Just Cause (42 page)

'Yes,' Cowart replied, bitterness streaking the word. Silence gripped the two men again.

'AH right,' Cowart said. 'You're right. Let's start.' He looked over at the policeman. 'Do we have an agreement?' 'What sort of agreement?'

'I don't know.'

Brown nodded. 'In that case, then, I suspect so,' replied the policeman.

Both men looked at each other. Neither believed the other for an instant. Both men knew they needed to find out the truth of what happened. The problem, each realized silently to himself, was that each man needed a different truth.

What about the Monroe detectives?' Cowart asked. Let them do their job. At least for now. I need to see what happened down there for myself.' They'll be back. I think I'm the only thing they've got to go on.'

Then we'll see. But I think they'll head back to the prison. That's what I'd do if I were them.' He pointed to the tape.'… And if I didn't know about that.'

The reporter nodded. 'A few minutes back you were accusing me of breaking the law.'

Brown rose and fixed the reporter with a single, fierce glance. Cowart glared back.

There's likely to be a few more laws broken before we get through with all this,' the policeman said quietly.

A burst of heat seemed to bridge the territory between the pale blues of the ocean and the sky. It wrapped them in a sticky embrace, squeezing the breath from their lungs. The two uneasy men walked slowly together, keeping their thoughts to themselves, their feet kicking up puffs of gray-white dust, crunching against the odd shells and pieces of coral that made up

Tarpon Drive. Neither man thought the other an ally; only that they were both engaged in a process that required the two of them, and that it was safest together. Cowart had parked his car adjacent to the house where he'd found the bodies. Then they'd begun walking door-to-door, armed with a photograph of Ferguson appropriated from the Journal's photo library.

By the third house, they'd established a routine: Tanny Brown flashed his badge, Matthew Cowart identified himself. Then they'd thrust the photo toward the inhabitants, with the single question, 'Have you seen this man before?'

A young mother in a thin yellow shift, her hair drooping in blonde curls around her sweat-damp forehead, had shushed her crying child, hitched the baby over to her hip, and shaken her head. A pair of teenage boys working on a dismantled outboard engine in the front of another yard had studied the picture with a devotion unseen in any schoolroom and then been equally negative. A huge, beer-gutted man, wearing oil-streaked jeans and a denim jacket with cut-off sleeves and a Harley Davidson Motorcycle patch above the breast had refused to speak with them, saying, 'I ain't talking to no cops. And I ain't talking to no reporters. And I ain't seen nothing worth telling.' Then he'd slammed the door in their faces, the thin aluminum of the frame rattling in the heat.

They moved on, working the street methodically. A few folks had questions for them. 'Who's this guy?' and 'Why're you asking?'

Cowart realized quickly that Brown was adept at turning an inquiry into a question of his own. If someone asked him, 'This got something to do with those killings down the street?' he would turn it back on the questioner, 'Do you know anything about what happened?'

But this question was greeted with blank stares and shaken heads.

Brown also made a point of asking everyone if the

Monroe Sheriff's Department had questioned them. They all replied that they had. They all remembered a young woman detective with a clipped, assured manner on the day the bodies were discovered. But no one had seen or heard anything unusual. They're all over it,' Tanny Brown mumbled. "Who?'

"Your friends from Monroe. They've done what I would've done.'

Cowart nodded. He looked down at the photograph in his hand but refused to put any words to the thoughts that seemed to lurk just beyond the glare of the day.

Sweat darkened the collar of the detective's shirt, Romantic, huh?' he grunted.

They were standing on the outside of a low, chain link fence that protected a faded aqua-colored trailer with an incongruous pink plastic flamingo attached with gray duct tape to the front door. The sun reflected harshly off the steel sides of the trailer, making the entire edifice glow. A single airconditioning unit, hanging from a window, labored against the temperature, clanking and whirring but continuing to operate.

Ten yards away, roped to a skew pole sunk into the hard-rock ground, a mottled brown pit bull eyed the two men warily. Matthew Cowart noticed that the dog had closed its mouth tight, despite the heat which should have caused its tongue to loll out. The dog seemed alert, yet not terrifically concerned, as if it was inconceivable to the animal that anyone would question its authority over the yard or trespass within its reach.

'What do you mean?' Cowart replied.

'Police work.' Brown looked over at the dog and then to the door. 'Ought to shoot that animal. Ever see what one of those can do to you? Or to a kid?'

Cowart nodded. Pit bulls were a Florida mainstay. In

South Florida, drug dealers used them as watchdogs.

Good old boys living near Lake Okeechobee raised them in filthy, illegal farms, training them for fights. Homeowners in dozens of tract developments, terrified of break-ins, got them and then acted surprised when they tore the face off some neighbor's child. He'd written that story once, after sitting in a darkened hospital room across from a pitifully bandaged twelve-year-old whose words had been muffled by pain and the inadequate results of plastic surgery. His friend Hawkins had tried to get the dog's owner indicted for assault with a deadly weapon, but nothing had come of it.

Before they could move from the front, the door to the trailer opened and a middle-aged man stepped out, shading his eyes and staring at the two men. He wore a white I-shirt and khaki pants that hadn't seen a washing machine in months. The man was balding, with unkempt strands of hair that seemed glued to his scalp, and a pinched, florid, unshaven face. He moved toward them, ignoring the dog, which shifted about, beat its tail twice against the ground, then continued to watch.

'Y'all want somethin'?'

Tanny Brown produced his badge. 'Just a question or two.'

'About those old folks got their throats slit?'

'That's right.'

'Other police already asked questions. Didn't know shit.'

I want to show you a picture of someone, see if you've seen him around here. Anytime in the last few weeks, or anytime at all.'

The man nodded, staying a few feet back of the fence.

Cowart handed him the photograph of Ferguson. The man stared at it, then shook his head.

'Look hard. You sure?'

The man eyed Cowart with irritation. 'Sure I'm sure. He some sort of suspect?'

'Just someone we're checking out,' Brown said. He retrieved the picture. 'Not hanging around here, or maybe driving by in a rental car?'

'No' the man said. He smiled, displaying a mouth of brown teeth and gaps. 'Ain't seen nobody hanging around. Nobody casing the place. Nobody in no rental car. And for damn sure, you're the only Negro I seen around here, ever.'

The man spit, laughed sarcastically and added, 'He looks like you. Negro.'

He pronounced the word knee-grow, elongating the two syllables into a harsh singsong, imbuing the word with mockery, turning it into an epithet.

Then the man turned, grinning, and gave a little whistle to the dog, who rose instantly, back hairs bristling, teeth bared. Cowart took a step back involuntarily, realizing that the man probably spent more time, effort, and money on maintaining the dog's mouth than his own. The reporter retreated another step before noticing that the detective hadn't budged.

After a moment punctuated only by the deep-throated continual growling of the dog, the policeman stepped back and silently moved down the street. Cowart had to hurry to keep pace.

Brown headed back toward the reporter's car. 'Let's go' he said.

There are a few other houses.'

'Let's go,' Brown repeated. He stopped and gestured broadly at the decrepit homes and trailers. 'The bastard was right.'

'What do you mean?'

'A black man driving down this street in the middle of the day would stand out like a goddamn Fourth of

July rocket. Especially a young black man. If Ferguson had been here, he'd have had to sneak in under cover of midnight. He might have done that, maybe. But that's a big risk, you know.'

'Where's the risk at night? Nobody'd see him.' The policeman leaned up against the side of the car. 'Come on, Cowart, think about it. You've got an address and a job. A killing job. What you've got to do is come to some place you've never been. Find a house you've never seen before. Break in and kill two people you don't know, and then get out, without leaving any evidence behind and without attracting any attention. Big risk. Take a lot of luck. No, you want to do some homework first. Got to see where you're going, what you're up against. And how's he gonna do that without being seen? None of these folks go anywhere. Hell, half of them are retirees sitting outside no matter how damn hot the sun gets, and the other half never held a job more'n maybe five or ten minutes. They got nothing much to do except watch.'

Cowart shook his head. 'Happens all the time,' he replied.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, it happens. Suppose Sullivan gave him the layout. All the information he needed.'

Brown paused. 'Maybe,' he said. 'But I'd think that after spending three years on the Row, Ferguson might be wary of doing something that might put him back there, if he wasn't real careful.'

That made sense to the reporter. Still, he was reluctant to give up on the idea. 'Why does he have to come last week? Maybe tie came last year. First thing, after getting out of prison. Soon as the hubbub dies down and his face has been out of the newspapers and television for a couple of weeks. Comes down, innocent as all get-out, walks all around the place. He knows they're an old couple. Not going to change a damn thing. Gets a feel for the location, what he's going to have to do. Maybe knocks on the door, tries to sell them some encyclopedias or a magazine subscription. Gets himself inside just long enough to get a good look around before they kick him out. Then walks away. It makes no difference who sees him because he knows they're gonna forget by the time he comes back.'

Brown nodded his head, eyeing Cowart. 'Not bad. for a reporter,' he said. 'Maybe. It's something to think about.' He allowed a small grin to rub the edges of his lips before adding, 'But, of course, that isn't what you want to know, is it? You want to know how he couldn't do it. Not how he could, right?'

Cowart opened his mouth to reply but then stopped.

And here's another little idea, Cowart,' Brown continued. 'You'll like this one 'cause it makes your man seem innocent. Suppose, just for a minute, that

Blair Sullivan did arrange, like he said, for these killings to happen – but not with Bobby Earl.

Somebody totally different. And what he wanted to guarantee is that nobody would look under the right stone for the slime that he made those arrangements with. How better could he guarantee that than by telling you that Mr. Innocent was the killer? He knew that sooner or later someone would be walking up and down this street with a picture of Bobby Earl in hand.

And if Bobby Earl's name gets into the paper again, that'd give just about anybody time enough to hide what they did. A little bit of extra confusion.'

The detective paused. 'You know how important it is to make a murder case fast, Cowart? Before time just worries away at facts and evidence until there's nothing left?'

'1 know it's important to move rapidly. That's what you did in Pachoula and look what the hell happened.' Brown scowled.

Cowart felt the sweat under his arms run down, tickling his ribs. 'Anything's possible,' he replied. 'That's right.'

Brown straightened up and rubbed a hand across his forehead, as if trying to shift about the thoughts that were contained within. He sighed deeply. 'I want to see the murder site,' he said. He started down the street, striding swiftly, as if by moving about quickly he could somehow elude the heat that had gathered about them.

When they reached the street outside number thirteen, the policeman hesitated, turning again to Cowart. 'Well, at least he had that going for him.'

'What?'

'Look at the house, Cowart. It's a real good place to kill somebody.'

He swept his arm about. 'Set back from the street. No real close neighbors. See the way the house is angled? At night there's no way anybody'd see anything going on inside unless they just happened to be standing right out front. And close, too. You think that Mister Rotten Teeth down there walks that pit bull around at night? No way. I'd bet a week's pay that once the sun goes down, and everybody's had a chance to have a drink or two, the TV sets are on and the only people out on this street are those teenagers. Everybody else is either drunk, watching reruns of Dallas, or busy praying for the day of judgment. I guess they didn't know it was closer than they thought.'

Cowart let his eyes flow about the exterior of the house. He envisioned the place at night and thought Brown correct. There would be an occasional outburst as some couple fought. That might mingle with the sounds of television sets playing too loudly. Broken bottle, drunk arguments, maybe a dog barking. And, even if someone did hear a car leaving fast, they'd probably assume it was some kids fighting the ubiquitous boredom with recklessness.

'A real good killing place, Brown said.

There was a yellow police tape surrounding the house. The detective slipped underneath it. Cowart followed him around the back.

'In there,' Brown said, pointing at the broken rear door.