The Red Scream (20 page)

He walked slowly toward the door, paused just before walking through it, and turned to face her. “Let’s make a wager on this, Molly. I’ll bet you a steak dinner with a bottle of red wine at Steak and Ale that Charlie McFarland is responsible for his wife’s death.”

Molly looked into the pale eyes and smiled with all the confidence she could muster. “It’s a deal,” she said firmly.

He tapped the dead bolt above the doorknob. “Pretty good lock you got there. So’s the one on the back door. If you remember to lock them. But I sure wish you had an alarm system.”

“How do you know about the one on the back door?”

“Oh, I checked it out while I was waiting for you to come home.” He raised his palms to her as if expecting an attack. “Just doing my job, ma’am. You’re a woman who lives alone and you’ve gotten a death threat from someone who has most likely killed one woman already.”

Molly felt a thump of alarm in her chest. “Then you do think the master poet killed Georgia.”

“I said likely.’ ”

“But wait a minute. If you really think this was a family matter and the master poet notes are just a cover, why should I worry?”

He looked down at his feet. “Oh, Molly, it’s just that I’m wrong so often and I don’t want you to take any chances.”

Her surprise was so total, she felt her jaw drop. This was a man she couldn’t ever remember admitting an error in the past. “Grady,” she said, her voice full of amazement.

“What I really wish is that you’d go away for a month, and not tell anyone where you’re going. Just wait this one out until we make an arrest.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I don’t suppose you’d—”

She grinned up at him.

“No, I didn’t think so,” he said. “And I suppose you still refuse to have a gun around.”

“That’s right. I still hate the damn things.”

“Well, then, I have a present for you.” He pulled out a key chain with a small cylinder-shaped canister the size of a fat lipstick attached and handed it to Molly.

She read from the canister: “ ‘Super CSX Tear Gas.’ ” She
dropped it into her big bag which was open on the hall table. “Just what I always wanted. Very kind of you, Grady.”

He shrugged. “They gave me a box of free samples when I spoke to a Citizens Against Violent Crime meeting last week. It’s better than nothing. Will you put it on your key chain right now?”

“Sure. Now I’m going to give you a gift, too. Wait a minute.” She went into her office and grabbed a copy of
Sweating Blood
from the box of fifty complimentary copies her publisher had sent. She got a pen from her desk and walked back to the front door.

Grady was attaching the tear gas to her ring of keys. “God, you’ve got a lot of keys. Must weigh a ton.”

Molly put the book on the table, opened the cover, and signed it on the title page. Then she handed it to Grady. “In case you don’t have enough crime in your life,” she told him.

He opened the cover to look at the inscription. “ ‘To Grady,’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘All the Best, Molly Cates.’ So intimate. I’m touched.”

He reached out, took her hand, and pressed it against his chest, hard. “Stay out of trouble now, Molly. You hear?”

chapter
11

Made of dust

Die we must.

Made of mud

and clotted blood.

Skulls and scalps,

Skins and sins.

The worm wins.

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

“O
kay. Let’s work the gluteus medias,” Michelle said from the platform. She had to shout so the class could hear her over the blast of the music. Down on all fours, leaning forward on her elbows and forearms, she lifted one bent leg up behind her and twitched it out to the side.

Molly could feel the thrum of the music in her hands and knees as she followed suit. She watched herself in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mirror and shook her head. “I feel like a male dog peeing,” she told Jo Beth. “I can’t believe I’m spending my middle years doing this.”

“Not to worry, Mother. You aren’t spending very much of your middle years at it.”

“Just a small movement,” Michelle shouted. “Make the glutes do all the work. That’s right. Four, three, two, one. Now cross it over the other one like this.”

After suffering in silence for a minute, Molly said, “I’m so sick of telling everyone about finding a dead body. Let’s talk about something else. How’s the preparation for your case going?”

“Well, I ran into some snags yesterday,” Jo Beth said, head down, leg moving up and down behind her, “but Ben always seems to have time to help and he has the gift of getting right to the heart of the
issue. We worked late last night and he helped me get back on course. So it looks like I’ll meet my deadline next week.”

“Ben?” Molly said, raising her head. “Benson Williams?” Molly had met Jo Beth’s boss, one of the senior partners in the Rutgers, Diamond and Williams law firm, several years before, in connection with a story she had been writing about a bank fraud case. She remembered him as a big, charismatic, middle-aged man with a twinkle in his eyes. Williams had been a U.S. congressman for several years and it was rumored he was planning to run for governor.

“Yeah,” Jo Beth said. “You’ve met him. What did you think of him, Mom?”

“I only met him briefly, honey, but I thought he was very competent. And attractive.”

“Yeah,” Jo Beth said in a small voice, “he is.”

Molly felt a mild tingle of misgiving. “Refresh my memory here, Jo Beth. How old a man is he?”

“Oh, hard to tell. Ben’s one of those ageless men. Like Dad. Early forties probably.”

“Married?” Molly asked, aware she was edging into dangerous territory.

Jo Beth kept her head down and kept lifting her leg. “Yeah, but—”

“But what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. She was at this office party we had last week, for John Seton’s retirement, and she seems so … I don’t know, dour and old, and he’s so vital and open to new things. They don’t really seem to match up.”

The tingle of misgiving turned into a buzz. Molly wanted to question and probe, to issue advice and warnings. Instead she pressed her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth and kept on lifting her leg. She looked at the back of her daughter’s head and admired the shining straight brown hair hanging forward onto her hands, the slender leg in black tights moving diligently up and down.

She felt her chest tighten with affection. Jo Beth, now Elizabeth to everybody but Molly, had mapped out a life plan when she was just thirteen: she would go to college in the East, to Bryn Mawr, she’d decided, though neither of her parents had ever heard of it, nor could they imagine why anyone would want to go anyplace other than Texas; her plan was then to come back to Texas for law school
and to practice law in Austin. She would make a lot of money, have two black Labs and an apartment of her own, and never get married.

So far the plan was right on track. When she’d been accepted at Bryn Mawr, Grady and Molly between them could come up with only half the tuition. So Jo Beth had gotten some student aid for the other half. She had worked summers as a lifeguard and saved enough money for law school. Now she had a job in one of the best law firms in Austin, an apartment in Westlake Hills, and two Labrador puppies. As for getting married, she divided her time between a middle-aged veterinarian and a young attorney from her office, both of whom she said were only good friends. And, knowing her, Molly believed it.

Molly was in awe of her daughter’s discipline and steady resolve, but she also worried that the illusion of control could come crashing down when the unexpected came to call. Which it always did, eventually.

Just when Molly felt like her leg was about to break off at the hip, Michelle stopped and called out, “Good news. Push-up time. We’re going to do thirty. Molly Cates, I’m watching you.”

Molly moaned and stretched out on her stomach, then hoisted herself up on her hands with her knees on the floor. The thing she hated most about her inability to master the push-ups in this class was that they weren’t even real push-ups; they were wimpy from the knee push-ups, and still she couldn’t do more than twelve without collapsing.

Michelle began counting. Molly was flagging at eight and ready to drop by twelve.

“Mrs. Cates,” a voice from above said. Molly glanced up, pathetically grateful for the interruption. One of the young men who worked at the desk stood over her, his face wide-eyed and flushed. “Telephone. He says he’s a police officer and that it’s an emergency.”

Molly rose and followed him, weaving through the sweating bodies, then out the glass doors to the extension phone near the drinking fountain. She poked the lighted button and lifted the receiver. “Hello.”

“That you, Molly? Grady here. Sorry to interrupt your chin-ups, but I promised I’d call when I heard something on David Serrano.”

Molly leaned her shoulder against the wall.

“Officer in Edward sector just responded to a bad odor call over at Burnet Road U-Store-It. Turned out to be a ripe one for us—it can really heat up in those storage units. Male Hispanic, middle thirties, slender, dark blue suit, empty shoulder holster, GSW to left side of head, looks like. No papers on him, but the description sounds a lot like your Mr. Serrano. I don’t have a recent picture and can’t get in touch with the cousin. One of my detectives is working the scene now and I’m going to stop by. Why don’t you come along with me, take a look? Maybe you could make the ID for us.”

Molly glanced through the door to where Jo Beth and the rest of the class were still doing push-ups. “Okay, but I don’t have a car here. Jo Beth drove.”

“I’ll pick you up in one of the patrol cars. As I remember, you always enjoyed that. You can work the siren like in the old days. Should be about twelve minutes, Molly. Bring your hankie.”

Molly walked slowly back into the room where sixteen women and two men were now doing one-armed push-ups, which were the worst.

Molly hadn’t told Jo Beth anything about her recent encounters with Grady Traynor, except that they had met at the McFarland murder scene. Usually she could discuss anything with her daughter, but each time she had thought about mentioning Grady, she found herself unable to broach the subject. Maybe it was because the subject had gone undiscussed between them for so many years that it had become taboo. Or maybe she was afraid Jo Beth would see right through to her true feelings.

She squatted next to her daughter and said, “That was your father. He’s picking me up in a few minutes. There’s a body over at Burnet Road U-Store-It that could be David Serrano.”

Jo Beth raised her head but kept up the rhythm of the push-ups. “The man from Katz’s the other night!”

“Yes.”

“This is connected to the McFarland thing?”

“If it’s him, yes, I think so. It must be. I’m going to get dressed now, honey, but don’t let this change your plans.”

Jo Beth studied Molly’s face, then tilted her head to the side and squinted her eyes as if some new idea had just occurred to her. She opened her mouth to speak, but then pressed her lips together and
shook her head, as if the idea was so outlandish that she couldn’t bring herself to give voice to it.

G
rady hadn’t been kidding; Molly
had
always loved riding in police cars, especially at night and especially when Grady Traynor was driving. It was embarrassing to admit it; she’d expected at her age that the fascination would have passed, like a child outgrowing a passion for dinosaurs or cowboys and Indians. But as they sped across town on Koenig Lane toward Burnet she felt it more intensely than ever. The pulsing light captured quick frames of the world speeding past her open window and intensified them. It transformed the familiar, benign landscape she saw every day into a quick succession of alien images, peeling away the top layer and exposing all the secret nighttime things underneath.

And the power of the siren! Traffic scattered in front of them like ants. As Grady sped through the openings, she felt as if the Red Sea were parting before them.

And the way he handled the car hadn’t changed since his patrol days when she used to keep him company on the night shift. He still drove fast, very fast, aggressively, purposefully, as if he had no doubts about anything in the world.

Life in a police car was simpler, she decided as Grady executed the left turn onto Burnet and accelerated north—simpler and more intense. That was why she loved it.

The storage place stood on a stretch of Burnet Road which also had a Church’s Fried Chicken, a Pizza Hut, a tiny donut shop, a junior high school, and an Academy Surplus—one of those franchised, hard-edged, familiar pieces of American road that could be anywhere in the country.

Molly had passed the U-Store-It entrance a hundred times, but she had never driven in. Never accumulated enough possessions to need a place to store them, she thought.

Two patrol cars flanked the gate in the high chain-link fence next to the huge sign that said “U-Store-It, U-Lock It, U-Keep-the-Key.” Grady flashed his badge in the window and got a salute as they drove through.