I had the best of intentions when I went home with her, but somehow it all went wrong. Creeping out from under her arm at five in the morning I couldn't remember if her name was Angie or Amber let alone why I thought it could have possibly ended any differently. Sordid encounters with unbalanced women seemed to come with the job. I was a private detective and I'd flown into salt lake city, utah on the red eye to solve a missing persons case. I was to discover the location of a kid named Wesley Sadler.

His family seemed nice enough, but you could tell by the way the talked about him that they were pretty sure he was dead. But, if that was the case where was the body? They went on at an inane length about what a smart kid he was and how proud they were of him. It's the way people talk about the deceased, they never have anything negative to say about you once you are six feet underground. He was nearly twenty-three years old, nearly six foot four, and nearly 150 pounds. As far as I could tell the fates nearly let him live. After speaking with his parents I studied his living space. He lived in a house less than a mile away from his parents with one other person. His mother owned the house so he got a deal on the rent, which was the only way he was able to afford the place. To the untrained eye his room was a complete mess, but in my line of work that's quite preferable to clean and organized. The messier something is the easier the clues are to find. There were old magazines mixed in with dirty clothes. A book of matches. A copy of a publication called "Chiaroscuro." A bowling ball. A gasmask, unused of course. A chessboard covered in dust. All of the signs of this kid's life were reduced to no more than one of those installation pieces. The exhibit would be referred to as "The Missing Person." Every inch of carpet covered by some sort of clutter. In the clutter near his bookshelves was a pile of postcards and letters from what was obviously a girlfriend at one point. The books were alphabetized by author and title. Strange. Order in chaos. The letters were postmarked years ago, but it was still my first lead. Being a private detective is all about names and numbers. Bank accounts. Dates. Addresses. Phone numbers.

A wallet sized card listing phone numbers of family, friends, and work contacts was located near his computer on a desk that took up roughly one sixth of the room. It was easy to find having been typed out on bright red paper. Besides for the computer the desk was home to a stack of comic books, a paper sack filled with zip-lock bags containing razor blades and scrapes of paper with reasons to kill oneself printed on them, some beat literature, an unlabelled vhs tape, and lined paper containing what were apparently meant to be lyrics. A bass guitar hid in the closet behind a rack of t-shirts and a pile of shoes. One of the slips of paper packaged with a razor blade read, "You don't really believe in hell, do you?" That one brought an unwelcome smile to my face. Another said, "It's a permanent solution to a never ending series of problems." I couldn't help but agree with that. The blades suggested suicide, but the question remained. Where was the body?

After I attempted to get in touch with the postcard mailing ex-girlfriend I spent nearly twenty minutes speaking with her father. She was also missing. He wanted me to let him know if I found out anything. Anything. He emphasized it by saying it twice. He said she had a drug problem. Methamphetamine. I told him that to her it must have been a drug solution - better living through chemistry and all that - and hung up the phone. It seemed like a coincidence, but in my line of work there is seldom such a thing. Stand far enough away from the facts and everything connects, only up close does anything ever appear to be random. I called everybody else on the list of phone numbers. Some were disconnected. Others had obnoxious answering machine messages. The list was clearly out of date. The one person I did get a hold of was a girl that attended high school with the missing person. The subject. The posthumous client. In order to remain objective it is important to use words like "subject" or "client" in place of the actual person's name. Sometimes I refer to them by their social security number. Occasionally I call them widgets. The important thing is not to get too close. Too involved. Too personal. After speaking with the girl she made it clear that they had never dated, though she suspects he probably wanted them to have. Throughout the conversation she maintained a genuine concern about the subject's well being, something that his parent's couldn't even keep up. A child screamed in the background, I wished her luck, and politely ended the conversation.

After I got off the phone the roommate came home. At first he seemed startled by my presence. He was clearly at least somewhat inebriated, but then again so was I. Any occupation that requires you to be surrounded by such an immense amount of human misery will generally be one where drinking on the job is considered normal. I showed him my identification and offered to buy him a late lunch. If anybody was going to be able to provide any useful information it would be him. After we ordered at a nearby diner and I answered the same patience grating questions about my profession I always seem to find myself answering we began to talk about the subject. He related to me the tale of discovering that his friend had disappeared. Their schedules were as such that they saw each other mostly only on weekends so nobody is quite sure exactly when the disappearance occurred. One day though the subject's place of employment called inquiring as to his whereabouts. After a few days of these calls the roommate called his friend's family who soon called the police. They wasted the tax payers' money for a few months and then essentially threw in the towel. That's when I was called in.

As the roommate rambled on about b-movies he used to watch repeatedly with the subject I found myself making eyes with the waitress. She was about five and a half feet tall with unnaturally black hair. Pale skin, lipstick red lips, and a tattoo creeping out of her pants onto that flesh no t-shirt would dare cover up. Her name tag said either Amber or Angie. She winked at me. Her name definitely began with the letter "A". The roommate lit a cigarette and took yet another swig off of a cheap bottle of vodka he had concealed in his jacket pocket. I apologized for his behavior and escorted him outside. Lest the utah clean air act be forgotten.. He told me that no one understood him and I promptly called him a cab. I re-entered the restaurant looking for the winking waitress. No dice. The food had arrived though, it looked awful. The meal was burned beyond recognition and covered in raw onions. Fuck food, I decided to call it a day. I'd go back to my hotel room, polish off a bottle, and go over the facts. It seemed, however, that fate had other plans for me that evening.

I was starting my rental car in the parking lot when I saw her leaning against the outside of the diner smoking a cigarette. The radio played a song I hated for being so catchy and her lips pulled on that cigarette like it was life itself. She winked again and the next thing I knew I was offering her a ride home. She seemed to be looking through my coat and directly at the gun I carried when she accepted my offer. In all my years as a private detective I've never fired my gun, though I have found it necessary to point it at people occasionally. Driving to her apartment on the other side of town I told her that she really shouldn't accept rides from strangers. She coyly responded by asking me if I'm strange. I'm already her prisoner at this point and I ask her why she'd ask me that. Does she like strange men? She told me that she was only wondering if she should be leaping out of the car. She had a clever response to every question I threw at her.

For a few moments, in the car, there was silence. It wasn't nearly as awkward as it should have been. She was comfortably setting in the passenger side seat and my mind was quite overworked. Why had I offered her a ride? What was I intending/hoping to happen between the two of us? Why did I have a Leonard Coen song stuck in my head? Why was I unable to remember most of the words? And where - where was the body of Wesley Sadler?

Once we arrived at her building she got out of my car and began to walk away, but then turned back and leaned into the passenger side window. The angle was pornographic. I was her's far before she asked if I'd like to come up for a drink. I justified it to myself by telling myself that there are no coincidences - which is bullshit by the way - and that she worked very close to the residence of the subject. The client. The victim. The suicide. She may have known something. I certainly had the best of intentions in heart as I followed her up some stairs and had a few drinks with her, but after that my memory is fucked. I must have had more to drink than I thought.

I woke up in her bed. There was no telling how much time had passed, it could have been two minutes and it could have been two hours. Ask an alcoholic how much sleep they get and you'll begin to get the picture. At first I just tried to get back to sleep, but then as I became increasingly more conscious I realized how sticky I was. Confused I searched for a light switch near the bed with my free hand. When I found it I wished that I hadn't. Blood. Somehow it had all gone wrong. I slithered out from under her arm and into my clothes, left her apartment, and descended the staircase. I drove to the hotel and hastily gathered the few personal belongings I had brought with me. After returning the car to the rental agency I caught the next flight out of salt lake city. I spent the seven hour flight trying to convince myself that the police weren't going to be waiting for me when I stepped off of the plane.

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