, drinking, ignoring calls from Samantha’s parents, barely leaving his room except to eat and buy more whiskey. When he finally gathered the courage to return to their apartment and the memories it held, it had been rented out and their boxes of things stored away in a garage by the property manager.

  He had thought of picking up another assignment, venturing to another war zone, but
he was done. He did not want to see what he had through his lens anymore. Death was no longer on the other side of his lens. The thin glass shield had been shattered with the death of Samantha. He was afraid of a world with its veil pulled away.

  After another month, he found a small studio apartment at the edge of Venice and when his savings dwindled and his bills stacked up, he reached out to an old contact at the Times. He put him in touch with Justine who, desperate for the status of a Pulitzer winner to add to the roster of her celebrity gossip rag, gave him a $500 bonus with his first photo sale.

  He had trembled when he took those first photos. Only one of a dozen shots was not blurred with his shaking. But the images were all safe. A young singer with an old Hollywood star, a married man. The two of them fleeing a motel, no shape in the shadows behind them reminding him of Samantha.

  After that first sale it was easy. He worked when he wanted to. Justine paid him quickly.

  But he did not care. The photos did not matter. Eventually she bought fewer of his photos. He tired of the unending celebrity chase, the banality of it all, photos that scraped the surface.

  When Phil reached the flats near the highway, he pulled onto the side of the road and called Justine.

  “Where are you?” he asked after she answered. “Are you at the Flatiron?” Her office shifted throughout the day; late morning found her on her West Hollywood apartment’s patio, midday she was at the hipster coffee shop on the edge of Koreatown, and evenings were spent at the Flatiron, where she coordinated her photographers and bloggers with a microbrew pint in hand.

  “Phil,” she said, “just the man I was looking for. I caught something across the wires. A potential James Dean off 101. A Bugatti. Taze is on his way over there. Maybe you can beat him.”