Chapter 18 Knox
KNOX
The call comes at six a.m. from Sagebrush’s old security guard, Morty. Somebody broke in at the studio overnight, and he knew we had a lot of memorabilia there, so he wanted us to be able to salvage what we could.
I’m dressed and out the door before I can think clearly. The morning is gray. Morty stands there, flashlight in hand. His uniform is a pair of khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He’s been here since before Mom was a studio artist. “I’m sorry, Knox. It’s real bad.”
“Were you here for it?”
He shakes his head. “Musta happened sometime in the night.”
“Kids?”
“Hard to say. Come on.”
I text Houston and Salem as we walk in, and then tuck my phone away.
The air is wrong. Cold where it should be stale.
A window in the live room is spider-webbed and punched through, glass flaking.
The console has fresh scratches along the faders like someone dragged something hard and metal across it on purpose.
Two rack spaces are empty where the mirrored backup drives used to sit.
The small lockbox by the desk is on the floor.
The latch is bent. I catalog everything without speaking.
Then I speak because otherwise I’ll start fixing before I record.
“Don’t touch anything,” I say. “We document before we call the police.”
I take photos. Time stamps visible. Wide shots first, then details: the glass on the floor, the scuff at the hinge, the gouge by the talkback. Houston and Salem show up while I’m in the middle of it.
“Who the fuck would do this?” Salem growls under his breath.
Houston sighs as he looks around. “This wasn’t just vandals. This was personal.”
Salem finds the DVR under the desk. The power light is on, but the panel is tilted. He props it up with a wedge and taps the monitor awake. We have a picture. The cameras caught motion in the hall at 3:14 a.m. Hood up. Mask. Shoulders forward.
A gait I know. Boots I know too. The left sole drags a hair on the push-off, because he fell off a ladder and fucked up his growth plate in his left ankle when he was three.
My heart drops, but I don’t say it out loud. I pull out my phone and call the police. I give the address twice and the list of missing items as best I can. Then I call Quincy.
He picks up on the second ring and says, “Bad?”
“Bad.”
“Don’t move anything until your photos cover it. I’m ten out.”
I call the owner next. He’s half-asleep, reminding me how early it is. “Why didn’t Morty call me?”
“Jake, come on. Who’s here more these days? Me or you?”
He blows out a breath. “I’m still the owner.”
“You mind if I board up the window and change the locks today?”
“No.” His tone cools. “I appreciate it.”
The cops come and do their thing for the insurance company. We give statements. The officers ask if we recognize the person in the still. I say I can’t be sure. It’s true. A gait is not a face.
But I know.
They nod like they’ve heard that line before and haven’t stopped needing to hear it. They say they’ll pull adjacent cameras on the block and call if anything from traffic caught a plate. It won’t amount to anything; I’m sure of it.
Quincy comes in quietly and stands at the console like a man at a hospital bed. He doesn’t speak until the officers are done. Then he says, “How bad?”
I explain the situation, and considering us recording here was his big plan for months before we got the chance, he handles it well.
We show him the break-in footage. He studies the still frame when we have the clearest view of the perp.
He doesn’t say the name I’m not saying. He doesn’t have to.
He squeezes my shoulder once and steps away to make calls.
When the room is clear and it’s just us, I look at my brothers. “We hoped we could pull him back. If this is him, that hope is over.”
Houston doesn’t argue. Salem doesn’t crack a joke. We stand with it.
Then I start a list because that’s how I keep from breaking things.
Board the window. Replace the locks. Inventory all serial numbers.
Audit cloud backups. Move the remaining drives off-site.
Contract a guard for nights. Quote cameras that pipe to the cloud and my phone.
Quote laminated glass and bars for the side windows. It’s a lot.
Jake, the owner, meets me at nine in his office above the garage two blocks over. He’s grayer than last year. He looks out at the lot and back at me and says, “You want it, don’t you? You boys have always loved the studio.”
“Yeah. I do. I can protect it, if it’s mine.”
We go back and forth on numbers and land fast because we both want to be done.
He hands me a ring of keys I already have copies of.
I don’t smile. I say thank you and go back to the building to install the first camera myself while the contractor schedules the rest. Too much to do to be nostalgic or sentimental today.
No time for feelings. They’ll just get in the way.
By three, most of my to-do list is done. I called a security company for a night guard, and they sent a few to interview. I like Chauncey. He’s big and mean-looking. Used to be a bouncer at some of the brothels outside of the city, and those guys do not put up with a damn thing. He’s perfect.
I call Lou from the lot because I don’t want to tell her this in the room where she just started breathing easier. She listens without interrupting. I say the part about the hooded figure and the gait last.
She knows that hint of a limp. “Damn. I didn’t think he’d go this far.”
“I want you somewhere safer for a few days.”
“Define safer.” She sounds perturbed.
“A separate suite. Your own door. Key card access to ours. Same floor. We rotate walking you everywhere. We shift the behind-the-scenes schedule so you’re never alone in a room with a door that isn’t ours.”
“What are you talking about, Knox? I’m not the one who’s under threat here.”
“Not yet.” There’s a weight in my chest that makes it hard to breathe. “But he’s clearly not thinking clearly, and if anything happened to you…” Can’t breathe.
“I’m not running. I’m in this. You can’t sideline me because things get a little weird.”
“I’m not asking you to run. I’m asking you to keep moving with a better plan.
You can be next door, if that one’s available.
I just need you in a suite where only you and the hotel have access.
The four of us have key cards to our suite.
So does Quincy. So do some people from the label.
That’s too many people with access to you, and people do stupid shit for money, Lou.
” I swallow the knot in my throat. “Sagebrush is a part of our family. Seeing her like this…I can’t handle it if something happens to you too. ”
She’s quiet, at first. “I’ll get a separate suite and key access. But I’m not hiding.”
Thank god. “Deal.”
I call the hotel and book a second suite on our floor under a quiet name. It’s two down from us. I tell security exactly who comes and goes and exactly who doesn’t. I let the front desk know we are picking up everything ourselves—no deliveries to our door or hers.
They don’t like it. I don’t care.
We spend the late afternoon at Sagebrush cleaning glass and logging everything missing.
We add serials to a list and send it to the police.
Houston walks the room, taking a second set of photos.
Salem bolts a bar across the inside of the back door that you can’t defeat without making a lot of noise.
I sweep and bag the glass. The scratches on the faders…
I hate those lines more than the broken window.
Houston’s right. This was personal.
We call it at six and go back to the hotel. I keep my voice level when I brief Lou at the table. I share everything with her, and she nods through all of it. I think she’s almost as upset as we are.
The next morning Quincy calls at eight. He doesn’t waste my time. “I’m hearing from a lawyer who says Troy is considering an injunction claiming ownership of the group’s early ideas. He won’t win fast or easy, but he can make noise that will disrupt the album release.”
I breathe and write while he talks. The behind-the-scenes footage we’ve already captured shows dates and hands and faces doing the actual work for this album.
That will help. But earlier work will require proof, and some of that was stolen from Sagebrush.
That’s not the only studio we’ve recorded at, but it’s where we did our earliest work.
At noon, I check on Sagebrush and meet the glass installer. He measures and promises laminated panes in forty-eight hours. I pay a rush fee and add a tip. The guard logs a vendor who tried to walk in without calling. We adjust the policy: no one crosses the threshold without ID and approval.
I ask Lou to take a walk with me after lunch. We go down the back corridor and out to the loading bay so we can talk without being overheard. It’s hot out—Vegas—and we hear the traffic from the Strip, but otherwise, it’s nice out here.
“The guilt lives in my bones.” I rake a hand through my hair. “I keep thinking I can fix him if I just hold the right line long enough. I saw that footage, and all the old reflexes came back. Hide it. Explain it away. Cover for him until he stops.”
“You can’t—”
“I didn’t. I’m done doing that. It still hurts.”
She listens without trying to patch it with words I don’t need. Then she says, “Guilt is wasted energy if you don’t pair it with a plan. You can’t fix him. You can fix the parts he breaks when he gets near you.”
I nod. “That’s what today is.”
The talk helped, but the day still feels off. Probably will for a while, I guess. The injunction threat sits in the air like weather. I don’t talk about it while the work is on the table. I pull Quincy into a call at seven and ask what we need to do to be ready.