John Katzenbach - Just Cause

The detective placed the knife in his suit pocket. 'Not much left of it,' he said slowly, with disappointment. 'We'll run it through the lab, but I wouldn't count on much.' He stared down at the culvert, then up into the sky. 'Step back,' he continued softly. 'Don't touch anything else. There may be something of forensic value, and I don't want it further disturbed.' He fixed Cowart with a long, hard stare. 'If this location relates to a crime, then I want it properly preserved.'

'You know what it relates to,' Cowart replied.

Brown stepped away for an instant, shaking his head. 'You son of a bitch,' he said softly, turning abruptly and scrambling back up the incline toward the reporter's car. He stood for an instant on the roadway, hand clenched, face set. Then, suddenly, with a swiftness that seemed to break the still morning, he kicked at the open car door. The noise of his foot slamming into the metal reverberated amidst the heat and sunlight, fading slowly like a distant shot.

Cowart sat alone in the policeman's office, waiting. He watched through the window as night slid over the town, a sudden surge of darkness that seemed to fight its way out of shadowy corners and from beneath shade trees to take over the atmosphere. It was a wintertime swiftness, with none of the slow lingering daylight of summer.

The day had been spent on edge. He had watched as a team of crimescene technicians had carefully processed the culvert for other evidence. He had watched as they had bagged and tagged all the debris, dirt samples, and some pieces of unrecognizable trash. He knew they would find nothing, but had waited patiently through the search.

By late afternoon, Tanny Brown and he had driven back to the police headquarters, where the detective had put him in the office to await the results of the laboratory examination of the knife. The two men had shared little but silence.

Cowart turned to the wall of the office and gazed at a framed photograph of the detective and his family, standing outside a whitewashed church. A wife and two daughters, one all pigtails and braces with an insouciance that penetrated even the austerity of her Sunday clothes; the other a teenage vixen-in-the-making with smooth skin and a figure pushing hard at the starched white of her blouse. The detective and his wife were smiling calmly at the camera, trying to look comfortable.

He was hit with a sudden twinge. He had thrown out all the pictures of himself with his wife and child after the divorce. Now he wondered why.

He let his eyes wander over the other wall decorations. There was a series of marksmanship plaques for winning the annual county handgun contest. A framed citation from the mayor and city council attesting to his bravery on an obscure occasion. A framed medal, a Bronze Star, along with another citation. Next to it was a picture of a younger, far leaner Tanny Brown in fatigues in Southeast Asia.

The door opened behind him, and Cowart turned. The detective was impassive, his face set.

'Hey,' Cowart said, 'what did you get the medal for?'

'What?'

Cowart gestured at the wall.

'Oh. That. I was a medic. Platoon got caught in an ambush and four guys got dropped out in a paddy. I went out and brought them in, one after the other. It was no big deal except we had a reporter from the Washington Post along with us that day. My lieutenant figured he'd fucked up so bad walking us into the ambush that he better do something, so he made sure I got cited for a medal. Kinda deflected the bad impression the newspaper guy was going to come away with after spending four hours having his ass shot at and his face pushed down in a swamp crawling with leeches. Did you go?'

'No, Cowart said. 'My lottery number was three-twenty. It never came up.'

The detective nodded, gesturing toward a chair. He plumped himself down behind the desk.

'Nothing,' the detective said.

'Fingerprints? Blood? Anything?'

'Not yet. We're going to send it off to the FBI lab and see what they can do. They've got fancier equipment than we do.'

'But nothing.'

'Well, the medical examiner says the blade is the right size to have caused the stab wounds. The deepest wound measured the same distance as the blade of the knife. That's something.'

Cowart pulled out his notepad and started taking notes. 'Can you trace the knife?'

'It's a cheap, typical nineteen-ninety-five, buy-it-in-any-sporting-goods-store-type knife. We'll try, but there's no identifying serial number or manufacturer's mark.' He hesitated and looked hard at Cowart. 'But what's the point?'

'What?'

'You heard me. It's time to stop playing games. Who told you about the knife? Is it the one that killed Joanie Shriver? Talk to me.'

Cowart hesitated.

'You gonna make me read all about it? Or what?' Harsh insistence crawled over the fatigue in his voice.

'I'll tell you one thing: Robert Earl Ferguson didn't tell me where to look for that knife.'

'You're telling me that someone else told you where to find the weapon that may have been used to kill

Joanie Shriver?'

'That's right.'

'You care to share this information?'

Matthew Cowart looked up from his scribblings. 'Tell me one thing first, Lieutenant. If I say who told me about that knife, are you going to reopen the murder investigation? Are you willing to go to the state attorney? To get up in front of the trial judge and say that the case needs to be reopened?'

The detective scowled. 'I can't make a promise like that before I know anything. Come on, Cowart. Tell me.'

Cowart shook his head. 'I just don't know if I can trust you, Lieutenant. It's as simple as that.'

In that moment, Tanny Brown looked like a man primed to explode. I thought you understood one thing,' the detective said, almost whispering.

'What?'

'That in this town until that man pays, the murder of Joanie Shriver will never be closed.'

'That's the question, isn't it? Who pays?'

'We're all paying. All of us. All the time.' He slammed his fist down hard on the table. The sound echoed in the small room. 'You got something to say, say it!'

Matthew Cowart thought hard about what he knew and what he didn't know and finally replied, 'Blair Sullivan told me where to find that knife.'

The name had the expected impact on the policeman. He looked surprised, then shocked, like a batter expecting a fastball watching a curve dip over the corner of the plate.

'Sullivan? What has he got to do with this?'

'You ought to know. He passed by Pachoula in May 1987, busy killing all sorts of folks.'

I know that, but…'

'And he knew where the knife was.'

Brown stared at him. A few stretched seconds of silence filled the room. 'Did Sullivan say he killed Joanie Shriver?'

'No, he didn't.'

'Did he say Ferguson didn't kill that girl?'

'Not exactly, but

'Did he say anything exactly to contradict the original trial?'

'He knew about the knife.'

'He knew about a knife. We don't know it is the knife, and without any forensics, it's nothing more than a piece of rusted metal. Come on, Cowart, you know Sullivan's stone crazy. Did he give you anything that could even remotely be called evidence?'

Brown's eyes had narrowed. Cowart could see him processing information rapidly, speculating, absorbing, discarding. He thought right then: It's too hard for him. He won't want to consider any possibilities of mistake. He has his killer and he's satisfied.

'Nothing else.'

'Then that's not enough to reopen an investigation that resulted in a conviction.'

'No? Okay. Get ready to read it in the paper. Then we'll see if it's enough.'

The policeman glared at Cowart and pointed at the door. 'Leave, Mr. Cowart. Leave right now. Get in your rental car and go back to the motel. Pack your bags. Drive to the airport. Get on a plane and go back to your city. Don't come back. Understand?'