Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  Cowart leaned back, as if picking up an interrupted story.

  “. . . Well, there was old Sully, talking my ear off. Old men, old women, young folks, middle-aged people, girls, boys. Gas-station attendants and tourists. Convenience-store clerks and the occasional passersby. Zip, zap. Just chewed up and tossed aside by a single wrong man. Knives, guns, strangled ’em with his hands, beat ’em with bats, chopped and shot and drowned. A variety of bad deaths. Inventive stuff, huh? Not nice, not nice at all. Makes one wonder what the world’s coming to, why anyone should go on in the face of all that evil. Isn’t that enough to listen to for a few hours? Wouldn’t that account for my—what? Indecisiveness? Is that a good word?—at the prison.”

  “It might.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “No.”

  “You think something else is bothering me, and you came all the way down here to ask me what. I’m touched by your concern.”

  “It wasn’t concern for you.”

  “No, I suspect not.” Cowart laughed ruefully. “I like this,” he said. “You want a drink of something, Lieutenant? While we fence around?”

  Brown considered. He shrugged, a single, why-the-hell-not motion and leaned back in his chair. He watched as Cowart rose, walked into the kitchen and returned after a moment, carrying a bottle and a pair of glasses and cradling a six-pack of beer under an arm. He held it up.

  “Cheap whiskey. And beer, if you want it. This is what the pressmen used to drink at my old man’s paper. Pour a beer, drink a couple of inches off the top, and in goes a shot. Boilermaker. Does a good job of cutting the day’s tension real fast. Makes you forget you’re working a tough job for long hours and little pay and not much future.”

  Cowart fixed each of them a drink. “Perfect drink for the two of us. Cheers,” he said. He swallowed half in a series of fast gulps.

  The liquor burned Tanny Brown’s throat and warmed his stomach. He grimaced. “It tastes terrible. Ruins both the whiskey and the beer,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Cowart grinned again. “That’s the beauty of it. You take two perfectly reasonable substances that work fine independently, throw them together, and get something horrible. Which you then drink. Just like you and me.”

  The detective gulped again. “But if you keep drinking, it improves.”

  “Hah. That’s where it’s different than life.” He refilled their glasses, then sat back in his chair, swirling a finger around the lip of his glass, listening to the squeaking sound it made.

  “Why should I tell you anything?” he said slowly. “When I first came to you with my questions about Ferguson, you sicced your dog on me. Wilcox. You didn’t make it real easy on me, did you? When we found that knife, were you interested in the truth? Or maybe in keeping your case together? You tell me. Why should I help you?”

  “Only one reason. Because I can help you.”

  Cowart shook his head. “I don’t think so. And I don’t think that’s a good reason.”

  Brown stirred in his seat, eyeing the reporter. “How about this for a reason,” he said after a momentary hesitation. “We’re in something together. Have been from the start. It’s not finished, is it?”

  “No,” Cowart conceded.

  “The problem, from my point of view, is that I’m in something, but I don’t know what it is. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  Cowart leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling, trying to determine what he could say to the detective, and what he should not.

  “It’s always pretty much like this, isn’t it?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Cops and reporters.”

  Brown nodded his head. “Uneasy accomplices. At best”

  “I had a friend once,” Cowart said. “He was a homicide detective like you. He used to tell me that we were both interested in the same thing, only for different purposes. For a long time neither of us could ever really understand the other’s motives. He thought I just wanted to write stories, and I thought he just wanted to clear cases and make his way up the bureaucratic ladder. What he would tell me helped me write the stories. The publicity his cases got helped him in the department. We sort of fed each other. So there we were, wanting to know the same things, needing the same information, using a few of the same techniques, more alike than we’d ever acknowledge, and distrusting the hell out of each other. Working the same territory from different sides of the street and never crossing over. It was a long time before we began to see our sameness instead of our differences.”

  Brown refilled his drink, feeling the liquor work on his frayed feelings. He swallowed long and stared over at Cowart. “It’s in the nature of detectives to distrust anything they can’t control. Especially information.”

  Cowart grinned again. “That’s what makes this so interesting, Lieutenant. I know something you want to learn. It’s a unique position for me. Usually I’m trying to get people like you to tell me things.”

  Brown also smiled, but not because he thought it amusing. It was a smile that made Cowart grasp his glass a bit tighter and shift about in his seat.

  “We’ve only had one thing to talk about, from the very start. I haven’t had enough to drink to forget that one thing, have I, Mr. Cowart? I don’t think there’s enough liquor in your apartment to make me forget. Maybe not in the whole world.”

  The reporter grew silent, then he leaned forward. “Tell you what, Detective. You want to know. I want to know. Let’s make a trade.”

  The detective set his glass down slowly. “Trade what?”

  “The confession. It starts there, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then you tell me the truth about that confession, and I’ll tell you the truth about Ferguson.”

  Brown held his back straight, as if memory thrust rigidity into his body and his words.

  “Mr. Cowart,” he replied slowly. “Do you know what happens when you grow up and live your life in one little place? You get so’s you can sense what’s right and wrong in the breeze, maybe in the smell of the day, the way the heat builds up around noon and starts to slip away at dusk. It’s like knowing the notes of a piece of music so that when the band plays them, in your head you’ve already heard them. I’m not saying everything’s always small-town perfect and there ain’t terrible things happening. Pachoula isn’t big like Miami, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have husbands who beat their wives, kids that do drugs, whores, loan sharks, extortion, killings. All the same. Just not quite so obvious.”

  “And Bobby Earl?”

  “Wrong from the start. I knew he was waiting to kill somebody. Maybe from the way he walked or talked or that little laugh he would make when I would pull his car over. He came from mean stock, Mr. Cowart, no different from a dog that’s been bred for fighting. And it got all tarnished and banged-up worse living in the city. He was filled with hate. Hated me. Hated you. Hated everything. Walking around, waiting for that hate to take over completely. All that time, he knew I was watching him. Knew I was waiting. Knew I knew he was waiting, too.”

  Cowart looked over at the narrow eyes of the detective and thought, Ferguson wasn’t the only one filled with hate. “Give me details.”

  “None to give. A girl complains he followed her home. Another tells us he tried to talk her into his car. Offered her a ride, he said. Just trying to be friendly. But then a neighborhood crime watch patrol spots him cruising their streets at midnight with his headlights off. Somebody’s committing rapes and assaults in the next couple of counties, but forensics can’t match him up. A patrol car rousts him from outside the junior high one week before the abduction and murder, right before the end of school, and he’s got no explanation for why he’s there. Hell, I even ran his name through the national computer and I called the Jersey state police, see if they had anything up t
here in Newark. No instant winners, though.”

  “Except Joanie Shriver turns up dead one day.”

  Brown sighed. The liquor slopped over some of his anger. “That’s correct. One day Joanie Shriver turns up dead.”

  Cowart stared at the police lieutenant. “You’re not telling me something.”

  Brown nodded. “She was my daughter’s best friend. My friend, too.”

  The reporter nodded. “And?”

  Brown spoke quietly. “Her father. Owned those hardware stores. Got ’em from his father. Gave me a job after hours in high school sweeping out the place. He was just one of those people who put color way down on his list, especially at a time when everybody else had it at the top of theirs. You remember what it was like in Florida in the early sixties? There were marches and sit-ins and cross burnings. And in the midst of all that, he gave me a job. Helped me when I went away to college. And when I came back from Vietnam, he pointed me to the police force. Made some calls. Pulled some strings. Called in a favor or two. You think those little things don’t amount to much? And his son was my friend. He worked in the store next to me. We shared jokes, troubles, futures. That sort of thing didn’t happen a lot back then, though you probably didn’t know that. That means something, too, Mr. Cowart, in this equation. And our children played together. And if you had any idea what that meant, well, you’d understand why I don’t sleep much now at night. So I had a couple of debts. Still do.”

  “Go on.”

  “Do you have any idea how much you can hate yourself for letting something happen that you could no more have prevented than you can prevent the sun from rising, or the tide from flowing in?”

  Cowart looked hard, straight ahead. “Perhaps.”

  “Do you know what it’s like to know, to know absolutely, positively, with complete certainty, that something wrong is going to happen and yet be powerless to stop it? And then, when it does happen, it steals someone you love right from beneath your arms? Crushes the heart of a real friend? And I couldn’t do a thing. Not a damn thing!”

  The force of Brown’s words had driven him to his feet. He clenched a fist in the air between them, as if grasping all the fury that echoed within him. “So, get it now, Mr. Cowart? You beginning to see?”

  “I think so.”

  “So, there the bastard was. Smirking away in a chair. Taunting me. He knew, you see. He thought he couldn’t be touched. Bruce looked at me, and I nodded. I left the room, and he let the bastard have it. You think we beat that confession out of Robert Earl Ferguson? Well, you’re absolutely right. We did.”

  Brown slapped one hand sharply against the other, making a sound like a shot. “Wham! Used the phone book, just like the bastard said.”

  The detective’s eyes pierced Cowart. “Choked him, hit him, you name it. But the bastard hung in there. Just spat at us and kept laughing. He’s tough, did you know that? And he’s a lot stronger than he appears.” Brown took a deep breath. “I only wished we’d killed him, right there and then, instead.”

  The detective clenched his fist and thrust it at the reporter. “So, if physical violence won’t work, what’s next? A little bit of psychological twisting will do the trick. You see, I realized he wasn’t afraid of us. No matter how hard we hit him. But what was he afraid of?”

  Brown rose. He pulled up his pants leg. “There’s the damn gun. Just like he said. Ankle holster.”

  “And that’s what finally made him confess?”

  “No,” Brown said with cool ferocity. “Fear made him confess.”

  The detective reached down abruptly and with a single, sudden movement, freed the weapon. It leapt into his hand and he thrust it forward, pointing straight at Cowart’s forehead. He thumbed back the hammer, which made a small, evil click. “Like this,” he said.

  Cowart felt sudden heat flood his face.

  “Fear, Mr. Cowart. Fear and uncertainty about just how crazy anger can make a man.”

  The small pistol was dwarfed by the hulking figure of the detective, rigid with emotion. He leaned forward, pushing the gun directly against Cowart’s skull, where it remained for a few seconds, like an icicle.

  “I want to know,” the detective said. “I do not want to wait.” He pulled the gun back so that the weapon hovered a few inches from Cowart’s face.

  The reporter remained frozen in his seat. He had to struggle to force his eyes away from the black barrel hole and up at the policeman. “You gonna shoot me?”

  “Should I, Mr. Cowart? Don’t you think I hate you enough to shoot you for coming up to Pachoula with all your damn questions?”

  “If it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else.” Cowart’s voice cracked with tension.

  “I would have hated anyone enough to kill them.”

  The reporter felt a wild panic within him. His eyes locked on the detective’s finger, tightening on the trigger. He thought he could see it move.

  Ohmigod, Cowart thought. He’s going to do it. For an instant, he thought he would pass out.

  “Tell me,” Brown said icily. “Tell me what I want to know.”

  Cowart could feel the blood draining from his face. His hands twitched on his lap. All control raced away.

  “I’ll tell you. Just put the gun away.”

  The detective stared at him.

  “You were right, you were right all along! Isn’t that what you want to hear?”

  Brown nodded. “You see,” he said softly, evenly, “it’s not hard to get someone to talk.”

  Cowart looked at the policeman. He said, “It’s not me you want to kill.”

  Tanny Brown held stiff for an instant. Then he lowered the gun. “That’s right. It isn’t. Or maybe it is, but it isn’t the right time yet.”

  He sat back down and placed the revolver on the arm of the chair, picking up his drink again. He let the liquor squeeze the anger, and he breathed out slowly. “Close, Cowart. Close.”

  The reporter leaned back in his seat. “Everything seems to be cut close for me.”

  They were both silent for a moment before the detective spoke again. “Isn’t that what you guys always complain about? People always hate the press for bringing them the bad news, right? Killing the messenger, huh?”

  “Yeah. Except we don’t mean it so damn literally.” Cowart exhaled swiftly and burst into a high-pitched laugh of relief. He thought for an instant. “So that must have been how it happened, right? Point that thing in someone’s face and one’s inhibitions against self-incrimination just naturally flow away fast.”

  “It’s not in the approved police training textbooks,” Brown replied. “But you’re right. And you were right about that all along. Ferguson told you the truth. That’s how we got that confession. Only one small problem, though.”

  “I know the problem.”

  The two men stared at each other.

  Cowart finished the statement hanging in the air between them. “The confession was the truth, too.”

  The reporter paused, then added, “So you say. So you believe.”

  Brown leaned back hard in his seat. “Right,” he said. He took a deep breath, shaking his head back and forth. “I should never have allowed it. I had too much experience. I knew too much. Knew what could happen when it got into the system. But I let all sorts of wrong things get in the way. It’s like hitting a patch of slick mud in your car. One minute you’re in control but speeding along, the next out of control, spinning around, fishtailing down the road.”

  Brown picked up his drink. “But, you see, I thought we might get away with it. Bobby Earl turned out to be his own worst witness. His old attorney didn’t know what the hell he was doing. We waltzed that bastard right onto the Row, where he belonged, with just a minimum of lies and misstatements. So I was thinking maybe it would all work out, you know. Maybe I w
ouldn’t be having any more nightmares about little Joanie Shriver. . . .”

  “I know about nightmares.”

  “And you came along, asking all the damn right questions. Picking away at all the little failures, the little lies. Seeing right through that conviction just as if it weren’t there. Damn. The more you were right, the more I hated you. Had to be, can’t you see?” He pulled hard at the glass, then set it down and poured himself another.

  “Why did you admit that Ferguson was slapped, when I came up to interview you? I mean, it opened the door . . .”

  The detective shrugged. “No, what opened the door was Bruce exploding. When you saw that frustration and anger, I knew you’d believe he’d beaten Ferguson, just like the bastard said. So, by telling a small truth—that he slapped him—I thought I could hide the big truth. It was a gamble. Didn’t work. Came close, though.”

  Cowart nodded. “Like an iceberg,” he said.

  “Right,” Brown replied. “All you see is the pretty white ice up on top. Can’t see the dangerous stuff below.”

  Cowart laughed out loud, though the laughter had no humor attached to it, only a burst of nervous relief and energy. “Only one other little detail.”

  The detective smiled as well, speaking quickly, cutting across the reporter’s words. “You see, I know what Blair Sullivan told you. I mean, I don’t know. But I sure as hell can guess. And that’s the little detail, ain’t it?”

  The reporter nodded. “What was it you say you knew Bobby Earl was?”

  “A killer.”

  “Well, I think you may be right. Of course, you may be wrong, too. I don’t know. You like music, Detective?”

  “Sure.”

  “What sort?”

  “Pop, mostly. A little bit of sixties soul and rock to remind me of when I was young. Makes my kids laugh at me. They call me ancient.”

  “Ever listen to Miles Davis?”

  “Sure.”