The Red Scream

by Mary Willis Walker

  She looked up the hill to the back of the McFarland house, shading her eyes with her hand. He must be standing at the top of the hill, but it was so steep she couldn’t see the top. “It’s me, Molly Cates,” she called. “Something very bad has happened here. Who are you?”

  “Franklin Purcell. Security director for McFarland Construction. Come up here, please.”

  “I can’t. Call the police. Now. Then come down and help me. Hurry.”

  “What should I tell the police they’re coming for?”

  It seemed all wrong to yell it out, but she didn’t see an alternative. “There’s a body down here, with two bullet holes in it. A woman.” Molly was having trouble catching her breath in the hot, still air.

  “Okay. You just hold on a minute, ma’am.” The voice was calm and competent. “I want to make sure Mr. McFarland’s settled inside, then I’ll call APD and be down. Do you know who it is?”

  Molly hesitated. “You better come see.”

  “Okay. Just hold on.”

  Just hold on. In the silence, Molly turned back to the body. Lying there in the weeds, it looked so naked, so white, so vulnerable, so in need of protection that she kept her eyes on it. Charlie McFarland’s second wife. Dead at home. Shot in the back. Naked. Head shaved. Hot day. It was all too familiar. She knew this scene, had written it once before. Unbidden, the lines came to her mind:

  Lady writer, you ought to know it:

  Louie is my favorite poet.

  Your depiction of his crimes

  Has inspired my poor rhymes

  I give your book a rave review.

  Accolades from me to you.

  Now that Louie’s doomed to die

  I may give his craft a try.

  She hadn’t realized that she’d memorized the words. She certainly hadn’t intended to. Once you memorize something, it becomes part of you forever. And she didn’t want that.

  She raised her right sleeve to blot the sweat that was dripping off her chin and neck. Lord, was it possible that her account of Tiny McFarland’s murder had inspired someone to imitate it?

  No. She turned her back to the corpse and stood watching up the hill instead. No. It was absurd. She was just an observer, a recorder of events. Not a participant. This had nothing at all to do with her; she just had the bad luck to get here first this afternoon.

  But what if some maniac read her account of Tiny McFarland’s murder and decided to do the same thing? To the same family? It hadn’t occurred to her that the poem might be directed at the McFarland family, even though it had come stuck to the pages about Tiny’s murder. She felt a flush of hot confusion, like waking panicked from a nightmare not knowing what was real and what wasn’t. Sweat was streaming down her back now and she didn’t know how much longer she could last, standing here in the heat.

  A spray of scattering pebbles made her look up. A man was barreling down the same route by which she had come.

  Franklin Purcell was a real can-do sort of fellow. He had done what he said he would and scrambled down the hill in less than four minutes. Running and sliding, with heedless abandon for his neck or for his impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit and shiny black shoes, he arrived on the scene in a shower of stones and clods of earth.

  His right hand rested on the semiautomatic pistol tucked into his belt. His eyes surveyed the scene with the practiced efficiency of a man whose business it was to spot danger before it spotted him. Only after he had looked the area over thoroughly did he focus in on Molly, buttoning his suit jacket over the gun, as if he were suddenly aware of exposing something unseemly in the presence of a lady. “You all right, Miz Cates?”

  “Yes,” Molly said, looking closer at his face—the thin lips and flat nose, the cheeks that were purplish with broken blood vessels. She’d seen him somewhere before; she was sure of it. But she couldn’t remember where.

  He nodded and then turned his attention to the body. He hunkered down to get a better look at the two bloody holes, wincing slightly as Molly had done. Then he studied the face, as if he wanted to be absolutely certain he knew who it was. When he finally turned to Molly, sweat was pouring down his forehead. “Jesus Christ, Miz Cates, this looks like history repeating its bloody self.”

  He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket. “One of us is going to have to go up there and tell Charlie it’s his wife down here.” Blotting his face and neck, he looked up at the buzzards, still relentless overhead; his fists clenched. “And one of us needs to stay and keep those fucking bastards away until the police arrive.”

  “I’ll go,” Molly said.

  Franklin Purcell rose to his feet and looked Molly over carefully from her muddy shoes to her snarled, sweat-dampened hair. Then he nodded at the path that curved up to the opposite end of the house, a much easier route than the one they’d both taken down. “I think we should leave the path alone. There might be prints. Can you manage to get up the way I came down, ma’am?”

  Molly hated condescension from men; she was accustomed to it, but she hated it. She gave Purcell back the same scrutinizing look, noting the breadth of shoulder and the suggestion of muscle definition under his suit. Where the devil had she seen him before? “Well, I got down here, didn’t I?” she said.

  His eyes opened wider. “Didn’t mean to offend you, Miz Cates.”

  Molly turned and started up the hill. Behind her, Purcell called, “Miz Cates, don’t let Charlie come down here. It would kill his back and it would … just kill him. Keep him up there.”

  Molly turned and nodded and then made her way back up the hill much faster than she’d come down. She dug her heels in and grabbed at branches to pull herself upward. As she climbed, she thought about the flush of pleasure on Charlie McFarland’s face when his wife had arrived home the day before.

  Instead of approaching the house from the rear and taking the chance of startling him, Molly walked around to the front and rang the bell. After a second, a door opened at the far end of the house near the garage. Charlie stuck his head out. “Molly. Come in this way. Frank didn’t want me going to the glass door until he figured out what happened down there. What the hell is going on?”

  As Molly approached him, she noted his hands clenched in front of him and his face blotched red with agitation. “Who’s down there?” he asked.

  “Let’s talk inside, Charlie.”

  He preceded her into a back hall which led to a huge, white-tiled kitchen with restaurant-size stainless-steel appliances. Then he faced her, bracing a hand on the round butcher-block table. “What’s happened?” he asked in a tight voice.

  “Let’s sit down, Charlie,” she said, “and I’ll tell you.”

  He sat heavily and looked at her with the world-weary expression of a man who, in spite of all his financial good fortune, has heard a great deal of bad news along the way and knows he’s about to get hit with some more.

  “I’m afraid it’s bad news—very bad,” Molly said. “The worst. I walked down the hill a ways because I got here early and saw the buzzards circling. It’s Georgia down there. Looks like she was shot, Charlie.”

  His jaw fell as if he’d suddenly lost all control of it. “Dead?” he said, his voice little more than a croak. “Georgia’s dead?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so.”

  His big head slowly drooped forward until she could see only the bald spot on the crown. A few lonely strands of wispy gray hair stood up from the freckled skin. She looked away.

  His head still hanging, he said, “She shouldn’t be alone. I need to be down there with her.” He started to push himself up. “I should help Frank. I need to go down there and—”

  Molly reached out and took hold of his arm. “Oh, Charlie, you don’t want to do that. Your man has it under control, and the police will be here in a shake. They’re professionals. Let them do it.”

  As if to validate her advice, the sound of sirens in the distance rose and fell and rose again.

  As though rooted, they sat listening as th
e sirens got louder, shriller, closer. It seemed only seconds before the squeal of tires and the sound of slamming doors and radios filled the courtyard. It was a combination of sounds Molly Cates used to find exciting, but somehow along the way she’d lost the taste for it. “I’ll go,” she told Charlie.

  When she pulled open the side door, Molly gasped. There in front of her stood her first ex-husband, his black hair and mustache gone mostly white, his skin more tanned and seamed than she remembered. “Grady,” she said, her hand fluttering to her breast and her voice higher than she liked.

  A man rarely taken by surprise, Grady Traynor merely lifted his eyebrows. They were still black and they still met in the middle.

  Suddenly Molly was aware of the sticker burrs in her shoes, the runs in her panty hose, and the tickle of tattered fabric at the hem of her dress. She resisted the impulse to reach up and smooth her hair. Lord, but this female vanity habit was hard to fight down; after forty-two years she wasn’t even gaining on it. At the rate she was going, on her deathbed she’d be wishing she’d remembered to shave her legs.

  Two uniformed officers jogged up behind Grady and an EMS van squealed in through the gates.

  “Well,” Grady prompted, “what’s going down here, Molly?”

  “The body is back of the house, down the hill,” she said. She lowered her voice. “It’s Mrs. Georgia McFarland. Her husband’s in the kitchen, Charlie McFarland. Frank Purcell is down there waiting for you; he’s the head of security at McFarland Construction. Just walk around that wall there and head west until you find a path down the hill. And, Grady, I don’t know if it rings a bell with you, but his first wife was one of Louie Bronk’s victims.”

  Grady nodded. One of the things she’d always liked about him was the quick way he entered into new situations; he was the only man she’d ever been close to who she felt might possibly be smarter than she was.

  “I’ll take a quick look-see. Tell Mr. McFarland we’ll be in to talk in a few minutes,” he said, turning to lead the way for the two officers and two EMS techs. He looked back over his shoulder. “You stay inside with him, Molly. I’ll leave one of my men out front to send the next wave down.”

  Molly paused to watch him go, so he wouldn’t think she was following his orders. After all these years, the macho son of a bitch still thought he could boss her around. Some people just never learned.

  When he had disappeared around the corner of the house, she turned and strode back to the kitchen. Charlie McFarland was still sitting at the table, but now he was talking into a cordless phone. “That’s all I know, honey.” His voice quavered. “I don’t understand it either. She was fine this morning when I left for Dallas. Yes, she had just gotten up and was taking a shower. Yeah, Frank’s here. I don’t think you ought to, honey. I’ll call you when we—” He paused to listen. “Yes, do tell him, but I don’t think he—” Again he seemed to be interrupted. “Well, all right, if you feel that way, but be careful. Drive real careful.” Tears oozed from the corners of his eyes. “I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.” He reached across the table for a red and white checked linen napkin which he used to blot his face.

  He lowered the phone slowly to the table as if it had gotten too heavy for his hand. “Alison,” he said, glancing up at Molly. “She’s coming over as soon as she gets in touch with Stuart. Christ, this can’t be happening.…”

  He rose painfully to his feet and, with his hands pressed into the small of his back, shuffled over to a cabinet near the sink. He took out two glasses and a bottle of Cutty Sark. Molly quickly took them from him. “Here. Sit down. Let me.” She put the glasses and the bottle on the table, unscrewed the top, and poured several ounces into one of the glasses.

  Shuffling back to the table so slowly it looked like he was moving underwater, Charlie said, “There couldn’t be anyone in the world who’d want to kill Georgia. She was my wife. For it to happen twice, it must have something to do with me. This must be my fault. I made some horrible mistake somewhere. I am to blame.”

  He took a long swallow from the glass, closing his eyes as the Scotch slid down his throat.

  Molly reached out and rested a hand on his arm. “Charlie, have you looked around the house? Is anything disturbed?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I walked through after Frank heard you shouting down the hill. I’d have to look more closely to be sure but …” His voice trailed off.

  They both flinched at the sound of heavy knocking on the side door. “Police, Mr. McFarland,” a voice called through the door.

  Molly jumped to her feet.

  Charlie looked up at her and said in a pleading voice that seemed strange coming from a man who was accustomed to giving orders, “Molly, I know this sounds crazy, but could he have escaped?”

  “Louie Bronk? No. People don’t escape from death row. And even if he had, I think we’d have heard.”

  The knocking intensified. It sounded now like a violent assault on the door.

  “Molly? Help me out here. You know some of the brass at Huntsville. Just to humor an old man, will you call them and check?”

  Molly looked down into his brown eyes that were set deep into the heavy flesh and thought she saw there the real thing—genuine despair. Still, she wished she could be certain. “Of course. Sure, I’ll check.”

  chapter 7

  Shrink asks about my childhood.

  Only one thing ever felt good:

  Ma let me brush her long

  black hair,

  And let me touch her anywhere.

  But when I turned ten

  She stopped me then.

  She didn’t care.

  She lost her hair

  And left me there.

  Life sure ain’t fair.

  LOUIE BRONK

  Death Row, Ellis I Unit,

  Huntsville, Texas

  Molly sat in Charlie McFarland’s big leather desk chair and stared at the telephone. It was comforting to pretend that all the random violence in the world was concentrated in one evil man, a criminal locked up in a nine-by-twelve-foot cell in East Texas. If he had escaped and come back to prey on this family again, then he could be recaptured and contained again and the world would be restored to sanity. No wonder that was the first idea Charlie had grabbed at.

  She felt stupid making the call, but she’d promised, so she decided to get it over with quick while Charlie was still talking in the kitchen with Grady Traynor and another detective. It took four tries but she finally reached Steve Demaris, the warden of the Texas Prison System’s Ellis Unit in Huntsville. She got him on his car phone as he was driving home from work.

  “Louie Bronk?” he said in his distinctive East Texas drawl. “You don’t have to worry none about that sucker, Miz Cates. We just did our body count and he’s right where he ought to be—locked up tight on death row, in ad seg. We’re keeping him healthy and safe for his date Tuesday; he ain’t going nowhere nohow. Why you asking?”

  When Molly explained what had happened, he was silent. For a moment Molly thought she had lost the connection. “Well, hell,” he said finally, “I’m real sorry for your troubles there in Austin. The wives of Mr. McFarland seem to attract bad luck. But you tell old Stan Heff to catch this one and send him on to us. We know what to do with his kind.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Molly said. “And I’ll see you in Huntsville Monday night, Mr. Demaris. I’m coming for the execution.”

  “God willing,” he said, “the creeks don’t rise and the federal courts mind their own damned business.”

  Molly cradled the phone and tilted back in the chair. She gave a start when she saw that Frank Purcell was standing in the office door; she hadn’t heard him approach. His jacket was slung over his shoulder and his white shirt showed half-moons of sweat under his arms.

  “Mr. Purcell. I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Didn’t want to interrupt your call. They finished with me in the kitchen. Now they’re talking to C
harlie alone. Could I fetch you a glass of ice water, ma’am? I don’t know if you lost as much fluid as I did down there on the hill, but I am parched.”

  “Yes. Thank you,” Molly said. “I sure could use one.”

  He walked to a panel in the wall and gave it a tap. The panel swung open, revealing a full wet bar with crystal glasses on a glass shelf and an ice maker below. He filled a tall glass with ice cubes and poured over them some bottled Utopia water. He carried it to her where she sat at Charlie’s huge mahogany desk. “I guess Louie Bronk’s right where he oughtta be,” he said.

  As she took the glass from him, Molly looked up into his face and said, “Mr. Purcell, I keep thinking I’ve met you before, but I can’t remember where.”

  He put a big hand to the back of his neck and rubbed. “Everybody around here calls me Frank, ma’am.”

  “If you’ll call me Molly.”

  He nodded.

  “Can you think where it might have been?” she asked.

  “Well, ma’am, I don’t believe we met as such, but I recollect seeing you once or twice when you came down to Hays County. You were reporting on Louie Bronk when we had him in custody down there back in ’82.” His hand still cupped the back of his neck. “Just like he was some sort of celebrity,” he said in a low voice, “rather than the vicious animal he is.”

  Molly looked at him more closely. Of course. She would have known him right away if he’d been wearing a gray Stetson pulled down low on his forehead like he used to. “You used to be a Ranger down there,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I sure was. For seventeen years.”

  “When did you go to work for Charlie?”

  “Oh, about six, seven years ago. There’s better money in corporate security and the wife likes it ’cause I’m home more.”

  “And how long have you known Charlie?”

  “Charlie? Oh, I knowed him for a long time; he had some projects down our way, years back. There was some vandalism—pilfering and such—on the construction sites. I got to know him then. Did a little security work for him on my off hours. Always was the most decent fellow.” He shook his head slowly, as if it had been Charlie killed down the hill.