Love Her Madly

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Also by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This book is dedicated

  to six literary guerrillas—

  Sybil Steinberg

  John Coyne

  Michael Anderson

  Dan Doyle

  Molly Friedrich

  and

  Elizabeth Stein

  1

  This was the first call I made. Houston Police Department. Asked them to track down the dispatcher working out of the Thirty-first Precinct seventeen years ago, third shift, on duty from eleven to seven.

  Very efficient force down there, cop called me back twenty minutes later.

  He said, “Now have I got Agent Penelope Rice of the FBI here?”

  He did.

  “Count yourself fortunate, ma’am. Officer Melvin Hightower dispatcher seventeen years ago Thirty-first Precinct is still dispatchin’ still workin’ the third shift don’t ask me why. He’s home asleep till five. Don’t need to sleep far as I can tell. Melvin’s famous for the amount of rest he gets on the job.”

  He gave me Melvin’s home phone number. I thanked him.

  “Always a pleasure helpin’ out the feds, ma’am.”

  Yeah, sure.

  At five o’clock Officer Hightower answered his phone on the first ring. He didn’t say hello, he said, “FBI?”

  So I said, “Officer Hightower?”

  Him: “Agent Rice?”

  I let it go. “Yes, this is Agent Rice. Sorry to bother you at home.”

  “Expect it’s urgent.”

  Very urgent. “Yes, it is. I need you to recall the work you did the night Melody Scott and James Munter were killed.”

  “You and everybody else. That little guttersnipe.… Well, her number’s just about up, ain’t it?”

  He wasn’t looking for an answer so why bother?

  “About to get the big stick. I’ll tell ya, it’s all been comin’ back to me like it happened last night, like I got a picture show in my head. I’d be more’n happy to share my recollections with you, Agent, but I do find myself wonderin’ what interest the FBI might be havin’ at this late date. I mean, when it’s too late to change a thing.”

  “Let’s just call it a spot check, Officer. We were involved in the case before it went to trial.”

  “That so? Never heard that. But who am I? Dispatcher, is all. So here I go: See, that night? I get two calls concernin’ the crime. From the same guy. ’Course, he was fool enough to try to deepen his voice second time. First voice, regular voice, guy tells me two people got beat up, gives me an address, a motel, and then I get dead air. Couple minutes later he’s Mr. Deep Voice and says two people, armed and dangerous, high on illegal drugs, are causin’ a fuss and gives me another address, a residence, then more dead air.

  “I figure it’s just some fool with an ax to grind.… Hey, now, I didn’t quite mean to say that, did I?”

  “I guess you didn’t.”

  “I don’t take none of it lightly, Agent.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Where was I? Oh. I send two cars out, two boys in each, hear from my second car ten minutes later. Officer says, ‘Melvin, we got a coupla naked, stoned kids standin’ in a bathtub fulla bloody water.’ More blood than water, he tells me. Says, ‘Ain’t their blood neither. Some, but most of it came off them, not outa them. And there’s a pile a clothes on the bathroom floor saturated with blood.’ Says, ‘Melvin? A violent crime’s been committed real recent, some other location. You keep your ears peeled, hear?’

  “Then as I remember he said he wouldn’t be gettin’ much outa the two kids till he brings ’em in. Says, ‘Make a real big pot a coffee, Melvin, ’cause I can see I’ll be needin’ six cups myself. Figure these hopheads’ll choose my squad car to puke up all the shit they been takin’.’

  “Two kids, Agent, are Rona Leigh Glueck and her boyfriend, Lloyd whatever-his-name-was. Forget. Officers come in, Rona Leigh wrapped in a blanket, and she’s laughin’ and laughin’. First sensible thing we make outa her is, ‘I had me so much fun killin’ that bitch I got a pop ever’ time the ax chopped her.’ Then she goes totally berserk, like a blind dog in a butcher shop, starts carryin’ on, screamin’ and cryin’ and laughin’ all at once. Pukes right then. Never puked in the squad car, oh, no, she waits till she gets in fronta my desk. Toss her in the lockup with all the hookers, and they’re like to kick the shit outa her ’cause she’s still pukin’ her brains out. But then they recognize her as one a their own and clean her up. The boyfriend, he never said a damn thing.

  “Then the other shoe drops. Two officers I sent to that motel? Here’s their story. They knock on a lotta doors, put up with a lotta grief from the other guests, who figure they was bein’ arrested and don’t know what for. Then they find the right room. The boy’s room.”

  Time to let him come up for air. “James Munter.”

  “Yeah, Munter, that was it. His room was unlocked. Officers open the door, flip on the light, first thing they can make out? The handle a that ax. Where it wasn’t slick with blood said the wood was almost white. The light comin’ through the door behind them had lit it up, is what that poor rookie kept sayin’ to anyone who would listen. Said the ax handle looked like it had a lightbulb in it.

  “The blade was embedded in the female victim’s upper chest. Senior officer says to me, ‘You wouldn’ta believed it, Melvin. A drip fell right down on my shoe like suddenly it’s rainin’ blood.’ Ma’am, our two boys look up at this big red splash on the ceilin’ and then they step back real quick so’s they won’t get dripped on further. And then they just go steppin’ on back and steppin’ on back till they was out the door again. Rookie told me he just slammed it, liked to make it all go away. Ya with me, Agent?”

  “I am.”

  “Could understand his feelin’. Been there, done that, which is why I choose to dispatch. Two boys run to the cruiser and call the precinct for help. Get me. I remember listenin’ to botha them talkin’ so fast, so crazy, I could smell sulfur. I said to them, ‘You boys best calm yourselves right down ’cause I can’t make out one word y’all’re tryin’ to say.’ So they did, and I know to quick send out another car, call the man in charge, wake him up, and then, a course, all hell breaks loose. Real soon, you got your newspaper boys, you got your TV lights, you got your rubberneckers, ex cetra. With a homicide word flies fast, never mind what happens when you got a double ax murder, you know what I’m sayin’, ma’am?”

  “I know.” I said to the dispatcher, “Did the officer who found the bodies get the names of the people staying at the motel?”

  “No, ma’am. Let’s just say those folks had the foresight to check out real fast—long as you call runnin’ out the back door checkin’ out.”

  “What about other people in the neighborhood? Did any witnesses come forward?”

  “Ma’am, that
neighborhood is so low-down you don’t want to know who your neighbor might be, never mind listen to what he has to say. Nobody seen or heard a thing. We figured right away, Forget about witnesses.”

  “Were you able to trace the calls?”

  “What calls?”

  “From the puppeteer?”

  “What the hell is that, FBI talk? Did you say puppeteer?”

  “The man who called you twice. Disguised his voice.”

  “Oh, him. Nope. Nobody saw to tracin’ that call.”

  “I find that impossible to believe.”

  He chose not to respond.

  “Who destroyed your trace?”

  “Ma’am, thought you said this was a spot check?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hey, Agent, you’re a pisser, you don’t mind my sayin’. You want to talk to someone else in the department? That’ll be fine. But you take it from this old geezer, who’s been around a lot longer than you, it is too late for stirrin’ up shit. She dies in—what is it? Couple weeks?”

  “Ten days.”

  “Ten days? You see? There’s no point. Now I got to get movin’. Got plenty to do before I report to work tonight.”

  Yeah. He had plenty to do. Had to get back on the phone the minute I hung up and report my call to someone. The bastard.

  * * *

  Here is what led to my calling Melvin Hightower. Last night I’d settled down on my sofa to watch the tape I’d made of the Evening News with Dan Rather. I am a dysfunctional sleeper. I wake up three hours after I go to bed and can’t fall asleep again until my alarm makes that little click immediately preceding the voice of Don Imus telling me the President is a moron. So my VCR is set to tape Dan, and when I find myself staring at the ceiling at 2 A.M. I get up, go to my living room, and watch the news.

  Last night, before going to the tape, I went to my fridge and selected a bottle of nail polish called Drop Dead Red from one of the twelve little holders that are supposed to keep eggs. I don’t have anything else on tap except in the freezer section, where I’ve stowed a bottle of Grey Goose and a crystal spritzer of Worth, both of which I use during DC summers when, even with my hair up and the air conditioner blowing on my neck, I can’t cool off.

  As I painted my left hand, Dan prepared to interview Rona Leigh Glueck, condemned ax murderer, about to become the first woman put to death by the people of Texas since the Civil War. Dan explained that in 1862, in the town of Mesquite, the previous woman executed was hanged by the neck. Her crime had been her manner of payment for a newly purchased horse: three bullets to the trader’s face. There was some talk the man had raped her, but so what? She was a Mexican.

  I half listened, half watched, and finished my left hand while Dan chatted with his guest, her smile so winsome, her manner so charming. She explained how Jesus had taught her the value of human life. She said, “I have taken human life, and I know what a horrible thing it is to do that. Jesus teaches us that murder, abortion, mercy killin’, and the death penalty are all evil.” Dan nodded in his fatherly way. “Though I am happy to accept a state of glory—if that is what must come to pass—I know that He is not ready for me yet. He wishes my life to be spared so I can spend the rest of my natural days preachin’ against the takin’ a lives. In a divine revelation, Jesus has offered me a ministry.”

  Sure.

  I was about to start on my right hand when the camera panned down to Rona Leigh Glueck’s own hands, very small, her nails trimmed and neat but not painted. I paused the frame. Her wrists were exceptionally delicate, the size you can encircle with your thumb and forefinger.

  So maybe it was a lightweight ax.

  I screwed the top of Drop Dead Red back onto the bottle and went to my FBI office–connected computer that is on a card table in my dining room, where I don’t dine. I’ve been meaning to call in a desk since I moved to DC, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. It’s only been five years, though, no problem. I keyed in the name RONA LEIGH GLUECK and got a one-line message:

  CASE #8037568-8233. DATA NOT ENTERED.

  Shit.

  DATA NOT ENTERED meant a file existed, but I’d have to deal with it on paper. My fault. It was taking an inordinate amount of time to get all the files entered into our computer system. That’s because I figured my personal attention to each would be a good chance to separate out the cases that should be reinvestigated.

  My first assistant—previous to the present one I’d hired myself—said, “Reinvestigated? How about we just burn all the files?”

  That initial week on the job, each time I brought up a problem the advice was either burn it, toss it, shred it, or lose it. I fired that first assistant and just about everyone else. As the new crime lab director, I cleared the decks. Got rid of the lazy louts with their patronage jobs and restarted the engine with no-nonsense peace officers, disciplined investigators, and the most talented chemists I could scrounge—out of academia and, even better, the pharmaceutical companies. People who needed something more meaningful in their lives than collecting stock options. People who were willing to dedicate themselves to fighting crime and seeking justice. Whistle-blowers. People like me.

  I made a lot of new enemies in addition to the enemies I’d made as a prosecutor in Florida and, before that, as a district attorney in the Bronx. But I figure those kinds of enemies were impotent to begin with, so why worry?

  Once I’d gotten everything sorted out, I sat behind my top-of-the-line desk and took in my corner office above all of DC, and then I went in to have a talk with my director. I told him I wasn’t meant for office work; I needed to be out in the field.

  He immediately said, “Within the FBI, though.”

  “Yes.”

  I could see he was glad of that. Then he protested my leaving the lab but in such a way as to show me how much he’d appreciated my work. He said, “Poppy, you turned a sinking trawler—infested with a lot of rats, I might add—into one sleek nuclear-powered yacht.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  “Did you have something specific in mind?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled at me. “I’m listening.”

  That’s what I wanted to be sure of: him listening. “You know all those files I separated out, the ones that need a good district attorney to reinvestigate them? We need a full-time pseudo—district attorney.”

  “You.”

  “Yes.”

  The man puts justice ahead of troublesome mechanics. He said, “Write out the job description and get it to me. Then I’ll do what I have to do to make it official. Essentially, reassure everyone that the crime lab is now functioning perfectly. That there’s nothing more you can bring to it and that other departments need Poppy Rice more.”

  What a combination. Though he was a superb politician, he respected me.

  “I’d like to keep some space here.”

  “You got it.”

  “And I want my assistant.”

  “I could use her.”

  “Everyone could use her.”

  So now here I was, out in the field with my home base my sofa. I took another look at Rona Leigh’s hands, I got up, put on a raincoat over my Victoria’s Secret pajamas, a gift from a fellow whose name I no longer recall, and pushed my bare feet into sneakers.

  FBI headquarters in Quantico looks like a space station. FBI headquarters in downtown DC looks like an extravagant art museum designed by I. M. Pei.

  Our security guard said to me, “You really gotta tie those sneakers, Poppy, ma’am.”

  I said, “Who’s got time?”

  He said, “I got all night. I’ll tie ’em for you.”

  I said, “Thanks, Bobby. I’ll do it.” I bent down to tie the sneakers.

  He never said a word about what I was now just noticing—I had a New Balance running shoe on one foot and a Nike tennis sneaker on the other.

  I looked up at him from my squat position. “I put them on in the dark, all right?”

  “What happens
when you don’t pay your electric.”

  “Oh, shut up, Bobby.”

  “Hope you didn’t tip your manicure lady either.”

  Bobby has a great gap-toothed smile.

  I said, “Why don’t you apply for a job as an agent, Bobby, you’re so damned observant.”

  He shrugged. “Security guards got to be observant too. Pay us to stay on our toes.”

  I stood. His smile was gone. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to condescend.”

  He chose not to forgive me. He said, “Body gets used to it.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Least you people don’t call me Boy no more.”

  He’d started working as a security guard in 1957. He’d been fourteen but lied about his age. Had reached his full height, over six-two, so nobody questioned his statistics.

  I went in, got the file on Rona Leigh, went back out, told Bobby I loved him, which I did, and dashed back home. Back in front of the tube again, I pressed play and looked at the ax murderer on the screen and then down at the mug shot of Rona Leigh Glueck tucked into the inside cover of the folder. She was seventeen the night Melody Scott and James Munter were murdered. She was scrawny and obviously still high as a kite when the picture was taken, though it was hours after she’d been brought in. Her thick hair was tangled. She hadn’t had a chance to comb it after her bloody shower.

  Rona Leigh Glueck had lived in prison for as long as she’d lived out of prison.

  I fast-forwarded past the ads. The Evening News continued. As Dan interviewed her I found it hard to believe, just like everyone else, that this lovely soft-spoken woman with eyes as large and warm and brown as Bambi’s was the same woman in the mug shot.

  But that was because she had thrown off Satan and accepted Jesus as her savior.

  Don’t they all?

  Rona Leigh was not a Mexican like the woman executed in 1862. She was white. And she was saying to Dan, “I do so appreciate this honor you have bestowed upon me, Mr. Rather. Letting me speak with you here on the TV in order for people to understand that I have been asked by Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior who has covered me in the armor of salvation, to pursue a very, very special mission in His Holy Name.”