Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  “Where is it!” Shaeffer demanded a second time. “Where’s his explanation of the deaths of his mother and stepfather?”

  She shook a typed transcript in his face. “Not a word in here,” she almost shouted.

  Weiss stood up and pointed a finger right at him. “Start explaining, right now. I’m tired of all this runaround, Cowart. We could arrest you as a material witness and chuck you in jail.”

  “That’d be fine,” he replied, trying to summon up an indignation to match that of the two detectives. “I could use some sleep.”

  “You know, I’m getting damn tired of you two threatening my man here,” came a voice from behind Cowart. It was the city editor. “Why don’t you two detectives do some work on your own? All you guys seem to want is for him to provide you with all the answers.”

  “Because I think he’s got all the goddamn answers,” Shaeffer replied slowly, softly, her voice filled with menace.

  For a moment, the room remained frozen with her words. The city editor finally gestured at chairs to try and slice through some of the tension that sat heavily in the room. “Everybody sit down,” he said sternly. “We’ll try to get this sorted out.”

  Cowart saw Shaeffer take a deep breath and struggle to control herself. “All right,” she said quietly. “Just a full statement, right now. Then we’ll get out of your way. How’s that?”

  Cowart nodded. The city editor interjected. “If he agrees, fine. But any more threats and this interview is ended.”

  Weiss sat down heavily and removed a small notepad. Shaeffer asked the first question.

  “Please explain what you told me in Starke at the prison.”

  She was watching him steadily, her eyes marking every movement he made.

  Cowart fixed his eyes back hard on to hers. It’s how she looks at suspects, he thought

  “Sullivan claimed he’d arranged for the killings.”

  “You said that. How? Who? What were his exact words? And why the hell isn’t it on the tape?”

  “He made me turn the tape machine off. I don’t know why.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “Continue.”

  “It was a brief element to the entire conversation . . .”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Okay. You understand how he sent me down to Islamorada. Gave me the address and all. Told me to interview the people I found there. He didn’t say they’d be dead. He didn’t give any indication of anything, just insisted I go . . .”

  “And you didn’t demand some explanation before heading down there?”

  “Why? He wouldn’t give me one. He was adamant. He was scheduled to die. So I went. Without asking any questions. It’s not so damn unreasonable.”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “When I first got back to his cell, he wanted me to describe the deaths. He wanted me to tell him all the details, like how they were sitting, and how they’d been killed and everything I noticed about the scene. He was particularly interested in learning whether they had suffered. After I finished telling him everything I remembered about the two dead bodies, he seemed satisfied. Downright pleased.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I asked him why and he said, ‘Because I killed them.’ And I asked how he’d managed that and he replied, ‘You can get anything you want, even on Death Row, if you’re willing to pay the price.’ I asked him what he’d paid, but he refused to say. Said that was for me to find out. Said he was going to go to his grave without shooting his mouth off. I tried to ask him about how he’d arranged it, but he refused to answer. Then he said, ‘Ain’t you interested in my legacy at all?’ He told me then to turn on the tape recorder. And he started confessing to all these other crimes.”

  Lies tripped readily from his mouth. He was surprised at how easily.

  “Do you think there was a connection between the subsequent confession and the murders in Monroe County?”

  That was the question, Cowart thought. He shrugged. “It was hard to tell.”

  “But you think he was telling you the truth?”

  “Yes, sometimes. I mean, obviously he sent me down there to that house knowing something was going to happen. So he had to know they were going to be murdered. I think he got what he wanted. But how he paid the bill . . .” Cowart let his voice drain away.

  Shaeffer rose abruptly, staring at Cowart. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks. Can you remember anything else?”

  “If I do, I’ll let you know.”

  “We’d like the original tapes.”

  “We’ll see,” the city editor interjected. “Probably.”

  “They may be evidence,” she said acidly.

  “Well, we still need to make copies. Maybe by this afternoon, late. In the meantime, if you want, you can take a transcript.”

  “Okay,” she said. Cowart glanced over at the city editor. The detective suddenly seemed extremely accommodating.

  “If I need to get hold of you?” she asked him.

  “I’ll be around.”

  “Not planning on going anywhere?”

  “Just home to bed.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay. We’ll be in touch for the tapes.”

  “With me,” said the city editor.

  She nodded. Weiss snapped shut his notepad.

  For an instant, she fixed Cowart with a glare. “You know, Mr. Cowart, there’s one thing that bothers me. In your press conference after the execution, you said that Blair Sullivan talked to you about the killing of that little girl up in Pachoula.”

  Cowart felt his insides tumble. “Yeah . . .” he said.

  “But none of that’s on this transcript, either.”

  “He made me shut the machine off. I told you.”

  She smiled, a look of satisfaction. “That’s right. That’s what I figured happened. . . .” She paused, letting a little silence heat up the room. “. . . Except, then we’d hear Sullivan’s voice saying something like: ‘Turn off that tape machine,’ wouldn’t we?”

  Cowart, fighting panic, shrugged, nonchalantly. “No,” he replied slowly. “He spoke of that crime at the same time he talked about the Monroe killings.”

  Shaeffer nodded. Her eyes squeezed hard on Cowart’s face. “Ah, of course. But you didn’t say that earlier, did you? Odd, though, huh? Every other crime goes on the tapes except those two, right? The one that first brought you to him and the one he ended with. Kinda unusual, that, what d’you think?”

  “I don’t know, Detective. He was an unusual man.”

  “I think you are, too, Mr. Cowart,” she said. Then she pivoted and led her partner from the conference room. He watched as she marched through the newsroom and out between the exit doors. He could see the knotted muscles of her calves. She must be a runner, he thought. She has that lean, unhappy look, driven and pained. He wanted to try to persuade himself that she’d believed his story but knew that was foolish.

  The city editor also let his eyes follow the detectives through the room. Then he breathed deeply and stated the obvious. “Matty,” he said quietly, “that gal doesn’t believe a word you said. Is that what happened with Sullivan?”

  “Yes, kinda.”

  “This is all very shaky, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Matty, is something going on here?”

  “It’s just Blair Sullivan,” Cowart replied quickly. “Mind games. He ran them on me. He ran them on everyone. It was what he did with himself when he wasn’t killing folks.”

  “But what about what that detective was implying?”

  Cowart tried for a reply that would make some sense. “It was kinda like Sullivan made a distinction between some crimes. The ones that were important, the two that aren’t on tape, were, I don’t know, different for him. All these others were just run-of-th
e-mill. Stuff for his legend. I’m not a shrink. I can’t explain what was going on in his mind.”

  The city editor nodded. “Is that what’s going into the paper?”

  “Yes, more or less.”

  “Let’s make sure what we put in the paper errs on the side of caution, okay? If you have doubts about something, leave it out. Or make certain it’s covered. We can always come back to it.”

  Cowart tried to smile. “I’m trying.”

  “Try hard,” the city editor said. “You know, it raises more questions than it answers. I mean, who was Sullivan trying to protect? You’re gonna find out, right? While Edna checks out the rest of the statement, you’re going to work on that angle?”

  “Yes.

  “Helluva story. A person arranging a murder right before his own execution. What are we talking about, a corrupt prison guard? An attorney, maybe? Another inmate? Get some rest and get on it, okay? You got an idea where to start?”

  “Sure,” he answered. Not only where to start, but, he thought, where to finish: Robert Earl Ferguson.

  Despite his fatigue, Cowart hung on in the newsroom throughout the remainder of the day, into the early evening. He ignored the news crews staked out in front of the building waiting for him for as long as he could. But when the news directors at each station started calling the managing editor, he was forced to go outside and made a short, unsatisfactory statement. This, of course, angered them more than placated them. They didn’t leave after he ended the interview. He took no calls from other reporters trying to interview him. He simply waited for the cover of darkness. After the first edition came up, he read the words he’d written slowly, as if afraid they could hurt him physically. He made a change or two for the late edition, adding more doubt about Sullivan’s confession, underscoring the essential mystery of the executed man’s actions. He spoke briefly with Edna McGee and the city editor one last time, a false coordination of work. He rode the freight elevator down through the bowels of the newspaper, past the computer makeup rooms, the classified advertising sections, the cafeteria, and the assembly docks. The building hummed and quivered with the noise of the presses as they pumped out tens of thousands of issues of the newspaper. He could feel the vibration from the machines right through the soles of his feet.

  A delivery truck gave him a lift for a few blocks, dropping him a short way from his apartment. He tucked a single issue of the next day’s paper beneath his arm and walked through the growing city night, suddenly relieved by the anonymous sound his shoes made pacing against the pavement.

  He eyed the front of his apartment building from a short distance, scanning the area for other members of the press. He saw none, and then checked for signs of the Monroe detectives. It would not be crazy to suspect they were following him. But the street appeared empty and he quickly cut through the shadows on the edges of the streetlamps, and into his lobby. For the first time since he’d moved in, he regretted the lack of security in the modest building. He hesitated for an instant in front of the elevator, then burst through an emergency door and raced up the fire stairs, his breath coming in short bursts, his feet pounding against the linoleum risers.

  He opened the door to his apartment and entered the shambles. For an instant he stood in the center, waiting for his heart to settle, then went to the window and stared out across the dark bay waters. A few reflected city lights sliced through the wavy black ink, only to be devoured by the expanse of ocean.

  He felt himself completely alone, but he was wrong. He did not understand that a number of people, though miles distant, were actually in the room with him, like ghosts, waiting for his next move.

  Some, of course, were less far. Such as Andrea Shaeffer, who’d parked an entire block distant, but who’d intently watched his erratic course down the street through a pair of night-vision binoculars, as the reporter ducked in and out of the fringe darkness. So precise had her concentration been that she had failed to notice Tanny Brown. He stood in a shadow of an adjacent building, letting the night surround and conceal him. He stared up at the lights of Cowart’s apartment until they were extinguished. Then he waited until the unmarked patrol car carrying the woman detective slowly headed off into the city night before moving, alley-cat-like, for Cowart’s apartment.

  14

  CONFESSION

  Tanny Brown listened outside the door to Cowart’s apartment. He could hear distant city-night sounds of traffic penetrating the still darkness, blending with the frustrated buzzing of a bottle-green bug that seemed suicidally intent upon assaulting the light fixture in the hallway. He started when he heard a pair of voices from an adjacent apartment rise in sudden laughter, then fade away. For an instant he wondered what the joke was. He listened again at the door, but no sound emanated from Cowart’s apartment. He put his hand on the door handle gently, just twisting it slightly until he met resistance. Locked. He peered at the dead bolt above it and saw that the bolt was thrown.

  He clenched a fist in disappointment. He hated the idea of asking Cowart for admittance. He had wanted to slip into the apartment with the stealth of a burglar, to rouse Cowart abruptly from sleep, perched like a wraith on the edge of the reporter’s dream, demanding the truth.

  He heard a whirring, metallic noise behind him and turned swiftly, in the same motion trying to back into a shadow. A hand went automatically to his shoulder holster. It was the elevator, rising to another floor. He watched as a small shaft of light slid through the closed entrance door, passing upward. He lowered his hand, wondering why he felt so jumpy. Fatigue and doubt. He looked back at the door in front of him, realizing that if someone spotted him standing there, they would in all likelihood summon the police, taking him for some intruder with evil intentions.

  Which, he thought with a twitch of humor, was exactly what he was.

  Brown breathed in deeply, clearing his head of exhaustion, concentrating on what had brought him to Cowart’s door. He felt the warm breath of anger on his forehead and he rapped sharply on the thick wooden panels.

  Cowart sat cross-legged on the floor amidst the ruins of his apartment, assessing his next step. When the four pistol-like cracks sounded on his door, his first thought was to remain still, frozen like a deer in headlights; his second was to take cover and hide. But instead he rose and walked unsteadily toward the sound.

  He took a deep breath and asked, “Who’s there?”

  Trouble, thought Brown to himself, but out loud said, “Lieutenant Tanny Brown. I want to talk to you.” There was a moment of silence. “Open up!”

  Cowart wanted to laugh out loud. He opened the door and peered around its edge. “Everyone wants to talk to me today. I thought you’d be some more of those damn television guys.”

  “No, just me,” replied Brown.

  “Same questions, though, I bet,” Cowart said. “So, how’d you find me? I’m not in the book and the city desk won’t give out my home address.”

  “Not hard,” the detective replied, still standing in front of the door. “You gave me your home phone number back when you were getting Bobby Earl out of prison. Just a matter of calling the telephone company and telling them it was a police matter.”

  The two men’s eyes met and the reporter shook his head. “I should have known you would show up. Everything else seems to be going wrong today.”

  Brown gestured with his hand. “Do I have to stand out here or may I come in?”

  The reporter seemed to think this was funny, smiling and shaking his head. “All right. Why not? I was going to come see you, anyway.”

  He held open the door. The room behind him was black.

  “How about lights?”

  Cowart went to a wall and flicked a switch. The detective stared around in surprise at the mess illuminated by the overhead light.

  “Christ, Cowart. What happened here? You have a break-in?”


  The reporter smiled again. “No, just a temper tantrum. And I didn’t feel much like cleaning it up yet. It fits my mood.”

  He walked into the center of the living room and found an overturned armchair. He lifted it up and set it on its legs, then stepped back and waved the detective toward it. He swept some papers from the seat of a couch onto the floor and slumped down in the space he’d made.

  “Tired,” Cowart said. “Not much sleep.” He rubbed his hands across his face.

  “I haven’t been sleeping much, either,” Brown replied. “Too many questions. Not enough answers.”

  “That will keep one awake.”

  The two weary men stared at each other. Cowart smiled and shook his head in response to the silence between them.

  “So, ask me a question,” he said to the detective.

  “What’s going on?”

  Cowart shrugged. “Too broad. I can’t answer that.”

  “Wilcox told me that whatever Blair Sullivan told you before he went to the chair, it fucked you up pretty good. Why don’t you tell me?”

  Cowart grinned. “Is that what he said? Sounds like him. He’s a pretty cold-blooded fellow. Didn’t bat an eyelash when they turned on the juice.”

  “Why would he? You can’t tell me you shed a tear over Sullivan’s exit.”

  “No, can’t say I did. Still . . .”

  Brown interrupted. “Bruce Wilcox just sees things differently from you.”

  “Ah, well, perhaps,” the reporter replied, nodding. “What would I know? So, you want to know what fucked me up, huh? Wouldn’t listening to a man confess to multiple homicides shake your complacency a bit?”

  “It would. It has.”

  “That’s right. Death is your line of business. Just as much as it was Sully’s.”

  “I guess you could say that, though I don’t like to think of it that way.” Brown tried to obscure the sensation that the reporter had pinned him with his first move. He sat watching the disheveled man in his disrupted apartment. He wondered how long he could keep from grabbing the reporter and shaking answers from him.