He rose and walked to a small sink in the corner of the cell. He ran the single tap for a moment, leaning down and drinking with great gulps. 'And thirsty, too. Keep getting dry in the mouth. Just like something keeps sucking all the moisture right out of me.'
Cowart didn't say anything.
'Of course, I expect when they jolt you the first time with those twenty-five hundred volts, that's thirsty work for all involved.'
Matthew Cowart felt his own throat tighten. 'Are you going to file?'
Sullivan scowled. 'What do you think?'
'I don't.'
He stared at Cowart. 'You got to understand, Cowart, right now I'm feeling more alive than ever.'
'Why do you want to see me?'
'Last will and testament. Dying declaration. Famous last words. How's that sound?'
'Up to you.'
Sullivan made a fist and punched the still air of the cell. 'Do you remember me telling you how far I could reach? Do you remember me saying how puny these walls and bars really are, Cowart? Do you remember me saying that I don't fear death, I welcome it? I think there's gonna be a special place in hell for me, Cowart. I do. And you're gonna help me get there.'
'How?'
'You're gonna do some things for me.'
'What if I don't agree?'
'You will. You can't help it, Cowart. You're in this all the way, ain't you?'
Cowart nodded, wondering what he was agreeing to.
'All right, Cowart. Mr. Famous Reporter Man. I want you to go someplace for me and do some of your special-type reporting. It's a little house. I want you to knock on the door. If there ain't no answer, I want you to go right on in. Don't you mind if the door's locked. Don't you let anything keep you from walking into that house. Got that? I don't care how, but you get inside that house. You keep your eyes open. You take down all the details inside, hear? You interview everybody there…'
Blair Sullivan ladled sarcasm onto the word. He laughed. 'Then you come back and tell me what you found, and I'll tell you a story worth hearing. Blair Sullivan's legacy.'
The killer put his head into his hands and then raised them up over his forehead, pushing back his hair, grinning wildly. 'And that'll be a story worth the knowing, I promise.'
Cowart hesitated. He felt swept up in a sudden darkness.
'Okay, Mr. Cowart,' Sullivan said. 'Ready? I want you to go to number thirteen – nice number, that – Tarpon Drive in Islamorada.'
'That's the Keys. I just came from…
'Just go there! And then come back and tell me what you find. And don't leave nothing out.'
Cowart looked at the prisoner, unsure for an instant. Then the doubt fled and he rose.
'Run, Cowart. Run hard. Run fast. There's not much time.'
Sullivan sat back on his bed. He turned his face away from Cowart but at the same time bellowed out, 'Sergeant Rogers! Get this man out of my sight!'
His eyes twitched once toward Cowart. 'Until tomorrow. That'd be day six.'
Cowart nodded and paced swiftly away.
Cowart managed to catch the last flight back to Miami. It was after midnight when he dragged himself into his apartment and threw himself down, still dressed, on his bed. He felt unsettled, filled with an odd stage fright. He thought himself an actor thrust onto a stage in front of an audience but not having been told his lines, his character, or what the name of the play was. He thrust away as much thought as he could and seized a few hours of fitful sleep.
But by eight in the morning, he was driving south toward the Upper Keys, through the clear, rising heat of the morning. There were a few lazy white clouds lost in the sky, gleaming with the early sun. He maneuvered past the commuter traffic clogging South Dixie Highway heading for downtown Miami, racing the opposite way. Miami spread out, changing from a city into strips of low-slung shopping centers with garish signs and empty parking lots. The number of cars diminished as he passed through the suburbs, finally racing past rows of auto dealerships decorated with hundreds of American flags and huge banners announcing cut-rate sales, their polished fleets of vehicles gleaming with reflected light, lined up in anticipation. He could see a pair of silver jet fighters swinging wide through the crystal air, jockeying for a landing at Homestead Air Force Base, the two planes roaring, filling the air with noise but performing like ballet dancers as they swept into their approach only a few feet apart, in tandem.
A few miles farther, he crossed Card Sound Bridge, driving hard toward the Keys. The road sliced through hummocks of mangroves and marshy swamp. He saw a stork's nest on a telephone pole, and as he swept by, a single white bird rose and beat its way across the sky. A wide flat green world surrounded him for the first few miles. Then the land on his left gave way to inlets and finally to miles of Florida bay. A light chop curled the surface of the ripe blue water. He drove on.
The road to the Keys meanders through wetlands and water, occasionally rising up a few feet so that civilization can grasp hold. The rough coral-ridged earth houses marinas and condo developments whenever it gains enough solidity to support construction. It sometimes seems as if the square cinder-block buildings have spawned; a gas station spreads into a convenience store. A I-shirt shop painted bright pink takes root and flowers into a fast-food outlet. A dock gives rise to a restaurant, which hatches a motel across the roadway. Where there is enough land, there are schools and hospitals and trailer parks clinging tightly to the crushed gravel, dirt, and pieces of white shells, bleached by the sun. The ocean is never far, blinking with reflected sunlight, its wide expanse laughing at the puny, tacky efforts of civilization. He pushed past Marathon and the entrance to Pennekamp State Park. At the Whale Harbor marina he saw a huge plastic blue marlin, bigger than any fish that ever cruised the Gulf Stream, which marked the entrance to the sports fishing dock. He drove on past a strip of shops and a supermarket, the white paint on the walls fading in the inexorable hot sun of the Keys.
It was midmorning when he found Tarpon Drive. The street was at the southern tip of the Key, a mile or so before the ocean encroached tightly and made construction impossible. The road spun off to the left, a angle lane of crunching shells cutting between some trailers and small single-story houses. There was a haphazardness to the road, as if the lots were simply carved by convenience. A rusted Volkswagen bus painted in faded ancient-hippie psychedelic style sat on blocks in one front yard. Two children in diapers played in a makeshift sandbox next to it. A single woman wearing tight blue cut-off jeans and a tank top and smoking a cigarette sat on an overturned bait bucket, watching over them. She eyed Matthew Cowart with a practiced toughness. In front of another house there was a boat, with a ragged hole beneath the gunnels, up on sawhorses. Outside a trailer, an elderly couple sat in cheap green-and-white beach chairs underneath a pink umbrella. They didn't move as he rolled past. He put his window down and heard a radio turned up to some talk show. Disembodied voices filled the air with angry tones debating meaningless issues. Bent and twisted television antennas littered the sky. Cowart felt he was entering a sun-baked world of lost hopes and found poverty.
Midway down the street was a single white clapboard church behind a rusty wire fence. There was a large handwritten sign out in the front yard: FIRST KEYS BAPTIST CHURCH. ALL WELCOME TO ENTER AND BE SAVED. He saw that the gate at the street was off its hinge and that the wooden steps leading to the front door were splintered and broken. The doors were padlocked. He drove on, looking for number thirteen. The house was set back thirty yards from the road beneath a gnarled mangrove tree, which cast a variegated shade across the front. It was cinder block, with old jalousie windows, their smoked glass open to catch whatever breezes filtered through the tangle of trees and brush. The shutters on the outside of the house were peeling black paint and a large crucifix was attached to the door. It was a small house, with a pair of propane fuel tanks leaning up against one wall. The yard was dirt and gravel, and dust kicked up about his feet as he walked to the front door. Scratched in the wood of the door were the words JESUS LIVES INSIDE ALL OF US.
He could hear a dog barking in the distance. The mangrove tree moved slightly, finding
