Crashing Through Mirrors

By Anonymous-9

With her background as a touring musician, and years working among celebrities. Anonymous-9 paints a realistic backdrop for her story set in music-industry Los Angeles:

Bern Aldershot, former bass player for the legendary band Aldershot is attacked in a parking lot. His 1965 Rickenbacker bass is stolen, but that's not all. It brings him to the end of his rope. In Bern's ruined world, the only person there to help is a 16-year-old fangirl. Together they hunt his attacker through Los Angeles, piecing together clues from a series of rapes and murders, crossing disbelieving cops and pissed off bikers as Bern's attacker plays 'cat and mouse'.

Anonymous-9’s CRASHING THROUGH MIRRORS is one wild, funky adrenaline rush—you don’t read it; you inhale it, like Peruvian marching powder on a mirror in the bathroom at the Viper Club, trying to get it all sucked up before the gendarmes bust down the door. This is one mighty talent. My heart’s still pounding.
—Les Edgerton, author of THE RAPIST, THE BITCH, and
THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING

"A novelette that locks you in the moment and smacks you through each page. Great depiction of Los Angeles, good tension in the subplots. I'd love to see this as a full novel. Recommended.
—Liam Sweeny, author of Welcome Back, Jack!

Hardboiled crime writer Anonymous-9 is the author of the best-selling HARD BITE series and named as one of five top debut novelists in 2013 by BOOKPEOPLE/MYSTERY PEOPLE independent bookstore and the winner of a Readers' Choice Award by The House of Crime & Mystery (Canada). She has publishing deals with Blasted Heath (Scotland), New Pulp Press, Down & Out Books, and Uncanny Books (USA). This is her first self-published novelette.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anonymous-9
• Release date: Oct 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310923258

Anonymous-9

Hardboiled mystery writer Anonymous-9 (Elaine Ash) writes in Los Angeles, parties in Texas, and traces her DNA back to Vikings in Scotland. She has deals with three publishers and is proud to self publish on Smashwords. Her bestselling HARD BITE series is digitally produced by Blasted Heath (Scotland) and trade paperbacks are published by New Pulp Press and Down & Out Books (USA). A-9 was listed in the Top 5 Novels of 2013 by BOOKPEOPLE/MYSTERYPEOPLE independent bookstores and she won a Readers' Choice Award 2013 from The House of Crime and Mystery (Canada) . Her short stories have earned a Thriller Award nomination by an ITW judging panel, Spinetingler Magazine’s Best Short Story on the Web 2009, another nomination for the same award in 2010, and two Derringer nominations. Uncanny Books has commissioned her to write a novelette titled DREAMING DEEP which tributes H.P. Lovecraft, a founding faher or modern American horror. Coming in 2015. Find out more at www.anonymous-9.com.

Book preview

Published by Elaine Ash, 2014

Copyright © 2014 Elaine Ash

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

Elaine Ash has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. Anonymous-9 is a pen name.

All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

E-book Formatting by Craig Douglas ([e-mail] )

Cover design by JT Lindroos

Cover photo credit: Kevin N. Murphy

http://www.anonymous-9.com/

Anonymous-9’s CRASHING THROUGH MIRRORS is one wild, funky adrenaline rush—you don’t read it; you inhale it, like Peruvian marching powder on a mirror in the bathroom at the Viper Club, trying to get it all sucked up before the gendarmes bust down the door. This is one mighty talent. My heart’s still pounding.

—Les Edgerton, author of THE RAPIST, THE BITCH, and THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING

To all the wronged men who stay silent,

and those who won't stay silent anymore.

Copyright

Praise for this Book

Dedication

CRASHING THROUGH MIRRORS

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Links

More Books by Anonymous-9

My reflection in the giant home theater screen across the living room shows a guy about thirty-five—a build the gym teachers used to call slight when scrawny would've nailed it. Full rug on the chest, bald spot up top. Nature's joke. Beside me there's an open bottle of Courvoisier brandy even though I’m not much of a drinker. Today’s an exception. I shouldn't be this shot to hell over a rough patch but I am.

There’s a song almost my age called The Day Before You Came. The vocalist sings about the twenty-four hours before somebody dropped into her life and changed everything. I’m not a chick, but like the song says, someone came into my life one day and blasted it apart. Three months later I’m still falling through space, crashing through mirrors, my world is fun-house crazy and the shotgun beside me is loaded and ready to kill.

All my instruments are out of their cases and lined up because I want them to be the last things in sight. Five bass guitars, three rhythm guitars, my keyboard, the clarinet I played in high school band until I switched to strings, and a melodica I played at seven years old—a little wind instrument with a couple octaves of keys on it and sounds like an accordion. On the walls are two framed platinum records and six gold ones, and there’s a Grammy on the entertainment center.

You can think about doing something for so long and then you have to shit or get off the pot as my brother would say. I’d put it a little different but it comes down to the same thing: Stop thinking. Start acting. I’m ready. Rifle ready.

When homicide cops talk on TV about shootings sometimes they talk about a trigger incident. Mine happened this afternoon. I was over at the studio in Long Beach hanging with the engineers, looking over the business, which is doing great by the way. I usually play a little guitar in one of the rooms if they’re not rented out. I still write songs for other artists, play on commercials. I own the studio. Got my own stuff going on even though the band is retired.

Until last night. What happened last night is an embarrassment. What happened last night I can’t live with. A songwriter wanted to try some tricky fingering on a bass line and the band was having trouble with it taking forever and everybody knows I can ace it—so the engineer on the session pulled me into the isolation booth. The feel in there is like nowhere else. It’s beautiful. No standing waves, no echo. The walls are paneled with African wood and that usual jittery feeling I walk around with—that Day Before You Came feeling—it dissolves in the iso booth. When the door closes with that airlock pppffftttttt sound, the jitters get locked out too.

So I got the chart in front of me, I should be able to ace this but even touching the strings my tone stinks. I’m stinking up the booth and everybody listening in the control room with headphones on has this look like, This is Bern Aldershot? Rock star guitar man Bern Aldershot? This shitty sound? Really? I made an excuse─said I felt sick and left. First time I ever walked on a session. In a way it’s the truth. I’m am sick. Getting sicker.

It started seriously affecting my playing a few weeks ago. Before