Love Her Madly (26 page)

“What is this?”

“A Lincoln. You got a problem with that?”

“Just open the door for me, Max.”

We rolled out into the traffic, which slowed for us since the drivers could tell he was a big-cheese cop. We settled into the flat Texas sixteen-lane road. He asked me if I knew anything about the juror.

“No.”

“I do. She's a cowgirl. She works on one of the new ranches northwest of Houston on a new highway goes to Austin. Fred Helton built one for himself not too long ago. They've become neighbors, but they ain't exactly on the same social level.”

“She's a real cowgirl, then.”

“Yeah. The highway we'll be on cuts through empty tracts of land whose former owners went bankrupt back during the oil bust. People who seen to that highway are the ones bought the land from the banks. Corrupt techno-rich boomers, not ranchers, is what they're called in some circles. Then they built farmhouses with twelve thousand square feet of living space. The houses always sit on the highest available knoll so they can be seen, even though they might be set back as much as a quarter mile from the highway.

“Every twenty miles or so, they stick up like sore thumbs. You'll see. So anyway, these guys brought in big herds of cattle. The more cattle you have, the more land you're telling people you own without having to give the numbers. Sounds less like crowing that way. Cattle require a good deal of grazing land, since one cow can pollute six square acres in about a week. Status symbol, so to speak. Then, to go with all the cows, these so-called ranchers needed cowboys. Sometimes, cow
girls.
Had to scour the rodeo circuits to find them.

“Juror's been interviewed all over the TV. TV people love her because she ropes cattle and wears fringe. And here's why else. I caught one of the shows she was on. She had on a fancy silk shirt very much strained by her mighty chestworks. She don't button the top three or four buttons, because if she did they'd pop off the minute she sneezed.

“Juror called for the execution of Rona Leigh. Real loud. Looks like her neighbor made a point of makin' her acquaintance.”

As we left the city, the highway was lined with billboards advertising hotels and restaurants, the space center, resorts in Galveston. Through the power of advertising, I learned that I could call a bail bondsman at 1-800-WALK.

GOING TO JAIL IS YOUR BUSINESS
.

GETTING YOU OUT IS OURS
.

And anyone with a change of heart as to procreation could dial 1-800-REVERSE.

YOU STILL GOT LEAD IN YOUR PENCIL, DUDE
.

DR. CRAIG WILL RE-START YOUR ENGINE
.

The billboards advertising Viagra needed no further illumination other than the photo of Bob Dole, smiling like a kid in a candy store.

After the billboards, the new highway was bordered by empty grassy land with cattle grazing. Very scenic. I had to agree with Scraggs about the sore thumbs, though. The new houses were copies of Normanesque châteaus and Savoyard palazzos—multistoried Palladio-windowed mansionettes. There were Victorian atrocities like the one the Addams family lived in and spread-out villas meant to lie under the Tuscan sun, not under the one in Texas. Then there were houses representing a more contemporary school of architecture, with walls of glass brick acting as prisms, throwing rainbows over the rolling landscape.

All were bound together by the ubiquitous western fence stretching along both sides of the highway, broken only by huge ornate wrought-iron gates marking the long drives leading to each house. The names of the ranches were cast in the gates. We came to Fred Helton's address, the name of his ranch
THE GUN AND ROD
.

Scraggs said to me, “Now don't think this Helton named it that because we worship guns, as Easterners like to believe. Used to be an old shooting range around here as I recall, plus great fishing. The lake with all the fish belongs to one of these new ranchers.”

We turned in and drove up the driveway. The late Melody Scott's brother went with contemporary.

Fred Helton and Candy Sinclair stood in the doorway. He looked just as sad and stricken as I remembered him from the witness room at Gatesville. The cowgirl was a bit long in the tooth, maybe late forties. Her skin was weathered and tan, her eyes bright blue, and her hair in a braid down her back, a rich brown with some wiry gray strands springing out. The shirt she wore was in the vein Scraggs had described. She looked like a Texan Sophia Loren.

Helton invited us to sit in an air-conditioned sun porch full of plants, with a crocheted hammock stretched out in a graceful swoop under a wide window. The cowgirl poured boiled coffee from a blue-and-white enameled tin pot. When Scraggs took a sip, he said, “Coffee don't have to drip through a filter and it don't have to come from Ethiopia either to taste damn good.”

I asked for sugar.

Basically, Fred Helton was bursting with the need to spill his guts. He thanked us for coming, for enjoying his coffee, and then he looked down at the floor and he said, “I hope you don't mind my starting with a little background. I want you to see where I'm comin' from.”

We let him go to it.

“My father was a cattleman. Sold off everything after the ocean of oil under his ranch was drilled free. Allowed me to go back to raisin' cattle all these years later, though people still consider me oil trash.” A little smile came to his lips and then flitted away. “When Rona Leigh's execution date grew close, I came to believe I had a responsibility to made amends for some things in my family's life I am not proud of.”

The cowgirl stopped him. “If you got some responsibilities, I got a damn sight more.”

He didn't respond to her.

He said, “My mama got pregnant with my baby sister at forty-eight years of age. My brother and I were teenagers at the time. Everyone—family, friends, and especially my father—tried to talk her out of goin' through with it. We were all worried to death. Afraid we would be dealin' with a Down syndrome child the rest of our lives. Still, Mama was determined and there was no discouragin' her.

“So then here comes this beautiful blue-eyed blond-haired baby girl who spent the first hours after she was born cooing at all of us with such a sweet sound we named her Melody. How often I have thought since, Oh, for a Down syndrome child who couldn't sing!”

The cowgirl refilled his cup.

“When my sister got to be around fifteen, we started to pressure my father in earnest to do somethin' about her troublin' behavior. Criminal behavior. We didn't let up for two years. When she was seventeen, he decided to get rid of us—me and my brother—not her, which had been our advice concerning our sister.

“It was upon news of her marriage, when Melody turned up on his doorstep with her no-good scum of a husband, that's when he turned her out without a cent. Of course Melody kept coming back, kept crying to him for money, but he stood firm. He refused her. Told her to get a job. Go to college. Dump her husband. Then she could have all the money she wanted. Finally, he slammed the door on her, wouldn't let her past his doorstep. She knew he meant business.

“Then she was dead.”

The cowgirl patted the back of his hand.

“My father called me up one day, called to tell us she'd been murdered. Me and my brother flew back to Houston, and the minute we were in our father's presence, he blamed us for what happened. ‘I turned her loose,' he kept saying, over and over. ‘Threw her to the wolves, and now my little girl is dead.' At the funeral, he told me he hoped I'd never have a fragile child, but if I did, I'd better listen to my heart when it told me to protect that child.

“Mama had to be hospitalized.

“The funeral was a travesty. I swear, every drug addict in Houston was there, cryin' their crocodile tears.”

His own tears now were not crocodile.

I asked him, “Are your parents alive?”

“My Daddy died within a year after Melody. My brother and I each tried havin' Mama live with us. She was bitter; she was angry; she made our families' lives hell. She was clinically depressed, is what she was. We had her treated but she wouldn't take her medication. One day, one of many such days, she stormed out of my brother's house and sped off in her car. She was killed. Couldn't make a curve.”

Candy had gone out, and now she was back with a box of Kleenex.

I said, “I'm sorry.” Scraggs said the same.

“Thank you. All that is why I went to Gatesville. There has been enough of death, so I went. Killing Rona Leigh Glueck wouldn't change anything except to end yet another person's life. She was a teenager when she murdered my sister. She was, we've all learned, a fragile child. A very fragile child. She was doin' okay there in prison. I thought, just let her stay put. So when the governor said he would witness the execution I was happy to hear it, because at the last minute, I would have the opportunity to ask him for mercy. He wouldn't let me earlier, when I tried to see him. But my plea was to no avail.

“Ma'am, what if my sister had redeemed herself with my father instead of latchin' on to Gary Scott? I like to think I'd have forgiven her for the grief she caused us. But I never had such an opportunity. So instead I have forgiven her killer.”

Max Scraggs said, “Mr. Helton, I don't see how you could. Your sister died for no rhyme or reason.”

Helton said, “Oh, there was plenty of reason. My father could have told you what he thought the reasons were. And I know a few.”

And then Fred Helton went on to tell us the same story that Chuck had told me in his truck, driving away from the AstroBar. When Chuck said everyone knew what Gary Scott was about, he was right. Gary was bent on creating a scenario in Lloyd and Rona Leigh's head that was dynamite.

“Gary Scott wanted Rona Leigh to understand that the woman she would find with James Munter was fixin' to move in on Lloyd. Gary Scott's the one who set those two kids up to die.

“I know this because I hired an investigator so I'd have a clear answer, a reason as to why my sister died. The reason is that Gary Scott lit their fuses.

“My sister had some money. She didn't know it. Our parents put money aside for all of us, hers in a secret trust. We made my father swear he would never tell her. We let her think she'd been cut out of my parents' will so she'd never have money ever. We thought destitution would turn her around. It didn't. Told us she didn't need our goddamn money.

“My brother and I beseeched our father to close down the trust, and he told us he would. When she was dead he said he should have used the money to care for her. To lock her up and have the ruin washed out of her brain. Man never stopped agonizing. But he was lying to us. He never closed the trust. If he had, I suppose he'd have lost the last bit of hope he was hanging on to—hope that she'd return to her family sorrowful and contrite. Ready to change her ways. Become the girl he'd hoped the little cooing baby would become.

“Melody's husband inherited that money. I was there when our lawyer informed Gary of his windfall. Around a quarter of a million dollars. Gary shouted out something that sounded like a pig call. Then the lawyer advised him to get a lawyer of his own because his former brothers-in-law would take every legal action available to prevent him from getting that money. So Gary hired a lawyer. A snake is not a stupid animal.

“It took him ten years to get his hands on Melody's money, and it cost me a damn sight more to keep it out of his hands for as long as I could. I learned that when he held the check in his hands, he started to cry. Overjoyed. Like one of those people on television who win the lottery. When his lawyer attempted to advise him of the tax consequences, he fired him. His lawyer called me to tell me that. Thought it might offer me some condolence.

“He bought the bar where he worked, bought a new truck, an RV. He drinks her money, he gambles it, he spends it on whores.

“Gary Scott may not be stupid but he's not rational either. What he is, he's a conniver. His conniving got my sister killed. After she died, I got to thinking about that pig call he made when he learned of the money she had. I'd expected stunned silence. That was when I knew he'd found out about the money earlier. He just didn't know how much.”

The cowgirl did her wrist-patting again.

He said, “Damn my father. Once my sister was married, her husband would automatically become the trust's beneficiary. He knew that. But still he didn't have it revoked. It was his stubborn love for my sister that created the motive for her death.”

He looked directly at me. “Miz Rice, you are the FBI. You are meant to walk in my shoes. I can't walk anymore, I'm tired out. Rona Leigh was sucker-punched, set up to walk a deadly path. But she went on to achieve what my sister did not: redemption.”

He looked at Max Scraggs. He said, “And you, sir, though I have all respect for you and the job you do, you can't do what I hope the FBI can. I hope the FBI can find her instead of you and take her to a federal prison where she won't be executed. Just keep her there.

“All this talk of closure is stuff and nonsense. Let her live. Killing her will not bring closure to me. But something else will. What I want is for Gary Scott to be held accountable.”

It was as if he and the cowgirl had rehearsed it all. She took her cue with those words.

“Ma'am, Fred has brought me to see the light. I have been asked and asked why myself and the rest of jurors did not take pity on a seventeen-year-old girl who'd lived one wretched life. Why we didn't sentence her to life in prison. I have been talking it out with Fred here. He has allowed me to see what I didn't see, didn't want to see back then. I tried to tell him no one could see past the crime-scene pictures, which will stay in my head forever. Couldn't see past the attitude of Rona Leigh, her laughin' at us, braggin' about killin' givin' her a sex thrill. Couldn't see past that doctor describing how a little girl like that went about pulling the ax out of Melody, strugglin' with it so's she could hit her again.