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
When 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.
She looked up the hill to the back of the McFarland house, shading her eyes with her hand. He must be standing at the top of the hill, but it was so steep she couldn’t see the top. “It’s me, Molly Cates,” she called. “Something very bad has happened here. Who are you?”
“Franklin Purcell. Security director for McFarland Construction. Come up here, please.”
“I can’t. Call the police. Now. Then come down and help me. Hurry.”
“What should I tell the police they’re coming for?”
It seemed all wrong to yell it out, but she didn’t see an alternative. “There’s a body down here, with two bullet holes in it. A woman.” Molly was having trouble catching her breath in the hot, still air.
“Okay. You just hold on a minute, ma’am.” The voice was calm and competent. “I want to make sure Mr. McFarland’s settled inside, then I’ll call APD and be down. Do you know who it is?”
Molly hesitated. “You better come see.”
Just hold on. In the silence, Molly turned back to the body. Lying there in the weeds, it looked so naked, so white, so vulnerable, so in need of protection that she kept her eyes on it. Charlie McFarland’s second wife. Dead at home. Shot in the back. Naked. Head shaved. Hot day. It was all too familiar. She knew this scene, had written it once before. Unbidden, the lines came to her mind:
Lady writer, you ought to know it:
Louie is my favorite poet.
Your depiction of his crimes
Has inspired my poor rhymes
I give your book a rave review.
Accolades from me to you.
Now that Louie’s doomed to die
I may give his craft a try.
She hadn’t realized that she’d memorized the words. She certainly hadn’t intended to. Once you memorize something, it becomes part of you forever. And she didn’t want that.
She raised her right sleeve to blot the sweat that was dripping off her chin and neck. Lord, was it possible that her account of Tiny McFarland’s murder had inspired someone to imitate it?
No. She turned her back to the corpse and stood watching up the hill instead. No. It was absurd. She was just an observer, a recorder of events. Not a participant. This had nothing at all to do with her; she just had the bad luck to get here first this afternoon.
But what if some maniac read her account of Tiny McFarland’s murder and decided to do the same thing? To the same family? It hadn’t occurred to her that the poem might be directed at the McFarland family, even though it had come stuck to the pages about Tiny’s murder. She felt a flush of hot confusion, like waking panicked from a nightmare not knowing what was real and what wasn’t. Sweat was streaming down her back now and she didn’t know how much longer she could last, standing here in the heat.
A spray of scattering pebbles made her look up. A man was barreling down the same route by which she had come.
Franklin Purcell was a real can-do sort of fellow. He had done what he said he would and scrambled down the hill in less than four minutes. Running and sliding, with heedless abandon for his neck or for his impeccably tailored charcoal-gray suit and shiny black shoes, he arrived on the scene in a shower of stones and clods of earth.
His right hand rested on the semiautomatic pistol tucked into his belt. His eyes surveyed the scene with the practiced efficiency of a man whose business it was to spot danger before it spotted him. Only after he had looked the area over thoroughly did he focus in on Molly, buttoning his suit jacket over the gun, as if he were suddenly aware of exposing something unseemly in the presence of a lady. “You all right, Miz Cates?”
“Yes,” Molly said, looking closer at his face—the thin lips and flat nose, the cheeks that were purplish with broken blood vessels. She’d seen him somewhere before; she was sure of it. But she couldn’t remember where.
He nodded and then turned his attention to the body. He hunkered down to get a better look at the two bloody holes, wincing slightly as Molly had done. Then he studied the face, as if he wanted to be absolutely certain he knew who it was. When he finally turned to Molly, sweat was pouring down his forehead. “Jesus Christ, Miz Cates, this looks like history repeating its bloody self.”
He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket. “One of us is going to have to go up there and tell Charlie it’s his wife down here.” Blotting his face and neck, he looked up at the buzzards, still relentless overhead; his fists clenched. “And one of us needs to stay and keep those fucking bastards away until the police arrive.”
“I’ll go,” Molly said.
Franklin Purcell rose to his feet and looked Molly over carefully from her muddy shoes to her snarled, sweat-dampened hair. Then he nodded at the path that curved up to the opposite end of the house, a much easier route than the one they’d both taken down. “I think we should leave the path alone. There might be prints. Can you manage to get up the way I came down, ma’am?”
Molly hated condescension from men; she was accustomed to it, but she hated it. She gave Purcell back the same scrutinizing look, noting the breadth of shoulder and the suggestion of muscle definition under his suit. Where the devil had she seen him before? “Well, I got down here, didn’t I?” she said.
His eyes opened wider. “Didn’t mean to offend you, Miz Cates.”
Molly turned and started up the hill. Behind her, Purcell called, “Miz Cates, don’t let Charlie come down here. It would kill his back and it would … just kill him. Keep him up there.”
Molly turned and nodded and then made her way back up the hill much faster than she’d come down. She dug her heels in and grabbed at branches to pull herself upward. As she climbed, she thought about the flush of pleasure on Charlie McFarland’s face when his wife had arrived home the day before.
Instead of approaching the house from the rear and taking the chance of startling him, Molly walked around to the front and rang the bell. After a second, a door opened at the far end of the house near the garage. Charlie stuck his head out. “Molly. Come in this way. Frank didn’t want me going to the glass door until he figured out what happened down there. What the hell is going on?”
As Molly approached him, she noted his hands clenched in front of him and his face blotched red with agitation. “Who’s down there?” he asked.
“Let’s talk inside, Charlie.”
He preceded her into a back hall which led to a huge, white-tiled kitchen with restaurant-size stainless-steel appliances. Then he faced her, bracing a hand on the round butcher-block table. “What’s happened?” he asked in a tight voice.
“Let’s sit down, Charlie,” she said, “and I’ll tell you.”
He sat heavily and looked at her with the world-weary expression of a man who, in spite of all his financial good fortune, has heard a great deal of bad news along the way and knows he’s about to get hit with some more.
“I’m afraid it’s bad news—very bad,” Molly said. “The worst. I walked down the hill a ways because I got here early and saw the buzzards circling. It’s Georgia down there. Looks like she was shot, Charlie.”
His jaw fell as if he’d suddenly lost all control of it. “Dead?” he said, his voice little more than a croak. “Georgia’s dead?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.”
His big head slowly drooped forward until she could see only the bald spot on the crown. A few lonely strands of wispy gray hair stood up from the freckled skin. She looked away.
His head still hanging, he said, “She shouldn’t be alone. I need to be down there with her.” He started to push himself up. “I should help Frank. I need to go down there and—”
Molly reached out and took hold of his arm. “Oh, Charlie, you don’t want to do that. Your man has it under control, and the police will be here in a shake. They’re professionals. Let them do it.”
As if to validate her advice, the sound of sirens in the distance rose and fell and rose again.
As though rooted, they sat listening as the sirens got louder, shriller, closer. It seemed only seconds before the squeal of tires and the sound of slamming doors and radios filled the courtyard. It was a combination of sounds Molly Cates used to find exciting, but somehow along the way she’d lost the taste for it. “I’ll go,” she told Charlie.
When she pulled open the side door, Molly gasped. There in front of her stood her first ex-husband, his black hair and mustache gone mostly white, his skin more tanned and seamed than she remembered. “Grady,” she said, her hand fluttering to her breast and her voice higher than she liked.
A man rarely taken by surprise, Grady Traynor merely lifted his eyebrows. They were still black and they still met in the middle.
Suddenly Molly was aware of the sticker burrs in her shoes, the runs in her panty hose, and the tickle of tattered fabric at the hem of her dress. She resisted the impulse to reach up and smooth her hair. Lord, but this female vanity habit was hard to fight down; after forty-two years she wasn’t even gaining on it. At the rate she was going, on her deathbed she’d be wishing she’d remembered to shave her legs.
Two uniformed officers jogged up behind Grady and an EMS van squealed in through the gates.
“Well,” Grady prompted, “what’s going down here, Molly?”
“The body is back of the house, down the hill,” she said. She lowered her voice. “It’s Mrs. Georgia McFarland. Her husband’s in the kitchen, Charlie McFarland. Frank Purcell is down there waiting for you; he’s the head of security at McFarland Construction. Just walk around that wall there and head west until you find a path down the hill. And, Grady, I don’t know if it rings a bell with you, but his first wife was one of Louie Bronk’s victims.”
Grady nodded. One of the things she’d always liked about him was the quick way he entered into new situations; he was the only man she’d ever been close to who she felt might possibly be smarter than she was.
“I’ll take a quick look-see. Tell Mr. McFarland we’ll be in to talk in a few minutes,” he said, turning to lead the way for the two officers and two EMS techs. He looked back over his shoulder. “You stay inside with him, Molly. I’ll leave one of my men out front to send the next wave down.”
Molly paused to watch him go, so he wouldn’t think she was following his orders. After all these years, the macho son of a bitch still thought he could boss her around. Some people just never learned.
When he had disappeared around the corner of the house, she turned and strode back to the kitchen. Charlie McFarland was still sitting at the table, but now he was talking into a cordless phone. “That’s all I know, honey.” His voice quavered. “I don’t understand it either. She was fine this morning when I left for Dallas. Yes, she had just gotten up and was taking a shower. Yeah, Frank’s here. I don’t think you ought to, honey. I’ll call you when we—” He paused to listen. “Yes, do tell him, but I don’t think he—” Again he seemed to be interrupted. “Well, all right, if you feel that way, but be careful. Drive real careful.” Tears oozed from the corners of his eyes. “I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.” He reached across the table for a red and white checked linen napkin which he used to blot his face.
He lowered the phone slowly to the table as if it had gotten too heavy for his hand. “Alison,” he said, glancing up at Molly. “She’s coming over as soon as she gets in touch with Stuart. Christ, this can’t be happening.…”
He rose painfully to his feet and, with his hands pressed into the small of his back, shuffled over to a cabinet near the sink. He took out two glasses and a bottle of Cutty Sark. Molly quickly took them from him. “Here. Sit down. Let me.” She put the glasses and the bottle on the table, unscrewed the top, and poured several ounces into one of the glasses.
Shuffling back to the table so slowly it looked like he was moving underwater, Charlie said, “There couldn’t be anyone in the world who’d want to kill Georgia. She was my wife. For it to happen twice, it must have something to do with me. This must be my fault. I made some horrible mistake somewhere. I am to blame.”
He took a long swallow from the glass, closing his eyes as the Scotch slid down his throat.
Molly reached out and rested a hand on his arm. “Charlie, have you looked around the house? Is anything disturbed?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I walked through after Frank heard you shouting down the hill. I’d have to look more closely to be sure but …” His voice trailed off.
They both flinched at the sound of heavy knocking on the side door. “Police, Mr. McFarland,” a voice called through the door.
Molly jumped to her feet.
Charlie looked up at her and said in a pleading voice that seemed strange coming from a man who was accustomed to giving orders, “Molly, I know this sounds crazy, but could he have escaped?”
“Louie Bronk? No. People don’t escape from death row. And even if he had, I think we’d have heard.”
The knocking intensified. It sounded now like a violent assault on the door.
“Molly? Help me out here. You know some of the brass at Huntsville. Just to humor an old man, will you call them and check?”
Molly looked down into his brown eyes that were set deep into the heavy flesh and thought she saw there the real thing—genuine despair. Still, she wished she could be certain. “Of course. Sure, I’ll check.”