“Where was McFarland?” Grady had been listening intently and still hadn’t touched his drink. Molly remembered that she had always loved the way he listened—with total concentration.
“At work. But he left the office at around ten-thirty to go to his health club for a swim; he got there, but no one knows exactly when. So he had an alibi but it wasn’t perfect.”
He ran an index finger along one side of his mustache. “This was right before Bronk was arrested, right? And dead women with their heads shaved had been turning up all over Texas?”
“Yes. Tiny McFarland was murdered eight days before Louie Bronk was arrested in Fort Worth. They had been trying to link David Serrano with the other crimes when Louie confessed. What made the Tiny McFarland case particularly interesting, beside the fact that she was rich and beautiful, was that it was the only chance to nail Louie on a capital charge.”
“Why was that?” Grady asked.
“Because he was in the process of robbing the house when he killed her,” Molly answered. “He also took her jewelry. That made it murder in the course of committing another felony, hence, a capital crime.”
“Oh, yes. I remember. He raped some of his other victims but the sequence was wrong for a capital charge. And this was before they added serial killing as a capital crime.”
“Yeah.” Molly could hear how hard her voice sounded. “He killed them first, then screwed them. So the most they could get him for was murder and the desecration of a corpse. Louie enjoyed submissiveness in his women.”
Grady let out a long, deep sigh. “So there’s no doubt Bronk did her, huh?”
“None. He was able to tell the detectives details that weren’t in the news—that she was wearing only panties under her dress, that red flowers she’d cut from her garden were strewn around her, that the garage door was open, that she was lying on an oil spot, that the driveway was gravel. And he listed all the stuff that was stolen. Two eyewitnesses saw the car drive away—a very distinctive car that he did own. And he confessed to it.”
“So his confession saved young David in the nick of time?”
“Yes. After the trial David moved back to the valley and went into the funeral parlor business.” She tried, but she just couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “I just saw him last night, Grady. He’s back in town.”
His eyes brightened. “That’s interesting—exceptionally interesting. Why?”
“Just a sentimental stop on the way to Huntsville, he claims. For Bronk’s execution.”
He raised his eyebrows. “We’ll have to talk with him, I think. I won’t tell him it was you who told me he was back.”
That was another thing she’d always liked about this man: he could be very sensitive. And if he said he wouldn’t mention something, you could count on him not to.
“Grady, did you look at that poem and the pages from my book?”
“Yes. I did.”
“I’ve been worrying that it’s a copycat and that I wrote the manual for him.”
“I can see why you would be, but breathe easy. It won’t turn out to be any copycat, just someone clever covering his tracks, Molly. Trying to make it look like some copycat crazy is at large. Bet you a steak dinner it turns out to be the usual thing—a dude killing his old lady. Only difference here from the ones we get all the time in East Austin is in this case they’re filthy rich.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“There are some things I can’t tell you. It’ll turn out to be McFarland,” he said and smiled at her in a teasing way that made her want to slap him. Now she remembered what she couldn’t stand about him—his cocksureness.
“You’re wrong, Grady.”
He smiled sweetly and shook his head. “So you think Charlie McFarland just couldn’t be guilty?”
“Well, he’s certainly guilty of something; we all are. But not of killing his wife.”
Grady kept his eyes fixed on her. “Why are you so certain?”
“Yesterday when I was at the house, Georgia got home from her exercise class. When she came in the room, Charlie stood up and sucked his stomach in, even though I could see it hurt his back to do it. It was the noble gesture of a man in love. There’s no way he killed her twelve hours later. That dog just will not hunt, Grady.”
Grady began chuckling low in his chest. “Oh, I’d forgotten how you can do that, Molly. It’s wonderful. How could I have forgotten that about you?”
“What?”
“That trick you have of summing up a person’s character by their choice of neckties or how they eat an ice cream cone.”
She studied his face to see if he was making fun of her or if he was really impressed. She decided it was a bit of both. “Anyway, he was really and truly surprised when I told him she was dead, Grady, and devastated.”
“You’ve made it to middle age, Molly, still believing you can tell whether people are lying just by watching them? Well, we’ll see.” For the first time, he lifted his bright red daiquiri and held it up to Molly, inviting a toast. Some drips of icy red sludge spilled over the lip of his glass. Molly raised her beer glass and clinked it against his. A trickle of red ice transferred itself to her glass. She scooped it up with her finger and licked it off.
“To our daughter,” Grady said.
“To Jo Beth,” Molly said, taking a sip of beer.
“To old times,” Grady said, still holding his glass up.
“Okay,” Molly said with a shrug, “to old times.” She raised her glass again.
“And to new ones,” he said, finally taking a sip and watching her over the rim of the glass.
Molly paused with the glass almost at her lips. “New ones?”
He nodded.
“Tell me about Jane,” she said.
“Janine. She left.”
Molly was silent as she absorbed the news. “Why?”
He shrugged. “It’s hard to know for sure with women, but she said it had gotten to the point after six years that the only surefire way she could think of to attract my attention was to get murdered during my shift.”
Molly grinned.
He smiled back at her, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes radiating upward. “She also said some people were not cut out to be married.”
“I think Jane has a point there.”
Grady nodded his agreement, then leaned back in the booth, stretching his arm behind her along the back of the booth. “Do you remember what was best about our marriage, Molly?”
To her everlasting astonishment, she felt a flood of hot blood pumping into her cheeks. She lowered her head in the hope that he wouldn’t notice. It was ridiculous. A woman of the world, three times married, with more lovers in between than she had ever counted, and here she was reacting like a virgin librarian.
“I see you do,” he said. “Good. So do I.” He sat watching her in silence for a minute while he sipped his drink. “I have a proposition for you.”
Molly took a long drink of her beer. “Shoot.”
“I was just thinking that now we are real adults, both of us single, we could enjoy what was best without having to suffer with the rest of it.” He drained his glass and held up a finger for the waitress. “I’ve missed you all these years, Molly. Not just the sex, though I have thought a lot about that, but you’re the only woman I’ve known who isn’t a silly romantic.” He leaned his head in very close to hers. “And I’ve always loved talking with you.”
Looking down into her beer, Molly Cates thought that if you just wait long enough in this life everything comes full circle.
She considered the proposition. The thought of taking Grady Traynor home right now and trying to relive the sexual fireworks of their early years made a pulse in her neck begin to throb. There sure hadn’t been much passion in her life lately and she’d missed it.
She glanced up at him—his longish hair and drooping mustache almost white against his beach-boy tan, the three scars across the bridge of his nose, the single black li
ne his eyebrows made. It was a face that had moved her twenty-five years ago and it still did. She would like to run her fingers over the scars in the dark, see if the old playfulness and inventiveness were still there. Yes, it might be fun.
“For a long time,” he said, “I was bitter about what you did, but it’s ancient history now. I’ve forgiven you completely. I just want you to know I’ll never throw it up to you.”
The hell he wouldn’t! He just did throw it up to her, the son of a bitch! Molly had to struggle to get her breathing under control. And what made him think he had the right to forgive her? No! The last thing in the world she wanted to discuss—or even think about—was what she did when she was twenty. She was goddamned if she’d let him do that to her.
She looked at him long and hard. There was something in his expression she remembered—the smug set of the mouth, the possessive way his arm draped above her—that reminded her of the tong warfare they had waged against one another during four long years of marriage.
She met his eyes and smiled.
He released a puff of air through his nose and sat up a little straighter.
“It’s a nice offer,” she said. “Very flattering, Grady, but I think I’ll pass.” She finished her beer in a last smooth swig and stood. “Thanks for the beer. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, so I need to get going.”
“Molly—”
“I’ll be in at ten to give my statement. Count on it,” she said over her shoulder as she walked out.
Molly gripped the steering wheel to steady her hands. It had been one hell of an upsetting day.
She started the engine. It was almost midnight. She should go home, like a normal person, and go to bed, but she wasn’t even the least bit tired. What she really wanted was to talk to her father. She wanted to tell him about the Louie Bronk situation, and about her book. And she wanted to tell him about Grady Traynor reappearing in her life and how confused and agitated she was.
Since she wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, she drove south toward Town Lake. To find David Serrano. He’d want to hear about Georgia’s death. And they needed to finish the conversation they’d started the night before; she should never have let him get away so easily. They were just getting to the interesting part. She took the Lamar Street Bridge and drove into South Austin, to Oltorf and then to South Fifth. It was a neighborhood which a realtor might describe as “in transition.” But right now, in the dark, it seemed pretty tough, with groups of men drinking on sagging, shadowy porches. It was the sort of neighborhood David had left behind him, she thought.
She fished her little notebook from her bag and paged through, resting it on the steering wheel, until she found where she’d written down the address. 1802 was a small house made of tan siding and, hallelujah, some lights were still on.
She parked the truck in front of the house and looked up and down the sidewalk before unlocking the door and getting out. She walked up the dark dirt and grass driveway to the front step. Behind the house a dog started to bark. A battered baby carriage was chained to an iron rail next to the door. Molly pushed the bell. When she didn’t hear anything, she knocked, at first softly, then louder.
The porch light came on. A woman’s voice, sounding angry, called, “Yeah, who is it?”
“Molly Cates. Sorry to bother you this late, but I saw your light was on. I’m looking for David Serrano.”
There was the rattle of a chain and the thunk of locks and the door opened a crack which was enough for Molly to see almost the entire woman she was so thin. Dark-haired and pale-skinned, she wore a dirty halter top and shiny blue running shorts. She looked Molly over and said, “He ain’t here.”
“He gave me this address. Do you know where I could find him?”
“No idea. He ain’t been back here since yesterday morning, got us all worried.”
“Do you think he might have gone back to Brownsville?” Molly asked.
“Without his clothes and his briefcase?” the woman said. “No way.”
Molly felt a tremor along her spine. “Could I leave him a message?” she asked.
The thin shoulders lifted in a bored shrug. “Suppose so.”
Molly pulled out her notebook, wrote her name and phone number and “Please call me right away—at any hour.” She handed it through the narrow opening in the door and decided it wouldn’t hurt to press a little. “Has anyone else been looking for him?”
“Why you want to know that?” The harsh voice had sharpened.
“Well, just wondering because something’s happened he’d want to know about and I thought other people might be looking for him, too.”
“I couldn’t say.”
“All right. Thanks for giving him the message.”
“Good night.” The door closed.
Molly had had lots of doors closed in her face and phones slammed down, but she had a rule: always give people a second chance to talk. About seventy-five percent of the time it worked—if you gave them some time to think about it. She counted to sixty, then knocked again.
This time the voice sounded even angrier than the first time. “What?”
“Mrs. Serrano, it’s Molly Cates again. I think there’s something you ought to know.”
“What?”
“It’s hard to talk with the door closed. Could you open it, please?”
There was a lengthy silence. Then the woman said, “Not now,” and turned off the porch light. Molly could hear her walking away. Well, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. She headed to the truck in the dark.
When she got home, she didn’t turn on the light, she didn’t look at the mail or get her messages from the phone machine the way she usually did. And she didn’t go to her office.
Instead, in total darkness, she walked through the house to the living room and sat down in the wing chair facing the big window. The shutters were open so the window loomed in front of her—that familiar black void to another world.
She curled her feet up under her and leaned back. Until she did that, she hadn’t known the night was to be a vigil. She never knew when the need for one would arise. It seemed to come about once a month. Maybe it was connected to some sort of lunar phase or hormonal cycle. She didn’t know.
She only knew that it would last until dawn and that she had been doing it for twenty-six years—in remembrance of the dead.
chapter 9
Time to make bones?
Go without groans,
No whining, no crying—
I seen that kind of dying.
Life’s just a bad dream,
Not worth the red scream.
LOUIE BRONK
Death Row, Ellis I Unit,
Huntsville, Texas
Making it through to sunrise filled her with a sense of mellow well-being, as usual. Everything looked so different in the morning light—rosier, more hopeful. Molly got up out of the wing chair and stretched.
After putting some coffee on to brew, she walked out the front door into the humid morning air to see if the paper had come. It hadn’t. She’d have to wait another hour to read what Grady Traynor and his cohorts had chosen to tell the press and public about Georgia McFarland’s murder.
The flag on her mailbox was up. In all the excitement yesterday she’d forgotten to get her mail—certainly the first time that had happened in years, since it seemed she was always waiting for one check or another to arrive.
She opened the box and pulled out a larger than usual stack. As she flipped through it, her eye was caught by a flimsy white envelope with pencil printing. She stared down at it. Her heart pumping hard, she lifted her head and glanced around. Three cars and one van were parked on the street. All looked empty.
She turned back to the mailbox and put the stack down inside. This time she wasn’t going to make the same mistake about prints. Looking around again to make sure no one was watching, she lifted her skirt up above her waist and used it to take the letters out and carry them to the house.
Strange. It hadn’t occurred to her that there would be more anonymous messages, but the instant she saw the envelope she’d known it was the master poet again.
She dropped the stack onto the kitchen table and lifted the envelopes off one by one until she got to it. Yes, the address was penciled in the same crabbed printing as the first one. And again there was an Austin postmark and no return address. She lowered her head to read the postmark which was a little blurry. September 23, yesterday.
She picked up her cotton gloves which were still lying on the table. After putting them on, she took her sharpest knife from the drawer and carefully slit the envelope. Then she held it open and peered inside. Again, there were torn-out pages. Carefully she drew them out—five pages from Sweating Blood. This time it was the account of the murder of Greta Huff in San Marcos. She turned quickly to the back page where another Post-it was stuck, with another penciled poem.
Lady writer, your book’s my guide
For sending folks to the other side.
You may think I’m mighty screwy,
But I am just as good as Louie.
I can kill or I can rhyme.
I’m inventive all the time.
At first you thought I was a crank.
Now you know it’s no one’s prank.
Monday we’ll cheer poor Louie’s demise,
But from his ashes I will rise
To show you death’s no fate to fear;
Yours is whispering in my ear,
Predetermined, drawing near.
Get one thing absolutely clear:
I am the master poet here.
She set the pages down. With a trembling hand, she poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she rummaged in her purse for the card Grady Traynor had given her and dialed the number on it. As the phone rang she checked her watch: five fifty-five. When he answered the phone himself on the second ring, she wondered if he’d been up all night, too.
The Red Scream Page 12
