The Red Scream

by Mary Willis Walker

  Death Row, Ellis I Unit,

  Huntsville, Texas

  She gave herself the first hour, from Austin to Caldwell, for listening to Willie Nelson and letting her mind float. Some loose easy time for thinking about Grady and how sweet it would be to get home tonight and find him there, in her bed, and press up against his back and sleep for ten delicious hours while the norther rattled the windows.

  Her hour was up when she hit Caldwell. She switched off the tape player and tried to focus on the problem of how she was going to write this story. One thing was sure: it couldn’t be just the usual execution story. She’d read plenty of accounts of death-row procedures. She knew exactly what had happened to Louie on this, his last day. Early this morning they had transferred him and his possessions. They had driven him, shackled and cuffed, the fourteen miles from the Ellis Unit to the Walls Unit inside the city limits of Huntsville, where the law mandated executions should take place. There his guards had passed the buck and turned him over to new guards, who had locked him in a holding cell on the old death row a few yards from the execution chamber.

  That cell was barred and reinforced with fine mesh so visitors couldn’t pass him any contraband—no tranquilizers, no drugs, no poisons to cheat the state of its duty. Two guards had been posted near the cell all day and the chaplain, in this case Sister Addie, had sat with him, outside the cell. He could have visitors, as many as he wanted, but no contact visits were allowed. In Louie’s case it didn’t matter. There was no one who wanted contact—no family, no friends. His three remaining sisters wanted nothing to do with him.

  He had been asked what he wanted for his last meal—it could be anything, so long as they had it on hand in the kitchen.

  Sometime during the day the warden had come to see him to talk about arrangements—the disposition of his worldly goods and the disposal of his body. The thought made Molly’s stomach contract.

  And this, for a murder she was absolutely convinced he didn’t commit. The only true elements in the account she’d written of Tiny McFarland’s death were that it happened on the morning of July 9, 1982, and that Tiny was shot dead. But not by Louie Bronk. By someone else—someone Tiny knew, someone she loved, someone in her family.

  She was rich. She was married. She was a mother. She liked to take chances. She was promiscuous. All those things may have contributed. Plus that one other ingredient that all murder victims shared: she got unlucky.

  Molly had started the story in her dreams two nights ago. Now she struggled to flesh it out.

  Tiny McFarland, dressed in a white linen sheath and high heels, had cut an armful of red gladioli from her garden. On the way back to the house, she’d run into a lover. A lover in the garage. David Serrano—young, attractive, hot-blooded, available. She had dropped the flowers so her hands were free for a lover’s purposes. The big garage door must have been closed; lovers require some privacy. Little Alison was asleep and no one else was home, so it wasn’t such a big chance to take.

  At this point the story got difficult.

  First Molly thought it through with David killing Tiny in a jealous rage over someone else, a new lover maybe, or Tiny’s desire to end the affair.

  Then she envisioned Charlie coming home, using the automatic door opener and finding them there. Nightmare time.

  She could see Stuart coming home early and finding them there and killing his mother in some sort of Oedipal rage.

  Or even Alison, a nervous girl with great possessiveness toward the men in her life, coming on them and panicking, thinking someone was being hurt. No. She was only a little girl—eleven years old.

  Or Mark. Maybe he was infatuated with Tiny. Maybe he’d spied on some of her trysts; he had a history of that. Maybe he was getting revenge on Charlie.

  One thing was clear: whoever did it had a clever idea that worked better than he could possibly have foreseen. He’d been reading the paper about the Scalper and decided to make the murder look like just another Scalper killing. What a thrill it must have been when Bronk actually confessed to it. Of course, Frank Purcell had fed him some information, she felt sure, but that must have been after Louie had already confessed.

  As for the recent murders, surely David had been killed over what he knew about Tiny’s death. He had gotten too nervous and was about to tell it all. Georgia—well, that just got too complicated for her at this late hour. Time was running out.

  When Molly pulled into Huntsville, the whole town was dark and buttoned up—just after 11 P.M. on a Monday night in a small East Texas town. She was thirty minutes early and so tense that she found herself craving a greasy cheeseburger even though she’d given them up a year before. A beer might help, too. She drove around a little and didn’t see anything open, so she abandoned the idea. Anyway, executions, like surgery and some crime scenes, were probably done best on an empty stomach.

  What she really needed was a walk, to get the kinks out of her legs after three hours of driving.

  She parked the truck across from the big modern Walker County courthouse on the town square. It was well lighted and there were several sheriff’s deputy cars parked on the street—a good place to walk. She slipped on her tennis shoes, laced them tight, and did four circuits of the square, increasing her speed each time, until she was nearly running. When she finished, she felt even tenser and more keyed up than she had when she began. She felt as if the volume of blood in her body were building up, pressing from the inside. God, that sounded like one of Louie’s poems.

  She got her notebook and pen out of the truck and changed from tennis shoes to a pair of black suede loafers, under the notion that it was inappropriate to wear tennis shoes to an execution; her Aunt Harriet would certainly approve of that notion. Then she headed toward the prison, an easy five-block walk.

  She passed the bus station and walked through the incongruously pleasant residential area that surrounded the old prison. It was a lovely neighborhood with handsome Victorian houses and a scattering of more modest but well-kept frame bungalows, green lawns, and flowerbeds.

  She’d never been here at night before and as she neared the prison she was awestruck. Against the dark sky, the massive forty-foot-high brick walls, washed in white security lights, loomed over everything. The inmates, and everybody else in Texas, called this place “the Walls.” The oldest structure in the Texas prison system, it reminded Molly of a medieval walled town. Inside, on 140 acres, was a nearly self-sufficient world: a textile mill, a machine shop, cell blocks, a chapel, school rooms, an exercise yard, kitchens, garden plots, even an arena for the annual prison rodeo. And, of course, there was also that small separate structure in the northwest corner—the death house, the one place in the prison she had not yet seen.

  As she approached, Molly remembered back about a year ago, when she was doing a piece on sex offenders. She had been sitting on the low wall across the street from the prison, waiting to interview Timothy Coffee who was being released after serving thirteen years for several aggravated rapes. That day they had been doing a mass release, because the number of inmates had gone over the court-set limit. One hundred twenty-five men were being released early, before their terms were up. As she waited, they emerged in groups from a small side door. All were dressed identically in the pastel long-sleeved shirts and work pants they were issued on release. Each group did the same thing: the men walked until they were a few yards past the prison wall, and then suddenly they started running. At first, they jogged slowly. Then they picked up speed. They ran as if the devil were chasing them, down the street, down to the bus station.

  Molly stopped. The memory made her want to turn and run. There was nothing to stop her, nothing making her go through with this. She could run back to her truck, lock the doors, put the cruise control on sixty-five, and hightail it back home, as if the devil were in pursuit.

  She stood rooted to the sidewalk.

  Ahead of her, a tiny cluster of demonstrators was gathered near the front door of the prison. A pretty
pathetic demonstration—five people dressed in black, holding candles and chanting in low voices words Molly could not make out.

  She looked at her watch. It was already past eleven-thirty. Almost time. She started walking again, reluctantly, one foot in front of the other, feeling herself pulled forward by whatever force it was that kept her in motion, doing what she did. It was habit maybe. Habit and curiosity. The curiosity spurred her on to look for the most grotesque things she could find, and habit made her keep on doing it. Appetite for violence and death. Just like the buzzards she’d watched from Charlie McFarland’s house.

  She passed the demonstrators without a word to them and headed toward the flat-topped, two-story administrative building across the street from the prison. The rosebushes that lined the walk were perfectly pruned and mulched. There was no better maintenance anywhere in Texas than in and around the prison buildings, she thought. And tonight the execution would be exactly like that—a neat and well-maintained death.

  Her chest tightened as she walked up the stairs—just the usual pre-Louie jitters, she told herself. Relax. You don’t even have to talk to him tonight; your only job is to watch him die. It was something just to be gotten over. In four hours she’d be home in bed.

  All the lights on the first floor of the administration building blazed. No doubt executions required administrative overtime; it was probably even in the budget. Molly headed down the hall to Darryl Jones’s office, where the witnesses had been told to gather. When family or friends of the condemned were attending, they gathered separately, in the basement. But there was no family or friends for Louie Bronk. As she approached the door, she heard the murmur of voices, low, but with an undertone of excitement. The vultures were gathering for the kill, and she had chosen to join them. She was one of them.

  The director of public information for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Darryl Jones, was in charge of dealing with the press, so Molly had met him often before. He hurried to the door of his office to greet her, like the host of a party, a very subdued party. A tall, slender black man with the profile of a movie star, Darryl gave her the full impact of his splendid smile. “Molly Cates,” he exclaimed, “have you come to expose us?”

  She smiled up at him. “Darryl, anytime you want to expose yourself I’ll be front and center. But I don’t really think it would be appropriate right now, do you?” Oh-oh, she thought, crime scene humor slipping out. She was going to have to watch herself.

  Darryl gave a perfunctory laugh. “Well, you know everybody?” He gestured into the room. Fifteen people, more than she’d expected, stood talking in groups. Clustered around Stan Heffernan stood six reporters, leaning forward trying to hear what he was saying. Molly recognized Judith Simpson from the American-Patriot and a man whose name she couldn’t recall from the Associated Press. Stuart McFarland, dressed in a dark suit and tie, stood in the corner drinking coffee out of a foam cup and talking to Tanya Klein.

  “Who are the men over there in front of the window?” Molly asked, indicating a group of five men.

  “The tall man in the three-piece suit is Tom Robeson, chief of the enforcement division of the attorney general’s office. The fat guy with the cowboy hat is Rider Kelinsky, the state prison director, my big boss. The others are just TDCJ brass, no one special.”

  “Why are they all here?”

  “Some of them, like Tom and Rider, have to be. The others, well, they just like coming.” Darryl grinned at her. “We could solve our cash flow problems by selling tickets to these damn things if they’d let us. Hey, I’ve got to make a call, Molly. Why don’t you help yourself to a cup of coffee over there.” He pointed to a credenza against the wall where a Thermos, some cups, and a plate of cookies sat on a tray. “It’ll be another few minutes.” He walked off.

  Molly looked around the room again. Alison McFarland was not there, which gave her a tiny pinch of misgiving. But there was still time.

  She should get out her notebook like a good writer and go interview the various officials, but she couldn’t face it tonight—the low droning male voices, the righteous indignation about recidivism and federal court interference, the outrages of Ruiz vs. Collins—she’d heard it all before. She wanted something she hadn’t heard. She wished Addie Dodgin were here to talk to.

  When she saw Tanya Klein turn to talk to one of the reporters, Molly walked up to Stuart. “Have a good day off?” she asked him.

  He reached up to adjust the perfect knot in his tie. “Actually, yes. It makes me realize that the rest of the world doesn’t have to work every minute. Yes. A fine day. How about you?”

  “Oh, I tried to write and couldn’t. I should have taken the day off, too. Have you seen Alison?”

  He scowled. “No.” He looked at his watch. “She’ll be here, though. Mark was going to drive her so she’ll make it on time. I talked to her at noon to check.” He paused. “She told me about what you said this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that, today of all days. She was pretty upset. I hope you won’t harp on this tonight and make it worse.”

  “You mean I shouldn’t harp on the fact that a man is being executed for something he didn’t do? I shouldn’t harp on it because it might upset your sister? Stuart, I don’t want to upset you or Alison. I know this is a hard time for you both, but the person who really killed your mother may be the one who killed your stepmother and David Serrano. Doesn’t that worry you?”

  His face darkened. “This is all crackpot theory, Mrs. Cates—your theory. You’re the only one who thinks this. Alison told me what you said about Louie Bronk and that damn car. If there were any truth to it, the people investigating at the time would have found it. Or his lawyer. You’re not helping matters by interfering here. You’re not qualified. Leave this to the law enforcement people.”

  Molly felt her combativeness rising but she swallowed it down. This man did not need any additional problems right now. “I can certainly see your point,” she said.

  He nodded, held up his coffee cup, and said, “Excuse me.”

  Molly watched him walk to the credenza and pour himself another cup of coffee. Then he leaned against the wall and began eating Oreo cookies off the tray. He popped one after another in his mouth, staring off into space while he chewed.

  Molly looked around and saw Tanya Klein standing alone. When Molly approached her, Tanya took a step back and frowned. She doesn’t trust me any more than I trust her, Molly thought, and I don’t trust her at all. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “The Supreme Court denied our last petition for a Writ of Certiorari a few hours ago. Louie Bronk is history.”

  “Have you seen him?” Molly asked.

  “Yes. Right after we got word, I went to tell him.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “Like a trooper. I hear you went to see the governor this morning.”

  Molly nodded.

  Tanya arched a dark eyebrow. “Oh, well. We never had a chance with this one. There are some others coming up, though, that are real cases.”

  Molly tried to fight down the irritation she felt. It was so unjustified. This was a woman who worked hard in an impossible job that rarely allowed any victories. They were on the same side, opposed to the death penalty. They should be natural allies. But Molly’s suspicions had been brewing and now they were bubbling over. “Tanya,” Molly said abruptly, “do you know the McFarlands?”

  “Well, you just saw me talking to Stuart,” Tanya said with a shrug.

  “Yes. But do you know Charlie, the patriarch? Ever talk to him about the Bronk case?”

  Tanya looked at Molly through narrowing eyes.

  “Have you?” Molly asked, her voice more aggressive than she’d intended. “Ever give him any information about what Louie was telling you?”

  Tanya’s face tightened in anger.

  “Maybe about the car he junked in Fort Worth?” Molly was on a roll now and couldn’t stop if she’d wanted
to. “Ever get any contributions from him for the Center?”

  Tanya’s nostrils constricted and she shook her head, clearly not in answer to Molly’s question but in dismissal, as if Molly were a fly buzzing around her head. She turned and walked out of the room.

  Wow, Molly thought, I am really on the warpath tonight. But she had hit a nerve there. Suddenly she felt better. Some of the tension had dissipated. A few more fights and she’d feel almost human. She poured herself a cup of coffee even though she had a rule about never drinking it after noon. What the hell.

  A few minutes later, Alison McFarland entered the room. She had dressed up. She wore a long brown skirt and clean white blouse, dangly earrings, and she’d washed her hair. When she saw Stuart, still leaning against the wall gobbling cookies, she made a beeline for him and put her arm through his as if she needed to hold herself up. He stiffened and pulled back slightly. Molly was close enough to hear Stuart say, “You clean up good. You ought to do it more often.”

  “Yeah, I know. What happens now?” his sister asked.

  “Damned if I know,” he said. “I wish they’d get on with it.”

  “I’m so nervous, I’m afraid I’ll have to pee right in the middle of it.”

  “Why don’t you take care of that now, Al?” Stuart said, his mouth grim.

  Alison left the room. Molly watched her leave and decided she should go to the bathroom, too. Why pass up a chance?

  In the ladies’ room, Alison was leaning over the sink staring into the mirror. She didn’t turn when Molly entered, but gave a tiny smile into the mirror. “Hi, Mrs. Cates.”

  “Hi, Alison. I don’t know about you, but I’m as nervous as a cat. Makes my bladder kind of chancy.”

  Alison straightened and turned to face Molly. “You know what I hope?”

  “What?”

  “That in his last words he’ll do the right thing and own up to it, settle all your doubts.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” Molly said, “but there’s no telling with Louie.”

  When they got back to the office, Darryl Jones was standing in the door saying, “All right, folks. If you’re ready, let’s walk across the street.”