Matthew Cowart walked to the side of the road and stared down at the edge of the slate-gray, rusted pipe that protruded into a tangle of scrub brush, rock, and moss. It was surrounded by the inevitable array of litter: beer cans, plastic soda bottles, unrecognizable paper wrappings, an old dirty white hightop sneaker, and a rank, half-eaten bucket of fried chicken. A trickle of black dirty water dripped from the end of the metal cylinder. He hesitated, then scrambled down into the damp, thorny undergrowth. The bushes tugged at his clothing and he could feel ooze beneath his feet. The detective followed him without hesitation, instantly ripping and muddying his suit. He paid it no mind.
'Tell me,' the reporter asked, 'is this thing always like this, or…'
'No. When it rains hard, this whole area will fill up, all muck swamp and mud. Takes a day or so to dry out again. Over and over.'
Cowart slid on the gloves. 'Hold the flashlight,' he said.
Gingerly, he got down on his knees and, with the detective balancing next to him, flashing the light beneath the edge of the culvert, the reporter started scraping away built-up dirt and rock.
'Mr. Cowart, do you know what you're doing?'
He didn't answer but continued pulling the debris away, pitching it behind him.
'Perhaps if you told me
He caught a glimpse of something in the light beam. He started to dig harder. The detective saw that he'd seen something and tried to peer down, under the lip, at what it was. Matthew Cowart scratched away some wet leaves and mud. He saw a handle and grasped it. He pulled hard. For an instant there was resistance, as if the earth would not give it up without a struggle, then it came free. He stood up abruptly, turning toward the detective, holding out his hand.
A wild, self-satisfied excitement filled him. 'One knife,' he said slowly.
The detective stared at it.
'One murder weapon, I suspect.'
The four-inch blade and handle of the knife were crusted with rust and dirt. It was black with age and the elements, and for an instant Cowart feared the weapon would disintegrate in his hand.
Tanny Brown looked hard at Matthew Cowart, pulled a clean cloth from a pocket and took the knife by the tip, wrapping it gently. 'I'll take that,' he said firmly.
The detective placed the knife in his suit pocket. 'Not much left of it,' he said slowly, with disappointment. 'We'll run it through the lab, but I wouldn't count on much.' He stared down at the culvert, then up into the sky. 'Step back,' he continued softly. 'Don't touch anything else. There may be something of forensic value, and I don't want it further disturbed.' He fixed Cowart with a long, hard stare. 'If this location relates to a crime, then I want it properly preserved.'
'You know what it relates to,' Cowart replied.
Brown stepped away for an instant, shaking his head. 'You son of a bitch,' he said softly, turning abruptly and scrambling back up the incline toward the reporter's car. He stood for an instant on the roadway, hand clenched, face set. Then, suddenly, with a swiftness that seemed to break the still morning, he kicked at the open car door. The noise of his foot slamming into the metal reverberated amidst the heat and sunlight, fading slowly like a distant shot.
Cowart sat alone in the policeman's office, waiting. He watched through the window as night slid over the town, a sudden surge of darkness that seemed to fight its way out of shadowy corners and from beneath shade trees to take over the atmosphere. It was a wintertime swiftness, with none of the slow lingering daylight of summer.
The day had been spent on edge. He had watched as a team of crimescene technicians had carefully processed the culvert for other evidence. He had watched as they had bagged and tagged all the debris, dirt samples, and some pieces of unrecognizable trash. He knew they would find nothing, but had waited patiently through the search.
By late afternoon, Tanny Brown and he had driven back to the police headquarters, where the detective had put him in the office to await the results of the laboratory examination of the knife. The two men had shared little but silence.
Cowart turned to the wall of the office and gazed at a framed photograph of the detective and his family, standing outside a whitewashed church. A wife and two daughters, one all pigtails and braces with an insouciance that penetrated even the austerity of her Sunday clothes; the other a teenage vixen-in-the-making with smooth skin and a figure pushing hard at the starched white of her blouse. The detective and his wife were smiling calmly at the camera, trying to look comfortable.
He was hit with a sudden twinge. He had thrown out all the pictures of himself with his wife and child after the divorce. Now he wondered why.
He let his eyes wander over the other wall decorations. There was a series of marksmanship plaques for winning the annual county handgun contest. A framed citation from the mayor and city council attesting to his bravery on an obscure occasion. A framed medal, a Bronze Star, along with another citation. Next to it was a picture of a younger, far leaner Tanny Brown in fatigues in Southeast Asia.
The door opened behind him, and Cowart turned. The detective was impassive, his face set.
'Hey,' Cowart said, 'what did you get the medal for?'
'What?'
Cowart gestured at the wall.
'Oh. That. I was a medic. Platoon got caught in an ambush and four guys got dropped out in a paddy. I went out and brought them in, one after the other. It was no big deal except we had a reporter from the Washington Post along with us that day. My lieutenant figured he'd fucked up so bad walking us into the ambush that he better do something, so he made sure I got cited for a medal. Kinda deflected the bad impression the newspaper guy was going to come away with after spending four hours having his ass shot at and his face pushed down in a swamp crawling with leeches. Did you go?'
'No, Cowart said. 'My lottery number was three-twenty. It never came up.'
The detective nodded, gesturing toward a chair. He plumped himself down behind the desk.
'Nothing,' the detective said.
'Fingerprints? Blood? Anything?'
'Not yet. We're going to send it off to the FBI lab and see what they can do. They've got fancier equipment than we do.'
'But nothing.'
'Well, the medical examiner says the blade is the right size to have caused the stab wounds. The deepest wound measured the same distance as the blade of the knife. That's something.'
Cowart pulled out his notepad and started taking notes. 'Can you trace the knife?'
'It's a cheap, typical nineteen-ninety-five, buy-it-in-any-sporting-goods-store-type knife. We'll try, but there's no identifying serial number or manufacturer's mark.' He hesitated and looked hard at Cowart. 'But what's the point?'
'What?'
'You heard me. It's time to stop playing games. Who told you about the knife? Is it the one that killed Joanie Shriver? Talk to me.'
Cowart hesitated.
'You gonna make me read all about it? Or what?' Harsh insistence crawled over the fatigue in his voice.
'I'll tell you one thing: Robert Earl Ferguson didn't tell me where to look for that knife.'
'You're telling me that someone else told you where to find the weapon that may have been used to kill
Joanie Shriver?'
'That's right.'
'You care to share this information?'
Matthew Cowart looked up from his scribblings. 'Tell me one thing first, Lieutenant. If I say who told me about that knife, are you going to reopen the murder investigation? Are you willing to go to the state attorney? To get up in front of the trial judge and say that the case needs to be reopened?'
The detective scowled. 'I can't make a promise like that before I know anything. Come on, Cowart. Tell me.'
Cowart shook his head. 'I just don't know if I can trust you, Lieutenant. It's as simple as that.'
In that moment, Tanny Brown looked like a man primed to explode. I thought you understood one thing,' the detective said, almost whispering.