“Really? That’s not what you told those two Escambia detectives. Not what a jury found.”
Barely contained rage creased the complacency of his face, and he replied in bitter, low tones, “That was beat out of me. You know that perfectly well. Judge threw it out. I never did anything to that little girl. Sullivan did, he killed her.”
“And the price?”
“In that case,” Ferguson said coldly, “the price was paid in pleasure.”
“What about Sullivan and his family? What do you think he’d have paid for those deaths?”
“Blair Sullivan? I suspect he’d have paid with his soul to take them with him.”
Ferguson leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You know what he told me, before I figured out he was the person who killed the little girl that had put me on the Row? He used to talk about cancer, you know. Like some damn doctor, he knew so much about the disease. He would simply start in talking about deformed cells and molecular structures and DNA breakdowns and how just this little, tiny, microscopic wrong was working away within you, wreaking evil right through your whole body and working hard so that it would get in your lungs and colon and pancreas and brain and whatever, just make you rot away from within. And when he’d finish his lecture, he’d lean back and say why he was just the same damn thing, no different at all. What do you think of that, Detective?”
Ferguson leaned back, as if relaxing, but Shaeffer could see the muscles beneath his sweatshirt twitch. She didn’t reply but started to move about the apartment again. The floor seemed to sway slightly beneath her feet.
“He talked to you about death?”
Ferguson leaned forward. “On Death Row, it’s a frequent subject.”
“And what did you learn?”
“I learned that it’s about the most common thing around, ain’t it, Detective? Why, it’s just everywhere you turn. People think dying is something special, but it isn’t, is it?”
“Some deaths are special.”
“Those must be the ones you’re interested in.”
“That’s right.”
She saw him lean forward slightly, as if anticipating her next question.
“You like sneakers?” she asked abruptly. For an instant, she thought it was someone else speaking in the small room.
He looked slightly surprised. “Sure. Wear them all the time. Everybody here does.”
“How about that pair. What sort are they?”
“These are Nikes.”
“They look new.”
“Just last week.”
“Got another pair in the closet?”
“Sure.”
She strode across in front of him, heading toward the back bedroom. “Just sit still,” she said. She could sense his eyes tracking her, burning into her back.
In the closet there was a pair of hightop basketball shoes. She picked them up. Damn! she thought abruptly. They were Converse and old and worn enough to have ripped near the toe. Still, she turned them over and inspected the soles. Near the ball of the foot the rubber had been rubbed smooth. She shook her head. That would have shown up. And the sole tread configuration was different from the Reeboks that the killer had worn when he visited number thirteen Tarpon Drive. She replaced the shoes and returned to face Ferguson.
He looked at her. “So, you’ve got a shoeprint from the murder scene, right?”
She remained silent.
“. . . And you just all of a sudden thought you’d better check my closet.” He stared at her. “What else have you got?” After a moment, he answered his own question. “Not much, right? But what brings you here?”
“I told you. Matthew Cowart. Blair Sullivan. And you.”
He didn’t respond at first. She could see his mind working rapidly. Finally he spoke in a flat, angry voice. “So, this is how it’s gonna be? From now on? Is that right? Some tired-ass Florida cop needs to make somebody on a killing and I’m going to be the convenient one, right? Convicted once, so I’m a likely candidate for just about anything you can’t make right away.”
“I didn’t say you were a suspect.”
“But you wanted to see my sneakers.”
“Routine, Mr. Ferguson. I’m checking everyone’s sneakers. Even Mr. Cowart’s.”
Ferguson snorted a half laugh. “Sure you are. What sort does Cowart wear?”
She continued the lie rapidly. “Reeboks.”
“Sure. They must be new, too, because last time I saw him he was wearing Converse just like my old ones.”
She didn’t reply.
“So, you’re checking everyone’s sneakers. But I’m the easy one, right? Wouldn’t it be something to connect me to that killing, huh, Detective? That’d get you some headlines. Maybe get you a promotion, too. Ain’t nobody going to question your motives.”
She turned it back on him. “Are you? Why are you so easy?”
“Always have been, always will be. If not me, then someone like me: young and black. Makes me automatically a suspect.”
She shook her head.
He half-rose from his seat in sudden anger. “No? When they needed someone fast in Pachoula who’d they come to see? And you? You figure that just because I knew Blair Sullivan, that made me someone you’d better talk to fast. But I didn’t, damn you! That man almost cost me my life. I spent three years on Death Row for something I didn’t do because of cops like you. I thought I was a dead man just because I was convenient for the system. So, screw you, Detective. I ain’t gonna be convenient for nobody no more. I may be black, but I’m no killer. And just because I am black, doesn’t make me one.”
Ferguson slid back into his seat. “You wanted to know why I chose to live here? Because here people understand what it is like to be black and always be a suspect or a victim. That’s what everyone here is. One or the other. And I’ve been both, so that’s why I fit. That’s why I like it, even though I don’t have to be here. You understand that, Detective? I doubt it. Because you’re white, and you’ll never know.”
He rose again, and stared out the window. “You’ll never understand how someone can think this is home.” He turned to her. “Got any more questions, Detective?”
The wealth of his fury had overcome her. She shook her head.
“Good,” he said quietly. “Then get the hell out.”
He pointed toward the door. She stepped toward it.
“I may have more questions,” she said.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, Detective. Not again. Last time I was polite to a couple of detectives it cost me three years of my life and nearly killed me. So, you’ve had your chance. And now it’s finished.”
She was in the doorway. She hesitated, as if reluctant to leave but feeling at the same instant an immense relief at getting out of the small space. She turned toward him, but he was already closing the door on her. She had a quick glimpse of his eyes, narrowed in anger, before the door slammed shut. The clicking sound of the locks being thrown echoed in the hallway.
19
PLUMBING
For most of the ride, the three men were silent.
Finally, as they turned off the highway, the police cruiser bumping against the hard-packed dirt of the secondary road, Bruce Wilcox said, “She’s not gonna tell us a thing. She’ll grab that old shotgun of hers and kick us off her place fast as a hungry mosquito can bite your naked ass. We’re wasting our time.”
He was driving. Next to him in the front seat, Tanny Brown stared through the windshield without replying. When a shaft of light slipped through the canopy of trees and struck him, it made his dark skin glisten, almost as if wet. At Wilcox’s words, he raised a hand and made a small dismissive gesture, then dropped back into thought.
Wilcox humphed and drove on for a moment or two. “I still think w
e’re wasting our time.”
“We aren’t,” Brown growled as the car skidded and swayed on the rough road.
“Well, why not?” the detective asked. “And I wish you two’d fill me in on all this.”
He twitched his head toward Cowart, sitting in the center of the rear seat, feeling more or less like one of the prisoners who generally occupied that location.
Brown spoke slowly. “Before Sullivan went to the chair, he implied to Cowart that there was evidence that we missed out at the Ferguson homestead. That it’s still there. That’s what we’re doing now.”
Wilcox shook his head. “Tanny, you ain’t telling me the half of it. You know, he was just jerking Slick’s chain.” He spoke as if Cowart wasn’t in the car. “I supervised that search myself. We took the place apart. Tapped every wall for a hollow spot. Pulled up the floorboards. Sifted through all the coals in that old stove to see if he’d burned anything. Crawled under the damn house with a metal detector. Hell, I even bought that damn tracking dog in, scented him, and led him through the place myself. If the creep had hid something, I’da found it.”
“Sullivan said you missed something,” Cowart insisted.
“Sullivan told the pencil pusher back there a lot of things,” Wilcox said to his partner. “Why are we paying any damn attention to it?”
“Hey,” Cowart said. “Give it a rest, will ya?”
“Where’d he tell you to look?”
“He didn’t. Just said you missed something. Made an obscene joke about having eyes in my backside.”
Wilcox shook his head. “And anyway, it won’t do no good to find something.” He glanced over at Brown. “You know that, boss, well as I. Ferguson’s history. Gotta move on.”
“No,” Tanny Brown answered slowly. “He’s not.”
“So we find something? What’s the point? Fruit of the poisonous tree. We can’t use anything against Ferguson that stems from an illegal act. You gotta go back to that confession. If he’d a told us where everything was, exactly how he killed little Joanie, the whole shooting match, and then the judge tosses out that confession? Well, everything that follows goes, too.”
“But that’s not what happened,” Cowart said.
Brown interrupted. “Right. Not exactly. It might give some lawyers something to argue over.” He hesitated before continuing. “. . . But I’m not expecting to win this case in court.” He did not amplify.
After a second’s silence, Wilcox started in again. “I don’t even think Ferguson’s grandmother’ll let us look around unless we’ve got a warrant. Hell, I don’t think she’d even tell us if the sun was up without an order from a judge. Waste of time.”
“She’ll let Cowart look.”
“When we drive him up? No way.”
“She will.”
“She probably hates the press worse’n I do. After all, they helped put her little darling on the Row in the first place.”
“Then got him out.”
“I don’t think that’s the way she thinks. She’s an old Baptist Bible-thumper. She probably believes that Jesus Hisself came down and opened the prison gate for her darling little boy, because she bombarded Him with prayers every Sunday at the meeting house. Anyway, even if she does let him in and let him poke around, which she won’t, he doesn’t even know what to look for. Or even how to look for it.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Okay, then suppose, just suppose, for the sake of fuckall, that he finds something. What does that do for us?”
“One thing,” Brown replied. He rolled down his window, letting some of the day’s heat slip into the police cruiser, where it quickly overcame the stale cold of the air conditioner. He spoke softly, his voice barely cresting the wind noise from the window. “Then we’ll know that about this, at least, Sullivan was telling the truth.”
“So what?” Wilcox snapped. “What the hell does that do for us?”
The question drew more silence from the police lieutenant.
“Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with,” Cowart finally interjected.
“Hah!” Wilcox snorted.
He drove on, gripping the steering wheel tightly, frustrated by the sense that his friend and partner and his adversary had shared some information to which he was not privy. It gave him an angry, hateful feeling within. He drove hard, raising a cloud of brown dust behind, half-wishing some mangy old dog or squirrel would run out in front of the car. He punched the accelerator, feeling the rear fishtail slightly on the dirt, scrabbling for thrust.
Cowart watched a tree line on the edge of a distant forest. “Where does that go?” he asked, pointing.
“Eventually to where we found Joanie. Edge of the same swamp. Runs back a half dozen miles or so before spreading out and curling toward town. Quicksand that’ll kill ya and mud so thick you step in, it’s like you put your foot in glue. Mile after mile of dead trees, weeds, and water. All dark and looks kinda the same. Get lost back in there, take a month to find your way out. If ever. Bugs, snakes, and gators and all sorts of slimy, crawling things. But good bass fishing, some real hawgs hanging underneath the dead wood. You just gotta be careful,” Wilcox answered. “Not that you’d care.”
As the police cruiser careened down the back road, jerking and swaying with the bumps and ruts, Cowart thought of the folded sheets of computer paper that contained the stories he’d printed out in the Journal’s library. They were inside his suit coat pocket, rubbing uncomfortably against his shirt, as if they had some radioactive quality that made them glow with heat. He had not shared the information with Tanny Brown.
It could just be coincidence, he insisted to himself. The man gave a speech in a church. Four days later a little girl disappears. That doesn’t add up to anything. You don’t know if he was still around or what he did after going to that church service, where he was, what he was doing. Four days. He could have been all the way back in Pachoula. Or Newark. Or Mars, for all you know.
His memory abruptly filled with the photograph of Joanie Shriver hanging on the wall at the elementary school. He saw the eyes of Dawn Perry staring out with little girl’s insouciance and enthusiasm from the page of the police flyer. White and black. His throat felt suddenly dry.
“Getting close,” Wilcox announced.
His partner’s words cracked through Tanny Brown’s thoughts. When he had arrived home in Pachoula, he had quickly been inundated in the routine of his life. One of his daughters had failed to get the lead in the class play; the other had discovered that her date curfew was an hour earlier than any of her friends’. These were problems of considerable dimension, items that needed his immediate attention. There were certain duties that his father simply would not perform; making the rules was one of them. “Your house. I’m just a visitor here,” the old man had said. He’d been quite content, however, to listen to the younger complain about not getting the acting role. Tanny Brown wondered if the old man’s occasional deafness was not an advantage in those situations.
He had lied to them about where he’d been, lied, as well, about what he was doing. And, he realized, he would have lied if anyone had asked him what he was afraid of. He had been relieved that both girls were caught up in their own lives, with that uniquely obsessive way children have. He had looked at the two of them, only half-listening to their complaints, and seen the picture of Dawn Perry that he still kept in his coat pocket. Why are they any different? he wondered.
He had castigated himself: You cannot be a policeman and survive if you allow yourself to see events as anything other than cases with file numbers. He had forced himself to cling to what he knew, what he could testify to. He kept denying his instincts, because his instincts insisted there was something out there that was far more terrible than he’d ever considered.
“There we go,” Wilcox said.
They approac
hed the shack rapidly, rattling loose stones against the undercarriage. Wilcox slammed the car to a halt and stared out, up at the tired wooden-frame house, before saying, “Okay, Cowart, let’s see you talk your way inside.” He turned and glared at him.
“Give it a rest, Bruce,” Brown grumbled.
Cowart did not reply but stepped out of the car and moved quickly across the dust of the front yard. He glanced back once, seeing the two detectives leaning side by side against the cruiser, watching his progress. He turned his back on them and climbed up the steps to the front porch. He called out, “Missus Ferguson? You home, ma’am?”
He shaded his eyes, blinded as he stepped from the bright sunlight of the front yard into the dark shade of the porch. He tried to make out some movement inside but couldn’t at first.
“Missus Ferguson? It’s Matthew Cowart. From the Journal.”
There was still no reply.
He knocked hard on the doorframe, feeling it rattle beneath his knuckles. The whitewashed boards were peeling.
“Missus Ferguson, ma’am? Please.”
Then, finally, a scratching sound came from the darkness within. A moment passed before a disembodied voice floated through the shadows within the shack toward him. The voice had lost none of its crackling edge and angry tone. “I know who you are. Whatcha ya’ll want this time?”
“I need to talk to you again about Bobby Earl.”
“We done talked and talked, Mr. Reporter. I ain’t hardly got no words left. Ain’t you heard enough now?”
“No. Not nearly. Can I come in?”
“What? Y’all only got inside questions?”
“Missus Ferguson, please. It’s important.”
“lmportant for who, Mr. Reporter?”
“Important for me. And for your grandson.”
“I don’t believe that,” she replied.
There was another silence. Cowart’s eyes slowly adjusted to the shade, and he began to make out shapes through the screen door. He could see an old table with a flowered water pitcher on top and a shotgun and a cane standing in a corner. After a moment, he heard footsteps approaching the door and finally the wispy old black woman hovered into view, her skin blending with the darkness of the interior, but her silver hair catching the light and shining at him. She was moving slowly and scowling as if the arthritis in her hips and back had penetrated her heart as well.
Just Cause Page 41
