The Girl on the Grill - Ron Mueller

It is late on a hot muggy night. The street is empty as the lone homeless Vietnam Vet walks slowly towards the highway over pass. A young woman runs frantically passed him and a car squeals its tires as it takes the corner behind him. He watches in horror as a car speeds past him and then skids to a halt and a huge man jumps out and slams the young woman against the overpass wall. He then lifts her over his head and launches her over the retaining wire fence to the highway below.

Johnnie is now a witness that must be eliminated. His first concern is to save himself.

He escapes by climbing over the retain fence blocking his way down to the highway and runs across the interstate. He is almost stopped by the scene of the young woman smashed by the grill of the semi. He thinks of her as the girl on the grill.

He gets away.

When an innocent man is accused of the murder, Johnnie decides he must step forward.

He knows that his PTSD, his being homeless and being black will all work against being considered a credible witness. The lawyer for the wrongly accused and arrested man being held ignores and rebuffs Johnnie.

Johnnie decides to engage a black female police detective he has seen almost daily as she rides her bike past the Cincinnati library. His first encounter with her convinces him that he has found the right connection.

Alex Evercrest, the only black female detective on the Cincinnati, police force believes Johnnie. She gets herself and her partner assigned to the case.

Almost immediately she becomes the focus of attack. The attacks are of a direct and personal revenge nature. She is caught by surprise, but she pursues the attacker with a cool and calculating persona.

Just as she thinks it over, the drug distribution king pin, now on the run surprises her in her apartment. He is looking for her to help him escape the city.

Her cool behavior and thinking in rejecting the person that knocks at her apartment door, provides time for the police swat team to respond. Her next action, to disarm the king pin, saves her life as the bullet meant for her misses and lodges in the refrigerator.

She is pulled off the king pin by the swat team members and is escorted down the hallway away from her apartment by the person who she has fallen in love with and who had called in the swat team when he had been rebuffed by her at the door.

Not much later, Johnnie now the superintended for the apartment building, due to Alex's help, places a plywood cover to seal Alex and her new love into her apartment for the night.