Just Cause

12. The Police Lieutenant's Sleeplessness

'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.

He put his hand to his head for just an instant, Irving to will some quiet into the world around him. Remarkably, after cutting loose with one last howl, the woman's voice drained away.

He turned toward her. She had curled up in a corner, lifting her feet from the floor, childlike, and tucking them beneath her. She seemed a preposterous killer, with stringy, unkempt brown hair, and a lean, skeletal figure. One eye was blackened and her thin wrist was wrapped in an elastic bandage. She was wearing a tattered pink housecoat, and the pushed-up sleeves revealed new purple-blue bruises on her arms. He made a mental note of these. He saw nicotine stains on her fingers as she lifted her hands to her face and gently patted the tears that flowed freely down her cheeks. When she looked at the moisture on her fingers, the look on her face made him think she expected to find blood.

Tanny Brown stared at the woman, letting the sudden quiet calm the air. She's old, he thought, and almost instantly corrected himself: She's younger than I am. Years had been beaten into her, aging her far more swiftly than the passing of time.

He motioned toward one of the uniformed officers hanging in the rear of the trailer, behind a kitchen partition.

'Fred,' he said quietly, 'got a cigarette for Missus Collins?'

The officer stepped forward, offering the woman his pack. She reached out while mumbling, 'I'm trying to quit.'

Brown leaned across and lit the cigarette for her. 'Now, Missus Collins, take it slowly and tell me what happened when Buck came here after the late shift.'

There came a popping sound from outside and a small explosion of light. Dammit, he thought, as he saw the woman's eyes go panicky.

'It's just a police photographer, ma'am. Now, how about a glass of water?'

'I could use something stronger,' she replied, hands shaking as she lifted the cigarette to her lips and took a long drag, which ended in a brief spasm of coughing.

'A glass of water, Fred.' As the man brought the drink, Brown heard voices outside. He rose abruptly. 'Ma'am, you just get ahold of yourself. I'll be right back.'

'You ain't gonna leave me?' She seemed abruptly terrified.

'No, just got to check on the work outside. Fred, you stay here.'

He wished Wilcox were with him as he looked down at the woman's eyes fluttering about the room, on the verge of breaking down and wailing again. His partner would know instinctively how to reassure her. Bruce had a way with the poor fringe folks that they were forever dealing with, especially the white ones. They were his people. He had grown up in a world not too far removed from this one. He knew beatings, cruelty, and the acid taste of trailer-park hopes. He could sit across from a woman like this and hold her hand and have her spilling the entire incident out within seconds. Tanny Brown sighed, feeling awkward and out of place. He did not want to be there, trapped amidst the silver bullet-like shapes of the airstreams.

He stepped from the trailer and watched as the police photographer angled about, looking for another shot of a dark shape sprawled on the thin grass and packed dirt outside the trailer. Several other policemen were measuring the location. A few others were holding back the other inhabitants of the trailer park, who craned forward with curiosity, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman's late and estranged husband. Brown walked over and stared down at the face of the man on the ground. His eyes were open, fixed in a grotesque mask that mingled surprise and death, staring at the night sky. A huge splotch of blood remained where his chest should have been. The blood had settled in a halo about his head and shoulders. On the ground, where the impact from the shotgun blast had tossed them, were a half-empty bottle of scotch and a cheap handgun. A couple of crime-scene men laughed, and he turned toward them.

'A joke?'

'Quickie divorce proceedings,' said one man, bending over and bagging the bottle of scotch. 'Better than Tijuana or Vegas.'

'Guess old Buck here figured he could wallop his woman whether they were married or not. Turns out he was wrong,' another technician whispered. There was another small burst of laughter.

'Hey,' Brown said brusquely. 'You guys got opinions, keep ' em down. At least until we clear the location.'

'Sure,' said the photographer as he popped another picture. 'Wouldn't want to hurt the guy's feelings.'

Brown bit back a smile of his own, a look which the other policemen caught. He waved at the men working the body in mock disgust, and that made them grin, as they continued to move about the scene.

He'd seen plenty of death: car wrecks, murder victims, men shot in war, heart attacks, and hunting accidents.

Tanny Brown remembered his aged grandmother laid out in an open casket, her dark skin stretched brittle, like the crust of an overdone bird, her hands folded neatly on her chest as if in prayer. The church had seemed a great, hollow place filled with weeping. He recalled the tightness in his throat caused by the starched white collar of his new and only dress shirt. He had been no more than six and what he remembered most was the sturdy sensation of his father's hand on his shoulder, part direction, part reassurance, guiding him past the casket. Whispered words: 'Say goodbye to Granmaw, quick now, child, she's on her way to a better place and movin' fast now, so say it fast while she can still hear you.'

He smiled. For years he had thought the dead could hear you, as if they were only napping. He wondered at how powerful a father's words can be. He remembered being overseas and zipping the bodies of men he'd known equally briefly and intimately into black rubber bags. At first he would always try to say something, some words of comfort, as if to steady their trip to death. But as the numbers grew and his frustration and exhaustion spiraled, he took to simply thinking a few phrases and finally, when his own tour dwindled to weeks and days, he gave up even that, performing his job with bitter silence.

He looked down at his watch. Midnight. They're walking into the room. He pictured the nervous sweat on the lip of the warden, the ashen faces of the official witnesses, a slight hesitation, then the hurried motions of the escort party as they pulled the straps tight around Sullivan's wrists and ankles.

He waited one minute.

First jolt now, he thought.

One more minute.

Second jolt.

He imagined the doctor approaching the body. He would bend down with his stethoscope, listening for the heart. Then he would raise his head and say, 'The man is dead,' and glance down at his own watch. The warden would step forward and face the official observers and he, too, would speak by ritual. 'The judgment and sentence of the Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida has been carried out according to law. Now God rest his soul.'

He shook his head. No rest for that soul, he thought.

And none for mine, either.

He walked back into the trailer. The woman had quieted completely.

'Now, Missus Collins, you want to tell me what happened? You want to wait for your attorney? Or you want to talk now, get this straightened out?'

The woman's voice was barely more than a whimper. He called me, you know, from that damn Sportman's Club, where he went after getting off work at the plant. Said he weren't gonna let me do this to him. Said he was gonna take care of me without no judge and divorce lawyers, no-sir.'

'Did he tell you he had a weapon?'

'Yes, sir, Mr. Brown, he did. Said he had his brother's gun and he was damn straight gonna use it this time on me.'

'This time?'

'He came over on Sunday, not so drunk that he was falling down, but plenty liquored up, and shot out the lights outside. Laughing and calling me names. Then he started to whale on me, yessir. My biggest, he's only eleven, got his arm busted trying to pull him off. I thought he'd kill us all. I was so scared; that's why I sent the kids off'n to their cuzzin's. Put all three of 'em on the bus this morning.'

The woman picked up a small fake-leather photo album from a side table. She opened it up and thrust it across at Tanny Brown. He saw three well-scrubbed faces, school pictures.

'They're good kids,' she said. 'I'm glad they weren't here for this.'

He nodded. 'Why didn't you call the police on Sunday?'

'Wouldn't do no good. I even had a judge's order telling him to stay away, but it didn't do no good. Nothing did no good when he'd been drinking. Except maybe that shotgun.'

Her upper lip started to quiver and tears began to well up again in the corners of her eyes.

'Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus,' she whimpered.

'The shotgun? Where'd you get the shotgun?'

I went over to Pensacola, to the Sears there, after they fixed me up at the clinic. I still got Buck's Sears card, so I charged it. I was so scared, Mr. Brown. And when I heard that old pickup of his pull up, I knew he meant to do me, I knew it.'

The woman started to cry again.

'Did you see the gun in his hand before you shot?'

I don't know. It was dark and I was so scared.

Tanny Brown spoke quietly but firmly. He kept the photo album with the children's pictures in his hands.

'Now think hard, Missus Collins. What did you see…?' The police lieutenant looked over at the uniformed officer, who nodded his head in comprehension. 'Now, you wouldn't have shot unless you saw him' raise that gun right at you, right?'

The woman stared at him quizzically.

'You wouldn't have shot unless you were in fear for your life, right?'

'Right, she replied slowly.

'Not unless you knew deadly force was the only available recourse left to you, right?'

A slow understanding seemed to fall on the woman's face, even though Brown knew she hadn't understood half the words he'd used in his question.

'Well,' she said softly, 'I could see he raised something right at me…'

'And you knew he had the gun and he had threatened you and shot at you before…'

'That's right, Mr. Brown. I was in fear.'

'And there was no place for you to run and hide?'

The woman gestured widely. 'Where you gonna hide in here? Got no recourse at all.'

Brown nodded his head and looked again at the children's pictures.

'Three kids? All his?'

'No, sir. Buck weren't their daddy, and he never liked ' em much. Guess they reminded him of my other husband. But they're fine kids, Mr. Brown. Fine kids.'

'Where's their real daddy?'

The woman shrugged, a movement that spoke volumes about trailer parks and bruises.

'Said he was going to Louisiana, try and get work on the oil rigs. But that's nearly seven years ago. Now, he's just gone. We weren't husband and wife official, nohow.'

Tanny Brown was about to ask another question when he heard a bellow of rage from outside. Sudden voices were raised and he heard policemen shouting to each other. The woman on the couch gasped, shrinking down to the floor. 'That's his brother. I know it. He'll kill me, Lord, I know.'

'No, he won't,' Brown said quietly. He handed the woman back the portraits of her children. She clutched the leather photo album tightly. Then he motioned for the uniformed officer to stand by the door as he returned outside.

From the doorway, he saw two other uniforms trying to restrain a large, enraged man who struggled hard against their hold. The crime-scene technicians had scattered. The man roared, tugging and jerking, pulling the officers toward the body.

'Buck, Buck! Jesus, Buck, I can't believe it! Jesus, lemme go! Lemme go! I'll kill the bitch, kill her!'

He surged forward dragging the officers. Two more policemen jumped in his path to try and slow his progress. One cop fell to the ground, cursing. The crowd of people started to catcall and yell, their voices adding to the man's fury.

'I'll kill the bitch, dammit!'

He screamed with red-streaked rage. His contorted face was caught in the flashing strobe lights of the police cruisers, illuminating his anger. He kicked at one of the policemen struggling to hold him, his foot landing on the officer's shin. The man yelped and fell aside, grabbing at his leg.

Tanny Brown stepped from the trailer's front stoop and walked toward the dead man's brother. He put himself directly in the man's vision.

'Shut up!' he shouted.

The wild man stared at him, hesitating momentarily in his push forward. Then he lurched again. I'll kill the bitch,' he screamed.

'That your brother?' Brown shouted.

The man twisted in the grasp of the policemen. 'She killed Buck, now I mean to do her. Bitch! You're dead!' he cried, directing his yell past Brown.

'Is that your brother?' Brown asked again, slightly quieter.

'You're dead, bitch! Dead!' the man snarled. 'Who's asking? Who're you, nigger?'

The racial epithet stung him, but he didn't move. He considered stepping up and feeding the man his fist, but then decided against it. The man had to be stupid to call him a name, but probably wasn't so stupid he wouldn't file a complaint. A brief vision of a stack of paperwork jumped into his sight like a mirage.

One of the officers trying to hold the man back freed his nightstick. Brown shook his head and stepped up so that his face was only a few inches away from the dead man's brother.

'I'm police Lieutenant Theodore Brown, asshole, and I'm gonna get pissed in one more second, and you don't want to have me on your case, asshole.'

The man hesitated. 'She killed him, the bitch.'

'You already said that.'

'What you gonna do about it?'

Tanny Brown ignored the question. 'That your gun?' he asked.

'Yeah, mine. He got it from me earlier.'

'Your gun? Your brother?'

'Yeah. You gonna arrest the bitch, or am I gonna have to kill her?'

The man's struggles had slowed, but his voice had gathered an angry, challenging edge.

'You knew he was gonna come over here?'

He told everyone at the bar.'

'What was the gun for?'

'He was just gonna scare her a little, like he did the other night.'

Brown turned and saw the uniformed officer standing in the light thrown from the trailer door, and the woman cowering behind the policeman. He turned back to the enraged man, who was standing still now, waiting, his arms still clasped by two officers.

The police lieutenant walked over to the dead man's body and looked down at it. Under his voice, he whispered, 'Can you hear me? You ain't worth the trouble.' Then he looked back at the brother.

'You gonna do something, or what?' the man demanded.

Tanny Brown smiled. 'Sure,' he said.

He turned to one of the crime-scene technicians. 'Tom, go get Missus Collins' shotgun.' The man went over to a cruiser and returned with the gun. Brown took the shotgun and jacked the pump action a single time, chambering a fresh round.

He looked over at the dead man's brother and smiled again. 'Give the shotgun back to Missus Collins,' he said loudly. He stared over at the man. 'Fred?' he called out in a loud voice. 'Officer Davis, you write Missus Collins up one of those tickets for dumping refuse without a permit. Pay a fifty-buck fine. And you call sanitation and tell them to come pick up this trash.' He pointed at the body at his feet.

'Hey,' said the man.

'That's right. Give her a ticket for shooting this piece of crap and dumping him out here.'

'Hey,' the man said again.

'Tell Missus Collins she dumps any more trash bodies in her front yard, it's gonna cost her fifty bucks every time.'

He aimed his index finger at the dead man's brother. 'Like this one here. Tell her she's got my permission to blow this sorry asshole's head off. But it's gonna cost her another fifty.'

'You can't do that,' the man said. His arms had dropped to his sides.

'You don't think so?' Brown said. He walked back to the man and shouted in his face. 'You don't think so?'

'Hey, Tanny!' cried one of the uniformed officers. I got fifty I can lend her.'

There was a burst of laughter from some of the other policemen.

'Sure,' came another voice. 'Hell, we can take up a collection. Cover her until she blows away all the assholes.'

'Put me in for ten, said one policeman, rubbing his shin.

'Hey,' said the man.

'Hey, what?' Tanny Brown demanded.

'You can't.'

'Watch what I can do,' the lieutenant said quietly. 'Arrest this man.'

'Hey!' the man said again as one of the officers slapped handcuffs around his wrists.

'Criminal trespass. Obstruction. Battery on a police officer. Harassment. And let's see, how about conspiracy to commit murder? That's for giving his damn dumb drunk brother a gun.'

'You can't,' the man said again. His voice had lost its rage.

'Those are all felonies, asshole. I'll bet you don't have a damn permit for that gun, either. And let's add driving under the influence.'

'Hey, I ain't drunk.'

Tanny Brown stared at the man. 'Take a good look,' he said quietly. 'You ever see this face again, and it's gonna be real trouble. Got that?'

'You can't do this.'

'Take him in,' Brown said to the uniformed officers. Show him a bit of country hospitality.'

'A pleasure,' murmured the man who had been kicked. He jerked the handcuffed man around savagely.

'Take it easy,' Brown said. The uniformed officer stared at the lieutenant. 'Okay, Brown added, smiling. 'Not too damn easy.' He whispered one more command. 'And make sure the bastard gets put in a cell with the biggest, meanest, rasty-ass black folks we've got in stir. Maybe they can teach him not to call people names.

Two of the officers burst into brief laughter.

Tanny Brown turned his back on the protesting man being dragged toward a squad car, walked back to the trailer, and spoke quietly to the woman cowering inside.

'Missus Collins, we got to go to the police station. We're gonna read you your rights down there. Then I want you to call up that attorney, have him come help you out. You got that?'

She nodded. 'I need to call my kids.'

'There'll be time for that.'

He turned to the uniformed officer. 'You get one of the female officers out here quick to transport her. See that she gets something to eat on the way.'

'What charge?' the policeman asked.

Tanny Brown turned, staring out at the sprawled lump that remained in the yard. 'How about discharging a firearm within town limits? That'll hold things until I talk to the state attorney.'

He went back outside and stood next to the body.

Stupid, he thought. So stupid.

He glanced down at his watch. A lot of dying tonight, he thought.

He looked at the dead man's eyes. The face faded, pushed out of the way by his memory of his first look at Joanie Shriver's body stretched out in the center of an embarrassed, angry group of searchers. They were standing at the edge of the swamp, beads of dirty-brown water and strands of green muck clinging to their boots and waders. He remembered wanting to touch her, to cover her, and forcing himself not to, steeling himself to the sturdy, official processing of violence.

He swallowed back the vision. It was all my fault, he thought. I will set it right. I will not lose that one.

Tanny Brown, struggling with visions of death, moved off slowly toward his squad car, believing nothing had ended that night. Not even the life demanded by the state.

It was hurrying toward dawn when Bruce Wilcox called. The first insinuations of light were cheating the darkness out of the trees and sky, giving the world edges and shapes.

Brown had spent the remainder of the night in taking a confession from Mrs. Collins; two hours of quiet, bitter history of sexual abuse and beatings, which had been, more or less, what he'd anticipated. The stories are always the same, he'd thought, only the victims change. He had then argued with a gruff assistant state attorney, irritated at being awakened, and negotiated with a divorce lawyer suddenly in over his head. Self-defense, he had insisted to the prosecutor, who had wanted her charged with second-degree murder. They had finally compromised on manslaughter, with the understanding that if there had been a crime committed that night, it paled in comparison to the crimes inflicted upon the woman.

Exhaustion curled around him, like his fingers gripping the pen as he signed the last of his reports, when the phone on his desk buzzed.

'Yes?'

'Tanny? It's Bruce. Scratch one mass murderer. He went through with it.'

'I'll be damned. What happened?'

'He basically told everyone to go fuck themselves and sat in the chair.'

'Jesus.' Brown realized his fatigue had dissipated.

'Yeah. Old Sully was one evil motherfucker right to the end. But that wasn't what was so damn interesting.'

Tanny Brown could hear the excitement in his partner's voice, a childish enthusiasm that flew in the face of the hour and the awfulness of everything that had happened.

Okay,' he asked. 'What's so interesting?'

'Our boy Cowart. Man, he spent all day squirreled away with that creep, all alone, listening to the bastard confess to maybe forty murders. All over Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama. A regular one-man crime wave. Anyway, our boy Cowart comes out of this little tea-and-sympathy session all shaky pale. He just about lost it when his fellow vultures turned the heat on him.

They were whaling on him with questions something fierce. It reminded me of wrestling matches, you know, where you know you're outclassed, and you keep trying one move after another, and the opponent has got all the answers, counters everything, until you know you got no chance and you're just in it until the whistle blows. Hurting more and more.'

'That is interesting.'

'Yeah. And after he got tired of letting his buddies in the press chew him over and spit him out, he took off like the devil was nipping at his heels.'

'Where'd he go?'

'Back to Miami. At least, that's what he said he was gonna do. Hell, I don't know for sure. He's supposed to meet those detectives from Monroe County later today. They weren't none too pleased with our boy Cowart, either. He knows something about those deaths down there that he ain't saying.'

'How do you know that?'

'Well, hell, Tanny. I'm just guessing. But the man looked like he was pretty seasick with all he'd heard. And I don't think he told the half of it.'

Brown sat back, listening to the excited tones in his partner's voice. It was easy for him to picture the reporter squirming under the pressure of information. Sometimes, he thought, there are things we don't want to learn. His mind calculated rapidly, like doing sums.

'Bruce, you know what I think?'

'Bet it's the same thing I'm thinking.'

I bet Cowart got told something he didn't want to hear. Something that screwed around with the way he had it all figured out.'

'Life ain't quite so neat and tidy, sometimes, is it, boss?'

'Not at all.'

'Well, it wouldn't have fazed that cold-hearted bastard to listen to someone tell him about any bunch of murders, no matter how many. I mean, just about everybody had Sully figured for more than he'd owned up to, so that weren't no great surprise…' Wilcox began, only to be interrupted, the thought finished by Brown.

'There's only one murder that means anything to him.'

'That's for damn sure.'

And only one murder that means anything to me, Tanny Brown thought.

He drove through the weak dawn light slowly, his mind churning with questions. He spotted the paper boy on his bicycle zigzagging up the street, and he pulled in behind him. The boy turned at the sound of the car, recognized the detective and waved before rising up on his pedals and racing ahead. Brown watched him maneuver amidst the wan morning shadows that blurred the edges of the neighborhood, making it appear like a photograph slightly out of focus. He pulled into his driveway and looked about for an instant. The detective saw modern security: measured rows of clean stucco and cinder-block houses painted in shiny white or quiet pastels, all marked with well-trimmed shrubs and bushes, green lawns, and late-model cars parked in the driveways. A simple, middle-class existence. Every house within a ten-block neighborhood planned by a single contracting company, designed to create a community both unique and uniform at the same time. No Old South here. Some doctors, some lawyers, and what was once the working class, policemen, like himself. Black and white. Just modern America moving forward. He looked down at his hands. Soft, he thought. A desk man's hands. Not like my father's. He glanced at his thickening middle. Christ, he thought, I belong here.

Inside the house, he hung his shoulder holster on a hood next to two book bags stuffed with notebooks and loose-leaf papers. He removed the pistol and, as was his habit, first checked the chambers. It was a.357 magnum with a short barrel, loaded with wadcutters.

He hefted the pistol in his hand and reminded himself to book some time at the department's shooting range. He realized it had been months since his last practice session. He opened a drawer and found a trigger lock, which he slid around the firing mechanism. He put the gun in the drawer and reached down to remove his backup pistol from his ankle holster.

He could smell bacon frying in the kitchen and he walked that way, past Danish furniture and framed prints. He stood for a moment in the doorway to the kitchen watching his father, who was bent over the stove, cracking eggs into a skillet.

'Hello, old man,' he said quietly.

His father didn't move but cursed once as some bacon grease splattered onto his hand.

'I said, good morning, old man.'

His father turned slowly. 'I didn't hear you come in,' he said, smiling.

Tanny Brown grinned a greeting. His father didn't hear much anymore. He went over and put an arm around the man's wide shoulders. He could feel the old man's bones beneath the thin cotton of his faded work shirt. He gave his father a small squeeze, thinking how skinny he'd become, how fragile he felt, as if he would break under the pressure of his son's hug. He felt a shadow of sadness inside, remembering a time when he thought there was nothing those arms couldn't lift and hold, now realizing there was little they could. All that strength robbed by disease. He thought, You grow up angry and pushing for that day when you're stronger and tougher than your father, but when it comes it makes you embarrassed and uncomfortable.

'You're up early,' the son said as he released his grip.

His father shrugged. He hardly slept anymore, Brown knew. A combination of pain and stubbornness.

'And what you calling me "old man" for? I ain't so damn old. Still whup you if I had to.'

'You probably could,' Brown replied, smiling. This was a lie both enjoyed.

'Sure could' insisted his father.

'The girls up yet?'

'Nah. I heard some shifting about. Maybe the bacon smell will wake 'em. But they're soft and young and don't like getting up none. If your mama was still with us, she'd see they got up right and smart first cock crow, yessir. It'd be them in here fryin' this bacon. Making biscuits, maybe.'

Brown shook his head. 'If their mama was still here, she'd tell them to sleep in and get their beauty rest. She'd let them miss the school bus and take them herself.'

Both men laughed and nodded their heads in agreement. Brown recognized that his father's complaints were mainly fiction; the old man doted on his granddaughters shamelessly.

His father turned back to the stove. 'I'll fix you some eggs. Musta been a tough night?'

'Wife shot her ex-husband when he came looking for her with a handgun, Dad. It wasn't anything unique or special. Just mighty sad and bloody.'

Sit down. You're probably beat. Why can't you work regular hours?'

'Death doesn't work regular hours, so neither do I.'

'I suppose that's your excuse for missing services this past Sunday. And the Sunday before that, too.'

Well…'he started.

'Your momma would whip you good if she were alive today. Hell, son, then she'd whip me good for letting you miss services. It ain't right, you know.'

No. I'll be there Sunday. I'll try.'

His father scrambled the eggs in a bowl. 'I hate all this new stuff you got in here. Like this damn electric stove thing. Nuclear food cooker, whatever the hell it is.'

Microwave.'

'Well, it don't work.'

"No, you don't know how to work it. There's a difference,'

His father was grinning. Brown knew the old man felt a contradictory superiority, having grown up in a world of icehouses and outhouses, well water and wood stoves, having made his life out of an old, familiar world, and finally, been taken in his old age into a home that seemed to him closer to a rocket ship than a house. All the gadgets of middle class amused his father, who saw most of them as useless.

'Well, I don't see what the hell good it's for anyway, 'cept maybe for thawing stuff out.'

He thought his father correct on that score.

He watched as the old man's gnarled hands swiftly dished the omelet into the skillet and tossed the eggs, folding them expertly. It was remarkable, the son thought. Arthritis had stolen so much of his mobility; old age, much of his sight and hearing; a bout with heart disease had sapped most of his strength, leaving him gaunt with skin that used to burst with muscles now sagging from his arms. But the old tanner's dexterity had never left him. He could still take a knife and slice an apple into equal pieces, take a pencil and draw a perfectly straight line. Only now it hurt him to do so.

'Here you go. Should taste good.'

'Aren't you gonna join me?'

'Nah. I'll just make enough for the girls. Me, just a bit of coffee and some bread.' The old man looked down at his chest. 'It doesn't take a lot to keep me going. Couple a sticks on the fire, that's all.'

The old man slid slowly, in obvious discomfort, into a chair. The son pretended not to notice.

'Damn old bones'

'What?'

'Nothing.'

They sat in silence for a moment.

'Theodore,' his father said quietly, 'how come you never think of finding a new wife?'

The son shook his head. 'Never find another like Lizzie,' he said.

'How you know if you don't look?'

'When Mama died, you never hunted out a new wife.'

I was already old. You're still young.'

Brown shook his head. 'I've got all I need. I've still got you and the girls and my job and this house. I'm okay.'

The old man snorted but said nothing. When his son finished, he reached out for the plate and carried it stiffly over to the sink.

'I'll go wake the girls,' Brown said. His father only grunted. The son paused, watching the father. We're quite a pair, he thought. Widowed young and widowed old, raising two girls as best we can. His father started to hum to himself as he scrubbed away at the plates. Brown stifled a sudden, affectionate laugh. The old man still refused to use the dishwashing machine and wouldn't allow any of the others to use it either. He'd insisted that there was only one way to tell if something were truly clean, and that was to clean it yourself. He thought that proper, in its own way. When the girls had complained, shortly after his father had moved in, he'd explained only that his father was set in his ways. The explanation had sat unquietly in the household for a few days, until the weekend, when Tanny Brown had loaded both girls into his unmarked squad car and driven north fifty miles, just over the Alabama border to Bay Minette.

They drove through the dusty, small town with its stolid brick buildings that seemed to glow in the noontime heat, and out past a long, cool line of hanging willows, into the farm country, to an old homestead.

He'd taken the girls across a wide field, down to a little valley where the heat seemed to hang in the air, sucking the breath from his lungs. He'd pointed to a group of small shacks, empty now, staggered by the passing of time, faded reds and browns, splintered with age, and told them that was where their grandfather had been born and raised. Then he'd taken them back toward Pachoula, pointing out the segregated school where his father had learned his letters, showing them the site of the farm where he'd worked hard to rise to be caretaker, and where he'd learned the tanning business. He showed them the house their grandfather had purchased in what had once been known as Blacktown, and where their grandmother had built up her seamstress business, gaining enough of a reputation that her talents cut across racial boundaries, the first in that community. He'd shown them the small white frame church where his father had been deacon and his mother had sung in the choir. Then he'd taken them home and there had been no more talk of the dishwasher.

I forget, too, he thought. We all do.

The hallway outside the girls' rooms was hung with dozens of family pictures. He spotted one of himself, in his fullback's outfit, cradling a football. He could see where the slick, shiny material of the jersey was frayed up near the shoulder pads. The red-and-gray uniforms at his school had been the used outfits from a neighboring white district. The girls don't understand that, he thought. They don't understand what it was like to know that every uniform, every book in the library, every desk in the classrooms, had once been used in the white high school, and then discarded. He recalled picking up his second-hand helmet for the first time and seeing a dark sweat line on the inside. He had touched the padding, trying to see if it felt different. Then he'd raised his fingers to his nose to check the smell. He shook his head at the memory. The war changed that for me, he thought. He smiled. Nineteen-sixty-nine. The march on Washington had been six years before. The Civil Rights Bill would pass the year after. The Voting Rights Bill in 1965. The whole South was convulsed with change. He'd returned from the service and gone to college on the GI Bill and then, coming home to Pachoula, had learned that the all-black school where he'd carried the ball was no longer. A large, ugly, stolid cinderblock regional high school was under construction. There were weeds growing on the playing fields he'd known. The red-and-brown dirt that had streaked his uniform was covered by a tangled growth of crabgrass and stinkweed. He remembered cheers, and thought there had been too few victories in his life.

He shook his head again. Mustn't forget, he thought. He remembered the epithet that had burst from the dead man's brother's lips a few hours earlier. None of it has changed.

He knocked on his eldest daughter's door. 'Come on, Lisa! Rise and shine. Let's go!' He turned quickly and banged away on the younger girl's door. 'Samantha! Up and at 'em. Hit the deck running. Schooltime!'

The groans amused him, turning his thoughts momentarily away from Pachoula, the murdered girl, and the two men who'd occupied space on Death Row.

Tanny Brown spent the next half hour in suburban-father school-day routine, prodding, cajoling, demanding, and finally accomplishing the desired result: both girls out the door, with homework intact, lunches made, in time to catch the school bus. With the two girls gone, his father had retreated to his bedroom to try to take a nap, and he was left alone with the growing morning. Sunlight flooded the room, making him feel as if everything was twisted about. He felt like some old nocturnal beast trapped by the daylight, lurching from shadow to shadow, searching for the familiarity and safety of night.

He looked across the room and his eyes focused on an empty flower vase that stood on a shelf. It was tall, with a graceful hourglass shape, and a single painted flower climbing up the ceramic side. It made him smile. He remembered his wife buying the vase when he took her on a vacation to Mexico, and hand-carrying it all the way back to Pachoula, afraid to trust it to doormen, luggage handlers, or porters. When they returned home, she put it in the center of the dining-room table and always kept it filled with flowers. She was like that. If there was something she wanted, there was no end to what she would do to accomplish it. Even if it meant carrying a silly vase by hand.

No flowers anymore, he thought, except for the girls.

He remembered how hard they'd tried to save her at the emergency room, how, when he'd arrived, they were still working, crowded around, running adrenaline and plasma lines, massaging her heart, trying to coax some life into her body. He'd known with a single look that it was useless. It had been something left over from the war, a way of understanding when some invisible line had been crossed and when, even with all of science gathered, connected, and being utilized, death still beckoned inexorably. They'd worked hard, passionately. She had been there herself, some twenty minutes earlier, working alongside all of them. Twenty minutes to get her raincoat, maybe make some small, end-of-the-workday joke, say good night to the rest of the emergency-room crew, walk to her car, drive five blocks and be rammed broadside by a drunk driver in a pickup truck. Even after she was dead, when they knew there was no hope, they kept working. They knew she would have done the same for them.

He stared at the ceiling but couldn't sleep, regardless of how exhausted he was. He realized that he no longer wondered when he would get over missing her, having come to understand that he would never get over her death. He had reached an accommodation with it, which was sufficient to get him from day to day.

He rose and walked into his youngest daughter's room, moved over to her bureau and started to push aside some of the girlish things collected there, a case overflowing with beads and rings and ribbons, a toy bear with a torn ear, an old loose-leaf binder stuffed with a different year's schoolwork, a tangle of combs and brushes. It did not take long to find what he was searching for: a small silver frame with a photo inside. He held it up in front of him. The frame gleamed when it caught the sunlight.

It was a picture of two little girls, one black, one white, one raven-haired, one blonde, arm-in-arm, giggling, braces and wildly mussed makeup, feather boas and dress-up clothes.

He looked at the two faces in the photograph.

Friends, he thought. Anyone would look at that picture and realize that nothing else counted, that they just liked each other, shared secrets and passions, tears and jokes. They had been nine and mugging shamelessly for his camera. It had been Halloween, and they had dressed up in colorful, cacophonous outfits, outdoing each other with wild, outrageous appearance, all laughter and unfettered childish glee.

He was almost overcome with fury. All he could see was Blair Sullivan, mocking him. I hope it hurt, he thought. I hope it ripped your soul from your body with all the pain in the world.

Sullivan's face disappeared, and he thought of Ferguson.

You think you're free. You think you're going to get away with it. Not a chance.

He looked down at the picture in his hand. He especially liked the way the girls had their arms around each others' shoulders. His daughter's black arm hung down around the front of Joanie Shriver's. body, and Joanie's arm hung around his daughter's, so the two girls were hugging close, framing each other.

Her first and best friend, he thought.

He stared at Joanie's eyes. They were a vibrant blue. The same color as the Florida sky on the morning of his wife's funeral. He had stood apart from the rest of the mourners, clutching his two daughters beneath his arms, listening to the drone of the preacher's voice, words about faith and devotion and love and being called home to the valley, and hearing little of it. He had felt crippled, unsure whether he would be able to summon the energy to take another step. He had pinned his daughters to his sides, aware only that each of them was convulsed with tears. He had wanted to be enraged but knew that would have been too simple, that he was instead going to be cursed with a dull constant agony blended with the terror that with their mother gone, he would somehow lose his daughters. That with their center ripped away, they couldn't hold together. He had lost his tongue, didn't know what to say to them, didn't know what to do for them, especially Samantha, the younger, who had sobbed uncontrollably since the accident.

The other mourners had kept their distance, but Joanie Shriver had pulled away from the comforting grasp of her own father, serious beyond her years, wearing her best dress and, eyes filled with tears, had walked past the lines of people, right up to him and said, 'Don't you worry about Samantha. She's my friend and I will take care of her.' And in that moment, she'd reached out and taken hold of his daughter's hand and stood there holding it as well. And she'd been true to her word. She'd always been there, whenever Samantha needed to turn to someone. Weekends. Lonely holidays. After school days. Helping him to restore a routine and solidity to life. Nine years old and wiser by far than any adult.

So, he thought, she was more than just her friend. She was my friend, too. Saved our lives.

Self-hatred filled him. All the authority and power in the world, and I couldn't protect her.

He remembered the war. Medic! they called, and I went. Did I save any of them? He remembered a white boy, one week in the platoon, a cowboy from Wyoming who'd taken a round in the chest, a sucking chest wound. It'd whistled, taunting him as he struggled to save the soldier. He'd had his eyes locked onto Tanny Brown, watching through the haze of hurt and shock for a sign that would tell him he was going to live or die. He'd still been looking when the last breath wheezed through his chest. It was the same look that George and Betty Shriver had worn when he came to their door carrying the worst news.

Brown shook his head. How long have I known George Shriver? Since the day I went to work in his father's store and he took a mop and worked next to me.

His hand twitched. I've buried too many. He looked at the picture a final time before setting it back on top of the bureau. It's not over, he insisted. I owe you too much.

He walked from his daughter's room into his bedroom. He no longer thought of exhaustion or rest. Fueled by outrage and debt, he began collecting a change of clothes and stuffing them into an overnight bag, wondering when the next commuter flight down to Miami left the airport.

13. A Hole In The Story

He had no plan.

Matthew Cowart faced the day after the execution of Blair Sullivan with all the enthusiasm of a man who'd been told he was next. He drove his rental car rapidly through the night, down more than half the length of the state, jumping on Interstate 95 south of Saint Augustine. He cruised the three-hundred-plus miles at an erratic pace, often accelerating to ninety miles per hour, oddly surprised he was not stopped once by a trooper, though he passed several heading in the opposite direction. He soared through the darkness, fueled by all the furious contradictions ricocheting back and forth in his head. The first morning sunshine began to rise as he pushed past the Palm Beaches, shedding no light on his troubles. It was well after dawn when he finally deposited the car with a surly Hertz agent at Miami International Airport, who had difficulty understanding why Cowart had not returned the vehicle to its North Florida origin. A Cuban taxi-cab driver, jabbering about baseball and politics without making a distinction between the two and using an energetic mixture of languages, muscled his way through the city's morning rush-hour traffic to Cowart's apartment, leaving the reporter standing alone at the curbside, staring up into the wavy, pale blue heat of the sky.

He paced about his apartment uncomfortably, wondering what to do. He told himself he should go in to the newspaper but was unable immediately to summon the necessary energy. The newspaper suddenly no longer seemed a place of sanctuary, but instead a swamp or a minefield. He stared down at his hands, turning them over, counting the lines and veins, thinking how ironic it was that so few hours earlier he'd been desperate to be alone and now that he was, he was incapable of deciding what to do.

He plumbed his memory for others trapped in the same type of circumstances, as if others' mistakes would help diminish his own. He recalled William F. Buckley's efforts to free Edgar Smith from Death Row in New Jersey in the early sixties and Norman Mailer's assistance to Jack Abbott. He remembered the columnist standing in front of a bank of microphones, angrily admitting to being duped by the killer. He could picture the novelist fighting through the glare of camera lights, refusing to talk about his murderous charge. It's not the first reporter to make an error, he thought. It's a high-risk profession. The stakes are always tough. No reporter is immune from a carefully executed deception.

But that only made him feel worse.

He sat up in his seat, as if talking to someone in a chair opposite him and said, 'What could I have done?'

He rose and started pacing about the room. 'Dammit, there was no evidence. It made sense. It made perfect sense. Dammit. Dammit.'

Rage suddenly overcame him, and he reached out and swept a stack of newspapers and magazines from a countertop. Before they had settled, he picked up a table and overturned it, crashing it into a sofa. The thud of the furniture smashing together was intoxicating. He started to mutter obscenities, picking up pace, assaulting the room. He seized some dishes and threw them to the floor. He swept clear a shelf filled with books. He knocked over chairs, punched the walls, finally throwing himself down next to a couch.

'How could I have known?' he shouted. The silence in the room was his only answer. A different exhaustion filled him, and he leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. Abruptly, he laughed. 'Boy,' he said, affecting a lugubrious Hollywood-Southern accent, 'you done fucked up good. Fucked up righteous. Done fucked up in a unique and special way.' He drew out the words, letting them roll around the disheveled apartment.

He sat up quickly. 'All right. What are we going to do?' Silence. 'That's right' he laughed again. 'We just don't know, do we?'

He rose and walked through the mess to his desk and tore open a bottom drawer. He shuffled through a stack of papers until he found a year-old copy of the Sunday paper with his first story. It had already started to yellow slightly. The newsprint felt brittle to his touch. The headline jumped at him and he started reading through the story.

Questions raised about Panhandle murder case, he abbreviated the words of the opening paragraph out loud. 'No shit.'

He continued to read as far as he could, past the lead and through the opening page to the jump and the double-truck inside. He wouldn't look at the picture of

Joanie Shriver but stared angrily at the photos of Sullivan and Ferguson.

He was about to crumple the paper and throw it into the wastebasket when he stopped and looked at it again. Grabbing a yellow highlight pen, he started marking the occasional word or phrase. After he finished the entire story a second time, he laughed. In all the words written, there was nothing wrong. There was nothing really untrue. Nothing inaccurate.

Except everything.

He looked at what he'd written again: All the 'questions' had been correct. Robert Earl Ferguson's conviction had been based on the flimsiest evidence concocted in a prejudicial atmosphere. Was the confession beaten out of Ferguson? His stories had only cited what the prisoner had contended and the policemen denied. It was Tanny Brown, Cowart thought, who had been unable to explain the length of time Ferguson had been held in custody before 'confession.' It had deserved to be set aside. The jury that had convicted him had been steamrollered into their decision by passions. A savagely murdered little white girl and an angry black man accused of the crime and represented by an incompetent old attorney. A perfect formula for prejudice. His own words -illegally obtained – putting him on the Row. There was no question about all that, about the injustice that had beset Ferguson in the days after Joanie Shriver's body-had been discovered.

Except for one isolated detail. He had killed the little girl. At least, according to a mass murderer.

His head spun.

Cowart continued to scan through his story. Blair Sullivan had been in Escambia County at the time of the murder. That had been confirmed and double-confirmed. There was no question Sullivan had been in the midst of a murderous spree. He should have been a suspect – if the police had bothered to look past the obvious.

The only outright lie – if it was one – that he could detect belonged to Ferguson, when he had accused Sullivan of confessing to the crime. But that was Ferguson talking – carefully attributed and quoted, not himself.

And yet, everything was a lie, the explosive coupling of the two men completely obscuring whatever truth lay about.

He thought, I am in hell. The simple, terrible reality was, for all the right reasons, all the wrong things had happened.

The first two times the telephone rang, he ignored it. The third time, he stirred himself and, despite knowing there was no one he wanted to talk to, plucked the phone from its cradle and held it to his ear.

Yes?'

Christ, Matt?'

It was Will Martin from the editorial department.

'Will?'

Jesus, fella, where the hell have you been? Everyone's going slightly bananas trying to find you.'

'I drove back. Just got in.'

From Starke? That's an eight-hour trip.'

'Less than six, actually. I was going pretty fast.'

'Well, boy, I hope you can write as fast as you can drive. The city desk is screaming for your copy and we got a couple hours before first-edition deadline. You got to get your rear in gear, in here, pronto.' The editor's singsong voice was filled with excitement.

'Sure. Sure…' Cowart listened to his own voice as if it were someone else talking on the telephone. 'Hey,

Will, what're the wires moving?'

'Wild stuff. They're still doing new leads on that little press conference of yours. Just what the hell happened up there, anyway? Nobody's talking about anything else and nobody knows a damn thing. You ought to see your phone messages. The networks, the Times and Post, and the newsweeklies, just for starters. The three local affiliates have the front door staked out, so we got to figure a way of getting you in here without too much fuss. There's a half-dozen calls already from homicide cops working cold cases that just happened to be on the route that Sullivan took. Everybody wants to know what that killer told you before taking his evening juice, if you'll pardon the pun.'

'Sullivan confessed to a bunch of crimes.'

'I know that. The wires have run that already. That's what you told everybody up there. But we've got to get the inside story right now, son. Chapter and verse. Names, dates, and details. Right now. You got it on tape? We got to get that to a typist, hell, a half-dozen typists, if need be, get some transcripts made. C'mon, Matty, I know you're probably exhausted, buddy, but you got to rally. Pop some No Doze, gulp some coffee. Just get on in here. Pump out those words. You got to move, Matty, move, before this place gets crazy. Hell, you can sleep later. Anyway, sleep's overrated. Better to have a big story anytime. Trust me.'

'Okay,' Cowart said helplessly. Any thought of trying to explain what had happened had dissipated in the waves of enthusiasm Will poured over the phone line. Cowart realized if Martin was this way – a man dedicated to a slow, thoughtful, editorial-page-consideration pace of events – the city desk was probably frantic with excitement. A big story has a universal impact on the staff of a newspaper. It catches hold of everyone, sucks them in, makes them feel as if they're a part of the events. He took a deep breath. 'I'm on my way,' he said quietly. 'But how do I get past the camera crews?'

'No problem. You know where the downtown Marriott Hotel sorta hides behind the Omni Mall? On that little back street by the bay?'

'Sure.'

'Well, a home-delivery truck will pick you up, right on the corner, in twenty minutes. Just jump in and come in the freight entrance.'

'Cloak and dagger, huh?' Cowart was forced to smile.

These are dangerous times, my son, demanding unique efforts. It was the best we could come up with on short notice. Now, I suppose the CIA or the KGB could think of something better, but who's got the time? And anyway, outwitting a bunch of television reporters shouldn't be the hardest damn thing in the world.'

'I'm on my way.' Then suddenly, he thought of the tapes in his briefcase containing the confession and the truth about Joanie Shriver's murder. He couldn't let anyone hear those words. Not until things had settled, and he'd sorted out what he was going to do. He scrambled. 'Look, I need to shower first. Hold the pickup for, say, forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour.'

Not a chance. You don't need to be clean to write.'

I've got to collect my thoughts.'

You want me to tell the city editor you're thinking?'

'No, no, just say I'm on my way, I'm just getting my notes together. Thirty minutes, Will. Half an hour. Promise.'

'No more. Got to move, son. Got to move.' Will Martin made slapping sounds to punctuate the urgency of the moment.

'A half hour. No more.'

'Okay. I'll tell the city editor. Man he's gonna have a heart attack and it's only ten A.M. The truck will be waiting for you. Just hurry. Keep the poor guy alive another day, huh?' Martin laughed at his joke and hung up.

Cowart's head spun. He knew he was running out of choices, that the detectives would arrive at his office momentarily. Things were moving too rapidly for him to contain. He had to go in and write something. Things were expected of him.

But instead of grabbing his jacket, he seized his briefcase and pulled out the tapes. It only took him a second to locate the last tape; he'd been careful to number them as each was completed. For a moment he held the tape in his hand and considered destroying it, but instead, he took it over to his own stereo system and plugged it into the tape deck. He wound the tape through to the end, then backtracked it a few feet and punched the Play button. Blair Sullivan's gravel voice burst through the speakers, filling the small apartment with its acid message. Cowart waited until he heard the words: '… Now I will tell you the truth about little Joanie Shriver.'

He stopped the tape and rewound it a few feet, to where Blair Sullivan said, 'That's all thirty-nine. Some story, huh?' And he'd responded, 'Mr. Sullivan, there's not much time.' The killer had shouted then, 'Haven't you paid any attention, boy?' before continuing with, 'Now it's time for one more story…'

He rewound the tape again, backing it up to 'Some story, huh?'

He went to his record and tape collection and found a cassette he'd recorded some years back of Miles Davis's 'Sketches of Spain.' It was an older tape, frequently played, with a faded label. He knew that there were a few feet of blank tape on the end of that recording. He put the tape in the player and found the end of the music. Then he removed the tape and placed it in his portable machine, put the small portable directly in front of his stereo speakers, and replaced Blair Sullivan's confession in the larger unit. He punched the Play button on the Sullivan recording and the Record button on the Miles Davis.

Cowart listened to the words boil around him, trying to blank them from his imagination.

When the tape was finished, he shut both machines off. He played the Sullivan section on the end of the Miles Davis tape. The clarity of the voice speaking was diminished – but still brutally audible. Then he took the tape and replaced it on the shelf with the rest of his records and tapes.

For a moment he stared at the original Sullivan tape.

Then he rewound it to the spot he'd duplicated on the Davis, punched the Record button and obliterated Sullivan's words with a breathless silence.

It would seem an abrupt ending, but it would have to do. He didn't know if the tape would stand up to any professional scrutiny by a police lab, but it would buy him some time.

Cowart looked up briefly from the computer screen and saw the two detectives moving through the newsroom. They maneuvered between the desks, zigzagging toward him, ignoring the dozens of other reporters in the room, whose heads rose and whose eyes followed their path, so that by the time they arrived at his desk, everyone was watching them.

All right, Mr. Cowart,' Andrea Shaeffer said briskly. 'Our turn.'

The words on the screen in front of him seemed to shimmer. 'I'll be finished in a second,' he replied, keeping his eyes on the computer.

'You're finished now' Michael Weiss interjected.

Cowart ignored the detectives. In a moment, the city editor had rushed up and positioned himself between the two policemen and the reporter.

We want to take a full statement, right now. We've been trying to do that for days and we're getting tired of the runaround,' Shaeffer explained.

The city editor nodded. 'When he finishes.'

That's what you guys said the other day, after he found the bodies. Then he had to talk to Sullivan. Then because of what Sullivan says to him, he has to be alone.

Now he's got to write it all up. Hell, we don't need a statement, all we have to do is buy a damn subscription to your paper.' Exasperation filled her voice.

"He'll be right there,' said the city editor, shielding

Cowart from the two detectives, trying to steer them away from his desk.

'Now,' she repeated stubbornly.

"When he finishes' the editor repeated.

'Do you want to get arrested for obstruction?' Weiss said. 'I'm really getting tired of waiting for you jerks to finish your job so that we can do ours.'

'I'll call that bluff,' the city editor replied. 'We'll get a nice picture of you two handcuffing me to run on the front page tomorrow. I'm sure the sheriff in Monroe County will love seeing that.' He held out his hands angrily.

'Look,' Shaeffer stepped in. 'He has information pertinent to a murder investigation. How goddamn unreasonable is it to ask him for a little cooperation?'

'It's not unreasonable,' the city editor answered, glaring at her. 'He also has a first-edition deadline staring him in the face. First things first.'

'That's right,' Weiss said angrily. 'First things first. We've just got a problem with what you guys think comes first. Like selling papers instead of solving murders.'

'Matt, how much longer?' the city editor asked. Neither side had moved much.

'A few minutes,' Cowart replied.

'Where are the tapes?' Shaeffer asked.

'Being transcribed. Almost finished.' The city editor seemed to think for an instant. 'Look, how about you read what Sullivan told our man while you're waiting?'

The detectives nodded. The editor guided them away from Cowart's desk, giving the reporter a single 'get going' glance as he led the detectives into a conference room where three typists wearing headsets were working hard on the tapes.

Cowart breathed in deeply. He had worked his way through a description of the execution and maneuvered through the substance of Sullivan's confession. He'd listed out all the crimes that Sullivan had confessed to.

The only remaining element was the deaths that concerned the two Keys detectives. Cowart felt stymied. It was a crucial part of the story, items that would occupy a prominence in the first few paragraphs. But it was the element that threatened him the most. He couldn't tell the police – or write in the newspaper – that Ferguson had been involved with the crimes without opening up the question why. And the only answer to why those killings had taken place went back to the murder of Joanie Shriver and the agreement the dead man claimed had been struck between the two men on Death Row.

Matthew Cowart sat frozen at his computer screen. The only way he could protect himself, his reputation, and his career, was to conceal Ferguson's role. He thought: Hide a killer? His imagination echoed with Sullivan's words. 'Have

I killed you?'

For a single instant, he considered simply telling the truth about everything, but, in the same instant, he wondered, What was the truth? Everything pivoted on the words of the executed man. A lover of lies, right to his death.

He looked up and saw the city editor watching him.

The man spread his arms and made a circling gesture with both hands. Wind it up, the movement said.

Cowart looked back at the story he was writing, knowing that it would parade into the paper untouched.

As he wavered, he heard a voice over his shoulder.

'I don't buy it.'

It was Edna McGee. Her blonde hair flounced about her face as she shook her head from side to side. She was staring down at some pages of typed paper.

Sullivan's confession.

"What?' Cowart spun in his seat, facing his friend. She frowned and grimaced as her eyes ate words.

'Hey Matt, I think there's a problem here.' "What?' he asked again.

"Well, I'm just going through these quick, you know, and sure, well, I know he's telling you straight about some of these crimes. Got to be, I mean, with the details and everything. But, well, look here, he told you he killed this kid who was working in a combination convenience store and Indian souvenir stand on the Tamiami Trail a couple of years back. He says he stopped for a Coke or something and shot the kid in the back and took the register contents before heading down to Miami. Well, shit, I remember that crime. I covered it. Remember, I started out doing a piece about all the businesses that have sprung up around the Miccosukkee Reservation, and I did a sidebar on some of the crime that has plagued the folks out there in the 'Glades? Remember?'

He gripped the desk.

'Matt, you okay?'

'I remember the stories,' Cowart replied slowly.

Edna looked at him closely. 'Well, they were mostly about people getting mugged on their way to the bingo games, and how the Indians have established an additional security patrol because of these cash businesses they've got.'

'I remember.'

'Well, I did a bit of research on that shooting. I mean, it happened pretty much the way Sullivan says it did. And it sounds like he was inside that store at some point. And sure, the kid got shot in the back. That was in all the papers…' She waved the sheaf of typed conversation in the air. I mean, he's got it all right, in a sort of superficial way. But, he didn't do it. No way. They busted three teenagers from South Dade for the crime. Forensics matched up the weapon with the bullet in the kid's back and everything. Got a confession from one and testimony against the shooter by the wheelman. Open and shut, as they say. Two of those kids are doing a mandatory twenty-five for first-degree. The other got a deal. But there ain't no doubt who did the crime.'

'Sullivan

'Well, hell, I don't know. He was in South Florida then. No doubt. I mean, I got to check the dates and everything, but sure. He probably passed right by. right about the time that crime hit the front page of the paper. The murdered kid was the nephew of one of the Indian elders, so it made a splash all over the local pages. TV was all over it, too. Remember?'

He did, vaguely, and wondered why he hadn't when Sullivan was talking to him. He nodded.

Edna shook the pile of papers in her hand. 'Hell, Matt, I'm sure he was probably telling the truth about most of these crimes. But all of them? Who knows? There's one that doesn't wash. How many others?'

Cowart felt sick to his stomach. The words 'probably telling the truth' punished him. What does it mean if he lied once? Twice? A dozen times? Who did he kill? Who didn't he kill? When was he telling the truth and when wasn't he?

Maybe it was all a lie and Ferguson was telling the truth. His image of Ferguson suddenly flip-flopped from a twisted, murderous gargoyle back to the angry man trapped by injustice. Sullivan's lies, half-truths, and misinformation all rolled together in an impossible

Innocent? Cowart thought.

He stared at the computer screen but remembered Sullivan's words. Guilty? He did. He didn't.

Edna flapped the sheaf of papers in her hand, 'There's a couple of others here that may not wash. I'm just guessing, though. I mean, why? Huh? Why would he claim some murders that he didn't do?' She paused and answered her own question, Because he was one weird guy, right up to the end. And all those mass murderers seem to get off on being the biggest or the toughest or the worst. You remember that guy Henley in Texas? Helped do twenty-eight with that other guy. So, there he is, sitting in prison, when word comes out that John Gacy in Chicago-has done thirty-three. So Henley calls up a detective in Houston and tells him, "I can get the record back…" I mean, weird doesn't really describe it, does it?'

'No,' replied Cowart, his insides collapsing in a turmoil of doubt.

Edna leaned over to look at the lead to his article. 'At least thirty-nine crimes. Well, that's what he said. But you better qualify it.'

'I will.'

'Good. Did he give you any real details about the killings in the Keys?'

'No,' Cowart answered quickly. 'He just said he'd managed to arrange for them to be done.'

'Well, he had to tell you something…'

Cowart scrambled. 'He talked about some informal prison grapevine that even gets to Death Row. He said anything could be arranged for a price. But he didn't say what he paid.'

'Well, I wonder. I mean, you've got to write what he said. But sorting it all out. Well, hell.'

She looked up and across the newsroom toward where the two detectives were reading transcripts. 'You suppose they've got any real evidence? I think they're just hoping you'll wrap the whole thing up for them nice and easy.' The cynicism in her voice was evident.

He looked up at her. 'Edna,' he started.

'You want some help checking these suckers out, right?' Edna's voice immediately filled with enthusiasm. She slapped her hand against the sheaf of papers. 'Got to know what's a definite, what's a maybe, and what's a no way, right?'

'Yes. Please. Can you do it?'

'Love to. Take a few days, but I'll get to work on it right away. I'll tell the higher-ups. You sure you don't mind sharing the story?'

'No. No problem.'

Edna gestured at the computer screen. 'Better be careful not to be too explicit about old Sully's confession. It may have some more little problems. Don't dig any hole in the story you can't jump out of.'

Cowart wanted to laugh or be sick, he was uncertain which.

'You know, you got to appreciate old Sully. Never wanted to make anything easy on nobody, she said, turning away.

He watched Edna McGee saunter across the newsroom to the city editor and start talking animatedly with him. He watched as they both stared down at the sheet of transcribed statements. He saw the man shake his head and then hurry over to where he was working.

This right?' the city editor demanded.

That's what she says. I don't know.'

'We're gonna have to check every bit of all this out.'

'Right.'

'Christ! How're you writing the story?'

'Just as the dying man's words. Allegations unproven. No idea where the truth lies. Questions abound. All that sort of stuff.'

Go heavy with the description and be careful with details. We need some time.' Edna said she'd help.'

Good. Good. She's going to start making calls now. When do you think you'll be able to get on it?'

'I need some rest.'

Okay. And those detectives…' 'I'll be right there.'

Cowart looked back at the page. He plucked Sullivan's words from his notebook and closed the piece with: 'Some story, huh?'

He punched a few buttons on the keyboard, shutting the screen down in front of him and electronically transporting his article over to the city desk so it could be measured, assessed, edited, and dummied on the front page. He no longer knew whether what he'd done compounded truth or lies. He realized that for the first time in his years as a journalist, he had no idea which was which, they had become so tangled in his head.

Adrift in a sea of ambiguity, he went in to see the detectives.

Shaeffer and Weiss were livid.

'Where is it?' the woman demanded as he walked through the door into the conference room. The three typists were stapling pages together at a large meeting table where the afternoon news conferences were held. When they heard the anger in the detectives' voices, they hurried, leaving a stack of paper behind as they left the room. Cowart didn't reply. His eyes swept away to a large picture window where sunlight reflecting off the pane streamed into the room. He could see a cruise liner getting up steam, heading out Governor's Cut toward the open ocean.

'Where is it!' Shaeffer demanded a second time. 'Where's his explanation of the deaths of his mother and stepfather?'

She shook a typed transcript in his face. 'Not a word in here,' she almost shouted.

Weiss stood up and pointed a finger right at him. 'Start explaining, right now. I'm tired of all this runaround, Cowart. We could arrest you as a material witness and chuck you in jail.'

'That'd be fine,' he replied, trying to summon up an indignation to match that of the two detectives. 'I could use some sleep.'

'You know, I'm getting damn tired of you two threatening my man here,' came a voice from behind Cowart. It was the city editor. 'Why don't you two detectives do some work on your own? All you guys seem to want is for him to provide you with all the answers.'

'Because I think he's got all the goddamn answers,' Shaeffer replied slowly, softly, her voice filled with menace.

For a moment, the room remained frozen with her words. The city editor finally gestured at chairs to try and slice through some of the tension that sat heavily in the room. 'Everybody sit down,' he said sternly. '"We'll try to get this sorted out.'

Cowart saw Shaeffer take a deep breath and struggle to control herself. 'All right' she said quietly. 'Just a full statement, right now. Then we'll get out of your way. How's that?'

Cowart nodded. The city editor interjected. 'If he agrees, fine. But any more threats and this interview is ended.'

Weiss sat down heavily and removed a small notepad. Shaeffer asked the first question.

Please explain what you told me in Starke at the prison.'

She was watching him steadily, her eyes marking every movement he made.

Cowart fixed his eyes back hard onto hers. It's how she looks at suspects, he thought.

"Sullivan claimed he'd arranged for the killings.' 'You said that. How? Who? What were his exact words? And why the hell isn't it on the tape?' He made me turn the tape machine off. I don't know why.'

Okay,' she said slowly. 'Continue.' It was a brief element to the entire conversation…' "Sure. Go ahead.'

Okay. You understand how he sent me down to

Islamorada. Gave me the address and all. Told me to interview the people I found there. He didn't say they'd be dead. He didn't give any indication of anything, just insisted I go…'

'And you didn't demand some explanation before heading down there?'

'Why? He wouldn't give me one. He was adamant. He was scheduled to die. So I went. Without asking my questions. It's not so damn unreasonable.' Sure. Go ahead.' 'When I first got back to his cell, he wanted me to describe the deaths. He wanted me to tell him all the details, like how they were sitting, and how they'd been killed and everything I noticed about the scene. He was particularly interested in learning whether they had suffered. After I finished telling him everything I remembered about the two dead bodies, he seemed satisfied. Downright pleased.'

'Go ahead.'

'I asked him why and he said, "Because I killed them." And I asked how he'd managed that and he replied, "You can get anything you want, even on Death Row, if you're willing to pay the price." I asked him what he'd paid, but he refused to say. Said that was for me to find out. Said he was going to go to his grave without shooting his mouth off. I tried to ask him about how he'd arranged it, but he refused to answer. Then he said, "Ain't you interested in my legacy at all?" He told me then to turn on the tape recorder. And he started confessing to all these other crimes.'

Lies tripped readily from his mouth. He was surprised at how easily.

'Do you think there was a connection between the subsequent confession and the murders in Monroe County?'

That was the question, Cowart thought. He shrugged. 'It was hard to tell.'

'But you think he was telling you the truth?'

'Yes, sometimes. I mean, obviously he sent me down there to that house knowing something was going to happen. So he had to know they were going to be murdered. I think he got what he wanted. But how he paid the bill…' Cowart let his voice drain away.

Shaeffer rose abruptly, staring at Cowart. 'Okay,' she said. 'Thanks. Can you remember anything else?'

'If I do, I'll let you know.'

'We'd like the original tapes.'

'We'll see,' the city editor interjected. 'Probably.'

'They may be evidence,' she said acidly.

'Well, we still need to make copies. Maybe by this afternoon, late. In the meantime, if you want, you can take a transcript.'

'Okay,' she said. Cowart glanced over at the city editor. The detective suddenly seemed extremely accommodating.

'If I need to get hold of you?' she asked him.

'I'll be around.'

'Not planning on going anywhere?'

'Just home to bed.'

'Uh-huh. Okay. We'll be in touch for the tapes.'

"With me,' said the city editor.

She nodded. Weiss snapped shut his notepad.

For an instant, she fixed Cowart with a glare. 'You know, Mr. Cowart, there's one thing that bothers me. In your press conference after the execution, you said that Blair Sullivan talked to you about the killing of that little girl up in Pachoula.'

Cowart felt his insides tumble. 'Yeah…' he said.

But none of that's on this transcript, either.'

'He made me shut the machine off. I told you.'

She smiled, a look of satisfaction. 'That's right. That's what I figured happened…' She paused, letting a little silence heat up the room. '… Except, then we'd hear Sullivan's voice saying something like: "Turn off that tape machine," wouldn't we?'

Cowart, fighting panic, shrugged nonchalantly. 'No' he replied slowly. 'He spoke of that crime at the same time he talked about the Monroe killings.'

Shaeffer nodded. Her eyes squeezed hard on

Cowart's face. 'Ah, of course. But you didn't say that earlier, did you? Odd, though, huh? Every other crime goes on the tapes except those two, right? The one that first brought you to him and the one he ended with.

Kinda unusual, that, what d'you think?'

'I don't know, Detective. He was an unusual man.'

'I think you are, too, Mr. Cowart,' she said. Then she pivoted and led her partner from the conference room.

He watched as she marched through the newsroom and out between the exit doors. He could see the knotted muscles of her calves. She must be a runner, he thought. She has that lean, unhappy look, driven and pained. He wanted to try to persuade himself that she'd believed his story but knew that was foolish.

The city editor also let his eyes follow the detectives through the room. Then he breathed deeply and stated the obvious. 'Matty,' he said quietly, 'that gal doesn't believe a word you said. Is that what happened with Sullivan?'

'Yes, kinda.'

'This is all very shaky, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'Matty, is something going on here?'

'It's just Blair Sullivan,' Cowart replied quickly. 'Mind games. He ran them on me. He ran them on everyone. It was what he did with himself when he wasn't killing folks.'

'But what about what that detective was implying?'

Cowart tried for a reply that would make some sense. 'It was kinda like Sullivan made a distinction between some crimes. The ones that were important, the two that aren't on tape, were, I don't know, different for him. All these others were just run-of-the-mill. Stuff for his legend. I'm not a shrink. I can't explain what was going on in his mind.'

The city editor nodded. 'Is that what's going into the paper?'

'Yes, more or less.'

'Let's make sure what we put in the paper errs on the side of caution, okay? If you have doubts about something, leave it out. Or make certain it's covered. We can always come back to it.'

Cowart tried to smile. 'I'm trying.'

'Try hard,' the city editor said. 'You know, it raises more questions than it answers. I mean, who was Sullivan trying to protect? You're gonna find out, right? While Edna checks out the rest of the statement, you're going to work on that angle?'

'Yes.'

Helluva story. A person arranging a murder right before his own execution. What are we talking about, a corrupt prison guard? An attorney, maybe? Another inmate? Get some rest and get on it, okay? You got an idea where to start?'

Sure,' he answered. Not only where to start, but, he thought, where to finish: Robert Earl Ferguson. despite his fatigue, Cowart hung on in the newsroom throughout the remainder of the day, into the early evening. He ignored the news crews staked out in front of the building waiting for him for as long as he could. But when the news directors at each station started calling the managing editor, he was forced to go outside and made a short, unsatisfactory statement.

This, of course, angered them more than placated them. They didn't leave after he ended the interview.

He took no calls from other reporters trying to interview him. He simply waited for the cover of darkness. After the first edition came up, he read the words he'd written slowly, as if afraid they could hurt him physically. He made a change or two for the late edition, adding more doubt about Sullivan's confession, underscoring the essential mystery of the executed man's actions. He spoke briefly with Edna

McGee and the city editor one last time, a false coordination of work. He rode the freight elevator down through the bowels of the newspaper, past the computer makeup rooms, the classified advertising sections, the cafeteria, and the assembly docks. The building hummed and quivered with the noise of the presses as they pumped out tens of thousands of issues of the newspaper. He could feel the vibration from the machines right through the soles of his feet.

A delivery truck gave him a lift for a few blocks, dropping him a short way from his apartment. He tucked a single issue of the next day's paper beneath his arm and walked through the growing city night, suddenly relieved by the anonymous sound his shoes made pacing against the pavement.

He eyed the front of his apartment building from a short distance, scanning the area for other members of the press. He saw none, and then checked for signs of the Monroe detectives. It would not be crazy to suspect they were following him. But the street appeared empty and he quickly cut through the shadows on the edges of the streetlamps, and into his lobby. For the first time since he'd moved in, he regretted the lack of security in the modest building. He hesitated for an instant in front of the elevator, then burst through an emergency door and raced up the fire stairs, his breath coming in short bursts, his feet pounding against the linoleum risers.

He opened the door to his apartment and entered the shambles. For an instant he stood in the center, waiting for his heart to settle, then went to the window and stared out across the dark bay waters. A few reflected city lights sliced through the wavy black ink, only to be devoured by the expanse of ocean.

He felt himself completely alone, but he was wrong. He did not understand that a number of people, though miles distant, were actually in the room with him, like ghosts, waiting for his next move.

Some, of course, were less far. Such as Andrea Shaeffer, who'd parked an entire block distant, but who'd intently watched his erratic course down the street through a pair of night-vision binoculars, as the reporter ducked in and out of the fringe darkness. So precise had her concentration been, that she had failed to notice Tanny Brown. He stood in a shadow of an adjacent building, letting the night surround and conceal him. He stared up at the lights of Cowart's apartment until they were extinguished. Then he waited until the unmarked patrol car carrying the woman detective slowly headed off into the city night before moving, alley-cat like, for Cowart's apartment.

14. Confession

Tanny Brown listened outside the door to Cowart's apartment. He could hear distant city-night sounds of traffic penetrating the still darkness, blending with the frustrated buzzing of a bottle-green bug that seemed suicidally intent upon assaulting the light fixture in the hallway. He started when he heard a pair of voices from an adjacent apartment rise in sudden laughter, then fade away. For an instant he wondered what the joke was. He listened again at the door, but no sound emanated from Cowart's apartment. He put his hand on the door handle gently, just twisting it slightly until he met resistance. Locked. He peered at the dead bolt above it and saw that the bolt was thrown.

He clenched a fist in disappointment. He hated the idea of asking Cowart for admittance. He had wanted to slip into the apartment with the stealth of a burglar, to rouse Cowart abruptly from sleep, perched like a wraith on the edge of the reporter's dream, demanding the truth.

He heard a whirring, metallic noise behind him and turned swiftly, in the same motion trying to back into a shadow. A hand went automatically to his shoulder holster. It was the elevator, rising to another floor. He watched as a small shaft of light slid through the closed entrance door, passing upward. He lowered his hand. wondering why he felt so jumpy. Fatigue and doubt He looked back at the door in front of him, realizing that if someone spotted him standing there, they would in all likelihood summon the police, taking him for some intruder with evil intentions.

Which, he thought with a twitch of humor, was exactly what he was.

Brown breathed in deeply, clearing his head of exhaustion, concentrating on what had brought him to Cowart's door. He felt the warm breath of anger on his forehead and he rapped sharply on the thick wooden panels.

Cowart sat cross-legged on the floor amidst the ruins of his apartment, assessing his next step. When the four pistol-like cracks sounded on his door, his first thought was to remain still, frozen like a deer in headlights; his second was to take cover and hide. But instead he rose and walked unsteadily toward the sound.

He took a deep breath and asked, 'Who's there?'

Trouble, thought Brown to himself, but out loud, said, 'Lieutenant Tanny Brown. I want to talk to you.' There was a moment of silence. 'Open up!'

Cowart wanted to laugh out loud. He opened the door and peered around its edge. 'Everyone wants to talk to me today. I thought you'd be some more of those damn television guys.'

'No, just me,' replied Brown.

'Same questions, though, I bet,' Cowart said. 'So, how'd you find me? I'm not in the book and the city desk won't give out my home address.'

'Not hard,' the detective replied, still standing in front of the door. 'You gave me your home phone number back when you were getting Bobby Earl out of prison. Just a matter of calling the telephone company and telling them it was a police matter.'

The two men's eyes met and the reporter shook his head. I should have known you would show up. Everything else seems to be going wrong today.'

Brown gestured with his hand. 'Do I have to stand out here or may I come in?'

The reporter seemed to think this was funny, smiling and shaking his head. 'All right. Why not? I was going to come see you, anyway.'

He held open the door. The room behind him was Mack.

How about lights?'

Cowart went to a wall and flicked a switch. The detective stared around in surprise at the mess illuminated by the overhead light.

Christ, Cowart. What happened here? You have a break-in?'

The reporter smiled again. 'No, just a temper tantrum. And I didn't feel much like cleaning it up yet. It fits my mood.'

He walked into the center of the living room and found an overturned armchair. He lifted it up and set it on its legs, then stepped back and waved the detective toward it. He swept some papers from the seat of a couch onto the floor and slumped down in the space he'd made.

Tired,' Cowart said. 'Not much sleep.' He rubbed his hands across his face.

'I haven't been sleeping much, either,' Brown replied. 'Too many questions. Not enough answers.' That will keep one awake.'

The two weary men stared at each other. Cowart smiled and shook his head in response to the silence between them.

'So. Ask me a question,' he said to the detective, 'What's going on?'

Cowart shrugged. 'Too broad. I can't answer that.' Wilcox told me that whatever Blair Sullivan told you before he went to the chair, it fucked you up pretty good. Why don't you tell me?'

Cowart grinned. 'Is that what he said? Sounds like him. He's a pretty cold-blooded fellow. Didn't bat an eyelash when they turned on the juice.'

'Why would he? You can't tell me you shed a tear over Sullivan's exit.'

'No, can't say I did. Still…'

Brown interrupted. 'Bruce Wilcox just sees things differently from you.'

'Ah, well, perhaps,' the reporter replied, nodding. 'What would I know? So, you want to know what fucked me up, huh? Wouldn't listening to a man confess to multiple homicides shake your complacency a bit?'

'It would. It has.'

'That's right. Death is your line of business. Just as much as it was Sully's.'

'I guess you could say that, though I don't like to think of it that way.' Brown tried to obscure the sensation that the reporter had pinned him with his first move. He sat watching the disheveled man in his disrupted apartment. He wondered how long he could keep from grabbing the reporter and shaking answers from him.

Cowart leaned back, as if picking up an interrupted story.

'… Well, there was old Sully, talking my ear off. Old men, old women, young folks, middle-aged people, girls, boys. Gas-station attendants and tourists. Convenience-store clerks and the occasional passersby. Zip, zap. Just chewed up and tossed aside by a single wrong man. Knives, guns, strangled 'em with his hands, beat 'em with bats, chopped and shot and drowned. A variety of bad deaths. Inventive stuff, huh? Not nice, not nice at all. Makes one wonder what the world's coming to, why anyone should go on in the face of all that evil. Isn't that enough to listen to for a few hours? Wouldn't that account for my – what? Indecisiveness? Is that a good word? – at the prison.'

'It might.'

'But you don't think so?'

'No.'

'You think something else is bothering me, and you came all the way down here to ask me what. I'm touched by your concern.'

'It wasn't concern for you.'

'No, I suspect not.' Cowart laughed ruefully. 'I like this,' he said. 'You want a drink of something, Lieutenant? While we fence around?'

Brown considered. He shrugged, a single, why-the-hell-not motion and leaned back in his chair. He watched as Cowart rose, walked into the kitchen and returned after a moment, carrying a bottle and a pair of glasses and cradling a six-pack of beer under an arm. He held it up.

Cheap whiskey. And beer, if you want it. This is what the pressmen used to drink at my old man's paper. Pour a beer, drink a couple of inches off the top, and in goes a shot. Boilermaker. Does a good job of cutting the day's tension real fast. Makes you forget you're working a tough job for long hours and little pay and not much future.'

Cowart fixed each of them a drink. 'Perfect drink for the two of us. Cheers,' he said. He swallowed half in a series of fast gulps.

The liquor burned Tanny Brown's throat and warmed his stomach. He grimaced. 'It tastes terrible. Ruins both the whiskey and the beer,' he said.

'Yeah,' Cowart grinned again. 'That's the beauty of it. You take two perfectly reasonable substances that work fine independently, throw them together, and get something horrible. Which you then drink. Just like you and me.'

The detective gulped again. 'But if you keep drinking, it improves.'

Hah. That's where it's different than life.' He refilled their glasses, then sat back in his chair, swirling a finger around the lip of his glass, listening to the speaking sound it made.

'Why should I tell you anything?' he said slowly.

'When I first came to you with my questions about

Ferguson, you sicked your dog on me. Wilcox. You didn't make it real easy on me, did you? When we found that knife, were you interested in the truth? Or maybe in keeping your case together? You tell me. Why should I help you?'

'Only one reason. Because I can help you.'

Cowart shook his head. 'I don't think so. And I don't think that's a good reason.'

Brown stirred in his seat, eyeing the reporter. 'How about this for a reason,' he said after a momentary hesitation. 'We're in something together. Have been from the start. It's not finished, is it?'

'No,' Cowart conceded.

'The problem, from my point of view, is that I'm in something, but I don't know what it is. Why don't you enlighten me?'

Cowart leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling, trying to determine what he could say to the detective, and what he should not.

'It's always pretty much like this, isn't it?' he said.

'What?'

'Cops and reporters.'

Brown nodded his head. 'Uneasy accomplices. At best.'

'I had a friend once,' Cowart said. 'He was a homicide detective like you. He used to tell me that we were both interested in the same thing, only for different purposes. For a long time neither of us could ever really understand the other's motives. He thought I just wanted to write stories, and I thought he just wanted to clear cases and make his way up the bureaucratic ladder. What he would tell me helped me write the stories. The publicity his cases got helped him in the department. We sort of fed each other. So there we were, wanting to know the same things needing the same information, using a few of the same techniques, more alike than we'd ever acknowledge, and distrusting the hell out of each other. Working the same territory from different sides of the street and never crossing over. It was a long time before we began to see our sameness instead of our differences.'

Brown refilled his drink, feeling the liquor work on his frayed feelings. He swallowed long and stared over at Cowart. 'It's in the nature of detectives to distrust anything they can't control. Especially information.'

Cowart grinned again. 'That's what makes this so interesting, Lieutenant. I know something you want to learn. It's a unique position for me. Usually I'm trying to get people like you to tell me things.' Brown also smiled, but not because he thought it amusing. It was a smile that made Cowart grasp his glass a bit tighter and shift about in his seat.

'We've only had one thing to talk about, from the very start. I haven't had enough to drink to forget that one thing, have I, Mr. Cowart? I don't think there's enough liquor in your apartment to make me forget. Maybe not in the whole world.'

The reporter grew silent, then he leaned forward. 'Tell you what, Detective. You want to know. I want to know. Let's make a trade.'

The detective set his glass down slowly. 'Trade what?'

The confession. It starts there, right?' That's right.'

'Then you tell me the truth about that confession, and

I'll tell you the truth about Ferguson.'

Brown held his back straight, as if memory thrust rigidity into his body and his words.

Mr. Cowart,' he replied slowly. 'Do you know what happens when you grow up and live your life in one little place? You get so's you can sense what's right and wrong in the breeze, maybe in the smell of the day, the way the heat builds up around noon and starts to slip away at dusk. It's like knowing the notes of a piece of music so that when the band plays them in your head, you've already heard them. I'm not saying everything's always small-town perfect and there ain't terrible things happening. Pachoula isn't big like Miami, but it doesn't mean we don't have husbands who beat their wives, kids that do drugs, whores, loan sharks, extortion, killings. All the same. Just not quite so obvious.'

'And Bobby Earl?'

'Wrong from the start. I knew he was waiting to kill somebody. Maybe from the way he walked or talked or that little laugh he would make when I would pull his car over. He came from mean stock, Mr. Cowart, no different from a dog that's been bred for fighting. And it got all tarnished and banged-up worse living in the city. He was filled with hate. Hated me. Hated you. Hated everything. Walking around, waiting for that hate to take over completely. All that time, he knew I was watching him. Knew I was waiting. Knew I knew he was waiting, too.'

Cowart looked over at the narrow eyes of the detective and thought, Ferguson wasn't the only one filled with hate. 'Give me details.'

'None to give. A girl complains he followed her home. Another tells us he tried to talk her into his car. Offered her a ride, he said. Just trying to be friendly. But then a neighborhood crime watch patrol spots him cruising their streets at midnight with his headlights off. Somebody's committing rapes and assaults in the next couple of counties, but forensics can't match him up. A patrol car rousts him from outside the junior high one week before the abduction and murder, right before the end of school, and he's got no explanation for why he's there. Hell, I even ran his name through the national computer and I called the Jersey state police, see if they had anything up there in Newark. No instant winners, though.'

'Except Joanie Shriver turns up dead one day.'

Brown sighed. The liquor slopped over some of his anger. 'That's correct. One day Joanie Shriver turns up dead.'

Cowart stared at the police lieutenant. 'You're not telling me something.'

Brown nodded. 'She was my daughter's best friend. My friend, too.'

The reporter nodded. 'And?'

Brown spoke quietly. 'Her father. Owned those hardware stores. Got 'em from his father. Gave me a job after hours in high school sweeping out the place.

He was just one of those people who put color way down on his list, especially at a time when everybody else had it at the top of theirs. You remember what it was like in Florida in the early sixties? There were marches and sit-ins and cross burnings. And in the midst of all that, he gave me a job. Helped me when I went away to college. And when I came back from

Vietnam, he pointed me to the police force. Made some calls. Pulled some strings. Called in a favor or two. You think those little things don't amount to much? And his son was my friend. He worked in the store next to me. We shared jokes, troubles, futures. That sort of thing didn't happen a lot back then, though you probably didn't know that. That means something, too, Mr. Co wart, in this equation. And our children played together. And if you had any idea what that meant, well, you'd understand why I don't sleep much now at night. So I had a couple of debts. Still do.'

'Go on.'

Do you have any idea how much you can hate yourself for letting something happen that you could no more have prevented than you can prevent the sun from rising, or the tide from flowing in?' Cowart looked hard, straight ahead. 'Perhaps.' Do you know what it's like to know, to know absolutely, positively, with complete certainty, that something wrong is going to happen and yet be powerless to stop it? And then, when it does happen, it steals someone you love right from beneath your arms? Crushes the heart of a real friend? And I couldn't do a thing. Not a damn thing!'

The force of Brown's words had driven him to his feet. He clenched a fist in the air between them, as if grasping all the fury that echoed within him. 'So, get it now, Mr. Cowart? You beginning to see?' 'I think so.'

So there the bastard was. Smirking away in a chair.

Taunting me. He knew, you see. He thought he couldn't be touched. Bruce looked at me, and I nodded. I left the room, and he let the bastard have it. You think we beat that confession out of Robert Earl Ferguson? Well, you're absolutely right. We did.'

Brown slapped one hand sharply against the other, making a sound like a shot. 'Wham! Used the phone book, just like the bastard said.'

The detective's eyes pierced Cowart. 'Choked him, hit him, you name it. But the bastard hung in there. Just spat at us and kept laughing. He's tough, did you know that? And he's a lot stronger than he appears.' Brown took a deep breath. 'I only wished we'd killed him, right there and then, instead.'

The detective clenched his fist and thrust it at the reporter. 'So, if physical violence won't work, what's next? A little bit of psychological twisting will do the trick. You see, I realized he wasn't afraid of us. No matter how hard we hit him. But what was he afraid of?'

Brown rose. He pulled up his pants leg. 'There's the damn gun. Just like he said. Ankle holster.'

'And that's what finally made him confess?'

'No,' Brown said with cool ferocity. 'Fear made him confess.'

The detective reached down abruptly and with a single, sudden movement, freed the weapon. It leapt into his hand and he thrust it forward, pointing straight at Cowart's forehead. He thumbed back the hammer, which made a small, evil click. 'Like this,' he said.

Cowart felt sudden heat flood his face.

'Fear, Mr. Cowart. Fear and uncertainty about just how crazy anger can make a man.'

The small pistol was dwarfed by the hulking figure of the detective, rigid with emotion. He leaned forward, pushing the gun directly against Cowart's skull, where it remained for a few seconds, like an icicle.

'I want to know' the detective said. 'I do not want to wait.' He pulled the gun back so that the weapon hovered a few inches from Cowart's face.

The reporter remained frozen in his seat. He had to struggle to force his eyes away from the black barrel hole and up at the policeman. 'You gonna shoot me?'

Should I, Mr. Cowart? Don't you think I hate you enough to shoot you for coming up to Pachoula with all your damn questions?'

If it hadn't been me, it would have been somebody else.' Cowart's voice cracked with tension. 'I would have hated anyone enough to kill them.'

The reporter felt a wild panic within him. His eyes locked on the detective's finger, tightening on the trigger. He thought he could see it move.

Ohmigod, Cowart thought. He's going to do it. For an instant, he thought he would pass out.

Tell me,' Brown said icily. 'Tell me what I want to know.'

Cowart could feel the blood draining from his face. His hands twitched on his lap. All control raced away.

I'll you. Just put the gun away.' The detective stared at him. 'You were right, you were right all along! Isn't that what you want to hear?'

Brown nodded. 'You see,' he said softly, evenly, 'it's not hard to get someone to talk.'

Cowart looked at the policeman. He said, 'It's not me you want to kill.'

Tanny Brown held stiff for an instant. Then he lowered the gun. 'That's right. It isn't. Or maybe it is, but it isn't the right time yet.'

He sat back down and placed the revolver on the arm of the chair, picking up his drink again. He let the liquor squeeze the anger, and he breathed out slowly, 'Close, Cowart. Close.'

The reporter leaned back in his seat. 'Everything seems to be cut close for me.'

They were both silent for a moment before the detective spoke again. 'Isn't that what you guys always complain about? People always hate the press for bringing them the bad news, right?' Killing the messenger, huh?'

'Yeah. Except we don't mean it so damn literally.' Cowart exhaled swiftly and burst into a high-pitched laugh of relief. He thought for an instant. 'So that must have been how it happened, right? Point that thing in someone's face and one's inhibitions against self-incrimination just naturally flow away fast.'

'It's not in the approved police training textbooks,' Brown replied. 'But you're right. And you were right about that all along. Ferguson told you the truth. That's how we got the confession. Only one small problem, though.'

'I know the problem.'

The two men stared at each other.

Cowart finished the statement hanging in the air between them. 'The confession was the truth, too.'

The reporter paused, then added, 'So you say. So you believe.'

Brown leaned back hard in his seat. 'Right,' he said. He took a deep breath, shaking his head back and forth. 'I should never have allowed it. I had too much experience. I knew too much. Knew what could happen when it got into the system. But I let all sorts of wrong things get in the way. It's like hitting a patch of slick mud in your car. One minute you're in control but speeding along, the next out of control, spinning around, fishtailing down the road.'

Brown picked up his drink. 'But, you see, I thought we might get away with it. Bobby Earl turned out to be his own worst witness. His old attorney didn't know what the hell he was doing. We waltzed the bastard right onto the Row, where he belonged, with just a minimum of lies and misstatements. So I was thinking maybe it would all work out, you know. Maybe I wouldn't be having any more nightmares about little Joanie Shriver…'

I know about nightmares.'

'And you came along, asking all the damn right questions. Picking away at all the little failures, the little lies. Seeing right through that conviction just as if it weren't there. Damn. The more you were right, the more I hated you. Had to be, can't you see?' He pulled hard at the glass, then set it down and poured himself another.

'Why did you admit that Ferguson was slapped, when I came up to interview you? I mean, it opened the door…'

The detective shrugged. 'No, what opened the door was Bruce exploding. When you saw that frustration and anger, I knew you'd believe he'd beaten Ferguson, just like the bastard said. So, by telling a small truth -that he slapped him – I thought I could hide the big truth. It was a gamble. Didn't work. Came close, though.

Cowart nodded. 'Like an iceberg,' he said.

"Right,' Brown replied. 'All you see is the pretty white ice up on top. Can't see the dangerous stuff below.

Cowart laughed out loud, though the laughter had no humor attached to it, only a burst of nervous relief and energy. 'Only one other little detail.'

The detective smiled as well, speaking quickly, cutting across the reporter's words. 'You see, I know what Blair Sullivan told you. I mean, I don't know. But

I sure as hell can guess. And that's the little detail, ain't it?'

The reporter nodded. 'What was it you say you knew Bobby Earl was?'

'A killer'

'Well, I think you may be right. Of course, you may be wrong, too. I don't know. You like music, Detective?'

'Sure'

'What sort?'

'Pop, mostly. A little bit of sixties soul and rock to remind me of when I was young. Makes my kids laugh at me. They call me ancient.' 'Ever listen to Miles Davis?' 'Sure.'

'This is a favorite of mine.'

Cowart rose and approached the stereo system. He put the tape into the player and turned to the detective. 'You don't mind if we just listen to the end, huh?'

He punched a button and plaintive jazz filled the room.

Brown stared at the reporter. 'Cowart, what're you doing? I'm not here to listen to music'

Cowart slumped back into his seat. ' "Sketches of Spain." Very famous. Ask any expert and they'll tell you it's a seminal piece of American musicianship. It just slides its rhythms right through you, gentle and harsh all at the same time. You probably think this piece ends nice and easy-like. But you're wrong.'

The mingled horns paled slowly and were abruptly replaced by Blair Sullivan's acrid voice. Brown pitched forward in his seat at the murderer's first words. He craned his neck toward the stereo speakers, his back rigid, his attention totally on what he was hearing.

'Now I will tell you the truth about little Joanie Shriver… Perfect little Joanie…' The executed man's voice was mocking, clear and resonant. '… Number forty,' Cowart said on the tape. And the dead man's laugh pierced the air. The reporter and the police detective sat still, letting Sullivan's voice envelop them. When the tape hissed to its end and clicked off, the two men sat quietly, staring at each other.

'Damn,' said Brown. 'I knew it. Son of a bitch.'

'Right,' replied Cowart.

Brown rose and pounded one hand into another. He felt his insides spark with energy, as if the killer's words had electrified the air. He clenched his teeth and said, 'I've got you, you bastard. I've got you.'

Cowart remained slumped in his seat, watching the policeman. 'Nobody's got anybody, he said quietly, sadly.

'What do you mean?' The detective looked at the tape machine. 'Who else knows about this?'

'You and me.'

You didn't tell those detectives working the Monroe murders?'

'Not yet.'

You understand that you're withholding important evidence in a murder investigation. You understand that's a crime?'

What evidence? A lying, twisted killer tells me a story. Blames another man for all sorts of things. What does that amount to? Reporters hear stuff all the time.

We listen, process, discard. You tell me: evidence of what?

'His goddamn confession. His description of the deaths of his mother and stepfather. How he worked it all out. Dying declaration, just as he said, is admissible in a court of law.'

He lied. He lied right, left, up, and down. I don't think, at the end, he understood what was truth and what was fiction.'

"Bullshit. That story sounds pretty goddamn real to me.'

That's because you want it to be real. Look at it another way. Suppose I told you that in the rest of the interview, he made up things. Claimed murders he couldn't possibly have committed. Misstated all sorts of stuff. He was grandiose, egotistical, wanted to be remembered for his achievements. Hell, he almost claimed being a part of the Kennedy assassination and to know where Hoffa's body lies. Now, hearing all that stuff mixed together, wouldn't that make you wonder if he was telling you the truth about this little murder or two?'

Brown hesitated. 'No.' Cowart stared at the detective.

All right. Maybe.'

'And what about him and Bobby Earl? Just where does the betrayal start? Maybe he figured this was his way back at Bobby Earl. I mean, what meant what? And now he's dead. Can't ask him, unless you want to take a trip to hell.' 'I'm willing.' 'So am I.'

The detective glared over at Cowart, but then his frown dissipated and he nodded his head. 'I think I see now.'

'See what?'

'Why it's so damn important for you to believe Bobby Earl's still innocent. I see why you tore up your own place here. Tore up your nice little life a bit when you heard what Sullivan told you, huh?'

Cowart gestured, as if to say the detective was stating the obvious.

'Prize. Reputation. Future. Pretty big stakes. Maybe you'd prefer it to just all go away, huh, Mr. Cowart?' 'It won't,' he replied softly.

'No, it won't, will it? Maybe you can close your eyes to a lot, but you're still gonna see that little girl all dripping dead in the swamp, aren't you? No matter how hard you shut your eyes.' 'Correct.'

'And so you've got a debt, too, huh, Mr. Cowart?' 'It seems that way.'

'Need to make things right? Put the world back in order?'

Cowart didn't need to answer. He smiled sadly and took another long drink. He gestured Brown back to his seat. The detective slumped down but remained on the front rim of the chair, wound tight, as if ready to jump up. 'Okay,' said the reporter. 'You're the detective. What would you do first? Go see Bobby Earl?'

Brown considered carefully. 'Maybe. Maybe not. Fox'll walk through the trap unless it's set just right and proper.'

'If there's a trap to set. If he is a fox.'

"Well' Brown said slowly, 'Sullivan said a few things that can be checked out up in Pachoula. Maybe mother talk with that old grandmother, and a look around her place. Sullivan said we missed something.

Let's go see if he was telling the truth about that.

Maybe we can start there, figure out what's the truth and what's not.'

Cowart shook his head slowly. 'That's right. Except we go back there and walk through the front door and there's eight-by-ten glossy photographs of Ferguson committing that murder sitting on the mantlepiece and it doesn't help a damn thing… ' He pointed a finger at Tanny Brown. 'He can't be touched, not legally. You know that you won't ever make a case against him.

Not ever. Not with that confession and with all the other stuff that's muddying up all this. It'll never happen in any court of law.'

Cowart breathed in hard. '… And another thing.

When we show up there, that old grandmother of his will know that something's changed. And as soon as she knows, he'll know.'

Brown nodded but said harshly, I still want the answer.

'So do I' Cowart said, before continuing. 'But the

Monroe case. Well, if he did it – and I'm only saying if – he did it, you could make him on that.' He paused, then corrected himself. 'We could make him on that.

'And that might put things right? Put him back on Death Row, clear the slate? That what you're thinking?' 'Maybe. I hope so.'

'Hope,' said the detective, 'is something I have never placed much faith in. Like luck and prayer. And anyway,' he continued, shaking his head, 'same problem. One lying man says a deal's been made. But the only corroboration of that deal is dead in Monroe County. So; you think maybe we can find some weapon on Bobby Earl? Maybe he used a credit card to buy a plane ticket and rent a car, so we can place him down there on the day of the murder? You think he let someone see him? Or maybe he shot his mouth off to some other folks? You think he was so stupid that he left prints or hair or any damn bit of forensic evidence which your dear friends in the Monroe sheriff's department will generously hand over to you with no questions asked? You don't think he learned enough the first time around, so that he did this clean?' 'I don't know. I don't know that he did it.' 'If he didn't do it, then who the hell did? You think Blair Sullivan struck some other deals in prison?'

'I only know one thing. Making deals, running head games, manipulation, it was what he lived for.' 'And died for.'

'That's right. Maybe that was his last deal.' Brown relaxed in his seat. He picked up his pistol and twirled it around, stroking a finger across the blue metal. 'You stick to that, Mr. Cowart. You stick to that objectivity. No matter how goddamn stupid it makes you look.'

Cowart felt a sudden rush of anger. 'Not as goddamn stupid as someone beating a confession out of a murder suspect so the man gets a free ride.'

There was a brief quiet between the two men before the detective said, 'And there's that one other thing on the tape, right? Where Sullivan says "Someone just like me…" ' He looked hard at the reporter. 'Didn't that make your skin crawl just a bit, Mr. Cowart? What do you suppose that means?' The detective spoke through tightly clenched teeth. 'Don't you think that's a question we ought to answer?'

'Yes,' Cowart replied, bitterness streaking the word. Silence gripped the two men again.

'AH right,' Cowart said. 'You're right. Let's start.' He looked over at the policeman. 'Do we have an agreement?' 'What sort of agreement?'

'I don't know.'

Brown nodded. 'In that case, then, I suspect so,' replied the policeman.

Both men looked at each other. Neither believed the other for an instant. Both men knew they needed to find out the truth of what happened. The problem, each realized silently to himself, was that each man needed a different truth.

What about the Monroe detectives?' Cowart asked. Let them do their job. At least for now. I need to see what happened down there for myself.' They'll be back. I think I'm the only thing they've got to go on.'

Then we'll see. But I think they'll head back to the prison. That's what I'd do if I were them.' He pointed to the tape.'… And if I didn't know about that.'

The reporter nodded. 'A few minutes back you were accusing me of breaking the law.'

Brown rose and fixed the reporter with a single, fierce glance. Cowart glared back.

There's likely to be a few more laws broken before we get through with all this,' the policeman said quietly.

15. Standing Out

A burst of heat seemed to bridge the territory between the pale blues of the ocean and the sky. It wrapped them in a sticky embrace, squeezing the breath from their lungs. The two uneasy men walked slowly together, keeping their thoughts to themselves, their feet kicking up puffs of gray-white dust, crunching against the odd shells and pieces of coral that made up

Tarpon Drive. Neither man thought the other an ally; only that they were both engaged in a process that required the two of them, and that it was safest together. Cowart had parked his car adjacent to the house where he'd found the bodies. Then they'd begun walking door-to-door, armed with a photograph of Ferguson appropriated from the Journal's photo library.

By the third house, they'd established a routine: Tanny Brown flashed his badge, Matthew Cowart identified himself. Then they'd thrust the photo toward the inhabitants, with the single question, 'Have you seen this man before?'

A young mother in a thin yellow shift, her hair drooping in blonde curls around her sweat-damp forehead, had shushed her crying child, hitched the baby over to her hip, and shaken her head. A pair of teenage boys working on a dismantled outboard engine in the front of another yard had studied the picture with a devotion unseen in any schoolroom and then been equally negative. A huge, beer-gutted man, wearing oil-streaked jeans and a denim jacket with cut-off sleeves and a Harley Davidson Motorcycle patch above the breast had refused to speak with them, saying, 'I ain't talking to no cops. And I ain't talking to no reporters. And I ain't seen nothing worth telling.' Then he'd slammed the door in their faces, the thin aluminum of the frame rattling in the heat.

They moved on, working the street methodically. A few folks had questions for them. 'Who's this guy?' and 'Why're you asking?'

Cowart realized quickly that Brown was adept at turning an inquiry into a question of his own. If someone asked him, 'This got something to do with those killings down the street?' he would turn it back on the questioner, 'Do you know anything about what happened?'

But this question was greeted with blank stares and shaken heads.

Brown also made a point of asking everyone if the

Monroe Sheriff's Department had questioned them. They all replied that they had. They all remembered a young woman detective with a clipped, assured manner on the day the bodies were discovered. But no one had seen or heard anything unusual. They're all over it,' Tanny Brown mumbled. "Who?'

"Your friends from Monroe. They've done what I would've done.'

Cowart nodded. He looked down at the photograph in his hand but refused to put any words to the thoughts that seemed to lurk just beyond the glare of the day.

Sweat darkened the collar of the detective's shirt, Romantic, huh?' he grunted.

They were standing on the outside of a low, chain link fence that protected a faded aqua-colored trailer with an incongruous pink plastic flamingo attached with gray duct tape to the front door. The sun reflected harshly off the steel sides of the trailer, making the entire edifice glow. A single airconditioning unit, hanging from a window, labored against the temperature, clanking and whirring but continuing to operate.

Ten yards away, roped to a skew pole sunk into the hard-rock ground, a mottled brown pit bull eyed the two men warily. Matthew Cowart noticed that the dog had closed its mouth tight, despite the heat which should have caused its tongue to loll out. The dog seemed alert, yet not terrifically concerned, as if it was inconceivable to the animal that anyone would question its authority over the yard or trespass within its reach.

'What do you mean?' Cowart replied.

'Police work.' Brown looked over at the dog and then to the door. 'Ought to shoot that animal. Ever see what one of those can do to you? Or to a kid?'

Cowart nodded. Pit bulls were a Florida mainstay. In

South Florida, drug dealers used them as watchdogs.

Good old boys living near Lake Okeechobee raised them in filthy, illegal farms, training them for fights. Homeowners in dozens of tract developments, terrified of break-ins, got them and then acted surprised when they tore the face off some neighbor's child. He'd written that story once, after sitting in a darkened hospital room across from a pitifully bandaged twelve-year-old whose words had been muffled by pain and the inadequate results of plastic surgery. His friend Hawkins had tried to get the dog's owner indicted for assault with a deadly weapon, but nothing had come of it.

Before they could move from the front, the door to the trailer opened and a middle-aged man stepped out, shading his eyes and staring at the two men. He wore a white I-shirt and khaki pants that hadn't seen a washing machine in months. The man was balding, with unkempt strands of hair that seemed glued to his scalp, and a pinched, florid, unshaven face. He moved toward them, ignoring the dog, which shifted about, beat its tail twice against the ground, then continued to watch.

'Y'all want somethin'?'

Tanny Brown produced his badge. 'Just a question or two.'

'About those old folks got their throats slit?'

'That's right.'

'Other police already asked questions. Didn't know shit.'

I want to show you a picture of someone, see if you've seen him around here. Anytime in the last few weeks, or anytime at all.'

The man nodded, staying a few feet back of the fence.

Cowart handed him the photograph of Ferguson. The man stared at it, then shook his head.

'Look hard. You sure?'

The man eyed Cowart with irritation. 'Sure I'm sure. He some sort of suspect?'

'Just someone we're checking out,' Brown said. He retrieved the picture. 'Not hanging around here, or maybe driving by in a rental car?'

'No' the man said. He smiled, displaying a mouth of brown teeth and gaps. 'Ain't seen nobody hanging around. Nobody casing the place. Nobody in no rental car. And for damn sure, you're the only Negro I seen around here, ever.'

The man spit, laughed sarcastically and added, 'He looks like you. Negro.'

He pronounced the word knee-grow, elongating the two syllables into a harsh singsong, imbuing the word with mockery, turning it into an epithet.

Then the man turned, grinning, and gave a little whistle to the dog, who rose instantly, back hairs bristling, teeth bared. Cowart took a step back involuntarily, realizing that the man probably spent more time, effort, and money on maintaining the dog's mouth than his own. The reporter retreated another step before noticing that the detective hadn't budged.

After a moment punctuated only by the deep-throated continual growling of the dog, the policeman stepped back and silently moved down the street. Cowart had to hurry to keep pace.

Brown headed back toward the reporter's car. 'Let's go' he said.

There are a few other houses.'

'Let's go,' Brown repeated. He stopped and gestured broadly at the decrepit homes and trailers. 'The bastard was right.'

'What do you mean?'

'A black man driving down this street in the middle of the day would stand out like a goddamn Fourth of

July rocket. Especially a young black man. If Ferguson had been here, he'd have had to sneak in under cover of midnight. He might have done that, maybe. But that's a big risk, you know.'

'Where's the risk at night? Nobody'd see him.' The policeman leaned up against the side of the car. 'Come on, Cowart, think about it. You've got an address and a job. A killing job. What you've got to do is come to some place you've never been. Find a house you've never seen before. Break in and kill two people you don't know, and then get out, without leaving any evidence behind and without attracting any attention. Big risk. Take a lot of luck. No, you want to do some homework first. Got to see where you're going, what you're up against. And how's he gonna do that without being seen? None of these folks go anywhere. Hell, half of them are retirees sitting outside no matter how damn hot the sun gets, and the other half never held a job more'n maybe five or ten minutes. They got nothing much to do except watch.'

Cowart shook his head. 'Happens all the time,' he replied.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, it happens. Suppose Sullivan gave him the layout. All the information he needed.'

Brown paused. 'Maybe,' he said. 'But I'd think that after spending three years on the Row, Ferguson might be wary of doing something that might put him back there, if he wasn't real careful.'

That made sense to the reporter. Still, he was reluctant to give up on the idea. 'Why does he have to come last week? Maybe tie came last year. First thing, after getting out of prison. Soon as the hubbub dies down and his face has been out of the newspapers and television for a couple of weeks. Comes down, innocent as all get-out, walks all around the place. He knows they're an old couple. Not going to change a damn thing. Gets a feel for the location, what he's going to have to do. Maybe knocks on the door, tries to sell them some encyclopedias or a magazine subscription. Gets himself inside just long enough to get a good look around before they kick him out. Then walks away. It makes no difference who sees him because he knows they're gonna forget by the time he comes back.'

Brown nodded his head, eyeing Cowart. 'Not bad. for a reporter,' he said. 'Maybe. It's something to think about.' He allowed a small grin to rub the edges of his lips before adding, 'But, of course, that isn't what you want to know, is it? You want to know how he couldn't do it. Not how he could, right?'

Cowart opened his mouth to reply but then stopped.

And here's another little idea, Cowart,' Brown continued. 'You'll like this one 'cause it makes your man seem innocent. Suppose, just for a minute, that

Blair Sullivan did arrange, like he said, for these killings to happen – but not with Bobby Earl.

Somebody totally different. And what he wanted to guarantee is that nobody would look under the right stone for the slime that he made those arrangements with. How better could he guarantee that than by telling you that Mr. Innocent was the killer? He knew that sooner or later someone would be walking up and down this street with a picture of Bobby Earl in hand.

And if Bobby Earl's name gets into the paper again, that'd give just about anybody time enough to hide what they did. A little bit of extra confusion.'

The detective paused. 'You know how important it is to make a murder case fast, Cowart? Before time just worries away at facts and evidence until there's nothing left?'

'1 know it's important to move rapidly. That's what you did in Pachoula and look what the hell happened.' Brown scowled.

Cowart felt the sweat under his arms run down, tickling his ribs. 'Anything's possible,' he replied. 'That's right.'

Brown straightened up and rubbed a hand across his forehead, as if trying to shift about the thoughts that were contained within. He sighed deeply. 'I want to see the murder site,' he said. He started down the street, striding swiftly, as if by moving about quickly he could somehow elude the heat that had gathered about them.

When they reached the street outside number thirteen, the policeman hesitated, turning again to Cowart. 'Well, at least he had that going for him.'

'What?'

'Look at the house, Cowart. It's a real good place to kill somebody.'

He swept his arm about. 'Set back from the street. No real close neighbors. See the way the house is angled? At night there's no way anybody'd see anything going on inside unless they just happened to be standing right out front. And close, too. You think that Mister Rotten Teeth down there walks that pit bull around at night? No way. I'd bet a week's pay that once the sun goes down, and everybody's had a chance to have a drink or two, the TV sets are on and the only people out on this street are those teenagers. Everybody else is either drunk, watching reruns of Dallas, or busy praying for the day of judgment. I guess they didn't know it was closer than they thought.'

Cowart let his eyes flow about the exterior of the house. He envisioned the place at night and thought Brown correct. There would be an occasional outburst as some couple fought. That might mingle with the sounds of television sets playing too loudly. Broken bottle, drunk arguments, maybe a dog barking. And, even if someone did hear a car leaving fast, they'd probably assume it was some kids fighting the ubiquitous boredom with recklessness.

'A real good killing place, Brown said.

There was a yellow police tape surrounding the house. The detective slipped underneath it. Cowart followed him around the back.

'In there,' Brown said, pointing at the broken rear door.

'It's sealed.'

'Screw it.' He tugged the door open with a single pull, breaking the yellow tape.

Cowart hesitated, then stepped inside the house behind him.

The death smell lingered in the kitchen, mingling with the heat, giving the room a tomblike oppressiveness. There were signs of police processing throughout the small space; fingerprint dust streaked the table and chairs. Chalk notes and arrows showed locations. Each of the blood splotches remained on the floor, though samples had clearly been scraped from them. Cowart watched as Brown absorbed and assessed each sign.

Tanny Brown went through an internal checklist. In his mind's eye, first he saw the forensic teams steadily working the scene, the busy work of death. He knelt down next to one of the swatches of blood that had turned almost black against the light linoleum of the floor. He reached out and rubbed a finger against it, feeling the slick, brittle consistency of dried blood.

When he rose, he pictured the old man and woman, gagged and bound, awaiting death. For an instant he wondered how many times they had sat in the same chairs and shared breakfast or dinner, or discussed the

Bible, or did whatever they did that was routine. It was one of the awful things about homicide work: that the banal, humdrum world in which most folks lived was suddenly rendered evil. That the places people thought safe were abruptly made deadly. In the war, of all the wounds he'd tended, he'd hated those caused by mines the most: toe-poppers, Bouncing Bettys, and worse. It was not so much the savagery of the damage the mines did as the manner in which they did it. You put your shoe down on the ground, took a single step, and were betrayed. If you were lucky, you only lost a foot. Did these people know they were living on a minefield? he wondered. He turned toward Cowart.

At least he understands that, he thought. Even the ground is unsafe. Brown left the kitchen, leaving

Cowart standing next to the dying spot.

He walked quickly through the small house, inventorying the lives that had festered there. Barren, he thought, clinging to Jesus and waiting for Mr. Death to come calling. They probably thought they were being stalked by old age, when it was something altogether different. He stopped in front of a small closet in the bedroom, marveling at the row of shoes and slippers that were lined up across the floor, like a regiment on parade. His father would do the same; the elderly like everything in its place. A pile of knitting, balls of yarn, and long silver needles were gathered in a basket in the corner. That surprised him: What would you knit down here? A sweater? Ridiculous. He saw a pair of small plaster figurines on the bureau, two bluebirds, throats wide open as if singing. You saw, he mentally spoke to the birds. Who came here? Then he shook his head at the mockery of it all. His eyes kept sweeping the room. A room of little comfort, he thought. Who killed you? he asked himself. Then he moved back into the kitchen, where he found Cowart standing, staring at the bloodstained floor. He turned.

'Learn anything?' Cowart asked.

'Yes.'

'What's that?' Cowart asked, surprised yet eager.

'I learned that I'd like to die someplace lonely and private, so's folks don't come and inspect all my things,' Tanny Brown replied.

Cowart pointed down at a chalk notation on the floor. It said Nightclothes.

'What's that?' Brown asked.

The old woman was naked. Her clothes were folded up nice and neat, just as if she was planning to put them away in a drawer instead of getting killed.'

Brown straightened up abruptly. 'Folded carefully?'

Cowart nodded.

The policeman eyed the reporter. 'You remember where we found Joanie Shriver?'

'Yes.' Cowart pictured the clearing at the edge of the swamp. He realized he was being asked a question but wasn't certain what it was. He walked around the clearing in his mind; remembering the splotch of blood where the little girl had been killed, the way the shafts of sun had torn through the canopy of trees and vines.

He walked to the edge of the black, still swamp water and stared down beneath the tangled roots to where Joanie Shriver's body was submerged, then he followed it back to where the searchers had taken her, until finally he remembered what they'd found at the edge of the killing place: her clothes.

Folded carefully.

It had been the sort of detail that had occupied a prominent spot in the original story, a small, little irony that had made the moment more real in newspaper prose; the implication being that the little girl's killer had an odd neat streak within him, and that rendered him somehow more terrifying and more tangible all at once.

He turned toward the detective. 'That says something.'

Brown, filled with a sudden fury, allowed rage to reverberate within him for a moment before clamping down hard on it and shutting it away. 'It might,' he struggled to say. 'I'd like it to say something.'

Cowart gestured toward the house. 'Is there anything else that suggests that…'

'No. Nothing. Maybe something that says who got tailed but nothing that says who did the killing. Excepting that little detail.'

He looked over at Cowart before continuing. 'Although you probably still want to think of it as a coincidence.'

Then he stepped over the bloodstains on the floor and headed out, without looking back, aware that the sunshine outside the small house illuminated nothing he thought important.

The two men walked quietly away from the murder scene, back to their car.

Do you have a professional opinion?' Cowart asked.

'Yes'

'You feel like sharing it?'

The policeman hesitated before replying. 'You know, Cowart, you go to some crime scenes and you can still feel all the emotions, right there in the room. Anger, hatred, panic, fear, whatever, but they're all hanging around, like smells. But in there, what was there? Just someone doing a job, like you or me or the postman that was here when you found the damn bodies. Whoever went in there and killed those old folks knew about one thing, for sure. Killing. He wasn't scared. And he wasn't greedy. All he was concerned about was one thing. And that's what happened, isn't it?'

Cowart nodded.

Brown returned to the driver's side of the car and opened the door. But before sliding behind the wheel, he looked across the roof toward Cowart.

'But did I see anything in there that told me for sure that Ferguson did that crime?' He shook his head. '… Except whoever did that crime took time to fold some clothes neatly and then sure seemed mighty comfortable and familiar with a knife. And I know one man who likes knives, don't I?'

They drove out of the Upper Keys, leaving Monroe County and reentering Dade, which gave Cowart a sense of being on familiar ground. They passed a huge sign that directed tourists toward Shark Valley and the Everglades National Park, continuing toward Miami, until Brown suggested they stop for something to eat. The detective lieutenant vetoed several fast-food outlets, until they reached the Perrine-Homestead area. Then he turned the car off the highway and headed down a series of meager streets strewn with bumps and potholes. Cowart looked at the houses they swept past: small, square, single-story cinder-block homes with open jalousie windows like razor slashes in front and flat red-tile roofs adorned with large television antennas. The front lawns were all brown dirt streaked with an occasional swatch of green crabgrass. More than a few had cars up on blocks and auto parts strewn about behind chain link fences. The few children he saw playing outdoors were black.

'You ever been in this part of your county, Cowart?' 'Sure, the reporter replied. 'Covering crimes?' That's right.'

You wouldn't come out here to cover stories about kids who get college scholarships or parents that work two jobs and raise their children right.' 'We'd come out for those stories.' 'But not often, I'll bet.' 'No, that's true.'

The policeman's eyes covered the community rapidly. 'You know, there are a hundred places like this in Florida. Maybe a thousand.' Like what?'

'Places that scratch at the edges both of poverty and stability. Not even lucky enough to be categorized as lower middle class. Black communities which haven't been allowed to flourish or fail, just allowed to exist.

All the houses are two-income, you know, only both incomes are pretty small. The guy who works in the county refuse center and his wife who's an in-home nurse. This is where they come to get started on the

American dream, you see. Home ownership. Local schools. They feel comfortable here. It's not like they're willing to blaze any trails. They just want to get along and go along and maybe make things a bit better. Got a black mayor. Got a black city council. Police chief's probably black and so's the dozen guys he's got working for him.'

'How do you know?'

'I get offers, you see. Career cop. Head of homicide for the Major Crimes Unit of a county force. In law inforcement in the state I may not be well known, but at least I'm known, if you follow. So I get around the state a bit. Especially to little places like Perrine.'

They continued to drive through the residential district for several blocks. Cowart thought the land seemed harsh and unfertile. Almost everything grows in South Florida. Leave a spot of ground untended and the next thing you know it's covered with vines and ferns and greenery. But not here. There was a dustiness to the earth that seemed to belong in some other location, Arizona or New Mexico or some place in the Southwest. Some place closer to the desert than the swamp. Brown steered the car onto a wide boulevard and eventually pulled the car to a stop. They were in front of a small strip shopping center. At one end was a huge warehouse food chain, and at the other a cavernous discount toy store. In between were two dozen smaller businesses, including a single restaurant.

'There we go,' the policeman said. 'At least the food'll be fresh and not cooked according to some formula devised in some corporate headquarters.'

'So, you've been here before?'

'No, I've just been in dozens of places like it. After a while, you get so you can recognize the type.' He smiled. 'That's what being a cop is all about, remember?'

Cowart stared down at the toy store at the end of the shopping mall.

'I was here once. A man kidnapped a woman and child coming out of the store. Just snatched them at random as they walked through the door. Drove them around for half the day, periodically stopping to molest the woman. A state trooper heading home after the day shift finally stopped the car when he thought something was suspicious. Saved her life. And the kid's. Shot the guy when he pulled a knife. One shot. Right through the heart. Lucky shot.'

Brown paused and followed Cowart's eyes toward the toy store.

'They were buying party favors for the kid's second birthday,' the reporter said. 'Red and blue balloons and little conical white hats with clowns on them. They still had the bag when they were rescued.'

He remembered seeing the bag clutched tightly in the woman's free hand. The other held her child, as they were gently deposited in the back of an ambulance. A blanket had been draped around them, though it had been May and the heat was oppressive. A crime like that has a frost all its own.

'Why'd the trooper stop them?' Brown asked.

'He said because the driver was acting suspiciously. Weaving. Trying to avoid being looked at.'

'What page did your story go on?'

Cowart hesitated, then replied, 'Front page. Below the fold.'

The detective nodded. 'I know why the trooper stopped the car.' He spoke quietly. 'White woman. Black man. Right?'

Cowart knew the answer, but was slow to say yes. I Why do you want to know?'

Come on, Cowart. You were once quick with the statistics to me, remember? Wanted to know if I knew the FBI stats on black-on-white crime. Well, I do know them. And I know how rare that sort of crime is. And I also know that's what gets your goddamn story on the front page instead of being cut to six paragraphs in the middle of the B-section roundup. Because if it had been black-on-black crime, that's where it would have landed, right?'

He wanted to disagree, but could not. 'Probably.'

The policeman snorted. ' "Probably" is a real safe answer, Cowart.' Brown gestured widely with his arm. "If you think the city editor would have sent one of the reporters from downtown all the way out here if he wasn't damn sure it was a front-page story? Nah, he'd have had some stringer or some suburban reporter file those paragraphs.' Brown turned toward the restaurant door, speaking he started to cross the parking lot. 'You want to know something, Cowart? You want to know why this is a tough place to live? It's because everyone knows how close they are to the ghetto. I don't mean in miles.'

What's Liberty City, maybe thirty, forty miles away from here, right? No, it's the closeness of fear. They know they don't get the same dollars, the same programs, the same schools, the same any damn thing. So they have to cling to that dream of lower-middle-class status just like it was some life preserver leaking air. They all know what it's like in the ghetto, it's like it sucks away at them, trying to pull them back all the time. All those get-up-early-and-be-on-time-every-morning jobs, all those paychecks that get cashed as soon as they get cut, those little hot houses, are all that keeps it away.'

'What about in North Florida? Pachoula?'

'Pretty much the same. Only up there, the fear is that the Old South – you know, the backwoods, no plumbing, tar paper shack poverty – will reach out and snag you once again.'

'Isn't that what Ferguson came from? From both?'

The detective nodded. 'But he rose up and made it out.'

'Like you.'

Brown stopped and turned toward Cowart. 'Like me,' he said with a low edge of anger in his voice. 'But I don't welcome that comparison, Mr. Cowart.'

The two entered the restaurant.

It was well past the lunch hour and before the evening rush, so they had the place to themselves. They sat in a booth alongside a window overlooking the parking lot. A waitress in a tight white outfit that exaggerated her ample bosom, and a gum-chewing scowl that indicated that any suggestive remarks would be greeted with little enthusiasm, took their order and passed it through a window to a solitary cook in the back. Within seconds they could hear the sizzle of hamburgers frying, and seconds later the scent hit them.

They ate in silence. When they'd finished, Brown ordered a slice of key lime pie with his coffee. He took one bite, then speared another, this time gesturing with the fork toward Cowart.

'Hey, homemade, Cowart. You ought to try a piece. Can't get this up in Pachoula. At least, not like this.'

The reporter shook his head.

'Hell, Cowart, I bet you're the type that likes to stop at salad bars for lunch. Keep that lean, ascetic look by munching on rabbit food.'

Cowart shrugged in admission.

'Probably drink that shitty bottled water from France, too.'

As the detective was speaking, Cowart watched as the waitress moved behind him, into another booth. She had a razor-scraper in her hand, and she bent over to remove something from the window. There was a momentary scratching sound as she cleaned tape from glass. Then she straightened up, putting a small poster under her arm. Cowart caught a glimpse of a young face. The waitress was about to turn away when, for no reason that he could immediately discern, he gestured for her.

She approached the table. 'Y'all gonna try that pie, too?' she asked.

No,' he answered. 'I was just curious about that poster.' He pointed at the paper she'd folded under her arm.

'This?' she said. She handed it over to him, and he spread it out on the table in front of him.

In the center of the poster was a picture of a young black girl, smiling, wearing pigtails. Underneath the picture, in large block letters, was the word MISSING.

This was followed by a message in smaller lettering:

DAWN PERRY, AGE 12, FIVE FEET TWO INCHES, 105 POUNDS,

DISAPPEARED THE AFTERNOON 8,12,90, LAST SEEN WEARING

BLUE SHORTS, WHITE I-SHIRT AND SNEAKERS, CARRYING

BOOK BAG. ANYONE WITH ANY KNOWLEDGE OF HER

WHEREABOUTS CALL 555-1212 AND ASK FOR DETECTIVE

HOWARD.

This message was completed with a large print: REWARD.

Cowart looked up at the waitress. 'What happened?'

The waitress shrugged as if to say that giving information wasn't part of her job. 'I don't know. Little girl. One day's she's there. The next, she's not.'

'Why are you taking the sign down?'

'Been a long time, mister. Months and months. Ain't nobody found that girl by now, I don't suspect this sign's gonna make any difference. And anyway, my boss asked me to yesterday, and I forgot until just now.'

Cowart saw that Brown had started examining the poster. He looked up. 'Police ever come up with anything?'

'Not that I'd know. Y'all want something else?'

'Just a check, Brown replied. He smiled, creased the flyer and slid it onto the table between them. 'I'll take care of this for you, he said.

The waitress walked away to make their change.

'Makes you wonder, doesn't it?' Brown said. 'You get into the right frame of mind, Cowart, and all sorts of terrible things just pop right in, don't they?'

He didn't reply, so the detective continued. 'I mean, you hang close to death enough and unusual things just jump up, like they were so normal and routine you'd ignore them if you weren't thinking so hard about how and when people kill each other.'

Cowart nodded.

Brown leaned back after stabbing at the last few crumbs of pie on his plate. I told you the food would be fresh,' he said. Then he pushed forward abruptly, closing the distance between them.

'Steals your appetite away, doesn't it, Cowart? A little coincidence for dessert, huh?'

He tapped the folded flyer. 'I mean, it probably doesn't amount to anything, right? Just another little girl that disappeared one day. And it probably doesn't fit in, time and opportunity and all that. But it is interesting, isn't it? That a little girl disappears not too far from the highway leading down to the Keys. I wonder if it was from in front of a school.'

Cowart interrupted. 'Fifty miles from Tarpon Drive.'

The detective nodded.

'And absolutely nothing that indicates anything about the cases that happen to concern us.'

'So,' Brown said slowly. 'Why'd you want to see it, when the waitress was pulling it down?'

The policeman crumpled up the flyer into a ball and stuck it into his pocket as he pushed back in his seat and rose to leave the restaurant.

The two men stopped on the sidewalk outside. Cowart looked down toward the toy store at the end of the mall and saw that a blue-shirted man was sitting outside the door, carrying a truncheon at his side. Security, he realized. He wondered why he hadn't noticed the man before. He guessed that he'd been added after the kidnapping, as if the guard's presence would prevent another lightning strike from occurring in the same spot. He remembered that even with the police gathered outside, people had continued to walk into the store, and that a steady stream of adults and children, all carrying large plastic bags filled with various toys, had continued to emerge, ignoring the savagery that had started on the sidewalk.

He turned toward Brown. 'So, what now? We've been to the Keys and all we've got are more questions, Where now? Why don't we go see Ferguson?'

The detective shook his head. 'No, first let's go back to Pachoula.'

'Why?'

'Well, it would be nice to know that Sullivan was telling you the truth about one thing at least, right?'

The two men separated warily shortly after returning to Miami and thick black night had encased them. The day's heat seemed to linger in the air, giving the dark a weight and substance. Cowart dropped Brown outside the downtown Holiday Inn, where he'd obtained a room. The hotel was across from the county criminal courts building, about halfway between the Orange

Bowl and the start of Liberty City, in a sort of urban no-man's-land defined by hospitals, office buildings, jails, and the slums' ubiquitous creep into their midst.

Once inside his room, Brown tore off his jacket and kicked off his shoes. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and dialed a telephone number.

'Dade County Sheriff. South Station.'

'I want to speak with Detective Howard.'

He heard the line being transferred and a moment or two later a clipped, official-sounding man's voice came over the line. 'This is Detective Howard. Can I help you?'

'Maybe. This is Detective Lieutenant Brown, Escambia County…'

'How yah doing, Lieutenant? What can I do for you?' The man's voice instantly lost its military tone, replaced with a simple jocularity.

'Ahh,' Brown said, sliding instantly into the same tones, 'probably nothing more than a wild goose chase. And it sounds pretty crazy, but I'd appreciate a little information about this young kid, a Dawn Perry, disappeared a few months back…'

'Yeah, heading home from the civic center. Christ, what a damn mess…'

'What exactly happened?'

'You got some sort of line on her?' the detective asked abruptly.

'No,' Brown replied. 'To be honest, I just saw the flyer and something in it reminded me of a case I once worked. Just thought, you know, I'd check it out.'

'Hell,' the detective answered. 'Too bad. For a minute I got hopeful. You know how it is.'

'So, can you fill me in a bit?'

'Sure. Not that much to tell. Little girl, not an enemy in the whole wide world, goes off to her swim class at the civic center one afternoon. School's out, you know, so they run all sorts of programs down there for the kids. Last seen by a couple of her friends walking toward her home.'

'Anyone see what happened?'

'No. One old lady, lives about midway down the street – you know, it's all old houses with air conditioners blasting away in every window, makes a damn racket. Anyway, this one old gal can't afford to run the electrics, you know, not so much, so she's sitting in her kitchen next to a fan, and she heard a little scream and then a car pulling away real fast, but by the time she can get out there, the car's already two blocks away. White car. American make. That's all. No plate, no description. Book bag with her swimsuit left on the street. Old lady was pretty sharp, give her that. Calls in what she sees. But by the time a patrol car finds her house, listens to her story, and gets out a BOLO, well, things are pretty much history. You know how many white cars there are in Dade County?' A lot.'

That's right. Anyway, we work the case best we can with what we got. Hell, we could only get one of the television stations to run the girl's picture that night. Maybe she wasn't cute enough, I don't know…'… Or the wrong color.'

'Well, you said it. I don't know how those bastards make up their minds what's news anyway. After we got the flyers out, we took a couple of dozen calls saying she'd been spotted here, there, all over. But none were good, you know. We checked out her family real good, wondered if maybe she'd been snatched by someone she knew, but, hell, the Perrys were good folks. He's a clerk for DMV, she works in an elementary school cafeteria. No problems at home.

Three other kids. What the hell could we do? I got a hundred other files on my desk. Assaults. B and E.

Armed robbery. I even got a couple of cases I can make. Got to spend time valuably, you know. Probably the same for you. So, it just turned into one of those cases where you gotta wait for someone to find her body, and then Homicide will take it over. But that maybe never happens. We're so damn close to the edge of the Everglades down here. You can get rid of someone pretty damn fast. Usually it's drug dealers. Like to just drive down some old deserted access road, dump some body out in the 'Glades. Let that old swamp water take care of hiding their work. Easy as one-two-three. But same technique works for just about anybody, if you catch my drift.'

'Anybody.'

'Anybody who likes little girls. And doesn't want them to tell anybody what happened to 'em.' The detective paused. 'Actually, I'm kinda surprised we don't work a hundred cases like this one. If you get that kid in your car without being made, well, hell, ain't nothing you can't get away with.'

'But you didn't…'

'Nah, we didn't have any others like this. I checked with Monroe and Broward, but they didn't have anything, either. I ran a sex offender profile through the computer and got a couple of names. We even went and rousted a couple of the creeps, but both were either out of town or at work when Dawn disappeared. By that time it was already a couple of days old, you know…'

'And?'

'And nothing. Nada. Zilch. No evidence of anything, except a little girl is long gone. So, tell me about your case. Ring any bells?'

Brown thought hard, considering what to respond. 'Not really. Ours was a white girl coming out of school. Old case. Had a suspect, but couldn't make him. Almost.'

'Ahh, too bad. Thought maybe you had something that might help us.'

Brown thanked the detective and hung up the telephone. His thoughts drove him to his feet. He walked to the window and stared out into the darkness. From his room, he could see up onto the major east-west highway that cut into the center of Miami, and then led away, toward the thick interior of the state, past the suburban developments, the airport, the manufacturing plants and malls, past the fringe communities that hung on the backside of the city, toward the state's swampy core. The Everglades gives way to Big Cypress. There's Loxahatchee and

Corkscrew Swamp and the Withlacoochee River and the Ocala, Osceola and Apalachicola state forests. In

Florida, no one is ever far from some nowhere, hidden, dark place. For a few moments he watched the traffic flee through his line of sight, headlights like tracer pounds in the darkness. He placed a hand to his forehead, reaching as if to hide his vision for an instant, then stopped. He told himself, it's just another little girl that disappeared. This one happened in the big city and it got swallowed up amidst all the other routine terrors. One instant she's there, the next she's not, just like she never existed at all, except in the minds of a few grieving folks left with nightmares forever. He shook his head, insisting to himself that he was becoming paranoid. Another little girl. Joanie

Shriver. There have been others since. Dawn Perry.

There was probably one yesterday. Probably one tomorrow. Gone, just like that. An elementary school.

A civic center. The lights beyond his window continued to soar through the night.

There was only one other person in the Miami Journal library when Cowart arrived there. She was a young woman, an assistant with a shy, diffident manner that made it difficult to speak to her directly, since she kept her head down, as if the words she spoke in reply were somehow embarrassing. She quietly helped Cowart get set up in one of the computer terminals and left him alone when he punched in Dawn Perry.

The word Searching appeared in a corner of the screen. followed rapidly by the words Two Entries.

He called them up. The first was only four paragraphs long and had run in a police blotter roundup well inside a zoned insert section that went to homes in the southern part of the county. No story had appeared in the main paper. The headline was: POLICE REPORT GIRL, 12, MISSING. The story merely informed him that Dawn Perry had failed to return home after a swimming class at a local civic center. The second library entry was: POLICE SAY NO LEADS IN MISSING GIRL CASE. It was a little longer than the first, repeating all the details that had previously run. The headline summed up all the new information in the story.

Cowart ordered the computer to print out both entries, which only took a few moments. He didn't know what to think. He had learned little more than what the waitress had told him.

He stood up. Tanny Brown was right, he told himself. You are going crazy.

He stared around the room. A number of reporters were working at various terminals, all concentrating hard on the green glowing computer screens. He had managed to slip back into the library without being seen by anyone on the night city desk, for which he was grateful. He didn't want to have to explain to anyone what he was doing. For a moment, he watched the reporters at work. It was the time of night when people wanted to head home, and the words that would fill the next day's paper got shorter, punchier, driven at least in part by fatigue. He could feel the same exhaustion starting to pour over him. He looked down at the two sheets of paper in his hand, the printout of the two entries documenting the disappearance of one Dawn Perry. Age twelve. Sets off one hot August afternoon for a swim at the local pool. Never comes home. Probably dead for months, he told himself. Old news.

He took a step away from the computer terminal, then thought of one other thing, a wild shot. He went back to the computer and punched in the name Robert Earl Ferguson.

The computer blipped and within a moment returned with the words Twenty-four Entries. Cowart sat back down at his seat and typed in: Directory All. The library computer came up with a list. Each entry was dated, and its approximate length given. Cowart scanned the roster of stories, recognizing each one. There was the original story and the follow-up pieces, the sidebars, and then the stories following the release, and finally the most recent, the stories he'd written after Blair Sullivan's execution. He scanned the list a second time, and this time noticed an entry from the previous August. He looked at the date and recognized it as the time he'd taken his own daughter to Disney world on vacation. It was a month after Ferguson had been released, in the time before his case had been thrown out of court. It was also four days before Dawn Perry had stepped out of the world. It was measured in the listing: 2.3 inches. A brief. He called it up on the screen.

The entry was from a Religion page roundup. This was the weekly listing of sermons and speeches given at churches throughout Dade County the following day. In the midst of the group was the item: FORMER DEATH ROW INMATE TO SPEAK. Cowart read, Robert Earl Ferguson, recently released Florida Death Row inmate unjustly accused of an Escambia County murder, will speak on his experiences and how his religious devotion has sustained him through the criminal justice system at the New Hope Baptist Church, Sunday, 11 a.m.

The church was in Perrine.

16. The Young Detective

Detective Andrea Shaeffer greeted the dawn from her desk.

She had tried sleep, only to find it elusive, then fitful. Rising in the compressed black of the early morning, she had discarded an awful dream of blood and torn throats, dressed, then driven to the Monroe County Sheriff's Department homicide substation in Key Largo. From where she sat in the second-floor offices, she could stare through a window and see a pinkish ridge of light painted on the edge of the night. She imagined the slow disintegration of the darkness out on the Gulf Stream, where the razor-sharpness of morning seemed to carve shapes onto the tossing waves and finally, with a great slash, cut the horizon free from the ocean.

For a moment she wished she were out on her stepfather's fishing boat, rigging hooks in the near-black, her legs spread against the bounce and shock of the swells, her hands, slippery from handling bait, rapidly twisting wire leaders and tying knots in monofilament. The fishing would be good today. There would be big thunderheads lurking far out over the water and the heat would stir up narrow waterspouts that would show even blacker and more terrifying against the sky. But the fish would rise toward the surface, hungry, anticipating the storm, eager to feed. Dance around on the edges of the gathering winds and keep the baits moving, she thought. Fast baits, for kings and wahoos and especially billfish. Something that scratches and slaps at the waves, furrowing through the dark Gulf Stream waters, irresistible to the big fish searching for sustenance.

That was what I always liked about fishing, she thought: not the fight against the hook and line, no matter how spectacular; nor the last impetuous panic at boatside; nor the back-slapping accomplishment or the beery congratulations. What I liked was the hunt. Her eyes stared through the homicide office window while her mind churned over what she knew and what she didn't know. When the light finally seemed to have succeeded in its daily battle, she turned away, hack to the spread of papers that were strewn about her desk.

She glanced at the summary report she'd prepared after questioning the neighbors on Tarpon Drive. No one had seen or heard anything of note. Then she fingered the report from the medical examiner's office.

Proximate cause of death in both subjects was the same: abrupt severing of the right carotid artery leading to sudden massive loss of blood. He was left-handed, she thought. Stood behind them and drew the blade across their throats. Skin around the wounds was only mildly frayed. A straightedge razor, maybe a carbon steel hunting knife. Something real sharp. Neither victim showed any signs of significant postmortem injury. He killed them and left. Premortem injuries included bruising around each victim's arms, which was to be expected. The killer had tied them savagely, the rope cutting into the skin. A strip of duct tape had gagged them. The male victim had a contusion on his forehead, a split lip, and a fractured pair of ribs. The knuckles on his right hand were skinned with trace residue of paint, and the chair legs had scratched the linoleum kitchen floor. At least he fought, if only for an instant. He must have been second, jamming his hands against the frame of his chair as he struggled, fighting to get free until he was slammed across the chest and in the head. There was no sign of sexual trauma to the woman, although she had been found naked. Humiliation. Shaeffer remembered seeing the old woman's night-clothes folded neatly in the kitchen corner. Folded carefully. By whom? Victim or killer? Fingernail scrapings were negative. Both victims had been body-printed at the morgue, but without success.

Shaeffer tossed the papers onto the desktop. No help, she thought. At least no obvious help.

She picked up the crime-scene preliminaries, struck with the language of the documents she was reading. Death reduced to the most clipped, unevocative terms. Things measured, weighed, photographed, and assessed. The rope that had been used to bind the elderly couple was quarter-inch nylon clothesline, available in any hardware store or supermarket. Two pieces, one measuring forty-one inches, the other thirty-nine and one-half, had been cut from a twelve-foot length discovered by the back door. The killer had made a slipknot, looped that over his victims' wrists, then doubled and tripled it, ending with a simple square knot to hold it all together.

An ordinary, nondistinctive knot, temporary, improvised at the scene. Strong enough for the moment of killing but one that, given time, could have been worked loose. That suggested something to her: not a local, someone from somewhere else. Keys folks for the most part knew their knots; they'd have tied something sturdier, nautical.

She nodded. Middle of the night. He broke in. Subdued them, tied them, gagged them. They thought they were going to be robbed and acquiescence would save their lives. No chance. He simply killed them. Maximum terror. Quick. Efficient. No extra time. A silent knife. No gunshot to arouse nosy neighbors. No robbery. No rape. No slamming door, race-away panic. A killer who arrives, murders, and exits, pausing only to open a Bible on the table between his victims, unseen, unheard by everyone except his victims. She thought, All murders leave a message. The drug dealer's body found decomposing in the mangroves with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head,

Bold watch and diamond jewelry still dangling from his wrists, sends one sort of message. The young woman who thinks it's okay just this once to hitchhike home from the restaurant where she waits on tables and ends up three counties away, naked, dead, and violated, sends another. The old man in the trailer who finally tires of tending his wife's degenerative cancer and shoots her and then himself and dies clutching a fifty-five-year-old wedding album is telling a different story

She looked down at the crime-scene photos. The glossy eight-by-ten pictures summoned up her memory of the oppressive heat in the death room and the nauseating smell of the bodies. It always made it worse when nature had had time to work on a murder scene; any residual dignity left over from their lives had dissipated swiftly in the soaring temperatures. It also played havoc with the investigative process. She had been taught that every minute that passed after a homicide made a successful resolution less likely. Old, cold cases that get solved get headlines. But for every one that results in an indictment, a hundred remain behind, each a tangled knot of suppositions. Two old people who helped bring into the world and deform a mass murderer are themselves murdered. What the hell sort of crime is that? Revenge. Maybe justice. Possibly a perverse combination of the two.

She continued looking through the crime-scene reports. There were two partial footprints outlined in blood lifted from the linoleum floor. The chair tread of the soles had been identified as coming from a pair of hightop Reebok basketball shoes, sized between nine and eleven.-The soles were of a style manufactured within the past six months. Some cloth fibres had been uncovered sticking to the swatch of blood that had littered the old man's chest. They were of a cotton-polyester blend commonly associated with sweat clothes. Entry to the house had been accomplished through the rear door. Old, rotting wood had torn apart at the first touch of a steel screwdriver or chisel. She shook her head. This was commonplace in the Keys. The sun, wind, and salt air played havoc with door frames, a fact with which every two-bit burglar frequenting the hundred and sixty miles between Miami and Key West was well familiar.

But no two-bit burglar had performed this crime.

She grabbed a pen and made some notes to herself: canvas the hardware stores, see if anyone purchased a knife, rope, and screwdriver or small crowbar. Talk to all the neighbors again, see if anyone saw a strange car. Check the local hotels. Did he bring the Bible with him? Check the bookstores.

She did not hold out much hope for any of this.

She continued: Check the crime lab with samples of the skin where the throats were sliced. Perhaps a spectrographic examination would show some metal fragments that might tell her something about the murder weapon. This was important. She ordered her thoughts with a military precision: if a killer leaves nothing of evidentiary value, no part of himself, like semen or fingerprints or hair, then to place him in that room, one must find what he took with him – the murder weapon, blood residue on his shoes or clothes, some item from the house. Something.

Shaeffer rubbed her eyes for an instant, letting her thoughts turn toward Cowart. What is he hiding? she asked herself. Some piece of the crime that means something to him. But what?

She drew a portrait of the reporter in her head, sketching in the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice. She did not know much about reporters, but she knew that they generally wanted to appear to know more than they did, to create the illusion that they were sharing information rather than simply seducing it. Cowart did not fit this profile. After their initial confrontation at the crime scene, he had not asked her a single question about the murders on Tarpon Drive. Instead, he had done his worldly best to avoid being questioned. What does that tell you? That he already has the answers.

But why would he hide them from her? To protect someone.

Blair Sullivan? Impossible. He needs to protect himself.

But that still didn't get her anywhere. She doodled on the empty pad in front of her, drawing concentric circles that grew darker and darker as she filled in the space with ink.

She remembered a lecture from her police academy days: four out of five killers know their victims. All right, she told herself. Blair Sullivan tells Matthew Cowart that he arranged the killing. How can he do this from Death Row?

Her heart sank. Prisons are worlds unto themselves.

Anything can be obtained, if one is willing to pay the price, even a death. And everyone inside knows the mechanics of prison barter and exchange. But for an outsider to penetrate the machinations of those worlds was difficult, sometimes impossible. The ordinary leverages of life that a policeman so depended on – the fear of social or legal sanctions, of being held accountable – didn't exist within a prison.

She envisioned her next step with distaste: questioning all the prison people who had come in contact with Sullivan. One of them should be the pipeline, she thought. But what does he pay with? He didn't have any money. Or did he? He didn't have any status. He was a loner who went to the chair. Or was he? How does he pay that debt? And why does he tell Matthew Cowart? A thought jumped into her head suddenly: Perhaps he'd already paid.

She took a deep breath.

Blair Sullivan contracts for a killing and we assume that payment is due upon completion of the contract. That is natural. But – turn it around. Shaeffer warmed suddenly, feeling her imagination trip like so many switches. She remembered the explosive excitement she felt when her eyes picked out the broad, dark shape of the billfish rising through the green-black waters to strike at the bait. A single moment, electric, exhilarating, before the battle was joined. The best moment, she thought.

She picked up the telephone and dialed a number. It rang three times before a groan slid over the line.

'Yeah?'

'Mike? It's Andy.'

'Christ. Don't you even want to sleep?'

'Sorry. No.'

'Give me a second.'

She waited, hearing a muffled explanation to his wife. She made out the words 'It's her first big case before the conversation was obscured by the sound of running water. Then silence, and finally the voice of her partner, laughing.

'You know, dammit, I'm the senior detective and you're the rookie. I say sleep, you're supposed to sleep.'

'Sorry,' she apologized again.

'Hah,' he replied. 'No sincerity. Okay, what's on your mind?'

'Matthew Cowart.' When she spoke his name, she! made up her mind: Don't play your hand quite yet.

'Mister I'm-Not-Telling-You-Everything Reporter?'

'The same.' She smiled.

'Boy, that sonuvabitch has me frosted.'

It was easy for her to envision her partner sitting at the side of his bed. His wife would have grabbed his pillow and jammed it over her head to drown out the noise of conversation. Unlike many detective partnerships, her relationship with Michael Weiss was businesslike and impersonal. They had not been together long – long enough to share an infrequent laugh, but not long enough to care what the joke was.

He was a sturdy man, unimaginative and hotheaded.

Better at showing pictures to witnesses and thumbing through insurance company records. That he'd acquired ten years of experience to her few months was thought she dismissed rapidly. Leaving him behind was easy for her. 'Me, too.' 'So what do you have in mind?'

'I think I ought to work him a bit. Just keep showing up. At his office. His apartment. When he goes jogging. When he takes a bath, whenever.' Weiss laughed. 'And?'

'Let him know we're going to sit on him until we learn what he really has to tell us. Like who committed that

'Makes sense to me.'

"But someone's got to start working the prison. See if someone there knows something, like maybe that guard sergeant. And I think somebody'd better go through all Sullivan's possessions. Maybe he left some- thing that'll tell us something.'

'.Andy, couldn't this conversation have waited until, say. eight A.M.?' Exhaustion mingled with wry humor in Weiss's voice. I mean, hell, don't you want to sleep a bit'

'Sorry, Mike. I guess not.'

'I hate it when you remind me of myself. I remember my first big case. I was breathing fire, too. Couldn't wait to get on it. Trust me. Take it slow.'

'Mike'

Okay. Okay. So you'd rather muscle the reporter than start interviewing cons and guards, right?' 'Yes.'

"See' Weiss laughed, 'that's the sort of intuitiveness that will get you ahead in this department. All right. You go bother Cowart, I'll go back to Starke. But I want

" to talk. Every day. Maybe twice a day, got it?'

'Absolutely.'

She had no idea if she intended to comply. She hung up the telephone and started to straighten her desk, sliding documents into files, organizing reports into neat stacks, clipping her own notes and observations onto the folders, placing pens and pencils into a cup. When she was satisfied with the order imposed on her working surface, she allowed herself a small surge of anticipation.

It's all mine, she thought.

She headed back to Miami beneath a midday sun that burned off the hood of the car, humming to herself, snatches of Jimmy Buffett tunes about living in the Florida Keys, daydreaming as she drove fast.

She was new to homicide work, only nine months out of a patrol car and three months from working burglaries, elevated by ability and an equal opportunity suit brought on behalf of all the women and minorities in the department. She was consumed by ambition, filled with energy and the belief that she could defuse her lack of experience with hard work. That had been her solution to almost all problems, since she had been a lonely child growing up in the Upper Keys. Her father had been a Chicago police detective, killed in the line of duty. She had often reflected upon the phrase 'the line of duty,' thinking how impoverished a concept it truly was. It pretended to give some sort of military importance to what she had come to understand was a moment of extraordinary mistake and bad luck. It was as if something necessary had been achieved by his dying, when she knew that to be a lie. Her father had worked bunco, usually dealing with cheapskate scam artists and confidence men, trying to stem the never-ending tide of retirees and immigrants who thought they could get rich by investing in one bizarre idea after another. He and his partners had raided a boiler-room operation one morning. Twenty women and men at desks work- ing the telephones, calling folks up with a gold- investment scheme. Neither the scheme nor the raid were anything unusual, just part of daily business for both the criminals and the police. What had been unforeseen was that one of the men working the phones was a hotheaded kid with a concealed gun, who'd never taken a fall before and so never learned that the criminal justice system was going to let him go with nary a whimper. A single shot had been fired. It'd penetrated a partition made out of cheap wallboard and struck her father in the chest on the other side, where he'd been writing down the phony names of the people being arrested.

Useless, she thought. Just useless.

He'd died with a pencil in his hand.

She had been ten, and her memories were of a burly man who'd roughhoused with her incessantly, treating her boyishly when she was young, then taking her on trips to Comiskey Park to see the White Sox as she grew older. He'd taught her to throw and catch, and to appreciate physical strength. Life had seemed extraordinarily ordinary. They'd lived in a modest brick house. She'd gone to the neighborhood parish schools, as had her older brothers. The short-barreled pistol her father wore to work had seemed somehow less important than the jackets and loud ties that he affected. She had kept only one picture of the two of them, taken outdoors after a snowstorm, standing next to a snow-man they'd constructed together. They had flung their arms around the snowman as if he was their friend. It had been early April, when the Midwest was trying to shake the long winter, only to be rewarded with a final blast of cold. The snowman had had a baseball hat, and rocks for eyes, broken branches for arms. They'd tied a scarf around its neck and sculpted a goofy smile on its face. It had been a terrific snowman, almost alive. It had melted, of course. The weather had turned rapidly and within a week it was gone.

They had come to the Keys a year after his death.

Miami had actually been the target; there were relatives there. But they had slid south when her mother had gotten a job managing a restaurant next to a sportfishing dock. That was where her stepfather had come from.

She liked him enough, she thought. Distant yet willing to teach her what he knew about the business of hunting fish. When she thought of him, she thought of the deep, reddish brown the sun had turned his arms and the precancerous white specks that cluttered his skin. She had always wanted to touch them but had never done so. He still ran his fishing charters out of Whale Harbor and called his forty-two-foot Bertram sportfisher 'The Last Chance,' which his clients all thought referred to fishing, rather than the tenuous existence of the charter-boat skipper.

Her mother had never told her so, but she believed she had been a child of accident, born just as her parents entered middle age, more than a decade younger than her brothers. They had left the Keys as quickly as age and education would allow, one to practice corporate law in Atlanta, the other to a modestly successful import-export business in Miami. The family joke was that he was the only legal importer in that city, and consequently the poorest. For some time she had thought that she would follow first the one brother, then the other, while she treaded water at the University of Florida, keeping her grade-point average high enough for graduate school.

She had decided to join the police after being raped.

The memory seemed to blister her imagination. It j had been the end of the semester in Gainesville, almost summer, hot and humid. She had not intended to attend the frat-house party, but an abnormal psychology final had left her drained and lethargic, and when her roommates pressed her to join them, she had readily agreed.

She recalled the loudness of everything. Voices, music, too many people jammed into too small a space.

The old wooden-frame building had shaken with the crowd. She'd gulped beer fast against the heat, rapidly losing her edge, dizzying into a casual acceptance of the night.

Well after midnight, hopelessly separated from her roommates, she'd started home alone, having rejected a thousand efforts at imposed companionship. She was just drunk enough to feel a liquid connectivity with the night, unsteadily maneuvering beneath the stars. She was not so soused that she couldn't find her way home, she remembered, just enough so that she was taking her time about it.

An easy mark, she thought bitterly.

She had been unaware of the two men coming out of the shadows behind her until they were right upon her. grabbing at her, tossing a jacket over her head, and pummeling her with fists. No time for screaming, no time to fight her way free and try to outrun them.

She hated this part of the memory more than any other.

I could have done it. She felt her calf muscles tighten. High school district one-mile champion. Two letters on the women's track team. If I could have just gotten free for one second, they would never have caught me. I'd have run them into the ground.

She remembered the pressure of the two men, crushing her with their weight. The pain had seemed intense, then oddly distant. She had been afraid of being suffocated or choked. She had struggled until one had punched her, an explosion of fist against her chin that had sent her head reeling far beyond any dizziness created by liquor. She had passed out, almost welcoming the darkness of unconsciousness, prefer- ring it to the awfulness and pain of what was happening.

She drove hard toward Miami, picking up speed as she plunged through the memory. Nothing happened, she thought. Wake up raped in a hospital. Get swabbed and prodded and invaded again. Give a statement to a campus cop. Then to a city detective. Can you describe the assailants, miss? It was dark. They held me down. But what did they look like? They were strong. One held a jacket over my head. But what did they look like? They were strong. One held a jacket over my head. Were they white? Black? Hispanic? Short? Tall? Thickset? Skinny? They were on top of me. Did they say anything? No. They just did it. She had called home, hearing her mother dissolve into useless tears and her stepfather sputter with rage, almost as if he were angry with her for what had happened. She spoke finally to a rape-counseling social worker who had nodded and listened. Shaeffer had looked across at the woman and realized that her compassion was part of her job, like the people hired at Disney world to wave in friendly fashion and false spontaneity at the tourists. She walked out and returned to her home and waited for something to happen. It didn't. No suspects. No arrests. Just one bad night when something went wrong on a college campus. Frat-house hijinks. Swallow the memory and get on with life.

Her bruises healed and disappeared. She fingered a small white scar that curled around the corner of her eye. That remained.

There had been no talk in her family of what had happened. She returned to the Keys and found that everything was the same. They still lived in a cinder-block house with a second-story view of the ocean, and paddle fans in each room that shifted the stalled humid air about. Her mother still went to the restaurant to make certain the key lime pie was fresh and the conch fritters were deep fried and that everything was in place for the daily arrival of tourists and fishing mates, who rubbed shoulders at the bar. A routine gradually cut from life by the passing of years stayed the same. She went back to work on her stepfather's boat, just as if nothing had changed within her. She remembered she would look up at him stolidly riding the flying bridge, staring out from behind dark sunglasses across the green waters for signs of life, while she labored below in the cockpit, fetching clients' beers, laughing at their off-color jokes, baiting hooks and waiting for action. She adjusted her own sunglasses against the highway glare.

But I had changed, she thought.

She had taken to writing her mother letters, pouring all the hurts and emotions of what had happened to her onto pages of slightly scented lilac-colored notepaper purchased at the local pharmacy, words and tears staining the thin, fragile sheets. After a while, she no longer wrote about the violation she felt, the hole she thought those two faceless men had torn at the center of her core, but instead about the world, the weather, her future, her past. The day she went for her preliminary police exam, she had written: I can't bring

Dad back… but it made her feel better to give this silent voice to the feeling within her, no matter how predictable she thought it was.

Of course, she never mailed any of those letters or showed them to anyone. She kept them collected in a fake leather binder she'd purchased at a crafts show in suburban Miami. Lately, she had taken to writing synopses of her cases in the letters, giving words to all her suppositions and guesses, keeping these dangerous ideas out of official notes and reports. She wondered sometimes whether her mother, if she'd actually read any of those letters ostensibly addressed to her, would be more shocked by what had happened to her daughter or by what her daughter saw happening to others.

She pictured the old couple on Tarpon Drive. They had no chance, she thought. They knew what they'd produced. Did they think they could bring Blair Sullivan into the world and not have to pay a price? Everyone pays, Shaeffer thought of the first time she'd raised the heavy.357 magnum Colt revolver that was the standard sidearm of the Monroe deputies. Its heft had been reassuring: a solidity in her grasp that whispered into her ear that she would never be a victim again.

She touched the gas pedal and felt the unmarked cruiser shoot forward, climbing through the seventies and eighties, surging through the midday heat.

She had put one of six into the target the first day. Two of six the next. By the time she'd finished the six-week training, all six of six, gathered tightly in the center. She'd continued practicing at least once a week, every week, after that. She'd branched out as well, gaining a proficiency with a smaller automatic and learning how to handle the riot pump that was locked into each car. Lately, she had started taking time on the range with a military-issue M-16 and had adopted a NATO-style nine-millimeter for her own use.

She pulled her foot from the pedal and let the car slow back to the speed limit. She stared up into her rearview mirror and watched another car ride up hard behind her, then swing out into the lane next to her. It was a state policeman in an unmarked Ford, hunting for speeders. She'd obviously sailed through his radar, bringing him out of hiding, only to have him make her car.

He peered across at her from behind dark aviator shades.

She smiled and gave an exaggerated shrug, seeing the man's face break into a grin. He raised one hand as if to say, No big deal, then accelerated past her. She picked up her radio and switched to the state police frequency.

This is Monroe homicide one-four. Come back.'

'Monroe homicide, this is Trooper Willis. I clocked you doing ninety-five. Where's the fire?'

'Sorry, Troop. It was a nice day, I'm working a good case, and I decided to air it out a bit. I'll keep it down.'

'No problem, one-four. Uh, you got time to have a bite to eat?'

She laughed. A high-speed pickup. 'Uh, negative right now. But try me in a couple of days at the Largo substation.' Will do.'

She saw him raise his hand and peel to the side of the road.

He will have hopes for a few days, she thought, and wanted to apologize in advance. He will be disappointed. She had one rule: She never slept with anyone who knew she was a police officer. She never slept with anyone she would ever have to see a second time.

She touched the scar by her eye a second time.

Two scars, she thought. One outside, one inside.

She continued north toward Miami. a receptionist outside the newsroom of the Miami

Journal informed her that Matthew Cowart was not in the office. Surprise flooded her, followed swiftly by a quickening of excitement. He's looking for something, she thought. He's after somebody. She asked to see the city editor, while she sorted through her suspicions. The receptionist spoke briefly on the telephone, then motioned her toward a couch, where she waited nervously. Twenty minutes passed before the city editor emerged from between the double doors to see her.

'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,' he said quickly. 'We were in the news conference and I couldn't get out.'

'I would like to talk with Cowart again,' she said, trying to remove all the surprise and anticipation from her voice.

'I thought you got a statement the other day.' 'Not completely.'

'No?' He shrugged as if to say he had no sympathy for lost opportunities.

'A few things perhaps he can straighten out.' 'I'm sorry, but he's not here,' the city editor said. He frowned widely. 'Perhaps I can help you?'

She recognized how insincere this offer was. 'Well' she said with mildly false enthusiasm, 'I just can't get it straight in my head how Sullivan made his contacts and set up his arrangements…' She waved a hand to cut off a question from the city editor. '… I know, I mean, I'm not sure what Mr. Cowart can add, but I still just don't have a feel for all this and was hoping he could help.'

She thought this sounded safe enough. She suspected a softening in the city editor's tones.

'Well, hell,' he said, 'I think everyone's trying to understand the same damn thing.'

She laughed. 'It's quite a situation, isn't it?'

He nodded, smiling but still wary. 'I think he's filled you in as best as he can. But…'

'Well,' she replied slowly, 'perhaps now that he's had some time to reflect on what he heard, he can remember something else. You'd be surprised what folks can remember after they've had some time to think about it.'

The city editor smiled. 'I wouldn't be surprised at all. What people remember about things is our trade, too.' He shuffled his feet a bit and ran a hand through his thinning hair. 'He's off on a story.'

'So, where's he gone?'

The city editor hesitated before replying. 'North Florida.'

He looked for an instant as if the act of actually giving out a piece of information would make him ill.

Shaeffer smiled. 'Big place, North Florida.'

The city editor shrugged. 'This story has only happened in two places. You know that. At the prison in Starke and a little town called Pachoula. I shouldn't have to spell that out for you. Now, I'm sorry, Detective Shaeffer, but I have to get back to work.'

'Can you tell Cowart I need to talk with him?'

'I'll tell him. Can't promise anything. Where will you be?'

'Looking for him' she said.

She got up as if to leave, then thought of one other thing. 'Can I take a look at Cowart's original stories?'

The city editor paused, thinking, then gestured toward the newspaper library. 'They'll help you there,' he said. 'If there's any problem, have them contact me.'

She stood at a desk, flipping through a huge bound volume of copies of the Miami Journal. For an instant, she was struck by the wealth of disaster the newspaper documented, then she came upon the Sunday edition with Matthew Cowart's initial story about the murder of Joanie Shriver. She read through it carefully, making notations, taking down names and dates.

As she rode the elevator down to the main entrance, she tried to settle all the thoughts that swept about within her. The elevator oozed to a halt on the ground floor, and she started to walk from the building, only to stop abruptly in the center of the lobby.

This story has only happened in two places, the editor had said. She thought about the box that Cowart was in. What brings him to Blair Sullivan? she thought.

The murder of a little girl in Pachoula. What's at the core of that crime?

Robert Earl Ferguson.

Who links Sullivan to Cowart?

Robert Earl Ferguson.

What props up his prize?

Robert Earl Ferguson.

She turned on her heel and walked back into the corner of the Journal lobby, where there was a bank of pay telephones. She checked her notes and dialed directory information in Pensacola. Then she dialed the number that the electronic voice had given her.

After dealing with a secretary, she heard the attorney's voice come on the line.

'Roy Black here. How can I help you, miss?'

Mr. Black,' she said, 'this is Andrea Shaeffer. I'm at the Miami Journal…' She smiled, enjoying her minor deception. 'We need to get a hold of Mr. Cowart, and he's gone to Pachoula, to see your client. It's important to run him down, and no one seems to have a number here. I wonder if you could help me on that. Really sorry to bother you…'

'No problem at all, miss. But Bobby Earl's left Pachoula. He's back up in Newark, New Jersey. I don't know why Mr. Cowart would go back to Pachoula.'

'Oh,' she said, layering her voice with disingenuous surprise and false helplessness. 'He's working on a follow-up after Blair Sullivan's execution. Do you think Mr. Cowart will go up there instead? He was very vague about his itinerary and it's important we track him down. Do you have an address? I hate to bother you, but no one can find Mr. Cowart's Rolodex.'

'I don't like giving out addresses,' the attorney said reluctantly.

'Oh,' she continued breezily, 'that's right. I guess not. Oh, boy, how'm I gonna find him now? My boss is gonna have my head for sure. Do you know how I could trace him up north?'

The attorney hesitated. 'Ahh, hell,' he said finally. 'I'll get it for you. Just got to promise you won't give it out to any other news outlets or anybody else. Mr. Ferguson is trying to put all this behind him, you know. Get on with things.'

'Boy, would you? I promise. I can see that,' she said with phony enthusiasm.

'Hang on,' said the attorney. 'I'm looking it up.'

She waited patiently, eagerly. The meager falsehoods and playacting had come easily to her. She wondered whether she could catch the next flight north. She was not precisely sure what she would do with Ferguson when she found him, but she was certain of one thing: the answers to all her questions were hovering about somewhere very close to that man. She envisioned his eyes as they stared out at her from the pages of the newspaper. The innocent man.

17. Newark

The plane dipped down beneath a thin cover of cloud on its final approach into the airport, and she could see the city, rising in the distance like so many children's blocks tossed into a pile. A flaccid early-spring sun illuminated the jumble of tall, rectangular office buildings. Staring through the window, she felt a damp April chill and had a momentary longing for the unequivocal heat of the Keys. Then she thrust everything from her mind except how to approach Ferguson.

Carefully, she decided. Play him like a strong fish on light tackle; a sudden move or too much pressure will break the line and set him loose. It's only the barest of threads. Nothing tied Ferguson to the murders on Tarpon Drive except the presence of a single reporter. No witnesses, fingerprints, or Woodwork. Not even a modus operandi, the sexual assault-murder of a little girl having little in common with the terror slaughter-ing of an elderly couple. And according to Cowart and his newspaper, he wasn't even guilty of the first half of that equation.

As the plane twisted through the airspace, she could see the broad ribbon of the New Jersey Turnpike snaking below her as it sliced north and south. She was struck with a sudden depression that she'd flowed herself to head off on some crazy tangent and would be better served by simply grabbing the first flight back to Florida and working at Weiss's side.

'Everything had seemed clear standing in the lobby of the Miami Journal. The murky, gray skies of New Jersey seemed to mock the uncertainty that filled her.

She wondered if Ferguson had learned anything the first time around. Probably. Her impression of him, gleaned from Cowart's words, was that he was clever, educated, and not at all like most convicts. That was too bad. One of the contradictory truisms of police work was that the prisonwise suspect was not harder to trip up. In fact, the opposite was true. But Ferguson, she suspected, was a different case.

Still… she remembered a moment on her stepfather's boat a half-dozen years earlier. They'd been fishing in the early evening, catching the outgoing tide as it ran fast between the pylons of one of the Key's innumerable bridges. The client had hooked a big tarpon, well over a hundred and twenty pounds. It had jumped twice, gills shaking, rattling its head back and forth, then sounded, its sleek silver shape slicing through the darkening waters. It had run with the current, using the force of the water to help it fight against the pressure of the line. The client had hung on, stubbornly, grunting, legs spread, back bent, fighting against the strength of the fish for nearly an hour. The big fish had pulled on, dragging line from the reel, heading toward the bridge pylons.

Smart fish, she thought. Strong fish. It had known that if it could get in there, it could sever the line on a barnacle. All it had to do was run that taut, thin length of monofilament against a pylon. The fish had been hooked before. It knew the pain of the barb in its jaw, the force of the line pulling it toward the surface. Familiarity gave it strength. There was no panic in its fight. Just a steady, intelligent savagery as it made for the bridge and safety.

What she'd done had seemed crazy. She had jumped to the man's side and in a single, impulsive motion, twisted the drag on the reel down all the way, virtually locking it. Then she'd shouted, Toss it over!

Toss it over! The man had looked wildly at her, and she'd seized the rod from his hands and thrown it over the side of. the boat. It had made a small wake as it was towed rapidly away. 'What the hell…' the man had started angrily, only to be interrupted when her stepfather pivoted the boat in the channel and roared underneath the bridge, throttling down on the far side.

She could see her stepfather standing on the flying bridge, peering through the growing darkness until he finally pointed. They all turned and saw the rod, its cork handle bobbing at the surface twenty yards away. They came alongside and she bent over and grasped it from the water, loosening the drag in almost the same moment. 'Now,' she had said to the fisherman, 'land him.' The man had pulled back on the rod, breaking into a grin when he felt the weight on the other end. The still-hooked tarpon exploded from the surface in shock and surprise when it felt the point of the hook drive hard once again into its jaw. It had jumped fast, soaring through the air, black water streaming from its sides. But she'd known it was the big fish's last run; she could sense the defeat in each shake of its head and twist of its body. Another ten minutes and they had the tarpon to the side of the boat. She'd lip-gaffed the fish and brought it out of the water. There had been a flurry of photos, and then they'd returned the fish to the channel waves. She'd leaned over the side, holding the fish, reviving it gently. But before setting it loose, she'd seized one of its silver scales, the size of a half-dollar, and broken it off. She'd put the scale in her shirt pocket as she watched the fish swim off slowly, its scythelike tail slicing through the warm water.

Smart fish. Strong fish.

But I was smarter and that made me stronger.

She pictured Ferguson again. Hooked before, she thought.

The airplane droned and bumped to a halt. She gathered her things together and headed for the exit.

The liaison captain at the Newark Police Department arranged for a pair of uniformed officers to accompany her to Ferguson's apartment. After a few brief introductions and modest small talk, the pair drove her through the city toward the address she'd given them.

Shaeffer stared out at streets she thought cut from a subdivision of hell. The buildings were all dirty brick and dark concrete, rimmed with grime and helplessness. Even the sunlight that caught the street seemed gray. There was a never-ceasing procession of small businesses, clothing stores, bodegas, cut-rate loan offices, appliance centers, and furniture rental showrooms, each clinging with decrepit energy to the edges of the littered sidewalks. There were black steel bars everywhere; inner-urban necessities. A different cluster of idle men, teenage gangs, or gaudy hookers seemed to occupy each corner. Even the fast-food outlets, with their uniform codes of cleanliness and order, seemed frayed and tattered, a far cry from their suburban counterparts. The city was like a has-been fighter, hanging on in the latter rounds of one too many fights, staggering but still inexplicably standing on its feet because it was too old or stupid or stubborn to fall.

'You said this dude is in school, Detective? No way. Not down here,' said one of the officers, a taciturn black man with gray hair touching his temples.

'That's what his attorney told me,' she replied.

'There's only one school down here. Where you learn whoring and pimping and dealing and how to do a B and E. I don't know what you'd call that school.'

'Well, maybe,' said his partner driving the car, a younger man with sandy blond hair and a drooping mustache. That's not altogether true. There's plenty of decent folks down here…'

'Yeah,' interrupted the older policeman. 'Hiding behind steel grates and bars.'

'Don't pay any attention to him,' the partner said. 'He's a burnt-out case. He's also not mentioning the fact that he started out down here and worked his way through night school. So it ain't impossible. Maybe your man's riding the commuter train out to New Brunswick and attending classes at Rutgers. Or grabbing evening classes at St. Pete's.'

'Don't make any sense. Why live in this rathole unless you have to?' the older policeman answered. 'If he's got some money, he could live out there. Only reason to live down here is if you ain't got a chance of being someplace else.'

I can think of another reason,' said the younger cop.

'What's that?' Shaeffer asked.

The policeman gestured with his arm. 'You want to hide. You want maybe to get swallowed up a bit. Best place in the world.'

He pointed at an abandoned building, pivoted in his seat and looked back at her. 'Parts of these cities, they're like the jungle or a swamp. We pass a building like that, been hit by fire, abandoned, whatever, there's no way to know what's really inside. People live in there without electricity, heat, water. Gangs hang out, hide weapons. Hell, there could be a hundred dead bodies in one of those buildings and we'd never find 'em. Never n know they were there.'

He paused for a moment. 'Perfect place to get lost.: Who the hell'd ever come down here looking for someone unless they really needed 'em?' he asked.

1 guess I would,' she said quietly.

'What d'you need this man for?' asked the driver.

'He may have some information about a double homicide I'm working.'

'You think he's gonna give us some trouble? Maybe we ought to have some backup. This drug-related?'

'No. More like a contract killing.'

'You promise us? I mean, I don't want to go walking in on some beady-eyed guy holding a Uzi and a pound of crack.'.

'No. Not at all.'

'Is he a suspect?'

She hesitated. What was he? 'Not exactly. Just someone we need to talk to. Could go either way.'

'Okay. We're gonna take your word for it,' said the younger man. 'But I'm not wild about it. What you got on this guy, anyway?'

'Not much.'

'So you're just hoping he'll say something that you can take to the bank, right?'

'That's the idea.'

'Fishing expedition, huh?'

She smiled at the irony. 'Right.'

She could see him look over at his partner for an instant. The officers humphed and drove on. They swept past a cluster of men hanging in front of a small grocery store. She could see the eyes of the inhabitants of the inner-city world following them. No doubts about who we are, she thought. They made us in a microsecond. She tried to focus on the faces on the street, but they blurred together.

'Down here,' said the policeman driving. 'Middle of the block.'

He steered the car into an empty space between a four-year-old cherry-red Cadillac with balloon whitewalls and velour upholstery, and a wreck, stripped of anything worthwhile. A small boy was sitting on the curb next to the Caddy.

'Home sweet home,' said the younger officer. 'How're you gonna play this, Detective?'

'Nice and easy,' she replied. 'Talk to the super first, if there is one. Maybe a neighbor. Then just knock on his door.'

The older policeman shrugged. 'Okay. We'll just stay a step behind you. But when you get inside, you're pretty much on your own.'

Ferguson's building was tired red brick, a half-dozen stories high. Shaeffer took a step toward it, then turned and faced the boy sitting on the curb. He was wearing a glistening white, expensive pair of hightop basketball shoes beneath tattered sweatpants.

'How you doing?' she asked.

The boy shrugged. 'Okay.'

'What're you up to?'

The boy gestured. 'I watch the wheels. You police?'

'You got it.'

'Not from 'round here.'

'No. You know a man named Robert Earl Ferguson?'

'Florida man. You looking for him?'

'Yes. He inside?'

'Don't know. No one sees him much.'

'Why not?'

The boy turned away. 'Guess he's got something. going.'

Shaeffer nodded and walked up the steps to the entranceway, trailed by the two uniformed officers. She checked a bank of mailboxes, finding Ferguson's name scratched on one. She took down the names of some neighbors as well and found a name with the abbreviation 'Supt' written after it. She rang that buzzer and stood next to an intercom. There was no reply.

'It don't work,' said the older officer.

'Nothing like that works down here,' added the younger.

She reached out and pushed on the apartment-house door. It swung open. She felt a momentary embarrassment.

I guess things like locks and buzzers still work down in Florida,' said the older policeman.

The interior of the apartment house was cavelike and dark. The hallways were narrow, scratched with graffiti and smelling vaguely of refuse tinged with urine. The younger policeman must have seen her nose wrinkle in distaste, because he said, 'Hey, this one's a helluva lot better than most.' He gestured. 'You don't see any drunks living in the hallway, do you? That's a big deal, right there.'

She found the super's apartment beneath the stairwell, knocked hard three times and after a moment heard noises from inside. Then a voice. 'Whatcha want?'

She held her badge up to the peephole. 'Police, sir,' she replied.

There was a series of clocking as three or four different locks were unfastened. Finally the door swung open, revealing a thin, middle-aged black man, barefoot beneath work clothes.

'You Mr. Washington? The superintendent?'

He nodded. 'Whatcha want?' he repeated.

'I want to come in out of the hallway,' she said briskly.

He opened the door and let the three of them inside. 'I ain't done nothing.'

Shaeffer glanced about at the threadbare furniture and tattered carpets, then turned toward the super and asked, 'Robert Earl Ferguson. Is he upstairs?'

The man shrugged. 'Maybe. I guess so. I don't pay much attention to comings and goings, you know.'

'Who does?'

'My wife does,' he said, pointing.

She turned and saw a short black woman, as wide as her husband was thin, standing quietly beneath an archway, steadying herself with an aluminum walker.

'Mrs. Washington?'

'That's right.'

'Is Robert Earl Ferguson upstairs?'

'He should be. Ain't gone out today.'

'How would you know?'

The woman struggled forward a step, carefully placing the walker in front of her. Her breath came in rapid, sharp, wheezing gasps.

'I don't move so good. I spends my days over there…' She pointed toward a front window. 'Watching what's going on in this world before I leaves it behind, doing a little knitting, and the such. I get to know pretty much when people come and goes.'

'And Ferguson, does he have a schedule? Is he regular?'

She nodded. Shaeffer took out a notepad and made some notations. 'Where's he go?'

'Well, I don't know for sure, but he's usually carrying some of those college books in a bag. Like a knapsack kinda bag. Put it on your back like you're gonna be in the army or take a hike or something. He goes out in the afternoons. Don't see him come back till late at night. Sometimes he goes off with a little suitcase. Don't come back for a couple of days. I guess he travels some.'

'You're still there, late? Watching?'

'Don't sleep too good, neither. Don't walk too good. Don't breathe too good. Don't do nothing too good now.'

Andrea Shaeffer felt excitement quickening. 'How's your memory?' she asked.

'Memory ain't limping around, that what you mean. Memory's fine. Whatcha need to know?'

'A week to ten days ago. Did Ferguson go out of town? Did you see him with that suitcase? Was he gone for a day or two? Anything unusual. Anything out of the routine?'

The woman thought hard. Shaeffer watched her mentally sorting through all the comings and goings she'd witnessed. The woman's eyes narrowed, then widened slightly, as if an image or memory crossed rapidly through her head. She opened her mouth as if to say something, her hand fluttering away from the grip on the aluminum walker. But before the words came out, Shaeffer saw the woman reconsider, as if a second thought had tripped the first. The woman's eyes narrowed, hesitating on the notepad that hovered in the detective's hands. Finally, she shook her head.

'Don't think so. But I'll consider it some more. Can't be absolutely sure without thinking on it for a piece. You know how it is.'

The detective watched the woman shift about. She remembers something, she thought. She just won't say it. 'You sure?'

'No,' the woman said warily. 'I might remember something after I set my mind on it a spell. A week to ten days ago, that what you say?'

'That's right.'

'I'll do some thinking.'

'All right. You do that. Is there anyone else who might know?'

'No, ma'am. He keeps to himself. Just heads out in the afternoons. Comes back at night. Sometimes early. Sometimes a bit later. That boy never makes noise, never causes a ruckus, just quiet. He don't even have a girlfriend. What you need to know all this for? What sort of police trouble he in?'

'You know anything about what he's been doing the past few years? Down in Florida?'

Mr. Washington interrupted. 'We heard he did some time down there. But that's all.'

'Doing time ain't much of a crime around here, ma'am. Just about everybody's done some time,' interjected the wife. She looked over at her husband. 'And Lord knows, those that ain't done any time are probably gonna end up doing some before too long. That's the way down here. Yes, ma'am.'

'How's he pay his rent?' Shaeffer asked.

'In cash. First of the month. No problem.'

She made a note of that.

'But it ain't that much, you know. This place ain't fancy, in case you haven't noticed.'

'Did you ever see him with a knife? Like a hunting knife? Ever see one in his apartment?'

'No, ma'am.'

'A gun?'

'No, I don't think so. But I expect most folks down here's got one hid somewhere.'

'Anything at all you remember about him. Anything out of the ordinary?'

'Well, it ain't ordinary down here to spend your time with those books.'

Shaeffer nodded. She handed both husband and wife her business card, embossed with the shield of the Monroe County sheriff's office. 'You think of something, you can call me. Collect. I'll be at this number here for a couple of days.' She wrote down the exchange of the motel near the airport where she'd parked her bag.

They both stared dutifully at the cards as she let herself out. In the hallway, the older policeman looked at her. 'Learn anything? It didn't sound all that exciting to me. 'Cept maybe that old gal was lying to you when she said she didn't remember a week ago.'

'She sure as hell remembered something,' said the younger officer.

'You guys saw it, too?'

'Couldn't hardly miss it. But hell, I don't know what it means. More'n likely nothing. What do you think, Detective?'

'We're getting there,' she replied. 'Time to see if the man's home.'

18. The Convenient Man

She took a slow, deep breath to try to control her surging heart, and knocked on the door. The apartment house hallway was dark, despite a window at the end that allowed some weak light to slide past a layer of gray grime. She had little idea what to expect. An unmade killer, she thought. What is he? One side of a triangle. A man who studies but sometimes packs a suitcase and goes someplace for several days. She knocked again and after a moment came the expected answer. 'Who's there?'

'Police.'

The word hung in the air in front of her, echoing in the small space. A few seconds passed.

'What do you want?'

'To ask you some questions. Open the door.'

'What sort of questions?'

She could sense the man's presence just inches away, hidden by the slab of brown wood. 'Open the door.'

The two officers stiffened behind her, and each stepped back slightly, out of the direct line. She rapped again on the door.

'Police,' she repeated. She did not know what she would do if he refused to open.

'All right.'

She had no time to feel relief. She thought she heard a catch in his voice, a small hesitation, like the reluctance of a child caught doing something improper. Perhaps, she thought, he'd turned away just before speaking, letting his eyes quickly survey his apartment, trying to guess what it was that she might see. Evidence? Evidence of what?

There was a sound of dead bolts being thrown and chain locks being removed, and then the door swung open slightly. Andrea Shaeffer stared at Robert Earl Ferguson. He was wearing jeans and sneakers and a baggy, faded maroon sweatshirt that draped around his shoulders, several sizes too large, obscuring his true shape. His hair was cropped close, he was clean-shaven. She almost stepped back in surprise; the force of the man's anger struck her like a blow. His eyes were fierce, penetrating. They severed the space between them.

'What do you want?' he asked. 'I haven't done anything.'

'I want to speak with you.'

'You got a badge?' he demanded.

She held up her shield for him to inspect.

'Monroe County? Florida?'

'That's right. My name's Shaeffer. I work homicide.'

For a moment she thought she saw uncertainty course through Ferguson's face, as if he were trying hard to remember something elusive.

'That's down below Dade, right? Below the edge of the 'Glades?'

'Right.'

'What do you need me for?'

'May I step inside?'

'Not until you tell me why you're here.'

Ferguson seemed to look her over in the silence that swept over them. She realized they were almost the same height and that his slight build seemed hardly more substantial than her own. But he was also the sort of man to whom size and strength were irrelevant.

'You're a long ways from home,' he said.

He turned and glared at the two officers hanging just behind her shoulder. 'What about them?'

'They're local.'

'Scared to come down here alone?' His eyes narrowed unpleasantly. The two backup officers stepped forward, closing the gap between them. Ferguson remained in the doorway, folding his arms in front of his chest.

'No,' she replied immediately, but the word only prompted a small grin that raced away rapidly.

'I haven't done anything,' he repeated, but with a flat tonality, like a lawyer saying something for a transcript.

'I didn't say you had.'

Ferguson smiled. 'But you wouldn't come all the way from Monroe County, all the way up here to this delightful place just to see me if you didn't have a good reason, right?' He stepped back. 'All right. You can come in. Ask your questions. Got nothing to hide.'

This last sentence was spoken loudly and directed at the two New Jersey policemen.

She stepped forward into the apartment. As soon as she was past him, Ferguson moved between her and the two backup officers, blocking their route.

I didn't invite you two goons,' he said abruptly. 'Just her. Unless you got a warrant.'

Shaeffer turned in surprise. She saw both Newark policemen bristle instantly. Like all cops, they were unaccustomed to getting orders from civilians.

'Move out of the way,' the older policeman said.

'Forget it. She has a question. She can come in and ask it.'

The younger officer moved to put his hand on Ferguson's chest, as if to thrust him aside, then seemed to think better of it. Shaeffer blurted out, 'It's all right. I can handle this.'

The two policemen wavered.

'It's not procedure,' the older one said to her. He turned to Ferguson. 'You want to push me, punk?'

Ferguson didn't move.

Shaeffer made a small, sweeping gesture with her hand. There was a momentary pause, then the two backup officers stepped back into the hallway.

'All right, the older one said. 'We'll wait here.' He turned toward Ferguson. 'I've got a good memory for faces, asshole,' he whispered. 'And yours just made my list.'

Ferguson sneered at the man. 'And you've made mine,' he said.

He started to close the door, only to have the younger officer shoot an arm out, stiff-arm like a football player, and say, 'This stays open, huh? No trouble that way.'

Ferguson's hand dropped away from the door. 'If that's the way you like it.' He turned and led Shaeffer into the apartment. As he walked, he said, 'I've seen them before. Just like half the COs on Death Row. Think they got to be tough. Don't know what tough really is.'

'What is tough, Mr. Ferguson?'

'Tough is knowing a time and date. Knowing you're perfectly healthy but society has delivered to you a terminal illness. Tough is knowing every breath draws you one breath closer to the last one.'

He stopped in the center of a small living room. 'But what about you, Detective? You think you're tough, too?'

'When I have to be,' she replied.

He didn't laugh but stared at her with a mixture of distrust and mockery. 'Have a seat,' he said. Ferguson slid onto the corner of a well-worn couch.

'Thanks,' she replied. But she didn't sit. Instead, she started to walk slowly around the room, inspecting, at the same time keeping an eye on him. It was something she'd been taught. Keep to her feet while the subject sits. It will make almost anyone nervous and makes the questioner seem more powerful. His eyes trailed her closely.

'Looking for something?'

'No.'

'Then tell me what you want.'

She went to a window and glanced out. She could see the pimp's red car and up and down the block, which was empty of life.

'Not much to look at,' she said. 'Why would anyone live here? Especially if they didn't have to.'

He did not answer her question.

'Whores on the corner. A crack house half a block away. What else? Thieves. Street gangs. Addicts She looked hard at him. 'Killers. And you.'

That's right.'

'What are you, Mr. Ferguson?'

'I'm a student.'

'Any others down here?'

'None that I've met.'

'So why do you live here?'

'It suits me.'

'You fit in?'

I didn't say that.'

'Then why?'

'It's safe.' He laughed slightly. 'Safest place on earth.'

'That's not an answer.'

He shrugged. 'You live within yourself. Not in that world. Inside. That's the first lesson you learn on Death Row. First of many. You think you forget what you learn there just because you're out? Now, tell me what you want.'

Instead of answering, she continued to move through the small apartment. She looked in at a bedroom. There was a narrow single bed and a solitary scarred brown wooden chest of drawers. She could see some clothes hung in a meager closet recessed into a black wall. The kitchen had a small refrigerator, stove, and a sink. A stack of chipped, utilitarian plates and cups drained next to the sink.

Back in the living room, she noticed a small table in the corner with a portable typewriter sitting on it and papers strewn about. Next to the table was a bookcase made from cinder blocks and cheap unpainted pine boards. She approached the desk and inspected the books on the shelves, immediately recognizing several of the titles: a book on forensic medicine by a former New York City medical examiner, one on FBI identification techniques put out by the government, a third book on media and crime, written by a professor at Columbia University. She had read them in her own course work at the police academy. There were many others, all relating to crime and detection, all well worn, clearly purchased secondhand. She pulled one from a shelf and flipped it open. Certain passages were highlighted in yellow marker.

'These your markings?'

'No. Tell me what you want.'

She put the book down and let her eyes sweep over the papers on the desk. She noticed on one sheet a series of addresses, including Matthew Cowart's. There were several listings from Pachoula, and a lawyer in Tampa that she didn't recognize. She picked it up and gestured toward him.

'Who are these people?' she asked.

He seemed to hesitate, then replied, 'I owe letters. People who supported me in my fight to get out of prison.'

She put the paper down. Next to the desk was a stack of newspapers. She bent down and flipped through them. There were local sections and front pages. Some of the newspapers were from New Jersey, others from Florida. She saw issues of the Miami Journal, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Petersburg Times, and others. She took out an issue of the Newark Star-Ledger and saw a headline that read: FAMILY OFFERS REWARD IN MISSING DAUGHTER CASE.

'This sort of thing interest you?' she asked.

'Same as it does you,' Ferguson answered. 'Isn't that true, Detective? When you pick up a newspaper, what's the first story you read?'

She did not reply but glanced down at the newspapers again. She noticed there was a crime story on each page. Other headlines leapt out at her: POLICE PROBE EVIDENCE IN ASSAULT and NO LEAD IN ABDUCTION, POLICE SAY.

'Where'd you get these papers?'

He glared at her. 'I go back to Florida with some frequency. Give speeches at churches, to civic groups.' His eyes locked onto her own. 'Black churches, black civic groups. The sort of people who understand how an innocent man gets sent to Death Row. The sort of people who don't think it's so damn unusual for a black man to get harassed by the cops. Who wouldn't think it so damn strange that every cheap homicide cop in the state who can't get anywhere on some damn case would roust an innocent black man.'

He continued to stare at her, and she dropped the newspaper she was holding back onto the pile.

I study criminology. "Media and Crime." Wednesdays, five-thirty P.M. to seven-thirty P.M. It's an elective. Criminology 307. Professor Morin. That's why I collect newspapers.'

She let her eyes sweep over the desk again.

'I'm getting an A,' he added. He restored the mocking tone to his voice. 'Now, tell me what you want, he insisted.

'All right,' she said. The force of his gaze was making her uncomfortable. She stepped away from his desk and returned to face him directly.

'When were you last in the Florida Keys? Upper Keys. Islamorada. Marathon. Key Largo. When did you go down there to talk to some civic group?' She made no attempt to conceal her sarcasm.

'I've never been in the Keys,' he replied.

'No?'

'Never.'

'Of course, if I had someone telling me the contrary, that would say something, wouldn't it?' She lied easily, but the implicit threat seemed to wash off him.

'It would say someone was feeding you false information.'

'You know a street called Tarpon Drive?'

'No.'

'Your friend Cowart's been there.'

He didn't reply.

'You know what he found there?'

'No.'

'Two dead bodies.'

'Is that why you're here?'

'No,' she lied. 'I'm here because I don't understand something.'

A cold rigidity rode his voice. 'What don't you understand, Detective?'

'You, Blair Sullivan, and Matthew Cowart.'

There was a momentary silence in the room.

'I can't help you,' he said.

'No?' Ferguson had the ability to make someone uncomfortable simply by remaining still, she thought. 'All right. Tell me what you were doing in the days before your old buddy Blair Sullivan got juiced.'

For an instant, a look of surprise sliced across his face. Then Ferguson answered, I was here. Studying. Going to classes. My course list is on the wall there.'

'Right before Sullivan went to the chair. Did you take one of your little trips?'

'No.'

He pointed at the wall. She turned and saw a list taped to the faded paint. She went over and wrote down the times and places and professors' names. Professor Morin and 'Media and Crime' were on the list.

'Can you prove it?'

'Do I have to?'

'Maybe.'

'Then maybe I can.'

Shaeffer heard a siren sweep by in the distance, its sound penetrating into the small room.

'… And he was never my buddy,' Ferguson said. 'In fact, he hated me. I hated him.'

'Is that right?'

'Yes.'

'What do you know about the murders of his stepfather and mother?'

Ts that your case?'

'Answer the question.'

'Nothing.' He smiled at her, then added, 'No. I know what I read and saw on television. I know they were killed a few days before his execution and that he told Mr. Cowart that he managed to arrange the deaths. That was in the papers. Even made the New York Times, Detective. But that's all.' Ferguson seemed to relax. His voice abruptly took on the tone of someone who enjoyed verbal fencing.

'Tell me how he could arrange those killings,' she asked. 'You're the Death Row expert.'

'That's right, I am.' Ferguson paused, thinking. 'There are a couple of different ways…' He grinned at her unpleasantly. 'First thing I'd do is pull the visitor lists. They log every visitor onto the Row. Every lawyer, reporter, friend, and family member. I'd go back to the day Sullivan arrived on the Row and I'd check every single person who came to see him. There were quite a bunch, you know. Shrinks and producers and FBI specialists. And of course, eventually, Mr. Cowart…' Ferguson's voice had a slightly animated edge to it '… And then I'd talk to the guards. You know what it takes to be a guard on Death Row? You've got to have a bit of the killer in you, you know, because you're always aware that one day it could be you strapping some poor sucker into the chair. You've got to want to be that man.' He held up his hand. 'Oh, hell, they'll tell you that it's just a job and nothing personal and nothing different from any other part of the prison, but that ain't true. You got to volunteer for Q, R, and S wings. And you got to like what you're doing. And like what you might have to do.'

He looked up at her, eyes alert. '… And I don't suppose if you don't think it's such a damn hard thing to strap somebody into a chair and fry their ass it'd be such a damn hard thing to go tie somebody in a chair and cut their throat.'

1 didn't say they had their throats cut.'

'It was in all the papers.'

'Who?' she asked. 'Give me a name or two.'

'You're asking me to help you?'

'Names. Who on the Row would you talk to?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know. But they were there. You could tell, you know. The Row is a society of killers. It didn't take too long to figure out that some of the jailers belonged on the other side.'

He continued to grin at her. 'Go and see for yourself,' he said. 'Shouldn't take a sharp detective like yourself too long to figure out who's bent and who's not.'

'A society of killers,' she said. 'Where did you fit in, Mr. Ferguson?'

'I didn't. I was on the fringe.'

'How much would you have to pay?'

He shrugged. 'I don't know. A lot? A little? Currency is a hard thing to estimate, Detective, because the right person will do the wrong thing for a lot of different reasons.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, Blair Sullivan, for example. He'd likely kill you for no reason at all. With no other payment than the sheer pleasure of it, huh, Detective? You ever meet anybody like that? I don't bet so. You look a bit young and inexperienced for that.'

His eyes followed her as she shifted position. 'And you know, Detective, there's some men on the Row hate the police so bad, they'd kill a cop for free. And enjoy every second of it. Especially if they could, you know, draw it out. Make it last.'

He mocked her with lilting tones. 'And they'd take a special pleasure in killing a lady cop, don't you think, Detective? A special, unique, and very terrible pleasure.'

She didn't reply, simply letting the harsh words flow over her like cold water.

– '… Or Mr. Cowart. Seems to me he'd do just about anything for a good story. What do you think, Detective?'

She felt a surge within her. 'What about you, Mr. Ferguson? What payment would you ask to kill somebody?'

His smile slid away. 'Never killed anybody. Never will.'

'That's not the question, Mr. Ferguson. What payment would you ask for?'

'It would depend,' he replied, with ice quiet riding his voice.

'Depend on what?' she demanded.

'Depend on who it was I was going to kill.' He stared across the room at her. 'Isn't that true for everybody, Detective? There are some killings that would require big money, right? Others you'd do for nothing.'

'What would you do for nothing, Mr. Ferguson?'

He smiled again. 'Can't really say. Never thought about it.'

'Really? That's not what you told those two Escambia detectives. Not what a jury found.'

Barely contained rage creased the complacency of his face, and he replied in bitter, low tones, 'That was beat out of me. You know that perfectly well. Judge threw it out. I never did anything to that little girl. Sullivan did, he killed her.'

'And the price?'

'In that case,' Ferguson said coldly, 'the price was paid in pleasure.'

'What about Sullivan and his family? What do you think he'd have paid for those deaths?'

'Blair Sullivan? I suspect he'd have paid with his soul to take them with him.'

Ferguson leaned forward, lowering his voice. 'You know what he told me, before I figured out he was the person who killed the little girl that had put me on the Row? He used to talk about cancer, you know. Like some damn doctor, he knew so much about the disease. He would simply start in talking about deformed cells and molecular structures and DNA breakdowns and how just this little, tiny, microscopic wrong was working away within you, wreaking evil right through your whole body and working hard so that it would get in your lungs and colon and pancreas and brain and whatever, just make you rot away from within. And when he'd finish his lecture, he'd lean back and say why he was just the same damn thing, no different at all. What do you think of that, Detective?'

Ferguson leaned back, as if relaxing, but Shaeffer could see the muscles beneath his sweatshirt twitch. She didn't reply but started to move about the apartment again. The floor seemed to sway slightly beneath her feet.

'He talked to you about death?'

Ferguson leaned forward. 'On Death Row, it's a frequent subject.'

'And what did you learn?'

'I learned that it's about the most common thing around, ain't it, Detective? Why, it's just everywhere you turn. People think dying is something special, but it isn't, is it?'

'Some deaths are special.'

'Those must be the ones you're interested in.'

'That's right.'

She saw him lean forward slightly, as if anticipating her next question.

'You like sneakers?' she asked abruptly. For an instant, she thought it was someone else speaking in the small room.

He looked slightly surprised. 'Sure. Wear them all the time. Everybody here does.'

'How about that pair. What sort are they?'

'These are Nikes.'

'They look new.'

'Just last week.'

'Got another pair in the closet?'

'Sure.'

She strode across in front of him, heading toward the back bedroom. 'Just sit still,' she said. She could sense his eyes tracking her, burning into her back.

In the closet there was a pair of hightop basketball shoes. She picked them up. Damn! she thought abruptly. They were Converse and old and worn enough to have ripped near the toe. Still, she turned them over and inspected the soles. Near the ball of the foot the rubber had been rubbed smooth. She shook her head. That would have shown up. And the sole tread configuration was different from the Reeboks that the killer had worn when he visited number thirteen Tarpon Drive. She replaced the shoes and returned to face Ferguson.

He looked at her. 'So, you've got a shoeprint from the murder scene, right?'

She remained silent.

'… And you just all of a sudden thought you'd better check my closet.' He stared at her. 'What else have you got?' After a moment, he answered his own question. 'Not much, right? But what brings you here?'

1 told you. Matthew Cowart. Blair Sullivan. And you.'

He didn't respond at first. She could see his mind working rapidly. Finally he spoke in a flat, angry voice. 'So, this is how it's gonna be? From now on? Is that right? Some tired-ass Florida cop needs to make somebody on a killing and I'm going to be the convenient one, right? Convicted once, so I'm a likely candidate for just about anything you can't make right away.'

'I didn't say you were a suspect.'

'But you wanted to see my sneakers.'

'Routine, Mr. Ferguson. I'm checking everyone's sneakers. Even Mr. Cowart's.'

Ferguson snorted a half laugh. 'Sure you are. What sort does Cowart wear?'

She continued the lie rapidly. 'Reeboks.'

'Sure. They must be new, too, because last time I saw him he was wearing Converse just like my old ones.'

She didn't reply.

'So, you're checking everyone's sneakers. But I'm the easy one, right? Wouldn't it be something to connect me to that killing, huh, Detective? That'd get you some headlines. Maybe get you a promotion, too. Ain't nobody going to question your motives.'

She turned it back on him. 'Are you? Why are you so easy?'

'Always have been, always will be. If not me, then someone like me: young and black. Makes me automatically a suspect.'

She shook her head.

He half-rose from his seat in sudden anger. 'No? When they needed someone fast in Pachoula who'd they come to see? And you? You figure that just because I knew Blair Sullivan, that made me someone you'd better talk to fast. But I didn't, damn you! That man almost cost me my life. I spent three years on Death Row for something I didn't do because of cops like you. I thought I was a dead man just because I was convenient for the system. So, screw you, Detective. I ain't gonna be convenient for nobody no more. I may be black, but I'm no killer. And just because I am black, doesn't make me one.'

Ferguson slid back into his seat. 'You wanted to know why I chose to live here? Because here people understand what it is like to be black and always be a suspect or a victim. That's what everyone here is. One or the other. And I've been both, so that's why I fit. That's why I like it, even though I don't have to be here. You understand that, Detective? I doubt it. Because you're white, and you'll never know.'

He rose again, and stared out the window. 'You'll never understand how someone can think this is home.' He turned to her. 'Got any more questions, Detective?'

The wealth of his fury had overcome her. She shook her head.

'Good,' he said quietly. 'Then get the hell out.'

He pointed toward the door. She stepped toward it.

'I may have more questions,' she said.

He shook his head. 'No, I don't think so, Detective. Not again. Last time I was polite to a couple of detectives it cost me three years of my life and nearly killed me. So, you've had your chance. And now it's finished.'

She was in the doorway. She hesitated, as if reluctant to leave but feeling at the same instant an immense relief at getting out of the small space. She turned toward him, but he was already closing the door on her. She had a quick glimpse of his eyes, narrowed in anger, before the door slammed shut. The clicking sound of the locks being thrown echoed in the hallway.

19. Plumbing

For most of the ride, the three men were silent.

Finally, as they turned off the highway, the police cruiser bumping against the hard-packed dirt of the secondary road, Bruce Wilcox said, 'She's not gonna tell us a thing. She'll grab that old shotgun of hers and kick us off her place fast as a hungry mosquito can bite your naked ass. We're wasting our time.'

He was driving. Next to him in the front seat, Tanny Brown stared through the windshield without replying. When a shaft of light slipped through the canopy of trees and struck him, it made his dark skin glisten, almost as if wet. At Wilcox's words, he raised a hand and made a small dismissive gesture, then dropped back into thought.

Wilcox humphed and drove on for a moment or two. 'I still think we're wasting our time.'

'We aren't,' Brown growled as the car skidded and swayed on the rough road.

'Well, why not?' the detective asked. 'And I wish you two'd fill me in on all this.'

He twitched his head toward Cowart, sitting in the center of the rear seat, feeling more or less like one of the prisoners who generally occupied that location.

Brown spoke slowly. 'Before Sullivan went to the chair, he implied to Cowart that there was evidence that we missed out at the Ferguson homestead. That it's still there. That's what we're doing now.'

Wilcox shook his head. 'Tanny, you ain't telling me the half of it. You know, he was just jerking your chain.' He spoke as if Cowart wasn't in the car. 'I supervised that search myself. We took the place apart. Tapped every wall for a hollow spot. Pulled up the floorboards. Sifted through all the coals in that old stove to see if he'd burned anything. Crawled under the damn house with a metal detector. Hell, I even brought that damn tracking dog in, scented him, and led him through the place myself. If the creep had hid something, I'da found it.'

'Sullivan said you missed something,' Cowart insisted.

'Sullivan told the pencil pusher back there a lot of things, Wilcox said to his partner. 'Why are we paying any damn attention to it?'

'Hey,' Cowart said. 'Give it a rest, will ya?'

'Where'd he tell you to look?'

'He didn't. Just said you missed something. Made an obscene joke about having eyes in my backside.'

Wilcox shook his head. 'And anyway, it won't do no good to find something.' He glanced over at Brown. "You know that, boss, well as I. Ferguson's history. Gotta move on.'

'No,' Tanny Brown answered slowly. 'He's not.'

'So we find something? What's the point? Fruit of the poisonous tree. We can't use anything against Ferguson that stems from an illegal act. You gotta go back to that confession. If he'd a told us where everything was, exactly how he killed little Joanie, the whole shooting match, and then the judge tosses out that confession? Well, everything that follows goes, too.'

'But that's not what happened,' Cowart said.

Brown interrupted. 'Right. Not exactly. It might give some lawyers something to argue over.' He hesitated before continuing. '… But I'm not expecting to win this case in court.' He did not amplify.

After a second's silence> Wilcox started in again. 'I don't eyen think Ferguson's grandmother'll let us look around unless we've got a warrant. Hell, I don't think she'd even tell us if the sun was up without an order from a judge. Waste of time.'

'She'll let Cowart look.'

'When we drive him up? No way.'

'She will.'

'She probably hates the press worse'n I do. After all, they helped put her little darling on the Row in the first place.'

'Then got him out.'

'I don't think that's the way she thinks. She's an old Baptist Bible-thumper. She probably believes that Jesus Hisself came down and opened the prison gate for her darling little boy, because she bombarded Him with prayers every Sunday at the meeting house. Anyway, even if she does let him in and let him poke around, which she won't, he doesn't even know what to look for. Or even how to look for it.'

'Yes, he does.'

'Okay, then suppose, just suppose, for the sake of fuckall, that he finds something. What does that do for us?'

'One thing,' Brown replied. He rolled down his window, letting some of the day's heat slip into the police cruiser, where it quickly overcame the stale cold of the air conditioner. He spoke softly, his voice barely cresting the wind noise from the window. 'Then we'll know that about this, at least, Sullivan was telling the truth.'

'So what?' Wilcox snapped. 'What the hell does that do for us?'

The question drew more silence from the police lieutenant.

'Then we'll know what we're dealing with,' Cowart finally interjected.

'Hah!' Wilcox snorted.

He drove on, gripping the steering wheel tightly, frustrated by the sense that his friend and partner and his adversary had shared some information to which he was not privy. It gave him an angry, hateful feeling within. He drove hard, raising a cloud of brown dust behind, half-wishing some mangy old dog or squirrel would run out in front of the car. He punched the accelerator, feeling the rear fishtail slightly on the dirt, scrabbling for thrust.

Cowart watched a tree line on the edge of a distant forest. 'Where does that go?' he asked, pointing.

'Eventually to where we found Joanie. Edge of the same swamp. Runs back a half dozen miles or so before spreading out and curling toward town. Quicksand that'll kill ya and mud so thick you step in, it's like you put your foot in glue. Mile after mile of dead trees, weeds, and water. All dark and looks kinda the same. Get lost back in there, take a month to find your way out. If ever. Bugs, snakes, and gators and all sorts of slimy, crawling things. But good bass fishing, some real hawgs hanging underneath the dead wood. You just gotta be careful,' Wilcox answered. 'Not that you'd care.'

As the police cruiser careened down the back road, jerking and swaying with the bumps and ruts, Cowart thought of the folded sheets of computer paper that contained the stories he'd printed out in the Journal's library. They were inside his suit coat pocket, rubbing uncomfortably against his shirt, as if they had some radioactive quality that made them glow with heat. He had not shared the information with Tanny Brown.

It could just be coincidence, he insisted to himself. The man gave a speech in a church. Four days later a little girl disappears. That doesn't add up to anything. You don't know if he was still around or what he did after going to that church service, where he was, what he was doing. Four days. He could have been all the way back in Pachoula. Or Newark. Or Mars, for all you know.

His memory abruptly filled with the photograph of Joanie Shriver hanging on the wall at the elementary school. He saw the eyes of Dawn Perry staring out with little girl's insouciance and enthusiasm from the page of the police flyer. White and black. His throat felt suddenly dry. 'Getting close,' Wilcox announced.

His partner's words cracked through Tanny Brown's thoughts. When he had arrived home in Pachoula, he had quickly been inundated in the routine of his life. One of his daughters had failed to get the lead in the class play; the other had discovered that her date curfew was an hour earlier than any of her friends'. These were problems of considerable dimension, items that needed his immediate attention. There were certain duties that his father simply would not perform; making the rules was one of them. 'Your house. I'm just a visitor here,' the old man had said. He'd been quite content, however, to listen to the younger complain about not getting the acting role. Tanny Brown wondered if the old man's occasional deafness was not an advantage in those situations.

He had lied to them about where he'd been, lied, as well, about what he was doing. And, he realized, he would have lied if anyone had asked him what he was afraid of. He had been relieved that both girls were caught up in their own lives, with that uniquely obsessive way children have. He had looked at the two of them, only half-listening to their complaints, and seen the picture of Dawn Perry that he still kept in his coat pocket. Why are they any different? he wondered.

He had castigated himself: You cannot be a policeman and survive if you allow yourself to see events as anything other than cases with file numbers. He had forced himself to cling to what he knew, what he could testify to. He kept denying his instincts, because his instincts insisted there was something out there that was far more terrible than he'd ever considered.

'There we go,' Wilcox said.

They approached the shack rapidly, rattling loose stones against the undercarriage. Wilcox slammed the car to a halt and stared out, up at the tired wooden-frame house before saying, 'Okay, Cowart, let's see you talk your way inside.' He turned and glared at him.

'Give it a rest, Bruce, Brown grumbled.

Cowart did not reply but stepped out of the car and moved quickly across the dust of the front yard. He glanced back once, seeing the two detectives leaning side by side against the cruiser, watching his progress. He turned his back on them and climbed up the steps to the front porch. He called out, 'Missus Ferguson? You home, ma'am?'

He shaded his eyes, blinded as he stepped from the bright sunlight of the front yard into the dark shade of the porch. He tried to make out some movement inside but couldn't at first.

'Missus Ferguson? It's Matthew Cowart. From the Journal.'

There was still no reply.

He knocked hard on the doorframe, feeling it rattle beneath his knuckles. The whitewashed boards were peeling.

'Missus Ferguson, ma'am? Please.'

Then, finally, a scratching sound came from the darkness within. A moment passed before a disembodied voice floated through the shadows within the shack toward him. The voice had lost none of its crackling edge and angry tone. 'I know who you are. Whatcha want this time?'

'I need to talk to you again about Bobby Earl.'

'We done talked and talked, Mr. Reporter. I ain't hardly got no words left. Ain't you heard enough now?'

'No. Not nearly. Can I come in?'

'What? Y'all only got inside questions?'

'Missus Ferguson, please. It's important.'

'Important for who, Mr. Reporter?'

'Important for me. And for your grandson.'

'I don't believe that, she replied.

There was another silence. Cowart's eyes slowly adjusted to the shade, and he began to make out shapes through the screen door. He could see an old table with a flowered water pitcher on top and a shotgun and a cane standing in a corner. After a moment, he heard footsteps approaching the door and finally the wispy old black woman hovered into view, her skin blending with the darkness of the interior, but her silver hair catching the light and shining at him. She was moving slowly and scowling as if the arthritis in her hips and back had penetrated her heart as well.

'I done talked with you enough already. What more you need to know?'

The truth,' he responded abruptly.

The old woman's scowl creased into a laugh. 'You think you can find some truths in here, white boy? What, you think I keep the truth in a little jar by the door or somethin'? Pull it out when I needs it?'

'More or less,' he replied.

She cackled unpleasantly. He watched her eyes sweep past him out toward the yard where the two detectives waited. She fixed her eyes on the two policemen, staring hard, then, after a long pause, shifting back to Cowart. 'You ain't coming alone, this time.'

He shook his head.

'You on their side now, Mister White Reporter?'

'No.' He forced the lie out rapidly.

'Whose side you on, then?'

'Nobody's side.'

'Last time you came here, you was on my grandson's side. Something different now?'

He searched hard for the right words. 'Missus Ferguson, when I was at the prison, talking with the man who everybody thinks killed that little girl, he told me a story. A story all filled with killing, lies, half-truths, and half-lies. But one thing he said was that if I came here and looked, I would find some evidence.'

'What sort of evidence?'

'Evidence that Bobby Earl committed a crime.'

How would this man know that?'

He said Bobby Earl told him.'

The old woman shook her head and laughed, a dry, brittle sound that broke off in the hot air between them.

'Why should I let you poke around and find something that's just gonna do my boy some harm? Cain't y'all leave him alone? Let him make hisself into something? Things is finished and over. Let the dead rest and let the living get on.'

'That's not the way it works,' he said. 'You know that.'

'All I know is you come 'round here looking to stir up a new patch of trouble for my boy. He don't need it.'

Cowart took a deep breath. 'Here's the reason, Missus Ferguson. You let me in and I look around, I don't find anything and that's it. The story becomes another lie that man told me, and that's all there is to it. Life goes on. Bobby Earl'll never have to look back. Those two detectives will walk out of your life and out of his life. But if I don't look, then they're never gonna be satisfied. Neither will I. And it'll never end. There will always be some questions. They won't ever go away. It'll stick with him all his days. See what I'm saying?'

The old woman hung a hand on the door handle, thinking.

'I see that point,' she said finally, easing her words out carefully. 'But suppose I let you in and you find this awful somethin' that that man told you about. What then?'

Then Bobby Earl will be in trouble again.'

She paused again before replying. 'I don't truly see how my boy wins much if'n I let you in.'

Cowart stared at the old woman hard and let loose his final weapon. 'If you don't let me in, Missus Ferguson, then I'm going to assume you're hiding the truth from me. That there is some evidence hidden inside. That's what I'm going to tell those two detectives out there, and then a couple of things will happen. We'll come back with a warrant and search the place anyway. And no one's going to sleep until they make a case against your grandson, Missus Ferguson. I promise you that. And when they make it, I'll be right there, with my newspaper, and all the other papers and television stations, and you know what'll happen, don't you? So it seems to me you've only got one choice. Understand?'

The old woman's eyes immediately blistered hate.

'I understands perfect,' she snarled. 'I understands that white men in suits always get what they want. You want to get in, all right. You gonna get in, no matter what I say.'

'All right, then.'

'Come back with a paper from some judge, huh? They been here with one of those and it ain't done them no good at finding something. You think things different now?' She snorted in disgust.

Finally she unlatched the screen door with a click and held it open perhaps six inches.

'That man in prison, he tells you where to be looking?'

'No. Not precisely.'

The old woman grinned unpleasantly. 'Good luck, then.'

He stepped into the house, like stepping out of one world and into another. He was accustomed – as much as anyone could become accustomed – to urban inner-city squalor. He had trailed his friend Vernon Hawkins to enough ghetto crime scenes so that he was no longer shocked or surprised by city poverty, rats, and peeling paint. But this house was different and unsettling.

Cowart saw a rigid, barren poverty, a place that made no concession to comfort or aspiration, only stiff lives, hard-lived, ruled by desperate anger. A crucifix hung on the wall over a threadbare sofa. An old wood rocker with a single yellow lace doily on its seat stood in the corner. There were a few other chairs, mostly hand-hewn wood. On a mantelpiece above a fireplace was a portrait of Martin Luther King Junior and an old photograph of a lithe black man in an austere black suit. He guessed it was her late husband. There were a few other photographs of family members, including one of Robert Earl. The walls were dark brown wood, giving the house the semblance of a cave. Only random shafts of sunlight penetrated the windows, losing their fight against the shadows inside. He could see down a hallway to a kitchen where an old-fashioned wood stove dominated the center of the room. But everything was immaculate. Frayed age was everywhere, but not a particle of dust. Mrs. Ferguson probably treated a speck of dirt the same way she treated visitors.

'It ain't much, but it's mine,' she said grimly. 'No bank man come by saying he owns this place. It be all mine. Paying it off killed my husband and like to kill me, too, but I been happy here, even if it ain't so high and mighty a place.'

She hobbled over to the window and stared out. 'I know that Tanny Brown,' she said bitterly. 'I knows his momma, she dead, and his daddy. They worked hard for Mister White Man and rose up thinking they be better than us. Ain't no truth in that. I remembers when he was little, stealing oranges off'n trees in the white men's groves. Now he's all grown up into a big policeman and thinks he's mighty fine. He ain't no better'n my grandson, hear?'

She turned away from the window. 'So, go on, Mister White Reporter. Whatcha gonna look for? Ain't nothing here for you, boy. Cain't you see that?' She waved her arms around her, gesturing. 'Ain't nothin' here for nobody.'

He did see that.

Cowart glanced around and felt that Wilcox had been right.-He had no idea what he was searching for or where to search. He had a sudden image of Blair Sullivan laughing at him.

'No' he said. 'Where's Bobby Earl's room?'

The old woman pointed. 'Down on the right. Go ahead.'

Cowart moved slowly down the corridor in the center of the shack. He glanced in at the old woman's bedroom. He saw a Bible open in the center of an old double bed covered with a single white knit coverlet. Austere and icy. Comfort only in those words read, and precious little comfort at that. He walked past a small bathroom, no bigger than a closet, with a single basin and toilet. The fixtures shone with a polished newness. Then he turned into Ferguson's room.

It, too, was barren, a monk's quarters. A single window high on the wall let in a little light. There was an iron bed, a hand-hewn wooden table, a small chest of drawers, and a chair. An old plank had been nailed to one wall to hold a modest collection of paperback books. Manchild in the Promised Land and The Invisible Man butted up against some science-fiction novels. A pair of fishing rods were stacked in the corner, along with a scratched cheap plastic tackle box.

Cowart sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the soft mushiness of the springs. He let his eyes roam over the meager items in the room, searching for some sign. What should a killer's room look like?

He didn't know. He looked about, remembering how Ferguson had insisted to him that coming to Pachoula after Newark, New Jersey, was like stepping into a summer camp, that it was warm and special, some sort of Huck Finn-like adventureland. Where the hell is that? Cowart thought, staring around himself at the blank walls, the passionless items of furniture.

Where to start? He couldn't imagine that something as potent as evidence of a murder would be obvious, so he started in on the drawers of the bureau, feeling foolish, certain that he was simply going over well-searched territory. He rifled through a few changes of clothing without finding anything that he imagined could help him. He ran his hands down behind the bureau drawers, to see if something was concealed there. You're some detective, he thought. He climbed down on his knees and did the same with the bed. He felt the mattress. Then he tapped the walls, looking for a hollow spot.

To conceal what? he kept asking himself.

He was on his hands and knees, tapping at the floor when Ferguson's grandmother hovered in the doorway.

'They done that,' she said. 'Way back when. Now, ain't ya satisfied yet?'

He stood up slowly, close to embarrassment. I don't know.'

She laughed at him. 'You finished now?'

He straightened his clothes. 'Let me talk to the detectives.'

She cackled again and trailed him back through the house and onto the front porch as he walked across the dirt yard to the two detectives.

Tanny Brown spoke first, but his eyes reached past Cowart, up at the old woman, before returning to settle on the reporter. 'Well?'

'Nothing that seemed like evidence of anything except being poor.'

'Told you so,' Wilcox said. He looked over at Cowart, his voice softening somewhat. 'You go into Ferguson's room?'

'Yeah.'

'Not much there, right?'

'A couple of books. Fishing pole. Tackle box. Few clothes in the drawers, that's it.'

'Wilcox nodded. 'That's how I remember it. That's what bugged me so damn much. You know, you walk into most anybody's room, no matter how rich or poor they are, and there's something in there that says something about who they are. But not in there. Not in that whole house.'

Brown rubbed his forehead. 'Damn, he said. 'I feel stupid and I am stupid.'

Co wart broke into his thoughts. 'The trouble is, I don't know what you did when you were there before, and what's different now. I could be picking something up that might mean something to you, but not to me.'

Wilcox seemed to have let some of his antagonism slide away in the growing heat of the day. 'That's what I thought would happen. Here, maybe this will help.'

He walked around to the trunk of the vehicle and opened it. Several accordion paper folders were stacked inside, next to a riot shotgun, a pair of flak jackets, and a large crowbar. He rifled swiftly through the files, finally seizing several stapled sheets of paper. He handed them to Cowart.

'Here's the inventory from the search back then. See if that helps.'

The papers started with a list of items seized from the house and their disposition. There were several articles of clothing. These were noted as 'Returned after analysis. Negative findings.' Some knives had been taken from the kitchen as well. These, too, were marked 'Returned.'

The inventory also listed what items had been taken from what part of the house. There were brief descriptions of the methods used to search each room and the locations searched. Cowart saw that Ferguson's room had been exhaustively processed, with negative results.

'You see anything inside we missed?' Wilcox asked.

Cowart shook his head.

'Tanny, we're wasting our time.'

Cowart looked up from the papers to see that the police lieutenant had stepped aside while he was reading, fixing his eyes on the old woman. She stayed on the edge of her porch, glaring back at him, their eyes locked onto each other.

'Tanny?' Wilcox asked.

The policeman didn't reply.

Cowart watched the detective and the old woman try to stare each other down. He was aware of the sweat streaking down beneath his shirt and the clammy damp that matted his hair to his forehead.

Brown spoke after a moment, without removing his eyes from the old woman. 'Look again,' he said. I think we're missing something obvious.'

'Christ, Tanny…' Wilcox started again, only to be cut off by the police lieutenant.

'Look at her. She knows something and knows we don't have a clue. Damn. Keep looking.'

Wilcox shrugged, muttering something under his breath which dissipated in the midday heat. Cowart dropped his eyes to the sheets of paper, trying to process them as carefully as the policeman had once processed the house. He went over the sheets, room by room, talking out loud toward Wilcox as he did. 'Front room: fingerprinting, all items inspected, none seized, floorboards loosened, walls tapped, metal detector used; grandmother's room: searched and examined for hidden items, none found; storeroom: cutting shears seized, cleaning rags seized, towel seized, floorboards removed; Ferguson's room: clothing seized, walls and floors examined, vacuumed for hair samples; kitchen: cutlery inspected and seized, stove ashes examined, sent to lab, crawl space inspected… ' He looked up. 'It seems pretty complete…'

'Hell, we spent hours in that place, checking every damn loose nail,' Wilcox said.

Brown continued to stare up at the old woman.

'It seems to be the same today,' Cowart said, 'except I guess she turned the storeroom into a toilet. Little room between hers and Ferguson's?' he asked.

'Yeah. More like a closet than a storeroom, really,' Wilcox said.

Cowart nodded. 'Toilet and basin now.'

Wilcox added, 1 heard Ferguson put that in. Used some of the money he got from some Hollywood producer who wanted to tell his life story. Progress reaches the sticks.'

In that moment, it seemed that the sunlight pouring down on top of them redoubled, a sudden explosion of heat that sucked all the air out of the yard.

'So before, where did they…'

'Old outhouse way 'round the back.'

'And?'

'And what?'

'It's not on the list here,' Cowart said slowly. He could feel a sudden pounding in his temples.

Brown spun away from Mrs. Ferguson, eyes burrowing into his partner. 'You searched it, right?'

Wilcox nodded, hesitantly. 'Ahh, yeah. Sort of. The warrant was for the house, so I wasn't sure if it was covered, exactly. But one of the technicians went inside, sure. Nothing.'

Brown stared hard at his partner.

'C'mon, Tanny. All it was was smells and shits. The tech went in, poked about and got the hell out of there. It was in the search report.' He pointed down to a sentence in the midst of the sheets of paper. 'See, he said hesitantly.

Cowart stumbled away from the car. He remembered Blair Sullivan's words: 'If you got eyes in your ass.'

'Goddammit,' he said. 'Goddammit.' He turned toward Brown. 'Sullivan said…'

The policeman frowned. 'I recall what he said.'

Cowart turned abruptly and started walking around the side of the shack, toward the back. He heard Ferguson's grandmother's voice driven across the heat toward him, penetrating like an arrow. 'Where you heading, boy?'

'Out back,' Cowart said brusquely.

'Ain't nothing there for you,' she shouted shrilly. 'You can't go back there.'

I want to see. Goddammit, I want to see.'

Brown caught up with him quickly, the crowbar from the trunk of the car in his hand. The two men strode around the corner of the house as the woman's protests slid away in the blistering sunlight. They saw the outhouse in a corner, near some trees, back away from everything. The wooden walls had faded to a dull gray. Cowart walked up to it. Cobwebs covered the door. He seized the handle and pulled hard, tugging, as it opened reluctantly, making a screeching sound of. protest, old wood scraping against old wood. The door jammed, partway open.

'Watch out for snakes,' Brown said, grabbing at the edge of the door and pulling hard. With a final tug that shook the entire structure, the door swung wide.

'Bruce! Get a goddamn flashlight!' Brown yelled. He took the end of the crowbar and swept more spiderwebs aside. A scuttling, scratching sound made Cowart jump back as some small beast fled from the sudden light pouring through the open door.

The two men stood, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the wooden toilet seat, carved from a board, polished by use. The stench in the small space was dull and thick. It was an old smell that clogged their breathing, a smell closer to death or age than waste.

'Under there,' Cowart said.

Brown nodded in agreement.

'Way down.'

Wilcox, slightly out of breath from running, joined them, thrusting the black flashlight toward his partner.

'Bruce,' Brown asked quietly, 'the crime-scene guy. Did he pull the seat?' Did he check through the stink?'

Wilcox shook his head. 'It was nailed down tight. The nails were old, I remember, because he made me come in and double-check. There was no sign that anything had been pulled up and then replaced. You know, like hammer marks or scrapes or anything

'No obvious sign,' said Brown.

'That's right. Nothing jumped out when we looked at it.' His eyes flashed angrily.

'But… 'Brown said.

'That's right. But, Wilcox replied, 'I can't guarantee he didn't have some way of getting down into the shit hole that we didn't see. The tech went in, checked with a light, and then came out, like I told you. I stuck my head in, looked around, and that was it. I mean, one of us would've seen anything shoved down that hole…'

'If you wanted to hide something, and you didn't think you had much time and you wanted to be sure it'd be the last place searched in the most perfunctory fashion…' Brown's voice hovered between lecture and anger.

'Why not take it out into the woods and bury it?'

'Can't be certain it won't be found, especially when we bring the damn dogs in. Can't be certain you won't be seen. But one thing's for sure. Nobody's gonna go down there into a shit hole that don't have to.'

Wilcox nodded. His voice curled up softly in despair. 'You're right. Dammit. D'you think…

His thought was interrupted by a sudden, shrill cry from behind them.

'Get away from there!'

The three men turned and saw the old woman standing on a back stoop, holding an old double-barreled shotgun at her hip.

I will blow you straight to hell if'n you don't move away from there! Now!'

Cowart froze in position, but the two detectives instantly started to move slowly apart, one right, one left, spreading the distance between the three men.

'Mrs. Ferguson,' Brown started.

'You shut up!' she said, swinging the gun toward him.

'Come on, Mrs. Ferguson…' Wilcox pleaded quietly, lifting both his hands up in a gesture more of supplication than surrender.

'You, too!' the old woman cried, swinging the barrels toward him. 'And both you men stop moving.'

Cowart saw a quick glance go between the partners. He didn't know what it meant.

The old woman turned back toward him. I tole you to get away from there.'

He lifted his arms but shook his head. 'No.'

'What you mean, no? Boy, don't you see this shotgun? I'll use it, too.'

Cowart felt a sudden rush of blood to his head. He saw all the fury masking the fear in the old woman's eyes and knew then she knew what she was hiding. It's I there, he thought. Whatever it is, it's there. It was as if all the frustration and exhaustion he'd felt for the past days coalesced in that second, and outrage overcame whatever reason he had left. He shook his head.

'No,' he said again, louder. 'No, ma'am. I'm going to Hook in there, even if you have to kill me. I'm just too damn tired of being lied to. I'm too damn tired of being used. I'm too damn tired of feeling like some goddamn fool all the time. You got it, old woman? I'm too damn tired!'

With each repetition of the phrase, he'd stepped toward her, covering half the distance between them.

'You stay away!' the old woman shouted.

'You gonna kill me?' he shouted back. 'That'll do a helluva lot of good. You just shoot me right in front of these two detectives. Go ahead. Goddammit, come on!'

He began to stride toward her. He saw the shotgun waver in her arms.

I means to!' she screamed.

'Then go ahead!' he screamed back.

His rage was complete. It overcame the delusion he'd clung to of Ferguson's innocence, so that it all poured out of him. 'Go ahead! Go ahead! Just like your grandson killed that little girl in cold blood! Go ahead! You gonna give me the same chance he gave her? You a killer too, old woman? This where he learned how to do it? Did you teach him how to slice up a little defenseless girl?'

'He didn't do nothing!'

'The hell he didn't!'

'Stand back!'

'Or what? You maybe just taught him how to lie? Is that it?'

'Stay away from me!'

'Did you, goddammit? Did you?'

'He didn't do no such thing. Now get back or I'll blow your head off!'

'He did it. You know it, goddammit, he did it, he did it, he did it!'

And the shotgun exploded.

The blast shredded the air above Cowart's head, singeing him and knocking him, stunned, to the ground. There was a rattle of bird shot against the walls of the outhouse behind him; shouts from the two detectives, who simultaneously went for their own weapons, screaming, 'Freeze!' Drop the gun!'

The sky spun above him and his nose filled with the smell of cordite. He could hear a thumping sound deep beyond the ringing from the shotgun's explosion, which confused him, until he realized it was the echo of his own heart in his ears.

Cowart sat up and felt his head, then stared at his hand, which came away damp from sweat, not blood. He stared up at the old woman. The detectives both continued to shout commands, which seemed lost in the heat and sun.

The old woman looked down at him. Her voice was shrill. 'I told you, Mr. Reporter Man, I told you once before, I'd spit in the eye of the devil hisself if'n it'd help my grandson.'

Cowart continued to stare at her.

'You dead?' she asked.

'No,' he replied quietly.

'I couldn't do it,' she said bitterly. 'Like to blow your head clean off. Damn.'

Her skin had turned an ashen gray. She dropped the weapon to her side.

'Only got one shell,' she said.

She looked over toward the two detectives, who were approaching her, weapons drawn, crouched and ready to fire. She fixed her eyes on Brown.

'Should have saved it for you,' she said.

'Drop the weapon.'

'You gonna kill me now, Tanny Brown?'

'Drop the weapon!'

The old woman humphed at him. Slowly, she took the shotgun and carefully set it against the door behind her. Then she stood and faced him, folding her arms.

'You gonna kill me now?' she asked again.

Wilcox bent toward Cowart. 'You okay, Cowart?'

'I'm okay,' the reporter replied.

He helped pull Cowart back to his feet. 'Christ, Cowart, that was something. You really lost it.'

Cowart felt suddenly elated. 'No shit,' he laughed.

Wilcox turned toward Brown. 'You want me to cuff her and read her her rights?'

The detective shook his head, reached over, and grasped the shotgun, cracking it open to check the double chambers. He pulled out the spent shell and flipped it to Cowart. 'Here. A souvenir.'

Then he turned back to Ferguson's grandmother. You got any other weapons lying around?'

She shook her head at him.

'You gonna talk to me now, old woman?'

She shook her head again and spat on the ground, still defiant.

'Okay, then, you can watch. Bruce?'

'Boss?'

'Find a shovel in the storeroom.',

The police lieutenant holstered his revolver and handed the emptied shotgun back to the old woman, who scowled at him. He walked back to the outhouse and gestured to Cowart. 'Here,' he said, handing the reporter the crowbar. 'Seems like you earned first swipe at this thing.'

The old wood protested slowly at the assault first with the crowbar, then with the shovel Wilcox discovered by the side of the shack. But when it finally cracked and gave way, it tore apart rapidly, exposing a fetid hole in the earth. Quicklime had been used for sanitation. White streaks covered the gray-brown mass of waste.

'In there somewhere, Cowart said.

'I hope you got all your shots,' Wilcox muttered. 'Anybody got any open cuts or sores? Better be careful.'

He grabbed the shovel out of Brown's hands.

'It was my search fucked up three years ago. Mine, now,' he whispered grimly. He took off his coat jacket and found a handkerchief in a pocket. This he tied around his face, over his nose and mouth. 'Damn, he said, his words muffled by the makeshift mask. 'You know this ain't a legal search, he said to Brown, who nodded. 'Damn.' Wilcox said again.

Then he stepped down into the ooze and muck.

He groaned once, muttering a series of expletives, then he set to uncovering each layer of refuse, scraping away with the shovel.

'You keep your eyes on the shovel, he said, breathing through his mouth, hard. 'Don't let me miss something.'

Brown and Cowart didn't reply. They just watched Wilcox's progress. He kept at it steadily, carefully, slowly working his way through the pile. He slipped once, catching himself before sliding down into the hole, but coming up with waste streaking his arms and hands. Wilcox simply swore hard and continued working with the shovel.

Five minutes passed, then ten. The detective continued to dig, pausing only to cough away some of the stench.

Another half dozen swipes with the shovel and he muttered. 'Got to be down a couple of years, now. I mean, how much shit can that old lady produce in a year?' He laughed unhappily.

'There!' Cowart said.

'Where?' Wilcox asked.

'Right there, said Tanny Brown, pointing. 'What's that?'

The corner of some solid object had been uncovered by a swipe with the shovel.

Wilcox grimaced and reached down gingerly, seizing the object. It came free with a sucking sound. It was a rectangular piece of thick synthetic material.

Brown crouched down, staring, took the material by the corner and held it up.

'You know what this is, Bruce?'

The detective nodded. 'You bet.'

'What?' Cowart asked.

'One slice of car carpet. You remember, in Ferguson's car, on the passenger side, there was a big piece of carpeting cut out. There it is.'

'You see anything else?' Brown asked.

Wilcox turned back and poked with the shovel in the same location. 'No, he said. 'Wait, unh-hunh, well, what have we here?'

He plucked what appeared to be a solid mass of refuse from the muck, and handed it to Brown. 'There it is.'

The police lieutenant turned toward Cowart. 'See, he said.

Cowart stared hard and finally did see.

The lump was a pair of jeans, a shirt, and sneakers and socks all rolled tightly together, tied with a shoelace. The years of being under the refuse, covered with lime, had worn them away to tatters, but they were still unmistakable.

'I'll bet the farm,' Wilcox said, 'that there's blood residue on those clothes somewhere.'

'Anything else down there?'

The detective struggled for another moment with the shovel. I don't think so.'

'Come on out, then.'

'With pleasure.' He scrambled from the pit.

The three men wordlessly walked back into the yard. They spread the items out carefully in the sun.

'Can they be processed?' Cowart asked after a moment had passed.

Brown shrugged. 'I suspect so.' He looked at the items quietly. 'Don't really need to.'

'That's right,' said Cowart.

Wilcox was trying to clean himself up as best as possible. He looked up from the task of shaking the clods of waste from his clothes over toward his partner.

'Tanny, he said softly. 'I'm sorry, buddy. I should have been more careful. I should have figured.'

Brown shook his head. 'You know more now than you did then. It's okay. I should have double-checked the search report.' He continued to look down at the items. 'Damn,' he said, finally. 'Dammit to hell.' He looked up at Cowart. 'But now we know, don't we?'

Cowart nodded.

The three men picked up the clothing and particle of carpet gingerly and turned back toward the house. They saw the old woman standing alone, watching them from her perch on the back stoop. She stared at them helplessly. Cowart could see her hands quivering at her sides.

'It don't mean nothing!' she yelled, searching for defiance. One arm rose slowly from her side and she shook a fist at them. 'Throw all sorts of old stuff away! It don't mean nothing at all!'

The two detectives and the reporter walked past her, but she continued to shout after them, the words soaring across the yard, up into the pale blue sky. 'It don't mean nothing! Can't you hear? Damn your eyes, Tanny Brown! It don't mean nothing at all!'

20. Traps

Tanny Brown drove the police cruiser aimlessly down the streets of the town where he'd grown up, Cowart next to him, waiting for the detective to say something. Wilcox had been dropped at the crime lab with the items seized from the outhouse. The reporter had thought that they would return immediately to the police offices to map out their next step, but instead found himself moving slowly through the town. 'And so?' he finally asked. 'What's next?' 'You know,' Brown said slowly, 'it's not really much of a town. Always played second fiddle to Pensacola and Mobile. Still, it was all I knew. All I ever really wanted. Even when I went away in the service and then to Tallahassee for college, always knew I wanted to come back here. What about you, Cowart? Where's home for you?'

Cowart pictured the small brick house where he'd grown up. It had been set back from the street, with a large oak tree in the front yard. It had had a front porch with a creaky, swinging love seat in the corner that was never used, and had grown rusty with the passing of winters. But almost immediately the picture of the house faded and what he saw was his father's newspaper, twenty years earlier, through a child's eyes, before computers and electronic layout machines. It was as if his understanding of the world had been channeled through the battered, steel-gray desks and wan fluorescent lights, past the cacophony of constantly ringing telephones, the voices raised in newsroom give-and-take, the whooshing sound of the vacuum tubes that linked the newsroom with composing, the machine gun rat-a-tat-tat of fingers slamming the keys of the old manual typewriters that banged out the history of the day's events. He'd grown up wanting nothing more than to get away, but away had always been interpreted to mean something the same, only bigger, better. Finally, Miami. One of the nation's finest newspapers. A life defined by words.

Maybe, he thought, a death defined by them, as well.

'No home,' he replied. 'Just a career.'

'Aren't they the same?'

'I suppose. It's hard to make distinctions.'

The detective nodded.

'So what are we going to do?' Cowart asked again.

The detective had no easy response. 'Well,' he said slowly, 'we know who really killed Joanie Shriver.'

Both men felt a palpable, physical depression with those words. Brown thought, I knew. All along, I knew. But he still couldn't shake the sensation that something had changed.

'You can't touch him, right?'

'Not in a court of law. Bad confession. Illegal search. We've been all over that.'

'And I can't touch him, either,' Cowart said, bitterness streaking his voice.

'Why? What happens if you write a story?'

'You don't want to know.'

Brown suddenly steered the car to the curb, jamming on the brakes. He slammed the car out of gear and pivoted toward the reporter in a single motion.

'What happens?' he asked furiously. 'Tell me, dammit! What happens?'

Cowart's face reddened. 'I'll tell you what happens: I write the story and the whole world jumps on our backs. You think the press was tough on you before?

You have no idea what they're like when they smell blood in the water. Everyone's going to want a piece of this mess. More microphones and notepads and camera lights than you've ever seen. Stupid cop and stupid reporter screw up their jobs and let a killer go free. There isn't a front page, a prime-time news show in this country that won't scream for that story.'

'What happens to Ferguson?'

Cowart scowled. 'It's easiest for him. He simply denies it. Smiles at the cameras and says, "No, sir. I didn't do anything. They must have planted that evidence there." A setup, he'll say, a cheap trick by a frustrated cop. He'll say you planted the evidence there after finding it someplace else – someplace where Blair Sullivan told me to find it, just like the knife. Got me to go along, or tricked me into going along, makes no difference. I'm the conduit for covering your mistakes. And you know what? A lot of people will believe it. You beat a confession out of him once. Why not try some other scheme?'

Brown opened his mouth, but Cowart wasn't done. Then, suppose he files a defamation suit? Remember Fatal Vision? He filed a crazy suit and right away everyone seemed to forget that he was convicted of slaughtering his wife and kids when they got so damned concerned over what that writer did or didn't do. Who do you think is going to be slicker on the air? More persuasive? What are you going to do when Barbara Walters or fucking Mike Wallace leans across the table, cameras rolling, lights making you sweat, and asks you, "Well, now, you really did order your man to beat Mr. Ferguson, right? Even though you knew it was against the law? Even though you knew if anyone found out, he would go free?" And what good is it going to do for you to say anything? How're you going to answer those questions, Detective? How're you going to make it seem like you wouldn't go and plant evidence at Ferguson's home? Tell me, Detective, because I'd surely like-to know.'

Brown glared at Cowart. 'And what about you?'

'Oh, they'll be just as tough on me, Detective. America is used to killers, familiar with the species. But failures? Ahh, failures get special, unique attention. Screwups and mistakes aren't the American way. We tolerate murder, but not defeat. I can just see it: "Now, Mr. Cowart, you won a Pulitzer Prize for saying this man was innocent. What do you expect to win by saying he's not?" And then it'll get tougher. "Guilty? Innocent? What do you want, Mr. Cowart? Can't have it both ways. Why didn't you tell us this before? Why did you wait? What were you trying to cover up? What other mistakes have you made? Do you know the difference between the truth and a lie, Mr. Cowart?' "

He took a deep breath. 'You got to understand one thing, Detective.'

'What's that?'

'There's only going to be two people anyone thinks is guilty here. You and me.'

'And Ferguson?'

'He walks. Inconvenienced but free. Maybe even a hero in the right places, with the right people. Even more of a hero than he currently is.'

'To do…'

'To do whatever he likes

Cowart opened the car door and stepped out of the vehicle. He stood on the sidewalk, letting the breeze dry his emotions. His eyes swept down the street, stopping at an old-fashioned barber shop that still had the traditional revolving pole, and watched the tri-colors swirl in an endless route, always moving but never arriving. He was only peripherally aware that Brown had gotten out of the car and was standing a few feet behind him.

'Suppose,' the detective said coldly to Cowart's back, 'suppose he's already doing whatever he likes.'

Another little girl. A Dawn Perry. Disappeared one day. 'May I go to the pool for a swim? Be back before dinner…'

'Now we know what he likes, don't we, Cowart?'

'Yes.'

'And there's nothing stopping him from taking up where he left off, before his little vacation on Death Row, right?'

'No. Nothing. So what do you suggest we do, Detective?'

'A trap, said Brown flatly. 'We set a trap. We sting him. If we can't get him on something old, we should get him on something new.'

Cowart knew, without turning, that the man's face was set in granite anger. 'Yes, he said. 'Go on.'

'Something unequivocal, that makes it clear who he is. Clear so that when I arrest him and you write the story, no one has any doubts whatsoever. None, got it? No doubts. Can you write that story, Cowart? Write it so that he has no way out?'

Matthew Cowart had a sudden memory of watching a Maine fisherman bait lobster traps with pieces of dead fish before slinging them over the side of his boat into the ice-black coastal waters. It had been a summer vacation when he was young. He remembered how fascinated he had been with the simple, deadly design of the lobster traps. A box made of a few pieces of wood and chicken wire. The beasts would crawl in one end, unable to resist the allure of the rotting carcass, then, after feeding, be unable to maneuver about and retreat through the narrow entrance. Captured by a combination of greed, need, and physical limitations.

1 can write that story,' he replied. He looked over at the detective and added, 'But traps take time. Have we got time, Detective? How much?'

Brown shook his head. 'AH we can do is try.'

Brown left Cowart alone in his office while he went off saying he needed to check on whether Wilcox had returned with preliminary laboratory results on the clothing and the piece of auto carpet. The reporter looked around for a moment at the various citations and photographs that he'd previously inspected, then he picked up the telephone and called the Miami Journal. A switchboard operator connected him with Edna McGee. Cowart wondered how many people had been fooled by the breeziness of her tones, not knowing that beneath them lay a steely mind that thrived on detail.

'Edna?'

'Matty, Matty, where have you been? I've been leaving messages all over for you.'

'I'm back up in Pachoula. With the cops.'

'Why them? I thought you were going to Starke to try and work the prison angle.'

'Uh, that's next.'

'Well, I would get there. The St. Pete Times reported today that Blair Sullivan left several file boxes filled with documents, diaries, descriptions, I don't know what else. Maybe something that described how he set up those murders. The paper said that Monroe detectives are going through the stuff now, looking for leads. They've also been interviewing everyone who worked on Death Row during Sullivan's stay. And they've got lists of visitors as well. I made some calls and filed a bit of a catch-up story. But the city desk is wondering where the hell you are. And especially wondering why the hell you didn't file that story before that son of a bitch from St. Pete did. Not pleased, Matty, they're not pleased. Where have you been?'

'Back in the Keys. Here.'

'Got anything?'

'Nothing for the paper, yet. Got a lead or two…'

'Like what?'

'Edna, give me a break.'

'Well, Matty, I'd get cracking and think of filing something spectacular pretty soon. Like, right away. Otherwise the wolves will be at the door, howling for their dinner. If you get what I mean.'

'You make it clear. And appetizing.'

Edna laughed. 'No one wants to go from being caviar to dog food.'

'Thanks, Edna. You're really reassuring.'

'Just a warning.'

'It's been heard. So, what have you come up with?'

'Following the trail of your Mr. Sullivan has been quite an education in the creative use of lying.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, of the forty or so killings he owned up to, I right now say he did about half. Maybe a little less.'

'Only twenty…'

He heard himself speak those words and realized how silly they sounded. Only twenty. As if it made him only half as evil as someone who killed forty people.

'Right. For sure. At least, twenty that sound persuasive.'

'What about the others?'

'Well, some he clearly didn't do because other people are serving time, or even sitting on Death Row, for the crimes. He just sort of stitched the stories into the fabric of his own story, see? Like I told you about the crime on the Miccosukkee Reservation, for one example. He also told you at one point that he killed a woman up outside of Tampa. A woman he met in a bar, promised her a good time, ended up killing her, you remember that one?'

'Ahh, sure, I remember he didn't say a lot about it, except to sort of delight in the fun of killing her.'

'Right. That's the one. Well, he had all the details right, except for one thing. The guy who did that crime also did two other women in that area and occupies a cell about thirty feet away from Blair Sullivan's old home on Death Row. He just slid that story right in amidst two others that check out. Wasn't until I started checking up there that it rang a bell. See what he did? Just grabbed that other guy's crime – and there ain't no doubt the other guy was the killer – and just added it into his grand total. Did that a couple of other times, with other crimes that guys are on the Row for. Sort of like a quarterback throwing a lot of short passes in the final quarter of a game that's already won. He was, like, inflating his stats.' Edna laughed.

'But why?'

Cowart could sense Edna's shrug through the telephone line. 'Who knows? Maybe that's why all those FBI folks were so damn interested in talking to Sully before he checked out.'

'But…'

'Well, let me give you one theory. Call it McGee's Postulate, or something nice and scientific like that. But I asked around a bit, you know, and guess what? They always figured Ted Bundy for some thirty-eight killings. Could have been more, but that's the figure that we got, and that's what he ended up talking about before heading off to hell, himself. My guess is that old Sully wanted to do him a couple better. They found at least three different books about Bundy amongst Sully's personal effects, you know. Nice detail, that, huh? The next best killer, if you want to call it that, waiting on Death Row is that guy Okrent, the Polish guy from Lauderdale, remember him? He had the little problem with prostitutes. Like, he killed them. He's only around eleven officially, but unofficially, he's at about seventeen or eighteen. He was on the same wing as Sully, too. You beginning to see my thinking here, Matty? Old Sully wanted to be famous. Not only for what he was doing, but for what he did. So, he took a few liberties.'

'I see what you're driving at. Can you get someone to say it, and put it in the paper?'

'No sweat. Those FBI guys will say whatever I want them to. And there are those two sociologists up in Boston who study mass murderers. I spoke with them earlier. They love McGee's Postulate. So, all in all, it should run tomorrow, if I work late. Or the next day, which is a lot more likely.'

'That's great,' Cowart said.

'But, Matty, it would go a lot better if you had something to run alongside it. Like a story saying who killed those old folks down in the Keys.'

'I'm working on it.'

"Work hard. That's the only question still out there, Matty. That's what everyone wants to know.'

'I hear you.'

'They're getting a bit frantic over at the city desk. They want to put our world-famous, crack, ace, and only occasionally incompetent investigative team on it. Lobbying hard, so I hear.'

Those guys couldn't figure out…'

I know that, Matty, but there are people saying you're overwhelmed.'

'I'm not.'

'Just warning you. Thought you'd want to know all the politicking going on behind your back. And that story in the St. Pete Times didn't help your cause any. It doesn't help either that no one knows where the hell you are ninety-nine percent of the time. Jeez, the city editor had to lie to that Monroe detective the other morning when she came in here looking for you.'

'Shaeffer?'

'The pretty one with the eyes that look like she'd rather be roasting you on an open spit than talking with you.'

'That's her.'

'Well, she was here, and she got the semi-runaround and that's a marker they hold on you now.'

'All right. I hear you.'

'Hey, break that case. Figure out who zapped the old couple. Maybe win another big one, huh?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'Well, nothing wrong with fantasizing, right?'

'I guess not.'

He hung up the phone, muttering obscenities to himself, but precisely whom or what he was cursing, he didn't know. He started to dial the number for the city editor, then stopped. What could he tell him? Just then he heard a noise at the door and looked up to see Bruce Wilcox. The detective seemed pale.

'Where's Tanny?' he asked.

'Around. He left me here to wait for him. I thought he was looking for you. What did you find out?'

Wilcox shook his head. 'I can't believe I screwed up, he answered.

'Did the lab find anything?'

'I just can't believe I didn't check the goddamn shithouse back then.' Wilcox tossed a couple of sheets of paper onto the desk. 'You don't have to read them,' he said. 'What they found was material resembling blood residue on a shirt, jeans, and the rug. Resembling, for Christ's sake. And that was looking through a microscope. All had deteriorated almost to the point of invisibility. Three years of shit, lime, dirt, and time. There wasn't a hell of a lot left. I watched that lab tech spread out the shirt and it, like, almost fell apart when he started to poke at it with tweezers. Anyway, not a damn thing that's conclusive. They're gonna send it all off to a fancier lab down in Tallahassee, but who knows what they'll come up with. The technician wasn't real optimistic'

Wilcox paused, taking a slow, long breath. 'Of course, you and I know why those things were there. But getting up and saying they were evidence of anything, well, we're a long ways from being able to say that. Damn! If I found them three years ago, when everything was fresh, you know, they just dissolve that shit and stuff right off and there's the blood.' He looked up at Cowart. 'Joanie Shriver's blood. But now, they're just a couple of pieces of tired old clothes. Damn.'

The detective paced the office. 'I can't believe how I screwed up,' he said again. 'Screwed up. Screwed up. Screwed up. My first goddamn big case.'

He was clenching his fists tightly, then releasing them before tightening them once again into a ball. In, out. In, out. Cowart could see the detective's muscles shifting about beneath his shirt. The high-school wrestler before a match.

Tanny Brown sat in a recently emptied office at a vacant desk making telephone calls. The door was shut behind him, and in front of him was a yellow legal pad for notes and his personal address book. He had to leave messages at the first three numbers he tried. He dialed a fourth number and waited for the phone to be picked up.

Eatonville Police.'

Captain Lucious Harris, please. This is Detective Lieutenant Theodore Brown.'

He waited patiently before a huge voice boomed over the receiver. 'Tanny? That you?'

'Hello, Luke.'

'Well, well, well. Long time, no hear. How's it goin'?'

'Ups and downs. And you?'

'Well, hell. Life ain't perfect by no means. But it ain't terrible, neither, so I guess I got no complaints.'

Brown pictured the immense man on the other end of the line. He would be in a uniform that would be too tight in the places where his three hundred pounds made no pretense toward muscle, and around his neck, so that his head seemed to rest on the starched white collar with its gold insignia. Lucious Harris had a big man's hesitancy to anger and a constant, bubbling outlook that made his entire life seem a feast on which he was continually dining. He'd always enjoyed calling the big man because no matter how evil the world had seemed, his response was always energetic and undefeated. Tanny Brown realized he no longer made those calls.

'How're things in Eatonville?' he asked.

'Ha! You know, we're actually becoming something of a tourist trap, Tanny. Folks coming to visit because of all the attention we got because of the late Miz Hurston. Ain't gonna compete with Disney World or Key West, I guess, but it's kinda nice to see new faces around town.'

Brown tried to picture Eatonville. His friend had grown up there, its rhythms were in the locutions of his voice.- It was a small town, with a singular sense of order about it. Almost everybody who lived there was black. It had gained some notoriety in the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, its most prominent resident. When she had been discovered first by the academicians and then the film people, Eatonville had been discovered as well. But mostly, what it was, was a small town for black people, run by black people.

There was a small pause before Lucious Harris asked, 'So. You don't ever call me no more. Hard to tell we are friends. Then, of course, I see you got yourself a bunch of publicity, but it ain't the sort that folks naturally go out of their way to acquire, right?'

'That's true.'

'And now, some more time passes, and you're on the phone, but it ain't to talk about how come you ain't called. And it ain't to talk about anything other than something special, am I right?'

'Just taking a wild shot, Luke. Thought you might be able to help.'

'Well, let me hear it.'

Tanny Brown breathed in deeply and asked, 'Unsolved disappearances. Homicides. In the last year. Children, teenagers, girls. And black. Anything like that in your town?'

The policeman was quiet. Brown could feel a sense of constriction coming over the line.

'Tanny, why you asking me this now?'

'I just got…'

'Tanny, you tell me the straight truth. Why you calling me with this now?'

'Luke, I'm just shooting in the dark. I got a bad feeling about something, and I'm just poking around.'

'You poked something solid here, my man.'

Brown felt instantly frozen inside. 'Tell me,' he asked softly. He noticed that the booming voice on the other end of the line had tightened, narrowed, as if the words suddenly carried more freight.

'Wild child,' Harris said slowly. 'Girl named Alexandra Jones. Thirteen. Part of her still be eight, part of her eighteen. You know the type. One minute she be all sweetness and polite, come baby-sit for

5sus Harris and me, the next minute I sees her smoking a cigarette outside the convenience store, acting all grown-up and tough.'

'Sounds like my own daughters,' Brown said inadvertently.

Xo, your gals got a hold of something, and this little gal didn't. Anyway, she got some confusion and this makes her wild, you know. She starts to think this little town be too small for her. Run away once, her daddy go find her couple miles down the road, dragging along a little suitcase. Daddy be one of my patrolmen, so we all knows about it. Run away twice, and this time we find her all the way in Lauderdale, just outside, on Alligator Alley, thumbing rides from the semi drivers that passes that way. Trooper spots her, and they brings her home. Third time she run is three months back. Her momma and daddy driving every road they can to find her, figure this time she's heading north to Georgia where they got relatives and the gal's got a cousin she sweet on. Put out a BOLO. I talks to departments all over the state. Flyers out, you know the drill. Only she never shows in Georgia. Or Lauderdale or Miami or Orlando or any damn place. Where she shows is in Big Cypress swamp, where some hunters find her three weeks ago. Find what's left of her, which is just some bones. Picked clean by the sun and little animals and birds. Not a pretty sight. Gotta make ID through dental records. Cause of death? Multiple stab wounds, the M.E. figures, but only 'cause there are nicks and cuts in some of the bones. Not even that be conclusive. And not even any clothes laying about. Whoever done her stashed the clothes someplace else. I mean, it ain't too damn a mystery what happened to her, now, is it? But figuring out who did it be a different matter for sure.'

Brown said nothing. He heard Harris take a deep breath.

'… Ain't never gonna make this case, no sir. You know how many interviews we've logged on this one, Tanny? More'n three hundred. And that's been me and my chief of detectives, Henry Lincoln, you know him. A couple of major-crimes guys from the county put in some time, too. Don't mean shit. No witnesses, 'cause nobody saw her get picked up on the road. No forensics, 'cause there ain't hardly nothing left of her. No suspects, even though we ran profiles and rousted all the usual likely folks. No nothing. When you get right down to it, all we really gonna do is just help her folks try and understand and maybe go down to the church an extra time myself, see if a little prayer or two won't help. You know what I pray for, Tanny?'

'No,' he replied hoarsely.

'Tanny, I don't pray we make this guy. No, 'cause I don't even think the Almighty gonna be able to make this case. I just prays that whoever did it just come by Eatonville this one time, and that he heads on off to someplace new and some other town, someplace where someone sees 'im and they got mobile forensic teams and all that new scientific stuff, and where maybe he makes a mistake and gets hisself busted bad. That's what I prays for.'

The police captain was quiet, as if thinking.' 'Cause I figures that gal goes terrible, you know. Pain and fear, Tanny. Pain, fear, and terror something special, and no one wants to know about it.'

He paused again. 'And then you calls me with this question come out of the blue, and I'm wondering what you got that makes you ask this question of me.'

Silence gathered on the line.

'You know the man that came off the Row?' Brown said.

'Sure. Robert Earl Ferguson.'

'He ever been in Eatonville?'

Lucious Harris stopped. Brown could hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line before the big man said, I thought he was innocent. That's what the papers and TV says.'

'Has he ever been in Eatonville? Around the time that gal disappeared?'

'He was here,' Harris responded slowly.

Brown felt a half-grunt, half-groan escape between his lips. He realized his teeth were shut tight. 'When?'

'Not close time. Maybe three, four months back before little Alexandra disappeared. Gave a speech in a church. Hell, I went to see him myself. He was right interesting. Talked about Jesus standing by your side and giving you the light of day no matter how dark the world seems.'

'What about…'

'Stayed a couple of days. Maybe a Saturday, then a Sunday, then drove off. Back to some school, I heard. I don't think he was here when Alexandra Jones takes off. I'll check hotels and motels, but I don't know. Sure, he coulda come back. But what makes you think…'

Brown leaned forward at the desk, a throbbing behind his temples. 'Check for me, Luke. See if you can't put him in the area when the gal disappears.'

'I'll try. Ain't gonna do no good, I don't suspect. You saying he's not innocent?'

'I'm not saying nothing. Just check, will ya?'

'No problem, Tanny. I'll check. Then maybe we'll have a talk 'cause I don't like what I'm hearing in your voice, my friend.'

'I don't like it either,' Brown replied. He hung up the telephone.

He remembered Pachoula in the moments after Joanie Shriver disappeared. He could hear the sirens picking up, see the knots of people forming on the street corners, talking, then setting off in search. The first camera crews were there that night, not long after the first telephone calls from the newspapers had started to flood into the switchboard. A little white girl disappears while trying to walk home from school. It's a nightmare that strikes a vulnerability within everyone. Blonde hair. Smile. Wasn't four hours before that face was on the television. Every minute that passed made it worse.

What did he learn? Brown thought. He learned that the same event would be ignored, no cameras and microphones, no Boy Scouts and National Guardsmen searching the swamp, if he changed one single aspect of the equation: turn white into black.

Fighting to maintain composure, Brown rose and went to find Cowart. A large map of the state of Florida hung in the offices of Major Crimes and he paused next to it. His eyes went first to Eatonville, then down to Perrine. Dozens, he thought. There are dozens of small, black enclaves throughout the state. The leftover South. Pushed by history and economics into little pockets of varying success or poverty, but all with one single thing in common: none were anyone's idea of a mainstream. All handled by undermanned, sometimes ill-trained police forces, with half the resources available to white communities and twice the problems with drugs and alcohol and robbery, frustration and despair.

Hunting grounds.

21. Conjunction

Andrea Shaeffer returned late to her motel room. She double-locked the door behind her, then checked the bathroom, the small closet, beneath the bed, behind the drapes, and finally the window, determining that it was still closed tight. She fought off the urge to open her pocketbook and remove the nine-millimeter pistol concealed within. A sense of misshapen fear had dogged her since leaving Ferguson's apartment. As the weak daylight had dissipated around her, she had felt a tightness, as if she were wearing clothes several sizes too small.

Who was he? she asked herself.

She reached into her small suitcase and rummaged around until she found some of the lavender-scented notepaper that she used to write unmailed letters to her mother. Then she switched on the small lamp at a tiny table in the corner of the room, pulled up a chair and started writing.

Dear Mom, she wrote. Something happened. She stared at the words at the top of the page. What did he say? she asked herself. He said he was safe. From what?

She leaned back in her chair, chewing on the end of her pen like a student searching for the answer on a test. She remembered being taken into a lineup room, despite her protests that she would be unable to recognize the two men who'd attacked her. The lights had been dimmed and she was flanked by a pair of detectives whose names she could no longer recall. She had watched intently as two sets of men were brought in and lined up against the wall. On command, they had turned first to the right, then the left, giving her a view of their profiles. She remembered the whispered admonitions from the detectives: Take your time, and Is there anyone who seems familiar? But she had been unable to make any identification. She had shaken her head at the detectives, and they'd shrugged. She recalled the look that had passed over their faces, and remembered then that she had decided that she wouldn't be helpless. That she wouldn't let anyone get away free ever again after delivering so much hurt.

She looked down at the unmailable letter and then wrote: I met a man filled with death.

That's it, she thought. She examined all that Ferguson had shown her: anger, mockery, arrogance. Fear, but only in short supply – only when he was uncertain why I was there. But once he learned, it evaporated. Why? Because he had nothing to fear. Why? Because I was there for the wrong reason.

She put the pen down beside the paper and stood up.

What's the right reason? she demanded.

Shaeffer rose and walked over to the double bed. She sat down and drew her knees up beneath her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs to hold them steady while she balanced precariously on the edge of the bed. For a moment or two she rocked back and forth, trying to determine what her course of action should be. Finally she imposed a discipline on her thoughts, unfolded and reached for the telephone.

It took her a few tries to track Michael Weiss down, finally reaching him through the superintendent's office at the state prison in Starke…Andy? That you? Where have you been?'

Mike. I'm up in Newark, New Jersey.'

New Jersey. Jesus. What's in New Jersey? You were supposed to be sitting on Cowart in Miami. Is he in New Jersey7'

No, but…' 'Well, where the hell is he?'

North Florida. Pachoula, but…' 'Why aren't you there?'

Mike, give me a moment and I'll explain.' it'd better be good. And another thing. You were supposed to be checking in, like, all the time. I'm in charge of this investigation, you do remember, don't you?'

Mike, just give me a minute, huh? I came up here to see Robert Earl Ferguson.'

The guy Cowart got off Death Row?'

'Right, the guy who was in the cell next to Sullivan.'

'Up to the moment he tried to reach through the bars and strangle him?'

Yeah.'

'So?' it was… ' She hesitated. 'Well, unusual.'

There was a momentary pause before the senior policeman asked, 'How so?'

Tm still trying to put my finger on it.'

She heard him sigh. 'What's this got to do with our case?'

'Well, I got to thinking, Mike. You know, Sullivan and Cowart were like two sides of a triangle. Ferguson was the other leg, the connection that brought them together. Without Ferguson, Cowart never sees Sullivan. I just figured I better go check him out. See if he had an alibi for the time the killings took place. See if he knew anything. Just get a look at the guy.'

Weiss hesitated before saying, 'Well, okay. That doesn't exactly not make sense. I don't know what it adds, but it's not crazy. You're thinking there's some link between the three of them? Maybe something that contributed to the murders?'

'Sort of.'

'Well, if there was, why wouldn't that bastard Cowart have put that into his story in the paper?'

1 don't know. Maybe because he was afraid it would make him look bad?'

'Look bad? Jesus, Andy, he's a whore. All reporters are whores. They don't care about yesterday's trick, only today's. If he had something, he'd have put it into the papers lickety split. I can see the headlines: DEATH ROW CONNECTION UNCOVERED. I don't know if they got type big enough for that story. They'd go crazy. Probably win him another damn prize.'

'Maybe.'

Weiss snorted. 'Yeah, maybe. Anyway, you got anything independent that gets this guy Ferguson to Tarpon Drive?'

'No.'

'Like anybody make him, down in Islamadora? Any of those folks you questioned on Tarpon Drive mention a black man?'

'No.'

'How about a hotel receipt or plane ticket or something? What about bloodwork or prints or a murder weapon?'

'No.'

'So you went all the way up there, just because somehow he was connected to the other two players here?'

'Right,' she said slowly. 'It was sort of a hunch.'

'Please, Andy. They have hunches on Perry fucking Mason, not in real life. Don't talk to me about hunches. Just talk to me about what you learned from the creep.'

'He denied any direct knowledge of the crime. But he had some interesting insights into the way things work on Death Row. Said that most of the guards there are only a step away from being killers themselves. Suggested we focus on them.'

That makes sense,' Weiss replied. 'It's also precisely what I'm doing right now and you should be doing, too. The guy had an alibi, right?'

'Said he was in class. He's studying criminology.'

'Really? Now that's interesting.'

'Yeah. He had a bookcase filled with textbooks on forensics and detection. Said he used them in class.'

Okay. Can you check that out and then, when it turns out to be true, get back down here?'

'Uh, sure. Yeah.'

There was a momentary quiet on the line before Weiss said, 'Andy, why do I detect a note of hesitation in your voice?'

She paused before replying. 'Mike, you ever have the sensation that you just talked with the right guy, but for the wrong reason? I mean, this guy made me sweat. I don't know how else to put it. He was wrong. I'm sure of it. All wrong. But why, I can't say. Just spooked me good.'

Another hunch?'

A feeling. Christ, Mike, I'm not crazy.'

Weiss waited an instant before asking, 'How spooked?'

Up in the ninety-ninth percentile.' She could sense the older detective thinking hard.

'You know what I'm supposed to say, right?'

She nodded as she answered. 'That I'm to take a cold shower, or a hot shower, whatever, and then forget it. Let the creep do whatever he's doing and make his mistake somewhere and let those cops take care of it and get my tail back down to the Sunshine State.'

He laughed. 'Christ,' he said. 'You even sound like me.'

'So?'

'Okay,' he said slowly. 'Take the right shower. Then poke around as much as you want to for a day or so. I can carry on here without much trouble. But when it's all said and done and you don't have anything, I want you to write up a report with all your guesses and reelings and whatever the hell else you think is appropriate, and we'll send it off to a guy I know with the New Jersey State Police. He'll just laugh it off, but, hey, at least you won't think you're crazy. And your ass will be covered.'

'Thanks, Mike,' she said, oddly relieved and frightened in the same moment.

'Oh,' he said, 'a couple other things. You haven't even asked what the hell I've found out down here.'

'What?'

'Well, Sullivan left about three boxes filled with personal things. Mostly books, radio, little television, Bible, that sort of shit, but there were a couple of real intriguing documents. One was his whole appeal, all mapped out, ready to file with the court, pro se. All he had to do was hand it to an official and bingo, automatic stay of execution. And you know something? The sucker made a pretty convincing argument for prejudicial statements to the jury by the prosecutor that nailed him. I mean, he might have stretched that one out for years.'

'But he never filed it.'

'Nope. But that's not all. How about a letter from a producer named Maynard out in LaLa Land. The same guy who bought the rights to your friend Ferguson's life story after Cowart made him into a star. Made the same offer to Sullivan. Ten grand. Actually, not quite ten grand. Ninety-nine hundred. For exclusive rights to his life story.'

'But Sullivan's life was in the public record, why would he pay…'

'I spoke with him earlier today. The slick said it was standard operating procedure before making a movie. Tie up all the rights. And, he said Sullivan promised him he was going to file the appeal. So the guy had to make a move to get the rights, otherwise' Sullivan could have messed him up as long as he was appealing his case. Surprised the hell out of the guy when Sullivan went to the chair.'

'Keep going.'

'Well, so there's ninety-nine hundred bucks floating about somewhere and I'm thinking, we find out what happened to that money and we find out how Sullivan paid for those two killings.'

'But we've got a Son of Sam law. Victims' rights. Sullivan couldn't collect the money. It was supposed to go to the victims of his crimes.'

'Right. Supposed to. The producer deposited the money in a Miami bank account according to instructions Sullivan gave him as part of the deal. Producer then writes a letter to the Victims' Rights Commission in Tallahassee, informing them of the payment, just as he's required to by law. Of course it takes the bureaucrats months and months to figure anything out. In the meantime…'

I can guess.'

'Right. The money exits, stage left. It's not in that account anymore. The victims' rights people don't have it and Sullivan sure doesn't need it, wherever he is.'

'So…'

'So, I'm guessing we trace that account, maybe we can find the sucker who opened it up and emptied it out. Then we'll have a reasonable suspect for a pair of homicides.'

'Ten thousand dollars.'

'Ninety-nine hundred. Real interesting number, that. Gets around the problem with the federal law requiring documentation of money transactions above ten grand…'

'But ninety-nine hundred isn't…'

'Hell, up there they'd kill you for a pack of smokes. What do you suppose somebody'd do for almost ten grand? And remember, some of those prison guards aren't making much more than three, four hundred a week. Ten big ones probably sound like a whole helluva lot of money to them.'

'What about setting up the account?'

'In Miami? Got a phony driver's license and a fake social security number? I mean it's not exactly like they spend a lot of time in Miami regulating what goes on at the banks. They're all so damn busy laundering heavy bucks for drug dealers, they probably never even noticed this little transaction. Christ, Andy, you can probably close out the damn account at an automatic teller, not even have to look a real person in the eyes.'

'Does the producer know who opened it?'

'That idiot? No way. Sullivan just provided the number and the instructions. All he knows is that Sullivan screwed him by telling his life tale to Cowart, so it all went splat into the paper when this guy thought it was going to be his exclusively. Then double-screwed him by jumping into the electric chair. He ain't too pleased by circumstances.'

Shaeffer was quiet. She felt caught between two different whirlpools.

Weiss spoke quickly. 'One other little detail. Real intriguing.'

'What's that?'

'Sullivan left a handwritten will.'

'A will?'

'That's right. Quite an interesting piece of paper. It was written right over a couple of pages of the Bible. Actually, the Twenty-third Psalm. You know, Valley of Death and Fearing No Evil. He just wrote it in a black felt-tip pen right over the text, then stuck a marker between the pages. Then he wrote a note, which he stuck on top of the box, saying, "Please read the marked passage…" '

'What's it say?'

'He says he wants all his stuff left to a prison guard. A Sergeant Rogers. Remember him? He's the guy who wouldn't let us see Sully before the execution. The one that ushered Cowart into the prison.'

'Is he…'

'Here's what Sullivan wrote: "I leave all my earthly possessions to Sergeant Rogers, who…" get this "… came to my aid and comfort at such a critical moment, and whom I could never repay for the difficult services he's performed. Although I've tried. Weiss paused. 'How do you like that?'

Shaeffer nodded, although her partner couldn't see her head move. 'Makes for an interesting combination of events.'

'Yeah, well guess what?'

'Tell me.'

'The good sergeant had two days off three days before Cowart found those bodies. And you know what else he's got?'

'What?'

'A brother who lives in Key Largo.'

'Well, damn.'

'Better than that. A brother with a record. Two convictions for breaking and entering. Did eleven months in county lockup on an assault charge – that was some barroom beef – and arrested once for illegal discharge of a weapon, to wit, a three-fifty-seven magnum pistol. Charge dropped. And it gets a little better. Remember your crime-scene analysis? The brother's left-handed, and both of the old folks' throats were cut slicing right to left. Interesting, huh?'

'Have you spoken with him?'

'Not yet. Thought I'd wait for you to get here.'

'Thanks,' she said. 'I appreciate it. But one question.'

'What's that?'

'Well, how come he didn't get rid of Sullivan's stuff after the execution? I mean, he had to figure if Sullivan was going to double-cross him, that would be where he would leave the message, right?'

I thought of that, too. Doesn't exactly make sense for him to leave those boxes laying about. But maybe he's not that smart. Or maybe he didn't figure Sully for quite the character he is. Or maybe it just slipped his mind. But it sure was a big slip.'

'All right, she said. 'I'll get there.'

'He's a real good suspect, Andy. Real good. I'd like to see if we can put him down in the Keys. Or check phone records, see if he wasn't spending a lot of time talking to that brother of his. Then maybe we go talk to the state attorney with what we've got.' The detective paused before saying, 'There's only one thing that bothers me, you know…'

'What's that?'

'Well, hell, Andy, that's a pretty damn big arrow pointing right at that sergeant that Sully left. And I hate trusting Sullivan, even if he's dead. You know the best way to screw up a murder investigation is to make somebody look like they did something. Even if we can eliminate other suspects, you know, some defense attorney is going to trot those suspects out at trial and mess up some jury's mind. I think Sully knew that, too.'

Again, she nodded vigorously. Weiss added, 'But, hey, that's just my own paranoia talking. Look, we make this guy, Andy, it's gonna be commendations and raises for the two of us. It'll be like giving your career a jump start. Trust me. Come on back here and get a piece. I'll keep interviewing people until you get here, then we'll head back down to the Keys.'

'All right,' she said slowly.

'I still hear a "but" in your voice.'

She was torn. Her partner's enthusiasm, coupled with his success and the sudden thought that she was missing out on the biggest case to which she'd ever been connected seemed to flood over all the fears she felt. She picked her head up and looked about the room. It seemed as if the shadows within her had diminished. For a moment, she wavered. 'Maybe I should just bag it and head home.'

'Well, do what you think is right. That'd be okay with me. A lot warmer down here, anyway. Aren't you cold up there?'

'It's cold. And wet.'

'Well, there you have it. But what about this guy Ferguson?'

'A bad guy, Mike,' she found herself saying again. 'A bad guy.'

'Well, look, hell. Go check out his schedule, poke about, make sure that alibi is as good as he says it is, then do what I said and forget it. It's not wasted time if it'll put the locals on to him. Maybe there's something floating about up there, you know. And anyway, all I've got in line for the next day or so are interviews with everybody who worked on the Row. Our sergeant is just one of the big pile. You know – routine questions, nothing to get him excited or nervous, make him think he's lost in the woodwork. Then zap. I'll wait until you get here. I'd like to see you work him over. Meanwhile, satisfy your curiosity. Then get down here.'

He paused, then added, 'See what a reasonable boss I am? No yelling. No swearing. Who would complain?'

She hung up the telephone wondering what she should do. It made her think of that moment when her mother had packed her and as many possessions as would fit into their old station wagon and left Chicago. It had been late on a gray, windy day, the breeze kicking up whitecaps on Lake Michigan: Adventure coupled with loss. She remembered closing the car door with a bang, slicing off the chill, and thinking that that was the moment when she'd realized her father was truly dead and would never return to her side.

Not when she'd come down the stairs at her house to find a priest and two uniformed police captains standing in the vestibule, holding their hands in front of them, unable to meet her eyes. Not the funeral, even when the single piper had started playing his heartbreaking dirge. Not the times when her classmates had stared at her with that uniquely cruel children's curiosity about loss. That afternoon.

There are such junctures in childhood, she realized, and later, when things get pressed together beneath a clear, hard shell. Decisions made. Steps taken. An irrevocability to life. It was time to make such a decision now.

She recalled Ferguson. She could see him grinning at her, sitting on the threadbare couch, laughing at the homicide detective.

Why she asked herself again.

The answer jumped instantly at her.

Because she was asking about the wrong homicide.

She lay back on the bed. She decided she was not ready to leave Robert Earl Ferguson quite yet.

The light rain and gloom persisted into the following morning, carrying with it a penetrating damp cold. The gray sky seemed to blend with the murky brown of the Raritan River as it flowed by the edge of the brick and ivy campus at Rutgers. She made her way across a parking lot, tugging the inadequate comfort of her trench coat tight around her, feeling like some odd sort of refugee.

It did not take her long to get swept up in the stolid pace of the university bureaucracy. After arriving at the Criminology Department and explaining to a secretary why she was there, she'd been rerouted to an administration building. There she'd received a lecture on student confidentiality from an assistant dean who, despite a tendency to drone on, had finally provided her with permission to speak with the three professors she was" searching for. Finding the three men had proven equally difficult. Office hours were erratic. Home telephone numbers weren't available. She'd tried waving her badge about, only to realize that it had little impact.

It was noontime when she found her first professor, eating lunch at the faculty union. He taught a course on forensic procedure. He was wiry-haired, slight of build, wore a sportcoat and khaki slacks, and had an irritating habit of looking off into the air next to her as he spoke. She had only one concrete area of questioning, the time surrounding the murders in the Keys, and felt a bit foolish chasing it, especially knowing what she did about the prison guard. Still, it was a place to start.

'I don't know what sort of help I can be,' the professor replied between bites of tired green salad. 'Mr. Ferguson is an upper-echelon student. Not the best, but quite good. B-plus, perhaps. Not an A, I doubt that, but solid. Definitely solid. But then, that's to be expected. He has a bit more practical experience than many of the students. Little joke, I guess, right there. Real aptitude for procedure. Quite interested in forensic sciences. Steady. No complaints.'

'And attendance?'

'Always take attendance.'

'And the days in question?'

'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.'

'He goes back to Florida?'

'On occasion.'

'You happen to have those dates?'

'Yes. But I thought he told me you were only interested in the week that…'

'No, I'm interested in the other times as well.'

Professor Morin hesitated, then shrugged. 'I don't suppose it will hurt anything.' He turned to a notebook, flipped rapidly through some pages and finally came to an attendance sheet. He handed this over to her, and she quickly copied down the dates Ferguson had been absent from class.

'Is that all, Detective?'

'I think so.'

'See. It's all quite routine and ordinary. I mean, he blends in here. Has a future as well, I suspect. Certainly has the capability of getting his degree.'

'Blends in?'

'Of course. We're a large, urban university, Detective. He fits in.'

'Anonymous.'

'Like any student.'

'Do you know where he lives, Professor?'

'No.'

'Anything else about him?'

'No.'

'And he doesn't make your skin shrivel a bit when you speak with him?'

'He has an intensity, like I said – but I don't see how that should make him into a suspect for a homicide. I suppose he wonders whether he'll ever be free from the interest of the police in Florida. And I think that's a legitimate question, Detective, don't you?'

'An innocent man has nothing to fear,' she answered.

'No,' the professor shook his head. 'I think in our society it's often the guilty who are safe.'

She looked over at the professor, who was gathering himself as if to launch into some quasi-radical, leftover sixties tirade. She decided to decline this particular lecture.

She stood and left the room. She wasn't sure what she'd heard, but she'd heard something. Anonymous. She walked partway down the corridor until struck with the thought she was being watched. She turned suddenly and saw the professor closing the door to his office. The sound reverberated in the hallway. Her eyes swept about, searching for the students who'd flooded the area earlier, and who now seemed to have been absorbed by the offices, classrooms, and lecture halls.

Alone.

She forced a shrug onto her shoulders. It's daytime, she told herself. This is a crowded, public place. She started walking rapidly. She could hear her shoes making a slapping sound against the polished linoleum of the floor, which echoed slightly about her ears. She began to hurry, picking up her pace, increasing the solitary sound around her. She found a stairwell and pushed ahead, moving quickly. The stairwell was empty as well. She took the stairs swiftly, almost jumping down the half-flights. She stopped abruptly when she heard a doorway behind her open and close and realized, suddenly, that someone else's footsteps were moving fast on the stairs behind her. She stopped, shoving herself against the wall, reaching into her pocketbook for her weapon as the sound increased and approached. She squeezed herself tight into a corner, feeling the reassuring grip of her pistol beneath her fingers. She looked up and saw the eyes of a young student, loaded with notebooks and texts, untied basketball shoes flapping in his hurry. The student barely looked at her as he swept past, obviously late and hurrying. She closed her eyes. What's happening to me? she asked herself. She released her grip on the pistol. What did I hear? She headed through the stairwell exit, spying the doors to the building in front of her. The late afternoon sky beyond the glass entranceway seemed gray and funereal but beckoning.

She pushed herself quickly toward it.

She did not see Ferguson, only heard him.

'Learn what you wanted, Detective?'

The hiss of his question made her jump.

She pivoted toward the sound, jerking her hand into her pocketbook, stepping back, almost as if struck with a blow. Her eyes locked onto Ferguson's, and she saw the same, unsettling grin crease his face.

'Satisfied?' he asked.

She squared her shoulders toward him.

'Did I frighten you, Detective?'

She shook her head, still unable to respond. She could feel her hand around the pistol grip, but she did not remove it from the bag.

'Are you going to shoot me, Detective?' he asked harshly. 'Is that what you're looking for?'

Ferguson stepped forward, out of the shadowed spot against the wall that had concealed him. He wore an olive-drab army surplus jacket and had a New York Giants cap on his head. A satchel, which she presumed was filled with books, was slung over his shoulder. He looked like almost every other student that she'd seen in that corridor that day. She controlled her racing heart and slowly removed her hand from the pocketbook.

'What do you carry, Detective? A thirty-eight, police issue? Maybe a twenty-five-caliber auto? Something small but efficient?'

He stared at her. 'No, I bet something larger. Got to prove something to the world. A three-fifty-seven with a magnum load. Or a nine-millimeter. Something that helps you think you're tough, right, Detective? Strong and in charge.'

She did not reply.

He laughed. 'Won't share that information, huh?'

Ferguson unslung his book bag, setting it on the floor. Then he spread his arms in mock surrender, almost supplication, palms out. 'But you see, I'm unarmed, aren't I? So what have you got to fear?'

She breathed in and out sharply, trying to clear the surprise of seeing him from her head, so that she could come up with some appropriate response of her own.

'So, did you find out what you wanted, Detective?'

She exhaled slowly. I found out some things, yes.'

'Discovered I was in class?'

That's right.'

'So, there wasn't any way I could be down in Florida and do that old couple, right? You figured that out yet?'

'It doesn't seem so. I'm still checking.'

'Got the wrong guy, Detective.' Ferguson grinned. "You Florida cops always seem to get the wrong guy.'

She met his eyes coldly. 'No, I don't know that, Mr. Ferguson. I think you're the right guy. But I just haven't figured out what for yet.'

Ferguson's eyes flashed toward her. 'You're all alone, aren't you, Detective?'

'No,' she lied. I have a partner.'

'Where is he?'

'Working.'

Ferguson stepped past her, glancing out the double glass doors toward the walkways and parking lots. Rain streaked the air, tumbling down with a depressing ferocity,

'Gal got beaten and raped right out there the other evening. Little late coming out of class. Just after night fell. Some guy just grabbed her, dragged her down behind that little lip at the edge of the parking lot. Did her right there. Knocked her out and did her. Didn't kill her, though. Broke her jaw. Broke her arm. Took his pleasure.'

Ferguson continued to look through the doors. He raised his arm and pointed. 'Right out there. That where you're parked, Detective?'

She clamped her mouth shut.

He turned toward her. 'They got no suspects yet. Gal's still in the hospital. Ain't that something, Detective? Just think about it. You can't even be safe walking across a campus. Finding your car. Not even in a motel room, neither, I guess. Doesn't that make you a bit nervous? Even with that big old gun stuck down there in that pocketbook where you can't reach it in near enough time.'

Ferguson stepped away from the doors. He turned and looked past Shaeffer, and she became aware of the sound of voices approaching them. She kept her eyes on Ferguson, however, eyeing him as he watched a gaggle of students approach. Their voices suddenly swarmed about her. She saw Ferguson nod at one of the men in the group and heard a young woman say, 'God! Look at that rain!' The bunch gathered coats and umbrellas and surged past the detective, out into the damp air. She felt a cold burst as the door swung open and then swept shut.

'So, Detective. Did you finish? Did you learn what you came up here for?'

'I know enough,' she replied.

He smiled. 'Don't like to give folks a straight answer,' he said. 'You know, that's such an old technique. I probably have a description of it in some textbook right here with me now.'

"You're a good student, Mr. Ferguson.'

Yes, I am,' he said. 'Knowledge is important. Sets you free.'

Where did you learn that?' she asked.

On the Row, Detective. Learned a lot right there. But mostly, I learned that I have to educate myself. Wouldn't have no future at all if I didn't. End up just like all those other poor folk waiting for the Death Squad to come shave their skulls and slap 'em down in that chair.'

So you came to school.'

Life's a school, ain't it, Detective?'

She nodded.

So, now you going to leave me alone?' he demanded.

Why should I?'

"Cause I ain't done nothing.'

'Well, I don't know if I think so, Mr. Ferguson. I don't know that yet at all.'

His eyes narrowed. He spoke evenly and slowly. That's a dangerous approach, Detective.' She didn't answer, so he continued. 'Especially if you're alone.'

He looked at her, then smiled, and gestured toward the door. 'I suspect you'll want to be leaving now, right? Before it gets real dark. Not much light left out there. I'd guess maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, no more. Wouldn't want to get lost looking for that rental car, now would you? What color was it, Detective? A silver-gray? Hard to find on a dark, wet night. Don't get lost, Detective. There are some bad folks out there. Even on a college campus.'

She stiffened. He had hit the right color for the rental car she was driving. A guess, she thought. A lucky guess.'

Ferguson stepped back, away from the door, giving her an open path to the rain and gloom.

'You be careful now, Detective,' he said mockingly.

Then he turned and walked back into the classroom building, disappearing down a side corridor. She listened for a moment, trying to hear the retreat of his footsteps but couldn't. She turned and looked again at the rain pelting down against the trees and sidewalks. She tightened her raincoat and pulled up the collar. It required a stiffening of will to force her feet to move.

The cold soaked into her immediately. She felt rain sliding down her neck. She started to move quickly, damning the awkward shoes that kept sliding on the footpath. Her head swiveled about, searching behind her, in front of her, making certain that she didn't spot Ferguson following her. When she reached the rental car, she checked the backseat before tossing her things in and throwing herself behind the wheel. She punched down the door locks immediately. Her hand shook slightly as she thrust the key into the ignition, and then slapped the car into gear. As the car started to move, she felt better. As she steered out of the parking lot, relief started to fill her. She picked up speed and pulled onto a two-way street. Out of the corner of one eye she thought, for just an instant, that she saw a hunched-over figure in an olive-drab coat, but when she tried to turn and look carefully, the figure had disappeared, lost in a group of students standing at a bus stop. She fought off a surge of fear and drove on. The heater on the little car started to whir with effort and hot air that seemed as if it had come from a can poured over her, warming her face but not her thoughts.

What did he learn on Death Row? she asked herself.

He learned to be a student.

Of what?

Of crime.

Why?

Because everyone else on Death Row had failed some test. They were all men who'd committed crime after crime, sometimes killing after killing, and finally ended up trapped and caught and awaiting the chair, because they'd screwed up. Even Sullivan screwed up.

She remembered a quotation from one of Matthew Cowart's stories: 'I'd of killed more if I hadn't been caught.' But Ferguson, she thought, got a second chance. And he's determined not to blow it this time.

Why?

Because he wants to keep doing whatever he's doing for as long as he wants.

Her head struggled with dizziness. She spoke to herself in the third person, trying to settle herself with familiar tones.

Ohmigod, Andy girl, what have you stumbled on?'

She tried to blank her mind and drove on into the night, searching for her motel. She let the road flow by outside the car, concentrating on nothing except finding a safe spot to order her thoughts. She stared up once into the rearview mirror, struck with the sudden panic that a car was tailing her, but she saw the headlights turn away. She gritted her teeth and drove through the rain steadily. When she saw the lights of the motel loom up in front of her, she felt a momentary relief, but she could find no parking spot near the front of the lot and was forced to swing her vehicle into a space some fifty yards and innumerable shadows from the lighted entrance. She shut off the engine and took a single deep breath, eyeing the distance she would have to travel. She had a sudden thought: It was easier in a uniform, driving a squad car. Always in touch with the dispatcher. Never really alone. Always part of a team of officers cruising the highways in regular fashion. She reached over and removed the nine-millimeter from her pocketbook. Then she got out of the car and walked directly to the front of the motel, eyes sweeping the area in front of her, ears sharpened for any sound behind her. Not until she was within a dozen feet of the doorway did she return the pistol to her pocketbook. An elderly couple bundled in overcoats, exiting the motel as she entered, must have seen the flash of dark metal with its unmistakable shape. She caught a snatch of their frightened conversation as she stepped past them. 'Did you see that? She had a gun…'

'No, dear, it must have been something else…'

And that was all.

A young man in a blue blazer was working behind the desk. She asked for her key and he handed it over, saying as he did, idly, 'Oh, there was a fellow looking for you earlier, Detective.'

'A fellow?'

'Yes. Didn't want to leave a message. Just asked for you.'

'Did you see the person?'

'No. It was the guy who had the desk before me.'

She could feel something within her trying to break loose. 'Did he say anything else? Like a description?'

'Ahh, yes. He said the gentleman was black. That's what he said. Some black fellow was asking about you, but didn't want to leave a message. Said he'd get in touch. That's all. Sorry, that's all I can remember.'

'Thank you,' she said.

She forced herself to walk slowly to the elevator.

How did he find me? she asked herself.

The elevator swooshed her upward and she padded down the corridor to her room. As before, she checked all the empty spots in the room after double-locking the doors. Then she sat heavily on the bed, trying to deal with the mundane, which was what she was going to do about getting supper, though she didn't feel particularly hungry, and the complicated, which was what she was going to do next about Robert Earl Ferguson.

When she pictured him, she tried to see him without the smirking look on his face but couldn't.

The knock at the door crashed through her fears.

It made her snatch her breath and rise in a single motion. She found herself frozen, staring at the door.

There was another sharp rap on it. Then a third.

She reached down once again, freeing the pistol from her handbag, cocked it, and approached the door, holding her finger on the outside of the trigger [guard, as she had been taught to do when uncertain what she was facing. There was a convex peephole on the door. She leaned toward it to see what was on the other side, but just as she did, another crash came against the door, and she jumped back.

She forced toughness onto her anxiety, reached for the door handle and in a single, swift motion, threw the dead bolts and tugged the door open. In the same moment, she raised her pistol to eye level, sighting down the barrel.

The door swung open and she saw Matthew Cowart.

He was standing in the hallway, hand half-raised to knock again. She saw his face freeze when he spied the weapon in her hand. Silence like a knife filled the space between them. He raised his hands slowly and then she saw that he was accompanied by two other men. She lowered the weapon.

'Cowart,' she said.

He nodded. 'That's quite a greeting,' he managed to croak out. 'Everyone seems to want to point guns at me lately.'

Her eyes slid to the other two men.

'I know you, she said. 'You were at the prison.'

'Wilcox,' the detective replied. 'Escambia County. This is my boss, Lieutenant Brown.'

She turned and stared at the hulking figure of Tanny Brown. He seemed to bristle with intensity, and she saw his eyes pausing for a moment on the pistol in her hand.

'I see,' he said slowly, 'that you've been to see Bobby Earl.'

22. Taking Notes

The three detectives and the solitary newspaperman took up uncomfortable positions in the motel room. Wilcox stood, back up against the wall, close to the windows, occasionally glancing out through the darkness at the headlights that trailed by, keeping his thoughts to himself. Shaeffer and Brown occupied the only chairs in the room, on either side of a small table, like poker players waiting for the final card to be dealt. Cowart perched uneasily on the edge of the bed, slightly apart. Someone in an adjacent room was playing a television loudly; voices from a news show filtered through the motel walls. Some tragedy, he thought, reduced to fifteen seconds, thirty if it is truly terrible, delivered with a practiced look of concern.

He glanced at Andrea Shaeffer. Although clearly surprised when she had opened the door on the three men, she had let them enter without comment. Introductions had been brief, small talk nonexistent. They were all aware of what had brought them together in a small room in an alien city. She shuffled a few notes and papers together, then turned to the three men and asked, 'How did you find me?'

'The local police liaison office told us,' Brown said. 'We checked in there when we arrived. They said they'd accompanied you to see Ferguson.'

Shaeffer nodded.

'Why did you do that?' Brown asked.

She started to answer, stopped, stared over at Cowart and then shook her head. 'Why are you here?' she demanded.

The reporter didn't want to answer that question, but Tanny Brown, speaking in measured, officious tones, replied, 'We're here to see Ferguson, too.' Shaeffer looked at the police lieutenant.

Why? I thought you were finished with him. And you, too,' she gestured at Cowart.

No. Not yet.'

Why?'

Again, Brown was the one to answer. 'We're here because we have reason to believe that there were errors made in the original prosecution of Ferguson. We think there may have been mistakes made in Mr. Cowart's stories. We're here to investigate both aspects.'

Shaeffer looked both angry and surprised. 'Mistakes? Errors?' She turned to the reporter. 'What sort of mistakes?'

Cowart realized he would have to answer her this lime. 'He lied to me.'

'About what?'

'About the murder of the little girl.'

Shaeffer shifted about in her seat. 'And now you're here for what?'

'To set the record straight.'

The cliche prompted a cynical smile. 'I'm sure that's real important,' she said. She glanced over at Brown and Wilcox. 'But it doesn't explain why you're traveling with this company.'

'We want the record straight as well,' Brown said. As soon as he spoke the words, he recognized he'd made an error of his own. He realized that the young woman across from him was measuring him and that, so far, he'd failed.

Shaeffer thought for a moment. 'You're not here to arrest Ferguson?'

'No. Can't do that.'

'You're here to talk to him?'

'Yes.'

She shook her head. 'You guys are lying, she said. She sat back hard, crossing her arms in front of her.

'We…' Brown began.

'Lying' she interrupted.

'Because…' Cowart said.

'Lying' Shaeffer said a third time.

The reporter and the police lieutenant stared at her, and after a small quiet, just enough time to let the word fester in their imaginations, she continued. 'What record?' she said. 'There is no record. There's only one very wrong man. Mistakes and errors. So what? If Cowart made some mistake, he'd be here alone. If you, Detective Brown, made some mistake, you'd be here alone. But together, that means something altogether different. Right?'

Tanny Brown nodded.

'Is this a guessing game?' she asked.

'No. Tell me what brought you here, then I'll fill you in.'

Shaeffer considered this offer, then agreed. I came to see Ferguson because he was connected to both Sullivan and Cowart and I thought he might have specific information about the killings in the Keys.'

Brown looked hard at her. 'And did he?'

She shook her head. 'No. Denied any knowledge.'

'Well, what would you expect?' Cowart said under his breath.

She turned to him. 'Well, he was a damn sight more cooperative than you've been.' This was untrue, of course, but she thought it would quiet the reporter, which it did.

'So, if he had no information and he denied any connection, said Brown, 'why are you still here, Detective?'

'I wanted to check out his alibi for the time period that the murders took place.'

'And?'

'It did.'

It did?' Cowart blurted. She glared at him.

Ferguson was in class that week. Didn't miss any. It'd been damn hard for him to get down to the Keys, kill the old couple, and get back, without being late for something. Probably impossible.'

But, goddammit, that's not what Sullivan…'

Cowart stopped short, and Shaeffer pivoted toward him. 'Sullivan what?'

Nothing.'

Sullivan what, dammit!'

Cowart felt suddenly sick. 'That's not what Sullivan told me.'

Tanny Brown tried to step in, but a single glance from Shaeffer cut him off before he could speak a word. Unbridled rage filled her; for a moment the world turned red-tinged. She could feel an explosion within her, and her hands shook with the effort to contain it. Lies, she thought, staring at the reporter. Lies and omissions. She took a deep breath. I knew it.

Sullivan told you when?' she asked slowly.

'Before going to the chair.'

'What did he tell you?'

'That Ferguson committed those crimes. But it's not that…'

You son of a bitch,' she muttered.

'No, look, you've got to understand…'

You son of a bitch. What did he tell you, exactly?'

That he'd arranged with Ferguson to switch crimes. Took Ferguson's crime in return for Ferguson committing this one for him.'

She absorbed this and in an instant saw the crevasse the reporter was in. She had no sympathy. 'And you didn't think this was relevant for the people investigating the murders?'

'It's not that simple. He lied. I was trying to…'

'And so you thought you could lie, too?'

'No, dammit, you've got to understand…' Cowart turned toward Tanny Brown.

I ought to arrest you right now,' she said bitterly.

'Could you write that one up from your own cell, Mr. Cowart? REPORTER CHARGED WITH COVER-UP IN SENSATIONAL MURDER CASE. Isn't that how the headline would read? Would they run that on the front page with your goddamn picture? Would it be the truth for once?'

They glared at each other until something occurred to Cowart. 'Yeah. Truth. Except it wasn't the truth, was it, Detective?'

'What?'

'Just what I said. Sullivan told me Ferguson did that old couple, but I didn't know whether to believe him or not. He told me lots of things, some of them lies. So I could have told you, and at the same time I would have had to put it in the paper – had to, Detective. But now, you're telling me that Ferguson had an alibi, so it would have been all wrong. He didn't do that old couple, no matter what Sullivan said. Right?'

Shaeffer hesitated.

'Come on, goddammit, Detective! Right?'

She could think of no way to disagree. She nodded her head. 'It doesn't seem that way. The alibi checks out. I went out to Rutgers and spoke with three different professors. In class each day that week. Perfect attendance. Also, my partner has come up with other information as well.'

'What other information?'

'Forget it.'

There was another pause in the room while each person sorted out what they'd heard. Tanny Brown spoke slowly.

'But,' he said carefully, 'something else. Right? If Ferguson isn't your suspect, and he has no information to help your investigation, you should be on an airplane heading south. You wouldn't be sitting around here, you'd be down with your partner. You could have checked out Ferguson's class schedule by telephone, but instead you went and saw some people in person. Why is that, Detective? And when you open your door you've got a nine-millimeter in your hand and your bags aren't packed. So why?' She shook her head.

"I'll tell you why,' Brown said quietly. 'Because you know something's wrong, and you can't say what.'

Shaeffer looked across at him and nodded. 'Well,' Brown said, 'that's why we're here, too.'

Dawn light streaked the street outside Ferguson's apartment, barely illuminating the wedge of gray clouds that hovered over the city, poised for more rain.

Shaeffer and Wilcox pulled one car to the curb at the north end of the street, while Brown stopped at the southern end. Cowart checked his tape recorder and his notebook, patted his jacket pocket to make certain pat his pens were still there, and turned toward the policeman.

Back in the motel room, Shaeffer had turned brusquely to them and said, 'So. What's the plan?'

The plan,' Cowart had said softly, 'is to give him something to worry about, maybe flush him out of his cover, do something that we can follow up on. We want to make him think that things aren't as safe as he supposes. Give him something to worry about,' he repeated, smiling wanly. 'And that's me.'

Now, out in the car, he tried to make a joke. 'In the movies, they'd have me wear a wire. We'd have a code word I could say that would signal I needed help.'

'Would you wear one?'

'No.'

I didn't think so. So we don't need a code word.'

Cowart smiled, but only because he could think of nothing else to do.

'Nervous?' Brown asked.

'Do I act it?' Cowart replied. 'Don't answer that.'

'He won't do anything.'

'Sure.'

'He can't.'

Cowart smiled again. 'I kinda feel like an old lion tamer who happens to be taking a stroll through the jungle, and he runs across some former charge that he maybe used a whip and chair on a bit too much. And he looks down at that old lion and realizes that they're not in his circus cage anymore, but on the lion's turf. Get the picture?'

Brown smiled. 'All he's going to do is growl.'

'Bark is worse than his bite, huh?'

'I guess, but that's dogs, not lions.'

Cowart opened the car door. 'Too many mixed metaphors here, he said. 'I'll see you in a few minutes.'

The cool, damp air curling above the dirty sidewalk slapped him in the face. He walked swiftly down the block, passing a pair of men asleep in an abandoned doorway, a huddled mass of gray, brown tattered clothing, nestled together to ward off the cold night. The men stirred as he walked near them, then slipped back into early-morning oblivion. Cowart could hear a few street noises a block or two away, the deep grumble-whine of diesel bus engines, the start of morning traffic.

He turned and faced the apartment building. For a moment, he wavered on the stoop, then he stepped within the dark entranceway and rapidly climbed the stairs to the front of Ferguson's apartment. He'll be asleep, the reporter told himself, and he'll awaken to confusion and doubt. That was the design behind the early-morning visit. These hours, between night and day, were the most unsettling, the transition time when people were weakest.

He took a deep breath and pounded hard on the door. Then he waited. He could hear no sound from within, so he pounded hard again. Another few seconds passed, then he heard footsteps hurrying toward the door. He bashed his fist against the door a third and fourth time.

Dead bolt locks started to click. A chain was loosened. The door swung open.

Ferguson stared out at him. 'Mr. Cowart.'

Killer, Cowart thought, but instead, he said, 'Hello, Bobby Earl.'

Ferguson rubbed a hand across his face, then smiled. 'I should have figured you would show up.'

I'm here now.'

'What do you want?'

'Same thing as always. Got questions that need answers.'

Ferguson held the door wide for him and he stepped inside the apartment. They moved into the small living room, where Cowart rapidly peered about, trying to take it all in.

'You want coffee, Mr. Cowart? I have some made,' Ferguson said. He gestured toward a seat on the couch. 'I have some coffee cake. You want a slice?'

'No.'

'Well, you don't mind if I help myself, do you?'

'Go ahead.'

Ferguson disappeared into the small kitchen, then returned, carrying a steaming coffee cup and a tin plate with a coffee cake on it. Cowart had already set up his tape recorder on a small table. Ferguson put the coffee cake next to it, then carved a piece off the end. Cowart saw that he used a gleaming steel hunting knife to cut the cake. It had a six-inch blade with a serrated edge on one side and a grip handle. Ferguson put the knife down and popped the cake into his mouth.

'Not exactly kitchen equipment,' Cowart said.

Ferguson shrugged. 'I keep this handy. Had some break-ins. You know, addicts looking for an easy score. This isn't the best neighborhood. Or maybe you didn't notice.'

'I noticed.'

'Need a little extra protection.'

'Ever use that knife for something else?'

Ferguson smiled. Cowart had the impression that he was being teased the way a younger child will tease an older sibling mercilessly, knowing that the parents will side with him. 'Now, what else could I use this for, save cutting an occasional piece of bread and slicing off some piece of rind?' he replied.

Ferguson took a sip of coffee. 'So. Early-morning visit. Got questions. Come alone?' He stood up, went to the window, and peered up and down the street.

'I'm alone.'

Ferguson hesitated, staring hard for an instant or two in the direction where Brown had parked his car, then turned back to the reporter.

'Sure.'

He sat back down. 'All right, Mr. Cowart. What brings you here?'

'Have you spoken with your grandmother?'

'Haven't spoken to anyone from Pachoula in months. She doesn't have a telephone. Neither do I.'

Cowart glanced around but couldn't see a phone. 'I went to see her.'

'Well, that was nice of you.'

'I went to see her because Blair Sullivan told me to go look for something there.'

'Told you when?'

'Right before he died.'

'Mr. Cowart, you're driving at something and I surely have no idea what.'

'In the outhouse.'

'Not a nice place. Old. Ain't been used for a year.'

'That's right.'

'I put some plumbing in. A thousand bucks, cash.'

'Why'd you do it?'

'What? Put plumbing in? Because it's cold to walk outside and do your business in the wintertime.'

Cowart shook his head. 'No. That's not what I mean. Why did you kill Joanie Shriver?'

Ferguson stared hard at Cowart and then leaned back in his chair. 'Haven't killed nobody. Especially that little gal. Thought you knew that by now.'

'You're lying.'

Ferguson glared at him. 'No.'

'You raped her, then you killed her, left her body in the swamp, and stuck the knife under the culvert. Then you returned home and saw that there was blood on your clothes and on a piece of the rug in your car, so you cut that out, and you took it and wrapped up the clothes and buried them under all this shit and muck in that outhouse, because you knew that no one in their right mind would ever look there for them.'

Ferguson shook his head.

'You denying it?' Cowart asked.

'Of course.'

'I found the clothing and the rug.'

Ferguson looked surprised for an instant, then shrugged. 'Came all this way to tell me that?'

'Why did you kill her?'

I didn't. I told you.'

'Liar. You've been lying from the start.'

Cowart thought the statement should anger Ferguson, but it did not, at least outwardly. Instead he smiled, reached forward, slowly cut himself another slice of cake, lingering with the knife in his hand for just a moment, then took another sip of coffee.

'The lies are all Sullivan's. What else did he tell you?'

That you killed his folks down in the Keys.'

Ferguson shook his head. 'Didn't do that crime, neither. Helps explain what that pretty detective was doing poking about up here, though.'

'Why'd you kill Joanie Shriver?' Cowart asked again.

Ferguson started to rise, anger finally creasing the edge of his voice. I didn't do that crime! Goddammit, how many times I got to say that?'

'Then how did that stuff get in your outhouse?'

'We used to throw all sorts of things away down there. Clothes, auto parts that didn't work, trash. You name it. Those clothes you thinking of, I threw them out 'cause they got covered with pig's blood, 'cause I helped a neighbor slaughter an old sow. And I was walking home through the woods and got surprised by an old skunk and got nailed good with its damn stink. And hell, I had a little extra money, so I wrapped up those clothes and just threw 'em out, they was almost worn out anyways. Went and bought a new pair of jeans downtown.'

'And the rug?'

'The rug got cut up by accident. Got torn when I put a chainsaw on the floor of the car. I cut out the square 'cause I was going to replace it with a new piece of rug. Got arrested first, though. Just chucked it down there, same as everything else.'

Ferguson looked over at Cowart warily. 'You got lab results that say differently?'

Cowart started to shake his head but then stopped. He didn't know whether Ferguson had spotted the slight movement.

'You think I'm so damn stupid that after I got out of prison, if that stuff were evidence of some damn crime, especially a first-degree murder, I wouldn't go get it and make sure it was disappeared for good? What do you think, Mr. Cowart? You think I didn't learn anything on Death Row? You think I didn't learn anything taking all those criminology courses? You think I'm stupid, Mr. Cowart?'

'No,' said Cowart. 'I don't think you're stupid.' His eyes locked onto Ferguson's. 'And I think you've learned a great deal.'

The two men were quiet for an instant.

'How did Sullivan know about that outhouse?'

Ferguson shrugged. 'He told me once, before we had our little disagreement, said he once strangled a woman with her pantyhose, then flushed the stockings down the toilet. Said once they got into that septic system, weren't no one gonna find them. Asked me what I had at my house, and I told him we had that old outhouse and we used to throw all sorts of stuff in there. I guess he just put two and two together and made up a story for you, Mr. Cowart. So when you looked hard enough and thought hard enough and expected to find something, you sure as hell did. Isn't that the way things work? When you go looking for sure for something, you're likely to find it. Even if it ain't what you really are looking for.'

That's a convenient story.'

Again, Ferguson bristled briefly, then relaxed. 'Can't make it any prettier. But if you listen, seems to me that you'll hear a bit of Blair Sullivan in it. Man was able to twist about anything into something useful for him, wasn't he, Mr. Cowart?'

That's true, he replied.

Ferguson gestured toward the tape recorder and the notepad that Cowart held in his hand.

'You here looking for some sort of story, Mr. Cowart?'

That's right.'

Well, this is all old news.'

'I don't know about that.'

Old story. Same old story. You been talking to Tanny Brown. That man is never gonna give up, is he?'

Cowart smiled. 'No,' he answered. 'He's never going to give up.'

Damn him,' Ferguson said bitterly. But then his voice lost the touch of fury that had accompanied the epithet and he added, 'But he can't touch me now.'

Cowart could feel a helplessness sinking within him. He tried to imagine what Tanny Brown would ask, what question could break through the hard shell of innocence that covered Ferguson. For the first time, he began to understand why Brown had loosened his partner's fists to obtain the confession to murder.

When you go south to talk to some church group, Bobby Earl, or when you go to some civic center, do you give the same speech every time, or do you make it a bit different for different audiences?'

I change it about a bit. It depends on whom I'm speaking to. But mostly it's the same message.'

'But the thrust of it?'

'That remains the same.'

Tell me what you say.'

'I tell folks how Jesus came and brought light right into the darkness of that cell on Death Row, Mr. Cowart. I tell them how faith will abide you through the most dangerous of times. How even the worst sinner can be touched by that special light and find comfort in the words of God. I tell them how truth will always rise up and cut through evil like a great shining sword and show the path to freedom. And they say Amen to that, Mr. Cowart, because that is a message that comforts the heart and soul, don't you think?'

'I think it does. And are you a regular churchgoer up here in Newark?'

'No. Here I'm a student.'

Cowart nodded. 'So, how many times have you given this speech?'

'Eight or nine.'

'You got the names of the churches, community centers, whatever?'

'This for a story?'

'Give me the names.'

Ferguson stared hard at Cowart, then shrugged, as if unconcerned. Rapid-fire he raced through a short list of churches, Baptist, Pentecostal, and Unitarian, adding the names of a few civic centers. The names of the towns they were in followed just as swiftly. Cowart struggled to get the information into his notebook. His pen made a scratching sound against the page, and he saw his handwriting flying about between the blue-ruled lines. Ferguson finished and waited for Cowart to say something. The reporter counted. Perrine was on the list.

'That's only seven.'

'Maybe I forgot one or two.'

Cowart stood up, driven to his feet by the turbulence, he felt within him. He moved away from Ferguson, toward the bookcase. His eyes scanned the titles, just as Shaeffer had done when she visited the apartment.

'You must be an expert, after reading all these,' he said.

Ferguson watched the reporter carefully. 'Assigned readings.'

Cowart turned back. 'Dawn Perry,' he said quietly. He moved behind Ferguson's desk, as if that would afford him momentary protection if Ferguson came after him.

'The name is unfamiliar,' Ferguson replied.

'Little girl. Black. Just twelve years old. On her way home from a swimming club one day last August, just a couple of days after you gave that speech down there.'

'No. Can't say I place her. Should I know her?'

I think so. Perrine, Florida. Swim club's about three, four blocks from the First Baptist Church of Perrine. Did you tell the congregation about Jesus's light that came and visited you? I guess they didn't know what else that light might mean.'

'You asking a question, Mr. Cowart?'

'Yes. Why'd you kill her?'

'Little girl's dead?'

'Disappeared.'

'I didn't kill her.'

'No? You were there. She disappears.'

'That a question, Mr. Cowart?'

'Tell me how you did it.'

'I didn't do anything to that little girl.' Ferguson's voice remained cold and even. 'I didn't do anything to any little girls.'

'I don't believe you.'

'Belief, Mr. Cowart, is in great supply. People will believe almost anything. They'll believe that UFOs visit little towns in Ohio and that Elvis was spotted buying Twinkies in a convenience store. They'll believe that the CIA is poisoning their water and that a secret organization actually runs the United States. But proving something, Mr. Cowart, is much more difficult.'

He looked at the reporter. 'Like murder.'

Cowart remained stock still, listening to Ferguson's voice as it swirled around him.

'You need motive, you need opportunity, and you need physical evidence. Something scientific and certain that some expert can get up in a court of law and say without dispute happened, like a fingerprint or blood residue. Or even maybe this new DNA testing, Mr. Cowart. You know about that? I do. You need a witness, and lacking that, maybe an accomplice to testify. And if you don't have any of those, you damn well better have a confession. The killer's own words, nice and clear and indisputable, but we know all about that, don't we? And you got to have all these things, all sewn together into a nice fabric, because otherwise, you've got nothing except awful feelings and guesses. And just because some little girl got snatched away, right out there on the outskirts of that big old evil city, Mr. Cowart, and I happened to be in that town some two days earlier, well, that isn't proof of anything, is it? How many killers you think there are in Miami at any given moment? How many men wouldn't think twice about grabbing some little girl who was walking home, just like you said? You think the cops down there haven't run profiles and questioned all the creeps? They have, Mr. Cowart. I'm certain of it. But you know what? I'm not on anybody's list. Not anymore. Because I am an innocent man, Mr. Cowart. You helped me become one. And I intend to stay that way.'

'How many?' Cowart asked, almost whispering. 'Six? Seven? Every time you give a speech, does somebody die?'

Ferguson narrowed his eyes, but his voice remained steady. 'White man's crime, Mr. Cowart. Don't you know that?'

'What?'

'White man's crime. Come on, think of all the killers you've read about. All the Specks, Bundys, Coronas, Gacys, Henleys, Lucases, and our old buddy Blair Sullivan. White men. Jack the Ripper and Bluebeard. White men. Caligula and Vlad the Impaler. White men, Mr. Cowart. They're all white men. You take a tour of any prison and they're gonna point at Charlie Manson or David Berkowitz and you're gonna see white men, because they're the people who give in and get those strange urges. This is not to say that there ain't an occasional exception that maybe proves the rule, you know. Like Wayne Williams down in Atlanta; but there are so many questions about him, aren't there? Hell, there was even a movie on television questioning whether he was the one that did all those young men down there in that fair city. Remember that, Mr. Cowart? No, snatching little girls off the street and leaving 'em dead someplace dark and forgotten ain't typical of black men. What we do is crimes of violence. Sudden, uncontrollable bursts with knives or guns and noise. City crime, Mr. Cowart, with witnesses and crime scenes fairly dripping with evidence, so that when the cops get around to putting us in jail there ain't no questions left around. Raping joggers and shooting rival crack dealers and strong-arming convenience store clerks and assaulting each other, Mr. Cowart, ain't that right? Typical stuff that makes white folks buy fancy alarms for their 'suburban homes and feeds the criminal justice system with its daily quota of black men – but not serial killing. And you know what else, Mr. Cowart?'

'What?'

'That's the way the system likes it. The system isn't comfortable with things that don't quite match up into statistics and categories.'

Ferguson looked over at him. 'How you gonna write that story up, Mr. Cowart? The one that doesn't fit into some nice, safe, expected niche? Tell me, are newspapers real good at telling people things that strange? That unexpected? Or do you go about your business of reporting over and over again all the same old stuff, just with different faces and words?'

He didn't reply.

'And you think you're gonna write something like that without any proof?'

'Joanie Shriver,' Cowart said.

'Goodbye to her, Mr. Cowart. She's long gone. Best you understood that. Maybe make your friend Tanny Brown understand that, too.'

Cowart remained standing next to Ferguson's desk. He leaned across it, gripping the edges for balance. 'I will write the story, you know that, don't you?'

Ferguson didn't reply.

'I'll put it all in the paper. All the falsehoods, all the lies, every bit of it. You can deny it and deny it, and you know what, don't you?'

'What?'

'It'll work. I'll go down. Maybe Tanny Brown'll go down. But you know what will happen to you, Bobby Earl?'

'Tell me,' he said coldly.

'You won't go to jail. Nope. You're right about that. Not enough evidence. And a whole lot of people will believe you when you say it is all a setup. They'll still believe you when you say you're innocent. Most folks'll want to blame me, and the cops, and they'll rally around you, Bobby Earl. I promise.'

Ferguson continued to stare at Cowart.

'But you know what you're gonna lose? Anonymity.'

Ferguson shrugged, and Cowart continued. 'Come on, Bobby Earl. You know what you do when you've got an old house cat that likes to hunt? Likes to kill birds and mice and then drag them into your nice clean suburban house? You put a bell around that cat's neck, so that no matter how clever and quiet and stealthy that old hunting cat is, it can't ever get close enough to some poor little starling to get its claws around it.'

Ferguson's eyes narrowed.

'You think those fine churches still gonna ask you to come give that nice speech if there's just a little bit of a question remaining? You think they might be able to find some other speaker for that Sunday? One that they are damn certain isn't going to hang around or come back some other time and pluck some little girl off the street?'

Cowart saw Ferguson stiffen with anger.

'And the police, Bobby Earl. Think of the police. They're always going to wonder, aren't they? And when something happens, and it will happen, won't it, Bobby Earl? When something happens they'll be looking at you first. How many times you think you can do it, Bobby Earl, without making some little mistake? Forget something. Maybe get seen once. That's going to be all it takes, isn't it? Because you just make that one little mistake and the whole world's going to come down square on your head, and you won't be able to look up again until you're right back where you were when we had our first conversation. And this time there won't be any Miami Journal writer looking to help you get out, will there?'

Cowart watched as Ferguson coiled himself on the seat, rage spreading like gasoline fire across his face. He saw the man's hand edge toward the hunting knife and felt himself freeze with instant fear.

I'm dead, he thought.

He wanted to search around, try to find something to protect himself with, but he could not remove his eyes from Ferguson. For an instant, he remembered: I needed a word. A word that would summon Tanny Brown. But he had none.

Ferguson half rose from his seat, then stopped. Cowart felt his hand close on a sheaf of papers. Then Ferguson sat back down slowly.

'No,' he said. 'I don't think you'll write that story.'

'Why?'

Ferguson looked down on the table in front of him, where Cowart had placed his tape recorder. For a moment, Ferguson seemed to watch as the tape absorbed silence. Then he said, in a firm, distinct voice, leaning toward the machine, 'Because not a word of it would be true.' After another second or two passed, he reached over and punched off the Record button.

'You know why you won't write that story? I'll tell you why. There are a lot of good reasons, but first off, because you know what you don't have? You don't have any facts. You don't have any evidence. All you have is a crazy combination of events and lies, and I know some editor'll look at all that and think it has no place in the paper. And you know what else you don't have, Mr. Cowart? All newspaper stories are all made up of "according to's" and "police said's" and "spokesmen confirmed's" and all sorts of other folks contributing documents and reports, and that's where you get the bones for your story. The rest of the flesh is just the detail that you've seen and the detail that you've heard, and you haven't seen or heard anything important enough to build a story.'

'And that's one reason why you don't scare me, Mr. Cowart. Tell me,' he said. 'Do I scare you?'

Cowart nodded.

'Well, that's good. Do you suppose I scare your friend Tanny Brown, as well?'

'Yes and no.'

'Now that's a strange answer for a man who aspires toward precision. What do you mean?'

'I think he fears what you're doing. But I don't think he's scared of you.'

Ferguson shook his head. 'Tell me something, will you? Why is it that people always fear something happening to them? Personal fear. Like you right now. Scared that maybe I'll pick up this hunting knife and come over there and cut your heart out. Isn't that right? Just walk right over there and slice you from balls to throat and take out what I want. What do you think? You think I'm such an expert killer that I could do that? Then maybe stick your bloody remains someplace special, make it look like you stumbled around down here, got caught up with some of the locals, you know. Some of the folks down here aren't too partial to white people wandering around. Think I could make it seem like some gang maybe had a little fun carving up a white reporter who got lost looking for an address? Think I could pull that off, Mr. Cowart?'

'No.'

'You don't think so9 Why not, if I'm such an expert?'

'I don't…'

'Why not!' Ferguson demanded sharply. His hand closed on the knife handle.

'Blood,' Cowart answered rapidly. 'The bloodstains. You couldn't hope to get them sufficiently cleaned up.'

'Good. Keep going.'

'Maybe somebody saw me come in. A witness.'

'That's good, Mr. Cowart. There's an old landlady here who keeps a watch on such things. She might have seen you come in. Maybe one of the derelicts outside would remember seeing you. That's possible as well, but they'd make a poor witness. Keep going.'

'Maybe I told somebody where I was going.'

'No,' Ferguson grinned. 'That wouldn't amount to anything. No proof you ever got here.'

'Prints. I've left prints in here.'

'Didn't take the cup of coffee you were offered. That might have left prints and saliva. What else you touched? The desk. The papers there. I could clean those.'

'You couldn't be sure.'

Ferguson smiled again. 'That's right.'

'Other things. Hair. Skin. I might fight back. Cut you. That'd put some of your blood on me. They'd find it.'

'Maybe. At least now you're thinking, Mr. Cowart.'

Ferguson leaned, back. He gestured at the hunting knife. 'Too many variables. You're right about that. Too many angles to cover. Any student of criminology would know that.' Ferguson continued to stare at him. 'But I still don't think you'll write that story, Mr. Cowart.'

'I'll write the story,' Cowart insisted softly.

'You know something? You know there are other ways of cutting out somebody's heart? Don't always have to use a big hunting knife…'

Ferguson reached over and grasped the blade. He held it up, twisting it in his hand so that it caught a small bit of gray light that forced its way through the window.

'… No, sir. Not at all. I mean, you'd think this was the easiest way to cut out your heart, Mr. Cowart, but it really isn't.'

Ferguson continued to hold the knife up in front of him. 'Who lives at 1215 Wildflower Drive, Mr. Cowart?'

Cowart felt a surge of dizzying heat.

'In that nice Tampa suburb. Rides that yellow school bus every day. Plays down in the park a couple of blocks distant. Likes to help her mother in with the groceries and watch her new baby brother. Of course, you wouldn't care much about that little baby now, would you? And I don't know how much you'd care about the mother, either. Divorce sometimes makes people just fill up with hate and so I can't really tell your feelings about her one way or the other. But that little girl? Now, that's a whole different matter.'

'How do you know about…'

'They were in the newspaper. After you won that prize.' Ferguson smiled at him. 'And I like to do a bit of research every now and then. Finding out about them wasn't too hard.'

Cowart's fear was complete. Ferguson continued to eye the reporter. 'No, Mr. Cowart. I don't think you're going to write that story. I don't think you've got the facts. I don't think you've got the evidence. Isn't that right, Mr. Cowart?'

'I'll kill you,' Cowart croaked.

'Kill me? Whatever for?'

'You go near

'And what?'

'I'm saying I'll kill you.'

'That'd do you a lot of good, wouldn't it, Mr. Cowart? After the fact? Ain't nothing matter much after something's done, does it? You see, you'd still have that memory, wouldn't you? It'd be there first thing in the morning, last thing at night. It'd be in every dream you had while you slept. Every thought you had while awake. It'd never leave you alone, would it, Mr. Cowart?'

'I'll kill you,' he repeated.

Ferguson shook his head. 'I don't know. I don't know if you know enough about death and dying to do something like that. But I'll say this for you now, Mr. Cowart.'

'What?'

'Now you're beginning to know a bit of what it's like living on Death Row.'

Ferguson rose, leaned over and opened the cassette door on the recorder. He removed the cassette and slipped it in his pocket. Then he picked up the tape recorder from the table. With a single, abrupt motion, he threw it at the reporter, who caught it before it smashed to the floor.

'This interview,' Ferguson said coldly. 'It never happened.'

He pointed toward the door. 'Those words? They never got spoke.' Ferguson eyed the reporter, whispering, 'What story you got to write, Mr. Cowart?'

Cowart shook his head.

'What story, Mr. Cowart?'

'No story,' he replied, his voice cracked and brittle.

'I didn't think so,' Ferguson replied.

Cowart, head reeling, stumbled into the hallway. He was only vaguely aware of the door closing behind him, of the sound of the locks being thrown. Stale, damp air trapped him in the dark space, and he clawed at his collar, trying to loosen it so he could breathe. He fought his way down the stairs, tore at the front door, slamming it open and battling his way to the street. The rain had started up; droplets scarred his coat and face. He did not look back up toward the apartment, but instead started to run, as if the wind in his face could eradicate the fear and nausea he felt within. He saw Tanny Brown exit from the driver's side door of their rental car, staring at him expectantly. Breathing hard, Cowart waved at him, trying to get him to return to the vehicle. Then he seized the car door handle and jerked it, leaping into the car, slamming himself into the warm, moist interior.

'Get me out of here,' he whispered.

'What happened?' Brown asked.

'Get me the hell out of here!' Cowart shouted. He reached across and grabbed the ignition, grinding it. The engine fired up. 'Go, goddammit! Go!'

Tanny Brown, eyes wide in surprise, but face marked with a sense of understanding, shifted the car in gear. He pulled out into the street, stopping only at the north end, pulling across from where Wilcox and Shaeffer had parked. He rolled down his window.

'Bruce, you two stay here. Watch Ferguson's place.'

'How long?'

'Just watch it.'

'Where are you…'

'Just don't let Ferguson get out of your sight.'

Wilcox nodded.

Cowart pounded on the dashboard. 'Go! Goddammit! Get me out of here!'

Tanny Brown punched the gas, and they pulled away, leaving the two other detectives behind in some confusion.

23. Detective Shaeffer's Negligence

The two detectives spent most of the day parked a half block from the doorway to Ferguson's apartment house. Their surveillance had no subtlety; within the first hour after Brown and Cowart's departure, everyone living within a two city-block radius, not merely those criminal in nature or inclination, was aware of their presence.

For the most part, they were ignored.

A minor-league crack dealer, accustomed to using an alleyway adjacent to their position, cursed them loudly as he bustled about, searching for a suitable replacement location; two members of a local street gang, wearing embossed jackets and headbands, sporting the preferred expensive hightop basketball shoes favored in the inner city, paused next to their rental car and mocked them with obscene gestures. When Wilcox rolled down the window and shouted at them to leave, they merely laughed in his face, imitating his southern accent with rancorous delight and only mildly concealed menace. Two prostitutes, wearing red high heels and sequined hot pants beneath slick black raincoats, flaunted their business at the detectives, as if sensing they would not budge for the likes of them. At least a half dozen homeless, decrepit folk, pushing the ubiquitous shopping carts filled with urban flotsam and jetsam, or merely staggering through the wet day, knocked on their windows, requesting money. A couple went away with whatever spare change the two detectives could muster. Others simply marched past, oblivious to anything save the demands of whatever unseen individual it was with whom they conversed so steadily.

The steady drizzle that kept the street-life parade down to a damp minimum kept most of the other residents of the block indoors, behind their barred windows and triple-locked doors. The rain and gray skies darkened the day, driving the gloom deeper.

More than once, each detective had asked, 'What the hell happened to Cowart?' But in the isolation of their car, they could not reach an answer. Wilcox had walked to a corner pay phone and tried reaching the two absent men at the motel, but without success. Lacking any information, knowing only what Brown had ordered as he drove off, they remained on the street, letting the hours pass in stultifying frustration.

They ate fast food purchased from a take-out joint, drank coffee that had grown cold from Styrofoam cups, wiped humid moisture from the windshield endlessly so they could see ahead. Twice, each had walked two blocks to an oil-stained gas station to use bathrooms that stank with a pungent mixture of disinfectant battling excrement. Their conversation had been limited, a few half hearted attempts at finding some commonality, lapsing into long silences. They had spoken a bit of technique, of the difference in crimes between the Panhandle and the Keys, knowing that differences were merely superficial. Shaeffer had asked questions about Brown and Cowart, but discovered that Wilcox merely idolized the first and despised the latter, though he was unable to say precisely why he felt either emotion. They had speculated about Ferguson, Wilcox filling the other detective in on his experiences with the onetime convicted man. She had asked him about the confession, and he'd replied that every time he'd hit Ferguson, he'd felt as if he was shaking loose another piece of the truth, the way someone would shake fruit from a tree. He said it without regret or guilt, but with an underlying anger that surprised her. Wilcox was a volatile man, she thought, far more explosive than the immense lieutenant he was partnered to. His rage would be sudden and dramatic. Tanny Brown's would be colder, more processed. No wonder he couldn't forgive himself for indulging in the luxury of having his partner beat a confession out of the man. It must have been an aberration, a window on a part of him that he must hate.

They saw no signs of Ferguson, though they expected he knew they were there.

'How long are we going to stay?' Shaeffer asked. Streetlights did little to slice the evening darkness. 'He hasn't shown all day, unless there's a backdoor exit. Which there probably is, and he's probably off somewhere laughing at us.'

'Little longer,' Wilcox replied. 'Long enough.'

'What are we doing?' Shaeffer continued. 'I mean, what's the point?'

'The point is to let him know someone's thinking about him. The point is, Tanny told us to watch Ferguson.'

'Right,' she replied. She wanted to add, But not forever. Time seemed to slip away from her. She knew that Michael Weiss at the state prison would be wondering where she was. Knew, as well, that she had to come up with a good reason for still being there. A good, solid, official-sounding reason.

Shaeffer stretched her arms wide and pushed her legs against the fire wall of the car, feeling the muscles ache with the stiffness of inactivity.

'I hate this,' she said.

'What? Watching?'

'Right. Just waiting. Not my style.'

'What is your style?'

She didn't reply. 'It'll be dark in another ten minutes. Too dark.'

'It's dark now.'

Wilcox motioned up at the apartment entrance, but did not connect a comment to the gesture.

Shaeffer glanced about the outside of the car. She thought the street had the same appearance as the raincoats that the two prostitutes who'd accosted them earlier had: a sort of slick, glistening, synthetic sense. It was almost like being caught on a Hollywood set, real and unreal all at the same moment. She felt a sudden shiver run down her spine.

'Something wrong?' Wilcox asked. He'd caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.

'No,' she replied hastily. 'Just a little bit of the creeps, you know. This place is awful enough in the daylight.'

He let his eyes sweep up and down the street.

'Sure ain't like anything at home, he said. 'Makes you feel like you're living in a cave.'

'Or a cell' she added.

Her pocketbook was on the floor, between her feet. It was a large, loose leather bag, almost a knapsack. She nudged it with her toe, just pulling open the top, revealing the contents and reassuring herself that all the essentials it contained were still in place: notebook, tape recorder, spare tapes, wallet, badge, a small makeup case, nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with two extra clips, loaded with soft-nosed wadcutters.

Wilcox caught the motion as well. 'Me, he smiled, 'I still like a three-fifty-seven short-nose. Fits up under the jacket nice. Put in a magnum load, bring down a bear.'

He glanced around at the darkness crawling over their car. 'Plenty of bear around here, too, he added. He patted his coat, on top of his left side.

In the distance a siren started up, like some cat in heat. It grew louder, closer, then just as swiftly faded away. They never saw the lights of whatever it was.

Wilcox put his hand up and rubbed his eyes for an instant. 'What do you think they've been doing?' he asked.

'I don't know,' she replied quickly. 'Why don't we get the hell out of here and find out? Place is starting to make me nervous.'

'Starting?'

'You know what I mean.' Unsettled anger marched briskly in her voice. 'Jesus, look at this place. I feel like it could eat us up. Just gulp and swallow. Those two city cops that brought me down here the other day weren't none too pleased to be here, either, and it was daytime. And one of them was black.'

Wilcox grunted in assent.

It was clear to both of them, though unsaid throughout the day, that their position was precarious: a pair of white southern cops, out of their jurisdiction, out of their element, in an unfamiliar world.

'Okay, Wilcox drawled slowly. His eyes swept up the street again. 'You know what gets to me?' he asked.

'No. What?'

'Everything looks so damn old. Old and used up.' He pointed through the windshield, down the street toward nothing. 'Dying, he said. 'It's like it's all dying.'

He did not amplify the statement. He remained rigid in his seat, staring out at the world surrounding them.

'I don't know how, but I think he's got all this figured out somehow. I think he's just a step or two ahead of us. Had us made from the start.' His voice was whispered, angry.

'I don't know what you're saying,' Shaeffer replied. 'Made what? Figured what?'

'I'd like to get just one more shot at him,' he went on, ignoring her questions. 'One more bite at the apple. I wouldn't let him screw with me this time.'

'I still don't know what you're driving at,' she said, alarmed at the coldness in his voice.

'I'd like to get my face in his one more time. Like to get us alone again in some small room, see if he walks away this time.'

'You're crazy.'

'That's right. Crazy mad. You got it.'

She shrank back in her seat again. 'Lieutenant Brown had orders.'

'Sure. And we've followed them.'

'So, let's get out of here. Find out what he wants to do next.'

Wilcox shook his head. 'Not until I see the bastard. Not until he knows it's me out here.'

Shaeffer put her hand up and waved it back and forth rapidly. 'That's not how to play him,' she said swiftly. 'You don't want him to take off.'

'You haven't got this figured out yet, have you?' Wilcox replied, his teeth set. 'Have you lost one yet? How long you been doing homicides? Not damn long enough. You ain't had somebody do a job on you like Ferguson.'

'No,' she said. 'And I don't mean to.'

'Easy for you to say.'

'Yeah, but I still know enough not to make one mistake into two.'

Wilcox started to reply angrily, but then nodded. 'That's right,' he said. He took a deep breath. 'That's right.'

He settled back in his seat, as if the wave of anger and memory that had beat on his shore was slowly receding. 'Right, right, right,' he said slowly. 'Don't want to play the hand before we see all the cards.'

Shaeffer expected him to reach out and start the car. She saw Wilcox's hand lift toward the ignition. But as his fingers closed on the protruding key, he stopped, suddenly rigid, eyes burning straight ahead.

'Son of a bitch,' he said softly.

She looked up wildly.

'There he is,' Wilcox whispered.

For an instant her view was obscured by the moisture on the windshield, but then, like a camera coming into focus, she, too, spotted Ferguson. He had hesitated just for an instant on the top landing, pausing as almost everyone does before forcing themselves to step into the damp, dark, cold night air. She saw he was wearing jeans and a long blue coat, carrying a satchel over his shoulder. Hunched against the drizzle, he rapidly stepped down from the apartment building, and without even glancing in their direction, headed off swiftly away from them.

'Damn!' Wilcox said. His hand had dropped away from the ignition. He seized the car door. 'I'm gonna follow him.'

Before she could protest, wild impulse filled him. He thrust himself out the door, feet hitting like shots against the pavement. Slamming the door behind him, he started up the street.

Shaeffer reached across the front seat, grabbing first at Wilcox's coattails, then at car keys. She saw him moving away and tried to extricate herself from the car. Her door was locked; the first pull on the handle produced nothing. Her handbag caught on the seat adjustment lever between her feet. It seemed leaden with weight. The seat belt grabbed at her clothes. Her shoes slipped on the slick pavement. When she finally got herself out, she saw she would have to run to catch up with Wilcox, who was already twenty yards down the street and moving fast.

She cursed and ran, holding her bag in one hand, the car keys in the other. It took her another ten yards to reach him.

'What the hell are you doing?' she demanded, seizing his arm.

He pulled away. 'I'm just gonna follow the bastard a bit! Let go!'

He continued his quick march after Ferguson.

She stopped, stealing a breath of air, and watched as he kept going. Again she put her head down and ran to catch up. She pulled alongside him, struggling to keep pace. She could see Ferguson a half block distant and moving swiftly himself, not looking back, just plowing through the darkness, apparently oblivious to their presence.

She grasped Wilcox's arm a second time.

'Let go, goddammit!' he said, angrily snatching his arm from her hold. 'I'll lose him.'

'We're not supposed…'

He turned, briefly, furiously. 'Get the damn car! Keep up! Come with me! Just don't get in my goddamn way!'

'But he…'

I don't care if he knows I'm back here! Now get out of my goddamn way!'

'What the hell are you doing?' she half shouted.

He waved furiously in her direction as if dismissing the question contemptuously. He spun away from her and, half running, tried to close the distance between Ferguson and himself.

Shaeffer hesitated, unsure. She saw Wilcox's back, pushing through the night, looked farther and saw Ferguson disappear around a corner. Wilcox increased his pace at the same moment.

She mumbled expletives to herself, turned, and ran fast back to the car. Two ancient street people, both women bundled in thick wads of coats with knit wool caps jammed on top of their heads, had materialized out of the gloom, blocking her path. One was pushing a shopping cart, cackling, while the other was gesturing wildly. They screeched at her as she pushed toward them. One of the old women reached out and tried to grab her as she went past, and for an instant they collided. The old woman spun and fell to the sidewalk, her voice wailing with anger and shock. Shaeffer stumbled, righted herself and, tossing an apology to the woman, ran to the car. The woman's shrieks followed after her. Two men had come out onto a front stoop despite the rain, and one of them called at her, 'Hey! Whatcha doin' lady? Big rush, hey?' She ignored them and threw herself into the driver's seat.

She ground the ignition and stalled the car.

Swearing continuously in a torrent of expletives, caught up in half panic and confusion, completely uncertain what Wilcox was doing, she stabbed at the engine again, pumping her foot on the gas pedal and twisting the ignition key. The engine caught and she slammed the car into gear, pulling out into the street without even glancing backward. The tires spun on the wet pavement and the car fishtailed sickeningly for an instant before shooting ahead.

Accelerating hard down the block, she rammed the car around the corner. She spotted Wilcox halfway down the block, catching sight of him as he swept into the weak light of a streetlight. She strained her eyes but could not see Ferguson.

Again she punched the car, and the engine responded sluggishly, complaining. She cursed the underpowered rental vehicle and felt a momentary longing for her own squad car back in the Keys. She came abreast of Wilcox just before the end of the block. He was turning down a one-way street, heading against the traffic. She rolled down her window as fast as she could, feeling the drizzle on her forehead.

'Keep going!' Wilcox gestured swiftly. 'Head him off.'

The detective plowed after his quarry, picking up his pace, breaking into a jog. Shaeffer shouted some quick word of agreement and spun the car down the rain-slicked street.

She had to go an extra block before she could turn. She ran a red light, sweeping around a corner, causing a pair of teenagers on the curb to leap back angrily shouting obscenities after her. The street was narrow, lined with dark, decrepit buildings that seemed to block her sight. A pair of cars were double-parked in mid-block. She blared the horn hard as she crawled past, leaving an inch or less on either side of her car.

At the next corner, she jerked the car back to the right, heading back toward the spot where she figured to catch up with Wilcox and Ferguson. Her mind raced with words; what to say, how to act. She realized that something was happening that was out of any control she might once have had. She concentrated on the road, fighting the night, trying to spot the two men as they maneuvered through the city streets.

They were not there.

She slowed the car, peering ahead, peering sideways down the veinlike alleyways and rubble-strewn clots of abandoned space. Shadows seemed to build into solid darkness. The street was abruptly empty of any people.

She stopped the car in the center of the street and jumped out, standing in the open doorway, looking both ways for any sign of the two men. Seeing none, she cursed loudly and slid back behind the wheel.

Dammit, she told herself. They must have turned down another street or cut through a vacant lot. He might have ducked down an alleyway.

She accelerated hard again, trying to guess and gauge, trying to catch up with the two men. She raced around another corner, only to feel a plummeting despair.

Still no sign of them.

She slapped the car into reverse, backing into the street from which she'd turned, and then jammed the car into forward. She sliced through the blackness sharply, still searching. She drove another block fast, then stabbed the brakes.

No one.

She felt a tightness winding within her. She had no idea what to do. Battling panic, she pitched the car quickly to the curb and jumped out. Walking fast, she headed in the direction in which she thought they should have been moving, still trying to think logically. Retrace their steps, she insisted to herself. Head them off. They can't be far. She strained her eyes against the shadows, her eyes searched for the sound of a raised voice. Then she picked up her pace and started to run. Her shoes made a solitary slapping sound against the sidewalk pavement. The sound increased, like a drumroll gaining momentum, until finally, flat out, she sprinted toward the empty night.

Bruce Wilcox had turned once, just long enough to catch a glimpse of the rental car's taillights disappearing down the street, before he centered all his concentration on keeping up with Ferguson.

He increased his pace, surprised that he couldn't narrow the distance between him and his quarry. Ferguson had a subtle quickness to him; without breaking into a run, he was moving swiftly, working his way around the spots of light that littered the street, blending with the surroundings.

He thought his legs seemed heavy, slow, and he furiously demanded more of them. Ahead, he saw Ferguson turn again, at another street corner, and he pushed himself hard to catch up.

A pair of bedraggled prostitutes were working the corner, using the sodium-vapor streetlight to advertise their presence. They ducked back as he approached, shrinking against a storefront.

'Where'd he go?' Wilcox demanded.

'Who, man?'

'Ain't seen nobody.'

He swore at them, and they both laughed, mocking him as he pushed past. The side street down which Ferguson had headed seemed cavernous, yawing back and forth like a ship in heavy weather. He caught a glimpse of Ferguson forty yards ahead, really just a shape that had more substance than the remaining shadows in the street, and he ran hard after it.

His mind raced alongside him.

He had no grasp of what he was going to say, what he was going to do, driven merely by the need to catch up with the chased man. Images jumped rapidly in and out of his head: It seemed as if the world he was cutting through was mixing crazily with his memory. A derelict lying semi-stuporously in an abandoned doorway sang out as he cruised past, but the voice reminded him of Tanny Brown's. A dog barked hard, throwing itself against a chain, and he remembered the search for Joanie Shriver's body. Dirt-streaked aluminum garbage cans reflected weak streetlamp light, and he thought of the sucking, oozing sensation between his hands as he pulled free the useless evidence from the outhouse refuse pit. This last memory drove him harder in pursuit.

He looked ahead and saw Ferguson reach the end of the block. He seemed to pause, and Wilcox saw the man turn. For one microscopic moment, their eyes met across the night.

Wilcox couldn't contain himself. 'Stop! Police!' he shouted.

Ferguson didn't hesitate. Running now, he fled.

Wilcox yelled a single, 'Hey!' then tucked his chin down and ran hard. All pretense of surveillance or tailing Ferguson was lost now in a single-minded, headstrong chase. He sucked in wind and started pumping his arms, feeling his feet lighten against the rain-slicked pavement, no more plodding, determined pursuit, but now a spring.

His burst of speed pushed him a bit closer, but Ferguson, too, rapidly settled into a hard run. They seemed evenly matched, feet hitting the pavement in unison, the distance between them maintaining a frustrating constancy.

The world around him turned vaporous, indistinct. He could feel the effects of his sprint. His wind was shortened, his heart beating fast. He tore air from the night to fill screaming lungs.

Another city block passed. He saw Ferguson turn again, still driving forward, seemingly unaffected by the run. Wilcox pushed on, sliding as he tried to cut the corner closely, his feet scrabbling on the pavement. For a sickening instant, he felt a dizziness, a stab of vertigo, and then he lost his balance. The cement came up fast, like a wave at the beach, striking him solidly. Breath exploded from him. A shock of red pain swept across his eyes. He heard some article of clothing tearing and felt a gritty taste in his mouth. He slid, partly stunned, finally coming to rest against a streetlight. Instinct fought against shock and hurt, and he forced himself back to his feet, rising, struggling to regain his rhythm. He had a sudden memory of a high-school wrestling championship when he'd been thrown through the air, and as he tumbled toward the mat, his mind had razored off a decision as to what move to employ so that when his opponent's arms sought to encircle him, he was already rolling free. He blinked hard and found himself running again, racing forward, trying to grasp where he was and what he was doing, but finding the blow from the street had scrambled his senses, and he was being driven merely by wild fury and impatient desire.

As he ran, he saw Ferguson abruptly slice across the street, heading toward a dark, empty lot. Headlights from an approaching car trapped him for an instant. There was a loud screeching sound, followed instantly by the blare of a horn.

For an instant, he thought it was Detective Shaeffer, and he cheered, 'That's it! Cut the bastard off!'

Then he saw that it wasn't. A sudden shot of anger pierced him: Where the hell is she? He pushed on, dodging the same car, leaving the driver shouting imprecations at the two wraithlike shapes that had disappeared as swiftly as they had materialized.

He scrambled over rubble and debris, which grabbed at his ankles like tendrils in a swamp. He caught a glimpse of Ferguson up ahead, maneuvering with identical difficulty through the abandoned junk of the inner city. For an instant, Ferguson rose up on top of a pile of boxes and an old refrigerator, outlined by a distant streetlamp. Their eyes met for a second time and Wilcox impulsively yelled, 'Stop. Police!' again. He thought he saw a flash of recognition and disbelief in Ferguson's eyes. Then the quarry vanished, leaping down out of the meager light. Wilcox muttered obscenities and struggled on.

He leapt up over a pile of bricks, but his foot caught the top, and he could feel the mass crumbling beneath his sudden weight. He felt himself pitched forward, and he threw out his hands to try to break his fall. He succeeded in preventing a broken-neck tumble -but his right hand slammed down on a jagged piece of rusty metal. One edge sliced through his palm, three fingers were jammed back fiercely, and his wrist almost buckled from the blow. He screamed in agony, struggling again to balance himself, grabbing his mangled hand with his left. He could feel the skin parted and swelling with sticky damp blood. His fingers and wrist were instantaneously on fire; broken, he thought, cursing himself, goddammit, goddammit, goddammit. He squeezed the hand into a tight balled fist, clutched it close to his chest, and battled on, picking another pile of debris to climb, to try and spot the pursued man.

He bent over at his waist to catch his breath, denying the pain in his hand and wrist. Standing carefully to keep his balance on this new pile of trash, he saw Ferguson vaulting a jagged and twisted chain link fence at the back of the vacant lot. He watched as Ferguson sprinted across an alleyway, hesitated for an instant, then ducked up some stairs and into a deserted building.

All right, he said to himself. You're tired, too, you bastard. Catch your breath in there. But you're not going to get away.

Ignoring the throbbing in his torn and broken hand, he pushed himself across the last few yards of the lot and scrambled over the chain link fence. He jogged to the abandoned building's door and stared at it, breathing hard with exertion.

All right, he said again. He gingerly reached into his jacket pocket and found a handkerchief, which he used to bind up his wound as best as possible. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but he suspected he would need stitches to close the cut. He shook his head. Probably a tetanus shot as well. With the handkerchief swiftly soaking up the blood that continued to pulse through his palm, he tried to flex his fingers and wrist, only to receive a sharp needle of pain racing up his arm. He touched the skin carefully, trying to feel for broken bones. It was already swelling rapidly, and for a moment he wondered if the Escambia County employee's insurance policy would take care of the whole thing. Line of duty, he thought. Got to be. He gritted his teeth against the shooting sensation that raced up his arm and hoped that some doctor would simply put a cast on the damn thing and that he wouldn't need an operation.

He looked up and down the alleyway. Damp, rain-slicked debris littered the narrow space. He peered up, trying to see if anyone was in any of the buildings, but no one was visible. It seemed an area of abandoned apartments, perhaps warehouses; it was hard to tell; the light was limited, diffuse, emanating from streetlights thirty yards away.

For a moment, he paused. If he could spot Detective Shaeffer, he thought, but then he didn't complete the mental question. It would be nice to have a backup.

He shrugged doubt way, replacing it with the headstrong bluster with which he was more familiar. I don't need any help to grab that squirrelly son of a bitch, he told himself. Even with one hand, I can handle him.

He believed this completely. He stepped up to the front door.

Ferguson's headlong passage had jammed it open, in mistaken invitation. The doorway opening was like a stripe of deeper black against the velour fabric of the night. He put his back to the door and stopped, listening.

As he hesitated, he freed his revolver from his shoulder holster. The weight of the gun in his damaged hand was impossible; like grabbing a red-hot coal from a fire. He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, gently shifting the weapon into his left hand. He opened his eyes and stared down at the gun. Can you hit something left-handed? he asked himself. Something close, maybe. If you have to. He spoke to himself in the third person. Are you sure? Suppose he's armed? You'll be okay. Just collar the bastard. Arrest him and sort it out later. Even if you just have to let him go. Put some fear into him. Let him know he's got big trouble and you're it.

He sorted through the sounds, defining, compartmentalizing, analyzing. He put a label to each small noise, giving it a shape and identity so that he would know it was nothing to fear. A dripping noise was rain in a gutter, leaking through the roof. A swishing sound was traffic, blocks distant. A rasping sound was his own breathing. Then, from deep within the building, a small sound of boards creaking.

There he is, Wilcox thought. He's close. He's inside and he's close.

Taking a single deep breath, he crouched low and stepped into the abandoned building.

It seemed at first as if he'd been enveloped by a blanket. The weak alleyway light disappeared. He cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight, not recognizing that his own was all the way back in Florida. He wished he smoked; then he would have matches or better, a lighter, in his pocket. He tried to remember if Ferguson smoked and thought he did. He hunkered down, still pushing his ears to locate his quarry, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. He thought, Can't see much. But just enough.

He moved carefully into the building. There were stairs leading up to his left, a stairway down to his right. An old apartment house, he thought. Why would anyone have ever lived here? He took a step and heard his own weight creak against the decrepit floor. A new worry flooded him. Christ! There could be a hole or something. Suppose those stairs give way? He used his gun hand as best he could for balance, holding it out perpendicular to his body, maintaining contact with the wall, all the time clutching his damaged hand close to his chest.

He went to the right, the stairway down. He had a sudden thought. He's a rat, Ferguson. An earth animal. He'll go down, deeper. That's where he'll feel safe.

He stopped to listen again.

Nothing.

Means nothing, he told himself. He's here.

He continued, slowly, feeling his way as best as possible. He damned the sounds he made. His own breathing seemed to scratch the darkness like fingernails on a blackboard. Each step he took thundered. His steady progress into the core of the building seemed to crash and rattle with noise.

He fought against the urge to say something, wanting to wait until he was very close before he demanded surrender. The stairs seemed solid beneath his feet, but he did not trust them. He put each foot forward slowly, testing it with a portion of his weight, like some reluctant bather facing cold water. He counted each rise; at twenty-two he reached the basement. A clammy damp sensation, cooler than the already chilled air, reached up from beneath to greet him. He stepped down. He could sense the cement under his feet and thought, Good. That will be quieter. He took a single step and squished into a puddle of water, which instantly soaked through his shoes. Damn! he said to himself.

He crouched, listening again. He was unsure whether the breathing he heard was his own or Ferguson's. He's close, the detective said to himself. He took a deep breath and held it, to try and locate the sound.

Close. Very close.

He breathed in again and caught a smell that seemed thick and awful, covering him with evil. It was a familiar smell, but one he couldn't immediately place. The little hairs on his neck rose; his arms grew prickly hot despite the cold air: Something died in here, he shouted to himself. Something's dead close by.

His head pivoted about, trying to see anything in the solid black space, but he was blind.

Electric fear and excitement hurtled through him. He lifted up and took three small steps farther into the basement, still maintaining contact with the wall with his gun hand. It was wet and soft to his touch. He thought about rats and spiders and the man he was pursuing.

He could stand it no longer. 'Ferguson, boy, come on out. You're fucking under arrest. You know who this is. Put your fucking hands up and come on out.'

The words seemed to echo briefly in the small room, dying swiftly as silence swept over them.

He waited. There was no reply.

'Goddammit, c'mon, Bobby Earl. Cut this shit. It ain't worth the trouble.'

He took another step forward.

'I know you're here, Bobby Earl. Goddammit, don't make this so damn hard.'

Doubt abruptly creased his heart. Where is the son of a bitch? he shouted to himself. He stiffened with tension, fear, and anger.

'Bobby Earl, I'm gonna shoot your fucking eyes out unless you come out right now!'

There was a scratching noise to his right. He tried to turn fast in that direction, pulling his gun from the wall toward the sound. His mind could not process what was happening, only that it was pitch black, and he was not alone.

For a microsecond, he was aware of the shape swooshing through the air toward him, aware that someone, grunting with exertion, had risen up out of the darkness beside him. He tried to command himself to duck back, and he raised his broken hand to try and ward off the blow. He fired once in panic, haphazardly, aiming at nothing except fear; the explosion crashed through the darkness. Then a length of metal pipe smashed against his shoulder and ear. Bruce Wilcox saw a sudden immense burst of white light in his eyes, then it disintegrated into a whirlpool blackness far deeper than he'd ever imagined. He staggered back, aware that he could not let himself slip into unconsciousness. He felt damp cement against his cheek, and he realized he'd fallen to the floor.

He raised his hand to deflect a second blow, which arrived with a similar hissing sound as the lead pipe sliced the cold basement air. It thudded into his already broken arm, sending red streaks of pain across the darkness in his eyes.

He did not know where or how he'd lost his revolver, but it was no longer in his hand. But he reached out savagely with his left arm, and his fingers found substance. He tugged hard, heard a ripping noise, then felt a body slam down on top of his.

The two men became entwined in the darkness, struggling, their breath mingling. Wilcox simply fought against the shape of the man he grasped, trying to find his throat, his genitals, his eyes, some critical organ that he could attack. They rolled together, thudding against the walls, smashing through the wet puddles on the floor. Neither man spoke, other than grunts of pain and outrage which burst unbidden from their lips.

They wrestled in the pitch black, pinned together by pain.

Bruce Wilcox felt his fingers encircle his attacker's neck, and he squeezed hard, trying to choke the life from the man. His useless right hand rose and joined his left, completing a ring around his opponent's life. Wilcox grunted with exertion.

He thought, I've got you, you bastard.

Then pain spiked his heart.

He did not know what it was that was killing him, did not know even who was killing him, only that something had ripped through his stomach and was rising toward his heart. He felt panic surge past the instant agony; his hands dropped away from the killer's neck, tumbling down to his midsection, where they closed around the handle of the knife that had ruined his fight. He felt a single insignificant groan escape from his lips, and he crumpled back to the wet floor.

He did not know it, knew nothing anymore, but it would be almost ninety seconds before he rattled out his last breath and died.

24. Pandora's Box

Her solitude was complete.

Andrea Shaeffer peered down the empty streets, eyes penetrating the gloom and mist, searching for some sign of her companion. She retraced her route for what seemed to be the tenth time, trying to impose reason on the disappearance, only to find that each footstep drove her deeper into despair. She refused to speculate, instead allowing herself to fill up with complaining expletives and anger, as if her inability to find the man were mere inconvenience rather than disaster.

She paused beneath a streetlight and steadied herself by leaning against it.

She would even have welcomed the sight of a Newark patrol car, but none came into view. The streets remained empty. This is crazy, she thought. It's not late. It's barely night. Where is everybody? The rain continued to thicken, hammering down on her. When she finally spotted a single woman, working a street corner in desultory fashion, she was almost pleased, just to see another human being. The woman was slouched against a building, trying to shield herself from the elements, her enthusiasm for another assignation on a cold, wet night, clearly limited. Andrea Shaeffer approached her carefully, producing her badge from about ten feet away.

'Miss. Police. I want a word.'

The woman took a single look and started to move away.

'Hey, I just want to ask a question.'

The woman kept moving, picking up her pace. Shaeffer followed suit.

'Dammit, stop! Police!'

The woman slowed and turned. She eyed Shaeffer with apprehension. 'You talking to me? Watcha want? I ain't doing nothing.'

'Just a question. You see two men come running through here, fifteen, twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago? A white guy, a cop. A black guy in a dark raincoat. One chasing the other. You see them come by here?'

'No. I ain't seen nothing like that. That it?'

The woman stepped back, trying to increase the distance between the detective and herself.

'You're not listening,' Shaeffer said. 'Two men. One white, one black. Running hard.'

'No, I ain't seen nothing, like I told you.'

Andrea felt anger creaking about inside her, pushing at the edge of its container. 'Don't bullshit me, lady. I'll make some real goddamn trouble for you. Now, did you see anything like that? Tell me the damn truth or I'll run you in right now.'

I ain't seen no men chasing. I ain't seen no men at all tonight.'

'You had to see them,' Andrea insisted. 'They had to come by here.'

'Nobody's come by here. Now leave me alone.' The woman stepped back, shaking her head.

Andrea started to follow, only to be surprised by a voice behind her.

'Whatcha bothering people for, lady?'

She turned nervously. The question had come from a large man wearing a long black leather coat and a New York Yankees baseball cap. Rain droplets had formed at the edge of the brim. He was a dozen feet away, striding toward her steadily, his voice, his body, all uttering menace.

'Police, she said. 'Stand back.'

'I don't care who you are. Come down here, bothering my lady here. Whatcha doing that for?'

Andrea Shaeffer seized hold of her pistol and brought it out, leveling it at the approaching man.

'Just stay there,' she said coldly.

The man stopped. 'You gonna shoot me, lady? I don't think so.'

He spread his hands a bit, his face grinning. 'I think you ain't where you should be, lady policeman. I think you ain't got any backup and you're all alone and I think you got some trouble here, maybe.'

He stepped forward.

She clicked back the action, chambering a round, readying the pistol. 'I'm searching for my partner, she said between clenched teeth. 'He was chasing a suspect. Now, did you see a white cop chasing a black man down here, thirty minutes ago? Answer that, and I won't shoot your balls off.'

She dropped the angle of the gun, so that it was pointing toward the man's crotch.

That made him hesitate. 'No,' he said, after pausing. 'Nobody come down here.'

'You sure?'

'I'm sure.'

'All right,' she said. She started to maneuver past the man. 'Then I'm leaving. Got that? Nice and easy.'

She slid by him, walking backward up the street. He turned slowly, watching her. 'You got to get out of here, miss policewoman. Before something bad happens to you.'

That was both a threat and a promise. As she moved away, she watched the man drop his raised hands and heard him mutter an expletive, drawing it out so that it trailed after her. She kept her weapon in her hand and turned and walked away, heading back to where she had left the car, now completely at a loss and totally frightened.

Her hand trembled slightly when she started the ignition. With the car running and the doors locked, she felt a momentary security, which allowed her anger to renew itself. 'That damn stupid sonuvabitch. Where the hell is he?'

Her voice seemed cracked and whining, and she regretted using it. She shook her head hard and stared out the window, for a single moment allowing herself the reassuring fantasy that Bruce Wilcox would come walking out of some shadow any second, out of breath, sweating, wet, and uncomfortable.

She let her eyes wander up and down the street, but she could not see him.

'Damn,' she said out loud again.

She was reluctant to put the car in gear, to move, thinking that sure enough, one minute after she pulled away from the curb he would emerge, and that she would have to apologize later for abandoning him.

'But I haven't, goddammit,' she argued with herself. 'He left me.'

She had little idea what to do. Night had taken a firm grip on the inner city, the rain had redoubled in intensity, steady sheets of gray sweeping down the street. If the cocoon of the car was warm and safe, it only added to her sense of isolation. Putting her hand on the shift lever and switching the car into gear took a painful, exaggerated effort. Driving a single block seemed exhausting.

She traveled slowly, painstakingly searching the area, back to Ferguson's apartment. She paused, staring up at the building but could see no lights. She pulled to the curb and waited for five minutes. Then another five. With no sign of anything, she drove back to where she had last seen Wilcox. Then she drove up and down the adjacent streets. She tried to tell herself, He caught a cab. He flagged down a patrol car. He's waiting back at the motel with Cowart and Tanny Brown. He's down at the precinct house taking a statement from Ferguson, wondering where the hell I am. That's probably it. He probably got him to talk and he's locked in some little room with Ferguson and a stenographer, getting a statement, and he doesn't want to break the momentum by sending someone out to look for me. He figures I'll know what the hell to do, anyway.

She steered the car onto a wide boulevard leading away from the inner city. In a moment, she found the entrance to the turnpike and a few moments later was heading back to the motel. She felt like a child, young and terribly inexperienced. She had failed to follow procedure, to follow routine; failed to adhere to her own judgment and had managed to screw up badly.

She fully expected Bruce Wilcox to scream at her for losing sight of him and failing to back him up. She swore to herself, Christ! That's the first thing they teach you in the academy.

Her sense of independence wavering, she drove into the parking lot of the motel and swiftly collected her things, pushing herself across the rainswept lot toward the room where she thought the three men would be waiting impatiently for her.

Cowart thought death was stalking him. He had fled from Ferguson's apartment in fear and anxiety, trying to restrain his emotions with little success. Tanny Brown had first pressed him for details of the conversation the two men had had, then had let Cowart slip into silence when the reporter refused to answer. There was little doubt in the policeman's mind that something had happened, that Cowart was genuinely frightened, and he supposed he would have taken some cynical pleasure in that discomfort had the source been any different.

They had ended up driving to New Brunswick and Rutgers, with no real reason other than to see where Ferguson was attending classes. After walking through the rain, hunched against the damp cold, dodging students, Cowart had finally described the conversation. He had raced through Ferguson's denials and interpretations, used dialogue and detail, filled in the policeman as fully as possible, until he had reached the point where Ferguson had threatened him and his daughter. That he had kept to himself. He could see the detective's eyes hard on his own face, awaiting something. But he would not say it.

'What else?'

'Nothing.'

'Come on, Cowart. You were freaked. What did he say?'

'Nothing. The whole thing freaked me.'

Now you're beginning to know a bit of what it's like living on Death Row…

Tanny Brown wanted to hear the tape.

'Can't,' Cowart replied. 'He took it.'

The detective asked to see Cowart's notes, but the reporter realized that after the first page or so, his note-taking had evaporated into useless scrawls. The two men each felt ensnared. But they didn't share this, either.

It was early evening when they returned to the motel, stymied by rushhour traffic and their mutual lack of cooperation. Brown left Cowart in his room and went off on his own to make telephone calls, after promising to return with some take-out food. The policeman knew that more had happened than he'd been told about, but also understood that information would eventually come his way. He did not think that Cowart would be able to maintain his fear and silence for too long. Few people could. After receiving a scare like that, it was only a matter of time before he'd need to share it.

He had little idea what their next step would be, but assumed it would be in reaction to something Ferguson did. He pondered the sense in simply arresting Ferguson again and charging him with Joanie Shriver's murder. He knew it would be legally hopeless, but it would at least get Ferguson back to Florida. The alternative was to continue doing what he had done when he had spoken to his friend in Eatonville: start working all the empty cases in the state until he found something that could get him back into court.

He sighed. It would take weeks, months, maybe longer. Do you have the patience? he asked himself. For a moment he tried to picture the little girl in Eatonville who had disappeared. Like my own daughters, he thought. How many others will die while you're doing the mule work of a homicide policeman?

But he had no choice. He started making calls, following up on some of the messages to various police departments in the state of Florida that he'd managed a few days earlier. Work the pattern, he insisted to himself. Research every little town and backwater village that Ferguson has visited in the past year. Find the missing girl in each one, then find the piece of evidence that will lock him to it. There will be some case, somewhere, where the evidence hasn't been tainted or destroyed. It was slow, painstaking work, and he realized that every hour that it took put some child, somewhere unknown, closer to death. He hated every second that slipped past him.

Cowart sat in his small room, trying to make a decision, any decision. He looked down and examined his notes, the shaky handwriting mocking him. He could just make out the list of visits Ferguson had made to Florida since being released from Death Row and returning to Newark for school. Seven trips. Have seven little girls died? he wondered.

Did someone die on each trip?

Or did he wait and return some other time?

Joanie Shriver. Dawn Perry. There had to be others. His head filled with a steady parade of little girls, all walking abroad in the world, girls in shorts and I-shirts or jeans and wearing ponytails, all alone and innocent, all prey. In his mind's eye he could see Ferguson creeping up toward them, arms open, face smiling, full of assurance and bluff and measured death. He shook his head as if to free himself of the image, and it filled instead with Blair Sullivan's words. He remembered the condemned man speaking on the ease with which he took life.

Are you a killer, Cowart?

Am I? he wondered.

He looked down at the list of Florida visits and felt a tremor race down his arms into his fingertips, where it remained like some wayward electric current, humming and buzzing.

There are some people dead who wouldn't be, if not for you. Little girls.

Sullivan had found safety in the randomness of his deaths. He'd killed people he didn't know, who merely by accident had had the misfortune to cross his path. By minimizing the context of murder, he had hamstrung the abilities of the police investigating each case. Cowart suspected that Ferguson was doing the same. After all, he'd learned at the side of an expert. Sullivan had taught Ferguson one crucial thing: to become a student of his loathsome desires.

He remembered his trip to the Journal's library and pictured the headline on the small story: POLICE SAY NO LEADS IN MISSING GIRL CASE. Of course not, he thought. There are no leads. There is no real evidence. At least, none that you know of. Just one innocent man taking his time to pluck children out of this world.

Cowart took a deep breath and let all the accumulated elements of fact, supposition, and imaginary crime cascade through his head, torrents of evil swept together into a single turbulent theme, all rushing toward an image of his own daughter, waiting at the end. It seemed to him that up until that moment he had been living in some moral twilight, all the deaths that circumscribed his relationship with Blair Sullivan and Robert Earl Ferguson out of his control. That was no longer the case.

Cowart let his head sink into his hands and thought, Is he killing someone now? Today? Tonight? When? Next week? He raised it again and looked up into the mirror hanging above the dresser.

'And you, you goddamn fool, you were worried about your reputation?'

He shook his head, watching his own reflection admonish him. Not going to have a reputation now, unless you do something and do it quickly, he told himself.

What can you do?

He was reminded of a story his friend Edna McGee had once written for the Journal. She had learned that the police in one Miami suburb were investigating a half dozen rape-assaults that had occurred along a single stretch of highway. When she had confronted the detectives handling the investigation, they had insisted she not write a word. They complained that a story in the paper would alert the serial rapist to the fact that they were on to him, and he would change his routine, alter his distinctive style, move to a different location, and slip through the decoys and stakeouts they had planned. Edna McGee had considered this request, then ignored it, believing it wiser to warn the other, unsuspecting women who were nightly traveling the rapist's route.

The stories had run, front page, Sunday edition, above the fold, along with a police composite of the suspect that stared out in malevolent black and white from the hundreds of thousands of newspapers that hit the streets. The detectives working the case were, predictably, furious, thinking that their quarry would be scared off.

But that wasn't what had happened. The rapist hadn't committed any half dozen rapes. The number had actually been in excess of forty. Almost four dozen women had been assaulted, but most, in pain and humiliation, had refused to go to the police. Instead, they had gone home after being victimized, thanking their lucky stars they were still alive, trying to mend their ripped bodies and torn self-esteem. One by one, they had all called Edna, Cowart remembered. Tears and hesitancy, sobbing voices, barely able to wring through their misery the horror that had befallen them, but anxious to tell this reporter, if perhaps she could save another woman, somewhere, from falling prey to this man. Within a few days of the story running, they had all called. Anonymous and terrified, but they had called. Each one thought they had been alone, a solitary, single victim. By the end of the week, Edna had the full license plate number of the rapist's car, a much improved description of the vehicle and the assailant, and dozens of other small details that had led the police to the man's door one night, a fortnight after the stories ran, just as he was readying himself to head out.

Cowart leaned back remembering. He weighed Ferguson's threat in his hands to see if it had substance.

Do it, he told himself.

Take it all, all the lies, the mistakes, the illegally obtained evidence, everything, and put it into a story and run it in the paper. Do it right away, before he has a chance to move. Smash into him with words and then run and take your daughter and hide her.

It's the only weapon you have.

'Of course,' he said out loud, 'your buddies in the business are going to tear you limb from limb for writing that story. Then you're going to be drawn and quartered, keelhauled, and your head placed on a stake. After that, things are gonna get real rough, because your wife is going to hate you and her husband is going to hate you and your daughter isn't going to understand, but maybe, if you're lucky, she won't hate you.' But it was the only way.

He sat back on the bed and thought, You're going to bring the whole world down on your head and his head. And then, maybe everyone will get what they deserve. Even Ferguson.

Inch-high headlines, full-color pictures. Make certain the wires pick it up, and the newsweeklies. Hit the talk shows. Keep shouting out the truth about Ferguson until it's a din that deafens him and overcomes all his denials. Then no one will ignore anything. Surround him, wherever he goes, with notepads, flashbulbs, and camera lights. Paint him with attention so that wherever he tries to hide, he glows with suspicion. Don't let him slide into the background, where he can continue to do what he does.

Steal his invisibility. That will kill him, Cowart thought.

Are you a killer, Cowart?

I can be.

He reached over to the telephone to call Will Martin, when there was a sharp rap at the motel door. Probably Tanny Brown, he thought.

He got up, his head filling with the words of the story he was preparing to write as he opened the door and saw Andrea Shaeffer standing in the corridor.

'Is he here?'

Her hair was damp and bedraggled. Rain streaked her tan coat, making dark splashes. Her eyes pitched past Cowart immediately, searching the space behind him desperately. Before he could speak, she asked again, Ts Wilcox here? We got separated.'

He started to shake his head, but she pushed past him, glanced around the room, turned, and said, 'I thought he'd be here. Where's Lieutenant Brown?'

'He'll be back in a moment. Did something happen?'

'No!' she snapped, then, modulating her voice, 'We just lost sight of each other. We were trying to tail Ferguson. He was on foot and I was in the car. I thought he'd have called by now.'

'No. No calls. You left him?'

'He left me! When's Lieutenant Brown gonna be here?'

'Any minute.'

She strode into the small room and stripped off her damp raincoat. He saw her shiver once. 'I'm frozen,' she said. 'I need some coffee. I need to change.'

He reached into the small bathroom, grabbed a white bath towel and tossed it to her. 'Here. Dry off.'

She rubbed the towel over her head, then over her eyes. He saw that she lingered with the towel as it crossed her face, hiding for just a moment or two behind the fluffy, white cotton. She was breathing heavily when she dropped the towel away.

Cowart was about to continue asking her questions, when there was another rapping at the door.

'Maybe that's Wilcox,' she said.

It was Tanny Brown. He carried a pair of brown paper bags in his hands, pushing them toward Cowart as he came through the door. 'They only had mayonnaise, he said. His eyes took in the sight of Shaeffer, standing rigidly in the middle of the room. "Where's Bruce?' he asked.

'We got separated,' she said.

Brown's eyebrows curved upward in surprise. At the same moment, he felt a solid shaft of fear drop through his stomach. He blanked his mind instantly to everything save the problem at hand and moved slowly into the room, as if by exaggerating the deliberate quality of his pace, he could temper the thoughts that instantly threatened to fill his imagination. 'Separated? Where? How?'

Shaeffer looked up nervously. 'He spotted Ferguson coming out of his apartment and set off on foot after him. I tried to get ahead of them both in the car. They were moving quickly, and I must have misjudged. Anyway, we got separated. I looked for him throughout a five-, six-block area. I went back and tried to find him at Ferguson's apartment. He wasn't either place. I figured he either made his way back here or flagged down a patrol car. Or a cab.'

'Let me get this straight. He went after Ferguson

'They were moving fast.'

'Had Ferguson made him?'

I don't think so.'

'But why would he?'

'I don't know,' Shaeffer replied, half in despair, half in fury. 'He just saw Ferguson and exploded out of the car. It was like he needed to face him down. I don't know what he was going to do after that.'

'Did you hear anything. See anything?'

'No. It was like one minute they were there, Wilcox maybe fifty yards or less behind Ferguson, the next, no sign of anything.'

'What did you do?'

'I got out, walked the streets, questioned people. Nothing.'

'Well,' Tanny Brown asked, with irritation, 'what do you think happened?'

Shaeffer looked over at the big detective and shrugged. 'I don't know. I thought he'd be back here. Or at least have called in.'

Brown looked over at Cowart briefly. 'Any phone messages?'

'No.'

'Did you try calling whatever the hell precinct house is in that district?'

'No,' Shaeffer said. 'I just got here a couple of minutes ago.'

'All right,' Brown said. 'Let's do that, at least. Use the phone in your own room, so, in case he calls, this line won't be tied up.'

'I need to change,' Shaeffer said. 'Let me just…'

'Make the calls,' Brown said coldly.

She hesitated, then nodded. She extricated her room key from a pocket, nodded once toward the two men, started to say something to Tanny Brown, obviously thought better of it, and left.

The two men watched her exit.

'What do you think?' Cowart asked.

Brown turned and snapped at him, I don't think anything. Don't you think anything either.'

Cowart opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. He merely nodded, recognizing that the detective's demand was impossible. The absence of information was inflammatory. They both sat, eating cold sandwiches, wordlessly waiting for the phone to ring.

It was nearly half an hour before Shaeffer returned.

'I got through to the desk sergeants at precincts twelve, seventeen, and twenty,' she said. 'No sign of him. At least, he hasn't checked in there. None of them had any unusual calls, either, they said. One had a team working a shooting, but that was gang-related. They all said the weather was keeping things quiet. I called a couple of emergency rooms, as well, just on the off chance, you know. And the central dispatch for fire, rescue. Nothing.'

Brown looked at the two of them. 'We're wasting time,' he said abruptly. 'Let's go. We're going to go find him. Now.'

Cowart looked down at his notebook. 'You know, Ferguson has a late class tonight. Forensic procedures. Eight to ten thirty. Maybe he tailed him all the way out to New Brunswick.'

Brown nodded and then shook his head. That's possible. But we can't wait.'

'What good will it do to race out of here? Suppose he's on his way back?'

'Suppose he isn't?'

'Well, he's your partner. What do you think he's doing?'

Shaeffer breathed out slowly. That's it, she thought to herself. Got to be. He probably chased the bastard right onto some connecting bus and then to a train and hasn't had the chance to call in. And now he's tailing him back and it'll be midnight before he gets in. A small wave of relief washed over her. It was warm, comforting. It distanced her from the steel feelings of helplessness that had trapped her when she'd lost sight of Wilcox. She became aware, suddenly, of the lights in the room, the plastic, uniform decorations and furnishings, the quiet familiarity of the setting. It was, in that instant, as if she'd returned to the brightly lit surface from a mine shaft sunk deep into the earth's core.

The safety of this reverie was smashed by the harsh sound of Brown's voice. 'No. I'm going out now.' He pointed at Shaeffer. 'I want you to show me where everything happened. Let's go.'

Cowart reached for his coat, and the three headed back out into the night.

As Shaeffer drove, Tanny Brown hunched in his seat in the car, in agony.

He would have called, Brown knew.

There was no doubt in his mind that Wilcox was impetuous, sometimes to the point of danger. He was ruled too much by impulse and arrogant confidence in his abilities. These were the qualities that Tanny Brown secretly enjoyed the most in his partner; he felt sometimes that his own life had been so rigid, so clearly defined. Every moment of his entire being had been dedicated to some carefully constructed responsibility: as a child sitting at Sunday dinner after church, listening to his father say, 'We will rise up!' and taking those words as a command; carrying the ball for the football team; bringing help to the wounded in war; becoming the highest-ranking black on the Escambia force. He thought, There is no spontaneity in my life. Hasn't been for years. He realized that his choice of partners had been made with that in mind; that Bruce Wilcox, who saw the world in terms of simple rights and wrongs, goods and evils, and who never thought hard about any decision, was the perfect balance for him.

I'm almost jealous, Brown thought.

Memory made him feel worse.

He knew, instinctively, that something had happened, yet was incapable of reacting to this phantom disaster. When he searched the inventory of his partnership, he could find dozens of times that Wilcox had gone off slightly half-cocked, only to return to the fold contrite and chastened, red-faced and ready to listen to the coal-raking he would receive from Tanny

Brown. The problem was, all these instances had taken place back within the secure confines of their home county, where they had both grown up and where they felt a safety and security, not to speak of power.

Tanny Brown found himself staring out the window at the rigid black night.

Not here, he thought. We should never have come here.

He turned away angrily toward Cowart.

I should have let the bastard sink alone, he thought.

Cowart, too, stared out at the night. The streets still glistened with rain, reflecting weak lights from streetlamps and the occasional neon sign from a bar window. Mist rose above the pavement, mingling with an occasional shaft of steam that burst from grates, as if some subterranean deities were angry with the course of the night.

As Shaeffer drove, Tanny Brown's eyes swept up and down the area, probing, searching. Cowart watched the two of them.

He did not know when he had come to the realization that this search would be futile. Perhaps it was when they had dropped down off the expressway and started winding their way through the middle of the city, that the heartlessness of the situation had struck him. He was careful not to speak his feelings; he could see, with each passing second, that Brown was moving closer to some kind of edge. He could see as well, in the erratic manner that Shaeffer steered the car, that she, too, was staggered by Wilcox's disappearance. Of the three, he thought, he was the least affected. He did not like Wilcox, did not trust him, but still felt a coldness inside at the thought that he might have been swallowed up by the darkness.

Shaeffer caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and swerved the car to the curb. 'What's that?' she said.

They all turned and saw a pair of men, crusted, abandoned, homeless, fighting over a bottle. As they watched, one man kicked the other savagely, knocking his antagonist to the sidewalk. He kicked again, swinging his leg like a pendulum, smashing it into the side and ribs of the fallen man. Finally, he stopped, reached down, seized a bottle, and clutched it close. He started to leave, seemed to think better of it, walked back and slammed his foot into the head of the beaten man. Then the assailant slithered away, moving from shadow to shadow, until disappearing.

Tanny Brown thought, I've seen poverty, prejudice, hatred, and evil and hopelessness. His eyes traveled the length of the street. Not like this. The inner city looked like the bombed-out remnants of a different nation that had just lost some terrible war. He wanted desperately to be back in Escambia County. Things there may be wrong or evil, he told himself, but at least they're familiar.

'Jesus,' Cowart said, interrupting the policeman's thoughts. 'That guy may be dead.'

But as soon as the words left his lips, they all saw the beaten man stir, rise, and limp off into a different darkness.

Shaeffer, wishing she could be anywhere else, put the car back in gear and for the third time drove them past the spot where she had lost sight of Wilcox.

'Nothing,' she said.

'All right,' Brown said abruptly, 'we're wasting our time. Let's go to Ferguson's apartment.'

The entire building was dark when they pulled in front, the sidewalks devoid of life. The car had barely ceased moving when Brown was out the door, moving swiftly up the stairs to the entrance. Cowart pushed himself to keep pace. Shaeffer brought up the rear, but called ahead, 'Second floor, first door.'

'What are we doing?' Cowart asked.

He got no reply.

The big detective's shoes resounded against the stairs, a machine-gun sound of urgency. He paused momentarily in front of Ferguson's apartment, reaching beneath his coat and producing a large handgun. Standing just to one side, he made a fist and crashed it down hard a half dozen times on the steel reinforced door.

'Police! Open up!'

He pounded again, making the whole wall shake with insistence. 'Ferguson! Open up!'

Silence battered them. Cowart was aware that Shaeffer was close to him, her own weapon out and held forward, her breathing raspy-fast. He pushed his back against the wall, the solidity affording him no protection.

Brown assaulted the door again. The blows echoed down the hallway. 'Dammit, police! Open up!'

Then nothing.

He turned toward Shaeffer. 'You're sure…'

'That's the right one,' she said, teeth clenched.

'Where the hell…'

All three heard a scraping noise from behind them. Cowart felt his insides constrict with fear. Shaeffer wheeled, bringing her weapon to bear on the sound, crying out, 'Freeze! Police!'

Brown pushed forward.

'I ain't done nothing,' said a voice.

Cowart saw a stout black woman in a frayed pale blue housecoat and pink slippers at the base of the apartment stairs. She was leaning on an aluminum walker, bobbing her head back and forth. She wore an opaque shower curtain cap, and brightly colored curlers were stuck in her hair. There was a ridiculousness in her appearance that pricked the tension building within him, deflating his fear. He instantly felt as if the three of them, guns drawn, faces set, were the ludicrous ones.

'Whatcha making all the noise for? You come in, like to raise the dead with all that pounding and shouting and racket like I never heard before. This ain't no crack house full of junkies. People live here got jobs. Got work and got to get their sleep at night. You, mister policeman, what you doing, making like some sledgehammer pounding?'

Tanny Brown stared down at the woman. Andrea Shaeffer slid past him. 'Mrs. Washington? You remember me from the other day. Detective Shaeffer. From Florida. We're looking for Ferguson again. This is Lieutenant Brown and Mister Cowart. Have you seen him?'

'He left earlier.'

'I know, shortly after six, I saw him leave.'

'No. He come back. Left again, 'bout ten. I saw him from my window.'

'Where was he going?' Tanny Brown demanded.

The woman scowled at him. 'How'm I s'posed to know? Had a couple of bags. Just left. There you go. Didn't stop to say no hellos or goodbyes. Just went walking out. Be back, mebbe. I don't know. I didn't ask no questions. Just heard him bustling 'bout up here. Then out the door, no looking back.'

She stepped back. 'Now, maybe you let some of the folks get some sleep.'

'No,' Tanny Brown said immediately. 'I want in,' he gestured with his revolver toward the apartment.

'Can't do that,' said the woman.

I want in,' he repeated.

'You got a warrant?' she asked slyly.

'I don't need a goddamn warrant,' he said. His eyes burned toward the woman.

She paused, considering. I don't want no trouble,' she said.

'You don't get the key and open that door, and you'll see more trouble than you've ever known,' Brown said.

The woman hesitated again, then turned and nodded.

Her husband, who'd been out of sight, hove into view. He carried a jangling key ring. He was wearing an old pajama top over a pair of faded and tattered khaki trousers. His feet were stuck into untied boots. He moved his stringy legs rapidly up the stairs.

'Shouldn't be doing this,' he said, glaring at Brown. He pushed past and faced the apartment door. Shouldn't be doing this,' he repeated.

He started feeding keys into the lock. It took three before the door swung open.

'Oughta have a warrant,' he said. Tanny Brown immediately pushed past him, ignoring his words. He found a light switch on the wall and quickly walked through the apartment, gun out, checking the bathroom and bedroom, making certain they were alone.

'Empty,' he said. The words echoed the sensation that tore within him. Empty and cold and like a tomb. He stared around the silent space, knowing what had happened yet refusing to allow himself to think what was loose in the world. He walked through the center of the small apartment, over to the desk where Ferguson had once sat. The student, he thought. An assortment of papers had fallen in disarray to the floor. He kicked at them and looked up and saw Matthew Cowart staring about at the room.

'Gone, Cowart said. His voice was shocked and quiet.

The reporter took a deep breath. He had expected Ferguson to be there, mocking them all, thinking himself forever just beyond their reach. There's no time now, he realized. He could feel the story he had been planning to write slipping through his fingers. No time. He's out there and he will do whatever he wants. The reporter's mind raced through scene after scene. He had no idea what Ferguson intended, whether his child was at risk or not. Or some other child. Nothing was safe. He looked over at Tanny Brown and realized the detective was thinking precisely the same thing.

The night closed rapidly toward dawn but promised no relief from the darkness that had descended upon each of them.

25. Lost Time

They lost hours to fatigue and bureaucracy.

Tanny Brown felt trapped between procedure and fear. After discovering Ferguson's apartment empty, he had felt compelled to report Wilcox's disappearance to the local police, while at the same time believing that every instant passing distanced him from his quarry. He and Shaeffer had spent the remainder of the night with a pair of Newark gold shields, neither of whom fully understood why they had each arrived from a different part of the state of Florida to question a man suspected of no current crime. The two gold shields had listened blankly to her account of the stakeout with Wilcox and acted surprised when she described how he'd taken off into the gloom and darkness after Ferguson. Their approach seemed to express a certain acceptance that whatever Wilcox had got, he'd deserved; it made no sense to them that a man, out of his jurisdiction, far from any familiar territory, driven by anger, would pursue a man deep into a country they clearly thought was not a part of the United States, but some alien nation with its own rules, laws, and codes of behavior. Tanny Brown bristled at their attitudes, thinking them racist, if logistically correct. Shaeffer marveled at their callousness. More than once, she promised herself that no matter how terrible things might become for her as a policeman, she would never succumb to what she heard in their voices. where she'd last seen Wilcox and showing them the route that she'd followed in her search. They had returned to Ferguson's apartment, but there was still no sign of him. The two gold shields clearly didn't believe that he had left the city, however.

Shortly before dawn, they told Brown they would put out a BOLO for Wilcox and would assign a team to canvas the streets asking for him. But they insisted Brown contact his own office, as if they actually believed that Wilcox would show up in Escambia County.

Cowart spent the night waiting in his motel room for the two detectives. He had no idea how great the threat might be to him or his daughter, only knew that as each minute slid past, his position worsened and his only weapon, the news story, grew more remote. No story would have an impact unless he knew where Ferguson was. Ferguson had to be trapped by the story, he had to be immediately surrounded with questions, mired in denials. It was the only way Cowart could buy time to protect himself. Ferguson abroad in the world was a constant, invisible danger. Cowart knew that before a word appeared in the paper, he had to find Ferguson once again.

He stared at his wristwatch, seeing the second hand race through each minute, reminded of the clock on Death Row.

Now you're beginning to know a bit…

He realized he could delay no further. Ignoring the sure-to-be terrifying impact of the middle-of-the-night call, he picked up the telephone and dialed his ex-wife's number.

It rang twice before he heard her new husband's voice groan an acknowledgement.

'Tom? It's Matt Cowart. Sorry to disturb you, but I've got a problem, and…'

'Matt? Jesus. Do you know what time it is? Christ, I've got to be in court in the morning. What through the darkness. He couldn't hear what she said but heard her new husband's response. 'It's your ex. He's got some sort of emergency, I guess.'

There was a pause, then he heard both voices on the phone.

'Okay, Matty? What the hell is it?'

The lawyer's tones had taken over, irritated, imperious. Before he could answer, the man added, 'Oh, Christ, there's the baby waking up. Shit.'

Matthew Cowart wished he'd rehearsed a speech. 'I think Becky's in danger,' he said.

The phone line was quiet for a moment, then both people responded.

'What danger? Matty, what are you talking about?' It was his ex-wife.

'The man I wrote about. The one on Death Row. He threatened Becky. He knows where you live.'

Another pause before Tom responded, 'But why? You wrote he didn't kill anyone…'

1 might have been wrong.'

'But why Becky?'

'He doesn't want me to write anything different.'

'Now look, Matt, what did this man say, exactly? Let's get this straight. What sort of threat?'

I don't know. Look, it's not that, I don't know, it's all…' He realized the impossibility of what he was saying.

'Matt, Christ. You call in the middle of the damn night and…'

The lawyer was interrupted by his wife. 'Matty, is this serious? Is this for real?'

'Sandy, I wish I could tell you what was real and what isn't. All I know is this man is dangerous and I no longer know where he is and so I had to do something, and I called you.'

'But Matt,' the lawyer interjected. 'We need to know some details. I need to have some appreciation of what the hell this all means.'

Matthew Cowart felt a sudden rage slide within him.

'No, you goddamn don't. You don't need to know a goddamn thing except Becky may be in danger. That there's one goddamn dangerous man out there and that he knows where you live and he wants to be able to strike at me through Becky. Got that? Got it good? That's all you need to know. No, Sandy, pack a damn bag and take Becky someplace. Someplace neutral. Like up to Michigan to see your aunt. Do it right away. First flight in the morning. Just go until I get this straightened out. I will get it straightened out, I promise you. But I can't do that unless I know Becky's safe and out of danger and someplace where this man can't get to her. Just go now. Do you understand? It's not worth the risk.'

There was another momentary pause, then his ex-wife replied, 'All right.'

Her husband immediately interjected. 'Sandy! Jesus, we don't know…'

'We'll know soon enough,' she said. 'Matty, will you call me? Will you please call Tom and explain this? As soon as you can?'

'I will.'

'Jesus,' said the new husband. Then he added, 'Matty, I hope this isn't some crazy… ' He stopped, hesitated, then said, 'Actually, I hope it is. I hope it is all crazy.' And when you call me with your goddamn explanation, it's a good one. I don't understand why I just don't call the police, or maybe hire a private investigator…'

'Because the damn police can't do anything about a threat! They can't do anything until something happens! She won't be safe, even if you hire the goddamn National Guard to watch over her. You've just got to get her someplace where this guy can't reach her.'

'What about Becky?' his ex-wife said. 'This is going to scare the hell out of her.'

I know,' Cowart replied. Despair and impotence seemed to curl about him like smoke. 'But the alternatives are a whole lot worse.'

This man… ' the lawyer started.

"The man is a killer,' Co wart said between clenched teeth.

The lawyer paused, then sighed. 'Okay. They'll take the first flight out. All right? I'm gonna stay here. The guy didn't threaten me, did he?'

'No.'

'Well. Good.'

Another silence crept onto the line, before Cowart added, 'Sandy?'

'Yes, Matt?'

'Don't hang up the telephone and think all of a sudden that this is silly and you don't have to do anything,' he said, his voice steady, low, and even. 'Leave right away. Keep Becky safe. I can't do anything unless I know she's safe. You promise me?'

'I understand.'

'Promise?'

'Yes.'

'Thank you,' he said. He felt relief and tension battling within him. 'I'll call you with details when I have them.' Sandy's new husband grunted in assent. Cowart put the telephone down gingerly, as if it were fragile, and leaned back on the motel bed. He felt better and awful at the same time.

When Brown and Shaeffer returned to the motel room, discouragement seemed to ride their shoulders, perched on top of exhaustion. Cowart asked, 'Did you get anywhere?' Shaeffer answered for them both. The local cops seem to think we're crazy. And, if not crazy, then incompetent. But mostly, I think, they don't really want to be bothered. Might have been different if they could see something in it for them. But they don't.' Cowart nodded. 'Where does that leave us?' Brown replied softly, 'Chasing a man guilty of something, suspected of everything, with evidence of nothing.' He laughed softly. 'Jesus, listen to me. Should have been a writer like you, Cowart.'

Shaeffer rubbed her hands across her face slowly, finally pushing her hair back tightly from her forehead, pulling the skin taut as she did so, as if this would clear her vision.

'How many?' she asked, turning toward the two men. 'There's the first one, the one you wrote about…'

Both men were silent, guarding their fears.

'How many?' she demanded again. 'What is it? You think something bad will happen if you share information? What could be worse than what we've got?'

'Joanie Shriver,' Cowart replied. 'She's the first. First we know about. Then there's a twelve-year-old girl down in Perrine who disappeared

'Perrine?' Shaeffer said. 'No wonder he…'

'No wonder what?' Cowart demanded.

It was his first question for me. When I went to see him. He wanted to be certain that it was a Monroe County case I was investigating. He was quite concerned over where the border between Dade and Monroe counties is. And once he was certain, he relaxed.'

'Damn, Cowart whispered.

'We don't know anything for certain about her, Brown interjected. 'It's really speculation…'

Cowart rose, shaking his head. He went over to his suit coat and extricated the computer printouts that he had been ferrying about. He handed them to Brown, who swiftly read them.

'What are those?' Shaeffer asked.

'Nothing, Brown replied, frustration creeping into his voice. He crumpled the pages together, then handed them back. 'So he was there?'

'He was there.'

'But there's still nothing against him.'

'No body, you mean. Though, judging from what she said, I suspect that girl's body is somewhere in the Everglades, close to the county line.'

'Right.' Cowart turned to Shaeffer. 'See, that's two.

Two so far…'

'Three, Brown added quietly. 'A little girl in Eatonville. Disappeared a few months back.'

Cowart stared hard at the policeman. 'You didn't…' he started.

Brown shrugged.

Cowart, hands quivering with anger, picked up his notepad. 'He was in Eatonville about six months ago. At the Christ Our Savior Presbyterian Church. Gave his speech about Jesus. Is that when…'

'No, sometime later.'

'Damn,' Cowart said again.

'He went back. He must have gone back when he knew no one would be looking.'

'Sure he did. But how do you prove it?'

'I'll prove it.'

'Great. Why didn't you tell me?' Cowart's voice cracked with rage.

Brown replied with equal fury. 'Tell you? So you can do what? So you can put it in the damn paper before I've got a chance to get somewhere on the case? Before I've had a chance to check every small black town in Florida? You want me to tell you so you can tell the world and save your reputation?'

'Get somewhere! How many people are going to die while you put together a case? If you can put together a case!'

'And what the hell will be accomplished by putting it in the newspaper?'

It'd work! It'd smoke him out!'

'More like it would just warn him so he'd start being even more careful.'

'No. Everybody else would be warned…'

'Yeah, so he'd change his pattern and there's not a courtroom in the world I'd ever get him into.'

Both men had moved to their feet, eyes locked, poised as if about to come to blows. Shaeffer held up her hand, cutting the two men off. 'Are you both crazy?' she asked loudly. 'Are you out of your minds?

Haven't you shared any information? What's the point of secrets?'

Cowart looked at her and shook his head. The point is, no one ever tells everything. Especially the truth.'

'How many people are dead because…' she started, then cut herself off. She realized that she herself possessed information that she was reluctant to share. Cowart caught it, though.

'What are you hiding, Detective? What do you know you don't want to talk about?'

She realized she had no choice.

'Sullivan's parents,' she said. 'Ferguson was right. He didn't do it.'

'What?'

She described everything Michael Weiss had told her: the Bible, the guard, the brother.

Cowart looked surprised, and then shook his head. 'Rogers, he said. 'Who'd have thought it?' It wasn't nonsense, though. Rogers seemed to be into everything at Starke. Nothing would have been easier for him, but yet…' One thing I don't understand,' said Cowart. 'If it was really Rogers, then why did Sullivan spend all that time implicating Ferguson in the murder to me, while at the same time writing Rogers' name in that Bible?'

Brown shrugged. 'Best way to guarantee someone gets away with murder. Multiple suspects. Tell you one thing. Point some other evidence another direction. Wait until some defense attorney gets ahold of that. But mostly, I think he did it because he was a sick man, Cowart. Sick and full of mischief. It was just his way of dragging down everybody into the same hell that awaited him: you, Ferguson, Rogers… and three cops he didn't even know.'

Everyone was silent for a moment. 'So maybe Rogers did it, and maybe he didn't,' Cowart said. 'Right now, old Sully must be down there laughing his damned head off.' He shook his head again. 'So what does it mean?'

'It means, Shaeffer spoke up, 'that we can forget about Sullivan. Forget his mind games. Let's worry about Ferguson and his victims. Three, you think?'

'He made seven trips south. Seven we know about.'

'Seven?'

Cowart lifted his arms in surrender. 'We don't know when it was for research, when he went for action. What we do know is – Christ! – What we suspect is -three little girls. One white. Two black. And Bruce Wilcox.'

'Four, she said quietly.

'Four, Tanny Brown said heavily. He stood, as if insisting that fatigue was something wrong, and began pacing about the small room like a prisoner in a cell. 'Can't you see what he's doing?' he said abruptly.

'What?'

Brown's voice carried an urgency that seemed to quiver in the small room. He looked at the young detective. 'What is it we do? A crime occurs and our first assumption is that, while unique, it will still fit directly into a clear-cut, recognizable category. Ultimately, we figure it will be typical of a hundred others, just like it. That's what we're taught, what we expect. So we go out and look for the usual suspects. The same suspects that ninety-nine times turn out to be the right ones. We process everything at the crime scene, hoping that some bit of hair or blood spatter or fiber sample will point right at one of the people on the short list. We do this because the alternative is so terrifying: that someone unconnected to anything except murder has walked onto the scene. Someone you don't know, that nobody knows, that may not be within a hundred or a thousand miles of the crime anymore. And did it for some reason so warped that you can't even contemplate it, much less understand it. Because if that's the case, you've got a chance in a million of making a case and maybe not even that. That's why we went to Ferguson in the first go-round, when little Joanie was killed. Because we had a crime and he was on the short list…'

Brown looked at Shaeffer and then toward Cowart. 'But now, you see, he's figured that out.'

The detective hunched forward, slapping a fist into a palm to accentuate his words. 'He's figured out that distance helps keep him safe, that when he arrives in some little town to kill, no one should know him. No one will pay any attention to him. And no one will make him when he grabs his victim. And who does he grab? He learned what happens when he snatched a little white girl. So now he goes to places where the police aren't quite as sophisticated and the press isn't as aware, and grabs a little black girl, because that ain't hardly going to get anyone's attention, not the same way Joanie Shriver did. So he goes and does these things, then he comes back up here and returns to school and there ain't nobody looking for him, 'Nobody.'

Brown paused before adding, 'Nobody now, except us three.'

'And Wilcox?' Cowart asked.

Brown took a deep breath. 'He's dead,' he replied flatly.

'We don't know that,' Shaeffer said. The idea seemed impossible to her. She knew it to be true yet couldn't stand to hear it said.

'Dead,' Brown continued, voice picking up momentum. 'Somewhere close to here. And that's the reason Ferguson's running. That's his first rule. Kill safe. Kill anonymously. Use distance. It's such a damn easy formula.'

He stared at the young detective. 'He was dead as soon as you lost sight of him.'

'You shouldn't have left him,' Cowart said.

She turned, bristling. 'I didn't leave him! He left me. I tried to stop him. Dammit, I don't have to listen to this! I don't even have to be here!'.'Yes, you do,' Cowart said. 'Don't you get it, Detective? There's a real bad guy out there. Because of accidents, bad judgment, mistakes, bad luck, whatever.

And when you add it all up, he let him go…' Cowart pointed sharply at Tanny Brown, '… and I let him go…' He punched an index finger against his own chest, then turned it, like a pistol, toward her.'… And now, you've let him go, too. Just like that.'

He took a deep breath. 'In effect, there's only one of us that actually caught up with him. Wilcox. And now…'

'He's dead,' Brown said again. He stood in the center of the room, clenching his hands into fists, then releasing them slowly. 'And we're the only people really looking for him.' He, too, punched a finger at her. 'Now you owe, too.'

She felt a sudden dizziness, as if the floor of the motel room were pitching beneath her like her stepfather's fishing boat. But she knew what they said was true. They had created the problem. Now it was up to them to find a solution.

Wilcox and some little girls, she told herself.

These two have no idea, she thought. They don't know what it's like to feel yourself pinned down and attacked, to know that you might be about to die and can do nothing to stop it. She envisioned the last minutes the little girls must have experienced in a rush of horror that robbed her of her breath and rekindled her determination.

'Got to be found, first, though,' she said. 'Who's got a suggestion?'

'Florida,' Cowart said slowly. 1 think he's gone back to Florida. That's what he knows. That will be where he thinks he's safest. He has two worries, it seems to me. He's worried about me and he's worried about Detective Brown. I don't think he has you connected in all this. Did he see you with Wilcox?'

'I don't think so.'

'Well, maybe that's an advantage.'

Cowart turned to Brown. His head was filled with something Blair Sullivan had told him: Got to be a free man to be a good killer, Cowart. He knows that, the reporter realized. So he said it.

'But you and I, well, that's different. He needs to know he's free of us. Then he can get on with what he's been doing, without worrying and always looking over his back.'

'How does he do that?'

The reporter took a deep breath. 'The other day. When I saw him. He threatened my daughter. He knows where she lives with her mother, in Tampa.'

Tanny Brown started to say something, then stopped.

"That's why…'

'Tell me about the threat,' the detective demanded.

'He just said he knew where she lived. He didn't say what he would do. Only that he knew who she was and that would prevent me from writing anything about him. Especially unproven allegations connecting him to other crimes.'

'And will it?'

'Well, what would you do?' the reporter replied angrily.

'You think that's where he's gone now? To Tampa. To…'

'Cut out my heart. Those are his words.'

'Is that what you think?'

Cowart shook his head. 'No. I think he believes he has me wrapped up. That he doesn't have to do anything to keep me quiet.'

Tanny Brown stared hard at him. I have daughters, too,' he said. 'Did he threaten them?'

Cowart felt a slight queasiness. 'No. He never mentioned them.'

'He knows where they live, too, Cowart. Everyone in Pachoula knows where I live.'

'He never said anything.'

'Did he know I was outside, when he was busy threatening you? Did he know I was there, close by?'

'I don't know.'

'Why didn't he mention them, Cowart? Wouldn't the same threat work against me as well?'

Cowart shook his head. 'No. He knows you wouldn't back off.'

Brown nodded. 'At least you got that right. So, Mister Reporter, how does he deal with me? If I'm his remaining problem, how does he get rid of me?'

Cowart thought hard. Only one possibility came to mind, so he spoke it quickly. 'He probably wants to do the same to you that he did to Wilcox. Lead you into a trap somewhere, and

He paused. 'Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he's figured he should just run. Boston, Chicago, L.A., any city with a large urban inner city. He could disappear, and, if he's got the patience, after a while start in doing what he wants, once again.'

'You think he's got that patience?' Shaeffer asked.

Cowart shook his head. 'No. I don't know that he thinks he even needs to be patient. He's won at every step. He's arrogant and on a roll and he doesn't think we can catch him. And even if we do, what can we do to him? He beat us before. Probably thinks he can do it again.'

'Which means there's only one place he can be going,' Tanny Brown said abruptly. He looked around at them. 'Only one place. Back where it started.'

'Pachoula,' Cowart said.

'Pachoula,' the detective agreed. 'Home for him. Home for me. Place he thinks is safe. Even if everybody there hates him, it's still where he's safe and comfortable. Good place to start things, or finish them. And that's where I think he's going.'

Cowart nodded and gestured toward the telephone. 'So, call. Get his grandmother's house staked out. Get him picked up.'

Brown hesitated, then walked to the telephone. He punched numbers on the dial rapidly, then waited while the line was connecting. After a moment, he said, 'Dispatch? This is Lieutenant Brown. Connect me with the day-command duty officer.'

He paused again before continuing. 'Randy? It's Tanny Brown. Look, something has come up. Something important. I don't want to go into details now, but I want you to do something for me. I want you to assign a pair of squad cars to spend the day in front of the high school. And I want another car in front of my house. And tell whoever you send to tell my old man I'll be back as soon as possible and he'll get his explanation then, okay?'

The detective paused, listening. 'No. No. Just do what I ask, all right? I appreciate it. No, don't worry about my old man. He can handle himself. It's my daughters I'm worried about…' He paused, listening, then added, 'No, nothing that specific. And I'll take care of all the paperwork when I get back. Today, if possible. Tomorrow, for sure. What are they looking for? Anyone who doesn't fit. Got that? Anyone.' He hung up the telephone.

'You didn't tell them about Ferguson,' Cowart said with surprise. 'You didn't tell them anything.'

I told them enough. He hasn't got that much of a lead on us. If we hurry, we can catch up with him before he's ready for us.'

'But what if…?'

'No ifs, Cowart. The squad cars will keep him away until we get there. And then he's mine.' He glared at them. 'No one else's. I finish this. Understand?'

They were quiet a moment, and then Cowart went to his bureau and found an airline schedule stuck in a corner of his small suitcase.

'There's a noon flight to Atlanta. Nothing down to Mobile until late afternoon. But we can fly to Birmingham and drive from there. Should get to Pachoula by day's end.'

Tanny Brown nodded. He glanced over at Shaeffer, who mumbled an approval.

'Day's end,' the policeman said quietly.

26. The Briar Patch

They crossed the Alabama border into Escambia County, moving fast as the Gulf evening crowded them toward night. The southern sky had lost its eggshell-blue vibrancy, replaced by a dirty gray-brown threat of bad weather streaking the horizon. An unsettled hot wind gusted about them, sucking and pulling with occasional bursts at the car windows, stripping away the residual cold and damp they felt from the Northeast. They cut past dust-streaked farms and stands of tall pine trees, whose towering, erect bearing reminded Cowart of spectators rising in a stadium at the moment of tension. Their speed underwrote the doubts they all felt. They all felt an urgency, a need to rush ahead, uncertainty shadowing their path. The countryside hurtled past them; there hardly seemed enough space to breathe on the narrow roadway. Cowart grabbed at the armrest when they bore down on an ancient school bus, painted a gleaming snow white, bouncing and jiggling slowly down the one-lane road. Tanny Brown had to push hard on the brake to keep from slamming into the back end. Cowart looked up and saw, hand-lettered on the back of the bus over the emergency-exit door, in a flowing, joyously enthusiastic bright red script, the words: STILL TIME TO WELCOME YOUR SAVIOR!

And, below that, in slightly smaller but equally florid, writing: NEW REDEMPTION BAPTIST CHURCH, PACHOULA, FLA.

And finally, on the bumper, an exhortation in large, bubbling letters: FOLLOW ME TO JESUS!

Cowart rolled down his window and could just make out the thunderous voices of the church choir bursting beyond the heat, above the grinding and groaning of the bus engine. He strained his hearing but couldn't make out the words of the hymn they were singing, though elusive strands of music poked at him.

Tanny Brown jabbed the steering wheel of the rental car, punching the gas pedal simultaneously. With a quick thrust, they maneuvered past the bus. Cowart stared up and saw dozens of black people, swaying and clapping to both the rocky ride and the energy of the singing. The sound of their voices was swept away by speed and distance.

They continued through the growing darkness. The weakening light seemed to blur the straight edges of the houses and barns, made the twisting road they traveled less distinct, almost infirm.

'Jesus works overtime in this county,' Brown said. 'Gathering in the souls.'

Brown had driven silently, unable to shake a memory that had crashed unbidden into his thoughts. A wartime moment, horrible yet ordinary: he'd been in country seven months, and his platoon had been crossing an open area; it was near the end of the day, they were close to camp, they were hot, filthy, tired, and probably thinking more of what was waiting for them, which was food, rest, and another uncomfortable, breathless night, than paying attention, which made them immensely vulnerable. So, in retrospect, it shouldn't have come as a great surprise when the air had been sliced by the single sound of a sniper's weapon, and one of the men, the man walking the point, had dropped with a suddenness that Brown thought was as if some irritated god had reached down and tripped the unsuspecting man capriciously.

The man had called out, high-pitched with fear and pain, Help me! Please.

Tanny Brown hadn't moved. He had known the sniper was waiting in concealment for someone to go to the wounded man. He had known what would happen if he went. So he had remained frozen, hugging the earth, thinking, I want to live, too. He had stayed that way until the platoon leader had called in an artillery strike on the line of trees where the sniper hid. Then, after the forest had been smashed and splintered with a dozen high-explosive rounds, he'd gone to the wounded man.

He was a white boy from California and had been in the platoon only a week. Brown had hovered above him, staring at the man's ravaged, hopeless chest, trying to remember his name.

He had been his last wounded man. And he had died.

A week later, Tanny had rotated home, his tour of duty cut short as it was for many medics. Back to Florida State University, the criminal justice training program, and finally a spot on the force. He hadn't been the first black to join the Escambia County Sheriff's Office, but it had been tacitly understood that he would be the first to amount to anything. He'd had much going for him: Local boy. Football star. War hero. State-college diploma. Old attitudes eroding like rocks turned to sand by the constant pounding of the surf.

He felt a tinge of guilt. He realized he'd often heard the memory cries of wounded men, but they had always been the cries of men he'd saved. They were easy voices to recall, he thought. They remind you that you were doing something right in the midst of all that wrong. This was the first time he'd thought of that last man's cry.

Did Bruce Wilcox cry for help? he wondered. I left him, too.

He realized that he would have to tell Wilcox's family. Luckily, there was no wife, no steady girlfriend. He remembered a sister, married to a career naval officer stationed in San Diego. Wilcox's mother was dead, he knew, and his father lived, alone in a retirement home. There were dozens of old-age homes in Escambia County; it was a veritable growth industry. He recalled his few meetings with Wilcox's father: a rigid, harsh old man. He hates the world already. This will simply add to it. Abrupt fury creased his thoughts: What do I say? That I lost him? That I put him on a stakeout with an inexperienced detective from Monroe County and he vanished? Presumed dead? Missing in action? It's not like he was swallowed up by some jungle.

But he realized it was.

He flicked on the car's headlights. They immediately caught the small, red pinprick eyes of an opossum, poised by the side of the road, seemingly intent on challenging the car's wheels. He held the wheel steady, watching the animal, which, at the last moment, twitched and dove back into a ditch and safety.

In that moment he wished that he, too, could dive for cover.

No chance, he told himself.

Not long after, he pulled the car into the parking lot of the Admiral Benbow Inn on the outskirts of Pachoula and deposited Cowart and Shaeffer on the sidewalk, where their faces were lit by a gleaming white sign bright enough to catch the attention of drivers heading up the interstate. 'I'll be back,' he said cryptically.

'What're you going to do?'

'Arrange backup. You don't think we should go get him alone, do you?'

Cowart thought about what Brown had said up in Newark. It had not occurred to him that they might seek assistance. 'I guess not.'

Shaeffer interrupted. 'What time?'

'Early. I'll pick you up before dawn. Say, five-fifteen.'

'And then?'

'We'll go out to his grandmother's place. I think that's where he'll be. Maybe we'll catch him asleep. Get lucky.'

'If not?' she asked. 'Suppose he's not there. Then what?'

'Then we start looking harder. But I think that's exactly where he'll be.'

She nodded. It seemed simple and impossible at the same time.

'Where're you going now?' Cowart asked again.

'I told you. Arrange backup. Maybe file some reports. I definitely want to check on my family. I'll see you here just before the sun comes up.'

Then he put the car in gear and accelerated swiftly away, leaving the reporter and the young detective standing on the sidewalk like a pair of tourists adrift in a strange country. For a moment, he glanced in the rearview mirror, watching the two before they moved into the motel lobby. They seemed small, hesitant. He turned the car, and they dropped away from his sight. He felt an unraveling starting within him, as if something wound tight was beginning to work loose. He could feel bitterness welling inside him as well, taste it on his tongue. The night swept around him, and for the first time in days he felt quiet. He let the reporter and the detective fall from his thoughts, not completely, but just enough to allow his own anger freer rein. He drove hard, rapidly, hurrying but heading nowhere specific. He had absolutely no intention of filing any reports or arranging for any backup officers. He told himself, The accountancy of death can wait.

Cowart and Shaeffer checked into the motel and headed into the restaurant to get something to eat. Neither felt particularly hungry but it was the proper hour, so it seemed the natural thing to do. They ordered from a waitress who seemed uncomfortable in a starched blue-and-white outfit perhaps a size too small for her that pulled tightly across her ample chest, and who seemed only mildly interested in taking their order. As they waited, Cowart looked across at Shaeffer and realized that he knew almost nothing about her. He realized as well that it had been a long time since he'd sat across from a young woman. The detective was actually attractive behind the razor-blade personality she projected. He thought, If this were Hollywood, we would have found some intense common emotion in everything that had happened and fall into each other's arms. He wanted to smile. Instead, he thought, I'll be satisfied if she simply converses with me. He wasn't even sure she would do that.

'Not much like the Keys, huh?' he said.

'No.'

'Did you grow up down there?'

'Yes. More or less. Born in Chicago but went down there when I was young.'

'What made you become a police officer?'

'This an interview? You going to put this in a story?'

Cowart waved a hand at her dismissively but realized she was probably right. He probably would put every small detail he could into the story, when he got around to describing all that had happened.

'No. Just trying to be civil. You don't have to answer. We could sit here in silence and that would be fine with me.'

'My father was a policeman. A Chicago detective until he got shot. After his death we moved to the Keys. Like refugees, I guess. I thought I might like police work, so I signed up after college. In the blood, I suppose you might say. There you have it.'

'How long have you

'Two years in patrol cars. Six months working robbery-burglary. Three months in major crimes. There. That's the history.'

'Were the Tarpon Drive killings your first important case?'

She shook her head. 'No. And all homicides are important.'

She wasn't sure whether he'd absorbed this company lie or spotted it, for he dropped his head to his salad, a chunk of iceberg lettuce with a single quarter of tomato glued to the side with Thousand Island dressing. He speared the tomato with a fork and held it up. 'New Jersey Number Six,' he said.

'What?'

'Jersey tomatoes. Actually, it's probably too early for them, but this one feels like it could be a year old, at least. You know what they do? Harvest them green, long before they're ripe. That way they're real firm, hard as a damn rock. When you slice them, they stay together. No seeds and oozing tomato flesh falling out, which is how the restaurants want them. Of course, nobody'd eat a green tomato, so they inject them with a red dye to make them look like the real thing. Sell them by the billions to fast-food places.'

She stared across the table at him. He's babbling, she thought. Well, who could blame him? His life is in tatters. She looked at her hand. Maybe we have that in common.

They both sat silently for a few moments. The taciturn waitress brought their dinners and tossed the plates down in front of them. When she could stand it no longer, Andrea finally asked, 'Just tell me what the hell you think is about to happen.'

Her voice was low, almost conspiratorial, but filled with a rough-edged insistence. Cowart pushed slightly back from the table and stared at her for an instant before replying. I think we're going to find Robert Earl Ferguson at his grandmother's house.'

'And?'

'And I think Lieutenant Brown will arrest him for the murder of Joanie Shriver, again, even if it is useless. Or obstruction of justice. Or lying under oath. Or maybe as a material witness in Wilcox's disappearance. Something. And then you and he are going to take everything we know and everything we don't know and start to question him. And I'm going to write a story and then wait for the explosion.'

Cowart paused, looking at her. 'At least he will be in hand and not out there doing whatever it is he's doing. So he'll be stopped.'

'And it's going to be that easy, is it?'

Cowart shook his head. 'No,' he replied. 'Everything's dangerous. Everything's a risk.'

I know that,' she said calmly. 'I just wanted to be certain you knew it as well.'

Silence crept over them again, imposing itself on their thoughts for a few awkward moments before Cowart said, 'This has happened quickly, hasn't it?'

'What do you mean?'

'It seems like a long time since Blair Sullivan went to the chair. But it's only been days.'

'Would you rather it be longer?' she asked.

'No. I want it to end.'

Andrea Shaeffer started to say one thing, changed her mind, and asked another. 'And what happens when it ends?'

Cowart didn't hesitate. 'I get the chance to go back to doing what I was doing, before all this started. Just a chance.'

He did not say what he thought was a more accurate answer: I get the chance to be safe.

He laughed sarcastically. 'Of course, I'm probably going to get chewed up pretty bad in the process. So will Tanny Brown. Maybe you, too. But…' He shrugged, as if to say it no longer mattered, which was a lie, of course.

Shaeffer digested this. She thought people who wanted things to return to the way they were before were almost always hopelessly naive. And never happy with the results. Then she asked, 'Do you trust Lieutenant Brown?'

Cowart hesitated. I think he's dangerous, if that's what you mean. I think he's close to the edge. I also think he's going to do what he says.'

Cowart thought of adding to his statement, I think he's filled with unmitigated fury and a hatred of his own. But he didn't get to where he is now by breaking rules. He got there by playing the game. Toeing the line. Behaving precisely the way people expected him to behave. He violated that once, when he let Wilcox beat that confession out of Ferguson. He won't fall into that trap again.

Shaeffer agreed. 'I think he's close to the edge, too. But he seems steady.' She wasn't sure whether she believed this or not. She knew the same thing could be said of Cowart, and of herself as well.

'Makes no difference,' Cowart said abruptly.

'Why?'

'Because we're all going to see this through to the end.'

The waitress came and removed their plates, inquiring whether they cared for dessert. Both refused and refused coffee as well. The waitress, remaining sullen, seemed to have anticipated their responses; she had already totaled their check and dropped it unceremoniously on the table between them. Shaeffer insisted on paying her half. They walked to their rooms without further conversation. They did not say good night to each other.

Andrea Shaeffer closed the door behind her and went straight to the bureau dresser in the small motel room. Images from the past few days, snatches of conversations, raced through her head, ratcheting about in a confusing, unsettling manner. But she steeled herself and started to act slowly, steadily. She placed her pocketbook down deliberately on the top and removed her nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. She released the clip of bullets from the handle, checking to make certain that it was fully loaded. She pulled back the action on the pistol as well, sighting down the barrel, making sure that all the moving parts were in working order. She reloaded the weapon and placed it down in front of her. Then she rummaged through the pocket-book, searching for her backup clip of bullets. She found this, checked it, then put it next to the gun.

For a few moments she stared down at the weapon.

She thought of hours spent practicing with the nine-millimeter. The Monroe County Sheriff's Department had set up a combat practice range on a deserted spot just below Marathon. It was a simple procedure; while she walked through a series of deserted buildings, little more than the cinder-block shells of homes bleached white by the constancy of sun, a range control officer electronically operated a series of targets. She'd been good at the procedure, scoring consistently in the nineties. But what she'd enjoyed the most was the electricity of the practice sessions, the demand to see a target, recognize it as friend or foe, and fire or hold fire accordingly. There was a sense of being totally involved, unconcerned by anything save the sun, the weight of the handgun in her hand, and the targets that appeared. In a killing zone. Comfortable, alone with the single task of proceeding through the course.

She looked down at the weapon again.

I've never fired except at a target, she thought.

She remembered the mist and cold of the streets in Newark.

It wasn't like what she had expected. She had not even known that she was in combat in those moments. The people on the sidewalk, the threatening looks and motions, the hopeless pursuit through the streets. It was the first time it had been for real, for her. She gritted her teeth. She promised herself not to fail that test again.

She set the weapon down on the bed and reached for the telephone. She found Michael Weiss on her third try…'Andy, hey!' he said quickly. 'Jesus, am I glad to hear from you. What's been happening? What about your bad guy?'

This question almost made her laugh.

'I was right,' she said. 'This guy's real wrong. I have to help this Escambia cop with an arrest, then I'll be there.'

She could sense Weiss absorbing this cryptic statement. Before he could say anything, she added, 'I'm back in Florida. I can get to Starke tomorrow, okay? I'll fill you in then.'

'Okay,' he said slowly. 'But don't waste any more time. Guess what I came up with?'

'Murder weapon?'

'No such luck. But guess who made a dozen phone calls to his brother in the Keys in the month before the murder? And guess whose brand-new pickup truck got a speeding ticket on 1-95 right outside Miami twenty-four hours before Mister Reporter finds those bodies?'

'The good sergeant?'

'You got it. I'm going over to the truck dealer tomorrow. Gonna find out just exactly how he purchased that new four- by-four. Red. With fat tires and a light bar. A redneck Ferrari.' Weiss laughed. 'Come on, Andy, I've done all the legwork. Now I need your famous cold-hearted questioning technique to close the door on this guy. He's the one. I can feel it.'

'I'll get there,' she said. Tomorrow.'

She hung up the telephone. Her eyes landed on the pistol resting beside her. She cleared her mind and picked up her handgun, and, cradling it in her arms, lay back on the bed, kicking off her shoes but remaining fully clothed. She told herself to get some sleep and closed her eyes, still holding the gun tight, slightly irritated with Matthew Cowart for perceiving the truth: that she was in this to the end.

Cowart locked the door behind him and sat on the side of the bed. For a few seconds he looked down at the telephone, half as if he expected it to ring. Finally he reached down and seized the receiver. He pushed button number eight to receive a long-distance line, then started to punch in his ex-wife and daughter's number in Tampa. He touched nine of the eleven digits, then stopped.

He could think of nothing to say. He had nothing to add to what he'd told them in the early morning hours. He did not want to learn that they had not taken his advice and were still exposed and vulnerable, sitting in their fancy subdivision home. It was safer to imagine his daughter resting safely up in Michigan.

He disconnected the line, pushed number eight again, and dialed the number for the main switchboard at the Miami Journal. Talk to Will or Edna, he thought. The city editor or the managing editor or some copyboy. Just talk to someone at the paper.

'Miami Journal,' said a woman's voice.

He didn't reply.

'Miami Journal,' she said again, irritated. 'Hello?'

The operator hung up abruptly, leaving him holding a silent telephone in his hands.

He thought of Vernon Hawkins and wondered for a moment how to dial heaven. Or maybe hell, he thought, trying to make a joke with himself. What would Hawkins say? He'd tell me to make it right, and then get on with life. The old detective had no time for fools.

Cowart looked at the telephone again. Shaking his head, as if refusing some order that had not been given, he held it back to his ear and dialed the number for the motel's front desk.

'This is Mr. Cowart in room one-oh-one. I'd like to have a wake-up call at five A.M.'

'Yes, sir. Rising early?'

'That's right.'

'Room one-oh-one at five A.M. Yes, sir.'

He hung up the phone and sat back on the bed. He felt a sickening amusement at the thought that in the entire world, the only person he could think of to talk with was the night clerk at a sterile motel. He put his head down and waited for the appointed hour to arrive.

The night draped itself around him like an ill-fitting suit. A cashmere heat and humidity filled the black air. Occasional streaks of lightning burst through the distant sky, as a big thunderstorm worked out in the Gulf, miles away, beyond the Pensacola shoreline. Tanny Brown thought it seemed as if some distant battles were taking place. Pachoula, however, remained silent, as if unaware of the immense forces that warred so close by. He turned his attention back to the quiet street he was riding down. He could see the school on his right, low-slung and unprepossessing in the darkness, waiting for the infusion of children that would bring it to life. He listened to the crunching sound the car tires made as he drove slowly past, and paused for an instant beneath the willow tree, looking back over his shoulder toward the school.

This is where it all started. It was right here she got into the car. Why did she do that? Why couldn't she have seen the danger and run hard, back to safety? Or called out for help?

It was the age, he realized, the same for his own daughter. Old enough to be vulnerable to all the terrors of the world, but still young enough not to know about them. He thought of all the times he'd sat across from his daughter and Joanie Shriver and considered telling them the truth about what lurked out in the world, only to bite back the horrors that echoed in his head, preferring to give them another day, another hour, another minute or two of innocence and the freedom it brought.

You lose something when you know, he thought.

He remembered the first time someone had spat the word 'nigger' at him, and the lesson that had gone with it. He'd been five years old and he'd gone home in tears. He'd been comforted by his mother, who'd made him feel better, but she hadn't been able to tell him that it would never happen again. He had known something was lost for him, from that moment on. You learn about evil slowly but surely, he thought. Prejudice. Hatred. Compulsion. Murder. Each lesson tears away a bit of the hopefulness of youth.

He put the car in gear and drove the few blocks to the Shriver house. There were lights on in the kitchen and living room and for an instant, he considered walking up to the front door and going inside. He would be welcomed, he knew. They would offer him coffee, perhaps something to eat. Once we were friends, but no longer. Now I am nothing to them except a reminder of terrible things. They would show him to a seat in the living room, then they would politely wait for him to tell them why he had come by, and he would be forced to concoct something vaguely official-sounding. He would be unable to tell them anything real about what had taken place because he was unsure himself what the reality was.

And finally, he realized, they would get to talking about their daughter, and they would say that they missed seeing his own child come around, and this would be too hard to hear. It would all be too hard to hear.

But he waited outside, simply watching the house until the lights blinked off and whatever fitful sleep the Shrivers found late at night arrived.

He felt an odd invisibility, a liquid connectivity moving slowly through the black air. For a moment he considered the awful thought that Robert Earl Ferguson felt the same, moving through the darkness, letting it hide him from sight. Is that the way it is? he asked himself. He couldn't answer his own question. He drove down streets he'd known since his childhood, streets that whispered of age and continuity, before bumping into the newer, suburban subdivisions that shouted of change and the future. He felt the texture of the town, almost like a farmer rubbing soil between his fingers. He found himself on his own street; he spotted a marked police cruiser parked halfway down the block and crunched to a stop behind it.

The uniformed officer jumped instantly from behind the wheel, hand on his weapon, the other wielding a flashlight which he shone in Tanny's direction.

He got out of his car. 'It's me, Lieutenant Brown,' he said quietly.

The young officer approached him. 'Jesus, Lieutenant, you scared the hell out of me.'

'Sorry. Just checking.'

'You heading inside, sir? Want me to take off?'

'No. Stay. I have some other business to attend to.'

'No problem.'

'See anything unusual?'

'No, sir. Well, yes, sir, one thing, but probably nothing. Late-model dark Ford. Out-of-state plates. Rolled by twice about an hour ago. Slow-like, as if he was watching me. Shoulda got the plate numbers, but missed them. Thought I'd go after him, but he didn't come by again. That's all. No big deal.'

'You see the driver?'

'No, sir. First time, I didn't really notice. Just paid attention, like, the second time he rolled on by. That's what got my attention. Probably nothing to it. Somebody down visiting relatives got lost, more'n likely.'

Tanny Brown looked at the young policeman and nodded. He felt no fear, just a cold understanding that maybe death had slowly cruised past.

'Yes. More than likely. But you stay alert, all right?'

'Yes, sir. I'm gonna be relieved in a half hour or so. I'll make sure whoever shows gets the word about the Ford.'

Tanny Brown lifted his hand to his forehead, as if in salute, and returned to his own car. He looked once toward his house. The lights were off. School night, he thought. A wave of domestic responsibilities burst over him. He realized much of his life had been obscured by the pursuit of Robert Earl Ferguson. He did not feel guilty about this; it was in the nature of police work to reach an agreement with obsession, shutting off the normalcy of life. He felt a surge of comfort. Good for you, Dad. Make them get their homework done early, shut off the damn television before they can complain too hard, and get them into bed.

For an instant, he wanted to go inside and peer down at the sleeping faces of his daughters, perhaps look in on the old man, who was probably snoring in a lounge chair; a whiskey dream in his head. The old man often took a glass or two after the girls were asleep; it helped fog the pain of arthritis. On occasion, Tanny Brown joined his father in a glass; his own pains sometimes needing similar blocking. He found a smile on his own face, a satisfaction of domesticity. For an instant he imagined his dead wife beside him in the car, and he had half a mind to talk to her.

What would I say? he asked himself.

That I haven't done all that badly, he thought. But now I need to put things right. Put the broken things back together as best as I can.

Make it all safe again.

He nodded and steered the car away from the curb. He drove away, passing through familiar routes, past remembered places. He could sense Ferguson's presence like some bad smell lingering over the town. He felt better moving about, as if by staying alert, he served as some sort of shield. He did not even consider sleep; instead he traveled up and down through the roads of his memory, waiting for enough of the night to end so he would be able to see clearly enough to do whatever he had to do.

27. Two Empty Chambers

At first the dawn light seemed reluctant to force its way into the shadows. It gave doubt to shapes, turning the world into a quiet, suspect place. It had still been dark when Tanny Brown picked up Cowart and Shaeffer from the motel. They had driven through empty streets, past lamps and neon signs, weak illumination that only heightened the inevitable sense of loneliness that accompanies the early morning. They passed few other cars, only an occasional pickup truck. Cowart saw no one on the sidewalks. He spotted a few people sitting along a counter inside a doughnut shop; that was the only sign that they were not alone.

Brown drove swiftly, cruising through stop signs and two red lights, and within a few minutes they had passed through the town and were heading into the surrounding countryside. Pachoula seemed to stumble and fall behind them; the earth appeared to reach out and entangle them, dragging them inside the variegated maze of drooping willow trees, huge, twisted bramble bushes, and stands of pine. Light and dark, muted greens, browns and grays, all seemed to blend together fluidly, making it seem as if they were heading into a shifting sea of forest.

The police lieutenant turned off the main road, and the car shuddered and bumped as it hit the hard-packed dirt that cut beneath the canopy of trees toward Ferguson's grandmother's shack. Cowart felt a fearful surge of familiarity, as if there was something awful and yet reassuring in the idea that he'd been down the road before.

He tried to anticipate what would happen but found only an unsettling excitement. He had a quick memory of the letter he'd received so many months ago:… a crime that I DID NOT COMMIT. Gripping the armrest, he stared straight ahead.

From the back seat, Andrea Shaeffer's voice penetrated the thick air. I thought you said you'd arrange for backup. I don't see anybody. What's going on?'

Brown answered abruptly, with a clipped tone designed to preclude further questions, 'We can get help if we need it.'

'What about some uniforms? Don't we need some uniforms?'

'We'll be okay.'

'Where's the backup?'

He gritted his teeth and answered bitterly, 'It's waiting.'

'Where?'

'Close.'

'Can you show me?'

'Sure,' he replied coolly. He reached inside his jacket and removed his service revolver from his shoulder holster. 'There. Satisfied?'

This word crushed the conversation and filled Shaeffer with an empty fury. It did not surprise her that they were proceeding alone. In fact, she realized she preferred it. She allowed herself to envision Ferguson's face when she arrived at his grandmother's shack. He thought he'd scared me off. Thought he had me running, she told herself. Well, here I am. And I'm not some little twelve-year-old that can't fight back. She reached down and put her hand on her own pistol. She looked over at Cowart but saw the reporter's eyes staring ahead, oblivious to what had just been said.

In that moment, she thought that she would never, ever again get as close to the core of being a policeman as that moment and the next moments to come. The clarity of their pursuit seemed to have gone past such worldly considerations as rights and evidence, and entered into some completely different realm. She wondered if closeness to death always made people crazy, and then answered her own question: of course.

'Okay, she said after a moment's pause, adrenaline starting to pump and not completely trusting her own voice. 'What's the plan?'

The car lurched as it hit a bump.

'Jesus, she said, as she grabbed her seat. 'This guy really lives out in the sticks.'

'It's all swamp, right over there, Cowart answered. 'Poor farmland off the other direction.' He remembered that it had been Wilcox who'd pointed this out to him before. 'What is the plan?' he asked Tanny Brown.

The police lieutenant slowly steered the car to the side of the road and stopped. He rolled down his window and damp, humid air filled the interior. He gestured down, through the gray-black blend of light and dark. 'Ferguson's grandmother's shack is about a quarter mile that way, he said. 'We're going to walk the rest of the way. That way we won't wake anyone unnecessarily. Then it's simple. Detective Shaeffer, you go around the back. Keep your weapon ready. Watch the back door. Just make certain he doesn't hightail it out that way. If he does, just stop him. Got that? Stop him…'

'Are you saying…'

'I'm saying stop him. I'm damn certain the procedures are the same in Monroe County as they are up here in Escambia. The bastard's a suspect in a homicide. Several homicides, including the disappearance of a police officer. That's all the probable cause we'll need. He's also a convicted felon. At least he was once…' Brown glanced over at Cowart, who said nothing. 'So, you know what the guidelines are on use of deadly force. You figure out what to do.'

Shaeffer paled slightly, her skin turning wan like the air around them. But she nodded. 'Got it,' she replied, imposing a rigid firmness on her voice. 'You think he's armed? And maybe waiting for us?'

Brown shrugged. 'I think he's probably armed. But I don't think he'll necessarily be alert and waiting. We moved fast to get here, probably just as damn fast as he did. I don't think he'll be quite ready. Not yet. But remember one thing: this is his ground.'

She grunted in assent.

Tanny Brown took a deep breath. At first his voice had been cold, even. But he then dropped the menacing tones, substituting a weariness that seemed to indicate he thought things were heading to an end.

'You understand?' he asked. 'I just don't want him running out the back door and heading into that swamp. He gets in there, I don't know how the hell we'll find him. He grew up in there, and…'

'I'll stop him,' she said. She did not add the words this time, though they were in each of the three's heads.

'Good,' Brown continued. 'Cowart and I will go to the front. I don't have a warrant, so I'm kinda making things up as I go along. What I figure is, I'm going to knock, announce, and then I'm going to go in. Can't think of any other way to do it. The hell with some procedures.'

'What about me?' Cowart asked.

'You're not a police officer. So I have no control over what you do! You want to tag along? Ask your questions? Do whatever you want, that's fine. I just don't want some lawyer coming in later and saying I violated Ferguson's rights – again – because 7 took you with me. So you're on your own. Stand back. Come in. Do whatever. Got it?'

'Got it.'

'That fair? You understand?'

'It's fine.' Cowart nodded his head. Separate but the same. One man knocks on the door with a gun, the other with a question. Both seeking the same answers.

'Are you going to arrest him?' Shaeffer asked. 'On what charge?'

'Well, first I'm going to suggest he come in for questioning. See if he'll come along voluntarily. But he's coming in. If I have to, I'll re-arrest him for Joanie Shriver's death. What'd I say yesterday? Obstruction of justice and lying under oath. But he's coming with us, one way or the other. Once he's in custody, then we're going to sort out what's happened.'

'You're going to ask him…?'

'I'm going to be polite,' Brown said. A small, sad smile worked the corners of his mouth for a moment. 'With my gun drawn, cocked, finger on the trigger, and pointed right at the bastard's head.'

She nodded.

'He doesn't walk away,' Brown said quietly. 'He killed Bruce. He killed Joanie. I don't know how many others. But there are others. It stops here.'

The statement filled the air with quiet.

Cowart looked away from the two detectives. He thought, There comes a point where the proofs required in a court of law don't seem to make much difference. A few strands of light had surreptitiously passed through the branches of the trees, just enough to give shape to the road before them.

'What about you?' the police lieutenant asked Cowart suddenly. His voice cracked the silence. 'Have you got all this straight?'

'Straight enough.'

Brown put his hand on the door handle, jerked it hard, and thrust the car door open. 'Sure,' he said, unable to keep a small mockery from his voice. 'Then let's go.'

And he was out of the car, striding up the narrow black dirt roadway, his broad back hunched forward slightly, as if he was heading into the strong winds of a storm. For an instant, Cowart watched the policeman's sturdy progress, and he thought to himself, How could I have ever presumed to understand what is truly inside him?

Or Robert Earl Ferguson? In that moment, both men seemed equally mysterious. Then he shed the thought as rapidly as possible and quickly fell in pace with him. Shaeffer took up position on the other side, so the three marched in unison, their footsteps muffled by the morning fog that coiled like gray smoke snakes around their feet.

Cowart spotted the shack first, wedged back in a clearing where the road ended. The damp swamp mists had gathered around the front, giving it a spectral, eerie appearance. There was no light inside; his first glance saw no movement at all, though he expected they had arrived just on the near side of waking. The old woman probably rises to beat the cock's crow, he thought, and then complains to the old bird that it's not doing its job. Cowart slowed his pace along with the others, lurking on the edge of the shadows, inspecting the house.

'He's here,' Brown said quietly.

Cowart turned to him. 'How can you tell?'

The police lieutenant pointed toward the far side of the shack. Cowart followed the trail with his eyes and saw the rear end of the car protruding past the edge of the porch. He looked carefully and could just make out the dirty blue-and-yellow colors of the license plate: New Jersey.

'That's his kinda car, too,' Brown said softly, gesturing. 'A couple of years old. American make. I'll bet it doesn't have anything special to it at all. Nondescript. A blend-right-in kinda car. Just like he used to have.'

He turned toward Shaeffer. He put his hand on her shoulder, gripping it firmly. Cowart thought it was the first familiar gesture he'd seen the big detective make toward the young woman.

'There's only the two doors,' he said, continuing to keep his voice low, almost inaudible, but not the same way that a whisper disappears, hissing. His voice had a firmness to it. 'One in front, that's where I'll be. And the one in back, where you're going to be. Now, best as I can recollect, there's windows on the left side, there…' He pointed, sweeping his hand in the direction of the side of the house that butted up close to the surrounding woods. 'That's where the bedrooms are. Any windows on the right I'll be able to cover, either from inside, in the front living room, or the porch. So watch that back door, but keep in mind he might try to go out the window. Just be ready. Stay on your toes. Okay?'

'Okay,' she replied. She thought the word wavered coming out of her mouth.

'I want you to stay there, in position, until I call you. Okay? Call you by name. Keep quiet. Keep down. You're the safety valve.'

'Okay,' she said again.

'Ever done anything like this before?' Tanny Brown asked abruptly. Then he smiled. I suppose I should have asked that question some time earlier…'

She shook her head. 'Lots of arrests. Drunk drivers and two-bit burglars. And a rapist or two. Nobody like Ferguson.'

'There aren't many like Ferguson to practice on,' Cowart said under his breath.

'Don't worry,' Brown said, continuing to smile. 'He's a coward. Plenty brave with little girls and scared teenagers, but he ain't got it in him to handle folks like you and me…' Brown spoke this softly, reassuringly. Cowart wanted to blurt out Bruce Wilcox's name, but stopped himself. '… Keep that in mind. There ain't gonna be anything to this…'

He let his voice roll with its Southern inflection, giving a contradictory ease to what he was saying. '… Now, let's move before it gets lighter out and folks start waking up.'

Shaeffer nodded, took a step forward, and stopped. 'Dog?' she whispered hurriedly, nervously.

'None.' Brown paused. 'As soon as you get to the corner, there, then I'm heading toward the front. You keep working your way around the back. You'll know when I get to the door, 'cause I ain't gonna be quiet when I get there.'

Shaeffer closed her eyes for one second, took a deep breath, and forced bravado into her heart. She told herself, No mistakes this time. She looked at the small house and thought it a small place, with no room for errors. 'Let's do it,' she said. She stepped across the open space quickly, slightly crouched over, a half-jog that cut through the mist and wet air.

Cowart saw that she had her pistol in her hands and was holding it down but ready, as she maneuvered toward the corner of the house.

'You paying attention, Cowart?' Brown asked. His voice seemed to fill some hollow spot within the reporter. 'You getting all this?'

'I'm getting it,' he replied, clenching his teeth.

'Where's your notebook?'

Cowart held up his hand. He clutched a thin reporter's notebook and waved it about. Brown grinned. 'Glad to see you're armed and dangerous,' he said.

Cowart stared at him.

'It's a joke, Cowart. Relax.'

Cowart nodded. He watched the policeman as his eyes fixed on Shaeffer, who'd paused at the corner of the shack. Brown was smiling, but only barely. He straightened up and shook his shoulders once, like some large animal shaking sleep from its body. Cowart realized then that Brown was like some sort of warrior whose fears and apprehensions about the upcoming battle dropped away when the enemy hove into view. The policeman was not precisely happy, but he was at ease with whatever danger or uncertainty rested inside the shack, beyond the fragile morning light and curling gray mists. The reporter looked down at his own hands, as if they were a window to his own feelings. They looked pale but steady-He thought, Made it this far. See it through. 'Actually, he replied, 'that's not a bad joke at all. Given the circumstances.'

Both men smiled, but not at any real humor.

'All right,' said Tanny Brown. 'Wake-up call.'

He turned toward the shack and remembered the first time he'd driven up to the house searching for Ferguson. He hadn't understood the storm of prejudice and hatred he was unleashing with his arrival. All the feelings that Pachoula wanted to forget had come out when Robert Earl Ferguson had been taken downtown for questioning in the murder of little Joanie Shriver. He was determined not to live through that again.

Brown set off swiftly, pacing directly across the hard-packed dirt of the shack's front yard, not looking back once to see if Cowart was following him. The reporter took a single deep breath, wondered for a moment why the air seemed suddenly dry to his taste, realized it wasn't the air that was dry at all, and moved quickly to keep stride with the police lieutenant.

Brown paused at the foot of the steps to the front door. He turned to Cowart and hissed, 'If things go to hell fast, make sure you stay out of my line of fire.'

Cowart nodded quickly. He could feel excitement surging through his body, chasing the fears that reverberated within him.

'Here we go,' said the policeman.

He took the stairs two at a time, in a pair of great leaps. Cowart scrambled behind him. Their feet made a clattering noise against the whitewashed old wooden boards, which added creaks and complaints to the sudden sounds that pierced the morning silence. Brown gathered himself to the side of the door, just off-angle, motioning Cowart to the other side. He swung open a screen door and grasped the doorknob. He twisted it carefully, but it refused to move.

'Locked?' whispered Cowart.

'No. Just jammed, I think,' Brown replied.

He twisted the knob again. He shook his head at Cowart. Then he took his empty hand, balled it into a fist and slammed it three times hard against the blistered wooden frame, shaking the entire house with urgency.

'Ferguson! Police! Open up!'

Before the echoes of his booming voice died away, he'd grabbed the screen door frame and wrenched it aside. Then he stepped back and raised his foot, kicking savagely at the door. The frame cracked with a sound like a shot, and Cowart jumped involuntarily. Brown gathered himself a second time, aiming carefully, and kicked again.

The door buckled and opened partway.

'Police!' he cried again.

Then the huge detective threw his entire bulk, shoulder first, against the door like some crazed fullback smashing toward the goal with the game on the line.

The door gave way with a torn, splintering sound.

Tanny Brown pushed it viciously away and jumped into the front parlor, half-crouched, weapon raised and swinging from side to side. He yelled again, 'Police! Ferguson, come out!'

Cowart hesitated for a moment, then, swallowing hard, stepped in behind him, his thoughts jumbled, the noise from the assault on the door ringing in his ears. It was like stepping off a cliff's edge, he thought. It seemed as if wind was rushing by his ears, screaming velocity.

'Dammit!' Brown called out, as if starting another command, then he stopped short, his words sliced, as if by a razor.

Robert Earl Ferguson stepped out of a side room.

For an instant, his dark skin seemed to blend with the gray morning shadows that crept about the interior of the shack. Then he moved slowly forward, toward the hunched-over police lieutenant. The killer wore a loose-fitting navy I-shirt and faded jeans, hastily tugged on. His feet were bare and made small slapping sounds against the polished hardwood floor. His arms were raised languidly, almost insouciantly, as if in a surrender of irony. He stepped forward into the living room and faced Tanny Brown, who straightened slowly, cautiously, keeping a static distance between himself and the killer. A false grin worked the sides of Ferguson's face, and his eyes swept around quickly. He fixed for a moment on the burst door, then on Matthew Cowart. Then he stared directly at Brown.

'You gonna pay for that door?' he asked. 'It wasn't locked. Just a bit stiff. No need to break it down. Country folk don't need to lock their doors. You know that. Now, what you want with me, Detective?'

There was no urgency or panic in the killer's voice. Simply an infuriating calm, as if he'd been waiting for their arrival.

'You know what I want with you,' Brown said. His teeth remained clenched tightly, and he trained his weapon on Ferguson's chest.

But the two men kept distant, looking across the small room toward each other, warily.

'I know what you want. You want someone to blame. Always the same thing,' Ferguson said coldly.

He eyed the pistol pointing at him carefully. Then he looked directly at the policeman, narrowing his gaze so that it seemed as harsh as his voice.

I ain't armed,' he said. He held both hands out, palms forward. 'And I ain't done nothing. You don't need that gun.' When Tanny Brown didn't move the pistol barrel, Cowart saw a single moment of nervousness and doubt flit through Ferguson's eyes. But it disappeared as rapidly as it arrived. Ferguson sounded like a man standing just beyond range. Cowart glanced over at Brown and realized, He can't touch him.

The killer turned toward Cowart, ignoring the policeman. He turned the corners of his mouth up into a smile that sent a chill right through the reporter.

'That what you're here for, too, Mr. Cowart? I been expecting the detective to show, but I figured you'd come to your senses. Or you got some other reason?'

'No. Just still looking for answers,' Cowart replied hoarsely.

'I thought our little talk the other day filled you up with answers. I can't hardly imagine you got any questions left, Mr. Cowart. I thought things were pretty clear.'

These last words were spoken in a soft, slow, harsh voice.

'Nothing is ever clear,' Cowart replied.

'Well,' Ferguson said carefully, gesturing at Brown, 'there's one answer you got already. You see what this man does. Kicks in a door. Threatens folks with a gun. Probably getting ready to beat my ass again.'

Ferguson spun toward Brown. 'What you want to kick out of me this time?'

Tanny Brown didn't reply.

Cowart shook his head. 'Not this time,' he said.

Ferguson scowled angrily. The muscles on his arms tightened into knots and the veins in his neck stood out.

'I can't tell you nothing' Ferguson replied, anger soaring through his words. He took a single step toward the reporter, but then stopped himself. Cowart saw him fight for some internal control, win, and relax. He leaned up against a sidewall. 'I don't know nothing. And say, where's your partner, Lieutenant? You gonna beat me again? I miss Detective Wilcox. You gonna need his help, huh?'

'You tell me where he is… ' Tanny Brown said. His voice was steel-edged, words like swords cut the space between the two men. 'You were the last person to see him.'

'Now really?' Ferguson seemed like a man who'd lain awake preparing his replies, as if he'd known what was going to happen that morning. His voice picked up pace. 'Might I lower my hands here, before we talk?'

'No. What happened to Wilcox?'

Ferguson smiled again. He lowered his hands anyway. 'Shit if I know. He gone someplace? I hope he's gone to hell.' The smile widened into a mocking grin.

'Newark, said Tanny Brown.

'Same thing as hell,' Ferguson replied.

Brown's eyes narrowed slightly. After a moment's pause, Ferguson started speaking. 'I never saw him there. Damn, just got back to Pachoula last night, myself. It's a long drive from there down here. You say Wilcox was in Newark?'

'He saw you. He chased you.'

'Well, don't know nothing about that. There was one crazy white man chased me the other night, but I didn't see who it was. He never got that close. Anyway, I lost him on some back street. It was raining hard. Don't know what happened to him. You know, the part of that city where I live, lots of folks get chased all the time. It ain't that unusual to have to put your feet down fast. And I sure wouldn't want to be some white guy walking alone down there after dark, if you catch my drift. Unhealthy place. People there'd cut your heart out if they thought they could sell it for another hit of crack cocaine.'

He looked over at Cowart. 'Isn't that right, Mr. Cowart? Cut your heart right out.'

Matthew Cowart felt a dizzying burst of anger sweep through his head. He stared across at the killer and felt things slipping within him. Rage and frustration overpowered reason, and he stepped forward, past Tanny Brown, punching a pencil at Ferguson. 'You lied. You lied to me before and you're lying now. You killed him, didn't you? And you killed Joanie. You killed them all. How many? How many, goddammit?'

Ferguson straightened. 'You're talking crazy, Mr. Cowart,' he replied, coldly calm. 'This man…' He gestured toward Tanny Brown,'… has filled you with some sort of crazy. I ain't killed nobody. I told you that the other day. I'm telling you that now.'

He looked over to the policeman. 'Got nothing to threaten me on, Tanny Brown. Got nothing that's gonna last a minute in court, that some lawyer won't just rip and shred. Got nothing.'

'No,' Cowart said. 'I've got it all.'

Ferguson's eyes sent a surge of anger toward Cowart. The reporter could feel a sudden heat on his face.

'You think you got some special line on the truth, Mr. Cowart? You don't.'

Ferguson's hands balled tightly into fists.

Brown stepped forward, shouldering Cowart aside.

'Screw this. Screw you, Bobby Earl. I want you to come downtown with me. Let's go…'

'You arresting me?'

'Yeah. For the murder of Joanie Shriver. Again. For obstruction of justice for hiding those clothes in the outhouse. For lying under oath at your trial. And as a material witness in Bruce Wilcox's disappearance. That'll give us plenty to sort through.'

Tanny Brown's face seemed set in iron. His free hand went into a jacket pocket and emerged with handcuffs. He held his weapon toward Ferguson's face. 'You know the drill. Face the wall and spread.'

'You arresting me?' the killer said, taking a step back, his voice rising a pitch, moving closer to anger again. 'I already walked on that crime. The rest is bullshit. You can't do that!'

Tanny Brown raised the service revolver. 'Watch me,' he said slowly. His eyes burned toward Ferguson. 'You should never have let me find you, Bobby Earl, because it's all over for you. Right now. It's all ended.'

'You haven't got nothing on me.' Ferguson laughed coldly in response. 'If you had, you'd be here with some fucking army. Not just one damn reporter with a bunch of damn fool questions that don't amount to nothing.'

He spat the words out like obscenities.

'I'm going to walk free, Tanny Brown, and you know it.' He laughed. 'Walk free.'

But Ferguson's words contradicted a nervous shift in his body. His shoulders hunched forward, his feet moved wide, as if poised to receive a blow in a prize fight.

Tanny Brown saw the movement. 'Just give me the chance,' he said. 'You know I'd love it.'

'I'm not going with you,' Ferguson said. 'You got a warrant?'

'You're coming with me,' Brown insisted. His voice was even, furious. 'I'm going to see you back on Death Row. Hear? Where you belong. It's all over.'

'It's never over,' the killer responded, stepping back.

'Ain't nobody going nowhere,' cracked a brisk voice.

All three men pivoted toward the sound.

Cowart saw the twin barrels of the shotgun before the small, wiry body of Ferguson's grandmother came into view. The gun was leveled at Tanny Brown.

'Nobody going nowhere,' the old woman repeated. 'Least of all Death Row.'

Brown instantly moved his pistol, bringing it to bear on the woman's chest, crouching as he did so. She was wearing a ghostly white nightgown that fluttered around her figure when she moved. Her hair was pinned up, her feet bare. It was as if she'd stepped from the comfort of her bed into a nightmare. She cradled the shotgun under her arm, pointing it at the policeman, just as she had when she'd fired at Cowart.

'Miz Ferguson,' Tanny Brown said quietly, while holding himself in firing position. 'You got to put that weapon down.'

'You ain't taking this boy,' she said fiercely.

'Miz Ferguson, you got to show some sense…'

'I don't know nothing about showing sense. I know you ain't taking my boy.'

'Miz Ferguson, don't make things harder than they are.'

'Hard makes no difference to me. Life's been hard. Maybe dying's gone be easy.'

'Miz Ferguson, don't talk that way. Let me do my job.

It will all come right, you'll see.'

'Don't you sweet-talk me, Tanny Brown. You ain't brought nothing but trouble into this home.'

'No,' Brown said softly, 'it hasn't been me that brung the trouble. It's been your boy here.' He had slid immediately into rhythmic southernisms, as if trying to speak the same language to a confused foreigner.

'You and that damn reporter. I shoulda killed you before.' She turned toward Cowart and spat her words. 'You ain't brought nothing but hate and death with you.'

Cowart didn't reply. He thought there was some truth in what she said.

'No ma'am,' Brown continued, soothing. 'It ain't been me. And it ain't been him. You know who it's been that brought the trouble.'

Ferguson stepped to the side, as if measuring the shotgun blast's spread. His voice had a cruel, clear edge to it. 'Go ahead, Granmaw. Kill him. Kill 'em both.'

The old woman's face filled with a sudden surprise.

'Kill 'em. Go ahead. Do it now,' Ferguson continued, moving back toward the old woman.

Tanny Brown took a step forward, still ready to fire.

'Miz Ferguson, he said, I've known you a long time. You knew my folks and cousins and we went to church together once. Don't make me…'

She interrupted angrily. 'Y'all left me behind some years ago, Tanny Brown!'

'Kill 'em,' whispered the grandson, stepping next to her.

Brown's eyes switched toward Ferguson. 'You freeze! You son of a bitch! And shut up.'

'Kill them,' Ferguson said again.

'It's not loaded,' Cowart said abruptly.

He remained rooted in his spot, wanting desperately to dive for cover but incapable of ordering his body to respond to his fear. He thought: It's a guess. Try it.

'She used up her last shot on me the other day. It's not loaded,' he said.

The old woman turned toward him. 'You're a fool if'n you think that.' She stared coldly at the reporter. 'You gone bet your life I didn't have no fresh shells?'

Tanny Brown kept his pistol aimed at the woman. 'I don't want to shoot, he said.

'Maybe I do,' she replied. 'One thing's I know. You ain't taking my grandson again. Gone have to kill me first.'

'Miz Ferguson, you know what he's done…'

'I don't care what he's done. He's all I got left and I ain't gone let you take him away again.'

'Did you ever see what he did to that little girl?' Cowart asked suddenly.

'I don't care, she replied. 'No business of mine.'

'That wasn't the only one, Cowart said slowly. 'There have been others. In Perrine and Eatonville. Little black children, Miz Ferguson. He's killed them, too.'

'Don't know nothin' about no children, she answered, her voice quavering slightly.

'He killed my partner, too,' Tanny Brown said quietly, as if speaking the words loudly would cause whatever restraint he still had to shatter and break.

'I don't care. I don't care about none of that.'

Ferguson stepped behind his grandmother. 'Hold them there, Grandmaw,' he said. He-ducked away, down the house's central corridor.

'I'm not going to let him get away, Brown said.

'Then either I'm gonna shoot you, or you're gonna shoot me,' the old woman replied.

Cowart could see Brown's finger tighten on the trigger. He could also see the gunpoint waver slightly.

Silence like weak morning light filled the room. Neither the old woman nor Tanny Brown moved.

He won't do it, Cowart thought. If he was going to shoot her, he already would have. In the first moment, when he first saw the shotgun. He won't do it now.

Cowart looked over at the policeman and saw tidal surges pulling at the man's emotions.

Tanny Brown felt his insides squeeze together. Acid ill taste ruined his tongue. He stared across at the old woman and saw her wispy aged fragility and steel will simultaneously.

Kill her! he told himself.

Then: how can you?

It was all in balance in his head, weights furiously sliding back and forth.

Robert Earl Ferguson stepped back into the room. He was dressed now, a gray sweatshirt thrown over his head, hightop sneakers on his feet. He carried a small duffel bag in his hand.

He tried one last time. 'Kill 'em, Granmaw,' he said. But his voice lacked the conviction that he thought she might do what he demanded.

'You go,' she said icily. 'You go and don't ever come back.'

'Granmaw, he said. He spoke her name not with affection or sadness but a frustrated inconvenience.

'Not to Pachoula. Not to my house. Never again. Y'all too filled with some evil I can't understand. You go do it someplace different. I tried,' she said bitterly. 'I may not have been much good, but I tried my best. It'd been better if you'd a died young, not to bring all this wrong down here. So you take it and never bring it back. That's all I can give you now. You go now. Whatever happens now, after you leave my door, that's your business, no more mine. Understand?'

'Granmaw…'

'Ain't no more blood, no more, after this,' she said with finality.

Ferguson laughed. He dropped all inflection from his voice and replied, 'Okay. That's the way you want it, it's fine with me.'

The killer turned toward Cowart and Brown. He smiled and said, 'I thought we'd get this finished today. Guess not. Some other time, I suppose.'

'He's not going,' Brown said.

'Yes, he is, said the old woman. 'You want him, then you gone have to find him someplace other than this my home. My home, Tanny Brown. It ain't much, but it's mine. And you gone have to take all this evil business someplace else, same as I told him. Same goes for you. I won't have no more of it here. This is a house where Jesus dwells, and I want it to stay that way.'

And Tanny Brown nodded. He straightened up, a movement that spoke of acquiescence. He did not drop the pistol but kept it trained on the grandmother, while the killer slid past him, a few feet apart, moving steadily but warily toward the front door. Brown's eyes followed him, the barrel of his pistol wavering slightly as if trying to follow the killer's path.

'Just go,' said the old woman. Some deep sadness creased her voice and her old eyes seemed rimmed with red grief tears. Cowart thought suddenly, He's killed her, too.

Ferguson stepped into the doorway, moving gingerly around the splintered door. He looked back once.

Brown, furious defeat riding his words, said, 'It makes no difference. I'll find you again.'

And Ferguson replied, 'And if you do, it still won't mean a damn thing, because I'll walk away clean again. I always will, Tanny Brown. Always.'

Whether or not this was a false boast was irrelevant. The word's possibility reverberated in the space between the two men.

Cowart thought the world had been turned upside down. The killer was walking free, the policeman rooted in spot. He told himself, Do something! but was unable to move. All he could see was a constancy of fear and threat like some awful nightmare vision before him. It's up to me, he thought. He started to blurt this out, stopped, and then saw the killer's face widen abruptly with surprise. Then he heard the shout.

'Everyone freeze!'

High-pitched and nerve-edged, the words shattered the glassine air.

Andrea Shaeffer, crouched over into a shooter's stance, arms extended, nine-millimeter pistol cocked and ready, was ten feet behind Ferguson's grandmother, down the hallway leading toward the rear kitchen door, which she'd slipped past without being seen or heard.

'Drop that shotgun!' she yelled, trying to cover anxiety with noise.

But the old woman did not. Instead, turning as if in some sepia-toned, herky-jerky antique film, she spun toward the sound of the detective's voice, swinging the shotgun barrel in front of her as if readying to fire.

'Stop!' screamed Shaeffer. She could see the twin barrels like predator's eyes pointing directly at her chest. She knew only that death often walked with hesitation and this time she could not let it slip through her grasp.

Cowart's mouth opened in a single, incomprehensible shout. Brown called, 'No!' but the word was swallowed by the deep burst of the detective's pistol as Shaeffer fired.

The huge handgun bucked violently in her hands and she fought to control it, suddenly alive with evil intent. Three shots burst through the morning still, exploding in the small, dark house, deafening, echoing through the rooms.

The first shot picked up the elderly woman and threw her back as if she weighed no more than a breath of wind. The second shot crashed into the wall, sending wood and plaster fragments into the air. The third bullet shattered a window and disappeared into the morning. Ferguson's grandmother's arms flung out, and the shotgun clattered from her grasp. She tumbled backward, smashing into the wall, and then slumping down, arms outstretched, as if in supplication.

'Jesus, no!' Tanny Brown cried again.

The policeman stepped toward the woman, then hesitated.

He tore his eyes away from the fast-growing splotch of crimson blood that stained Ferguson's grandmother's nightgown. He fixed first on Cowart, who was standing, frozen, in spot, mouth slightly agape. The reporter blinked, as if awakening from a bad dream, said, 'Jesus Christ,' himself, then suddenly turned toward the front door.

Ferguson had disappeared.

Cowart pointed and shouted, not words but simply surprise and anger. Tanny Brown jumped toward the empty space.

Andrea Shaeffer entered the room, her hands shaking, her eyes locked onto the dying woman.

Brown tore through the front door, out onto the porch. Sudden quiet shocked him; the world seemed a wavy, infirm sight of mists and shafts of dawn light. There was no sound. No sign of life. His eyes swept the yard, then he turned toward the side, instantly seeing Ferguson moving rapidly for the car parked by the side of the shack.

'Stop!' he shouted.

Ferguson paused, but not in response to the command. Instead he squared himself to the policeman and raised his right hand. There was a short-barreled revolver in it. He fired twice, wildly, the shots slashing the air around the detective. Brown was pierced with a sudden familiar memory: The deep booming sounds were like those of his partner's gun. Fury, like a storm, burst within him. He shouted out 'Stop!' again, and ran insanely forward on the porch, rapidly returning fire.

His shots missed the killer but struck the car. A window exploded glass. The demon sound of metal scoring metal and ricocheting off into the morning filled the air.

Ferguson fired again, then turned away from the car and ran toward the line of trees on the far side of the clearing. Tanny Brown anchored himself on the edge of the porch and screamed to himself to take careful aim. He took a deep breath, his eyesight glowing red with fury and anger and saw the killer's back dancing onto the small pistol sight. He thought, Now!

And pulled the trigger.

The gun jumped in his hand and he saw his shot fly astray, splintering into the trunk of a tree.

Ferguson spun once, facing Tanny Brown, fired another wild shot and disappeared into the darkness of the forest, running hard.

As Brown went through the front door, Shaeffer walked quickly over to Ferguson's grandmother. She knelt down, her pistol still in her hand, reached out with her free hand and gently touched the woman's chest, like a child touching something to see if it is real. She drew back fingertips smeared with blood. The old woman tried to breathe in one final time; it made a sucking, rattling sound. Then she wheezed out in death. Shaeffer stared at the figure in front of her and then turned toward Cowart.

'I didn't have a choice…' she said.

The words seemed to force action back into the reporter's limbs. He stepped across the room and seized the shotgun from the floor. He swiftly cracked it open and stared at the two empty chambers, one for each barrel.

'Empty,' he said.

'No,' Shaeffer replied.

He held the weapon up to her.

'No, she said again, quietly. 'Damn.'

She looked toward the reporter, as if seeking reassurance. She seemed suddenly terribly young.

'I didn't have a choice,' she repeated.

From outside, they heard the crash of shots.

Matthew Cowart ducked involuntarily. It seemed to him that the silence between the gun reports was somehow deeper, thicker, and he felt like a swimmer treading water in the ocean. He took a shallow breath and jumped toward the front door. Andrea Shaeffer moved in swiftly behind him.

He saw Tanny Brown's back at the edge of the porch and realized the policeman was feverishly emptying spent casings from his revolver. The shells clattered against the wooden boards at his feet, and he started to jam fresh bullets into the gun's cylinders.

'Where is he?' Cowart asked.

Brown spun toward him. 'The old woman?'

'She's dead,' Shaeffer replied. 'I didn't know…'

He interrupted, 'You couldn't help it.'

'The shotgun was empty,' Cowart said.

Tanny Brown stared at him but had no response, save a single, sad shrug of his shoulders. Then, in the same instant, he straightened up and pointed toward the forest.

'I'm going after him.'

Shaeffer nodded, feeling that she was being tugged along by some current she could not see, only feel. Matthew Cowart nodded as well.

Tanny Brown pushed past the two of them, leaped off the porch, and moved rapidly across the clearing toward the edge of shadows some thirty yards distant. He picked up his pace as he crossed the open space so that by the time he reached the small cut in the darkness that had swallowed up Ferguson, he was loping in an easy run, not pushed into a sprint, but making up for each moment that the killer had stolen.

He was aware of the harsh breathing of the two others a few feet behind him, but he paid them no mind. Instead, he leaned forward into the cool green half-light of the forest, eyes dead ahead on a small trail, searching for Robert Earl Ferguson, knowing that it would not be long before the chased creature turned in ambush to fight. He told himself, This is my country, too. I grew up here, too. It's as familiar to me as it is to him.

He reassured himself with lies and pushed on.

Heat fractured the morning, rising about them with sticky insistence, sucking at their strength as they penetrated the tangled branches and vines in pursuit.

They clung to the small path, Shaeffer and Cowart following the swath cut by Tanny Brown's single-minded search. He forced himself ahead steadily, trying to anticipate what Ferguson would do.

There were occasional signs that Ferguson, too, was following the path. Tanny Brown spotted a footprint in the wet earth. Cowart noticed a small swatch of gray material stuck on the end of a thorn, pulled from the killer's sweatshirt.

Sweat and fear clogged their eyes.

Brown remembered the war, thought, I've been here before, felt a joint apprehension and excitement within him and continued. Shaeffer plodded on, seeing only the old woman's body tossed by death into a corner of the shack. The vision blended with a distant memory of the sight of Bruce Wilcox disappearing into the gloom of the inner-city night. She thought death seemed to be mocking her; whenever she tried to do what was right it tripped her, sent her sprawling into wrong. She had so much to correct and had no idea how to do it.

Cowart thought each step was pushing him further into a nightmare. He'd lost his notebook and pen. A ridge of brambles had stolen them from his hand and sliced open a line of blood that pulsated and stung infuriatingly. For an instant he wondered what he was doing there. Then he told himself, Writing the last paragraph.

He jogged to keep up.

The ground beneath their feet began to ooze and grasp at their shoes. A thick, damp heat surrounded them. The forest seemed to grow more snarled and knotted together as it gave way to swamp, almost as if the two elements of nature were struggling over possession of the earth beneath their feet. They were streaked with grime and dirt, their clothes ripped. Cowart thought that somewhere there was morning, with clarity and warmth, but not there, not beneath the mat of overhanging tree branches that shut out the sky. He was no longer aware how long they had been pursuing Ferguson. Five minutes. An hour. It seemed to him that they'd all been pursuing Ferguson all their lives.

Tanny Brown stopped abruptly, kneeling down and signaling the two others to crouch. They huddled up close to him and followed his gaze.

'Do you know where we are?' whispered Shaeffer.

The police lieutenant nodded. 'He knows,' Brown replied softly, gesturing toward Cowart.

The reporter breathed in hard. 'Not far from where the little girl's body was found,' he said.

Brown nodded.

'Can you see anything?' Shaeffer asked.

'Not yet.'

They stopped and listened. Cowart heard a bird rise through the branches of a nearby bush. There was a small noise from adjacent underbrush. A snake, he thought, taking cover. He shivered despite the warmth. A breeze moved across the treetops, seeming very distant.

'He's out there,' Brown said.

He gestured toward a break in the thick mire of swamp and forest. Shafts of sunlight measured a small open space in the path before them. The clearing couldn't have been more than ten yards across, surrounded by the maze of greenery. They could see where the path they were following sidled between two trees on the far side, like a slice of darkness.

'We have to cross that open space,' he said quietly. 'Then it's not too far down to the water. The water runs back, miles. Goes all the way to the next county. He's got a couple of options: keep going, but that's tough country to cross, and when he gets out on the other side, assuming he can without getting lost or bit by a snake or chewed on by an alligator or whatever, he'll be cold and wet and knows maybe I'll be waiting. What he'll really want to do is double back, get past us and back out the easy way. Get back to the car, get over the Alabama border and start to make things happen for himself that way.'

'How's he going to do that?' Cowart asked.

'Lead us on. String us out. Then make a move.' Brown paused before adding, 'Precisely what he has been doing.'

'And the clearing?' Cowart asked. His voice was slow with fatigue.

'A good place to do it.'

Shaeffer stared directly ahead. She spoke with a sullen, awful finality. 'He means to kill us.'

None of them wanted to debate that observation.

'What are we going to do?'

Brown shrugged. 'Not let him.'

Cowart stared at the opening in the forest and said quietly, 'That's what it always comes down to, right? Eventually you always have to step out into the open.'

Tanny Brown, half rising, nodded. He glanced back toward the small space and thought it a good spot to turn and fight. It would be the spot he would select. There's no way around it. No way to avoid it. We have to cross through it. He thought it suddenly unfair that the edge of the swamp seemed to be conspiring with Ferguson to help him escape. Every tree branch, every obstacle, hindered them, hid him. He scanned the tree line, searching for any sign of color or shape that didn't fit. Make a move, he said to himself. Just a single little twitch that I can see. He cursed to himself when he saw none.

He saw no option, except going ahead. 'Watch carefully,' he whispered.

He stepped out into the clearing, pistol in his hand, muscles tense, listening. Shaeffer was only two feet behind him. She kept both hands on her pistol, thinking, This is where it will end. She was overcome by the desire to do a single thing right before she died. Cowart picked himself up and followed behind her another couple of feet. He wondered whether the others were as frightened as he was, then wondered why that made any difference.

The silence shrouded them.

Tanny Brown wanted to scream out. The sensation that he was walking into a gunsight was like pressure on his chest. He thought he could not breathe.

Cowart could feel only the heat and an awful vulnerability. He thought himself blinded.

But it was he that saw the small movement before anyone else. A quiver of leaves and shake of bushes, and a gray-black gun barrel that pointed toward them. So he shouted, 'Watch out!' as he dove down, oddly surprised in the wave of dread that swept over him that he was able to process anything at all.

Tanny Brown, too, had thrown himself forward at the first syllable of panic that came from Cowart. He rolled, trying to bring his weapon up into a firing position, not really having any idea where to shoot.

Shaeffer, however, did not duck. Screaming harshly, she had turned toward the movement, firing her weapon once without taking aim at anything except fear. Her shot spun crazily into the sky. But the deep roar of the nine-millimeter was bracketed by three resonant blasts from Ferguson's pistol.

Brown gasped as a bullet exploded in the dirt by his head. Cowart tried to force himself into the wet earth.

Shaeffer screamed again, this time in sudden pain.

She spun down to the ground like a bird with a broken wing, clutching at her mangled elbow. She writhed about, her voice pitched high with hurt. Cowart reached out and dragged her toward him as Brown rose, taking aim but seeing nothing. His finger tightened but he did not fire. As he paused, he heard an explosion of trees and bushes as Ferguson ran.

Cowart saw the detective's pistol hanging limply from her hand, blood pulsing down her wrist and staining the polished steel of the weapon. He seized the gun and raised himself up, tracking the sounds of the escaping man.

He was not aware that he'd stepped over some line.

He fired.

Wildly, letting the racket from the gun obliterate any thoughts of what he was doing, he tugged on the trigger, sending the remaining eight shots in the clip whining into the thick trees and underbrush.

He kept pulling after the magazine was emptied, standing in the center of the clearing listening to the echoes from the weapon.

He let the pistol drop to his side, as if exhausted.

All three seemed frozen for a moment, before Shaeffer moaned in pain at the reporter's feet and he bent down toward her. The sound picked up Tanny Brown, switching him back into action. He scrambled across the wet earth and hastily inspected the wound to the detective's arm. He could see smashed white bone protruding through the skin. Deep arterial blood pulsed through the ripped flesh. He glanced up at the forest as if searching for some guidance, then back down. Working as rapidly as he could, he tore a strip of cloth from his own jacket, then twisted it into a makeshift tourniquet. He broke a green branch from an adjacent tree limb and used that to tighten the bandage. His hands worked skillfully; old lessons never forgotten. As he twisted the wrapping tight, he could see the blood flow diminish. He looked up at Cowart, who had risen and gone to the edge of the clearing, eyes staring into the dark forest.

The reporter still gripped the pistol in his hand.

Brown saw Cowart lean forward into the black hole in the clearing, then step back, looking down at his hand.

'I think I got him,' the reporter said. He turned toward Brown and held out his palm.

It was smeared with blood.

Brown rose, nodding. 'Stay with her,' he said.

Cowart shook his head. 'No, I'm coming with you.'

Shaeffer groaned.

'Stay with her,' Brown repeated.

Cowart opened his mouth, but the policeman cut him off. 'Now it's mine,' he said.

The reporter breathed out hard and harsh. Emotions smashed into him. He thought of everything he'd set in motion and thought, It can't stop for me here.

Shaeffer moaned again.

And he realized he had no choice.

He nodded.

Matthew Cowart waited with the wounded detective, but felt more alone than ever before.

The police lieutenant turned and plunged ahead, angling through the net of brambles and branches that reached out and grabbed at his clothes, scratching like wildcats at his skin and eyes. He moved hard and fast, thinking: If he's wounded, he will run straight. He thought he had to make up lost seconds spent fixing the detective's arm.

He saw the blood splotch that Cowart had found as he passed out of the clearing, then another some fifteen yards into the swamp. A third marked the trail a dozen feet after that. They were small, a few crimson droplets of blood standing out against the green shadows.

He raced on, sensing the black water that lay ahead.

The forest crashed around him. He thrust apart all the tendrils and ferns that blocked his path. His pursuit now was all speed and power, a tidal force of fury. He smashed aside anything that hindered his way.

He did not see Ferguson until he was almost on top of him.

The killer had turned, leaning up against a gnarled mangrove tree at the edge of the expanse of swamp water that ran inkily behind him. A line of dark blood had raced down from his thigh to his ankle, standing out against the faded blue of his jeans. He was pointing his weapon directly at Tanny Brown as the policeman burst ahead, running directly into the line of fire.

He had one thought only: I'm dead.

Glacial fear covered everything within him, freezing memories of family, of friends, into a winter death tableau. He thought the world suddenly stopped. He wanted to dive for cover, throw himself backward, hide somehow, but he was moving in slow motion and all he could do was fling a hand up across his face, as if that might deflect the bullet he was certain was about to fly his way.

It was as if his hearing was suddenly sharpened; his sight piercing. He could see the hammer on the pistol creeping backward, then slamming forward.

He opened his mouth in a silent scream.

But all he heard were two empty clicks as the hammer of the killer's pistol twice hit empty chambers. The noise seemed to echo in the small space.

A wild look of surprise crossed Ferguson's face. He looked down at the pistol as if it were a priest caught in a lie.

Tanny Brown realized he had fallen to the ground. Damp dirt clung to him. He shifted to his knees, his own revolver pointing straight ahead.

Ferguson grimaced. Then he seemed to shrug. He held his hands wide in surrender.

Tanny Brown took a deep breath, heard a hundred voices within his head screaming contradictory commands: voices of duty or responsibility shouting disagreement with voices of revenge. He looked up at the killer and remembered what Ferguson had said: I'll walk away clean again. The words joined the tumult and turbulence within him, reverberating like distant thunder. The sudden cacophony deafened him so that he hardly heard the report from his own weapon, was aware only that he'd fired by the pulse in his fist as the gun seized life.

The shots crushed into Robert Earl Ferguson, forcing him back into the embrace of the thorny branches. For an instant his body contorted with confusion and pain. Disbelief rode his eyes. He seemed to shake his head, but the movement was lost as surprise turned to death in his face.

Minutes stretched around him.

He remained on his knees, facing the killer's body, trying to collect himself. He fought a dizzying surge of vertigo, followed by a wave of nausea. This passed, and he waited for his racing heart to slow. After a moment, he sucked in the first gasp of air he was aware of breathing since the pursuit had begun.

He looked at Ferguson's sightless eyes.

'There, he said bitterly. 'You were wrong.'

Thoughts crowded his imagination and he stared over at the killer's body. He spotted the short-barreled revolver lying in the dirt where Ferguson had flung it in death. The gun was as familiar to him as his partner's voice and laugh. He knew there was only one way Ferguson could have obtained the weapon, and a sheet of pain and sadness curved through him. He looked back at Ferguson and said out loud, 'You wanted to kill me with my partner's gun, you sonuvabitch, but it wouldn't do it for you, would it?' His eyes slid to the streaks of blood marking the spot where Cowart's wild shot had ripped into the flesh of Ferguson's leg. He couldn't have made it much farther with a wound like that. Certainly not to freedom. A single, lucky shot that had killed him as much as the twin blasts from Brown's own weapon.

Brown put his hand to his forehead, feeling the cool metal of his pistol like holding an ice cube to a headache. His imagination worked hard, and he looked over at Ferguson and asked, 'Who were you?' as if the killed man could answer. Then he turned and started moving back down the trail toward where he'd left Cowart and Shaeffer. He looked back once, over his shoulder, just to make certain that Ferguson hadn't moved, that he'd remained pinioned by death in the briars. It was as if he didn't trust death to be final.

He walked slowly, aware for the first time that the day had taken over the forest. Shafts of light burned through the ceiling of branches, illuminating his path. It made him feel slightly uncomfortable. He had a sudden, odd preference for shadows.

It took him a few minutes to reach the small clearing where Cowart remained with Shaeffer.

The reporter looked up. He had taken off his jacket and wrapped it around the detective, who had paled and was shivering despite the growing heat. Blood from her mangled elbow had seeped through the makeshift bandage. She was conscious but fighting shock.

1 heard shots,' Cowart said. 'What happened?'

Brown sucked in harshly. 'He got away, he replied.

'He what!' blurted Cowart.

'Get him,' moaned Shaeffer. She twisted about in pain and anger, on the verge of unconsciousness.

'He was heading across the water,' Brown replied. I tried from a distance, but…'

'He got away?' Cowart asked, disbelievingly.

'Disappeared. Headed deep into the swamp. I told you what'd happen if he got in there. Never find him.'

'But I hit him,' Cowart complained. 'I'm sure I did.'

The policeman didn't reply.

'I hit him,' the reporter insisted.

'Yes. You hit him, Brown answered softly.

'Why, what, what're…' Cowart started to blurt. Then he stopped and stared at the policeman.

Tanny Brown shifted uncomfortably beneath the reporter's gaze, as if he was being slapped with difficult questions. He took hold of himself and insisted, 'You've got to take her back. Get her help. She's not hurt too bad, but she needs help now.'

'What about you?'

'I'm going to go back. Take one more look. Then I'll follow you.'

'But…'

'When we get back to Pachoula, we'll put out an APB. File formal charges. Put him on the national computer Wire. Get the FBI involved. You go write your story.'

Cowart continued to stare at Brown, trying to see past the policeman's words.

'He got away,' Brown repeated coldly.

And then Cowart did see. Shock and fury fought for space within him. He glared at the policeman. 'You killed him, Cowart said. 'I heard the shots.'

Tanny Brown said nothing.

'You killed him,' he said again.

Brown shook his head, but said, 'You understand something, Cowart. If he dies out there, then no one ever knows. Not about Bruce Wilcox. Not about any of the others. It just stops, right there. And no one will give a damn about Ferguson. They'll just care about you and me. A policeman with a personal vendetta and a reporter trying to save his career. No one will want to hear about suspicions and theories and tainted evidence. They'll just want to know why we came out here and killed a man. An innocent man. Remember? An innocent man. But if he gets away…'

Cowart looked hard at the policeman and thought, It ended. But it never ends. He breathed in deeply. 'The guilty man runs,' he finished the policeman's sentence.

'That's right.'

'Then it keeps going. People keep hunting. Answers…'

'People keep looking for answers. You make them. I make them.'

Cowart breathed in air like steam that scorched within him. 'He's dead. You killed him…'

Brown looked at Cowart.

'… I killed him,' the reporter continued.

He hesitated, then added the obvious. '… We killed him.' The reporter took another deep breath.

A whirlwind of thoughts tore through his head. He could feel the morning heat rising around him. He saw Ferguson, remembered Blair Sullivan's laughing 'Have I killed you, too, Cowart answered No to this vision, hoping he was right; remembered in a torrent of memory his family, his own child, the murdered child, the children that had disappeared and all that had happened- He thought, It's a nightmare. Tell the truth and be punished. Tell a lie and it will all come right. He could feel himself sliding, as if he'd lost his grasp on the face of a sheer cliff. But it was one he'd elected to climb himself. Summoning a burst of energy, he imagined slamming an ice pick into the granite and arresting his fall. He told himself, You can live with it, alone. He looked over at Tanny Brown, who was bent over, checking Andrea Shaeffer's bloody wrap, and realized he was mistaken. The nightmare would be shared. He glanced at Shaeffer. At least, he thought, her wound will scar over and heal.

'No,' he said, after a moment's pause. 'He got away.'

Tanny Brown said nothing.

'Just like you said. Into the swamp. Get back there, no one could find him. Could go anywhere. Atlanta. Chicago. Detroit. Dallas. Anywhere.'

He bent down and lifted the wounded policeman from the earth, working his shoulder under her arm.

'Write the story,' Tanny Brown said.

'I'll write the story,' Cowart replied.

'Make them believe,' the policeman said.

'They'll believe, Cowart answered.

He said it without anger.

Brown nodded.

Matthew Cowart started to steer Andrea Shaeffer back down the path toward civilization. She leaned against him. He could sense her teeth gritting against pain, but she did not complain. His mind began to churn beneath the weight of the wounded detective. Write it so that she gets a commendation for bravery. Tell everyone how she stood up to a sadistic killer and took a bullet for her trouble. Heroine cop. The television boys will eat it up. So will the tabs. It'll give her a chance, he thought. Words began to pump into him, strengthening him. He could see columns of newsprint, headlines racing from high-speed presses. He threw an arm around Shaeffer's waist. He'd managed perhaps ten feet when he turned and looked at the police lieutenant, still standing on the edge of the clearing.

'Is this right?' the reporter asked. The question burst from him, unbidden.

Brown shrugged. 'There's never been any right in this. Not from the start. Never been any choice, either.'

Cowart nodded. It was the only truth he felt comfortable with. He didn't smile, but said, 'Seems like an odd time to start trusting each other.'

Then he turned and continued to help the wounded young woman toward safety. She moaned slightly and leaned against him. It was a small thing he was doing, he told himself. But at least he was saving one person. He took solace in the thought he might have saved others as well.

Tanny Brown watched Cowart help Shaeffer. He saw the two disappear into the tangle of lights and shadows. Then he headed back through the brush to the edge of the swamp. It only took him a few minutes to locate Ferguson's body.

The dead weight pulled against him as he extricated Ferguson from the trap of brambles. The swamp water was cold against his body as he slid into it. He put his foot down and felt the sucking ooze beneath him. Then he pushed away, dragging the body through the water, away from the land, toward a maze of trees, laden with hanging ferns and vines, some fifty yards away, deeper into the swamp. He half-dragged, half-pushed the killer's body through the water, puffing with exertion, struggling with the bulk, until he came to the spot. He gathered his last strength and pushed hard on Ferguson's body, submerging it, forcing it underneath and between the roots, until it was snared beneath the surface of the water. He had no idea if it would stay there forever or not. Ferguson had wondered the same thing once, he realized. He pushed himself back and then looked from a few feet away and saw that he could see no sign of the body. The roots held all. The water covered all.

Light penetrated the trees and hit the black water surface, making it gleam for an instant. He turned away from the dead spot and swam easily toward the home shore.