Love You More: A Novel (48 page)

EXT. GOLDEN GARDENS PARK - WOODS - DAY

Sarah continues jogging the wooded trial.

EXT. DISCOVERY PARK - WOODS - NIGHT

Rosie’s face is suddenly flooded with light. The Assailant has doubled back and is now only a dozen yards away. Moving in with terrifying speed. With a scream, Rosie runs—

EXT. GOLDEN GARDENS PARK - WOODS - INTERCUT

Dawn. Sarah bursts into a clearing, down a small embankment, is an abandoned beach strewn with driftwood, fog.

EXT. DISCOVERY PARK - WOODS - INTERCUT

Rosie tripping, scrambling on hands and knees down a small embankment. The flashlight behind her jaggedly cuts through the woods, nearing.

EXT. GOLDEN GARDENS PARK - WOODS - INTERCUT

Sarah looks up, goes still. A FIGURE lies on the beach. A blanket of loopy seaweed covering it. Gnats and flies buzzing over it.

Sarah, transfixed, nears the still figure on the sand.

She reaches down, pulls off the blanket of seaweed.

It is a dead SEA LION — one blank eye staring up. Sarah takes it in. RAIN begins to fall.

Even here, on this beach, she is unable to escape these broken, sad bodies. The exhausting knowledge that life doesn’t care. It is indifferent.

Sarah’s CELL PHONE RINGS, startling her—

Off this—

CREDITS ROLL

END TEASER

ACT ONE

EXT. DOCKS - DAY (CHYRON: “DAY ONE”)

A CAR drives down the industrial docks of downtown Seattle. In the distance, through the now heavy rain, the Space Needle, the gray downtown skyline, the waters of Lake Union, all under a breathtaking, brooding sky. A city of contrasts, light and dark, sun and fog, where rain falls eight months of the year. A city surrounded on all sides by waterways, ocean, lakes. Stark beauty and dark underbelly.

The car pulls up to a crime scene. In her sweats and a raincoat, Sarah exits her car in the now intense DOWNPOUR, chomping NICACHEW. A UNIFORM guards the entrance of an abandoned factory, keeping a bunch of LOOKIE LOOS — sullen emo teens and a bug-eyed crackhead — at bay.

A Lookie Loo — male, pierced - catches Sarah’s eye. She holds his baleful stare.

Sarah ducks under the crime scene TAPE, met by a SARGEANT — 40s, grizzled, ex-boxer’s battered face—

They stop in front a steel door. Sargeant opens it revealing a dark hallway, stairs — He gives her BAGGIES and a FLASHLIGHT over—

With a smile, she enters …

INT. FACTORY - CONTINUOUS

 … Heads up the stairs. Suddenly, the steel door slams shut, plunging her into darkness. It’d be easy to turn back but that’s not Sarah’s style. Instead, she turns on her flashlight — flickery, iffy.

Ahead of her, a ramp tilting up into blackness. Trash, graffiti everywhere. Rain pelts the tin roof, pigeons coo. She’s used to silent, secret places like this. Forges on.

Her light catches a dark SMEAR on one wall. Blood. Below it, a pile of trash. Baggie in hand, Sarah sifts through. Pulls out a sharp deboning KNIFE. Bags it.

Trains her flashlight on a faint trail of BLOOD. Leading to the top of the conveyor shaft, a room. Something in there …

INT. FACTORY - BACK ROOM - CONTINUOUS

A large OBJECT, like a side of beef encased in plastic, hangs from a hook. Sarah slowly reaches up, rips it off—LIGHTS snap on, revealing a group of middle-aged male DETECTIVES in PARTY HATS, clutching a CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE,

Laughing at what’s hanging on the hook: a BLOW UP DOLL. Red mouth around a fake SPLIFF, San Francisco baseball CAP on its head, written across its torso: “BON VOYAGE SARAH”.

They warble off key, the others clapping, hooting, blowing noise makers. They tease Sarah.

Sarah laughing now, much loved, overwhelmed by it all …

EXT. ESTABLISHING AERIAL SHOT - CHINNTENDEN LOCKS - DAY

The waterway connecting Lake Union with the vast Puget Sound. Through the RAIN—

INT. SARAH’S CONDO - DAY

Sarah enters, BLOW UP DOLL under arm, rain coat sopping. Takes in the sterile, empty condo. Packing boxes everywhere.

As she moves through the barren rooms CAMERA FOLLOWS. Someone watching, closing in …

Suddenly, Sarah spins around—

Getting the drop on RICK FELDER — salt-and-pepper sexy, established man’s confidence mixed with a former bad boy’s heat—

He grabs at her. Laughing, screaming, she fends him off with the blow up doll. As they tussle—

He flings it to the side, grabs her, they kiss. Visceral, electric, heating up. Over—

Sarah sighs, worried, rests her head on his shoulder.

She goes to an open moving BOX, digs around. Pops a NICACHEW out of its box.

He laughs. Kisses her.

She kisses him. Deep, passionate—

They kiss again, heating up. Their need for one another bottomless. BEEP BEEP—

Rick disengages and moves toward his bags.

Sarah grabbing at him.

He laughs at her playfulness. Grabs his bags. Makes his way to the front door.

This moment honest. No jokes. No masks. They smile.

Rick exits. A beat as Sarah sits in this empty place, her smile fades. She spots the TICKETS on the fridge. As she takes them down, a PHOTO — pinned underneath — flutters to the ground. Sarah picks it up, smiles, tenderly kisses the photo. Pins it back on the fridge.

We see the PHOTO: Sarah and her 13-year-old son, JACK, smiling into camera. Mom and son against the world.

Only thing left in the empty kitchen. She carefully straightens it. Making it perfect.

EXT. SEATTLE PD - DAY

Sarah seen in her office window, cleaning up. A UNI walks past.

INT. SEATTLE PD - SARAH’S OFFICE - DAY

Musty and cramped, mismatched steel filing cabinets, Sarah, in sweater and jeans, tosses manila FOLDERS into cardboard boxes, chewing gum, mid-convo on her cell phone—

Her office door bangs opens, revealing Det. STEPHEN HOLDER — 30, ex-narc, dark circles under his eyes. Startled as she—

Not much room to navigate. He drops his box on the desk, knocking over her box, spilling files everywhere.