The Body rolled on past, eyes straight ahead. It was twilight and the car's headlights beamed white, unforgiving light on the tall, skinny palms and fragile crepe myrtles. They looked washed out, not green enough to be real. Nearby the sea hissed along the private stretches of beach adjoining the Malibu enclaves.
The Body turned around and drove past Karl's house again, noticing the lights on inside. Parking at a distance, The Body jogged back to the driveway and crept to the far side of the Chevrolet Caprice. Hunkered down. Looked beneath the car to the exhaust system, hunting for the simple bomb device put there the day before.
As suspected, it was gone.
Marilyn had called him. She'd told him. Before The Body had gotten to her and despite the warning phone call, she had told him about the script and the very next scene.
Scrabbling back away from the car and moving stealthily down the drive, The Body fumed. If Marilyn weren't already dead, she'd die in a different fashion. Not from a knife through the heart this time. She'd be alive while having her limbs taken off, one by one. She'd know what was being done to her beautiful young body before she expired. She'd witness her own desecration.
On the way home, The Body stopped at a phone booth set away from a gas station and dialed Karl's number.
~ * ~
Karl jerked up the phone on the second ring before the answering machine could engage. "Yeah?" He was dripping water, just out of the shower and not yet dried off. The towel hung from his free hand and he saw that his wet footprints looked dark gray against the carpet leading from the bath.
"I'm going to kill you," a voice said.
Karl pressed the receiver hard against his ear. "Who is this? You're not going to kill anybody. You're a coward, a slithering, snake-bellied coward and I'm not afraid of you."
"The pieces of that body they found?"
The voice was muffled and of indeterminable gender. Karl wouldn't have made out the words had he not been concentrating and listening carefully. Now he bit down on his lip at the mention of the crime that was all over the news. He knew, knew suddenly, what the caller was going to say and it made his legs rubbery so that he had to collapse onto the side of the bed. He pressed the receiver so hard to his head that it hurt.
"What are you talking about?" he whispered.
"You know what I'm talking about. The arms and legs, the torso. They don't know who it is. But we know, don't we? It was that lying, bigmouth bitch Marilyn. She told you about the bomb. You had it removed."
There was a pause and Karl could hear the caller breathing.
"You can't stop me now. You're a dead man."
Before Karl could say anything, the call was disconnected. He sat naked, bewildered and grieving, droplets of water from his hair sliding down his forehead and the back of his neck, chilling him.
Marilyn had been killed because of him, because she'd tried to save him. Oh God in heaven. Oh dear God. Because of him. The foul evil that had been aimed at him had found another target for just a little while and Marilyn had been sacrificed in the furnace of that hatred.
He had to call the police. He had to tell them he knew who those scattered limbs belonged to. He had to let them know there was a killer on the loose. An insane murderer.
'The phone rang again and Karl jerked up the receiver.
"I forgot to tell you something."
“You . . . !”
"You call the cops? That's what you were just thinking, isn't it? You call the cops, though, and I make you a promise. Another old girlfriend loses her head over you."
'The cackling laughter rung in Karl's ears long after the caller had hung up and the dial tone buzzed monotonously. Karl sat with the receiver lying in his lap and he could still hear the sexless, maniacal laughter. It was so macabre it could have been coming from an open, windswept grave on a black November night.
39
"O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad."
William Shakespeare, King Lear
Cambridge Hill was a slob. Lived in his own shit. Disgusting. With his money he could have hired two-dozen domestics, but it looked like he only had someone come in occasionally. That occasion had not been recent.
The Body winced with distaste while maneuvering the piled and scabbed dishes in the kitchen, noted the overflowing ashtrays and scattered newspapers in the living room that was the size of a ballpark, swore at the stacks of unopened bills and invitations and junk mail piled all over the small eighteenth-century teakwood desk in what appeared to be Cam's ruined bedroom. Covers hung from the mattress to the floor. Discarded clothes were everywhere, covering every surface of furniture, dirty damp towels stood wadded and mountainous just outside the bathroom door.
Where would the script be? Under this stack of mail? No green cover in sight. Where—hell—where would he have put any extra copies?
He might have them in his office at the studio.
Getting in there would take so much effort. Might not be able to do it. Guarded too well, too much security.
Goddamn it, the script had to be here somewhere.
The Body toppled the stacks of mail. Envelopes fluttered to the floor and behind the desk. In the four drawers there was more mail, some of it opened, some not. Pencils, pens, paper clips, rubber bands, stamps.
No script.
The Body moved from the bedroom after peeking into the bathroom. The terrible mess in there made The Body's nose wrinkle. It smelled like mildew overlaid with men's cologne. Stunk worse than an old whorehouse. He must never wash his socks. There was a mountain of them all black, as tall as the damp towels. He probably bought new socks every week. Perhaps every couple of months he threw out the old stinking ones.
What a fucking pig.
It was in the library-study that the script was unearthed. This was no gentleman's library, no alphabetically arranged system of books in beautifully wrought wood shelves. Much handled and tattered paperbacks were squashed between hardbacks, magazines sprawled from shelf edges and over the floor, textbooks with broken spines were tilted precariously against vases full of dead flower arrangements and there were scripts literally everywhere. Stacked on the seats of chairs, spread three deep over a reading table in the center of the room, lying on the shelves, fallen open on top of magazines.
How did Cam ever find any damn thing in this chaos? He lived like a mad mystic. The Body imagined him going from one interest to another in the room, moving swiftly between an open encyclopedia to a magazine on a shelf to some scene in one of the myriad bent and littered scripts that sparkled with Post-it notes in three violently fluorescent colors.
Pure and Uncut had been bound in metallic green covers. The Body searched for twenty minutes amid the paper rubble before finding a copy beneath a weighty tome on criminal behavior.
Snatching it up, The Body grinned and thought if anyone were watching, he would think that grin malign. Got it. Got the plan and no one could take it away. No one would even know. Cam obviously hadn't looked at this particular copy of the script for ages. He had his own personal copies at the office, no doubt. This might have been an early working copy.
Now to get out of this place before Cam showed up. Get out where there was fresh air to clean away the stink of a life that obviously thrived in this massive disorder.
With the bound script, The Body finally possessed an outline of every step that needed taking to rob Karl of his precious life. No longer would The Body have to wait for the scene handed out daily. Now all the details for destruction were collected in one spot, in one metallic green folder. The Body could choose to skip scenes. Could choose to hurry Karl LaRosa to his demise, if that was called for.
The prospect was thrilling enough to make the exit from Cam's house as happy as a lighthearted dance through the air.
It was beautiful when a plan came together like a dream.
40
"A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it."
Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge
Now tired and drained after the excitement of finding the script, The Body's mood spiraled into depression. While looking through the script in the nursery, bad memories crept into the forefront of the mind and demanded attention. The Body tried not to give in, but could think of nothing to replace or dispel the gloom. Gloom was not a state of mind, but a presence with shape and form. It seemed to come from the corners of the room, sliding from the shadows, insinuating itself through the very pores of the human body slumped in the chair at the child's desk.
Too hard to fight a phantom. Then let it come. Let the past swamp the present and take it away. When you couldn't fight, there was no alternative but to give in.
The Body glanced around the room from lowered lids, sneaking quick looks. Staring straight on might call attention to the self. Hallucinations always lay in wait, waking dreams that were more real than life. Most often they came when cocooned in the leather chair in the deprivation room, but sometimes the hallucinations pounced during normal time, time that The Body used to live life the way other people lived it.
From the wall at the head of the crib, the ghost of a child formed, rising from within the flat, white plaster. It was Michelle.
The Body whispered her name.
"Michelle. My belle."
The words from the old Beatles' song.
She floated from above the crib, settling down just on the floor in front of it. "This room is pretty," she said in her little girl's piping voice. "Can I stay here?"
She could not stay. If she stayed, at least for very long, The Body would die.
"You don't belong here. This isn't our old home. Go away, Michelle. Go away."
"But it's pretty here," she repeated. "I don't like it where I am. It's cold."
She was wet, her hair dark strings hanging about her face. She was bloated. She carried the sharp scent of chlorine and underneath that odor a sweetish, cloying smell of decay. She was dead. For many years she had been dead. Poor little sister.
Of course she was cold. Dead and alone, drowned on that sunny Hollywood day.
"I can't help you. Please go away."
Tears fell down The Body's face onto the open script. This is why there was no name. When alone and in the mind, the identity was The Body. Not twin or sibling, simply nameless. Just one aching shell of a body that had lost its soul the day Michelle died. Heartbreak all over again. It did not matter thirty-two years had passed. The pain was as great today as it was when it happened. A three-year-old never forgot, never let go. The wound remained raw and open, no way to heal.
"I'll just sit here," Michelle said, squatting and then sitting down on the floor. "I won't bother you." She rested her head on her little fists, staring at The Body.
On the day of her death thirty-two years ago, she had been arguing with her twin over possession of a big red plastic ball. She wanted to throw it in the pool. Both of them had been strongly admonished never to go near the pool without adult supervision. They did not know how to swim. They hardly ever had mommy or daddy around to teach them how. Mommy and daddy were movie stars. The parents were famous and busy, meaning the twins' care fell on the shoulders of live-in help. Nannies and housekeepers. No one wanted to play in the pool with the children, no one had time, "Too much to do, children, too much to do."
Time, it seemed, was too precious and too scarce for any of it to be shared with toddlers.
"I told you to put the ball back," The Body said now, weeping openly at the memory of that terrible day. "If you'd only let me have it."
"I just wanted to see it float in the pool," Michelle said. "Pretty ball. Pretty ball on top of the blue water."
She had the big ball in her chubby baby arms. She couldn't see where she was going or what was before her, how close she might be to the pool edge. Her twin came from the side and tugged to free the ball. "You can't go near the swimming pool. We'll get in trouble. Gimme it."
Michelle squealed and jerked away, refusing. She had always been the stubborn one. She stumbled, turned around trying to get her balance and still keep possession of the red ball. Her twin saw her falling. Reached out one hand to grab her, but it was too late. Her arms flew out to each side and the ball lifted into the air like a balloon.
Michelle hit the water first, falling backward, going under and sinking to the bottom. The ball bounced almost exactly on the spot where she hit. Her twin went to the pool's edge.
There was a screaming that went on and on. MOM . . . MOM . . . MOMMOMMOM!
Michelle was in the deep end, down under, her long hair swirling in the blue water like seaweed. She stared up through the water, eyes bulbous in shock, her mouth open in her own terrified scream. Her little arms made slow motion circles in the water as she kicked to reach the surface and air.
Her twin raised eyes to heaven, screaming, screaming, screaming for help.
Help came. But only after Michelle had swallowed water and lost air in her lungs. She bobbed face down in the still waters of the blue pool by the time anyone showed at its side. Not far away the big red ball rolled lazily over the wind-ruffled wavelets.
And still her twin screamed, unable to stop.
A gardener tried to revive her. Then the paramedics arrived and they tried, laboring in the heat, bent over her and sweating. Her twin stood by, going unnoticed, crying and whispering, "Save her, save her, save her." It was useless. Little Michelle was gone.
"Please go away," The Body cried. "Go away, go away, go away. I can't save you." It seemed no one could.
Michelle took pity after watching her twin cry and beg. She stood and floated toward the ceiling. She touched the top bar of the empty crib on her way. She moved toward the blank white wall, turned and waved, and disappeared through it into the beyond.
The Body had let the script fall to the floor. Had slipped from the chair to kneel and to keen in misery. Gloom had won. It had found its victim.
Michelle's twin called for help, screaming.
In the midst of the wail of despair, The Body shouted a name, cursing it.
Catherine shouldn't have killed the babies. Unlike the accident that took Michelle, the little twins in Catherine's body made no mistakes, presented no stubbornness that shoved them toward the brink of death. They were blameless. Murdered. For no reason. If Karl died because of those deaths so that Catherine would be convicted, then that is what it would take to clear the slate. She must pay for her terrible sin. It was not true the pregnancy was her concern only. It was not true that a fetus was a blob of cell structures and blood. Even in the first weeks a fetus already had a head, arms, legs, a body. A fetus was a human being dependent on its host for protection, for life.
How could she have had them aborted, those tiny twins? How could she have killed them in such a wanton, thoughtless way?
41
"Best friend, my well-spring in the wilderness!"
George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy
Karl LaRosa was left alone for a week. He received no phone calls or notes from his tormentor, suffered no attempts on his life. There were no more bomb devices attached to the underside of the rental car.
It took that much time for The Body to search through the script and decide what scene to implement. During those days' filming on the set and location there was quite a hullabaloo about the missing actress, Marilyn Lori-Street. A police detective from missing persons was contacted by her friends. A few people from the film, including Cambridge Hill, were questioned about the last time she was seen. The detective seemed to be a tired, bored man going through the motions. He took a few notes, asked some desultory questions, and left.
Cam rewrote the scenes that included her, effectively writing her out of the movie by having Olivia's stalker character turn on her best friend and murder her. They used a stand-in actress wearing a wig. They never showed her face.
People on the film still discussed Marilyn and worried over her, but, as a topic of conversation, speculation
on her whereabouts was beginning to lag. They were all too busy to give it the attention perhaps it deserved. Films couldn't just halt because one of the actors disappeared. It wasn't as if it hadn't happened before. The schedule went ahead at an inflexible pace.
After the week of planning, which gave Karl time enough to get back his Jaguar from the body shop, everything was set into motion again. After a lull in the eye of the hurricane the storm is greatest, The Body recalled. Karl might die from this attempt on his life. Once he was dead, the authorities would come looking for his killer.
And they would find Catherine Rivers. All the clues, for any halfway decent investigator, pointed to her involvement. She'd be arrested. She would pay for all her crimes. They might even suspect her of Marilyn's murder.
At this point in the script the fictional stalker had lost all patience. There was no longer any pretense that the man would find a way to love the rejected woman again. She meant to kill him, to even things.
Just as The Body meant to do.
If it didn't work, there were one or two more scenes upcoming that could be tried. Soon now, Karl LaRosa would be on the way to the cemetery. He might not know it, but he already had one foot in the grave and the other planted on flimsy ground.
~ * ~
Karl was thrilled to have his Jag back from the shop. It looked beautiful again. The detailed workmanship of the repair made the car look new once more. They had had to replace parts and repaint the car. The paint shone like liquid silver.
"Great work," Jimmy Watz said, sliding into the passenger seat. He had had a little time off and accompanied Karl to pick up the car. "These guys are worth the money."
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