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I ran to the opposite sidewalk. Slipping among the tourists, I searched the alleys and parking lots for an out-of-the-way car. I collided with someone rooted to the spot. When I pushed that person aside with one hand, my palm sank into the supple flesh of a breast, hot under my touch. I mumbled an apology.

I came upon a parking lot wedged between two buildings, that stretched into an L-shape. Four cars and a van. I stopped by the nearest car, a cherry-red Mercury Bobcat, and tried the driver’s door handle. It held fast. I moved on to the next one, a chalk-colored Ford Pinto.

Time was speeding toward zero. I pictured the bodybuilder and the girl talking to a cop while another officer handcuffed Richard Alcala, and it felt like I was the one getting arrested. If cops were waiting for me when I got back, there’d be questions I wasn’t ready to answer.

I closed my fingers around the Pinto’s door handle. Another shadow joined mine, spilling across the Pinto’s bodywork. I turned around as if expecting someone to bury a knife in my back.

It was the aspiring model. The flare of her dress had lost its grace beneath wrinkles. Strands of blonde hair stuck out in all directions. Her eyes had grown glassy. A bruise shaped like a hand clung to her throat.

I refocused on the car. When I pulled the handle, the driver’s door opened. I bent inside and sat down.

The woman approached the gap of the open door, darkening the interior.

“Why did you call me an idiot?”

I flipped down the hinged flap of the sun visor in case the owner had stashed a key.

“That man hurt me,” the woman said, “and you insulted me. You could’ve given me a hand.”

I bent over to slide a forearm under the seat, rooting among candy wrappers and clumps of dirt. I barely diverted my gaze toward the midsection of her dress.

“Why the fuck are you still here?”

“Where should I go?” she asked, sounding dazed. “Home, like you said? To hide in terror? No. I’m supposed to get my pictures taken, and I will. That nasty man won’t ruin my day.”

I slumped against the seat as if my muscles had fallen asleep. I leaned over to frame her face in the door’s opening.

“The photographer assaulted you.”

“Excuse me?”

“The photographer assaulted you after shaving his head and sticking on a fake mustache.”

“The same photographer we talked to yesterday?”

“The only one that connects us.”

“Why would he do that?”

“You ran into the Southern California Prowler.” I shook my head. “A serial killer. Besides, do you really want them photographing that hand-shaped bruise on your neck?”

When the woman traced the bruise’s outline, pain twisted her features. She let her gaze wander over the other parked cars and the sky, as if cementing the information to the slow rise of the mountains.

While I felt around the gearshift, someone rapped on the passenger-side window. A middle-aged man, hair combed like some bank employee. He eyed me, eyebrows raised. I stretched across the passenger seat and turned the crank to lower the window.

“Yes?”

The man creased his brow and tried to smile.

“You’ve mistaken this car for yours.”

“I need it. It’s vital. Can you give me the keys?”

He stared at me like I was refusing to admit that this was all a joke.

“I don’t think so.”

I got out. The man came around the car and hurried to sit behind the wheel. He shut the door while throwing me a suspicious glance. He then started the engine and pulled out of the lot.

I was heading for the third car, a cinnamon-colored Chevy Caprice, when the woman grabbed my arm.

“People like the guy who attacked me show up when everyone forgets how to be kind.”

I shook loose.

“Jesus. Go home or to a hospital. But leave me alone.”

I tugged on the Chevy’s door handle, and it opened. I slid in, fitting my legs beneath the oversized steering wheel, and rifled through the glove compartment. Under a mess of papers, I found a key ring.

The woman bent over the doorway, holding onto the frame.

“I’ll stay happy. I owe it to the world.”

I wanted to scream until she fled. I made it clear with a scowl that I was sick of nonsense.

“You owe it to the world that let you get raped? That nearly strangled you to death?”

“I knew someone would save me. And you showed up.”

My back sank against the seat. I dipped my head, filled my lungs, and exhaled for three seconds. Then I stuck the key in the ignition.

“Thanks to you, I’m still alive,” the woman said.

When I turned the key, the engine purred, making my seat vibrate. The door handle shook as well.

She was smiling, leaning in so that her breasts all but spilled from her dress like upside-down bells framed by glossy, golden strands. A pang of hunger hit me.

“I don’t need your gratitude. I stopped expecting it a while back.”

She straightened, and backed away while fumbling with her left hand. She softened her voice.

“We should spread love, you know? In the end, that’s the one thing we’ll remember.”

I closed the door and gripped the steering wheel. I sighed. I let go with my left hand to open the door again.

“Sorry I called you an idiot, even though it’s true. Enjoy the rest of your life.”

I shut the door. I jiggled the gearshift into reverse and drove out to the street. On my way back, traffic slowed me down. I should have stolen an ambulance and blasted the siren.

I hopped the curb near my comrades-in-arms. The bodybuilder was driving a knee between Richard Alcala’s shoulder blades while the vagrant girl pressed the killer’s head into the dirt. As I climbed out of the car, Alcala’s eyes went wide. He whimpered like a frightened dog.

“Oh, you parked nearby,” said the bodybuilder.

“It’s not my car. Thanks for your help. I’ll take care of the Prowler.”

Richard Alcala flailed around like a fish on the boards of a pier, but the bodybuilder dug his weight into Alcala’s back. He growled, and the girl punched him in the crown of his head.

“Shut it, bastard.”

The bodybuilder freed a hand to calm the girl.

“We’ve got him. Don’t go overboard.”

She shot him a glare.

“Are you serious? You know he raped and killed like a dozen women, right?”

I popped the trunk. It was stuffed with camping gear. I cleared it out by dumping the bags next to a parked car until a body would fit.

“What are you doing?” asked the bodybuilder.

“Taking the Prowler somewhere else.”

“The police will come.”

“He hasn’t called them,” the girl said casually.

The bodybuilder looked at us, confused.

“Isn’t it enough if the police take him?”

I stepped closer. With half his face mashed against the dirt, Alcala strained his eyes toward me.

“The cops will hand him over to the legal system,” I said. “Trials. A media circus. Years spent arguing whether keeping him locked up or executing him is humane. His victims are rotting and their families suffer. I’m ending this for good.”

“Spending the rest of his life in prison seems like punishment enough.”

“I’ll keep him from ever getting out. Decades from now, someone may set him free.” I fixed my gaze on the vagrant girl’s. “Some idiot puffed up with pride over how compassionate he is, someone who’d be outraged to learn what I’m going to do. This killer deserves a classical treatment.”

“In a few decades, we’ll have forgotten all this,” the bodybuilder argued.

“I’ll remember it like it happened yesterday.”

“You can also let me go,” Richard Alcala said, spitting dirt. “I don’t hold grudges.”

“Need any help?” asked a woman over my shoulder.

A retired couple with bronze-tanned skin had come up behind us. They wore sleeveless shirts and shorts, carrying towels and toiletries.

“Move along,” said the girl, nodding toward the beach.

“He’s a thief,” the bodybuilder said. “We’ve got it under control.”

The woman looked down at the killer.

“Have you stolen something?”

Richard Alcala flared his nostrils and scowled.

“Fuck off, old toad.”

The retirees backed off, mouths agape. They scurried toward the Venice Beach boardwalk, whispering and eyeing us nervously, as if we were hooded thugs loitering outside a bank.

The bodybuilder forced Alcala’s chest into the dirt while pinning me with his stare.

“I see your point, but turning him in spares us a lot of trouble.”

I clenched my jaw. I longed to kill from a distance, offing murderers who suspected nothing, distracted by their own schemes. How would I convince two people I’d rather not harm?

Partly due to the unrelenting sunlight, a throbbing pain in my head demanded I barricade myself in a dark room, lie down, and hope that when I woke, this week’s nightmare had passed. The clamor of tourists, beachgoers, and traffic scraped my skin like sandpaper.

I lifted the hem of my T-shirt to show off the Smith & Wesson’s grip.

“You’ve noticed the guy’s missing a few fingers—courtesy of this gun. You two are the most decent people I’ve met in a while, but you’re letting me take the Prowler.”

The bodybuilder raised a hand.

“Listen, man, neither of us wants to get shot over this.”

The vagrant girl was eyeing the gun.

“Are you an undercover cop?”

“No.”

“You’re carrying a gun for no reason?”

“No. Let me put this killer in the trunk.”

“I knocked him out by throwing my bike,” the bodybuilder said.

“I remember. That was cool.”

The bodybuilder looked down at Richard Alcala, whose frantic thoughts escaped in mutters, but the giant mushroom of a man remained indecisive.

I rubbed my eyelids and took a deep breath.

“This killer raped and murdered someone I cared about. I’m not letting him rot in a cushy cell. Richard Alcala and I are going to have some fun. Whatever’s left, I’ll send to the police in boxes.”

I crouched down and seized the killer’s wrists. The bodybuilder eased off the weight of his knee.

“Help me if you feel like it,” I said to the girl.

“Absolutely.”

We hoisted Alcala by his arms and legs while he squirmed. We wedged him on his side inside the trunk, then I slammed it shut. Alcala let out a screech.

On the boardwalk, the retired couple, far enough that they could fit between my fingers, was talking to two cops who looked our way. Electricity shot down my spine.

“How do we know you’ll do what you say?” the bodybuilder asked as he rubbed his palms on his pant legs.

“Read the papers.”

The cops were weaving through the streams of people on the boardwalk, pink faces turned toward us.

When I opened the driver’s door, the girl slid a hand inside my unzipped jacket and grabbed my shirt. Her eagle eyes a couple of inches away. The smudge of dirt on her cheek suggested she’d started putting on war paint but got sidetracked. Her open mouth shifted the chewed gum like a washing machine’s agitator. She smelled foul.

“You need a Robin?”

“I work alone.”

She pressed her lips to mine and slid her tongue into my mouth. She tasted of strawberries and neglect.

I stepped back. I groped the air before remembering I had opened the door. Sweat coated me like I’d just climbed out of hot water.

“Thanks.”

I slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Once I sped off, in the rearview mirror, the bodybuilder was scratching his neck, and the girl crossed the road while eyeing my stolen car. She was slender—her body worn thin from life on the street—and her fixed smile rarely meant joy.

I kept watching her, a pressure swelling in my chest, until her figure vanished from the mirror. Was she still alive in my present? How had she filled those decades? Found a partner, had children? Died within a few years thanks to any of the disasters that loom over those who sleep on the streets?

As I turned a corner, I let go of another person that time will ruin.

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Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish in a collection titled Los reinos de brea, about ten years ago. I guess back then I considered romancing a vagrant girl who doesn’t brush her teeth. I can fix you, babe.