Just Cause

by John Katzenbach

  “I done talked with you enough already. What more you need to know?”

  “The truth,” he responded abruptly.

  The old woman’s scowl creased into a laugh. “You think you can find some truths in here, white boy? What, you think I keep the truth in a little jar by the door or somethin’? Pull it out when I needs it?”

  “More or less,” he replied.

  She cackled unpleasantly. He watched her eyes sweep past him out toward the yard where the two detectives waited. She fixed her eyes on the two policemen, staring hard, then, after a long pause, shifting back to Cowart. “You ain’t coming alone, this time.”

  He shook his head.

  “You on their side now, Mister White Reporter?”

  “No.” He forced the lie out rapidly.

  “Whose side you on, then?”

  “Nobody’s side.”

  “Last time you came here, you was on my grandson’s side. Something different now?”

  He searched hard for the right words. “Missus Ferguson, when I was at the prison, talking with the man who everybody thinks killed that little girl, he told me a story. A story all filled with killing, lies, half-truths, and half-lies. But one thing he said was that if I came here and looked, I would find some evidence.”

  “What sort of evidence?”

  “Evidence that Bobby Earl committed a crime.”

  “How would this man know that?”

  “He said Bobby Earl told him.”

  The old woman shook her head and laughed, a dry, brittle sound that broke off in the hot air between them.

  “Why should I let you poke around and find something that’s just gonna do my boy some harm? Cain’t y’all leave him alone? Let him make hisself into something? Things is finished and over. Let the dead rest and let the living get on.”

  “That’s not the way it works,” he said. “You know that.”

  “All I know is you come ’round here looking to stir up a new patch of trouble for my boy. He don’t need it.”

  Cowart took a deep breath. “Here’s the reason. Missus Ferguson, you let me in and I look around, I don’t find anything and that’s it. The story becomes another lie that man told me, and that’s all there is to it. Life goes on. Bobby Earl’ll never have to look back. Those two detectives will walk out of your life and out of his life. But if I don’t look, then they’re never gonna be satisfied. Neither will I. And it’ll never end. There will always be some questions. They won’t ever go away. It’ll stick with him all his days. See what I’m saying?”

  The old woman hung a hand on the door handle, thinking.

  “I see that point,” she said finally, easing her words out carefully. “But suppose I let you in and you find this awful somethin’ that that man told you about. What then?”

  “Then Bobby Earl will be in trouble again.”

  She paused again before replying. “I don’t truly see how my boy wins much if’n I let you in.”

  Cowart stared at the old woman hard and let loose his final weapon. “If you don’t let me in, Missus Ferguson, then I’m going to assume you’re hiding the truth from me. That there is some evidence hidden inside. That’s what I’m going to tell those two detectives out there, and then a couple of things will happen. We’ll come back with a warrant and search the place anyway. And no one’s going to sleep until they make a case against your grandson, Missus Ferguson. I promise you that. And when they make it, I’ll be right there, with my newspaper, and all the other papers and television stations, and you know what’ll happen, don’t you? So it seems to me you’ve only got one choice. Understand?”

  The old woman’s eyes immediately blistered hate.

  “I understands perfect,” she snarled. “I understands that white men in suits always get what they want. You want to get in, all right. You gonna get in, no matter what I say.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Come back with a paper from some judge, huh? They been here with one of those and it ain’t done them no good at finding something. You think things different now?” She snorted in disgust.

  Finally she unlatched the screen door with a click and held it open perhaps six inches.

  “That man in prison, he tells you where to be looking?”

  “No. Not precisely.”

  The old woman grinned unpleasantly. “Good luck, then.”

  He stepped into the house, like stepping out of one world and into another. He was accustomed—as much as anyone could become ­accustomed—to urban inner-city squalor. He had trailed his friend Vernon Hawkins to enough ghetto crime scenes so that he was no longer shocked or surprised by city poverty, rats, and peeling paint. But this house was different and unsettling.

  Cowart saw a rigid, barren poverty, a place that made no concession to comfort or aspiration, only stiff lives, hard-lived, ruled by desperate anger. A crucifix hung on the wall over a threadbare sofa. An old wood rocker with a single yellowed lace doily on its seat stood in the corner. There were a few other chairs, mostly hand-hewn wood. On a mantelpiece above a fireplace was a portrait of Martin Luther King Junior and an old photograph of a lithe black man in an austere black suit. He guessed it was her late husband. There were a few other photographs of family members, including one of Robert Earl. The walls were dark brown wood, giving the house the semblance of a cave. Only random shafts of sunlight penetrated the windows, losing their fight against the shadows inside. He could see down a hallway to a kitchen where an old-fashioned woodstove dominated the center of the room. But everything was immaculate. Frayed age was everywhere, but not a particle of dust. Mrs. Ferguson probably treated a speck of dirt the same way she treated visitors.

  “It ain’t much, but it’s mine,” she said grimly. “No bank man come by saying he owns this place. It be all mine. Paying it off killed my husband and like to kill me, too, but I been happy here, even if it ain’t so high and mighty a place.”

  She hobbled over to the window and stared out.

  “I know that Tanny Brown,” she said bitterly. “I knows his momma, she dead, and his daddy. They worked hard for Mister White Man and rose up thinking they be better than us. Ain’t no truth in that. I remembers when he was little, stealing oranges off’n trees in the white men’s groves. Now he’s all grown up into a big policeman and thinks he’s mighty fine. He ain’t no better’n my grandson, hear?”

  She turned away from the window. “So, go on, Mister White Reporter. Whatcha gonna look for? Ain’t nothing here for you, boy. Cain’t you see that?” She waved her arms around her, gesturing. “Ain’t nothin’ here for nobody.”

  He did see that.

  Cowart glanced around and felt that Wilcox had been right. He had no idea what he was searching for or where to search. He had a sudden image of Blair Sullivan laughing at him.

  “No,” he said. “Where’s Bobby Earl’s room?”

  The old woman pointed. “Down on the right. Go ahead.”

  Cowart moved slowly down the corridor in the center of the shack. He glanced in at the old woman’s bedroom. He saw a Bible open in the center of an old double bed covered with a single white knit coverlet. Austere and icy. Comfort only in those words read, and precious little comfort at that. He walked past a small bathroom, no bigger than a closet, with a single basin and toilet. The fixtures shone with a polished newness. Then he turned into Ferguson’s room.

  It, too, was barren, a monk’s quarters. A single window high on the wall let in a little light. There was an iron bed, a hand-hewn wooden table, a small chest of drawers, and a chair. An old plank had been nailed to one wall to hold a modest collection of paperback books. Manchild in the Promised Land and The Invisible Man butted up against some science-fiction novels. A pair of fishing rods were stacked in the corner, along with a scratched cheap plastic tackle box.

  Cowart sa
t on the edge of the bed, feeling the soft mushiness of the springs. He let his eyes roam over the meager items in the room, searching for some sign. What should a killer’s room look like?

  He didn’t know. He looked about, remembering how Ferguson had insisted to him that coming to Pachoula after Newark, New Jersey, was like stepping into a summer camp, that it was warm and special, some sort of Huck Finn–like adventureland. Where the hell is that? Cowart thought, staring around himself at the blank walls, the passionless items of furniture.

  Where to start? He couldn’t imagine that something as potent as evidence of a murder would be obvious, so he started in on the drawers of the bureau, feeling foolish, certain that he was simply going over well-searched territory. He rifled through a few changes of clothing without finding anything that he imagined could help him. He ran his hands down behind the bureau drawers, to see if something was concealed there. You’re some detective, he thought. He climbed down on his knees and did the same with the bed. He felt the mattress. Then he tapped the walls, looking for a hollow spot.

  To conceal what? he kept asking himself.

  He was on his hands and knees, tapping at the floor when Ferguson’s grandmother hovered in the doorway.

  “They done that,” she said. “Way back when. Now, ain’t ya satisfied yet?”

  He stood up slowly, close to embarrassment. “I don’t know.”

  She laughed at him. “You finished now.”

  He straightened his clothes. “Let me talk to the detectives.”

  She cackled again and trailed him back through the house and onto the front porch as he walked across the dirt yard to the two detectives.

  Tanny Brown spoke first, but his eyes reached past Cowart, up at the old woman, before returning to settle on the reporter. “Well?”

  “Nothing that seemed like evidence of anything except being poor.”

  “Told you so,” Wilcox said. He looked over at Cowart, his voice softening somewhat. “You go into Ferguson’s room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not much there, right?”

  “A couple of books. Fishing pole. Tackle box. Few clothes in the drawers, that’s it.”

  Wilcox nodded. “That’s how I remember it. That’s what bugged me so damn much. You know, you walk into most anybody’s room, no matter how rich or poor they are, and there’s something in there that says something about who they are. But not in there. Not in that whole house.”

  Brown rubbed his forehead. “Damn,” he said. “I feel stupid and I am stupid.”

  Cowart broke into his thoughts. “The trouble is, I don’t know what you did when you were there before, and what’s different now. I could be picking something up that might mean something to you, but not to me.”

  Wilcox seemed to have let some of his antagonism slide away in the growing heat of the day. “That’s what I thought would happen. Here, maybe this will help.”

  He walked around to the trunk of the vehicle and opened it. Several accordion paper folders were stacked inside, next to a riot shotgun, a pair of flak jackets, and a large crowbar. He rifled swiftly through the files, finally seizing several stapled sheets of paper. He handed them to Cowart.

  “Here’s the inventory from the search back then. See if that helps.”

  The papers started with a list of items seized from the house and their disposition. There were several articles of clothing. These were noted as “Returned after analysis. Negative findings.” Some knives had been taken from the kitchen as well. These, too, were marked “Returned.”

  The inventory also listed what items had been taken from what part of the house. There were brief descriptions of the methods used to search each room and the locations searched. Cowart saw that Ferguson’s room had been exhaustively processed, with negative results.

  “You see anything inside we missed?” Wilcox asked.

  Cowart shook his head.

  “Tanny, we’re wasting our time.”

  Cowart looked up from the papers to see that the police lieutenant had stepped aside while he was reading, fixing his eyes on the old woman. She stayed on the edge of her porch, glaring back at him, their eyes locked onto each other.

  “Tanny?” Wilcox asked.

  The policeman didn’t reply.

  Cowart watched the detective and the old woman try to stare each other down. He was aware of the sweat streaking down beneath his shirt and the clammy damp that matted his hair to his forehead.

  Brown spoke after a moment, without removing his eyes from the old woman. “Look again,” he said. “I think we’re missing something obvious.”

  “Christ, Tanny . . .” Wilcox started again, only to be cut off by the police lieutenant

  “Look at her. She knows something and knows we don’t have a clue. Damn. Keep looking.”

  Wilcox shrugged, muttering something under his breath which dissipated in the midday heat. Cowart dropped his eyes to the sheets of paper, trying to process them as carefully as the policemen had once processed the house. He went over the sheets, room by room, talking out loud toward Wilcox as he did. “Front room: fingerprinting, all items inspected, none seized, floorboards loosened, walls tapped, metal detector used; grandmother’s room: searched and examined for hidden items, none found; storeroom: cutting shears seized, cleaning rags seized, towel seized, floorboards removed; Ferguson’s room: clothing seized, walls and floors examined, vacuumed for hair samples; kitchen: cutlery inspected and seized, stove ashes examined, sent to lab, crawl space inspected . . .” He looked up. “It seems pretty complete . . .”

  “Hell, we spent hours in that place, checking every damn loose nail,” Wilcox said.

  Brown continued to stare up at the old woman.

  “It seems to be the same today,” Cowart said, “except I guess she turned the storeroom into a toilet. Little room between hers and Ferguson’s?” he asked.

  “Yeah. More like a closet than a storeroom, really,” Wilcox said.

  Cowart nodded. “Toilet and basin now.”

  Wilcox added, “I heard Ferguson put that in. Used some of the money he got from some Hollywood producer who wanted to tell his life story. Progress reaches the sticks.”

  In that moment, it seemed that the sunlight pouring down on top of them redoubled, a sudden explosion of heat that sucked all the air out of the yard.

  “So before, where did they . . .”

  “Old outhouse way ’round the back.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “It’s not on the list here,” Cowart said slowly. He could feel a sudden pounding in his temples.

  Brown spun away from Mrs. Ferguson, eyes burrowing into his partner. “You searched it, right?”

  Wilcox nodded, hesitantly. “Ahh, yeah. Sort of. The warrant was for the house, so I wasn’t sure if it was covered, exactly. But one of the technicians went inside, sure. Nothing.”

  Brown stared hard at his partner.

  “C’mon, Tanny. All it was was smells and shits. The tech went in, poked about and got the hell out of there. It was in the search report.” He pointed down to a sentence in the midst of the sheets of paper. “See,” he said hesitantly.

  Cowart stumbled away from the car. He remembered Blair Sullivan’s words: “If you got eyes in your ass.”

  “Goddammit,” he said. “Goddammit.” He turned toward Brown. “Sullivan said . . .”

  The policeman frowned. “I recall what he said.”

  Cowart turned abruptly and started walking around the side of the shack, toward the back. He heard Ferguson’s grandmother’s voice driven across the heat toward him, penetrating like an arrow. “Where you heading, boy?”

  “Out back,” Cowart said brusquely.

  “Ain’t nothing there for you,” she shouted shrilly. “You can’
t go back there.”

  “I want to see. Goddammit, I want to see.”

  Brown caught up with him quickly, the crowbar from the trunk of the car in his hand. The two men strode around the corner of the house as the woman’s protests slid away in the blistering sunlight. They saw the outhouse in a corner, near some trees, back away from everything. The wooden walls had faded to a dull gray. Cowart walked up to it. Cobwebs covered the door. He seized the handle and pulled hard, tugging, as it opened reluctantly, making a screeching sound of protest, old wood scraping against old wood. The door jammed, partway open.

  “Watch out for snakes,” Brown said, grabbing at the edge of the door and pulling hard. With a final tug that shook the entire structure, the door swung wide.

  “Bruce! Get a goddamn flashlight!” Brown yelled. He took the end of the crowbar and swept more spiderwebs aside. A scuttling, scratching sound made Cowart jump back as some small beast fled from the sudden light pouring through the open door.

  The two men stood, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the wooden toilet seat, carved from a board, polished by use. The stench in the small space was dull and thick. It was an old smell that clogged their breathing, a smell closer to death or age than waste.

  “Under there,” Cowart said.

  Brown nodded in agreement.

  “Way down.”

  Wilcox, slightly out of breath from running, joined them, thrusting the black flashlight toward his partner.

  “Bruce,” Brown asked quietly, “the crime-scene guy. Did he pull the seat? Did he check through the stink?”

  Wilcox shook his head. “It was nailed down tight. The nails were old, I remember, because he made me come in and double-check. There was no sign that anything had been pulled up and then replaced. You know, like hammer marks or scrapes or anything . . .”

  “No obvious sign,” said Brown.