Just Cause (47 page)

She touched the gas pedal and felt the unmarked cruiser shoot forward, climbing through the seventies and eighties, surging through the midday heat.

She had put one of six into the target the first day. Two of six the next. By the time she'd finished the six-week training, all six of six, gathered tightly in the center. She'd continued practicing at least once a week, every week, after that. She'd branched out as well, gaining a proficiency with a smaller automatic and learning how to handle the riot pump that was locked into each car. Lately, she had started taking time on the range with a military-issue M-16 and had adopted a NATO-style nine-millimeter for her own use.

She pulled her foot from the pedal and let the car slow back to the speed limit. She stared up into her rearview mirror and watched another car ride up hard behind her, then swing out into the lane next to her. It was a state policeman in an unmarked Ford, hunting for speeders. She'd obviously sailed through his radar, bringing him out of hiding, only to have him make her car.

He peered across at her from behind dark aviator shades.

She smiled and gave an exaggerated shrug, seeing the man's face break into a grin. He raised one hand as if to say, No big deal, then accelerated past her. She picked up her radio and switched to the state police frequency.

This is Monroe homicide one-four. Come back.'

'Monroe homicide, this is Trooper Willis. I clocked you doing ninety-five. Where's the fire?'

'Sorry, Troop. It was a nice day, I'm working a good case, and I decided to air it out a bit. I'll keep it down.'

'No problem, one-four. Uh, you got time to have a bite to eat?'

She laughed. A high-speed pickup. 'Uh, negative right now. But try me in a couple of days at the Largo substation.' Will do.'

She saw him raise his hand and peel to the side of the road.

He will have hopes for a few days, she thought, and wanted to apologize in advance. He will be disappointed. She had one rule: She never slept with anyone who knew she was a police officer. She never slept with anyone she would ever have to see a second time.

She touched the scar by her eye a second time.

Two scars, she thought. One outside, one inside.

She continued north toward Miami. a receptionist outside the newsroom of the Miami

Journal informed her that Matthew Cowart was not in the office. Surprise flooded her, followed swiftly by a quickening of excitement. He's looking for something, she thought. He's after somebody. She asked to see the city editor, while she sorted through her suspicions. The receptionist spoke briefly on the telephone, then motioned her toward a couch, where she waited nervously. Twenty minutes passed before the city editor emerged from between the double doors to see her.

'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,' he said quickly. 'We were in the news conference and I couldn't get out.'

'I would like to talk with Cowart again,' she said, trying to remove all the surprise and anticipation from her voice.

'I thought you got a statement the other day.' 'Not completely.'

'No?' He shrugged as if to say he had no sympathy for lost opportunities.

'A few things perhaps he can straighten out.' 'I'm sorry, but he's not here,' the city editor said. He frowned widely. 'Perhaps I can help you?'

She recognized how insincere this offer was. 'Well' she said with mildly false enthusiasm, 'I just can't get it straight in my head how Sullivan made his contacts and set up his arrangements…' She waved a hand to cut off a question from the city editor. '… I know, I mean, I'm not sure what Mr. Cowart can add, but I still just don't have a feel for all this and was hoping he could help.'

She thought this sounded safe enough. She suspected a softening in the city editor's tones.

'Well, hell,' he said, 'I think everyone's trying to understand the same damn thing.'

She laughed. 'It's quite a situation, isn't it?'

He nodded, smiling but still wary. 'I think he's filled you in as best as he can. But…'

'Well,' she replied slowly, 'perhaps now that he's had some time to reflect on what he heard, he can remember something else. You'd be surprised what folks can remember after they've had some time to think about it.'

The city editor smiled. 'I wouldn't be surprised at all. What people remember about things is our trade, too.' He shuffled his feet a bit and ran a hand through his thinning hair. 'He's off on a story.'

'So, where's he gone?'

The city editor hesitated before replying. 'North Florida.'

He looked for an instant as if the act of actually giving out a piece of information would make him ill.

Shaeffer smiled. 'Big place, North Florida.'

The city editor shrugged. 'This story has only happened in two places. You know that. At the prison in Starke and a little town called Pachoula. I shouldn't have to spell that out for you. Now, I'm sorry, Detective Shaeffer, but I have to get back to work.'

'Can you tell Cowart I need to talk with him?'

'I'll tell him. Can't promise anything. Where will you be?'

'Looking for him' she said.

She got up as if to leave, then thought of one other thing. 'Can I take a look at Cowart's original stories?'

The city editor paused, thinking, then gestured toward the newspaper library. 'They'll help you there,' he said. 'If there's any problem, have them contact me.'

She stood at a desk, flipping through a huge bound volume of copies of the Miami Journal. For an instant, she was struck by the wealth of disaster the newspaper documented, then she came upon the Sunday edition with Matthew Cowart's initial story about the murder of Joanie Shriver. She read through it carefully, making notations, taking down names and dates.

As she rode the elevator down to the main entrance, she tried to settle all the thoughts that swept about within her. The elevator oozed to a halt on the ground floor, and she started to walk from the building, only to stop abruptly in the center of the lobby.

This story has only happened in two places, the editor had said. She thought about the box that Cowart was in. What brings him to Blair Sullivan? she thought.

The murder of a little girl in Pachoula. What's at the core of that crime?

Robert Earl Ferguson.

Who links Sullivan to Cowart?

Robert Earl Ferguson.

What props up his prize?

Robert Earl Ferguson.

She turned on her heel and walked back into the corner of the Journal lobby, where there was a bank of pay telephones. She checked her notes and dialed directory information in Pensacola. Then she dialed the number that the electronic voice had given her.

After dealing with a secretary, she heard the attorney's voice come on the line.

'Roy Black here. How can I help you, miss?'

Mr. Black,' she said, 'this is Andrea Shaeffer. I'm at the Miami Journal…' She smiled, enjoying her minor deception. 'We need to get a hold of Mr. Cowart, and he's gone to Pachoula, to see your client. It's important to run him down, and no one seems to have a number here. I wonder if you could help me on that. Really sorry to bother you…'

'No problem at all, miss. But Bobby Earl's left Pachoula. He's back up in Newark, New Jersey. I don't know why Mr. Cowart would go back to Pachoula.'

'Oh,' she said, layering her voice with disingenuous surprise and false helplessness. 'He's working on a follow-up after Blair Sullivan's execution. Do you think Mr. Cowart will go up there instead? He was very vague about his itinerary and it's important we track him down. Do you have an address? I hate to bother you, but no one can find Mr. Cowart's Rolodex.'

'I don't like giving out addresses,' the attorney said reluctantly.

'Oh,' she continued breezily, 'that's right. I guess not. Oh, boy, how'm I gonna find him now? My boss is gonna have my head for sure. Do you know how I could trace him up north?'

The attorney hesitated. 'Ahh, hell,' he said finally. 'I'll get it for you. Just got to promise you won't give it out to any other news outlets or anybody else. Mr. Ferguson is trying to put all this behind him, you know. Get on with things.'

'Boy, would you? I promise. I can see that,' she said with phony enthusiasm.

'Hang on,' said the attorney. 'I'm looking it up.'

She waited patiently, eagerly. The meager falsehoods and playacting had come easily to her. She wondered whether she could catch the next flight north. She was not precisely sure what she would do with Ferguson when she found him, but she was certain of one thing: the answers to all her questions were hovering about somewhere very close to that man. She envisioned his eyes as they stared out at her from the pages of the newspaper. The innocent man.

The plane dipped down beneath a thin cover of cloud on its final approach into the airport, and she could see the city, rising in the distance like so many children's blocks tossed into a pile. A flaccid early-spring sun illuminated the jumble of tall, rectangular office buildings. Staring through the window, she felt a damp April chill and had a momentary longing for the unequivocal heat of the Keys. Then she thrust everything from her mind except how to approach Ferguson.

Carefully, she decided. Play him like a strong fish on light tackle; a sudden move or too much pressure will break the line and set him loose. It's only the barest of threads. Nothing tied Ferguson to the murders on Tarpon Drive except the presence of a single reporter. No witnesses, fingerprints, or Woodwork. Not even a modus operandi, the sexual assault-murder of a little girl having little in common with the terror slaughter-ing of an elderly couple. And according to Cowart and his newspaper, he wasn't even guilty of the first half of that equation.

As the plane twisted through the airspace, she could see the broad ribbon of the New Jersey Turnpike snaking below her as it sliced north and south. She was struck with a sudden depression that she'd flowed herself to head off on some crazy tangent and would be better served by simply grabbing the first flight back to Florida and working at Weiss's side.

'Everything had seemed clear standing in the lobby of the Miami Journal. The murky, gray skies of New Jersey seemed to mock the uncertainty that filled her.

She wondered if Ferguson had learned anything the first time around. Probably. Her impression of him, gleaned from Cowart's words, was that he was clever, educated, and not at all like most convicts. That was too bad. One of the contradictory truisms of police work was that the prisonwise suspect was not harder to trip up. In fact, the opposite was true. But Ferguson, she suspected, was a different case.

Still… she remembered a moment on her stepfather's boat a half-dozen years earlier. They'd been fishing in the early evening, catching the outgoing tide as it ran fast between the pylons of one of the Key's innumerable bridges. The client had hooked a big tarpon, well over a hundred and twenty pounds. It had jumped twice, gills shaking, rattling its head back and forth, then sounded, its sleek silver shape slicing through the darkening waters. It had run with the current, using the force of the water to help it fight against the pressure of the line. The client had hung on, stubbornly, grunting, legs spread, back bent, fighting against the strength of the fish for nearly an hour. The big fish had pulled on, dragging line from the reel, heading toward the bridge pylons.

Smart fish, she thought. Strong fish. It had known that if it could get in there, it could sever the line on a barnacle. All it had to do was run that taut, thin length of monofilament against a pylon. The fish had been hooked before. It knew the pain of the barb in its jaw, the force of the line pulling it toward the surface. Familiarity gave it strength. There was no panic in its fight. Just a steady, intelligent savagery as it made for the bridge and safety.

What she'd done had seemed crazy. She had jumped to the man's side and in a single, impulsive motion, twisted the drag on the reel down all the way, virtually locking it. Then she'd shouted, Toss it over!

Toss it over! The man had looked wildly at her, and she'd seized the rod from his hands and thrown it over the side of. the boat. It had made a small wake as it was towed rapidly away. 'What the hell…' the man had started angrily, only to be interrupted when her stepfather pivoted the boat in the channel and roared underneath the bridge, throttling down on the far side.

She could see her stepfather standing on the flying bridge, peering through the growing darkness until he finally pointed. They all turned and saw the rod, its cork handle bobbing at the surface twenty yards away. They came alongside and she bent over and grasped it from the water, loosening the drag in almost the same moment. 'Now,' she had said to the fisherman, 'land him.' The man had pulled back on the rod, breaking into a grin when he felt the weight on the other end. The still-hooked tarpon exploded from the surface in shock and surprise when it felt the point of the hook drive hard once again into its jaw. It had jumped fast, soaring through the air, black water streaming from its sides. But she'd known it was the big fish's last run; she could sense the defeat in each shake of its head and twist of its body. Another ten minutes and they had the tarpon to the side of the boat. She'd lip-gaffed the fish and brought it out of the water. There had been a flurry of photos, and then they'd returned the fish to the channel waves. She'd leaned over the side, holding the fish, reviving it gently. But before setting it loose, she'd seized one of its silver scales, the size of a half-dollar, and broken it off. She'd put the scale in her shirt pocket as she watched the fish swim off slowly, its scythelike tail slicing through the warm water.

Smart fish. Strong fish.

But I was smarter and that made me stronger.

She pictured Ferguson again. Hooked before, she thought.

The airplane droned and bumped to a halt. She gathered her things together and headed for the exit.