Just Cause

'What question is that?'

'How does Blair Sullivan know how this item got to that location?'

'I…'

'That's the question, isn't it, always? How does he know something? You'll have to figure it out for yourself, Cowart, because you and I ain't gonna talk again. Not at least until I can feel the breath of Mr. Death right behind my neck.'

Blair Sullivan stood up then and suddenly bellowed, 'Sergeant! I'm finished with this pig! Get him outa my sight before I eat his head right off!'

He grinned at Cowart, rattling his chains while the air reverberated with the echo of the murderer's voice and the impatient sound of footsteps hurrying toward the cage.

6. The Culvert

A light breeze out of the south played with the increasing morning heat, sending great gray-white clouds sliding across the rich blue of the Gulf sky and swirling the moist air about him as he crossed the motel's parking lot. Cowart carried a bag with a pair of gardening gloves and a large lantern-flashlight purchased the evening before at a convenience store. He quickstepped toward his car, preoccupied with what he'd heard from the two men on Death Row, confident that he was heading toward a puzzle piece that would complete the picture in his mind. He did not see the detective until he was almost upon him.

Tanny Brown was leaning up against the reporter's car, shading his eyes with his hand, watching him approach.

'In a hurry to get somewhere?' the detective asked.

Cowart stopped in his tracks. 'You've got good sources. I only got in last night.'

Tanny Brown nodded. 'I'll take that as a compliment. Not too much gets by us in a little place like Pachoula.'

'You sure about that?'

The detective refused to rise to the bait. 'Perhaps I'd better not take it as a compliment,' he said slowly. Then he continued. 'How long you planning on staying?'

Cowart hesitated before replying. 'This sounds like a conversation out of some B movie.'

The detective frowned. 'Let me try again. I heard last night that you'd checked into the motel here. Obviously you still have some unanswered questions, otherwise you wouldn't be here.'

'Right.'

'What sort of questions?'

Cowart didn't reply. Instead he watched as the detective shifted about. He had an odd thought: Even though it was bright daylight, the policeman had a way of narrowing the world down, compressing it the way the night does. He could sense a nervousness within him and a small, unsettling vulnerability.

'I thought you'd already made up your mind about Mr. Ferguson and us.'

'You thought wrong.'

The detective smiled, shaking his head slowly, letting Cowart know he recognized this for a lie. 'You're a hard case, aren't you, Mr. Cowart?'

He did not say this angrily or aggressively, but mildly, as if prompted by a bemused curiosity!

'I don't know what you mean, Lieutenant.'

I mean, you got an idea in your head and you aren't gonna let go of it, are you?'

'If you mean have I got some serious doubts about the guilt of Robert Earl Ferguson, well, yes, that's true.'

'Can I ask you a question, Mr. Cowart?'

'Go ahead.'

The detective took a deep breath, then leaned forward, speaking barely above a whisper. 'You've seen him. You've talked to him. You've stood right next to the man and smelled him. Felt him. What do you think he is?'

I don't know.'

'You can't tell me that your skin didn't shrivel up a bit and you didn't feel a little sweat under the arms when you were talking with Mr. Ferguson, can you? That what you'd expect talking to an innocent man?'

'You're talking about impressions, not evidence.'

'That's right. Don't tell me that you don't deal in impressions. Now what do you think he is?'

'I don't know.'

'Hell you don't.'

In that moment, Cowart remembered the tattoos on the pale flesh of Blair Sullivan's arms. Some painstaking artist had constructed a pair of ornate Oriental dragons, one on each forearm, which seemed to slither down across the skin, undulating with each small flex of the man's tendons. The dragons were a faded red and blue ornamented with green scales. Their claws were extended and their jaws gaped open in menace so that when Sullivan reached out his arms to seize something or someone, so did the pair of dragons. He thought, right then, of blurting out Sullivan's name and watching its impact on the detective, but it was too important a clue to waste like that.

The detective stared at the reporter, shifting his weight forward and speaking softly. 'You ever watched a pair of old, mean dogs, Mr. Cowart? You know the way they sort of snuffle about, circling around, measuring each other up? The thing that always made me wonder was how it was those old dogs decided to fight. Sometimes, you know, they get the scent and then just back on down, maybe wag their old tails a bit, and then go on about their business of being a dog, whatever it is. But sometimes, just quick as you know, one dog'll growl and bare those teeth and they all of a sudden start to rip into each other as if their damn lives depended on tearing the other's throat out.' He paused. 'You tell me, Mr. Cowart. Why do those dogs walk away sometimes? And why sometimes do they fight?'

1 don't know.'

'Suppose they can smell something?'

'I guess so.'

Tanny Brown leaned back against the car, lifting his head up into the sunlight, staring up at the clouds that slid past. He directed his words toward the expanse of pale blue. 'You know, when I was a little boy, I thought all white folks were special somehow. It was real easy to think that way. All I had to see was that they always had the good jobs and the big cars and the nice houses. I hated white folks for a long time. Then I got older. Got to go to high school with whites. Went to the army, fought alongside whites. Came back, got my degree in a college with whites. Became a policeman, one of the first black cops on an all-white force. Now we're twenty percent black and rising. Put white folks in jail right alongside black folks. And I learned a little bit more every step of the way. And you know what I learned? That evil is color-blind. It don't make no difference what color you are. If you're a wrong one, you're wrong, black, white, green, yellow, red.'

He looked down out of the sky. 'Now, that's simple, isn't it, Mr. Cowart?'

'Too simple.'

'That must be because I'm a country fellow at heart,' Tanny Brown replied. 'I'm an old dog. And I got the scent.'

The two men stood next to the car, silently staring at each other. Brown seemed to sigh, and he rubbed a large hand through his closely cropped hair. 'I ought to be laughing at all this, you know.'

'What do you mean?'

'You'll figure it out. So where are you going?'

'On a treasure hunt.'

The detective smiled. 'Can I come along? You make it sound like a game, and I could certainly use some childish pleasure, don't you think? Not much easy laughter in being a policeman, just lots of gallows humor. Or do I have to follow you?'

Cowart realized that as much as he wanted to, he would not be able to hide from the policeman. He made the easy decision. 'Jump in,' he said, gesturing toward the passenger seat.

The two men drove in silence for a few miles. Cowart watched the highway wash through the windshield, while the detective stared out at the passing countryside. The quiet seemed uncomfortable, and Cowart shifted about in his seat, trying to stretch his arms out stiffly toward the steering wheel. He was used to rapid assessments about personality and character, and so far Tanny Brown had eluded him. He glanced over at the detective, who seemed to be lost in thought himself. Cowart tried to appraise the man, like an auctioneer before the start of bidding. Despite his musculature and imposing size, Brown's modest tan suit hung loosely about his arms and shoulders, as if he'd purposefully had it cut two sizes too large to diminish his physique. Although the day was warming, he wore his red tie tight to the neck of a pale blue button-down shirt. As Cowart stole glances away from the roadway, he watched the detective clean a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses and put them on, giving him a bookish appearance that again contradicted his bulk. Then Brown took out a small pen and notepad and made some notations swiftly, a motion not unlike a reporter's. After finishing his writing, the detective put away pad, pen, and glasses and continued to stare through the window. He lifted his hand slightly, as if pushing an idea up into the air, and gestured at the passing countryside. 'It was all different ten years ago. And twenty years ago, it was different again.'