Just Cause

'Were the victims white?' Cowart asked.

'Yes.'

'Were they young, like Joanie Shriver?'

'No. They were all adults.'

Cowart paused, considering, before continuing his questions.

'You know, Lieutenant, what the FBI statistics on black-on-white rape are?'

'I know you're going to tell me.'

Cowart surged on. 'Less than four percent of the cases reported nationwide. It's a rarity, despite all the stereotyping and paranoia. How many black-on-white cases have you had in Pachoula before Robert Earl Ferguson?'

'None that I can recall. And don't lecture me about stereotypes.' Brown eyed Cowart. Wilcox shifted about in his seat angrily.

'Statistics don't mean anything,' he added quietly.

'No?' Cowart asked. 'Okay. But he was home on vacation.'

'Right.'

'And nobody liked him much. That I've learned.'

'That's correct. He was a snide rat bastard. Looked down at folks.'

Cowart stared at the policeman. 'You know how silly that sounds? An unpopular person comes to visit his grandmother and you want to make him on rape charges. No wonder he didn't like it around here.'

Tanny Brown started to say something angry in reply, but then stopped. For a few seconds he simply watched Cowart, as if trying to burrow into him with his eyes. Finally he replied, slowly, 'Yes. I know how silly it sounds. We must be silly people.' His eyes had narrowed sharply.

Cowart leaned forward in his chair, speaking in his own, steady, unaffected voice. You've got no edge on me, he thought.

'But that's why you went to his grandmother's house first, looking for him?'

'That's right.'

Brown started to say something else, then closed his mouth abruptly. Cowart could feel the tension between the two of them and knew, in that moment, what the lieutenant had been prepared to say. So he said it for him. 'Because you had a feeling, right? That old policeman's sixth sense. A suspicion that you had to act on. That's what you were about to say, right?'

Brown glared at him.

'Right. Yes. Exactly.' He stopped and looked over at Wilcox, then back at Cowart. 'Bruce said you were slick,' he spoke quietly, 'but I guess I had to see it for myself.'

Cowart eyed the lieutenant with the same cold glance that he was receiving. 'I'm not slick. I'm just doing what you would do.'

'No, that's incorrect,' Brown said acidly. 'I wouldn't be trying to help that murdering bastard off of Death Row.'

The reporter and the policeman were both silent.

After a few moments, Brown said, 'This isn't going right.'

'That's correct, if what you want is to persuade me that Ferguson's a liar.'

Brown stood up and started pacing the floor, obviously thinking hard. He moved with a rugged intensity, like a sprinter coiled at the starting line, waiting for the starter's gun to sound, the muscles in his body shifting about easily, letting Cowart know all the time that he was not a person who enjoyed the sensation of being confined, either in the small room or by details.

'He was wrong,' the policeman said. I knew it from the first time I saw him, long before Joanie was killed. I know that's not evidence, but I knew it.'

'When was that?'

'A year before the murder. I rousted him from the front of the high school. He was just sitting in-that car, watching the kids leave.'

'What were you doing there?'

'Picking up my daughter. That's when I spotted him. Saw him a few times after that. Every time, he was doing something that made me uncomfortable. Hanging in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Or driving slowly down the street, following some young woman. I wasn't the only one that noticed it. A couple of the Pachoula patrolmen came to me saying the same. He got busted once, around midnight, right behind a small apartment building, just standing around. Tried to hide when the squad car rolled past. Charges got dropped right away. But still…'

'I still don't hear anything like evidence.'

'Goddammit!' the lieutenant's voice soared for the first time. 'Don't you hear? We didn't have any. All we had was impressions. Like the impression you get when you get to Ferguson's house and he's scrubbing out that car – and he's already deep-sixed a slice of rug. Like when the first thing out of his mouth is, "I didn't do that girl," before he's heard a question. And how he sits in an interview room, laughing because he knows you haven't got anything. But all those impressions add up to something more than instinct, because he finally talks. And, yes sir, all those impressions turn out to be absolutely right because he confesses to killing that girl.'

'So, where's the knife? Where's his clothes covered with blood and mud?'

'He wouldn't tell us.'

'Did he tell you how he staked out the school? How he got her to get into the car? What he said to her? Whether she fought? What did he tell you?'

'Here, goddammit, read for yourself!'

Lieutenant Brown seized a sheaf of papers from the file on his desk and tossed them toward Cowart. He looked down and saw that it was the transcript of the confession, taken by a court stenographer. It was short, only three pages long. The two detectives had gone through all of his rights with him, especially the right to an attorney. The rights colloquy occupied more than an entire page of the confession. They'd asked him whether he understood this and he'd replied he had. Their first question was phrased in traditional cop-ese: 'Now, on or about three P.M. on May 4, 1987, did you have occasion to be in a location at the corner of Grand and Spring streets, which is next to King Elementary School?' And Ferguson had replied monosyllabically, 'Yes.' The detectives had then asked him whether he had seen the young woman later known to him as Joanie Shriver, and again, his reply had been the single affirmative. They had then painstakingly brought him through the entire scenario, each time phrasing their narrative as a question and receiving a positive answer, but not one of them elaborated with even the meagerest detail. When they had asked him about the weapon and the other crucial aspects of the crime, he'd replied that he couldn't remember. The final question was designed to establish premeditation. It was the one that had put Ferguson on Death Row: 'Did you go to that location intending to kidnap and kill a young woman on that day?' and he'd replied again with a simple, awful 'Yes.'

Cowart shook his head. Ferguson had volunteered nothing except a single word, 'Yes,' over and over. He turned toward Brown and Wilcox. 'Not exactly a model confession, is it?'

Wilcox, who had been sitting unsteadily, shifting about with an obvious, growing frustration, finally jumped up, his face red with anger, shaking his fist at the reporter. 'What the hell do you want? Dammit, he did that little girl just as sure as I'm standing here now. You just don't want to hear the truth, damn you!'