Just Cause

He heard himself speak those words and realized how silly they sounded. Only twenty. As if it made him only half as evil as someone who killed forty people.

'Right. For sure. At least, twenty that sound persuasive.'

'What about the others?'

'Well, some he clearly didn't do because other people are serving time, or even sitting on Death Row, for the crimes. He just sort of stitched the stories into the fabric of his own story, see? Like I told you about the crime on the Miccosukkee Reservation, for one example. He also told you at one point that he killed a woman up outside of Tampa. A woman he met in a bar, promised her a good time, ended up killing her, you remember that one?'

'Ahh, sure, I remember he didn't say a lot about it, except to sort of delight in the fun of killing her.'

'Right. That's the one. Well, he had all the details right, except for one thing. The guy who did that crime also did two other women in that area and occupies a cell about thirty feet away from Blair Sullivan's old home on Death Row. He just slid that story right in amidst two others that check out. Wasn't until I started checking up there that it rang a bell. See what he did? Just grabbed that other guy's crime – and there ain't no doubt the other guy was the killer – and just added it into his grand total. Did that a couple of other times, with other crimes that guys are on the Row for. Sort of like a quarterback throwing a lot of short passes in the final quarter of a game that's already won. He was, like, inflating his stats.' Edna laughed.

'But why?'

Cowart could sense Edna's shrug through the telephone line. 'Who knows? Maybe that's why all those FBI folks were so damn interested in talking to Sully before he checked out.'

'But…'

'Well, let me give you one theory. Call it McGee's Postulate, or something nice and scientific like that. But I asked around a bit, you know, and guess what? They always figured Ted Bundy for some thirty-eight killings. Could have been more, but that's the figure that we got, and that's what he ended up talking about before heading off to hell, himself. My guess is that old Sully wanted to do him a couple better. They found at least three different books about Bundy amongst Sully's personal effects, you know. Nice detail, that, huh? The next best killer, if you want to call it that, waiting on Death Row is that guy Okrent, the Polish guy from Lauderdale, remember him? He had the little problem with prostitutes. Like, he killed them. He's only around eleven officially, but unofficially, he's at about seventeen or eighteen. He was on the same wing as Sully, too. You beginning to see my thinking here, Matty? Old Sully wanted to be famous. Not only for what he was doing, but for what he did. So, he took a few liberties.'

'I see what you're driving at. Can you get someone to say it, and put it in the paper?'

'No sweat. Those FBI guys will say whatever I want them to. And there are those two sociologists up in Boston who study mass murderers. I spoke with them earlier. They love McGee's Postulate. So, all in all, it should run tomorrow, if I work late. Or the next day, which is a lot more likely.'

'That's great,' Cowart said.

'But, Matty, it would go a lot better if you had something to run alongside it. Like a story saying who killed those old folks down in the Keys.'

'I'm working on it.'

"Work hard. That's the only question still out there, Matty. That's what everyone wants to know.'

'I hear you.'

'They're getting a bit frantic over at the city desk. They want to put our world-famous, crack, ace, and only occasionally incompetent investigative team on it. Lobbying hard, so I hear.'

Those guys couldn't figure out…'

I know that, Matty, but there are people saying you're overwhelmed.'

'I'm not.'

'Just warning you. Thought you'd want to know all the politicking going on behind your back. And that story in the St. Pete Times didn't help your cause any. It doesn't help either that no one knows where the hell you are ninety-nine percent of the time. Jeez, the city editor had to lie to that Monroe detective the other morning when she came in here looking for you.'

'Shaeffer?'

'The pretty one with the eyes that look like she'd rather be roasting you on an open spit than talking with you.'

'That's her.'

'Well, she was here, and she got the semi-runaround and that's a marker they hold on you now.'

'All right. I hear you.'

'Hey, break that case. Figure out who zapped the old couple. Maybe win another big one, huh?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'Well, nothing wrong with fantasizing, right?'

'I guess not.'

He hung up the phone, muttering obscenities to himself, but precisely whom or what he was cursing, he didn't know. He started to dial the number for the city editor, then stopped. What could he tell him? Just then he heard a noise at the door and looked up to see Bruce Wilcox. The detective seemed pale.

'Where's Tanny?' he asked.

'Around. He left me here to wait for him. I thought he was looking for you. What did you find out?'

Wilcox shook his head. 'I can't believe I screwed up, he answered.

'Did the lab find anything?'

'I just can't believe I didn't check the goddamn shithouse back then.' Wilcox tossed a couple of sheets of paper onto the desk. 'You don't have to read them,' he said. 'What they found was material resembling blood residue on a shirt, jeans, and the rug. Resembling, for Christ's sake. And that was looking through a microscope. All had deteriorated almost to the point of invisibility. Three years of shit, lime, dirt, and time. There wasn't a hell of a lot left. I watched that lab tech spread out the shirt and it, like, almost fell apart when he started to poke at it with tweezers. Anyway, not a damn thing that's conclusive. They're gonna send it all off to a fancier lab down in Tallahassee, but who knows what they'll come up with. The technician wasn't real optimistic'

Wilcox paused, taking a slow, long breath. 'Of course, you and I know why those things were there. But getting up and saying they were evidence of anything, well, we're a long ways from being able to say that. Damn! If I found them three years ago, when everything was fresh, you know, they just dissolve that shit and stuff right off and there's the blood.' He looked up at Cowart. 'Joanie Shriver's blood. But now, they're just a couple of pieces of tired old clothes. Damn.'

The detective paced the office. 'I can't believe how I screwed up,' he said again. 'Screwed up. Screwed up. Screwed up. My first goddamn big case.'

He was clenching his fists tightly, then releasing them before tightening them once again into a ball. In, out. In, out. Cowart could see the detective's muscles shifting about beneath his shirt. The high-school wrestler before a match.

Tanny Brown sat in a recently emptied office at a vacant desk making telephone calls. The door was shut behind him, and in front of him was a yellow legal pad for notes and his personal address book. He had to leave messages at the first three numbers he tried. He dialed a fourth number and waited for the phone to be picked up.

Eatonville Police.'

Captain Lucious Harris, please. This is Detective Lieutenant Theodore Brown.'

He waited patiently before a huge voice boomed over the receiver. 'Tanny? That you?'

'Hello, Luke.'

'Well, well, well. Long time, no hear. How's it goin'?'

'Ups and downs. And you?'

'Well, hell. Life ain't perfect by no means. But it ain't terrible, neither, so I guess I got no complaints.'

Brown pictured the immense man on the other end of the line. He would be in a uniform that would be too tight in the places where his three hundred pounds made no pretense toward muscle, and around his neck, so that his head seemed to rest on the starched white collar with its gold insignia. Lucious Harris had a big man's hesitancy to anger and a constant, bubbling outlook that made his entire life seem a feast on which he was continually dining. He'd always enjoyed calling the big man because no matter how evil the world had seemed, his response was always energetic and undefeated. Tanny Brown realized he no longer made those calls.