The Red Scream (31 page)

“No. I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me. But that was not the case with Georgia; everyone agrees it was a loving marriage, that they were devoted to one another. And faithful—that does happen occasionally, you know.”

“Have you got anything back on David Serrano?” she asked, ignoring the barb.

“The ME thinks he preceded Georgia McFarland in death by about five or six hours, but it’s just an estimate. He was killed with his own .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, registered to him. Not a print anywhere on it. Definitely not the same weapon that killed Georgia.”

“What about your inquiries down in Brownsville?”

“Interesting. Makes me doubt my initial theory about Serrano. He’s got no record. Matter of fact, he was a leading citizen. Very rich. But it came from legitimate business—funeral homes, just like he told you. He had a license for the gun. They’d had some bad business at one of his operations, so he took a security guard course and got a license.”

“You working on a new theory?” she asked.

“Always.” He yawned into the phone. “But let’s talk about something else for a change. You said you’re in your dark office. It sounds like you’re lying down. Are you?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, letting her head fall back onto the pillow.

“Are you dressed?” he asked, lowering his voice.

She smiled. “I should have realized by the way you started out that this was going to be an obscene phone call.”

“What a good idea. From what I hear, the way it’s done is for me to tell you in vivid detail what I’d like to do to you. Should I do that, Molly?”

She hesitated; there was no question where all this was going to end up if she didn’t stop it now. It would be a big mistake to encourage him.

“All right,” she said. “Tell me.”

“I’d start by finishing the headache cure I began the other night.
You know how I hate to leave things unfinished. And a thorough headache cure neglects no part of the body. But I’d want you to get all comfortable first, out of your binding clothes and into a nice loose T-shirt like you used to wear to bed.”

“I still do,” she said.

“Mmmmm. White ones you can see through?”

“Sometimes.”

“Good. Then we’d put on some nice slow dance music. Something from the old days—Johnny Mathis or Sinatra. Remember how slow we used to dance, Molly?” His voice had dropped even lower, to a growl. “I know you’re tired, so while we dance you could lean against me, and I’d start pressing nice and firm with my thumbs all the way down your spine so that—”

Molly’s fax machine rang once and then began its shrill electronic buzzing.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Just my fax.”

“Well, we’d certainly turn that damn thing off first,” he said. “Anyway, then I’d—” He stopped talking into the phone; Molly could hear several men’s voices at his end. Then he spoke into the phone again. “I wish I could come show you now but I’m working and my chief is right here. Unfortunately, he’s a man who doesn’t understand spontaneity. How about tomorrow?”

“If I’m back from Fort Worth.”

“Call me. I can see I need some more practice on this obscene calling business. And, Molly, please, please be careful.”

After they hung up she lay in the dark for a while thinking about dancing with Grady Traynor and wondering how the years had slipped away without her noticing.

Then she got up and walked over to the fax machine. A single curled-up sheet on her agent’s familiar letterhead had slid out. It said, “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the Japanese are withdrawing the offer for translation rights to
Sweating Blood.
They say the
New York Times
article today made them nervous and they are going to pass it up. Best, Jonathan.”

Twenty thousand down the drain. Damn.

She let the paper fall to the floor. She didn’t have the heart or energy for a reply right now. It could wait until she got back from Fort Worth.

On her way to bed, she stopped at the foot of the stairs, turned, and did something she’d never done before. She checked the front door and then the back one, even though she was certain she’d already locked and bolted them.

The next morning Molly caught the eight o’clock Southwest flight to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. A forty-minute flight, it just gave her enough time to drink two cups of coffee and speculate about how she might get the magazine to pick up the expense of her airfare and car rental. Just before they landed, she glanced over the
New York Times.
At least there was nothing more about Louie Bronk.

The Budget Rent A Car smelled like someone had thrown up in it not too long ago, but she didn’t want to take the time to exchange it, so she rolled down the window and turned the air-conditioning on high.

She put on her sunglasses, glanced down at her map, and drove south out of the immense airport complex, resigned to a long haul. She remembered other trips to the Dallas area when she’d felt she’d been caught in one of Dante’s circles of hell, condemned to driving for all eternity. The metropolitan area was huge, endless, even by Texas standards.

She drove west toward Fort Worth, then south on 820, delighted with the sparse traffic of a Saturday morning. She spotted her exit after only thirty minutes. That could be a good omen for the day.

The first order of business was to find the junkyard Louie had described, if it still existed—if it ever had existed—and then search for the car itself. Preferably before it got much hotter; it was already humid and eighty-four degrees at quarter to ten and climbing for the nineties. Then, whether she found anything or not, she’d try the auto painting places in the area Louie had described. She hoped to be finished in time for a late lunch someplace with excellent air-conditioning and a menu that had things like pasta and steamed vegetables. And wine. Yes, it was Saturday. Wine was a fine idea, a reward for going through the motions on this.

She turned off the highway at the Rosedale exit. With a sinking heart she surveyed the decaying, graffitied warehouses, the clusters of black teenagers hanging out in garbage-strewn alleys, the weedy parking lots, and cracked curbs. Well, if you had to pick the most appropriate place in the world for a serial killer to junk an old bloodstained car, it would be this very area of Fort Worth.

The stretch of Rosedale just west of the highway seemed to be devoted to the seriously disabled automobile—wrecking yards, auto body shops, service stations, used car lots. The shiny new cars sold and driven in the downtown area must get banished out here to the perimeter for their old age and death.

She drove for a few miles, then turned around and slowly headed back toward the highway, studying the possibilities on the right side of the road. They all started with “A”—ABC Auto Salvage, A-One Auto Parts, Aaron’s Automotive Recycling Center. The one closest to the highway was All Okay Body Parts. That fit the name pattern Louie remembered and it was close to the highway. She’d start there.

She pulled up to a tin shack that seemed to be the office. A hand-lettered sign said “
NO TITLE, NO PROBLEM, NO MINORS
.” Two cars and a truck in various stages of cannibalization rested on their axles near the door. The truck looked as if the entire front end had been amputated by a gigantic saw and one of the cars, a little red compact, was so crumpled it was barely recognizable as a car. Anyone inside would have been pulverized.

When she entered the office, two men in overalls looked up at her from where they were squatting on the floor unpacking some boxes behind the wooden counter. “H’ep you, ma’am?” the younger one said, standing and dusting his hands on the sides of his overalls.

Until this second Molly wasn’t sure how she would play this. On an impulse she decided to start out as a customer, rather than a journalist.

“I hope so.” She pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head. “I’m looking for a ’72 Mustang hardtop.”

“What parts?”

“Any parts you have. I particularly want a 351 Cleveland engine and doors and a notchback trunk. But I’d like to look at any Mustangs you have from before ’75.”

The man looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “Well, let me think. I know we got a old blue Mustang out there, way back in the old part of the lot, don’t know the exact date. Jeff, we got any other Mustangs?”

“Check the computer,” the older man said.

The man motioned her to the back where he opened the door to a small office that contained only one chair and a card table with a
computer on it. Without sitting down, he typed in some commands and then typed some more, watching the screen flicker.

“Just the one Mustang,” he said. “Blue one I mentioned. It don’t have the model listed here.”

“Could I see it?” Molly asked. She felt ripples of anticipation in her chest, that old thrill of the chase getting under way. She’d moaned about making this trip, but once she got into a search, there was nothing more engrossing in the world.

The man looked her over. “Sure. Come on.”

He led the way to a back door. They stepped onto a grassy field that extended back for many acres and looked like a battlefield of burned-out car bodies, rusted metal parts, broken glass, and scraps of tires. It was the most unkempt place Molly had ever seen, and the ugliest. It was also unshaded and very hot.

“It’s yonder,” he said, pointing to a far corner of the field and striding off in that direction, “past where the driveway ends.”

She followed, stepping carefully to avoid the debris that was scattered everywhere. The driveway he’d referred to was merely a beaten-down path in the overgrown grass and weeds. “How long has the car been on the lot?” she asked.

“Dunno. Long time. More than the six years I been here.”

As they walked, Molly felt a sharp pricking on her ankle. She looked down and saw several huge mosquitoes there. Quickly she leaned down and slapped at them, leaving two blood smears on her skin.

In the daze of her early rising this morning she’d put on her khaki skirt because it had been lying out on the chair and looked clean. Big mistake. The flats with no socks were a mistake, too. Damn place must be a mosquito breeding ground; they were everywhere. She brushed her hand around her ear where one was buzzing.

“Real bad year for mosquitoes,” the man said, looking back at her. “All the rain.”

As she followed him, Molly eyed his thick overalls and long sleeves with envy. She felt a prick in the center of her back and tried to slap at the spot, but couldn’t reach it. They were biting right through her damp T-shirt. She glanced around at the puddles of standing water and the tire segments and other junk that held water. It would be impossible to design a better breeding ground for mosquitoes.

“You got an old Mustang you’re working on?” the man asked.

Afraid he’d test her knowledge if she said yes, she improvised. “Uh, no. My son. I’m scouting for him.”

As they passed close to a tin lean- to where tires were stacked up to the high roof, Molly stopped in her tracks and let out a little gasp. There next to the path lay a big white dog, its head reduced to a bloody mess of bone and fur. Clusters of black flies stuck to the blood and swarmed around the body.

The man stopped and looked back. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, shaking his head. “Ain’t that a shame? Poor old Bomber. Best damn dog we ever had and look at that.”

“What happened to him?” Molly asked, reaching down the back of her shirt to scratch a bite.

“Dunno. We come in this morning and he was laying out here dead. Someone nearly beat his fool head off. We ain’t gotten around to burying him yet.”

“Why? Was there a burglary?” she asked, looking around the yard.

“We couldn’t find nothing missing, but as you can see, it ain’t easy around here to know.”

Molly forced her eyes away from the dog and continued walking, stepping gingerly around the broken glass and sharp metal shards that lay everywhere.

When they got to the back of the lot, the grass was longer, less beaten down, and it sliced at her bare calves. Sticker burrs caught on her skirt.

The man pointed to the area where the high barbed-wire fence formed a corner. There in the shade of a squatty live oak, with weeds grown up to the bottom of the windows and vines half covering it, was a pale blue car. Molly’s heart sank when she saw how light the color was, but she plowed through the tall grass to get a closer look. The hood and the engine were gone. The windshield above the steering wheel had a small circular break with a network of cracks radiating out from it—the same exact configuration she’d seen on many of the cars they’d passed.

When the man saw where she was looking, he said, “Didn’t buckle up.”

He pushed his way through the weeds and managed to wrench the driver’s side door open. He squatted down to look at the dirty old
sticker on the edge of the door. “A ’75,” he said, squinting at it. “Engine’s gone, but the doors look pretty good.” He walked around to the back and pulled some vines away. “Back’s a hatch, so that don’t help you none.”

Molly looked at a rusted patch on the roof and asked, “Is this the original paint job, do you think?”

He ran a thick index finger over a rusted spot and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“And no other Mustangs on the lot,” she said.

“Computer says not,” he said, turning around and starting to walk back to the office.

Molly walked beside him, feeling sweat trickling down her back. “How long has this lot been operating?” she asked.

“Twenty years, maybe,” he said.

She was so hot now and the bites were itching with such an intensity that she decided to blow her cover and speed up the process. “Did there used to be a black man working here? A man with one hand?”

He turned and looked at her. “Oh, you must be thinking of old Calvin, nigger who runs A-One couple of blocks down Rosedale. Got in some trouble while back, armed robbery, I think. Served some time. But he’s back in the business now. Wondered though if he’d got in trouble again what with all the cop cars there this morning.”

“Cop cars?” Molly asked, feeling vibrations running down her arms and into her fingertips. Something around here was on the move in a big way.