Just Cause

Of course, she was already dead then, he thought. She was dead the moment she stepped off the curb into that car.

The search had continued with spotlights and a helicopter brought in that night from the state police barracks near Pensacola. It had buzzed, its rotors throbbing, its spotlight probing the darkness, past midnight. In the first morning light, tracker dogs were brought in and the hunt had widened. By noontime the town had gathered itself like an army camp preparing itself for a long march, all documented by the arrival of television cameras and newspaper reporters.

The little girl's body had been discovered in the late afternoon by two firemen diligently searching the edge of the swamp, walking through the sucking ooze in hip waders, swatting at mosquitoes and calling the little girl's name. One of the men had spotted a flash of blonde hair at the edge of the water, just caught by the dying light.

He imagined the news must have savaged the town, just as surely as the girl's body had been savaged. He realized two things: To be picked up for questioning in the death of Joanie Shriver was to have stepped into the center of a whirlwind; and the pressure on the two police detectives to catch the killer had to have been immense. Perhaps, he thought, unbearably immense.

Hamilton Burns was a small, florid, gray-haired man. His voice, like so many others in Pachoula, tinged with the rhythmic locutions of the South. It was late in the day, and as he motioned to Matthew Cowart to sit in an overstuffed red leather chair, he mentioned something about the 'sun being over the yardarm,' and fixed himself a tumbler of bourbon after magically producing a bottle from a bottom desk drawer. Cowart shook his head when the bottle was proffered in his direction. 'Need a bit of ice,' Burns said, and he went to a corner of the small office, where a half-sized refrigerator stacked high with legal documents occupied some precious floor space. Cowart noticed that he limped as he walked. He looked around the office. It was paneled in wood, with legal books filling one wall. There were several framed diplomas and a testimonial from the local Knights of Columbus. There were a few pictures of a grinning Hamilton Burns arm in arm with the governor and other politicians.

The lawyer took a long pull at his glass, sat back, swiveling in his seat behind the desk opposite Cowart and said, 'So y'all want to know about Robert Earl Ferguson. What can I tell you? I think he's got a shot on appeal for a new trial, especially with that old sonuvabitch Roy Black handling his case.'

'On what issue?'

'Why, that damn confession, what else? Judge shoulda suppressed the shit out of it.'

'We'll get to that. Can you start by telling me how you came into the case?'

'Oh, court appointment. Judge calls me up, asks me if I'll handle it. Regular public defenders were overburdened, like always. I guess a little too hot for

'em, anyway. Folks was screaming for that boy's neck. I don't think they wanted any part of Ferguson. No sir, no way.'

'And you took it?'

'When the judge calls, you answer. Hell, most of my cases are court appointed. I couldn't rightly turn this one down.'

'You billed the court twenty thousand dollars afterwards.'

'It takes a lot of time to defend a killer.'

'At a hundred bucks an hour?'

'Hell, I lost money on the deal. Hell's bells, it was weeks before anybody'd even talk to me again in this town. People acted like I was some kind of pariah. A Judas. All for representing that boy. Walk down the street, no more "Good morning, Mr. Burns." "Nice day, Mr. Burns." People'd cross the street to avoid talking to me. This is a small town. You figure out how much I lost in cases that went to other attorneys because I'd represented Bobby Earl. You figure that out before you go criticizing me for what I got.'

The attorney looked discomfited. Cowart wondered whether he thought it was he that had gotten convicted, instead of Ferguson.

'Had you ever handled a murder case before?'

'A couple.'

'Chair cases?'

'No. Mostly like domestic disputes. You know, husband and wife get to arguing and one of them decides to underscore their point with a handgun… ' He laughed. 'That'd be manslaughter, murder two at worse. I handle a lot of vehicular homicides and the like. Councilman's boy gets drunk and smashes up a car. But hell, defending somebody from a jaywalking charge and defending someone from murder's the same in the long run. You got to do what you got to do.'

'I see,' Cowart said, writing quickly in his notepad and for the instant avoiding the eyes of the lawyer. 'Tell me about the defense.'

'There ain't that much to tell. I moved for a change of venue. Denied. I moved to suppress the confession. Denied. I went to Bobby Earl and said, "Boy, we got to plead guilty. First-degree murder. Go on down, take the twenty-five years, no parole. Save your life." That way, he'd still have some living left to do when he gets out. "No way," the boy says. Stubborn-like. Got that fuck-you kind of attitude. Keeps right on saying, "I didn't do it." So what's left for me? I tried to pick a jury that warn't prejudiced. Good luck. Case went on. I argued reasonable doubt till I was fair blue in the face. We lost. What's to tell?'

'How come you didn't call his grandmother with an alibi?'

'Nobody'd believe her. You met that little old battle-ax? All she knows is her darling grandson is well-nigh perfect and wouldn't hurt a flea. 'Course, she's the only one that believes that. She gets on the stand and starts lying, things gonna be worse. Mightily worse.'

'I don't see how they could be worse than what happened.'

'Well, that's hindsight, Mr. Cowart, and you know it.'

'Suppose she was telling the truth?'

'She might be. It was a judgment call.'

'The car?'

'That damn teacher even admitted it could have been a different color. Sheeit. Said it right on the stand. I can't understand why the jury didn't buy it.'

'Did you know that the police showed her a picture of Ferguson's car after telling her he'd confessed?'

'Say what? No. She didn't say that when I deposed her.'

'She said it to me.'

'Well, I'll be damned.'

The lawyer poured himself another drink and gulped at it. No, you won't be, Cowart thought. But Ferguson will.

'What about the blood evidence?'

'Type O positive. Fits half the males in the county, I'd wager. I cross-examined the technicians on that, and why they didn't type it down to its enzyme base better, or do genetic screening or some other fancy shit. Of course, I knew the answer: They had a match and they didn't want to do something special that might screw it up. So, hell, it just seemed to fit. And there was Robert Earl, sitting there in the trial, squirming away, looking hangdog and guilty as sin. It just didn't do no good.'

'The confession?'

'Shoulda been suppressed. I think they beat it out of that boy. I do, sir. That I do. But hell, once it was in, that was the whole ball of wax, if you know what I mean. Ain't no juror gonna disagree with that boy's own words. Every time they asked him, "Did ya'll do this, or did y'all do that," and he answered, "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." All those yes, sirs. Couldn't do much about them. That was all she wrote. I tried, sir, I tried my best. I argued reasonable doubt. I argued lack of conclusive evidence. I asked those jurors, Where is the murder weapon? Something that positively points at Bobby Earl. I told them you can't just kill someone and not have some sort of mark on you. But he didn't. I argued upside and downside, rightside and leftside, over, under, around, and through. I promise you, sir, I did. It just didn't do any damn good. I kept looking over at those folks sitting in the box and I knew right away that it didn't make no damn difference what I said. All they could hear was that damn confession. His own words just staring at him off the page. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Put himself right in that electric chair, he did, just like he was pulling up a seat at the dinner table. People here was mighty upset with what happened to that little girl and they wanted to like get it finished, get it over, get it all done with right fast, so they could go on living the way they was used to. And you couldn't find two folks in this town who'd got up and said a nice thing about that boy. Something about him, you know, attitude and all. No sir, no one liked him. Not even the black folks. Now I'm not saying there weren't no prejudice involved…'