The Red Scream Read Online Free Page B

the rumor in her ear. There was this drifter, Gus said, who was being arraigned down in Hays County for murdering an old woman he’d done some odd jobs for. “He’s got one murder on his record, back in Oklahoma. Killed his older sister and shaved the hair off her head. Then raped her—in that order. Sound familiar?” he asked, his voice rising in excitement.
    Molly had turned to face him and whispered, “The Texas Scalper?”
    “Could be,” Gus said. “But this guy wasn’t driving a white Mustang. No car at all—he was on foot. Rumor has it that he’s confessing to everyone who’ll listen that he’s killed more than thirty women, mostly in Texas, and mostly close to the Interstate. We’re sending someone down to question him about the McFarland case.” Gus grinned at her. “And if all that isn’t bizarre enough for you, here’s something that’s sure to appeal to a literary type like you. Many times he makes up rhymes about his crimes. If he isn’t ourScalper, at least he should be good press. You get there quick, Molly, you might could scoop this.”
    She’d given Gus a peck on the cheek, called to check with the city desk, and headed her truck toward San Marcos in the hope of interviewing the district attorney there and maybe catching the arraignment.
    She entered the Hays County courthouse just in time to see three Texas Rangers and a U.S. marshal escorting a man who was handcuffed and chained at the waist down a long dark-paneled hallway. Because she’d come in from the bright sunlight outside into the dark hall, she couldn’t see them well at first. She followed them to where they stopped and waited in front of a closed double door marked “Courtroom Four.”
    Her first impression of him, as he stood waiting, was of a small insignificant man who was slightly amused, as if none of this had anything to do with him. The chained prisoner was in his mid-thirties, she guessed, short and wiry, but with an unpleasant-looking hard paunch asserting itself above his belt. His stringy arms were covered in crude blue-green tattoos, the kind that were done in prison, and his skimpy dark hair was greased back on his scalp. Small dark eyes were set very close together. The gray T-shirt he wore was darkened with sweat stains under the arms and across the chest. She didn’t know it then, but Louie was a prolific sweater. Even in cold weather, and even fresh from the shower, he smelled like a man who’d never had a bath.
    One of the Rangers turned and said to him, “Want me to escort you to the gentlemen’s before we go in, Louie?”
    As he opened his mouth to speak, Molly recoiled slightly. The man’s lower jaw was crowded with jumbled, crooked teeth. It looked as if he had twice as many as was intended for the narrow jaw. It was a shock, like going fishing and thinking you’d caught a perch, but when you opened the mouth to remove the hook you found you’d caught a piranha that was still very much alive.
    On an impulse, sensing that this might be an important moment, she’d pulled her little Nikon out of her bag and snapped a picture. When the flash went off in the dark hall, the man whirled toward the light with a movement as quick and instinctual as the flicker of a snake’s tongue testing the air for possible prey. He stared at her. Then he offered a twitch of the mouth which some might call thebeginning of a smile, but Molly recognized it as something else entirely. She put the camera to her eye and snapped again.
    That second photograph turned out to be the best she’d ever taken. It had been run nationwide by the Associated Press and was among the pictures that made the final cut in Sweating Blood. What made it such a good photograph, she’d always thought, was that it captured the smirk of amused knowledge that was Louie Bronk’s characteristic way of looking at women. Looking past the camera directly at Molly, his expression that day suggested he was capable of knowing things about her that