3

PACHOULA

Escambia County is tucked away in the far northwest corner of Florida, touched on two borders by the state of Alabama. It shares its cultural kinship with the states to its immediate north. It was once primarily a rural area, with many small farms that rolled green over hillsides, separated by dense thickets of scrubby pine and the looped and tied tendrils of great willows and vines. But in recent years, as with much of the South, it has seen a burst of construction, a suburbanizing of its once country lands, as its major city, the port town of Pensacola, has expanded, growing shopping malls and housing developments where there was once open space. But, at the same time, it has retained a marshy commonality with Mobile, which is not far by interstate highway, and with the saltwater tidal regions of the Gulf shore. Like many areas of the deep South, it has the contradictory air of remembered poverty and new pride, a sense of rigid place fueled by generations who have found the living there, if not necessarily easy, then better than elsewhere.

The evening commuter flight into the small airport was a frightening series of stomach-churning bumps and dips, passing along the edges of huge gray storm clouds that seemed to resent the intrusion of the twin-engine plane. The passenger compartment alternately filled with streaks of light and sudden dark as the plane cut in and out of the thick clouds and red swords of sunshine fading fast over the Gulf of Mexico. Cowart listened to the engines laboring against the winds, their pitch rising and falling like a racer’s breath. He rocked in the cocoon of the plane, thinking about the man on Death Row and what awaited him in Pachoula.

Ferguson had stirred a war within him. He had come away from his meeting with the prisoner insisting to himself that he maintain objectivity, that he listen to everything and weigh every word equally. But at the same time, staring through the beads of water that marched across the plane’s window, he knew that he would not be heading toward Pachoula if he expected to be dissuaded from the story. He clenched his fists in his lap as the small plane skidded across the sky, remembering Ferguson’s voice, still feeling the man’s ice-cold anger. Then he thought about the girl. Eleven years old. Not a time to die. Remember that, too.

The plane landed in a driving thunderstorm, careening down the runway. Through the window, Cowart saw a line of green trees on the airport edge, standing dark and black against the sky.

He drove his rental car through the enveloping darkness to the Admiral Benbow Inn just off the interstate, on the outskirts of Pachoula. After inspecting the modest, oppressively neat room, he went down to the bar in the motel, slid between two salesmen, and ordered a beer from the young woman. She had mousy brown hair that flounced around her face, drawing all the features in tight so that when she frowned, her whole face seemed to scowl along with her lips, an edgy toughness that spoke of handing too many drinks to too many salesmen and refusing too many offers of companionship issued over shaky hands clutching scotch and ginger ale. She drew the beer from a tap, eyeing Cowart the entire time, sensing when the froth from the beer was about to slide over the lip of the glass. “Y’all ain’t from around here, are you?”

He shook his head.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “I like to guess. Just say, the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.”

He laughed and repeated the phrase.

She smiled at him, just losing a small edge from her distance. “Not from Mobile or Montgomery, that’s for sure. Not even Tallahassee or New Orleans. Got to be two places: either Miami or Atlanta; but if it’s Atlanta, then you ain’t originally from there but from somewhere else, like New York, and you’d just be calling Atlanta home temporary-like.”

“Not bad,” he replied. “Miami.”

She eyed him carefully, pleased with herself. “Let’s see,” she said. “I see a pretty nice suit, but real conservative, like a lawyer might wear. . . .” She leaned across the bar and rubbed her thumb and forefinger against the lapel of his jacket “Nice. Not like the polyester princes selling livestock vitamin supplement that we get in here mainly. But the hair’s a bit shaggy over the ears and I can see a couple of gray streaks just getting started. So you’re a bit too old—what, about thirty-five?—to be running errands. If you were a lawyer that old, you’d damn well have to have some fresh-cheeked just-outa-school assistant you’d send here on business instead of coming yourself. Now, I don’t figure you for a cop, ’cause you ain’t got that look, and not real estate or business either. You don’t have the look of a salesman, like these guys do. So now, what would bring a guy like you all the way up here from Miami? Only one thing left I can think of, so I’d guess you’re a reporter here for some story.”

He laughed. “Bingo. And thirty-seven.”

She turned to draw another glass of beer, which she set in front of another man, then returned to Cowart. “You just passing through? Can’t imagine what kinda story would bring you up here. There ain’t much happening around here, in case you hadn’t already noticed.”

Cowart hesitated, wondering whether he should keep his mouth shut or not. Then he shrugged and thought, If she figured out who I was in the first two minutes, it isn’t going to be much of a secret around here when I start talking to the cops and lawyers.

“A murder story,” he said.

She nodded. “Had to be. Now you’ve got me interested. What sort of story? Hell, I can’t remember the last killing we had around here. Now, can’t say the same for Mobile or Pensacola. You looking at those drug dealers? Jesus, they say that there’s cocaine coming in all up and down the Gulf, tons of it, every night. Sometimes we get some ­Spanish-speaking folks in here. Last week three guys came in, all wearing sharp suits and those little beeper things on their belts. They sat down like they owned the place and ordered a bottle of champagne before dinner. I had to send the boy out to the liquor store for it. Wasn’t hard to figure out what they were celebrating.”

“No, not drugs,” Cowart said. “How long have you been here?”

“A couple of years. Came to Pensacola with my husband, who was a flier. Now he still flies and he ain’t my husband and I’m stuck here on the ground.”

“Do you remember a case, about three years old, a little girl named Joanie Shriver? Allegedly killed by a fellow named Robert Earl Ferguson?”

“Little girl they found by Miller’s Swamp?”

“That’s it.”

“I remember that one. It happened right when me and my old man, damn his eyes, got here. Just about my first week tending this bar.” She laughed briefly. “Hell, I thought this damn job was always gonna be that exciting. Folks were real interested in that little girl. There were newspapermen from Tallahassee and television all the way from Atlanta. That’s how I got to recognize your type. They all pretty much hung out here. Of course, there’s no place else, really. It was quite a set-to for a couple of days, until they announced they caught the boy that killed her. But that was all back then. Ain’t you a little late coming around?”

“I just heard about it.”

“But that boy’s in prison. On Death Row.”

“There are some questions about how he got put there. Some inconsistencies.”

The woman put her head back and laughed. “Man,” she said, “I don’t bet that’s gonna make a lot of difference. Good luck, Miami.”

Then she turned to help another customer, leaving Cowart alone with his beer. She did not return.

The morning broke clear and fast. The early sun seemed determined to erase every residual street puddle remaining from the rain the day before. The day’s heat built steadily, mixing with an insistent humidity. Cowart could feel his shirt sticking to his back as he walked from the motel to his rental car, then drove through Pachoula.

The town seemed to have established itself with tenacity, situated on a flat stretch of land not far from the interstate, surrounded by farmland, serving as a sort of link between the two. It was a bit far north for successful orange groves, but he passed a few farms with well-ordered rows of trees, others with cattle grazing in the fields. He figured he was coming in on the prosperous side of the town; the houses were single-story cinder block or red-brick construction, the ubiquitous ranch houses that stand for a certain sort of status. They all had large television antennas. Some even had satellite dishes in their yards. As he closed on Pachoula, the roadside gave way to convenience stores and gas stations. He passed a small shopping center with a large grocery store, a card shop, a pizza parlor, and a restaurant clinging to the edges. He noticed that there were more houses stretched in the areas off the main street into town, more single-family, trim, well-kept homes that spoke of solidity and meager success.

The center of town was only a three-block square area, with a movie theater, some offices, some more stores, and a couple of stoplights. The streets were clean, and he wondered whether they had been swept by the storm the night before or by community diligence.

He drove through, heading away from the hardware stores, auto parts outlets, and fast-food restaurants, on a small, two-lane road. It seemed to him that there was a slight change in the land around him, a fallow brown streakiness that contradicted the lush green he’d seen moments earlier. The roadway grew bumpy and the houses he saw by the road were now wooden-frame houses, swaybacked with age, all painted a fading whitewashed pale color. The highway slid into a stand of trees, swallowing him with darkness. The variegated light pouring through the branches of the willows and pines made seeing his way difficult. He almost missed the dirt road cutting off to his left. The tires spun briefly in the mud before gaining some purchase, and he started bouncing down the road. It ran along a long hedgerow. Occasionally, over the top, he could see small farms. He slowed and passed three wooden shacks jumbled together at the edge of the dirt. An old black man stared at him as he slowly rolled past. He checked his odometer and drove another half mile, to another shack perched by the road. He pulled in front and got out of the car.

The shack had a front porch with a single rocker. There was a small chicken coop around the side, and chickens pecked away in the dirt. The road ended in the front yard. An old Chevy station wagon, with its hood up, was parked around the side.

A steady, solid heat washed over him. He heard a dog bark in the distance. The rich brown dirt that served as a front yard was packed hard underfoot, solid enough to have survived the previous evening’s rainstorm. He turned and saw that the house stared out across a wide field, lined by dark forest.

Cowart hesitated, then approached the front porch.

When he put his foot on the first step, he heard a voice call out from inside, “I see you. Now what y’all want?”

He stopped and replied, “I’m looking for Mrs. Emma Mae Ferguson.”

“Whatcha need her for?”

“I want to talk to her.”

“You ain’t tellin’ me nothin’. Whatcha need her for?”

“I want to talk to her about her grandson.”

The front door, half of it screen that was peeling away from the cracked wood, opened slightly. An old black woman with gray hair pulled severely behind her head stepped out. She was slight of frame, but sinewy, and moved slowly, but with a firmness of carriage that seemed to imply that age and brittle bones didn’t really mean much more than inconvenience.

“You police?”

“No. I’m Matthew Cowart. From the Miami Journal. I’m a reporter.”

“Who sent you?”

“Nobody sent me. I just came. Are you Mrs. Ferguson?”

“Mebbe.”

“Please, Mrs. Ferguson, I want to talk about Robert Earl.”

“He’s a good boy and they took him away from me.”

“Yes, I know. I’m trying to help.”

“How can you help? You a lawyer? Lawyers done enough wrong for that boy already.”

“No, ma’am. Please, could we just sit and talk for a few minutes? I don’t mean to do anything except try to help your grandson. He told me to come and see you.”

“You saw my boy?”

“Yes.”

“How they treating him?”

“He seemed fine. Frustrated, but fine.”

“Bobby Earl was a good boy. A real good boy.”

“I know. Please.”

“All right, Mr. Reporter. I’ll sit and listen. Tell me what you want to know.”

The old woman nodded her head at the rocker and moved gingerly toward it. She motioned toward the top step on the porch, and Matthew Cowart sat down, almost at her feet.

“Well, ma’am, what I need to know about are three days almost three years ago. I need to know what Robert Earl was doing on the day the little girl disappeared, on the next day, and the day after that, when he was arrested. Do you remember those times?”

She snorted. “Mr. Reporter, I may be old, but I ain’t dumb. My eyesight may not be as good as it once was, but my memory is fine. And how in the Lord’s name would I ever forget those days, after all that’s come and passed since?”

“Well, that’s why I’m here.”

She squinted down at him through the porch shade. “You sure you’re here to help Bobby Earl?”

“Yes, ma’am. As best as I can.”

“How’re you gonna help him? What can you do that that sharp-talking lawyer cain’t do?”

“Write a story for the paper.”

“Papers already written a whole lot of stories about Bobby Earl. They mostly helped put him in the Death Row there, best as I can figure it.”

“I don’t think this would be the same.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t have a ready answer for that question. After a moment, he replied, “Look, Mrs. Ferguson, ma’am, I can hardly make things worse. And I still need some answers if I’m going to help.”

The old woman smiled at him again. “That’s true. All right, Mr. Reporter. Ask your questions.”

“On the day of the little girl’s murder . . .”

“He was right here with me. All day. Didn’t go out, except in the morning to catch some fish. Bass. I remember because we fried them for dinner that night.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Where was he to go?”

“Well, he had his ear.”

“And I’da heard it if he started it up and drove off. I ain’t deaf. He didn’t go nowheres that day.”

“Did you tell this to the police?”

“Sure did.”

“And?”

“They didn’t believe me. They said, ‘Emma Mae, you sure he didn’t slip away in the afternoon? You sure he didn’t leave your sight? Mebbe you took a nap or somethin’.’ But I didn’t, and I tole them so. Then they tole me I was just plain wrong and they got angry and they went off. I never saw them much again.”

“What about Robert Earl’s attorney?”

“Asked the same damn questions. Same damn answers. Didn’t believe me none, either. Said I had too much reason to lie, to cover up for that boy. That was true. He was my darlin’ gal’s boy and I loved him plenty. Even when he went off’n to New Jersey and then came back all street tough and talking trash and actin’ so hard, I still loved him fine. And he was doing good, too, mind you. He was my college boy. Can you imagine that, Mr. White Reporter? You look around you. You think a lot of us get to go to college? Make somethin’ of ourselves? How many you figure?”

She snorted again and waited for an answer, which he didn’t offer. After a moment, she continued. “That was true. My boy. My best boy. My pride. Sure I’da lied for him. But I didn’t. I’m a believer in Jesus, but to save my boy I’da hopped up to the devil hisself and spat in his eye. I just never got the chance, ’cause they didn’t believe in me, no sir.”

“But the truth is?”

“He was here with me.”

“And the next day?”

“Here with me.”

“And when the police came?”

“He was right outside, polishing that old car of his. Didn’t give them no lip. No trouble. Just yes sir, no sir and went right along. See what it did for him?”

“You sound angry.”

The small woman pitched forward in the chair, her entire body rigid with emotion. She slapped her palms down hard on the arms of the rocker, making two pistol shots that echoed in the clear morning air.

“Angry? Y’all asking me if I’m angry? They done tore my boy from me and sent him away so they’s can kill him. I ain’t got the words in me to tell you about no anger. I ain’t got the evil in me that I could say what I really and truly feel.”

She got up out of the chair and started to walk back inside. “I ain’t got nothing but hate and bitter empty left, Mr. Reporter. You write that down good.”

Then she disappeared into the shack’s shadows, clacking the door shut hard behind her, leaving Matthew Cowart scribbling her words into his notepad.

It was noontime when he arrived at the school. It was very much the way he had pictured it, a solid, unimaginative cinder-block building with an American flag hanging limply in the humid air outside. There were yellow school buses parked around the side and a playground with swings and basketball hoops and a fine covering of dust in back. He parked and approached the school, slowly feeling the wave of children’s voices rise up and carry him forward. It was the lunch hour and there was a certain contained mayhem within the double doors. Children quickstepped about, clutching paper bags or lunch boxes, buzzing with conversation. The walls of the school were decorated with their artwork, splashes of color and shape arranged in displays, with small signs explaining what the artwork represented. He stared at the pictures for an instant, reminded of all the drawings and colored paper and glue montages he was forever receiving in the mail from his own daughter and which now decorated his office. He pushed past, heading through a vestibule toward a door marked ADMINISTRATION. It swung open as he approached and he saw two girls exit, giggling together in great secret animation. One was black, the other white. He watched them disappear down a corridor. His eyes caught a small framed picture hanging on a wall, and he went over to look at it.

It was a little girl’s picture. She had blonde hair, freckles, and a wide smile, displaying a mouth filled with braces. She wore a clean white shirt with a gold chain around her neck. He could read the name “Joanie” stamped in thin letters in the center of the chain. There was a small plaque beneath the picture. It read:

Joanie Shriver

1976–1987

Our Friend and Beloved Classmate

She will be missed by all

He added the picture on the wall to all the mental observations he was accumulating. Then he turned away and walked inside the school’s office.

A middle-aged woman with a slightly harried air looked up from behind a counter. “Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m looking for Amy Kaplan.”

“She was just here. Is she expecting you?”

“I spoke with her on the phone the other day. My name is Cowart. I’m from Miami.”

“You’re the reporter?”

He nodded.

“She said you were going to be here. Let me see if I can find her.” There was a note of bitterness in the woman’s voice. She did not smile at Cowart.

The woman stood up and walked across the office, disappearing for an instant into the faculty lounge, then reemerging with a young woman. Cowart saw she was pretty, with a sweep of auburn hair pushed back from an open, smiling face.

“I’m Amy Kaplan, Mr. Cowart.”

They shook hands.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch.”

She shrugged. “Probably the best time. Still, like I said on the telephone, I’m not sure what I can do for you.”

“The car,” he said. “And what you saw.”

“You know, it’s probably best if I show you where I was standing. I can explain it there.”

They walked outside without saying anything. The young teacher stood by the front of the school and turned, pointing down a roadway. “See,” she said, “we always have a teacher out here, checking on the kids after school. It used to be mostly to make sure the boys don’t get into fights and the girls head straight home, instead of hanging around and gossiping. Kids do that, you know, more’n anybody it seems. Now, of course, there’s another reason to be out here.”

She looked over at him, eyeing him for an instant. Then she went on. “. . . Anyway, on the afternoon Joanie disappeared, just about everyone had cleared off and I was about to go back inside, when I spotted her, down by the big willow over there. . . .” She pointed perhaps fifty yards down the road. Then she put her hand to her mouth and hesitated.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Cowart said.

He watched the young woman fixing her eyes on the spot down the road as if she could see it all again, in her memory, in that moment. He saw her lip quiver just the slightest bit, but she shook her head to tell him she was all right.

“It’s okay. I was young. It was my first year. I remember, she saw me and turned and waved, that’s how I knew it was her.” Some of the firmness of her voice had slid away in the heat.

“And?”

“She walked just under the shadows there, right past the green car. I saw her turn, I guess because somebody’d said something to her, and then the door opened, and she got inside. The car pulled away.”

The young woman took a deep breath. “She just got right in. Damn.” She whispered the swearword under her breath. “Just right in, Mr. Cowart, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Sometimes I still see her, in my dreams. Waving at me. I hate it.”

Cowart thought of his own nightmares and wanted to turn to the young woman and tell her that he, too, didn’t sleep at night. But he didn’t.

“That’s what’s always bothered me,” Amy Kaplan continued. “I mean, in a way, if she’d been grabbed and struggled or called for help or something . . .” The woman’s voice was broken with remembered emotion. “. . . I might have done something. I’d have screamed and maybe run after her. Maybe I could have fought or done something. I don’t know. Something. But it was just a regular May afternoon. And it was so hot, I wanted to get back inside, so I didn’t really look.”

Cowart stared down the street, measuring distances. “It was in the shadows?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re sure it was green. Dark green?”

“Yes.”

“Not black?”

“You sound like the detectives and the attorneys. Sure, it could have been black. But my heart and my memory say dark green.”

“You didn’t see a hand, pushing open the door from inside?”

She hesitated. “That’s a good question. They didn’t ask that. They asked me if I saw the driver. He would have had to lean across to open the door. I couldn’t see him. . . .” She strained with recall. “No. No hand. Just the door swinging open.”

“And the license plates?”

“Well, you know, Florida plates have that orange outline of the state on a white background. All I really noticed was that these were darker and from somewhere else.”

“When did they show you Robert Earl Ferguson’s car?”

“They just showed me a picture, a couple of days later.”

“You never saw the car itself?”

“Not that I recall. Except on the day she disappeared.”

“Tell me about the picture.”

“There were a couple, like taken by an instant camera.”

“What view?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What angle did they take the pictures from?”

“Oh, I see. Well, they were from the side.”

“But you saw the car from the back.”

“That’s right. But the color was right. And the shape was the same. And . . .”

“And what?”

“Nothing.”

“You would have seen the brake lights when the car took off. When the driver put it into gear, the brake lights would have flashed. Would you remember what shape they were?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t ask me that.”

“What did they ask?”

“There wasn’t a lot. Not by the police. Not at the trial. I was so nervous, getting up there to testify, but it was all over in a few seconds.”

“What about the cross-examination?”

“He just asked me whether I was sure about the color, like you did. And I said I could be wrong, but I didn’t think so. That seemed to please him real well, and that was it.”

Cowart looked down the roadway again, then at the young woman. She seemed resolved to the memories, her eyes staring off away from him.

“Do you think he did it?”

She breathed in and thought for an instant. “He was convicted.”

“But what do you think?”

She took a deep breath. “The thing that always bothered me was that she just got into the car. Didn’t seem to hesitate for an instant. If she didn’t know him, why, I can’t see why she’d do that. We try to teach the kids to be safe kids and smart kids, Mr. Cowart. We have classes in safety. In never trusting a stranger. Even here in Pachoula, though you might not believe it. We aren’t so backwoods backwards as you probably think. A lot of people come here from the city, like I did. There’s people here, too, professional people who commute down to Pensacola or over to Mobile, because this is a safe, friendly place. But the kids are taught to be safe. They learn. So I never understood that. It never made sense to me that she just got into that car.”

He nodded. “That’s a question I have, too,” he said.

She turned angrily toward him. “Well, the first damn person I’d ask is Robert Earl Ferguson.”

He didn’t reply, and in a moment she softened. “I’m sorry for snapping at you. We all blame ourselves. Everyone at the school. You don’t know what it was like, with the other children. Kids were afraid to come to school. When they got here, they were too afraid to listen. At home they couldn’t sleep. And when they did sleep, they had nightmares. Tantrums. Bed-wettings. Sudden bursts of anger or tears. The kids with discipline problems got worse. The kids who were withdrawn and moody got worse. The normal, everyday, ordinary kids had trouble. We had school meetings. Psychologists from the university came down to help the kids. It was awful. It will always be awful.”

She looked around her. “I don’t know, but it was like something broke here that day, and no one really knows if it can ever be fixed.”

They remained silent for an instant. Finally, she asked, “Have I helped?”

“Sure. Do you mind just one more question?” he replied. “And I might have to get back to you after I talk with some of the other people involved. Like the cops.”

“That’d be okay,” she said. “You know where to find me. Shoot.”

He smiled. “Just tell me what it was that went through your mind a couple of minutes ago, when we were talking about the pictures of the car, and you cut it off.”

She stopped and frowned. “Nothing,” she replied.

He looked at her.

“Oh, well, there was something.”

“Yes?”

“When the police showed me the pictures, they told me that they had the killer. That he’d confessed and everything. My identifying the car was just a formality, they said. I didn’t realize that it was so important until months later, just before the trial. That always bugged me, you know. They showed me pictures, said, ‘Here’s the killer’s car, right?’ And I looked at them and said, ‘Sure.’ I don’t know, it always bothered me they did it that way.”

Cowart didn’t say anything but thought, It bothers me, too.

A newspaper story is a compilation of moments, accumulated in quotations, in the shift of a person’s eyes, in the cut of their clothes. It adds in words the tiny observations of the reporter, what he sees, how he hears. It is buttressed by the past, by a sturdy foundation of detail. Cowart knew that he needed to acquire more substance, and he spent the afternoon reading newspaper clippings in the library of the Pensacola News. It helped him to understand the unique frenzy that had overtaken the town when the little girl’s mother had called the police to say that her daughter hadn’t come home from school. There had been a small-town explosion of concern. In Miami, the police would have told the mother that they couldn’t do anything for twenty-four hours. And they would have assumed that the girl was a runaway, fleeing from a beating, from a stepfather’s sexual advances, or into the arms of some boyfriend, hanging out by the high school in a new black Pontiac Firebird.

Not in Pachoula. The local police started cruising the streets immediately, searching for the girl. They had ridden with bullhorns, calling her name, up the back roads surrounding the town. The fire department had assisted, sirens starting up and wailing throughout the quiet May evening. Telephones started ringing in all the residential neighborhoods. Word had spread with alarming swiftness up and down each side street. Small groups of parents had gathered and started walking the backyards, all searching for little Joanie Shriver. Scouts were mobilized. People left their businesses early to join in the search. As the long early-summer night started to slide down, it must have seemed as if the whole town was outside, hunting for the child.

Of course, she was already dead then, he thought. She was dead the moment she stepped off the curb into that car.

The search had continued with spotlights and a helicopter brought in that night from the state police barracks near Pensacola. It had buzzed, its rotors throbbing, its spotlight probing the darkness, past midnight. In the first morning light, tracker dogs were brought in and the hunt had widened. By noontime the town had gathered itself like an army camp preparing itself for a long march, all documented by the arrival of television cameras and newspaper reporters.

The little girl’s body had been discovered in the late afternoon by two firemen diligently searching the edge of the swamp, walking through the sucking ooze in hip waders, swatting at mosquitoes and calling the little girl’s name. One of the men had spotted a flash of blonde hair at the edge of the water, just caught by the dying light.

He imagined the news must have savaged the town, just as surely as the girl’s body had been savaged. He realized two things: To be picked up for questioning in the death of Joanie Shriver was to have stepped into the center of a whirlwind; and the pressure on the two police detectives to catch the killer had to have been immense. Perhaps, he thought, unbearably immense.

Hamilton Burns was a small, florid, gray-haired man. His voice, like so many others in Pachoula, tinged with the rhythmic locutions of the South. It was late in the day, and as he motioned to Matthew Cowart to sit in an overstuffed red leather chair, he mentioned something about the “sun being over the yardarm,” and fixed himself a tumbler of bourbon after magically producing a bottle from a bottom desk drawer. Cowart shook his head when the bottle was proffered in his direction. “Need a bit of ice,” Burns said, and he went to a corner of the small office, where a half-sized refrigerator stacked high with legal documents occupied some precious floor space. Cowart noticed that he limped as he walked. He looked around the office. It was paneled in wood, with legal books filling one wall. There were several framed diplomas and a testimonial from the local Knights of Columbus. There were a few pictures of a grinning Hamilton Burns arm in arm with the governor and other politicians.

The lawyer took a long pull at his glass, sat back, swiveling in his seat behind the desk opposite Cowart and said, “So y’all want to know about Robert Earl Ferguson. What can I tell you? I think he’s got a shot on appeal for a new trial, especially with that old sonuvabitch Roy Black handling his case.”

“On what issue?”

“Why, that damn confession, what else? Judge shoulda suppressed the shit out of it.”

“We’ll get to that. Can you start by telling me how you came into the case?”

“Oh, court appointment. Judge calls me up, asks me if I’ll handle it. Regular public defenders were overburdened, like always. I guess a little too hot for ’em, anyway. Folks was screaming for that boy’s neck. I don’t think they wanted any part of Ferguson. No sir, no way.”

“And you took it?”

“When the judge calls, you answer. Hell, most of my cases are court appointed. I couldn’t rightly turn this one down.”

“You billed the court twenty thousand dollars afterwards.”

“It takes a lot of time to defend a killer.”

“At a hundred bucks an hour?”

“Hell, I lost money on the deal. Hell’s bells, it was weeks before anybody’d even talk to me again in this town. People acted like I was some kind of pariah. A Judas. All for representing that boy. Walk down the street, no more ‘Good morning, Mr. Burns.’ ‘Nice day, Mr. Burns.’ People’d cross the street to avoid talking to me. This is a small town. You figure out how much I lost in cases that went to other attorneys because I’d represented Bobby Earl. You figure that out before you go criticizing me for what I got.”

The attorney looked discomfited. Cowart wondered whether he thought it was he that had gotten convicted, instead of Ferguson.

“Had you ever handled a murder case before?”

“A couple.”

“Chair cases?”

“No. Mostly like domestic disputes. You know, husband and wife get to arguing and one of them decides to underscore their point with a handgun. . . .” He laughed. “That’d be manslaughter, murder two at worse. I handle a lot of vehicular homicides and the like. Councilman’s boy gets drunk and smashes up a car. But hell, defending somebody from a jaywalking charge and defending someone from murder’s the same in the long run. You got to do what you got to do.”

“I see,” Cowart said, writing quickly in his notepad and for the instant avoiding the eyes of the lawyer. “Tell me about the defense.”

“There ain’t that much to tell. I moved for a change of venue. Denied. I moved to suppress the confession. Denied. I went to Bobby Earl and said, ‘Boy, we got to plead guilty. First-degree murder. Go on down, take the twenty-five years, no parole. Save your life.’ That way, he’d still have some living left to do when he gets out. ‘No way,’ the boy says. Stubborn-like. Got that fuck-you kind of attitude. Keeps right on saying, ‘I didn’t do it.’ So what’s left for me? I tried to pick a jury that warn’t prejudiced. Good luck. Case went on. I argued reasonable doubt till I was fair blue in the face. We lost. What’s to tell?”

“How come you didn’t call his grandmother with an alibi?”

“Nobody’d believe her. You met that little old battle-ax? All she knows is her darling grandson is well-nigh perfect and wouldn’t hurt a flea. ’Course, she’s the only one that believes that. She gets on the stand and starts lying, things gonna be worse. Mighty worse.”

“I don’t see how they could be worse than what happened.”

“Well, that’s hindsight, Mr. Cowart, and you know it.”

“Suppose she was telling the truth?”

“She might be. It was a judgment call.”

“The car?”

“That damn teacher even admitted it could have been a different color. Sheeit. Said it right on the stand. I can’t understand why the jury didn’t buy it.”

“Did you know that the police showed her a picture of Ferguson’s car after telling her he’d confessed?”

“Say what? No. She didn’t say that when I deposed her.”

“She said it to me.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

The lawyer poured himself another drink and gulped at it. No, you won’t be, Cowart thought. But Ferguson will.

“What about the blood evidence?”

“Type O positive. Fits half the males in the county, I’d wager. I cross-examined the technicians on that, and why they didn’t type it down to its enzyme base better, or do genetic screening or some other fancy shit. Of course, I knew the answer: They had a match and they didn’t want to do something special that might screw it up. So, hell, it just seemed to fit. And there was Robert Earl, sitting there in the trial, squirming away, looking hangdog and guilty as sin. It just didn’t do no good.”

“The confession?”

“Shoulda been suppressed. I think they beat it out of that boy. I do, sir. That I do. But hell, once it was in, that was the whole ball of wax, if you know what I mean. Ain’t no juror gonna disagree with that boy’s own words. Every time they asked him, ‘Did ya’ll do this, or did y’all do that,’ and he answered, ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ All those yes, sirs. Couldn’t do much about them. That was all she wrote. I tried, sir, I tried my best. I argued reasonable doubt. I argued lack of conclusive evidence. I asked those jurors, Where is the murder weapon? Something that positively points at Bobby Earl. I told them you can’t just kill someone and not have some sort of mark on you. But he didn’t. I argued upside and downside, rightside and leftside, over, under, around, and through. I promise you, sir, I did. It just didn’t do any damn good. I kept looking over at those folks sitting in the box and I knew right away that it didn’t make no damn difference what I said. All they could hear was that damn confession. His own words just staring at him off the page. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Put himself right in that electric chair, he did, just like he was pulling up a seat at the dinner table. People here was mighty upset with what happened to that little girl and they wanted to like get it finished, get it over, get it all done with right fast, so they could go on living the way they was used to. And you couldn’t find two folks in this town who’d a got up and said a nice thing about that boy. Something about him, you know, attitude and all. No sir, no one liked him. Not even the black folks. Now I’m not saying there weren’t no prejudice involved . . .”

“All-white jury. You couldn’t find one black qualified?”

“I tried, sir. I tried. Prosecution just used their peremptory challenges to whack each and every one right off the panel.”

“Didn’t you object?”

“Objection overruled. Noted for the record. Maybe that’ll work on appeal.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“How so?”

“Well, what you’re saying is that Ferguson didn’t get a fair trial and that he may be innocent. And he’s sitting right now on Death Row.”

The lawyer shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Yeah, the trial, well, that’s right. But innocent. Hell, his own words. That damn confession.”

“But you said you believed they beat it out of him.”

“I do, sir. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I’m old-fashioned. I like to believe that if’n you didn’t do something, there’s nothing in the world’ll make you say you did. That bothers me.”

“Of course,” Cowart responded coldly, “the law is filled with examples of coerced and manipulated confessions, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Hundreds. Thousands.”

“That’s correct.”

The lawyer looked away, his face flushed red. “I guess. Of course, now what with Roy Black on the case, and now you’re here, maybe gonna write a little something that’ll wake up that trial judge or maybe something that the governor can’t miss, well, things have a way of working their ways right out.”

“It’ll work out?”

“Things do. Even justice. Takes time.”

“Well, it sounds like he didn’t have much of a chance the first time.”

“You asking me for my opinion?”

“Yes.”

“No, sir. No chance.”

Especially with you arguing his case, Cowart thought. More worried about your standing in Pachoula than putting someone on the Row.

The lawyer leaned back in his chair and swished his drink nervously around in his hand so that the bourbon and ice tinkled.

Night like impenetrable black water covered the town. Cowart moved slowly through the streets, stepping through the odd lights tossed from streetlamps or from storefront displays that remained lit. But these moments of dull brightness were small; it was as if with the sun falling, Pachoula gave itself over completely to the darkness. There was a country freshness in the air, a palpable quiet. He could hear his own footsteps as they slapped at the pavement.

He had difficulty falling asleep that night. Motel sounds—a loud, drunken voice, a creaking bed in the next room, a door slamming, the ice and soda machines being used—all intruded on his imagination, interrupting his sorting through of what he’d learned and what he’d seen. It was well past midnight when sleep finally buried him, but it was an awful rest.

In his dreams, he was driving a car slowly through the riot-lit streets of midnight Miami. Light from burning buildings caressed the car, tossing shadows across the front. He had driven slowly, maneuvering carefully to avoid broken glass and debris in the roadway, all the time aware he was closing in on the center of the riot but knowing that it was his job to see it and record it. As he had pulled the car around a corner, he spotted the dream mob, dancing, looting, racing through the flickering fire lights toward him. He could see the people shouting, and it seemed to him they were calling his name. Suddenly, in the car next to him, a piercing voice screamed, panic-stricken. He turned and saw that it was the little murdered girl. Before he could ask what was she doing there, the car was surrounded. He saw Robert Earl Ferguson’s face and suddenly felt dozens of hands pulling him from behind the wheel as the car was rocked, pitching back and forth as if it were a ship lost at sea in a hurricane. He saw the girl being pulled from the car, but as she slipped from his wild, grasping hands, her face changed terribly and he heard the words “Daddy, save me!”

He awakened, gasping for breath. He staggered from the bed, got himself a glass of water, and stared into the bathroom mirror as if looking for some visible wound, but seeing only a ridge of sweat plastering his hair by his forehead. Then he went back and sat by the window, remembering.

Some half-dozen years earlier, he had watched the frenzy as a mob pulled two teenage boys from a van. The boys had been white, the attackers black. The teenagers had unwittingly wandered into the riot area, gotten lost, tried to escape, only to drive themselves farther into the melee. I wish it were a dream, he thought. I wish I hadn’t been there. The crowd had surged about the screaming youths, pushing and pulling them, tossing them about until finally they had both disappeared beneath a siege of kicking feet and pummeling fists, crushed down by rocks, shot by pistols. He had been a block distant, not close enough to be a helpful eyewitness for the police, just close enough to never forget what he saw. He had been hiding in the lee of a burning building beside a photographer who kept clicking pictures and cursing that he didn’t have a long lens. They waited through the deaths, finally seeing the two mangled bodies abandoned in the street. He had run then, when the mob had finished and had poured in another direction, back to his car, trying to escape the same fate, knowing he would never escape the vision. Many people had died that night.

He remembered writing his story in the newsroom, as helpless as the two young men he’d seen die, trapped by the images that slid from him onto the page.

But at least I didn’t die, he thought.

Just a tiny part of me.

He shuddered again, turned it into a shrug, and rose, stretching and flexing his muscles as if to reinvigorate himself. He needed to be alert, he admonished himself. Today he would interview the two detectives. He wondered what they would say. And whether he could believe any of it.

Then he went to the shower, as if by letting the water flow steadily over him, he could cleanse his memory as well.