Just Cause (21 page)

By the end of the week, a photographer dispatched by the Journal to North Florida had returned. He spread his pictures out on a layout desk before Cowart. There was a full-color shot of Ferguson in his cell, peering out at the camera between the bars. There was a shot of the culvert, other shots of Pachoula, the Shriver house, the school. There was the same picture that Cowart had seen hanging in the elementary school. There was a shot of Tanny Brown and Bruce Wilcox, striding out of the Escambia County homicide offices.

'How'd you get that?' Cowart asked.

'Spent the day staked out, waiting for them. Can't say they were real pleased, either.'

Cowart nodded, glad that he hadn't been there. 'What about Sully?'

'He wouldn't let me shoot him,' the photographer replied. 'But I've got a good shot of him from his trial. Here.' He handed the picture to Cowart.

It was Blair Sullivan marching down a courtroom corridor, shackled hand and foot, braced by two huge detectives. He was sneering at the camera, half-laughing, half-threatening.

'One thing I can't figure,' the photographer said.

'What's that?'

'Well, if you saw that man coming at you out on the street, you sure as hell would run fast the other way. You sure wouldn't get into the car with him. But Ferguson, hell, you know, even when he's staring out at you angry, he still don't look that damn bad, you know. I mean, I could see letting him talk me into a car.'

'You don't know,' Cowart replied. He picked up the picture of Sullivan. 'The man's a psychopathic killer. He could talk you into anything. It's not just that little girl. Think about all the other folks he killed. How about that old couple, after he helped change their tire? They probably thanked him before he killed them. Or the waitress. She went with him, remember? Just looking to have a little good time. Thought she was going to have a party. She didn't make him for a killer. The kid in the convenience store? He had one of those emergency alarm buttons right under the register. But he didn't hit it.'

'Didn't have the chance, I think.' Cowart shrugged.

'Well,' the photographer said, I sure as hell wouldn't get into a car with him.' 'That's right. You'd be dead.'

He commandeered his old desk in a back corner of the newsroom, spreading all his notes out around himself, staring into a computer screen. There was a single moment, when the screen was empty before him, that he felt a quick nervousness. It had been some time since he'd written a news story, and he wondered if the skill had left him. Then he thought, It's all there, and let excitement overcome any doubts. He found himself describing the two men in their cells, the way they had appeared, the way they'd talked. He sketched out what he'd seen of Pachoula, and he outlined the hulking intensity of the one detective and the abrupt anger of the other. The words came easily, steadily. He thought of nothing else.

It took him three days to write the first story, two days to construct the follow. He spent a day polishing, another day writing sidebars. Two days were spent going over it line by line with the city editor. Another day with lawyers, a frustrating word-by-word analysis. He hovered over the layout desk as it was budgeted for the front of the Sunday paper. The main headline was: A CASE OF QUESTIONS. He liked that. The subhead was: TWO MEN, ONE CRIME AND A MURDER THAT NO ONE CAN FORGET. He liked that as well.

He lay sleepless in bed at night, thinking: There it is. I've done it. I've really done it.

On the Saturday before the story was to run, he called Tanny Brown. The detective was home, and the homicide offices wouldn't give Co wart his unlisted telephone number. He told a secretary to have the detective call him back, which the man did an hour later.

'Cowart? Tanny Brown here. I thought we'd finished talking for now.'

'I just wanted to give you a chance to respond to what's going to be in the story.'

'Like your damn photographer gave us a chance?'

'I'm sorry about that.'

'Ambushed us.'

'Sorry.'

Brown paused. 'Well, at least tell me the picture doesn't look too damn bad. We've always got out vanity, you know.'

Cowart could not tell if the detective was joking or not.

'It's not bad,' he said. 'Like something out of Dragnet.'

'Good enough. Now, what do you want?'

'Do you want to respond to the story we're running tomorrow?'

'Tomorrow? I'll be damned. Guess I'll have to get up early and go down to the paper store. Gonna be a big deal?'

'That's right.'

'Front page, huh? Gonna make you a star, right, Cowart? Make you famous?'

'I don't know about that.'

The detective laughed mockingly. 'This is Robert Earl's big shot, right? You think it'll do the trick for him? You think you can walk him off the Row?'

'I don't know. It's a pretty interesting story.'

'I bet.'

'I just wanted to give you the opportunity to respond.'

'You'll tell me what it says now?'

'Yes. That's correct. Now it's written.'

Tanny Brown's voice paused over the telephone line. 'I suppose you got all that stuff about beating him up and that crap? The bit with the gun, right?'

'It says what he contends. It also says what you said.'

'Just not quite as strong, though, huh?'

'No, they have equal weight.'

Brown laughed. 'I bet,' he said.

'So, would you like to comment directly?'

'I like that word, "comment." Says a bunch, doesn't it? Nice and safe. You want me to comment on what it says?' A sharp sarcasm tinged his voice.

'Right. I wanted you to have the opportunity.'

I got it. An opportunity to dig a bigger grave for myself,' the detective said. 'Get myself in more trouble than I'm already going to be in, just because I didn't bullshit you. Sure.' He took a breath and continued, almost sadly. 'I could have stonewalled the whole thing, but I didn't. Is that in your story?'

'Of course.'

Tanny Brown laughed briefly, wryly. 'You know, I know you got an idea what's gonna happen because of all this. But I'll tell you one thing. You're wrong. You're dead wrong.'

'Is that what you want to say?'

'Things never work out as smoothly or as simply as people think. There's always a mess. Always questions. Always doubts.'

'Is that what you want to say?'

'You're wrong. Just wrong.'

'Okay. If that's what you want to say.'

'No, that's what I want you to understand.'

The detective laughed abruptly. 'Still the hard case, ain't you, Cowart? You don't have to answer that. I already know the answer.' He let a beat slip by, then another.

Cowart listened to the deep, angry breathing on the line before Tanny Brown finally spoke, rumbling his words like a distant storm. 'Okay, here's a comment: Go fuck yourself.'

And then he hung up.

He did not see or speak with Ferguson until the hearing. The same was true for the detectives, who refused to return any of his phone calls in the weeks after the stories ran. His requests for information were handled summarily by prosecutors up in Escambia County, who were scrambling for a strategy. On the other hand, Ferguson's defense attorneys were effusive, calling him almost daily to inform him of developments, filing a barrage of motions in front of the judge who'd presided over Ferguson's murder trial.

When his story had appeared, Cowart had been caught up in a natural momentum created by the allegations he'd printed, like being driven down a street by sweeping sheets of rain. The television and newspaper press inundated the case, crawling with rapacity over all the people, events, and locations that had constituted his tale, retelling it, reforming it in dozens of different yet fundamentally similar ways. To all involved, it had been a story of several fascinations: the tainted confession, the disquieted town still restless from the child's murder, the iron-hard detectives, and ultimately, the awful irony that the one killer could see the other go to the electric chair simply by keeping his mouth shut. This, of course, Blair Sullivan did, summarily refusing all interviews, refusing to speak with reporters, lawyers, police, even a crew from 60 Minutes. He made one call, to Matthew Cowart, perhaps ten days after the articles appeared.

The call was collect. Cowart was at his desk, back in the editorial department, reading the New York Times version of the story (QUESTIONS RAISED IN FLORIDA PANHANDLE MURDER CASE) when the phone rang and the clipped voice of the long-distance operator asked him if he would accept a call from a Mr. Sullivan in Starke, Florida. He was momentarily confused, then electrified. He leaned forward in his seat and heard the familiar soft twang of Sergeant Rogers at the prison.

'Cowart? You there, fella?'

'Hello, Sergeant. Yes?'

'We're bringing in Sully. He wants to talk to y'all.'

'How're things up there?'

The sergeant laughed. 'Hell, I shoulda known better than to let you in here. This place been buzzing like a damn bee's nest since your stories. All of a sudden, everybody on Death Row's calling up every damn reporter in the state, for sure. And every damn reporter is showing up here demanding interviews and tours and every damn thing.' The sergeant's laugh continued to barrel over the telephone line. 'Got this place more excited than the time both the main and the backup generators went out, and all the inmates thought it was the hand of Fate opening the doors for them.'

'I'm sorry if I caused you some trouble…'

'Oh, hell, I don't mind. Takes the edge off the sameness, you know. Of course, likely to be a mite difficult around here when things do settle down. Which they will, sooner or later.'

'How about Ferguson?'

'Bobby Earl? He's so busy giving interviews I think they ought to give him his'n own talk show on late-night TV, like Johnny Carson or that Letterman guy-'

Cowart smiled. 'And Sully?'

There was a pause, then the sergeant spoke softly.

'Won't talk to no one about nothing, no sir. Not just reporters or shrinks. Bobby Earl's attorney been 'round maybe five, six times. Those two detectives from Pachoula came by, but he just laughed at them and spat in their eyes. Subpoenas, threats, promises, whatever, you name it, don't do no good. He don't want to talk, especially about that little gal in Pachoula. He sings some hymns to himself and writes more letters and studies the Bible hard. Keeps asking me what's happening, so I fill him in as best as possible, bring him the papers and the magazines and such. He watches the television each night, so he can see those two detectives call you every name in the book. And then he just laughs it all off.'

'What do you think?'

'I think he's having fun. His own kind of fun.'

'That's scary.'

'I told you about that man.'

'So why does he want to talk to me?'

'I don't know. He just up and asks me this morning if'n I'll put the call through.'

'So put him on.'

The sergeant coughed with concern. 'Ain't that easy. You remember, we like a few precautions moving Mr. Sullivan.'

'Of course. How's he look?'

'He don't look no different from when you saw him, save maybe a bit of excitement about him. Got a little bit of a glow to him, like he's been putting on weight, which he ain't, cause he don't eat much at all. Like I said, I think he's having fun. He's right lively.'

'Uh-huh. Hey, Sergeant, you didn't say what you thought of the story.'

'No? Well, I thought it real interesting.'

'And?'

'Well, Mr. Cowart, I got to say, you hang around prisons long enough, especially Death Row, and you're likely to hear every damn strange story there is.'

Before Cowart could ask another question, he heard loud voices in the background and shuffling sounds by the telephone. The sergeant said, 'He's coming in now.'

'This is a private conversation?' Cowart asked.

'You mean, is this phone bugged? Hell if I know. It's the line we use mainly for lawyers, so I doubt it, 'cause they'd make a helluva stink. Anyway, here he is, just one second, we got to cuff his hands.'

There was a momentary silence. Cowart could hear the sergeant speaking in the background. 'That too tight, Sully?' And he heard the prisoner reply, 'Nah, it's okay.' Then there were some indistinct noises and the sound of a door closing, and finally Blair Sullivan's voice.

'Well, well, well, Mr. Cowart. The world-famous reporter, how yah doing?'

'Fine, Mr. Sullivan.'

'Good. Good. So what d'you think, Cowart? Our boy Bobby Earl gonna walk in the air of freedom? Do you think that god of good fortune's gonna pluck him out from behind these bars, from out of the shadow of death, huh? You think the gears of justice gonna start grinding away on him now?' Sullivan laughed hoarsely.

'I don't know. His attorney has filed a motion for a new trial back in the court that convicted him…'

'You think that's gonna do the trick?'

'We'll see.'

Sullivan coughed. 'That's right, you're right.'

Both men were silent.

After a moment, Cowart asked, 'So, why have you called me?'

'Hang on, Sullivan replied. 'I'm trying to get this damn smoke lit. It's hard. I got to put the phone down.' There was a clunking sound before Cowart heard his voice again. 'Ahh, there we go. You asked?'

'Why'd you call?'

'I just wanted to hear how famous you're getting.'

'What?'

'Why, hell, Cowart, I see your story all over the news. Sure got everybody's attention, didn't you? Just by sticking your hand under a greasy old culvert, right?'

'I guess.'

'Pretty easy way to get famous, huh?'

'That wasn't all there was to it.'

Sullivan spat out another laugh. 'I suppose not. But you sure looked fine answering all those questions on Nightline. Real confident and sure of yourself.'