Just Cause (37 page)

Brown shook his head. How long have I known George Shriver? Since the day I went to work in his father's store and he took a mop and worked next to me.

His hand twitched. I've buried too many. He looked at the picture a final time before setting it back on top of the bureau. It's not over, he insisted. I owe you too much.

He walked from his daughter's room into his bedroom. He no longer thought of exhaustion or rest. Fueled by outrage and debt, he began collecting a change of clothes and stuffing them into an overnight bag, wondering when the next commuter flight down to Miami left the airport.

He had no plan.

Matthew Cowart faced the day after the execution of Blair Sullivan with all the enthusiasm of a man who'd been told he was next. He drove his rental car rapidly through the night, down more than half the length of the state, jumping on Interstate 95 south of Saint Augustine. He cruised the three-hundred-plus miles at an erratic pace, often accelerating to ninety miles per hour, oddly surprised he was not stopped once by a trooper, though he passed several heading in the opposite direction. He soared through the darkness, fueled by all the furious contradictions ricocheting back and forth in his head. The first morning sunshine began to rise as he pushed past the Palm Beaches, shedding no light on his troubles. It was well after dawn when he finally deposited the car with a surly Hertz agent at Miami International Airport, who had difficulty understanding why Cowart had not returned the vehicle to its North Florida origin. A Cuban taxi-cab driver, jabbering about baseball and politics without making a distinction between the two and using an energetic mixture of languages, muscled his way through the city's morning rush-hour traffic to Cowart's apartment, leaving the reporter standing alone at the curbside, staring up into the wavy, pale blue heat of the sky.

He paced about his apartment uncomfortably, wondering what to do. He told himself he should go in to the newspaper but was unable immediately to summon the necessary energy. The newspaper suddenly no longer seemed a place of sanctuary, but instead a swamp or a minefield. He stared down at his hands, turning them over, counting the lines and veins, thinking how ironic it was that so few hours earlier he'd been desperate to be alone and now that he was, he was incapable of deciding what to do.

He plumbed his memory for others trapped in the same type of circumstances, as if others' mistakes would help diminish his own. He recalled William F. Buckley's efforts to free Edgar Smith from Death Row in New Jersey in the early sixties and Norman Mailer's assistance to Jack Abbott. He remembered the columnist standing in front of a bank of microphones, angrily admitting to being duped by the killer. He could picture the novelist fighting through the glare of camera lights, refusing to talk about his murderous charge. It's not the first reporter to make an error, he thought. It's a high-risk profession. The stakes are always tough. No reporter is immune from a carefully executed deception.

But that only made him feel worse.

He sat up in his seat, as if talking to someone in a chair opposite him and said, 'What could I have done?'

He rose and started pacing about the room. 'Dammit, there was no evidence. It made sense. It made perfect sense. Dammit. Dammit.'

Rage suddenly overcame him, and he reached out and swept a stack of newspapers and magazines from a countertop. Before they had settled, he picked up a table and overturned it, crashing it into a sofa. The thud of the furniture smashing together was intoxicating. He started to mutter obscenities, picking up pace, assaulting the room. He seized some dishes and threw them to the floor. He swept clear a shelf filled with books. He knocked over chairs, punched the walls, finally throwing himself down next to a couch.

'How could I have known?' he shouted. The silence in the room was his only answer. A different exhaustion filled him, and he leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. Abruptly, he laughed. 'Boy,' he said, affecting a lugubrious Hollywood-Southern accent, 'you done fucked up good. Fucked up righteous. Done fucked up in a unique and special way.' He drew out the words, letting them roll around the disheveled apartment.

He sat up quickly. 'All right. What are we going to do?' Silence. 'That's right' he laughed again. 'We just don't know, do we?'

He rose and walked through the mess to his desk and tore open a bottom drawer. He shuffled through a stack of papers until he found a year-old copy of the Sunday paper with his first story. It had already started to yellow slightly. The newsprint felt brittle to his touch. The headline jumped at him and he started reading through the story.

Questions raised about Panhandle murder case, he abbreviated the words of the opening paragraph out loud. 'No shit.'

He continued to read as far as he could, past the lead and through the opening page to the jump and the double-truck inside. He wouldn't look at the picture of

Joanie Shriver but stared angrily at the photos of Sullivan and Ferguson.

He was about to crumple the paper and throw it into the wastebasket when he stopped and looked at it again. Grabbing a yellow highlight pen, he started marking the occasional word or phrase. After he finished the entire story a second time, he laughed. In all the words written, there was nothing wrong. There was nothing really untrue. Nothing inaccurate.

Except everything.

He looked at what he'd written again: All the 'questions' had been correct. Robert Earl Ferguson's conviction had been based on the flimsiest evidence concocted in a prejudicial atmosphere. Was the confession beaten out of Ferguson? His stories had only cited what the prisoner had contended and the policemen denied. It was Tanny Brown, Cowart thought, who had been unable to explain the length of time Ferguson had been held in custody before 'confession.' It had deserved to be set aside. The jury that had convicted him had been steamrollered into their decision by passions. A savagely murdered little white girl and an angry black man accused of the crime and represented by an incompetent old attorney. A perfect formula for prejudice. His own words -illegally obtained – putting him on the Row. There was no question about all that, about the injustice that had beset Ferguson in the days after Joanie Shriver's body-had been discovered.

Except for one isolated detail. He had killed the little girl. At least, according to a mass murderer.

His head spun.

Cowart continued to scan through his story. Blair Sullivan had been in Escambia County at the time of the murder. That had been confirmed and double-confirmed. There was no question Sullivan had been in the midst of a murderous spree. He should have been a suspect – if the police had bothered to look past the obvious.

The only outright lie – if it was one – that he could detect belonged to Ferguson, when he had accused Sullivan of confessing to the crime. But that was Ferguson talking – carefully attributed and quoted, not himself.

And yet, everything was a lie, the explosive coupling of the two men completely obscuring whatever truth lay about.

He thought, I am in hell. The simple, terrible reality was, for all the right reasons, all the wrong things had happened.

The first two times the telephone rang, he ignored it. The third time, he stirred himself and, despite knowing there was no one he wanted to talk to, plucked the phone from its cradle and held it to his ear.

Yes?'

Christ, Matt?'

It was Will Martin from the editorial department.

'Will?'

Jesus, fella, where the hell have you been? Everyone's going slightly bananas trying to find you.'

'I drove back. Just got in.'

From Starke? That's an eight-hour trip.'

'Less than six, actually. I was going pretty fast.'

'Well, boy, I hope you can write as fast as you can drive. The city desk is screaming for your copy and we got a couple hours before first-edition deadline. You got to get your rear in gear, in here, pronto.' The editor's singsong voice was filled with excitement.

'Sure. Sure…' Cowart listened to his own voice as if it were someone else talking on the telephone. 'Hey,

Will, what're the wires moving?'

'Wild stuff. They're still doing new leads on that little press conference of yours. Just what the hell happened up there, anyway? Nobody's talking about anything else and nobody knows a damn thing. You ought to see your phone messages. The networks, the Times and Post, and the newsweeklies, just for starters. The three local affiliates have the front door staked out, so we got to figure a way of getting you in here without too much fuss. There's a half-dozen calls already from homicide cops working cold cases that just happened to be on the route that Sullivan took. Everybody wants to know what that killer told you before taking his evening juice, if you'll pardon the pun.'

'Sullivan confessed to a bunch of crimes.'

'I know that. The wires have run that already. That's what you told everybody up there. But we've got to get the inside story right now, son. Chapter and verse. Names, dates, and details. Right now. You got it on tape? We got to get that to a typist, hell, a half-dozen typists, if need be, get some transcripts made. C'mon, Matty, I know you're probably exhausted, buddy, but you got to rally. Pop some No Doze, gulp some coffee. Just get on in here. Pump out those words. You got to move, Matty, move, before this place gets crazy. Hell, you can sleep later. Anyway, sleep's overrated. Better to have a big story anytime. Trust me.'

'Okay,' Cowart said helplessly. Any thought of trying to explain what had happened had dissipated in the waves of enthusiasm Will poured over the phone line. Cowart realized if Martin was this way – a man dedicated to a slow, thoughtful, editorial-page-consideration pace of events – the city desk was probably frantic with excitement. A big story has a universal impact on the staff of a newspaper. It catches hold of everyone, sucks them in, makes them feel as if they're a part of the events. He took a deep breath. 'I'm on my way,' he said quietly. 'But how do I get past the camera crews?'

'No problem. You know where the downtown Marriott Hotel sorta hides behind the Omni Mall? On that little back street by the bay?'

'Sure.'

'Well, a home-delivery truck will pick you up, right on the corner, in twenty minutes. Just jump in and come in the freight entrance.'

'Cloak and dagger, huh?' Cowart was forced to smile.

These are dangerous times, my son, demanding unique efforts. It was the best we could come up with on short notice. Now, I suppose the CIA or the KGB could think of something better, but who's got the time? And anyway, outwitting a bunch of television reporters shouldn't be the hardest damn thing in the world.'

'I'm on my way.' Then suddenly, he thought of the tapes in his briefcase containing the confession and the truth about Joanie Shriver's murder. He couldn't let anyone hear those words. Not until things had settled, and he'd sorted out what he was going to do. He scrambled. 'Look, I need to shower first. Hold the pickup for, say, forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour.'

Not a chance. You don't need to be clean to write.'

I've got to collect my thoughts.'

You want me to tell the city editor you're thinking?'

'No, no, just say I'm on my way, I'm just getting my notes together. Thirty minutes, Will. Half an hour. Promise.'

'No more. Got to move, son. Got to move.' Will Martin made slapping sounds to punctuate the urgency of the moment.

'A half hour. No more.'

'Okay. I'll tell the city editor. Man he's gonna have a heart attack and it's only ten A.M. The truck will be waiting for you. Just hurry. Keep the poor guy alive another day, huh?' Martin laughed at his joke and hung up.

Cowart's head spun. He knew he was running out of choices, that the detectives would arrive at his office momentarily. Things were moving too rapidly for him to contain. He had to go in and write something. Things were expected of him.

But instead of grabbing his jacket, he seized his briefcase and pulled out the tapes. It only took him a second to locate the last tape; he'd been careful to number them as each was completed. For a moment he held the tape in his hand and considered destroying it, but instead, he took it over to his own stereo system and plugged it into the tape deck. He wound the tape through to the end, then backtracked it a few feet and punched the Play button. Blair Sullivan's gravel voice burst through the speakers, filling the small apartment with its acid message. Cowart waited until he heard the words: '… Now I will tell you the truth about little Joanie Shriver.'

He stopped the tape and rewound it a few feet, to where Blair Sullivan said, 'That's all thirty-nine. Some story, huh?' And he'd responded, 'Mr. Sullivan, there's not much time.' The killer had shouted then, 'Haven't you paid any attention, boy?' before continuing with, 'Now it's time for one more story…'

He rewound the tape again, backing it up to 'Some story, huh?'

He went to his record and tape collection and found a cassette he'd recorded some years back of Miles Davis's 'Sketches of Spain.' It was an older tape, frequently played, with a faded label. He knew that there were a few feet of blank tape on the end of that recording. He put the tape in the player and found the end of the music. Then he removed the tape and placed it in his portable machine, put the small portable directly in front of his stereo speakers, and replaced Blair Sullivan's confession in the larger unit. He punched the Play button on the Sullivan recording and the Record button on the Miles Davis.

Cowart listened to the words boil around him, trying to blank them from his imagination.

When the tape was finished, he shut both machines off. He played the Sullivan section on the end of the Miles Davis tape. The clarity of the voice speaking was diminished – but still brutally audible. Then he took the tape and replaced it on the shelf with the rest of his records and tapes.