'He's a pretty twisted man.'
'What will happen to him?'
'If he doesn't start filing appeals, the governor will sign a death warrant for him as soon as the state Supreme Court upholds his conviction. There's not much doubt they'll do that.'
'When will that happen?'
'I don't know. The court usually announces its decisions at several times, right up to the New Year. There'll be just a single line in the sheaf of decisions: In Re: The State of Florida versus Blair Sullivan. The judgment and sentence of the trial court is affirmed. It's all pretty bloodless until the governor's order arrives at the prison. You know, lots of papers and signatures and official seals and that sort of stuff, until it falls on somebody actually to have to juice the guy. The guards there call it doing the deathwork.'
'I don't think the world will be a lesser place when he's gone,' Sandy said with a small shudder in her voice.
Cowart didn't reply.
'But if he never owns up to what he did, what will happen to Ferguson?'
'I don't know. The state could try him again. He could get pardoned. He could sit on Death Row. All sorts of strange things can happen.'
'If they execute Sullivan, will anyone ever really know the truth?'
'Know the truth? Hell, I think we know the truth now. The truth is that Ferguson shouldn't be on Death Row. But prove the truth? That's a whole other thing. Real hard.'
'And what will happen to you now?'
'Same old stuff. I'll follow this story to the end. Then write some more editorials until I get old and my teeth fall out and they decide to turn me into glue. That's what they do to old racehorses and editorial writers, you know.'
She laughed. 'Come on. You're going to win a Pulitzer.'
He smiled. 'I doubt it,' he lied.
'Yeah, you will. I can feel it. Then they'll probably put you out to stud.'
'I should be so lucky.'
'You will be. You're going to win one. You deserve to. It was a hell of a story. Just like Pitts and Lee.'
She, too, remembered that story, he realized. 'Yeah. You know what happened to those guys after they got the judge to order up a new trial? They got convicted again, by a racist jury just as damn stupid as the first. It wasn't until the governor pardoned them that they got off Death Row. People forget that. Twelve years it took them.'
'But they got off and that guy won the Pulitzer.'
He laughed. 'Well, that's right.'
'You will, too. Won't take twelve years, either.'
'Well, we'll see.'
'Will you stay with the Journal?'
'No reason to leave.'
'Oh, come on. What if the Times or the Post calls?'
'We'll see.'
They both laughed. After a momentary pause, she said, 'I always knew someday you'd find the right story. I always knew someday you'd do it.'
'What am I supposed to say?'
'Nothing. I just knew you'd do it.'
'What about Becky? Did she stay up to watch me on Nightline?'
Sandy hesitated. 'Well, no. It's much too much past her bedtime
'You could have taped it.'
'And what would she have heard her daddy talk about? About somebody who murdered a little girl? A little girl who got raped and then stabbed, what was it, thirty-six times? And then tossed into a swamp? I didn't think that was too swift an idea.'
She was right, he realized, though he hated the thought. 'Still, I wish she'd seen.'
'It's safe here' Sandy said.
'What?'
'It's safe here. Tampa isn't a big city. I mean, it's big, but not big. It seems to move a little slower. And it's not at all like Miami. It's not all drugs and riots and weird, the way Miami is. She doesn't have to know about little girls that get kidnapped and raped and stabbed to death. Not yet, at least. She can grow up a bit, and be a kid, and not have to worry all the time.'
'You mean you don't have to worry all the time.'
'Well, is that wrong?'
'No.'
'You know what I can never understand? It's why everyone who works at the paper always thinks everything bad just happens to other people.'
'We don't think that.'
'It seems that way.'
He didn't want to argue. 'Well, maybe.'
She forced a laugh. 'I'm sorry if I've rained on your parade. Really, I wanted to call to congratulate you and tell you that I really was proud.'
'Proud but divorced.'
She hesitated. 'Yes. But amicably, I thought.'
'I'm sorry. That was unfair.'
'Okay.'
There was another pause.
'When can we talk about Becky's next visit?'
I don't know. I'll be hung up on this story until there's some sort of resolution. But when, I don't know.'
'I'll call you then.'
'Okay.'
'And congratulations again.'
'Thanks.'
He hung up the telephone and realized that he was sometimes a fool, incapable of saying what he wanted, articulating what he needed. He pounded the desk in frustration. Then he went to the window of his cubicle and looked out over the city. Afternoon traffic was flowing toward the expressway, like so many body nerves pulsating with the desire to head home to family. He felt his solitude surround him. The city seemed baked beneath the hot blue sky, the light-colored buildings reflected the sun's strength. He watched a tangle of cars in an intersection maneuvering like so many aggressive bugs on the earth. It is dangerous, he thought.
It is not safe.
Two motorists had shot it out two days earlier following a fender bender, blazing away in the midst of rush-hour traffic, each armed with nearly identical, expensive nine-millimeter semiautomatics. Neither man had been hurt, but a teenager driving past had taken a ricochet in the lung and remained in critical condition at a local hospital. This was a routine Miami story, a by-product of the heat and conflicting cultures and a populace that seemed to consider handguns an integral part of their culture. He remembered writing almost the same story a half-dozen years earlier. Remembered a dozen more times the story had been written, so frequently that what had been once a front-page story was now six paragraphs on an inside page.
He thought of his daughter and wondered, Why does she need to know? Why does she need to know anything about evil and the awful desires of some men?
He did not know the answer to that question.
There were thick black television cables snaking out the entranceway to the courtroom.
