by Steve Fisher
The headlines were big and black. Jill Lynn arrested.
Police close in on fugitive hide-out. The paper said I had deserted Jill last night and gone to sea on a tanker bound for Brazil.
I read all the details carefully. The police had worked on the theory that we were somewhere in Long Beach. First they had painstakingly checked all recent hotel registrations. This job alone had taken almost three days. After that they had begun checking up on all the tenants who had rented an apartment since the day we had left the tourist camp. They had third-class detectives all over town doing this and in the course of the survey one of them had come to our apartment on the court.
A young detective had arrived there at noon today and asked Jill to identify herself. The paper said it had been several minutes before he realized that she was actually Jill Lynn! He had been ringing doorbells and questioning peopie all day, and he had very nearly passed Jill by when he found her.
Jill had been calm. The paper reported her only emotion had been one of bitterness. The money had run out and I had left her. The woman scorned. She was apparently ready to talk and tell anything she could to bring about my apprehension. They played that up big. It had a familiar ring to it; and they repeated all of the old police phrases to the effect that there is never any escape from the law.
Jill was taken into custody and afterward returned to the apartment by Los Angeles detectives and questioned. She was cool; she didn’t once break down. A matron was brought in and Jill was permitted to change into her green dress. She was then taken to Los Angeles where she was booked and lodged in the city jail. She was to be charged with aiding the escape of a fugitive from justice, and assault with intent to kill on an officer of the law!
That was Ed Cornell’s touch. He knew as well as I did that she hadn’t intended to kill him!
There were pictures of the corduroy skirt and the brown and white sweater which were of no material value in the case and had been left for the photographers. The tinfoil I’d seen had been from an exploded flashlight bulb!
The whole business had been conducted very quietly and even the people in the court were unaware that anything had happened. The address of the apartment was not revealed on the grounds that I might return and a crowd of curious people out in front would frighten me off. A detective had remained in the apartment until after six o’dock and now radio police were keeping a close watch on the place. In spite of this it was generally believed that I was at sea. The watch on the apartment was maintained only as a safeguard against the possibility that Jill’s story had been untrue.
How close I had come! If I’d returned a half an hour earlier I’d have been arrested!
I skipped over all of the rest. It didn’t matter. She had lied to protect me. She had kept her head and put on a wonderful show. All for me! She had done everything she could. It would be terribly hard on her when they discovered the truth, but she mustn’t have cared. Her only concern had been for my safety!
I thought of Ed Cornell. The way he had watched me. The way he had tormented me for weeks. I had been his obsession. Now he was spewing his bitterness and his hatred on Jill. Assault—with intent to kill!
“You dirty bastard,” I said. “I’ll dedicate a book to you sometime.”
I dropped the paper. I began to walk. I was cold with hatred. I was scarcely conscious of anything else. I shivered in the dungarees and the sweat shirt and the wool cap. I was going to Los Angeles. I was going to steal a car from a parking lot and go to Los Angeles.
I had parked the stolen car and for a long time I stood there on the hill and watched Robin Ray’s house. I had been here on parties and I knew the layout of the rooms. But I studied it very carefully and made my plans. All of the lights had gone out an hour ago. These were the hills over the Cahuenga Pass and you could hear a coyote very far away, and the nervous flutter of night birds, and the singing crickets. It was a two-story house constructed of stone. I moved silently across the road and my shadow was pale in the moonlight. I reached the side of the house and began to climb up along the stones. I made no sound at all. When I was at the window I slashed down at the screen with a jagged piece of rock. It tore and I jammed my fist in and unlatched it.
I crawled through the window into the room. Robin was stirring on the bed. I grabbed the floor lamp and put it directly over him, soit would show down on his face. He was waking up. I switched the lamp on. He opened his eyes and blinked.
”Don’t move,” I said.
“Wh-what?”
”If you move I’ll kill you!”
22
HE SAT THERE on the bed, up on one elbow, trying to penetrate the blinding light. I was on my haunches on the other side of the lamp. My whole body was rigid. I was shaking with rage.
“Who is it?” he said. I told him.
It was half a minute before it hit him. Then he was wide awake, trying to look past the light and into the darkness at me. Robin was washed out. His eyes were bloodshot. I had an idea he’d been drinking earlier. His skin was sallow without make-up, but he was still good looking.
“Mind if I light.a cigarette, old man?” he said.
“You won’t need one.” He was motionless.
“I’m going to ask some questions,” I said. I was talking slowly, and very low.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“I want the answers, Robin. All of them!”
“Sure.”
He was rubbing his mottled skin. Apparently he was able to see me now. He could see the beard and he could see my eyes.
“That day of the murder,” I said, “you picked up Vicky
Lynn outside her agent’s office on the Sunset Strip.”
“That’s right.”
“How come you never told the police?”
“I didn’t at first because I figured it would have put me under suspicion, and it would have.”
“What do you mean by at first?”
“They found out later,” he said, “and I admitted it.”
“Who found out?”
“Ed Cornell.”
I was jarred. “Then you told him?”
“I didn’t have to tell him—I wish you’d let me have a cigarette!—he found out by himself. You see, Vicky and I had an argument.”
“About her leaving you?”
“Yes. She was tossing me over for—for you.”
“Go on.”
“We had this argument. It meant a lot to me. Publicity angles and all that.” He changed to the other elbow. “I lost my head. I began to yell at her and I didn’t look where I was driving. I ran into a guy. No damage—except the bumper and the windshield. The windshield shattered. Cornell found out about that and deduced the rest.”
Ed Cornell had never told me this. Yet I remembered he had not accused me of having picked her up on Sunset— which had been the first police theory: he had stated I was waiting in the apartment when she came in. I was sick that Cornell was so far ahead of me; that these things which I had figured out he had known weeks ago! It was like a terrible race between us. But I was behind.
“You didn’t hit her in the car—and kill her?”
“My God, no!” Robin said.
“After the accident what happened?”
“I took her home. She didn’t have the key to her apartment. She said she usually got a pass key from the boy at the desk. But the switchboard was jammed and the boy was gone.”
“Harry Williams wasn’t there when you came in?”
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I—why don’t you give me a cigarette?”
“I haven’t any,” I said.
“They’re on the night stand. Will you hand me one?”
He lit up, propped himself against the pillow and went on. His tangled hair fell over his forehead.
“She said she knew a way to get in. We went upstairs, then out on the fire escape and crawled in the living-room windows. There’re no screens on those windows, you know.”
“Go on,” I said.
“That’s all. In the apartment we argued some more—and I left.”
“Was Harry Williams downstairs when you went out?”
“No—the switchboard was empty.”
I moved a little closer. “Isn’t it true that after you and Vicky were in the apartment you lost your temper and hit her?”
“Hell, no!”
“I think you did.”
He was trembling.
“You hit her—and you had that big metal ring on your finger. I haven’t seen the ring since.”
“Haven’t you? Let me get up and I’ll get it.”
“All right.”
I moved back and he got out of bed, crossed the room in his pajamas and opened a dresser drawer. He took out the ring and tossed it to me. Then he stood there with his hands on his hips.
“If I killed her that’d be Exhibit A—the weapon of murder. The most damning evidence against me anybody could get, so—I make you a gift of it!”
I turned the ring over in my hand.
“Would I do that,” he said, “if I were guilty?”
I couldn’t speak.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to accomplish,” he said. “Personally, I never did think you were guilty. None of us did. Hell, we were four guys who really wanted to promote
Vicky. We were just Hollywood people. We have our troubles. We cry a little, and love a little, but we don’t go in for murder.”
I started for the window. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“It’s all right. I won’t tell them you were here.”
My voice was hollow. “Where’s Lanny Craig?”
“Gone to New York. I got a card from him. He says it’s cold as hell.”
“Hurd?”
“Still at the studio. But they aren’t guilty, believe me!”
”Somebody’s guilty,” I said. “God, I—”
“Need any dough?”
“I could use some,” I said.
Robin picked up his wallet, flipped it open and took out all that was there. It amounted to forty dollars. I stuck it in my blue jeans.
“Good luck,” he said.
I drove the car down around the hifis and on to Cahuenga. I kept driving. I meant to turn back but I kept driving. San Fernando fell behind me. The car ate up the black asphalt highway. I drove like the wind. My mind was turning the whole thing over. There were two of Ed Cornell’s clues that bothered me. Vicky’s shoe somebody had stood on and crushed. The cigarette that had been smashed out in the closet. Somebody had been hiding in the closet when she and Robin came in. Who? It had narrowed down to this. The answer of this one question contained the solution. I was suddenly possessed with the notion that I knew it.
The town of Doris in California is near the state line. It is a small town, and in the hotel where I had a room it was very hot. But I didn’t spend much time in the hotel. Through the long days I stopped every person I met and asked endless questions. I didn’t look at newspapers. I didn’t want to know what they were doing with Jill. I couldn’t stand to know.
At the end of the first week I found him.
It was on a Saturday night and it was raining very hard. There was a relentless crashing of thunder, and lightning streaked out of the sky. He lived in a ranch house ten miles out of town. I stood there at the door and rapped my knuckles against it. After a long time the door opened and a woman peered out. She was withered, but very hard, with sharp, ugly little eyes.
“What is it you want?”
“I came to see Bill Hunter.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of his from Doris.”
“You don’t work at the pool room?”
“No,” I said.
She opened the door. “Come in, then. He’s here in the living room.”
I came in and she closed the door. He was sitting next to an open fire. He turned and looked up at me.
“Hello, Harry Williams,” I said.
He stared at me. The old woman was his aunt and she was saying: “William gets in a lot of trouble at the pool room, don’t you, William? How many times have I told you not to go there?” She talked to him as though he were not quite bright. But suddenly it struck her that I had spoken his real name, and she turned to me.
“What did you call him?”
“Harry Williams.”
“But he’s not! How foolish! He’s—”
“He’s Harry Williams.”
“You—you knew him before?”
“Yes. Would you mind leaving the room for a moment?”
“No.” she said. She folded her scrawny arms. “I won’t leave the room at all.”
Harry Williams was on his feet. Lightning flashed at the window, and the big yellow eyes behind the thick-lens glasses were horrible.
“How’d you get the name Hunter?” I said.
He watched me sullenly. His lips were ugly smears and his skin was bad. He shot a glance at his aunt.
She said: “When—ah—Harry came from—”
“From Hollywood,” I said.
She pursed her lips. “Yes, from Hollywood—you see he came at a time when my son—Harry’s second cousin—had gone away, joined the army. We were lonely here and we took him into our house. As a son. We just changed his name. It was easier that way for everybody.”
“Except the police. And bright boy came here instead of going to his home up in Washington, or near any of his former friends—because he figured he’d never be traced. He laid low, and—”
She closed up. “Harry, who is this man?”
“He’s from Hollywood,” Williams said evenly. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. They were hideous eyes like two small oranges.
I watched him. “You killed Vicky, didn’t you?”
He didn’t speak.
His aunt watched me. She must have known all about the murder.
“It was like this,” I said. “When Lanny Craig left—you went back into the apartment to wait for Vicky. You intended to tell her about his visit.”
“Yeah,” he said. The lightning outside seemed to make him nervous.
“But you saw her coming in through the fire escape and Robin was with her. You weren’t supposed to be hanging around in her apartment and you got scared. It was too late to make a break for the door—they’d have seen you. So you beat it into the bedroom. You hid in the closet! You smoked a cigarette in there and stood on one of her shoes.”
“Yeah—yeah.” There was sweat on his face.
“You heard her and Robin arguing. You heard the door slam when Robin left. You came out of the closet—”
”Stand clear, Harry!”
I turned. The old woman had a shotgun leveled at me. I didn’t know where she had gotten it. Harry saw it.
“No! Don’t! I’m not afraid. Let him go on. I know him!” She lowered the gun but it was still pointed at me.
“Go on,” Harry Williams said. “When you’re through— there’s something I want to say.”
“You came out of the closet. Vicky saw you and screamed.”
“Yeah.”
“You were in love with her. You knew she’d signed a movie contract—was going to leave the apartment—”
It was as though he were transfixed. He nodded; now he began to talk.
“Yeah. She screamed, and yelled at me to get out. Her screaming got me excited. I went a little crazy maybe—listen, here’s what I told her—I swear to God—I swear to God in heaven—I said, ‘Vicky, you’re going away. I want just one little kiss!’ That’s what I said. I told her I loved her.” He was almost sobbing. “I only wanted one little kiss! But she kept screaming. I don’t know why she was afraid of me—I tried to kiss her and she fought me and kept screaming!”
I wanted to vomit.
; “I had that big iron key ring,” he went on, “the ring with pass keys; I had it in my hand. I don’t know what happened. I must have hit her. I think I caught her one along the side of the head. She went limp in my arms. Her eyes fluttered closed. I was all choked up. I dropped her. I began to scream. I ran out of the apartment. I got a freight train—I came back here to Doris. They hid me. We changed my name. You see—you see—”
The old lady slammed the shotgun down across the table. She wasn’t going to use it. “Harry, you’re a fool!” she said.
“What’s the difference?” he said. “The cops figured this all out. They found me. They just said lay low and don’t talk about the murder. They understood how it was—how I just wanted to kiss her. This guy’ll understand, too. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I just—”
”What was it you said?”
“I said the cops, they—”
”Cops?”
“Well, no—just one detective by himself. I suppose he told the others how it was. He was a guy from L.A., this detective. His name was—”
It was noon. In Los Angeles the traffic was thick on the streets and the sidewalks were crowded with people. I was in an old hotel. I knocked at the door of a room. Then I went in. I let the door slam behind me.
Ed Cornell looked up.
23
HELLO, OPERATOR THIRTEEN.” I said.
He wore white pajamas. They were wet with sweat, and they were soiled. In the shadow that fell across the room from the window his face was long and evil. He had cards laid out in a game of solitaire. He had been putting down a card and his. hand stopped in mid-air. His face was jaundiced, sickly, and his eyes were a burning red. He was running a fever—and I knew somehow that he was on his last legs.
There were six different pictures of Vicky around the walls. They were large size. Three of them were intimate pictures. In four of them she seemed to be looking at you. I felt cold. It was as though I were walking over her grave. On the dresser I saw items of her clothing. There were three half-used bottles of her perfume. I saw a diary and telegrams and letters which should have been in police files, not here. But I could not get rid of the feeling that Vicky had her eyes on me. That from the walls she was looking at me. To be in this room was like living with her.
