Free L.A. Rotten by Jeff Klima

Even in my dreams I could smell my skin burning off—it always smelled like my dad’s cigarettes to me. Burning to death is the absolute worst way to die.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” I say.
    “Trust me, it’s horrible.” She doesn’t get the sarcasm.
    “How did you finally overcome your dreams?” My mind flashes to my own twisted nightmares.
    “I don’t really remember; they just sort of stopped.”
    I’ve been having my nightmares for ten years now, with no signs of stopping. “Oh.”
    Ivy continues to watch as I busy myself retrieving a sock from beneath the corner of the bedspring; as I bend, the sudden urge to check comes over me.
Don’t do it
, I think, attempting to will myself away from shining my flashlight beneath the bed and becoming further entrenched in the enigma. In the end, my willpower serves me no better than when I try and resist heroin.
I know I’m going to end up doing it anyway, so I might as well get it over with
. Grabbing my light, I drop to my knees and scan the beam across the spread of carpeting, finally coming to rest on the dull, boxy shape in the middle of the floor: the Gideon Bible.
    “Motherfucker,” I say, grimacing, now annoyed with myself for seeking it out.
    “What?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Try and explain.”
    Straining, I reach under the bed and retrieve the book, flipping it open to reveal the condom among the verses—the same verses as the last one. And, likely, the same verses as the other Bibles too.
    “What?” she asks again when I don’t answer immediately.
    “The Bible…with the condom tucked into this exact page. I’ve found it at other crime scenes. Different Offramp Inns, but all the same room number.”
    “This same Bible?”
    “No—different Bibles, but all with the same brand of condom, all placed beneath the bed.”
    “So what are you saying?”
    “I’m not saying anything,” I try.
    “Yeah, you are.”
    “Okay, I’m pretty certain that whatever happened here was related to what happened there.”
    “What happened there?”
    “At the last one, a homeless woman was pretty much torn apart with a knife.”
    “Well, what should we do about this?”
    “Nothing.” I quickly pitch the Bible into the plastic bag. “Not a damn thing.”
    “Do you think it’s a coincidence then?”
    “No.”
    “So…then why do nothing?”
    “What’s to do?”
    “Call the police?”
    “Nope.”
    “Why?”
    “Look, telling you anything, bringing you here, I regret it.”
    “Fine. Jesus, no cops; pull your tampon out already. I’m just saying we can’t do nothing.”
    “We
can
do nothing. Easily.”
    “We
shouldn’t
do nothing then.”
    “Why? What would we do anyway? I mean, honestly, outside the cops, there isn’t anything we can do.”
    “You said it was the same room number on all those jobs, right?”
    “Yep.”
    “How do you know that for sure? Why would you even remember a room number?”
    “This room number…236…it comes up a lot. Lots of bad things happen in lots of different Offramps all over SoCal. Recently, a lot of them have been happening in 236.”
    “How come the police don’t notice that?”
    “Why would they? I’m talking suicides, homicides, robberies gone wrong, overdoses, accidental deaths…there’s no pattern to it.”
    “But the room numbers?”
    “Different cities and areas mean different cops responding. And each homicide doesn’t look like the others. The cops don’t recognize any sort of pattern, because they can’t.”
    “And you’ve just been keeping this to yourself?”
    “I tried not to really think too much of it…”
    “I don’t know. Are you sure you aren’t just making a mountain out of…nothing?”
    “Why would I do that?”
    “I had a roommate who one day decided that she could get coke through the airport if she hid it in a jar of peanut butter. Like the peanut butter would make it impossible to detect. It was just something she dreamed up one day, but she was certain it