Love Her Madly (37 page)

Joe stood over me, but he didn't know what to do in the face of Scraggs's incessant shouting. So he just put his face down to mine. “Just answer him, Poppy. Pinpoint her.”

Everything began to spin. I knew I had to shout louder than Scraggs. I did. “She's not in there. She's been outside for forty-eight hours.”

Scraggs said, “Bullshit. We're goin' in.” His finger pointed into my face. “And somebody arrest
her,
goddamn it.”

One of the women who searched me told me I was under arrest and while she was reading me Miranda the van came alive. Everyone was suiting up, grabbing canisters, masks. Not Joe. He squatted down. “She couldn't have gotten out.”

“Night before last. Just before you got here.”

I looked toward Scraggs. “Max.”

He looked down at me.

“I'm telling you the truth. She's out. She got herself to Houston, where she killed Gary Scott.”

They all gaped at me, including Scraggs. He said, “Who says he's dead? Every police officer in Texas is looking for Gary Scott.”

“Then I hope they're using sifters. He's mixed in with the ashes of his bar.”

Scraggs just shut his eyes. He believed me.

“Max, the people inside the mission are praying, if you're wondering what that racket is. They pray real funny. They pray till they drop and before they drop they hurl themselves around like a gang of lunatics. Give them fifteen more minutes, get on your bullhorn, and tell them to come out. They won't be able to come out, though, because they'll be collapsed on the floor. So you just go in, pick them up, and carry them out.

“Don't kill the people in there, they're misfits. That's all they are. They thought they were saving the life of Christ's sister. They think that now. They will not fight you. But there's a man there whose name is George, a chemist, that's all I know, and he'll tell us how he saved Rona Leigh from execution. You can't kill him; we need him.

“I'm sorry, Max. She's not there. She did it again. She's gone. She slipped right through my fingers the same way she slipped through yours.”

Scraggs, very softly, said, “Fuck me.”

Then Joe said, “And while you're at it, Scraggs, unarrest this agent, or you'll look like the biggest idiot in Texas since”—he thought—“since the Dallas chief of police let his friend Jack Ruby into the station so he could eyeball Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Joe said to me, “You look like hell warmed over. You'd look like hell warmed over even without the black eye. What happened?”

“She hit me. She poisoned me. She'd have killed me except that those people in there saved me.”

16

A week later, my director held a meeting at the crime lab. Scraggs was there representing the interests of the state of Texas. Our chemist held us all rapt.

She said, “The New Shaker chemist, George Billings, came from a stern Pentecostal family and grew up praying. Praying to the exclusion of everything except eating, sleeping, and studying. Then he came to spend more time studying than praying. He was a genius. He won scholarships to great schools here and abroad. He studied, specifically, violently aggressive criminals and produced a Ph.D. thesis that is, to this day, held in the highest esteem.

“Dr. Billings was gay. When he came out of the closet as a young man, his family held a funeral for him. His empty coffin is buried in a cemetery in Oklahoma. Poppy Rice has characterized the New Believers as misfits. Sociologically, misfits are always in search of a family. Raymond Tiner only asked George Billings that he be celibate. The sexual preferences of the New Believers didn't matter to him. Only their sacrifice to God.

“George Billings worked independently—free agent—for years before he joined the society. He synthesized chemicals for other biochemists. He flourished financially by simplifying other people's jobs.” She glanced up from her papers. “Now you won't want to hear this part…”

My director whispered to me, “I haven't wanted to hear any of it.”

“… but his chief client for many years was the FBI crime lab. Of course, Poppy Rice came aboard, and one of the first things she did was to see that this lab accomplished its work in-house.”

She delved into her papers. “Billings's premise was that the constitution of the human body contains elements and receptors that can elicit violent behavior. He became a student again. He read, he studied. He learned that violently aggressive people—high-rate offenders, killers—are more likely than nonoffenders to have neuro-biological anomalies. Their behavior centers on uncontrollable impulse; we have all observed that. Billings's findings showed that violent criminals have slower heart rates and far lower levels than nonoffenders of specific neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, maybe epinephrine, others.… You get the idea.”

Lots of sidelong glances.

“In addition, he came to believe—and this is supported—that violent offenders also have a complexity in their metabolic abilities that is not understood. There are sociopaths who have difficulty or are completely unable to absorb minerals, specifically manganese and possibly selenium, zinc, cobalt.… Which brings us to potassium. It is the most common mineral of all and can be transfigured into a huge number of compounds and derivatives, including potassium chloride, an extraordinarily deadly substance.

“Mineral absorption requires carrier proteins to move the minerals through the intestinal membranes. Billings was on his way to proving that violent offenders had abnormally low levels of these carrier proteins. Tiner extrapolated and concluded that the violent constitution of Rona Leigh Glueck was created specifically by God for his own purposes. And so it was left to their chemist to enable that purpose.

“Rona Leigh was treated in such a way as to temporarily rid her body of carrier proteins to prevent a fatal absorption of potassium chloride, and at the same her heart was chemically trained with L-dopa to beat very slowly without her suffering any lack of oxygen to her brain. In the death chamber, her heart almost stopped, but it did not stop completely.

“She did not absorb enough potassium chloride to kill her, though it was certainly enough to kill a human being with a normal metabolic constitution. And the process to rid her body of what she did absorb was begun the minute she was put into the bogus ambulance. Actually, Billings made clear to Tiner that the time it would take to get Rona Leigh into the ambulance after she'd been injected might prevent them from saving her. But the risk they would incur in having Harley Shank, the guard, give her something in the death house—that was one of their scenarios—would be greater than the risk in not treating her at all during those minutes. Billings concluded that they would have to rely on prayer during that gap.”

She looked up from her papers again, smiled a little, and shrugged.

“As we know, she was restored to health.” Our chemist paused and then said, “Brilliant.”

But why wouldn't God's plan for his daughter be anything but brilliant?

She picked up the papers from the podium and patted them together in a neat pile. Then she said, “Finally, I want to conclude by saying that in the nineteenth century criminology was a branch of medicine. Scholars were on the verge of accepting biological explanations for crime. But that study was abandoned when Hitler showed us that racism alone can lead average people to unequivocal violence.

“Perhaps now we can reconsider. Yes, there are many factors that bring about violent behavior and racism is indeed one of them. But also a simple chemical imbalance, just like any other chemical imbalance, can create antisocial behavior in one person and an utter devastation of the brain in another, as with Alzheimer's disease, while the rest of us show just the usual effects of simple aging.”

She held up her stack of papers. “If you want details, specifics, formulas, studies, the mechanics of the whole operation, these pages are only the beginning. The actual notes are voluminous though crystal-clear, thanks to the talents of one very patient chronicler”—she flipped through the stack—“Sister Emily.”

We all had lunch together, and Scraggs told us that what was left of Gary Scott did not weigh as much as the six little puddles of melted lead the Rangers pulled out of their sifters. A five-gallon jug of gasoline plus a building made of old dried wood will do that.

Joe leaned over and said to me, “Five gallons of gas weighs more than the ax.”

Then Scraggs said, “Rona Leigh left us a note in the mission. Taped to it was a lock of her hair. The note said”—he pulled a copy out of his pocket—
“This here is a relic. Build my church upon it.”

I thought the chemist would choke. She said, “You've got a lock of her hair?”

Scraggs said, “Yes, we do.”

I really hoped some cop back in Texas hadn't lost it.

*   *   *

That afternoon, my director brought me into his office for a head-to-head. He said, “At the minimum, no more fieldwork. You're behind a desk until the poison is completely out of your system and the concussion is healed and the Ace bandage is put to rest.”

All right.

“Poppy, you turned the FBI crime lab into a work of art. Single-handed. My gratitude knows no bounds. Now I've suggested the minimum to you, but I'd like to ask you for a bit more. I know it's a cliché but, Poppy, you need a vacation.”

Nope.

As it turned out, he'd prodded Joe. Joe offered me his cottage on Block Island without him in it. “'Course I'd rather be with you gazing at the sunsets while we fish for stripers.”

I told him I'd take a rain check.

He said, “My Poppy Rice rain-check file is getting mighty full.”

So sweet as always.

Delby seconded both of them and felt free to add her own opinion. “Go to that place. That island. See what the world is like outside because you haven't been outside in a damn long time. Go with Joe. Give the man a chance. Give yourself a chance. See if you're in love with him.”

I said, “Delby, what has love ever done for anyone?”

She thought. “Nothin'.”

We both laughed. I was starting to feel better.

*   *   *

The dragnet created by the U.S. Marshal Service swept around the world and came up empty. They told me that in almost all cases a fugitive will turn to family or friend. Rona Leigh never had either of those.

There was no sign of her, not anywhere, and she didn't turn up to kill any law officers, or jurors, or her mother, or the johns who mistreated her, or anyone else. There had been one sighting, a sighting that took place within an hour of Rona Leigh's offering me a piece of fudge: In Nuevo Laredo a gringa prostitute was seen exchanging her services for a ride to Houston. The guy who gave her the lift would never turn up to offer us leads because the clientele of prostitutes tend to keep a low profile.

My friend the shrink said to me, “All of it is so intriguing. Tiner was the perfect personality for the role of the maligned guru. He encouraged his followers to project their fantasies upon him. He was asexual, removed, empty of personality, only able to feel satisfaction via a crowd of worshipers, absorbing their energy. Classic.

“But as to Rona Leigh, who knows? Maybe she'll never kill anyone else. Maybe she zeroed in on Gary Scott because he epitomized all the men who abused her when she was a child. All the men who used her to satisfy their own needs, though they knew such treatment could only destroy her. Or perhaps he represented all that was perpetrated upon her by a system that doesn't rescue a child like Rona Leigh Glueck. Maybe a swift sharp revenge has cleansed her. Maybe she's starting a new life. In which case her poisoning of you, Poppy, was merely what she was forced to do in order to survive.”

He wasn't there when she'd cracked me across the face.

I said, “Maybe she zeroed in on Gary Scott because I forced her hand.”

“And, pray, what might that mean?”

“I told her Gary knew he would inherit a lot of money if his wife died. She hadn't been aware of that.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “My very dear Poppy, might I suggest a one-session counseling meeting for you? I know just the gentleman in Washington. He'll give you the magic bullet you need to override any guilt. I know you'll appreciate that kind of practicality.”

But I already had a counselor. I called Cardinal de la Cruz.

He didn't let me off the hook. He said, “Miss Rice, all of us forced her hand. From her mother, to the father she'd never heard of, to the school system who let her pass through without seeing to an obviously mistreated child, to a prison system that no longer bothers rehabilitating teenagers. And I forced her hand with my naïveté.”

*   *   *

Before Vernon Lacker's trial began, I tried to speak to him but he wouldn't see me. I talked with his lawyer, though, a court-appointed attorney. He explained to me very carefully that the DA had a confession.

No kidding.

I checked in with Max Scraggs fairly regularly. He said he expected the body of Rona Leigh would turn up when we least expected it. Wishful thinking, and he knew it. He was hugely depressed.

So was I. I've always had a hard time opening up a new closet before shutting the old one.

And Joe just kept battering me. “I'm tellin' ya, honey, try a few days of breathing air full of salt. A few mornings of heavy fog and the echo of buoy bells. Evenings just listening to the waves plopping onto the beach.… Man, it's magic. What d'ya say? Give your brain a break.”

Tempting.

I had bad nights. But Bobby and the rest of security had orders not to let me come in to work at 2
A.M
. Bobby said to me, “I take my break at 2
A.M
. Anytime you're awake then, just call me and I'll meet you at Starbucks. We'll shoot the breeze.” I took him up on his offer a couple of times. Bobby knows more about what's going on in the world than Dan Rather any day.