The Red Scream (27 page)

“That’s true,” he whined. Then he repeated it in a whisper: “That’s true. God will forgive me.”

Molly found herself gripping the ledge in front of her. “Then you told me about driving into Austin that hot, hot day, with the fantasy bursting out of your head. You hadn’t been able to find a woman, you told me, so you took the 2222 exit in Austin and drove west and found this little windy road and the gravel driveway. You told me about driving partway in and parking your old white Mustang with the one brown door.” She felt her speech speeding up and couldn’t stop it. “You went into the house, you said, the door was open, and you stole a Sony television and a silver bowl and a knife. When you were walking back to your car you saw a small blond woman in a white dress standing in the garage. You shot her and stripped off her clothes and shaved her head so you could have sex with her, but you couldn’t do it because she was a blonde and—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” he protested. “I know what-all I told you. I shouldn’t of.” His chains rattled as he tried to lift his hands. When they held him back he shoved his hands down into his lap. “I shouldn’t of said it. But it wasn’t my fault. You asked me to tell you about it. You kept asking me. I was already convicted and you came here to hear about it, the big one—Tiny McFarland—the one that really interested you. You wouldn’t of kept coming if I didn’t tell you. It was what you wanted to hear. So I told you. You’re to blame, too. ’Cause it was like we told the story together.”

He leaned his head forward until it was a bare inch from the wire mesh, so close Molly could smell his sweat and rotting breath. “But it ain’t true. I never even saw the bitch. She weren’t one of mine. Back then, down in the jail in Hays County, I just said I did it because it was the easiest thing to do. They come in—the sheriff and all them Rangers—and said my car had been seen at this one and sure I done it. She was rich so they paid more attention to that one and there was like this movement that caught me up. It was kind of exciting, like being famous.”

He was an effective liar, she conceded to herself. No wonder he could often talk stranded women into his car. “Louie, I don’t believe you. What about the jewelry you described, the television, the silver bowl? That wasn’t in the paper.”

“One of them Rangers, a big one, told me about that. He described the house and all, told me what happened there. I don’t recollect his name, but the one with the nose all pushed in like it had got broke more than once.”

Molly felt that her body temperature had just gone up several degrees. She wanted to take off her jacket, but she had never wanted to do that in front of Louie.

“But even if he hadn’t told me those things,” Louie said, “I still could of made a good confession.”

“How?” Her voice cracked on the word.

“It’s easy. They ask you questions. You know. Like ‘Louie, what did you do after you parked your car on the gravel driveway?’ And then I know where I’m supposed to have parked. They ask, ‘Louie, did you get to the west part of town on 2222 or did you come on such and such?’ See, I can figure out almost everything. And I got a real good memory. And when I made a mistake they’d just say, ‘Oh, he’s done so many women he can’t keep all them bitches straight.’ ”

That’s exactly what they did say. Molly sat back on the hard chair and took a breath to try to get rid of the buzz of fear in her brain. This couldn’t be true; it was just Louie doing his thing again. “Louie, you disappoint me. I thought you were going to be different from the others. I thought you’d go down owning up to what you did. Remember what you told me—how on death row the men make a big deal about going down tough, not letting the red scream break out? You said you’d never cry and you’d never give in to the red scream. What baloney! Here you are at the last minute suddenly whining you’re an innocent man.”

His face tightened as though the skin had just shrunk another size and the area around his nose yellowed. “I’m not saying I’m innocent. I’m saying I didn’t kill that Tiny McFarland. Not her. And now I’m a real Christian I don’t lie no more. You just ask Sister Addie.”

She snorted and said, “What kind of fool would believe that?”

He tried to lift his hands again, but remembered about the chain this time before it jerked him back. He let his hands fall back into
his lap. “I want to tell the truth and, Molly, I been thinking. There might be a way to prove it.”

She felt like putting her hands over her ears; she didn’t want to hear any more of this.

He leaned forward so far his bony nose almost pressed against the mesh of his cage. “I think you can prove I didn’t do it. Molly, listen. It’s about the car. That white Mustang I had, the one with the brown door on the driver side? The one I told ’em I dumped in Lake Worth and got rid of?”

They had dragged the lake for several days but never found the car. It was one of the ragged ends left in this case.

“Those witnesses at the trial—the little girl and the baby-sitter—they said they saw that car at the McFarland house. I never did understand that—little girl like that lying. See, they were lying through their goddamned teeth. They had to be. They had to be. That’s why I put them on my witness list. So they could see what they done. Not for revenge. God don’t like that. But for them to see and repent.” His face was screwed up with an intensity she had never seen in him before.

“Are you listening?” he asked. “This is important. After the Greta Huff thing in Hays County I heard on the TV that they’d connected me and my car to it. So there I was in Forth Worth having a bad moment, I got to admit. Greta, old Greta, she was one of mine—Jesus forgive me—and I did have that car. So what I did, I went and had it painted—see, ordinarily I would have just dumped it somewhere but I was real fond of that car, best car ever, so I had it painted—a real pretty bright blue. Cost me $150 cash money, my last cent in the world. And the next day the damned thing broke down. Radiator burnt out, after all that money I spent on it. Had to junk it.”

Louie Bronk lifted his eyes and looked right into Molly’s. “Now here’s the thing,” he said. “That was over the Fourth of July ’cause I remember I took it to the body shop up there in Fort Worth to get painted and they said it’d take four days ’cause it was over the holiday. So I got it back on the sixth and it broke down on the seventh.”

Molly was listening hard in spite of herself, caught up in his account. He must have noticed some change in her because he said, “Yes, ma’am, now you got it. Miz McFarland, she was done on July
the ninth. There ain’t no way in hell those people in Austin seen that car because by then it was blue and it was broke down.”

Molly held her hands up to stop him. She felt like he’d been digging a hole in front of her and if she wasn’t very careful she would fall right into it. “Louie, stop right there. If you have something like this, you should give it to Tanya Klein, your very able attorney, and let her look into it. That’s what she’s there for.”

“No. Molly, I tried to. When she was here Monday. I tried, but she don’t listen. She’s not … like you say, able. Or maybe she’s just not trying. You’re the only one who—”

“Louie, you’ve had eleven years for this. Why do this now, with only three days left?”

His eyes opened in surprise. “Why? I heard on the TV about Charlie McFarland’s second wife. Then this morning that baby-sitter. Can’t you see? Someone got away with it eleven years ago. And if you get away with doing it once, you’re going to do it again—sometime. Like me. Someone’s copycatting me, just like they done eleven years ago.” He sat up straighter. “Now that just ain’t right. Sister Addie, she says you got to do what you can to set things right. She believes me, Molly. She got my statement in the newspaper.”

Molly sat up straight in her chair. She was getting damned sick of hearing about Sister Addie. “Louie, I want to be perfectly clear about this so you don’t have any false hopes. There is nothing I can do. For you to tell me any more would be pointless.” She looked down at her watch. “I’m going to have to leave now, but—”

“You got to do it for me.” His whole body tensed.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You got to.”

In exasperation, she held her palms up in front of her. “What makes you think I got to?”

“Because I know you.”

She pressed both clenched hands against her chest. “You
don’t
know me!”

“In all them hours we talked and you was asking questions, you don’t think it was just you getting to know me, do you?”

Molly looked at him in horror. Suddenly she remembered a quote she’d read somewhere—Nietzsche she thought—something about having to be careful when you deal with monsters because when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

She said slowly, emphasizing each word. “Your case is over. If you think I’ll do this, then you don’t know me.” She gathered up her notebook and pen from the table.

Louie leaned so far forward his forehead bumped against the mesh of the cage. Like a shot, the guard started toward the cage. “No,” Louie said to him, “it’s okay. I just leant too far. Really. I didn’t mean nothing.”

His eyebrows raised, the guard looked at Molly.

“It’s okay,” she said.

When the guard took his place back at the door, he kept his eyes fixed on Louie. Louie glanced over at him a few times, then took a deep breath. “Remember when you was coming here all those weeks and I told you about the cross they found in my box, that little gold cross with real diamonds in it?”

“Yes, but, Louie, I don’t know what this—”

“Listen. They said I stole it from some woman I killed and I always said no, I didn’t, that I bought it to give to my sister Carmen-Marie for taking me on after my parole in Oklahoma, you know, for doing my sister Angela. I wanted to give her something nice. I told you I bought it with cash money from a jewelry store in Corpus. After I told you that, you went down there to Corpus and you went from store to store asking about those little crosses. When you found some stores that sold crosses like that you got them to look back in their records—and at that time it was back nine years—until you found the store that had a record with my name on it. When you came back the next week, you told me about it. Remember? And I asked you how long it had took and you said all week. All week! You spent a whole week doing that,” he said with awe in his voice.

“So what, Louie? That’s my job. I do lots of boring research like that.”

“No. No. It’s your … the … I don’t know how to say it. You’re like this pit bull bitch I saw fight once down in Laredo.

“Little bit of a thing,” he said, rushing on, “but she had these big jaws and she just never let go of nothing once she got her teeth sunk in.” He clenched his teeth to illustrate. “She was all ripped up and bloody, guts hanging out, but she still didn’t let go. After she was dead, they had to break her jaw with a wrench to get her off the other dog.” A smile of pure pleasure had spread over his face as he told the story.

Molly sat back in her chair disgusted by the image he’d drawn in her mind. She’d had enough of this for a lifetime. She was leaving. She started to stand.

“Wait.” It was a command, a tone of voice she’d never heard out of him before.

“I ain’t finished with the story,” he said. “You done all that work for this little bitty thing that don’t make no difference to no one. But you done it because it showed something good about me and you wanted to be fair. And I bet you put it in your book, didn’t you? See, that’s what I learned about you: you’re fair and you never let go of nothing you’ve started on.” He nodded his head up and down. “Yes. That’s why you’ll do this for me. God will provide.”

Molly stood, this time making it all the way up. She shook her head decisively. “No. Louie, I hate to disappoint you. God won’t provide. I know it’s a devil of a hard time for you, but I’m not going to do anything but drive home and get back to work.”

She felt like running, but she looked toward the guard and said in the calmest voice she could muster, “I’m ready to leave now.”

The guard nodded at her and walked toward the cage.

Molly took a step away, then looked at Louie one last time. His head was drooping on his scrawny neck. “I’m sorry, Louie,” she said.

She turned and walked to the door.

Behind her he said, “It’s because of the book, isn’t it? You’re mad about what I said. And you’re afraid what I’m saying here is true.”

She stopped and turned her head. “No. It’s because I
don’t
believe you.”

As she stepped through the door, she heard him say, “Because it’s already wrote down in the book and you can’t take the chance of finding out it’s wrong. You want to be perfect. Don’t want anyone to know you made a mistake. But you did. And like Sister Addie says, you got to face up to your mistakes. You got to admit them and give them over to God. Sister Addie says.”

Fuck Sister Addie. Molly set her mouth and walked as fast as she could through the anteroom and out the front door. Her blood was boiling and when she stepped out into the beating sun she felt the heat was equal on the inside and the outside of her skin.

She took a deep breath, struggling to regain some equilibrium. One thing was sure. She’d liked Louie better before he found God.

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