made you pick up Ferguson and then I want to know about that confession. And don't leave anything out. Isn't that what you'd say to someone whose statement you were about to take?'
Tanny Brown settled his large body into the chair and smiled, but not because he was pleased. 'Yes, that's what I would say,' he answered. He spun about in the chair, thinking, but all the time eyeing Cowart steadily.
'Robert Earl Ferguson was at the top of the short list of prime suspects from the first minute the girl was discovered.'
'Why?'
'He had been a suspect in other assaults.'
'What? I've never heard that before. What other assaults?'
'A half-dozen rapes in Santa Rosa County, and over the 'Bama border near Atmore and Bay Minette.'
'What evidence do you have that he was involved in other assaults?'
Brown shook his head. 'No evidence. He physically fits the best description we could piece together, working with detectives in those communities. And the rapes all corresponded to times when he was out of school, on vacation, visiting that old grandmother of his.'
'Yes, and?'
'And that's it.'
Cowart was silent for an instant. 'That's it? No forensic evidence to tie him to those assaults? I presume you did show his picture to the women.'
'Yes. Nobody could make him.'
'And the hair you found in his car – the one that didn't match Joanie Shriver's – you ran comparisons with the victims in those other cases?'
'Yes.'
'And?'
'No matchups.'
'The modus operandi in the other attacks was the same as in the Shriver abduction?'
'No. Each of the other cases had some similarities, but aspects that were different as well. A gun was used to threaten the victims in a couple of cases, a knife in others. A couple of women were followed home. One was out jogging. No consistent pattern that we could determine.'
'Were the victims white?' Cowart asked.
'Yes.'
'Were they young, like Joanie Shriver?'
'No. They were all adults.'
Cowart paused, considering, before continuing his questions.
'You know, Lieutenant, what the FBI statistics on black-on-white rape are?'
'I know you're going to tell me.'
Cowart surged on. 'Less than four percent of the cases reported nationwide. It's a rarity, despite all the stereotyping and paranoia. How many black-on-white cases have you had in Pachoula before Robert Earl Ferguson?'
'None that I can recall. And don't lecture me about stereotypes.' Brown eyed Cowart. Wilcox shifted about in his seat angrily.
'Statistics don't mean anything,' he added quietly.
'No?' Cowart asked. 'Okay. But he was home on vacation.'
'Right.'
'And nobody liked him much. That I've learned.'
'That's correct. He was a snide rat bastard. Looked down at folks.'
Cowart stared at the policeman. 'You know how silly that sounds? An unpopular person comes to visit his grandmother and you want to make him on rape charges. No wonder he didn't like it around here.'
Tanny Brown started to say something angry in reply, but then stopped. For a few seconds he simply watched Cowart, as if trying to burrow into him with his eyes. Finally he replied, slowly, 'Yes. I know how silly it sounds. We must be silly people.' His eyes had narrowed sharply.
Cowart leaned forward in his chair, speaking in his own, steady, unaffected voice. You've got no edge on me, he thought.
'But that's why you went to his grandmother's house first, looking for him?'
'That's right.'
Brown started to say something else, then closed his mouth abruptly. Cowart could feel the tension between the two of them and knew, in that moment, what the lieutenant had been prepared to say. So he said it for him. 'Because you had a feeling, right? That old policeman's sixth sense. A suspicion that you had to act on. That's what you were about to say, right?'
Brown glared at him.
'Right. Yes. Exactly.' He stopped and looked over at Wilcox, then back at Cowart. 'Bruce said you were slick,' he spoke quietly, 'but I guess I had to see it for myself.'
Cowart eyed the lieutenant with the same cold glance that he was receiving. 'I'm not slick. I'm just doing what you would do.'
'No, that's incorrect,' Brown said acidly. 'I wouldn't be trying to help that murdering bastard off of Death Row.'
The reporter and the policeman were both silent.
After a few moments, Brown said, 'This isn't going right.'
'That's correct, if what you want is to persuade me that Ferguson's a liar.'
Brown stood up and started pacing the floor, obviously thinking hard. He moved with a rugged intensity, like a sprinter coiled at the starting line, waiting for the starter's gun to sound, the muscles in his body shifting about easily, letting Cowart know all the time that he was not a person who enjoyed the sensation of being confined, either in the small room or by details.
'He was wrong,' the policeman said. I knew it from the first time I saw him, long before Joanie was killed. I know that's not evidence, but I knew it.'
'When was that?'
'A year before the murder. I rousted him from the front of the high school. He was just sitting in-that car, watching the kids leave.'
'What were you doing there?'
'Picking up my daughter. That's when I spotted him. Saw him a few times after that. Every time, he was doing something that made me uncomfortable. Hanging in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Or driving slowly down the street, following some young woman. I wasn't the only one that noticed it. A couple of the Pachoula patrolmen came to me saying the same. He got busted once, around midnight, right behind a small apartment building, just standing around. Tried to hide when the squad car rolled past. Charges got dropped right away. But still…'
'I still don't hear anything like evidence.'
'Goddammit!' the lieutenant's voice soared for the first time. 'Don't you hear? We didn't have any. All we had was impressions. Like the impression you get when you get to Ferguson's house and he's scrubbing out that car – and he's already deep-sixed a slice of rug. Like when the first thing out of his mouth is, 'I didn't do that girl,' before he's heard a question. And how he sits in an interview room, laughing because he knows you haven't got anything. But all those impressions add up to something more than instinct, because he finally talks. And, yes sir, all those impressions turn out to be absolutely right because he confesses to killing that girl.'
'So, where's the knife? Where's his clothes covered with blood and mud?'
'He wouldn't tell us.'
'Did he tell you how he staked out the school? How he got her to get into the car? What
