26

THE BRIAR PATCH

They crossed the Alabama border into Escambia County, moving fast as the Gulf evening crowded them toward night. The southern sky had lost its eggshell-blue vibrancy, replaced by a dirty gray-brown threat of bad weather streaking the horizon. An unsettled hot wind gusted about them, sucking and pulling with occasional bursts at the car windows, stripping away the residual cold and damp they felt from the Northeast. They cut past dust-streaked farms and stands of tall pine trees, whose towering, erect bearing reminded Cowart of spectators rising in a stadium at the moment of tension. Their speed underwrote the doubts they all felt. They all felt an urgency, a need to rush ahead, uncertainty shadowing their path. The countryside hurtled past them; there hardly seemed enough space to breathe on the narrow roadway. Cowart grabbed at the armrest when they bore down on an ancient school bus, painted a gleaming snow white, bouncing and jiggling slowly down the one-lane road. Tanny Brown had to push hard on the brake to keep from slamming into the back end. Cowart looked up and saw, hand-lettered on the back of the bus over the emergency-exit door, in a flowing, joyously enthusiastic bright red script, the words: STILL TIME TO WELCOME YOUR SAVIOR!

And, below that, in slightly smaller but equally florid writing: NEW REDEMPTION BAPTIST CHURCH, PACHOULA, FLA.

And finally, on the bumper, an exhortation in large, bubbling letters: FOLLOW ME TO JESUS!

Cowart rolled down his window and could just make out the thunderous voices of the church choir bursting beyond the heat, above the grinding and groaning of the bus engine. He strained his hearing but couldn’t make out the words of the hymn they were singing, though elusive strands of music poked at him.

Tanny Brown jabbed the steering wheel of the rental car, punching the gas pedal simultaneously. With a quick thrust, they maneuvered past the bus. Cowart stared up and saw dozens of black people, swaying and clapping to both the rocky ride and the energy of the singing. The sound of their voices was swept away by speed and distance.

They continued through the growing darkness. The weakening light seemed to blur the straight edges of the houses and barns, made the twisting road they traveled less distinct, almost infirm.

“Jesus works overtime in this county,” Brown said. “Gathering in the souls.”

Brown had driven silently, unable to shake a memory that had crashed unbidden into his thoughts. A wartime moment, horrible yet ordinary: He’d been in country seven months, and his platoon had been crossing an open area; it was near the end of the day, they were close to camp, they were hot, filthy, tired, and probably thinking more of what was waiting for them, which was food, rest, and another uncomfortable, breathless night, than paying attention, which made them immensely vulnerable. So, in retrospect, it shouldn’t have come as a great surprise when the air had been sliced by the single sound of a sniper’s weapon, and one of the men, the man walking the point, had dropped with a suddenness that Brown thought was as if some irritated god had reached down and tripped the unsuspecting man capriciously.

The man had called out, high-pitched with fear and pain, Help me! Please.

Tanny Brown hadn’t moved. He had known the sniper was waiting in concealment for someone to go to the wounded man. He had known what would happen if he went. So he had remained frozen, hugging the earth, thinking, I want to live, too. He had stayed that way until the platoon leader had called in an artillery strike on the line of trees where the sniper hid. Then, after the forest had been smashed and splintered with a dozen high-explosive rounds, he’d gone to the wounded man.

He was a white boy from California and had been in the platoon only a week. Brown had hovered above him, staring at the man’s ravaged, hopeless chest, trying to remember his name.

He had been his last wounded man. And he had died.

A week later, Brown had rotated home, his tour of duty cut short as it was for many medics. Back to Florida State University, the criminal justice training program, and finally a spot on the force. He hadn’t been the first black to join the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, but it had been tacitly understood that he would be the first to amount to anything. He’d had much going for him: Local boy. Football star. War hero. State-college diploma. Old attitudes eroding like rocks turned to sand by the constant pounding of the surf.

He felt a tinge of guilt. He realized he’d often heard the memory cries of wounded men, but they had always been the cries of men he’d saved. They were easy voices to recall, he thought. They remind you that you were doing something right in the midst of all that wrong. This was the first time he’d thought of that last man’s cry.

Did Bruce Wilcox cry for help? he wondered. I left him, too.

He realized that he would have to tell Wilcox’s family. Luckily, there was no wife, no steady girlfriend. He remembered a sister, married to a career naval officer stationed in San Diego. Wilcox’s mother was dead, he knew, and his father lived alone in a retirement home. There were dozens of old-age homes in Escambia County; it was a veritable growth industry. He recalled his few meetings with Wilcox’s father: a rigid, harsh old man. He hates the world already. This will simply add to it. Abrupt fury creased his thoughts: What do I say? That I lost him? That I put him on a stakeout with an inexperienced detective from Monroe County and he vanished? Presumed dead? Missing in action? It’s not like he was swallowed up by some jungle.

But he realized it was.

He flicked on the car’s headlights. They immediately caught the small, red pinprick eyes of an opossum, poised by the side of the road, seemingly intent on challenging the car’s wheels. He held the wheel steady, watching the animal, which, at the last moment, twitched and dove back into a ditch and safety.

In that moment he wished that he, too, could dive for cover.

No chance, he told himself.

Not long after, he pulled the car into the parking lot of the Admiral Benbow Inn on the outskirts of Pachoula and deposited Cowart and Shaeffer on the sidewalk, where their faces were lit by a gleaming white sign bright enough to catch the attention of drivers heading up the interstate. “I’ll be back,” he said cryptically.

“What’re you going to do?”

“Arrange backup. You don’t think we should go get him alone, do you?”

Cowart thought about what Brown had said up in Newark. It had not occurred to him that they might seek assistance. “I guess not.”

Shaeffer interrupted. “What time?”

“Early. I’ll pick you up before dawn. Say, five-fifteen.”

“And then?”

“We’ll go out to his grandmother’s place. I think that’s where he’ll be. Maybe we’ll catch him asleep. Get lucky.”

“If not?” she asked. “Suppose he’s not there. Then what?”

“Then we start looking harder. But I think that’s exactly where he’ll be.”

She nodded. It seemed simple and impossible at the same time.

“Where’re you going now?” Cowart asked again.

“I told you. Arrange backup. Maybe file some reports. I definitely want to check on my family. I’ll see you here just before the sun comes up.”

Then he put the car in gear and accelerated swiftly away, leaving the reporter and the young detective standing on the sidewalk like a pair of tourists adrift in a strange country. For a moment, he glanced in the rearview mirror, watching the two before they moved into the motel lobby. They seemed small, hesitant. He turned the car, and they dropped away from his sight. He felt an unraveling starting within him, as if something wound tight was beginning to work loose. He could feel bitterness welling inside him as well, taste it on his tongue. The night swept around him, and for the first time in days he felt quiet. He let the reporter and the detective fall from his thoughts, not completely, but just enough to allow his own anger freer rein. He drove hard, rapidly, hurrying but heading nowhere specific. He had absolutely no intention of filing any reports or arranging for any backup officers. He told himself, The accountancy of death can wait.

Cowart and Shaeffer checked into the motel and headed into the restaurant to get something to eat. Neither felt particularly hungry but it was the proper hour, so it seemed the natural thing to do. They ordered from a waitress who seemed uncomfortable in a starched blue-and-white outfit perhaps a size too small for her that pulled tightly across her ample chest, and who seemed only mildly interested in taking their order. As they waited, Cowart looked across at Shaeffer and realized that he knew almost nothing about her. He realized as well that it had been a long time since he’d sat across from a young woman. The detective was actually attractive behind the razor-blade personality she projected. He thought, If this were Hollywood, we would have found some intense common emotion in everything that had happened and fall into each other’s arms. He wanted to smile. Instead, he thought, I’ll be satisfied if she simply converses with me. He wasn’t even sure she would do that.

“Not much like the Keys, huh?” he said.

“No.”

“Did you grow up down there?”

“Yes. More or less. Born in Chicago but went down there when I was young.”

“What made you become a police officer?”

“This an interview? You going to put this in a story?”

Cowart waved a hand at her dismissively but realized she was probably right. He probably would put every small detail he could into the story, when he got around to describing all that had happened.

“No. Just trying to be civil. You don’t have to answer. We could sit here in silence and that would be fine with me.”

“My father was a policeman. A Chicago detective until he got shot. After his death we moved to the Keys. Like refugees, I guess. I thought I might like police work, so I signed up after college. In the blood, I suppose you might say. There you have it.”

“How long have you . . .”

“Two years in patrol cars. Six months working robbery-burglary. Three months in major crimes. There. That’s the history.”

“Were the Tarpon Drive killings your first important case?”

She shook her head. “No. And all homicides are important.”

She wasn’t sure whether he’d absorbed this company lie or spotted it, for he dropped his head to his salad, a chunk of iceberg lettuce with a single quarter of tomato glued to the side with Thousand Island dressing. He speared the tomato with a fork and held it up. “New Jersey Number Six,” he said.

“What?”

“Jersey tomatoes. Actually, it’s probably too early for them, but this one feels like it could be a year old, at least. You know what they do? Harvest them green, long before they’re ripe. That way they’re real firm, hard as a damn rock. When you slice them, they stay together. No seeds and oozing tomato flesh falling out, which is how the restaurants want them. Of course, nobody’d eat a green tomato, so they inject them with a red dye to make them look like the real thing. Sell them by the billions to fast-food places.”

She stared across the table at him. He’s babbling, she thought. Well, who could blame him? His life is in tatters. She looked at her hand. Maybe we have that in common.

They both sat silently for a few moments. The taciturn waitress brought their dinners and tossed the plates down in front of them. When she could stand it no longer, Andrea Shaeffer finally asked, “Just tell me what the hell you think is about to happen.”

Her voice was low, almost conspiratorial, but filled with a rough-edged insistence. Cowart pushed slightly back from the table and stared at her for an instant before replying. “I think we’re going to find Robert Earl Ferguson at his grandmother’s house.”

“And?”

“And I think Lieutenant Brown will arrest him for the murder of Joanie Shriver, again, even if it is useless. Or obstruction of justice. Or lying under oath. Or maybe as a material witness in Wilcox’s disappearance. Something. And then you and he are going to take everything we know and everything we don’t know and start to question him. And I’m going to write a story and then wait for the explosion.”

Cowart paused, looking at her. “At least he will be in hand and not out there doing whatever it is he’s doing. So he’ll be stopped.”

“And it’s going to be that easy, is it?”

Cowart shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Everything’s dangerous. Everything’s a risk.”

“I know that,” she said calmly. “I just wanted to be certain you knew it as well.”

Silence crept over them again, imposing itself on their thoughts for a few awkward moments before Cowart said, “This has happened quickly, hasn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems like a long time since Blair Sullivan went to the chair. But it’s only been days.”

“Would you rather it be longer?” she asked.

“No. I want it to end.”

Andrea Shaeffer started to say one thing, changed her mind, and asked another. “And what happens when it ends?”

Cowart didn’t hesitate. “I get the chance to go back to doing what I was doing, before all this started. Just a chance.”

He did not say what he thought was a more accurate answer: I get the chance to be safe.

He laughed sarcastically. “Of course, I’m probably going to get chewed up pretty bad in the process. So will Tanny Brown. Maybe you, too. But . . .” He shrugged, as if to say it no longer mattered, which was a lie, of course.

Shaeffer digested this. She thought people who wanted things to return to the way they were before were almost always hopelessly naive. And never happy with the results. Then she asked, “Do you trust Lieutenant Brown?”

Cowart hesitated. “I think he’s dangerous, if that’s what you mean. I think he’s close to the edge. I also think he’s going to do what he says.”

Cowart thought of adding to his statement, I think he’s filled with unmitigated fury and a hatred of his own. “But he didn’t get to where he is now by breaking rules. He got there by playing the game. Toeing the line. Behaving precisely the way people expected him to behave. He violated that once, when he let Wilcox beat that confession out of Ferguson. He won’t fall into that trap again.”

Shaeffer agreed. “I think he’s close to an edge, too. But he seems steady.” She wasn’t sure whether she believed this or not. She knew the same thing could be said of Cowart, and of herself as well.

“Makes no difference,” Cowart said abruptly.

“Why?”

“Because we’re all going to see this through to the end.”

The waitress came and removed their plates, inquiring whether they cared for dessert. Both refused and refused coffee as well. The waitress, remaining sullen, seemed to have anticipated their responses; she had already totaled their check and dropped it unceremoniously on the table between them. Shaeffer insisted on paying her half. They walked to their rooms without further conversation. They did not say good night to each other.

Andrea Shaeffer closed the door behind her and went straight to the bureau dresser in the small motel room. Images from the past few days, snatches of conversations, raced through her head, ratcheting about in a confusing, unsettling manner. But she steeled herself and started to act slowly, steadily. She placed her pocketbook down deliberately on the top and removed her nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. She released the clip of bullets from the handle, checking to make certain that it was fully loaded. She pulled back the action on the pistol as well, sighting down the barrel, making sure that all the moving parts were in working order. She reloaded the weapon and placed it down in front of her. Then she rummaged through the pocketbook, searching for her backup clip of bullets. She found this, checked it, then put it next to the gun.

For a few moments she stared down at the weapon.

She thought of hours spent practicing with the nine-millimeter. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department had set up a combat practice range on a deserted spot just below Marathon. It was a simple procedure; while she walked through a series of deserted buildings, little more than the cinder-block shells of homes bleached white by the constancy of sun, a range control officer electronically operated a series of targets. She’d been good at the procedure, scoring consistently in the nineties. But what she’d enjoyed the most was the electricity of the practice sessions, the demand to see a target, recognize it as friend or foe, and fire or hold fire accordingly. There was a sense of being totally involved, unconcerned by anything save the sun, the weight of the handgun in her hand, and the targets that appeared. In a killing zone. Comfortable, alone with the single task of proceeding through the course.

She looked down at the weapon again.

I’ve never fired except at a target, she thought.

She remembered the mist and cold of the streets in Newark.

It wasn’t like what she had expected. She had not even known that she was in combat in those moments. The people on the sidewalk, the threatening looks and motions, the hopeless pursuit through the streets. It was the first time it had been for real, for her. She gritted her teeth. She promised herself not to fail that test again.

She set the weapon down on the bed and reached for the telephone. She found Michael Weiss on her third try.

“Andy, hey!” he said quickly. “Jesus, am I glad to hear from you. What’s been happening? What about your bad guy?”

This question almost made her laugh.

“I was right,” she said. “This guy’s real wrong. I have to help this Escambia cop with an arrest, then I’ll be there.”

She could sense Weiss absorbing this cryptic statement. Before he could say anything, she added, “I’m back in Florida. I can get to Starke tomorrow, okay? I’ll fill you in then.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But don’t waste any more time. Guess what I came up with?”

“Murder weapon?”

“No such luck. But guess who made a dozen phone calls to his brother in the Keys in the month before the murder? And guess whose brand-new pickup truck got a speeding ticket on I-95 right outside Miami twenty-four hours before Mister Reporter finds those bodies?”

“The good sergeant?”

“You got it. I’m going over to the truck dealer tomorrow. Gonna find out just exactly how he purchased that new four-by-four. Red. With fat tires and a light bar. A redneck Ferrari.” Weiss laughed. “Come on, Andy, I’ve done all the legwork. Now I need your famous cold-hearted questioning technique to close the door on this guy. He’s the one. I can feel it.”

“I’ll get there,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

She hung up the telephone. Her eyes landed on the pistol resting beside her. She cleared her mind and picked up her handgun, and, cradling it in her arms, lay back on the bed, kicking off her shoes but remaining fully clothed. She told herself to get some sleep and closed her eyes, still holding the gun tight, slightly irritated with Matthew Cowart for perceiving the truth: that she was in this to the end.

Cowart locked the door behind him and sat on the side of the bed. For a few seconds he looked down at the telephone, half as if he expected it to ring. Finally he reached down and seized the receiver. He pushed button number eight to receive a long-distance line, then started to punch in his ex-wife and daughter’s number in Tampa. He touched nine of the eleven digits, then stopped.

He could think of nothing to say. He had nothing to add to what he’d told them in the early morning hours. He did not want to learn that they had not taken his advice and were still exposed and vulnerable, sitting in their fancy subdivision home. It was safer to imagine his daughter resting safely up in Michigan.

He disconnected the line, pushed number eight again, and dialed the number for the main switchboard at the Miami Journal. Talk to Will or Edna, he thought. The city editor or the managing editor or some copyboy. Just talk to someone at the paper.

“Miami Journal,” said a woman’s voice.

He didn’t reply.

“Miami Journal,” she said again, irritated. “Hello?”

The operator hung up abruptly, leaving him holding a silent telephone in his hands.

He thought of Vernon Hawkins and wondered for a moment how to dial heaven. Or maybe hell, he thought, trying to make a joke with himself. What would Hawkins say? He’d tell me to make it right, and then get on with life. The old detective had no time for fools.

Cowart looked at the telephone again. Shaking his head, as if refusing some order that had not been given, he held it back to his ear and dialed the number for the motel’s front desk.

“This is Mr., Cowart in room one-oh-one. I’d like to have a wake-up call at five A.M.”

“Yes, sir. Rising early?”

“That’s right.”

“Room one-oh-one at five A.M. Yes, sir.”

He hung up the phone and sat back on the bed. He felt a sickening amusement at the thought that in the entire world, the only person he could think of to talk with was the night clerk at a sterile motel. He put his head down and waited for the appointed hour to arrive.

The night draped itself around him like an ill-fitting suit. A cashmere heat and humidity filled the black air. Occasional streaks of lightning burst through the distant sky, as a big thunderstorm worked out in the Gulf, miles away, beyond the Pensacola shoreline. Tanny Brown thought it seemed as if some distant battles were taking place. Pachoula, however, remained silent, as if unaware of the immense forces that warred so close by. He turned his attention back to the quiet street he was riding down. He could see the school on his right, low-slung and unprepossessing in the darkness, waiting for the infusion of children that would bring it to life. He listened to the crunching sound the car tires made as he drove slowly past, and paused for an instant beneath the willow tree, looking back over his shoulder toward the school.

This is where it all started. It was right here she got into the car. Why did she do that? Why couldn’t she have seen the danger and run hard, back to safety? Or called out for help?

It was the age, he realized, the same for his own daughter. Old enough to be vulnerable to all the terrors of the world, but still young enough not to know about them. He thought of all the times he’d sat across from his daughter and Joanie Shriver and considered telling them the truth about what lurked out in the world, only to bite back the horrors that echoed in his head, preferring to give them another day, another hour, another minute or two of innocence and the freedom it brought.

You lose something when you know, he thought.

He remembered the first time someone had spat the word “nigger” at him, and the lesson that had gone with it. He’d been five years old and he’d gone home in tears. He’d been comforted by his mother, who’d made him feel better, but she hadn’t been able to tell him that it would never happen again. He had known something was lost for him, from that moment on. You learn about evil slowly but surely, he thought. Prejudice. Hatred. Compulsion. Murder. Each lesson tears away a bit of the hopefulness of youth.

He put the car in gear and drove the few blocks to the Shriver house. There were lights on in the kitchen and living room and for an instant, he considered walking up to the front door and going inside. He would be welcomed, he knew. They would offer him coffee, perhaps something to eat. Once we were friends, but no longer. Now I am nothing to them except a reminder of terrible things. They would show him to a seat in the living room, then they would politely wait for him to tell them why he had come by, and he would be forced to concoct something vaguely official-sounding. He would be unable to tell them anything real about what had taken place because he was unsure himself what the reality was.

And finally, he realized, they would get to talking about their daughter, and they would say that they missed seeing his own child come around, and this would be too hard to hear. It would all be too hard to hear.

But he waited outside, simply watching the house until the lights blinked off and whatever fitful sleep the Shrivers found late at night arrived.

He felt an odd invisibility, a liquid connectivity moving slowly through the black air. For a moment he considered the awful thought that Robert Earl Ferguson felt the same, moving through the darkness, letting it hide him from sight. Is that the way it is? he asked himself. He couldn’t answer his own question. He drove down streets he’d known since his childhood, streets that whispered of age and continuity, before bumping into the newer, suburban subdivisions that shouted of change and the future. He felt the texture of the town, almost like a farmer rubbing soil between his fingers. He found himself on his own street; he spotted a marked police cruiser parked halfway down the block and crunched to a stop behind it.

The uniformed officer jumped instantly from behind the wheel, hand on his weapon, the other wielding a flashlight which he shone in Tanny’s direction.

He got out of his car. “It’s me, Lieutenant Brown,” he said quietly.

The young officer approached him. “Jesus, Lieutenant, you scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry. Just checking.”

“You heading inside, sir? Want me to take off?”

“No. Stay. I have some other business to attend to.”

“No problem.”

“See anything unusual?”

“No, sir. Well, yes, sir, one thing, but probably nothing. Late-model dark Ford. Out-of-state plates. Rolled by twice about an hour ago. Slow-like, as if he was watching me. Shoulda got the plate numbers, but missed them. Thought I’d go after him, but he didn’t come by again. That’s all. No big deal.”

“You see the driver?”

“No, sir. First time, I didn’t really notice. Just paid attention, like, the second time he rolled on by. That’s what got my attention. Probably nothing to it. Somebody down visiting relatives got lost, more’n likely.”

Tanny Brown looked at the young policeman and nodded. He felt no fear, just a cold understanding that maybe death had slowly cruised past.

“Yes. More than likely. But you stay alert, all right?”

“Yes, sir. I’m gonna be relieved in a half hour or so. I’ll make sure whoever shows gets the word about the Ford.”

Tanny Brown lifted his hand to his forehead, as if in salute, and returned to his own car. He looked once toward his house. The lights were off. School night, he thought. A wave of domestic responsibilities burst over him. He realized much of his life had been obscured by the pursuit of Robert Earl Ferguson. He did not feel guilty about this; it was in the nature of police work to reach an agreement with obsession, shutting off the normalcy of life. He felt a surge of comfort. Good for you, Dad. Make them get their homework done early, shut off the damn television before they can complain too hard, and get them into bed.

For an instant, he wanted to go inside and peer down at the sleeping faces of his daughters, perhaps look in on the old man, who was probably snoring in a lounge chair, a whiskey dream in his head. The old man often took a glass or two after the girls were asleep; it helped fog the pain of arthritis. On occasion, Tanny Brown joined his father in a glass, his own pains sometimes needing similar blocking. He found a smile on his own face, a satisfaction of domesticity. For an instant he imagined his dead wife beside him in the car, and he had half a mind to talk to her.

What would I say? he asked himself.

That I haven’t done all that badly, he thought. But now I need to put things right. Put the broken things back together as best as I can.

Make it all safe again.

He nodded and steered the car away from the curb. He drove away, passing through familiar routes, past remembered places. He could sense Ferguson’s presence like some bad smell lingering over the town. He felt better moving about, as if by staying alert he served as some sort of shield. He did not even consider sleep; instead he traveled up and down through the roads of his memory, waiting for enough of the night to end so he would be able to see clearly enough to do whatever he had to do.