Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  “We want the record straight as well,” Brown said. As soon as he spoke the words, he recognized he’d made an error of his own. He realized that the young woman across from him was measuring him and that, so far, he’d failed.

  Shaeffer thought for a moment “You’re not here to arrest Ferguson?”

  “No. Can’t do that.”

  “You’re here to talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “You guys are lying,” she said. She sat back hard, crossing her arms in front of her.

  “We . . .” Brown began.

  “Lying,” she interrupted.

  “Because . . .” Cowart said.

  “Lying,” Shaeffer said a third time.

  The reporter and the police lieutenant stared at her, and after a small quiet, just enough time to let the word fester in their imaginations, she continued. “What record?” she said. “There is no record. There’s only one very wrong man. Mistakes and errors. So what? If Cowart made some mistake, he’d be here alone. If you, Detective Brown, made some mistake, you’d be here alone. But together, that means something altogether different. Right?”

  Tanny Brown nodded.

  “Is this a guessing game?” she asked.

  “No. Tell me what brought you here, then I’ll fill you in.”

  Shaeffer considered this offer, then agreed. “I came to see Ferguson because he was connected to both Sullivan and Cowart and I thought he might have specific information about the killings in the Keys.”

  Brown looked hard at her. “And did he?”

  She shook her head. “No. Denied any knowledge.”

  “Well, what would you expect?” Cowart said under his breath.

  She turned to him. “Well, he was a damn sight more cooperative than you’ve been.” This was untrue, of course, but she thought it would quiet the reporter, which it did.

  “So, if he had no information and he denied any connection,” said Brown, “why are you still here, Detective?”

  “I wanted to check out his alibi for the time period that the murders took place.”

  “And?”

  “It did.”

  “It did?” Cowart blurted. She glared at him.

  “Ferguson was in class that week. Didn’t miss any. It would’ve been damn hard for him to get down to the Keys, kill the old couple, and get back, without being late for something. Probably impossible.”

  “But, goddammit, that’s not what Sullivan . . .”

  Cowart stopped short, and Shaeffer pivoted toward him. “Sullivan what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sullivan what, dammit!”

  Cowart felt suddenly sick. “That’s not what Sullivan told me.”

  Tanny Brown tried to step in, but a single glance from Shaeffer cut him off before he could speak a word. Unbridled rage filled her; for a moment the world turned red-tinged. She could feel an explosion within her, and her hands shook with the effort to contain it. Lies, she thought, staring at the reporter. Lies and omissions. She took a deep breath. I knew it.

  “Sullivan told you when?” she asked slowly.

  “Before going to the chair.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That Ferguson committed those crimes. But it’s not that . . .”

  “You son of a bitch,” she muttered.

  “No, look, you’ve got to understand . . .”

  “You son of a bitch. What did he tell you, exactly?”

  “That he’d arranged with Ferguson to switch crimes. Took Ferguson’s crime in return for Ferguson committing this one for him.”

  She absorbed this and in an instant saw the crevasse the reporter was in. She had no sympathy. “And you didn’t think this was relevant for the people investigating the murders?”

  “It’s not that simple. He lied. I was trying to . . .”

  “And so you thought you could lie, too?”

  “No, dammit, you’ve got to understand . . .” Cowart turned toward Tanny Brown.

  “I ought to arrest you right now,” she said bitterly. “Could you write that one up from your own cell, Mr. Cowart? REPORTER CHARGED WITH COVER-UP IN SENSATIONAL MURDER CASE. Isn’t that how the headline would read? Would they run that on the front page with your goddamn picture? Would it be the truth for once?”

  They glared at each other until something occurred to Cowart. “Yeah. Truth. Except it wasn’t the truth, was it, Detective?”

  “What?”

  “Just what I said. Sullivan told me Ferguson did that old couple, but I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He told me lots of things, some of them lies. So I could have told you, and at the same time I would have had to put it in the paper—had to, Detective. But now, you’re telling me that Ferguson had an alibi, so it would have been all wrong. He didn’t do that old couple, no matter what Sullivan said. Right?”

  Shaeffer hesitated.

  “Come on, goddammit, Detective! Right?”

  She could think of no way to disagree. She nodded her head. “It doesn’t seem that way. The alibi checks out. I went out to Rutgers and spoke with three different professors. In class each day that week. Perfect attendance. Also, my partner has come up with other information as well.”

  “What other information?”

  “Forget it.”

  There was another pause in the room while each person sorted out what they’d heard. Tanny Brown spoke slowly.

  “But,” he said carefully, “something else. Right? If Ferguson isn’t your suspect, and he has no information to help your investigation, you should be on an airplane heading south. You wouldn’t be sitting around here, you’d be down with your partner. You could have checked out Ferguson’s class schedule by telephone, but instead you went and saw some people in person. Why is that, Detective? And when you open your door you’ve got a nine-millimeter in your hand and your bags aren’t packed. So why?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Brown said quietly. “Because you know something’s wrong, and you can’t say what.”

  Shaeffer looked across at him and nodded.

  “Well,” Brown said, “that’s why we’re here, too.”

  Dawn light streaked the street outside Ferguson’s apartment, barely illuminating the wedge of gray clouds that hovered over the city, poised for more rain. Shaeffer and Wilcox pulled one car to the curb at the north end of the street, while Brown stopped at the southern end. Cowart checked his tape recorder and his notebook, patted his jacket pocket to make certain that his pens were still there, and turned toward the policeman.

  Back in the motel room, Shaeffer had turned brusquely to them and said, “So. What’s the plan?”

  “The plan,” Cowart had said softly, “is to give him something to worry about, maybe flush him out of his cover, do something that we can follow up on. We want to make him think that things aren’t as safe as he supposes. Give him something to worry about,” he repeated, smiling wanly. “And that’s me.”

  Now, out in the car, he tried to make a joke. “In the movies, they’d have me wear a wire. We’d have a code word I could say that would signal I needed help.”

  “Would you wear one?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. So we don’t need a code word.”

  Cowart smiled, but only because he could think of nothing else to do.

  “Nervous?” Brown asked.

  “Do I act it?” Cowart replied. “Don’t answer that.”

  “He won’t do anything.”

  “Sure.”

  “He can’t.”

  Cowart smiled again. “I kinda feel like an old lion tamer who happens to be taking a stroll through the jungle, and he runs across some former ch
arge that he maybe used a whip and chair on a bit too much. And he looks down at that old lion and realizes that they’re not in his circus cage anymore, but on the lion’s turf. Get the picture?”

  Brown smiled. “All he’s going to do is growl.”

  “Bark is worse than his bite, huh?”

  “I guess, but that’s dogs, not lions.”

  Cowart opened the car door. “Too many mixed metaphors here,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  The cool damp air curling above the dirty sidewalk slapped him in the face. He walked swiftly down the block, passing a pair of men asleep in an abandoned doorway, a huddled mass of gray-brown tattered clothing, grown together to ward off the cold night. The men stirred as he walked near them, then slipped back into early-morning oblivion. Cowart could hear a few street noises a block or two away, the deep grumble-whine of diesel bus engines, the start of morning traffic.

  He turned and faced the apartment building. For a moment, he wavered on the stoop, then he stepped within the dark entranceway and rapidly climbed the stairs to the front of Ferguson’s apartment. He’ll be asleep, the reporter told himself, and he’ll awaken to confusion and doubt. That was the design behind the early-morning visit. These hours, between night and day, were the most unsettling, the transition time when people were weakest.

  He took a deep breath and pounded hard on the door. Then he waited. He could hear no sound from within, so he pounded hard again. Another few seconds passed, then he heard footsteps hurrying toward the door. He bashed his fist against the door a third and fourth time.

  Dead bolt locks started to click. A chain was loosened. The door swung open.

  Ferguson stared out at him. “Mr. Cowart.”

  Killer, Cowart thought, but instead, he said, “Hello, Bobby Earl.”

  Ferguson rubbed a hand across his face, then smiled. “I should have figured you would show up.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Same thing as always. Got questions that need answers.”

  Ferguson held the door wide for him and he stepped inside the apartment. They moved into the small living room, where Cowart rapidly peered about, trying to take it all in.

  “You want coffee, Mr. Cowart? I have some made,” Ferguson said. He gestured toward a seat on the couch. “I have some coffee cake. You want a slice?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you don’t mind if I help myself, do you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Ferguson disappeared into the small kitchen, then returned, carrying a steaming coffee cup and a tin plate with a coffee cake on it. Cowart had already set up his tape recorder on a small table. Ferguson put the coffee cake next to it, then carved a piece off the end. Cowart saw that he used a gleaming steel hunting knife to cut the cake. It had a six-inch blade with a serrated edge on one side and a grip handle. Ferguson put the knife down and popped the cake into his mouth.

  “Not exactly kitchen equipment,” Cowart said.

  Ferguson shrugged. “I keep this handy. Had some break-ins. You know, addicts looking for an easy score. This isn’t the best neighborhood. Or maybe you didn’t notice.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Need a little extra protection.”

  “Ever use that knife for something else?”

  Ferguson smiled. Cowart had the impression that he was being teased the way a younger child will tease an older sibling mercilessly, knowing that the parents will side with him. “Now, what else could I use this for, save cutting an occasional piece of bread and slicing off some peace of mind?” he replied.

  Ferguson took a sip of coffee. “So. Early-morning visit. Got questions. Come alone?” He stood up, went to the window, and peered up and down the street.

  “I’m alone.”

  Ferguson hesitated, staring hard for an instant or two in the direction where Brown had parked his car, then turned back to the reporter.

  “Sure.”

  He sat back down. “All right, Mr. Cowart. What brings you here?”

  “Have you spoken with your grandmother?”

  “Haven’t spoken to anyone from Pachoula in months. She doesn’t have a telephone. Neither do I.”

  Cowart glanced around but couldn’t see a phone. “I went to see her.”

  “Well, that was nice of you.”

  “I went to see her because Blair Sullivan told me to go look for something there.”

  “Told you when?”

  “Right before he died.”

  “Mr. Cowart, you’re driving at something and I surely have no idea what.”

  “In the outhouse.”

  “Not a nice place. Old. Ain’t been used for a year.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I put some plumbing in. A thousand bucks, cash.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “What? Put plumbing in? Because it’s cold to walk outside and do your business in the wintertime.”

  Cowart shook his head. “No. That’s not what I mean. Why did you kill Joanie Shriver?”

  Ferguson stared hard at Cowart and then leaned back in his chair. “Haven’t killed nobody. Especially that little gal. Thought you knew that by now.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Ferguson glared at him. “No.”

  “You raped her, then you killed her, left her body in the swamp, and stuck the knife under the culvert. Then you returned home and saw that there was blood on your clothes and on a piece of the rug in your car, so you cut that out, and you took it and wrapped up the clothes and buried them under all this shit and muck in that outhouse, because you knew that no one in their right mind would ever look there for them.”

  Ferguson shook his head.

  “You denying it?” Cowart asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I found the clothing and the rug.”

  Ferguson looked surprised for an instant, then shrugged. “Came all this way to tell me that?”

  “Why did you kill her?”

  “I didn’t. I told you.”

  “Liar. You’ve been lying from the start.”

  Cowart thought the statement should anger Ferguson, but it did not, at least outwardly. Instead he smiled, reached forward, slowly cut himself another slice of cake, lingering with the knife in his hand for just a moment, then took another sip of coffee.

  “The lies are all Sullivan’s. What else did he tell you?”

  “That you killed his folks down in the Keys.”

  Ferguson shook his head. “Didn’t do that crime, neither. Helps explain what that pretty detective was doing poking about up here, though.”

  “Why’d you kill Joanie Shriver?” Cowart asked again.

  Ferguson started to rise, anger finally creasing the edge of his voice. “I didn’t do that crime! Goddammit, how many times I got to say that?”

  “Then how did that stuff get in your outhouse?”

  “We used to throw all sorts of things away down there. Clothes, auto parts that didn’t work, trash. You name it. Those clothes you thinking of, I threw them out ’cause they got covered with pig’s blood, ’cause I helped a neighbor slaughter an old sow. And I was walking home through the woods and got surprised by an old skunk and got nailed good with its damn stink. And hell, I had a little extra money, so I wrapped up those clothes and just threw ’em out, they was almost worn out anyways. Went and bought a new pair of jeans downtown.”

  “And the rug?”

  “The rug got cut up by accident. Got torn when I put a chain saw on the floor of the car. I cut out the square ’cause I was going to replace it with a new piece of rug. Got arrested first, though. Just chucked it down there, same as everything else.”

  Ferguson looked over at Cow
art warily. “You got lab results that say differently?”

  Cowart started to shake his head, but then stopped. He didn’t know whether Ferguson had spotted the slight movement.

  “You think I’m so damn stupid that after I got out of prison, if that stuff were evidence of some damn crime, especially a first-degree murder, I wouldn’t go get it and make sure it was disappeared for good? What do you think, Mr. Cowart? You think I didn’t learn anything on Death Row? You think I didn’t learn anything taking all those criminology courses? You think I’m stupid, Mr. Cowart?”

  “No,” said Cowart. “I don’t think you’re stupid.” His eyes locked onto Ferguson’s. “And I think you’ve learned a great deal.”

  The two men were quiet for an instant.

  “How did Sullivan know about that outhouse?”

  Ferguson shrugged. “He told me once, before we had our little disagreement, said he once strangled a woman with her panty hose, then flushed the stockings down the toilet. Said once they got into that septic system, weren’t no one gonna find them. Asked me what I had at my house, and I told him we had that old outhouse and we used to throw all sorts of stuff in there. I guess he just put two and two together and made up a story for you, Mr. Cowart. So when you looked hard enough and thought hard enough and expected to find something, you sure as hell did. Isn’t that the way things work? When you go looking for sure for something, you’re likely to find it. Even if it ain’t what you really are looking for.”

  “That’s a convenient story.”

  Again, Ferguson bristled briefly, then relaxed. “Can’t make it any prettier. But if you listen, seems to me that you’ll hear a bit of Blair Sullivan in it. Man was able to twist about anything into something useful for him, wasn’t he, Mr. Cowart?”

  “That’s true,” he replied.

  Ferguson gestured toward the tape recorder and the notepad that Cowart held in his hand.

  “You here looking for some sort of story, Mr. Cowart?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, this is all old news.”

  “I don’t know about that”

  “Old story. Same old story. You been talking to Tanny Brown. That man is never gonna give up, is he?”