Alone.
She forced a shrug onto her shoulders. It’s daytime, she told herself. This is a crowded, public place. She started walking rapidly. She could hear her shoes making a slapping sound against the polished linoleum of the floor, which echoed slightly about her ears. She began to hurry, picking up her pace, increasing the solitary sound around her. She found a stairwell and pushed ahead, moving quickly. The stairwell was empty as well. She took the stairs swiftly, almost jumping down the half-flights. She stopped abruptly when she heard a doorway behind her open and close and realized, suddenly, that someone else’s footsteps were moving fast on the stairs behind her. She stopped, shoving herself against the wall, reaching into her pocketbook for her weapon as the sound increased and approached. She squeezed herself tight into a corner, feeling the reassuring grip of her pistol beneath her fingers. She looked up and saw the eyes of a young student, loaded with notebooks and texts, untied basketball shoes flapping in his hurry. The student barely looked at her as he swept past, obviously late. She closed her eyes. What’s happening to me? she asked herself. She released her grip on the pistol. What did I hear? She headed through the stairwell exit, spying the doors to the building in front of her. The late afternoon sky beyond the glass entranceway seemed gray and funereal but beckoning.
She pushed herself quickly toward it.
She did not see Ferguson, only heard him.
“Learn what you wanted, Detective?”
The hiss of his question made her jump.
She pivoted toward the sound, jerking her hand into her pocketbook, stepping back, almost as if struck with a blow. Her eyes locked onto Ferguson’s, and she saw the same, unsettling grin crease his face.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
She squared her shoulders toward him.
“Did I frighten you, Detective?”
She shook her head, still unable to respond. She could feel her hand around the pistol grip, but she did not remove it from the bag.
“Are you going to shoot me, Detective?” he asked harshly. “Is that what you’re looking for?”
Ferguson stepped forward, out of the shadowed spot against the wall that had concealed him. He wore an olive-drab army surplus jacket and had a New York Giants cap on his head. A satchel, which she presumed was filled with books, was slung over his shoulder. He looked like almost every other student that she’d seen in that corridor that day. She controlled her racing heart and slowly removed her hand from the pocketbook.
“What do you carry, Detective? A thirty-eight, police issue? Maybe a twenty-five-caliber auto? Something small but efficient?”
He stared at her. “No, I bet something larger. Got to prove something to the world. A three-fifty-seven with a Magnum load. Or a nine-millimeter. Something that helps you think you’re tough, right, Detective? Strong and in charge.”
She did not reply.
He laughed. “Won’t share that information, huh?”
Ferguson unslung his book bag, setting it on the floor. Then he spread his arms in mock surrender, almost supplication, palms out. “But you see, I’m unarmed, aren’t I? So what have you got to fear?”
She breathed in and out sharply, trying to clear the surprise of seeing him from her head, so that she could come up with some appropriate response of her own.
“So, did you find out what you wanted, Detective?”
She exhaled slowly. “I found out some things, yes.”
“Discovered I was in class?”
“That’s right.”
“So, there wasn’t any way I could be down in Florida and do that old couple, right? You figured that out yet?”
“It doesn’t seem so. I’m still checking.”
“Got the wrong guy, Detective.” Ferguson grinned. “You Florida cops always seem to get the wrong guy.”
She met his eyes coldly. “No. I don’t know that, Mr. Ferguson. I think you’re the right guy. But I just haven’t figured out what for yet.”
Ferguson’s eyes flashed toward her. “You’re all alone, aren’t you, Detective?”
“No,” she lied. “I have a partner.”
“Where is he?”
“Working.”
Ferguson stepped past her, glancing out the double glass doors toward the walkways and parking lots. Rain streaked the air, tumbling down with a depressing ferocity.
“Gal got beaten and raped right out there the other evening. Little late coming out of class. Just after night fell. Some guy just grabbed her, dragged her down behind that little lip at the edge of the parking lot. Did her right there. Knocked her out and did her. Didn’t kill her, though. Broke her jaw. Broke her arm. Took his pleasure.”
Ferguson continued to look through the doors. He raised his arm and pointed. “Right out there. That where you’re parked, Detective?”
She clamped her mouth shut.
He turned toward her. “They got no suspects yet. Gal’s still in the hospital. Ain’t that something, Detective? Just think about it. You can’t even be safe walking across a campus. Finding your car. Not even in a motel room, neither, I guess. Doesn’t that make you a bit nervous? Even with that big old gun stuck down there in that pocketbook where you can’t reach it in near enough time.”
Ferguson stepped away from the doors. He turned and looked past Shaeffer, and she became aware of the sound of voices approaching them. She kept her eyes on Ferguson, however, eyeing him as he watched a gaggle of students approach. Their voices suddenly swarmed about her. She saw Ferguson nod at one of the men in the group and heard a young woman say, “God! Look at that rain!” The bunch gathered coats and umbrellas and surged past the detective, out into the damp air. She felt a cold burst as the door swung open and then swept shut.
“So, Detective. Did you finish? Did you learn what you came up here for?”
“I know enough,” she replied.
He smiled. “Don’t like to give folks a straight answer,” he said. “You know, that’s such an old technique. I probably have a description of it in some textbook right here with me now.”
“You’re a good student, Mr. Ferguson.”
“Yes, I am,” he said. “Knowledge is important. Sets you free.”
“Where did you learn that?” she asked.
“On the Row, Detective. Learned a lot right there. But mostly, I learned that I have to educate myself. Wouldn’t have no future at all if I didn’t. End up just like all those other poor folk waiting for the Death Squad to come shave their skulls and slap ’em down in that chair.”
“So you came to school.”
“Life’s a school, ain’t it, Detective?”
She nodded.
“So, now you going to leave me alone?” he demanded.
“Why should I?”
“’Cause I ain’t done nothing.”
“Well, I don’t know if I think so, Mr. Ferguson. I don’t know that yet at all.”
His eyes narrowed. He spoke evenly and slowly. “That’s a dangerous approach, Detective.” She didn’t answer, so he continued. “Especially if you’re alone.”
He looked at her, then smiled, and gestured toward the door. “I suspect you’ll want to be leaving now, right? Before it gets real dark. Not much light left out there. I’d guess maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, no more. Wouldn’t want to get lost looking for that rental car, now would you? What color was it, Detective? A silver-gray? Hard to find on a dark, wet night. Don’t get lost, Detective. There are some bad folks out there. Even on a college campus.”
She stiffened. He had hit the right color for the rental car she was driving. A guess, she thought. A lucky guess.
Ferguson stepped back, away from the door, giving her an open path to the rain and gloom.
“You be careful now, Detective,” he said mockingly.
Then he turned and walked back into the classroom building, disappearing down a side corridor. She listened for a moment, trying to hear the retreat of his footsteps but couldn’t. She turned and looked again at the rain pelting down against the trees and sidewalks. She tightened her raincoat and pulled up the collar. It required a stiffening of will to force her feet to move.
The cold soaked into her immediately. She felt rain sliding down her neck. She started to move quickly, damning the awkward shoes that kept sliding on the footpath. Her head swiveled about, searching behind her, in front of her, making certain that she didn’t spot Ferguson following her. When she reached the rental car, she checked the backseat before tossing her things in and throwing herself behind the wheel. She punched down the door locks immediately. Her hand shook slightly as she thrust the key into the ignition, and then slapped the car into gear. As the car started to move, she felt better. As she steered out of the parking lot, relief started to fill her. She picked up speed and pulled onto a two-way street. Out of the corner of one eye she thought, for just an instant, that she saw a hunched-over figure in an olive-drab coat, but when she tried to turn and look carefully, the figure had disappeared, lost in a group of students standing at a bus stop. She fought off a surge of fear and drove on. The heater on the little car started to whir with effort and hot air that seemed as if it had come from a can poured over her, warming her face but not her thoughts.
What did he learn on Death Row? she asked herself.
He learned to be a student.
Of what?
Of crime.
Why?
Because everyone else on Death Row had failed some test. They were all men who’d committed crime after crime, sometimes killing after killing, and finally ended up trapped and caught and awaiting the chair, because they’d screwed up. Even Sullivan screwed up. She remembered a quotation from one of Matthew Cowart’s stories: “I’d of killed more if I hadn’t been caught.” But Ferguson, she thought, got a second chance. And he’s determined not to blow it this time.
Why?
Because he wants to keep doing whatever he’s doing for as long as he wants.
Her head struggled with dizziness. She spoke to herself in the third person, trying to settle herself with familiar tones.
“Ohmigod, Andy girl, what have you stumbled on?”
She tried to blank her mind and drove on into the night, searching for her motel. She let the road flow by outside the car, concentrating on nothing except finding a safe spot to order her thoughts. She stared up once into the rearview mirror, struck with the sudden panic that a car was tailing her, but she saw the headlights turn away. She gritted her teeth and drove through the rain steadily. When she saw the lights of the motel loom up in front of her, she felt a momentary relief, but she could find no parking spot near the front of the lot and was forced to swing her vehicle into a space some fifty yards and innumerable shadows from the lighted entrance. She shut off the engine and took a single deep breath, eyeing the distance she would have to travel. She had a sudden thought: It was easier in a uniform, driving a squad car. Always in touch with the dispatcher. Never really alone. Always part of a team of officers cruising the highways in regular fashion. She reached over and removed the nine-millimeter from her pocketbook. Then she got out of the car and walked directly to the front of the motel, eyes sweeping the area in front of her, ears sharpened for any sound behind her. Not until she was within a dozen feet of the doorway did she return the pistol to her pocketbook. An elderly couple bundled in overcoats, exiting the motel as she entered, must have seen the flash of dark metal with its unmistakable shape. She caught a snatch of their frightened conversation as she stepped past them. “Did you see that? She had a gun . . .”
“No, dear, it must have been something else . . .”
And that was all.
A young man in a blue blazer was working behind the desk. She asked for her key and he handed it over, saying as he did, idly, “Oh, there was a fellow looking for you earlier, Detective.”
“A fellow?”
“Yes. Didn’t want to leave a message. Just asked for you.”
“Did you see the person?”
“No. It was the guy who had the desk before me.”
She could feel something within her trying to break loose. “Did he say anything else? Like a description?”
“Ahh, yes. He said the gentleman was black. That’s what he said. Some black fellow was asking about you, but didn’t want to leave a message. Said he’d get in touch. That’s all. Sorry, that’s all I can remember.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She forced herself to walk slowly to the elevator.
How did he find me? she asked herself.
The elevator swooshed her upward and she padded down the corridor to her room. As before, she checked all the empty spots in the room after double-locking the doors. Then she sat heavily on the bed, trying to deal with the mundane, which was what she was going to do about getting supper, though she didn’t feel particulatly hungry, and the complicated, which was what she was going to do next about Robert Earl Ferguson.
When she pictured him, she tried to see him without the smirking look on his face but couldn’t.
The knock at the door crashed through her fears.
It made her snatch her breath and rise in a single motion. She found herself frozen, staring at the door.
There was another sharp rap on it. Then a third.
She reached down once again, freeing the pistol from her handbag, cocked it, and approached the door, holding her finger on the outside of the trigger guard, as she had been taught to do when uncertain what she was facing. There was a convex peephole on the door. She leaned toward it to see what was on the other side, but just as she did, another crash came against the door, and she jumped back.
She forced toughness onto her anxiety, reached for the door handle and, in a single, swift motion, threw the dead bolts and tugged the door open. In the same moment, she raised her pistol to eye level, sighting down the barrel.
The door swung open and she saw Matthew Cowart.
He was standing in the hallway, hand half-raised to knock again. She saw his face freeze when he spied the weapon in her hand. Silence like a knife filled the space between them. He raised his hands slowly and then she saw that he was accompanied by two other men. She lowered the weapon.
“Cowart,” she said.
He nodded. “That’s quite a greeting,” he managed to croak out. “Everyone seems to want to point guns at me lately.”
Her eyes slid to the other two men.
“I know you,” she said. “You were at the prison.”
“Wilcox,” the detective replied. “Escambia County. This is my boss, Lieutenant Brown.”
She turned and stared at the hulking figure of Tanny Brown. He seemed to bristle with intensity, and she saw his eyes take her in, pausing for a moment on the pistol in her hand.
“I see,” he said slowly, “that you’ve been to see Bobby Earl.”
22
TAKING NOTES
The three detectives and the solitary newspaperman took up uncomfortable positions in the motel room. Wilcox stood, back up against the wall, close to the windows, occasionally glancing out through the darkness at the headlights that trailed by, keeping his thoughts to himself. Shaeffer and Brown occupied the only chairs in the room, on either side of a small table, like poker players waiting for the final card to be dealt. Cowart perched uneasily on the edge of the bed, slightly apart. Someone in an adjacent room was playing a television loudly; voices from a news show filtered through the motel walls. Some tragedy, he thought, reduced to fifteen seconds, thirty if it is truly terrible, delivered with a practiced look of concern.
He glanced at Andrea Shaeffer. Although clearly surprised when she had opened the door on
the three men, she had let them enter without comment. Introductions had been brief, small talk nonexistent. They were all aware of what had brought them together in a small room in an alien city. She shuffled a few notes and papers together, then turned to the three men and asked, “How did you find me?”
“The local police liaison office told us,” Brown said. “We checked in there when we arrived. They said they’d accompanied you to see Ferguson.”
Shaeffer nodded.
“Why did you do that?” Brown asked.
She started to answer, stopped, stared over at Cowart and then shook her head. “Why are you here?” she demanded.
The reporter didn’t want to answer that question, but Tanny Brown, speaking in measured, officious tones, replied, “We’re here to see Ferguson, too.”
Shaeffer looked at the police lieutenant.
“Why? I thought you were finished with him. And you, too,” she gestured at Cowart.
“No. Not yet.”
Again, Brown was the one to answer. “We’re here because we have reason to believe that there were errors made in the original prosecution of Ferguson. We think there may have been mistakes made in Mr. Cowart’s stories. We’re here to investigate both aspects.”
Shaeffer looked both angry and surprised. “Mistakes? Errors?” She turned to the reporter. “What sort of mistakes?”
Cowart realized he would have to answer her this time. “He lied to me.”
“About what?”
“About the murder of the little girl.”
Shaeffer shifted about in her seat “And now you’re here for what?”
“To set the record straight.”
The cliché prompted a cynical smile. “I’m sure that’s real important,” she said. She glanced over at Brown and Wilcox. “But it doesn’t explain why you’re traveling with this company.”
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