“You wouldn’t believe how often I see that in my work, Molly.” He smiled at her, that rueful, ironic smile of his that never failed to snag her heart.
She squeezed his hand in both of hers. “I’m so glad to see you. I need a few favors.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Please see what you can do to help Sarah Jane Hurley.”
“She needs help. The Houston warrant is for aggravated assault—stabbing a woman in a downtown shelter and fleeing to avoid arrest. The woman was badly injured, but she was stealing from Hurley and also had a knife, so I think there are extenuating circumstances. I don’t know how serious they are about pursuing her. It was more than a year ago. I’ll check.”
“Good.”
“There’s also this matter—she and a friend, this Lufkin who got shot, apparently found Emily Bickerstaff’s body first and didn’t report it.”
“But she’s cooperating now, Grady, and she’s a hero. Surely that counts for something.”
“Well, she may be a hero, Molly, but she sure waited long enough to do something about the gas plot. Five more minutes and it would have been too late.”
“Would you have listened to her, Grady? If she’d come to you—a bag lady, a drunk, a woman with a warrant for assault. Would you have bought her story?”
He sat looking pensive for a few long moments. Molly loved him for that: he was man who, from time to time, was actually willing to look honestly and critically at himself. “I’ll work on both those matters,” he said. “What else?”
“The library. She’s worried about that.”
He rolled his eyes upward. “Jesus, Molly. Can’t this wait?”
“It’s important to her, Grady. She likes libraries. Now that she’s a hero maybe they could give her an honorary lifetime card or something. At the very least they need to let her back in.”
“I’ll check.”
“And, Grady, would you get her daughter’s phone number for me? Her name is Ellie—I don’t know the last name—and she lives in Brenham.”
Grady nodded.
“And one more favor. The guy at the service station—the one who says I tried to break his window? Burt.”
“Yeah?”
“I want you to use the rubber hose on him. Break his fingers.”
“That bad, huh?”
“He treats the homeless like insects.”
“I wish there were a law against it.”
“Me too.” She lowered her voice and glanced over at the receptionist, who was still on the phone. “What’s the scuttlebutt here?”
He shrugged. “How should I know?”
“Oh, come on, Grady.”
“Well, Cullen Shoemaker and his mother are on their way back from New Orleans in FBI custody.”
“His mother?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She wasn’t involved, was she?”
“I don’t know, but two of the McNelly Posse members are being questioned downstairs right now. Of course, they’re swearing the posse is a service fraternity and they are just clean-cut college boys, but they have suggested that both Cullen Shoemaker and his mother may have planned this.”
“Oh, no.” Molly pictured the sensible gray-haired grandmother in the Senate hearing room, leaning forward in her seat, listening to her son’s diatribe. “She couldn’t have supported a plot that would kill children and innocent people. After what she’s suffered, she couldn’t do that. It would be doing the same thing to other people as what happened to her.”
“Molly! Haven’t you learned anything? This gun business is one of those wildly irrational issues. People do lunatic things when they believe the very basis of their freedom is under attack. We have a long history of that in this country.”
Molly could hear Cullen Shoemaker ranting to the Senate committee. If we let them disarm us, pardners, the same thing that happened to those folks in Waco will happen to us—coldblooded massacre. Don’t think it won’t. If we let those jackbooted thugs from the ATF get us on their list, then we are up shit creek with no paddle. That will be the end of our freedoms, pardners, the end.
Elizabeth Shoemaker, Molly recalled, had been listening earnestly, nodding even. “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted.
“The problem is, you have this idea women are more civilized than—”
“We are!”
He looked at her coolly, his pale eyes calm and sure. “Bullshit.”
Molly leaned back on the sofa, picturing Elizabeth Shoemaker, saintly, in her sensible shoes. “Well, I’ve been wrong about nearly everything else. I might as well add this to the list.”
Grady’s eyes opened wide with interest. “Really? What else have you been wrong about?”
“The list is endless. I’ll fill you in later. What about the actual bomber? The German, the one Sarah Jane calls Billy Goat Gruff?”
“Our artist is working on a composite right now with a man called Rhyming Rudy and the maître d’ at Creekside Grill and Sarah Jane.”
“What else?” she said. “There’s something else, Grady. I can see it in your eyes.”
He leaned forward and said quietly, “A print. They lifted one perfect thumbprint from the fake camera that launched the gas.”
“Oh, good. One more favor, Grady. The last one.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Get me out of here. They told me to wait, but I have an appointment with Parnell Morrisey in twenty minutes. Will you vouch for me?”
“Sure.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “You know, Molly, you missed getting gassed by three and a half minutes.”
“That close?”
“That’s what Heller says.”
She felt a twinge of anxiety, not about the close call with the gas, but about what Heller might have told Grady. “You’ve talked with Agent Heller?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you he came to see me the other night?”
“Yes. He said you had Cullen Shoemaker spotted from the get-go. Says he should have listened to you, Molly, instead of focusing on Wanda Lavoy. There’s something you were right about.”
She studied his face to see if Heller had told him anything else. Even if he had, it was unlikely Grady knew about the Olin Crocker incident. And if he did know, he’d decided not to let her know he knew. Secrecy sure made for complications—too much to remember. She vowed to avoid it in the future and live her life like an open book.
NEEDLES AND PINS, NEEDLES AND PINS, WHEN A MAN MARRIES HIS TROUBLE BEGINS.
—MOTHER GOOSE
Molly Cates sat waiting on the cool granite base of the Confederate soldiers monument. It had been her favorite statue on the Capitol grounds ever since she and her daddy had first visited Austin the summer her mother died. After they had taken the usual visitors’ tour of the Capitol, they had walked the grounds and stopped here to read the inscription and talk about the Civil War. This afternoon, when she’d called Parnell from the FBI office and told him to meet her, this was the first place that came to mind. Over the phone her godfather’s voice had sounded unsurprised and weary, resigned to the inevitable, as though he’d been waiting all his life for that very call and, now it had come, he might not be able to muster the energy to go through with it.
She was exhausted too. Every inch of her body ached right down to the bone, her lip hurt every time she opened her mouth, her knee was throbbing, and the bites on her feet itched with a vengeance. This was probably the worst possible time to confront him, but she was not going to put off the reckoning any longer.
It was five hours since the gas had been released in the Senate chamber, and the Capitol itself was still sealed off to everyone except the bomb squad and FBI agents. At each of the entrances two DPS troopers stood on guard. But the grounds and the several surrounding blocks were a madhouse, swarming with media and cops and curiosity seekers. Scores of media vans were parked outside the grounds and a steady stream of cars with gawkers looking out the windows crawled by. Just outside the poli
ce perimeter, TV reporters were setting up to broadcast the evening news from the Capitol grounds.
Now she caught sight of Parnell. He stood at the yellow police tape, talking with two of the bomb squad officers who were still suited up like spacemen. He glanced toward her, then headed across the grass, walking very slowly. His shoulders were stooped, his feet looked heavy, like a man with barely enough energy to resist gravity’s pull. When he reached the monument, he didn’t speak to her or even look at her. Instead, he stood close to where she was sitting and studied the inscription carved into the marble, underneath the four bronze Confederate soldiers posted at each corner. “Died for states rights guaranteed under the Constitution,” he read. “I bet that’s not how they teach the story up in New York City.”
Molly recited the next line from memory: “The South, against overwhelming numbers and resources, fought until exhausted. That’s certainly the story they taught at Lubbock High.”
“But you can see it now from a Yankee perspective too,” he said. “Sure.”
“Do you think it’s possible to understand almost any act if you can get yourself into the right perspective?”
“No.” Molly shook her head for emphasis. “Some things are unforgivable, beyond understanding. Like what Cullen Shoemaker tried to do here today—sacrificing innocent lives for a political idea. I will never understand that.”
“Your capacity to understand and forgive has its limits, then.”
“Oh, yes.”
He looked directly at her for the first time. He was squinting against the sun, which had finally come out just in time to set. The bags under his eyes were so swollen, they seemed to be dragging his whole face downward. He said, “You look terrible, sweetheart.”
She studied his ravaged face. “You look pretty bad yourself.”
He seemed to be trying for a smile, but gravity was too much for him and he couldn’t manage it. “Didn’t sleep much last night. I hear you were held hostage and nearly killed.”
She nodded. “Very nearly. Parnell, I’ve always wondered why people say someone who survives an ordeal is brave. I wasn’t brave at all. I didn’t know it was possible to be so scared. I nearly burned myself up with fear. I would have done anything not to die.” She was surprised that, in spite of what she was about to do, she still expected sympathy from him, and reassurance. She had pulled up the leg of her pants to check the bandage on her knee and now she smoothed down the edges of it. Parnell looked down at it and winced. “I’d sure like to hear the story,” he said.
“Not today. It’s your turn to tell me a story.”
“But you think you already know it, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I hear you threatened to kill Olin Crocker,” he said.
“No. I threatened to blow his balls into raw hamburger. I don’t think that would have killed him.”
“Would you have done it?”
“Of course not.”
“He thought you were dead serious.”
“He called you?”
“Uh-huh. Got me out of bed Sunday morning. What would you have done if he’d refused to tell you?”
“I’d’ve slunk off, probably, and never known.”
“But now you know.”
She looked him in the eye. “I know you paid Crocker sixty thousand dollars to call my daddy’s death a suicide.”
His expression didn’t change. “Well, that’s true. I did pay him to call it a suicide. Because it was a suicide.”
“No, Parnell. It wasn’t.”
He shook his head and the smile he’d been trying for finally came. “God save us, Molly, when you get ahold of an idea.”
“Parnell, I know.”
“What is it you know?”
She lowered her eyes, unable to bring herself to look at him when she said it. “I know Rose was having an affair with my father. For more than twenty years.”
“How do you know that?” His voice was steady.
“Old letters between Harriet and Daddy. I went to the family archives yesterday.”
He nodded slowly. “You’ve been mighty busy, Molly.”
“Yes, I have.”
“And you think you’ve put it all together, at long last. You finally have your truth.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“So it’s a country and western song, Miss Molly? That old honky-tonk theme.” In his twangiest West Texas voice, he drawled, “My woman, she done me wrong with my best friend, so I done the sucker in.” The mournfulness of his voice and the slump of his shoulders belied the flipness of the words. “Is that what happened?”
“It must have been terrible, Parnell, to find out that they were having an affair, deceiving you all those years.”
“Yes, it was worse than terrible, Molly. But tell me, why did I just kill him, then? Why not her?”
“Because you loved her too much to kill her.”
“So…our country song gets more melodramatic yet. That cheatin’ woman of mine, she done me wrong,” he twanged, “but her blue eyes cryin’ in the rain begged me to spare her life. Is that what happened, Molly?”
“Yes.”
“And why did I do it just then, when Vern was about to get married?”
“Because you finally found out about the affair.”
“I see.”
“Where’s Rose?” Molly asked.
“She’s over yonder on the west lawn.” He turned his face in that direction. “Sittin’ on the bench feeding the squirrels. Damned rodents.”
“Does she know about Crocker’s call?”
“No. I didn’t see any reason to upset her with that.”
Molly’s eyes were stinging with the effort to hold back tears. “No one will ever love me the way you love Rose.”
“I don’t know, Molly. I’ve never seen a man love anyone more than your daddy loved you. Vern thought the sun rose and set in your eyes.”
“I loved him too. So much. But he wasn’t the man I thought he was.”
“Oh, now, Molly. Who of us can stand up to the scrutiny you’ve been giving your daddy of late? Vern had a soft spot for the ladies, there’s no denying it. And God knows”—he closed his eyes—“the ladies had a soft spot for him.”
“Oh, Parnell. It’s much more than that. He never really succeeded at anything. He was a failed rancher, an unfaithful husband. He couldn’t manage money. He drank too much, got depressed, depended on his older sister to bail him out like she was his nursemaid.” She found herself hugging her knees into her chest and rocking slightly.
Parnell reached down and patted her shoulder. “Molly, Molly.”
“And he wasn’t even a very good writer.” She pressed her forehead against her knees, completing the circle, making her body into a cocoon.
“Sounds to me like a real human being, with lots of flaws. Can I tell you a story, Molly?”
Molly picked her head up and looked at him, amazed. Here was a man who would be telling stories even as he was standing on the gallows with a rope around his neck. “Sure. Tell me a story.”
He put a foot up on the monument’s base and leaned forward, resting his arm on his knee, the storyteller’s classic pose. “Remember the day you got tossed by Jocko? It looked for a while like you might bleed to death. He’d caught an artery, old Jocko, and I never saw anyone as small as you lose so much blood so fast. Your daddy went in to donate blood ’cause they were running short. You and he had the same type. It was a valiant thing for him to do because you remember how he was scared to death of needles.” He looked to her for a response and she nodded. She did remember.
“Well, sure enough,” Parnell continued, “Vern fainted dead away while they were taking it. I was there, and Rose was there, when he came to. He opened his eyes and asked us if you had died while he’d been out. No, we said. As a matter of fact they had the bleeding stopped and it looked like you were out of danger.
“Molly, he was so relieved and happy he bawled like a baby, and, while he was cr
ying, he said, “Parnell, did you see the way the kid handled that horse? She damn near made it. If that horse hadn’t been so goddamned old and slow, I believe she would have counted her coup on Jocko. Isn’t she something else?’ ”
Parnell closed his eyes, remembering back. “He never let on to you he felt that way ’cause he was supposed to be angry with you for breaking the rules, but really he was so proud of your courage and daring, your defiance and your pigheadedness. I believe if he was here right now he’d be unhappy you found out all his peccadilloes and weaknesses, but he’d be so proud that you’re the same swashbuckler you were then.”
Molly had never heard this. She had vowed she wouldn’t cry at this meeting, and she didn’t, but she wished she had a tissue to blot her nose.
“I feel sort of the same way right now, Molly. I didn’t want the story of how Vern died to come out, but I always knew that, if it did, you would be the one to drag it out into the light. I can’t help but feel a little proud. But you aren’t quite there yet, sweetheart.”
“No?”
“No.” He turned back to the inscription on the monument and moved his fingers slowly along the carved letters like a man reading Braille. “You have in mind my making a confession? You want to send your police lieutenant to take my statement? Nice fella you got there, by the way—that Grady Traynor. I believe I’d hold on to him this time.”
“I do want a confession, Parnell. I want you to tell me about it.”
“Oh, Molly, sweetheart, I didn’t kill Vern.”
“Then Rose did.” She watched his face closely for a reaction, but his expression didn’t change.
“Ah, now we’ve got a real country and western song going,” he said. “She loved that man so much she couldn’t stand to see him love another, so she shot him dead just before his wedding day. Even though she was married to his best friend, a true-blue fella who worshiped her.” He looked down at Molly. “Now that’s a real sad one, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“The problem is, Miss Molly, you’re thinking Jimmie Dale Gilmore when you should be thinking Shakespeare.”
“Huh?”
“Romeo and Juliet.”
“What do you mean?”
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