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The man, sprawled on the sofa as if he’d spent sleepless hours watching TV reruns, lifted his eyelids and peeled himself off the backrest. He avoided looking me in the face.

I stood up from my chair, which groaned. Years of running had sculpted the man’s legs, making it hard to tell if he was about to lunge at me.

He sighed and combed through his scalp with his fingers. He gathered his mane of hair as if meaning to tie it at the nape of his neck.

“You’re a pretty entertaining son of a bitch. First time I’ve heard a story like that. Let’s see. You say you come from the future. You found out that yesterday, my yesterday, I kidnapped and killed someone. The little girl on roller skates.” He walked around the coffee table toward the entryway, turning his back on me, and shook his head. “I knew I recognized that car parked outside.”

“You recognize it because you tried to kidnap Cassie, and I stopped you.”

He spun around to face me. His voice had peeled away to that of someone who’d been stuck in traffic for hours.

“You blocked my way, and when I insisted you keep going, you ignored me. You made me late to pick up that girl.”

“You had the oncoming lane free. You could have passed me.”

“And that would’ve been illegal,” he said as if underlining something obvious.

He paced between the record-player cabinet and the opposite wall, while rolling his shoulders like a boxer about to climb into the ring.

“Yesterday you saw me and figured I’d kidnap that girl. You must have heard of the one they call the South California Prowler, linked to at least two dozen disappearances. Assuming that was me, you followed my car to Venice and, I guess, back to my house. You spun some fantasy about coming from the future because you’re crazy, having a psychotic episode triggered by PTSD.”

“I didn’t fight in the war.”

“And now you think you’re some avenger.”

In under forty-eight hours, this man had broken into three homes, raped and murdered the women inside, and attacked two women in separate alleys. Now he was holding off on dispatching the stranger who refused to leave his apartment. Did he believe me? Or was he hung up by the fact that he was dealing with someone claiming to come from the future—someone who had revealed real information?

He stopped next to the record player and leaned one forearm halfway across the Velvet Underground album cover and the smudged lid. He regarded me with weary eyes and pronounced dark circles.

“Regardless of what you’ve heard, the police investigated, questioned me. They booked me and put me on the list of suspects, people they hassle whenever a woman goes missing, while the detectives run around like chickens. They can’t tie me to the Prowler’s victims. You said some employees at other magazines told you about my legal troubles.” He cut off and looked at the ceiling, taking a moment to close his mouth. “They arrested me for sexual assault. When the drugs wore off, the girl regretted having consented. She never told me her age.”

I smiled showing both rows of teeth, making it clear I rejected his lies.

The man bowed his head and rubbed a few smudges off the record player’s plastic cover. He inhaled deeply. He took two steps toward me, though the coffee table stood in the way. He looked at me as if a cold wind were stinging his eyes.

“What are you after, you crazy son of a bitch? You haven’t attacked me the way I expected, with all this crap you’re saying.”

“I’m going to call the police.”

He laughed, a sound like stones clacking together.

“You’ll tell them I was driving behind you when you stopped to pick up a stranger’s little girl, but that you did it because you knew I was going to kidnap her and kill her. You know because you’re from the future. Brilliant. And what if you’re the Prowler, picking up clueless kids in your car? Maybe I should be worried.”

“You’ll never worry that anyone else might be the Prowler.”

The man narrowed his eyes and tensed his jaw.

“Why not stop me, if you’re so sure? Why not try to kill me? Easier than giving me a lecture, I’d think.”

“I’m tired of saving this ungrateful society that staggers around with its eyes closed. Let the police handle it. You’ll remember how you ended up in prison, up until the day they sort out the paperwork and execute you. If you spend decades on death row and some politician forgets your rapes and mutilations and murders, decides that keeping you locked up is inhumane, lacking compassion, or whatever redefinition of weakness and cowardice they come up with, and lets you out, every time you look at a woman, you’ll know I’ll return to wreck your fun.”

He stretched one arm toward the phone mounted on the wall next to the kitchen counter.

“Go ahead. You’ve got no evidence, whoever you are. Your word against mine.” He raised his voice as though slapping me with it. “The word of some whack job who says he comes from the future!”

I walked past the coffee table, and past him, heading to the kitchen.

He stepped back until his spine hit the record player.

“I’ll tell them you refuse to leave my house.”

I took the receiver off the hook, pressed it to my ear, and dialed three numbers.

He swept the apartment with his gaze, from the kitchen to the curtain at the back of the living room, as if taking inventory of his possessions. A bead of sweat rolled down from his hairline and got caught in an eyebrow. He touched the handle of the first drawer under the record player cabinet, but within two seconds his arm jerked back. He tugged at the collar of his shirt.

“You’re really going to do it,” he said in a dull tone. “Call the cops. Jesus.”

An operator announced that I’d reached the Los Angeles Police Department.

“Write down this address,” I said. “Number twenty-four on Ninth Street at Hoffenbach Avenue.”

“Twenty-four on Ninth at Hoffenbach. What’s your emergency?”

“That’s where Richard Alcala lives, the South California Prowler. He’s inside his apartment. In the parking lot, you’ll find his ruby-red Ford Thunderbird. Check the trunk.”

I hung up.

He looked at me as if possessed. Past the sleeves of his shirt, the muscles in his forearms bulged. His nostrils flared, and his face reddened.

“You plan on sticking around till they show up?”

I moved away from the phone and blocked the doorway.

“Till they show up, if you don’t mind.”

He grabbed The Velvet Underground album jacket and wrestled to pull the record free.

“You’ve ruined my day, clown. You pretended you worked for that magazine, but nobody at that office knows you came, and I doubt you talked to any employee at the other magazines about me. Maybe you told someone else about your plan, but I can deny you ever turned up. And you’re not a cop.”

He hooked his index finger into the record’s center hole and slid the sleeve back into his collection. He lifted the lid of the record player. He set the disc on the turntable and guided the needle to the first track. He turned the volume knob and switched on the player. The opening of “Who Loves the Sun” flooded the apartment as if I’d snuck into a nightclub.

I moved near one arm of the sofa while he pulled on the first drawer’s handle. He took out a gun—a 9mm Smith & Wesson semi-automatic with a cloud-gray slide. As he raised the weapon, he froze and stared at it as if surprised to be holding it. He blinked. He extended his right arm, aiming at my chest. His brow creased. Between his parted lips, clenched teeth.

“You going to shoot me or what?” I said.

A drop of sweat slid down his temple. His pupils quivered. He smiled like a shy student posing for his yearbook photo.

“You’re accusing me of killing dozens of women, and you think that the notion of shooting you would bother me?”

“Twenty-something, that we know of.”

“You broke into my apartment. I could say you were robbing me and I feared for my life. You think a gunshot would alarm the neighbors? My neighbor on the right gets home at seven, and the old toad to my left cranks her TV so high I sleep with earplugs. They think I’m a friendly guy. They’ve never complained. Worst case, they’ll think it’s a champagne cork.”

“Then pull the trigger.”

The pistol trembled. He squinted. The artery in his neck was throbbing.

“You told me you took a minor girl home,” I said. “Or somewhere else. Then she later regretted that romantic encounter under the influence of any of the drugs that are all over the place at this time. Quite the euphemism for the fact that one afternoon you broke into a hotel room, where a woman was resting, and you raped her. And that her husband walked in while you were strangling his wife with a lamp cord. He beat the hell out of you. I’ve seen the pictures. You healed without scars. And you stayed out of prison because they refused to travel hundreds of miles to testify. Facing you again would have traumatized them, though less than you traumatized the victims who followed.”

I stooped to reach the open photo album and pulled it closer, onto my corner of the coffee table. He lowered the pistol toward my gut, distracted. I pressed a finger to the photo of a woman with bleached blonde hair done in two pigtails. Naked save for a bra printed with a red-and-yellow pattern. She was perched on the edge of a king-size bed, tilting her head so that locks of hair fell across her tanned features.

“I recognize this woman. Sandra Arras. You cornered her in an alley, I imagine in a way similar to how you cornered a couple of others who managed to escape. You faked having a broken arm under a phony cast. You smiled at her and led her to a van. Why would she refuse to help a friendly photographer? The moment she climbed in, holding onto one end of some piece of furniture, you shut the trunk and attacked her. You gouged out her eyes and kept them, who knows why. I don’t know the other women on these two pages. Maybe you killed them and no one ever found out, or you just took pictures and they lost themselves back in the jungle.”

I straightened. The man raised the gun to point at my heart while staring with a reptilian gaze.

“You loved it,” I said. “Locking them in the dark. Terrifying them. Torturing them. Making them realize no one would save them.”

“You’ve got a mic on. You think I’m going to confess? If I had killed those women, their bodies would be gone. Plenty of places to dump them. No bodies, no proof.”

“They took eight years to find the first one. They dug up Sandra Arras on one of the hills. They found Lisa Redman near Riverside, inside a buried car. Some divers discovered the trash bags holding Annette Warner at the bottom of a pond.”

His breathing came fast as a bird’s, his pupils twitching. He let out a growl that blended with the song’s vowels.

I took a step forward.

“When you picked up the gun, you felt the weight shift. You know you left a magazine in it.”

He hurled the Smith & Wesson at me. I sidestepped. The pistol ricocheted off the stack of books, scattering them, then hit the floor.

He sprinted to the kitchen. Grabbed the hammer. He charged at me, hair flying around with each stride, arm raised stiff as a stretched rubber band. His eyelids had stretched back, revealing the whites of his eyes, and his wet lips were pulled into a grin.

That would have been enough against a helpless victim. As he whipped the hammer at my skull, I blocked his wrist with my left forearm, then slammed a right-handed punch between his eyes. He spat a growl, spraying saliva. He staggered backward. I grabbed his right wrist and twisted that arm behind his back, then I shoved him down until he was on his knees, forcing his elbow as if to snap it. He loosened his grip on the hammer, and I ripped it away. I smashed the hammer into his side at kidney height. He screamed and collapsed.

When I let go of his wrist, he leaped upright. He climbed onto one arm of the sofa, dug a foot into a cushion, tried to clear the other arm, but tripped and went down on his shoulder with a crash. He crawled away, half on all fours like a cave beast, all the way to the closed bedroom door.

I looked for the Smith & Wesson. It had fallen behind me, between the entryway and the bookcase.

The bedroom door was open. The man was gone.

I crouched and picked up the pistol. With my free hand, I rummaged in the inside left pocket of my jacket. I took out the magazine. I slid it into the pistol grip and pressed it with my palm until it clicked.

After I straightened, I aimed at the bedroom doorway and racked the Smith & Wesson’s slide. The man emerged looking dazed. He’d gone pale as if dunked in ice water. He braced a hand on the doorframe and raised his gaze at me, confused.

“The shotgun under the bed,” I said. “I don’t know how much a decent security system costs these days, but you should’ve invested in protection against burglars.”

He hunched his shoulders, tucking his head in, and blinked slowly as though it took effort to keep his eyes open. A dark bruise was forming between his eyebrows.

When I opened my mouth to speak, he lurched at me, fists clenched. I aimed a few inches from his left ear and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed like a drumbeat. A crater of splinters appeared in the bedroom doorframe.

The living room reeked of hot gunpowder. He froze as though he’d just heard a voice call out inside an abandoned house. A loose strand of hair dangled over his left eye, and saliva glistened at the corners of his mouth.

The throb of blood in my ears gradually died down. When he glanced at the entrance door, I heard, faint under the music, someone pounding and, between the muffled words jumbled by the song, I caught the word “Police.”

He looked at me. He stepped gingerly around the space between the coffee table and the record player as if walking on shards of glass. I shifted to aim at him head-on. He slipped over to the entryway, and while the pounding shook the door, he glanced back as if waiting for me to shoot him in the back of the skull.

He opened the door and used his body to block the gap. Over his blond mane I saw the policeman’s cap.

I lowered the Smith & Wesson, flipped the safety on. Slipped the barrel between my waistband and stomach, pulling my shirt over it.

He left the apartment and closed the door. Through the window curtain, I saw two silhouettes move toward the stairs.

I rushed to the record player and shut it off. In comparison, the hum of the fans sounded as if I were floating underwater. I took out the Smith & Wesson again, though I hid it behind my body, and bent toward the window. I moved the curtain a few inches.

Beyond the railings I caught sight of the man and the policeman in the parking lot. The cop, back to me, had his right hand on the holster at his belt. The man—Richard Alcala—wore that grin that swayed anyone who believed in smiles. Except for his messy hair as if someone had shoved him off a bed, and the bruise between his eyes, he could pass for someone who’d just cranked up the music and smoked weed until annoyed neighbors called the police.

The cop’s head bobbed as he spoke, but from up here they might as well have been pantomiming. Alcala opened his Ford Thunderbird’s door and leaned in. He pulled out some folded papers. The policeman wrote on a notepad. The killer glanced over his shoulder at me like I was a ghost peering out a window. The cop nodded and handed back the papers. Alcala dropped them onto the driver’s seat. The officer pointed to the trunk of the Thunderbird. Alcala shrugged and moved his lips. They circled around the car to the trunk. Alcala, on the officer’s right, was smiling as he spoke and turned his key in the lock. When he lifted the trunk lid, both men recoiled. The cop went for his gun, but the killer, snake-quick, clamped onto the officer’s forearm. They struggled.

I yanked the apartment door open and stepped onto the second-floor landing. Shouts rose as both men traded punches like two boxers pinned in a corner. Should I brace my forearms on the railing and aim at Alcala?

At the far end of the landing, a neighbor stared with his jaw slack, a lit cigarette between his fingers. A dozen onlookers hurried toward the parking lot like people drawn to a burning house.

I was halfway down the stairs when a gunshot rang out. I ducked. The policeman had fallen, and clutched at his stomach. His pistol bounced across the asphalt. Alcala slid behind the Thunderbird’s wheel and slammed the door.

After I jumped onto the sidewalk, I tore through the parking lot as the Thunderbird’s engine roared and its tires screeched, smoking. The air smelled of burnt rubber. A cluster of bystanders shrieked and jumped aside while the car lurched onto the sidewalk and dropped onto the road with a squeal of rubber. The edge of the Thunderbird’s nose smashed into the left headlight of an AMC Gremlin, blowing it out in a spray of glass and grinding metal. The Thunderbird straightened and sped away.

I dashed to my rental, fumbling to hide the gun at my waistband. I nearly tripped over the policeman, who was gasping. I reached my car door, hand on the handle.

The Thunderbird had vanished at the far end of the street. The owner of the AMC Gremlin, the one Alcala had hit, shook his head and shouted at the onlookers near his wrecked headlight, as if they were to blame.

The cop groaned. His hat lay on the asphalt. His hair was jet-black and slicked down. He was pressing bloody hands to one side of his guts.

I seethed with rage. I had Richard Alcala in my sights, I could have blown a hole right between his eyes. I should have killed him, even if society stayed blind and other monsters came crawling up. But I’d banked on the police doing their job. Maybe I could track that Thunderbird in a few minutes, following the transponder signals.

The crowd that had seen the shooting was dispersing. The man with the cigarette was still leaning on the second-floor railing, eyeing the cop like he was roadkill on the highway.

Maybe someone had gone to call for an ambulance, but could I trust these people? They were like toddlers crawling around in diapers, babbling nonsense. I slammed a fist against my car door. I turned back to the wounded policeman, who was shaking, and I crouched beside him.

He had olive-toned, sweaty skin and a mustache that was notably thick for someone who seemed to be in his mid-twenties. Blood leaked between the fingers laced over his abdomen.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The officer became aware of my presence and laughed through ragged coughs.

“I’ve spilled enough blood overseas,” he rasped in a shaky voice with a Hispanic accent. “They blew out my subclavian artery. Not looking to bleed out again. But give me a hand.”

“An ambulance, I suppose. Using the radio in your cruiser?”

He nodded vigorously.

“And tell them to put out a BOLO on Richard Alcala. He’s fleeing in a ruby-red Ford Thunderbird, plates number 1DNE049. You got that plate memorized?”

“I read it before.”

I notified dispatch that an officer was down. I repeated the address of the apartment and the name of the Prowler, plus the license plate. I rushed back to the officer. I wanted to check for an exit wound, but I held back from moving him. The smell of brass and diarrhea surrounded us. The bullet must have torn through his intestines. If they didn’t get him to a hospital, he’d bleed out or die from infection. As I started to pull off my jacket, I remembered I had the gun tucked there, so instead I used my bare palm to press against the bullet’s entry hole.

His face was drenched, and he laid his head on the pavement, breathing through his mouth like a woman in labor. Shadows covered us, blocking the sun. The circle of gawkers made me edgy as if they might gang up to beat me.

“Three people,” the policeman mumbled.

“What’s that?”

“Three bodies in that trunk. Decomposed. Three skulls. Maybe he really is the Prowler.”

I had to pretend I was just some citizen who’d called in. Meanwhile, I was kneeling in blood and filth. My shirt clung to my back, and I felt dizzy as if I’d been awake for twenty-four hours, hopped up on coffee. The people around us looked like tall silhouettes against a blue sky, their speech a tangled mass of nonsense.

I’d never stuck around to deal with the police whenever I involved them. I’d go back to my own time and read the articles they wrote about my intervention years before. This cop was suffering, and he might die, because I fucked up.

“You got a tip that the Prowler lived here?” I asked.

“The dispatcher said someone called in, naming him.”

“And they sent a lone officer, a single unit?”

He groaned. He lifted his head off the pavement to glance at the mess around his abdomen, and the skin under his chin bunched up.

“If they sent out most of us every time someone claimed they knew who the Prowler was, we’d barely solve any other cases.”

---

Author’s note: today’s song is, predictably, The Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun.”

This is the translation of a novella I wrote in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in my self-published book Los reinos de brea.