The Red Scream

by Mary Willis Walker

  Jo Beth opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it and shook her head. “You know my rule about that, Mother.”

  It was damned maddening. Jo Beth, always mature beyond her years, had from the beginning refused to talk to one parent about the other, throughout the divorce, Molly’s subsequent two marriages, and Grady’s one.

  Molly sighed. From her bag on the seat she pulled copies she’d made of the twelve torn-out pages and the poem and laid them in front of her daughter.

  Jo Beth read the poem over twice and scanned the pages. Then she looked at the poem again as if she were memorizing it. When she looked up, the smooth skin of her forehead was creased. “I see what you mean about the poem. If you take it literally, this part about Louie inspiring his rhymes and giving his craft a try could mean this person actually likes Louie Bronk’s poetry and wants to write like that.” She shook her head. “Unlikely.”

  “Yeah. And poetry being metaphorical, I’m afraid the writer is using the poetry as a symbol for something Louie does do well.”

  “Killing,” said Jo Beth.

  Molly nodded.

  “I agree you should show this to the DA. And I don’t like to nag, but I really think you should show it to Dad, too. Tonight if possible. I’m going to call him now. Maybe he could—”

  Molly grabbed her daughter’s arm and pulled her back down. “No. I’ll take it to Stan Heffernan first thing tomorrow.”

  Jo Beth sighed and sat back down in the booth.

  The waiter arrived with their beers and both women took long drinks, putting their glasses down at exactly the same moment and looking at each other across the table.

  “Could this be Louie Bronk’s last gasp?” Jo Beth asked. “He could have gotten someone here to mail it for him.”

  “That’s the first thing I thought about, but the language is far too literate for him. Louie has trouble spelling cat; his vocabulary doesn’t include words like ‘depiction’ and ‘accolades.’ The poetry of his that I quote in my book has been cleaned up—my editor corrected the spelling and added some punctuation.” Molly took another long sip of her beer. “You know, after fifty hours of interviews I feel I know Louie better than anyone in the world. He didn’t write this. But I’ve wondered whether he’s read the book; it would take him a while with his fifth-grade reading level.”

  “Where he is, he’s got plenty of time.”

  “Until it runs out altogether, sometime between midnight and sunrise on Tuesday,” Molly said, shaking her head. “Tell me something that makes sense, like tax law.”

  Jo Beth grinned. “Well, yesterday I started working on the Overton case, directly for Benson Williams.”

  “One of the partners. Honey, that’s great.”

  “Uh-huh. Ben’s a super teacher; it’s heaven working with him. He’s letting me do most of the prehearing preparation, and I’ll probably go to Houston with him if it goes to trial.”

  While she listened Molly marveled at what an accomplished and beautiful daughter she had produced in spite of all her own manifest deficiencies as a mother.

  “So if we can prove that Paul Overton didn’t know about the—” Jo Beth stopped midsentence and looked up. So did Molly. The man in the dark suit was standing at their table, looking down at them. Molly felt her shoulders tense; now that he was closer, the bulge she thought she’d seen under his left arm was unmistakable.

  “Mrs. Cates?” His soft voice carried the slight singsong intonation that characterized Texans of Mexican descent. “I don’t think you recognize me.”

  Molly studied the smooth-contoured olive face with its straight nose and lustrous, slightly slanted black eyes and felt just a prickle of memory stir. “Sorry, I—”

  “Well, it’s been a long time. Ten years. I’m David Serrano. We met during the Bronk trial.” His expression remained grave.

  Molly stifled a gasp. David Serrano. The McFarlands’ baby-sitter-handyman. How could she have forgotten? “Yes, of course. David. Mr. Serrano,” Molly blurted out. “Sorry I didn’t recognize you; you’ve—” She stopped, afraid of offending. This well-dressed, soft-spoken man had been a scruffy young student at the time, handsome but threadbare and unsophisticated. He had changed tremendously over the years.

  He shrugged. “People change. It’s been a long time.”

  “David, this is my daughter, Jo—uh, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, David Serrano.”

  He reached out to take Jo Beth’s proffered hand and shook it gravely. Jo Beth’s eyes were bright with interest as she scanned the bulge under his arm. The daughter of a policeman, she had no trouble spotting a man who was carrying.

  “I hate to interrupt you,” he said in a low voice, “but I wonder if I could have a word with you in private, Mrs. Cates. I was going to call you tomorrow, but since you’re here …” He gestured toward the bar. “I have a table there. I won’t keep you long.”

  Molly looked over at Jo Beth, who nodded at her. “I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, sliding out of the booth, noting the intensity of interest in her daughter’s eyes. She has inherited something from me after all, Molly thought as she followed David into the bar; she is afflicted with that same damned sordid curiosity; she can’t wait to hear what this is all about. And neither can I.

  The bar at Katz’s, with its low, black-tiled ceiling and dim lighting, was notorious as the hangout for many of Austin’s heavy drinkers. The sign outside said “Katz’s Never Kloses,” and several of the good ol’ boys drinking and laughing at the bar looked like they hadn’t been home in years.

  David Serrano with his courtly manners, serious face, and business suit looked decidedly out of place there. And so did the gun under his arm.

  He led her to a small round table against the brick wall and pulled a chair out for her. He waited until she sat before he did. “Can I order you a drink, Mrs. Cates?”

  “Call me Molly.”

  “All right. A drink?”

  “First call me Molly,” she said with a smile.

  He let out a puff of air which might have been a laugh if he’d allowed it to take shape, but his lips looked as if they’d been trained to solemnity. “Molly,” he conceded. “How about that drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  He motioned the waiter over and ordered a double Scotch on the rocks.

  Molly sat back in her chair and took a good look at this man she had not seen for ten years. Last time she had seen him, he’d been testifying at Louie Bronk’s trial, wearing a shiny ill-fitting suit he’d obviously borrowed for the occasion. And he had wept throughout his testimony.

  Now his long delicate fingers were tightly interlaced on the table in front of him; on his left hand he wore a wide, hand-hammered gold band and a heavy gold watch. His thick black hair, combed straight back from his face, was graying at the sides—prematurely, since he was only thirty-two, Molly calculated—and he was as svelte as he had been at twenty-two. She should have recognized him.

  She found herself brimming with questions, but decided to wait and hear what was on his mind first.

  When he started to speak his voice was shaky, like a nervous public speaker. “I’ve only been back in Austin a few days and I was going to call you.” He shifted his weight on the chair as if he was having trouble getting comfortable. “I’ve been living in Brownsville for the past ten years, you know.”

  “No. I didn’t know,” she said.

  The waiter set his drink down on the table. David picked it up and drank as if it had arrived in the nick of time.

  Then he took a deep breath and said, “The reason I wanted to talk to you—I wonder if I could ask you something. About Louie Bronk?”

  “Sure. Ask.”

  His tongue flicked over his lips. “Do you think the execution will go through this time?”

  It was the second time today she’d been asked that. Molly studied him before answering. His body was so full of tension that his shoulders were hunched up close to his ears. “Yes,” she said. “I th
ink so. Why do you ask?”

  He shrugged, but his shoulders stayed tense. “Well, the last two times, his attorneys have managed to get him a stay. I thought you might have some inside information. You know, what last-minute maneuvering was going on.”

  She shook her head. “I really don’t have any inside information, David. When I talked with his attorney last week, she said the state court had rejected Bronk’s appeal.”

  “What about the governor? Do you think she might pardon him, or reprieve him?”

  “Not a chance. She’s tough on law and order. And she really believes in the death penalty.” She leaned forward across the table. “What brings you back to Austin, David?”

  He hesitated. “Well, it seemed time. I haven’t been back since I left ten years ago.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bad memories, I guess. But really I came here on my way to Huntsville. I’m going to witness the execution on Tuesday—if it happens.”

  “You are?” Molly tried to conceal her surprise.

  “Yes. Weird isn’t it? He requested me as one of his witnesses.”

  “And you accepted.”

  “Yes. My first reaction was to say no, but then I decided I should. It might be good for me.”

  “Good how?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He took a sip of his drink. Then he said, “So maybe I could stop thinking about it. This thing almost ruined my life. It changed everything for me. I suppose I was hoping that seeing him die might erase it all, so I could—not go back—I wouldn’t want to do that, but put it behind me. Eleven years ago when Mrs. McFarland was murdered, I was just a kid really, only twenty-one. Innocent. I had no idea how things were.” His face tightened up and the skin around his nostrils went white. “But I learned fast.”

  Molly suspected he harbored anger that he hadn’t even begun to fathom. She wanted to pull out her tape recorder but was afraid that asking might spook him.

  “I was so dumb back then,” he said, “I didn’t even know how vulnerable I was, how I couldn’t do noth—anything to protect myself.”

  He paused and looked at Molly miserably; she nodded to encourage him.

  “The cops assumed I’d killed her. That I was the Scalper. They tried to pin every murder they could think of on me. They treated me like I was some sort of mad dog. Even when Alison and me told about seeing the car drive away and Mr. McFarland went to bat for me. Even though I’d never done nothing, never been in trouble with the law. Even with those things, they still knocked me around and tried to pin it on me.” As he talked on, he lost his controlled grip on grammar. “If it hadn’t been for Louie Bronk confessing right then, they probably would have indicted me. It was like a miracle, him confessing. If that hadn’t happened it’d be me on death row now.” He took a drink. “I decided right then I was going to do everything I could to get some power in this world so that couldn’t happen to me again.”

  “And have you?”

  He looked up at her, puzzled.

  “Gotten power?” she said.

  He emitted the gust of air that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t contained so much bitterness. “Well, I made some money. A lot of money actually.” He finished off his drink in a quick move and held the glass in the air to get the waiter’s attention.

  Once she started asking questions, Molly believed in asking the rude ones—the questions everyone else was too tactful to ask; lack of tact, she believed, was one of the main things she had going for her as an investigative journalist. “How did you make money?” she asked.

  For a minute she thought he might not answer, but he did. “Funeral parlors,” he said. “My grandfather had one old one in Laredo and when I went back we acquired some more and now we’ve got a string of fifteen along the border. It’s a good business. Death is a growth industry there.”

  Molly studied his face to see if his last sentence had been a joke, but there was no sign of it. Maybe funeral directors didn’t make jokes.

  “Did it work? Did money bring you the power you’d hoped for?”

  He narrowed his eyes as if he didn’t understand the question. “Not really. Maybe I feel a little safer than before.”

  “Is that the reason for the gun? To be safe?” Molly nodded toward the bulge under his arm.

  His face stayed blank, his black eyes steady; it was hard to believe this was the same emotional young man who had wept as he testified a decade earlier. “I suppose,” he said. “I got a permit for it.”

  “But does it make you feel safer?”

  “Not really. But in this world some people are safer than others. I want for me and my family—I’m married now and we have three kids—to be in the safer category. Whatever it takes.”

  He fell silent. When the waiter put a drink in front of him, he just stared at it.

  Molly wished she knew what the hell was really going on here. Serrano seemed to have a great deal more on his mind than he was saying. She decided to try fishing around a little.

  “David, do you stay in touch with the McFarlands?”

  He took a long draw on his drink. “Sure. I saw Alison last night, and Mark, you know, her cousin Mark Redinger. We’ve kept in touch over the years. I really loved those kids, and they were real fond of me, especially Alison, ’cuz their mother was gone a lot of the time. Most of the time, really. I saw much more of them the two and a half years I worked there than their parents did.”

  “What about Stuart? Have you seen him?”

  “Not yet. He’s been busy at the hospital. But I’m planning to.”

  “And Charlie?”

  He shrugged.

  “The kids have had a hard time of it, I imagine,” Molly said.

  “Yeah, as hard as people like that can have.”

  “What do you mean—people like that?”

  He looked away. “Oh, people who have it all so easy—Anglos with a fancy education and a rich daddy. When they run out of money, they just whine for more. For those people there’s always a safety net.”

  “How is Alison?” Molly asked. “Her father says he’s worried about her mental health.”

  He sighed. “She had a sort of breakdown when she first started college, had to drop out for a year, but I think she’s in pretty good shape now.”

  “David, I suppose you know the book I wrote about Louie Bronk just came out.”

  He lowered his eyes and stared into his drink.

  “Two years ago I wrote you several letters asking for another interview, but I never heard back from you.”

  He didn’t lift his eyes.

  “Have you read it?”

  He hesitated a betraying fraction of a second. “Yes. I read it last week.”

  “What did you think of it? I’d welcome some feedback on the part that involved you.”

  His eyes darted toward the door. For all the world, Molly thought, like a trapped animal. “You mean was it accurate?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, you must have used my testimony at the trial for your information.”

  “That, and the interview you gave me at the time,” she said.

  “You stuck close to it, so it was accurate in that respect. I guess that’s what you got to do, but—” He took a long swig of his drink.

  Molly shifted her weight on the hard chair; the man’s tension was contagious. “But what?”

  He didn’t answer and he didn’t look up.

  This was so unexpected a development that Molly found herself floundering around for the right question. Finally she said, “David, are you having some second thoughts about your testimony in the McFarland matter?”

  When he looked up, there were several tiny droplets of liquid just above his upper lip; Molly wasn’t sure whether it was sweat or Scotch. “I just wondered,” he said softly. “There wasn’t anything in your book about the nicks.”

  “Nicks?”

  “Yeah. The nicks on her scalp.”

  Molly felt short of breath and her fingertips prickled.
“What are you talking about, David?”

  He lifted a hand and used the back of it to wipe the moisture off his upper lip. “Well, those little cuts Mrs. McFarland had on her head—you didn’t mention them in the part about the autopsy. I read it a couple of times to be sure.”

  “There weren’t any little cuts,” Molly said.

  “Yes there were. Like I’ve seen sometimes when our clients—you know, the departed—have been shaved by someone in the family who had a shaky hand instead of having it done by our professional mortuary barber.”

  When she had caught her breath, Molly said, “David, the Travis County ME who’s been doing the postmortems for thirty years didn’t mention any nicks. And I had one of the autopsy photographs on my bulletin board for a year, looked at it every day, and I never saw any nicks.”

  “They weren’t very big,” he said, “and when they’re done after death, there isn’t any bleeding.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “No one asked. I thought it was obvious and would come out in the autopsy. I didn’t know it hadn’t until I read your book.” His black eyes watched her so intently Molly got the feeling that he was giving her a test of some sort.

  “I’ll check on it tomorrow,” she said, looking at the tight set of his handsome red mouth and wondering what else he was holding back. “Is this what’s been bothering you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Is there anything else I can check on for you?”

  He lifted his glass, drained the contents, and set it down carefully on the table. “Molly,” he said, using her name voluntarily for the first time, “you’re against the death penalty, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you Catholic?” he asked.

  “No. I’m not any religion. I’m just against the state killing people. What about you?”

  He lifted his right hand to his chest and put the index and middle fingers inside his shirt between the buttons. Molly was certain he was touching a small gold cross that hung there. “I’m against it, too,” he said. “Thou shalt not kill.”

  Molly thought she understood now what his problem was. “It sounds like you’re having some last-minute discomfort about your role in putting Louie Bronk away. That’s not unusual for witnesses, David. Among the many things wrong with the death penalty is that it can be devastating for witnesses.”