Serena passes an SUV that's in front of them and, as she does, Richter leans out the window and shoots out the SUV's tires.
The SUV spins out of control, right across McGrave's path.
He swerves into the other lane, clipping the spinning SUV with his front passenger-side bumper.
The impact triggers his air bags.
He keeps on going, pedal to the floor, even though he can't see a thing with the bag in his face.
The car scrapes the guardrail, shooting off sparks, as he heads towards a hairpin turn.
Serena is already in the turn, swerving into the opposite lane to pass a slow car in front of her.
She doesn't see the Hollywood Celebrity Homes Tour bus coming around the bend until it's too late.
Serena jerks the wheel hard to the right to avoid a head-on collision and tries to squeeze between the bus and the guardrail.
And gets rear-ended by the car she just passed.
She loses control, smashes through the guardrail, and goes off the cliff.
The BMW flies into the night sky and then drops into the deep canyon below.
McGrave pushes the air bag out of his way, sees the curve and the bus coming at him, and wrenches the steering wheel hard to the left at the last possible second.
The bus grinds to a stop, brakes squealing like pigs.
McGrave spins and ends across the lanes. The bus hits the passenger side of his car, shattering his windows, buckling his dashboard, and snapping the burled walnut trim. The side air bags all go off.
He scrambles out of the crumpled Mercedes and staggers to the broken guardrail just in time to see the BMW swallowed by the dark depths of the canyon below.
Captain Roy Thackery has been a cop for twenty-five years and has a nice side gig working as a technical consultant on one of those TV series where the cops do autopsies themselves, wear Armani suits, drive vintage muscle cars, live on the beach, and can access the cameras on spy satellites with their cell phones.
He answers incredibly stupid questions from the writers, offers them "authentic cop talk" that he totally makes up, and shares outrageously embellished anecdotes from the cases he's worked.
The producers think that his input gives their show its "gritty verisimilitude," as if having their ex-stripper turned Navy SEAL turned homicide detective character say a few words from an actual cop makes her any more believable than, say, a talking goldfish who solves crimes.
But for his $500 an episode, he's glad to tell them that it does.
What he really wants is to write an episode himself. That's a $30,000 payday, not including residuals, and he figures if his script is any good, it could lead to something more, like maybe a producing gig, maybe a series of his own someday.
So what he needs is quiet time to write. No distractions. No controversies. A clear head so he can create.
What he gets is John McGrave engaging in a shoot-out and a pursuit that shuts down Mulholland Drive in both directions at nine p.m. on a Saturday night.
The scene of the crash is illuminated by portable lights. News choppers swarm overhead, kicking up the air and blowing dust around. Police officers and crime scene investigators scurry around measuring things, bagging stuff, writing notes, and taking pictures. Paramedics treat the drivers of the crashed cars and the tourists in the bus for their mild injuries and what will later be characterized by their attorneys as "severe infliction of emotional distress."
McGrave stands at the cliff's edge, drinking a Hawaiian Punch and eating Oreos that he mooched from a paramedic who keeps the stuff around to treat people for shock. He's watching a crane drag the wrecked BMW up from the canyon below. Firemen move through the brush, looking for anything that might spark a blaze.
Captain Thackery joins him and reeks of spearmint. Ever since he quit smoking, he's always got a mint in his mouth. He's like a highly evolved Altoid.
"What brings you out here, Roy?" McGrave says.
"Jesus Christ, McGrave," Thackery says. "You drove a car through a house, shot up a collection of rare artifacts, stole a Mercedes, ran it into two cars, chased another one off a cliff, and then crashed into a bus full of tourists."
"Yeah. So?"
"What were you thinking?"
"That I wanted to catch the bad guys," McGrave says.
"And as a result, you made things far worse than they would have been if you'd just let the thieves get away with the crime."
"Do nothing. Now that's an innovative approach to law enforcement that I've never considered before. Is that how you got ahead, Roy? Because I've always wondered what your secret was."
"Do you see the news choppers up there? You shut down Mulholland Drive. It's all over the news. And since the crash, those tourists in the bus have already sent out a thousand e-mails, tweets, photos, and videos of this fiasco to the entire planet. There's going to be lots of heat on this, so you'd better hope that all of your extreme actions tonight were justified."
McGrave nods. "Is the phony cable guy talking?"
"Only to St. Peter."
The instant Thackery says it, he knows it's a good line, one they'd love on the show. But he doesn't want to reach for his notebook, because that would be so fucking obvious.
"Go ahead, write it down," McGrave says.
"Fuck you," Thackery says, but he takes out his pad and makes the note anyway, deciding as he does that he ought to start carrying a little digital recorder around to capture his gems of authentic cop talk.
The BMW is brought to the street.
The car is pancaked.
McGrave goes over and peers inside. Serena is still buckled into her seat, her head twisted at an angle not compatible with living. Her eyes are wide open and look like fogged glass.
The passenger seat is empty.
There could be a corpse in the brush at the bottom of the canyon, but McGrave knows in his gut that there isn't.
He goes back to the cliff's edge and looks out at the glittering lights of the San Fernando Valley.
The bastard is out there somewhere. And McGrave is going to find him.
####
It's a warm, sunny Sunday morning, which is another way of saying there's a stage-two smog alert and Los Angeles residents are strongly advised to stay indoors and not breathe more than is absolutely necessary.
McGrave is at his cluttered cubicle, studying a coroner's photo of Otto's tattoo and talking on the phone.