John Katzenbach - Just Cause

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.'