The Red Scream (6 page)

But that poem was damned unsettling.

She walked to the back hall closet and rummaged on the shelf for a pair of old cloth gardening gloves she rarely wore. This time touching only the edges with her gloved hands, she reread the poem. The line, “I may give his craft a try” bothered her. Was there a threat of violence there?

And, of all the 421 pages of her book that could have been torn out, why these? And why right now, just after her meeting with Charlie McFarland?

Glancing up, she saw that the kitchen window had darkened. She rose and pulled the blinds, then walked into the living room and closed the shutters on the big windows so she wouldn’t be tempted to look into those black voids. She poured herself a Scotch and
water, a rare indulgence for her, and sipped at it while she changed into her exercise clothes. Maybe some strenuous sweating would help her get rid of this clutch of dread in the pit of her stomach.

It was a feeling she’d almost forgotten. She hadn’t experienced it for two years—not since the last time she went to visit Louie Bronk.

chapter
3

Always their hair

Their long black hair

Combing and brushing,

Washing and fussing.

Black hair everywhere

You could drown in hair,

Hair in the sink,

Hair in the drains

Long black hair instead of brains.

LOUIE BRONK
Death Row, Ellis I Unit,
Huntsville, Texas

“B
ut what if it isn’t just some nut case?” Molly Cates grunted as she did the seventh push-up in the set of twenty-five; she was damned if she’d let herself collapse at this point the way she usually did, even though the muscles in her back were screaming. “I mean, what if it isn’t a
harmless
nut case?”

She glanced up at her daughter who, as she rose and sank on thin, shaking arms, wore her usual serene expression in spite of the big drops of sweat dripping off her face. Jo Beth Traynor, who now wanted to be called Elizabeth, had the kind of determination that just didn’t recognize pain, Molly thought.

“Mother, calm down. You’ve had this sort of thing before.” Jo Beth just managed to make herself heard over the thrumming beat of the hard-rock booming from the overhead speakers. “Remember that guy who kept threatening to load his dump truck with explosives and crash it into the
Lone Star Monthly
offices if you didn’t stop writing about developers ruining the Barton Creek watershed. I hope you aren’t getting paranoid in midlife.”

“No,” Molly gasped. There was no way she was going to last through fifteen more push-ups. “I’ve always been paranoid.” She
closed her eyes against the stinging sweat that was dripping into them. “God, this is torture.” She stopped for a minute to grab her towel and wipe her face. Then she hoisted herself up immediately and joined back in, determined to make this the first time she did all the push-ups. “Wait until you read this poem before calling me paranoid,” she panted. “It has a crazy feel to it. Of course I suppose it goes with the territory of—” She couldn’t finish; she’d done thirteen—thirteen!—more than she’d ever managed before, and her back and shoulders were burning. She collapsed on her stomach and watched Jo Beth persevere through all twenty-five.

Push-ups finished, the class of twenty sweating bodies looked to the front of the room for instructions. On a platform in front of the mirrored wall, the instructor, a forty-five-year-old freak of nature with tight beige skin, a twenty-two-inch waist, and a concave abdomen, flipped onto her back. “Now let’s work those abs,” Michelle bellowed out over the deafening music. “Backs flat, glutes squeezed tight, suck in, let’s
go.”
Hands behind her head she began to demonstrate sit-ups. Molly and Jo Beth turned onto their backs and followed her lead.

“But this poem—” Molly said, “it could be read as a threat.”

“Maybe you should show it to Dad then. You know, get his opinion.”

Molly shook her head as she raised and lowered her torso. “No. Austin homicide won’t want to bother with this. Too subtle. I’ll take it to the DA’s office—tomorrow. Stan Heffernan can take it to APD if he wants. God, these sit-ups always make me feel like I’m going to throw up.”

Now Michelle was pulling her knees into her elbows on each sit-up. It was difficult to do that and talk, but Molly managed to say, “This thing with Charlie McFarland bothers me, too.”

“You sure he tried to bribe you?” Jo Beth said, pulling her knees in to touch her elbows.

Molly grunted. “Yes. I can’t figure any other way to take it.”

“Tell me the truth. Weren’t you tempted? Just for a minute?”

Before Molly could answer, Michelle bellowed out from the platform, “Okay, as a special treat, let’s end on some more push-ups—another set of twenty-five.”

“No-o-o,” Molly wailed. “Just when I thought we were safe.” She wiped her brow and turned over again to her stomach, hoisting
herself up on shaky arms. “Yeah, I was tempted. Maybe that’s why I feel so angry about it.” Molly stopped in mid push-up. “You know something?”

“What?” Jo Beth asked, not even short of breath.

“I’ll really be relieved when this Bronk thing is over.”

Jo Beth stopped, her arms extended, and looked up, wide-eyed. “Mother! What’s this? Do I detect some blood lust here?”

Michelle was counting to help them get through the push-ups: “Fourteen … fifteen …” Molly was groaning now from the strain and her arms were trembling, but in the five months she’d been doing this class she’d never gotten so far before. “Sixteen.” Only nine more; she didn’t want to give up. “Seventeen …” Her back felt like it was ripping. With a moan, she collapsed onto her stomach. So close, so close.

“Well, Mother,” Jo Beth finished off the last eight and added one extra for good measure, “what about it? Don’t tell me that an old liberal like you is looking forward to poor Louie getting the needle?”

Molly was silent for a moment, resting her chin on the floor. Then she said, her lips barely moving, “If I weren’t in a weakened state right now, I probably wouldn’t say this—and if you repeat it I’ll deny I ever said it—but,” she closed her eyes and said it very low so Jo Beth might not hear it over the music, “the world will be a better place with Louie Bronk out of it. I can’t wait to see that sneering, smug, murdering, evil son of a bitch dead.”

Jo Beth looked at Molly with her eyes open wide and said nothing.

They both did the cool-down stretching in silence. It was Molly’s favorite part of the class because it didn’t hurt and it meant they were almost finished.

When it was over, Molly stood up and wrapped the towel around her neck. “I’m going to get a little dinner at Katz’s. Want to come?”

“If you’re paying, sure,” Jo Beth said. As she followed her mother down the stairs to the women’s locker room, she said, “For a woman your age who can barely do a push-up, you’ve got a pretty firm butt.”

Molly looked back at her. “I’m bowled over by the praise.”

T
he menu at Katz’s Bar and Deli included several items that Molly had never identified—things like latkes and knishes, which she wouldn’t know how to pronounce even if she did order them. An unadventurous eater who stuck to the tried and true, Molly ordered her usual turkey on white bread and a Coors Light. Jo Beth ordered pastrami on Jewish rye and a Coors Light. Beer was one of the few things mother and daughter agreed on.

As the waiter left, Jo Beth said, “It may be your lucky night. Don’t look now, but there’s a man standing in the doorway of the bar who’s been staring at you.”

Molly glanced over that way. A dark-haired man in a well-tailored blue suit was indeed staring at her. He nodded his head when he saw her look over.

“You know him?” Jo Beth asked.

“No,” Molly said, turning back to the table.

“Gorgeous,” Jo Beth said.

“He is good-looking,” Molly agreed.

“I knew you’d think so. He’s just slightly sleazy and since that’s the way your taste in men runs—”

“Sleazy? You think your daddy’s sleazy?”

Jo Beth smiled the gentle, loving, maddening smile she always got on her face when she talked about Grady Traynor. “No. Not Dad. The other two. And some of the boyfriends. My God! Sleaze personified.”

Molly decided not to rise to the old bait. Instead, she shifted the topic slightly: “Speaking of your father, that marriage can’t still be holding together?”

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.