On his way inside, Emmett took a selfie on the museum st eps, then paused to admire the photo. He looked decent—better than he had in years: his face visibly slimmer, his second chin tighter. Every part of him was smaller. His hair was clean cut and back to its natural brown; he hadn’t felt the need to dye it. He wore a pressed button-down, khakis, and a blazer that Lizette had sewn for the occasion. He was broke until payday and she’d been looking to sharpen her menswear skills. The design had tested her resolve. “You look great,” she’d said during the fitting, tugging on sleeves and adjusting lapels, “but it’s just so fucking boring, my god.” “I’m surprised you didn’t go for the flamingo print.” “Damn, was that an option?” Back on the st eps of the Museum of Us, Emmett posted two photos to Instagram: the one he’d just taken and one Lizette had snapped of him weeks before in the same spot. Forbidden from discussing the clinical trial, he hadn’t blogged about his weight loss. But they couldn’t stop him posting photos, could they? He k ept the caption simple. Never realized this place could look even more beautiful, but nine weeks can make a world of difference #weightloss #weightlossgoals #50 lbsdown #9 weekbodytransformation #confidence #motivation #feelinggood #balboapark #thetrueme As instructed, he checked in at the front desk of the administration building beside the museum. “Emmett Truesdale. I’m here for an interview with Aaron Wolfe?” “I’ll let him know you’re here.” Aaron came out a few minutes later and greeted Emmett with an oblivious smile, then did a double take. “Emmett? My god, I barely recognized you!” “Oh, yeah. Guess I look a little—” “You look incredible.” Emmett blushed. “No.” “Seriously. How much weight have you lost?” “About fifty pounds?” Fearing Aaron would think he’d taken up an eating disorder or a recreational addiction to meth, he added, “Cross Fit.” Aaron opened his mouth to question him further, but simply smiled. “Well, it’s really working. Good for you. You ready to head back?” He led Emmett into a conference room where three women already sat. The interview lasted forty-five minutes, and despite a couple of tricky questions, he answered well and was warmly received. The group was particularly drawn to his experience working with underserved youth. The story of his proudest achievement—tutoring a student living with his family in a single-room occupancy hotel who went on to ace his SATs and receive a full ride to UC Riverside—drew a glowing “I love that!” from Aaron’s boss. Though his experience wasn’t an exact fit, Emmett felt more at ease in this interview than any before. At one point he cracked a joke and had the whole room laughing. His shirt didn’t come untucked once. “You did great,” Aaron said when it was over, shaking his hand. “We have one more person to see, but I hope to have good news for you early next week.” It wasn’t until he was walking out of the building and
passed a stunning twenty-five-year-old size two that Emmett started to question his chances. He checked Instagram, surprised that his photo had generated more than thirty likes, seven new followers, and a handful of comments. joanna_225 You look amazing!! dkpurcell1 Looking great, ke ep it up!!! powaygal gordita_official good luck, you got this! nino. hofstetter85 Nice, lookin good man He was tickled and halfway through responding to each of them when he received a new direct message. Mom, asking what diet he was on. He was about to r eply with the same lie he’d told Aaron when he noticed a message request. An account named lacrosse_dad71. Good to see you looking so well, sport. Hope you can find it inside your heart to forgive me for everything that happened. -H Emmett physically recoiled from the message, his fingers already scrambling to block. He didn’t need to confirm the profile was Hank’s. Hours later, the message remained with him. He was still rolling it around in his head as he lay in bed that night. It r epeated, mutating like a corrupted echo, as the masked surgeon sewed the open halves of Emmett’s torso together with rough twine. Good to see you looking so well, sport. Hope you can find everything that happened inside your heart. Good sport, looking so well. Hope you can find your heart and forgive me. Give me your heart, sport. Give me everything you can find inside. Investigative R eport Pr epared for Monstera Bio Sciences BY PRENTICE & DARROW LLP Excerpt from “Part 2: Family Life” (p. 45) Until the age of fourteen, the participant spent every other weekend with his father, Louis Truesdale, at his town house condominium in Point Loma. Despite his consistent presence in the participant’s life, Truesdale features only peripherally in his son’s online writing. Friends and family described relations between the men as cordial but distant, strained by their dissimilarity and Truesdale senior’s anger issues—factors that may be relevant to the participant’s later crimes. Lou Truesdale’s life story is one dominated by rejection and violence. Originally from the Sacramento Valley, he dropped out of high school at age fifteen after his alcoholic father threw him out onto the streets. He fell in with an outlaw motorcycle gang, and by nineteen, he was serving a four-year sentence for the voluntary manslaughter of a man in a bar. Following his release, Truesdale appears to have made an attempt to turn his life around. He earned his GED, found work on construction sites, met and fell in love with a young woman named Cheryl Funderburk, and moved with her to San Diego. In 1985 the pair had a son, Christopher.
Less than a year later, Funderburk became the subject of a murder investigation after her body was found in Mission Hills Park. Truesdale was arrested for murder, but was eventually released without charge after police began to suspect that Funderburk, addicted to methamphetamine, had been killed by a drug dealer to whom she owed money. Truesdale, spurned by his late partner’s family, who believed he had murdered their daughter in a violent rage, was left to care for his young son alone. Not long later, he would meet and marry Joanna Rossi, fathering a daughter, Abigail, and later the participant. The marriage was tumultuous, with police regularly called to the couple’s Old Town home to break up domestic disturbances. On two s eparate occasions, Truesdale spent the night in jail for battery. He and Rossi split in 1997, with Truesdale maintaining full custody of Christopher, and Rossi taking Abigail and the participant. Despite his checkered past, Lou Truesdale went on to find success. Following his divorce, he built, ran, and eventually sold a successful building maintenance company; trained as a certified special inspector for government and private developers; and managed a small portfolio of rental properties on the side. Described by his former wife as a “high-functioning drunk” and “rageaholic” and by his son Christopher as “a pretty messed-up dude,” Truesdale is a complicated character whose impact on the participant’s disordered eating—and perhaps the murderous tendencies he demonstrated while under the influence of Ema C-8—cannot be overlooked. Appendix K—Interview Transcript FD: It’s 10:32 a. m. on Thursday, December 18, 2024. This is Frank Darrow belowdecks of the Jamaica Me Crazy at the Marina del Rey in Cabo San Lucas. [Clattering of kitchen drawers and cabinets in background.] Mr. Truesdale, you all set? LT: I’m coming. [Refrigerator door opening.] You want a beer? Sparkling water or something? FD: No, thank you. LT: [Refrigerator closing. Squeaking of banquette. Can snapping open.] Aright, let’s get this over with. FD: Would you mind stating your name, age, and occupation? LT: Lou Truesdale. Sixty-four. Retired. FD: And your relationship to the participant? LT: His pops. FD: Thank you. We’re doing everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened, so I appreciate your time. LT: Aright. [Sniff.] I don’t got all day. Wha’d’ya wanna know? FD: I’ll dive right in. I spoke with your daughter Abigail last month, and she seemed to think that when she and Emmett were in the care of your ex-wife and her then husband, Hank Stauder, something untoward was happening to Emmett behind closed doors. When he came to visit, did you get any sense that something was up? LT: Well, yeah. He told me his st epdad was an asshole. Used to give him a hard time about what he ate, call him names, fat pig. FD: How’d you feel about that as his father? LT: What do you think, I was fucking pissed. I told his mom, “You tell that motherfucker that if he calls my kid a fat pig again, I’m gonna drive up there and kick his fucking ass. No one talks to my kid that way.”
FD: Did you ever address it with Hank directly? LT: [Scoff.] Fuck that son of a bitch. He thought he was better than me because he had a Ph D. But I got street smarts. You could fill a library with everything I got up here, and it’d be worth three times his limp-dick science degree. FD: So that’s a no? [Pause.] For the record, Mr. Truesdale is shaking his head. I wonder, how did you feel about your son’s weight? LT: I mean, I was a chubby little fucker too when I was his age. Figured once he got to high school and no girls would touch him, he’d start hitting the gym like I did. FD: Girls? I thought— LT: Or whoever. [Pause.] Next question. FD: Did you ever mention it to him, suggest he should lose weight? LT: Nah. It was the shit his mom was feeding him, all that pasta and starch. When he came to my house, he ate good. Chicken, salad. FD: Snacks? LT: If he wanted ’em. I only had him and Ab every other weekend. I wasn’t gonna get all strict. They got enough of that at home. FD: Understandable. LT: But I won’t lie, the kid liked to eat. He’d put away a family-size bag of Doritos in a sitting. Couldn’t make a box of Pop-Tarts last a day. Shit like that. FD: Did that concern you? LT: What concerned me was the sneaking. I remember one day—he must’ve been, what, eight or so—I ran out to do some errands and when I get back—it’s Saturday, you know? I’m fucking tired and hungry and just wanna sit down and have a beer, and I’m lugging this propane tank upstairs from the garage in one hand, I got groceries in the other, and I’m calling out for Emmett to give me a hand. I get up there and he’s nowhere to be found. I thought, Where the fuck is he? Kid spent most of his time playing that fucking Pokémon game, so I know he didn’t go out. I think he’s pranking me, and I’m getting pissed off, right? I’m running around, checking closets and looking under the beds, and I’m like, Quit fucking around. I’m not fucking playing no more, you know? Then I hear him in the kitchen. I open the pantry and there’s Emmett, white as a sheet. His face is covered in chocolate, and he fucking bursts out crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t get mad.” Like that. He’s holding a fucking half gallon of rocky road to his chest. It’s fucking empty, and he’s saying, “It was an accident, I’ll never do it again, I promise.” FD: As in, I won’t eat when I’m not supposed to? LT: Fucking broke my heart. The fear in his eyes, over a few bites of ice cream? So I call his mom and I tell her, “Hey, what the fuck is going on in that house? Why’s my kid so terrified to be found eating that he’s hiding in the fucking closet?” FD: How’d she respond? LT: The bitch says, “Maybe if he didn’t have a raging alcoholic for a father, he wouldn’t have to eat his feelings away.” She says he’s been running to her complaining for years, saying he hates coming to my house, that he’s scared of me. FD: That must’ve been hard to hear. LT: Blew a hole through my chest. I did everything for that kid, and he was talking shit? Fuck that. FD: I’m guessing you never mentioned it to him.
LT: You bet your ass I did. Found him upstairs and said, “Fuck you, you ungrateful little shit. That’s the last time I go to bat for you. You think I’m a drunk asshole, you can stay at your mom’s. You think it’s so great over there, you can deal with Hank yourself.” FD: And did he deal with Hank? As far as you know? LT: Things got better after that, I think. Least, he never came running to me again.