Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  “I still don’t hear anything like evidence.”

  “Goddammit!” the lieutenant’s voice soared for the first time. “Don’t you hear? We didn’t have any. All we had was impressions. Like the impression you get when you get to Ferguson’s house and he’s scrubbing out that car—and he’s already deep-sixed a slice of rug. Like when the first thing out of his mouth is, ‘I didn’t do that girl,’ before he’s heard a question. And how he sits in an interview room, laughing because he knows you haven’t got anything. But all those impressions add up to something more than instinct, because he finally talks. And, yes sir, all those impressions turn out to be absolutely right because he confesses to killing that girl.”

  “So, where’s the knife? Where’s his clothes covered with blood and mud?”

  “He wouldn’t tell us.”

  “Did he tell you how he staked out the school? How he got her to get into the car? What he said to her? Whether she fought? What did he tell you?”

  “Here, goddammit, read for yourself!”

  Lieutenant Brown seized a sheaf of papers from the file on his desk and tossed them toward Cowart. He looked down and saw that it was the transcript of the confession, taken by a court stenographer. It was short, only three pages long. The two detectives had gone through all of his rights with him, especially the right to an attorney. The rights colloquy occupied more than an entire page of the confession. They’d asked him whether he understood this and he’d replied he had. Their first question was phrased in traditional cop-ese: “Now, on or about three P.M. on May 4, 1987, did you have occasion to be in a location at the corner of Grand and Spring streets, which is next to King Elementary School?” And Ferguson had replied monosyllabically, “Yes.” The detectives had then asked him whether he had seen the young woman later known to him as Joanie Shriver, and again, his reply had been the single affirmative. They had then painstakingly brought him through the entire scenario, each time phrasing their narrative as a question and receiving a positive answer, but not one of them elaborated with even the meagerest detail. When they had asked him about the weapon and the other crucial aspects of the crime, he’d replied that he couldn’t remember. The final question was designed to establish premeditation. It was the one that had put Ferguson on Death Row: “Did you go to that location intending to kidnap and kill a young woman on that day?” and he’d replied again with a simple, awful “Yes.”

  Cowart shook his head, Ferguson had volunteered nothing except a single word, “Yes,” over and over. He turned toward Brown and Wilcox. “Not exactly a model confession, is it?”

  Wilcox, who had been sitting unsteadily, shifting about with an obvious, growing frustration, finally jumped up, his face red with anger, shaking his fist at the reporter. “What the hell do you want? Dammit, he did that little girl just as sure as I’m standing here now. You just don’t want to hear the truth, damn you!”

  “Truth?” Cowart shook his head and Wilcox seemed to explode. He sprang from behind the desk and grabbed hold of Cowart’s jacket, pulling the reporter to his feet. “You’re gonna get me really angry, asshole! You don’t want to do that!”

  Tanny Brown jackknifed his bulk across the desk, seizing the detective with one hand and jerking him backward, controlling the smaller, wiry man easily. He did not say anything, especially when Wilcox turned toward his superior officer, still sputtering with barely controlled anger. The detective tried to say something to Brown, then turned toward Cowart. Finally, choking, fists clenched, he stormed from the office.

  Cowart straightened his jacket and sat back down heavily. He breathed in and out, feeling the adrenaline pumping in his ears. After a few minutes of silence, he looked over at Brown.

  “You’re going to tell me now that he didn’t hit Ferguson, right? That he never lost it during thirty-six hours of interrogation?”

  The lieutenant paused for an instant, thinking, as if trying to assess the damage done by the outburst before replying. Then he shook his head.

  “No, truth is, he did. Early on, once or twice, before I stopped him. Just slapped Ferguson across the face.”

  “No punch to the stomach?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “How about telephone books?”

  “An old technique,” Brown said sadly, his voice growing quieter. “No. Despite what Mr. Ferguson says.”

  The lieutenant turned away for the first time, looking out the window. After a moment or two, he said, “Mr. Cowart, I don’t think I can make you understand. That little girl’s death just got under all our skins and it’s still there. And it was the worst for us. We had to make some sort of case out of that emotional mess. It bent us all. We weren’t evil or bad. But we wanted that killer caught. I didn’t sleep for three days. None of us did. But we had him, and there he was, smiling back at us just like nothing was wrong. I don’t blame Bruce Wilcox for losing it a bit. I think we were all at the edge. And even then, with the confession—you’re right, it’s not a textbook confession, but it was the best we could get out of that closemouthed son of a bitch—even then it was all so fragile. This conviction is held together by the thinnest of threads. We all know that. And so, you come along, asking questions, and each one of those questions just shreds a little bit of those threads and we get a little crazy. There. That’s my apology for my partner. And for sending you to the Shrivers. I don’t want this conviction to shatter. More than anything else, I don’t want to lose this one. I couldn’t face those folks. I couldn’t face my own family. I couldn’t face myself. I want that man to die for what he did.”

  The lieutenant finished his confession and waited for Cowart’s reply. The reporter felt a sudden rush of success and decided to press his advantage. “What’s the policy with your department on taking weapons into interrogation rooms?”

  “Simple: You don’t. Check them with the sergeant on duty. Every cop knows that. Why?”

  “Would you mind standing up for a moment.”

  Brown shrugged and stood.

  “Now, let me see your ankles.”

  He looked surprised and hesitated. “I don’t get it.”

  “Indulge me, Lieutenant.”

  Brown stared angrily at him. “Is this what you want to see?” He lifted his leg, putting his shoe up on the desk, raising his trouser leg at the same time. There was a small, brown-leather ankle holster holding a snub-nosed .38-caliber pistol strapped to his calf.

  The lieutenant lowered his leg.

  “Now, you didn’t point that weapon at Ferguson and tell him you were going to kill him if he didn’t confess, did you?”

  “No, absolutely not.” Cold indignation rode the detective’s voice.

  “And you never pulled the trigger on an empty chamber?”

  “No.”

  “So, how would he know about that gun if you hadn’t shown it to him?”

  Brown stared across the desk at Cowart, an ice-like anger behind his eyes. “This interview is finished,” he said. He pointed at the door.

  “You’re wrong,” Cowart said, rising. “It’s just beginning.”

  5

  DEATH ROW AGAIN

  There is a zone reporters find, a space like the marksman’s narrowing of vision down the barrel, past the sight and directly to the center of the target, where other considerations of life fade away, and they begin to see their story take shape within their imaginations. The gaps in the narrative, the prose holes that need information start to become obvious; like a gravedigger swinging shovels of soil on top of a coffin, the reporter fills the breaches in his story.

  Matthew Cowart had reached that place.

  He drummed his fingers impatiently on the linoleum-topped table, waiting for Sergeant Rogers to escort Ferguson into the interview room. His trip to Pachoula had left him energized with questions, suffused with answers. The story was half-settled i
n his mind, had been from the moment that Tanny Brown had angrily conceded that Ferguson had been slapped by Wilcox. That small admission had opened an entire vista of lies. Matthew Cowart did not know what precisely had happened between the detectives and their quarry, but he knew that there were enough questions to warrant his story, and probably to reopen the case. What he hungered for now was the second element. If Ferguson hadn’t killed the little girl, then who had? When Ferguson appeared in the doorway, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lip, arms filled with legal folders, Cowart wanted to jump to his feet.

  The two men shook hands and Cowart watched Ferguson settle into the chair opposite him. “I’m gonna be outside,” the sergeant said, closing the reporter and the convict in the small room. There was the audible click of a dead bolt lock. The prisoner was smiling, not with pleasure but with smugness, and for just a moment, as he measured the grin in front of him against the cold anger he had seen in Tanny Brown’s eyes, Cowart felt a swaying within him. Then the feeling fled and Ferguson dropped his papers onto the tabletop, making a muffled thudding sound with their weight.

  “I knew you’d be back,” Ferguson said. “I knew what you’d find there.”

  “And what do you think that was?”

  “That I was telling the truth.”

  Cowart hesitated, then sought to knock a bit of the prisoner’s confidence astray. “I found out you were telling some truths.”

  Ferguson bristled instantly. “What the hell do you mean? Didn’t you talk to those cops? Didn’t you see that cracker redneck town? Couldn’t you see what sort of place it is?”

  “One of those cracker cops was black. You didn’t tell me that.”

  “What, you think that just because he’s the same color as me that automatically makes him okay? You think he’s my brother? That he ain’t as much a racist as that little worm partner of his? Where you been, Mr. Reporter? Tanny Brown’s worse than the worst redneck sheriff you ever imagined. He makes all the Bulls and Bubbas and all those other Deep South cops look like a bunch of bleeding hearts from the ACLU. He’s white right to his heart and soul and the only thing he hates worse than himself is folks his own color. You go ask around. Find out who the big head-banger in Pachoula is. People’d tell you it was that pig. I promise.”

  Ferguson had snapped to his feet. He was pacing about the cell, pounding one fist into an open palm, the sharp slapping noise punctuating his words. “Didn’t you talk to that old alky lawyer who sold me out?”

  “I talked to him.”

  “Did you talk to my grandmother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you go over the case?”

  “I saw they didn’t have much.”

  “Didn’t you see why they had to have that confession?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you see the gun?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Didn’t you read that confession?”

  “I read it.”

  “They beat me, those bastards.”

  “They admitted hitting you once or twice . . .”

  “Once or twice! Christ! That’s nice. They probably said it was like some little love taps or something, huh? More like a little mistake than an actual beating, right?”

  “That’s pretty much what they implied.”

  “Bastards!”

  “Take it easy . . .”

  “Take it easy! You tell me, how am I to take it easy? Those lying sons of bitches can just sit out there and say any damn thing they want. Me, all I’ve got are the walls and the chair waiting.”

  Ferguson’s voice had risen and his mouth opened again, but instead he grew silent and stopped abruptly in the middle of the room. He looked over at Cowart, as if trying to regain some of the cool that had dissipated so swiftly. He seemed to think hard about what he was going to say before continuing.

  “Were you aware, Mr. Cowart, we were in a lockdown until this morning? You know what that means, don’t you?” Ferguson spoke with obvious restraint clipped to his voice.

  “Tell me.”

  “Governor signed a death warrant. We all get locked down into the cells twenty-four hours a day until the warrant expires or the execution takes place.”

  “What happened?”

  “Man got a stay from the fifth circuit.” Ferguson shook his head. “But he’s running close to the edge. You know how it works. First you take all the appeals that stem from the case. Then you start in on the big issues, like the constitutionality of the death penalty. Or maybe the racial makeup of the jury. That’s a real favorite around here. Keep arguing away at those. Try to come up with something new. Something all those legal minds haven’t thought of yet. All the time, ticktock, ticktock. Time’s running out.”

  Ferguson walked back to his seat and sat carefully, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “You know what a lockdown does to your soul? It makes it grow all frozen cold inside. You’re trapped, feeling every tick of that damn clock like it was tapping at your heart. You feel as if it’s you that’s gonna die, because you know that someday they’re gonna come and lock down the Row because that warrant’s been signed with your name on it. It’s like they’re killing you there, slowly, just letting the blood drip out drop by drop, bleeding you to death. That’s when the Row goes crazy. You can ask Sergeant Rogers, he’ll tell you. First there’s a lot of angry shouting and yelling, but that only lasts for a few minutes. Then a quiet comes over the Row. It’s almost like you can hear the men sweating nightmares. Then something happens, some little noise will break it and pretty soon the silence gets lost because some of the men start yelling again, and others start screaming. One man, he screamed for twelve straight hours before he passed out. A lockdown squeezes all the sanity out of you, just leaves all the hate and madness. That’s all that’s left. Then they take you away.”

  Ferguson spoke the last very softly, then he got up and started pacing again. “You know what I hated about Pachoula? Its complacency. How nice it is. Just damn nice and quiet.”

  Ferguson clenched his fist. “I hated the way everything had a place and worked just right. Everyone knew each other and knew exactly how life was going to work. Get up in the morning. Go to work. Yes sir, no sir. Drive home. Have a drink. Eat dinner. Turn on the television. Go to bed. Do it again the next day. Friday night, go to the high-school game. Saturday, go on a picnic. Sunday, go to church. Didn’t make any difference if you were white or black—’cept the whites ran things and the blacks lifted and carried, same as everywhere in the South. And what I hated was that everyone liked it. Christ, how they loved that routine. Shuffling in and out of each day, just the same as the day before, same as the day after. Year after year.”

  “And you?”

  “You’re right. I didn’t fit. Because I wanted something different. I was going to make something of myself. My granny, she was the same. The black folks down there used to say she was a hard old woman who put on airs about how fine she was, even though she lived in a little shack with no indoor plumbing and a chicken coop in the back. The ones that made it out—like your goddamn Tanny Brown—couldn’t stand that she had pride. Couldn’t stand that she wouldn’t bow her head to no one. You met her. She strike you as the type likely to step aside on the sidewalk and let someone else pass?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “She’s been a fighter all her life. And when I came along, and I wasn’t a get-along type like they wanted, well, they just came after me.”

  He looked ready to go on, but Cowart stopped him. “Okay, Ferguson, fine. Let’s say that’s all true. And let’s say that I write the story: Flimsy evidence. Questionable identification. Bad lawyer. Beaten confession. That’s only half of what you promised.” He had Ferguson’s full attention now. “I want the name. The real killer, you said. No more screwing around.”

  “Wh
at promises do I have . . .”

  “None. My story, to tell as I report it.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my life. Maybe my death.”

  “No promises.”

  Ferguson sat down and looked over at Cowart. “What do you really know about me?” he asked.

  The question set Cowart back. What did he know? “What you’ve told me. What others have told me.”

  “Do you think you know me?”

  “Maybe a bit.”

  Ferguson snorted. “You’re wrong.” He seemed to hesitate, as if rethinking what he had just said. “What you see is what I am. I may not be perfect, and maybe I said and did things I shouldn’t have. Maybe I shouldn’t have pissed off that whole town so much so that when trouble came driving down the roadway, they only thought to look for me, and they let their trouble just drive on past, without even knowing it.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You will.” Ferguson closed his eyes. “I know I may come on a bit strong sometimes, but you got to be the way you are, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “That’s what happened in Pachoula, you see. Trouble came to town. Stopped a couple of minutes and then left me behind to get swept up with all the other broken little pieces of life there.” He laughed at Cowart’s expression. “Let me try again. Imagine a man—a very bad man—driving a car heading south, pulling off the roadway into Pachoula. He stops, maybe to eat a burger and some fries, beneath a tree, just outside a school yard. Spots a young girl. Talks her into his car because he looks nice enough. You’ve seen that place. It ain’t hard to find yourself out in the swamp in a couple of minutes, all alone and quiet. He does her right there and drives on. Leaves that place forever, never thinking about what he did for more’n one or two minutes, and that’s only to remember how good it felt to him to take that little girl’s life.”