Love Her Madly Read online

  A woman answered. “I need to speak with Max Scraggs.”

  She said, “You and everyone else, honey.”

  There was the smallest bit of fumbling, then: “Scraggs.”

  I didn’t think to identify myself. “Max, I need to talk to the nurse.”

  “This you, Poppy?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean the nurse who would only kill Rona Leigh the once?”

  “The very one.”

  “She’s somewhere havin’ a nervous breakdown is the last I heard. Talk to her about what? Let me do this, Poppy. Give me something. What do you want from her?”

  “Ask her why she swabbed Rona Leigh’s arm with alcohol before she stuck her.”

  “She swabbed her arm with alcohol?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You saw her?”

  “Yes. And it has just now reentered my mind.”

  “But what dunce would do that?”

  “A dunce following orders.”

  Before he could follow up the pause, I followed it up for him. “I know. Fuck me.”

  “Where the hell you callin’ from?”

  “A friend’s. I’ll be at the Holiday Inn in Gatesville tomorrow.”

  “You’ll be at the Best Western, and you don’t want anyone to find you easy, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Man, I’m glad you’re comin’ back, Agent. We are at each other’s throats here. Any voice of reason has flown out the window, so I surely would welcome yours.”

  “I’ll call you when I get there.”

  I hung up. Joe said, “Who was that?”

  I said, “Nobody.”

  He snorted.

  * * *

  I checked in with Delby before I got on the plane. I said, “I need you to call the police in Houston again.”

  “They’re sure goin’ to be sick of hearin’ from me.”

  “There’s a guy named Chuck who hangs out at the AstroBar. See if he’s in any trouble. Tell them you need to know what anybody’s got on him. Tell them you need that information immediately.”

  “They’ll love that.”

  “Use Max Scraggs’s name.”

  “Speakin’ of same, I just talked to him. Wanted you. Told him you’d already left. Wanted to meet you at the airport. Told him he didn’t need to, you had a car lined up. Insisted he had to drive you. Something urgent, he didn’t say what. Told him, Okay. Okay?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “What the hell exactly is a Texas Ranger anyway?”

  “State police. Elite section. It’s what they call their homicide investigators, Delby.”

  “Know what they call state homicide investigators in my neighborhood?”

  “Yeah, cops. Texans have the need to be noticed.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Fine.”

  “Ankle?”

  “Fine.”

  “Right. Take care, boss. I’ll be manning the phone. Call me at home after eight if you need to.”

  Her kids were asleep by eight. But she’d never made the offer before.

  “I appreciate that.”

  She’d already hung up.

  The plane was late. Scraggs was hyperventilating. The first thing he said was, “We’re questioning the warden this afternoon. He thinks it’s just a visit to rehash the shit we’ve already rehashed ten times over. We wanted you to be there. Shake him up as much as possible. Scare the shit out of him so we can get to the bottom of this.”

  “The nurse was forthcoming, then?”

  “She was. I want you there when we tell him what she told us.”

  When we walked into the warden’s living room he was able to shake our hands and give us a friendly welcome, but his palm was wet. His wife sat squashed into one end of the sofa. He introduced us to her. Her eyes were red and she started crying again. She said, “My husband is going to lose his job, isn’t he?”

  Scraggs was not sympathetic. “We all of us surely deserve to lose our jobs, ma’am, and that’s the least of our problems far as I can see. Agent Rice is here because we’ve decided we have to work together in the short time we got left till the governor fires us.

  “We are here to talk about the nurse who injected Rona Leigh Glueck with the chemicals. What about her, warden?”

  The warden’s forehead wrinkled. “She got sent up from Huntsville just like the chemicals got sent up from there. Never laid eyes on her before that day.”

  “Did you notice she swabbed Rona Leigh’s arm with alcohol before she stuck her?”

  He thought. “Yes, I guess she did.”

  “You didn’t think that was just a little bit ridiculous?”

  “I didn’t think about it at all till now you’ve brought it up.”

  I did sympathize.

  “See, it’s like this, warden. Turns out Vernon got to her. He asked if she would do something humane for Rona Leigh. He told her to swab her arm so that Rona Leigh would feel like she was just gettin’ a little shot of penicillin. Keep her calm. Nurse told me she didn’t see any problem with that. Figured if it would help to keep the condemned woman calm, why not? Told me she was willin’ to go along with him, Vernon bein’ a holy man and all.

  “Warden, tell Agent Rice where Vernon Lacker is.”

  “I been through that enough, Scraggs.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll never be through that enough. Tell her.”

  “There was nothin’ to hold him on. You people said that yourselves.”

  Scraggs turned to me. “We questioned Lacker for two days. He and everyone else. Not a one of them seemed to have any idea what the hell happened. We couldn’t connect Lacker to the ambulance, and there was nothin’ else to connect him to. We told him not to wander far from home. Told us he’d be in the prison chapel prayin’ when he wasn’t sleepin’ in his bed. We asked the warden here to keep tabs on him.”

  I said, “So I guess he’s in the chapel.”

  The warden looked down at his shoes. “No, ma’am, he’s not, but—”

  Scraggs bellowed, “Is he sleepin’ in his bed, then?” Scraggs didn’t wait for an answer. “Tell the agent where he is.”

  The warden looked up at me. His wife was beginning to make a lot of noise into her wads of Kleenex.

  “He asked if he could go on a religious retreat. To the meditation center out by Austin. I told him he could. My wife thought it was the best place for him. Good idea. He was attractin’ a lot—”

  Scraggs interrupted. “Was it a good idea?”

  “No.”

  “So aside from the guard in the ambulance, we got one more man missin’, don’t we? I’m thinkin’ they’re on retreat together. Warden, tell Agent Rice who got Vernon a job here at the Mountain View Unit.”

  He seemed to be having trouble answering. So Scraggs answered his own question.

  “The warden’s wife got him the job, Agent. The warden’s wife happens to be Vernon’s cousin. Isn’t that right, ma’am?”

  She managed to squeak out some sort of unintelligible response.

  “You want a job in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, you got to be related to somebody. That’s right too, ma’am, isn’t it?”

  She wailed.

  “And who got the guard his job here at the prison?”

  Now she sounded like a small dog barking.

  “Vernon did, isn’t that right?”

  That woman could cry.

  Scraggs said to me, “The guard, Corrections Officer Harley Shank, is this lady’s great-nephew. Makes him Vernon’s cousin, twice removed.” Then he said to the warden, “If you and your wife don’t want to spend the rest of your lives tillin’ the soil like the girls out that window, then you think where your nephew and his cousin might have gone. Get the whole family to think. Where the hell would they take that girl? Where is that goddamned retreat?”

  The warden’s wife tried to speak. Her husband said, “Take a deep breath, honey.”

  She did. Th
en we were able to make out her words. “Maybe we could call his school.”

  “What school?”

  “The school where he earned his ministry. They’re his real family. We’re family by name, but that’s all. His branch was estranged—”

  A very wide-eyed very young Ranger came running in. He said, “Commander, turn on the TV. No matter the channel. Hurry, sir.”

  The remote control was right on the coffee table. None of us moved. The Ranger grabbed it and hit POWER. He was partial to CBS, just like I used to be. I could tell how serious the situation was by the gay glint in Dan Rather’s eyes. Dan was giving a dramatic explanation of what he was about to show us.

  Copies of a videotape had arrived at the three major networks an hour earlier. They would shed light on the kidnapping of Rona Leigh Glueck.

  Scraggs said, “Did he say kidnapping?”

  We shushed him. Dan said the networks had agreed among themselves to notify the FBI. Whereupon the tapes were immediately confiscated. But the contents of those tapes were appearing on various Internet sites. Therefore, the FBI had decided the tapes should be shown on the networks in case the public could be of any assistance in locating the site where the original tape was made.

  I said, “All that must have happened while I was in the airplane.”

  I got shushed.

  Dan said he wanted to make clear that the tape hadn’t been edited or altered in any way. He said, “This tape is authentic. The woman you will see is Rona Leigh Glueck.”

  His producer cut to the tape.

  Rona Leigh was propped on pillows in a bed. She was dressed in white and all the bedding was white. The bedstead was hand-carved, sleek, and it was whitewashed. The wall behind the bed was also white. She seemed to be floating in layers of clouds.

  Her skin was white too, but it was a dull dead white. Not white were the whites of her eyes. They were yellow and bloodshot. Her cheeks were sunken, her lips dry and cracked. The only thing about her that was the same as when I’d seen her last was the hair, the dark mat of curls overpowering her little face.

  Rona Leigh Glueck was alive, but just barely. She was getting oxygen via tubes into her nose and a feeding tube led into a cut in her neck, nourishment flowing directly into an artery.

  She wore what I’d have to describe as a white cotton granny gown, prim, with a dainty ruffle at the throat.

  A whisper of a smile came to her lips. She was struggling to keep her eyes open. She tried to look directly into the lens of the camcorder probably set up on a tripod, no shake.

  She said, “Thank you, Lord Jesus,” and her eyes closed.

  A man’s voice, deep and clear, came from just outside the camera’s range. Some of his words, certain phrases, resonated like the bong of a heavy brass bell. He said, “The time has come for ALL the world to CELEBRATE. THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST is upon us. His KINGDOM ON EARTH is at hand. Although Jesus DIED FOR US ON THE CROSS and although HIS HEAVENLY FATHER DESTINED that He be EXECUTED in order to RISE AGAIN ON THE THIRD DAY, the Lord God ALMIGHTY has not followed the same plan for his DAUGHTER. THE SISTER OF JESUS CHRIST DID NOT DIE!

  “Jesus Christ did as His Father asked. As has His SISTER! She REMINDS us of what Jesus suffered and what she has suffered and WILL SUFFER in order for us to understand that all sin may be repented and FORGIVEN! Repentance is the road to peace. Dear fellow Christians, the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY has allowed us TODAY, in this new CENTURY, in this great COUNTRY OF OURS, to witness the SECOND COMING OF CHRIST, a WOMAN, the woman who lies before us. We are truly blessed and we thank God IN HIS INFINITE WISDOM for granting us such a gift for which we are surely NOT WORTHY!

  “AMEN. AMEN AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

  The shot faded to black as the camera panned in for a close-up of Rona Leigh’s sunken-cheeked but serene face.

  The warden said, “Did he say the sister of Jesus Christ?”

  His wife slid off the couch in a graceful swoon. All I could think of was the moment when I first stood in the death chamber where Rona Leigh was to be executed and had an image of crucifixion. How appropriate.

  While everyone attended to the warden’s wife, I ducked out of the room to call my office. Delby assured me that a tape was at the lab and it was being studied right then. She got me through to a technician, who said to me, “We’ll need a few hours. Call us back, Poppy.” I hung up. Scraggs was watching me. I told him to stop standing there and find out what school Vernon went to, that there was probably a diploma hanging in his apartment, and then I decided I needed to use the phone again. I needed reassurance.

  I called Beltrán Cardinal de la Cruz. He was gracious. He was also cynical.

  He said, “We were both used, Miss Rice.”

  “You feel certain she orchestrated it?”

  “She was instrumental. I’ve visited many prisoners sentenced to die. No matter how strongly I try to impress upon them that they will be going to a better place so long as they take responsibility for their crime and repent, they don’t want to die. It’s human nature, this will to live, one of God’s gifts. But Rona Leigh Glueck was perfectly satisfied to meet her maker, as she put it. Because of my vanity, I forgot all I’ve learned of human nature.”

  It wasn’t vanity. She’d charmed him. We are all subject to charm, but I didn’t tell him that charm fucks us all up, even cardinals.

  He said, “I saw small bits of anxiety in Rona Leigh that was not the same kind of panic you see in a prisoner’s eyes who is about to die. The panic is animal. Her anxiety apparently reflected worry that the plan, whatever it was, wouldn’t work. But her will to live allowed her to place huge confidence in whoever guided her through the days and events leading up to her execution. Her faith was not in God but rather in whatever team of culprits managed to spirit her away and conceal her.

  “This is becoming a nightmare. Even the religious close to me want to believe that it was Jesus who saved her. They have no compunction about revealing this belief. And now, after this tape, I see the situation as downright dangerous.

  “So Miss Rice, I will pray all the harder for you. I will pray constantly until you find her. So that the despicable use of God’s love—God’s grace—to serve her misguided means will be exposed for what they are.”

  The man was furious. Powerful men don’t like to be taken. He’d given his crook of a bookkeeper one severe dressing-down before he sent him to the Hopis.

  “Eminence, my concern has always been that Rona Leigh was deprived of a fair trial. Deprived of justice. But looking at Rona Leigh from your point of view, could her will to live have come from her not having committed the crime? Did she trust God to save her because she was innocent?”

  He was silent. I waited. Then he said, so quietly, “God has given you time, Miss Rice, hasn’t he?”

  “I’m sorry. Time for what, Eminence?”

  “Time to prove whether or not she was served by justice. Time to clarify to all of us whether she is a cold-blooded killer or a victim and, to yourself, whether or not the law was fair to her. If the woman is innocent, then when you do catch her, she may be saved yet again. May God forgive me for the judgment I have made based on my vanity.”

  “Eminence, all of us make—”

  “Miss Rice, your mission, your life’s work, is to see to others. It is what God means when he asks us to have goodwill. But do not waste your time seeing to me. I am not deserving. See to Rona Leigh Glueck. Find the truth. Bring her to justice, whatever that justice might be.”

  Exactly. Justice.

  10

  A new videotape would come every three days or so, and with each one another tube had been removed from Rona Leigh’s body. She was healing, the effects of the massive chemical poisoning she’d suffered fast disappearing. Christian Web sites played the tapes over and over, and the Christian network emphasized the obvious influence of Jesus in her words.

  In the second tape, Rona Leigh was able to put together a fairly efficient smile-and-wave combo. She said, “As the
arms of Jesus enfold me in love, heed the words of my brethren,” meaning the man behind the voiceover. He told us what we could see—that Rona Leigh was out of the woods, though still very ill. This is how he put it:

  “Jesus has LIFTED HER up, breathed NEW LIFE INTO HER LIPS and will soon TELL HER when to begin conveying His WORDS OF SALVATION.” He did not refer to her as Rona Leigh Glueck. He called her the Daughter of God and, like her Brother in Christ, Jesus, she would take on the sins of the world in order to save it. The New York Times refused to capitalize she and her when referring to Rona Leigh; all the newspapers within the Bible Belt did.

  By the third tape, she managed to speak for about a minute. The vehicle for her message was in the tradition of Jesus, a parable, uplifting, a lesson in kindness, honor, and truth with just a touch of warning for doubters woven through:

  “A man came to an intersection. He relied on luck to choose the right road, the one that would lead him to his destination. He did not think or consider with the intelligence and cleverness he’d been blessed with. And so he came to another intersection, and yet another, then another, only to realize the last had been the first. He’d been traveling in circles. And so I say to you, every road does not lead to God. In order to be redeemed we must work to find the road and pray with all our heart and soul that we might choose the right one. This is the Divine Plan of our Lord and Savior. Under His direction and guided by His will, I will help all believers to find the right road. It is the word of the Lord.”

  I could detect Vernon’s style mixed with someone more authoritative yet still genuine. It was someone who had performed a physiological feat no less spectacular than a miracle. When Rona Leigh finished speaking, the mystery man came on again with his rising and falling crescendo, to give Lazarus the credit for interceding with God so that Rona Leigh would rise from the dead.

  I decided, even with so little, maybe I could get a psychological profile from my buddy the shrink. But I could only reach his assistant, who said he’d been called away to head up an emergency conference on the effect of memory cells on something or other that I didn’t quite get. He was momentarily unavailable. He’d left orders that he was not to be disturbed with any calls. Translation: He was in Vegas.