'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 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 the 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.'
