The Girl in the Glass Box

by James Grippando

  “No.”

  Jerrell checked her notes, then continued. “Yesterday, your sister showed Judge Kelly a scar on the back of her neck. Have you seen that before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did your sister ever tell you how she got it?”

  Her voiced softened. “She did.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  Her voice dropped even lower. “She said it was from the zip line.”

  “What’s the zip line?”

  “There’s a place to cross the river outside San Salvador. A cable runs from one side to the other and there’s a swing attached to it about twenty feet in the air. Julia said she scraped her neck on the cable when she was zipping across the river.”

  Jerrell turned the page in her notebook. Cecilia wrung her hands as she waited for the next series of questions.

  “Ms. Varga, your sister had an abortion in El Salvador, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “At any time prior to having an abortion, did your sister tell you she’d been raped?”

  “Before the abortion, no.”

  “You’re aware that your sister was later charged with a crime in El Salvador for having an abortion, are you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “At any time before she was criminally charged, did your sister tell you that she had been raped?”

  “I believe she told me after the case was over.”

  “So the first time that your sister ever mentioned to you that she’d been raped was after she’d been charged and after she’d talked to a lawyer, correct?”

  “Right. After the case was over.”

  Jerrell stepped out from behind the lectern, leaving nothing between her and the witness. “Now, I’m going to ask you a little different question,” said Jerrell. “When was the first time your sister told you that the man who’d raped her was her husband, Jorge Rodriguez?”

  Cecilia paused. The silence lingered.

  The judge sat up. “Ms. Varga, do you understand the question?”

  “Yes. I’m trying to think.”

  “Let me ask it again,” said Jerrell. She did.

  Cecilia blinked hard, then answered. “I don’t think Julia ever told me that. That’s just something I’ve heard.”

  “But you’ve never heard it from your sister, is that correct?”

  “Julia’s a lot older than me,” said Cecilia. “I was just a girl when all this happened.”

  “Excuse me,” said Jerrell, using the same tone that had backfired at the close of Julia’s testimony. “It’s a yes-or-no question. Have you ever heard your sister say that she was raped by her husband?”

  “Well, I was here in the courtroom yesterday. I heard her say it then.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve ever heard her say it? In court, yesterday?”

  “I believe so.”

  Jerrell returned to the lectern and gathered her notebook. “Thank you, Ms. Varga. Your Honor, I have no further questions.”

  “Mr. Swyteck?” said the judge. “Any questions for the witness?”

  Before Jack could answer, the assistant state attorney spoke up. “Judge, I’m told that Detective Barnes has just arrived and is in the hallway.”

  “Can he wait until after Mr. Swyteck has finished with this witness?”

  “Actually, he can’t,” said the prosecutor. He must attend an autopsy at noon, which cannot be rescheduled. This is his only availability.”

  Jack was a long way from Denmark, but something definitely smelled rotten. It had all seemed far too convenient: Barnes’ unavailability, testimony from Julia’s own sister that cried out for serious damage control, followed by Barnes’ sudden availability, which would delay Jack’s rehabilitation of Cecilia as witness.

  “I can be quick with my examination,” said Jack.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” said the judge. “This isn’t a jury trial. I understand your sense of urgency, Mr. Swyteck, given the substance of this witness’s testimony, but there’s no rule that says you have the right to rehabilitate Ms. Varga this very minute. I’m not going to make Mr. Barnes sit in the hallway waiting and miss an autopsy, which would not only inconvenience the medical examiner’s office but could also delay and prejudice a homicide investigation. So it’s your choice: question Detective Barnes now, while he’s available, or I will enter an order releasing Mr. Barnes from his subpoena, and you can forfeit your right to question him at all.”

  “Thank you, Judge,” said Jerrell.

  The judge smacked his gavel with anger. “I told you not to thank me for my rulings, Ms. Jerrell!”

  Jerrell couldn’t hide her smile, and Jack couldn’t help noticing it. Judge Kelly had left him and his client no choice, and despite the judge’s professed pet peeves, Jerrell’s “thank you” should have been delivered in fountain pen ink on letterpress stationery.

  “We’ll proceed with Detective Barnes,” said Jack.

  Judge Kelly excused the witness, and the assistant state attorney stepped out of the courtroom to bring in the detective.

  “Up until this point we have not invoked the rule,” said Jerrell, meaning the unwritten rule that no witness should be in the courtroom to hear the testimony of other witnesses. “But, seeing how Ms. Varga is in the middle of her testimony, the department would ask that she wait outside.”

  “That’s fine,” said the judge. “Ms. Varga, there’s a nice bench in the hallway with your name on it. Please wait there, and do not discuss your testimony with anyone.”

  Cecilia acknowledged that she understood and started toward the rail. She glanced in Julia’s direction, as if to offer a silent apology, but she didn’t look at Jack, and Jack noticed something as she passed that he hadn’t noticed before.

  Cecilia smelled of cigarette smoke.

  Chapter 57

  Jack took his time as he rose to examine the next witness. His mind was awhirl with what he’d just heard from Cecilia on the witness stand, what he’d heard from Cecilia since Julia’s arrest, and what he’d just smelled as Cecilia walked past him.

  “Mr. Swyteck, you may question the witness,” the judge said, nudging him along.

  Detective Barnes sat comfortably in a wood chair that so many witnesses before him had found unbearably uncomfortable. Immigration court was not his usual venue, but he was no stranger to courtrooms, and he’d seen virtually every trick in the trial lawyer’s book. Jack’s slow-motion gait, however, seemed to confuse even the seasoned detective.

  “Mr. Swyteck,” the judge said in a firmer voice, “your witness.”

  Jack had prepared thoroughly for Barnes. He’d thought about this showdown in his office, in the shower, and on the drive home. His questions and their possible answers had played out in his mind countless times. The watershed moment in the hearing had been Jerrell’s asking Julia if her husband was a smoker: it told Jack that the DNA evidence connecting Jorge to the cigarette in McBride’s car was less than conclusive. But Jack didn’t know where that ambiguity took him. He’d been in similar predicaments in the courtroom before, and experience taught him to ditch the prepared outline and follow his instincts.

  “Detective Barnes, you are the lead detective in the investigation into the death of Duncan McBride, correct?”

  The assistant state attorney was in the courtroom, and a quick glance from Barnes brought him immediately to his feet. “Your Honor, I object,” said Arnoff.

  “You can’t object,” said the judge. “This is immigration court. Not your turf.”

  “Then I’ll object for him,” said Jerrell. “And to pick up on Your Honor’s point, immigration court is no place to put an active homicide investigation on public display.”

  “Your Honor, my questions will focus on an issue that Ms. Jerrell has put front and center in this proceeding: the whereabouts of Ms. Rodriguez’s husband.”

  “All right,” said the judge. “But I’m going to keep a tight rein on this.”

  “Understood,” said Jack.


  Jack spent the next few minutes exploring the detective’s two decades of experience, focusing in particular on his knowledge of DNA evidence. Barnes wasn’t a scientist, but this wasn’t a murder trial, so Jack didn’t need a DNA analyst from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to explain the complexities of deoxyribonucleic acid. All he needed was an admission from the lead detective on the investigation.

  “Detective, you know from your own experience in law enforcement that, except for identical twins, no two people have the same DNA.”

  “That is my understanding.”

  “You, personally, have collected DNA evidence from crime scenes before?”

  “Yes. Many times.”

  “Dried saliva on a cigarette butt can be a source of DNA, correct?”

  “Not always, but it can be.”

  Jack made a mental note of the “not always” qualification, then moved on. “In the McBride homicide investigation, you, personally, collected a cigarette butt from the ashtray of the victim’s vehicle, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “And the lab was able to extract DNA from the saliva on that cigarette butt, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, speaking more generally, sometimes an investigator collects DNA evidence from a crime scene and the lab compares the sample to the DNA of a known suspect or person of interest, correct?”

  “Yeah, if you have a suspect or a person of interest.”

  “Fair point,” said Jack. “Is it correct to say that you had no suspect or person of interest at the time you collected the DNA sample from Mr. McBride’s car?”

  “No, that’s not correct. Julia Rodriguez was a person of interest.”

  Jack did a double take. It was not the answer he’d expected, which put him in the exact position no trial lawyer wanted to be in: deep into cross-examination and having no idea of the answer to the next question. The judge asked the question that Jack didn’t want to ask.

  “So, Detective, did you compare the DNA sample from the cigarette to DNA from Julia Rodriguez?”

  “The lab did. During her INS detention, Ms. Rodriguez was held in Baker County Facility, which collects cheek swabs from all detainees. It’s done to help solve unsolved crimes, and, consistent with that purpose, we made the comparison in our investigation.”

  Jack hesitated, but if they made a comparison and didn’t revoke Julia’s release on bond, Jack could guess the answer to the next question. So he asked it.

  “You didn’t get a match, did you, Detective Barnes?”

  “No match.”

  “Am I correct in saying that Julia Rodriguez is no longer a person of interest in your investigation?”

  “She’s not,” said Barnes. “But her husband is.”

  The detective’s answer was clearly intended to jam the lawyer, but Jack kept his composure. “We’ll get to that,” said Jack. “But I want to stick to the DNA. After the DNA comparison to Julia Rodriguez returned no match, you collected DNA from her daughter, Beatriz, correct?”

  “She consented to a cheek swab, yes.”

  The issue of a high school student’s “consent” was debatable, but this wasn’t the time. “You compared Beatriz’s DNA to the DNA collected from the saliva, correct?”

  “The lab did.”

  “You didn’t get a complete match, did you?”

  “We got a partial match.”

  “By ‘partial match’ you mean what?”

  “A complete match would mean that it was Beatriz’s DNA on the cigarette butt. We didn’t have that. But there was enough common DNA between the two samples to tell us that the person who left that saliva on the cigarette butt was related to Beatriz.”

  “You knew from the earlier lab work that the relative wasn’t Beatriz’s mother. Correct?”

  “That’s correct. The comparison to Ms. Rodriguez showed no match.”

  “One theory is that the DNA belongs to Beatriz’s father. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t know for sure, do you?”

  “It’s a complicated DNA analysis that’s beyond me.”

  “Let’s keep it simple,” said Jack. “There’s enough common DNA that it could be Beatriz’s father, right?”

  “Right.”

  Jack paused, feeling like a pitcher one out away from a no-hitter. “There’s enough common DNA that it could also be Beatriz’s aunt. Isn’t that true, Detective?”

  Barnes glared at him coldly, but he was too experienced to dig himself into a hole by trying to evade the inevitable outcome. He simply answered, “Yes.”

  Jack wasn’t certain, but he was sure enough that MDPD had yet to collect a DNA sample from Cecilia. “You have not compared the DNA from the cigarette butt to the DNA of Cecilia Varga, have you?”

  “No.”

  “It would be logical to run that comparison, would it not?”

  “It would be something to consider.”

  “Were you waiting to make that comparison until after Ms. Rodriguez was deported?”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled.”

  Barnes shifted in his chair, looking nowhere near as comfortable as he had just minutes earlier. “I don’t understand your question.”

  “Let me restate it,” said Jack. “Did Ms. Jerrell ask you to hold off on comparing the cigarette DNA to Cecilia Varga’s DNA until after Ms. Jerrell ‘proved’ that Jorge Rodriguez is here in Miami, until after this hearing was over, until after this court ordered my client deported, and until after her deportation flight touched down in San Salvador?”

  “This is outrageous!” Jerrell shouted, with a heavy dose of indignation.

  Jack’s gaze remained fixed on the witness, and everything about the detective’s body language told Jack that he was spot-on.

  Jerrell’s indignation only heightened. “Your Honor, I strongly object to Mr. Swyteck’s insinuation and the attack on my professional integrity.”

  “Sustained.”

  It was a punch to the chest—the proverbial infield hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to end the no-hitter. Sustained?

  “Judge—”

  “I sustained the objection, Mr. Swyteck. I’m not going to turn a deportation hearing into a mudslinging contest.”

  Jack could see the writing on the wall. “Technically it’s an asylum hearing, Your Honor. Not a deportation hearing.”

  “Call it what you like. Do you have any more questions for the witness, or can we let him return to his job?”

  “I have one more,” said Jack. “Detective Barnes, is Cecilia Varga a person of interest in your investigation?”

  “She is a person of interest as a possible accessory after the fact in connection with the disposal of Mr. McBride’s vehicle. Not in the murder.”

  “Thank you,” said Jack. “Nothing further.”

  “All right,” the judge said. “It seems we have a bit of a situation here. I told Ms. Varga to wait out in the hall until we finished with Detective Barnes.”

  “Judge, I have no questions for Detective Barnes,” said Jerrell. “Notwithstanding Mr. Swyteck’s personal attack on the detective’s professionalism and mine, the criminal investigation into the death of Mr. McBride should remain confidential, and I have no desire to jeopardize that investigation by subjecting Detective Barnes to more of whatever it is that Mr. Swyteck is trying to accomplish.”

  “That’s very professional of you, Ms. Jerrell,” the judge said, but he was looking at Jack, as if he wished Jack were more like her. “That still leaves us a situation, as I called it,” he continued. “Accessory after the fact to murder is a serious crime. Since Detective Barnes has identified Ms. Varga as a person of interest, this court is compelled to allow Ms. Varga the opportunity to consult with counsel before subjecting her to cross-examination in this proceeding. She may have a Fifth Amendment right she would like to assert. Mr. Swyteck, as a criminal defense lawyer, I assume you understand where I’m coming from.”


  “I do, Your Honor.”

  “All right, then,” the judge said, again looking at Jack. “If someone could bring Ms. Varga into the courtroom, I’ll let her know that we will adjourn for the day, and that I will expect an answer from her by nine o’clock tomorrow morning as to whether she will testify or assert her rights.”

  “I’ll go,” Jack and Julia said in unison.

  Jack was about to tell Julia to stay, but she bolted from the table, hurried down the center aisle, and exited the courtroom through the double doors in the rear. Jack rushed after her and caught up with her in the hallway.

  “Where is she?” asked Julia.

  Benches lined the walls on both sides of the hallway outside the courtroom. Jack didn’t see Cecilia.

  “The judge told her to wait,” Julia said, her voice rising with anger. “Where is she?”

  Jack checked again, looking one way and then the other. The answer was clear.

  “She left,” said Jack.

  Chapter 58

  Jack got a phone call from the assistant state attorney later that afternoon. Arnoff wanted a face-to-face meeting with Jack, his client, and Detective Barnes. The drive to the Graham Building near the Criminal Justice Center was against rush-hour traffic, and Jack arrived in less than twenty minutes. Julia took the bus and met him in the lobby.

  “Any word from Cecilia?” Jack asked.

  “No. Could that be what they want to meet with us about?”

  “We’ll find out,” said Jack.

  They rode the elevator together to the eighth floor. Jack wanted details before bringing his client into a room with a prosecutor and a detective. He told Julia to wait in the reception area while he had a pre-meeting without her in Arnoff’s office.

  “You went too far in court today,” said the prosecutor.

  Arnoff was seated at his desk with the window behind him. In the distance was a sunset over the Everglades, an orange-pink blast enhanced by clouds of smoke rising from the spring brush fires that were so typical of South Florida’s dry season. Two armchairs normally faced the prosecutor’s desk, but Barnes had moved his around to face Jack and align himself with the assistant state attorney.