Plot

Johnny "Skidmark" Scardino is a free-lance crime-scene photographer and part-time blackmailer. When his associates begin to turn up murdered, he has a very short time to discover the killer before it is his turn.

Crime scene photographer, Johnny Scardino (aka Johnny Skidmarks), is working on the side for a group of blackmailers, photographing wealthy guys in seedy motels with prostitutes. One such assignment turns the wrong way and the blackmailers he works for start dying one by one in more and more brutal ways. Is Johnny the next on the list?—Anonymous

Johnny Scardino is a crime scene photographer, his job which is why some of the police detectives with who he most frequently works, like Larry Skovik and Woody Warshawski, affectionately or not so affectionately call him Johnny "Skidmarks". To maintain his sanity from all the gruesome things he is forced to photograph, he has a sense of detachment from the world, which has only been exacerbated by the death of his wife, Ruth. As such, he is a loner, his only real friends being Ruth's needy and overly talkative brother Jerry, a friend only by that association, Jerry's always empty fast food burger joint where Johnny hangs out in its solitude beside Jerry being there, and his pet hamster. Having not told anyone, Johnny has entered into a blackmail scheme orchestrated by private investigator Walter Lippinscott, Johnny's role to photograph the blackmail victims in compromising positions. Much like his police work, Johnny remains at arms length emotionally from the job, never really noticing the blackmail victims themselves despite taking their photographs. At a police crime scene - a multi-vehicle traffic accident - he notices that one of the many casualties is someone also involved in that blackmail scheme with him. What he initially believes is a coincidence turns into a belief of conspiracy that someone is after those behind the blackmail scheme when Larry tells him that the traffic accident was discovered not to be an accident, and when another on the blackmail team is found dead, this time obviously tortured before murdered. Johnny has to try and find out what's going on before he becomes the next victim, he not ruling out that a wealthy woman that has just entered his personal life, Alice, who is going through the twelve step program in her substance abuse, is not by coincidence.—Huggo