Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

She liked him enough, she thought. Distant yet willing to teach her what he knew about the business of hunting fish. When she thought of him, she thought of the deep, reddish brown the sun had turned his arms and the precancerous white specks that cluttered his skin. She had always wanted to touch them but had never done so. He still ran his fishing charters out of Whale Harbor and called his forty-two-foot Bertram sportfisher The Last Chance, which his clients all thought referred to fishing, rather than the tenuous existence of the charter-boat skipper.

  Her mother had never told her so, but she believed she had been a child of accident, born just as her parents entered middle age, more than a decade younger than her brothers. They had left the Keys as quickly as age and education would allow, one to practice corporate law in Atlanta, the other to a modestly successful import-export business in Miami. The family joke was that he was the only legal importer in that city, and consequently the poorest. For some time she had thought that she would follow first the one brother, then the other, while she treaded water at the University of Florida, keeping her grade-point average high enough for graduate school.

  She had decided to join the police after being raped.

  The memory seemed to blister her imagination. It had been the end of the semester in Gainesville, almost summer, hot and humid. She had not intended to attend the frat-house party, but an abnormal psychology final had left her drained and lethargic, and when her roommates pressed her to join them, she had readily agreed.

  She recalled the loudness of everything. Voices, music, too many people jammed into too small a space. The old wooden-frame building had shaken with the crowd. She’d gulped beer fast against the heat, rapidly losing her edge, dizzying into a casual acceptance of the night.

  Well after midnight, hopelessly separated from her roommates, she’d started home alone, having rejected a thousand efforts at imposed companionship. She was just drunk enough to feel a liquid connectivity with the night, unsteadily maneuvering beneath the stars. She was not so soused that she couldn’t find her way home, she remembered, just enough so that she was taking her time about it.

  An easy mark, she thought bitterly.

  She had been unaware of the two men coming out of the shadows behind her until they were right upon her, grabbing at her, tossing a jacket over her head, and pummeling her with fists. No time for screaming, no time to fight her way free and try to outrun them. She hated this part of the memory more than any other.

  I could have done it. She felt her calf muscles tighten. High school district one-mile champion. Two letters on the women’s track team. If I could have just gotten free for one second, they would never have caught me. I’d have run them into the ground.

  She remembered the pressure of the two men, crushing her with their weight. The pain had seemed intense, then oddly distant. She had been afraid of being suffocated or choked. She had struggled until one had punched her, an explosion of fist against her chin that had sent her head reeling far beyond any dizziness created by liquor. She had passed out, almost welcoming the darkness of unconsciousness, preferring it to the awfulness and pain of what was happening.

  She drove hard toward Miami, picking up speed as she plunged through the memory. Nothing happened, she thought. Wake up raped in a hospital. Get swabbed and prodded and invaded again. Give a statement to a campus cop. Then to a city detective. Can you describe the assailants, miss? It was dark. They held me down. But what did they look like? They were strong. One held a jacket over my head. Were they white? Black? Hispanic? Short? Tall? Thickset? Skinny? They were on top of me. Did they say anything? No. They just did it. She had called home, hearing her mother dissolve into useless tears and her stepfather sputter with rage, almost as if he were angry with her for what had happened. She spoke finally to a rape-counseling social worker who had nodded and listened. Shaeffer had looked across at the woman and realized that her compassion was part of her job, like the people hired at Disney World to wave in friendly fashion and false spontaneity at the tourists. She walked out and returned to her home and waited for something to happen. It didn’t. No suspects. No arrests. Just one bad night when something went wrong on a college campus. Frat-house hijinks. Swallow the memory and get on with life.

  Her bruises healed and disappeared.

  She fingered a small white scar that curled around the corner of her eye. That remained.

  There had been no talk in her family of what had happened. She returned to the Keys and found that everything was the same. They still lived in a cinder-block house with a second-story view of the ocean, and paddle fans in each room that shifted the stalled humid air about. Her mother still went to the restaurant to make certain the key lime pie was fresh and the conch fritters were deep fried and that everything was in place for the daily arrival of tourists and fishing mates, who rubbed shoulders at the bar. A routine gradually cut from life by the passing of years stayed the same. She went back to work on her stepfather’s boat, just as if nothing had changed within her. She remembered she would look up at him stolidly riding the flying bridge, staring out from behind dark sunglasses across the green waters for signs of life, while she labored below in the cockpit, fetching clients’ beers, laughing at their off-color jokes, baiting hooks and waiting for action.

  She adjusted her own sunglasses against the highway glare.

  But I had changed, she thought.

  She had taken to writing her mother letters, pouring all the hurts and emotions of what had happened to her onto pages of slightly scented lilac-colored notepaper purchased at the local pharmacy, words and tears staining the thin, fragile sheets. After a while, she no longer wrote about the violation she felt, the hole she thought those two faceless men had torn at the center of her core, but instead about the world, the weather, her future, her past. The day she went for her preliminary police exam, she had written: I can’t bring Dad back . . . but it made her feel better to give this silent voice to the feeling within her, no matter how predictable she thought it was.

  Of course, she never mailed any of those letters or showed them to anyone. She kept them collected in a fake leather binder she’d purchased at a crafts show in suburban Miami. Lately, she had taken to writing synopses of her cases in the letters, giving words to all her suppositions and guesses, keeping these dangerous ideas out of official notes and reports. She wondered sometimes whether her mother, if she’d actually read any of those letters ostensibly addressed to her, would be more shocked by what had happened to her daughter or by what her daughter saw happening to others.

  She pictured the old couple on Tarpon Drive. They had no chance, she thought. They knew what they’d produced. Did they think they could bring Blair Sullivan into the world and not have to pay a price? Everyone pays.

  Shaeffer thought of the first time she’d raised the heavy .357 Magnum Colt revolver that was the standard sidearm of the Monroe deputies. Its heft had been reassuring: a solidity in her grasp that whispered into her ear that she would never be a victim again.

  She touched the gas pedal and felt the unmarked cruiser shoot forward, climbing through the seventies and eighties, surging through the midday heat.

  She had put one of six into the target the first day. Two of six the next. By the time she’d finished the six-week training, all six of six, gathered tightly in the center. She’d continued practicing at least once a week, every week, after that. She’d branched out as well, gaining a proficiency with a smaller automatic and learning how to handle the riot pump that was locked into each car. Lately, she had started taking time on the range with a military-issue M-16 and had adopted a NATO-style nine-millimeter for her own use.

  She pulled her foot from the pedal and let the car slow back to the speed limit. She stared up into her rearview mirror and watched another car ride up hard behind her, then swing out into the lane next to her. It was a state policeman in an unmarked Ford, hunting for speeders. She’d ob
viously sailed through his radar, bringing him out of hiding, only to have him make her car.

  He peered across at her from behind dark aviator shades.

  She smiled and gave an exaggerated shrug, seeing the man’s face break into a grin. He raised one hand as if to say, No big deal, then accelerated past her. She picked up her radio and switched to the state police frequency.

  “This is Monroe homicide one-four. Come back.”

  “Monroe homicide, this is Trooper Willis. I clocked you doing ninety-five. Where’s the fire?”

  “Sorry, Troop. It was a nice day, I’m working a good case, and I decided to air it out a bit. I’ll keep it down.”

  “No problem, one-four. Uh, you got time to have a bite to eat?”

  She laughed. A high-speed pickup. “Uh, negative right now. But try me in a couple of days at the Largo substation.”

  “Will do.”

  She saw him raise his hand and peel to the side of the road.

  He will have hopes for a few days, she thought, and wanted to apologize in advance. He will be disappointed. She had one rule: She never slept with anyone who knew she was a police officer. She never slept with anyone she would ever have to see a second time.

  She touched the scar by her eye a second time.

  Two scars, she thought. One outside, one inside.

  She continued north toward Miami.

  A receptionist outside the newsroom of the Miami Journal informed her that Matthew Cowart was not in the office. Surprise flooded her, followed swiftly by a quickening of excitement. He’s looking for something, she thought. He’s after somebody. She asked to see the city editor, while she sorted through her suspicions. The receptionist spoke briefly on the telephone, then motioned her toward a couch, where she waited nervously. Twenty minutes passed before the city editor emerged from between the double doors to see her.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said quickly. “We were in the news conference and I couldn’t get out.”

  “I would like to talk with Cowart again,” she said, trying to remove all the surprise and anticipation from her voice.

  “I thought you got a statement the other day.”

  “Not completely.”

  “No?” He shrugged as if to say he had no sympathy for lost opportunities.

  “A few things perhaps he can straighten out.”

  “I’m sorry, but he’s not here,” the city editor said. He frowned widely. “Perhaps I can help you?”

  She recognized how insincere this offer was. “Well,” she said with mildly false enthusiasm, “I just can’t get it straight in my head how Sullivan made his contacts and set up his arrangements . . .” She waved a hand to cut off a question from the city editor. “. . . I know, I mean, I’m not sure what Mr. Cowart can add, but I still just don’t have a feel for all this and was hoping he could help.”

  She thought this sounded safe enough. She suspected a softening in the city editor’s tones.

  “Well, hell,” he said, “I think everyone’s trying to understand the same damn thing.”

  She laughed. “It’s quite a situation, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, smiling but still wary. “I think he’s filled you in as best as he can. But . . .”

  “Well,” she replied slowly, “perhaps now that he’s had some time to reflect on what he heard, he can remember something else. You’d be surprised what folks can remember after they’ve had some time to think about it.”

  The city editor smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all. What people remember about things is our trade, too.” He shuffled his feet a bit and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “He’s off on a story.”

  “So, where’s he gone?”

  The city editor hesitated before replying. “North Florida.”

  He looked for an instant as if the act of actually giving out a piece of information would make him ill.

  Shaeffer smiled. “Big place, North Florida.”

  The city editor shrugged. “This story has only happened in two places. You know that. At the prison in Starke and a little town called Pachoula. I shouldn’t have to spell that out for you. Now, I’m sorry, Detective Shaeffer, but I have to get back to work.”

  “Can you tell Cowart I need to talk with him?”

  “I’ll tell him. Can’t promise anything. Where will you be?”

  “Looking for him,” she said.

  She got up as if to leave, then thought of one other thing. “Can I take a look at Cowart’s original stories?”

  The city editor paused, thinking, then gestured toward the newspaper library. “They’ll help you there,” he said. “If there’s any problem, have them contact me.”

  She stood at a desk, flipping through a huge bound volume of copies of the Miami Journal. For an instant, she was struck by the wealth of disaster the newspaper documented, then she came upon the Sunday edition with Matthew Cowart’s initial story about the murder of Joanie Shriver. She read through it carefully, making notations, taking down names and dates.

  As she rode the elevator down to the main entrance, she tried to settle all the thoughts that swept about within her. The elevator oozed to a halt on the ground floor, and she started to walk from the building, only to stop abruptly in the center of the lobby.

  This story has only happened in two places, the editor had said. She thought about the box that Cowart was in. What brings him to Blair Sullivan? she thought.

  The murder of a little girl in Pachoula.

  What’s at the core of that crime?

  Robert Earl Ferguson.

  Who links Sullivan to Cowart?

  Robert Earl Ferguson.

  What props up his prize?

  Robert Earl Ferguson.

  She turned on her heel and walked back into the corner of the Journal lobby, where there was a bank of pay telephones. She checked her notes and dialed directory information in Pensacola. Then she dialed the number that the electronic voice had given her.

  After dealing with a secretary, she heard the attorney’s voice come on the line.

  “Roy Black here. How can I help you, miss?”

  “Mr. Black,” she said, “this is Andrea Shaeffer. I’m at the Miami Journal. . . .” She smiled, enjoying her minor deception. “We need to get ahold of Mr. Cowart, and he’s gone up to Pachoula, to see your client. It’s important to run him down, and no one seems to have a number here. I wonder if you could help me on that. Really sorry to bother you . . .”

  “No problem at all, miss. But Bobby Earl’s left Pachoula. He’s back up in Newark, New Jersey. I don’t know why Mr. Cowart would go back to Pachoula.”

  “Oh,” she said, layering her voice with disingenuous surprise and false helplessness. “He’s working on a follow-up after Blair Sullivan’s execution. Do you think Mr. Cowart will go up there instead? He was very vague about his itinerary and it’s important we track him down. Do you have an address? I hate to bother you, but no one can find Mr. Cowart’s Rolodex.”

  “I don’t like giving out addresses,” the attorney said reluctantly.

  “Oh,” she continued breezily, “that’s right I guess not. Oh, boy, how’m I gonna find him now? My boss is gonna have my head for sure. Do you know how I could trace him up north?”

  The attorney hesitated. “Ahh, hell,” he said finally. “I’ll get it for you. Just got to promise you won’t give it out to any other news outlets or anybody else. Mr. Ferguson is trying to put all this behind him, you know. Get on with things.”

  “Boy, would you? I promise. I can see that,” she said with phony enthusiasm.

  “Hang on,” said the attorney. “I’m looking it up.”

  She waited patiently, eagerly. The meager falsehoods and playacting had come easily to her. She wondered whether she cou
ld catch the next flight north. She was not precisely sure what she would do with Ferguson when she found him, but she was certain of one thing: The answers to all her questions were hovering about somewhere very close to that man. She envisioned his eyes as they had stared out at her from the pages of the newspaper. The innocent man.

  17

  NEWARK

  The plane dipped down beneath a thin cover of clouds on its final approach into the airport, and she could see the city, rising in the distance like so many children’s blocks tossed into a pile. A flaccid early-spring sun illuminated the jumble of tall, rectangular office buildings. Staring through the window, she felt a damp April chill and had a momentary longing for the unequivocal heat of the Keys. Then she thrust everything from her mind except how to approach Ferguson.

  Carefully, she decided. Play him like a strong fish on light tackle; a sudden move or too much pressure will break the line and set him loose. It’s only the barest of threads. Nothing tied Ferguson to the murders on Tarpon Drive except the presence of a single reporter. No witnesses, fingerprints, or blood-work. Not even a modus operandi, the sexual assault–murder of a little girl having little in common with the terror slaughtering of an elderly couple. And according to Cowart and his newspaper, he wasn’t even guilty of the first half of that equation.

  As the plane twisted through the airspace, she could see the broad ribbon of the New Jersey Turnpike snaking below her as it sliced north and south. She was struck with a sudden depression that she’d allowed herself to head off on some crazy tangent and would be better served by simply grabbing the first flight back to Florida and working at Weiss’s side. Everything had seemed clear standing in the lobby of the Miami Journal. The murky, gray skies of New Jersey seemed to mock the uncertainty that filled her.

  She wondered if Ferguson had learned anything the first time around. Probably. Her impression of him, gleaned from Cowart’s words, was that he was clever, educated, and not at all like most convicts. That was too bad. One of the contradictory truisms of police work was that the prisonwise suspect was not harder to trip up. In fact, the opposite was true. But Ferguson, she suspected, was a different case.