Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  “Keep going!” Wilcox gestured swiftly. “Head him off.”

  The detective plowed after his quarry, picking up his pace, breaking into a jog. Shaeffer shouted some quick word of agreement and spun the car down the rain-slicked street.

  She had to go an extra block before she could turn. She ran a red light, sweeping around a corner, causing a pair of teenagers on the curb to leap back, angrily shouting obscenities after her. The street was narrow, lined with dark, decrepit buildings that seemed to block her sight. A pair of cars were double-parked in midblock. She blared the horn hard as she crawled past, leaving an inch or less on either side of her car.

  At the next corner, she jerked the car back to the right, heading back toward the spot where she figured to catch up with Wilcox and Ferguson. Her mind raced with words; what to say, how to act. She realized that something was happening that was out of any control she might once have had. She concentrated on the road, fighting the night, trying to spot the two men as they maneuvered through the city streets.

  They were not there.

  She slowed the car, peering ahead, peering sideways down the veinlike alleyways and rubble-strewn clots of abandoned space. Shadows seemed to build into solid darkness. The street was abruptly empty of any people.

  She stopped the car in the center of the street and jumped out, standing in the open doorway, looking both ways for any sign of the two men. Seeing none, she cursed loudly and slid back behind the wheel.

  Dammit, she told herself. They must have turned down another street or cut through a vacant lot. He might have ducked down an alleyway.

  She accelerated hard again, trying to guess and gauge, trying to catch up with the two men. She raced around another corner, only to feel a plummeting despair.

  Still no sign of them.

  She slapped the car into reverse, backing into the street from which she’d turned, and then jammed the car into forward. She sliced through the blackness sharply, still searching. She drove another block fast, then stabbed the brakes.

  No one.

  She felt a tightness winding within her. She had no idea what to do. Battling panic, she pitched the car quickly to the curb and jumped out. Walking fast, she headed in the direction in which she thought they should have been moving, still trying to think logically. Retrace their steps, she insisted to herself. Head them off. They can’t be far. She strained her eyes against the shadows; her eyes searched for the sound of a raised voice. Then she picked up her pace and started to run. Her shoes made a solitary slapping sound against the sidewalk pavement. The sound increased, like a drumroll gaining momentum, until finally, flat out, she sprinted toward the empty night.

  Bruce Wilcox had turned once, just long enough to catch a glimpse of the rental car’s taillights disappearing down the street, before he centered all his concentration on keeping up with Ferguson.

  He increased his pace, surprised that he couldn’t narrow the distance between him and his quarry. Ferguson had a subtle quickness to him; without breaking into a run, he was moving swiftly, working his way around the spots of light that littered the street, blending with the surroundings.

  He thought his legs seemed heavy, slow, and he furiously demanded more of them. Ahead, he saw Ferguson turn again, at another street corner, and he pushed himself hard to catch up.

  A pair of bedraggled prostitutes were working the corner, using the sodium-vapor streetlight to advertise their presence. They ducked back as he approached, shrinking against a storefront.

  “Where’d he go?” Wilcox demanded.

  “Who, man?”

  “Ain’t seen nobody.”

  He swore at them, and they both laughed, mocking him as he pushed past. The side street down which Ferguson had headed seemed cavernous, yawing back and forth like a ship in heavy weather. He caught a glimpse of Ferguson forty yards ahead, really just a shape that had no more substance than the remaining shadows in the street, and he ran hard after it.

  His mind raced alongside him.

  He had no grasp of what he was going to say, what he was going to do, driven merely by the need to catch up with the chased man. Images jumped rapidly in and out of his head: It seemed as if the world he was cutting through was mixing crazily with his memory. A derelict lying semistuporously in an abandoned doorway sang out as he cruised past, but the voice reminded him of Tanny Brown’s. A dog barked hard, throwing itself against a chain, and he remembered the search for Joanie Shriver’s body. Dirt-streaked aluminum garbage cans reflected weak streetlamp light, and he thought of the sucking, oozing sensation between his hands as he pulled free the useless evidence from the outhouse refuse pit. This last memory drove him harder in pursuit.

  He looked ahead and saw Ferguson reach the end of the block. He seemed to pause, and Wilcox saw the man turn. For one microscopic moment, their eyes met across the night.

  Wilcox couldn’t contain himself. “Stop! Police!” he shouted.

  Ferguson didn’t hesitate. Running now, he fled.

  Wilcox yelled a single, “Hey!” then tucked his chin down and ran hard. All pretense of surveillance or tailing Ferguson was lost now in a single-minded, headstrong chase. He sucked in wind and started pumping his arms, feeling his feet lighten against the rain-slicked pavement, no more plodding, determined pursuit, but now a sprint.

  His burst of speed pushed him a bit closer, but Ferguson, too, rapidly settled into a hard run. They seemed evenly matched, feet hitting the pavement in unison, the distance between them maintaining a frustrating constancy.

  The world around him turned vaporous, indistinct. He could feel the effects of his sprint. His wind was shortened, his heart beating fast. He tore air from the night to fill screaming lungs.

  Another city block passed. He saw Ferguson turn again, still driving forward, seemingly unaffected by the run. Wilcox pushed on, sliding as he tried to cut the corner closely, his feet scrabbling on the pavement. For a sickening instant, he felt a dizziness, a stab of vertigo, and then he lost his balance. The cement came up fast, like a wave at the beach, striking him solidly. Breath exploded from him. A shock of red pain swept across his eyes. He heard some article of clothing tearing and felt a gritty taste in his mouth. He slid, partly stunned, finally coming to rest against a streetlight. Instinct fought against shock and hurt, and he forced himself back to his feet, rising, struggling to regain his rhythm. He had a sudden memory of a high-school wrestling championship when he’d been thrown through the air, and as he tumbled toward the mat, his mind had razored off a decision as to what move to employ so that when his opponent’s arms sought to encircle him, he was already rolling free. He blinked hard and found himself running again, racing forward, trying to grasp where he was and what he was doing, but finding the blow from the street had scrambled his senses, and he was being driven merely by wild fury and impatient desire.

  As he ran, he saw Ferguson abruptly slice across the street, heading toward a dark, empty lot. Headlights from an approaching car trapped him for an instant. There was a loud screeching sound, followed instantly by the blare of a horn.

  For an instant, he thought it was Detective Shaeffer, and he cheered, “That’s it! Cut the bastard off!”

  Then he saw that it wasn’t. A sudden shot of anger pierced him: Where the hell is she? He pushed on, dodging the same car, leaving the driver shouting imprecations at the two wraithlike shapes that had disappeared as swiftly as they had materialized.

  He scrambled over rubble and debris, which grabbed at his ankles like tendrils in a swamp. He caught a glimpse of Ferguson up ahead, maneuvering with identical difficulty through the abandoned junk of the inner city. For an instant, Ferguson rose up on top of a pile of boxes and an old refrigerator, outlined by a distant streetlamp. Their eyes met for a second time and Wilcox impulsively yelled, “Stop. Police!” again. He thought he saw a flash of recognition and disbeli
ef in Ferguson’s eyes. Then the quarry vanished, leaping down out of the meager light. Wilcox muttered obscenities and struggled on.

  He leapt up over a pile of bricks, but his foot caught the top, and he could feel the mass crumbling beneath his sudden weight. He felt himself pitched forward, and he threw out his hands to try to break his fall. He succeeded in preventing a broken-neck tumble—but his right hand slammed down on a jagged piece of rusty metal. One edge sliced through his palm, three fingers were jammed back fiercely, and his wrist almost buckled from the blow. He screamed in agony, struggling again to balance himself, grabbing his mangled hand with his left. He could feel the skin parted and swelling with sticky damp blood. His fingers and wrist were instantaneously on fire; broken, he thought, cursing himself, goddammit, goddammit, goddammit. He squeezed the hand into a tight balled fist, clutched it close to his chest, and battled on, picking another pile of debris to climb, to try and spot the pursued man.

  He bent over at his waist to catch his breath, denying the pain in his hand and wrist. Standing carefully to keep his balance on this new pile of trash, he saw Ferguson vaulting a jagged and twisted chain link fence at the back of the vacant lot. He watched as Ferguson sprinted across an alleyway, hesitated for an instant, then ducked up some stairs and into a deserted building.

  All right, he said to himself. You’re tired, too, you bastard. Catch your breath in there. But you’re not going to get away.

  Ignoring the throbbing in his torn and broken hand, he pushed himself across the last few yards of the lot and scrambled over the chain link fence. He jogged to the abandoned building’s door and stared at it, breathing hard with exertion.

  All right, he said again. He gingerly reached into his jacket pocket and found a handkerchief, which he used to bind up his wound as best as possible. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but he suspected he would need stitches to close the cut. He shook his head. Probably a tetanus shot as well. With the handkerchief swiftly soaking up the blood that continued to pulse through his palm, he tried to flex his fingers and wrist, only to receive a sharp needle of pain racing up his arm. He touched the skin carefully, trying to feel for broken bones. It was already swelling rapidly, and for a moment he wondered if the Escambia County employee’s insurance policy would take care of the whole thing. Line of duty, he thought. Got to be. He gritted his teeth against the shooting sensation that raced up his arm and hoped that some doctor would simply put a cast on the damn thing and that he wouldn’t need an operation.

  He looked up and down the alleyway. Damp, rain-slicked debris littered the narrow space. He peered up, trying to see if anyone was in any of the buildings, but no one was visible. It seemed an area of abandoned apartments, perhaps warehouses; it was hard to tell; the light was limited, diffuse, emanating from streetlights thirty yards away.

  For a moment, he paused. If he could spot Detective Shaeffer, he thought, but then he didn’t complete the mental equation. It would be nice to have a backup.

  He shrugged doubt away, replacing it with the headstrong bluster with which he was more familiar. I don’t need any help to grab that squirrelly son of a bitch, he told himself. Even with one hand, I can handle him.

  He believed this completely. He stepped up to the front door.

  Ferguson’s headlong passage had jammed it open, in mistaken invitation. The doorway opening was like a stripe of deeper black against the velour fabric of the night. He put his back to the door and stopped, listening.

  As he hesitated, he freed his revolver from his shoulder holster. The weight of the gun in his damaged hand was impossible, like grabbing a red-hot coal from a fire. He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, gently shifting the weapon into his left hand. He opened his eyes and stared down at the gun. Can you hit something left-handed? he asked himself. Something close, maybe. If you have to. He spoke to himself in the third person. Are you sure? Suppose he’s armed? You’ll be okay. Just collar the bastard. Arrest him and sort it out later. Even if you just have to let him go. Put some fear into him. Let him know he’s got big trouble and you’re it.

  He sorted through the sounds, defining, compartmentalizing, analyzing. He put a label to each small noise, giving it a shape and identity so that he would know it was nothing to fear. A dripping noise was rain in a gutter, leaking through the roof. A swishing sound was traffic, blocks distant. A rasping sound was his own breathing. Then, from deep within the building, a small sound of boards creaking.

  There he is, Wilcox thought. He’s close. He’s inside and he’s close.

  Taking a single deep breath, he crouched low and stepped into the abandoned building.

  It seemed at first as if he’d been enveloped by a blanket. The weak alleyway light disappeared. He cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight, not recognizing that his own was all the way back in Florida. He wished he smoked; then he would have matches or, better, a lighter in his pocket. He tried to remember if Ferguson smoked and thought he did. He hunkered down, still pushing his ears to locate his quarry, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. He thought, Can’t see much. But just enough.

  He moved carefully into the building. There were stairs leading up to his left, a stairway down to his right. An old apartment house, he thought. Why would anyone have ever lived here? He took a step and heard his own weight creak against the decrepit floor. A new worry flooded him. Christ! There could be a hole or something. Suppose those stairs give way? He used his gun hand as best he could for balance, holding it out perpendicular to his body, maintaining contact with the wall, all the time clutching his damaged hand close to his chest.

  He went to the right, the stairway down. He had a sudden thought, He’s a rat, Ferguson. An earth animal. He’ll go down, deeper. That’s where he’ll feel safe.

  He stopped to listen again.

  Nothing.

  Means nothing, he told himself. He’s here.

  He continued, slowly, feeling his way as best as possible. He damned the sounds he made. His own breathing seemed to scratch the darkness like fingernails on a blackboard. Each step he took thundered. His steady progress into the core of the building seemed to crash and rattle with noise.

  He fought against the urge to say something, wanting to wait until he was very close before he demanded surrender. The stairs seemed solid beneath his feet, but he did not trust them. He put each foot forward slowly, testing it with a portion of his weight, like some reluctant bather facing cold water. He counted each rise; at twenty-two he reached the basement. A clammy damp sensation, cooler than the already chilled air, reached up from beneath to greet him. He stepped down. He could sense the cement under his feet and thought, Good. That will be quieter. He took a single step and squished into a puddle of water, which instantly soaked through his shoes. Damn! he said to himself.

  He crouched, listening again. He was unsure whether the breathing he heard was his own or Ferguson’s. He’s close, the detective said to himself. He took a deep breath and held it, to try and locate the sound.

  Close. Very close.

  He breathed in again and caught a smell that seemed thick and awful, covering him with evil. It was a familiar smell, but one he couldn’t immediately place. The little hairs on his neck rose; his arms grew prickly hot despite the cold air: Something died in here, he shouted to himself. Something’s dead close by.

  His head pivoted about, trying to see anything in the solid black space, but he was blind.

  Electric fear and excitement hurtled through him. He lifted up and took three small steps farther into the basement, still maintaining contact with the wall with his gun hand. It was wet and soft to his touch. He thought about rats and spiders and the man he was pursuing.

  He could stand it no longer. “Ferguson, boy, come on out. You’re fucking under arrest. You know who this is. Put your fucking hands up and come on out.”

  The words seemed to echo bri
efly in the small room, dying swiftly as silence swept over them.

  He waited. There was no reply.

  “Goddammit, c’mon, Bobby Earl. Cut this shit. It ain’t worth the trouble.”

  He took another step forward.

  “I know you’re here, Bobby Earl. Goddammit, don’t make this so damn hard.”

  Doubt abruptly creased his heart. Where is the son of a bitch? he shouted to himself. He stiffened with tension, fear, and anger.

  “Bobby Earl, I’m gonna shoot your fucking eyes out unless you come out right now!”

  There was a scratching noise to his right. He tried to turn fast in that direction, pulling his gun from the wall toward the sound. His mind could not process what was happening, only that it was pitch black, and he was not alone.

  For a microsecond, he was aware of the shape swooshing through the air toward him, aware that someone, grunting with exertion, had risen up out of the darkness beside him. He tried to command himself to duck back, and he raised his broken hand to try and ward off the blow. He fired once in panic, haphazardly, aiming at nothing except fear; the explosion crashed through the darkness. Then a length of metal pipe smashed against his shoulder and ear. Bruce Wilcox saw a sudden immense burst of white light in his eyes, then it disintegrated into a whirlpool blackness far deeper than he’d ever imagined. He staggered back, aware that he could not let himself slip into unconsciousness. He felt damp cement against his cheek, and he realized he’d fallen to the floor.

  He raised his hand to deflect a second blow, which arrived with a similar hissing sound as the lead pipe sliced the cold basement air. It thudded into his already broken arm, sending red streaks of pain across the darkness in his eyes.

  He did not know where or how he’d lost his revolver, but it was no longer in his hand. But he reached out savagely with his left arm, and his fingers found substance. He tugged hard, heard a ripping noise, then felt a body slam down on top of his.