'A real good killing place, Brown said.
There was a yellow police tape surrounding the house. The detective slipped underneath it. Cowart followed him around the back.
'In there,' Brown said, pointing at the broken rear door.
'It's sealed.'
'Screw it.' He tugged the door open with a single pull, breaking the yellow tape.
Cowart hesitated, then stepped inside the house behind him.
The death smell lingered in the kitchen, mingling with the heat, giving the room a tomblike oppressiveness. There were signs of police processing throughout the small space; fingerprint dust streaked the table and chairs. Chalk notes and arrows showed locations. Each of the blood splotches remained on the floor, though samples had clearly been scraped from them. Cowart watched as Brown absorbed and assessed each sign.
Tanny Brown went through an internal checklist. In his mind's eye, first he saw the forensic teams steadily working the scene, the busy work of death. He knelt down next to one of the swatches of blood that had turned almost black against the light linoleum of the floor. He reached out and rubbed a finger against it, feeling the slick, brittle consistency of dried blood.
When he rose, he pictured the old man and woman, gagged and bound, awaiting death. For an instant he wondered how many times they had sat in the same chairs and shared breakfast or dinner, or discussed the
Bible, or did whatever they did that was routine. It was one of the awful things about homicide work: that the banal, humdrum world in which most folks lived was suddenly rendered evil. That the places people thought safe were abruptly made deadly. In the war, of all the wounds he'd tended, he'd hated those caused by mines the most: toe-poppers, Bouncing Bettys, and worse. It was not so much the savagery of the damage the mines did as the manner in which they did it. You put your shoe down on the ground, took a single step, and were betrayed. If you were lucky, you only lost a foot. Did these people know they were living on a minefield? he wondered. He turned toward Cowart.
At least he understands that, he thought. Even the ground is unsafe. Brown left the kitchen, leaving
Cowart standing next to the dying spot.
He walked quickly through the small house, inventorying the lives that had festered there. Barren, he thought, clinging to Jesus and waiting for Mr. Death to come calling. They probably thought they were being stalked by old age, when it was something altogether different. He stopped in front of a small closet in the bedroom, marveling at the row of shoes and slippers that were lined up across the floor, like a regiment on parade. His father would do the same; the elderly like everything in its place. A pile of knitting, balls of yarn, and long silver needles were gathered in a basket in the corner. That surprised him: What would you knit down here? A sweater? Ridiculous. He saw a pair of small plaster figurines on the bureau, two bluebirds, throats wide open as if singing. You saw, he mentally spoke to the birds. Who came here? Then he shook his head at the mockery of it all. His eyes kept sweeping the room. A room of little comfort, he thought. Who killed you? he asked himself. Then he moved back into the kitchen, where he found Cowart standing, staring at the bloodstained floor. He turned.
'Learn anything?' Cowart asked.
'Yes.'
'What's that?' Cowart asked, surprised yet eager.
'I learned that I'd like to die someplace lonely and private, so's folks don't come and inspect all my things,' Tanny Brown replied.
Cowart pointed down at a chalk notation on the floor. It said Nightclothes.
'What's that?' Brown asked.
The old woman was naked. Her clothes were folded up nice and neat, just as if she was planning to put them away in a drawer instead of getting killed.'
Brown straightened up abruptly. 'Folded carefully?'
Cowart nodded.
The policeman eyed the reporter. 'You remember where we found Joanie Shriver?'
'Yes.' Cowart pictured the clearing at the edge of the swamp. He realized he was being asked a question but wasn't certain what it was. He walked around the clearing in his mind; remembering the splotch of blood where the little girl had been killed, the way the shafts of sun had torn through the canopy of trees and vines.
He walked to the edge of the black, still swamp water and stared down beneath the tangled roots to where Joanie Shriver's body was submerged, then he followed it back to where the searchers had taken her, until finally he remembered what they'd found at the edge of the killing place: her clothes.
Folded carefully.
It had been the sort of detail that had occupied a prominent spot in the original story, a small, little irony that had made the moment more real in newspaper prose; the implication being that the little girl's killer had an odd neat streak within him, and that rendered him somehow more terrifying and more tangible all at once.
He turned toward the detective. 'That says something.'
Brown, filled with a sudden fury, allowed rage to reverberate within him for a moment before clamping down hard on it and shutting it away. 'It might,' he struggled to say. 'I'd like it to say something.'
Cowart gestured toward the house. 'Is there anything else that suggests that…'
'No. Nothing. Maybe something that says who got tailed but nothing that says who did the killing. Excepting that little detail.'
He looked over at Cowart before continuing. 'Although you probably still want to think of it as a coincidence.'
Then he stepped over the bloodstains on the floor and headed out, without looking back, aware that the sunshine outside the small house illuminated nothing he thought important.
The two men walked quietly away from the murder scene, back to their car.
Do you have a professional opinion?' Cowart asked.
'Yes'
'You feel like sharing it?'
The policeman hesitated before replying. 'You know, Cowart, you go to some crime scenes and you can still feel all the emotions, right there in the room. Anger, hatred, panic, fear, whatever, but they're all hanging around, like smells. But in there, what was there? Just someone doing a job, like you or me or the postman that was here when you found the damn bodies. Whoever went in there and killed those old folks knew about one thing, for sure. Killing. He wasn't scared. And he wasn't greedy. All he was concerned about was one thing. And that's what happened, isn't it?'
Cowart nodded.
Brown returned to the driver's side of the car and opened the door. But before sliding behind the wheel, he looked across the roof toward Cowart.
'But did I see anything in there that told me for sure that Ferguson did that crime?' He shook his head. '… Except whoever did that crime took time to fold some clothes neatly and then sure seemed mighty comfortable and familiar with a knife. And I know one man who likes knives, don't I?'
They drove out of the Upper Keys, leaving Monroe County and reentering Dade, which gave Cowart a sense of being on familiar ground. They passed a huge sign that directed tourists toward Shark Valley and the Everglades National Park, continuing toward Miami, until Brown suggested they stop for something to eat. The detective lieutenant vetoed several fast-food outlets, until they reached the Perrine-Homestead area. Then he turned the car off the highway and headed down a series of meager streets strewn with bumps and potholes. Cowart looked at the houses they swept past: small, square, single-story cinder-block homes with open jalousie windows like razor slashes in front and flat red-tile roofs adorned with large television antennas. The front lawns were all brown dirt streaked with an occasional swatch of green crabgrass. More than a few had cars up on blocks and auto parts strewn about behind chain link fences. The few children he saw playing outdoors were black.