Just Cause

The silence shrouded them.

Ta

Cowart could feel only the heat and an awful vulnerability. He thought himself blinded.

But it was he that saw the small movement before anyone else. A quiver of leaves and shake of bushes, and a gray-black gun barrel that pointed toward them. So he shouted, 'Watch out!' as he dove down, oddly surprised in the wave of dread that swept over him that he was able to process anything at all.

Ta

Shaeffer, however, did not duck. Screaming harshly, she had turned toward the movement, firing her weapon once without taking aim at anything except fear. Her shot spun crazily into the sky. But the deep roar of the nine-millimeter was bracketed by three resonant blasts from Ferguson's pistol.

Brown gasped as a bullet exploded in the dirt by his head. Cowart tried to force himself into the wet earth.

Shaeffer screamed again, this time in sudden pain.

She spun down to the ground like a bird with a broken wing, clutching at her mangled elbow. She writhed about, her voice pitched high with hurt. Cowart reached out and dragged her toward him as Brown rose, taking aim but seeing nothing. His finger tightened but he did not fire. As he paused, he heard an explosion of trees and bushes as Ferguson ran.

Cowart saw the detective's pistol hanging limply from her hand, blood pulsing down her wrist and staining the polished steel of the weapon. He seized the gun and raised himself up, tracking the sounds of the escaping man.

He was not aware that he'd stepped over some line.

He fired.

Wildly, letting the racket from the gun obliterate any thoughts of what he was doing, he tugged on the trigger, sending the remaining eight shots in the clip whining into the thick trees and underbrush.

He kept pulling after the magazine was emptied, standing in the center of the clearing listening to the echoes from the weapon.

He let the pistol drop to his side, as if exhausted.

All three seemed frozen for a moment, before Shaeffer moaned in pain at the reporter's feet and he bent down toward her. The sound picked up Ta

The reporter still gripped the pistol in his hand.

Brown saw Cowart lean forward into the black hole in the clearing, then step back, looking down at his hand.

'I think I got him,' the reporter said. He turned toward Brown and held out his palm.

It was smeared with blood.

Brown rose, nodding. 'Stay with her,' he said.

Cowart shook his head. 'No, I'm coming with you.'

Shaeffer groaned.

'Stay with her,' Brown repeated.

Cowart opened his mouth, but the policeman cut him off. 'Now it's mine,' he said.

The reporter breathed out hard and harsh. Emotions smashed into him. He thought of everything he'd set in motion and thought, It can't stop for me here.

Shaeffer moaned again.

And he realized he had no choice.

He nodded.

Matthew Cowart waited with the wounded detective, but felt more alone than ever before.

The police lieutenant turned and plunged ahead, angling through the net of brambles and branches that reached out and grabbed at his clothes, scratching like wildcats at his skin and eyes. He moved hard and fast, thinking: If he's wounded, he will run straight. He thought he had to make up lost seconds spent fixing the detective's arm.

He saw the blood splotch that Cowart had found as he passed out of the clearing, then another some fifteen yards into the swamp. A third marked the trail a dozen feet after that. They were small, a few crimson droplets of blood standing out against the green shadows.

He raced on, sensing the black water that lay ahead.

The forest crashed around him. He thrust apart all the tendrils and ferns that blocked his path. His pursuit now was all speed and power, a tidal force of fury. He smashed aside anything that hindered his way.

He did not see Ferguson until he was almost on top of him.

The killer had turned, leaning up against a gnarled mangrove tree at the edge of the expanse of swamp water that ran inkily behind him. A line of dark blood had raced down from his thigh to his ankle, standing out against the faded blue of his jeans. He was pointing his weapon directly at Ta

He had one thought only: I'm dead.

Glacial fear covered everything within him, freezing memories of family, of friends, into a winter death tableau. He thought the world suddenly stopped. He wanted to dive for cover, throw himself backward, hide somehow, but he was moving in slow motion and all he could do was fling a hand up across his face, as if that might deflect the bullet he was certain was about to fly his way.

It was as if his hearing was suddenly sharpened; his sight piercing. He could see the hammer on the pistol creeping backward, then slamming forward.

He opened his mouth in a silent scream.

But all he heard were two empty clicks as the hammer of the killer's pistol twice hit empty chambers. The noise seemed to echo in the small space.

A wild look of surprise crossed Ferguson's face. He looked down at the pistol as if it were a priest caught in a lie.

Ta

Ferguson grimaced. Then he seemed to shrug. He held his hands wide in surrender.

Ta

The shots crushed into Robert Earl Ferguson, forcing him back into the embrace of the thorny branches. For an instant his body contorted with confusion and pain. Disbelief rode his eyes. He seemed to shake his head, but the movement was lost as surprise turned to death in his face.

Minutes stretched around him.

He remained on his knees, facing the killer's body, trying to collect himself. He fought a dizzying surge of vertigo, followed by a wave of nausea. This passed, and he waited for his racing heart to slow. After a moment, he sucked in the first gasp of air he was aware of breathing since the pursuit had begun.

He looked at Ferguson's sightless eyes.

'There, he said bitterly. 'You were wrong.'

Thoughts crowded his imagination and he stared over at the killer's body. He spotted the short-barreled revolver lying in the dirt where Ferguson had flung it in death. The gun was as familiar to him as his partner's voice and laugh. He knew there was only one way Ferguson could have obtained the weapon, and a sheet of pain and sadness curved through him. He looked back at Ferguson and said out loud, 'You wanted to kill me with my partner's gun, you sonuvabitch, but it wouldn't do it for you, would it?' His eyes slid to the streaks of blood marking the spot where Cowart's wild shot had ripped into the flesh of Ferguson's leg. He couldn't have made it much farther with a wound like that. Certainly not to freedom. A single, lucky shot that had killed him as much as the twin blasts from Brown's own weapon.