The Red Scream

by Mary Willis Walker

  “Yes. I’m planning to attend.”

  His black eyes flickered, alive with intelligence in his heavy, immobile face. “You ever seen an execution before, Molly?”

  “No. Actually, I haven’t.”

  “I thought that’s something a journalist who writes about crime would do routinely.”

  “Well, it is, for some. But I—”

  “I know,” he said, his mouth turning down at the corners, “you and all those liberals over at the magazine are opposed to it. You think it’s barbaric.”

  Molly sighed; she really didn’t want to get into this discussion. “I am opposed to the state being in the killing business, yes.”

  “But you must admit,” he said, “if we’re going to do it, lethal injection is an easy way to go.” He jabbed a finger at his thick forearm.

  “Compared to, say, the electric chair, it is. More humane.”

  “Humane? I’m surprised you can even use that word in connection with Mr. Bronk.” His voice rose for the first time to a challenging tone.

  “It’s not in connection with him, Charlie; it’s in connection with us. The state does this in the name of its citizens. I don’t want killing done in my name, but if they are going to do it, better it should be done quickly and with as little suffering as possible.”

  He shrugged. “Well, that sounds like nit-picking to me. I don’t give a shit whether they boil him in oil, or hang him, or shoot him, or cut his sick head off. It seems like every time I pick up the goddamned newspaper, I read about a new murder committed by some Louie Bronk clone who’s out on parole. We’re letting these guys out to prey on our families. Now, Molly, do you think that’s right?”

  “No. I don’t. I think they ought to keep habitual murderers like Louie Bronk in for life.”

  His voice boomed. “Life? According to the bozos on the parole board, life is about twelve goddamned years. Now that’s just terrible.”

  Molly had to nod in agreement.

  His chest was rising and falling as if he’d been running. He took several deep breaths. “Well, we aren’t going to get anywhere on this subject. What I’m worried about is Alison. I don’t believe she knows what’s best for her right now. I’m her father and I know that bringing up the whole sorry mess will be harmful to her.” He sought out her eyes with his. “Molly, I do wish you’d rethink it before you travel any further down that road.”

  “Charlie, every time I write an article, someone objects to it. What makes you think I’d let you talk me out of this one?”

  He rested his head back on the chair and closed his eyes again. “Because you have a daughter, too.” He paused to let it sink in. “Because there’s no shortage of crimes out there to write about.” He lifted his head and opened his eyes, meeting hers directly. “And because if you help me here, I can help you a great deal. A great deal.”

  She felt a catch of surprise in her throat. Never before had anyone attempted to bribe her and she couldn’t imagine where this was heading if not to a bribe. “How could you help me?” she asked quietly.

  “How much did you make last year, Molly?”

  Molly smiled and shook her head. “Why should I tell you that?”

  “Because I know anyway. You made forty-five thousand last year—thirty from the magazine and most of the rest from the advance on Sweating Blood. Your best year ever. Even so, you had to borrow at the end of the year to pay your taxes. You aren’t a very smart money manager, Molly, but then you’re an artist.”

  “You seem very well informed about my finances.”

  He raised a hand up in dismissal. “Hell, that’s easy. You know that.”

  Yes, she did know that. She’d pried into other people’s finances herself—often—but to have it done to her made her damn mad. Her hypocrisy, she thought, seemed to know no limits.

  He went on: “Now I’ve always been a supporter of the arts—the ballet, the symphony—I give to them all. I know you need to do the magazine pieces for the money and that makes it hard to take the time you need for book writing.”

  He leaned forward and Molly saw by the grimace he made that it hurt him to do it. “Now what I have in mind is to endow an annual prize to be given to the Texan who … oh, contributes the most to crime writing—you know, to educate the public about the dangers and all that. And you’d be the first recipient. One hundred thousand dollars in cash, Molly—enough to support you while you write another book—on any subject in the world except my sorry family history.”

  Molly felt herself stiffening. The ignorant, redneck son of a bitch thought he could buy anything.

  Charlie struggled up out of his chair. “I can see you’re about to break your promise and get offended. Wait a minute before you do. Let me show you something.” He shuffled to the bookcase behind his desk, which contained only a few books but scores of framed photographs. He picked up a silver frame and brought it to her. In it was a picture of a pale girl with limp, light brown hair, colorless eyes, and a startled expression. “That’s Alison’s graduation picture from Austin High four years ago. She was valedictorian of her class, out of three hundred kids—I guess I already told you that.”

  Surprised, Molly looked at the face in the photo again. She’d seen the girl only once, ten years ago when she was twelve, a key witness at the trial of Louie Bronk. The face stared back like a rabbit cornered by a pack of beagles.

  Charlie McFarland jerked his head up as he heard the buzz of a security alarm and a door opening. He quickly took the photograph from her and put it back on the shelf. “That’ll be Georgia, home from the fitness wars,” he said. “I haven’t told her what I was fixing to ask you, so please don’t say anything about it. This whole subject just upsets her no end.”

  A door slammed shut and in a few seconds a slender blond woman dressed in fuchsia tights, a flowered leotard, and sunglasses appeared in the office doorway. A very well-preserved fifty, Molly estimated.

  The woman entered smiling. Before greeting Molly, she walked the length of the room to where Charlie stood at his desk. As she approached, Charlie straightened and made a visible effort to pull his stomach in. He’s in love, Molly thought.

  Charlie leaned over slowly to kiss the woman. She pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head and stretched her arms around his neck. It wasn’t the perfunctory greeting kiss you usually saw in couples their age, but a warm, real kiss with sexual intent. Molly was impressed.

  Keeping his arm wrapped around her waist, Charlie said, “Sweetheart, this is Molly Cates. I’ve been talking to her about doing some free-lance PR work for the company, but it seems Molly’s incorruptible; can’t be lured into the corporate jungle now that she’s a famous writer of books.”

  Molly stood and held out her hand.

  Georgia’s smile faded a little as she heard the name and made the connection, but she took hold of Molly’s hand and shook it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Cates. I’m Georgia McFarland.”

  Molly took a good look at the second Mrs. McFarland. Her short blond hair was artfully cut to show off a slender neck and her cheeks were slightly flushed as if exercising had been an aphrodisiac. She had a delicate upturned nose and luminous blue eyes. The only signs of aging were some faint lines around the eyes. Charlie certainly had a fine eye for women.

  Molly wondered how Alison felt about her.

  When Georgia caught sight of the book next to Charlie’s chair, her smile died. She looked at Molly. “I haven’t read your book and don’t plan to. That’s such an unhappy chapter in my life. I knew Tiny—we were friends in college—and I don’t want any more reminders. None of us need any more of that horrible business. Thank God it’s over.” She looked immediately uneasy, as if she had just broken some rules of Southern womanhood and hospitality. To dispel the somber mood she had created, she gave a tinkling laugh and said, “Mrs. Cates, I bet Charlie hasn’t offered you anything to drink—the oaf—has he?”

  “Oh, no thanks,” Molly said. “I’ve got to be going
in just a minute.”

  Disengaging herself from Charlie’s arm but holding on to his hand, Georgia asked, “Honey, are you feeling up to that dinner with the Merrimans at seven?”

  “You bet,” he said. “I’ve been having some back problems lately, Molly. May have to have surgery. It’s hard for me to sit too long.”

  “You’ll need to dress,” Georgia told him. “Coat and tie. They’re taking us to the Headliners.”

  He sighed.

  “Good to meet you, Mrs. Cates,” Georgia said and left the room.

  When Molly turned back to Charlie, he looked flushed with pleasure. He waited until his wife’s footsteps faded before he said, “Molly, I don’t want you to give me an answer now. Why don’t you take some time to think about this? Just go home and—”

  Molly held up both palms to stop him. “Whoa, there, Charlie. Hold your horses. I’m sorry about Alison’s difficulties—real sorry, and sorry for your pain in this matter, but that’s not how I decide what to write about and I certainly wouldn’t let money change my mind.”

  “Now hold on a minute, Molly. Just answer me this. When you chose to write about Mr. Bronk and his exploits, you saw it as a story with commercial appeal, didn’t you?—a serial murderer on the loose for years, butchering women, and doing God knows what-all to them, Texas Rangers on the trail, five trials around the state—pretty sensational stuff. You made that decision with money in mind, didn’t you?”

  She paused, wanting to deny it, but from the first she had seen in Louie Bronk’s five-year killing spree and subsequent confessions a story that would sell books. There was more to it than that, but money was a big factor. “Of course,” she said.

  The curt nod of his head said that settled it. “Well, I’m just asking you to make another commercial decision. There are lots of violent crimes out there. Choose one of the others and let me help you finance the project. Hell, you can return the favor by dedicating the book to me.” He chuckled and held his hands out in a supplicating gesture. “What do you say, Molly?”

  “I say that I don’t take bribes.”

  “Bribes! Now goddammit, you promised not to get insulted and here you are sounding like a stuck pig.”

  She heard the echo of her voice in her ear and knew he was right. She relaxed back in her chair and smiled up at him. “It’s just that no one’s ever tried to bribe me before, Charlie. I guess it gets me feeling all officious and self-righteous, gives me the illusion that what I do matters a rat’s ass in this world.”

  “You don’t really think I was trying to bribe you, did you, Molly? No way. You should be flattered. I just want to be a patron of the arts like some of those rich old Eye-talians who paid Michelangelo to do their portraits. Only I’d be paying you not to do ours.”

  “I don’t think Michelangelo would have been flattered by that.” Molly looked at her watch and stood. “I’ve got to get going, Charlie.”

  As he started to limp toward the door, his face screwed up in pain. When he got to the doorway, he leaned against it and took several ragged breaths. “Well, I guess I haven’t budged you at all,” he said, facing Molly.

  She shook her head. “I don’t budge easy.”

  He looked down at her with his eyes narrowed. “Let me ask you something else. If you are determined to write this article, why not interview me instead of Alison or Stuart? On the record.”

  Molly lowered her eyes to give herself time to consider. Here was another bribe more tempting than the first—a bribe she might be able to accept. He was offering, after eleven years of never saying a public word, to give her an interview. And she still wanted to hear what he had to say. She felt the gears begin to turn in that cold journalist part of her mind, that icy lobe of the brain that was always weighing alternatives. On the one hand was the husband who keeps a stoic silence for eleven years and then finally speaks out on the occasion of the execution of his wife’s murderer. And the husband is a rich and powerful man to boot. It could make a hell of a story.

  On the other hand was the story she had been planning, the one about the eleven-year-old girl, who was in the house when her mother was murdered, who saw the murderer drive off in his car, and her older brother, fourteen at the time, who arrived home to see his mother’s body lying in the garage. What were they like now? How had that event shaped their lives? And how did they feel about the approaching execution of their mother’s murderer? Now there was a story.

  She looked up at Charlie McFarland’s big, mournful face and said, “You’d be willing to talk about the murder and your feelings about it all now?”

  He stared back over her shoulder into his office. “Yes, if you’d agree not to interview my kids.”

  Molly felt a prickling of self-contempt in her chest, but she knew from experience it would pass quickly. For the past twenty years she had written about crime; it was her work and her obsession. She was a self-appointed messenger of the worst news society could generate; sometimes the message was ugly and painful to the living, but it was her job and to do it well she had to seek out the stories where they were.

  “Let me think about it, Charlie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she told him.

  He stood aside to let her pass, then followed her down the bluebonnet-lined hall to the front door. At the door he punched a code into the wall control box to deactivate the alarm. Then he pulled a key ring out of his pocket and leaned down to unlock the several dead bolts. Those precautions didn’t seem at all excessive, Molly thought, in someone whose family had once encountered the likes of Louie Bronk.

  “How long have you lived here, Charlie?” she asked to break the silence.

  “Oh, I started this house right after the trial, about ten years ago. I couldn’t stand the idea of staying on in the old house and I thought it might be safer here—closer to town, more neighbors. And I figured a change of location might help me and Alison forget.” He straightened up and pushed the door open. “Didn’t work a damn, of course. Neither of us forgot, and now she’s moved out. But Georgia likes it.”

  Molly turned to say good-bye, but he stepped out into the courtyard ahead of her. “I’ll walk you to your truck,” he said.

  They walked in silence, at Charlie’s slow pace, across the brick-paved courtyard to her Chevy pickup parked near the wrought-iron gate. Molly unlocked the door of her truck and he held it open for her.

  But when he saw the truck’s customized interior with the reclining leather seats, wood-trim dash, phone, special CD player and stereo, he let out a whistle of surprise. “Looks like a regular old Chevy pickup from outside and a goddamned German luxury car inside.”

  “Yeah,” Molly said, “I’ve always driven Chevy pickups, in honor of my father who thought they were the Second Coming. But now I’m older, I like a little more creature comfort than they come off the factory floor with.”

  He grinned and shut the door for her.

  Molly looked out the open window. “Did Richard Dutton know what you were going to ask me?”

  “No, ma’am. I just said it was a personal matter.” He reached up through the window and took her hand in both of his. Squeezing it warmly, he said, “Thanks for coming and listening, Molly. Give it some thought. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

  She looked into his big ravaged face. He was smiling and his eyes crinkled at the corner, but she was certain that no matter how genial he might appear, this man wouldn’t stop pushing until he got his way. Well, if she had learned anything over the years, it was how to push back. “I’ll be in touch, Charlie,” she said.

  As she started the engine and revved it, she felt her blood quicken. Before this visit she’d been lukewarm about writing anything more about Louie Bronk, but now she couldn’t wait to get going on it. Nothing in the world gave her the motivation that opposition did. It was her own personal siren song. It reminded her of the time her Daddy told her never, not under any circumstances whatsoever, to go into the pasture where the old bull was grazing. That just made her spur her h
orse right on into that pasture. Of course, she’d gotten gored—she had the scar on her thigh to prove it—and her horse barely escaped alive. It was childish and contrary, but at forty-two she hadn’t yet grown out of the impulse to go into the pasture.

  As she drove out the gates she glimpsed off in the distance the buzzards still lazily working the ridge.

  chapter 2

  When I was five

  Oh, man alive,

  I learnt to survive

  All alone.

  On my own.

  When I was six

  What a fix

  Ma did tricks

  With anyone.

  Weren’t no fun.

  When I turned ten

  She died then,

  The big fat hen.

  The sisters four

  They settled the score.

  I turned fourteen

  They got so mean

  Worst I seen.

  It wasn’t fair.

  I wuz outta there.

  LOUIE BRONK

  Death Row, Ellis I Unit,

  Huntsville, Texas

  Turning out of the driveway, Molly glanced at the huge houses lined up close together on the ridge, each one edging out a little farther than the one next door, like rich matrons elbowing one another to get a better view, and she couldn’t help thinking about money. What made Charlie McFarland think she could be bought off this story? And so cheap! If she were for sale, a measly hundred thou wouldn’t do it.

  As if she could stop now, before the end.

  After all, she had chronicled Louie Bronk’s sorry life and crimes from his miserable illegitimate birth in Laredo, through his twelve years in prison in Oklahoma for killing the oldest of his four sisters, and through his five murder convictions in Texas and his ten-year stay on death row. His lethal injection at Huntsville next week would mark the end of a case that had sucked her irresistibly into its vortex eleven years ago, on that miserably hot July day when Louie Bronk had been arrested in Fort Worth and extradited down to San Marcos where he was wanted for questioning in the death of Greta Huff. Lord, a lifetime ago.