Crime Rave Read online

  Table of Contents

  Other books by Sezín Koehler:

  Stories by Sezín Koehler:

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  Part One: The Party’s Over

  Part Two: The Survival of the Fittest Freaks

  Part Three: Further Down The Rabbit Hole

  Part Four: Something Wicked This Way Comes

  Afterword

  Appendices

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Coming soon(ish)

  CRIME RAVE

  BY SEZÍN KOEHLER

  The Margins Press 2015

  Crime Rave

  Copyright © 2015 by Sezín Koehler All rights reserved.

  First Edition: October 2015

  www.Sezin.org

  Cover image © David Arts, courtesy of Shutterstock.

  Formatting: Streetlight Graphics

  ISBN: 978-1-312-78813-8

  No part or whole of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author or publisher, with the exception of reviewers for quotation and citation purposes.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright-free public domain quotes from W.B. Yeats, Francisco Goya, T.S. Eliot, Charles Darwin, Arthur, Rimbaud, Mary Shelley, Lewis Carroll, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William Shakespeare courtesy of The Gutenberg Project.

  www.Gutenberg.org

  An imprint of The Margins Press, Lighthouse Point, Florida.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For Christine Fernando, my beloved aunty and biggest fan,

  with all my love.

  Other books by Sezín Koehler:

  American Monsters

  Stories by Sezín Koehler:

  “Karma’s A Bitch,” in Red Phone Box

  Acknowledgements

  My husband Steven has been a steadfast cheerleader of love as I struggled with life and completing this novel through what was constant geographical transition. I love you, Schmoopie. Your support means everything to me.

  A massive thank you goes out to my book doulas[1]© Tammy Salyer, Jon Stonger, my mom Marty, and husband Steven, who worked with me through the labor pains of writing, rewriting, and some more rewriting of the rewrites of Crime Rave like patient midwives during a difficult birth. Y’all rock some serious Casbah. Thank you ever so.

  And of course I must mention my brilliant final editor, Helen Southcott, for catching all those last little things and for generally being one of the top women on this planet. Thank you, m’dear.

  Another big thanks goes out to my team of first readers Christina Brzustoski, Kira Stegman, and Farrah Macy, who helped me figure out just when the book was ready to set free into the world.

  My amazing college advisor and now friend Jeffrey Tobin also needs a special mention: It’s because of him I decided to resurrect my characters at all. Even though there were times writing this book I wished I hadn’t, I now know it was the right thing and a great thing to do. Gracias para siempre, Jeff. You are forever an inspiration, and your words and advice never seem to stop resonating.

  So much thanks and gratitude go out to Curtis Wong and Jessica Rotundi of Huffington Post, Lisa Wade of Sociological Images, Maya Garg of Al Jazeera, Michele Kort of Ms. Magazine, and Tim Dedopulos and Salomé Jones of Ghostwoods Books, for their amazing help publishing and promoting my writing over recent years.

  A hearty thanks to the dozens of creators and writers of the myriad television shows that got me into a crime-fighting and superhero-y mood, like Hannibal, Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Cold Case, Law & Order: SVU, CSI, The Killing, The Closer, Dexter, Heroes, True Blood, Dollhouse, Hemlock Grove, Medium, Misfits, The Profiler, Top of the Lake, The Fall, Veronica Mars, and The X-Files, along with literally hundreds of films I can’t possibly begin to list here. Molto grazie.

  A special thank you to the Boca Raton and Lighthouse Point Public Libraries for the hundreds of books I borrowed, without which I never would have found my crime novel voice.

  A dancy thanks to Alexi Murdoch, Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra, Daft Punk, Eddie Vedder, Karen-O, Lady Gaga, Lana del Rey, Patti Smith, Pearl Jam, Prince, Prodigy, Skrillex, Sqürl, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, and my mother-in-law Eileen Koehler for the Apple Television that allows music to fill our home. The final revisions just wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Or I’d have no hair left on my head. One or the other.

  I have too many amazing friends and chosen family members to thank by name otherwise we’ll be here all day and we have a book to get to. You soul sisters and brothers all know who you are because I make a point of telling you regularly how important a person you are in my life. You already know how I couldn’t have done this without your friendship, love, encouragement, and support. So, once again, I thank you.

  Last, but definitely not least, a monsterlicious thank you to my readers, who are among the most intelligent, savvy, and coolest people out there in the world. Thank you for reading and more importantly, understanding my strange little book babies and making them feel welcome in this bizarre new world of publishing. The bee’s knees haven’t a thing on you wonderful lot.

  [1]A delightful turn of phrase coined by musician and writer Amanda F. Palmer.

  Author’s Note

  Unlike American Monsters, which was born from an uncomfortable cocktail of trauma and immersion in the horror genre, Crime Rave is the result of years of crime novels and visual media inspired by the stylings of the Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child horror-crime novels and the hardboiled crime fiction of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy. I wrote American Monsters when I was nineteen years old. I finished Crime Rave at thirty-five. I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two about the craft of writing during those many years in between, and part of the challenge I set up for myself was to write a (mostly) straight narrative and put the experimental leanings on the side. This proved a gauntlet that lasted more than five years.

  While technically Crime Rave is a sequel, I’ve fashioned it as a stand-alone novel in a more traditional narrative style for a few reasons: First, for all the readers who wanted to read American Monsters but couldn’t due to the violent content. Second, for my own mental health in not revisiting the kind of emotional pain and soul rippage that the first book channeled. Third, I don’t see myself as someone who will ever write in one genre, and continuing the story as a crime novel made perfect sense given the context of a massive terrorist attack in Los Angeles. Fourth, this gives me the opportunity to explore all the original characters from the perspective of law enforcement, a very different view than what you might have experienced in American Monsters. Fifth, genre jumping is serious fun and not boring at all.

  I also took a number of liberties in Crime Rave with the way law enforcement works in my fictional universe. I figured that since the US has never had an act of terrorism this grand take place on its soil, the easiest way to approach it would be as any other crime until protocols would be set up by the government in the case of future attacks. It’s generally what they did during September 11, 2001, so it’s pretty much what I did here, too. Any inconsistencies on that front are my bad.

  Further, in case you take issue with a non-Native person featuring Native American characters in their novels (I’m saying this because I often do mys
elf) please feel free to read the Afterword on p. 379 before beginning Crime Rave. Including Native Americans in my narrative was not a decision I made lightly, and I explain in further detail how these characters came to be as well as my own history and ties to a variety of Native American communities as an ally in their human rights, independence, and sovereignty struggles.

  During the course of writing Crime Rave I lived in Prague, Czech Republic; Cologne, Germany; and Boca Raton, and Lighthouse Point, Florida. Yikes. While the transition from Europe to the US couldn’t have been more difficult, I humbly admit that I could not have written this novel without the hundreds of books that the Boca Raton and Lighthouse Point Public Libraries offered me. I never would have been able to afford buying all those amazing Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Ellroy, Cormac McCarthy, Neil Gaiman, and other books I devoured while writing Crime Rave had I still been abroad. And this story would never have come together without my mainlining of these amazing authors’ words. Libraries rule.

  Oh, and feel free to imagine the auditory punctuation made famous by Law & Order (“dun DUN”) at the end of each section, or whenever it feels appropriate. It adds a little something, I think.

  If this is your first journey with me, welcome. If this is your second, then welcome back. The scenery has changed some.

  Love,

  Sezín

  January 4, 2015

  Lighthouse Point

  Warning

  This book contains scenes of sexual, gender-based, and extreme violence that some readers might find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.

  Part One:

  The Party’s Over

  I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

  —T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

  The sleep of reason breeds monsters.

  —Francisco Goya

  Prologue: Saturday October 31, 2000

  11:59 PM

  Griffith Observatory

  Los Angeles

  A coven of witches convening for an All Hallows’ Eve séance chant their praises to the full moon, pregnant over well-lit Los Angeles. As the clock ticks into All Saints’ Day the women call the corners: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Spirit, connecting with their lost loved ones in soul embraces. A sudden sharp pain goes through the heart of each witch, an ethereal stiletto piercing a meditative trance. Eyes tear open. Looking out to the Hollywood Hills they see an unholy sight: Red swirling air funneling upward into the heavens, an explosion that rocks the ground upon where they stand. A blast of heat singeing their eyebrows and hair, even from so many miles away.

  Screaming, the witches stand, tears streaming as they watch the sky open into the maw of a goddess, toothed and wicked, sucking into it dead souls, a deified vacuum. The witches take hands and pray as they watch the entire hill subsumed into the creature’s great cavern of a mouth. The goddess cackles and shouts words that only the witches can understand:

  I am Kaleanathi! Goddess of Smog! Eater of Souls! Bow down to your queen!

  Kaleanathi’s war cry sends the witches to their knees, clutching at their throats. They can’t breathe. The agony of such great loss overwhelms, sending their hearts palpitating. One witch will not survive this trauma, she who calls Water.

  The smog goddess burps. Cackles again. Disappears into the ether as fast as she arrived. The witches sob, a fierce lament for the souls of the dead, thousands of whom rise with their fallen sister.

  Sunday November 1, 2000

  2:00 AM

  The Wreckage

  Crime tape marks the scene of the Hollywood Hills Massacre in a brutal ring, the yellow and black harsh in floodlights against the muted gray of rubble, marking the spot where more than thirty thousand partygoers danced to their deaths. Save four: a woman in a werewolf costume missing a leg, a pale man dressed as a vampire with no discerning wounds, a middle-aged lady whose screams shut down the entire site until medics tranquilize her, and fourth, an exotic South Asian bird girl with bleach-blonde hair. Four survivors of the largest explosion Los Angeles has seen since the SS Sansinena blow-up at the Port of Los Angeles back in ’76. The difference is on that day in December only nine lives were lost. Today goes down in history as the biggest hit the city has ever taken. In fact, it’s the biggest attack ever to take place on American soil, the 168 deaths in the Oklahoma City bombing now dwarfed by this new magic number of roughly 35,486. It was a bad night, turned into a morning with no intention of getting better.

  LAPD Homicide Captain Ward Anderson’s voice booms through a megaphone, instructing hundreds of patrol cops to keep press at bay and for the canine unit to release their dogs in the search for bodies and other survivors. Captain Anderson: tall, slim, African-American, with a deep voice that belongs to a much larger man, doesn’t need the mic but uses it anyway. He likes the weight of it and the ever-further gravitation of his words. With him are Homicide Detectives Atticus Red Feather and Synthia Günn, who survey the site that once housed eccentric motel magnate Charles Wallace Crane’s mansion. Half Lakota, half white Detective Red Feather, thirty-nine, wears his long dark hair in a braid down his back, secured with leather cord. Thirty-one-year-old Detective Günn’s Scandinavian roots are evident in her white-blonde hair and sharp features, framed by a severe pixie cut and a perpetual scowl that give her Nordic features a cruel edge.

  Around them, LA’s most notorious landmark is now a glorified pile of dust and scattered body parts that the crime scene investigators bag and tag, double and triple checking their work, anxious for the hundreds more people needed to cover what’s left of the now-demolished hill.

  The governor’s on site in a state of shock, adding work to the already-stretched patrolmen who shield him from the press hounds. The mayor is en route and a task force sets up along the perimeter to deal with the evidence, awaiting dozens more members flying in from around the world, torn from war zones and covert missions to deal with problems closer to home. On the other side of Los Angeles, family members of the dead queue up at the Beverly Center with DNA samples to assist the ID process. Not that there will be anything with which to match their hair and toothbrushes: The site is vaporized, through and through.

  A cordon of police officers pushes back eager press coming from all over the country, vying for the story of the century, already assigning blame, shouting questions and clicking their telephoto lenses in spite of repeated yells to move away and stop. Someone’s gonna get a baton in the face, it’s that kind of morning.

  News helicopters buzz overhead, ignoring the no-fly zone Captain Anderson declared over the explosion site. Despite the chaos, despair hangs over the site in a mushroom cloud. The metaphysics of tragedy. Disbelief gives way to resignation as the scale of devastation hits home moment by moment, too vast to comprehend. Underneath it all the question of who’s responsible itches worse than shingles. But the show must go on. And each cop knows his part, plays it like it’s his last.

  The captain clips off the megaphone and turns to Detectives Red Feather and Günn. “Here’s what we’ve got so far.” Captain Anderson’s face is creased with sleep and he’s missed several spots with his razor. The white stubble against his dark skin belies his otherwise youthful appearance.

  “Charles Wallace Crane was the organizer of this Halloween night ‘rave’ party.” Anderson makes air quotes with his fingers. “Tickets went on sale thirty days ago at the usual points; clothing stores, Ticketmaster, etc. Vendors were informed if they ran out of tickets they could call a one-eight-hundred number and more tickets would be delivered. At last count, they sold approximately 35,486 tickets.”

  “Thousand! You’ve gotta be kidding.” Red Feather’s mouth drops open.

  “I shit you not, Atticus.” Captain Anderson hands him the party flier: A glossy Technicolor display of a haunted mansion framed by speakers emblazoned with a skull and the words FULL LUNACY. The captain c
ontinues. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that all thirty-five-thou-plus were in attendance, some might have left early, some might have been on their way—”

  “But not many,” Günn interrupts, “once the drugs kick in, they stay all night.”

  “Always Miss Sunshine.” The captain pulls a wry smile.

  Günn shrugs, her scowl transforms to disgust. “It’s true, Boss. Got a niece up in San Fran who loves these things. Wears these huge baggy pants that look like a skirt until she walks, plastic bracelets like a five-year-old. She wears a goddamn pacifier around her neck.” Günn has the urge to spit but reins it in.

  “A pacifier?” Captain Anderson is getting too old for this shit.

  “Ecstasy makes you grind your teeth, Boss, so they chew on those instead.”

  “Oh for God’s sake.” The generation gap gets wider and wider.

  “Yeah.” Günn spits anyway.

  Captain Anderson shakes his head and continues. “The lifestyles of the young and stupid aside, we got thirty-five thousand potential vics here, making this the single largest terrorist act to take place on American soil. Feds will be here, so we gotta make sure everything goes copacetic.” Anderson looks at the mess around them. He has a smear of ash on the sleeve of his black jacket. “The explosion took place at approximately twelve thirty in the AM, November first, but paint me pink and call me cotton candy if this doesn’t go down as the Halloween massacre. The press is gonna have a field day with this one.”