“Yes.”
Cullen’s face softened into something like a grin. “That would work out then. The senator’s going to host some of the press in his office after the vote—sort of a celebration—and he’d be honored to have you come.”
“So you think—” Molly stopped mid-question. Olin Crocker was approaching. Her breath felt sucked right out of her body. It had been inevitable for them to meet, but she was unprepared for the intensity of her revulsion. He wore his star belt buckle again and carried a briefcase. He said, “My God, Cully, the McNelly Posse? Sounds like a rich-kid militia. How come you never told me about this, boy?”
Cullen replied, “You never asked, pardner.”
“I’ve got to hand it to you—coming out at the last minute on the losing side. It’s like being airlifted to the Titanic as it’s sinking. You sure know how to pick a losing cause, boy.”
“Miracles happen, pardner.” Cullen took a step back, clearly eager to make an escape from the group that was gathering to talk to him. “Sorry, Mr. Crocker, Miz Cates—I believe Senator Rauther will want a word with me.” He took off, leaving Molly face to face with Olin Crocker.
He looked her over. “Miz Cates.”
Molly’s jaw was so tense, it was difficult to speak. “Mr. Crocker,” she said through tight lips. “Long time.”
“Yes, ma’am. I thought maybe I saw you day before yesterday in the gallery.” He shifted his weight forward slightly so his belt buckle angled toward her. “And I thought to myself, That sure looks like that little Cates gal from that unfortunate situation out at Volente, but—”
“You mean my daddy’s murder, Mr. Crocker? That unfortunate situation?”
“His death, yes, ma’am.”
“Well, I recognized you right off, Mr. Crocker. You’re doing your hair a little differently, but other than that you haven’t changed much.”
Crocker put a hand to the top of his head to see if the strands were in place over the bald spot. Molly smiled sweetly at him. “I hear you’ve come out of retirement to do some lobbying, Mr. Crocker.”
“Well, I’m just helping to educate folks on the need for this carry bill,” he drawled.
“So you’re in the education business now instead of law enforcement.”
“Yes, ma’am, I am. And I heard you’re a writer now, writing an article about the bill for Lone Star Monthly. Isn’t that a coincidence?”
“How so?”
“Well, we’re both interested in the same bill,” he said. “If there’s any little thing I can do to help educate you, ma’am, I’d sure be pleased.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a card. “Here’s my card. Give me a holler any time I can be of help.”
“Miz Cates!” Parnell’s secretary hurried toward them and handed Molly a folded slip of paper. “Senator Morrisey asked me to try and catch you before you left. Phone message just came for you. The caller said it was urgent.”
Molly unfolded the note. It said, Call me right away please. Urgent. Grady.
“You can use a phone in the office,” the secretary said.
Molly looked at her watch. She had only an hour left. “Thanks, but I’ve got a plane to catch. It’ll be quicker if I use a pay phone on my way out.”
Alarmed by how little time she had now to get to the airport, Molly nodded to Olin Crocker and nearly ran to the bank of pay phones in the hall.
“Molly,” Grady said, “I’m glad I caught you. Listen, sweetheart, I’m afraid this is going to be bad news for you. Shawcross caught an angel here. Couple of kids found her in a drainage pipe along Waller Creek. Dead a few days. Transient female, throat cut. I think she might be one of your bag ladies.”
“Oh.” Molly turned toward the wall and leaned her head against it.
“Didn’t you tell me you’d interviewed one called Tin Can? Small, mildly retarded. Missing several front teeth.”
Under her closed lids, Molly saw the image of the woman with the sun behind her, the cat stretched out on her lap. “Her real name is Emily Bickerstaff.”
“That’s the one. We just got an ID from one of the counselors at HOBO. We’ll double-check with the prints and dental casts at the State Hospital. But I think it’s pretty definite. Will you come in and confirm, tell us about your interview with her? We’re real interested in who her associates were.”
“Grady, I would, but I’ve got to catch my plane in less than an hour. The photographer who took pictures of her—Henry Iglesias—could identify her. And he’s got photos, recent ones, taken about two weeks ago. I’ve got his number in my bag.” She held the phone to her ear by scrunching up her shoulder while she pulled her address book from her bag. “Is this a homicide for sure?”
“Unless she cut her own throat, bled all over the ground outside the pipe, crawled inside a garbage bag, and tied it shut with three knots. We are keenly interested in her associates, as I said.”
“Grady, all I know is that she was friends with another homeless woman they call Cow Lady. A large woman, around fifty, I think. Wears a black and white coat with spots like on a cow.”
“Know where to find her?”
“No. Well, maybe the Salvation Army. Or here at the Capitol, Grady. I saw her in the third-floor ladies’ room on Monday.”
“Shawcross will want to hear more about this. Molly—can’t you put this trip off? Given the circumstances.”
“I have an appointment in Lubbock this afternoon.”
“Change it.”
“Sorry, I can’t.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“We’re interested in your notes,” he said.
She glanced at her watch again, feeling harried and much too warm. “Oh, Grady, you know better than that. Anyway, I haven’t transcribed my tapes yet. But when I get back I’d be glad to tell Shawcross what little I know about her. I’m in a time crunch here and—”
“Listen, I don’t want to be crass, but think about this: you are interviewing several homeless women over a period of time to see what happens with them, and now one of them has been killed. Murdered. Something major has happened. Isn’t this of some interest to your story?”
“Yes. Of course. But I won’t be gone long. She’ll still be dead when I get back.”
“Molly, this is making me uneasy.”
“I don’t know why. I’ll be gone twenty-four hours on family business. Aunt Harriet is expecting me for dinner tonight.”
“Aunt Harriet? Expecting you! She doesn’t even recognize you.”
“Grady, I’m going to be late. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tonight.”
She put the phone down before he could reply. There was no time to argue; as it was, she’d have to skip going home to pack.
THEN UP SHE TOOK HER LITTLE CROOK,
DETERMINED FOR TO FIND THEM;
SHE FOUND THEM INDEED, BUT IT MADE HER HEART BLEED,
FOR THEY’D LEFT ALL THEIR TAILS BEHIND ’EM!
—“LITTLE BOPEEP,” VERSE 3, MOTHER GOOSE
Molly stood panting at the top of the stairs, blood thrumming, heart pounding. It was only one flight up, but she felt as winded as if she’d been running all day. She’d parked her car illegally at the Austin airport, made a mad dash for the gate, and caught her flight to Lubbock by the skin of her teeth, just as the last passengers were boarding. But she’d made it, ten minutes early for her appointment with Shelby Palmer at the Cap Rock Office Park.
She ran her tongue over her dry lips. Forty minutes in Lubbock and already her lips were peeling and she felt grit on her teeth from the blowing dirt. Welcome home.
She studied the closed door bearing the tiny discreet brass sign—PALMER INVESTIGATIONS—and forced her breathing to slow. She needed to approach this in a deliberate, grownup way instead of the passionate, seat-of-the-pants way that had not served her well in the past. She was, after all, a forty-four-year-old investigative journalist now, a methodical researcher. If she kept her cool, she could bring the skills she’d acqui
red over the past two and a half decades to solving this old and agonizing puzzle.
She turned the shiny brass knob and stepped inside.
The white-haired woman at the reception desk glanced up. “Miss Cates, I bet.”
Still huffing, Molly nodded.
“Sit yourself down, honey. You look like the heat’s got to you. I’ll let Shelby know you’re here.”
While Molly was still circling the furniture, trying to calm down enough to sit, Shelby Palmer appeared. He was a short, solid man in his fifties with curly gray hair and a gray seersucker suit. He pumped her hand vigorously. “I see you found us. Come on back.” He turned to the receptionist and said, “Thanks, Mama. You go on home now. I’ve got to stay for my six o’clock, and I think I just might manage to take care of Miz Cates all by myself.”
As he led Molly down a hallway he said, “This is very unusual, Miz Cates. When Mr. Quinlan called, I was real surprised. Occasionally we need to locate old files for one reason or another, but I don’t believe we’ve ever had anyone come to look at a file in quite these circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” Molly asked.
Palmer turned his head to look at her. “Well, you are one of the subjects of the inquiry. I’ve never had a client ask me to open a file to a subject before. And then there’s the timing. This is a twenty-five-year-old case. If Mama wasn’t such a stickler for keeping everything, the file would have been destroyed a long time ago.”
He opened the door to a small windowless room dominated by an oval table and six chairs. “Our humble conference room.” At one end of the table sat a brown accordion file with several tabbed manila folders inside. Molly’s eyes locked on it hungrily.
“I’ve looked the file over,” Palmer told her, “and you’re in luck. Most of my dad’s notes got typed. You’ll see why that’s important when you try to read the handwritten ones. When you get to those, I’ll try to help. If I can’t decode them, we’ll bring in the real expert.” He nodded toward the front office. “Mama will probably stay around even though I told her to go on home. She’s only supposed to work a half day. At seventy-nine she—” He went on talking about his mother’s prodigious working habits, but Molly was no longer listening. She was staring down at the file and willing him to shut up and leave.
As if he’d gotten the message, he stopped talking and nodded. “Well, then, I’ll leave you to it. If you need anything—coffee or a soda water—just holler.” He closed the door quietly as he left.
Molly sat down at the head of the table and looked around at the room. She was pleased there was no window because she was in no mood to look at Lubbock. She pulled the file toward her, then looked at the neatly typed labels on the three inner folders: CATES, VERNON; CATES, MOLLY; and CROCKER, OLIN T. Just seeing Crocker’s name made her teeth grit; a quarter century had not dulled her hatred one iota.
She pulled out the folder with her name on it. Best to get this little piece of hell over with first.
Stapled to the inside cover was a color photograph of a sullen-looking, dark-haired girl standing in front of a white frame bungalow, a laundry bag slung over one slumped shoulder. She wore a very short green dress that revealed her thin, pale legs to mid-thigh. The girl’s long hair, parted in the middle, looked wet, as though she’d just stepped from the shower, and she was gazing down at the sidewalk with the intensity of someone trying to remember something important. Molly Cates at twenty-one.
Molly Cates at forty-four couldn’t remember what she had been doing or thinking, standing on that sidewalk holding that laundry bag, but she recognized the bungalow on Avenue D, and the green cotton dress, and the state of profound unhappiness she had been in then. She was certain she hadn’t known the photo was being taken; if she had, she would have stood up straight and smiled for the camera—a lifelong habit of putting on a happy face in front of the lens.
The folder contained twelve stapled sheaves of onionskin paper. On top lay five loose sheets typed back in the days before word processors. Single-spaced. The date at the top was 11/2/75. The heading was: “Subject: Cates, Molly. DOB 6—3—54, SS#460—88—5099.”
Molly closed her eyes, giving herself a few seconds’ reprieve before facing November of 1975—surely one of the worst times of her life. She opened her eyes and began to read.
SUBJECT: MOLLY CATES, TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD MARRIED WHITE FEMALE—RETAINED MAIDEN NAME—RENTS DUPLEX, 2324 AVENUE D, AUSTIN—HUSBAND: SENIOR PATROLMAN GRADY TRAYNOR, AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT—MOVED OUT FIVE MONTHS AGO—STILL PAYS RENT—DAUGHTER: JOSEPHINE ELIZABETH TRAYNOR, AGE 2—RESIDES WITH SUBJECT’S AUNT, HARRIET CAVANAUGH, 4700 MESQUITE TRAIL, LUBBOCK. SUBJECT EMPLOYED AT AUSTIN, AMERICAN-PATRIOT, 1974—1975—ON LEAVE NOW—NO VISIBLE MEANS OF SUPPORT.
Molly stopped reading. Christ. This twenty-one-year-old white female being summarized here, the subject, the intense and unhappy girl in the picture—what did that person have to do with her? Same name, same birth date, same Social Security number, but was there a single cell in her body now that was present in the body of that young woman who lived in such misery on Avenue D? She doubted it.
She forced her eyes to the next paragraph.
SUBJECT DROPPED OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL AT 16, 1970, AFTER FATHER’S DEATH—JUNIOR YEAR AT LAKE TRAVIS HIGH—EXCELLENT ACADEMIC RECORD, GIRLs’ TENNIS TEAM, HONOR SOCIETY.
PERSONALITY CHANGED AFTER FATHER’S DEATH, SAY PEERS AND NEIGHBORS (SEE ATTACHED INTERVIEWS)—UNBALANCED, IRRATIONAL, OBSESSED WITH FATHER’S DEATH—REJECTED ALL EVIDENCE OF SUICIDE, INSISTED HE WAS MURDERED THOUGH MEDICAL EXAMINER RULED DEATH SUICIDE, JUNE 1970 (SEE ATTACHED REPORT).
SUBJECT CALLED SHERIFF’S OFFICE 40 TIMES IN JULY 1970—DEMANDED COPIES OF ME’S REPORT— TRIED TO OBTAIN SHERIFF’S NOTES, THREATENED TO TAKE HIM TO COURT—BROKE INTO HIS OFFICE TO STEAL NOTES, SHERIFF ALLEGES.
RUMORS OF HEAVY DRINKING AND SEXUAL PROMISCUITY AFTER FATHER’S DEATH (SEE ATTACHED INTERVIEWS).
Heavy drinking? Sexual promiscuity? Molly considered it. She had gotten drunk from time to time, yes, but she had never thought of it as heavy drinking. And sexual promiscuity? Well, you might call it that, that desperate prowling and grappling, that nervous groping for something she could never quite pinpoint. But calling it sexual promiscuity made it sound like a lot more fun than the sweaty, lonely disappointment those pathetic couplings had been.
She read on.
SUBJECT FREQUENTED BARS IN LAKE TRAVIS AREA—DRANK BEER—PICKED UP MEN—PROMISCUITY DIFFICULT TO DOCUMENT BECAUSE SUBJECT WAS UNDER AGE AND MEN WILL NOT TALK ON RECORD.
Molly wondered which ones Julian Palmer had found. Not that she could even remember their names now, those long-legged, slow-talking cowboys and carpenters and truckers she had preferred back then.
1970—1971—SUBJECT LIVED ALONE IN RENTED HOUSE IN VOLENTE—RAN OUT OF MONEY—MOVED TO BOARDINGHOUSE IN AUSTIN—RECEIVED FATHER’S $100,000 LIFE INSURANCE BENEFIT—DEPOSITED IT AT MERRILL LYNCH, DID NOT SPEND ANY OF IT. SUBJECT’S FATHER’S SISTER, HARRIET CATES CAVANAUGH, A RESPECTABLE MARRIED WOMAN IN LUBBOCK, TRIED TO GET SUBJECT TO COME BACK TO LUBBOCK, BUT SUBJECT STAYED IN AUSTIN.
Now there was an understatement, Molly thought. Subject and her respectable married aunt had indulged in frequent screaming fights over that very issue. Aunt Harriet had begged Molly to come back to Lubbock to live with her and finish school. Molly had refused, even when Aunt Harriet had threatened to bring the law into it. Molly had been too far gone at that point to care, too sunk in her grief and the need to know what had really happened to her daddy out there on the lake.
She was tempted to quit reading here. It was like overhearing people gossiping about you and having the choice to go on listening to them or leave. It was just inviting pain to go on listening.
She went back to reading.
SUBJECT MARRIED GRADY TRAYNOR, AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT PATROLMAN 1972—DAUGHTER BORN 6 MONTHS LATER—ADEQUATE IF UNCONVENTIONAL MOTHER FIRST 2 YEARS. FEBRUARY 1975, QUIT JOB—LEFT BABY IN LUBBOCK WITH HARRIET CAVANA
UGH—STARTED NEW ROUND OF QUESTIONING RE VERNON CATES’S DEATH.
The disapproval permeating the tone of this dead investigator stung her where she was most vulnerable. She wanted to talk back to him, explain the extenuating circumstances. Maybe she had neglected her daughter, but she’d discovered something that had set her off again: four years after his death, some of her father’s rare Mexican gold coins had turned up in an Austin pawnshop that specialized in old coins. The burglary suspect who had pawned them was in the Travis County Jail and Olin Crocker had talked with him. She’d been desperate for information about this because she was certain the coins had been stolen from her father’s houseboat the night he was killed. It could lead to the killer. How could she not follow up on that? Julian K. Palmer had been an investigator; surely he knew how compelling such things were.
CROCKER SAYS SUBJECT STARTED TO HARASS HIM AGAIN, WORSE THAN BEFORE—CALLS CATES A “DANGEROUSLY DERANGED YOUNG WOMAN.”
MAY 1975—SUBJECT’S HUSBAND MOVED OUT. INITIATED DIVORCE ON GROUNDS OF INCOMPATIBILITY. FRIENDS WERE SURPRISED, THOUGHT COUPLE HAD BEEN VERY MUCH IN LOVE.
Molly felt so tired. What a mess these people had made of their lives, this subject and her policeman husband. How could people be so stupid?
SUBJECT BLAMES QUINLAN OIL COMPANY IN LUBBOCK FOR FATHER’S DEATH (SEE ATTACHED ARTICLE)—CLAIMS QUINLAN OFFERED FATHER A BRIBE NOT TO PUBLISH ARTICLE HE HAD WRITTEN ON AN ALLEGED SCAM QUINLAN WAS CONDUCTING IN ITS DALHART OIL FIELDS—CLAIMS QUINLAN HAD HIM KILLED, HIS NOTES DESTROYED, TO STOP PUBLICATION.
QUINLAN PRESIDENT JASPER QUINLAN AND VICE-PRESIDENT ROGER QUINLAN DENY CHARGES. SUBJECT NEVER PRODUCED ANY EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT ACCUSATIONS AGAINST QUINLAN OIL.
IN CONCLUSION: MOLLY CATES APPEARS TO BE DISTURBED YOUNG WOMAN UNABLE TO ACCEPT FATHER’S SUICIDE. BECAUSE OF UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE STYLE AND IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR SHE WOULD MAKE EXCEEDINGLY POOR WITNESS IN ANY SORT OF PROCEEDINGS.
All the Dead Lie Down Page 15
