He don't need it.'
Cowart took a deep breath. 'Here's the reason, Missus Ferguson. You let me in and I look around, I don't find anything and that's it. The story becomes another lie that man told me, and that's all there is to it. Life goes on. Bobby Earl'll never have to look back. Those two detectives will walk out of your life and out of his life. But if I don't look, then they're never gonna be satisfied. Neither will I. And it'll never end. There will always be some questions. They won't ever go away. It'll stick with him all his days. See what I'm saying?'
The old woman hung a hand on the door handle, thinking.
'I see that point,' she said finally, easing her words out carefully. 'But suppose I let you in and you find this awful somethin' that that man told you about. What then?'
Then Bobby Earl will be in trouble again.'
She paused again before replying. 'I don't truly see how my boy wins much if'n I let you in.'
Cowart stared at the old woman hard and let loose his final weapon. 'If you don't let me in, Missus Ferguson, then I'm going to assume you're hiding the truth from me. That there is some evidence hidden inside. That's what I'm going to tell those two detectives out there, and then a couple of things will happen. We'll come back with a warrant and search the place anyway. And no one's going to sleep until they make a case against your grandson, Missus Ferguson. I promise you that. And when they make it, I'll be right there, with my newspaper, and all the other papers and television stations, and you know what'll happen, don't you? So it seems to me you've only got one choice. Understand?'
The old woman's eyes immediately blistered hate.
'I understands perfect,' she snarled. 'I understands that white men in suits always get what they want. You want to get in, all right. You gonna get in, no matter what I say.'
'All right, then.'
'Come back with a paper from some judge, huh? They been here with one of those and it ain't done them no good at finding something. You think things different now?' She snorted in disgust.
Finally she unlatched the screen door with a click and held it open perhaps six inches.
'That man in prison, he tells you where to be looking?'
'No. Not precisely.'
The old woman grinned unpleasantly. 'Good luck, then.'
He stepped into the house, like stepping out of one world and into another. He was accustomed – as much as anyone could become accustomed – to urban inner-city squalor. He had trailed his friend Vernon Hawkins to enough ghetto crime scenes so that he was no longer shocked or surprised by city poverty, rats, and peeling paint. But this house was different and unsettling.
Cowart saw a rigid, barren poverty, a place that made no concession to comfort or aspiration, only stiff lives, hard-lived, ruled by desperate anger. A crucifix hung on the wall over a threadbare sofa. An old wood rocker with a single yellow lace doily on its seat stood in the corner. There were a few other chairs, mostly hand-hewn wood. On a mantelpiece above a fireplace was a portrait of Martin Luther King Junior and an old photograph of a lithe black man in an austere black suit. He guessed it was her late husband. There were a few other photographs of family members, including one of Robert Earl. The walls were dark brown wood, giving the house the semblance of a cave. Only random shafts of sunlight penetrated the windows, losing their fight against the shadows inside. He could see down a hallway to a kitchen where an old-fashioned wood stove dominated the center of the room. But everything was immaculate. Frayed age was everywhere, but not a particle of dust. Mrs. Ferguson probably treated a speck of dirt the same way she treated visitors.
'It ain't much, but it's mine,' she said grimly. 'No bank man come by saying he owns this place. It be all mine. Paying it off killed my husband and like to kill me, too, but I been happy here, even if it ain't so high and mighty a place.'
She hobbled over to the window and stared out. 'I know that Tanny Brown,' she said bitterly. 'I knows his momma, she dead, and his daddy. They worked hard for Mister White Man and rose up thinking they be better than us. Ain't no truth in that. I remembers when he was little, stealing oranges off'n trees in the white men's groves. Now he's all grown up into a big policeman and thinks he's mighty fine. He ain't no better'n my grandson, hear?'
She turned away from the window. 'So, go on, Mister White Reporter. Whatcha gonna look for? Ain't nothing here for you, boy. Cain't you see that?' She waved her arms around her, gesturing. 'Ain't nothin' here for nobody.'
He did see that.
Cowart glanced around and felt that Wilcox had been right.-He had no idea what he was searching for or where to search. He had a sudden image of Blair Sullivan laughing at him.
'No' he said. 'Where's Bobby Earl's room?'
The old woman pointed. 'Down on the right. Go ahead.'
Cowart moved slowly down the corridor in the center of the shack. He glanced in at the old woman's bedroom. He saw a Bible open in the center of an old double bed covered with a single white knit coverlet. Austere and icy. Comfort only in those words read, and precious little comfort at that. He walked past a small bathroom, no bigger than a closet, with a single basin and toilet. The fixtures shone with a polished newness. Then he turned into Ferguson's room.
It, too, was barren, a monk's quarters. A single window high on the wall let in a little light. There was an iron bed, a hand-hewn wooden table, a small chest of drawers, and a chair. An old plank had been nailed to one wall to hold a modest collection of paperback books. Manchild in the Promised Land and The Invisible Man butted up against some science-fiction novels. A pair of fishing rods were stacked in the corner, along with a scratched cheap plastic tackle box.
Cowart sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the soft mushiness of the springs. He let his eyes roam over the meager items in the room, searching for some sign. What should a killer's room look like?
He didn't know. He looked about, remembering how Ferguson had insisted to him that coming to Pachoula after Newark, New Jersey, was like stepping into a summer camp, that it was warm and special, some sort of Huck Finn-like adventureland. Where the hell is that? Cowart thought, staring around himself at the blank walls, the passionless items of furniture.
Where to start? He couldn't imagine that something as potent as evidence of a murder would be obvious, so he started in on the drawers of the bureau, feeling foolish, certain that he was simply going over well-searched territory. He rifled through a few changes of clothing without finding anything that he imagined could help him. He ran his hands down behind the bureau drawers, to see if something was concealed there. You're some detective, he thought. He climbed down on his knees and did the same with the bed. He felt the mattress. Then he tapped the walls, looking for a hollow spot.
To conceal what? he kept asking himself.
He was on his hands and knees, tapping at the floor when Ferguson's grandmother hovered in the doorway.
'They done that,' she said. 'Way back when. Now, ain't ya satisfied yet?'
He stood up slowly, close to embarrassment. I don't know.'
She laughed at him. 'You finished now?'
He straightened his clothes. 'Let me talk to the detectives.'
She cackled again and trailed him back through the house and onto the front porch as he walked across the dirt yard to the two detectives.
Tanny Brown spoke first, but his eyes reached past Cowart, up at the old woman, before returning to settle on the reporter. 'Well?'
'Nothing that seemed like evidence of anything except being poor.'
'Told you so,' Wilcox said. He looked over at Cowart, his voice softening somewhat. 'You go into Ferguson's room?'
'Yeah.'
'Not much there, right?'
