“Getting drunk isn’t going to help.”
“Sure didn’t hurt.”
“Do you want me to call Duncan Fitz?”
“No!” she said, almost jackknifing on the couch, suddenly finding the energy to sit up. “You can’t fix this, Jack. Nobody can fix this.”
“Fix what?”
“Fix what?” she said, overenunciating, her mouth forming the words in such exaggerated fashion that Jack could have understood without a sense of hearing. “You don’t think something is broken?” she asked.
Jack dropped her left foot into his lap and started on the right, trying to relax her. “Why don’t you tell me what you think is broken?”
“Us, Jack. Us.”
Jack stopped the foot massage. “What are you talking about?”
“I was talking to Molly.”
“Today?”
“No, no. Like two months ago. We were talking about religion. She’s not a Muslim, so I was curious to know how that worked for her and Amir.”
“The imam told me she has no religion,” said Jack.
“That’s not true. She’s not without religion. She was raised Episcopalian. She just doesn’t practice, and she chose not to convert to Islam.”
“What does this have to do with us?”
“Just listen to me, Jack. When Molly decided not to convert, she and Amir reached an understanding. Since Molly doesn’t practice, their children would go to the mosque with Amir.”
“That’s the way it is in a lot of interfaith families. You go with the parent who considers religion to be a more important part of their life. But I still don’t see how this pertains to us.”
“It’s . . .” She paused, but it appeared to be just a head rush. “It’s like us because they had an understanding, and it doesn’t work.”
“Andie, we’re both Christians. We don’t have that issue.”
“I’m not saying it’s the same issue. But we have the same problem.”
“You’re drunk, and I’m not following you at all.”
“No, don’t dismiss what I’m saying. We really do have the same problem. It’s like Molly told me. The understanding worked for a while. But as you get older, and you have kids, and things get more complicated, you realize that the old understanding isn’t working. You’re only pretending it works.”
“So religion became more important to Amir as they got older. Is that what you’re saying.”
“Yes!”
“Fine. That’s them. That has nothing to do with us.”
“Yes, it does! We have an understanding. It’s not exactly like theirs, but it’s just as important to our marriage.”
Jack finally had a sense of where this conversation was headed. “You’re talking about our agreement: I don’t ask you about active investigations you’re working on; you don’t ask me about criminal cases I’m handling.”
“Yes! Our agreement,” said Andie. “The one that we fool ourselves into thinking can make a marriage work between an FBI agent and a criminal defense lawyer.”
Jack was starting to worry. “I don’t see the comparison between our agreement and the one that Molly and Amir have.”
“Before you agreed to defend Xavier, I wouldn’t have seen it either. But now it’s so clear to me. After the deposition today, it’s crystal clear.”
“You’re going to have to explain it to me, honey.”
“Jack, before I met you, you did nothing but defend guilty murderers on death row.”
“Theo wasn’t guilty.”
“One,” said Andie. “One innocent client.”
“What’s your point?”
“It’s like a religion for you, Jack. Defending guilty people. Amir went back to his religion stronger, more devoted, as their marriage went on. I’m afraid. I’m so afraid you’re going back to your religion. Because I can’t handle it, Jack. I can’t. It’s not who I am.”
Jack took a deep breath. He’d known this was hard on Andie, but he’d clearly underestimated how hard. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“For all this pain. I can’t make it go away now. I’m in this case, and the judge isn’t going to let me out. But if it’s any consolation, defending Xavier has taught me something.”
“What?”
“It’s not who I am, either,” he said, shooting a quick glance down the hallway to Righley’s bedroom. “Not anymore.”
Chapter 31
Jack drove to work in the morning with one of the biggest songs of the nineties in his head. The one about the guy in the corner. In the spotlight. Losing my religion.
Jack considered it a rock trivia nugget to know that the old R.E.M. hit had nothing to do with religion. Not until he went to college in North Florida did he hear anyone say “losing my religion,” an Old South expression for losing your temper or feeling frustrated and desperate. “Frustrated” seemed to fit well enough on the heels of Jack’s conversation with Andie. Maybe even “desperate.” Jack didn’t hold out much hope that his meeting with the Justice Department would improve things.
The James Lawrence King Federal Justice Building is a twelve-story government office building in downtown Miami. Glass-and-concrete construction made it a relatively modern addition to a jigsaw complex that included the old and new federal courthouses, all connected by courtyards. Surrounding streets were cordoned off by concrete car-bomb barriers, a part of life across the country after domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh detonated a truckload of explosives outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, murdering 149 adults and 19 children. Had Xavier been indicted under federal law as a terrorist, he would have been housed in the federal detention center right next door to the US Attorney’s Office.
It was Sylvia Gonzalez who’d requested the meeting, and she’d traveled down from Washington to attend on behalf of the National Security Division. Jack assumed it was about federal charges. They met with Jack in the US attorney’s spacious corner office, so technically he was the host. The US attorney’s post was a political appointment, changing like clockwork with each presidential election, which meant that the best lawyers didn’t necessarily rise to the top. Grady Olson was more of a CEO than a lawyer, and apparently he had more important things to manage than this meeting. He was glued to his smartphone, not even trying to hide the fact that he was reading and answering emails, thumbs in high gear.
Gonzalez was in control.
“Let’s start with this unpleasant reality,” she said. “Because the shooting has been designated an act of terrorism, the DOJ has the power to prosecute your client and seek the death penalty under federal law.”
“You also have the power to prosecute my client and seek life in prison without parole,” said Jack. “Which is what I hope you’ll do. And because I’m feeling particularly lucky this morning, I hope you’ll convince Abe Beckham and the state attorney to do the same under Florida law.”
“This indeed may be your lucky day, Jack.”
Her words took Jack by surprise. He’d come prepared to talk about the dents he’d put in the prosecutor’s case, maybe even spring the alibi that Xavier was in bed with Maritza, though he was saving Maritza until he knew whether she was his ace in the hole or a bald-faced liar.
“Come again?” said Jack.
“There’s one way to get death off the table,” said Gonzalez. “Tell us who Xavier’s accomplice was.”
“I don’t represent Molly Khoury,” said Jack, “but I can tell you this much, based on what I know about her. Molly would gladly tell you that she went to Riverside Day School after the shooting; that she gathered up the shooter’s hat, goggles, clothes, and vest and then dumped all of it deep in the Everglades where it could never be found. She would happily plead guilty as an accessory after the fact and even do jail time. And she would do that even if it wasn’t true—if it would save her son from the death penalty.”
Gonzalez poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the coffee table. Jack declined
her offer, and Grady was too focused on his phone to notice, so she kept it for herself.
“We’re not talking about Molly Khoury,” she said. “And we are definitely not talking about an accessory after the fact.”
“I’m listening,” said Jack.
“You’ve seen the evidence Abe Beckham presented to the grand jury. Your client’s confession may or may not meet the standard of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The gun belonged to his father, so you’ll tell the jury that it was stolen from his glove compartment by the real shooter, who is not your client.”
“It’s more than a colorable argument,” said Jack. “The government’s own fingerprint expert has confirmed the existence of a print that doesn’t belong to Xavier or his father. And the gun-shop owner’s testimony that Xavier tried to buy an automatic rifle from him is unusable.”
“Shaky,” said Gonzalez. “I’ll give you that.”
“There’s also no evidence to connect my client to the purchase of extended magazines,” Jack continued. “No surveillance video to confirm his identity. No credible eyewitness identification of him as the shooter. No one could have identified the man behind the ski mask and goggles in the fog of war.”
Gonzalez chomped on an ice cube from her water glass. “I didn’t invite you here to debate the evidence,” she said. “Every prosecutor’s case has weaknesses.”
“These are holes, not weaknesses,” said Jack. “More holes than the state attorney wants to admit.”
“Not one of these holes, as you call them, will stop a jury from convicting him of murder in the first degree. Nor will they save him from the death penalty. Which leads me back to where I started.”
“The accomplice,” said Jack.
“Yes,” said Gonzalez, placing her water glass on the coffee table.
Grady quickly moved it to the tray, grabbed a napkin, and wiped the condensation from his gorgeous mahogany tabletop. Then he went back to his phone.
Gonzalez continued. “Your client didn’t do this alone. Someone planned it, recruited him, educated him, supplied the extended magazines, told him what to wear, and helped him escape. It wasn’t Molly Khoury. Tell us who it was, and the United States will not seek the death penalty when we indict him under federal law.”
“If you could prove an al-Qaeda connection, you would have already charged him under federal terrorism laws. Without a terrorist connection, you might as well throw double jeopardy out the window and charge him twice for the same crime. Frankly, I’m more concerned about the good, ol’ fashioned homicide charges. Beckham doesn’t have to prove it was terrorism under state law.”
“I believe we can persuade the state attorney to fall in line.”
“Let me make sure I understand the deal. If my client names his accomplice, he gets life without parole.”
“Put another way, if he doesn’t give up his accomplice, he’s looking at the death penalty under Florida law and under federal law.”
“I don’t think he’s all that concerned about being executed twice.”
“You know what I mean, Jack. At least one of us is going to make it stick.”
“I understand,” said Jack. “But isn’t your offer overlooking one thing?”
“My offer is tailored to what your client is lucky to get.”
Jack hadn’t pressed the “wrong man” argument so far, but the existence of an accomplice and recitation of “holes” in the government’s case had him thinking: What if Maritza wasn’t a liar?
“Have you considered the possibility that Xavier wasn’t the shooter?” asked Jack.
The US attorney chuckled, his second contribution to the meeting, this time without a napkin. “Don’t get cocky, Swyteck,” he said.
“There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind who did it,” said Gonzalez. “We want to know who helped him.”
Jack paused, but only to increase the effect of his next suggestion. “What if Xavier has an alibi?”
“Beckham spoke to me about that,” said Gonzalez. “He told me you raised the possibility of presenting an alibi to the grand jury. You came forward with nothing.”
“I’m in the process of verifying it. I don’t want to put it out there only to have it picked apart. Under the rules, I don’t have to disclose an alibi until ten days before trial.”
“I’m not going to tell you all of the evidence I’m sitting on, Jack. But know this much: any alibi would be taken not with a grain, but a boulder, of salt.”
“We’ll see.”
Grady rose, as if to signal it was time for his next meeting. “Seriously, Swyteck, do you really believe your client is not the shooter?”
Jack didn’t have to answer, and he wasn’t sure if the US attorney expected him to. But he gave him an honest one.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” said Jack.
Chapter 32
Jack left the US Attorney’s Office certain of one thing: if Xavier was the shooter, and if he had an accomplice, Jack wasn’t going to get a name from a client who was giving him the silent treatment. The long and impressive run of the Miami-Dade Detention Center Monologues, starring Jack Swyteck, had to end.
The court order directing the defendant to submit to a psychiatric “competence” evaluation was still in effect. Jack had managed to stave off the prosecutor’s repeated demands for a firm date, taking the position that he needed to speak to his client—or, more precisely, his client needed to speak to him—before any session with a psychiatrist chosen by the prosecution. Jack’s meeting with Sylvia Gonzalez had attached some urgency to the process, so he modified his position: if he wouldn’t talk to Jack, Xavier at least had to talk to a psychiatrist chosen by Jack.
“Hypnosis?” asked Dr. Moore. “Really, Jack?”
Elaine Moore, M.D., used hypnosis in her practice, but she used it cautiously. So cautiously that, in one of his capital cases at the Freedom Institute, Jack had called her as an expert witness to attack the use of hypnotically induced memory recall in a police homicide investigation. It was Dr. Moore’s testimony—“Uncorroborated, hypnotically elicited memories can lead to the wrongful imprisonment of innocent people”—that had won a last-minute stay of execution for Jack’s client.
“Can you help?” said Jack. “I’m desperate.” Losing my religion.
“For you, I’ll give it a shot.”
Jack arranged for the session to take place the next day in the detention center’s police interrogation room. It was a tiny space, the perfect cramped rectangle for one good cop, one bad cop, and any suspect who was pliable enough to trade away the rest of his life for a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake. Dr. Moore and Xavier were inside alone. Jack and Hannah were standing in the adjacent room. Hidden behind a one-way mirror and connected by a hidden microphone, they could see and hear the doctor and her patient.
“So this is what it’s like to be on the other side,” said Hannah. “I wonder where they keep the rubber hose.”
“That’s not funny,” said Jack. Hannah sometimes forgot that Jack was married to a law enforcement officer.
Jack stepped closer to the glass, his gaze focused on his client. Dr. Moore had requested a comfortable cot for her patient, which the warden had denied, so she’d brought a beanbag chair from her office. Xavier was half submerged in a big ball of blue velour, seemingly relaxed, with knees bent, feet flat on the floor, and hands on his thighs. The lights were dimmed to create the right mood. The doctor spoke in a calm, soothing tone.
“Just begin to allow yourself to relax . . . Letting all your cares and worries go . . . And at this moment in time . . . Nothing matters . . . As you switch off your thoughts . . . And let your eyelids close.”
Xavier’s eyes remained open. The doctor continued in the same even tone, as if her voice were on a recorded audio loop. “Just allow this time for yourself . . . So that you can unwind completely . . . And as you begin to feel more and more relaxed . . . Letting go of any worries or problems . . . That may have been on your mind lat
ely . . . And there is no need to fight any unwanted negative thoughts . . .”
Xavier closed his eyes.
“You think he’s faking?” asked Hannah.
“Damned if I know,” said Jack.
“Usually you can tell,” said Hannah. “My college roommate used to pretend to faint every time her boyfriend broke up with her. We knew she was faking because her eyelids quivered. Xavier’s aren’t quivering.”
They weren’t, but Jack was skeptical. “I’m not sure quivering eyelids is a medically sound litmus test.”
The doctor’s voice continued. “I want you to take me back now, Xavier. Back to that day.”
Jack and the doctor had agreed on “that day” as a handle for the shooting. A more explicit reference would have been contrary to the instructions to relax and release all negative energy.
Dr. Moore continued. “You’re with your mom . . . In the family car . . . She’s driving . . . Your sister and brother are in the back seat.”
The clinical approach, as Jack understood it, was to take Xavier back to the last time he’d spoken in the presence of another human being. The hypnosis would elicit the next words out of his mouth. At least that was the plan.
“The car is moving down the street . . . Where you walked the dog . . . Rode your bike . . . You see the house . . . Where you grew up . . . Where your family lives . . .”
Xavier appeared to be very relaxed.
“I don’t think he’s faking,” Hannah whispered.
“We’ll see,” said Jack, allowing for the possibility that perhaps Dr. Moore had made a breakthrough.
“The car stops . . . You open the door . . . You get out . . .”
She was reaching the critical point, and Dr. Moore had forewarned Jack that even if things were going well, the moment of confrontation with the police could be jarring and might bring the session to a screeching halt.
“Men in uniform approach the car . . . They want something . . . You put your hands in the air . . . You say something to your mother . . .”
Xavier didn’t flinch. His eyes remained closed. The doctor gave him a moment and then modulated her tone, as if trying to explore a deeper place in Xavier’s psyche.
Twenty Page 18
