Chapter Thirteen

Ten days after Terry Wilford's abduction

Monday 1 July

The waters of the world-famous Los Angeles River, historically known as the Porciúncula River, began their nearly 51-mile journey in Canoga Park. From there, they traveled south through the San Fernando Valley and into the City of Angels before finding their way to Long Beach – where they finally flowed into San Pedro Bay. Unlike most natural rivers, as it passed through Downtown LA, the LA River flowed through a man-made concrete channel on a fixed course, which was only built after a series of devastating floods hit Los Angeles in the early twentieth century. But its worldwide fame went much deeper than its waters and the destructive floods of the last century. In fact, it went all the way down to its man-made concrete channel.

During winter and spring, the river was fed primarily by rainwater and snowmelt, but during summer and fall, when temperatures in southern California could get up to 80°F and the entire state could experience months without a drop of rainfall, long stretches of the river's concrete channel would practically dry up – and that was why the LA River became so famous.

When dried of water, the man-made concrete channel became, in essence, a freeway. During the Second World War, for example, trucks sped loads of munitions and war materials down the paved river to the harbor – but war didn't bring fame to the Los Angeles River… Hollywood did, thanks to some of the most iconic scenes shot down at the concrete freeway for blockbusters such as Grease, The Dark Knight Rises, Terminator 2, Drive, Point Blank, All Quiet on the Western Front and To Live and Die in LA.

Despite its fame, the LA River freeway did have one major drawback. In the summer, when it didn't rain, the freeway didn't just run dry. At certain specific spots, it was fed wastewater discharged from three distinct treatment plants – Burbank, Glendale and the City of Los Angeles. Whenever that happened, the concrete channel needed to be cleaned, a job that fell to the LA Sanitation Environment Division (LASAN), and there was no job that LASAN employees Luis Toledo and Randy Douglas hated more than cleaning and sanitizing the LA River freeway. Unfortunately for them, they'd been assigned to LA River sanitation duty for that entire week's nightshift, starting that Monday evening.

‘Look at all this shit,' Luis said, gesturing at the amount of wastewater that he and Randy were looking at. His Mexican accent was mild, but still clearly noticeable.

‘Literally,' Randy replied, crinkling his nose before hooking the wings of his P3 disposable mask behind his ears and handing one to Luis.

They were both sitting inside the cabin of their LASAN vacuum sweeper truck. Even with the windows shut the smell from the wastewater was still strong enough to itch the inside of their nostrils.

‘This will take us all night… every night,' Luis said, putting on his mask before slumping back against the driver's seat.

‘Well, it's not like we haven't done it before,' Randy commented, his mouth twisting left behind his mask.

‘My point exactly.' Luis did nothing to cover the annoyance in his tone. ‘I mean – we got assigned to nightshit duty every goddamn year for the past seven years. They could've given us a break this year. Let some other cholos clean it for once.'

‘I've only done four out of the past seven,' Randy reminded Luis. ‘But you're right, they could've assigned this crap to a different team this year.'

Luis had parked the vacuum sweeper truck directly under the East 7th Street Bridge, one of the 136 bridges that provided some sort of crossing over the LA River. He checked his watch before letting go of a deep breath. It was just past eight in the evening, and their shift ran from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

‘I guess we better get started,' Luis said, nodding at Randy, before pausing and quickly studying the stretch of concrete in front of their truck. ‘The right side looks heavier with wastewater, but not as bad as last year.'

‘Yeah, I noticed that too.' Randy nodded. ‘So let's start with the right side. I'd rather get through the heavier stuff first.'

‘Yeah, me too, but since the whole stretch doesn't look as heavy as last year, I'm thinking that maybe we can cover one hundred yards at a time, instead of only fifty. What do you think?'

Randy's bottom lip pursed forward as he nodded. ‘Yeah, I think that's doable. We're cleaning all the way up to the next bridge and then back, right?'

‘That's right.' Luis nodded.

‘OK, let's get this party going.'

Luis shook his head at Randy. ‘You and I have very different ideas of what a party is, cholo.'

There was no specific procedure that a team had to follow when cleaning the LA River concrete channel. It was all a question of preference, which was left to the team itself. The way Luis and Randy went about it was a simple and efficient one, but certainly laborious.

First, they would divide the channel into two halves – right and left side. Then they'd use the truck to sweep the bulk of the wastewater toward the edges, where drainage gutters ran for almost fifty miles. After that, came the hardest part – they needed to manually sweep the leftover water and waste from the main concrete body to the side gutters, picking up any large debris they might find, so as not to clog up the gutters. Due to how wide the channel was – equivalent to about four freeway lanes – they had to repeat that entire process four times – twice on the left… twice on the right.

Luis started the truck and activated the sweeping blades together with the wind turbines before driving south, in the direction of the 6th Street Viaduct, which was the next bridge along. They drove for about one hundred yards before stopping the truck and switching off the blades and the turbines.

‘Ready?' Luis asked, as they both jumped out of the truck and collected their equipment from the back.

‘As I'll ever be,' Randy replied, breathing out through his mask.

The driving part usually took them around five minutes to complete, but the manual sweeping, depending on what sort of grime they encountered along the way, could take them anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five minutes per hundred-yard section. Once that was done, the process repeated itself for the next hundred yards, until they got to the 6th Street Viaduct, which they did at around 10:30 p.m.

‘Do you want to take a break now?' Luis asked, using his sleeve to mop the sweat from his forehead. ‘Or when we make it back to the 7th Street Bridge?'

‘I'm all right,' Randy replied. ‘I can wait until we get back, if you want.'

‘Let's do that then,' Luis agreed.

They both got back into the truck, moved it one lane to the right, closer to the gutter, and began their first of two return journeys back from the 6th Street Viaduct to the 7th Street Bridge, but they never finished the job.

It was Luis who spotted it first, just a couple of minutes past midnight, during their last hundred-yard manual sweeping job before they got to the bridge. When they were just about seventy yards away from it, as he swept another rake full of dirty water toward the side gutter, his wandering stare moved up to meet the bridge. He didn't see it at first, but as his gaze was coming back to his rake, he spotted something – a silhouette, it seemed – just by the second lamppost up on the bridge. The only one out of four that was faulty.

As his eyes clocked the silhouette, Luis did a double-take before pausing.

‘What the fuck?' he said, squinting, trying to sharpen his focus.

‘What the fuck what?' Randy asked, looking in the same general direction as Luis, but failing to spot anything.

‘Up there.' Luis raised his right arm to indicate. ‘On the bridge. By the second lamppost from the right. The one that's busted.'

It took Randy a second, but he finally spotted it too, his neck craning forward. ‘Is that someone up there?'

‘I think it is, yeah,' Luis replied before he realized what was just about to happen. His eyes widened as he let go of his rake. ‘Jesus Christ, I think the dude's gonna jump.'

Randy's mouth dropped open. Luis was right. The man on the bridge looked like he was about to leap to his death.

‘HEY!' Luis yelled at the top of his voice, waving his arms in the air frantically. ‘HEY… STOP!'

The man didn't look back at him. His head stayed low, with his chin almost touching his chest, and as Luis began a mad sprint in the direction of the bridge, the man simply stepped off its edge.

Luis was still too far away to make it there in time.

Horrified, all he could do was watch the man's body slice through the air, gaining speed as it did, before splattering itself against the concrete channel down below. Even from a distance, as the body hit the ground hard, Luis could hear a sickening cracking noise, as the man's bones fractured on impact – some rupturing through muscle and skin to protrude out of his arms, legs and shoulders. His head also hit the ground with tremendous momentum, the collision hard enough to shatter his cranium, making it cave in and deforming his whole face out of shape.

Luis didn't stop running until he got to the bridge… his breathing labored, his body shaking, tears already welling up in his eyes.

‘What the fuck?' he called out, desperately bringing both hands to his head. His gaze moved to the mangled body on the ground and the pool of blood that was slowly forming around it. ‘Jesus Christ, man!'

Randy, on the other hand, stood exactly where he was, about seventy yards away. His eyes were still squinting, trying hard to sharpen their focus and see through the darkness, but he wasn't looking at the man on the ground or at a freaked-out Luis Toledo. No, Randy's eyes were still squinting at the bridge… because what he actually saw, couldn't really be possible… could it?