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

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 emerged lately for Mary Smith. As for a “kill list,” I had no idea what the TV reporter was talking about.