John Katzenbach - Just Cause

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.