He returned to the main room as the body movers carefully lifted Amy Ong from the bed onto the gurney. The sound of the zipper was loud in the small room as the body bag was shut with a sense of finality. Pryce watched as the gurney was wheeled from the room to the coroner’s van waiting outside, sparking a sudden burst of commotion as reporters barked at cameramen to start rolling while flashbulbs popped on photographers’ cameras. Another story to fill a few column inches or a couple of minutes of airtime, he thought angrily.

Pryce turned off the shower now. He toweled dry and pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. As he passed Dionne’s room, he saw the door was still ajar, and the room was in darkness. He crossed the living room, pulled back the sliding door, and stepped out onto the balcony.

This high up, the night air felt cool against his skin, which still tingled from the hot shower. He plucked a bottle of MGD from an ice chest stored between two lawn chairs and looked out over the city. Ten stories below, the traffic was light, the sidewalks almost empty. Beyond the vast black expanse of Griffith Park, the lights of Glendale and Burbank twinkled like a million stars under an eggplant sky.

He knew the Hollywood sign stood off to the west, a symbol of hopes and dreams and the gateway to the studios that lay beyond the hills to the north. Warner Bros. Disney. Universal. Places that had the power to make those hopes and dreams a reality or turn them to dust.

Pryce knew the LAPD investigated as many as three hundred missing persons reports each month. Most of those who were reported missing were found or returned voluntarily within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Of the 30 percent who weren’t found in that time frame, Pryce wondered how many were native Angelenos and how many had come to Tinseltown chasing a dream. Kids just like Amy Ong. Chewed up and spat out by a town where your future could flip from stardust to shit in a heartbeat.

He drank his beer and thought about his own life. About all the things he still had to lose. His badge, his freedom, his home, Angie, Dionne. The feeling of dread that had been sitting heavy in his gut since he’d first taken the call about Amy Ong spread through his insides like a cancer.

Pryce finished the bottle and walked to the other end of the balcony to the sliding door for the master bedroom. He slipped into bed beside Angie. He listened to his wife snoring softly. He stared at the spot on the ceiling where he knew there was a crack he had never gotten around to fixing. The red digits on the alarm clock told him it was almost one a.m.