Twenty

by James Grippando

  “So his point was—”

  “His point was that the state attorney should accept the shooter’s guilty plea and let the court sentence him to seventeen consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole.”

  “Is that what you think should happen here?”

  “I do. And that’s why you should take the case.”

  Jack was dumbstruck. “How did you know I’d even been asked?”

  “All of us parents are glued to social media. I saw the update ten minutes before you called. Isn’t that what you came here to talk about?”

  Jack didn’t know who had twisted his words and put it out there. Sheila? Molly? All that mattered was that it was out there.

  “Please, get involved, Jack,” said Nate. “I trust you to convince the state attorney to accept a guilty plea and a sentence of twenty consecutive life sentences without parole. Don’t force my daughter and dozens of other traumatized kids to relive this nightmare for the next four years, just so that the state attorney can someday run for governor as the ‘pro-death-penalty, tough-on-crime’ candidate.”

  Jack wasn’t sure if the allusion had been intentional, but Jack’s father had run on that platform twice—and won. “I take your point and can see this in a different light.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  Jack paused. “I need to talk to Andie.”

  Jack met Andie for lunch. He ordered a Cuban sandwich sin mostaza, as most of the so-called Cuban joints in Miami didn’t seem to know that a real Cuban didn’t have mustard on it. Andie ordered only an iced tea, having lost her appetite.

  Andie was unlike any woman Jack had ever known, and not just because she worked undercover for the FBI. Jack loved that she wasn’t afraid to cave dive in Florida’s aquifer, that in her training at the FBI Academy she’d nailed a perfect score on one of the toughest shooting ranges in the world, that as a teenager she’d been a Junior Olympic mogul skier from her home state of Washington—something Jack hadn’t even known about her until she’d rolled him out of bed one hot August morning and said, “Let’s go skiing in Argentina.” He loved the green eyes she got from her Anglo father and the raven-black hair from her Native American mother, a mix that made for such exotic beauty.

  He hated when she tried to manage his career. But the case of Xavier Khoury was different.

  “This one’s outside the agreement,” said Andie.

  The “agreement” was for the sake of their relationship: Jack didn’t question her FBI assignments; Andie didn’t judge his clients.

  “I get it,” said Jack. “It affects Righley.”

  Andie drank from her iced tea. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, Jack. No, let me restate that: if anyone but Nate Abrams had asked, I would tell you what to do. But . . .”

  He knew Andie would never approve. The question was whether he could live with her mere acquiescence.

  “But there’s one condition,” she said.

  “Okay. What?”

  “I want to know why that boy wanted to kill my daughter. I want to know what he thought it would accomplish. I want you to ask him. And I don’t want to hear any bullshit from you about the attorney-client privilege. You’re going to tell me what he says.”

  Jack didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say—to Andie or to Nate Abrams.

  Chapter 8

  Jack needed some therapy. He drove to Cy’s Place in Coconut Grove and took a seat on a stool at the U-shaped bar.

  “You look like you could use a Cy Bender,” said Theo, offering up his version of a shot-and-beer: craft-brewed IPA paired with 150-proof whiskey.

  “Just a draft,” said Jack. “No disrespect to Uncle Cy.”

  The “Cy” in Cy’s Place was Theo’s great-uncle Cyrus Knight, a saxophonist who’d in younger days—nights, actually—played in Miami’s Overtown Village, once known as Little Harlem. It seemed fitting to put his name on the club, the second bar Theo had purchased with the settlement money from the state of Florida—Theo’s “compensation” for spending four years on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. Cy’s vibe and occasional riff inspired the place, drawing weekend crowds from all over South Florida. Creaky wood floors, redbrick walls, and high ceilings were the perfect bones for a jazz club. Art nouveau chandeliers cast just the right mood lighting after dark. It had been Theo’s goal to “do something right.” He’d nailed it.

  Theo placed the draft in front of him. “Funny thing about you, Jack. Whenever there’s something on your mind, it’s all over your face. Talk to me.”

  Theo was Jack’s best friend, bartender, therapist, confidant, and sometime investigator. He was also a former client, a one-time gangbanger who easily could have ended up dead on the streets of Overtown or Liberty City. Instead, he landed on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. Theo was the one innocent client Jack had represented during his stint at the Freedom Institute.

  And he was one damn good listener.

  Jack unloaded—the plea from Molly, the “ask” from the public defender—and then Nate Abrams, speaking on behalf of his daughter and every other child who might have to relive the nightmare by testifying as a witness in deposition, at trial, and again at the sentencing hearing.

  “Nate’s the only one who has me thinking,” said Jack.

  Theo leaned onto the bar top, as if to level with his friend. “Maybe I can get you off the fence. No extra charge.”

  “Extra?” said Jack. “You’ve never let me pay for anything here.”

  It was Theo’s way of paying back the young lawyer who’d never stopped believing in him and never stopped fighting to get him off death row—for no pay.

  “Figure of speech,” said Theo. “Let me tell you this story.”

  “Only if I haven’t heard it before.”

  “Guaranteed,” said Theo. “I used to think my landlord was the most generous man in Miami. When my bar shut down because of the coronavirus, I couldn’t pay my staff and pay the rent. He said no problem. We’ll waive the rent. You don’t even have to pay it back.”

  “That sounds too nice to be true.”

  “No shit. Here’s where it gets interesting. Later on, his partner comes by to check on the place. I thanked him personally. ‘God bless you, man,’ was all I could say. ‘You kept me in business.’ He looked at me like I had three heads. That’s when I found out the truth.”

  “Which was?”

  “Molly Khoury paid my rent. She told the landlord not to tell me.”

  “Why would Molly pay your rent?”

  “That’s what I asked myself. Then I remembered: I coached her son. Xavier was on my eighth-grade-boys basketball team when I ran the program over at the Boys and Girls Club. He wasn’t very good. Terrible, actually. But he tried hard, and got nothing in the way of sports from his old man, so I used to run extra drills with him and a couple other kids after practice. I guess that meant a lot to Molly. So when every bar and restaurant around me was boarding up from the virus, I wasn’t the one lucky tenant who had a saint for a landlord. Molly paid my rent. It was her way of saying ‘Thanks, Coach. Thanks for being the only man who ever cared enough to get my son off the couch.’”

  “Wow,” said Jack. “She must know we’re friends, right?”

  “Yeah, we ran into each other at Righley’s birthday party. She says, ‘Theo, what’re you doin’ here?’ I say, ‘I’m Righley’s godfather. What’re you doin’ here?’”

  “But she didn’t mention anything about paying your rent when she asked me to be Xavier’s lawyer.”

  “That’s because she didn’t help me so that she could call in a favor someday.”

  “Rare,” said Jack.

  “Very,” said Theo. “So, let me put in my two cents. No one’s asking you to put a school shooter back on the street. Nate sure isn’t. It doesn’t sound like Molly is, either. She’s just a mom trying to figure out how to pull her life back together. She needs this to end. We both know that a death sentence is
far from ‘finality’ or ‘closure’ or whatever you want to call it. It means another fifteen years of appeals and stays of execution. Life in prison without parole: that’s finality. If you can get that, Molly can put this behind her for herself and for her other two kids. It’s step one to getting her life back.”

  Jack considered Theo’s words, and his thoughts kept tumbling back to the way Molly had comported herself in his living room. “She could have easily played that card—paying your rent—when she came to see Andie and me and asked me to defend her son. She didn’t.”

  “I respect that,” said Theo.

  Jack watched the little bubbles rise up from the bottom of his beer glass and explode at the surface. “So do I.”

  “Maybe you should go talk to her.”

  Jack nodded. “Maybe we should.”

  Jack braced his hands against the dashboard as Theo maneuvered around a slow-moving camper with Quebec license plates. “Dude, this is Miami, not Daytona, so there’s no need to drive five hundred miles an hour.”

  “I don’t think the Daytona Five Hundred means they actually go five—”

  “Just slow down, will you?”

  Theo grumbled something to the effect of “old fart” as they joined the normal traffic flow.

  The meeting was at the Khoury residence on Santa Maria Street. Law enforcement had finished the execution of the search warrant and allowed the family to move back in that morning. Lamps were aglow inside, situation normal, just like any other house on the street. But the porchlight was out. In the darkness, Jack stepped on a stray strip of yellow police tape that the police had left behind. Walking up the driveway, he felt like the hapless teacher who lights up the laughter by entering a classroom with a trail of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. He finally shook the tape loose, continued to the front door, and rang the bell. Molly answered and invited them into the living room, where her husband was on the couch, waiting. Jack had never met Amir, but he’d gathered as much publicly available background information about him as he could, so it came as no surprise that Molly’s Muslim husband spoke with no Middle Eastern accent. According to his online bio, he had a BS from Duke and an MBA from Wharton. He was fluent in Arabic, French, and English, which was true of many people of Lebanese heritage, especially businesspeople. For the last decade he’d worked at an elite private equity firm on Brickell Avenue, the heart of downtown Miami’s Financial District.

  “Thank you for taking our case,” said Amir.

  “I actually haven’t decided yet,” said Jack. “But I should point out that even if I do defend Xavier, it’s not quite accurate to call it ‘our’ case.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “First thing you need to understand is that I’m meeting with you and Molly as witnesses, not prospective clients. Xavier would be the only client. Everything I discuss with his parents would be useable in court, just like my conversations with any other school parents.”

  “That seems odd,” said Amir. “But if that’s the way it is, we’ll deal with it.”

  “Let’s start with the search warrant,” said Jack. “I’ve seen a copy of it, but I’m not sure what it turned up.”

  “The house looked like a bomb went off,” said Amir.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” said Molly.

  “You didn’t see the worst of it, Molly,” said Amir.

  “The police aren’t supposed to break anything, unless it’s necessary to execute the warrant,” said Jack. “But it happens.”

  “Happened every fucking day where I grew up,” said Theo. “Cops called it tossing the place.”

  “We got tossed,” said Amir. “And please don’t use that word in front of my wife.”

  “Tossing?”

  Jack shot Theo a look that said, Let me do the talking, and then he turned his attention back to the Khourys. “Have you been able to determine what’s missing since the police left?”

  “They definitely took Xavier’s cell phone and laptop,” said Molly. “And the family computer in the den.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Weapons? Ammunition?”

  “There’s none of that in the house,” said Amir.

  “I don’t allow it,” said Molly. “Not with children.”

  “That rule is a little hard to square with the fact that the gun used in the shooting was registered in Amir’s name.”

  “I kept that gun in my car,” said Amir. “Locked in the glove compartment.”

  “Do you have a concealed-carry permit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind if I ask why you got one?”

  “Because I was hoping that my son would someday grow up to be a school shooter.”

  “Amir, please,” said Molly.

  “That was clearly the point of his question,” said Amir.

  “I’m just asking why you had a concealed-carry permit,” said Jack.

  “Fine. It goes back almost twenty years. Two weeks after the nine-eleven attacks I got into a fender bender. My luck, I hit a monster red pickup truck with a stars-and-bars decal stretched across the entire rear window. When the driver saw the name on my driver’s license was Amir Khoury, I honestly thought he might grab the shotgun from his rack and kill me. Anti-Muslim sentiment in this country was out of control. It’s gotten almost that bad again. Molly doesn’t want a gun in the house. I keep it in my car.”

  “Did Xavier know you kept it there?”

  “Yes. I told him. I took him to the shooting range and taught him how to use it, too.”

  “For—”

  “For self-defense,” Amir said sharply. “Not for murdering innocent children.”

  Molly reached over and took his hand. “Amir, honey. Take a deep breath, okay?”

  “I’m sorry I have to ask these questions,” said Jack. “But I do have to ask them. When was the last time you saw the gun in your glove compartment?”

  “I don’t remember. How often do you look in your glove compartment?”

  “Fair point,” said Jack. He wanted to ask about the extended magazines, but Amir seemed to have reached his limit on guns and ammo questions. “Let’s talk about the laptop and family computer taken in the search. Is there anything on those devices I should know about?”

  “Can you be a little more specific?” asked Molly.

  “Sure. Here’s what the police will be looking for. First they’re going to check every email, text, and social media post to see if there were any threats or red flags about a school shooting.”

  “Xavier isn’t on social media,” said Amir.

  Jack looked at Molly, as if the moms always had the real story. “Seriously?”

  “We didn’t allow it,” said Amir. “Social media is a complete waste of time, and Xavier has no time to waste. How do you think he was accepted to MIT?”

  “Ordinarily, I’d be skeptical of any parent’s blanket claim that their high school student was not on social media. But it’s been forty-eight hours, and the media hasn’t turned up a single social media post by Xavier. So you may be right.”

  “I am right,” said Amir.

  “What about his Internet searches?” asked Jack. “How closely did you monitor Xavier’s online activity?”

  “As closely as any parent.”

  “The police will be all over his search history. And so will I, if I take the case,” said Jack. “It could be a key part of his defense.”

  “Part of his defense?” said Amir. “How?”

  Jack paused, not sure how his answer might be received. “Let me take a step back and explain the process. A death penalty case has two phases. Guilt or innocence is decided at phase one. If the defendant is found guilty, the trial moves to phase two: sentencing. Both phases are decided by a jury of twelve. Sometimes the strategy in phase one is completely different from phase two. Here, not necessarily.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Amir.

  “Our legal strategy may be to convince the jury
in both phases of the trial that Xavier was radicalized. In phase one, proving that Xavier was radicalized by Islamic extremists—perhaps even by members of al-Qaeda itself—is the best shot at proving that he’s not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, however slight the chance of success may be. More realistically, radicalization will be a persuasive mitigating circumstance at the sentencing phase of trial and could convince at least one juror that Xavier should not receive the death penalty. One vote is all he needs. The jury must be unanimous for the death penalty in Florida.”

  “So that’s where the Internet comes in?” asked Molly. “Finding evidence to support a radicalization theory?”

  “Yes. More to the point, that’s where your help comes in. As Xavier’s lawyer, I would need to know every possible source of radicalization that Xavier could have been exposed to. Internet. Friends. Relatives.”

  Amir’s eyes were like black, smoldering embers. “Family?”

  “Is there someone you have in mind?” asked Jack.

  “Is there someone you have in mind, Mr. Swyteck?”

  Molly squeezed his hand. “Honey, you’re taking this too personally.”

  “How else am I supposed to take it? I’ve seen the posts on social media. They might not come right out and say it, but every parent at Riverside thinks the same thing.”

  “Thinks what?” asks Jack.

  “That—”

  “Amir, please,” said Molly.

  Amir took a breath. “Let me set something straight. Molly and I disagree completely about this being an act of international terrorism.”

  “You don’t think it was?” asked Jack.

  “I believe the claim of responsibility by al-Qaeda is a hoax. Al-Qaeda hasn’t claimed credit for an attack in the US since 2001. As a terrorist organization, they are yesterday’s news.”

  “Who do you think made the phony claim of responsibility?” asked Jack.