The Red Scream

by Mary Willis Walker

  Molly was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then she slapped the palm of her hand against her forehead. “Oh, God. I’m so slow. I know what it is. He’s head of the Builder’s Association and they buy all that advertising from us. You’ve been bought!” She all but barked the words out.

  He snapped his head upright. His eyes were blazing amber pits. “Come off it, Molly. You know I have nothing to do with that part of the magazine.”

  Her fists clenched themselves into balls and she gave voice to the suspicions which had just flooded through her bloodstream. “But the publisher sure does. If you haven’t been bought, then he has, and he’s leaning on you. That’s it, isn’t it?” She was on a roll now. “McFarland’s a man with some powerful connections. Don’t deny it, Richard.”

  “Why would I want to? McFarland’s an old crony of the governor, one of her major campaign contributors, friend of all the fallen wheeler-dealers, one of the few who was canny enough to pull in his horns just before the crash. Now he’s back bigger than ever. Sure, he’s rich and powerful, but that has nothing to do with my editorial decision that Louie Bronk is stale news.”

  “McFarland tried to bribe me, Richard.”

  Richard looked back at her with raised eyebrows and bright, amused eyes. “Bribe you? How?”

  “He said he wanted to endow an award for worthy crime writers and make me the first recipient—one hundred thousand dollars not to write anything more about his wife’s murder.”

  Richard threw his head back and laughed. “Worthy crime writers!” he said when he caught his breath. “That’s marvelous. I hope you snapped it up, Molly, since you aren’t going to do the story anyway. God knows you could use the money.”

  “But, Richard, I am going to do the story.”

  He stood up. “Not for Lone Star Monthly you’re not.”

  She felt it like a kick in the ribs. “Richard!”

  “I’d hate to lose you, Molly, but I am the boss here. I’ve never pulled rank on you before, but I say we’re going to do the piece on Banker Griswold, not Louie-fucking-Bronk.”

  She wasn’t about to let him intimidate her with that macho posturing. Through gritted teeth she said, “Richard, if I didn’t know what an opinionated, snobbish, aesthete you are, I’d really suspect that McFarland got to you on this.”

  She could see by the barely perceptible flinch of a muscle in his cheek that she’d gone too far. His brown-orange eyes narrowed. “Well,” he said in his clipped, mock-British intonation, “if I didn’t know what a death-obsessed, morbid ambulance-chaser you are, I’d suspect you just want to rake up something new to boost the sales of your book.”

  She felt breathless, as if she’d been flattened by a steamroller. Finally she managed to croak out, “Oh, Richard, I never even thought about book sales.”

  He was breathing heavily. “Molly, I think we need a time-out here. We both need to go back to our corners. Why don’t you hold off on a decision for today.” He walked to the window. “And I need to get a grip on my temper. I really think—” A buzzer on his desk went off. “Damn. Just a minute.”

  Keeping his back to her, he picked up the phone. “What is it?” He listened a minute, turning so Molly could see his smile spreading. “Hold on, Becky,” he said in a light voice, “I’ll see if she’ll take it.”

  Pushing the hold button, he held the receiver out. “For you. Your benefactor. Charlie McFarland calling. From his private plane. Says it’s urgent.”

  Molly took a deep breath and stepped forward to take the phone. As she was raising it to her ear, Richard leaned over and whispered into the other ear, “Be smart, Molly. Tell him you’ll take his offer.” He chuckled and clapped his hands together softly. “Worthy crime writer of the year, indeed. That’s delicious! If you play it right maybe next Charlie’ll set up a retirement home where old crime writers can go in their sunset years.” He went into peals of laughter so loud Molly had to cover her other ear so she could hear McFarland.

  chapter 5

  In comes this shrink

  A four-eyed fink

  Asks how I think

  Rinka Dink

  Says he’ll help me

  I should talk free.

  Was I damaged at birth?

  Born under a curse?

  Or something worse?

  Maybe I’m just scared to die.

  He’s got a tic in his eye.

  LOUIE BRONK

  Death Row, Ellis I Unit,

  Huntsville, Texas

  In spite of the heat, Molly Cates was glad she’d decided to walk instead of driving the six blocks to the Travis County district attorney’s office. Parking at the Stokes Building was impossible, and anyway, she needed to work off some steam. What a horse’s ass Richard could be! She’d never seen him act like that before. Of course she hadn’t exactly covered herself in roses either—losing it like that and calling him names.

  Sweat began to drip down her hairline, but she walked faster, passing the white-pillared Greek Revival governor’s mansion without even glancing up at it.

  Why had he changed his mind in midstream? Months ago at the staff meeting everyone had agreed that it was a good idea to use Louie Bronk’s execution, when it came, as an opportunity to recap the case and to look at the capital punishment situation in Texas. Then when Bronk’s date was set last month, they’d discussed it again.

  It made her jaw clench to think about Richard Dutton calling her morbid and death-obsessed. Then, to top it off, while she talked on the phone with Charlie McFarland, he had leaned against his desk with that just-swallowed-the-canary look, insinuating she had capitulated just by taking the phone call. When she hung up, they’d looked at one another in hostile silence.

  Finally Richard had said why didn’t she take a day to think it over before saying anything else she might regret. She’d been on the verge of saying it wouldn’t matter if she took a day or a month; she was going to write the article on Louie Bronk and if he didn’t want to print it, well, hell, she’d find another publication that would. But she stopped the words before they escaped. She had a sudden vision of herself unemployed, out pounding the pavements for a new job, maybe having to go back to the grind of a police beat on some daily rag—a hard job at her age. As jobs went, hers was a great one; she couldn’t afford to lose it.

  As she approached the Stokes Building at the corner of Guadalupe and Eleventh, her sweat was flowing. In other parts of the country September might be fall, but in Austin it was often the hottest month. Today it felt like living inside a blast furnace.

  The two flags—U.S. and Texas—that flanked the entrance of the Stokes Building hung limp in the still air. Across Guadalupe the white limestone of the county courthouse shimmered in the heat and gasoline fumes.

  Molly took the elevator to the second floor. When she gave her name at the reception desk, the woman there checked her list and said, “Mr. Heffernan said he’d be in by twelve-thirty and he could see you then if you don’t mind him eating his lunch while you talk. He said for you to wait on him in his office.”

  The receptionist buzzed the glass door open and Molly wended her way through the warren of cubicles toward the DA’s office. Inside, she shut the door and settled down on his big red leather sofa. She let her head drop to the back of the sofa and closed her eyes.

  Charlie McFarland had said he needed to talk to her—privately, not over the phone—today. Could she meet him at his house again, at five-thirty when he got back to town? It would be worth her while, he said. She agreed. Her curiosity was piqued, and anyway, it was on her way home.

  Yes, things certainly were on the move, but try as she might, she couldn’t figure out where they were going.

  Head still resting on the sofa back, she opened her eyes and let them roam around Stan Heffernan’s office. Except for this sofa, it was pretty Spartan—an institutional metal desk and two imitation wood bookcases, old maps of Civil War battle sites on the wall. Not really the sort of office a boy growing up poor in South Te
xas would fantasize about having when he made it big.

  When she had researched Stan’s background for Sweating Blood, she had been intrigued to find his early life not all that different from Louie Bronk’s: both came from extreme poverty in small South Texas towns, both had alcoholic, absent fathers and domineering, often abusive mothers. But the similarities ended there. Stan Heffernan’s rotten childhood had propelled him out into the world determined to work hard and succeed. Louie Bronk’s rotten childhood sent him forth determined to kill and rape. One of the questions she had tried to answer in the book was why.

  Stan Heffernan had grown up in George West, one of those dusty, dying towns where the local Dairy Queen was the only place to eat and the high school football game on Friday night the only entertainment. An all-state tackle and a solid student, he had gotten a football scholarship to the University of Texas. A serious knee injury his senior year left him free to pursue what he really wanted: law school.

  Right out of school, he joined District Attorney Warren Stappleton’s staff as an assistant and immediately acquired the reputation for taking on and winning tough cases. Ten years ago, when he was still an assistant DA, he had prosecuted Louie Bronk for capital murder in the robbery-slaying of Tiny McFarland and gotten a death sentence. The following year, when his boss retired, he ran for DA and won. He was one of the most tenacious and steady people Molly had ever met.

  When she heard his heavy tread approaching down the hall, she felt a twinge of apprehension: she hadn’t seen him since the book came out and she wondered how he felt about it. He was an important source for the section on the prosecution of Louie Bronk in the McFarland murder and he appeared as a major character. As a courtesy, she had sent him one of the first copies she got from her publisher, but she hadn’t heard from him. Did he find it accurate? Was he offended at her frank portrayal of him as slow and steady—the plodding tortoise who always won the race? Had he even read it yet? Of course he’d read it; not even Stan-the-Man-Heffernan could resist reading about himself.

  As he entered, he was pulling on his tie to loosen it from his thick bull neck, which was every bit as wide as his head. He closed the door behind him. “Molly, Molly, what’s this I hear about someone threatening you? We can’t have that.” His hoarse, whispery voice was almost inaudible. When he spoke to a jury, he had to wear a microphone. It always came as a surprise to her that such a big man had almost no voice—sort of like seeing a Saint Bernard opening its mouth and letting out a tiny mew. People tended to get very quiet and lean forward when Stan was around.

  She said, “I don’t know if it’s me being threatened, or just some general threat, or nothing but a crank letter, but I’d feel better if you’d take a look.” From her briefcase she pulled a plastic bag containing the envelope, the torn-out pages, and the poem. She set it down on the coffee table. “I didn’t think about prints when I was opening the mail, so I may have messed them up.”

  His tie hanging loose now, he took off his suit jacket and tossed it on his desk. Then he sat down in the chair across the coffee table from her and pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket. He used it to take the pages out of the plastic bag. Looking at the envelope through the plastic, he said, “Came by mail yesterday?”

  Molly nodded.

  In his usual unhurried, methodical way, which often drove his legal opponents to fury, he read the pages, moving his lips slightly as he did. When he got to the poem stuck to the last page, the deep line that ran vertically between his heavy brow ridges deepened. Finally, still silent, he put the pages back in the bag, stood, and walked to a cabinet under the bookshelves. When he opened the door, it revealed a small refrigerator inside. “Like something to drink, Molly? A soda water?”

  “No thanks,” she said.

  He pulled out a brown bag and can of Diet Dr Pepper which he carried back to his chair. As he lowered himself, he pulled over a magazine—Texas Lawyer—to put the can on, and with the little finger of his left hand he popped the top. Then he pulled from the bag a sandwich wrapped in plastic. He peeled it back just enough to allow him to take one big bite, which he chewed slowly, meditatively, for a long time. After he swallowed, he said, “It’s not from our old friend Bronk.”

  “Oh, no,” Molly said.

  “Has this shaken you?”

  “A little. I hate to be a sissy, but the line ‘Now that Louie’s doomed to die/I might give his craft a try’ is troublesome. The idea of a more literate version of Louie Bronk out there does worry me.” As usual when she talked to him, she found herself almost whispering so she wouldn’t sound loud and shrill in contrast. This phenomenon always made a conversation with him feel very intimate.

  Stan picked it up and read it again, then dropped it on the table. “Nah,” he said. “This is the kind of nutty stuff we get all the time. We just stick them in the file marked ‘mail from outer space’ and forget about them. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll send it over to the DPS lab, see if they can pick up some latents and run them through the computer. Since you’ve touched it you’ll need to drop by there and leave your prints. Okay?”

  Molly nodded. “Stan, there’s something else. I ran into David Serrano last night at Katz’s and he seemed upset about Louie’s execution coming up—the usual willies people get when they’re involved in capital cases maybe, but he did say there was something that bothered him about my book. He said there was no mention of the nicks on Tiny’s scalp.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “Nicks?”

  “Uh-huh. I was over at the ME’s office this morning looking at the autopsy photos. If you look closely under a magnifier, there were some nicks on her scalp, just like David says—the first I ever heard of it. Did you know that?”

  “Not that I recall. But it was ten years ago and one hell of a complicated case. As much as I hate to say it, there are always some details that get away from us. You’re much more current with the case than I am. Even if we did overlook this, what difference does it make?”

  “Well, probably none. But Barb Gruber called the MEs in McLennan, Bexar, and Denton counties and had them check the autopsy photos of the Bronk victims there. Absolutely no nicks. Not one. Perfectly shaven.”

  “So the day he did Tiny McFarland he had more caffeine than usual, or he just felt jittery in the lavish surroundings; he’s probably more at ease mutilating people in drainage ditches.” He grinned at her.

  Molly nodded, but she couldn’t work up a smile. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s just that Louie was trained as a barber when he was doing time for murdering his sister in Oklahoma and he’s got a steady hand. I’ve never seen him shake.”

  Stan’s eyes were pinpoints of light under the heavy protruding ridges of his brow. “Molly, something’s got hold of you.” He took another bite and chewed, waiting for her to speak. “Maybe it’s the execution coming up. When you write a book where you get as close as you did to the subject, there’s bound to be some … identification with him, some empathy.”

  “No,” she said, too loud. She lowered her voice. “No, not in this case. Usually I do find some area of empathy with people I write about, but not with Louie. No,” she repeated, shaking her head, “that’s not it.”

  Stan pulled a carrot stick from the bag. “Attending the execution might be a bad idea for you, Molly. Given your feelings about the death penalty. Why subject yourself to it if it’s going to be a problem?” He bit down on the carrot and chewed it.

  “No, I need to be there, to see it through. Stan—” She suddenly felt ridiculous, like a lifetime religious believer who loses faith for no reason at the last minute. “Stan, let me ask you something. You’ve prosecuted more than ten capital cases and got the death penalty in eight of them. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Would you answer something, not as DA, but just as a reasonable citizen, an old friend? No ass-covering, no macho posturing, okay?”

  He laughed—a low, pleasing, raspy sound. “I can try.”

  “Do
you ever wake up at night worrying about how easy it is to make a mistake and how you might—just might—send an innocent person to the death chamber?”

  “Louie Bronk is not an innocent person.”

  “No. I know. He’s not. But if we overlooked something like these nicks on the scalp, we could make other mistakes, too. Don’t you ever worry about it?”

  He pointed the carrot stick at her. “Did you say this was off the record?”

  “Would it affect your answer?”

  “Damn right, it would; I’m a politician.”

  “Okay. Off the record.”

  “First of all, I never wake up at night, Molly; I sleep like a baby. And second, that’s something I don’t worry about because we don’t prosecute innocent people.”

  “Goddammit,” she wailed, “that’s an on-the-record answer.”

  He took a bite of the carrot stick. “I can’t help it. It’s the truth.”

  They sat silently for a while as he chewed. Finally Molly said, “So you never have doubts?”

  He didn’t answer right away. He took a long swig from his can and nodded to show her he was thinking about it. “Well, I wouldn’t say that; there’s always some doubt. Let’s take Louie Bronk as an example here. If I’d been there and seen Bronk shoot Tiny McFarland with my own eyes, I’d be ninety-nine point eight percent certain. As it is, I’m ninety-eight point five percent certain.”

  He leaned forward and used what was left of the carrot stick to emphasize his words. “When the little girl and the baby-sitter gave the description of the car, that white Mustang with the one brown door, I was up to twenty percent. When Louie confessed, that only raised it to twenty-five, because he’s a born confessor. But when he picked out a photo of Tiny and told us what had been stolen from her body and the house, I shot up to seventy-five. And when he described how to get to the house and where the body lay, and where the gunshot wound was and the caliber of the bullet, it went up to ninety-eight. The other half a percent happened from watching him during the trial.”