The Red Scream (11 page)

Molly was still digesting the news. What was Louie up to? This certainly had the makings of a dramatic story; she couldn’t have planned it better.

“Now,” Stan said, using his handkerchief to lift the pages from his lap to the table, “about this. We get this sort of bullshit all the time, you know. It’s probably just some casual craziness; ninety-nine times out of a hundred you don’t hear anything more about it. But I
will send it to DPS and notify APD, too, just to be safe. Okay?” He stood.

Molly nodded and rose, too. He didn’t see this as serious. Neither did she, not really.

He shook her hand, walked with her to the door, and opened it for her. As she walked out, he said, “Oh, Molly, about your book—”

She turned.

So quietly that she had to lean her head toward him to hear, he said, “It reminded me that we did real good to nail that motherfucker. Thanks for sending it to me and thanks for the kind words in your acknowledgments. Give me a holler, if anything else comes up.”

Molly felt much better as she walked back to the
Lone Star Monthly
office. Her first impression about the letter had been right: it was just some crank. And if she worked like a maniac this afternoon, she might be able to finish the piece on the Abilene Angel before her meeting with Charlie McFarland at five-thirty.

Then she’d have time tonight to get cracking on the final installment—the very last word, finally—of the Louie Bronk saga.

chapter
6

Blood needs to get out,

It’s dying to spout.

It presses the veins

And squeezes the brains.

The first drop of blood

Turns into a flood,

A blanket of red

To comfort the dead.

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

W
hen she pulled through the open gates, Molly Cates noticed something she hadn’t on her first visit—the gate’s ornate, flowery design formed the initials “CMcF” in wrought iron. She parked in the courtyard, which was enclosed by the two curved wings of the house meeting a high stucco wall. When the gates were closed, it formed a circle, a fortified space at the top of the world. Nice for security, if they’d just keep the gates shut.

She got down from her truck and walked to the front door which had a center panel of heavy frosted glass with a swirling pattern of clear glass. She pushed the bell and heard it chime, then echo through the big house. When no one came, she rang again and checked her watch. Five minutes early; he must not be back from the airport.

She got back in her truck to wait and turned on the ignition so she could sit in air-conditioned comfort. Even though it was almost five-thirty, the heat was stifling, still over ninety degrees in the sun, and she was feeling every degree of it. She picked up the sheaf of papers resting on the seat. Might as well finish editing the Abilene Angel while she waited. Rummaging in her bag for a pen, she glimpsed
three huge shadows flitting across the brick-paved courtyard. Quickly she glanced up through the windshield, scrunching her neck so she could see the sky. There against the clear blue, a bunch of turkey vultures circled overhead. As she watched, they circled lower and lower. When they were just above the roof of the house, they seemed to hang motionless in the air, so close that Molly could see the crepey red skin of their small heads and the silver flight feathers that formed the fringed tips of their wings. That familiar clutch of dread in her stomach, she told herself, was just a hangover from growing up on a West Texas ranch. There, the sight of buzzards circling low like that always meant death.

Lowering her eyes to the page, she tried to concentrate, but a prickle of misgiving had started in her fingertips and spread up her arms to her chest. Buzzards, after all, were buzzards, and likely to behave the same in this fancy Austin suburb as they did out in Lubbock.

She got down from the truck, keeping an eye on the birds. They seemed to be zeroing in on an area just behind the house. She walked up to the front door and rang the bell again, really leaning on it this time and trying to peer through the swirls in the glass panel. When she got her eye right up to one of the thin clear ribbons, she could see straight through the house out to the hills behind. There was no movement inside.

Molly glanced at her watch again. Five twenty-seven. Still a few minutes early.

She walked back to the truck and opened the door, intending to climb in, but instead she tossed her purse onto the seat and slammed the door so hard it echoed off the courtyard walls. The noise didn’t spook the buzzards a bit; they were too intent on something.

Molly walked out the gate and turned left, following the stucco wall around the garage at the side, toward the back of the big house. Just killing time, she told herself.

She stopped where the mown grass ended and the slope descended sharply. The hill was a tangle of scrub oak, cedar, tiny yellow wildflowers, weeds, and prickly pear—wild and snaky-looking. But about fifty yards down, she could make out a flat clearing and a white trellislike gazebo.

The birds were circling right near the gazebo. They’d probably found a nice ripe rabbit or an armadillo. She needed to get a grip on
herself and get back to the air-conditioning. It was a furnace out here.

Just as she was about to do the sensible thing, she caught sight of four or five more buzzards soaring in to join the original group.

Word was out.

She peered hard through the brush. Just below the circling birds something white was visible through the underbrush. And then she glimpsed movement—several large dark shapes. Some of the buzzards had landed. She took a few steps to the left where she could get a better view of the clearing. There. She could see what looked like a leg—a bare human leg. She shook her head. No, it couldn’t be. But she held her breath and took three little steps down the hill to get a closer look. God. It was a leg. There was someone down there, lying on the ground, right where the buzzards had landed.

Flustered and confused, she looked back toward the road and the driveway. If a car had driven in while she was standing here she would have heard it. She could run back to her truck and use the phone to call for help. That would be sensible. But someone was down there, only yards away, and they might need help right now.

She turned and looked down the hill again; there must be a path somewhere down to the gazebo, but she sure couldn’t see one. A trickle of sweat ran down her rib cage to her waist. Wishing she’d worn her usual jeans and tennis shoes instead of this damn dress and high heels, she started down the hill. Thorns and thistles snagged her stockings and grabbed at the hem of her skirt. Her thin heels sank into the soft ground.
Shit
In a perfect world she’d never wear panty hose.

With difficulty she made her way to a limestone ledge, then hesitated before stepping on it. This was just the kind of place rattlers liked to sun themselves on a hot day—the kind of place she firmly believed in staying away from. She wiped away the sweat that was running along her eyebrows.

When she saw another buzzard thump to earth in the clearing, she stepped down onto the rock. Lord, the ugly brutes were aggressive, and with her so close. Another one bumped to earth as she half slid down toward the clearing.

Now she could see better—she could make out a human form, stretched out on the ground, facedown, surrounded by tugging, hissing
buzzards. Now sweat was running freely down her back and between her breasts. She wanted to turn back, but it was too late.

“You go out looking for trouble, darlin’,” her daddy used to say, “and you usually find it in spades.” How right he was.

“Hey!” she shrieked down at the birds as she made her way through the brush. “Get away, goddammit. Scram!” They only increased their jerky motions, darting in, pecking and tearing.

In her forty-two years, Molly Cates had seen her share of death, both natural and unnatural; on the ranch in West Texas and as a police reporter, she’d seen calm, dignified deaths and messy, clawing, screaming deaths. And she had certainly seen buzzards doing what they were born to do, eating what nature decreed they should eat.

But this was more than she could stand.

She bent over, picked up a rock, drew it back over her head, and took aim at the bird closest to her. Using her wrist to give it some snap, just the way her daddy had taught her, she flung the rock at the closest bird. It landed at the buzzard’s scaly, red feet, kicking up a puff of dirt.

The buzzard hopped backward, stretched out its wings, flapped a few times, and took off. The flapping sound made the others stop and look around; then they went right back to their grisly work. Molly felt like a child who’d stumbled through the forest onto a coven of witches, their long black wings drooping at their sides like cloaks, their wrinkled, blood-smeared hags’ heads jerking up and down.

She shook off the vision and hurried toward them. Skidding, she made her way to the small clearing, waving her arms like a madwoman and screaming, “Shoo now! Get away, dammit. Get away from here, you hags!” One by one, the other seven buzzards hopped away from her. With a few strong wing beats, they rose almost straight up until they caught an air current to ride.

That left only Molly, alone in total silence with what had once been a human being. A rivulet of sweat trickled down her hairline, from her temple toward her ear. She made no move to brush it away.

The smooth naked body—a woman’s body with a narrow back, tapering at the waist and flaring at the hips—lay facedown in the clearing, a few feet from the gazebo. One hand, stretched out above
the head, was still caught inside the sleeve of a white terry-cloth robe that lay in a heap on the ground. A sudden stab of fear made Molly glance around the clearing and down the deserted hill, then back up to the house. But there was no one around. Whoever had done this was long gone. She knew it from the smell—that sweet, sickly smell that was all too familiar from other homicide scenes. She needed no medical examiner to tell her this was a body that had been dead in the heat for many hours.

Reluctantly she turned her eyes back to the body. The face of the corpse was turned down to the ground, but Molly could see just enough of the profile—the turned-up nose and full mouth—to recognize that this was Georgia McFarland. Yes, it was Georgia, even though the artfully frosted blond hair was all gone.

Her head had been shaved.

Just like Louie Bronk’s victims years ago.

Just like the first Mrs. McFarland.

Molly held her breath and leaned forward to look closer at the scalp. It had been carefully, cleanly shaved. Someone with a steady hand had done this. She began to tremble. How could any human being keep such a steady hand right after committing a murder?

Two bloody holes marred the smooth narrow back. She had seen enough autopsies to recognize the entrance wounds made by large caliber bullets. But those ragged torn edges were not typical. She glanced up at the buzzards in disgust. They had managed to get their licks in.

All that earthly beauty, all that effort to stay young—in the end just food for buzzards that didn’t care whether the flesh was firm and well exercised or old and wrinkled.

As she looked, she saw a thin red line snaking along the naked rib cage. Ants. She shuddered. When we die we descend the food chain pretty goddamned fast.

She glanced around the clearing. In the rays from the low western sun, something shiny glinted next to the single wood step up to the gazebo. She walked closer. It was a metal cylinder. She reached out for it, but checked herself in time. This was a murder scene.

She squatted down to get a better look. It was one of those sleek, stainless-steel Thermoses from Germany that you saw in expensive kitchenware shops.

Molly rose and took a step backward. She needed to call this in
immediately. She could do it from the phone in her pickup. But the minute she left, the buzzards would be back in force. And she couldn’t allow that to happen. No way.

She turned around and looked up the hill. Along the ridge two other houses might be in earshot. She called out, “Help. Is there anyone up there?” She raised her voice to a scream. “Help! I need some help down here! Help me, dammit!”

But no sound came back. No one would be out on this blistering hot afternoon. All the windows would be closed, air conditioners on full-blast.

She looked up into the cloudless Texas sky. The birds were still there, circling patiently, wings held in a vee, tilting from side to side. Waiting for her to go.

It was intolerable.

She picked up another rock and took aim, but let it drop back to the ground when she saw how hopeless it was. Instead, she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted at them, “Ha! Get away, you hags.” Then she waved her hands in the air.

She jumped when a man’s voice called out from above. “What’s going on down there? This is private property.”

Molly looked around frantically for the source of the voice.

“What the hell are you doing down there?” the voice called.