Peter had been a dog-lover all his adult life and this was a great job to have a hound. It was practically a requirement. He had had four since he had been out here. They had all been Labradors. Good dogs, obedient and loyal; it was just like he always said it, you couldn’t go far wrong with a Lab. Jethro was his current dog. He was two years old and mongrel, part Labrador and part pointer. Peter had picked him out as a puppy and was training him up himself. He had the most even temperament out of all the dogs and the best nose.

It was an early Tuesday morning in December when Peter stopped his truck in the wide, exposed and bleak square of ground that served visitors to Headlands Lookout. It was a remote area, served by a one-track road with the waters of Bonita Cove at the foot of a sheer drop on the left. He stepped carefully; yet another dense bank of fog had rolled in overnight and visibility was down to twenty yards. It was cold and damp, the curtain of solid grey muffling the sound. The western portion of San Francisco was just on the other side of the Bay, usually providing a splendid vista, but it was invisible today. The only sign that it was there was the steady, eerie boom of the foghorns, one calling and the other answering.

There were only two other cars in the lot. Fishermen still visited with reels to try and catch the fluke, bluefish, winter flounder, mackerel, porgy and weakfish that abounded just offshore, and as he checked he noticed that a couple of them had followed the precarious path down the cliff face to get to the small beach. Oystermen came, too, even though the oyster beds, which had once been plentiful, had grown more scarce. There was still enough on the sea bed to make the trip worthwhile: hard-shelled clams, steamers, quahogs, bay scallops, blue-claw crabs and lobsters. Others came with binoculars to watch the birds and the seals. Kayakers, clad in neoprene wetsuits, cut across the waves.

The margins between the road and the cliff had grown too wild in places for a man to get through but the dog was keen to explore today and Peter watched as he forced himself into thickets of bramble. He walked on, following the headland around to the west. He watched the dog bound ahead, cutting a line through the sumac and salt hay that was as straight as an arrow. Peter lived on the other side of the bay, in Richmond, and he had always had a keen interest in the local flora and fauna. He found the rough natural world interesting, which was reason enough, but it was also professionally useful to have some knowledge of the area that you were working in. As he followed Jethro through the salt hay that morning he found himself thinking that this part of the world would not have changed much in hundreds of years. Once you were down the slope a ways, and the city was out of sight, the view would have been unchanged for millennia.

He stepped carefully through the bracken, navigating the thick clumps of poison ivy before breaking into the open and tramping down the suddenly steep slope to the water’s edge. All along the beach were stacks of tombstones brought over from Tiburon. They had been piled into makeshift jetties to help combat the constant erosion and the salty bite of the tide had caused them to crumble and crack. The dog paused for a moment, frozen still, his nose twitching, and then, as Peter watched with a mixture of curiosity and anticipation, he sprinted towards the deep fringe of the undergrowth. He got six feet in and stopped, digging furiously with his forepaws. Peter struggled across the soft, wet sand as the dog started to bark. When he got there, the dog had excavated the sand so that a flap of canvas sacking had been exposed. He called for Jethro to stay but he was young and excited and knew he was onto something and so he kept digging, wet sand spraying out from between his hind legs.

By the time that the ranger had fastened the lead to the dog’s collar, he had unearthed a skull, a collarbone and the start of a ribcage.

PART TWO

The Man Who Would Be King

“Careful now.

We're dealing here with a myth.

This city is a point upon a map of fog;

Lemuria in a city unknown.

Like us,

It doesn't quite exist.” — Ambrose Bierce, San Francisco journalist, poet, and novelist

#2

MEGAN MELISSA GABERT

Meg Gabbert had always wanted to act. She was a born performer, that was what she would tell anyone who cared to ask her about her ambitions, and, as far as she was concerned, she was going to make it. She hadn’t decided exactly what her talents best suited — acting or singing, she could do both — but there was no question about it in her mind: she was going to be famous. It wasn’t in doubt.

When she was in seventh grade, she had taken to the stage in her school’s production of Bugsy Malone. She had hoped to play Tallulah, Fat Sam’s moll and Bugsy’s old flame, but that role had been assigned to a rival. She ended up playing Blousey Brown, a sassy dame who had designs on Hollywood and, once she had gotten over her disappointment, she decided that this was the better role, one that was more suited to her. She had a great voice and everyone said that she was brilliant on opening night. The local paper exclaimed that she stole the show. It was something she would never forget: the excitement she felt while she was standing there in the single spotlight, belting out the numbers to a roomful of parents and friends. If she had needed any confirmation about the course she had chosen for herself, this was it. From that point forwards, performing would be the only thing she was interested in doing.

Getting to the stage where she could make enough money to support herself through her acting was going to take some time and, until that happened, she had paid her way with a little hooking. It had started with webcams but then she had realised there was more to be made by going a little further. She had posted an ad on the Fresno/Adult Services page of Craigslist a year after she graduated from high school. She had a killer photo from a session she did for her acting portfolio and the replies had been instantaneous. She was hanging out with a guy in those days, this dude called Clay, nothing serious, just messing around, and she had persuaded him to come along and keep an eye on her. He drove her from job to job. They worked out a routine to keep her safe: he called her cell ten minutes after she went inside and if there was no answer then he would know that she was in trouble. If she answered, everything was fine. She charged a hundred bucks an hour and gave him twenty.

It was going okay but she was always a little nervous that she’d bump into a john again when she was off the clock. She knew, too, that there was better money to be made in a bigger city. She thought of Los Angeles but the idea of being closer to Hollywood and her dream frightened her; she wasn’t ready for that yet. San Francisco seemed like a good compromise.

The difference in the city was stark. It was full of johns, and they were of a much higher class than the bums and stiffs she was used to in Fresno. There were plenty of out-of-towners, away from home and bored and looking for a little fun. She would take her laptop to a hotel room, post an ad and wait for the calls. She could get through four or five appointments and clear a thousand bucks every night, easy. The men were a real mixture: some were old and wanted to daddy her; others were young and trim and good-looking. The money was amazing. She took rooms in the nicest hotels with views of the Golden Gate and ate in the best restaurants. She never had any problems with what she was doing. It was another performance, in a way. The johns were prepared to pay to spend time with her. She could play any number of parts for them: schoolgirl, vamp, prim secretary. Their adulation was instant and obvious. For as long as she was with them she was desired: full of potential, the centre of attention, loved, rich. And what was wrong with that?