Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  “I’ll be damned,” Cowart said.

  “No, he will, to be sure. But that’s not our concern, now, is it?”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  “Take your time. We don’t move Mr. Sullivan without a bit of caution, mind you. Not since nine months ago when he jumped one of the Row guards outside the shower and chewed the man’s ear clean off. Said it tasted good. Said he’d of eaten the man’s whole head if we hadn’t pulled him off the top. That’s Sully for you.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “The man called him crazy. You know, nothing special. Just like you’d say to your old lady, Hey, you’re crazy to want to buy that new dress. Or you’d say to yourself, I’m crazy to want to pay my taxes on time. Like no big deal, huh? But it sure was the wrong damn word to use with Sullivan, all right. Just, bam! And he was on top of that man, chewing away like some sort of mongrel dog. The guy he took after, too, had to be twice his size. Didn’t make no difference. And there they were rolling about, blood flying all over and the man screaming all the time, get offa me, you crazy sonuvabitch. ’Course it didn’t make Sully do anything except fight harder. We had to pry him off with nightsticks, cool him down in the hole for a couple of months. I imagine it was that word, though, got it all started, kept it all going. It was just like pulling the man’s trigger, he exploded so quick. Taught me something. Taught everyone on the Row something. To be a bit more cautious about the words we use. Sully, well, I gather he’s very concerned about vocabulary.”

  Rogers paused, letting a momentary silence slip into the air. Then he added, “So’s the other guy, now.”

  Cowart was escorted by a young, gray-suited guard who said nothing and acted as if he were accompanying some disease-bearing organism down a whitewashed corridor filled with glare from sunlight pouring through a bank of high windows, placed beyond anyone’s reach. The light made the world seem fuzzy and indistinct. The reporter tried to clear his mind as they walked. He listened to the tapping of their soles on the polished floor. There was a technique he used, a blanking-out where he tried not to think of anything, not to envision the upcoming interview, not to remember other stories he’d written or people he knew, anything at all; he wanted to exclude every detail and become a blotter, absorbing every sound and sight of the event that was about to happen.

  He counted the clicking footsteps of the corrections officer as they passed down the corridor and through a locked set of double doors. As the count neared one hundred, they came into an open area, overseen by a pair of guards in a cubicle with catwalks and stairs leading up to housing tiers. In the junction of the space made by all the paths converging was a wire cage. In the center of the cage was a single steel-gray table and two benches. These were bolted to the floor. On one side of the table was a large metal ring welded into the side. Cowart was shown through the cage’s single opening and motioned to take a seat opposite the side with the ring.

  “The son of a bitch’ll be here in a minute. You wait,” the guard said. Then he turned and walked swiftly out of the cage, disappearing up one of the stairwells and down a catwalk.

  Within a moment or so came a pounding on one of the doors that opened onto the area. Then a voice shouted over the intercom, “Security Detail! Five men coming through!”

  There was a harsh blare from an electronic lock being opened and Cowart looked up to see Sergeant Rogers, wearing a flak jacket and a helmet, leading a squad into the area. The orange jumpsuit of the prisoner was obscured by men on either side of him, and a third behind. The group moved in quickstep right into the cage.

  Blair Sullivan was hobbled by shackles connecting his hands and feet. The men that surrounded him marched with military precision, each boot hitting the floor in unison while he half-skipped in their midst, like a child trying desperately to keep up with a Fourth of July parade.

  He was a cadaverously thin man, not tall, with purple-red tattoos crawling up the bleached white skin of each forearm and a shock of black hair streaked with gray. He had dark eyes that flickered about rapidly, taking in the cage, the guards, and Matthew Cowart. One eyelid seemed to twitch mildly as if each eye worked independently of the other. There was a flush looseness about his grin, about the languid way he stood while the sergeant cautiously undid the handcuff chain from where it was connected to his feet, almost as if he was able to disconnect the manacles from his mind. The corrections officers that flanked him stood at port arms with riot batons. The prisoner smiled at them, mock-friendly. The sergeant then ran the chain through the metal ring on the table and refastened it to a large leather belt that encircled the man’s waist.

  “All right. Sit down,” Rogers ordered brusquely.

  The three guards stood back quickly from the prisoner, who eased himself into the steel seat. He had locked his eyes onto Cowart’s. The light grin still wandered about the prisoner’s lips, but his eyes were narrowed and probing.

  “All right,” the sergeant said again. “Have at it.”

  He led the corrections officers from the cage, pausing to lock it securely.

  “They don’t like me,” Blair Sullivan said with a sigh.

  “Why not?”

  “Dietary reasons,” he replied, laughing abruptly. The laugh degenerated within seconds into a wheeze, followed by a hacking cough. Sullivan produced a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, along with a box of wooden matches. He had to stoop toward the table to manage this, half-bending in his seat as he lit the cigarette, the range of his arms limited by the chain that fastened his wrists to the table.

  “Of course, they don’t have to like me to kill me. You mind if I smoke?” he asked Cowart.

  “No, go ahead.”

  “It’s sort of funny, don’t you think?”

  “What?”

  “The condemned man smoking a cigarette. While everybody in the world is trying so damn hard to quit smoking, folks here living on the Row just naturally chain-smoke. Hell, we’re probably R. J. Reynolds’ best customers. I suspect we’d engage in every bad or dangerous vice we could if they’d let us. As it is, we just smoke. It’s not like any of us are terribly worried about contracting lung cancer, although I suspect that if you managed to get damn sick enough, I mean really sick like unto death, then the state would be reluctant to drop your tail into the chair. The state gets squeamish about such things, Cowart. They don’t want to execute somebody who’s sick of mind or body. No, sir. They want the men they juice to be physically fit and mentally sound. There was a big uproar in Texas a couple of years back when that state tried to kill some poor sucker who had suffered a heart attack when his warrant was signed. It postponed the execution until the man was well enough to walk to his death. Didn’t want to wheel him into the chamber on some hospital gurney, no way. That would offend the sensibilities of the do-gooders and the bleeding hearts. And there’s a great story, back from the thirties, about some gangster in New York. Man, soon as he got to the Row, he started eating and eating. He was a big man getting bigger, you see. Got fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter. Ate bread and potatoes and spaghetti until it was coming out his ears. Starches, you see. You know what he figured? He figured he could beat the chair by getting so big that they couldn’t fit him into it! I love it. Trouble was, he didn’t quite make it. It was a tight squeeze, but damn, he still fit. Joke was on him, then, wasn’t it? He must have looked like a pig roast by the time they got through with him. You tell me where’s the logic in all that? Huh?”

  He laughed again. “There’s no place like Death Row for letting you see all the little ironies of life.” He stared over at Cowart, his one eyelid twitching quickly.

  “Tell me, Cowart, you a killer, too?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, you ever take a life? In the army, maybe? You’re old enough for Vietnam, you go there? No, probably not. You ain’t got that faraway look that vets get
when they start in to remembering. But maybe you smashed a car up as a teenager or something. Kill your best buddy or your main squeeze on a Saturday night? Or maybe you told the doctors at some damn hospital to pull the plug on your old mom or dad when they got so decrepit a respirator had to keep them alive. Did you do that, Cowart? You ever tell your wife or girlfriend to get an abortion? Didn’t want any little ones crawling in the way of success? Maybe you’re a bit more upscale, Cowart, huh? Take a little toot or two of cocaine at some party down in Miami, maybe? Know how many lives were lost over that shipment? Just guessing, mind you. Come on, Cowart, tell me, you a killer, too?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Blair Sullivan snorted. “You’re wrong. Everybody’s a killer. You just got to look hard enough. Take a broad enough definition of the word. Haven’t you ever been in a shopping mall and seen some ragged mean momma just light into her kid, wallop ’em good right there in front of everybody? What you think’s going on there? Look at that child’s eyes, you’ll see them go icy cold, sir. A killer in the making. So, why don’t you look inside yourself as well. You got those icy eyes, too, Cowart. You got it in you. I know. I can tell just by looking at you.”

  “That’s quite a trick.”

  “Not a trick. A special ability, I guess. You know, takes one to know one, that sort of thing. You get thick enough with death and dying, Cowart, and you can spot the signs.”

  “Well, you’re mistaken this time.”

  “Am I? We’ll see. We’ll see about that.”

  Sullivan lounged about in the hard metal chair, striking a relaxed pose but all the time letting his eyes burrow deeper into Cowart’s heart. “It gets easy, you know.”

  “What does?”

  “Killing.”

  “How?”

  “Familiarity. You learn real quick how people die. Some die hard, some die soft. Some fight like the devil, others just go along quietly. Some plead for their lives, some spit in your eye. Some cry, some laugh. Some call out for their mommas, others tell you they’ll see you in hell. Some folks’ll hang on to life real strong, others just give it up easy. But in the end, everybody’s just the same. Getting stiff and cold. You. Me. Everybody’s the same at the end.”

  “Maybe at the end. But people get there in a lot of different ways.”

  Sullivan laughed. “That’s true enough. That’s a real Death Row observation, Cowart. That’s exactly what some fellow on the Row would say, after about eight years and a hundred appeals and time running out quick. A lot of different ways.”

  He drew hard on the cigarette and blew smoke up into the still prison air. For a moment Blair Sullivan’s eyes followed the trail of smoke as it slowly dissipated. “We’re all smoke, aren’t we? When it comes right down to it. That’s what I told those shrinks, but I don’t think they wanted to hear that too much.”

  “What shrinks?”

  “From the FBI. They got this special Behavioral Sciences section that’s trying like crazy to figure out what makes mass murderers, so they can do something about this particular American pastime. . . .” He grinned. “Of course, they ain’t having a whole helluva lot of success, ’cause each and every one of us has our own little reasons. Couple of real nice guys, though. They like to come down here, give me Minnesota Multiphasic Personality tests and Thematic Apperception tests and Rorschach tests and I.Q. tests and, Christ knows, they’ll probably want to give me the fucking college board exams next time. They like it when I talk about my momma a lot, and when I tell them how much I hated that old bat and especially my stepdaddy. He beat me, you know. Beat me real bad every time I opened my mouth. Used his fists, used his belt, used his prick. Beat me and fucked me, fucked me and beat me. Day in, day out, regular as Sundays. Man, I hated them. Sure do. Still do, yes sir. They’re in their seventies now, still living in a little cinder-block bungalow in the Upper Keys with a crucifix on the wall and a full-color picture of Jesus, still thinking that their savior’s gonna come right through the door and lift them up into heaven. They cross themselves when they hear my name and say things like, ‘Well, the boy was always in the devil’s thrall,’ and stuff like that. Those boys from the FBI are sure interested in all that. You interested in that stuff, too, Cowart? Or do you just want to know why I killed all those folks, including some I hardly even knew?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed harshly. “Well, it’s an easy enough question to answer: I was just on my way back home and sort of got sidetracked. Distracted, you might say. Never did make it all the way. That make sense to you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Sullivan grinned and rolled his eyes. “Life’s a mystery, ain’t it?”

  “If you say so.”

  “That’s right. If I say so. Of course you’re a bit more interested in another little mystery, aren’t you, Cowart? You don’t really care about some other folks, do you? That ain’t why you’re here.”

  “No.”

  “Tell me why you want to talk to a bad old guy like myself?”

  “Robert Earl Ferguson and Pachoula, Florida.”

  As best he could, Blair Sullivan threw back his head and bellowed a single sharp laugh that echoed off the prison walls. Cowart saw a number of the corrections officers swing their heads, watch momentarily, then turn back to their tasks.

  “Well now, those are interesting subjects, Cowart. Mighty interesting. But we’ll have to get to them in a minute.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  Blair Sullivan pitched forward across the table, bringing his face as close as possible to Cowart’s. The chain that linked him to the table rattled and strained with the sudden pressure. A vein stood out on the prisoner’s neck and his face flushed suddenly. “Because you don’t know me well enough yet.”

  Then he sat back abruptly, reaching for another cigarette, which he lit off the stub of the first. “Tell me something about yourself, Cowart, then maybe we can talk. I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Got a wife?”

  “Ex-wife.”

  The prisoner hooted. “Kids?”

  Matthew Cowart hesitated, then replied, “None.”

  “Liar. Live alone or you got a girlfriend?”

  “Alone.”

  “Apartment or a house?”

  “Little apartment.”

  “Got any close friends?”

  Again, he hesitated. “Sure.”

  “Liar. That’s twice and I’m counting. What do you do at night?”

  “Sit around. Read. Watch a ball game.”

  “Keep to yourself mostly, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  The eyelid twitched again. “Have trouble sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Liar. That’s three times. You ought to be ashamed, lying to a condemned man. Same as Matthew did to Jesus before the cock crowed. Now, do you dream at night?”

  “What the hell . . .”

  Blair Sullivan whispered sharply, “Play the game, Cowart, or else I’ll walk out of here without answering any of your frigging questions.”

  “Sure. I dream. Everyone dreams.”

  “What about?”

  “People like you,” Cowart said angrily.

  Sullivan laughed again. “Got me on that one.” He leaned back in his seat and watched Cowart. “Nightmares, huh? Because that’s what we are, aren’t we? Nightmares.”

  “That’s right,” Cowart replied.

  “That’s what I tried to tell those boys from the FBI, but they weren’t listening. That’s all we are, smoke and nightmares. We just walk and talk and bring a little bit of darkness and fear to this earth. Gospel according to John: ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning,
and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.’ Got that? Eighth verse. Now, there might be a bunch of fancy shrink words to describe it all, but, hell, that’s just a bunch of medical gobbledygook, right?”

  “Right, I guess.”

  “You know what? You’ve got to be a free man to be a good killer. Free, Cowart. Not hung up on all the silly shit that bogs down ordinary lives. A free man.”

  Cowart didn’t reply.

  “Let me tell you something else: It ain’t hard to kill folks. That’s what I told them. And you don’t really think about it much after, neither. I mean, you got too many things to think about, like disposing of bodies and weapons and getting bloodstains off’n your hands and such. Hell, after a murder, you’re downright busy, you know. Just figuring out what to do next and how to get the hell outa there.”

  “Well, if killing is easy, what was hard?”

  Sullivan smiled. “That’s a good question. They never asked that one.” He thought for a moment, turning his face upward toward the ceiling. “I think that what was hardest was getting here to the Row and figuring that I never did kill the folks I wanted to kill the most, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ain’t that always the hardest thing in life, Cowart? Lost opportunities. They’re what we regret the most. What keeps us up at night.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  Sullivan shifted about in his seat, leaning forward again toward Cowart, whispering in a conspiratorial voice, “You got to get it. If not now, you will someday. You got to remember it, too, because it’ll be important someday. Someday when you least expect it, you’ll remember: Who is it that Blair Sullivan hates most? Who does it bother him every day to know they’re alive and well and living out their days? It’s real important for you to remember that, Cowart.”