Just Cause

'How many?'

'Who?'

He held up his hands. 'Guys, give me a break. There's no confirmation on any of this. I don't know for certain if he was telling me the truth or not. He could have been lying…'

'Before going to the chair? C'mon!' someone shouted from the back.

Cowart bristled. 'Hey! I don't know. I'll tell you one thing he told me: He said if killing people wasn't so hard for him, how hard did I think lying would be?'

There was a lull as people scribbled his words.

'Look,' Cowart said, 'if I tell you that Blair Sullivan confessed to the murder of Joe Blow and there was no such murder, or someone else got charged with the crime, or maybe Joe Blow's body's never been found, then, hell, we've got a mess. I'll tell you this. He confessed to multiple homicides…'

'How many?'

'As many as forty.'

The number electrified the crowd. There were more shouted questions, the lights seemed to redouble in intensity.

'Where?'

'In Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama. There were some other crimes as well, rapes, robberies.'

'How long?'

'He'd been doing them for months. Maybe years.'

'What about the murders in Monroe County? His mother and stepfather? What did he tell you about them?'

Cowart breathed slowly. 'He hired someone to do those crimes. At least, that's what he said.'

Cowart's eyes swept over to where Shaeffer stood. He saw her stiffen and lean her head toward her partner. Weiss was red-faced. Cowart turned away swiftly.

'Hired who?'

'I don't know,' Cowart said. 'He wouldn't tell me.'

The first lie.

'Come on! He must have told you something or somebody.'

'He wouldn't get that specific'

The first lie bred another.

'You mean he tells you he's the person who arranged a double homicide and you didn't ask him how he managed it?'

'I did. He wouldn't say.'

'Well, how did he contact the killer? His phone privileges were monitored. His mail was censored. He's been in isolation on Death Row. How did he do it?' This question was greeted with some buttressing cheers. It came from one of the pool reporters, who was shaking his head as he asked it.

'He implied he set it up through some sort of informal prison grapevine.'

Not exactly a lie, Cowart thought. An oblique truth.

'You're holding back!' someone shouted.

He shook his head.

'Details!' someone called out.

He held up his arms.

'You're gonna put it all in the Journal tomorrow, right?'

Resentment, jealousy, like the lights, flowed over him. He realized that any of the others would have sold their souls to be in his position. They all knew something had happened and hated not knowing precisely what. Information is the currency of journalism, and he was foreclosing on their estate. He knew no one in that room would ever forgive him – if the truth ever came out.

'I don't know what I'm going to do,' he pleaded. 'I haven't had a chance to sort through anything. I've got hours of tape to go through. Give me a break.'

'Was he crazy?'

'He was a psychopath. He had his own agenda.'

That was certainly the truth. And then the question he dreaded.

'What did he tell you about Joanie Shriver? Did he finally confess to her murder?'

Cowart realized that he could simply say yes and be done with it. Destroy the tapes. Live with his memory. Instead, he stumbled and landed somewhere between truth and fiction.

'She was part of the confession,' he said.

'He killed her?'

'He told me exactly how it was done. He knew all the details that only the killer would know.'

'Why won't you say yes or no?'

Cowart tried not to squirm. 'Guys. Sullivan was a special case. He didn't put things in yes-and-no terms. Didn't deal in absolutes, not even during his confession.'

'What did he say about Ferguson?'

Cowart took a deep breath. 'He had nothing but hatred for Ferguson.'

'Is he connected to all this?'

'It was my impression that Sullivan would have killed Ferguson, too, if he'd had the chance. If he could have made the arrangements, I think he would have put Ferguson on his list.'

He exhaled slowly. He could see the interest in the room shifting back to Sullivan. By assigning Ferguson to the list of potential victims, he'd managed to give him a different status than he deserved.

'Will you provide us with a transcript of what he did say?'

He shook his head. 'I'm not a pool reporter.'

The questions increased in anger.

'What are you going to do now? Gonna write a book?'

'Why won't you share it?'

'What, you think you're gonna win another Pulitzer?'

He shook his head.

Not that, he thought. He doubted he would have the one he had won much longer. A prize? I'll be lucky if my prize is to live through all this.

He raised his hand. 'I wish I could say that the execution tonight put an end to Blair Sullivan's story, guys. But it didn't. There's a bunch of loose ends that have to be tied up. There are detectives waiting to talk to me. I've got my own damn deadlines to meet. I'm sorry, but that's it. No more.'

He walked away from the podium, followed by cameras, shouted questions, and growing dread. He felt hands grasping at him, but he pushed through the crowd, reached the prison doors, and passed through into the deep black of the hours after midnight. An anti-death-penalty group, holding candles and placards and singing hymns, was gathered by the road. The pitch of their voices washed around him, tugging him like a blustery wind, away from the prison. 'What a friend we have in Jesus…' One of the group, a college coed wearing a hooded sweatshirt that made her seem like some odd Inquisition priest, screamed at him, her words cutting bladelike across the gentle rhythms of the hymn, 'Ghoul! Killer!' But he sidestepped past her words, heading toward his car.

He was fumbling for his keys when Andrea Shaeffer caught up with him. 'I need to talk to you,' she said.

'I can't talk. Not now.'

She grabbed him by the shirt, suddenly pulling him toward her. 'Why the hell not? What's going on, Cowart? Yesterday was no good. Today was no good. Tonight's no good. When are you going to level with us?'