In “Spatter Pattern,” Neal Bell’s noirish new offering at Playwright’s Horizons, the police procedural finally gets its rightful place onstage. For all those who have lost a weekend watching consecutive episodes of “Law and Order,” here is a work of theater to appreciate. But Mr. Bell’s real interest lies not in bullet casings and glow-in-the-dark residues but the constant rewrites and edits we impose on our own daily lives.

Dunn (Peter Frechette) is a writer who’s just about done in. Still reeling from the death of his lover from lung cancer, he loses his agent. Worst of all, he is looking for an apartment, surely the best way to bring out the ghoulishness of New York living. He moves into a new place only to find a mysterious, handsome stranger living next door. Whether or not his brooding neighbor, Tate (Darren Pettie), has recently killed his student is a matter of debate; he certainly spooks the bejesus out of Dunn.

Mr. Bell doesn’t just write a scene, he posits it in a number of different ways. If Tate seems to give Dunn a straight answer to his questions, or his agent sounds compassionate for a moment, a little bell rings to whisk us back in time a few seconds. We then get another opportunity to hear the “real” response.

As poor Dunn constantly rewrites his saleable, salacious version of Tate’s story, that carriage-return “ding” works like a writer’s “delete.” Mr. Bell’s little bell lets us eavesdrop on unexpressed thoughts, take short trips down narrative dead-ends, or just peep into his characters subconscious. He, like Tate, wants to find the “motive behind the motive.” As he peels back layers of Tate’s story, he gets closer to truths of his own.

Director Michael Greif hustles his actors through the fast-moving scenes of the first half, finding a brisk, sexy pace. Mark Wendland’s pitch-perfect set, a series of panels that slide around under a concrete arch, forms long alleys and dangerous corners. With creepy shadows thrown by Kevin Adams’s lights and a neo-noir score by Michael Friedman, the production manages a marvelous mixture of lightness and suspense. The play will have won its admirers by the time Dunn’s reminiscences about his dead lover begin to drag it down.

Mr. Bell clearly likes his herring red. The dead student (the always marvelous Deirdre O’Connell) appears with plenty to say. In a number of roles, John Lavelle adds to the creep-out factor – as both a belligerent student and a real-estate agent, he always seems like the next guy to die. Mr. Bell has the perfect set-up, perfect cast, and perfect tone. The strange deflation of his final scenes is the perfect crime.

***

The Rattlestick Theater, usually such a homey place, looks a sight. Three men in various stages of catatonia inhabit a nasty plywood room, fouled with graffiti, Happy Meal boxes, and a neglected drum set. Chase (Paul Sparks) and Staples (Robert Beitzel) sit on the couch, having zoned out completely. Chase has taken the pinks, leaving him twitching and nominally engaged. Sparks has decided on the blues. A third roommate, Speed (Ray Rizzo), wanders naked and ignored.

The play catches these men on what will be their worst day. They were once a band called Less, well-enough known that even their downstairs neighbor had heard of them. But indolence and drugs have left them numb and nearly insane -so much so that even a genuine psychotic can enter their midst and feel relatively at home. When moody, bearish Lynch (Michael Chernus) barges in and busts the television, the countdown to their last moments begins.

Like other heroes of Adam Rapp plays, these men hide indoors, caught in feedback loops of self-destructive behavior. Claustrophobic with self-absorption, they slide and collapse under a tonnage of drugs, pop culture, and abject, physical humiliation. They are also very, very funny. Director Michael Garces keeps the tone light even as the quartet nears the bottom of their barrel. In this he is aided by the champion Mr. Sparks.

This play has none of the romanticism of Mr. Rapp’s “Blackbird.” Nor does it have its economy. By the end, one too many people have gone nuts, one too many notes of careful eccentricity sounded. But just as Mr. Rapp’s control begins to slip, the music starts. The cast, already notable for their ease with one another, has actually formed the band they portray.

Suddenly, we see Chase and the others at their high point – still jamming, still in tune with one another, still making music. Less gets one last chance to rock out – probably the most deeply touching moment involving feedback that you’ll hear this year. This may be a play about paralysis, but it’s moving.