Just Cause

'Sullivan's parents,' she said. 'Ferguson was right. He didn't do it.'

'What?'

She described everything Michael Weiss had told her: the Bible, the guard, the brother.

Cowart looked surprised, and then shook his head. 'Rogers, he said. 'Who'd have thought it?' It wasn't nonsense, though. Rogers seemed to be into everything at Starke. Nothing would have been easier for him, but yet…' One thing I don't understand,' said Cowart. 'If it was really Rogers, then why did Sullivan spend all that time implicating Ferguson in the murder to me, while at the same time writing Rogers' name in that Bible?'

Brown shrugged. 'Best way to guarantee someone gets away with murder. Multiple suspects. Tell you one thing. Point some other evidence another direction. Wait until some defense attorney gets ahold of that. But mostly, I think he did it because he was a sick man, Cowart. Sick and full of mischief. It was just his way of dragging down everybody into the same hell that awaited him: you, Ferguson, Rogers… and three cops he didn't even know.'

Everyone was silent for a moment. 'So maybe Rogers did it, and maybe he didn't,' Cowart said. 'Right now, old Sully must be down there laughing his damned head off.' He shook his head again. 'So what does it mean?'

'It means, Shaeffer spoke up, 'that we can forget about Sullivan. Forget his mind games. Let's worry about Ferguson and his victims. Three, you think?'

'He made seven trips south. Seven we know about.'

'Seven?'

Cowart lifted his arms in surrender. 'We don't know when it was for research, when he went for action. What we do know is – Christ! – What we suspect is -three little girls. One white. Two black. And Bruce Wilcox.'

'Four, she said quietly.

'Four, Tanny Brown said heavily. He stood, as if insisting that fatigue was something wrong, and began pacing about the small room like a prisoner in a cell. 'Can't you see what he's doing?' he said abruptly.

'What?'

Brown's voice carried an urgency that seemed to quiver in the small room. He looked at the young detective. 'What is it we do? A crime occurs and our first assumption is that, while unique, it will still fit directly into a clear-cut, recognizable category. Ultimately, we figure it will be typical of a hundred others, just like it. That's what we're taught, what we expect. So we go out and look for the usual suspects. The same suspects that ninety-nine times turn out to be the right ones. We process everything at the crime scene, hoping that some bit of hair or blood spatter or fiber sample will point right at one of the people on the short list. We do this because the alternative is so terrifying: that someone unconnected to anything except murder has walked onto the scene. Someone you don't know, that nobody knows, that may not be within a hundred or a thousand miles of the crime anymore. And did it for some reason so warped that you can't even contemplate it, much less understand it. Because if that's the case, you've got a chance in a million of making a case and maybe not even that. That's why we went to Ferguson in the first go-round, when little Joanie was killed. Because we had a crime and he was on the short list…'

Brown looked at Shaeffer and then toward Cowart. 'But now, you see, he's figured that out.'

The detective hunched forward, slapping a fist into a palm to accentuate his words. 'He's figured out that distance helps keep him safe, that when he arrives in some little town to kill, no one should know him. No one will pay any attention to him. And no one will make him when he grabs his victim. And who does he grab? He learned what happens when he snatched a little white girl. So now he goes to places where the police aren't quite as sophisticated and the press isn't as aware, and grabs a little black girl, because that ain't hardly going to get anyone's attention, not the same way Joanie Shriver did. So he goes and does these things, then he comes back up here and returns to school and there ain't nobody looking for him, 'Nobody.'

Brown paused before adding, 'Nobody now, except us three.'

'And Wilcox?' Cowart asked.

Brown took a deep breath. 'He's dead,' he replied flatly.

'We don't know that,' Shaeffer said. The idea seemed impossible to her. She knew it to be true yet couldn't stand to hear it said.

'Dead,' Brown continued, voice picking up momentum. 'Somewhere close to here. And that's the reason Ferguson's running. That's his first rule. Kill safe. Kill anonymously. Use distance. It's such a damn easy formula.'

He stared at the young detective. 'He was dead as soon as you lost sight of him.'

'You shouldn't have left him,' Cowart said.

She turned, bristling. 'I didn't leave him! He left me. I tried to stop him. Dammit, I don't have to listen to this! I don't even have to be here!'.'Yes, you do,' Cowart said. 'Don't you get it, Detective? There's a real bad guy out there. Because of accidents, bad judgment, mistakes, bad luck, whatever.

And when you add it all up, he let him go…' Cowart pointed sharply at Tanny Brown, '… and I let him go…' He punched an index finger against his own chest, then turned it, like a pistol, toward her.'… And now, you've let him go, too. Just like that.'

He took a deep breath. 'In effect, there's only one of us that actually caught up with him. Wilcox. And now…'

'He's dead,' Brown said again. He stood in the center of the room, clenching his hands into fists, then releasing them slowly. 'And we're the only people really looking for him.' He, too, punched a finger at her. 'Now you owe, too.'

She felt a sudden dizziness, as if the floor of the motel room were pitching beneath her like her stepfather's fishing boat. But she knew what they said was true. They had created the problem. Now it was up to them to find a solution.

Wilcox and some little girls, she told herself.

These two have no idea, she thought. They don't know what it's like to feel yourself pinned down and attacked, to know that you might be about to die and can do nothing to stop it. She envisioned the last minutes the little girls must have experienced in a rush of horror that robbed her of her breath and rekindled her determination.

'Got to be found, first, though,' she said. 'Who's got a suggestion?'

'Florida,' Cowart said slowly. 1 think he's gone back to Florida. That's what he knows. That will be where he thinks he's safest. He has two worries, it seems to me. He's worried about me and he's worried about Detective Brown. I don't think he has you connected in all this. Did he see you with Wilcox?'

'I don't think so.'

'Well, maybe that's an advantage.'

Cowart turned to Brown. His head was filled with something Blair Sullivan had told him: Got to be a free man to be a good killer, Cowart. He knows that, the reporter realized. So he said it.

'But you and I, well, that's different. He needs to know he's free of us. Then he can get on with what he's been doing, without worrying and always looking over his back.'

'How does he do that?'

The reporter took a deep breath. 'The other day. When I saw him. He threatened my daughter. He knows where she lives with her mother, in Tampa.'

Tanny Brown started to say something, then stopped.

"That's why…'

'Tell me about the threat,' the detective demanded.

'He just said he knew where she lived. He didn't say what he would do. Only that he knew who she was and that would prevent me from writing anything about him. Especially unproven allegations connecting him to other crimes.'

'And will it?'

'Well, what would you do?' the reporter replied angrily.

'You think that's where he's gone now? To Tampa. To…'

'Cut out my heart. Those are his words.'

'Is that what you think?'

Cowart shook his head. 'No. I think he believes he has me wrapped up. That he doesn't have to do anything to keep me quiet.'

Tanny Brown stared hard at him. I have daughters, too,' he said. 'Did he threaten them?'