The author believed he was safe. But his contentment didn’t last. Enter the reporter who’d found the underlined passages, and the investigation started anew; the police called, asking him for fan letters. The author knew the only way to be safe was to give the police a scapegoat. So he agreed to meet with the police — but in fact he’d arrived in town a day before his planned meeting with the detective. He broke into the police sergeant’s house, planted some incriminating clothing he’d taken from the dead women’s houses and stole one of the cop’s mallets and a business card. He then went out to the dead fan’s lake house, where he’d hidden the body, and used the tool to crush the skull of the decomposed body and hid the mallet, along with some of the dead man’s hairs, in an oil drum. The card he slipped into the wallet. The next day he showed up at the police station with the fan letter that led to the cottage — and ultimately to the sergeant.
The author, who’d asked the unsuspecting sergeant to drive to dinner, grabbed his gun, made him stop the car and get out. Then he shot him, rested the pistol near the dead cop’s hands and fired it into the woods to get gunshot 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.
THE VOYEUR
He 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 restaurants and 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 most gorgeous creatures on earth. But they weren’t just pretty. No, these lasses also had substance. He’d overhear them in the coffee bar of the bookstore, sitting over skim lattés and talking art and politics, brilliant, animated, funny. Just yesterday he’d listened to a couple of twenty-somethings in tight-fitting workout clothes arguing about the odd-sounding instrument on the soundtrack of The Third Man. A dulcimer, no, it was an accordion, no, it was—
A zither! Pullman had wanted to shout, but sensed an intrusion wouldn’t be welcome (and sensed too that the one who’d been wrong would be royally pissed, putting the kibosh on any chance to hang out with either of them).
Your typical LA girl’s DVD collection surely wouldn’t include any sappy tearjerkers. They’d have The Bicycle Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Battleship Potemkin, Wings of Desire, The Manchurian Candidate.
Ah, but how to meet one… That was the problem. How he hated the cold leap, the Hi-My-Name’s-Rod-What’s-Yours stage. Pudgy, clumsy, shy, he always clutched.
He’d hoped his job at the bookstore would connect him with glamorous Hollywoodians. Put him in a situation where he had a purpose — like being a salesman — or where somebody came up to him, then he could charm a woman with the best of them. But at the store, the instant he answered a customer’s question, she had no more use for him. As for his fellow workers, they were either middle-aged losers or youngsters obsessed with their own careers (trying to, guess what, write, act in or direct movies, of course).
Out of sheer exhaustion, Pullman had given up on romance.
But then the Resident in 10B moved in.
Tammy Hudson — he’d asked the super her name the next morning — was a bit older than the stunning young things you’d see at Ivy or the back bar at the Beverly Wilshire. Pullman put her at thirty-three or thirty-four, which was good, a manageable age gap. She was gorgeous. Long hair, black as a raven’s wings, often tied up in a jaunty ponytail or pinned into a flirtatious bun. She was tall and, as her yellow-and-black spandex jogging outfit proved, slim and muscular. She ran every day, and sometimes on his way to open the bookstore in the morning he’d see her in the backyard of the complex, standing in the cool, foggy air, practicing some kind of martial art.
One other thing he liked: Tammy had a great joy of life. She traveled often and — based on what he’d overheard — had a place down in Baja, or knew someone who did; she often spent weekends there. She rode a bright-red Vespa motor scooter, reminding him of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Her auto was an old MG and she d
rove it lightning fast.
He hadn’t been surprised to find that nearly every day she’d leave her apartment with her portfolio; of course she’d be involved in films. With her expressive face, she’d make a great character actor. Had he seen her in anything? he wondered. There were not many films Rodney Pullman hadn’t seen.
He debated, and decided it wasn’t completely out of the question that they could go out and that something serious might develop between them. He wasn’t really bad looking. Too much gut, sure, but that was true of a lot of successful businessmen; women didn’t mind, if you had the charm to offset it. He had a full head of brown hair, not a trace of gray, and a solid jaw that largely covered his double chin. He didn’t smoke and drank only wine, and that in moderation. He always picked up the check at dinner.
But instantly, as always, the doubts swarmed like bees. How could the shy man meet her some way other than simply walking up and introducing himself? And once you’ve blown your initial chance, he knew all too well, you can’t go back and start over again, not with a beautiful woman like Tammy.
So for months Pullman worshiped her from afar, struggling to come up with some way to break the ice and not make a fool of himself.
Then, this cool April evening, he got a break.
Around seven, Pullman was standing by his window, looking down into the courtyard, when he noticed motion from the bushes across the sidewalk from Tammy’s bedroom. It was repeated a moment later and this time he saw a faint flash of light, like a reflection off glass.
Pullman shut his lights out and pulled the blinds down. Dropping to his knees, he peered outside and saw that a man was crouching in the bushes. He seemed to be staring into Tammy’s window. He wore one of the gray uniforms of the apartment complex’s groundskeepers. Pullman rose and slipped into his bedroom, where he’d have a better view of the courtyard. Yes, there was no doubt. The skinny young guy was peeping. He had a small pair of binoculars. Goddamn pervert!
Pullman’s initial reaction was to call 9–1–1 and he grabbed the phone.
But he hit only the first digit, then thought, hold on… maybe he could use this somehow. He set the phone down.
Tammy’s curtains closed. He focused on the voyeur and he felt a chill as the maintenance guy’s shoulders slumped in disappointment — like he’d been hoping to get a look at her stripping for the shower. Still, the man stayed in position, waiting for a chance to resume his spying. But then Tammy’s door opened and she stepped outside. She was wearing her pink top and tight floral pants. Her blue leather Coach purse was over her shoulder and sunglasses rode high on her head, stuck into her hair, which was loose tonight.
The voyeur crouched down into the bushes, out of sight.
Tammy locked her door and walked down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. Where was the maintenance man? Pullman wondered in alarm. Was he crawling closer to her? But just as Pullman snatched up the phone and started to push 9, he saw the stalker rise. He hadn’t been about to pounce; he’d only been gathering up his tools. Carrying them, he turned away from Tammy and walked in the opposite direction, toward the back of the building.
Tammy disappeared into the lot and a moment later the rattle of her MG engine and the whine of the gears filled the night as she sped away in the little green car.
That evening Pullman stayed close to home, ordering in a pizza and keeping a close eye on the courtyard. Hours passed without any sign of Tammy or her stalker. He nearly fell asleep, but he made some coffee, drank it down black and hot, and forced himself to stay awake so he could scope out the courtyard. Reflecting, with a shiver of excitement, that this was just like the Hitchcock thriller, Rear Window, where Jimmy Stewart, housebound in a wheelchair, spends his time peering through his neighbors’ windows. It was Pullman’s favorite movie; he wondered if Tammy had ever seen it. He had a feeling she had.
At nine p.m., still seeing no sign of Tammy or the skinny voyeur, Pullman went downstairs and around the back of his building, where he found the superintendent. He asked the man, “Who’s that young maintenance guy? The blond?”
“Blond?” the heavyset janitor asked, pulling a strand of greasy hair off his forehead. He smelled of beer.
“Yeah, the short guy.”
“You said ‘blond.’”
“Right, the one with blond hair,” Pullman said, frowning in frustration. “You understand who I mean?” The janitor was Anglo; there was no language barrier. Maybe he was just stupid.
“I thought, you called somebody ‘the blonde,’ that meant a girl. Like ‘Look at the blonde.’ Nobody says that about a man. You don’t call a man ‘the blond.’”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t know about that. But he’s blond. And short. He was trimming the hedges and raking today. You know who I mean?”
“Yeah, yeah. Him.”
“What’s his name?”
“I dunno. I didn’t hire him. I don’t do the grounds work. The board hired him.”
“What’s his story?”
“Story? He sweeps up, he rakes, he cuts the grass. That’s the story. Why?”
“He works for a service?”
“Yeah, a service. I guess.”
“Is the company bonded?” Pullman asked.
“He works for?”
“Yeah, that company.”
“I guess. I told you it was the board—”
“Hired him. I know. So you don’t know anything about him.”
“Why?”
“Just curious.”
The super waddled back to his apartment, frowning as if he’d been wrongly accused of something, and Pullman hurried back upstairs.
At one a.m. Tammy returned. Looking as vibrant and sexy as when she’d left, she walked to her door and unlocked it. With a look over her shoulder, she stepped inside and slammed the door shut.
She’d seemed a bit uneasy at the doorstep, Pullman decided, as if she’d seen or heard an intruder, and so he grabbed some binoculars and scanned the bushes. It didn’t seem that the peeper was back but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He stepped into the hallway and padded downstairs. He stood in the shadows near the stand of bushes where the voyeur had perched earlier to play his sick game.
Flies buzzed, lights flickered through the bushes and Pullman could hear the distant howl of coyotes in the hills on the way to Malibu. But the scene was otherwise quiet and still.
No sign of the maintenance man.
After Tammy’s lights went out, Pullman waited a half hour and, seeing nothing but the resident tomcat prowl past, returned to his apartment, vaguely aware that this situation could be a gold mine for his love life, but wondering how best to exploit it.
Well, the first thing to consider: was the guy a serious threat? Pullman’d heard that voyeurs were like people with foot fetishes and exhibitionists. They weren’t generally dangerous. They substitute the emotionally distant — and to them safer — act of watching men or women and fantasizing about them for normal sexual relationships, even though they think they want the latter.
It was true, of course, that rapists would sometimes spy on their victims to learn their habits and patterns before assaulting them but the vast majority of voyeurs would never even think of speaking to their victims, much less assaulting them. The odds were that the groundskeeper was harmless. Besides, he was a slim, meek-looking little punk. With her karate training, Tammy could deck him with a single jab. No, Pullman decided, there was little risk to the woman if he didn’t blow the whistle on the stalker just yet.
He fell into bed and closed his eyes but was unable to fall asleep; his overheated brain continued to wrestle with the problem of how to parlay the stalking into a chance to ask Tammy out. Tossing uncomfortably, he beat the alarm to sleep by half an hour. When it blared on at seven he stumbled out of bed and looked outside. The lights were on in Tammy’s apartment. He pictured her doing her morning workout or enjoying a breakfast of yogurt and berries and herbal tea, content in her ignorance of the stalker.
An
d of him, Pullman saw nothing.
This was troubling. Had this apartment complex been just a one-day assignment for the guy? What if he never returned? That would ruin all of the plans.
He remained at the window for as long as he could, hoping for the maintenance man’s return. But at eight, he could wait no longer; he had to be at work in fifteen minutes.
Pullman showered fast and staggered outside to the parking lot, head aching from the lack of sleep, eyes stinging in the fierce sunlight. He was just about to get into his battered Saturn when a Pacific Landscaping Services pickup truck pulled into the lot.
He held his breath.
Yes, it was the stalker! He climbed out, collected his tools and a drink cooler and headed toward the courtyard. Pullman stepped behind his car and crouched down. The voyeur slipped into the same bushes where he’d kept his vigil yesterday and started to clip a hedge that was already perfectly trimmed. His hungry eyes didn’t even glance at the clippers; they were focused on Tammy’s bedroom window.
Thank you, Pullman offered to the god his Midwest upbringing suggested might exist and hurried back to his apartment, taking the back path to stay out of the stalker’s view. He was supposed to open the bookstore but he wasn’t going to pass up this chance. He pulled out his cell phone and called the Human Resources director of the store. He faked a raspy voice and told her that he was sick; he wouldn’t be coming in.
“Oh,” she said uncertainly. Pullman remembered that the other assistant manager was scheduled to start vacation today, which meant the HR woman’d have a hell of time finding somebody who could open the store. Pullman coughed hard but the woman offered no sympathy. She said coolly, “Let me know if you’ll be in tomorrow. Give me a little more warning next time.”
“I—”
Click.
Pullman shrugged. He had more important things to worry about. As he walked to his apartment he was running through some of the plans he’d been thinking of as he lay in bed last night.
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II Page 32
