Authors: Mary Willis Walker
Stan Heffernan had grown up in George West, one of those dusty, dying towns where the local Dairy Queen was the only place to eat and the high school football game on Friday night the only entertainment. An all-state tackle and a solid student, he had gotten a football scholarship to the University of Texas. A serious knee injury his senior year left him free to pursue what he really wanted: law school.
Right out of school, he joined District Attorney Warren Stappleton’s staff as an assistant and immediately acquired the reputation for taking on and winning tough cases. Ten years ago, when he was still an assistant DA, he had prosecuted Louie Bronk for capital murder in the robbery-slaying of Tiny McFarland and gotten a death sentence. The following year, when his boss retired, he ran for DA and won. He was one of the most tenacious and steady people Molly had ever met.
When she heard his heavy tread approaching down the hall, she felt a twinge of apprehension: she hadn’t seen him since the book came out and she wondered how he felt about it. He was an important source for the section on the prosecution of Louie Bronk in the McFarland murder and he appeared as a major character. As a courtesy, she had sent him one of the first copies she got from her publisher, but she hadn’t heard from him. Did he find it accurate? Was he offended at her frank portrayal of him as slow and steady—the
plodding tortoise who always won the race? Had he even read it yet? Of course he’d read it; not even Stan-the-Man-Heffernan could resist reading about himself.
As he entered, he was pulling on his tie to loosen it from his thick bull neck, which was every bit as wide as his head. He closed the door behind him. “Molly, Molly, what’s this I hear about someone threatening you? We can’t have that.” His hoarse, whispery voice was almost inaudible. When he spoke to a jury, he had to wear a microphone. It always came as a surprise to her that such a big man had almost no voice—sort of like seeing a Saint Bernard opening its mouth and letting out a tiny mew. People tended to get very quiet and lean forward when Stan was around.
She said, “I don’t know if it’s me being threatened, or just some general threat, or nothing but a crank letter, but I’d feel better if you’d take a look.” From her briefcase she pulled a plastic bag containing the envelope, the torn-out pages, and the poem. She set it down on the coffee table. “I didn’t think about prints when I was opening the mail, so I may have messed them up.”
His tie hanging loose now, he took off his suit jacket and tossed it on his desk. Then he sat down in the chair across the coffee table from her and pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket. He used it to take the pages out of the plastic bag. Looking at the envelope through the plastic, he said, “Came by mail yesterday?”
Molly nodded.
In his usual unhurried, methodical way, which often drove his legal opponents to fury, he read the pages, moving his lips slightly as he did. When he got to the poem stuck to the last page, the deep line that ran vertically between his heavy brow ridges deepened. Finally, still silent, he put the pages back in the bag, stood, and walked to a cabinet under the bookshelves. When he opened the door, it revealed a small refrigerator inside. “Like something to drink, Molly? A soda water?”
“No thanks,” she said.
He pulled out a brown bag and can of Diet Dr Pepper which he carried back to his chair. As he lowered himself, he pulled over a magazine—
Texas Lawyer
—to put the can on, and with the little finger of his left hand he popped the top. Then he pulled from the bag a sandwich wrapped in plastic. He peeled it back just enough to allow him to take one big bite, which he chewed slowly, meditatively,
for a long time. After he swallowed, he said, “It’s not from our old friend Bronk.”
“Oh, no,” Molly said.
“Has this shaken you?”
“A little. I hate to be a sissy, but the line ‘Now that Louie’s doomed to die/I might give his craft a try’ is troublesome. The idea of a more literate version of Louie Bronk out there does worry me.” As usual when she talked to him, she found herself almost whispering so she wouldn’t sound loud and shrill in contrast. This phenomenon always made a conversation with him feel very intimate.
Stan picked it up and read it again, then dropped it on the table. “Nah,” he said. “This is the kind of nutty stuff we get all the time. We just stick them in the file marked ‘mail from outer space’ and forget about them. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll send it over to the DPS lab, see if they can pick up some latents and run them through the computer. Since you’ve touched it you’ll need to drop by there and leave your prints. Okay?”
Molly nodded. “Stan, there’s something else. I ran into David Serrano last night at Katz’s and he seemed upset about Louie’s execution coming up—the usual willies people get when they’re involved in capital cases maybe, but he did say there was something that bothered him about my book. He said there was no mention of the nicks on Tiny’s scalp.”
He tilted his head to one side. “Nicks?”
“Uh-huh. I was over at the ME’s office this morning looking at the autopsy photos. If you look closely under a magnifier, there
were
some nicks on her scalp, just like David says—the first I ever heard of it. Did you know that?”
“Not that I recall. But it was ten years ago and one hell of a complicated case. As much as I hate to say it, there are always some details that get away from us. You’re much more current with the case than I am. Even if we did overlook this, what difference does it make?”
“Well, probably none. But Barb Gruber called the MEs in McLennan, Bexar, and Denton counties and had them check the autopsy photos of the Bronk victims there. Absolutely no nicks. Not one. Perfectly shaven.”
“So the day he did Tiny McFarland he had more caffeine than usual, or he just felt jittery in the lavish surroundings; he’s probably
more at ease mutilating people in drainage ditches.” He grinned at her.
Molly nodded, but she couldn’t work up a smile. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s just that Louie was trained as a barber when he was doing time for murdering his sister in Oklahoma and he’s got a steady hand. I’ve never seen him shake.”
Stan’s eyes were pinpoints of light under the heavy protruding ridges of his brow. “Molly, something’s got hold of you.” He took another bite and chewed, waiting for her to speak. “Maybe it’s the execution coming up. When you write a book where you get as close as you did to the subject, there’s bound to be some … identification with him, some empathy.”
“No,” she said, too loud. She lowered her voice. “No, not in this case. Usually I do find some area of empathy with people I write about, but not with Louie. No,” she repeated, shaking her head, “that’s not it.”
Stan pulled a carrot stick from the bag. “Attending the execution might be a bad idea for you, Molly. Given your feelings about the death penalty. Why subject yourself to it if it’s going to be a problem?” He bit down on the carrot and chewed it.
“No, I need to be there, to see it through. Stan—” She suddenly felt ridiculous, like a lifetime religious believer who loses faith for no reason at the last minute. “Stan, let me ask you something. You’ve prosecuted more than ten capital cases and got the death penalty in eight of them. Right?”
“Right.”
“Would you answer something, not as DA, but just as a reasonable citizen, an old friend? No ass-covering, no macho posturing, okay?”
He laughed—a low, pleasing, raspy sound. “I can try.”
“Do you ever wake up at night worrying about how easy it is to make a mistake and how you might—just might—send an innocent person to the death chamber?”
“Louie Bronk is not an innocent person.”
“No. I know. He’s not. But if we overlooked something like these nicks on the scalp, we could make other mistakes, too. Don’t you ever worry about it?”
He pointed the carrot stick at her. “Did you say this was off the record?”
“Would it affect your answer?”
“Damn right, it would; I’m a politician.”
“Okay. Off the record.”
“First of all, I never wake up at night, Molly; I sleep like a baby. And second, that’s something I don’t worry about because we don’t prosecute innocent people.”
“Goddammit,” she wailed, “that’s an on-the-record answer.”
He took a bite of the carrot stick. “I can’t help it. It’s the truth.”
They sat silently for a while as he chewed. Finally Molly said, “So you never have doubts?”
He didn’t answer right away. He took a long swig from his can and nodded to show her he was thinking about it. “Well, I wouldn’t say that; there’s always some doubt. Let’s take Louie Bronk as an example here. If I’d been there and seen Bronk shoot Tiny McFarland with my own eyes, I’d be ninety-nine point eight percent certain. As it is, I’m ninety-eight point five percent certain.”
He leaned forward and used what was left of the carrot stick to emphasize his words. “When the little girl and the baby-sitter gave the description of the car, that white Mustang with the one brown door, I was up to twenty percent. When Louie confessed, that only raised it to twenty-five, because he’s a born confessor. But when he picked out a photo of Tiny and told us what had been stolen from her body and the house, I shot up to seventy-five. And when he described how to get to the house and where the body lay, and where the gunshot wound was and the caliber of the bullet, it went up to ninety-eight. The other half a percent happened from watching him during the trial.”
“His other convictions must have been worth a percentage point or two.”
Stan’s eyes closed. “Rosa Morales,” he whispered. “Greta Huff. Lizette Pachullo. Candice Hargrave. I like to say their names every so often. It keeps me focused. And helps me sleep like a baby.”
Molly let out a long sigh. He was right, of course.
“Sounds like you’re having a bad case of the eleventh-hour willies here. That’s not unusual for people involved in capital cases as the moment of truth approaches, you know. Jury members have been known to seek psychiatric help and send us the bills.”
“I know. I hate to be such a pain in the ass. I’m just having a
rotten day and it’s not Louie’s execution really. I can actually see that it’s best to put him to death.”
“Damn right. If we don’t, twelve years from now those moronic incompetents we’ve got on the parole board will read the file upside down and let him walk. And do you have any doubt that he’d kill as soon as he got out?”
“It might take him a day or two to get organized. He’s a living, breathing argument for the death penalty. So it’s not that. And I have no feelings for him personally at all. Isn’t that strange? After all the time I’ve spent with him?”
“So what’s the problem?”
“This is going to sound dumb,” she said. “It’s just all this power—the attorney general and his staff, you and your certainty, the governor in her white-pillared mansion, public opinion favoring capital punishment, Charlie McFarland and his money—the entire criminal justice system like an inexorable steamroller out to flatten one miserable wretch. It’s like going after a rat with a Sherman tank.”
“Remember when he was out killing on the highway, Molly? It seemed like he had all the power then.”
“I know. But I can’t help flinching at the idea of a mighty state taking blood revenge on a man who hasn’t known a day of kindness in his life. We’ll watch them strap him to the gurney and put a needle in his arm. Then we’ll watch him sputter a few times and die, and we’ll walk away feeling like crime fighters, like we’ve done our duty.”
Stan Heffernan looked her in the eye. “Goddamn right we will. My job is to use all my energy and skill to keep people like Louie Bronk from preying on citizens.” His eyes were burning. “And when we put him to death, I will damn well feel I’ve done my duty. If your sensibilities have gotten too delicate for this, Molly, make a job change. Write about the environment or ladies’ fashions.”
Molly felt her cheeks heat up with the rebuke; maybe he was right.
He reached across the table and patted her hand. “It is harsh and barbaric,” he whispered, “but so is he. We’re fighting fire with fire.”
She nodded. “Anything new on his appeals?”
“I don’t know. It’s out of state court now so I haven’t kept up. You might say that the baton has passed to the attorney general. I suppose you’re doing an article on the execution.”
She hesitated just a moment before answering. “Yes, I am. What can I quote you on?”
He smiled broadly; his teeth were as wide and solid as the rest of him. “Anything but my calling the parole board a gang of moronic incompetents. Even though they are.”
“You
will
be there, won’t you?”
He picked up his sandwich. “Wouldn’t miss it. Did you know Bronk actually put me on his witness list? I got a note from him asking me to come, sort of like a party invitation.”
“No.” Interesting; Louie was on record as saying he thought Stan Heffernan was the sorriest son of a bitch he ever saw.
“And just guess who else is on his list.” He looked at her with a big smile of anticipation.
“You, me, David Serrano,” she said. “Who else?”
“It’s the goddamnedest thing,” Stan said. “You know he’s allowed five. You and me I can understand him asking for. Serrano is a weird choice. But he also asked for the two McFarland kids—Alison and Stuart. And he made sure they were on his visitor list at Ellis, so it would be legal. First time I ever heard of a condemned killer asking for a victim’s family members as witnesses.”
Molly kept making the mistake of thinking life had no more major surprises for her and then she got hit with something like this. After she caught her breath, she said, “Do you know if they’re going?”
“They both said yes. I know that because their daddy called me yesterday with a burr up his butt. How could I allow this? I should have called him first, got his permission. I tried to tell him this had nothing to do with me, but he didn’t listen. He demanded I not let his offspring attend such a barbaric ritual, said it would be real bad for his little girl’s mental health.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Hell, she’s an adult and when I’ve talked to her in the past she sounded tough as nails. This might be just what she needs.”