'Damn, Cowart whispered.
'We don't know anything for certain about her, Brown interjected. 'It's really speculation…'
Cowart rose, shaking his head. He went over to his suit coat and extricated the computer printouts that he had been ferrying about. He handed them to Brown, who swiftly read them.
'What are those?' Shaeffer asked.
'Nothing, Brown replied, frustration creeping into his voice. He crumpled the pages together, then handed them back. 'So he was there?'
'He was there.'
'But there's still nothing against him.'
'No body, you mean. Though, judging from what she said, I suspect that girl's body is somewhere in the Everglades, close to the county line.'
'Right.' Cowart turned to Shaeffer. 'See, that's two.
Two so far…'
'Three, Brown added quietly. 'A little girl in Eatonville. Disappeared a few months back.'
Cowart stared hard at the policeman. 'You didn't…' he started.
Brown shrugged.
Cowart, hands quivering with anger, picked up his notepad. 'He was in Eatonville about six months ago. At the Christ Our Savior Presbyterian Church. Gave his speech about Jesus. Is that when…'
'No, sometime later.'
'Damn,' Cowart said again.
'He went back. He must have gone back when he knew no one would be looking.'
'Sure he did. But how do you prove it?'
'I'll prove it.'
'Great. Why didn't you tell me?' Cowart's voice cracked with rage.
Brown replied with equal fury. 'Tell you? So you can do what? So you can put it in the damn paper before I've got a chance to get somewhere on the case? Before I've had a chance to check every small black town in Florida? You want me to tell you so you can tell the world and save your reputation?'
'Get somewhere! How many people are going to die while you put together a case? If you can put together a case!'
'And what the hell will be accomplished by putting it in the newspaper?'
It'd work! It'd smoke him out!'
'More like it would just warn him so he'd start being even more careful.'
'No. Everybody else would be warned…'
'Yeah, so he'd change his pattern and there's not a courtroom in the world I'd ever get him into.'
Both men had moved to their feet, eyes locked, poised as if about to come to blows. Shaeffer held up her hand, cutting the two men off. 'Are you both crazy?' she asked loudly. 'Are you out of your minds?
Haven't you shared any information? What's the point of secrets?'
Cowart looked at her and shook his head. The point is, no one ever tells everything. Especially the truth.'
'How many people are dead because…' she started, then cut herself off. She realized that she herself possessed information that she was reluctant to share. Cowart caught it, though.
'What are you hiding, Detective? What do you know you don't want to talk about?'
She realized she had no choice.
'Sullivan's parents,' she said. 'Ferguson was right. He didn't do it.'
'What?'
She described everything Michael Weiss had told her: the Bible, the guard, the brother.
Cowart looked surprised, and then shook his head. 'Rogers, he said. 'Who'd have thought it?' It wasn't nonsense, though. Rogers seemed to be into everything at Starke. Nothing would have been easier for him, but yet…' One thing I don't understand,' said Cowart. 'If it was really Rogers, then why did Sullivan spend all that time implicating Ferguson in the murder to me, while at the same time writing Rogers' name in that Bible?'
Brown shrugged. 'Best way to guarantee someone gets away with murder. Multiple suspects. Tell you one thing. Point some other evidence another direction. Wait until some defense attorney gets ahold of that. But mostly, I think he did it because he was a sick man, Cowart. Sick and full of mischief. It was just his way of dragging down everybody into the same hell that awaited him: you, Ferguson, Rogers… and three cops he didn't even know.'
Everyone was silent for a moment. 'So maybe Rogers did it, and maybe he didn't,' Cowart said. 'Right now, old Sully must be down there laughing his damned head off.' He shook his head again. 'So what does it mean?'
'It means, Shaeffer spoke up, 'that we can forget about Sullivan. Forget his mind games. Let's worry about Ferguson and his victims. Three, you think?'
'He made seven trips south. Seven we know about.'
'Seven?'
Cowart lifted his arms in surrender. 'We don't know when it was for research, when he went for action. What we do know is – Christ! – What we suspect is -three little girls. One white. Two black. And Bruce Wilcox.'
'Four, she said quietly.
'Four, Tanny Brown said heavily. He stood, as if insisting that fatigue was something wrong, and began pacing about the small room like a prisoner in a cell. 'Can't you see what he's doing?' he said abruptly.
'What?'
Brown's voice carried an urgency that seemed to quiver in the small room. He looked at the young detective. 'What is it we do? A crime occurs and our first assumption is that, while unique, it will still fit directly into a clear-cut, recognizable category. Ultimately, we figure it will be typical of a hundred others, just like it. That's what we're taught, what we expect. So we go out and look for the usual suspects. The same suspects that ninety-nine times turn out to be the right ones. We process everything at the crime scene, hoping that some bit of hair or blood spatter or fiber sample will point right at one of the people on the short list. We do this because the alternative is so terrifying: that someone unconnected to anything except murder has walked onto the scene. Someone you don't know, that nobody knows, that may not be within a hundred or a thousand miles of the crime anymore. And did it for some reason so warped that you can't even contemplate it, much less understand it. Because if that's the case, you've got a chance in a million of making a case and maybe not even that. That's why we went to Ferguson in the first go-round, when little Joanie was killed. Because we had a crime and he was on the short list…'
Brown looked at Shaeffer and then toward Cowart. 'But now, you see, he's figured that out.'
The detective hunched forward, slapping a fist into a palm to accentuate his words. 'He's figured out that distance helps keep him safe, that when he arrives in some little town to kill, no one should know him. No one will pay any attention to him. And no one will make him when he grabs his victim. And who does he grab? He learned what happens when he snatched a little white girl. So now he goes to places where the police aren't quite as sophisticated and the press isn't as aware, and grabs a little black girl, because that ain't hardly going to get anyone's attention, not the same way Joanie Shriver did. So he goes and does these things, then he comes back up here and returns to school and there ain't nobody looking for him, 'Nobody.'
Brown paused before adding, 'Nobody now, except us three.'
'And Wilcox?' Cowart asked.
