BURNER: A Killing in Palm Springs

A BRUTAL MURDER: Three bullets to the victim’s face, and hitman JOE McKAY (Taylor Zakhar Perez?) calmly leaves a storm-darkened hilltop house in an exclusive Palm Springs neighborhood, taking valuables to make it look like a burglary interrupted. Soon his inner demons will begin to overpower him (as all the principals involved will face their own). MARTY MASUR (Bryan Cranston?), a ruthless Beverly Hills businessman, waits anxiously by his burner phone to hear that his high-maintenance ex-wife Lenore (Parker Posey?) is dead, and that her face was horribly mutilated as ordered. Unfaithful to her for much of their married life, he left her with HIV complications. She now gleefully makes Marty pay through the nose with many years of alimony as revenge. Black police detective RAYNELLE GOODPASTER (see list below) is consumed by a number of personal issues, especially a breast cancer-scare and an alcoholic husband, PAUL (Alan Tudyk?), an ex-Marine like Joe. And in the first of several surprising twists and turns, Raynelle learns that the victim was not Lenore but the Masurs’ beloved daughter, CAROLYN, a noted research scientist! Unhinged by grief and guilt, Marty irrationally blames Joe and sets out to kill him. Unlike Marty’s need for vengeance, Joe’s fatal error causes a crisis of conscience. While Joe has killed insurgents in Iraq without a qualm, he has never killed an innocent woman before. Complicating his life further, Joe is experiencing something entirely new to him: A budding romance with KYLIE, his shy, fragile neighbor (Beanie Feldstein?), who has escaped an abusive past relationship that has left her emotionally scarred. Despite his own bouts with battle-related PTSD and opioid addiction, Joe becomes protective of Kylie and her physical and psychological wounds. A MOTHER’S PROMISE: As the mom of a teenage girl, Raynelle is moved by Lenore’s grief and makes a vow to find and arrest Carolyn’s killer. Raynelle has made the same promise to her chief who suspects that her problems are interfering with her job, one that she may no longer have if she doesn’t nab the killer. Raynelle, in turn, believes her boss to be a closet racist and misogynist, and their rocky working relationship stresses her out almost to the breaking point. When he suggests that he may have to let her go because of budget cuts, Raynelle blows her top but immediately apologizes which sticks in her craw. But that makes her more driven than ever! ANOTHER HIT: Joe is on the hook for thousands of dollars for his invalid mother’s health care in Texas, and because of the screw-up, he knows he’ll never be paid for the Masur job. Desperate for money, he takes on another hit with pragmatic, compartmentalized indifference by sending a coyote off a 200-foot San Bernardino cliff in the callous human smuggler’s classic ’57 Chevy. The car lands greasy-side-up in a swimming pool! To Joe it is a death well-deserved and a temporary lifeline for him. (For the audience, it’s a spectacular and memorable sequence!) SETTING A TRAP: Marty entices Joe out from hiding with an overly generous $25,000 reward for a $3,000 diamond tennis bracelet that he and Lenore gave Carolyn on her 18th birthday and which Joe stole. Marty meets Joe on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway where, 2800 feet above Coachella Valley, a claustrophobic cat-and-mouse game takes place. The palpable tension (ala Hitchcock) between them causes a gunfight to break out and Marty is badly wounded. Joe escapes but he is captured on security footage, and Raynelle now has a suspect in her sights. After a harrowing car chase, Raynelle comes face to face with Joe when his car breaks down outside of town. Unable to kill her, and mourning his lost future with Kylie and his perceived abandonment of his mom, Joe tries to turn the gun on himself. But Raynelle, as a longtime Marine wife, is able to make the Semper Fi connection and empathy in her heart to successfully talk Joe out of suicide and arrest him. A newfound self-awareness gives her the inner strength to face her boss -- and husband -- with a clearer, more positive outlook.