by Steve Fisher
I remembered all of the things Ed Cornell had said. Harry Williams couldn’t be guilty. Jealousy was the only strong motive. Jealousy. Rank, bitter hatred. The blind obsession of a man about to die. With each day his hatred for me had grown. It was very clear now. The whole picture was there. The morning he had stood on the corner at dawn and watched as I brought Jill home. His scorn was acid that day. He must have imagined I’d violated Vicky’s tomb!
What profane, what lewd, sick thoughts must have brewed in his mind, stirred agony in his withered soul, as he sat here day after day in his self-made aura of Vicky Lynn! His subconscious flaying and screaming against the impotence which twisted him. I was an object, a figure, a symbol, even an effigy at which to hurl the bitter gall from the exploded bladder of his ego!
For weeks he alone had been fully aware of the fact that Harry Williams was the murderer!
It didn’t matter! He arrested me for murder while Williams’ confession still rang in his ears! He knew what he was doing. It was not the law I was fleeing—but him. The relentless pursuer! He would haunt me, hound me, persecute me until I hung from the end of a rope. The knowledge of my innocence only fed flame to his fury. He meant to destroy me. He had trumped up a case—manufactured evidence.
And all the time he knew that Harry Williams was guilty. It was only in the very beginning that he must have honestly believed I was the killer. He was too good a detective to hold that opinion long. He alone had uncovered the genuine solution—a solution to which he deliberately closed his eyes.
I had heard Vicky say months ago that Harry Williams had complained about his job and said he could always get employment in Doris, California—that he had a second cousin up there. Williams had told this to no one but Vicky. She was dead. He was not overly bright but he realized that the police would find his home address without difficulty and would check with every known friend he’d ever had. But the place in Doris was an ace up his sleeve; and this only because his cousin had recently dropped him a card to the effect that fruit pickers were needed up there. Probably a hundred such cards were sent out to every address the cousin (now in the army) could find. When the fruit is ripe, or a week or so earlier, certain ranchers do this. But for Harry Williams it was obscurity. His cousin was such a distant relative that it wasn’t likely he’d be traced to him. He went to Doris, was welcomed by a shrewd, mean and lonely old woman, who saw in him a likeness to her son who, on a sudden, impulsive decision, had enlisted in the army. She had wrung a confession from Harry and had connived to keep him hidden. Doris was a very small town, but until the clamor died down Harry never even left the ranch. It was only after Ed Cornell discovered him, seemingly cleared him, that he had started visiting the Doris pool room. There, with his new name, weeks after most of the active hunt for him had died down, no one paid any attention to him. No other law officer (if indeed, in a place so small he even passed one by) recognized him as Harry Williams.
Ed Cornell with only one possible clue: the post card from Harry’s cousin which might have been left in his room the night he fled, had journeyed alone to Doris, discovered Harry without difficulty, and heard his confession. And for what must have been the first time in Cornell’s life—turned his back on a murderer.
Cornell warned Williams to keep his mouth shut, and gambled on the chance that no one else would ever find Williams. At least, until after I’d been executed. If he was discovered then—by accident some day—it was of no importance. Ed Cornell knew that his own days were numbered and he cared nothing for the fact that it would be revealed he had deliberately sent an innocent man to the gallows. It was even likely that by the time all this happened Cornell himself, as sick as he was, would have died. But he wanted first the satisfaction of seeing me executed. His was the most fantastic game in the world: he wanted to commit a legal murder! He wanted the state to be his assassins!
Even now, with my appearance in this room, he labored under the impression that his plans were moving with flawless precision. He imagined that he had cornered me— that! was in a trap from which there was no possible escape. It would give him a certain, exquisite pleasure to see me squirm. Cat and mouse. It had never occurred to him that I could track down Harry Williams; that through him I could acquit myself. And Harry Williams? He was only the murderer. It was Ed Cornell who was the villain of this piece!
I should have known. I should have guessed when he pressed the charge he did against Jill. When out of his own pocket he posted the reward money… . “I’ll fry you in oil… . You’ll never escape!”
He laid the card down now. He sat very still. I heard the sound of the dock; and I could hear the downtown traffic. The air of the room was foul. All of the windows were shut.
He spoke, as though he were talking to the cards.
“Come to give yourself up? I knew you’d be back! I suppose you want to make a deal—you’ll surrender if I let the girl go.” He looked at me coldly. “I suppose you came here to be noble. Well, it’s no good!”
I did not move.
“You’ll excuse me if! don’t get up,” he said. “The doctor’s got me in bed. They want me to go to a sanitarium, see? But you wouldn’t be interested, would you?”
He was catching for his breath. He hated me so thoroughly he could no longer cover it up.
“Well, what the hell do you want?”
“I was talking to Harry Williams,” I said.
His face was expressionless. But his eyes went chill. He looked down at the cards.
“I heard the confession,” I said, “and you heard it—weeks ago, and yet—” I could feel Vicky’s eyes staring down. “You were still determined to send me to the gas chamber, and you—”
I stopped. The room was silent. He began mixing the cards. Suddenly he leapt from the bed and toward a table. I grabbed him and slammed him back across the bed. The moment he fell he was seized with a fit of coughing. He lay there, that cough racking his throat, retching through his decayed lungs. His police gun was on the table. He hadn’t reached it. I didn’t go near it.
At last he stopped coughing. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. He spoke.
“Well?”
“Nothing,” I said. “There’s no words. It’s over. I’m. released. The game between us is finished.”
He just watched me. I turned. One by one I ripped the pictures of Vicky from off the wall. I tore them into bits. I broke the perfume bottles in the waste basket. Then I leaned back against the dresser. I was breathing hard.
“This is over, too, Cornell. You’re—alone now.”
His eyes dropped. He looked at his hands. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his pajamas hanging loose on his thin body.
“Call the D. A.,” he said. “Tell him to come over here.”
How do you say the end? What are the words you use? For there is no end, really. There are simply episodes, and all of the episodes put together make one lifetime. It’s rather wonderful! The earth is sweet and green after the rain, and that is the way with laughter after tears. I remember I could not end the first play I wrote because I felt the drama was but a partide of the lives of the people in it, and they should go on. I cannot end this.
Ed Cornell told the whole story to the District Attorney and Jill was released. Ed Cornell did not elaborate.
He offered no excuse for himself, and I made no charge against him. Two weeks ago he died of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Arizona. In his effects they found a bent and worn picture of Vicky Lynn. I don’t know how he got it. Harry Williams was arrested in Doris, California, and sentenced to life in San Quentin.
So the end did not come violently. It was all gradual. The Williams trial. The death of Cornell. And that day in Santa Barbara when Jill and I were married in an old Spanish mission. There are so many things! The opening of my first picture, Winter in Paris, and the nice house beside the sea where Jill and I live. All of these things have become reality, but if this were a screen play I think I’d go back—back to that day Corn
ell confessed—and write the Fade Out with the scene of Jill’s release from jail.
It was late afternoon, and the sun shone dimly on the gray stone steps. Pigeons strutted up and down, and people were coming and going. Jill came out, wearing a tan skirt that was tight on her hips, and the sandals with red cork heels. She came down the steps, and she saw me.
“Why, darling,” she said, “you’ve shaved!”
I was holding her in my arms then and it was very hard for me to speak. I just held her close, and finally I said:
“Hello, mommy!”
About the Author
STEVE FISHER wrote for Pocket Detective, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and The Saint. He also wrote the Screenplays for Lady in the Lake and I, Mobster. I Wake Up Screaming was filmed in 1941 and starred Victor Mature and Betty Grable. Steve Fisher died in 1980.