Married, ambitious young assistant D.A. in Santa Cruz falls for a beautiful bohemian artist, unaware that she is also involved with a charismatic killer.
Neo noir based on a true crime in 1982. Adapted from my short story published in Close to theBone UK crime magazine: https://www.close2thebone.co.u...

SYNOPSIS:

Based on a 1982 true crime.

Deep night on the steep Empire Grade, in the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains. A car containing four people winds down the narrow road. ROYAL WILLIAM COONEY, a charismatic psychopath posing as a real estate agent, and his girlfriend, KATHI KENT, have lured drug dealer, DON McALISTER, and his girlfriend, LAUREN GRAVEN, to a rendezvous with a major cocaine supplier. Don is carrying $250,000 cash.

Royal tells Don he has instructions to search him and Lauren before bringing them to the cabin. As they are being patted down, Royal shoots them both. Now, Royal's teenage accomplices, TINA and BILLIE join them. As instructed, they have dug graves and brought what they believe is quicklime to dissolve the bodies in this pre-DNA era.

Royal dismembers and buries the bodies and takes the money. He rents a suite in the Dream Inn on the Santa Cruz beach and invites friends to a cocaine-fueled orgy.

OPEN ON the Santa Cruz County DA's office.

Young Ass't DA Denny Anders has yet to try a homicide, and he is seething with ambition.

His wife, FANCHON, has a growing alcohol problem.

When Denny is sent to interview a snitch, surfer NICK SWANSON, in the seedy Beach Flats neighborhood, he meets Nick's roommate, beautiful young vagabond artist, AIMEE and falls hard for her.

After Denny's wife, Fanchon, enters rehab for her drinking, his secret affair with Aimee deepens.

One evening, while Denny is on call, two mushroom hunters unearth a human skull up near Empire Grade Road. Denny drives out with the cops to secure the chain of evidence. The torsos are covered in a white "clayey" substance that turns out to be oyster shell gardening lime. Royal's accomplices, told to buy quicklime, had bought the wrong kind.

Unbeknownst to Denny, his girlfriend Aimee sometimes mules cocaine for Royal. Aimee learns from Royal's girlfriend, Kathi Kent, that Royal committed the murders on Empire Grade. Kathi confides that Royal is insane from coke and has her followed everywhere.

Aimee decides to tell Denny that she knows who the murderer is, but she suddenly disappears-kidnapped by an accomplice of Royal who had followed Kathi to Aimee's home.

Meanwhile, acting on a hunch, the DA sends some sheriffs with a search warrant to the cabin on Empire Grade Road. They meet Royal's flirty teen accomplices but cannot turn up any evidence of the murder. Meanwhile, Aimee is lying tied up and gagged in a crawl space under the cabin just a few feet away.

Madeleine, the DA, comes out to the cabin on her own and spots te rental car that Royal was driving when he killed the victims. She photographs the license and tire treads.

Denny panics when Aimee disappears. But nobody knows of his affair with her. Royal finally sends out JIM DAHLEN to strangle Aimee. He completes the job just minutes before Denny and Madeleine arrive and shoots up a speedball before driving back to report to Royal.

Meanwhile, Kathi Kent cracks and tells her brother in law, a probation officer, about the murders. He calls in the FBI. Denny and Madeleine bust JIM DAHLEN stoned in a popular bar parking lot near the Santa Cruz Dream Inn and bust him.

A SWAT team bursts into the Santa Cruz Dream Inn, where Royal has been on a nonstop cocaine bender. They arrest him and find the murder weapon with a silencer that Dahlen had crafted for Royal. The accomplices talk, and Royal's fate is sealed.

Given the case to try, Denny convicts Royal with a brilliant strategy. The appeal fails, and Royal is sent to death row.

Aimee's body is finally found in the crawl space. Denny's relationship with her is never revealed, although a DA's investigator, DICK VAN DE BERG, figures it out and now has something to hold over Denny in his fast-rising career.

Denny's wife Fanchon has "graduated" from rehab, eager to resume her duties as wife and mother. As flashbulbs go off, Denny is lauded a superstar prosecutor. And he's not even 30! But his marriage is a lie, and the rest of his life he will carry the burden of his duplicity, guilt, and lost love.

In a final scene, Nick Swanson the snitch commits suicide out of broken-hearted guilt.

REDWOOD TOMB