The Red Scream (13 page)

Shrink asks about my childhood.

Only one thing ever felt good:

Ma let me brush her long

black hair,

And let me touch her anywhere.

But when I turned ten

She stopped me then.

She didn’t care.

She lost her hair

And left me there.

Life sure ain’t fair.

LOUIE BRONK
Death Row, Ellis I Unit,
Huntsville, Texas

M
olly sat in Charlie McFarland’s big leather desk chair and stared at the telephone. It was comforting to pretend that all the random violence in the world was concentrated in one evil man, a criminal locked up in a nine-by-twelve-foot cell in East Texas. If he had escaped and come back to prey on this family again, then he could be recaptured and contained again and the world would be restored to sanity. No wonder that was the first idea Charlie had grabbed at.

She felt stupid making the call, but she’d promised, so she decided to get it over with quick while Charlie was still talking in the kitchen with Grady Traynor and another detective. It took four tries but she finally reached Steve Demaris, the warden of the Texas Prison System’s Ellis Unit in Huntsville. She got him on his car phone as he was driving home from work.

“Louie Bronk?” he said in his distinctive East Texas drawl. “You don’t have to worry none about that sucker, Miz Cates. We just did our body count and he’s right where he ought to be—locked up tight
on death row, in ad seg. We’re keeping him healthy and safe for his date Tuesday; he ain’t going nowhere nohow. Why you asking?”

When Molly explained what had happened, he was silent. For a moment Molly thought she had lost the connection. “Well, hell,” he said finally, “I’m real sorry for your troubles there in Austin. The wives of Mr. McFarland seem to attract bad luck. But you tell old Stan Heff to catch this one and send him on to us. We know what to do with his kind.”

“I’ll tell him,” Molly said. “And I’ll see you in Huntsville Monday night, Mr. Demaris. I’m coming for the execution.”

“God willing,” he said, “the creeks don’t rise and the federal courts mind their own damned business.”

Molly cradled the phone and tilted back in the chair. She gave a start when she saw that Frank Purcell was standing in the office door; she hadn’t heard him approach. His jacket was slung over his shoulder and his white shirt showed half-moons of sweat under his arms.

“Mr. Purcell. I didn’t know you were there.”

“Didn’t want to interrupt your call. They finished with me in the kitchen. Now they’re talking to Charlie alone. Could I fetch you a glass of ice water, ma’am? I don’t know if you lost as much fluid as I did down there on the hill, but I am parched.”

“Yes. Thank you,” Molly said. “I sure could use one.”

He walked to a panel in the wall and gave it a tap. The panel swung open, revealing a full wet bar with crystal glasses on a glass shelf and an ice maker below. He filled a tall glass with ice cubes and poured over them some bottled Utopia water. He carried it to her where she sat at Charlie’s huge mahogany desk. “I guess Louie Bronk’s right where he oughtta be,” he said.

As she took the glass from him, Molly looked up into his face and said, “Mr. Purcell, I keep thinking I’ve met you before, but I can’t remember where.”

He put a big hand to the back of his neck and rubbed. “Everybody around here calls me Frank, ma’am.”

“If you’ll call me Molly.”

He nodded.

“Can you think where it might have been?” she asked.

“Well, ma’am, I don’t believe we met as such, but I recollect seeing you once or twice when you came down to Hays County. You
were reporting on Louie Bronk when we had him in custody down there back in ’82.” His hand still cupped the back of his neck. “Just like he was some sort of celebrity,” he said in a low voice, “rather than the vicious animal he is.”

Molly looked at him more closely. Of course. She would have known him right away if he’d been wearing a gray Stetson pulled down low on his forehead like he used to. “You used to be a Ranger down there,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. I sure was. For seventeen years.”

“When did you go to work for Charlie?”

“Oh, about six, seven years ago. There’s better money in corporate security and the wife likes it ’cause I’m home more.”

“And how long have you known Charlie?”

“Charlie? Oh, I knowed him for a long time; he had some projects down our way, years back. There was some vandalism—pilfering and such—on the construction sites. I got to know him then. Did a little security work for him on my off hours. Always was the most decent fellow.” He shook his head slowly, as if it had been Charlie killed down the hill.

“Yes. I was wondering—” She stopped speaking when they heard the noise of several more vehicles squealing into the courtyard.

He began to back away. “If you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I need to check on that.”

Molly watched him hurry down the hall to the front door. She felt the vague uneasiness that always afflicted her when someone knew more about her than she knew about him. Would this man have mentioned that he’d been a Ranger involved with the Bronk case if she hadn’t asked?

She checked her watch. It was after seven and it might be a long time before she could leave. Grady and Detective Caleb Shawcross had listened to her account of finding the body, and her story of the anonymous poem and pages from her book. They said they’d send someone to pick them up from the DA’s office and told her to stick around while they talked to Charlie. She suspected it might be a long time before they got back to her.

She walked to the front of the house to see what was going on. Frank Purcell stood at the open door impassively watching the black coroner’s van back up in the driveway. When it stopped, two men in white jackets climbed out and walked around to the back where they
opened the double doors and pulled out a litter. A uniformed policeman approached them and gestured to the path down the hill.

Just then, a beat-up red Toyota labored up the driveway and chugged to a stop in the courtyard. The driver, a young man with black hair, drove with one arm around a young woman whom Molly recognized from the photograph Charlie had showed her: Alison McFarland.

The young couple got out of the car and gazed around, looking stunned at all the police vehicles filling the courtyard. They talked for a minute with the uniformed cop standing in the middle of it all. He gestured first down the hill, then to the door where Molly stood behind Frank Purcell.

A week ago Molly had spoken to the girl on the phone about an interview, but this was the first time she had seen Alison in person since she testified at the trial ten years ago. Amazingly, she hadn’t really changed much. Very small-boned and pale-skinned, she wore old jeans with holes in both knees, a dingy-looking T-shirt, and hightop sneakers that were laced only partway up. Looking at her narrow hips and shoulders, Molly couldn’t help thinking about the photos of her mother stretched out on the autopsy table. Mother and daughter had the same childlike build, as unlike Charlie McFarland as it was possible to get, as if they were different species as well as different sexes.

Frank stepped out to meet the girl and put an awkward hand on her thin shoulder. “Alison, I’m so sorry about this.”

“How’s Daddy?”

“I don’t know, honey. He’s in the kitchen talking to two police detectives. They’ve been in there for about a half hour.”

“Mrs. Cates. I recognized you from the picture on your book jacket. I’m Alison.”

Molly extended her hand. Alison’s fingers felt small and sticky.

The dark-haired young man appeared at Alison’s side, towering over her. He draped a protective arm around her shoulders. “This is Mark Redinger,” Alison said, her arm automatically reaching out and snaking around his waist.

This was Mark Redinger, the cousin. Molly had never met him, but she knew the name. He was a first cousin of the McFarland children, several years older than Stuart. Stuart had been at his house the day Tiny was killed. What confused her was that just now
she would have sworn the interplay between Alison and him was of a sexual nature.

He smiled down at Molly, his deep-set navy-blue eyes glowing under thick dark lashes. His face was tanned, and close-up, she could see that he was older than she had first thought, near thirty probably. Like Alison, he wore old jeans and a white T-shirt, but his jeans were soft and faded and his shirt was snowy white. Definitely a hunk.

Mark Redinger and Frank Purcell stood aside for the two women to enter the house, then stayed at the doorway, talking in hushed voices.

Inside, Alison wrinkled her nose in what looked to Molly like distaste. “Poor Georgia. This should have been such a happy time for her. She and Daddy were really in love, but she married into an unlucky family.”

Unlucky, Molly thought. That was certainly one way to explain getting hit twice by lightning. Maybe the McFarlands were unlucky, but she had always suspected that when lightning strikes twice, it must have had a real good reason for striking in the first place—maybe because you lived on the highest hill around or next to a huge oak tree. Or maybe it struck the second time because the first had created some sort of electromagnetic field that attracted a second strike—some sort of unfinished business.

Alison wandered around the big living room as if she were looking for a place to sit but couldn’t find any surface that suited her. Finally she perched on the arm of one of the immaculate suede sofas. “Can you tell me about finding her, Mrs. Cates? Daddy said on the phone you got here first.”

“The police asked me not to discuss it until they’ve had a chance to talk to everyone.”

Alison’s gray eyes widened. “Does that mean me? Will they want to talk to me?” She pressed both hands against her breastbone.

“I imagine so.” The girl was very pale. Her skin in places was transparent; at her temples and along her jaw you could see the delicate lavender veins under the skin. The startled look which Molly had noticed in the photograph came from round lashless eyes and an upper lip which naturally lifted to show her prominent front teeth.

Alison lowered her head, raised a thumb to her mouth, and began
to chew furiously on the side of the nail. Then she pulled her hand away from her mouth and gripped both hands together in her lap. “It’s hard to think of Georgia as dead. She was always so … lively. And so pretty. But dead? God.” She looked down at her bony knees, visible through the holes in her jeans. “Poor Daddy.”

She lifted her head and the intensity of her gaze almost made Molly take a step back. “Isn’t this weird? Daddy said she was shot. Just like my mother. And right now, when Mom’s killer is about to get executed.” Her voice grew higher as she began enumerating how very strange it was. “And you’re here. You’ve written a book about my mother’s killer and you happen to be here and find Georgia’s body.” She held her hands out, palms up, as if she were waiting to receive something. “I mean don’t you think that’s all really strange?”

“Yes,” Molly said with conviction, “I do. Very strange.”

Alison’s eyes opened wide, showing white all the way around the light irises. “He hasn’t escaped or anything, has he?” she asked.

“No. I just talked with the warden in Huntsville. Louie Bronk’s locked up in his cell on death row.”

The girl let out a sigh. She looked toward the kitchen. “I wish they’d finish, so I could see him. He must be devastated.”

“Yes. I believe he is devastated,” Molly said.

“It’s just so unfair he should have to go through something like this again. I mean you don’t see that many happy marriages, and even though they were so old, Georgia and Daddy, they really …”

“Yes. They seemed to have a good thing going,” Molly said softly.

Alison’s eyes teared up. She lowered her head.

Molly said, “Alison, I hear you’re planning to attend the execution next week.”

“Yeah, I am. Another weird thing, isn’t it? He asked for me and my brother to witness it. Can you believe that? And David, too.”

Molly looked at the girl’s thin arms and birdlike wrists and felt the aura of vulnerability surrounding her. It wasn’t difficult to see why her father would want to protect her. “How does your father feel about that?”

Alison whipped her head up and fixed Molly with a fierce look. “What difference does that make? I’m twenty-two years old. I make my own decisions, Mrs. Cates. Daddy doesn’t want me to do an interview with you, either. He doesn’t want me to live with Mark; he
doesn’t want me to study journalism—he thinks it will be upsetting. My God, of course it’s upsetting. Life’s upsetting.”

She gripped her knees with her hands. It was the same gesture Charlie had made. “Daddy thinks I should avoid anything difficult or unpleasant. As if that were even possible. When I decided to attend the execution, it was because I thought it might be, oh, like a ritual or ceremony where I could finally say good-bye to the whole thing. But now, this—with Georgia, I don’t know. I just never expected that anything—”

The sound of voices in the courtyard made Alison jump up and hurry to the door where the two men were still standing. Molly walked up behind her.

The two coroner’s men were loading a litter with a long green body bag on it into the back of the black van. Sweat stains broke through their shirts. From the stunned look on Alison’s face Molly could see that the reality of Georgia’s death was just now registering on the girl. Hearing about death over the phone was a different matter from seeing it up-close.

Alison glanced toward the closed kitchen door and said, “I’m glad Daddy’s not seeing this. He hates death.”

Well, Molly thought, he can join the club.

A silver Lexus pulled into the courtyard and Alison let out a long breath. “Oh, good. It’s Stuart.” She glanced at Molly. “He must have found someone to cover for him in the emergency room.” She ran out into the courtyard. As soon as her brother got out of the car, she threw her arms around his neck and held on to him for dear life. Stuart returned the hug with one arm, then disengaged himself.

Molly remembered Stuart McFarland well from the trial; he’d been an excellent witness for one so young—articulate and forthright. At the time he’d been a skinny, forlorn-looking fourteen-year-old with wire-rimmed glasses and dry tan hair. His hair had darkened and he wasn’t skinny anymore. He was shorter than his father by six inches, she guessed, and husky, his upper body muscled like a weight lifter. He no longer wore glasses, but he still had that forlorn look of someone who’d just lost something important but couldn’t remember what. A bit like his sister’s look. Molly had a sudden flash of an idea. Maybe it had to do with losing a parent early in life. And maybe she, Molly, had that look, too—as if she were roaming the
world, room to room, and place to place, looking for someone who was never there.