Just Cause (33 page)

'Scratch one bad guy,' Wilcox said. All the jocularity had fled from his voice, replaced with a barren satisfaction. 'It's all over…' The detective glanced at Cowart.'… Except for the shouting.'

He walked through the prison corridors with the rest of the official witnesses toward where the other members of the press contingent and the demonstrators had crowded. He could see the artificial light of the television cameras flooding the vestibule, giving it a forced otherwordly glow. The polished floor glistened; the whitewashed walls seemed to vibrate with light. A bank of microphones was arranged behind a makeshift podium. He tried to sidle to the side of the room, edging toward the door, as the warden approached the gathering, holding up his hand to cut off questions, but there were no shadows to hide in.

'I'll read a short statement,' the warden said. His voice creaked with the strain of the events. 'Then I'll answer your questions. Then the pool reporters will brief you.'

He gave the official time of death as 12:08 A.M. The warden droned that a representative from the state attorney general's office had been present when Sullivan had been prepared for execution and during the procedure, to make certain that there was no controversy over the events – that no one would come forward later and claim that Sullivan had been denied his rights, had been taunted or beaten – as they had more than a dozen years earlier when the state had renewed the death penalty by executing a somewhat pathetic drifter named John Spenkelink. He said that Sullivan had refused a final plea to file an appeal, right outside the execution chamber door. He quoted the dead man's final words as 'Obscenity you. Let 'er rip.'

The still photographers' cameras made a whirring, clicking noise like some flight of mechanical birds taking wing en masse.

The warden then gave way to the three pool reporters. Each in turn started reading from their notepads, coolly relating the minute details of the execution. They were all pale, but their voices were steady. The woman from Miami told the crowd that Sullivan's fingers had stiffened, then curled into fists when the first jolt hit him and that his back seemed to arc away from the chair. The reporter from St. Petersburg had noticed the momentary hesitation that had stymied Sullivan for just an instant when he spotted the chair. The reporter from the Tampa Tribune said that Sullivan had glared at the witnesses without compassion, and that he seemed mostly angry as he was strapped in. He had noticed, too, that one of the guards had fumbled with one of the straps around the condemned man's right leg, causing him to have to redo the binding rapidly. The leather had frayed under the shock of the execution, the reporter said, and afterward was almost severed by the force of Sullivan's struggle against the electric current. Twenty-five hundred volts, the reporter reminded the gathering.

Cowart heard another voice at his shoulder. He pivoted and saw the two detectives from Monroe County.

Andrea Shaeffer's voice whispered soothingly. 'What did he tell you, Mr. Cowart? Who killed those people?'

Her gray eyes were fastened onto his, a whole different sort of heat.

'He did,' Cowart replied.

She reached out and grasped his arm. But before the detective could follow up, there was another clamor from the assembly.

'Where's Cowart?'

'Cowart, your turn! What happened?'

Cowart pulled away from the detective and walked unsteadily toward the podium, trying desperately to sort through everything he'd heard. He felt his hand quiver, knew his face was flushed and that sweat ringed his forehead. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wiped his brow, as if he could wipe away the panic that filled him.

He thought, I have done nothing wrong. I am not the guilty person here. But he didn't believe it. He wanted a moment to think, to figure out what to say, but there was no time. Instead, he grabbed on to the first question he heard.

'Why didn't he file an appeal?' someone yelled.

Cowart took a deep breath and answered, 'He didn't want to sit in prison waiting for the state to come get him. So he went and got the state. It's not that unusual. Others have done it – Texas, North Carolina, Gilmore out in Utah. It's sorta like suicide, only officially sanctioned.'

He saw pens scraping across paper, his words falling onto so many blank pages.

'What did he tell you when you went back there and talked with him?'

Cowart felt pinioned by despair. And then he remembered something Sullivan had told him earlier: If you want someone to believe a lie, mix a bit of truth in with it. So he did. The killer's formula: Mix lies and truths.

'He wanted to confess,' Cowart said. 'It was pretty much like Ted Bundy a few years back, when he told investigators about all the crimes he'd committed before going to the chair. 'That's what Sullivan did.'

'Why?'

'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?'

'Look,' he cried. 'They're dead, dammit! They were old and he hated them and they got killed and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about that now! You don't have to have an answer right now. It can wait until the morning. No one else is dying tonight!'

The detective started to say something, then paused. She fixed him with a single, long, fierce glance, shut her mouth and set her jaw. Then she poked him three times in the chest with her index finger, hard, before stepping aside so that he could get into the car.

'In the morning,' she said.

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'Miami. My office.'

I'll be there. You be sure you're there as well.'

She stepped back from the car, menace creeping into her tone.

'Yes, dammit, yes. Miami.'

Shaeffer made a small sweeping motion with her hand, as if reluctantly granting permission for him to depart. But her eyes were filled with suspicion, narrowed to pinpoints.

He jumped behind the wheel and thrust the keys into the ignition, slamming the door. The engine fired and he snatched at the gearshift, put the car in gear, and pulled back.

But as he retreated, the headlights swept over the mocking red check of Detective Wilcox's sportcoat. He stood in the roadway, his arms crossed, watching Cowart closely, blocking the reporter's path. He shook his head with exaggerated slowness, made his fist into a pistol and fired it at him. Then he stepped aside to let him pass.

The reporter looked away. He no longer cared where he headed, as long as it was someplace else. He punched hard on the gas, swinging the wheel toward the exit gate, and drove hard into the dark. The night chased after him.

'Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus, why, Lord, why?' she cried. Her voice rose and rattled the walls of the small trailer, shaking the knicknacks and bric-a-brac that decorated the fake wood-paneled walls, penetrating the thick heat that lingered in the darkness outside, oblivious of the midnight hour. Every few seconds, the red-and-blue strobe lights of the police cruisers parked in a semicircle outside struck the back wall of the cramped room and illuminated a carved crucifix that hung next to a framed blessing cut from a newspaper. The Bashing lights seemed to mark the steady progression of seconds.

'Why, Lord?' the woman sobbed again.

That's a question He never seems eager to answer, Tanny Brown thought cynically. Especially in trailer parks.