Intemperance Epilogue Volume I

Chapter 1

 

Aftermath

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indian Springs, Nevada
March 26, 2005
12:14 a.m.

 

 

 

Matt Tisdale was still on the stage.

He lay on his back where he’d fallen and been rolled over during the futile resuscitation attempt, shirt cut open and peeled away, the adhesive edges of the defibrillator pads still clinging to his chest, stark against his skin. An endotracheal tube protruded from his mouth at a slight angle, secured with tape that had already begun to loosen. An IV line trailed from his arm, saline bag hanging slack and forgotten.

Someone—no one could quite remember who—had covered him with a yellow emergency blanket. It rested awkwardly, more symbolic than useful, doing nothing to disguise the fact that he hadn’t moved.

It had been two hours since Jim Ramos had pronounced him dead.

The audience was gone now. All one hundred and twenty thousand of them. They’d filed out slowly, quietly, almost reverently, as if sound itself might have been inappropriate. Shock traveled faster than language. They’d witnessed a man die onstage, and now they were expected to carry that knowledge home with them, into cars, campsites, trailers, hotel rooms, and the long empty hours before sleep. No one quite knew yet what it meant.

All they knew for sure at this point was that Matt Tisdale had died and that Intemperance was likely not going to be the headliner for tomorrow night’s show as scheduled.

The house lights were still up. Not dimmed. Not softened. Full white. The stage lights too—white, unforgiving, clinical. The kind of lighting meant for work, not performance. The kind that stripped away illusion and left only surfaces and facts.

Jake Kingsley stood near the edge of the stage and counted the officials who were back here. Fourteen LVMPD officers, spread between the stage and the backstage corridor. All in uniform, some leaning against road cases or speaking quietly into radios. Two plainclothes deputies from the coroner’s office stood a little apart, their posture different, already operating on a longer timeline. And Jim.

Jim sat on the floor with his back against a packing crate, legs stretched out, hands resting loosely on his thighs. He hadn’t said much since making the call. Jake understood. There was nothing left to explain until someone asked the right questions.

Kim sat on Jake’s other side. Her eyes were swollen and red, her face blotched from crying she hadn’t tried to hide. She hadn’t left Matt’s side for long. She hadn’t said she wouldn’t. She simply hadn’t moved.

Owen moved in and out of the space like a nervous particle, never stopping for long. At some point he’d appeared with coffee—paper cups, lids, creamers scavenged from somewhere deep in the machinery of the venue. Not just for the crew. For the cops too. He handed them out without comment, without ceremony. No one refused. Several nodded thanks. Someone clapped him once on the shoulder.

GM was earning his keep.

In the backstage area, Intemperance’s road crew stood waiting, hands idle, muscle memory screaming at them to start breaking down the set. Cables lay coiled where they’d been dropped. Cases sat open and empty, ready for instruments that weren’t going anywhere yet. Everyone knew how this was supposed to go after a show.

This just wasn’t that kind of night.

Jake stayed where he was, eyes drifting back—again and again—to the Stratocaster lying where it had been set down after Matt fell. It hadn’t moved. He’d made sure of that.

And it wouldn’t be moved until he was ready for it to be.

Jake turned away from the stage and walked toward one of the uniformed officers standing near the edge of the backstage corridor.

The man noticed him coming and straightened a little—not stiff, not defensive. Just attentive. Late forties, maybe early fifties. Solid build. Gold bars on his collar.

“Lieutenant… uh..,” Jake said.

“Jorgenson,” the officer replied. “Dan Jorgenson. North District watch commander.”

Jake nodded once. He had been told the name once but had forgotten. He was like that. Laura was not. She was a former teacher and great at remembering names. Jorgenson had arrived about forty minutes earlier and quietly taken ownership of the situation. Since then, everything had slowed down. Deliberately. No statements. No formal interviews. No one touching anything that didn’t absolutely need to be touched. Even the coroner’s deputies had kept their distance, standing back with their hands folded or tucked into jacket pockets, waiting like everyone else.

“What are we waiting on?” Jake asked.

Jorgenson didn’t bristle at the question. He didn’t hedge, either.

“Homicide,” he said. “They’re on their way.”

Jake looked past him for a moment, out toward the empty corridor where the crowd had once been. Then he looked back.

“You think this was a homicide?” he asked.

Jorgenson shook his head slightly. Not no. Not yes. Something in between.

“I don’t think anything yet,” he said. “Common sense says catastrophic medical event or he overdosed on drugs. But belief isn’t the standard. Procedure is.”

Jake nodded. He didn’t bother telling the lieutenant that Matt didn’t do drugs before a show. Never had. Not in twenty-five years of stepping onto stages and playing that Strat that was now lying next to him. He knew better than to waste the breath. Even if Jorgenson believed him—and Jake did not think he would—that wouldn’t change anything.

Jorgenson continued, his tone matter-of-fact.

“Homicide are the most meticulous investigators we have. They document everything. They miss nothing. When a high-profile person dies in public, especially onstage, they take the lead. That way, nobody gets to ask later why corners were cut.”

Jake absorbed that. He could already see the shape of it. The reports. The scrutiny. The inevitable second-guessing by people who hadn’t been there.

“I understand,” he said.

And he did.

Jorgenson watched him for a beat, then gave a small nod in return.

“They’ll walk it, ask a few questions, and make their own determination,” the lieutenant said. “Once they’re satisfied, things will start moving again.”

Jake glanced back toward the stage—toward the body, the lights, the Strat still where it had been left.

“Soon?” he asked.

“Should be,” Jorgenson said. “They know who it is.”

Jake nodded again. He turned back toward the stage without another word and resumed his place.

Waiting, it turned out, was the only thing anyone was allowed to do tonight.

Jake stepped off the stage and pushed through the backstage door, the familiar smell of dust, sweat, and hot metal closing around him.

One of the roadies stood just inside, leaning against the cinderblock wall, arms folded, eyes unfocused. It was Gene Volga. The other roadies called him Vulgar for short. He had been on the Millennial Tour and the Never Say Never Tour after that. A good solid roadie who knew his shit. And he was a smoker.

“Got a cigarette?” Jake asked.

Vulgar blinked, surprised, then nodded and fished a pack from his pocket. He tapped one out and handed it over without comment. Jake took it, feeling faintly ridiculous and vaguely relieved at the same time. Thirteen years. That was how long it had been since he’d last asked anyone for one. That had been the day that his old Chancellor had hit a Canadian goose after taking off from Portland with Celia aboard.

The roadie struck a lighter and held it up. Jake leaned in, cupped the flame, drew.

The first drag burned. He coughed once, then again, turning his head aside. The roadie pretended not to notice. Jake straightened, nodded his thanks, and wandered back out onto the stage.

The lights were still too bright. The smoke looked wrong under them—too visible, too honest. He took another drag anyway. Slower this time. Let it sit.

He wished Laura was here. Not because she’d know what to do—though she probably would—but because of her warmth. The way she grounded him just by standing close. The way she’d put a hand on his arm without saying anything, letting him borrow her steadiness.

She wouldn’t like the cigarette. She’d wrinkle her nose when she smelled it on him later. She always did.

Celia would smoke with him.

Celia wouldn’t wrinkle her nose. If someone offered them a joint, she’d take it and ask him to secondhand her, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And she’d do it right here. Right in front of Matt. Matt wouldn’t mind. Hell—if Matt was still hanging around somewhere, hovering just out of sight, he’d probably be cheering them on.

Jake smiled faintly at that, then took another drag.

It still made him cough, but the burn was oddly soothing. It gave his hands something to do. Gave his head something small and manageable to focus on. For a few seconds, the noise in his mind softened.

He knew he needed to think about what came next. About calls and cancellations and statements and planes and lawyers and families and the thousand small decisions that would start stacking up the moment this night finally loosened its grip.

His mind refused.

All it wanted—desperately—was to get through this night. Just this night. To make it back to the Bellagio. A couple of drinks. A dark room. Sleep that might or might not come.

Later would deal with itself.

He flicked ash onto the concrete and looked back toward the center of the stage. The Strat was still lying there, exactly where it had been set down. Untouched. Unmoved.

I am not taking my eyes off of it, he told himself. Not yet.

Jake walked back toward Kim, the cigarette still burning between his fingers.

She looked up when she saw him coming, eyes already red again, jaw tight like she was holding herself together by force alone. He didn’t say anything. He just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in.

She went into him gladly. Hard. Her face pressed into his chest, fingers gripping the back of his jacket like she was afraid the ground might give way if she let go. Jake held her and felt the tremor in her shoulders, the effort it was taking just to stay upright.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she said. The words came out rough, but she didn’t pull away.

She reached up, took the cigarette from between his fingers, and brought it to her mouth. Took a long drag like it was muscle memory. Held it. Let it out slow. Then handed it back to him.

“I always knew he’d go out like this,” she said. Not dramatic. Not bitter. Just stating a fact she’d apparently carried for a long time. “Onstage. Doing exactly what he loved. It was the only way Matt could go.”

Jake nodded. He didn’t interrupt.

“I just… I wasn’t expecting it so soon.” Her voice wavered. “He told me he loved me the other morning. First time he ever said it. Twenty years together, and he finally says it like it’s no big deal. Just drops it in there.” She gave a short, broken laugh that collapsed into something uglier. “And now he’s gone.”

The tears came then. Kim folded forward, hands coming up to her face, shoulders shaking as the dam finally broke. Jake tightened his hold and let her cry into him, steady and unmoving, the way you do when there’s nothing to fix.

“It’s okay,” he murmured—not reassurance, just permission.

After a bit—how long didn’t matter—her breathing slowed. She wiped at her face with the heel of her hand, then again, then drew a breath and straightened a little, embarrassed but not apologetic.

“I really did love that asshole,” she said. “He wasn’t exactly the most romantic man who ever walked the earth.”

Jake let out a quiet huff.

“But he was alive,” she went on. “God, he was alive. Every second of it. Even when he was being impossible.”

Jake looked past her, back toward the stage—toward the lights, the body, the Strat still lying where it shouldn’t have been.

“Yeah,” he said. “He was.”

He took the cigarette back, finished it, and crushed it out carefully under his shoe.

“He was a legend in his own time.”

Kim nodded once, sharp and decisive, like that was something she could hold onto.

They stood there together, the noise of the world kept at arm’s length, while everything waited for the next thing it was going to demand from them.

They broke their embrace. And then they waited some more.

Time kept doing its strange, elastic thing—stretching, compressing, refusing to move in straight lines. Kim eventually wandered back toward the backstage door and bummed another cigarette from one of the crew. She came back a minute later and held it out to him without a word. He took a drag, then handed it back. They shared it that way, passing it between them like an unspoken agreement.

Jim stayed where he was, still seated on the floor against the packing crate, posture unchanged. He looked smaller somehow now that the work was done.

After a while, Kim walked over to him.

She didn’t announce herself. She didn’t ask permission. She just sat down with him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Jim hesitated for half a second, then leaned forward and rested his forehead against her shoulder. His hands came up slowly, awkwardly, and settled against her back.

He cried a little. Quietly. The kind of crying you do when you don’t want to make a scene and can’t quite stop it anyway.

Jake looked away.

Guy code.

He told himself he’d check on them in a minute. He didn’t. He stayed where he was and kept his eyes on the stage, on the yellow blanket covering Matt’s body. He still hadn’t cried. He wasn’t sure he would be able to. Everything inside him felt wrapped in cotton—muted, distant, unreal. Even now, even looking straight at the outline beneath the blanket, some part of his brain kept insisting that Matt couldn’t actually be dead. Not really. Not permanently.

GM dropped down beside him and sat with his back against the stage riser.

“How are you doing, Mr. Jake?” Owen asked quietly.

Jake took a breath and let it out slow. “Holding it together. For now.”

Owen nodded like that was a perfectly reasonable answer.

“Matt was an interesting guy,” he said after a beat. “I mean… I used to worship him when I was in high school. Posters, solos on repeat, the whole thing. Then I got to work with him and he was exactly what I thought he would be like.”

Jake smiled faintly.

“And a little bit more for your money, too,” he said.

Owen snorted. “Yeah. Definitely that.”

They sat in silence for a moment, the hum of the lights filling the space.

“You know,” Owen said, glancing sideways at Jake, “he got me through my first threesome.”

Jake turned his head, eyebrow lifting. “He did?”

“Yeah,” Owen said earnestly. “I would’ve fucked it up without him.”

Jake shook his head once, amused despite himself. “Was he there?” He had heard the story of Owen’s threesome directly from the source. Quite possibly the most awkward sexual encounter of the modern sexual age. But no one had mentioned Matt being there.

“He wasn’t there in person,” Owen said, “but he was in my head.”

“In your head? That’s a scary thought.”

“It wasn’t,” Owen insisted. “He helped me.”

“How so?” Jake wanted to know.

“The three of us were playing Naughty Truth or Dare,” Owen went on. “Things were getting heated. The last dare had Tif and Tricia French kissing each other for thirty seconds, but the card said no groping.” He paused. “Well… Tricia started groping. Hands under Tif’s bra, feeling up her boob. And I was totally about to yell ‘no groping—it’s the rules!’”

Jake could already see it. The look on Owen’s face. The timing. The impending disaster. “That would have gone over like a fart in church,” he said.

“No shit,” Owen said. “And then… I swear to God, I felt Matt bitch-slap me. Like he actually did it. Right upside the head. It hurt. Actual pain. And in my head, just as plain as if he were there, he yelled, ‘What the fuck are you doing, GM? You don’t call rule violations when a bitch is feeling up another bitch’s tit!’”

Jake laughed. Out loud. The sound surprised him.

“So I didn’t,” Owen said, nodding. “Call the rule violation that is. And the rest of the threesome… well. It happened. I didn’t fuck it up. We took some casualties, but that wasn’t my fault. And I still got to fuck them both.”

Jake wiped at his face with the back of his hand, still smiling.

“That,” he said, “is a very moving story. A very Matt story.”

Owen grinned, just a little, then sobered again as the weight of the night settled back in around them.

They sat there together, the legend of Matt Tisdale lingering not just in music and lights—but in the stupid, human lessons he’d left behind.

 

 

*****

 

 

The homicide cops did not announce themselves when they arrived.

Jake noticed the shift before he noticed the people—the way conversations stopped finishing their sentences, the way radios went quiet, the way bodies subtly reoriented toward the backstage corridor without anyone meaning to do it.

Three men in suits and ties came through first. Dark jackets. Conservative colors. No visible rush. No visible curiosity either. They moved like people who were used to walking into rooms where something terrible had already happened and would not be made better by enthusiasm.

Behind them came uniformed CSI teams, all civilians, no guns, handcuffs, or badges, just ID cards clipped to their uniform shirts. They toted rolling cases that made a particular sound when they crossed concrete. They staged themselves in the SVIP section just offstage, careful not to spill forward until someone told them to.

Lieutenant Jorgenson peeled off from where he’d been standing and met the three suits halfway. The coroner’s deputies joined them. They formed a loose huddle—close enough to hear each other, far enough from everyone else to keep it contained.

They talked quietly.

Jake watched without really hearing, catching only fragments—time stamps, locations, confirmations. A patrol sergeant read from a notebook, flipping pages carefully, like the order mattered. One of the detectives nodded. Another asked a question without looking up. Every so often, one of them glanced toward the stage.

Toward the body. Toward Jim. Toward Jake.

The conference went on longer than Jake expected. Five minutes. Maybe more. No one interrupted. No one checked a watch. It felt like the moment where the night finally decided what shape it was going to take.

Then the group broke apart.

Two of the detectives headed toward the stage. They didn’t rush. They stopped well short of Matt’s body and simply looked. Took in position, posture, distance. One of them crouched slightly, hands on his knees, then stood again without saying anything.

The third detective came toward Jake.

Jake stood up before the man reached him. Not out of respect exactly—more out of instinct.

“Mr. Kingsley,” the detective said, extending a hand. “Sergeant Craine. Homicide.”

They shook. The grip was firm and brief.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Craine said.

Jake nodded once. “Thank you.”

Craine didn’t offer anything else yet. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t look past Jake toward the stage.

He gave the moment the weight it deserved—and no more than that.

Behind them, the machinery of the night shifted again, settling into its next configuration.

Sergeant Craine glanced once toward the body, then back to Jake.

“For the record,” he said, “we’re not treating this as a homicide. High-profile death in a public venue—we cover all the bases. That’s all this is.”

Jake nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m told Mr. Tisdale collapsed during the set,” Craine said.

“At the very end,” Jake replied. “He hung in there until then.”

Craine lifted his eyebrows slightly. “How do you mean?”

Jake didn’t hesitate. “He died on the very last note he was responsible for. Made us miss the final two-note finish, but he did his part.”

Craine blinked. “That’s kind of… badass, actually.”

“It was… something,” Jake said.

The detective hesitated, then added, “I should probably tell you—I’ve been an Intemperance fan since college. I caught you guys live here in Las Vegas back in ’86. The It’s In the Book tour.”

Jake smiled faintly. “I thought you looked familiar.”

Old joke. Muscle memory.

Craine smiled back, then shifted gears, professional again.

“I need to confirm something, Mr. Kingsley. The man on the stage—that is, in fact—Matthew Norman Tisdale. Professional guitarist?”

Jake stared at him for a beat, genuinely puzzled.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s who he is. Who else would he be?”

Craine raised a hand slightly. “I know how that sounds. But in the celebrity world there are always rumors. Stand-ins. Body doubles. Someone sick or disfigured, management trying to keep a tour alive. I just need to know if anything like that was happening tonight.”

Jake’s expression didn’t change, but something in it hardened.

“KVA would never do stand-ins,” he said. “We’re an honest organization.”

Craine nodded immediately. No pushback. No follow-up. “Then that’s Matthew Norman Tisdale,” he said. “Thank you.”

Jake followed his gaze back toward the stage, to the still shape under the sheet, the lights too bright, the night refusing to move on.

“Yes,” he said again. “It is.”

Craine nodded once. “It’ll be easy enough to verify. We’ll run fingerprints.”

Jake didn’t react.

“He’s been arrested before,” Craine went on, matter-of-fact. “So they’ll be in the system. Last year, right?” A corner of his mouth twitched. “Wasn’t he and Coop picked up for breaking into a church and stealing holy water so they could use it in their bong?”

Jake exhaled through his nose. “That did happen.”

Craine waited.

“The official line,” Jake added, “was that it was a crossover religious experience that went wrong.”

Craine snorted quietly and made a note. “Sounds about right.” He looked up again. “He lived an interesting life.”

Jake met his eyes. “You have no idea.”

Craine nodded, accepting that without argument. He flipped a page in his notebook, pen poised.

“Talk to me about drugs and alcohol.”

Jake didn’t hedge. There was no point.

“He drank every day,” Jake said. “He smoked pot every day. He used cocaine almost every day.”

Craine’s pen moved, steady.

“But,” Jake continued, “in twenty-five years of performing, he never used anything within four hours of taking the stage. Not once. Every Intemperance rehearsal and every Intemperance show has always been cold sober. That’s a band rule.”

Craine looked up briefly. “Always?”

“Well,” Jake allowed, “there were some incidents back in the dim dark days of our first contract with National. Band discipline was taken out of the band’s hands. The rule wasn’t enforced. Darren and Coop started getting high before the shows. Then they started doing coke and drinking. And Darren fucked up one night and got blown off the stage by a pyrotechnic device. Burned him. Fucked up his ear. So he started taking Demerol for the pain. And pretty soon he was taking heroin. And then Coop was doing heroin. And then we got a new contract and made the two assholes go to rehab. It stuck for Coop and we haven’t had a problem with him since. It didn’t stick for Darren and you know what happened to him.”

“I do,” Craine confirmed. “He got botulism from skin popping. And then he overdosed after the band voted not to take him back.”

“And there have been no incidents of performing on stage intoxicated since then,” Jake said. “I guarantee you that.”

“Fair enough,” Craine said.

Craine flipped his notebook shut partway and looked at Jake again.

“Do you have any idea what caused his death?” he asked. “If you had to guess.”

Jake didn’t answer right away. He glanced toward Jim, still seated on the floor, then back to the stage.

“Jim thinks it was a head bleed,” he said finally. “Says not even a massive heart attack would’ve killed him that fast. Or that clean.”

Craine’s expression didn’t change.

“He saw Matt’s pupils,” Jake went on. “I saw them too. One was big. One was little. I’m not a doctor or anything, but even I know that means bad shit.”

Craine nodded once, noncommittal. He made a small note, then capped his pen.

“The coroner will sort that out,” he said. The tone wasn’t dismissive exactly—but it wasn’t receptive either. Jim’s opinion went into the pile with everything else. Jake let it go. There was no upside to pushing.

Craine glanced back toward the other detectives, then returned his attention to Jake.

“I don’t have any further questions for you right now,” he said. “You’re free to head back to Band City. Or back to Vegas, if that’s where you’re staying.”

Jake didn’t move. “There’s one thing I need,” he said.

Craine paused. “What’s that?”

Jake didn’t answer immediately. He just turned his head.

They both looked toward the center of the stage.

Matt’s Stratocaster was still lying there, face up on the scuffed black surface, just beyond the edge of the yellow emergency blanket. It hadn’t been touched. It hadn’t been covered. It sat where it had been set down—ordinary, unmistakable, suddenly freighted with more weight than it had ever carried in its life.

“That,” Jake said, nodding toward the guitar. “It needs to leave with me.”

Craine followed his gaze, then looked back at him. “That may take a while. We still have to process the scene. Photographs. Measurements. Documentation. We don’t move anything until that’s done.”

“I’m not asking you to rush,” Jake said. “I’m asking you not to let it out of my sight.”

Craine tilted his head slightly. “Ordinarily, personal effects would be released to the next of kin.”

Jake didn’t react immediately. When he spoke, his voice stayed level. “Matt doesn’t want his next of kin handling that instrument,” he said. “And I don’t want that guitar disappearing into a chain of well-meaning hands where it becomes a question mark.”

Craine glanced back toward the Strat. “It’s a guitar,” he said mildly.

“It’s a priceless guitar now,” Jake replied. “And it looks like every other black Strat on the planet. No custom paint. No obvious markers. If it leaves this stage without a clean, documented handoff, there will always be doubt about whether it’s the guitar. The one he played his entire career. The one he died playing.”

Craine was quiet.

“I’m not claiming ownership,” Jake went on. “I’m claiming responsibility. I am the owner of KVA Records and Matt was, to put it in sterile legality, my employee. Onstage. Offstage. In transit. That hasn’t changed tonight. My job is to make sure that guitar stays what it is. Not a rumor. Not a substitute. Not something people argue about later.”

Craine studied him for a moment longer than strictly necessary. Then he nodded once, slow. “Hold on,” he said.

He turned and motioned to Lieutenant Jorgenson, who had been standing nearby watching the CSI team stage their equipment. Jorgenson came over, expression unreadable, hands resting lightly on his belt.

Craine leaned in and spoke quietly.

Jake stayed where he was, eyes drifting back—again—to the Strat lying beside the yellow blanket, untouched, exactly where it had been when the night went wrong. He didn’t look away. Not even when the men behind him started deciding what happened next.

It took them twenty-five minutes to make the decision.

The discussion moved away from Jake, into murmurs and half-turned backs. It involved forms and hypotheticals and someone stepping off to make a phone call that no one wanted to be responsible for making. Eventually, that phone call went as high as anyone on the floor could push it.

They woke the Big Sheriff Himself.

Saturday morning. At home. Out of bed. Asked to decide something that would be replayed later by lawyers, journalists, families, and people who had never been within a hundred miles of this stage.

While they talked, nothing else happened.

No one approached the body. No one touched the guitar. CSI stayed staged, hands idle, equipment waiting. The whole place existed in suspension, as if the night itself had been told to hold.

Matt Tisdale lay where he had been left, indifferent beneath the yellow emergency blanket. He had no opinion about jurisdiction or chain of custody or who might eventually argue over what he left behind.

Finally, the call came back down the chain.

Craine returned to Jake, posture settled now, decision made somewhere above his pay grade.

“The guitar will be photographed in place,” he said. “Extensively. Measurements, close-ups, serial number, condition, position relative to the body. Full documentation.”

Jake nodded. He hadn’t expected anything less.

“Once that’s complete,” Craine went on, “it will be released to you for safekeeping. You’ll sign for it. It stays with you until a probate court determines its final disposition.”

Jake felt something loosen in his chest that he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“Thank you,” he said.

Craine nodded once. “Don’t thank me. Thank the sheriff. And the fact that nothing about tonight suggests that guitar answers any questions.”

Jake glanced back toward the stage.

It didn’t answer anything.

It just was.

And for now, that was enough.

 

 

*****

 

 

Jim stayed where he was, seated on the concrete with his back against the stage wall, Kim beside him.

She was smoking one cigarette after another now, barely letting one burn out before lighting the next. The roadie she’d bummed them from had turned out to be a Mary Ann Cummings fan—deep catalog, paid member of her website. He’d given her the entire pack and the lighter without hesitation.

Jim had never seen her smoke before.

Matt had smoked cigarettes like a chimney. Always had. It was one of several reasons he was lying on the stage thirty feet away from them, covered with a yellow emergency blanket even though he wasn’t cold—or at least he wasn’t cold in a way that mattered.

Jim kept running the call over in his head.

He’d already written a report for the coroner. Composed longhand on a pre-printed form while things were still stalled, every box checked, every time stamp precise. Objective language. No speculation. No editorializing. Exactly what it was supposed to be.

That didn’t stop the loop.

He knew, intellectually, that there wasn’t anything else he could have done. The paramedic part of his brain—the part trained by repetition, reinforced by outcome, hardened by years of practical experience—understood that completely.

He’d known Matt wasn’t going to survive almost from the moment he put the monitor leads on.

Agonal rhythm.

Not ventricular tachycardia. Not ventricular fibrillation. Not anything he could shock back into line and restore homeostasis. No chaotic electricity to reset. No rhythm to capture and bully into submission.

Just a heart that wasn’t beating. A few dying electrical impulses sputtering across the monitor—strong enough to be detected, not strong enough to do a damn thing. No contraction. No forward flow. No perfusion.

Shock that and all you do is waste battery and desecrate a corpse.

If it had been V-fib or V-tach, Matt would’ve been defibrillated right away and it likely would have worked if that was the only thing wrong. He probably would’ve popped right back up once circulation returned. Cussed them out. Tried to sign himself out AMA. Made a joke about the tube. Tried to score some gash afterward. Maybe snort a few lines of cocaine to clear his pipes. He’d only been down a minute or so before compressions started. His brain hadn’t gone without oxygen long enough to erase the memories, thoughts, feelings, essential Matt-ness. Get the pump going again and the rest of the system would’ve followed.

Jim had seen that before. Had brought people back from the dead like that before.

This wasn’t that kind of situation though.

Agonal rhythms didn’t come back. Not the way people wanted them to. Not intact. Not walking out of a hospital with a story and a headache. In all of Jim’s career, he’d never once seen someone with an agonal rhythm on the monitor survive to discharge with their brain working the way it was supposed to.

That was why the pronouncement of death protocol was written the way it was. Three full rounds. Drugs on schedule. Good CPR. Secure airway. No response.

At that point, you weren’t practicing medicine anymore. You were practicing theater.

So he’d made the call. By the book. Clean. Defensible.

And still. The guilt sat there anyway.

It didn’t care about protocols or statistics or outcome data. It didn’t care that the doctors who wrote those rules had written them based on years upon years of clinical studies that showed the same conclusion. It didn’t care that continuing would have changed nothing except the official location of the death.

His job had been to save Matt’s ass when the shit hit the fan.

And he hadn’t.

Jim leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, hands hanging loose between them. Kim’s shoulder pressed against his. She smelled like smoke now, sharp and constant. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

Behind them, the stage lights stayed on. The machinery stayed paused. Matt stayed dead. And no amount of being right was going to make that feel okay.

A man stepped into Jim’s peripheral vision and stopped a respectful distance away.

Jim clocked him automatically. Mid-forties. Thinning hair, starting to go at the crown. Clean suit, no rumples. Calm posture. Not trying to dominate the space.

“Mr. Ramos?” the man asked.

Jim looked up. “Yeah.”

The man nodded. “Martin Keen. Clark County Coroner’s Office.”

Kim had already picked up on the shift. She gave Jim a small, understanding nod, stubbed out her cigarette, and stood. “I’ll be right over there,” she said quietly, already moving away.

Jim watched her go for half a second, then turned his attention back to Keen.

He knew coroner’s deputies.

They were sworn peace officers. Academy-trained. Carried guns. Had arrest authority on paper. But they weren’t cops—not really. As a rule, they were people who hadn’t quite cleared the bar for a traditional police agency. Sometimes it was a background issue. Sometimes psychological. Sometimes just a mismatch that flagged them as not ideal for street patrol. So they ended up here instead—working death scenes, collecting bodies, living in the quiet aftermath where nothing ever fought back.

Most of them leaned hard into the badge.

“I’m going to need to talk to you about what you saw and what you did tonight,” Keen said. “Not as part of a criminal investigation—just to establish medical and procedural facts.”

Jim nodded. “Okay.”

“My role,” Keen continued, “is that once homicide is satisfied there was no foul play, I’ll be the one assuming custody of Mr. Tisdale. I’ll coordinate transport to the medical examiner’s facility and make sure he gets to the pathologist for autopsy.”

He said it cleanly. No euphemisms. No unnecessary softness. No edge.

Jim appreciated that.

“Before that happens,” Keen went on, “I need to document your involvement. Your credentials, your assessment, and the steps you took.”

Jim shifted slightly, sitting up straighter without quite realizing he’d done it. Muscle memory. This was the part he was trained for.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

Keen nodded, flipped open a slim notebook, and glanced once—briefly—toward the stage.

Matt was still there. Still waiting.

“All right,” Keen said. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

And for the first time since the monitor had gone flat, Jim began telling the story out loud. The overview took only a few minutes. The details took much longer.

Keen started where people like Keen always started—with Jim himself. Name. Age. Training. Experience. Jim answered automatically, the words coming out in the same order he’d used a hundred times before.

EMT school a year after high school. Southern Medical Systems. Two years running BLS calls in Los Angeles and Orange counties—transfers mostly. Paramedic school in 1979. Then more years with SMS, ALS this time, working 911 in whatever cities and unincorporated pockets the company had contracts with that month. Eventually, West Covina. That was where he’d met Matt.

Unstable SVT during rehearsal for a solo tour. Fast enough to be scary. Symptomatic enough that nobody could pretend it wasn’t real. Jim had cardioverted him, clean and calm, explained what was happening while everyone else in the room had been panicking. Matt had noticed.

He always noticed competence.

That was in 1995. Matt had hired him not long after. Personal paramedic. On retainer. Travel, rehearsals, tours, the long, strange years in between. Jim had been there ever since.

Keen wrote all of it down.

Then he looked up. “Who’s your employer, officially?”

“Matt Tisdale,” Jim said. “He pays my salary. He’s my boss.”

Keen nodded, pen moving again.

“The position was originally set up by National Records when Matt was under contract with them,” Jim added. “They provided the equipment and the initial legal framework. Once Matt signed with KVA to produce his last solo album, National stepped out completely. But the medical support stayed in place.”

Keen paused. “Who is your medical authority?”

Jim didn’t hesitate. “Dr. Stanley Ford. Spokane, Washington.”

Keen looked up again. “Washington?”

“He wrote the protocols I operate under,” Jim said. “He’s my medical director. He oversees my care.” And he’s also a pretty good gynecologist I hear, he did not say. Nor did he mention that he had never actually met the good doctor. No sense muddying the water.

Keen’s pen slowed.

“And your paramedic license?”

“California,” Jim said. “Active. Current.”

Keen sat back slightly. “You’re current on certifications?”

“Yes,” Jim said. “ACLS. PALS. BTLS. Twelve-lead interpretation and care. All current.”

Keen tapped his pen once against the notebook, thinking.

“So,” he said carefully, “you hold a California paramedic license, your medical oversight is out of Washington State, and tonight you pronounced a man dead in Nevada?”

“That’s correct,” Jim said.

Keen hesitated. Just a fraction. Enough that Jim felt it.

“I need to ask this,” Keen said. “Is that… legal?”

Jim exhaled slowly through his nose.

“Yes,” he said. “It was vetted by lawyers and physicians when the position was created. Interstate operations. Touring environments. Medical necessity. I’ve kept my license, certifications, and continuing education current the entire time.”

Keen watched him for a beat, then nodded.

“Okay,” he said, and wrote a few more lines.

Jim felt something loosen in his chest that he hadn’t realized was tight.

The legality of all of it would be scrutinized. He knew that. Hard. Thoroughly. By people with better law degrees and sharper pencils than Martin Keen. But it wasn’t going to start here. Not tonight.

Keen closed the notebook partway.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s talk about the call itself.”

Jim nodded once. Here we go, he thought—and leaned in.

Jim went through it step by step.

Once he started, the rhythm came back to him—the same rhythm he’d used a hundred times before as a street medic, standing in a living room or an alley or a trailer in a trailer park, talking to a coroner’s deputy or a patrol officer about someone who was no longer alive.

Sometimes it was a gunshot victim. Or a traffic accident. Most often, however, it was an old person who had died quietly in their home and needed the legal machinery to acknowledge it. That was a big part of a 911 paramedic’s job.

Jim had pronounced hundreds of people dead in his career. The vast majority were over seventy. The vast majority were deaths that, in retrospect, were not really unexpected. This one was different only in who the man had been. The cadence didn’t care.

“He’d been complaining of intermittent headaches for the past few days,” Jim said. His voice was steady now, neutral, factual. “Nothing severe. Nothing that would’ve kept him from performing.”

Keen’s pen moved.

“As he finished the last number of the set, he collapsed on the final note,” Jim continued. “No warning. No prodrome. Just went down.”

He paused only long enough to make sure Keen was keeping up.

“When Mr. Kingsley reached him, he wasn’t breathing. When I got to him—less than a minute after collapse—he had no carotid pulse.”

Keen glanced up. “Less than a minute?”

“Yes,” Jim said. “We started CPR immediately. From collapse to compressions, no more than two minutes total.”

Keen nodded once. “Monitor?”

“I attached leads as soon as I could,” Jim said. “Initial rhythm was an agonal PEA at about twenty, very irregular, very wide complexes.”

Keen stopped writing. “No V-fib or V-tach?”

“No,” Jim said. “Neither.”

“Did you defibrillate?”

“No,” Jim said again. “PEA is not a shockable rhythm.”

Keen resumed writing, slower now.

“CPR and ACLS?” he asked.

“I followed the PEA algorithm under ACLS,” Jim said. “That algorithm exactly matches my protocols under Dr. Ford. High-quality CPR throughout. Airway secured. Oxygenation confirmed.”

He didn’t embellish. There was no need.

“Three rounds of epinephrine,” Jim went on. “No response. By the second round, the PEA had degenerated to asystole.”

Keen looked up again. “You confirmed that?”

“Yes,” Jim said. “Monitor strips will be attached to my report. After each round was circulated for two minutes under CPR, we performed rhythm checks. Leads were attached and plugged in. Not a telemetry failure. Still asystole. Still pulseless. Still apneic.”

He let that sit for a beat.

“After the third round,” Jim said, “with no response to ACLS medications or procedures and no signs of life, I made the call under the Determination of Death protocol. No response to three rounds of ACLS plus no signs of life equals dead.” He didn’t soften it. “I pronounced him at twenty-two eighteen hours.”

Keen wrote the time down carefully, underlining it once.

Jim leaned back slightly against the wall, the story told, the sequence complete.

Keen finished writing and looked up again. “In your opinion,” he said, “what caused the collapse? Drugs combined with his cardiac history?” He didn’t phrase it as an accusation. He didn’t need to. “We’re aware of both.”

Jim shook his head once. “Drugs didn’t directly cause this.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, Matt was addicted to cocaine,” Jim said. “And alcohol. And he smoked weed like it was legal.” He didn’t bother softening that. “But he never imbibed within four hours of a performance. Never.”

Keen watched him carefully.

“Not in the ten years I’ve known him,” Jim said. “And I’ve been at his side all over the world on tour. Not once. And not in all the time Jake’s known him either, which goes back to the late seventies.”

Keen nodded, but it was the kind of nod that acknowledged the statement without endorsing it.

“All right,” he said. “Given his history, I’d expect a massive myocardial infarction.”

Jim felt the shift then. The subtle downgrade—from witness to opinion.

“I don’t,” Jim said.

Keen raised his eyebrows slightly. “You don’t?”

“I think it was a massive cerebral bleed.”

Keen leaned back a fraction, lips pressing together in something that might have been a smile. “That’s quite a specific diagnosis,” he said. “And quite different from how it appears to me.”

Jim met his eyes.

“I worked the streets for fifteen years before I signed on with Matt,” he said. His voice stayed level, but the patience in it thinned. “I’ve seen it before.”

Keen said nothing.

“A massive heart attack doesn’t drop you that fast,” Jim went on. “And it doesn’t kill you that fast. Not clean. Not without warning. And it doesn’t put you into an agonal PEA less than three minutes after collapse.”

He paused, just long enough to make sure Keen was listening.

“And it doesn’t jack your pupils,” Jim said. “One blown. One pinpoint. That’s not cardiac. That’s intracranial. Classic sign of a head bleed.”

Keen’s expression cooled. Professional again. Slightly condescending now.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll let the pathologist determine cause of death.”

He closed the notebook with a soft snap.

“But it’s an interesting theory.”

Jim didn’t respond. He just nodded once and leaned back against the wall again, knowing exactly how this part worked. Truth didn’t always win the room. It just waited for the autopsy.

Keen looked at his notes for a moment, then back up at Jim.

“Did you consider transporting him to a hospital?” he asked. “Higher medical authority.”

Jim didn’t hesitate. “No.”

Keen’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “You didn’t consider it at all.”

“No,” Jim said again. “Once the third round of epinephrine was circulated with no response, he met the legal definition of death.”

Keen nodded slowly. “I understand that. But in high-profile, witnessed collapses like this, a lot of medics would’ve transported anyway. Just so an actual physician could make the determination.”

Jim had been expecting that. “Part of my job,” he said, “is to research hospitals near every venue and every hotel before we arrive.”

Keen looked at him, waiting for the point.

“There’s a small community hospital in Pahrump,” Jim went on. “About thirty miles west. No specialty services. Just an ER doc, a few nurses, and a lab. No CT scanner. No neurosurgery. No cardiology.”

Keen didn’t interrupt.

“So realistically,” Jim said, “we would’ve gone to Spring Valley Hospital in Las Vegas. That’s close to an hour from here running code three. Probably longer tonight with festival traffic.”

He let that sit for a beat.

“And what would that have accomplished?” Jim asked, not rhetorically. “Matt would still be dead. There’s no miraculous comeback from agonal PEA that degenerates into asystole. That doesn’t happen.”

Keen closed his notebook halfway. “Mr. Tisdale is a public figure,” he said. “It’s traditional to go the extra mile in those circumstances.”

Jim nodded. He didn’t disagree with the premise.

“This decision will likely be scrutinized,” Keen added.

“I operated under my training and experience,” Jim said. “And under protocol. I made the right call. Matt was dead. Transporting him to Valley wouldn’t have changed that. It would’ve just been driving a morgue wagon.”

Keen studied him for a long moment, then flipped the notebook shut completely.

“All right,” he said. “I don’t have any further questions on that.”

Jim didn’t offer anything else.

Especially not the most important part.

If they’d transported Matt, he would’ve been pronounced dead in an emergency department under fluorescent lights by a physician who’d never met him. His official time and place of death would’ve been a hospital bay number.

Instead, the record would show, history itself would show, that Matthew Norman Tisdale died onstage, during his performance.

No matter what they did to Jim afterward, no matter how many people second-guessed the call, that part would stand.

If nothing else, Jim had made sure of that.

 

 

*****

 

 

It was 4:30 a.m. before they finally put Matt into a body bag.

By then, the night had thinned out to something brittle and exhausted. The stage lights were still on, still wrong, but the energy that had filled the place earlier was gone—leached out by hours of waiting and documentation.

Before the bag ever came out, they spent more than three hours measuring everything, photographing everything, marking everything. The stage became a grid. Tape markers bloomed on the floor. Camera shutters clicked in steady, indifferent rhythms. Matt’s final resting position was documented from every conceivable angle, reduced to coordinates and reference points and scale indicators.

Matt Tisdale, legend, flattened into evidence.

Jake didn’t watch that part.

He sat where he had been sitting for hours, patient and still, his attention fixed on the Strat. He didn’t need to see Matt’s body again. He’d already seen it. He’d already said goodbye in whatever way he was capable of right now.

The guitar stayed where it was, untouched except by lenses and gloved hands that never quite reached it. Jake tracked every movement in its orbit, every person who came close, every camera that leaned in. He didn’t interfere. He didn’t hover. He just stayed present.

While he waited, he made a few calls.

He started with Pauline.

She’d been asleep. Hadn’t heard yet. Her voice was thick with confusion when she answered, which lasted about three seconds—right up until Jake said Matt’s name and the words that followed it. Then she broke. Full, uncontrolled tears, the kind that catch people by surprise and embarrass them even as they can’t stop.

“I’m so sorry,” Jake said, and meant it in a way that felt new.

Pauline pulled herself together quickly. She always did. Within moments she was breathing steadily again, asking the right questions, already shifting into motion.

“I’ll get things moving,” she said. “We’ll have a statement out before the end of the day. Clean. Respectful. No speculation.”

“I know,” Jake said.

She paused. “Are you okay?”

Jake looked at the guitar. “I will be.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll handle it.”

The next call was home.

Yami answered on the second ring. Jake told her what had happened, keeping his voice calm, factual, careful. He told her everyone was safe. That everyone was sane. That he’d be home when he could.

She listened without interrupting.

“I’ll take care of the kids,” she said. “We’re okay.”

“I know,” Jake said again.

When he hung up, the morgue attendants were finally ready.

They moved with quiet efficiency, practiced and unceremonious. Matt was zipped into the bag. The bag was lifted onto the gurney. No rush. No reverence. Just work that needed doing.

They wheeled him off the stage and out into the dark, toward a white minivan parked beyond the perimeter. Clark County was printed on the door in block letters.

Jake watched the gurney disappear, then looked back at the Strat.

He then called Laura, who was 344 meters away in Band City, still waiting for him with Celia. Everyone else had gone on a bus back to Vegas.

“How’s it going?” she asked him carefully.

“The lead homicide guy says I’ll be able to get the Strat in a few more minutes,” he told her.

“That’s good,” she said. “Are you doing okay, sweetie?”

“Still numb,” he said. “It still hasn’t really soaked in. I’m holding it together.”

“You’re always good at that,” Laura said. “Nothing flaps you.”

“Not on the outside anyway,” he said. “I’ll have to sit down and think about what all this means at some point.”

“I know, sweetie,” she said. “Me and C are here for you when that happens.”

“I love both of you,” he said. “Very much.”

“We know,” she said softly. “And we love you. Listen, I talked to Sharon a few hours ago. She said they got mobbed when they got back to the hotel. Had to fight their way through a media circus camped outside. Not just pap, legit media. News vans. Camera crews. The whole shebang.”

“Awesome,” Jake said tiredly, though without surprise. The word had passed within minutes of Matt’s death. More than a hundred and twenty thousand people had witnessed his passing. Had witnessed Jake and Owen doing CPR on him. Had witnessed that final moment when CPR stopped and everyone stood back, looking down at what had once been Matt Tisdale.

“C and I think that it might be a good idea to wait here until the sun comes up and then go directly to the airport. They don’t know we’re flying out of Henderson. They probably have McCarren staked out though.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Jake said. “It’s not like we’re going to be performing tomorrow.”

“Nobody is going to perform tomorrow,” Laura said. “Jerry Stillson came by. He told me and C that he’s canceling the festival for Saturday and Sunday night out of respect for Matt.”

“The entire festival?” Jake asked, astounded. “Even Sunday night? We weren’t going to play Sunday. Insane Clown Posee is the closer. It was going to be a Juggalo freak-fest for the fuckin’ ages.”

“Not anymore,” Laura said.

Jake wanted to feel admiration for Jerry Stillson. Respect, at least. Some sense that the man had stepped up in a moment that demanded it. He couldn’t quite manage it. He knew what Stillson’s real motivation was—at least for Saturday night.

If Intemperance couldn’t perform—and they most certainly could not without Matt Tisdale playing lead—then one hundred and twenty thousand ticket holders were not getting what they’d paid for. Minimum one hundred and thirty-five dollars a head. A lot more for VIP and access tiers. From a contractual standpoint, that was a problem.

Music Alive would be in breach for not giving their customers what they’d agreed to.

The cleanest move—the smartest one—was to cancel. Let the insurance company eat the refunds. Absorb the deductible. Close the books.

And if you threw Sunday night into the mix as well, the math got even cleaner. No partial losses. No complicated apportionment. Just a single catastrophic event clause, neatly triggered. After the deductible, there would be no losses at all.

Jake didn’t say any of that to Laura. It was too bleak. Too cynical. Too early in the morning for that level of truth. Instead, he just nodded and said, “I think he did the right thing.”

Which was true, even if the reasoning behind it wasn’t particularly noble.

“And the bands?” Laura asked.

“They’ll still get paid,” Jake said. “Contract requires it. Cancellation due to acts of God means full payment. Even us.”

Laura was quiet for a moment. “Good.”

“Insurance will pick it up,” Jake added.

That part, at least, brought him a flicker of grim satisfaction. It was about time the fucking insurance companies did their part—after years of sliding an unlubed schlong up the asshole of the industry while calling it risk management.

Jake kept that thought to himself too.

Some truths didn’t need to be shared. Not tonight. Not with Laura’s voice still careful on the other end of the line, and the sun still hours away from rising.

For now, it was enough that the music had stopped, the bands would be paid, and the night—slowly, grudgingly—was finally running out of excuses to keep going.

They told each other they loved each other and hung up.

Jake put the phone away and went back to waiting.

It didn’t take long after that.

Lieutenant Jorgenson approached him with a small, deliberate nod and gestured toward the center of the stage. “Mr. Kingsley. If you’ll come with me.”

Jake stood and followed.

The Strat was still lying where it had been all night, now surrounded by a quiet little constellation of people who knew exactly what they were doing. A couple of CSI techs. Jorgenson. No one else.

“I want you to watch this part,” Jorgenson said. “And participate. That way there’s no question later about the chain of custody or the documentation.”

Jake nodded. “I appreciate that.”

“We’ve already photographed every visible surface,” Jorgenson went on. “Front, sides, headstock, wear marks. Then we flipped it and documented the back as well, paying particular attention to the serial number. Same level of detail. If that is Matt’s Strat, the serial number will match the records of his insurance company.”

Jake believed him. He could see the camera rigs still set up, the measurement placards stacked neatly off to the side.

“Next step,” Jorgenson said, “is casing it. Once it’s in the case, we seal the case. As long as those seals remain intact, that guitar is legally Matthew Tisdale’s Stratocaster. No one can credibly argue otherwise in court.”

Jake nodded again. “Understood.”

“I assume you’ll keep it sealed.”

“Yes,” Jake said. “Until its ultimate fate is decided. I won’t wipe it either. Matt’s fingerprints will still be all over it.”

Jorgenson paused, then smiled faintly. “That helps establish authenticity too.”

One of the CSI techs handed Jake a pair of latex gloves. Jake pulled them on carefully, flexed his fingers once, then stepped forward.

He lifted the Strat gently. It felt lighter than it should have, or maybe he was just tired. He turned and set it into Matt’s travel case, the one that had followed him around the world for decades.

The case was a collage of history. Stickers layered over stickers. Bars, clubs, festivals, dive joints that no longer existed, a few foreign whorehouses that Matt had only drank in. One caught Jake’s eye and made him smile despite himself: I ❤️ Ukraine, the heart filled in blue and yellow. Another was square and said Icelandic Gash. Below the words was a checkbox. It had a check in it.

“Fuckin’ Matt,” he said, feeling tears starting to form in his eyes.

He closed the lid and snapped the latches shut.

The CSI tech threaded zip ties through each latch. Jorgenson and Jake both put their initials on the little tabs on the zip-ties. Two evidence seals were placed across the seam where lid met body, one near the headstock end, one near the lower bout. Jorgenson and the CSI tech both signed each. Jake did the same.

When it was done, Jorgenson stepped back and nodded. “It’s yours.”

Jake took the case. It was heavier now.

He shook hands with the people who’d been there with him all night—the lieutenant, the detectives, the CSI techs, even a couple of uniformed officers he’d been leaning against road cases with for hours. Somewhere along the way, they’d stopped being strangers. Respect had settled in quietly, without ceremony.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” more than one of them said.

“Thank you,” Jake replied, meaning it.

He turned and walked off the stage, the case in his hand.

Behind him, as the sun began to think about coming up, the roadies stepped forward. Cables were lifted. Cases were opened. The machinery that had been paused all night finally began to move again.

The show was over.

The work, as always, went on.

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 

Jake walked back to Band City alone.

The path was dark and strangely silent, lit only by scattered work lights. Under ordinary circumstances, this hour would have been loud. A dozen bands in one place always turned into something—music bleeding through thin trailer walls, laughter, clinking bottles, somebody shouting a story that got better with every retelling.

Tonight, there was none of that.

Every trailer was dark. Every door closed. The joy had been drained clean out of the place, like someone had pulled a plug and let it run away into the desert.

Jake reached the trailer he shared with Laura and Celia, punched in the code, and stepped inside.

The door closed softly behind him.

Laura and Celia were asleep in the bed, turned toward each other, limbs loosely tangled. They hadn’t brought sleepwear with them—they were in their bags at the hotel—and they wore nothing but panties. In the dim light, their bodies looked relaxed, unguarded. Safe.

Jake set the guitar case down carefully, making sure it was out of the way, then moved to the small bar built into the side of the trailer.

He poured himself a triple Chivas over ice. The glass clinked once, loud in the quiet.

He sat down in a chair and took a long swallow, nearly half the glass gone in one pull. The whiskey burned, then spread warmth through his chest and stomach, a familiar sensation that felt earned tonight.

He sat there for a moment, breathing, staring at nothing.

Then he heard movement behind him.

Laura came out first, hair loose, eyes still heavy with sleep. Celia followed a step behind her, rubbing at one eye, already awake in the way she always was. They took in the scene in a single glance—Jake in the chair, the glass in his hand, the case on the floor.

Neither of them said anything.

They came to him instead.

Laura sat on one side, Celia on the other, their bodies pressing close, bare skin warm against him. Jake was acutely aware that he still smelled like sweat and smoke and the night he hadn’t had a chance to wash off yet.

Neither of them cared.

Laura rested her head on his shoulder. Celia leaned into his other side, her arm draped across his waist, solid and present.

Jake let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

He finished the glass more slowly this time, the room quiet around them, the world reduced to the three of them breathing together while the last of the night finally let go.

Without a word to or from his wives, Jake began to cry. It was not heaving cries. If you didn’t know him, you might not even know he was doing it. But they knew him. They saw the tears running down.

They held him and told him it would be all right.

 

Chapter 2

 

Everybody Wants You

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indian Springs, Nevada
March 26, 2005
9:52 a.m.

 

 

 

The trailer felt normal. That was the strange part.

Daylight in Band City wasn’t unusual. They’d spent all of yesterday in here—waiting, killing time, dozing on and off, smoking a little herb and drinking a few beers. The sun coming through the blinds, the low hum of the generator, the faint smell of dust and warm metal—none of that was out of place.

What was missing was the reason for being here.

Jake sat at the narrow counter with a mug of coffee and looked out through the slats. Band City lay quiet beyond the window, but not in a way that felt eerie or abandoned. It felt shut down. Finished. Like a job site after the foreman had called it and everyone had gone home.

No golf carts cutting between trailers. No techs hauling cases. No half-dressed musicians wandering by with lanyards and cigarettes.

At this hour on a normal Saturday, the final sound checks would be bleeding through the air. Somebody’s kick drum. Somebody else’s amp whining while a tech swore at it. Controlled chaos ramping toward showtime.

Instead, there was nothing. Theirs was the only trailer occupied.

Jake took a sip of coffee. It tasted okay. Strong.

He’d woken up just after eight and showered in the tiny stall at the back of the trailer. Put on clean jeans and a dark T-shirt. Brushed his teeth. The routine had carried him through the morning on muscle memory alone.

Behind him, the bed shifted.

Laura rolled onto her back and blinked up at the ceiling for a moment before her eyes found him. Celia stirred a second later, already half-awake, one arm flung across Laura’s hip like she’d been keeping her anchored even in sleep.

“What time is it?” Celia asked, voice rough.

“Almost ten,” Jake said.

The words landed differently than they should have. Ten o’clock on a Saturday at a festival meant sound check. It meant schedules and radio chatter and somebody knocking on the trailer door asking for five minutes of Jake’s time.

None of that was happening.

Laura pushed herself up on one elbow. “It’s too quiet,” she said, not accusing the world of anything—just stating a fact.

Jake nodded. “They’ve cleared the venue. No performances tonight or tomorrow.”

Celia sat up, hair a mess, eyes already sharp. “They really did it then?”

“They really did,” Jake said.

Laura swung her legs off the bed and stood, crossing the narrow space to him. She took the mug from his hands and set it aside so she could lace her fingers through his instead.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

Jake had been thinking about that since the moment he woke up.

“We go back to the hotel,” he said. “We stay out of sight until all the Vegas business is wrapped up. Then we leave.”

Celia’s head tilted. “Hide?”

“Lie low,” Jake said. “No unnecessary movement. No being seen.”

Laura didn’t argue, but her gaze flicked automatically toward the guitar case on the floor near the wall.

“And the Strat?” she asked.

Jake followed her eyes.

The case sat exactly where he’d put it the night before, sealed with evidence tape and zip ties, initials still visible on the tags. It looked the same as it always had.

“It comes with us,” Jake said. “It doesn’t leave my sight.”

Celia snorted softly. “You realize if we’re in a hotel room with that thing, one of us is basically on guard duty at all times.”

“I know,” Jake said. “It’s temporary.”

He stepped away from the counter and reached for his phone. He hadn’t checked it yet. Not since crashing hard after returning from the stage.

The screen lit up with missed calls stacked one on top of the other—his mom, Bigg G, Chase, Joey, and Helen Brody, twice. Everyone he knew. Everyone who had his number. All of them checking in, all of them waiting for him to pick up and say something that would make this make sense.

He scrolled past them without listening. Lower down were the calls that mattered right now. Pauline. Three missed calls. And Nerdly. Two missed calls. Both of then left voicemails.

Jake’s thumb hovered. He tapped Pauline first and listened. Her voice was brisk, controlled, already in logistics mode.

“Jake, it’s Pauline. Call me as soon as you get this. I need to talk through next steps—media, insurance, statements. Do not engage with Stillson if he reaches out. I’ll handle him. Call me.”

Jake ended the message and didn’t call back yet.

He tapped Nerdly’s voicemail. The tone was different immediately. No humor. No rambling.

“Jake, it’s Bill. Call me right away. There’s been a disturbing incident in your hotel room this morning.”

A pause. Background noise—voices, maybe a hallway.

“I don’t want to say more on voicemail. Call me. Now.”

The message cut off. The trailer felt smaller.

Jake repeated what Nerdly had said to the women.

Laura’s hand tightened on Jake’s arm. “Disturbing how?”

Jake shook his head once. “He didn’t say.”

Celia’s eyes went hard. “But it involves the room?”

“That’s what it sounds like,” Jake said.

He looked once more at the sealed guitar case on the floor. Then he brought the phone back up and hit the return call button. He put it on speaker so the girls could hear.

“Nerdly,” he said. “I got you on speaker. Lala and See-ya are listening in.”

“Okay,” Nerdly answered immediately. He sounded awake in the way people do when they haven’t slept but can’t afford to slow down. “I’m in the room. Sharon’s here. Door’s closed.”

“What’s the word?” Jake said. “Someone broke into our room?”

There was a brief pause, the faint sound of movement, like Nerdly stepping away from someone else before continuing.

“It happened early this morning,” he said. “Right when maid service started up. One of the housekeepers saw a guy she didn’t recognize go into your suite. He used an access card and the door opened for him.”

Jake didn’t interrupt.

“White guy,” Nerdly went on. “Dark clothes. Close enough to staff attire that it tripped her radar, but wrong. She knew he didn’t belong. She didn’t challenge him—she called security.”

Laura’s hand tightened on Jake’s arm. Celia leaned in, listening.

“Security got there fast,” Nerdly said. “They found him inside the suite. Living area. Not rifling through anything. Just… there.”

“What did he say?” Jake asked.

“He told them he was with KVA Records,” Nerdly said. “Said he was supposed to meet you.”

Jake closed his eyes briefly.

“They asked him to identify you,” Nerdly continued. “He said Jake Kingsley. No hesitation. Everyone knows that part. Then they asked him to confirm your hotel name.”

Jake felt the line tighten.

“And he couldn’t,” Nerdly said. “Not even close. Didn’t even know what a hotel name was. Anyone who actually had business accessing that room would’ve known you’re Glenn Sutter in a hotel. He didn’t.”

Celia exhaled slowly through her nose. “So he had a card,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

“Yeah,” Nerdly said. “Universal access. Same kind the maids carry.”

“Are any of those cards missing?” Jake asked. Assuming they even track that, he did not say.

“No,” Nerdly said. “They checked. All accounted for. All the on-duty maids had theirs on them. No reports of loss. No gaps they can find.”

Laura shook her head once. “So they have no idea how he got one.”

“Exactly,” Nerdly said. “When security pressed him on the hotel name, he backed off fast. Said there must’ve been a misunderstanding, apologized, and walked. Didn’t argue. Didn’t escalate. Just disengaged and disappeared.”

“They let him go?” Jake asked, appalled.

“That’s protocol,” Nerdly replied. “No escalation, no detention.”

Jake stared at the wall of the trailer, already replaying the sequence in his head.

“Anything missing?” he asked.

“No,” Nerdly said. “They went through the room with us. Nothing taken. Nothing obviously disturbed. This wasn’t a simple burglary.”

Jake didn’t speak for a moment. “He was after Matt’s Strat,” he said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “That’s an ominous thought,” Nerdly said slowly. “But… yeah. That actually makes sense.”

“He expected it to be back in the room by then,” Jake said. “He figured I’d leave the venue with it. Anyone would’ve.”

“Right,” Nerdly said. “So when it wasn’t there, he didn’t trash the place or steal Teach and Celia’s panties. He was probably just going to leave and try again later.”

“And he didn’t know my hotel name,” Jake said softly.

“Exactly,” Nerdly said. “Once security pushed on that, he had nowhere to go.”

Jake shifted his weight and looked down at the floor.

“What’s the news saying?” he asked. “I haven’t seen anything. No TV out here. No radio. No papers.”

“It’s the only headline,” Nerdly said. “Everywhere. Matt dying onstage at the Tsunami Sound Festival. CNN, FOX, BBC—even Al Jazeera’s running it.”

Jake nodded once. “Figures.”

“They’ve got cell phone video,” Nerdly went on. “Not great quality. Someone filming the big screen. You can barely tell what’s happening unless the anchor narrates it for you. But they keep looping it. The collapse. The CPR. All of it.”

“That’s what I figured,” Jake said.

“The speculation’s already gone feral,” Nerdly said. “People claiming they saw a gun flash from backstage right before he went down. Assassination theories. Whole thing’s metastasizing.”

“Of course it is,” Jake said.

“LVMPD put out a statement,” Nerdly continued. “All it says is that Mr. Tisdale’s death is under investigation. Nothing else.”

Jake didn’t comment.

“And then there’s the usual shenanigans,” Nerdly added. “A couple of outlets ran with a report that you were arrested last night. For the murder of Matt Tisdale.”

Jake snorted quietly. “Par for the fucking course.”

There was a brief pause.

“Are they talking about the Strat?” Jake asked.

“A little,” Nerdly said. “It’s starting to come up. Mostly in longer pieces. They’re saying the guitar was released to Jake Kingsley for safekeeping until its legal status can be determined.”

“That’s why the man thought it would be there,” Jake said. And then something occurred to him. Something dark and frightening. “And… he would have thought that if the guitar was there, then all of us would be there too. At least me, Lala, and See-ya. That means he was prepared to deal with us… to take the guitar by force. Jesus. He probably had a fucking gun on him. That’s the only way one person could have taken it from me.”

“That truly is a frightening thought,” Nerdly said.

And would the man have been willing to kill for that Strat? Jake could not help but wonder. He was very much afraid that the answer was yes.

 

 

 

*****

 

 

There was a knock on the trailer door.

Jake barely registered it at first. His mind was still working its way through timing windows and threat vectors and the sickening realization of how close the Strat had come to changing hands. Perhaps by violence. The knock came again, firmer this time, deliberate.

Jake turned, crossed the narrow space, and lifted the blind a fraction with two fingers.

Jerry Stillson stood outside. The CEO of Music Alive. The big guy himself.

Mid-fifties. A little thick through the middle. Hair retreating fast enough that the comb-over had become less camouflage than habit. Dark suit, crisp white shirt, no tie. Sunglasses despite the early hour and the light overcast. He looked like a man who expected to be let in wherever he showed up.

Jake exhaled through his nose.

He hadn’t spoken to Stillson since Matt died. Pauline had handled that—fed him the facts that were available, shut down speculation, kept him at arm’s length. Stillson had been the one to cancel the rest of the Tsunami Sound Festival, citing respect for Matt Tisdale. Jake had no doubt the decision had also penciled out nicely on an insurance ledger somewhere, but he wasn’t interested in litigating motives right now.

He turned back into the trailer.

“Stillson,” he said quietly.

Laura and Celia were both standing near the bed, still in nothing but panties, hair loose, bodies relaxed in that post-sleep way that hadn’t yet shifted into armor, boobs unapologetically on display. A nice aesthetic for Jake, but it might give Stillson a coronary if he caught even a glimpse.

Celia rolled her eyes. Laura sighed once, already moving. They slipped into the bedroom without a word and closed the door behind them.

Jake glanced toward the little bar built into the trailer wall and had the fleeting thought that it wasn’t too early for a Jack and Coke—Matt’s favorite drink—but dismissed it just as quickly. Later.

He opened the door.

Stillson stepped in immediately, not waiting for an invitation. Jake let him. He wasn’t in the mood to establish territorial boundaries with a man who didn’t recognize them anyway.

“Jake,” Stillson said, removing his sunglasses. His eyes were red-rimmed, whether from sleep deprivation or affect Jake couldn’t tell. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am. Matt’s passing… it’s a terrible loss. For you. For all of us.”

Jake met his gaze and nodded once.

“Thank you,” he said.

Stillson didn’t sit.

He paced a little instead, hands moving as he talked, occupying the narrow space like it belonged to him by default. Jake stayed where he was, leaning back against the counter, arms loosely folded, letting the man burn through whatever this was without helping.

“You know,” Stillson said, shaking his head slowly, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve seen a lot of artists come and go. But Matt—Matt Tisdale was something else. One of the greats. Truly.”

Jake nodded once. That much, at least, was true.

“Just an absolute monster on the guitar,” Stillson went on. “The kind of player who only comes along once in a generation. And to go out like that—onstage, in front of his fans, doing exactly what he loved?” He spread his hands. “I mean… if you could choose an ending.”

Jake didn’t interrupt. In his head, he agreed completely. Matt had died exactly the way he would have picked if anyone had ever asked him the question.

Stillson took Jake’s silence as encouragement.

“Matt and I had some incredible times together,” he said, smiling faintly. “Late nights. Long talks. Big ideas. Those early years of the festival—man, we were building something. Matt was right there at the beginning. Helped make the TSF what it is.”

Jake’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He was about one hundred percent sure that Matt and Stillson had never hung out or had any long talks. Stillson was—heart and soul—a record company suit and they were just slightly above vegan pedophiles on Matt’s scale of people he would want to shoot the shit with.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me and my band were here for that too, remember?”

Stillson blinked, then laughed as if Jake had just made a joke. He stepped closer and clapped Jake lightly on the shoulder, the gesture familiar in the way of people who confuse proximity with intimacy.

“Of course, of course,” he said. “You guys were all part of that magic. Those were special days.”

Jake resisted the urge to step away. Stillson kept talking anyway—about the first TSF show, about crowds and sunsets and how nobody knew yet what the festival would become. About Matt’s legacy. About how moments like this reminded you why the business mattered.

Jake’s patience thinned by degrees.

When there was finally a break—half a breath where Stillson seemed to be winding down—Jake took it.

“So,” he said evenly, “what can I do for you, Jerry? You came out here for a reason, right?”

Stillson’s smile didn’t falter, but something in it sharpened. “Well,” he said, lowering his voice slightly, “it’s about Matt’s guitar.”

Jake’s eyes darkened. “What about his guitar?”

“My understanding is that you took possession of it early this morning when the police released it.”

“That’s correct,” Jake said. “It’s right there.” He pointed to the case with its many stickers—including I 🖤 UKRAINE and the checked checkbox with ICELANDIC GASH listed above.

Stillson’s eyes looked at it with near reverence. “It’s in there?”

“Yes,” Jake said. “It was placed in there on camera after thorough photographic documentation by the cops. It was then sealed with evidence tape and zip-ties. As long as it’s not opened, that is legally Matt’s Strat in there.”

“Good thinking,” Stillson said, nodding rapidly. “No question legally of authenticity.”

“Yes,” Jake said.

“I think it would be best if I took possession of the case and the guitar for now,” Stillson said.

Jake looked at him. “Do you now?”

Stillson nodded slowly. “Indeed,” he said. He clasped his hands in front of him, adopting a tone that suggested reasonableness, as if what followed were simply the natural order of things.

“The guitar lost its owner during the performance,” Stillson said. “On our stage. During our event. That places a certain responsibility on Music Alive. Until such time as ownership is formally determined, it’s appropriate—necessary, really—that we take possession of the instrument and ensure its security.”

Jake listened without expression.

“That’s awfully nice of you,” he said when Stillson finished. “But I already have possession. And I’ll be maintaining it until a court decides who gets it.”

Stillson’s smile thinned, but it didn’t disappear.

“As the venue owner,” he said, “we’re ultimately responsible for the security of everything that happens on that stage. That includes Mr. Tisdale’s guitar. My people are prepared to keep it sealed, guarded, documented. Proper chain of custody. We just ask that you hand it over to us.”

“No,” Jake said.

Stillson blinked. “Excuse me?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Jake said, evenly. “The guitar isn’t leaving my custody.”

Stillson straightened a fraction, the friendliness giving way to something firmer.

“I would prefer not to escalate this,” he said. “But if necessary, I may have to consider seeking judicial intervention. A judge could determine the proper course here, and I believe the law would be on our side.”

Jake didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t move away from the counter.

“If you try to pull any shit like that,” he said, “you won’t just lose this guitar, you’ll lose me. No more Jake Kingsley. No more Celia Valdez. No more Brainwash. No more V-tach. No act signed to KVA will ever perform onstage for you again. Ever. Not next year. Not ten years from now. Not ten generations from now.”

He paused, just long enough to let the scope of it land.

“And you’ll lose the battle anyway,” Jake added. “Of that I am quite sure. Do you really want to piss me off like that for something you don’t have a chance in hell of winning anyway?”

Stillson held Jake’s gaze for several seconds, his jaw working slightly as he recalculated. Whatever he saw there convinced him to change tack.

He exhaled and gave a small, conceding nod.

“It sounds,” he said carefully, “like you’ve come up with a firm plan for possession of the guitar.”

“I have,” Jake said.

Stillson considered that for another beat, then inclined his head. “Very well,” he said. “I won’t challenge you on this.”

Jake nodded once. “I’m glad you see it my way.”

Stillson lingered a few minutes longer, as if proximity itself were a kind of entitlement.

He drifted into nostalgia again—about the early days of the festival, about wild nights that hadn’t actually involved Matt, about a woman he’d once hooked up with backstage at some long-forgotten show. The story was delivered with a smirk and a lowered voice, the kind of anecdote men like Stillson believed conferred credibility.

Jake nodded politely and felt nothing. The story wasn’t even interesting. He fucked a groupie once. She had big tits. Stop the fucking presses.

Eventually, Stillson seemed to sense that the moment had expired. He checked his watch, straightened his jacket, and extended a hand.

“Again,” he said, shaking Jake’s hand firmly, “I’m very sorry for your loss. Matt was… special.”

Jake met his eyes. “He was.”

Stillson replaced his sunglasses, gave one last nod, and let himself out.

The door clicked shut behind him. For a beat, the trailer was quiet. Then the bedroom door opened.

Laura and Celia stepped out together, now dressed—shorts, pullover shirts, hated bras firmly in place, hair pulled back into no-nonsense ponytails. Armor on.

“Well?” Laura asked.

Jake blew out a breath. “He wanted the guitar.”

Celia stared at him. “He wanted what?”

“He thinks Music Alive should take possession of it until the courts decide ownership,” Jake said. “Venue responsibility. Chain of custody. All that bullshit.”

Laura’s expression hardened. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

Celia swore in Spanish. “Pinche cabrón.”

Jake nodded. “That about covers it.”

Laura crossed her arms. “So it’s official,” she said. “Everyone wants that guitar.”

“Yes,” Jake said. “Which means it can’t stay in public space.”

Celia glanced at the guitar case, then back at him. “So what do we do?”

Jake didn’t hesitate. “We get it off the streets.”

Laura tilted her head. “Where?”

“Home,” Jake said. “Once it’s there, it’ll take an armed attack squad that’s in cahoots with the cops and the legal system to