Just Cause (32 page)

Sullivan stood up, stretching his hands wide. 'And this way, maybe I can take him right along with me on the road to hell. Number forty-two. Big joke on him. He'd make a fine traveling companion, so to speak. Traveling right down to hell, all quickstep and double-time.'

Sullivan stopped laughing abruptly. 'You see, ain't that a last little joke? He never thought I'd add this little wrinkle.'

'Suppose I don't believe you?'

Sullivan cackled. 'Someone just like me, Cowart. That's right.' He looked over at the reporter. 'Y'all want proof, huh? What you think old Bobby Earl's been doing all this time, since you set him free?'

'He's been in school, studying. He gives some speeches to church groups…'

'Cowart,' Sullivan burst in, 'you know how silly that sounds? Don't you think Bobby Earl didn't learn nothing in his little experience in our great criminal justice system? You think that boy got no sense at all?'

I don't know…'

'That's right. You don't know. But you better find out. 'Cause I wager there's been a lot of tears shed over what old Bobby Earl's been up to. You just gotta go find out.'

Cowart reeled beneath the assault of words. He struggled, wrestling with unnameable horrors. I need proof,' he repeated lamely.

Sullivan whistled and let his eyes roll up toward the roof of the cell. 'You know, Cowart, you're like one of those old, crazy medieval monks, sitting around all day working out proofs for the existence of God. Can't you tell the truth when you hear it, boy?'

Cowart shook his head.

Sullivan smiled. I didn't think so.'

He paused a moment, savoring, before continuing. 'Well, you see, I ain't dumb, so when we were working out this little arrangement, me and Bobby Earl, I found out a bit more than I used already. I had to have a little extra, just to guarantee that Bobby Earl'd do his part of the bargain. And also just so's I could help you along the path to understanding.'

'What?'

'Well, let's make it an adventure, Cowart. You listen carefully. It weren't only that knife that got hid. Some other things got hid, too…'

He thought for a moment before grinning at the reporter. 'Well, suppose those things are in a real nasty place, yes sir. But you can see them, Cowart. If you got eyes in your ass.' He burst out in a raucous laugh.

I don't understand.'

'You just remember my words exactly when you go back to Pachoula. The route to understanding can be a pretty dirty one.' The harsh sound of the prisoner's voice echoed around Matthew Cowart. He remained frozen, speechless.

'How about it, Cowart? Have I managed to kill Bobby Earl, too?' He leaned forward. 'And what about you, Cowart? Have I killed you?'

Blair Sullivan leaned back sharply. 'That's it,' he said. 'End of story. End of talk. Goodbye, Cowart. It's dying time, and I'll see you in hell.'

The condemned man rose and slowly turned his back on the reporter, folding his arms and staring at the back of the cell, his shoulders shaking with an awful mingling of mirth and terror. Matthew Cowart remained rooted for a few moments, unable to will his limbs to move. He felt suddenly like an old man, as if the weight of what he'd heard was pressing down on his shoulders. His mind was throbbing. His throat was dry. He saw his hand shake slightly as he reached out to pick up his notepad and tape recorder. When he rose, he was unsteady. He took one step, then another, finally stumbling away from the lone man gazing at the wall. At the end of the corridor, he stopped and tried to catch his breath. He felt fevered, nauseous, and fought to contain himself, lifting his head when he heard footsteps. He saw a grim-faced Sergeant Rogers and a squad of strong men at the end of the corridor. They were forming into a tight group. There was a white-collared priest with a line of sweat on his forehead and several prison officials nervously glancing at wristwatches. He looked up and noticed a large electric clock high on the wall. He watched the sweep hand circle inexorably. It read ten minutes before midnight.

He felt himself falling. Tumbling down, head over heels, out of control, into a black hole.

'Mr. Cowart?'

He breathed in hard.

'Mr. Cowart, you okay, boy?'

He crashed and felt his body shatter into pieces.

'Hey, Mr. Cowart, you all there?'

Cowart opened his eyes and saw the sturdy, pale visage of Sergeant Rogers.

'You got to take your place now, Mr. Cowart. We ain't waiting on anybody, and all the official witnesses got to be seated before midnight.'

The sergeant paused, running his big hand through the short brush of his crew cut, a gesture of exhaustion and tension. 'It ain't like some movie show you can come in late on. You okay now?'

Cowart nodded his head.

'It's a tough night for everyone,' the sergeant said. 'You go on in. Right through that door. You'll see a seat in front, right next to a detective from Escambia County. That's where Sully said to put you. He was real specific about that. Can you move? You sure you're okay?'

'I'll make it, Cowart croaked.

'It ain't as bad as you think,' the hulking prison guard said. Then he shook his head. 'Nah, that's not true. It's as bad as can be. If it don't sorta turn your stomach, then you ain't a person. But you'll get through it okay. Right?'

Cowart swallowed. 'I'm okay.'

The prison guard eyed him carefully. 'Sully musta bent your ear something fierce. What'd he tell you all those hours? You look like a man who's seen a ghost.'

I have, thought Cowart. But he replied, 'About death.'

The sergeant snorted. 'He's the one who knows. Gonna see for himself, firsthand, now. You got to move right ahead, Mr. Cowart. Dying time don't wait for no man.'

Cowart knew what he was talking about and shook his head.

'Oh yes, it does,' he said. 'It bides its time.'

Sergeant Rogers looked at the reporter closely. 'Well, you ain't the one about to take the final walk. You sure you're okay? I don't want nobody passing out in there or making a scene. We got to have our decorum when we juice someone.'

The prison guard tried to smile with his irony.

Cowart took a single, unsteady step toward the execution chamber, then turned and said, 'I'll be okay.'

He wanted to burst into laughter at the depth of the lie he'd just spoken. Okay, he said to himself. I'll be okay. It was as if some foreign voice were speaking inside of him. Sure, no problem. No big deal.

All I've done is set a killer free.

He had a sudden, awful vision of Robert Earl Ferguson standing outside the small house in the Keys, laughing at him, before entering to fulfill his part of the bargain. The sound of the murderer's voice echoed in his head. Then he remembered the eighty-by-ten glossy photographs taken of Joanie Shriver at the swamp where her body had been discovered. He remembered how slick they had felt in his sweaty grasp, as if coated with blood.

I'm dead, he thought again.

But he forced his feet to drag forward. He went through the door at two minutes to twelve.

The first eyes he saw belonged to Bruce Wilcox. The bantam detective was seated in the front row wearing a brightly checked sportcoat that seemed a sick, hilarious contradiction to the dirty business at hand. He smiled grudgingly and nodded his head toward an empty seat beside him. Cowart spun his eyes about rapidly, glancing over the other two dozen or so witnesses sitting on folding chairs in two rows, gazing straight ahead as if trying to fix every detail of the event in their memories. They all seemed waxen, like figurines. No one moved.

A glass partition separated them from the execution chamber, so that it seemed as if they were watching the action on a stage or some oddly three-dimensional television set. Four men were in the chamber: two correction officers in uniform; a third man, the doctor, carrying a small black medical bag; another man in a suit – someone whispered "from the state attorney general's office" – waiting beneath a large electric clock.

He looked at the second hand as it scythed through time.

'Siddown, Cowart, the detective hissed. 'The show's about to start.'

Cowart saw two other reporters from the Tampa Tribune and the St… Petersburg Times. They looked grim but mimicked the detective by motioning him toward his seat, before continuing to scribble details in small notepads. Behind them was a woman from a Miami television station. Her eyes were staring straight ahead at the still-empty chair in the execution chamber. He saw her wind a simple white handkerchief tightly around her fist.

He half-stumbled into the seat waiting for him. The unyielding metal of the chair burned into his back.

'Tough night, huh, Cowart?' the detective whispered.

He didn't answer.

The detective grunted. 'Not as tough as some have it, though.'

'Don't be so sure about that,' Cowart replied under his breath. 'How did you get here?'

'Tanny's got friends. He wanted to see if old Sully would really go through with it. Still don't believe that bullshit you wrote about him being the killer of little Joanie. Tanny said he didn't much know what it would mean if Sullivan doesn't back out. But he thought if he didn't, and I got to see it, well, it might help teach me respect for the system of justice. Tanny is always trying to teach me things. Says it makes a man a better policeman to know what can happen in the end.'

The detective's eyes glistened with a hellish humor.

'Has it?' Cowart asked.

Wilcox shook his head. 'It ain't happened yet. Class is still in session.' He grinned at Cowart. 'You're looking a bit pale. Something on your mind?'

Before Cowart could reply, Wilcox whispered, 'Got any last words? It's midnight.'

They waited a heartbeat or two.

A side door opened and the prison warden stepped through. Blair Sullivan was next, flanked by two guards and trailed by a third. His face was rigid and pale, a corpselike appearance. His whole wiry body seemed smaller and sickly. He wore a simple white shirt buttoned tight to the neck and dark blue trousers. A priest wearing a collar, carrying a Bible and an expression of frustrated dismay, trailed the group. The priest shuffled off to the side of the chamber, pausing only to shrug in the direction of the warden, and cracked open the Good Book. He started reading quietly to himself. Cowart saw Sullivan's eyes widen when he spotted the chair. They swung abruptly to a telephone on the wall, and for the briefest moment his knees seemed to lose some strength, and he tottered. But he regained control almost instantly and the moment of hesitation was lost. It was the first time he'd seen Sullivan act in any way vaguely human, Cowart thought. Then things started to happen swiftly, with the herky-jerkiness of a silent movie.

Sullivan was steered into the seat and two guards dropped to their knees and started fastening leg and arm braces. Brown leather straps were tightened around Sullivan's chest, bunching up his white shirt. One guard attached an electrode to the prisoner's leg. Another swooped behind the chair and seized a cap, ready to bring it down over Sullivan's head.

The warden stepped forward and started reading from the black-bordered death warrant signed by the governor of Florida. Each syllable pricked Cowart's fear, as if they were being read for him. The warden hurried his words, then took a deep breath and tried to slow his pace down. His voice seemed oddly tinny and distant. There were speakers built into the walls and microphones hidden in the death chamber.

The warden finished reading. For an instant, he stared at the sheet of paper as if searching for something else to read. Then he looked up and peered at Sullivan. 'Any last words?' he asked quietly.

'Fuck you. Let 'er rip,' Sullivan said. His voice quavered uncharacteristically.

The warden gestured with his right hand, the one that held the curled-up warrant, toward the guard standing behind the chair, who abruptly brought the black leather shroud cap and face mask down over the prisoner's head. The guard then attached a large electrical conductor to the cap. Sullivan squirmed then, an abrupt thrust against the bonds that held him. Cowart saw the dragon tattoos on the man's arms spring to life as the muscles beneath the skin twitched and strained. The tendons on his neck tightened like ropes pulled taut by a sudden great wind. Sullivan was shouting something but the words were muffled by a leather chin strap and tongue pad that had been forced between his teeth. The words became inarticulate grunts and moans, rising and falling in panic pitch. In the witness room there was no noise except for the slow in and out of tortured breathing. Cowart saw the warden nod almost imperceptibly toward a partition in the rear of the death chamber. There was a small slit there, and for an instant, he saw a pair of eyes.

The executioner's eyes.

They stared out at the man in the chair, then they disappeared.

There was a thunking sound.

Someone gasped. Another person coughed hard. There were a few whispered expletives. The lights dimmed momentarily. Then silence regained the room.

Cowart thought he could not breathe. It was as if some hand had encircled his chest and squeezed all the air from within him. He watched motionless as the color of Sullivan's fists changed from pink to white to gray.

The warden nodded again toward the rear partition.

A distant generator whine buzzed and shook the small space. A faint odor of burnt flesh crept into his nostrils and filled his stomach with renewed nausea.

There was another fracture in time as the physician waited for the 2,500 volts to slide from the dead man's body. Then he stepped forward, removing a stethoscope from his black bag.

And it was done. Cowart watched the people in the execution chamber as they circled around Sullivan's body, slumped in the polished oaken chair. It was as if they were stage players ready to break down a set after the final performance of some failed show. He and the other official witnesses stared, trying to catch a glimpse of the dead man's face as he was shifted from the killing seat into a black rubber body bag. But Sullivan was zipped away too quickly for anyone to see if his eyeballs had exploded or his skin had been scorched red and black. The body was hustled back through the side door on a gurney. It should be terrible, he thought, but it was simply routine. Perhaps that was the most terrifying aspect of it. He had witnessed- the factorylike processing of evil. Death canned and bottled and delivered with all the drama of the morning milk.