Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 5, April 1968

Death on the Silver Screen by John Lutz

Somewhere in that darkened theater a desperate man waited to make his last kill. No one could stop him. Unless...

Snow. Within an hour it had fallen, soft, swirling, spinning its white web about Edmundville and the surrounding countryside until it lay five inches deep on the farmland and in the town streets. But it was Saturday night, and though white flakes still swirled in the bitter cold air, the Royal Theatre, the only theatre in Edmundville was filled to half capacity with almost four hundred people who had paid to see the first local showing of “Safari Love.” One of those people — maybe — was Ray Hatten.

“I tell you it is him!” Off-duty deputy Burt Kline was almost shouting at the sheriff. “I was sittin’ almost next to him when I happened to look over and I knew in a flash! He’s on an aisle seat on the right side, five rows from the front. An’ he don’t suspect a thing, I swear he don’t!”

Newly elected sheriff Wilson Parker had registered surprise and alarm when Kline first suggested Ray Hatten might be in the Royal Theatre, but now he sat back calmly and tried to assimilate facts from Kline’s torrent of information.

Wilson Parker was no ordinary small town sheriff. Lean and personable, thirty years old and a recent law school graduate, he was a man many people had marked for a political future.

While Kline was talking, Parker reached into the breast pocket of his brown uniform shirt for a cigarette and thoughtfully accepted the flame from the lighter that was in his deputy’s trembling hand.

It was difficult to believe that Ray Hatten, the most wanted criminal in the history of the state, possibly the country, was right here in Edmundville at the old Royal. Hatten, an ex-infantry sharpshooter, had started with a multiple murder in California, then in stolen cars had cut a bloody path eastward, plundering and killing. Including the three in California, his total death count stood at seven and one pending in a hospital in Phoenix. One of those seven was a policeman who had made the mistake of thinking Hatten carried only one gun.

Then had come the murder of a school girl in Cliffordson, which Hatten was strongly suspected of, and an armed robbery east and out of state that suggested Hatten had moved on toward the eastern seaboard. By now he was supposed to be in New York.

“My God, Sheriff,” Kline was saying, his heavy face red with excitement, “what are you gonna do?”

Parker stood and reached for a heavy mackinaw that would cover his sheriff’s badge and revolver. “The only thing to do is go and look the situation over, make sure it’s really Hatten. You get Sandy and as many reserve deputies as you can line up and I’ll meet you at the Royal.”

Kline already had the door open.

“And, Burt,” Parker said, blue eyes serious in his lean face, “don’t do anything rash unless I give the word. Okay?”

“Sure, Sheriff,” Kline said. The door was shut and he was gone.

Few people were on State Highway 47, Edmundville’s main street, as Parker trudged through the snow toward the Royal. In his teens he’d worked as an usher at the old theatre. He was trying to recall every facet of its construction, just in case a plan of action was needed. The Royal was an ancient theatre, dating back to the thirties, and in all that time there had been no major change in its simple, one-story design. Lack of competition had preserved it through the years.

In the empty lobby, Parker explained things to Rog Hopper, the Royal’s manager. Then he casually walked down a side aisle to cross below and in front of the screen, then to walk up the right center aisle past the man Kline said was Hatten. Parker would appear to be a man just getting up to go to the restroom, or to the lobby to smoke a cigarette. Or, if he’d been seen coming down the side aisle, a man searching the darkness for his children or wife.

Parker was careful to glance only once, and swiftly, but in that split second he was sure the man was Hatten. The fugitive looked exactly like his newspaper pictures, broad shouldered and heavy featured, straight black hair over pale eyes in a pale face, eyes that were fixed on, but not looking at, the sunny Amazon jungle scene on the screen. And he was wearing a dark colored windbreaker too thin for the weather outside,

Without looking back, Parker walked slowly up the aisle to the lighted lobby.

“It’s him,” he said to Rog Hopper.

Hopper’s complexion blanched. “Good Lord, does he suspect he’s been spotted?”

“I don’t know,” Parker said. “I don’t think so.” Though the lobby was empty, he kept his voice low.

Hopper lowered his voice in accordance with Parker. “What are we gonna do, Park?”

Parker walked to the glass double doors and peered out at the falling snow. “In a few minutes Sandy, Burt Kline and the rest of the deputies will be here,” he said. “You meet them and tell them to stay in the lobby. Tell them not to make a move until I come back.”

“You want me to keep an eye on Hatten in the meantime?”

“That’s the very last thing I want,” Parker said. “He’s worse than nitroglycerin; you only have to look at him wrong and he’ll explode in there with about four hundred people.”

“But what do I do if Hatten comes up here for a smoke or something?”

“He’s not likely to. He doesn’t want to be spotted. But if he does, you go outside and meet Sandy and the boys and tell them to wait out there out of sight from the front doors.”

“It’s ten above zero out there, Park!”

“I know,” Parker said, “but I’m more interested in keeping people at ninety-eight point six.” He buttoned his heavy mackinaw. “I’m going to the office to contact the State Patrol and the F.B.I. I’ll be back within ten minutes.” He stepped out into the neon lit winter night beyond the doors and disappeared.

When Parker returned to the Royal his chief deputy, Sandy Jackson, and three other deputies were standing in a comer of the lobby. Only Jackson was uniformed.

“He didn’t come up here while you were gone,” Rog Hopper said nervously twisting the large ring on his finger.

“Relax, Rog,” Parker said. He turned to Sandy Jackson. “You know who we got down there?”

Jackson nodded. “Help coming?”

“Both the State Patrol and the F.B.I.,” Parker said. “But it’ll be at least a half hour before anybody — gets here. The roads farther east are covered with almost a foot of snow. That’s probably why Hat-ten’s here. Couldn’t risk traveling in this weather and doubled back toward Cliffordson to confuse the police.”

Parker looked around suddenly. “Where’s Burt Kline?”

Jackson’s barrel chest expanded as he took a deep breath. “I was waiting for you to ask that.” He nodded his tousled head toward the darkened auditorium. “He’s down there a few rows from the back. I don’t know what’s got into him. He says the only thing to do is walk right down to Hatten, put a gun to the back of his head and make him surrender.”

Parker bit his lower lip and his eyes narrowed. He was cursing himself for accepting Kline as a deputy. He’d always known the man was too excitable and unpredictable.

“The damned idiot!” he said. Then he calmed himself. “What’s he waiting for?”

Jackson’s voice was without a sign of the stress showing in his face. “He said he’d wait fifteen minutes so you’d be here to take charge of the prisoner.”

“That was considerate of him,” Parker said. He looked at Rog Hopper. “Go down there, Rog, and tell Kline I said to get his — tell him I said to get back up here in the lobby.”

Hopper walked quickly to the nearest of the four exit arches. Then he stopped, ran halfway back frantically and almost fell on the lobby carpet as he motioned desperately to Parker.

“Kline just stood up.” Hopper yelled in a hoarse whisper. “Quick! He’s walkin’ down!”

Parker swallowed dryly and drew his pistol from its leather holster. “Sandy, you’re uniformed, so stay out of sight. Better still, take Garfield and go out and cover the exits.”

To the remaining two deputies he said, “Each of you stand at the head of one of the end aisles. I’ll take the right center aisle. Keep your revolvers ready but out of sight and when Kline puts that gun to Hatten’s head, move down there quick and settle that crowd.”

He was walking across the lobby. “And for God’s sake,” he said over his shoulder, “don’t use those guns unless I fire a shot!”

His heart pounding, Parker stood with his mackinaw buttoned, his revolver held losely behind his leg, and watched Kline’s dumpy figure walk slowly down the right center aisle toward Hatten. He was halfway down, using a box of popcorn as an innocent looking prop. His right hand was in his suitcoat pocket, and Parker was sure the deputy’s finger would be on the trigger.

When Kline was about ten rows behind Hatten, the fugitive’s head turned momentarily and Kline’s steps faltered. Parker looked quickly at his two deputies and saw that they too had seen what had happened. He’s on to him, Wilson Parker thought, his heart skipping a beat. But Hatten was again watching the screen and Kline was walking forward, as if nothing had happened.

Suddenly Hatten twisted in his seat, leaning his body almost casually out into the aisle, and a gunshot barked.

Kline fell stiffly, straight backward onto the carpeted, slanted aisle, popcorn scattering over the chest of his tweed suitcoat, inanely reminding Parker of grotesque funeral spray petals.

Parker and the theatre audience snapped out of their shock at the same time. They were snapped out of it by a screaming voice from the narrow stage in front of the screen.

“Cool it everybody! Back down in your seats!”

Parker was astonished to see Ray Hatten standing boldly before the screen with a nickel-plated revolver in each hand. And suddenly one of those guns was pointed at Parker.

“You three guys!” Hatten yelled. “I know you’re fuzz and I know you got the exits blocked! Now do what I say or I’ll fire into the audience! Drop those guns you got behind you, back into the lobby and shut them doors! Only leave those doors on the left exit open.”

“Do it!” Parker yelled. He dropped his own gun in the center of the aisle, where Hatten could see it, backed up three steps and swung the two wooden doors shut across the exit arch.

There were alarmed murmurs from the audience. The projectionist cut the sound of the movie and the wail of a baby cut through everyone’s vibrating nerves. Then the baby was silent.

The whole theatre beyond the closed doors was silent.

“Good Lord,” Rog Hopper said. “What a damn crazy thing to do!”

“A damn smart thing to do,” Parker said bitterly. “If he’d done anything else he’d have been dead by now.”

Hearing the gunfire and shouting, Sandy Jackson had left Garfield to cover the side exits and rushed back into the lobby.

“Why didn’t he want those end doors shut?” he asked, his voice still amazingly calm.

“That side door in the corner beyond them leads to the stairs to the projectionist’s booth,” Parker said. “The booth is the one place we might be able to get a shot at him from, but now he’s got it cut off.”

“You mean Hatten cased this place?” one of the deputies asked incredulously.

“He’s been on the run for over a month,” Parker said. “He’s no idiot.”

“Is anybody up there now?” Sandy Jackson asked.

“Old Ed, the projectionist,” Hopper said breathlessly. “He doesn’t have a gun though.”

“Good,” Parker said. “I don’t think the light from the projector is bright enough to keep Hatten from seeing someone taking aim at him anyway. And if someone did get a shot away from the projection booth it would have to be perfect. Even dying, Hatten could empty those revolvers into the audience.”

“What about Kline?” one of the deputies asked.

“I think he’s dead,” Parker said bluntly. “But if he is only wounded, we still can’t make a deal that will turn that maniac loose on society again.”

They stood in thoughtful silence while Parker tried to recall some way to conceal himself in the auditorium, some small bit of cover that would enable a man to take careful aim without being seen. But he could think of none. The Royal was a simple rectangular building without alcoves or protruding fancy trim.

“Ed!” Rog Hopper shouted suddenly in near hysteria. He pointed a trembling finger. “Ed, get back!”

Parker looked to see Ed Noonan, the old projectionist of the Royal, opening the door to the projection booth stairs. His white hair was unruly and he looked puzzled. As he took his first step across the lobby he began to ask something, but a bullet in the head interrupted him. He took three wobbly, staggering steps away from the deadly open doors to the auditorium and fell forward.

Parker and a deputy ran to the old man and pulled him toward the center of the lobby.

“He’s still breathing,” Parker said, amazed that it was so with the amount of blood soaking into the lobby carpet. He turned to Sandy Jackson. “Call an ambulance.”

Then Parker heard a sound that chilled him. The audience, like one huge, frightened animal, was murmuring and moaning in fear, the sound of dozens of sobbing women underlying the buzz of prayers and frightened conversation. Parker was suddenly sharply aware that whatever was done to get Hatten must be done in a way that wouldn’t send four hundred people stampeding in fright toward the narrow exits.

Then he heard the faint sound of Hatten yelling.

“Head fuzz!” the fugitive was screaming. “I wanna talk to you!”

Parker straightened and walked slowly to the open doors by the projection booth stairs, motioning everyone else to stay back. Then he stood framed in the doorway, a perfect target, noticing with horror that his left foot was resting in a small puddle of blood.

Hatten was strutting back and forth on the stage. Behind him the newest Hollywood find, Tad Montgomery, was making silent love to a young European actress. Though Hatten was crazed with desperation, Parker saw with amazement that the murderer was actually enjoying his spectacular predicament. Even through his fright, the man’s fantastic ego was making itself seen.

A gleaming revolver was aimed at Parker and Hatten grinned behind it. The grin was strikingly incongruous to the panic in his eyes. “You the sheriff, man?”

“I am.” Parker’s voice was too high.

Hatten’s grin widened, then quickly disappeared. “I’m in a hell of a fix, ain’t I, Fuzz?”

Parker was silent.

“Well, let me tell you, Fuzz, you’re in a hell of a fix yourself. Now this here picture’s over in about fifteen minutes, and you got that much time to do like I say or a lot of these people are gonna die. I guess you noticed I ain’t a bad shot.”

Behind him, Parker could hear the noises of the stretcher bearers working to carry the old man out.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You,” Hatten said, “handcuffed and walking down that aisle. Then you an’ me’ll walk out of here together, get in a patrol car with snow tires and drive out of town.”

Parker, stood clenching and unclenching his hands, knowing that he couldn’t do it, knowing that it was his duty not to do it, and knowing that there were ten bullets left in those ludicrous silver revolvers.

“Let us get Kline, the first man you shot, and I’ll think about it,” Parker said.

“He don’t enter into it,” Hatten said contemptuously. “He’s dead. I don’t miss at that range.” Then he laughed loudly, the laugh of a frightened man. “If it’ll make you feel any better I’ll put another bullet in him to make sure.”

He looked out at the terror stricken audience for some kind of perverse approval and his face became serious again. Then he let one of the pistols suddenly twirl downward around his trigger finger, bringing a gasp from the audience. He toyed with the gun, letting it dangle upside down while he made a slow sweeping motion across the audience with the revolver in his other hand.

“Now back out of here, Fuzz. You ain’t got long to think about what I said.”

“He’s half crazy!” Rog Hopper said as Parker stepped back into the lobby.

“So is the audience,” Parker said.

“Isn’t there any place in there a man could get a good shot at him from?” Sandy asked.

Parker shook his head. “Even if there were, the firing might stampede the audience and take more lives than Hatten could. Anyway, he’d have to be hit perfectly and by complete surprise or he’d get some shots away before he died.”

The sheriff put a hand on Rog Hopper’s shoulder. “When’s this movie over — exactly?”

Hopper looked at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

Parker breathed deeply and wiped a sweat-damp hand across his face.

“Don’t the light from the projector bother him enough to keep him from seeing somebody in the back of the show?” one of the deputies asked.

“You saw how much it bothered him,” Parker said.

He was remembering the times he’d been up on the stage as an usher when he was young. The light from the projector came down from too great an angle to affect the vision of a man on the stage unless he looked directly at it.

“Damn it!” Jackson said. “How about a stage door or something?”

“There’s nothing,” Hopper said hopelessly. “Only some steps at each side of the stage.”

Sandy Jackson glanced at his wrist watch and looked at Parker. “You can’t go with him, you know.” This time his voice betrayed emotion.

“I know,” Parker said. “I don’t intend to.”

Then Wilson Parker was actually smiling.

Hopper wrung his hands. “You gone out of your head, Park? I don’t see anything funny about this.”

Parker’s smile faded to seriousness. “You got a key to that back door?”

“Sure,” Hopper said, “but that’s just an old store room. You can’t get at him from there.”

“Get me the key,” Parker said. He was staring thoughtfully out the theatre’s doors at the still-falling snow. “Sandy, drive over to the office and get me my new repeating rifle. And put a silencer on it.”

“A silencer?”

“Make it as fast as you can,” Parker said. “I’ll meet you around back.”

He began to button his jacket.

The audience at the. Royal Theatre was looking up at Ray Hatten, who was standing with his feet wide, the shining revolvers in his hands at his sides, when suddenly the gunman’s body trembled. His face distorted, he began to jerk about the stage in violent spasms, a marionette gone mad. Then he pitched forward and lay still.

All this happened silently, within the space of a few seconds, leaving the audience more surprised than frightened. They stared numbly as the camera zoomed in for the final close up of Tad Montgomery, noticing that the new star had suddenly developed a bad case of acne.

On the dust-covered wood floor behind the taut, bleached canvas screen, Parker lay with his cheek resting on the hard stock of his rifle. He’d gotten low and aimed at an upward angle, well above the heads of the audience, and then waited for the precise moment when both of Hatten’s hands were down at his sides. Aiming carefully at the dark, bigger than life silhouette, starting at the head and working downward, he’d squeezed off shot after shot until the rifle had jammed.

He’d seen the silhouette jerk about, trying to raise its hands, seen one hand raise only after the gun it was holding had dropped. And then the silhouette had disappeared, the raised hand flying upward in what reminded Wilson Parker of an insane, uncoordinated Nazi salute.

Parker lay still, breathing deep relief, aware of the increasing brightness about him as the projector brightened to close-up intensity. Then he gradually became aware of a softer light as the immense, red-hued letters magically appeared before and above him.