Just Cause Read online

  “Keep going.”

  “Man zigzags down the state. A little trouble in Bay City. A bit in Tallahassee. Orlando. Lakeland. Tampa. All the way to Miami. Schoolgirl. Tourist couple. Waitress in a bar. Problem is, when he gets to the big city, he’s not quite as careful, and he’s busted. Busted bad, busted big time. Murder one. Sound familiar?”

  “Starting to. Keep going.”

  “After a couple of years in court, man ends up right here on the Row. And what does he discover when he gets here? A big joke. Biggest joke he could ever imagine. Man in the cell next to him is waiting a date for the crime he committed and nearly goddamn forgot about because there were so many crimes, they all sort of got rolled together in his mind. Laughs so hard he’d like to split a gut. Only it isn’t so funny for the man in the next cell, is it?”

  “You’re telling me that . . .”

  “That’s right, Mr. Cowart. The man who killed Joanie Shriver is right here on Death Row. Do you know a man named Blair Sullivan?”

  Cowart breathed in sharply. The name exploded like shrapnel in his head. “I do.”

  “Everyone knows Blair Sullivan, right, Mr. Reporter?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, he’s the one that did her.”

  Cowart felt his face flush. He wanted to loosen his tie, stick his head out some window, stand in a breeze somewhere, anything to give himself some air. “How do you know?”

  “The man told me! Thought it was the funniest damn thing.”

  “Tell me exactly what he said.”

  “Not too long after he got sent up here, he was moved into the cell next to mine. He’s not all there, you know. Laughs when nobody’s made a joke. Cries for no reason. Talks to himself. Talks to God. Shit, man’s got this awful soft voice, kinda makes a hissing sound, like a snake or something. He’s the craziest motherfucker I’ve ever met. But crazy same as a damn fox, you know.

  “Anyway, after a week or two, we get to talking and of course he asks me what I’m doing there. So I tell him the truth: I’m waiting on the death man for a crime I didn’t do. This makes him grin and chuckle and he asks me what crime. So I tell him: Little girl in Pachoula. Little blonde girl, he says, with braces? Yeah, I say. And then he starts to laugh and laugh. Beginning of May? he asks. Right, I says. Little girl all cut up with a knife, body tossed in a swamp? he asks. Right again, I say, but how come you know so much about this? And he keeps giggling and laughing and snorting and just rolling about, wheezing, he thinks it’s so funny. Hell, he says, I know you didn’t do that girl, ’cause I did. And she was mighty fine, too. Man, he says, you are the sorriest fuck on this row, and he keeps laughing and laughing. I was ready to kill him right there, you see, right there, and I start screaming and yelling and trying to get through the bars. Goon squad comes down the row, flak jackets and truncheons and those helmets with the plastic shit in front of their eyes. They pound my ass for a bit and haul me off to isolation. You know isolation? It’s just a little room with no window and a bucket and a cement cot. They toss you in there naked until you get your act together sufficiently.

  “By the time I got out, they had shifted him off to another tier. We don’t get exercise the same time, so I don’t see him. Word has it, he’s really off the deep end. I can hear him sometimes at night, yelling for me. Bobby Earl, he calls out, kinda high-pitched and nasty. Bobbbbby Earrrrll! Why won’t you talk to meeeeee? Then he laughs when I don’t call back. Just laughs and laughs and laughs.”

  Cowart shivered. He wanted to have a moment to stand back and assess the story he’d heard, but there was no time. He was locked in, fastened by the words that had flowed from Robert Earl Ferguson.

  “How can I prove this?”

  “I don’t know, man! It ain’t my job to prove things!”

  “How can I confirm it?”

  “Damn! The sergeant’ll tell you they had to move Sullivan away from me. But he don’t know why. No one knows why, except you and me and him.”

  “But I can’t . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear what you can and can’t do, Mr. Reporter. People all my life have been telling me lots of can’ts. You can’t be this, you can’t do that, you can’t have this, you can’t even want that. That’s my whole life, man, in one word. I don’t want to hear it no more.”

  Cowart was silent. “Well,” he said, “I’ll check . . .”

  Ferguson turned swiftly, pushing his face toward him, his eyes electric with fury. “That’s right. You go check,” the prisoner said. “Go ask that bastard. You’ll see, damn you, you’ll see.”

  Then Ferguson rose abruptly, pushing himself away from the table. “Now you know. What you gonna do? What can you do? Go ask some more damn questions, but make damn sure I ain’t dead before you finish asking ’em.”

  The prisoner walked over to the door and started pounding on it. The noise was like gunshots reverberating in the small room. “We’re finished in here!” he called. “Sergeant Rogers! Damn!” The door staggered under the violence of his assault. When the prison guard swung the door open, Ferguson tossed a single look back at Cowart, then said, “I want to go back to my cell. I want to be alone. I don’t need to make any more talk. No, sir.” He held out his hands and they were cuffed. As the manacles were clicked shut around his wrists, he looked once more at the reporter. His eyes were piercing, harsh, filled with challenge and demand. Then he turned and disappeared through the doorway, leaving Cowart sitting quietly, feeling for all the world as if his legs were dangling over the edge of a whirlpool, threatening to suck him in.

  As he was being shown the way out of the prison, Cowart asked the sergeant, “Where’s Blair Sullivan?”

  Sergeant Rogers snorted. “Sully? He’s in Q wing. Stays in his cell all day, reading the Bible and writing letters. He writes to a bunch of psychiatrists and to the families of his victims. He writes them obscene descriptions of what he did to their loved ones. We don’t mail those. We don’t tell him that, but I think he suspects.” The sergeant shook his head. “He’s not playing with a full deck, that one. He’s also got a real thing about Robert Earl. Calls his name out, kinda taunting-like, sometimes in the middle of the night. Did Bobby Earl tell you he tried to kill Sullivan when they were in adjacent cells? It was kinda odd, really. They got along fine at first, talking away through the bars. Then Robert Earl just goes crazy, screaming and thrashing about, trying to get at Sullivan. It’s just about the only real trouble he’s ever given us. Landed in the hole for a brief vacation. Now they’re on the separation list.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just what it sounds like. No contact whatsoever, under any circumstances. It’s a list we keep to try to prevent some of the boys from killing one another before the state has the opportunity to juice them all legal-like.”

  “Suppose I wanted to talk to Sullivan?”

  The sergeant shook his head. “The man’s genuinely evil, Mr. Cowart. Hell, he even scares me, and I’ve seen just about every kind of head case killer this world’s got to offer.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you know, we got some men here who’d kill you and not even think about it, means nothing to them to take a life. We’ve got madmen and sex killers and psychopaths and thrill seekers and contract boys and hit men, you name it. But Sullivan, well, he’s twisted a little different. Can’t exactly say why. It’s like he would fit into any of the categories we’ve got, just like one of those damn lizards that changes color . . .”

  “A chameleon?”

  “Yeah. Right. It’s almost like he’s every sort, rolled up into one, so he’s no specific type at all.” Sergeant Rogers paused. “Man just scares me. I can’t say I’m ever happy to see anyone go to the chair, but I won’t think twice about strapping that sucker in. Gonna be soon, too.”

  “How so? He’s only been on the Row a year or so,
right?”

  “That’s right. But he’s fired all his lawyers, like that guy did up in Utah a few years back. He’s got just his automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court pending, and he says when that’s finished, that’s the end of the line. Says he can’t wait to get to hell because they’ll roll out the red carpet for him.”

  “You think he’ll stick to that?”

  “I told you. He ain’t like other folks. Not even like other killers. I think he’ll stick hard. Living, dying, seems all the same to him. My guess is he’ll just laugh, like he laughs at everything, and plop himself down in the chair like it ain’t no big deal.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “No one needs to talk to that man.”

  “I do. Can you arrange it?”

  Rogers stopped and stared at him. “This got something to do with Bobby Earl?”

  “Maybe.”

  He shrugged. “Well, best I can do is ask the man. He says yes, I’ll set it up. He says no, and that’s all she wrote.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Won’t be like talking to Bobby Earl in the executive suite. We’ll have to use the cage.”

  “Whatever. Just try for me.”

  “All right, Mr. Cowart. You call me in the morning, and I’ll try to get some sort of answer for you.”

  They both walked silently through the sally-port entrance to the prison. For an instant they stood in the vestibule, before the doors. Then Rogers walked beside Cowart out into the sunlight. The reporter saw the prison guard shade his eyes and stare up through the pale blue sky toward the glaring sun. The sergeant stood, breathing in clear air, his eyes closed for an instant as if trying to force some of the clamminess of confinement away with fresh air. Then he shook his head and, without saying anything further, walked back inside the prison.

  Ferguson was right, Cowart thought. Everyone knew Blair Sullivan.

  Florida has an odd way of spawning killers of unique proportions, almost as if, like the gnarled mangroves that flourish in the saltwater-tinged sandy dirt near the ocean, evil takes root in the state and fights its way into the ground. And those not born there seem to gravitate toward the state with alarming frequency, as if following some unusual gravitational swing of the earth, driven by tides and the awful desires of men. It gives the state a sort of routine familiarity with evil; a shrugging acceptance of the paranoic who opens fire with an automatic weapon in a fast-food outlet, or the bloated bodies of drug couriers gathering maggots in the Everglades. Drifters, crazies, contract murderers, killers willed with madness, passion, or devoid of reason or emotion, all find their way, it seems, to Florida.

  Blair Sullivan, heading south, had killed a dozen people that he owned up to before arriving in Miami. The killings had been murders of convenience, really; just folks who happened to brush up against the man and wind up dead. The night manager of a small roadside motel, a waitress in a coffee shop, the clerk at a small store, an old tourist couple changing a tire by the road. What had made this particular killing spree so frightening was its utter random application. Some victims were robbed. Some raped. Some were simply killed, for no apparent reason or unfathomable reasons, like the gas-station attendant shot right through his protective cage, not because he was being robbed, but because he wasn’t quick enough to make change of a twenty-dollar bill. Sullivan had been arrested in Miami minutes after he’d finished dealing with a young couple he’d found necking on a deserted road. He had taken his time with the pair, tying the teenage boy up and letting him watch as he raped the girl, then letting the girl watch as he slit the boy’s throat. He had been slashing away at the young woman’s body when a state trooper patrolling the area had spotted him. “Just bad luck,” Sullivan had told the judge, arrogant, unrepentant, at his sentencing. “If I’d been just a little bit quicker, I would have got the trooper, too.”

  Cowart dialed the telephone in his room and within a few minutes was connected with the city desk at the Miami Journal. He asked for Edna McGee, the courthouse reporter who’d covered Sullivan’s conviction and sentencing. The telephone played Muzak momentarily before she came on the line.

  “Hey, Edna?”

  “Matty? Where are you?”

  “Stuck in a twenty-buck-a-night motel in Starke, trying to get it all figured out.”

  “You’ll let me know if you do, huh? So, how’s the story going? Rumors all over the newsroom that you’re on to something real good.”

  “It’s going along.”

  “That guy really kill that girl or what?”

  “I don’t know. There’s some real questions. Cops even admitted hitting him before getting the confession. Not as bad as he says they did, of course, but still, you know.”

  “No kidding? Sounds good. You know, even the smallest little bit of coercion should cause a judge to throw out the man’s confession. And if the cops admitted lying, even a little, well, watch out.”

  “That kinda bothers me, Edna. Why would they admit hitting the guy? It can’t help them.”

  “Matty, you know as well as I that cops are the world’s worst liars. They try and it just screws them up. They get all turned around. It’s just not in their natures. So, finally, they end up telling the truth. You just got to hang in there long enough, keep asking the questions. Eventually, they’ll always come around. Now, how can I help you?”

  “Blair Sullivan.”

  “Sully? Whew, now that’s interesting. What’s he got to do with all this?”

  “Well, his name came up in a kind of unusual context. I can’t really talk about it.”

  “C’mon. Tell me.”

  “Give me a break, Edna. As soon as I’m certain, you’ll be the first.”

  “Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  “Double-promise?”

  “Edna. C’mon.”

  “Okay. Okay. Blair Sullivan. Sully. Jesus. You know, I’m a liberal, but that guy, I don’t know. You know what he made that girl do, before killing her? I never put it into a story. I couldn’t. When the jurors heard it, one of them got sick, right in the jury box. They had to take a recess to clean up the mess. After she’d watched her boyfriend bleed to death, Sully made her bend down and . . .”

  “I don’t want to know,” Cowart interrupted.

  The woman on the phone fell abruptly into silence. After a moment, she asked, “So, what do you want to know?”

  “Can you tell me about his route south?”

  “Sure. The tabloids called it ‘The Death Trip.’ Well, it was pretty well documented. He started out by killing his landlady in Louisiana, outside of New Orleans, then a prostitute in Mobile, Alabama, He claims he knifed a sailor in Pensacola, some guy he picked up in a gay bar and left in a trash heap, then . . .”

  “When was that?”

  “It’s in my notes. Hang on, they’re in my bottom drawer.” Matthew Cowart heard the telephone being put down on the desktop and could just make out the sounds of drawers being opened and then slammed shut. “I found it. Hang on. Here it is. Should have been late April, early May at the latest, right when he crossed over into the Sunshine State.”

  “Then what?”

  “Still heading downstate slowly. Incredible, really. APBs in three states, BOLOs, FBI flyers with his picture, NCIC computer bulletins. And nobody spots him. At least, not nobody who lived. It was end of June before he reached Miami. Must have taken him a long time to wash all the blood off his clothes.”

  “What about cars?”

  “Well, he used three, all stolen. A Chevy, a Mercury, and an Olds. Just abandoned them and hot-wired something new. Kept stealing plates, you know, that sort of thing. Always picked nondescript cars, real dull, not-the-type-to-get-attention cars. Said he always drove the speed limit, too.”

  “When he first came to Florida, what was he d
riving?”

  “Wait. I’m checking my notebook. You know, there’s a guy at the Tampa Tribune trying to write a book about him? Tried to go see him, but Sully just kicked him out. Wouldn’t talk to him, I heard from the prosecutors. I’m still checking. He’s fired all his lawyers, you know that? I think he’ll check out before the end of the year. The governor’s got to be getting writer’s cramp he must be so anxious to sign a death warrant for Sully. Here it is: brown Mercury Monarch.”

  “No Ford?”

  “No. But you know, the Mercury’s just about the same car. Same body, same design. Easy to get them mixed up.”

  “Light brown?”

  “No, dark.”

  Cowart breathed in hard. It fits, he thought.

  “So, Matty, gonna tell me what this is all about?”

  “Let me just check a few things, then I’ll let you know.”

  “Come on, Matty. I hate not knowing.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know the rumors are just gonna get worse around here?”

  “I know.”

  She hung up the phone, leaving Matthew Cowart alone. The room about him filled quickly with fearsome thoughts and terrifying explanations: Ford into Mercury. Green into brown. Black into white. One man into another.

  “I don’t properly understand it, but you’re in luck, boy,” Sergeant Rogers said jovially, his voice betraying no sign of the early hour.

  “How so?”

  “Mr. Sullivan says he’ll see you. Sure would piss off that guy from Tampa who was here the other week. Wouldn’t see him. Sure would piss off all the damn lawyers who’ve been trying to get in to see Sully, too. He won’t see them, neither. Hell, the only folks he sees are a couple of shrinks that the FBI sent down from the Behavioral Sciences Unit. You know, the boys that study mass murderers. And I think the only reason he sees them is so that none of the damn lawyers can file papers claiming he’s incompetent and get a court order to handle his appeals. Did I tell you Mr. Sullivan is one unique fellow?”