More Twisted

residue on the man’s finger (writers know as much about forensics as most cops). The author had gotten the shotgun from the trunk, left it with the sergeant and then climbed back into the squad car, where he’d taken a deep breath and shot himself in the belly—as superficially as he could.
    He’d then crawled onto the road to wait for a passing car to come to their aid.
    The police bought the entire story.
    In the final scene the author returned home to try to resume his writing, having literally gotten away with murder.
    Carter now finished rereading the story, his heart thumping hard with pride and excitement. True, it needed polishing but, considering that he hadn’t written a word for more than a year, it was a glorious accomplishment.
    He was a writer once again.
    The only problem was that he couldn’t publish the story. He couldn’t even show it to a soul.
    For the simple reason, of course, that it wasn’t fiction; every word was true. Andy Carter himself was the homicidal author.
    Still, he thought, as he erased the entire story from his computer, publishing it didn’t matter one bit. The important thing was that by writing it he’d managed to kill his writer’s block as ruthlessly and efficiently as he’d murdered Bob Fletcher and Howard Desmond and the two women in Greenville. And, even better, he knew too how to make sure that he’d never be blocked again: From now on he’d give up fiction and pursue what he’d realized he was destined to write: true crime.
    What a perfect solution this was! He’d never want for ideas again; TV news, magazines and the papers would provide dozens of story leads he could choose from.
    And, he reflected, limping downstairs to make a pot of coffee, if it turned out that there were no crimes that particularly interested him . . . well, Andy Carter knew that he was fully capable of taking matters into his own hands and whipping up a bit of inspiration all by himself.

T HE V OYEUR

    H e had no serious chance for her, of course.
    She was way out of his league.
    Still, Rodney Pullman, forty-four both in age and in waistband, couldn’t help being seduced by the sight of the Resident in 10B when she’d moved into his Santa Monica apartment complex six months ago. After all, a man can dream, can’t he?
    With focused hopes but diffuse energy, Pullman had moved to LA from Des Moines two years ago to become a movie producer and spent months papering Tinseltown with his résumés. The results were unremarkable and he finally concluded that success at selling Saturns and industrial air conditioners in the Midwest would never open doors at companies whose products included TomKat, George Clooney and J-Lo.
    But, despite the rejection, Pullman got into the Southern California groove, as he’d write to his parents. Sure, maybe folks out here were a little more superficial than in Iowa and occasionally he felt like he was coasting. But what a place to be adrift! This was a promised land—wide highways, silky fog on the beach, sand between your toes, gigaplex movie theaters, all-night noodle restaurantsand a January low that matched the temperature of a typical May Day in Des Moines.
    Pullman shrugged off his failure to become a mogul, took a job as a manager at a chain bookstore in Westwood and settled into a pleasant life.
    He was content.
    Well, almost. There was the love life situation . . .
    Oh, that.
    Pullman was divorced, ten years, from a woman he’d married just after they’d graduated from State. After the breakup he’d dated some but had found that it was hard to connect on a serious level. None of the women he went out with, mostly blind dates, knew much at all about movies, his true passion in life. (Oh, that is so weird, Rod, I love the classics too. Like, I’ve seen Titanic a hundred times. I mean, I own it . . . . Now, tell me about this Orbison Welles guy you mentioned.) Generally conversation settled into boring bragging about their kids and rants about how bad their ex-husbands had treated them. His dates also tended to dress themselves at the unglamorous places like Gap or L.L.Bean and were generally of—how could he put it?—solid Midwestern builds.
    Oh, he met a few attractive women—like Sally Vaughn, the runner-up for Miss Iowa 2002, no less—but that relationship never went anywhere and after her he found himself longing for greener pastures in the girl department.
    Which perfectly described LA. Here was a massive inventory of the