The Red Scream (45 page)

W
hen Molly pulled into Huntsville, the whole town was dark and buttoned up—just after 11
P.M.
on a Monday night in a small East Texas town. She was thirty minutes early and so tense that she found herself craving a greasy cheeseburger even though she’d given them up a year before. A beer might help, too. She drove around a little and didn’t see anything open, so she abandoned the idea. Anyway, executions, like surgery and some crime scenes, were probably done best on an empty stomach.

What she really needed was a walk, to get the kinks out of her legs after three hours of driving.

She parked the truck across from the big modern Walker County courthouse on the town square. It was well lighted and there were several sheriff’s deputy cars parked on the street—a good place to walk. She slipped on her tennis shoes, laced them tight, and did four circuits of the square, increasing her speed each time, until she was nearly running. When she finished, she felt even tenser and more keyed up than she had when she began. She felt as if the volume of blood in her body were building up, pressing from the inside. God, that sounded like one of Louie’s poems.

She got her notebook and pen out of the truck and changed from tennis shoes to a pair of black suede loafers, under the notion that it
was inappropriate to wear tennis shoes to an execution; her Aunt Harriet would certainly approve of that notion. Then she headed toward the prison, an easy five-block walk.

She passed the bus station and walked through the incongruously pleasant residential area that surrounded the old prison. It was a lovely neighborhood with handsome Victorian houses and a scattering of more modest but well-kept frame bungalows, green lawns, and flowerbeds.

She’d never been here at night before and as she neared the prison she was awestruck. Against the dark sky, the massive forty-foot-high brick walls, washed in white security lights, loomed over everything. The inmates, and everybody else in Texas, called this place “the Walls.” The oldest structure in the Texas prison system, it reminded Molly of a medieval walled town. Inside, on 140 acres, was a nearly self-sufficient world: a textile mill, a machine shop, cell blocks, a chapel, school rooms, an exercise yard, kitchens, garden plots, even an arena for the annual prison rodeo. And, of course, there was also that small separate structure in the northwest corner—the death house, the one place in the prison she had not yet seen.

As she approached, Molly remembered back about a year ago, when she was doing a piece on sex offenders. She had been sitting on the low wall across the street from the prison, waiting to interview Timothy Coffee who was being released after serving thirteen years for several aggravated rapes. That day they had been doing a mass release, because the number of inmates had gone over the court-set limit. One hundred twenty-five men were being released early, before their terms were up. As she waited, they emerged in groups from a small side door. All were dressed identically in the pastel long-sleeved shirts and work pants they were issued on release. Each group did the same thing: the men walked until they were a few yards past the prison wall, and then suddenly they started running. At first, they jogged slowly. Then they picked up speed. They ran as if the devil were chasing them, down the street, down to the bus station.

Molly stopped. The memory made her want to turn and run. There was nothing to stop her, nothing making her go through with this. She could run back to her truck, lock the doors, put the cruise control on sixty-five, and hightail it back home, as if the devil were in pursuit.

She stood rooted to the sidewalk.

Ahead of her, a tiny cluster of demonstrators was gathered near the front door of the prison. A pretty pathetic demonstration—five people dressed in black, holding candles and chanting in low voices words Molly could not make out.

She looked at her watch. It was already past eleven-thirty. Almost time. She started walking again, reluctantly, one foot in front of the other, feeling herself pulled forward by whatever force it was that kept her in motion, doing what she did. It was habit maybe. Habit and curiosity. The curiosity spurred her on to look for the most grotesque things she could find, and habit made her keep on doing it. Appetite for violence and death. Just like the buzzards she’d watched from Charlie McFarland’s house.

She passed the demonstrators without a word to them and headed toward the flat-topped, two-story administrative building across the street from the prison. The rosebushes that lined the walk were perfectly pruned and mulched. There was no better maintenance anywhere in Texas than in and around the prison buildings, she thought. And tonight the execution would be exactly like that—a neat and well-maintained death.

Her chest tightened as she walked up the stairs—just the usual pre-Louie jitters, she told herself.
Relax. You don’t even have to talk to him tonight; your only job is to watch him die.
It was something just to be gotten over. In four hours she’d be home in bed.

All the lights on the first floor of the administration building blazed. No doubt executions required administrative overtime; it was probably even in the budget. Molly headed down the hall to Darryl Jones’s office, where the witnesses had been told to gather. When family or friends of the condemned were attending, they gathered separately, in the basement. But there was no family or friends for Louie Bronk. As she approached the door, she heard the murmur of voices, low, but with an undertone of excitement. The vultures were gathering for the kill, and she had chosen to join them. She was one of them.

The director of public information for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Darryl Jones, was in charge of dealing with the press, so Molly had met him often before. He hurried to the door of his office to greet her, like the host of a party, a very subdued party. A tall, slender black man with the profile of a movie star, Darryl
gave her the full impact of his splendid smile. “Molly Cates,” he exclaimed, “have you come to expose us?”

She smiled up at him. “Darryl, anytime you want to expose yourself I’ll be front and center. But I don’t really think it would be appropriate right now, do you?” Oh-oh, she thought, crime scene humor slipping out. She was going to have to watch herself.

Darryl gave a perfunctory laugh. “Well, you know everybody?” He gestured into the room. Fifteen people, more than she’d expected, stood talking in groups. Clustered around Stan Heffernan stood six reporters, leaning forward trying to hear what he was saying. Molly recognized Judith Simpson from the
American-Patriot
and a man whose name she couldn’t recall from the Associated Press. Stuart McFarland, dressed in a dark suit and tie, stood in the corner drinking coffee out of a foam cup and talking to Tanya Klein.

“Who are the men over there in front of the window?” Molly asked, indicating a group of five men.

“The tall man in the three-piece suit is Tom Robeson, chief of the enforcement division of the attorney general’s office. The fat guy with the cowboy hat is Rider Kelinsky, the state prison director, my big boss. The others are just TDCJ brass, no one special.”

“Why are they all here?”

“Some of them, like Tom and Rider, have to be. The others, well, they just like coming.” Darryl grinned at her. “We could solve our cash flow problems by selling tickets to these damn things if they’d let us. Hey, I’ve got to make a call, Molly. Why don’t you help yourself to a cup of coffee over there.” He pointed to a credenza against the wall where a Thermos, some cups, and a plate of cookies sat on a tray. “It’ll be another few minutes.” He walked off.

Molly looked around the room again. Alison McFarland was not there, which gave her a tiny pinch of misgiving. But there was still time.

She should get out her notebook like a good writer and go interview the various officials, but she couldn’t face it tonight—the low droning male voices, the righteous indignation about recidivism and federal court interference, the outrages of Ruiz vs. Collins—she’d heard it all before. She wanted something she hadn’t heard. She wished Addie Dodgin were here to talk to.

When she saw Tanya Klein turn to talk to one of the reporters, Molly walked up to Stuart. “Have a good day off?” she asked him.

He reached up to adjust the perfect knot in his tie. “Actually, yes. It makes me realize that the rest of the world doesn’t have to work every minute. Yes. A fine day. How about you?”

“Oh, I tried to write and couldn’t. I should have taken the day off, too. Have you seen Alison?”

He scowled. “No.” He looked at his watch. “She’ll be here, though. Mark was going to drive her so she’ll make it on time. I talked to her at noon to check.” He paused. “She told me about what you said this morning.”

“Oh?”

“I wish you hadn’t done that, today of all days. She was pretty upset. I hope you won’t harp on this tonight and make it worse.”

“You mean I shouldn’t harp on the fact that a man is being executed for something he didn’t do? I shouldn’t harp on it because it might upset your sister? Stuart, I don’t want to upset you or Alison. I know this is a hard time for you both, but the person who really killed your mother may be the one who killed your stepmother and David Serrano. Doesn’t that worry you?”

His face darkened. “This is all crackpot theory, Mrs. Cates—your theory. You’re the only one who thinks this. Alison told me what you said about Louie Bronk and that damn car. If there were any truth to it, the people investigating at the time would have found it. Or his lawyer. You’re not helping matters by interfering here. You’re not qualified. Leave this to the law enforcement people.”

Molly felt her combativeness rising but she swallowed it down. This man did not need any additional problems right now. “I can certainly see your point,” she said.

He nodded, held up his coffee cup, and said, “Excuse me.”

Molly watched him walk to the credenza and pour himself another cup of coffee. Then he leaned against the wall and began eating Oreo cookies off the tray. He popped one after another in his mouth, staring off into space while he chewed.

Molly looked around and saw Tanya Klein standing alone. When Molly approached her, Tanya took a step back and frowned. She doesn’t trust me any more than I trust her, Molly thought, and I don’t trust her at all. “What’s happening?” she asked.

“The Supreme Court denied our last petition for a Writ of Certiorari a few hours ago. Louie Bronk is history.”

“Have you seen him?” Molly asked.

“Yes. Right after we got word, I went to tell him.”

“How’d he take it?”

“Like a trooper. I hear you went to see the governor this morning.”

Molly nodded.

Tanya arched a dark eyebrow. “Oh, well. We never had a chance with this one. There are some others coming up, though, that are real cases.”

Molly tried to fight down the irritation she felt. It was so unjustified. This was a woman who worked hard in an impossible job that rarely allowed any victories. They were on the same side, opposed to the death penalty. They should be natural allies. But Molly’s suspicions had been brewing and now they were bubbling over. “Tanya,” Molly said abruptly, “do you know the McFarlands?”

“Well, you just saw me talking to Stuart,” Tanya said with a shrug.

“Yes. But do you know Charlie, the patriarch? Ever talk to him about the Bronk case?”

Tanya looked at Molly through narrowing eyes.

“Have you?” Molly asked, her voice more aggressive than she’d intended. “Ever give him any information about what Louie was telling you?”

Tanya’s face tightened in anger.

“Maybe about the car he junked in Fort Worth?” Molly was on a roll now and couldn’t stop if she’d wanted to. “Ever get any contributions from him for the Center?”

Tanya’s nostrils constricted and she shook her head, clearly not in answer to Molly’s question but in dismissal, as if Molly were a fly buzzing around her head. She turned and walked out of the room.

Wow, Molly thought, I am really on the warpath tonight. But she had hit a nerve there. Suddenly she felt better. Some of the tension had dissipated. A few more fights and she’d feel almost human. She poured herself a cup of coffee even though she had a rule about never drinking it after noon. What the hell.

A few minutes later, Alison McFarland entered the room. She had dressed up. She wore a long brown skirt and clean white blouse, dangly earrings, and she’d washed her hair. When she saw Stuart, still leaning against the wall gobbling cookies, she made a beeline for him and put her arm through his as if she needed to hold herself up.
He stiffened and pulled back slightly. Molly was close enough to hear Stuart say, “You clean up good. You ought to do it more often.”

“Yeah, I know. What happens now?” his sister asked.

“Damned if I know,” he said. “I wish they’d get on with it.”

“I’m so nervous, I’m afraid I’ll have to pee right in the middle of it.”

“Why don’t you take care of that now, Al?” Stuart said, his mouth grim.

Alison left the room. Molly watched her leave and decided she should go to the bathroom, too. Why pass up a chance?

In the ladies’ room, Alison was leaning over the sink staring into the mirror. She didn’t turn when Molly entered, but gave a tiny smile into the mirror. “Hi, Mrs. Cates.”

“Hi, Alison. I don’t know about you, but I’m as nervous as a cat. Makes my bladder kind of chancy.”

Alison straightened and turned to face Molly. “You know what I hope?”

“What?”

“That in his last words he’ll do the right thing and own up to it, settle all your doubts.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Molly said, “but there’s no telling with Louie.”

When they got back to the office, Darryl Jones was standing in the door saying, “All right, folks. If you’re ready, let’s walk across the street.”

They all filed out, two by two. Alison grabbed her brother’s arm and walked pressed up against his side. Stan fell in silently next to Molly. “I hear you went to see the governor this morning,” he said as they crossed the street.

“Word does get around,” she said.