Cop Out (33 page)

Authors: Susan Dunlap

Tags: #Suspense

Seumas and Dunlap in 1988: “He was an old guy by this time, who had better things to do than be a photo prop. I think his expression says it all.”

Dunlap relished West Coast life. “This is what someone who grew up in the snow of the East Coast dreams of . . . the California life!”

For her fiftieth birthday, Dunlap and a group of close writer friends went to Santa Cruz for the weekend. Seated above from left to right: Marilyn Wallace, Marcia Muller, Dunlap, and Shelley Singer. Seated on the floor: Judith Gruber (pen name Gillian Roberts), Linda Grant, and Lia Matera.

The Sisters-in-Crime presidents and former presidents—known as the Goddesses—always gather for a picture at conventions. One year, Dunlap had to miss the gathering. Her friends, knowing how much she wanted to be there, photoshopped her into the image.

Dunlap’s last typewriter, before she happily switched to writing on a computer. “Plotting is one of the aspects of writing I really like—everything’s new, all gates open, all roads wide,” she says. “But it involves a great deal of data with connections that are not always linear. On paper or white board or with notes taped on corkboard—I tried them all—it was cumbersome. Using the computer was magic.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

O
NCE AGAIN I AM
indebted to the Berkeley Police Department, especially to Sergeants Kay Lantow and Mike Holland for their unfailing willingness to help. And to Officer Abbie Cohen for her generosity and literary sensitivity.

Thanks to Mary Alice Gorman of Mystery Lovers Bookshop for her thorough research and quick response.

And to the Blue Buddha Tattoo Studio for suggestions I would never have considered.

And for their continuing guidance and support, to Jackie Cantor and Dominick Abel.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Kathleen Lynch

978-1-4532-5054-9

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com