Just Cause

He held up his fist, as if he was holding a fruit. He squeezed the air. The handcuff chain rattled in the metal bracket. 'Let me tell you a few things, Cowart.' He paused, staring at the reporter. 'One: I am filled with power. You may think I am an impotent prisoner, handcuffed and shackled and locked in an eight-by-seven cell each night and day, but I am filled with strength that reaches way beyond those bars, sir. Far beyond. I can touch any soul I want to, just as easy as dialing a telephone. No one is beyond my reach, Cowart. No one.'

He stopped, then asked, 'Got that?'

Cowart nodded.

'Two: I ain't going to tell you if I killed that little girl or not. Hell, if I told you the truth, it would make everything too easy. And how could you believe me, anyway? Especially after all the things the papers have written about me. What sort of credibility do I have? If killing somebody's easy for me, how easy you think is lying?'

Cowart started to speak, but a single glance from Sullivan made him halt, his mouth open.

'You want to know something, Cowart? I quit school in tenth grade, but I never quit learning. I'll bet I'm better read and better educated than you. What do you read? Time and Newsweek. Maybe The New York Times Book Review? Probably Sports Illustrated when you're on the can. But I've read Freud and Jung and kinda prefer the disciple to the master. I've read Shakespeare, Elizabethan poetry and American history, with an emphasis on the Civil War. I like novelists, too, especially ones that are filled with the politics of irony like James Joyce, Faulkner, Conrad, and Orwell. I like to read classics. Little bit of Dickens and Proust. I enjoy Thucydides and reading about the arrogance of the Athenians, and Sophocles because he talks about each and every one of us. Prison's a great place for reading, Cowart. Ain't nobody gonna tell you what to read or not. And you got all the time in the world. I suspect it's a damn sight better than most graduate schools. Of course, this time I don't exactly have all that time, after all, so now I just occupy myself with the Good Book.'

'Hasn't it taught you anything about truth and charity?'

Blair Sullivan screeched a laugh that echoed about the cage. 'I like you, Cowart. You're a funny man. You know what the Bible's all about? It's about cheating and killing and lying and murder and robbery and idolatry and all sorts of things that are right up my alley, so to speak.'

The prisoner stared over at Cowart. He smiled wickedly. 'Okay, Cowart. Let's have some fun.'

'Fun?'

'Yeah.' He giggled and wheezed. 'About seven miles from the spot where little Joanie Shriver was killed, there is an intersection where County Route Fifty intersects with State Route One-Twenty. A hundred yards before that intersection there is a small culvert that runs under the roadway, right near a big old stand of willow trees that kinda droop down and toss a bit of shade on the road on a summer day. If you were to pull over your car at that spot and go down to the right-hand side of that culvert and reach your hand down under the lip where the culvert pipe protrudes out, stick your hand right under whatever greasy old water is flowing through there, you might find something. Something important. Something real interesting.'

'What?'

'Come on, Cowart. You don't expect me to spoil the surprise, do you?'

'Suppose I go and find this something, what then?'

'Then you'll have a real intriguing question to pose to your readers in your articles, Cowart.'

'What question is that?'

'How does Blair Sullivan know how this item got to that location?'

'I…'

'That's the question, isn't it, always? How does he know something? You'll have to figure it out for yourself, Cowart, because you and I ain't gonna talk again. Not at least until I can feel the breath of Mr. Death right behind my neck.'

Blair Sullivan stood up then and suddenly bellowed, 'Sergeant! I'm finished with this pig! Get him outa my sight before I eat his head right off!'

He grinned at Cowart, rattling his chains while the air reverberated with the echo of the murderer's voice and the impatient sound of footsteps hurrying toward the cage.

6. The Culvert

A light breeze out of the south played with the increasing morning heat, sending great gray-white clouds sliding across the rich blue of the Gulf sky and swirling the moist air about him as he crossed the motel's parking lot. Cowart carried a bag with a pair of gardening gloves and a large lantern-flashlight purchased the evening before at a convenience store. He quickstepped toward his car, preoccupied with what he'd heard from the two men on Death Row, confident that he was heading toward a puzzle piece that would complete the picture in his mind. He did not see the detective until he was almost upon him.

Tanny Brown was leaning up against the reporter's car, shading his eyes with his hand, watching him approach.

'In a hurry to get somewhere?' the detective asked.

Cowart stopped in his tracks. 'You've got good sources. I only got in last night.'

Tanny Brown nodded. 'I'll take that as a compliment. Not too much gets by us in a little place like Pachoula.'

'You sure about that?'

The detective refused to rise to the bait. 'Perhaps I'd better not take it as a compliment,' he said slowly. Then he continued. 'How long you planning on staying?'

Cowart hesitated before replying. 'This sounds like a conversation out of some B movie.'

The detective frowned. 'Let me try again. I heard last night that you'd checked into the motel here. Obviously you still have some unanswered questions, otherwise you wouldn't be here.'

'Right.'

'What sort of questions?'

Cowart didn't reply. Instead he watched as the detective shifted about. He had an odd thought: Even though it was bright daylight, the policeman had a way of narrowing the world down, compressing it the way the night does. He could sense a nervousness within him and a small, unsettling vulnerability.

'I thought you'd already made up your mind about Mr. Ferguson and us.'

'You thought wrong.'

The detective smiled, shaking his head slowly, letting Cowart know he recognized this for a lie. 'You're a hard case, aren't you, Mr. Cowart?'

He did not say this angrily or aggressively, but mildly, as if prompted by a bemused curiosity!

'I don't know what you mean, Lieutenant.'

I mean, you got an idea in your head and you aren't gonna let go of it, are you?'

'If you mean have I got some serious doubts about the guilt of Robert Earl Ferguson, well, yes, that's true.'