Just Cause
Page 44
He took a deep breath. “You got to understand one thing, Detective.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s only going to be two people anyone thinks is guilty here. You and me.”
“And Ferguson?”
“He walks. Inconvenienced but free. Maybe even a hero in the right places, with the right people. Even more of a hero than he currently is.”
“To do . . .”
“To do whatever he likes . . .”
Cowart opened the car door and stepped out of the vehicle. He stood on the sidewalk, letting the breeze dry his emotions. His eyes swept down the street, stopping at an old-fashioned barbershop that still had the traditional revolving pole, and watched the tri-colors swirl in an endless route, always moving but never arriving. He was only peripherally aware that Brown had gotten out of the car and was standing a few feet behind him.
“Suppose,” the detective said coldly to Cowart’s back, “suppose he’s already doing whatever he likes.”
Another little girl. A Dawn Perry. Disappeared one day. “May I go to the pool for a swim? Be back before dinner . . .”
“Now we know what he likes, don’t we, Cowart?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s nothing stopping him from taking up where he left off, before his little vacation on Death Row, right?”
“No. Nothing. So what do you suggest we do, Detective?”
“A trap,” said Brown flatly. “We set a trap. We sting him. If we can’t get him on something old, we should get him on something new.”
Cowart knew, without turning, that the man’s face was set in granite anger. “Yes,” he said. “Go on.”
“Something unequivocal, that makes it clear who he is. Clear so that when I arrest him and you write the story, no one has any doubts whatsoever. None, got it? No doubts. Can you write that story, Cowart? Write it so that he has no way out?”
Matthew Cowart had a sudden memory of watching a Maine fisherman bait lobster traps with pieces of dead fish before slinging them over the side of his boat into the ice-black coastal waters. It had been a summer vacation, when he was young. He remembered how fascinated he had been with the simple, deadly design of the lobster traps. A box made of a few pieces of wood and chicken wire. The beasts would crawl in one end, unable to resist the allure of the rotting carcass, then, after feeding, be unable to maneuver about and retreat through the narrow entrance. Captured by a combination of greed, need, and physical limitations.
“I can write that story,” he replied. He looked over at the detective and added, “But traps take time. Have we got time, Detective? How much?”
Brown shook his head. “All we can do is try.”
Brown left Cowart alone in his office while he went off saying he needed to check on whether Wilcox had returned with preliminary laboratory results on the clothing and the piece of auto carpet. The reporter looked around for a moment at the various citations and photographs that he’d previously inspected, then he picked up the telephone and called the Miami Journal. A switchboard operator connected him with Edna McGee. Cowart wondered how many people had been fooled by the breeziness of her tones, not knowing that beneath them lay a steely mind that thrived on detail.
“Edna?”
“Matty, Matty, where have you been? I’ve been leaving messages all over for you.”
“I’m back up in Pachoula. With the cops.”
“Why them? I thought you were going to Starke to try and work the prison angle.”
“Uh, that’s next.”
“Well, I would get there. The St. Pete Times reported today that Blair Sullivan left several file boxes filled with documents, diaries, descriptions, I don’t know what else. Maybe something that described how he set up those murders. The paper said that Monroe detectives are going through the stuff now, looking for leads. They’ve also been interviewing everyone who worked on Death Row during Sullivan’s stay. And they’ve got lists of visitors as well. I made some calls and filed a bit of a catch-up story. But the city desk is wondering where the hell you are. And especially wondering why the hell you didn’t file that story before that son of a bitch from St. Pete did. Not pleased, Matty, they’re not pleased. Where have you been?”
“Back in the Keys. Here.”
“Got anything?”
“Nothing for the paper, yet. Got a lead or two . . .”
“Like what?”
“Edna, give me a break.”
“Well, Matty, I’d get cracking and think of filing something spectacular pretty soon. Like, right away. Otherwise the wolves will be at the door, howling for their dinner. If you get what I mean.”
“You make it clear. And appetizing.”
Edna laughed. “No one wants to go from being caviar to dog food.”
“Thanks, Edna. You’re really reassuring.”
“Just a warning.”
“It’s been heard. So, what have you come up with?”
“Following the trail of your Mr. Sullivan has been quite an education in the creative use of lying.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, of the forty or so killings he owned up to, I right now say he did about half. Maybe a little less.”
“Only twenty . . .”
He heard himself speak those words and realized how silly they sounded. Only twenty. As if it made him only half as evil as someone who killed forty people.
“Right. For sure. At least, twenty that sound persuasive.”
“What about the others?”
“Well, some he clearly didn’t do because other people are serving time, or even sitting on Death Row, for the crimes. He just sort of stitched the stories into the fabric of his own story, see? Like I told you about the crime on the Miccosukkee Reservation, for one example. He also told you at one point that he killed a woman up outside of Tampa. A woman he met in a bar, promised her a good time, ended up killing her, you remember that one?”
“Ahh, sure, I remember he didn’t say a lot about it, except to sort of delight in the fun of killing her.”
“Right That’s the one. Well, he had all the details right, except for one thing. The guy who did that crime also did two other women in that area and occupies a cell about thirty feet away from Blair Sullivan’s old home on Death Row. He just slid that story right in amidst two others that check out. Wasn’t until I started checking up there that it rang a bell. See what he did? Just grabbed that other guy’s crime—and there ain’t no doubt the other guy was the killer—and just added it into his grand total. Did that a couple of other times, with other crimes that guys are on the Row for. Sort of like a quarterback throwing a lot of short passes in the final quarter of a game that’s already won. He was, like, inflating his stats.” Edna laughed.
“But why?”
Cowart could sense Edna’s shrug through the telephone line. “Who knows? Maybe that’s why all those FBI folks were so damn interested in talking to Sully before he checked out.”
“But . . .”
“Well, let me give you one theory. Call it McGee’s Postulate, or something nice and scientific like that. But I asked around a bit, you know, and guess what? They always figured Ted Bundy for some thirty-eight killings. Could have been more, but that’s the figure that we got, and that’s what he ended up talking about before heading off to hell, himself. My guess is that old Sully wanted to do him a couple better. They found at least three different books about Bundy amongst Sully’s personal effects, you know. Nice detail, that, huh? The next best killer, if you want to call it that, waiting on Death Row is that guy Okrent, the Polish guy from Lauderdale, remember him? He had the little problem with prostitutes. Like, he killed them. He’s only around eleven officially, but unofficially, he’s at about seventeen or eighteen. He was on the same wing as Sully, too. You begi
nning to see my thinking here, Matty? Old Sully wanted to be famous. Not only for what he was doing, but for what he did. So, he took a few liberties.”
“I see what you’re driving at. Can you get someone to say it, and put it in the paper?”
“No sweat. Those FBI guys will say whatever I want them to. And there are those two sociologists up in Boston who study mass murderers. I spoke with them earlier. They love McGee’s Postulate. So, all in all, it should run tomorrow, if I work late. Or the next day, which is a lot more likely.”
“That’s great,” Cowart said.
“But, Matty, it would go a lot better if you had something to run alongside it. Like a story saying who killed those old folks down in the Keys.”
“l’m working on it.”
“Work hard. That’s the only question still out there, Matty. That’s what everyone wants to know.”
“I hear you.”
“They’re getting a bit frantic over at the city desk. They want to put our world-famous, crack, ace, and only occasionally incompetent investigative team on it. Lobbying hard, so I hear.”
“Those guys couldn’t figure out . . .”
“I know that, Matty, but there are people saying you’re overwhelmed.”
“I’m not.”
“Just warning you. Thought you’d want to know all the politicking going on behind your back. And that story in the St Pete Times didn’t help your cause any. It doesn’t help either that no one knows where the hell you are ninety-nine percent of the time. Jeez, the city editor had to lie to that Monroe detective the other morning when she came in here looking for you.”
“Shaeffer?”
“The pretty one with the eyes that look like she’d rather be roasting you on an open spit than talking with you.”
“That’s her.”
“Well, she was here, and she got the semi-runaround and that’s a marker they hold on you now.”
“All right. I hear you.”
“Hey, break that case. Figure out who zapped the old couple. Maybe win another big one, huh?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, nothing wrong with fantasizing, right?”
“I guess not.”
He hung up the phone, muttering obscenities to himself, but precisely whom or what he was cursing, he didn’t know. He started to dial the number for the city editor, then stopped. What could he tell him? Just then he heard a noise at the door and looked up to see Bruce Wilcox. The detective seemed pale.
“Where’s Tanny?” he asked.
“Around. He left me here to wait for him. I thought he was looking for you. What did you find out?”
Wilcox shook his head. “I can’t believe I screwed up,” he answered.
“Did the lab find anything?”
“I just can’t believe I didn’t check the goddamn shithouse back then.” Wilcox tossed a couple of sheets of paper onto the desk “You don’t have to read them,” he said. “What they found was material resembling blood residue on a shirt, jeans, and the rug. Resembling, for Christ’s sake. And that was looking through a microscope. All had deteriorated almost to the point of invisibility. Three years of shit, lime, dirt, and time. There wasn’t a hell of a lot left. I watched that lab tech spread out the shirt and it, like, almost fell apart when he started to poke at it with tweezers. Anyway, not a damn thing that’s conclusive. They’re gonna send it all off to a fancier lab down in Tallahassee, but who knows what they’ll come up with. The technician wasn’t real optimistic.”
Wilcox paused, taking a slow, long breath. “Of course, you and I know why those things were there. But getting up and saying they were evidence of anything, well, we’re a long ways from being able to say that. Damn! If I found them three years ago, when everything was fresh, you know, they just dissolve that shit and stuff right off and there’s the blood.” He looked up at Cowart. “Joanie Shriver’s blood. But now, they’re just a couple of pieces of tired old clothes. Damn.”
The detective paced the office. “I can’t believe how I screwed up,” he said again. “Screwed up. Screwed up. Screwed up. My first goddamn big case.”
He was clenching his fists tightly, then releasing them before tightening them once again into a ball. In, out. In, out. Cowart could see the detective’s muscles shifting about beneath his shirt. The high-school wrestler before a match.
Tanny Brown sat in a recently emptied office at a vacant desk making telephone calls. The door was shut behind him, and in front of him was a yellow legal pad for notes and his personal address book. He had to leave messages at the first three numbers he tried. He dialed a fourth number and waited for the phone to be picked up.
“Eatonville Police.”
“Captain Lucious Harris, please. This is Detective Lieutenant Theodore Brown.”
He waited patiently before a huge voice boomed over the receiver. “Tanny? That you?”
“Hello, Luke.”
“Well, well, well. Long time, no hear. How’s it goin’?”
“Ups and downs. And you?”
“Well, hell. Life ain’t perfect by no means. But it ain’t terrible, neither, so I guess I got no complaints.”
Brown pictured the immense man on the other end of the line. He would be in a uniform that would be too tight in the places where his three hundred pounds made no pretense toward muscle, and around his neck, so that his head seemed to rest on the starched white collar with its gold insignia. Lucious Harris had a big man’s hesitancy to anger and a constant, bubbling outlook that made his entire life seem a feast on which he was continually dining. He’d always enjoyed calling the big man because no matter how evil the world had seemed, his response was always energetic and undefeated. Tanny Brown realized he no longer made those calls.
“How’re things in Eatonville?” he asked.
“Ha! You know, we’re actually becoming something of a tourist trap, Tanny. Folks coming to visit because of all the attention we got because of the late Miz Hurston. Ain’t gonna compete with Disney World or Key West, I guess, but it’s kinda nice to see new faces around town.”
Brown tried to picture Eatonville. His friend had grown up there, its rhythms were in the locutions of his voice. It was a small town, with a singular sense of order about it. Almost everybody who lived there was black. It had gained some notoriety in the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, its most prominent, resident. When she had been discovered first by the academicians and then the film people, Eatonville had been discovered as well. But mostly, what it was, was a small town for black people, run by black people.
There was a small pause before Lucious Harris asked, “So. You don’t ever call me no more. Hard to tell we are friends. Then, of course, I see you got yourself a bunch of publicity, but it ain’t the sort that folks naturally go out of their way to acquire, right?”
“That’s true.”
“And now, some more time passes, and you’re on the phone, but it ain’t to talk about how come you ain’t called. And it ain’t to talk about anything other than something special, am I right?”
“Just taking a wild shot, Luke. Thought you might be able to help.”
“Well, let me hear it.”
Tanny Brown breathed in deeply and asked, “Unsolved disappearances. Homicides. In the last year. Children, teenagers, girls. And black. Anything like that in your town?”
‘The policeman was quiet. Brown could feel a sense of constriction coming over the line.
“Tanny, why you asking me this now?”
“I just got . . .”
“Tanny, you tell me the straight truth. Why you calling me with this now?”
“Luke, I’m just shooting in the dark. I got a bad feeling about something, and I’m just poking around.”
“You poked something solid here, my man.”
“Wild child,” Harris said slowly. “Girl named Alexandra Jones. Thirteen. Part of her still be eight, part of her eighteen. You know the type. One minute she be all sweetness and polite, come baby-sit for Missus Harris and me, the next minute I sees her smoking a cigarette outside the convenience store, acting all grown-up and tough.”
“Sounds like my own daughters,” Brown said inadvertently.
“No, your gals got a hold of something, and this little gal didn’t. Anyway, she got some confusion and this makes her wild, you know. She starts to think this little town be too small for her. Run away once, her daddy go find her couple miles down the road, dragging along a little suitcase. Daddy be one of my patrolmen, so we all knows about it. Run away twice, and this time we find her all the way in Lauderdale, just outside, on Alligator Alley, thumbing rides from the semi drivers that passes that way. Trooper spots her, and they brings her home. Third time she run is three months back. Her momma and daddy driving every road they can to find her, figure this time she’s heading north to Georgia where they got relatives and the gal’s got a cousin she sweet on. Put out a BOLO. I talks to departments all over the state. Flyers out, you know the drill. Only she never shows in Georgia. Or Lauderdale or Miami or Orlando or any damn place. Where she shows is in Big Cypress swamp, where some hunters find her three weeks ago. Find what’s left of her, which is just some bones. Picked clean by the sun and little animals and birds. Not a pretty sight. Gotta make ID through dental records. Cause of death? Multiple stab wounds, the M.E. figures, but only ’cause there are nicks and cuts in some of the bones. Not even that be conclusive. And not even any clothes laying about. Whoever done her stashed the clothes someplace else. I mean, it ain’t too damn a mystery what happened to her, now, is it? But figuring out who did it be a different matter for sure.”