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Lorraine Page once had everything. She was a lieutenant in the Pasadena Homicide Squad, married to a devoted husband, and the mother of two daughters. She was respected, competent, confident — until tragedy struck. One night, her partner was shot and died in her arms. In anguish and grief, Lorraine turned to drink. What started as after-hours social drinking soon spiraled into full-blown alcoholism.
Her judgement faltered. On duty one dark night, as she drove, impaired, a teenager ran into her path. In a panicked moment she fired her weapon. The bullet struck and killed the teenager. The fallout was instant and brutal. She was dismissed from the force. Her marriage shattered. Her home gone. Her colleagues, once her allies, turned away and forgot her.
With nothing left, Lorraine drifted into the forgotten fringes of Los Angeles. She ended up on Skid Row, living as a prostitute, chasing the next drink, the next escape. Years passed in a haze of self-loathing and degradation. She was a shell of her former self, stripped of dignity, alienated from her children, haunted by guilt and shame. Her life was a downward spiral from which escape seemed impossible.
Then one day, when she had been sober for a little while, she accepted a meager job working part time for an art gallery owner named Art Matthews. It was far from glamorous, but it offered a sliver of routine, a thread of normalcy. She clung to it, desperate for anything that might pull her back from the abyss.
On a late evening, a man approached her, soliciting her. She accepted, hoping for money, perhaps for validation, perhaps out of habit. But the encounter turned violent. He tried to kill her with a hammer, striking out in fury. She fought back. In the struggle she bit him on the neck, drawing blood, and escaped. Bruised, terrified, she fled into the night.
As news broke of a series of murders — working women found dead, struck with a hammer — Lorraine began to suspect that the man who attacked her was part of a larger, more sinister pattern. Her instincts, honed over years in homicide, stirred within her. She recognized similarities between her assault and reports in the press: hammer murders in back-street areas, victims with no protection, overlooked by the system.
Her former partner, Bill Rooney, had been tracking some of those killings. He believed a vital witness was missing: someone the killer had tried to silence. He didn’t know that the missing witness was Lorraine herself. She carried not only the scars of her assault, but the memory of the violence she inflicted back in defense — those bite marks on the attacker’s flesh.
Lorraine was torn. She dreaded exposure, feared investigation, didn’t trust the police who had discarded her. But she also felt compelled to act. The woman she’d been — strong, determined — still resided somewhere deep inside her. She reached out reluctantly to Rooney. He was wary, but he could not ignore the fact that Lorraine’s experience might hold the key to catching the killer.
As Lorraine and Rooney joined forces, they drew into a dark underworld of corruption, hidden identities, and dangerous secrets. They probed the links between the gallery, Art Matthews, his transsexual assistants, and the victims. They unearthed a connection to a high-profile family, the Thorburns, with wealth, influence, and skeletons in their closets.
Along the way Lorraine developed a shaky alliance with Rosie Hurst, the rehabilitation cook who had taken her in when she hit rock bottom. Rosie offered care, support, understanding — a lifeline to someone broken, someone who sometimes reverted to old habits and self-harm. Their bond became a fragile lifeline in the chaos.
Lorraine also struggled with her feelings toward Brad Thorburn, a magnetic, wealthy playboy with a charismatic presence. He appeared to care for her, offering tenderness when she was wounded. But as she probed more deeply, she sensed the smell of protectiveness that masked darker loyalties. Brad’s family name, his resources, his secrets — all suggested complications she couldn’t trust.
As the investigation deepened, Lorraine confronted more than the killer. She confronted her own guilt. She confronted how far she had fallen, how compromised she had become. There were moments when she slipped, moments of desperation when the bottle called her, when she felt small and worthless again. But she forced herself to stand, to fight.
The trail led them to Norman Hastings, a seemingly innocent man whose death bore echoes of the pattern — a man found dead in a trunk. His killing perplexed Rooney: how did it connect to the now many murdered prostitutes? Lorraine recognized elements — the hammer, the signature, the locations. She insisted they follow the clues.
Piece by piece, the puzzle came together. They learned that the gallery’s business was more than art: illicit services, underground networks, protection rackets, and sex trafficking all intersected. The killer had ties to the Thorburn family and their financial empire. The wealthy family’s public face hid payoffs, silences, and protection.
As danger closed in, the killer hunted them back. Lorraine, once a target, became a hunter. Scenes of confrontation, near escapes, nights in hiding, secrets uncovered late at night. Brad’s loyalty wavered; Lorraine found betrayal among those she trusted. But through it all she held on, driven not only by a desire for justice, but by a need for redemption.
In the final confrontation, Lorraine faced the man who had attacked her, the murderer responsible for so many deaths, including Holly — a working woman connected to Art’s transsexual assistants. In a desperate struggle she used every scrap of strength she had left. She survived, wounded but alive. The killer was exposed, unmasked, his ties to respected figures revealed.
After the case closed, Lorraine had changed. She was no longer the shattered wreck she had been. She still bore her scars — physical and psychological — but she had reclaimed herself. She reconciled, in small ways, with the memory of who she had been. She resolved to rebuild, to help others, to fight dark corners other women were ignored in. She emerged, bruised but determined, Lorraine again — with a story of fall and resurrection.
The city might forget her, colleagues might scorn her, the past might haunt her — but she now knew she could survive it.