“When they’re particular friends of mine, like Louie, the chaplain usually asks me to keep them company and pray with them that last hard day.”
“Is it true that they usually admit to the crime then?”
“Oh, yes. They talk freely then. When the appeals are done and there’s nothing left to lose, when they know for sure they’re going to die.”
“But Louie seems to be an exception to the rule. He’s waited to the end to start proclaiming his innocence.”
“That’s one of the reasons I believe him.”
Molly shook her head; she didn’t want to hear the other reasons. “How on earth did you manage to get his statement picked up by the Associated Press?” she asked.
Sister Addie put her head back and laughed a rumbling, deep laugh. “That’s another story. I won’t bore you with it. But Jim Ledbetter, the AP writer in the Dallas bureau, is a dear ol’ boy who was on the board of Amnesty International when I was. He believed I once did him a good turn and that he owed me one.” She laughed again. “Now I owe him a couple. The eternal favor bank, huh, Miz Cates? I’m afraid it’ll be like that even in heaven, should we be lucky enough to get there.”
Addie’s expression turned serious. “Did you agree to do what Louie wanted you to do?” she asked.
Molly sat back and her pen rolled off her lap onto the floor. She looked down at it where it came to rest near her left foot. This woman had a hell of a nerve. She didn’t have to answer a question like that. She leaned over and picked up the pen.
After she straightened up, she said, “No.”
Addie Dodgin nodded sympathetically. “It’s hard with Louie because every time you do something for him, you know he thinks it’s because he finagled you into doing it, rather than you doing it of your own God-given free will.” She shook her head. “Makes you want to close up and give nothing. I think he’s been inspiring that in people all his life.” She took another long sip from the can. “All his life.”
“I think he’s lying,” Molly said.
Addie chuckled. “It’s the only thing he’s good at.”
“That and killing,” Molly said. “He used to be good at killing.”
Addie nodded. “Quick with a knife, our Louie. I agree with you on the death penalty. I’m dead set against it, too.”
Molly remembered that she should be taking notes and opened her notebook. “Why?”
“Oh.” Addie heaved a sigh that made the cross resting on her huge bosom rise and fall dramatically. “Each one of us has a life to work out in some special, individual way. To interfere with that cuts off the process. Like Louie. I don’t know if you could see it today, but he is in his own way working on his issues and it ripples out to you and me. It’s like letting the snail darter, or those blind slugs, go extinct—we don’t know how exactly, but its absence will have an effect on us.”
Molly let her head rest back on the chair and closed her eyes for a second. She had a sudden urge to tell this woman about the master poet, about her fears, and her vigils. When she looked up, Addie was studying her. “Miz Cates—”
“What?”
The big woman let out a long sigh. “You ever know something that defies all reason and proof, but you know it anyway? Something if you say it out loud will make you sound all preachy and melodramatic?”
Molly remembered the night her father died. She had been certain there was bad trouble waiting for him and had begged him to stay home. “Yes.”
“Well, I know something like that and I’m afraid if I tell it to you, you’ll call me a Bible-thumping busybody, which I am of course, and walk off; but if I don’t tell it to you, I’m not going to have a moment’s peace.”
Unable to resist any longer, Molly smiled at her. “Then you better tell me, Sister Addie.”
Addie sighed, put her knitting down, and pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket. With a grin, she said, “Well, Sister Molly, I don’t even know the details of what Louie wants you to do for him.” Slowly she wiped her face and neck and tucked the handkerchief back into the pocket. “But I know this: if you don’t do it, you will lose your soul.”
Molly was breathless with the shock. It sounded so … medieval. “Lose my soul? What is this? Some sort of curse if you refuse a dying man’s request?”
“We’re all of us dying, sister; Louie just knows his date.”
“But what do you mean ‘lose my soul’?” Molly asked. “That’s not something I even believe in. I—you see I—” She found herself sputtering.
Sister Addie Dodgin sat with her hands clasped in her lap. “Sorry. That was a negative way to put it and I fall into a sort of shorthand religion talk sometimes. What I mean is that agreeing to do it, saying ‘yes’ to him, will give you more abundant life. I feel this about you—that you’re at a big decision-making time.”
Molly tried to laugh, but the sound emerged more as a wail. “Sister Addie, this is ridiculous. What Louie wants me to do is go look for a car that he says was junked in Fort Worth eleven years ago. Even if it’s still there, which is so unlikely I can’t count high enough to tell you the odds against it, it’s not going to matter. It isn’t going to save him from dying.”
“No,” Addie said slowly, “it probably won’t save him from dying.”
“It would be a waste of time,” Molly continued. “A wild goose chase.”
Addie shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Well, then. Why should I do it?” Molly asked.
Addie shrugged again. “I told you there was nothing logical about this. I think you should do it because Louie expects you to, and in all his forty-eight years he hasn’t had many expectations that got met.” She picked up the can of Coke and drained it. “It is mighty hot in here,” she said, pulling out her handkerchief again. “Mighty hot. I do believe the temperature in this place is adequate to keep me from a life of crime.”
Addie pushed up out of her chair and said, “No rest for the wicked. I’ve got my rounds to do. Thanks for hearing me, sister.”
Molly stood and said, “Thanks for telling me what was on your mind, Sister Addie. I’ll think on it.”
Addie Dodgin folded the long piece of brown and pink knitting and tucked it into her huge plastic handbag. From the bag she pulled out a card which she held out to Molly. “In case you’d like to chat again sometime,” she said.
Molly took the card.
Addie hefted her bag up and slipped the strap over her shoulder. “They let me have a handbag because that’s how I carry my Bibles.”
As Addie trudged out the door, Molly glanced down at the card. It read: “Sister Adeline Dodgin, Texas Prison Ministries, 121 Pecos Street, Waco, Texas, 817-555-9080. WE ARE FORGIVEN.”
Molly sighed, sat back down, and closed her eyes.
When the warden returned ten minutes later she was still sitting there with her eyes closed. She opened them and looked at Steven Demaris, who was staring down at her. “I’d like to talk to Louie Bronk again,” she said.
Molly sat in the same chair in the visitors’ room for about twenty minutes before the same two guards brought Louie back in and locked him in the cage. This time without a word, the same guard stationed himself at the door and stood watching.
When Molly saw Louie’s thin lips twist up slightly into that knowing smirk, she felt like walking right out and being done with it, whether she lost her soul or not. But instead she picked up her pen. “Okay, Louie, tell me about the car.”
“Good golly, Miss Molly. You came back. Right on track.”
“I’m a jerk. Let’s get to work,” she said. The rhyme was unintentional.
For the first time since she’d known him, Louie laughed. It was a creaky, thin sound, but a genuine laugh nonetheless and Molly felt terrifically pleased with herself. She’d made Louie Bronk laugh. And without shedding blood. Or maybe this was Sister Addie’s work—maybe the woman was converting him into a real human being.
“It’s a Ford Mustang. You already know that. ‘Seventy-two model, two-door, of course,
hardtop, notchback.”
“What does notchback mean?” she asked as she wrote in her notebook.
He looked at her with his skinny eyes as wide open as they would go. “You don’t know nothing about cars?”
“I can drive. That’s about it.”
“Well, notchback means it’s got a trunk, not a hatchback like lots of Mustangs.”
She wrote it down.
“Before I had it painted blue, it was white,” he said. “With grabber blue stripes down the hood.”
“Grabber blue?”
“Yeah. This bright blue Ford came out with in the trim packages for the Mustang. My favorite color. The color I had it painted all over was like that—real bright blue—electric blue, you might call it.”
“And before you had it painted, when the car was still white, one of the doors was brown?” she asked.
His smile faded. “Yeah. The driver’s side. It was a repair that was did before I bought it. You’d of thought they would of painted it, but some people don’t care.”
“Louie, didn’t you worry about driving a car that would be so easy to spot—a white car with a brown door?”
His face narrowed in displeasure. “No. I told you lots of times—I never thought about doing them things until they happened. They wasn’t planned out.”
She nodded. He’d always said that but she’d never believed it. She still didn’t. “But when you found out the police were looking for a car like that, then you worried about it?”
“Sure. That’s different.”
“Okay. What else might help me recognize it?”
“I don’t remember the vehicle identification number. Wish I did, but it had a 351 Cleveland engine, vee-eight, air-conditioning that worked, automatic floor shift.”
Molly wrote it down. “Louie, if that car’s still in the wrecking yard, the engine and some other parts of it are probably gone. What do you remember about it that would make it different, distinctive?”
“You mean other than being blue painted over white? You ain’t gonna find many others like that.… It had a decal on the rear bumper that was there when I bought it—said some radio station, KBJM or some such. Oh. And the passenger door was rigged not to open from the inside.”
Molly’s breath caught with a little clicking noise as she wrote it down. He’d never mentioned that before. It would have been a good detail for the book.
“I guess I forgot to tell you that before,” he said.
“Mmmm,” she said. “What else?”
“On the back seat there’d be some spots. Blood, you know.”
Molly nodded impassively. “A lot of it?”
“Right much. The vinyl part of the seat I could wipe off, but most of it was this fabric that just wouldn’t clean up. It had got kind of smelly and drew flies for a while, I recollect.”
Molly nodded again as if he were telling her about spilling coffee on the rug. Talking with Louie had always seemed to her like being down a rabbit hole in some X-rated wonderland where doors rigged not to open and bloodstains that spoiled the upholstery were matter-of-fact, everyday subjects.
When she looked up, Louie was saying “—off of this lot in El Paso for three hundred. It was in 1981, so I had it for about a year. Best car I ever had. Never no trouble; all it required was just the littlest attention. I put more’n sixty thousand miles on it. When I junked it, it had almost a hundred and fifty thousand.”
Molly looked over her notes. “All right, Louie. Now tell me how I can find the wrecking yard in Fort Worth where you sold it.”
He let out a breath. “Okay. Now I’m not exactly sure of the name—something-something-auto parts, but it was on Rosedale near 820 and there was a sign that said ‘Bring your own tools’—I remember that—and it was run by a big nigger with only one hand. He weren’t the owner, just ran the place. He’s the one who towed my car in and gave me seventy-five cash for it.”
“How far from 820?” she asked, writing fast.
“No more than a mile. Toward Fort Worth, that’s west.”
“Which side of the street?”
“Uh—” His hands moved slightly and finally the right one pulled out to the limit of the chain. “Right side when you’re going toward Dallas. It’s a large place, more’n twenty acres, I think. Coupla real mean dogs there, too. Thievery’s a problem in them wrecking yards you know. Dogs is the only protection at night. And that’s a real bad area, Molly. You watch it.”
Rabbit hole time again, she thought: Louie Bronk worrying about the criminal element.
“Okay, now, Louie. Let’s think about this. Suppose I get lucky and find the car. There’s not much chance of it after all this time—that yard is probably a shopping mall by now—but if I do, it won’t do us any good unless we can establish the exact date you had it painted and junked. Now I don’t think these places keep good records. What do you think?”
“Not the wrecking yard. But the place I had the car painted, this auto body place on Mansfield Highway, it was a high-class operation. They might still have records going back to then. The Fourth was on a Saturday and I took it in two days before that hoping I could have it back by the Fourth to take some friends to the fireworks, but it was real humid and they said it would take a few days to dry so I couldn’t get it back until Monday. That was the sixth. So I picked it up then and it was blue. Wouldn’t that show my car wasn’t at Austin July ninth? Wouldn’t it?”
“It might. Tell me everything you can remember about the painting place.”
“Well, now. I don’t rightly remember the name—but it was right on Mansfield Highway in the south part of the city—a mostly nigger area. There was a man’s name, you know, like Jim’s Auto Body or Mike’s, something like that, and it was right near the city limits, where Mansfield and Loop 20 come together.”
Molly was writing it down. “What did it look like and which side of the road was it on?”
“Going south it was on the left.” His chains rattled because he had to use his hands to give directions. “I don’t remember much about what it looked like, but it was real close to the road and you could park off to one side. It had a big sign and the sign said the name and that they had the best prices on body painting. And they did, too, because I got estimates different places. It was run by a man, the man whose name was in the sign—Bob or whatever.”
Molly finished writing and looked up. “Okay. Anything else?”
“Oh, yeah. The name I used was ‘L. Bronson.’ ” He paused, seeming out of breath after all the talking. Then he said, “Molly, are you going to do this like you did them crosses?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean are you going to work at it?”
She looked at him and smiled. “You have to ask that of a pit bull bitch like me?”
He laughed again, and again she felt the pleasure of it.
“But, Louie,” she said, “we need to talk about this. Even if it turned out—God knows how—that I could prove you got the car back on the sixth of July, painted blue, and junked it on the seventh, I don’t know that it would make a damn bit of difference for you.”
His face tightened. “Now you sound like that lawyer bitch. ‘It’s not about actual innocence, Louie,’ she says, ‘it’s about mistakes in legal procedure, violations of your rights during the trial.’ ”
“Tanya knows the law,” Molly said.
“Can’t the governor give …” he struggled for the word, “you know.”
“Reprieves? Pardons?” Molly sighed. “That’s unlikely, Louie. She’s committed to capital punishment.”
“I know. But you could try.”
“Let’s see what happens here. But, Louie—”
“What?”
“Don’t count on this. Make your peace. Get ready.”
He exhaled hard through his nose. “That’s what Sister Addie says, too.”
“I’d listen to her,” Molly said, standing up and looking at her watch. “It’s almost five now. I’ll fly to F
ort Worth tomorrow and start looking.”
She sat back down. “Louie, who else have you told this to?”
He shrugged. “Just Tanya and you. And Sister Addie. I tell her everything.”
Molly stood and nodded to the guard.
As the guard took a step in his direction, Louie turned his head and watched his approach with the intensity of a batter watching a pitch cross the plate. The cords in his neck stood out like snakes and his eyes from the side looked as still as marbles. It occurred to Molly for the first time that she’d never once seen Louie blink.
chapter 16
The kid was always black and blue
Scared to death and hungry too.
That’s too bad, the teacher said.
Just be glad that you ain’t dead.
So he learnt at home and school
The hunter’s special Golden Rule:
In this world some blood will spill.
Make damn sure you’re not the kill.
LOUIE BRONK
Death Row, Ellis I Unit,
Huntsville, Texas
It was after nine o’clock and almost dark. The last fifty miles of the drive home Molly had felt like a horse galloping back to the stable; all she wanted was to get home, soak in the bathtub, and climb into bed with the stack of mail-order catalogues she’d been saving. The absolute last thing she wanted to do was what she’d promised herself she would do: sit down and work at her computer. Maybe it was age creeping up on her; she used to make this trip all the time and then work half the night.
She pulled up to her mailbox. Inside was a neat stack of mail bound with a rubber band. On top was a note written on a piece of lined paper torn from a spiral notebook. She drove into the garage and read the note by the overhead light.
“I’ve got some news. Call me if you feel like dinner or if you don’t feel like dinner. Grady.”
Molly paged through the mail and since nothing looked like a check or good news, she carried it into the house and dumped it on the table. She didn’t feel like dinner or calling Grady. It could wait. She opened the refrigerator door and the icy blast felt so good she just stood there for a while, leaning over with her forehead resting against the freezer door, surveying the meager contents—sliced turkey, bread, some beer, and a few shriveled tomatoes.
The Red Scream Page 22