Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  “See that gas station? The drive-in, serve-yourself Exxon Mini-Mart with the grocery store and the computer-driven, digital-read-out automatic pumps?”

  They swept past the station.

  “Sure. What about it?”

  “Five years ago, it was a little Dixie Gas, owned by a guy who probably’d been in the Klan in the fifties. A couple of old pumps, a stars-and-bars hanging in the window and a sign that said BAIT ’N AMMO. Hell, the guy was lucky he could spell that much, and he still had to abbreviate one of three words. But he had prime location. Sold it. Made a bundle. Retired to one of these little houses you see growing up around here in developments named Fox Run or Bass Creek or Elysian Fields, I guess.” The detective laughed to himself. “I like that. When I retire, it’s got to be to some place called the Elysian Fields. Or maybe Valhalla, that’s probably more appropriate for a cop, huh? The warriors of modern society. Of course, I’d have to die with my weapon in my hand, right?”

  “That’s right,” Cowart replied. He was tense. The detective seemed to fill the small interior of the car, as if there were more to him than Cowart could see. “Lots has changed?”

  “Look around. The road is good, that means tax dollars. No more mom-and-pops. Now it’s all 7-Eleven and Winn-Dixie and Southland Corporation. You want your car lubed, you go to a corporation. You want to see a dentist, you go to a professional association. You want to buy something, you go to a mall. Hell, the quarterback on the high-school football team is a teacher’s son and black, and the best wide receiver is a mechanic’s boy and white. How about that?”

  “Things didn’t seem to have changed much where Ferguson’s grandmother lives.”

  “No, that’s right. Old South. Dirt poor. Hot in the summer. Cold in the winter. Woodstove and outdoor plumbing and bare feet kicking at the dust. Not everything has changed, and that’s the sort of place that exists to remind us how much more changing we’ve got to do.”

  “Gas stations are one thing,” Cowart said, “what about attitudes?”

  Brown laughed. “Those change more slowly, don’t they? Everybody cheers when that teacher’s boy throws the ball and that mechanic’s boy catches it for a touchdown. But either of those kids wanted to date the other’s sister, well, I think the cheering would stop damn fast. But then, you must know all about that in your business, don’t you?”

  The reporter nodded, unsure whether he was being teased, insulted, or complimented. They swept past some tract housing being built on a wide field. A yellow bulldozer was uprooting a swath through a green field, turning over a scar of reddish dirt. It made a grinding and digging noise, momentarily filling the car with the sound of machinery working hard. Nearby, a work crew in hard hats and sweat-drenched shirts was stacking lumber and cinder block. In the car, the two men were silent until they cruised past the construction site. Then Cowart asked, “So, where’s Wilcox today?”

  “Bruce? Oh, we had a couple of traffic fatalities late last night. I sent him down to officially witness the autopsies. It teaches you a new respect for seat belts and driving around drunk and what happens when you’ve got construction workers like the ones we just passed getting paid on Thursdays.”

  “He needs lessons like that?”

  “We all do. Part of growing into the job.”

  “Like his temper?”

  “That’s something he will learn to control. Despite his manner, he is a very cautious observer, and astute. You’d be surprised how good he is with evidence and with people. It’s not often his temper boils over like that.”

  “He should have controlled it with Ferguson.”

  “I think you do not yet understand how strung out we all were over what happened to that little girl.”

  “That’s beside the point and you know it.”

  “No, that is precisely the point. You just don’t want to hear it.”

  Cowart was quieted by the detective’s admonition. After a moment, however, he started in again. “You know what will happen when I write that he struck Ferguson?”

  “I know what your think will happen.”

  “He’ll get a new trial.”

  “Maybe. I guess, probably.”

  “You sound like someone who knows something, who’s not talking.”

  “No, Mr. Cowart, I sound like someone who understands the system.”

  “Well, the system says you can’t beat a confession out of a defendant.”

  “Is that what we did? I think I told you only that Wilcox slapped Ferguson once or twice. Slapped. Open hand. Hardly more than an attention-getting device. You think getting a confession from a murderer is a tea party, all nice and proper every time? Christ. And anyway, it was almost twenty-four hours later before he confessed. Where’s the cause and effect?”

  “That’s not what Ferguson says.”

  “I suppose he says we tortured him all that time.”

  “Yes.”

  “No food. No drink. No sleep. Constant physical abuse coupled with deprivation and fear. Old tactics, remarkably successful. Been around since the Stone Age. That’s what he says?”

  “Pretty much. Do you deny it?”

  Tanny Brown smiled and nodded. “Of course. It didn’t happen that way. If it had, we’d have damn well gotten a better confession out of that close-mouthed son of a bitch. We’d have found out how he sweet-talked Joanie into that car and where he stashed his clothes and that piece of rug and all the rest of the shit he wouldn’t tell us.”

  Cowart felt a surge of indecision again. What the policeman said was true.

  Brown paused, thinking. Then he added, “There you go, that’ll help your story, won’t it? An official denial.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it won’t stop your story?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, well, I suppose it’s much more convenient for you to believe him.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No? What makes his version more plausible than what I told you?”

  “I’m not making that judgment.”

  “The hell you aren’t.” Brown pivoted in his seat and glared at Cowart. “That’s the standard reporter’s excuse, isn’t it? The ‘Hey, I just put all the versions out there and let the readers decide whom to believe . . .’ speech, right?”

  Cowart, unsettled nodded.

  The detective nodded back and returned his gaze out the window.

  Cowart fell into a hole of quiet as he steered the car slowly down the roadway. He saw that he was driving past the intersection described by Blair Sullivan. He peered down the roadway, looking for the stand of willow trees.

  “What are you looking for?” Brown asked.

  “Willow trees and a culvert that runs beneath the road.”

  The detective frowned and took a second before replying. “Right down the road. Slow down, I’ll show you.”

  He pointed ahead and Matthew Cowart saw the trees and a small dirt space where he could pull over. He parked the car and got out.

  “Okay,” said the detective, “we found the willows. Now what are we looking for?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Mr. Cowart, perhaps if you were a bit more forthcoming . . .”

  “Under the culvert. I was told to look under the culvert.”

  “Who told you to look under the culvert, for what?”

  The reporter shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s just take a look first.”

  The detective snorted, but followed after him.

  Matthew Cowart walked to the side of the road and stared down at the edge of the slate-gray, rusted pipe that protruded into a tangle of scrub brush, rock, and moss. It was surrounded by the inevitable array of litter: beer cans, plastic soda bottles, unrecognizable paper wrappings, an old dirty white hightop sneaker, and a rank
, half-eaten bucket of fried chicken. A trickle of black dirty water dripped from the end of the metal cylinder. He hesitated, then scrambled down into the damp, thorny undergrowth. The bushes tugged at his clothing and he could feel ooze beneath his feet. The detective followed him without hesitation, instantly ripping and muddying his suit. He paid it no mind.

  “Tell me,” the reporter asked, “is this thing always like this, or . . .”

  “No. When it rains hard, this whole area will fill up, all muck swamp and mud. Takes a day or so to dry out again. Over and over.”

  Cowart slid on the gloves. “Hold the flashlight,” he said.

  Gingerly, he got down on his knees and, with the detective balancing next to him, flashing the light beneath the edge of the culvert, the reporter started scraping away built-up dirt and rock.

  “Mr. Cowart, do you know what you’re doing?”

  He didn’t answer but continued pulling the debris away, pitching it behind him.

  “Perhaps if you told me . . .”

  He caught a glimpse of something in the light beam. He started to dig harder. The detective saw that he’d seen something and tried to peer down, under the lip, at what it was. Matthew Cowart scratched away some wet leaves and mud. He saw a handle and grasped it. He pulled hard. For an instant there was resistance, as if the earth would not give it up without a struggle, then it came free. He stood up abruptly, turning toward the detective, holding out his hand.

  A wild, self-satisfied excitement filled him. “One knife,” he said slowly.

  The detective stared at it.

  “One murder weapon, I suspect.”

  The four-inch blade and handle of the knife were crusted with rust and dirt. It was black with age and the elements, and for an instant Cowart feared the weapon would disintegrate in his hand.

  Tanny Brown looked hard at Matthew Cowart, pulled a clean cloth from a pocket and took the knife by the tip, wrapping it gently. “I’ll take that,” he said firmly.

  The detective placed the knife in his suit pocket. “Not much left of it,” he said slowly, with disappointment. “We’ll run it through the lab, but I wouldn’t count on much.” He stared down at the culvert, then up into the sky. “Step back,” he continued softly. “Don’t touch anything else. There may be something of forensic value, and I don’t want it further disturbed.” He fixed Cowart with a long, hard stare. “If this location relates to a crime, then I want it properly preserved.”

  “You know what it relates to,” Cowart replied.

  Brown stepped away for an instant, shaking his head. “You son of a bitch,” he said softly, turning abruptly and scrambling back up the incline toward the reporter’s car. He stood for an instant on the roadway, hand clenched, face set. Then, suddenly, with a swiftness that seemed to break the still morning, he kicked at the open car door. The noise of his foot slamming into the metal reverberated amidst the heat and sunlight, fading slowly like a distant shot.

  Cowart sat alone in the policeman’s office, waiting. He watched through the window as night slid over the town, a sudden surge of darkness that seemed to fight its way out of shadowy corners and from beneath shade trees to take over the atmosphere. It was a wintertime swiftness, with none of the slow lingering daylight of summer.

  The day had been spent on edge. He had watched as a team of crime-scene technicians had carefully processed the culvert for other evidence. He had watched as they had bagged and tagged all the debris, dirt samples, and some pieces of unrecognizable trash. He knew they would find nothing, but had waited patiently through the search.

  By late afternoon, Tanny Brown and he had driven back to the police headquarters, where the detective had put him in the office to await the results of the laboratory examination of the knife. The two men had shared little but silence.

  Cowart turned to the wall of the office and gazed at a framed photograph of the detective and his family, standing outside a whitewashed church. A wife and two daughters, one all pigtails and braces with an insouciance that penetrated even the austerity of her Sunday clothes; the other a teenage vixen-in-the-making with smooth skin and a figure pushing hard at the starched white of her blouse. The detective and his wife were smiling calmly at the camera, trying to look comfortable.

  He was hit with a sudden twinge. He had thrown out all the pictures of himself with his wife and child after the divorce. Now he wondered why.

  He let his eyes wander over the other wall decorations. There was a series of marksmanship plaques for winning the annual county handgun contest. A framed citation from the mayor and city council attesting to his bravery on an obscure occasion. A framed medal, a Bronze Star, along with another citation. Next to it was a picture of a younger, far leaner Tanny Brown in fatigues in Southeast Asia.

  The door opened behind him, and Cowart turned. The detective was impassive, his face set.

  “Hey,” Cowart said, “what did you get the medal for?”

  “What?”

  Cowart gestured at the wall.

  “Oh. That. I was a medic. Platoon got caught in an ambush and four guys got dropped out in a paddy. I went out and brought them in, one after the other. It was no big deal except we had a reporter from The Washington Post along with us that day. My lieutenant figured he’d fucked up so bad walking us into the ambush that he better do something, so he made sure I got cited for a medal. Kinda deflected the bad impression the newspaper guy was going to come away with after spending four hours having his ass shot at and his face pushed down in a swamp crawling with leeches. Did you go?”

  “No,” Cowart said. “My lottery number was three-twenty. It never came up.”

  The detective nodded, gesturing toward a chair. He plumped himself down behind the desk.

  “Nothing,” the detective said.

  “Fingerprints? Blood? Anything?”

  “Not yet. We’re going to send it off to the FBI lab and see what they can do. They’ve got fancier equipment than we do.”

  “But nothing?”

  “Well, the medical examiner says the blade is the right size to have caused the stab wounds. The deepest wound measured the same distance as the blade of the knife. That’s something.”

  Cowart pulled out his notepad and started taking notes. “Can you trace the knife?”

  “It’s a cheap, typical nineteen-ninety-five, buy-it-in-any-sporting-goods-store-type knife. We’ll try, but there’s no identifying serial number or manufacturer’s mark.” He hesitated and looked hard at Cowart.“But what’s the point?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. It’s time to stop playing games. Who told you about the knife? Is it the one that killed Joanie Shriver? Talk to me.”

  Cowart hesitated.

  “You gonna make me read all about it? Or what?” Harsh insistence crawled over the fatigue in his voice.

  “I’ll tell you one thing: Robert Earl Ferguson didn’t tell me where to look for that knife.”

  “You’re telling me that someone else told you where to find the weapon that may have been used to kill Joanie Shriver?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You care to share this information?”

  Matthew Cowart looked up from his scribblings. “Tell me one thing first, Lieutenant. If I say who told me about that knife, are you going to reopen the murder investigation? Are you willing to go to the state attorney? To get up in front of the trial judge and say that the case needs to be reopened?”

  The detective scowled. “I can’t make a promise like that before I know anything. Come on, Cowart. Tell me.”

  Cowart shook his head. “I just don’t know if I can trust you, Lieutenant. It’s as simple as that.”

  In that moment, Tanny Brown looked like a man primed to explode. “I thought you understood one thing,” the detective said, almost whispering.
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  “What?”

  “That in this town until that man pays, the murder of Joanie Shriver will never be closed.”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Who pays?”

  “We’re all paying. All of us. All the time.” He slammed his fist down hard on the table. The sound echoed in the small room. “You got something to say, say it!”

  Matthew Cowart thought hard about what he knew and what he didn’t know and finally replied, “Blair Sullivan told me where to find that knife.”

  The name had the expected impact on the policeman. He looked surprised, then shocked, like a batter expecting a fastball watching a curve dip over the corner of the plate.

  “Sullivan? What has he got to do with this?”

  “You ought to know. He passed right by Pachoula in May 1987, busy killing all sorts of folks.”

  “I know that, but . . .”

  “And he knew where that knife was.”

  Brown stared at him. A few stretched seconds of silence filled the room. “Did Sullivan say he killed Joanie Shriver?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Did he say Ferguson didn’t kill that girl?”

  “Not exactly, but . . .”

  “Did he say anything exactly to contradict the original trial?”

  “He knew about the knife.”

  “He knew about a knife. We don’t know it is the knife, and without any forensics, it’s nothing more than a piece of rusted metal. Come on, Cowart, you know Sullivan’s stone crazy. Did he give you anything that could even remotely be called evidence?”

  Brown’s eyes had narrowed. Cowart could see him processing information rapidly, speculating, absorbing, discarding. He thought right then, It’s too hard for him. He won’t want to consider any possibilities of mistake. He has his killer and he’s satisfied.

  “Nothing else.”

  “Then that’s not enough to reopen an investigation that resulted in a conviction.”

  “No? Okay. Get ready to read it in the paper. Then we’ll see if it’s enough.”

  The policeman glared at Cowart and pointed at the door. “Leave, Mr. Cowart. Leave right now. Get in your rental car and go back to the motel. Pack your bags. Drive to the airport. Get on a plane and go back to your city. Don’t come back. Understand?”