Killer, Come Back to Me

by Ray Bradbury

  He touched her and said, “She’s been poisoned.”

  The word “poison” spread out through the dim sound stage behind the glaring lights. Echoes came back with it.

  Georgie Kroll stuttered. “She—she got a drink—from the soft drinks—box—a couple minutes ago. Maybe—”

  Cleve found the soft drinks dispenser blindly. He smelled one bottle and tucked it aside carefully, using a handkerchief, into a lunchbox that was studio property. “Nobody touch that.”

  The floor was rubbery to walk on. “Anybody see anybody else touch that bottle before Diana drank out of it?”

  Way up in the glaring electrical heaven, a guy looked down like a short-circuited god and called, “Hey, Cleve, just before the last scene we had light trouble. Somebody conked a main switch. The lights were doused for about a minute and a half. Plenty time for someone to fix that bottle!”

  “Thanks.” Cleve turned to Jamie Winters, the cameraman. “You got film in your camera? Got a picture of—her—dying?”

  “I guess so. Sure!”

  “How soon can you have it developed?”

  “Two, three hours. Got to call Juke Davis and have him come to the studio, though.”

  “Phone him, then. Take two watchmen with you to guard that film. Beat it!”

  Far away the sirens were singing and Hollywood was going to sleep. Somebody onstage suddenly realized Diana was dead and started sobbing.

  I wish I could do that, thought Cleve. I wish I could cry. What am I supposed to do now, act tough, be a Sherlock? Question everyone, when my heart isn’t working? Cleve heard his voice going on alone.

  “We’ll be working late tonight, everybody. We’ll be working until we get this scene right. And if we don’t get it right, I guess we don’t go home. Before the homicide squad gets here, everyone to their places. We’ll do the scene over. Places, everybody.”

  They did the scene over.

  * * *

  The homicide squad arrived. There was one detective named Foley and another named Sadlowe. One was small, the other big. One talked a lot, and the other listened. Foley did the talking and it gave Cleve a sick headache.

  R. J. Guilding, the director and producer of the film, slumped in his canvas chair, wiping his face and trying to tell Foley that he wanted this whole mess kept out of the papers and quiet.

  Foley told him to shut up. Foley glared at Cleve as if he were also a suspect. “What’ve you found out, son?”

  “There was film in the camera. Film of Diana—Miss Coyle’s death.”

  Foley’s eyebrows went like that. “Well, hell, let’s see it!”

  They walked over into the film laboratory to get the film. Cleve was frankly afraid of the place. Always had been. It was a huge dark mortuary building with dead-end passages and labyrinths of black walls to cut the light. You stumbled through pitch dark, touching the walls, careening, turning, cursing, twisting around cutouts; walked south, east, west, south again and suddenly found yourself in a green-freckled space as big as the universe. Nothing to see but green welts and splashes of light, dim snakes of film climbing, winding over spools from floor to high ceiling and back down. The one brilliant light was a printing light that shot from a projector and printed negative to positive as they slid by in parallel slots. The positive then coiled over and down into a long series of developing baths. The place was a whining morgue. Juke Davis moved around in it with ghoul-like movements.

  “There’s no soundtrack. I’ll develop it and splice it in later,” said Davis. “Here you are, Mr. Foley. Here’s your film.”

  They took the film and retreated back through the labyrinth.

  In the projection room Cleve and the detectives Foley and Sadlowe, with Jamie Winters operating the projector in the booth, watched the death scene printed on the screen for them. Stage twelve had been slammed shut, and other officers were back there, talking, grilling everyone in alphabetical order.

  On the screen Diana laughed. Robert Denim laughed back. It was very silent. They opened mouths but no sounds came out. People danced behind them. Diana and Robert Denim danced now, gracefully, quietly, leisurely. When they stopped dancing they talked seriously with—Tally Durham and Georgie Kroll.

  Foley spoke. “You say that this fellow Kroll loved Diana too?”

  Cleve nodded. “Who didn’t?”

  Foley said, “Yeah. Who didn’t. Well—” He stared with suspicion at the screen. “How about this Tally Durham woman. Was she jealous?”

  Was there any woman in Hollywood who didn’t hate Diana because she was perfect? Cleve spoke of Tally’s love for Georgie Kroll.

  “It never fails,” replied Foley with a shake of his head.

  Cleve said, “Tally may have killed Diana. Who knows. Georgie’d have a motive too. Diana treated him like a rag doll. He wanted her and couldn’t have her. That happened to a lot of men in Diana’s life. If she ever loved anybody, it was Robert Denim, and that didn’t last. Denim is a little too—tough, I guess that’s how you’d put it.”

  Foley snorted. “Good going. We got three suspects in one scene. Any one of them could have dosed that pop bottle with nicotine. The lights were out for a minute and a half. In that time any guy who ever bought Black Leaf Forty nicotine sulfate at the corner garden store could have tossed twenty drops of it in her drink and gone back playing innocent when the lights bloomed again. Nuts.”

  Sadlowe spoke for the first time that evening. “There ought to be some way to splice out the innocents from this film.” A brilliant observation.

  Cleve caught his breath. She was dying.

  She died like she had done everything in her life. You had to admire the way she did it, with the grace, fire, and control of a fine cat-animal. In the middle of the scene she forgot her lines. Her fingers crawled slowly to her throat and she turned. Her face changed. She looked straight out at you from the screen as if she knew this was her biggest and, to a cynic, her best scene.

  Then she fell, like a silken canopy from which the supports had been instantly withdrawn.

  Denim crouched over her, mouthing the word, “Diana!”

  And Tally Durham screamed a silent scream as the film shivered and fluttered into blackness, numbers, amber colors, and then nothing but glaring light.

  Oh, God, press a button somewhere! Run the reel backward and bring her back to life! Press a button as you see in those comic newsreels; in which smashed trains are reintegrated, fallen emperors are enthroned, the sun rises in the west and— Diana Coyle rises from the dead!

  From the booth Jamie Winters’s voice said, “That’s it. That’s all of it. You want to see it again?”

  Foley said, “Yeah. Show it to us half a dozen times.”

  “Excuse me,” gasped Cleve.

  “Where you going?”

  He went out into the rain. It beat cold on him. Behind him, inside, Diana was dying again and again and again, like a trained puppet. Cleve clenched his jaw and looked straight up at the sky and let the night cry on him, all over him, soaking him through and through; in perfect harmony, the night and he and the crying dark.…

  * * *

  The storm lasted until morning both inside and outside the studio. Foley yelled at everybody. Everybody answered back calmly that they weren’t guilty; yes, they had hated Diana, but at the same time loved her, yes, they were jealous of her, but she was a good girl too.

  Foley evolved a colossal idea, invited all suspects to the projection room and scared hell out of everyone, proving nothing, by showing them Diana’s last scene. R. J. Guilding broke down and sobbed, Georgie squeaked, and Tally screamed. Cleve got sick to his stomach, and the night went on and on.

  Georgie said yes, yes, he’d loved Diana; Tally said yes, yes, she’d hated her; Guilding reaffirmed the fact that Diana had stalled production, causing trouble; and Robert Denim admitted to an attempted reconciliation between himself and his former wife. Jamie Winters told how Diana had stayed up late nights, ruining her face for proper photography. And R
. J. Guilding snapped, “Diana told me you were photographing her poorly, on purpose!”

  Jamie Winters was calm. “That’s not true. She was trying to shove the blame for her complexion off on someone else, me.”

  Foley said, “You were in love with her too?”

  Winters replied, “Why do you think I became her photographer?”

  So when dawn came Diana was still as dead as the night before. Big stage doors thundered aside and the suspects wearily shambled out to climb into their cars and start home.

  Cleve watched them through aching eyes. Silently he walked around the studio, checking everything when it didn’t need checking. He smelled the sweet green odor of the cemetery over the wall.

  Funny Hollywood. It builds a studio next door to a graveyard. Right over that wall there. Sometimes it seemed everyone in movietown tried to scale that wall. Some poured themselves over in a whiskey tide, some smoked themselves over; all of them looked forward to an office in Hollywood Cemetery— with no phones. Well, Diana didn’t have to climb that wall.

  Someone had pushed her over.…

  Cleve held on to the steering wheel, tight, hard, wanting to break it, telling the world to get out of the way, dammit! He was beginning to get mad!

  They buried her on a bright California day with a stiff wind blowing and too many red and yellow and blue flowers and the wrong kind of tears.

  That was the first day Cleve ever drank enough to get drunk. He would always remember that day.

  The studio phoned three days later.

  “Say, Morris, what’s eating you? Where you been?”

  “In my apartment,” said Cleve dully.

  He kept the radio off, he didn’t walk the streets like he used to at night, dreaming. He neglected the newspapers; they had big pictures of her in them. The radio talked about her, so he almost wrecked the thing. When the week was over she was safely in the earth, and the newspapers had tapered off the black ink wreaths, were telling her life story on page two the following Wednesday; page four Thursday; page five Friday; page ten Saturday; and by the following Monday they wrote the concluding chapter and slipped it in among the stock-market reports on page twenty-nine.

  You’re slipping, Diana! Slipping! You used to make page one!

  Cleve went back to work.

  By Friday there was nothing left but that new stone in Hollywood Cemetery. Papers rotted in the flooded gutters, washing away the ink of her name; the radio blatted war, and Cleve worked with his eyes looking funny and changed.

  He buzzed doors all day, and people went in and out. He watched Tally dance in every morning, smaller and chipper, and happy now that Diana was gone, holding on to Georgie, who was all hers now, except his mind and soul. He watched Robert Denim walk in, and they never spoke to each other. He waved hello to Jamie Winters and was courteous to R. J. Guilding.

  But he watched them all, like a dialogue director waiting for one muffed line or missed cue.

  And finally the papers announced casually that her death had been attributed to suicide, and it was a closed chapter.

  * * *

  A couple of weeks later Cleve was still sticking to his apartment, reading and thinking, when the phone rang.

  “Cleve? This is Jamie Winters. Look, cop-man, come out of it. You’re wanted at a party, now, tonight. I got some film clips from Gable’s last picture.”

  There was argument. In the end Cleve gave in and went to the party. They sat in Jamie Winters’s parlor facing a small-size screen. Winters showed them scenes from pictures that never reached the theater. Garbo tripping over a light cord and falling on her platform. Spencer Tracy blowing his lines and swearing. William Powell sticking his tongue out at the camera when he forgot his next cue. Cleve laughed for the first time in a million years.

  Jamie Winters had an endless collection of film clips of famous stars blowing up and saying censorable things.

  And when Diana Coyle showed up, it was like a kick in the stomach. Like being shot with two barrels of a shotgun! Cleve jerked and gasped, and shut his eyes, clenching the chair.

  Then, suddenly, he was very cool. He had an idea. Looking at the screen, it came to him, like cold rain on his cheeks. “Jamie!” he said.

  In the sprocketing darkness, Jamie replied, “Yes?”

  “I’ve got to see you in the kitchen, Jamie.”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind why. Let the camera run itself and come on.”

  In the kitchen Cleve held on to Jamie. “It’s about those films you’re showing us. The mistakes. The censored clips. Have you any clips from Diana’s last picture? Spoiled scenes, blow-ups, I mean?”

  “Yeah. At the studio. I collect them. It’s a hobby. That stuff usually goes in the trash can. I keep them for laughs.”

  Cleve sucked in his breath. “Can you get that film for me; all of it; bring it here tomorrow night and go over it with me?”

  “Sure, if you want me to. I don’t see—”

  “Never mind, Jamie. Just do like I say, huh? Bring me all the cutouts, the scenes that were bad. I want to see who spoiled the scenes, who caused the most trouble, and why! Will you do it, Jamie?”

  “Sure. Sure I will, Cleve. Take it easy. Here, sit down. Have a drink.”

  Cleve didn’t eat much the next day. The hours went too slowly. At night he ate a little supper and swallowed four aspirins. Then he drove in a mechanical nightmare to Jamie Winters’s house.

  Jamie was waiting with drinks and film in the camera.

  “Thanks, Jamie.” Cleve sat down and drank nervously. “All right. Shall we see them?”

  “Action!” said Jamie.

  Light on the screen. “Take one, scene seven. The Gilded Virgin: Diana Coyle, Robert Denim.”

  Clack!

  The scene faded in. There was a terrace by an ocean scene in moonlight. Diana was talking.

  “It’s a lovely night. So lovely I can’t believe in it.”

  Robert Denim, holding her hands in his, looked at her and said, “I think I can make you believe in it. I’ll—damn it!”

  “Cut!” cried Guilding’s voice offscreen.

  The film ran on. Denim’s face was ugly, getting dark and lined.

  “There you go, hogging the camera again!”

  “Me?” Diana wasn’t beautiful anymore. Not this way. She shook the gilt off her wings in an angry powder. “Me, you two-bit thespian, you loud-mouthed, dirty—”

  Flick. Dark. End of film.

  Cleve sat there, staring. After a while he said, “They didn’t get along, did they?” And then, to himself, almost, “I’m glad.”

  “Here’s another one,” said Winters. The camera ticked rapidly. Another scene. A party scene. Laughter and music; and cutting across it, dark, snapping, bitter and accusative:

  “—damn you!”

  “—if you fed me the wrong cue on purpose! Of all the cheap, common little—”

  Diana and Robert Denim, at it again!

  Another scene, and another, and another. Six, seven, eight! Here was one of Denim saying, “Honest to God, someone ought to shut you up for good, lady!”

  “Who?” cried Diana, eyes flashing like little green stones. “You? You snivel-nosed ham!”

  And Denim, glaring back, saying quietly, “Yes. Maybe me. Why not? It’s an idea.”

  There were some bristling hot scenes with Tally Durham too. And one in which Diana browbeat little Georgie Kroll until he was nervous and sweating out an apology. All on film; all good evidence. But the ratio was seven of Denim’s blow-ups to one of Tally’s or Georgie’s. On and on and on and on!

  “Stop it, stop it!” Cleve got up from his chair. His figure cut the light, threw a shadow on the screen, swaying.

  “Thanks for the trouble, Jamie. I’m tired too. Can—can I have these film clips of Denim?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m going downtown to police headquarters tonight and turn in Robert Denim for the murder of Diana Coyle. Thanks again, Jamie. You been a great he
lp. Night.”

  Five, ten, fifteen, twenty hours. Count ’em by twos, by fours, by sixes. Rush the hours by. Argue with the cops and go home and flop in bed.

  Toddle off to your gas chamber, Robert Denim: that’s a good little killer!

  And then in the middle of deep slumber, your phone rang.

  “Hullo.”

  And a voice said over the phone in the night, “Cleve?”

  “Yeah?”

  And the voice said, “This is Juke Davis at the film laboratory. Come quick, Cleve. I been hurt, I been hurt, oh, I been hurt.…” A body fell at the other end of the line.

  Silence.

  * * *

  He found Juke lying in a chemical bath. Red chemical from his own body where a knife had dug out his dreams and his living and his talking forever and spread it around in a scarlet lake.

  A phone receiver hung dangling on one greenish wall. It was dark in the laboratory. Someone had shuffled in through the dim tunnels, come out of the dark, and now, standing there, Cleve heard nothing but the film moving forever on its trellises, like some vine going up through the midnight room trying to find the sun. Numbly, Cleve knelt beside Juke. The man lay half propped against the film machinery where the printing light shot out and imprinted negative to positive. He had crawled there, across the room.

  In one clenched fist, Cleve found a frame of film; the faces of Tally, Georgie, Diana, and Robert Denim on it. Juke had found out something, something about this film, something about a killer; and his reward had come swiftly to him through the studio dark.

  Cleve used the phone.

  “This is Cleve Morris. Is Robert Denim still being held at Central Jail?”

  “He’s in his cell, and he won’t talk. I tell you, Morris, you gave us a bum steer with them film clips.…”

  “Thanks.” Cleve hung up. He looked at Juke lying there by the machinery. “Well, who was it. Juke? It wasn’t Denim. That leaves Georgie and Tally? Well?”

  Juke said nothing and the machinery sang a low sad song.

  One year went by. Another year followed. And then a third.

  Robert Denim contracted out to another studio. Tally married Georgie, Guilding died at a New Year’s party of over-drinking and a bad heart, time went on, everybody forgot. Well, almost everybody.…