Deranged fan, p.1
Deranged Fan, page 1
Deranged Fan
A Thriller, Volume 6
Vincent Zandri
Published by Vincent Zandri, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
DERANGED FAN
First edition. February 23, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 Vincent Zandri.
ISBN: 979-8224466290
Written by Vincent Zandri.
Also by Vincent Zandri
A Chase Baker Thriller
Chase Baker Box Set
Chase Baker and the Dutch Diamonds
Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny
The Chase Baker Trilogy: The First Three Chase Baker Thriller Novels
Chase Baker and the Quest for the Holy Grail
Chase Baker and the Pyramid of Madness
A Chase Baker Thriller No. 12
Chase Baker and the Lost Ark of God
A Chase Baker Thriller Series
Young Chase Baker and the Cross of the Last Crusade
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 1
The Shroud Key
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2
Chase Baker and the Golden Condor
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 3
Chase Baker and the God Boy
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 4
Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 6
Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity
A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 9
Chase Baker and the Seventh Seal
A Dick Moonlight PI Series
Moonlight Gets Schooled
Moonlight Breaks Bad
Divorce by Moonlight
A Dick Moonlight PI Series Short
Moonlight Gets Served
Moonlight Goes Viral
Moonlight Mafia
Moonlight Detour
A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller
Moonlight Kills
Moonlight Falls: New and Lengthened Editor’s Cut Edition
A Dick Moonlight Thriller Book 9
Dog Day Moonlight
A Gripping Ava "Spike" Harrison Thriller
The Concrete Pearl
A Gripping Tanya Teal Corporate War Chronicles Thriller
Primary Termination
A Jack "Keeper" Marconi PI Thriller Series
The Sins of the Sons: A Gripping Hard-Boiled Mystery Thriller with a Surprise Ending
The Innocent
Godchild
American Prison Break
The Jack Marconi P.I. Box Set
White Wedding
(A Jack Marconi PI Series)
The Guilty
(A Keeper Marconi PI Thriller Book 5
Dressed to Kill
American Crime Story: A Thriller Series
American Crime Story: Book I
American Crime Story: Book II
American Crime Story: Book III
American Crime Story: Book IV
A Meta Man Time Travel Thriller
The Passion of Casey Smith
Meta Man
Meta Man: Mars 900 C
Cashless Bail
After Life
A Sam Savage Sky Marshal Thriller
Dead Heading
The Sam Savage Sky Marshal Boxed Set
Tunnel Rats
The Empire Runaway
A Short Thriller
Ghosts
Pembroke PInes
The Killer
The Devil Won't Have You
The Girl in the Window
Go Get Me A Gun
The Left Hook
Autonomous
Delusional
Desperate Measures
Domestic Dispute
Living Doll
The Woman with Two Faces
The Man Who Prayed for the End of the World
Hitchhiker
A Short Thriller Collection
Desperate Measures: A Short Thriller Collection
A Short True Crime Thriller
I Am God
A Steve Jobz PI Thriller
The Flower Man
The Extortionist
The Plumber
I, The Judge
The Steve Jobz PI Box Set
A Steve Jobz Thriller
The Embalmer
(A Thriller)
The Scream Catcher
A Touch of Evil
Detonator
A Thriller
The Caretaker
American Crime Story: The Complete Saga
Deranged Fan
The Girl Who Wasn't There
Her Darkest Secret
Paradox Lake
Max Gator: A Thriller
The Squatters
A Tony and Stan Thriller
Bingo Night
Border Crossings
A Vincent Zandri Hard-Boiled Short Read
Pathological
Dick Moonlight PI
Full Moonlight
PI Jack Marconi
Arbor Hill
PULP Thrillers
Pulp 2: Three Gripping Thrillers Collected in One Box Set
The Rebecca Underhill Trilogy
The Remains
The Ashes
(Vincent Zandri on Writing Book)
Pieces of Mind: Fictional Truths & Non-Fictional Lies about Writing and the Writing Life
Writer's Life Mindset Lecture Series
The Writer’s Life Mindset Lecture Series Number 1: The Series that Helps You become a Real Pro Writer!
Writer's Life Volume 1
The Writer's Life
Standalone
Pulp!: Two Thriller Novels and a Novella
Head
Pathological: Collected Short Reads of Sex, Lies, and Murder!
Go Get Me a Gun
Watch for more at Vincent Zandri’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By Vincent Zandri
Dedication
Begin your Moonlight journey today with a FREE copy of MOONLIGHT FALLS, the first novel in the Thriller and Shamus Award winning series. | Or visit WWW.VINZANDRI.COM to nab all of Vin’s thriller and mysteries. | PRAISE FOR VINCENT ZANDRI
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Also By Vincent Zandri
For Jennifer. With love.
Begin your Moonlight journey today with a FREE copy of MOONLIGHT FALLS, the first novel in the Thriller and Shamus Award winning series.
Or visit WWW.VINZANDRI.COM to nab all of Vin’s thriller and mysteries.
PRAISE FOR VINCENT ZANDRI
“SENSATIONAL . . . MASTERFUL . . . brilliant.”
—New York Post
“(A) CHILLING TALE OF obsessive love from Thriller Award–winner Zandri (Moonlight Weeps) . . . Riveting.”
—Publishers Weekly
“. . . OH, WHAT A STORY it is . . . Riveting . . . A terrific old school thriller.”
—Booklist “Starred Review”
“ZANDRI DOES A FANTASTIC job with this story. Not only does he scare the reader, but the horror
Show he presents also scares the man who is the definition of the word “tough.”
—Suspense Magazine
“I VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book . . . It’s a great crime drama that is full of action and intense suspense, along with some great twists . . . Vincent Zandri has become a huge name and just keeps pouring out one best seller after another.”
—Life in Review
“(THE INNOCENT) IS A thriller that has depth and substance, wickedness and compassion.”
—The Times-Union (Albany)
“THE ACTION NEVER WANES.”
—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“GRITTY, FAST-PACED, lyrical and haunting.”
—Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author of Six Years
“TOUGH, STYLISH, HEARTBREAKING.”
—Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of Savages and Cartel.
“A TIGHTLY CRAFTED, smart, disturbing, elegantly crafted complex thriller . . . I dare you to start it and not keep reading.”
—MJ Rose, New York Times bestselling author of Halo Effect and Closure
“A CLASSIC SLICE OF raw pulp noir...”
—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob
&
—Book Reporter
“I am your number one fan.”
—Stephen King, Misery
Deranged Fan
A Thriller
Vincent Zandri
1
The writing studio is chilly this late Fall morning. No, that’s not right. It’s downright cold and uninviting like an invisible enemy is sharing the small space along with me, just waiting to pounce on me and begin cutting me into a thousand little pieces so that I suffer terrible pain, dread, and agony before the Lord finally takes me. But then, I’m not sure there is a God.
The place is also very quiet and surrounded by some of the most gorgeous Upstate New York countryside you ever did see. The spread I purchased nearly ten years ago when I was flush with cash has got a white farmhouse and a barn that’s been renovated into a fully functional second home, including an attached game room with a pool table, dart board, and a fully stocked bar. Too bad I don’t have any family left who wants to use it now that they’ve become adults and have lives of their own. Too bad my second wife, Maureen, walked out on me last year when the finances were so tight, we were forced to pay the mortgage with a credit card. Last I heard the long, brunette-haired fifty-something daughter of a wealthy, now deceased accountant has hooked up with a lawyer five years younger than her. The word cougar comes to mind.
But then, I think it’s safe to say she got out at the right time since my finances haven’t recovered much since then. Whoever said successful writers who’ve won all the awards, hit all the bestseller lists, and even had a movie or two produced, were set for life financially, is full of shit. Life for a full-time hardboiled fiction writer like me in the 2020s doesn’t have anything to do with past successes. It has everything to do with what I’m about to write next. And right now, I’m staring at a blank white Word document, just like I’ve been doing for the past three weeks’ worth of mornings. Simply put, I’ve got writer’s block. I’ve got it real bad.
But where the hell are my manners? My name is Martin Jordan. You might have heard of me, or maybe not. I’m no Lee Child is what I mean, but then again, I’m not entirely anonymous when it comes to the writer’s life. I write mysteries mostly. Hardboiled mysteries with violence and sex and really cool plots where you can’t possibly guess what’s going to happen next, much less guess the ending when only halfway through the book. That’s because I don’t outline. I do what they call, write into the dark. I just sit down and make shit up, in other words. At least, that’s how the creative brain is supposed to work. In theory.
In fact, I have been referred to as one of the most prolific writers of my generation. But lately, for the last year or so, the words haven’t been coming as easily. Most mornings, they don’t come at all. And in a writer’s world where words equal cash, writer’s block can not only be a career destroyer. It can mean bankruptcy.
It’s not like I haven’t suffered through this kind of thing before, it’s just the anxiety it poses. For instance, the last time I went through a bout of writer’s block, it lasted almost an entire year. I nearly blew my own brains out and I was hospitalized in Poughkeepsie for two full weeks where they don’t have locks on the doors, laces for your shoes, or belts to keep your pants up. It also cost me my publisher who had contracted me for a new book which I didn’t deliver on time. Writers can always be replaced. I was replaced in short order.
Best thing to do for a block? Best thing to do to avoid going bonkers? Get out of your chair, move away from your desk, and breathe. I stare at the rough wooden walls of the square-shaped studio. I view the spines on the many books that fill the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that take up two of the walls. The bookcase closest to my desk contains the sixty novels I’ve written over the years. They are proof that I am a real writer. So are the many awards that hang from the wall above the leather couch situated beside the wood and glass door.
Shuffling my way to the window near the corner where the wood stove is located, I stare out onto the yard. I see two deer grazing on the overgrown lawn. Note to self: mow the lawn before the winter freeze settles in. It’s a four-point buck and its doe wife. Maybe she’s pregnant.
There was a time I would have run into the house for my deer rifle and shot the buck. I was young then and life was cheap because there was so much of it to live. Now that I’m middle-aged with a receding hairline, a salt and pepper stubbly facial growth, and a sore back every morning despite daily jogs and a strength training regimen I’ve been addicted to for decades, I don’t feel like killing anything anymore. Getting old is a bitch my old man used to say.
When he was seventy-six years of age, he ran three miles, then did a full chest workout with the free weights. He took a shower and while he was putting his work boots on in the garage, he dropped dead from a massive coronary. I guess you could say his heart exploded. You never know what can suddenly come at you in this life. You never know what danger lurks and what can kill you.
I’m just about to add a log to the stove when my cell phone rings. Note to self: Pay overdue cell phone bill. The phone is set on my desk beside my laptop. I go to it, pick it up. It’s a number I don’t recognize but it’s a New York City area code. What the hell, it could be a publisher or a movie studio calling. It could be the New York Times or Fox News. It’s not like they haven’t interviewed me before.
I answer the phone.
“Jordan,” I say.
But no one answers. There’s only breathing.
“Hello?” I press.
More breathing, until whoever is on the other end hangs up. I find myself shaking my head.
“Fucking spam,” I say. “I should just shut my phone off before they cut off my service anyway.”
Just then, I make out the sound of a car pulling into the gravel drive. A car with a powerful engine. When I go to the window and look out, I see that it’s the police. Not just any police. But the New York State Police.
I immediately grab my leather coat off the hook embedded into the wall by the door. Putting the coat on, I open the studio door and head outside to greet the cop with a shiny, I’m entirely happy-go-lucky, not-a care-in-the-fucking-world, smile on my ruddy face.
Note to self: stop lying for once.
2
The state trooper is not here to arrest me. Far from it. She is a cop I have become very familiar with, having made her acquaintance in a Millbrook roadhouse more than a year ago. Her name is Mary Clifton. No that’s not entirely right. Her name is Lieutenant Mary Clifton, and she’s a decorated veteran law enforcement officer who has, over the four years I’m known her, read my manuscripts to point out inaccuracies and mistakes that I occasionally make when writing about crimes and crime scenes. That’s a good thing, especially when I’m not blocked and writing up a storm.
The even better thing is that she’s a five-feet four-inch, beauty with a body to kill for, including a tight round ass, perfect size C breasts, a thin waist thanks to daily runs and strength training, a cute little laugh, a penchant for good beer and food, and boy oh boy, can she fuck like nobody’s business. We’re also pals if not best friends. In lots of ways, we’re the perfect match.
Before I go any further, I know what you’re thinking. There’s got to be a “But” here, and there is. Mary might be my ideal mate, but (and this is a big but), there just happens to be one tiny complication. She’s married with a child. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a home wrecker here. The child is an adult and engaged to be married.
And as for the husband? He’s twenty years her senior, in ill health, and an alcoholic. He also spends almost all his time down in Florida where it’s hot and comfortable for him. So, optimistically speaking, you could say Mary is unofficially separated from the guy. But then, technically speaking, she’s still married, and according to her, if she were to tell him she wants a divorce, it would outright kill him. Apparently, he is that delicate.
