Just Cause

'Class met twice that week. Only twenty-seven students. Can't hide, you know. Can't send your roommate in to pick up the assignments. Tuesdays and Thursdays.'

'And?'

'Right here. In my notebook.'

The professor ran thin fingers down a column of names. 'Ahh. Perfect.'

'He was there?'

'Never missed a class. Not this month. A few other absences, earlier in the year. But I showed those as excused absences.'

'Excused?'

'Means he came to me with a good reason. Got the assignments himself. Did the makeup work. That sort of thing. That's dedication, especially in these days.'

The professor snapped his notebook shut and returned to his plate of greens and dried fruit.

Shaeffer found the second professor outside a lecture hall in a corridor swamped with students hurrying to classes. This man taught the history of crime in America, a large survey course designed to accommodate a hundred students. He carried a briefcase and an armful of books and couldn't remember whether Ferguson was present on specific dates, but he did show the detective a sign-in sheet, where Ferguson's signature appeared prominently.

It was creaking toward afternoon, a gray, rancid light filling the hallways of the university, and Shaeffer felt angry and disappointed. She had not held much hope that she would discover his absence from the university at the time of the murders; still, she was frustrated by the sense that she was wasting time. She thought she knew little more about the man than she had when she'd started out in the morning. Surrounded by the constant press of students, even Ferguson had begun to diminish in her mind. She started asking herself, What the hell am I doing?

She decided to head back to her motel, then, at the last moment, changed her mind again and decided to knock on the door of the third professor. If there was no answer, she told herself, she'd go straight back to Florida.

She found his cubicle after several wrong turns and rapped sharply on the door, then stepped back as it swung open to reveal a stocky man, wearing 1960s-style granny glasses beneath an uncombed mop of straggly sand-colored hair. The professor wore a loose-fitting tweed sportcoat with a dozen pens stuck in the breast pocket, one of which seemed to have leaked. His tie was loose around his collar and a substantial paunch tugged at the belt of his corduroy trousers. He had the appearance of someone awakened from a nap taken in his clothes, but his eyes moved swiftly to take in the detective standing in front of him.

'Professor Morin?'

'Are you a student?'

She produced her badge, which he inspected. 'Florida, huh?'

'Can I ask you a few questions?'

'Sure.' He gestured for her to enter his office. 'I was expecting you.'

'Expecting?'

'You want to know about Mr. Ferguson, right?'

'That's correct,' she said as she stepped into the cubicle. It was a small space, with a single dirty window that overlooked a quadrangle. One wall was devoted to books. A small desk and computer were tightly jammed against the other wall. There were copies of newspapers taped to the few remaining empty spots. There were also three bright watercolors of flowers hung about, contradicting the grimy appearance of the office. 'How did you know?'

'He called me. Said you'd be checking on him.'

'And?'

'Well,' the professor said, speaking with the bubbly enthusiasm of someone who has been shut in too long, 'Mr. Ferguson has a fine attendance record. Just perfect. Especially for the time period he said you were interested in,'

He sat down hard in a desk chair that bounced with his weight. 'I hope that clears up any misunderstandings you might have.' The professor smiled, displaying perfectly white, even teeth, which seemed to contradict his disheveled appearance.

'He's quite a good student, you see. Quite intense, you know, which puts people off. Very much a loner, but I guess Death Row has something to do with that. Yes, intense, dedicated, wound tight. Don't see that in too many students. A little scary, but ultimately refreshing. Like danger, I suppose.'

Professor Morin burbled on. 'Even the policemen and women we get in here trying to advance their careers, they just see this as part of a process of collecting credits and getting ahead. Mr. Ferguson is more of a scholar.'

There was a single hardbacked chair in a corner, scarred and worn with hard use, which she slid into. It was obviously designed to keep visiting students and their concerns totally uncomfortable, and thereby in the office as briefly as possible.

'You know Mr. Ferguson well?' she asked.

The professor shrugged. 'As well as any. Actually, yes. He's an interesting man.'

'How so?'

'Well, I teach "Media and Crime," and he has a good deal of natural expertise in that area.'

'And so?'

'Well, he's been called upon on numerous occasions to give his opinions. They are always, how shall I say it? Intriguing. I mean, it's not every day that you teach a course to someone who has firsthand experience in the field. And who might have gone to the electric chair had it not been for the media.'

'Cowart.'

'That's correct. Matthew Cowart of the Miami Journal. A Pulitzer Prize and well deserved, I might add. Quite a job of reporting and writing.'

'And what are Ferguson's opinions, Professor?'

'Well, I would say he is extremely sensitive to issues of race and reporting. He wrote a paper examining the case of Wayne Williams in Atlanta. He raised the issue of the double standard, you know, one set of rules reporting on crime in the white community and another for reporting on crimes in the black community. It's a distinction I happen to subscribe to as well, Detective.'

She nodded.

Professor Morin swiveled in his desk chair, ebbing back and forth as he spoke, clearly enamored of his own voice.

'… Yes, he made the point that the lack of media attention in black community crimes invariably leads to a diminishment of resources for the police, lessening of activity by the prosecutorial bodies and makes crime seem a commonplace fabric of the society. Not unsophisticated, this view. The routinization of crime, I suppose. Helps explain why fairly a quarter of the young black male population in this nation is or has been behind bars.'

'And he was in class?'

'Except when he had an excuse.'

'What sort of excuses?'

'He gives occasional lectures and speeches, often to church groups down in Florida. Up here, of course, no one really has any idea of his past. Half the students in the class hadn't even heard of his case at the beginning of the semester. Can you believe that, Detective? What a commentary on the quality of students today.'