The Journal (Patreon)

It was the kind of hotel that made you consider sleeping in the car.  Tired curtain. A parking lot you had to believe was cracked and cratered underneath the litter and burned out cars.  The phone book identified this dump as The Los Angeles Inn, but the neon had failed in places leaving only Angels Inn. I couldn't help but snicker at the irony. The only angels this place had seen were the kind that rose up out of hell and called Lucifer "boss."

I had tracked my missing partner here after three days crawling through the darkest alleys in the city, roughing up a few guys who thought they were tougher than they turned out to be. My knuckles were bruised and scabbed from the effort. I went right to the room where I was told I'd find him. Room 13. The door was unlocked. The room surprisingly neat. Too neat. I'd been a detective for 10 years before striking out on my own, and this room looked like nothing other than a clean-up job after some sort of nasty crime.

The desk lamp was on, and sitting right in the round, white light was a leather bound journal.  Someone wanted this found, read, and I wasn't about to disappoint them. I sat down and opened the journal to the first page. The handwriting was shaky, but I would recognize those block letters anywhere.  It was Mike's writing. I read the words:

Tangled sheets, hair, thoughts

Tears so soft, slender, yielding

Her lips, her shame, mine