If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen these. Below are photographs of places where scenes from UNLEASHED take place - or sometimes places that inspired scenes. I claim full privilege to modify reality to meet my authorial needs.

I turn my head, only to be confronted with ten identical images pummeling me from an entire wall of TVs. An electronics store is not the place to go if you want to avoid seeing Portland’s hottest news story of the week: young, pretty Emily Shea came home from a visit to her parents to find her husband in bed, alone, with his throat slashed.

Rows of parked cars fill the bunker-like garage, smelling vaguely of gasoline. I search the shadows between the hulking pieces of metal and find only emptiness.

[Lloyd Center parking garage]

​The squat is the third story of a brick building, the main floor of which houses a store called Elmer’s Wonder Shoppe. The only wonder to me is that anyone makes a living out of a place that screams “tired and shabby.” Curved green awnings, their tops dark with rain-induced mold, droop over ground-floor picture windows. Inside, out-of-date furniture too young to be antique shares space with bins of comic books and plastic samurai swords. Exterior bricks shed peels of white paint, and the upper stories’ rusty metal windows sport cracked panes that are nearly opaque with grime. The top two floors were abandoned years ago, and Elmer’s staff members never venture up there. No one does, except for us and a few hungry rats.

Jack yanks the rusty ladder down, and moments later, we’re stepping into the open space that makes up the entire tip floor [of the squat]. I sigh, releasing time as soon as the door whines shut behind us. Something small and probably furry scuttles away from our sudden appearance. I wait for my vision to adjust to the gloom, listening to the resumed rumble of the freeway and the restless coo and shuffle of pigeons that roost under the building’s eaves. Dust floats into my nostrils, the dry scent accented with an undertone of mold.

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Shout out to The Airplane Factory, the "squat"'s current owner, who let me prowl around inside and take photos!

​We hurry to the parking garage and trot up two flights of stairs until we’re well above the sight line for prying eyes. The steps are concrete and smell like urine. I stop at a bend and lean out the opening overlooking the street, my heart pumping much harder than the minimal exercise merits.

(Seeing the fire escape the spinners use in the book requires use of your imagination.)

We cross Elmer’s empty parking lot and check that no one is looking before slipping around to the back of the building. The blackberry bushes welcome us with their usual thorny embrace.

Jack must feel a little guilty, because he helps me decipher the TriMet map we picked up to figure out which bus will get me to Dr. Barnard’s house.

“If you take the seventy-seven, you won’t have to transfer.” He traces the route with his finger. “Take the map with you, so you know when to get off.”

Bus map courtesy of TriMet

It’s brighter on this side of the squat, illuminated by sunlight filtering through the grimy windows. It’s also a few degrees colder, since the windows don’t quite shut. Our resident nurse days this is OK. Fresh air, she insists, is good for the patient.

There’s a bench a few feet away, tucked behind the shelter of a large hedge. I stumble over and plop down on the seat.

[Grant Park]

Dr. Barnard’s home is one of six identical, three-story townhouses, each painted gray with darker gray trim. Tall trees arch over the street, dappling the units with green and gold light. The townhouses have garages on the ground floor, with outdoor staircases leading up to their second-story entrances. Barnard’s unit has a small Japanese maple planted at the foot of the stairs, the leaves of which are already deepening into fall red.

I peer though the dark leaves, one piece of my mind on the verge of stopping time. A police car is cruising down the street, slowly, like it’s trolling for something. My throat tightens. The windows are tinted, and I can’t tell if the drive is looking this way or not.

Plunked down between a Chinese restaurant and a place that sells discount tires, the Pegasus promises anonymity and not much else. Thirty rooms share a bunker-like concrete building that’s bent in an L shape around a potholed parking lot. Guessing by the number of cars, business isn’t booming.

Both motel photos from Google Maps

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I reach the stairs leading up to the [Center’s] doorway. They are painfully familiar. Here is the chip from the time some protestors threw rocks, there the mold stain that looks like a bald man wearing glasses. Memories lay themselves before me like pictures in a photo album: racing up the stairs with KJ to avoid being late after an outing; skipping down them beside Ross as we head out on a mission; stumbling up them just weeks before, my arm bleeding from the attack by one of Sikes’s men, naively believing I was heading to safety.

[Portland Main Library , downtown]

All photo credits mine, except where noted