Mary, Mary

myself. The story of stories.”
    “Wow, that’s great. You’re writing it yourself, huh?”
    “Yeah. You know those murders in L.A.? Mary Smith?”
    She knew a little but not everything, since she’d been up in Vancouver for four weeks, so he quickly filled her in.
    “You bought the rights? Wow! That’s great. And what, you want
me
to produce?”
    He shook his head in disbelief.
    “From
who,
Tracey? Who would I buy the rights from?”
    “Oh, right. Well, so what’s the deal then?”
    “So I can talk to you? Really talk?”
    “Of course you can talk to me. Tell me your big idea, your story. I love thrillers.”
    This is it. Go or no-go? What is it going to be?
    “I planned those murders, Tracey. I’m Mary.” Wow. It was out. Just like that. I’m Mary. Holy shit!
    She looked at him real funny, funny peculiar, and suddenly he knew this had been a very bad idea, and old Tracey wasn’t the crazy one—
he was.
He’d just blown his whole deal. And for what? To let off a little steam with an old girlfriend? To vent? Confess?
    She was staring at him as if he had two heads, at least that many. “Come again? What are you saying?”
    He laughed, faked it the best he could, anyway.
    “It’s a
joke,
Trace. We’re high; I made a joke. Hey, let me give you a ride home. You’ve got the kid at your hotel, the nanny and whatever. I hear you. And you’re a good mommy, right?”

Chapter 57
    THEY DIDN’T TALK MUCH IN THE CAR, so he knew how big a mistake he’d made, and now he wondered if he’d made other mistakes along the way. Maybe important ones that would get him caught. Like way back in New York City. The movie-theater shootings.
    He finally spoke. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, you know.”
    She muttered, “Sure. I hear you.”
    Man, she was making him paranoid, and a little nuts, actually. They’d been friends for a long time, though. “So how old is the kid now?”
    “Uhmmm, four and a half. He’s great. Stefan.”
    She was really scaring him. Now what? What the hell should he do? This wasn’t a “Mary Smith” scene. Tracey wasn’t even in his story. This was bad news.
    Suddenly he pulled his rented Volvo over to the side of the road. Now what?
    “What’s the matter?” she asked. “What?”
    “You’d better get out right here, Trace. I’m not kidding you. Get out! Walk the rest of the way!”
    “Walk? Are you crazy. What are you talking about?”
    “Get out of the car! Right now.
Get out before I throw you out!
”
    That got her moving. She threw open the passenger’s door and stumbled outside, cursing him like a truck driver. It was cold out there, and she had both arms wrapped around her. Then she started to cry. “You’re crazy. You know that? I thought we were friends.”
    She started to run away on the dark residential side street somewhere between the Marriott and her hotel.
    The Storyteller got out of the car and found himself following close behind. “Tracey, wait! Hey. Tracey.”
    He caught up to her easily. “Hey, hey. I’m sorry for scaring you, baby. I’m really sorry. Hey, you okay?” And then he shot her in the throat, and once she was down on the sidewalk, he shot her again in the head.
    And this time it wasn’t good, didn’t feel good at all.
    This time it felt kind of bad, scared the hell out of him.
    Because the story was taking over, the story was writing itself, and the story didn’t seem to care who got hurt.

Chapter 58
    AS I FLEW FROM SEATTLE back to Los Angeles the next day, it struck me again how darkly appropriate the Mary Smith case was as a backdrop to my entire life. I was also starting to feel like some kind of record-setter for complicated or failed relationships. The only closure I had reached with Christine was that we would speak more soon. It excited me to think about having Little Alex—Ali—closer by, but I wasn’t about to get attached to the idea. Christine had proved herself too changeable in the past for me to trust that anything she said might happen for sure.
    As it turned out, I got sucked back into the murder case even before I made it through the terminal at LAX.
    A television news report caught my ear, and I stopped to watch the next development unfold.
    I couldn’t look away as a talking head reported, “At a press conference this morning, lead detective on the Hollywood Stalker case, Jeanne Galletta, denied the existence of any so-called kill list.”
    Hollywood Stalker was a media moniker that had