Just Cause (55 page)

The policeman was quiet. Brown could feel a sense of constriction coming over the line.

'Tanny, why you asking me this now?'

'I just got…'

'Tanny, you tell me the straight truth. Why you calling me with this now?'

'Luke, I'm just shooting in the dark. I got a bad feeling about something, and I'm just poking around.'

'You poked something solid here, my man.'

Brown felt instantly frozen inside. 'Tell me,' he asked softly. He noticed that the booming voice on the other end of the line had tightened, narrowed, as if the words suddenly carried more freight.

'Wild child,' Harris said slowly. 'Girl named Alexandra Jones. Thirteen. Part of her still be eight, part of her eighteen. You know the type. One minute she be all sweetness and polite, come baby-sit for

5sus Harris and me, the next minute I sees her smoking a cigarette outside the convenience store, acting all grown-up and tough.'

'Sounds like my own daughters,' Brown said inadvertently.

Xo, your gals got a hold of something, and this little gal didn't. Anyway, she got some confusion and this makes her wild, you know. She starts to think this little town be too small for her. Run away once, her daddy go find her couple miles down the road, dragging along a little suitcase. Daddy be one of my patrolmen, so we all knows about it. Run away twice, and this time we find her all the way in Lauderdale, just outside, on Alligator Alley, thumbing rides from the semi drivers that passes that way. Trooper spots her, and they brings her home. Third time she run is three months back. Her momma and daddy driving every road they can to find her, figure this time she's heading north to Georgia where they got relatives and the gal's got a cousin she sweet on. Put out a BOLO. I talks to departments all over the state. Flyers out, you know the drill. Only she never shows in Georgia. Or Lauderdale or Miami or Orlando or any damn place. Where she shows is in Big Cypress swamp, where some hunters find her three weeks ago. Find what's left of her, which is just some bones. Picked clean by the sun and little animals and birds. Not a pretty sight. Gotta make ID through dental records. Cause of death? Multiple stab wounds, the M.E. figures, but only 'cause there are nicks and cuts in some of the bones. Not even that be conclusive. And not even any clothes laying about. Whoever done her stashed the clothes someplace else. I mean, it ain't too damn a mystery what happened to her, now, is it? But figuring out who did it be a different matter for sure.'

Brown said nothing. He heard Harris take a deep breath.

'… Ain't never gonna make this case, no sir. You know how many interviews we've logged on this one, Tanny? More'n three hundred. And that's been me and my chief of detectives, Henry Lincoln, you know him. A couple of major-crimes guys from the county put in some time, too. Don't mean shit. No witnesses, 'cause nobody saw her get picked up on the road. No forensics, 'cause there ain't hardly nothing left of her. No suspects, even though we ran profiles and rousted all the usual likely folks. No nothing. When you get right down to it, all we really gonna do is just help her folks try and understand and maybe go down to the church an extra time myself, see if a little prayer or two won't help. You know what I pray for, Tanny?'

'No,' he replied hoarsely.

'Tanny, I don't pray we make this guy. No, 'cause I don't even think the Almighty gonna be able to make this case. I just prays that whoever did it just come by Eatonville this one time, and that he heads on off to someplace new and some other town, someplace where someone sees 'im and they got mobile forensic teams and all that new scientific stuff, and where maybe he makes a mistake and gets hisself busted bad. That's what I prays for.'

The police captain was quiet, as if thinking.' 'Cause I figures that gal goes terrible, you know. Pain and fear, Tanny. Pain, fear, and terror something special, and no one wants to know about it.'

He paused again. 'And then you calls me with this question come out of the blue, and I'm wondering what you got that makes you ask this question of me.'

Silence gathered on the line.

'You know the man that came off the Row?' Brown said.

'Sure. Robert Earl Ferguson.'

'He ever been in Eatonville?'

Lucious Harris stopped. Brown could hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line before the big man said, I thought he was innocent. That's what the papers and TV says.'

'Has he ever been in Eatonville? Around the time that gal disappeared?'

'He was here,' Harris responded slowly.

Brown felt a half-grunt, half-groan escape between his lips. He realized his teeth were shut tight. 'When?'

'Not close time. Maybe three, four months back before little Alexandra disappeared. Gave a speech in a church. Hell, I went to see him myself. He was right interesting. Talked about Jesus standing by your side and giving you the light of day no matter how dark the world seems.'

'What about…'

'Stayed a couple of days. Maybe a Saturday, then a Sunday, then drove off. Back to some school, I heard. I don't think he was here when Alexandra Jones takes off. I'll check hotels and motels, but I don't know. Sure, he coulda come back. But what makes you think…'

Brown leaned forward at the desk, a throbbing behind his temples. 'Check for me, Luke. See if you can't put him in the area when the gal disappears.'

'I'll try. Ain't gonna do no good, I don't suspect. You saying he's not innocent?'

'I'm not saying nothing. Just check, will ya?'

'No problem, Tanny. I'll check. Then maybe we'll have a talk 'cause I don't like what I'm hearing in your voice, my friend.'

'I don't like it either,' Brown replied. He hung up the telephone.

He remembered Pachoula in the moments after Joanie Shriver disappeared. He could hear the sirens picking up, see the knots of people forming on the street corners, talking, then setting off in search. The first camera crews were there that night, not long after the first telephone calls from the newspapers had started to flood into the switchboard. A little white girl disappears while trying to walk home from school. It's a nightmare that strikes a vulnerability within everyone. Blonde hair. Smile. Wasn't four hours before that face was on the television. Every minute that passed made it worse.

What did he learn? Brown thought. He learned that the same event would be ignored, no cameras and microphones, no Boy Scouts and National Guardsmen searching the swamp, if he changed one single aspect of the equation: turn white into black.

Fighting to maintain composure, Brown rose and went to find Cowart. A large map of the state of Florida hung in the offices of Major Crimes and he paused next to it. His eyes went first to Eatonville, then down to Perrine. Dozens, he thought. There are dozens of small, black enclaves throughout the state. The leftover South. Pushed by history and economics into little pockets of varying success or poverty, but all with one single thing in common: none were anyone's idea of a mainstream. All handled by undermanned, sometimes ill-trained police forces, with half the resources available to white communities and twice the problems with drugs and alcohol and robbery, frustration and despair.

Hunting grounds.

Andrea Shaeffer returned late to her motel room. She double-locked the door behind her, then checked the bathroom, the small closet, beneath the bed, behind the drapes, and finally the window, determining that it was still closed tight. She fought off the urge to open her pocketbook and remove the nine-millimeter pistol concealed within. A sense of misshapen fear had dogged her since leaving Ferguson's apartment. As the weak daylight had dissipated around her, she had felt a tightness, as if she were wearing clothes several sizes too small.

Who was he? she asked herself.

She reached into her small suitcase and rummaged around until she found some of the lavender-scented notepaper that she used to write unmailed letters to her mother. Then she switched on the small lamp at a tiny table in the corner of the room, pulled up a chair and started writing.

Dear Mom, she wrote. Something happened. She stared at the words at the top of the page. What did he say? she asked herself. He said he was safe. From what?

She leaned back in her chair, chewing on the end of her pen like a student searching for the answer on a test. She remembered being taken into a lineup room, despite her protests that she would be unable to recognize the two men who'd attacked her. The lights had been dimmed and she was flanked by a pair of detectives whose names she could no longer recall. She had watched intently as two sets of men were brought in and lined up against the wall. On command, they had turned first to the right, then the left, giving her a view of their profiles. She remembered the whispered admonitions from the detectives: Take your time, and Is there anyone who seems familiar? But she had been unable to make any identification. She had shaken her head at the detectives, and they'd shrugged. She recalled the look that had passed over their faces, and remembered then that she had decided that she wouldn't be helpless. That she wouldn't let anyone get away free ever again after delivering so much hurt.

She looked down at the unmailable letter and then wrote: I met a man filled with death.

That's it, she thought. She examined all that Ferguson had shown her: anger, mockery, arrogance. Fear, but only in short supply – only when he was uncertain why I was there. But once he learned, it evaporated. Why? Because he had nothing to fear. Why? Because I was there for the wrong reason.

She put the pen down beside the paper and stood up.

What's the right reason? she demanded.

Shaeffer rose and walked over to the double bed. She sat down and drew her knees up beneath her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs to hold them steady while she balanced precariously on the edge of the bed. For a moment or two she rocked back and forth, trying to determine what her course of action should be. Finally she imposed a discipline on her thoughts, unfolded and reached for the telephone.

It took her a few tries to track Michael Weiss down, finally reaching him through the superintendent's office at the state prison in Starke…Andy? That you? Where have you been?'

Mike. I'm up in Newark, New Jersey.'

New Jersey. Jesus. What's in New Jersey? You were supposed to be sitting on Cowart in Miami. Is he in New Jersey7'

No, but…' 'Well, where the hell is he?'

North Florida. Pachoula, but…' 'Why aren't you there?'

Mike, give me a moment and I'll explain.' it'd better be good. And another thing. You were supposed to be checking in, like, all the time. I'm in charge of this investigation, you do remember, don't you?'

Mike, just give me a minute, huh? I came up here to see Robert Earl Ferguson.'

The guy Cowart got off Death Row?'

'Right, the guy who was in the cell next to Sullivan.'

'Up to the moment he tried to reach through the bars and strangle him?'

Yeah.'

'So?' it was… ' She hesitated. 'Well, unusual.'

There was a momentary pause before the senior policeman asked, 'How so?'

Tm still trying to put my finger on it.'

She heard him sigh. 'What's this got to do with our case?'

'Well, I got to thinking, Mike. You know, Sullivan and Cowart were like two sides of a triangle. Ferguson was the other leg, the connection that brought them together. Without Ferguson, Cowart never sees Sullivan. I just figured I better go check him out. See if he had an alibi for the time the killings took place. See if he knew anything. Just get a look at the guy.'

Weiss hesitated before saying, 'Well, okay. That doesn't exactly not make sense. I don't know what it adds, but it's not crazy. You're thinking there's some link between the three of them? Maybe something that contributed to the murders?'

'Sort of.'

'Well, if there was, why wouldn't that bastard Cowart have put that into his story in the paper?'

1 don't know. Maybe because he was afraid it would make him look bad?'

'Look bad? Jesus, Andy, he's a whore. All reporters are whores. They don't care about yesterday's trick, only today's. If he had something, he'd have put it into the papers lickety split. I can see the headlines: DEATH ROW CONNECTION UNCOVERED. I don't know if they got type big enough for that story. They'd go crazy. Probably win him another damn prize.'

'Maybe.'

Weiss snorted. 'Yeah, maybe. Anyway, you got anything independent that gets this guy Ferguson to Tarpon Drive?'

'No.'

'Like anybody make him, down in Islamadora? Any of those folks you questioned on Tarpon Drive mention a black man?'

'No.'

'How about a hotel receipt or plane ticket or something? What about bloodwork or prints or a murder weapon?'

'No.'

'So you went all the way up there, just because somehow he was connected to the other two players here?'

'Right,' she said slowly. 'It was sort of a hunch.'

'Please, Andy. They have hunches on Perry fucking Mason, not in real life. Don't talk to me about hunches. Just talk to me about what you learned from the creep.'

'He denied any direct knowledge of the crime. But he had some interesting insights into the way things work on Death Row. Said that most of the guards there are only a step away from being killers themselves. Suggested we focus on them.'

That makes sense,' Weiss replied. 'It's also precisely what I'm doing right now and you should be doing, too. The guy had an alibi, right?'

'Said he was in class. He's studying criminology.'

'Really? Now that's interesting.'

'Yeah. He had a bookcase filled with textbooks on forensics and detection. Said he used them in class.'

Okay. Can you check that out and then, when it turns out to be true, get back down here?'