The Pictures

by Guy Bolton

  He pushed himself harder, desperate to lose his pursuer, grinding his way through the loose gravel between the lines as fast as he could, the rims of his eyes burning with steam and coal dust. He was a hundred feet from the underpass now. He checked the chamber of Kinney’s pistol. There was no other option left open. To escape, he’d have to kill Craine.

  Behind him, Craine kept step, twice almost tripping on the steel rails as he narrowed the distance between them. When the gap was no more than fifty feet, Craine fired, aiming for Peterson’s legs.

  The bullets whistled through the air but missed their mark. In response, Peterson swung round and fired three loose rounds. Craine saw the bullets spark against the metal lines but never lost focus, increasing his pace, carrying on through the mist.

  Then, ahead of them, he heard the soft chugging of a steam engine. He heard a rumble in the distance and saw the gauzy outline of a freight train. The tracks began to vibrate, the shingles dancing on the spot as a steam engine carrying eight boxcars made toward them, whistling its approach.

  Peterson too heard the train approaching up ahead. He continued across the gravel, turning every few paces to fire. He knew Craine was behind him, the distance between them quickly decreasing. Craine was gaining on him every second. If he didn’t get across the railroad in time, the train would cut across the path in front and he’d never make it. He needed to get out of the line of fire.

  Craine hurried after Peterson, his jaw clamped tight. “Stop,” he shouted, his voice drowned out by the train’s deafening whistle. “You won’t make it.”

  Running full speed, Peterson hurled himself across the tracks. Craine raised his gun to fire. A deafening noise took his breath away as the freight train hurtled down the tracks between them.

  Craine waited intently as the freight boxcars careered toward Union Station. When the final car had passed, Peterson was nowhere to be seen; he had disappeared into the clouds.

  Breathless from running, Craine continued slowly toward the underpass and paused. He heard the rumblings of another train up ahead. He strained his eyes through the fog but could see nothing except the signal lights flashing intermittently from green to red.

  Through the heavy clouds of steam, Peterson saw Craine stepping forward toward the underpass. He’d waited in the shadows of the bridge, determined to do away with Craine while he could. When the train was less than a hundred feet away, he stepped out to face his pursuer. Craine’s eyes were angled away, staring at the approaching train. He was an open target. Peterson took a deep breath and lifted his pistol.

  Craine stopped dead as the oncoming train bore down on where he stood, the headlamps cutting through the darkness. Then, at his periphery, he saw a silhouetted figure with his arms raised.

  Craine’s body reacted on instinct. He dropped to the floor, twisting himself round to face Peterson as a shot rang out and thundered over his head. He heard the click of an empty magazine; there was the slightest pause as they locked eyes, then Craine sighted down the barrel and squeezed the trigger.

  The first two bullets hit Peterson square in the chest, the third in the bridge of his nose. Peterson’s pistol clattered to the ground and he pirouetted sideways onto the gravel as the train surged past them.

  Craine emptied his clip, reached inside his pocket for another, twisted it sideways, reloaded, cocked it. It all seemed to take an age, and when he was finished the silence caught him off guard.

  The moonlight made patches of light on the gravel and he cautiously approached Peterson, his Browning aimed toward him. He wasn’t moving but Craine could hear a hissing sound in his chest. When he got close enough he could see Peterson staring at him.

  Craine’s voice was faint and harried, little more than a whisper. “Why?” he asked Peterson. His eyes searched for something in Peterson’s but Peterson wouldn’t yield. His pupils were glassy now, his life unravelling. “Why, Peterson?”

  But he would never have his answer. Peterson gave a final, wintry gasp and then he was gone.

  Chapter 44

  It was after two o’clock when Craine entered the doors to the hospital. He looked like a man in trauma, his stride almost a stagger, his voice when he spoke unrecognizable from the softly spoken law officer that had joined the department ten years ago.

  Roger Simms met him in the foyer. He didn’t raise an eyebrow at the sight of him, his greeting little more than a nod. He was holding his hat in both hands and his face was weighed down with the burden of bad news.

  “Peterson’s dead,” Craine grunted before Simms could say anything. “It’s done. All of it. Over.” The police must have arrived at Union Station shortly after Craine did because when he’d returned to the train platform there were almost a dozen officers shielding the ambulance crew as they carried Kinney’s body away on a gurney. Doctors from the M.E.’s office pronounced both Kinney and Peterson dead at the scene and a mortuary truck took them away not long after. People gathered to watch as people so often did but it was late by then and the station was almost empty. He’d asked the police about Carell and they told him what had happened.

  Simms nodded and looked at him with something that might be pity, but could be something else entirely. Gratitude, maybe, for a reason he would only later begin to understand.

  “We need to talk,” Simms whispered as he guided Craine through the waiting room toward a corridor of private consulting rooms.

  The hospital was busier than it had been earlier on in the night. All around were white hats with gold trim, a few dozen uniformed officers and members of his own unit talking quietly with men in long coats he assumed were from the Federal Bureau. He recognized Redhill giving orders to two plainclothesmen before moving on to talk to ranking officers from the police department. He saw him show them his badge. He wondered where Davidson was. But there were also other men here, photographers whispering with their heads close together. There were press everywhere, more than there should be.

  Simms stopped outside a doorway with CONSULTATION ROOM painted on the wood. Craine knew this room. It was the room where doctors told family and friends that their loved one had died.

  When they were alone, Simms said, “Craine, I have to tell you something.”

  Craine wiped a hand across his face, pulling his mussed and sooty hair back across his forehead. “What is it? The uniforms told me about Carell—”

  “This isn’t about Carell—”

  “Then what—”

  “Craine, listen to me,” he said, his voice clear and lucid, as if he’d rehearsed what he was about to say a hundred times. “There’s been a terrible accident.”

  It took a few seconds for Craine’s body to register what Simms had said, and then all too quickly the blood in his face and limbs receded like someone had pulled the plug and his insides were draining away. But if there was a moment of panic, he didn’t feel it. He couldn’t bear to think those thoughts. Too much had happened for anyone else to die. It couldn’t be possible. Please let it not be Michael. Please let my son be alive.

  Simms was sensitive to what he was about to say, speaking on tiptoes now. “It’s Gale, Craine,” he said slowly. “I’m so sorry. She left the house and got in her car. They tried to stop her but by the time they realized it was too late. She had an accident not far from her house, came right off the road—” And although he continued speaking, Craine heard nothing more. Simms said something about alcohol and pills in the house, about them pulling her from the wreckage, a word or two about doctors doing the best they could and it not being his fault. And when he could hear again Simms was saying over and over, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Jonathan.”

  There were several questions he wanted to ask but his mouth was dry and his face was tingling. A rush of images and emotions stopped him from forming coherent thoughts. Instead all he could manage was a tight and raspy, “Where is she?”

  “It’s too late, Craine.”

  “Where is she?” he said again, his jaw clenched so hard his w
hole head was shaking.

  “There’s nothing—”

  “Where?” He wasn’t crying but he wished he was. Let this feeling out of me.

  “Down the hall, on the corner. I identified her myself.”

  Simms led him through the intensive care unit. Two nurses made notes on a clipboard outside a large green door. Simms looked at him and he knew this was it. He paused as Simms spoke to a man in a long white coat. Quiet words were issued and then Craine was allowed to enter.

  When Simms had told him, a part of Craine hadn’t quite believed him. He had a strange sense that it hadn’t happened. That this was all a hoax, and that any minute Gale would come walking in with O’Neill right behind her. But all that changed when he stepped through the door.

  She was lying on a silver bed in a private room. A white blanket traveled from her feet to the top of her head. He caught sight of her hair and had to stop himself from gagging.

  Simms moved toward the door. “I’ve heard the rumors,” he said quietly. “I realize you two . . . were familiar. I’m not sure if it’s public knowledge. We’ll protect you. The press won’t know about it.”

  Craine’s breaths were fast and shallow. “Why was no one there? Why did no one stop her?”

  “They tried to, Jonathan. There was nothing anyone could do.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “She . . . apparently she wanted to see you. She was driving to see you but she came off a sharp turn. Another driver called it in. Paramedics say she was dead by the time they got there. That’s all I know.”

  A part of him wondered whether she was run off the road, if Carell or Peterson had made one desperate attempt to have her killed, but deep down he knew that wasn’t true.

  His chest was filling and deflating. His eyes stung as he tried to hold himself together. “Was it quick?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to know in these situations. She’d taken a lot of pills. My guess is she barely knew what was happening. I’m sorry.”

  When Simms took a step back, Craine took a moment to compose himself. Then, slowly, he pinched the sheet and pulled it away from her face.

  She was pale, almost luminous. They were always so white when the heart stopped beating. And so still. In the short time he’d known her, she’d never stopped moving.

  There were bruises round her neck and face where she’d hit the steering wheel. He wondered what he was doing when Gale’s heart stopped beating. Would he have been at the train station? Perhaps it was the exact same moment he’d killed Kinney, or Peterson. An eye for an eye.

  Familiar questions ran through his head. Was she drunk? Where was she when she came off the road? How long did it take for the police to find her? Did she die hating him? What were her last words? He tried to recall what she’d said to him. Yes, he remembered. “You’ll carry this with you forever,” she’d said.

  It was true, of course. However he spent the remaining years of his life, there would never be a moment, happy or sad, where he didn’t remind himself that it could all have been different. There is a story, a different story, Craine thought, and the ending isn’t this one. I burned the pictures and I told Gale it didn’t matter, I loved her and wanted us to spend our lives together. He would have realized that she was human, as fallible as he, and that any mistakes that were made weren’t even hers. They might have even become closer, left the city and made a new life somewhere new. They could have taken Michael with them. They could have been a family.

  But this could never happen now. The decision had been made; the chain of consequences was already in motion. He’d kept the photographs and now Gale was dead.

  He’d been so upset with Gale a few hours before, but now any anger he felt was gone. Only regret stood in its place. He had lost two loves in his life and he carried the guilt for both of them. I can’t let myself do this again. I cannot lose what little I have left. I cannot lose Michael.

  He might have been there a few seconds or several minutes, he wasn’t sure. But when Simms said his name and asked if he needed anything, Craine pulled the sheet over her head and turned back toward the door.

  Simms looked at him reassuringly. “People are going to ask about what happened tonight. We’ll make sure Mayer knows. She’ll be protected too, you know that.”

  “And O’Neill?”

  “We got them. We got the men that did this.”

  Without betraying a hint of emotion, Craine said, “I want people to know that O’Neill figured this all out. He solved this case alone. I don’t want him to die for nothing.”

  Simms nodded. “He won’t, Craine. He hasn’t.”

  He left Simms standing in the corridor, walking back toward the lobby where he found himself at the back of a press mob gathered around a long staircase. A doctor in a long surgical gown walked down toward them and explained matter-of-factly that Gale Goodwin had suffered from internal bleeding and blunt brain trauma resulting from a single-car collision. Her car was found off the road less than a mile from her house and she was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident ten minutes after midnight.

  The room lit up with the flare and pop of flashbulbs.

  “Can you tell us where she was going . . .?”

  “Was Gale Goodwin under the influence of drugs or alcohol . . .?”

  “Are the police positive it wasn’t murder . . .?”

  “Will Louis Mayer be making a statement . . .?”

  Before the tears could come, Craine broke into a run, pushing his way past the mass of brown hats and probing cameras. He could still smell the magnesium in his nostrils even after he’d left the hospital and sprinted all the way back to his car.

  Margaret watched as her husband buttoned up his pajamas and went into the bathroom to clean his teeth.

  Louis had returned to his box in Grauman’s Theatre just in time to see Dorothy make it back to Kansas, safe at home with her friends and family all around her. He wouldn’t explain where he’d been or why and Margaret didn’t probe him.

  When the picture was over and the audience filed out toward the lobby, she kissed her husband hard on the lips. “I’m so proud of you,” she said, “so unbelievably proud.”

  Louis had been very quiet all night. It must be the stress of it all, Margaret reasoned. He began complaining of a migraine and they skipped the after-party and made their way home. Now, as she sat in bed, Margaret looked at her husband admiringly. Yes, the pictures he made were stressful on their marriage but she was wrong to ever second-guess what his success had given them. It was selfish of her to want him all to herself. After all, Louis’ pictures created so much happiness.

  “Have some aspirin, Louis. It’s in the cupboard. You should really ask Dr. Hendricks for something a little stronger. Seems so silly we don’t have a decent painkiller in the house. Try one of the sedatives. Second shelf down.”

  He didn’t answer, but she heard him rummaging through the medicine cabinet.

  “Maybe it’s the champagne talking,” Margaret continued, “but wasn’t it wonderful when Dorothy saw the Scarecrow was in Kansas? Do you think they would fall in love? I thought he was delightful. I know you’ve seen it before, but the audience was in hoots. And the Lion! Oh, he had me in hysterics. I can’t wait to talk to Carole about it.”

  It was such a shame they missed the party tonight. She’d been so looking forward to having a natter with Carole and Clark about the picture. They’d really missed out by not going. Still, there would be other parties. It was surprising anyone wanted to come at all after what happened at Loew House. Thank God nothing like that went on tonight! No, they could throw another little party, a soirée at the end of the summer. She needed a little project to focus on and besides, didn’t they deserve a little celebration at M.G.M. after all the difficulties they had with Herbert and all that Loew House nonsense? A dinner party was the perfect antidote. Not too many people. Two dozen at most. A sit-down meal, of course—three courses but keep the food simple; nothing
too Jewish or Louis would get mad.

  Joan Crawford would come, and Fred Astaire and the lovely Phyllis. Gale, of course. Katharine would be invited but only if she promised not to wear a pantsuit. Who else? Vivien Leigh and Larry Olivier. How nice to add some culture into the mix. Margaret was beginning to run through her invitation list when the phone started ringing downstairs, and then a moment later the telephone on the bedside cabinet began dancing on its cradle.

  The dog was already barking when Louis came out of the bathroom.

  “Do you have to get it now, Louis?” she asked when he reached out to the telephone.

  Louis sat down beside her with his feet dangling over the edge of the bed. “I’ll just be a minute.” He was very quiet when he lifted up the receiver, muttering “yes” and “no” before pausing to listen for a long time with his back turned.

  Margaret stroked her husband’s back. For no reason at all she felt lucky for everything she had. After the picture, she’d asked her husband why Dorothy would choose to go back home. Kansas was so gray, so dark, so depressing. Why not stay in Oz? But Louis had been adamant. “No, she has to go back to Kansas,” he’d said. “Why wouldn’t Dorothy want to go back to America? It has everything Oz has and more.” He was right, of course, as he always was. When she first met Louis, he was so poor he had spent his teenage years selling scrap metal. Now they had everything they could ever ask for. Their life was a Horatio Alger tale of rags to riches.

  Settling her head back on her pillow, Margaret allowed herself a few proud tears. This was America. This was truly a place where dreams come true.

  Chapter 45

  Throughout the long drive back to Beverly Hills, Craine tried not to reflect too much on the night’s events. He knew that tomorrow morning the news of what had happened would be broadcast on the radio, the papers making more of the story in time for the evening extra. There would be brief articles about the Chicago syndicate but they’d be lost beneath headlines about Gale Goodwin. This was a city that not only accommodated tragedies but cherished them. Devoid of a far-reaching history, the City of Angels was content to forge its own mythology, and Gale’s loss would be the creation of a legend. This nightmare isn’t mine alone, thought Craine—it belongs to all of us. Gale would be the city’s lost princess, a starlet who died mourning the passing of her husband only two months ago. Her direct involvement with Carell’s criminal enterprise would likely be rumored but ultimately refuted. Inquests would be denied, witness statements edited, autopsies rigged. Mayer’s and M.G.M.’s involvement would never be made clear, even if Peterson himself couldn’t escape the accusations. M.G.M.’s Head of Publicity would fall on his sword for all of them. And O’Neill. He’d get a medal, Craine would make sure of it. The papers would call him a hero and rightly so; that boy deserved better than what the press could ever offer him.