Just Cause

'How can I prove this?'

I don't know, man! It ain't my job to prove things!'

'How can I confirm it?'

'Damn! The sergeant'll tell you they had to move

Sullivan away from me. But he don't know why. No one knows why, except you and me and him.'

'But I can't…'

'I don't want to hear what you can and can't do, Mr. Reporter. People all my life have been telling me lots of can'ts. You can't be this, you can't do that, you can't have this, you can't even want that. That's my whole life, man, in one word. I don't want to hear it no more.'

Cowart was silent. 'Well,' he said, 'I'll check…'

Ferguson turned swiftly, pushing his face toward him, his eyes electric with fury. 'That's right. You go check' the prisoner said. 'Go ask that bastard. You'll see, damn you, you'll see.'

Then Ferguson rose abruptly, pushing himself away from the table. 'Now you know. What you gonna do? What can you do? Go ask some more damn questions, but make damn sure I ain't dead before you finish asking 'em.'

The prisoner walked over to the door and started pounding on it. The noise was like gunshots reverberating in the small room. 'We're finished in here!' he called. 'Sergeant Rogers! Damn!' The door staggered under the violence of his assault. When the prison guard swung the door open, Ferguson tossed a single look back at Cowart, then said, I want to go back to my cell. I want to be alone. I don't need to make any more talk. No, sir.' He held out his hands and they were cuffed. As the manacles were clicked shut around his wrists, he looked once more at the reporter. His eyes were piercing, harsh, filled with challenge and demand. Then he turned and disappeared through the doorway, leaving Cowart sitting quietly, feeling for all the world as if his legs were dangling over the edge of a whirlpool, threatening to suck him in.

As he was being shown the way out of the prison, Cowart asked the sergeant, 'Where's Blair Sullivan?' Sergeant Rogers snorted. 'Sully? He's in Q wing.

Stays in his cell all day, reading the Bible, and writing letters. He writes to a bunch of psychiatrists and to the families of his victims. He writes them obscene descriptions of what he did to their loved ones. We don't mail those. We don't tell him that, but I think he suspects.' The sergeant shook his head. 'He's not playing with a full deck, that one. He's also got a real thing about Robert Earl. Calls his name out, kinda taunting-like, sometimes in the middle of the night. Did Bobby Earl tell you he tried to kill Sullivan when they were in adjacent cells? It was kinda odd, really. They got along fine at first, talking away through the bars. Then Robert Earl just goes crazy, screaming and thrashing about, trying to get at Sullivan. It's just about the only real trouble he's ever given us. Landed in the hole for a brief vacation. Now they're on the separation list.'

'What's that?'

'Just what it sounds like. No contact whatsoever, under any circumstances. It's a list we keep to try to prevent some of the boys from killing one another before the state has the opportunity to juice them all legal-like.'

'Suppose I wanted to talk to Sullivan?'

The sergeant shook his head. 'The man's genuinely evil, Mr. Cowart. Hell, he even scares me, and I've seen just about every kind of head case killer this world's got to offer.'

'Why?'

'Well, you know, we got some men here who'd kill you and not even think about it, means nothing to them to take a life. We've got madmen and sex killers and psychopaths and thrill seekers and contract boys and hit men, you name it. But Sullivan, well, he's twisted a little different. Can't exactly say why. It's like he would fit into any of the categories we've got, just like one of those damn lizards that changes color…'

'A chameleon?'

'Yeah. Right. It's almost like he's every sort, rolled up into one, so he's no specific type at all.' Sergeant Rogers paused. 'Man just scares me. I can't say I'm ever happy to see anyone go to the chair, but I won't think twice about strapping that sucker in. Gonna be soon, too.'

'How so? He's only been on the Row a year or so, right?'

'That's right. But he's fired all his lawyers, like that guy did up in Utah a few years back. He's got just his automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court pending, and he says when that's finished, that's the end of the line. Says he can't wait to get to hell because they'll roll out the red carpet for him.'

'You think he'll stick to that?'

'I told you. He ain't like other folks. Not even like other killers. I think he'll stick hard. Living, dying, seems all the same to him. My guess is he'll just laugh, like he laughs at everything, and plop himself down in the chair like it ain't no big deal.'

'I need to talk to him.'

'No one needs to talk to that man.'

'I do. Can you arrange it?'

Rogers stopped and stared at him. This got something to do with Bobby Earl?'

'Maybe.'

He shrugged. 'Well, best I can do is ask the man. He says yes, I'll set it up. He says no, and that's all she wrote.'

'Fair enough.'

'Won't be like talking to Bobby Earl in the executive suite. We'll have to use the cage.'

'Whatever. Just try for me.'

'All right, Mr. Cowart. You call me in the morning, and I'll try to get some sort of answer for you.'

They both walked silently through the sally-port entrance to the prison. For an instant they stood in the vestibule, before the doors. Then Rogers walked beside Cowart out into the sunlight. The reporter saw the prison guard shade his eyes and stare up through the pale blue sky toward the glaring sun. The sergeant stood, breathing in clear air, his eyes closed for an instant as if trying to force some of the clamminess of confinement away with fresh air. Then he shook his head and, without saying anything further, walked back inside the prison.

Ferguson was right, Cowart thought. Everyone knew Blair Sullivan.

Florida has an odd way of spawning killers of unique proportions, almost as if, like the gnarled mangroves that flourish in the salt water-tinged sandy dirt near the ocean, evil takes root in the state and fights its way into the ground. And those not born there seem to gravitate toward the state with alarming frequency, as if following some unusual gravitational swing of the earth, driven by tides and the awful desires of men. It gives the state a sort of routine familiarity with evil; a shrugging acceptance of the paranoiac who opens fire with an automatic weapon in a fast-food outlet, or the bloated bodies of drug couriers gathering maggots in the Everglades. Drifters, crazies, contract murderers, killers willed with madness, passion, or devoid of reason or emotion, all find their way, it seems, to Florida.

Blair Sullivan, heading south, had killed a dozen people that he owned up to before arriving in Miami. The killings had been murders of convenience, really; just folks who happened to brush up against the man and wind up dead. The night manager of a small roadside motel, a waitress in a coffee shop, the clerk at a small store, an old tourist couple changing a tire by the road. What had made this particular killing spree so frightening was its utter random application. Some victims were robbed. Some raped. Some were simply killed, for no apparent reason or unfathomable reasons, like the gas-station attendant shot right through his protective cage, not because he was being robbed, but because he wasn't quick enough to make change of a twenty-dollar bill. Sullivan had been arrested in Miami minutes after he'd finished dealing with a young couple he'd found necking on a deserted road. He had taken his time with the pair, tying the teenage boy up and letting him watch as he raped the girl, then letting the girl watch as he slit the boy's throat. He had been slashing away at the young woman's body when a state trooper patrolling the area had spotted him. 'Just bad luck,' Sullivan had told the judge, arrogant, unrepentant, at his sentencing. 'If I'd been just a little bit quicker, I would have got the trooper, too.'