Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  The front of the prison had been transformed in the prior twenty-four hours. There were easily two dozen television minivans in the parking lot, their call letters emblazoned on the sides, lots of LIVE EYES and ACTION NEWS TEAMS. Most were equipped with portable satellite transmission capabilities for live, remote shots. Camera crews lounged around, talking, sharing stories, or working over their equipment like soldiers getting ready for a battle. An equal number of reporters and still photographers milled about as well. As promised, the roadway was marked by demonstrators from both camps, who honked and hooted and shouted imprecations at each other.

  Cowart parked and tried to slide inconspicuously toward the front of the prison. He was spotted almost immediately and instantly surrounded by cameras. The two detectives worked their way toward the prison, moving on the fringe of the crowd that gathered about him.

  He held up his hand. “Not right now. Just not yet, please.”

  “Matt,” cried a television reporter he recognized from Miami. “Will Sullivan see you? Is he going to tell you what the heck is going on?”

  The camera lights blended with fierce sunlight. He tried to shade his eyes. “I don’t know yet, Tom. Let me find out.”

  “Are there any suspects?” the television man persisted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is Sullivan going to go through with it now?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “What have you been told?”

  “Nothing. Not yet. Nothing.”

  “Will you tell us when you talk to him?” another voice shouted.

  “Sure,” he lied, saying anything to extricate himself. He was struggling through the crowd toward the front doors. He could see Sergeant Rogers waiting for him.

  “Hey, Matty,” the television reporter called. “Did you hear about the governor?”

  “What, Tom? No, I haven’t.”

  “He just had a press conference, saying no stay unless Sullivan files an appeal.”

  Cowart nodded and stepped toward the prison door, sweeping under the broad arm of Sergeant Rogers. The two detectives had slid in before him and were striding away from the probing lights of the cameramen.

  Rogers whispered in his ear, singing, as he passed, “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away . . .”

  “Thanks,” said Cowart sarcastically.

  “Things sure are getting interesting,” the sergeant said.

  “Maybe for you,” Cowart said under his breath. “For me, it’s getting a little difficult.”

  The sergeant laughed. Then he turned to the two detectives. “You must be Weiss and Shaeffer.” They shook hands. “Y’all can wait in that office, right in there.”

  “Wait?” Weiss said sharply. “We’re here to see Sullivan. Right now.”

  The sergeant moved slowly, grasping Cowart by the elbow and steering him toward a sally port. All the time, however, he was shaking his head. “He don’t want to see you.”

  “But, Sergeant,” Andrea Shaeffer spoke softly. “This is a murder investigation.”

  “I know that,” the sergeant replied.

  “Look, dammit, we want to see Sullivan, right now,” Weiss said.

  “It don’t work that way, Detective. The man’s got an official . . . ,” he glanced up at a wall clock, shaking his head, “uh, nine hours and forty-two minutes of life. If’n he don’t want to see somebody, hell, I ain’t gonna force him. Got that?”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts.”

  “But he’s going to talk to Cowart?” Shaeffer asked.

  “That’s right. Excuse me, miss, but I don’t pretend to understand what Mr. Sullivan’s got in mind by all this. But if’n you got a complaint or you think maybe he’s gonna change his mind, well, you got to talk to the governor’s office. Maybe they’ll give you some more time. As for us, we got to work with what we got. That means Mr. Cowart and his notebook and tape recorder. Alone.”

  The woman nodded. She turned to her partner. “Get on the horn with the governor’s office. See what the hell they say about all this.” She turned to Cowart. “Mr. Cowart, you’ve got to do your job, I know, but please, will you ask him if he’ll talk with us?”

  “I can do that,” Cowart replied.

  “And,” the detective continued, “you probably have a pretty good idea what I’d be asking him. Try to get it down on tape.” She opened a briefcase and thrust a half dozen extra cassettes at him. “I’m not going anywhere. Not until we can talk again.”

  The reporter nodded. “I understand.”

  The detective looked over toward the sergeant. “It always get this weird?” she asked, smiling.

  Rogers paused and returned her smile. “No, ma’am.”

  The sergeant looked up at the clock again. “There’s a lot of talking here, but time’s wasting.”

  Cowart gestured toward the sally port and followed the sergeant into the prison. The two men walked quickly down a long corridor, their feet slapping against the polished linoleum surface. The sergeant was shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “It’s just I don’t like all this confusion,” the sergeant replied. “Things should be put in order before dying. Don’t like loose ends, no sir.”

  “I think that’s how he’s always meant it to play.”

  “I think you’re damn right there, Mr. Cowart.”

  “Where we going?”

  The reporter was being led onto a different wing than he’d been to before.

  “Sully’s in the isolation cell. It’s right close by the chair. Right close to an office with phones and everything, so’s if there’s a stay, we’ll know right fast.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “See for yourself.” He pointed Cowart toward a solitary holding cell. There was a single chair set outside the bars. He approached alone and found Sullivan lying on a steel bunk, staring at a television screen. His hair had been shaved, so that he looked like a death’s head mask. He was surrounded by small cartons overflowing with clothing, books, and papers—his possessions moved from his former cell. The prisoner turned abruptly in the bed, gestured widely toward the single chair, and rolled his feet off the bunk, stretching as if tired. In his hand he clutched a Bible.

  “Well, well, Cowart. Took your own sweet time getting back for my party, I see.”

  He lit a cigarette and coughed.

  “There are two detectives from Monroe County, Mr. Sullivan. They want to see you.”

  “Fuck ’em.”

  “They want to ask you about the deaths of your mother and stepfather.”

  “They do? Fuck ’em.”

  “They want me to ask you to see them.”

  He laughed. “Well, that makes all the difference in the world, don’t it? Fuck ’em again.”

  Sullivan got up abruptly. He stared about for an instant, then went to the bars and grasped hold of them, pushing his face against them hard.

  “Hey!” he called out. “What the hell time is it? I need to know, what time is it? Hey, somebody! Hey!”

  “There’s time,” Cowart said slowly.

  Sullivan stepped back, staring angrily toward him. “Sure. Sure.”

  The man shuddered, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You know something, Cowart? You get so you can actually feel all the muscles around and about your heart just getting a little tighter with each second.”

  “You could call an attorney.”

  “Fuck ’em. You got to play the hand you’re dealt.”

  “You’re not going to . . .”

  “No. Let’s get that settled. I may be a bit scared and a bit twitchy, but shit. I know about dying. Yes, sir, it’s one thing I know a lot about.”

&nb
sp; Blair Sullivan shifted about in the cell, finally sitting on the edge of the bunk and leaning forward. He seemed to relax suddenly, smiling conspiratorially, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

  “Tell me about your interviews,” he said, laughing. “I want to know everything.” Sullivan gestured at the television. “The damn television and newspapers don’t have any real details. It’s just a lot of general garbage. I want you to tell me.”

  Cowart felt cold. “Details?”

  “That’s right. Leave nothing out. Use all those words you’re so damn clever with and paint me a real portrait, huh?”

  Cowart took a deep breath, thinking, I’m as mad as he is, but he continued. “They were in the kitchen. They’d been tied up . . .”

  “Good. Good. Tied tight, like hog-tied, or what?”

  “No. Just their arms pulled back like this . . .” He demonstrated.

  Sullivan nodded. “Good. Keep going.”

  “Throats cut.”

  Sullivan nodded.

  “There was blood all over. Your mother was naked. Their heads were back like this . . .”

  “Keep going. Raped?”

  “I couldn’t tell. There were a lot of flies.”

  “I like that. Buzzing around, real noisy?”

  “That’s right.” Cowart heard the words falling from his mouth, echoing slightly. He thought some other part of him that he’d never known existed had taken over.

  “Had they been in pain?” the condemned man asked.

  “How would I know?”

  “C’mon, Cowart. Did it look like they’d had some time to contemplate their deaths?”

  “Yes. They were tied in their chairs. They must have been looking at each other, right up to the time they were killed. One got to watch the other die, I guess, unless there was more than one killer.”

  “No, just one,” Sullivan said quietly. He rubbed his arms. “They were in the chairs?”

  “Right. Tied down.”

  “Like me.”

  “What?”

  “Tied in a chair. And then executed.” He laughed.

  Cowart felt the cold abruptly turn to heat. “There was a Bible.”

  “. . . And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been . . .”

  “That’s right.”

  “Perfect. Just like it was supposed to be.”

  Sullivan stood up abruptly, wrapping his arms around himself, hugging himself as if to contain all the feelings that reverberated within him. The muscles on his arms bulged. A vein on his forehead throbbed. His pale face flushed red. He let out a great breath of air.

  “I can see it,” the condemned man said. “I can see it.”

  Sullivan raised his arms up in the cell, stretching out. Then he brought them down sharply.

  “All right!” he said. “It’s done.” He breathed hard for a few moments, like a runner winded at the end of a race, then looked down at his hands, staring at them as he twisted them into claws. The dragon tattoos on his forearms wrenched with life. He laughed to himself, then turned back to Cowart. “But now for the little bit extra. The addition that really makes this all worthwhile.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Sullivan shook his head. “Get out that notepad. Get out that tape recorder. It’s time to learn about death. I told you. Legacy. Old Sully’s last will and testament.”

  As Cowart got ready, Sullivan resumed his seat on the edge of the bunk. He smoked slowly, savoring each long drag.

  “You ready, Cowart?”

  Cowart nodded.

  “All right. All right. Where to start? Well, I’ll just start in with the obvious first. Cowart, how many deaths they pinned on me?”

  “Twelve. Officially.”

  “That’s right. But we gotta be technical. I been convicted and sentenced to die for those nice folks in Miami, that cute little gal and her boyfriend. That’s official-like. And then I confessed to those ten other folks, just to be hospitable, I guess. Those detectives got those stories, all right, so I ain’t going into those details right now. And then there’s that little gal in Pachoula—number thirteen, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, we’re gonna leave her aside for the moment. Let’s just go back to twelve as the starting place, okay?”

  “Okay. Twelve.”

  He let out a long, slow laugh. “Well, that ain’t hardly right. No, sir. Not hardly right at all.”

  “How many?”

  He grinned. “I been sitting here, trying to add that total up, Cowart. Adding and adding, trying to come up with a total that’s accurate. Don’t want to leave any room for discussion, you know.”

  “How many?”

  “How about thirty-nine folks, Cowart?”

  The condemned man leaned back on his seat, rocking slightly. He picked up his legs and wrapped his arms around his knees, continuing to rock.

  “Of course, I may have missed one or two. It happens, you know. Sometimes killings just seem the same, don’t have that little spark to ’em that makes ’em stand out in your mind.”

  Cowart didn’t reply.

  “Let’s start with a little old lady who lived outside New Orleans. Lived alone in an apartment complex for the elderly in a little town called Jefferson. I saw her one afternoon, just walking home alone, just as nice and easy and taking in the day, like it belonged to her. So I followed her. She lived on a street called Lowell Place. I think her name was Eugenia Mae Phillips. I’m trying hard to remember these details, Cowart, because when you go to checking them all out, you’ll need something to go on. This’d be about five years ago, in September. After night fell, I jimmied open a sliding door in the back. She had one of those garden-type apartments. Didn’t even have a dead bolt on the back. Not a light outside, no nothing. Now why would any damn fool live in one of those? Just likely to get yourself killed, yes sir. There ain’t a self-respecting rapist, robber, or killer about who don’t see one of those apartments and just give a little jump for joy, ’cause they ain’t no trouble at all. She should at least have had some big old vicious black dog. But she didn’t. She had a parakeet. A yellow one in a cage. I killed it, too. And that’s what happened. Of course, I had me a little fun with her first. She was so scared, hardly made no noise when I stuffed that pillow over her head. I did her, and five others right around there. Just rape and robbery, mainly. She was the only one I killed. Then I moved on. You know, you keep moving, ain’t nothing bad gonna happen to you.”

  Sullivan paused. “You should keep that in mind, Cowart. Keep moving. Never sink in and let any roots dig in. You keep going, police don’t get a fair shot at you. Hell, I got picked up for vagrancy, trespassing, suspicion of burglary, all sorts of shit. But each time, nobody ever made me. I’d spend a couple of nights in jail. Spent a month in a county lockup in Dothan, Alabama, once. That was a helluva place, Cowart. Cockroaches and rats, and smelled of shit something awful. But nobody ever made me for what I was. How could they? I wasn’t nobody important. . . .”

  He smiled. “Or so they thought.”

  He hesitated, looking through the iron bars. “Of course, that ain’t the situation now, is it? Right now, Blair Sullivan’s a bit more important, ain’t he?”

  He looked up sharply toward the reporter. “Ain’t he, dammit!”

  “Yes.”

  “Then say it!”

  “A lot more important.”

  Sullivan seemed to relax, his voice slowed.

  “That’s right. That’s right.” He shut his eyes for a moment, but when they blinked open, there was a chilling insouciance flickering within them.

  “Why, I’m probably the most damn important fellow in the state of Florida right about now, don’t ya think, Cowart?”

&
nbsp; “Maybe.”

  “Why, everyone wants to know what old Sully knows, ain’t that true?”

  “That’s true.”

  “You getting the picture now, Cowart?”

  “I think so.”

  “Damn right. I daresay there’s a whole lot of folks gonna be right intrigued . . . ,” he stretched the word out, letting it roll around on his tongue like a piece of hard candy, “. . . by what old Sully has to say.”

  Cowart nodded.

  “Good. Real good. Now, when I moved over to Mobile, I killed a kid in a 7-Eleven. Just a holdup, no big deal. You got any idea how hard it is for the cops to make you on one of those? If nobody sees you go in, nobody sees you come out, why it’s just like this little touch of evil lands right there and bingo! Somebody dies. He was a nice kid, too. Begged once or twice. Said, ‘Take the money. Take the money.’ Said, ‘Don’t kill me. I’m just working my way through school. Please don’t kill me.’ Of course, I did. Shot him once in the back of the head with a handgun, nice and quick and easy. Got a couple of hundred bucks. Then I took a couple of Twinkies and a soda or two and some chips and left him back behind the counter. . . .”

  He paused. Cowart saw a line of sweat on the man’s forehead. His voice was quavering with intensity. “You got any questions, don’t hesitate to let me know.”

  Cowart choked out, “Do you have a time, a date, a location?”

  “Right, right. I’ll work on that. Got to have details.”

  Sullivan relaxed, considering, then burst out with a short laugh. “Hell, I shoulda had a notebook, just like you. I got to rely on what I remember.”

  Sullivan leaned back again, setting forth details, places, and names, slowly yet steadily, ransacking his history.

  Cowart listened hard, occasionally interjecting a question, trying to gain some further edge to the stories he was hearing. After the first few, the shock wore off. They took on a sort of regular terror, where all the horrors that had once happened to real people were reduced to the memoirs of a condemned man. He sought details from the killer, the accumulation of words draining each event of its passion. They had no substance, almost no connection to the world. That the events he spoke of had actually filled the last moments of once real, breathing humans was somewhere lost, as Blair Sullivan spoke with an ever-increasing, steady, sturdy, unimaginative, and utterly routine evil.