Gone Again: A Jack Swyteck Novel

by James Grippando

  She sank into the chair, still staring at the photograph.

  “You again,” she said to no one but herself.

  CHAPTER 48

  The drive from Cy’s Place to Hallandale Beach Boulevard was forty minutes, most of it straight up I-95. Jack rode shotgun and used the time to prepare his cross-examination of Carlos Mendoza. Theo drove, breaking the boredom every so often with a soft but distracting relapse into the new and technologically improved version of “The E-mail.”

  “My baby, she sent me an e-mail. / Said she—”

  “Theo, stop,” Jack said as he looked up from his laptop. “I’m in my cross-exam zone here.”

  “My bad. Sorry.”

  In silence, they drove east toward the northern tip of Little Moscow.

  For over seventy-five years, Gulfstream Park has been one of the premier Thoroughbred racing venues in the world, but its surrounding neighborhoods are a mixed bag. Condos, marinas, pricey shopping destinations, and other signs of gentrification stretch toward the ocean to the east. West of the racetrack was a middle-to-lower-middle-class area that, depending on the specific address, was either on the rebound or in serious decline. The streets were paved and quiet, but there were no sidewalks, and the only streetlamps were at major intersections. Houses were relics of the 1950s, one-and two-bedroom shoe boxes, some with the original metal awnings and jalousie windows. There were a few vacant lots, most of which marked the final resting place of a mobile home that was built long before anyone had ever heard the term “manufactured housing” and that had seen one too many hurricanes. The residents of the area were mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union who preferred to keep to themselves, not the jet-setters who were personal friends of Vladimir Putin and quick to let you know it.

  It was dark between the lone streetlights at intersections, and Theo flipped on the high beams so that Jack could check the address on a mailbox. They were getting close. An old ranch-style house on the corner looked to be the right place, though in the darkness Jack couldn’t make out the street number at the front door.

  “That has to be it,” said Jack.

  Theo pulled up to the curb, directly across the street. The house had no garage, and there was no car in the driveway. The windows were dark. Not even the porch light was burning.

  “Looks like Mr. Volkov might be in violation of his curfew,” said Theo.

  “Or his driver’s license is suspended and he doesn’t have a car. Let’s check.”

  They got out of the car, crossed the street, and walked up the short paved way to the front door. Jack knocked, and they waited. The windows remained dark. Jack put his ear to the door: not a sound emerged—no footsteps, no TV, no pet. Jack was about to knock again, but Theo beat him to it—with authority.

  “Do you have to make it sound like a drug bust?” asked Jack.

  “We ain’t here to sell him Thin Mints and Shortbread cookies,” said Theo.

  No one came to the door.

  “Is it possible he doesn’t live here anymore?” asked Jack. “How current is the info from your friend?”

  “It’s the same database that Volkov’s parole officer would use. He lives here. I guarantee it.”

  A quick double-check of the house number confirmed that they were in the right place.

  “Maybe the court dropped the curfew from the terms and conditions of his probation.”

  “Well, it’s just nine-twenty,” said Theo. “He could be running a little late. Let’s wait in the car a few and see if he shows up.”

  They stepped down from the porch and went to the car. Jack was about to power up his laptop and get back to work when a pair of headlights shone at the street corner. A two-door Mazda came toward them. The driver was visible only in silhouette, but it appeared that he was alone. The car turned into the driveway, the driver’s door opened, and a man who was built more like Jack than Theo stepped out and started toward the front door.

  “There’s our boy,” said Theo.

  They got out of the car, and Theo took the lead, which was fine with Jack. Theo was to the streets what Jack was to the courtroom.

  “Hey, Volkov,” Theo called out.

  The man stopped midway between the driveway and his front door. He shot a quick but suspicious look at the two who were crossing the street and coming toward him.

  “We need to talk—”

  He turned and ran in the opposite direction, stopping Theo in mid-sentence. It suddenly occurred to Jack that they probably looked like a couple of parole officers out to bust Volkov for a curfew violation, but Theo was in hot pursuit before Jack could question what he was thinking. Jack followed as Theo gave chase around the house and into the backyard. A chain-link fence ran the length of the property line, and the alley on the other side was well lit by a streetlamp. Theo quickly closed the gap, and when the man stopped for an instant to open the gate, Theo caught up and slammed the gate shut. Theo never laid a hand on him, but the man fell to the ground in a defensive posture, breathing heavily from the short run.

  “Stop,” the man said, but his voice sounded strange—like a burp.

  “Relax, dude. We just want to talk,” said Theo, as Jack reached them.

  The man answered in fragmented sentences, and it wasn’t because the sprint had left him breathless. It was his way of talking—more burping. “Leave. Me. Alone.”

  Theo made a face, confused. “What the fuck?”

  In the glow of the streetlamp, Jack noticed a deep, thick scar that ran all the way across the man’s throat.

  “Go. Away,” he belched.

  Jack understood. One of his father’s closest friends had smoked for forty years and lost his vocal cords to cancer. Esophageal speech was a learned method of swallowing air and gradually expelling it, as in a belch, to produce a sound.

  “I have to ask you about Carlos Mendoza,” said Jack.

  He swallowed more air, then expelled it firmly: “No.”

  “I’m the lawyer for Dylan Reeves. You know Dylan, right?”

  Volkov didn’t answer.

  “I need you to tell me what you know about Sashi Burgette.”

  “I. Know. Nothing.”

  “Mr. Volkov, you’re Dylan’s last shot.”

  “Nothing!” he said in his loudest belch yet, punctuating it with a slashing motion across his throat.

  Jack understood perfectly. Volkov’s loss of his voice was not from disease or accident, and the hideous scar across his neck was not from surgery. Talking about Carlos Mendoza was how Volkov had ended up with his throat slashed and his vocal cords severed.

  “You want me to give him some encouragement?” asked Theo.

  Volkov’s eyes widened at the suggestion, but Jack didn’t even start down that road.

  “We’re going to do this by the book, and Mr. Volkov is going to do the right thing.”

  “Say what?” asked Theo.

  Jack looked straight at Volkov, his glare tightening. “It’s obvious why you didn’t talk when you made those phone calls,” said Jack. “But I want to know why, Mr. Volkov. Why did you call Debra Burgette every year on Sashi’s birthday?”

  He didn’t answer. But there was no denial.

  “What do you know about Sashi Burgette?” asked Jack.

  Volkov glanced at Theo and then back at Jack before forcing out his one-word response: “Things.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  He swallowed and answered in his halting cadence. “Things. I wish. I didn’t.”

  “Did Dylan Reeves kill Sashi Burgette?”

  They locked eyes for a moment, perhaps a few seconds. It seemed much longer than that to Jack. Finally, Volkov swallowed more air.

  “Dylan,” he belched. Then he took another gulp and released it with the rest of his answer: “Should. Have.”

  CHAPTER 49

  No flights were available, so Jack slept in the passenger seat while Theo drove the six hours to Florida State Prison. Theo didn’t want to go inside. He waited in th
e car. Who could have blamed him?

  Jack checked in at Q-Wing and was escorted to death row. Five to six a.m. was the breakfast hour for all condemned inmates, but Jack’s guess was that Dylan Reeves would skip it. It wasn’t an exact science, but by Jack’s calculation, Reeves had entered the up-all-night-and-pacing phase of death watch. Three meals a day were delivered like clockwork, but in death-watch Cell No. 1, food went untouched until repeated trips from one end of the twelve-by-seven cell to the other left the inmate so starving and exhausted that he had to sit and eat.

  Around five-thirty the guards brought Reeves to the attorney-visitation room and left the two men alone. Jack took stock of his client. He wasn’t doing well, even by death-watch standards. Just the few days since their last visit had left him noticeably thinner. His glassy, sunken eyes signaled lack of sleep. Jack’s guess about pacing had been spot-on. Even with the correction officer’s assistance, Reeves had practically fallen into the chair on the other side of the table.

  “My feet are fucking killing me,” he said, groaning.

  Jack had seen death-row inmates walk them raw. “We can get a doctor to look at them.”

  That drew a sardonic smile. “Yeah. Don’t want to make a bad impression when they carry me outta here feetfirst.”

  Sometimes, a little sarcasm from a death-row inmate could be a good sign; a sense of humor meant he still had hope. Other times, it was simply bitterness—a sign that he’d given up. It all depended on the delivery. Jack didn’t detect much hope in his client’s demeanor. He shifted gears. “Last night I spoke with Mikhail Volkov.”

  Reeves snapped out of his self-pity for a moment. “Poor bastard. What did he burp to you?”

  “Not much. He’s still afraid to talk.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Jack leveled his gaze, looking for a straight answer. “Is that why you didn’t tell me about Carlos Mendoza?”

  “Did you get a good look at what Bad Boy done to Volkov? That was what he got for telling the cops that Bad Boy was living with a thirteen-year-old prostitute.”

  It wasn’t the explanation Jack had been expecting. “I thought it was to make sure Volkov kept his mouth shut about Sashi Burgette.”

  “It’s both.”

  “Let’s break this down,” said Jack, “because I need to understand. Volkov was the tipster who got Bad Boy convicted for sex trafficking. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Yeah. Not that Mikhail was completely innocent. He was the night manager at the motel.”

  “So Volkov knew what was going on?”

  “More than knew. He even referred a few clients to Bad Boy, who wanted a turn with a teenager. Somebody from MDPD got wind of what was going on and put the squeeze on Mikhail, and he cut a deal. He got probation, Bad Boy got jail time—and then Bad Boy got even.”

  “Okay. So the last thing Bad Boy needs is to add a murder conviction to his rap sheet. And I understand that you don’t want to end up like Mikhail. But this doesn’t end well for you if we lose this petition.”

  Reeves shook his head, telling Jack that he most definitely did not understand. “You only seen half of what they done to Mikhail. He pisses in a plastic bag strapped to his leg. You know what I’m sayin’? If you win this petition, I get off death row, but I don’t leave Raiford. I go back into gen-pop. That’s where Carlos Mendoza is right now. He’ll be my fucking neighbor. How long you think I’d last in there if I save my ass by pointing the finger at Bad Boy?”

  “We can try to get you moved to another facility.”

  “Bad Boy has friends everywhere. No offense, Swyteck, but look at the high-priced lawyer he hired. He’s got enough money on the outside to make bad things happen inside, no matter where I go.”

  “We’ll deal with that problem when we have to. First, we have to get you off death watch.”

  “Look, it’s this simple: I’d rather go to sleep on a gurney than have my throat slashed and my dick cut off. Okay? You need to figure out a way to win without sticking your finger in Bad Boy’s eye.”

  Jack sat back, folded his arms, and shrugged. “Then we lose.”

  “What?”

  “No Carlos Mendoza, no way we win.”

  “Look, man. I wasn’t saying Bad Boy has a better lawyer than I do, okay?”

  “This isn’t about my ego. I’m talking legal reality. Let me explain how this works, Dylan. This isn’t a trial. This isn’t even a retrial. This is a habeas petition. I can’t conjure up new theories and throw new evidence against the wall and see what sticks. The law limits what I can do.”

  “Just put me on the stand. I’ll tell the judge I didn’t do it.”

  “No, you’re not listening. I can’t call you as a witness to testify about something you could have testified to at trial. That’s not how the system works. You can’t choose to remain silent at trial and then years later, on the eve of your execution, run to a federal judge and say, ‘Hold everything, I changed my mind. Now I want to testify.’”

  “Okay. I get that.”

  “We’re onto something here with Carlos Mendoza. Talk to me, Dylan. What does Mikhail Volkov know about Sashi?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Jack tried again, starting with something simple. “How did you and Mikhail know each other?”

  “From the motel. Like I said, he was the manager. It’s one of those places where you can rent a room for an hour or for a month. Whatever you need. I stayed there sometimes.”

  “Did you and Volkov ever talk about Sashi?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Tell me about the first time Sashi came up.”

  Reeves drew a deep breath, then let it out. “First time was when Mikhail showed me some pictures.”

  “Pictures of Sashi?”

  “Yeah. He told me he had an online thing going with a hot seventeen-year-old. I said bullshit, but then he showed me the pictures and the e-mails. This girl could write the dirtiest fucking e-mails you ever read. Mikhail said he was ‘this close’ to setting up a meeting with her when the ol’ lady stepped in and screwed everything up.”

  “By ‘old lady’ you mean Debra Burgette?”

  “He didn’t say her name. But, yeah, I assume it was her.”

  “Then what?”

  “We showed the pictures to Bad Boy. Showed him what she wrote in her e-mails, too. He took one look and decided he had to have her.”

  “Did he say how he planned to get her?”

  “Not right away. I didn’t hear nothin’ about it for at least a month.”

  Jack was working a timeline in his head. “A month” was about how long Carlos Mendoza had spent trying to get the Burgettes to rehome Sashi. “So after the month, you and Mendoza had another talk about Sashi?”

  “Yeah. We talked. He wanted me to bring her to him.”

  “Kidnap her?”

  The word made him squirm. “He just wanted me to bring her to him alive. He didn’t say nothin’ about a ransom like a kidnapping.”

  “Is that when you followed Sashi to Ingraham Park?”

  “No. It’s like I told you before: I watched her for a time. Then I went to the park.”

  “To abduct her?”

  Another grimace at Jack’s word choice. “To make the pickup,” said Reeves.

  “Did you make it?”

  “No. Come on, man. Now you’re just bein’ stupid, Swyteck. You know what happened. I told you and Miss Hannah, or whatever her name is. I fucked it up. I wasn’t supposed to, you know, come on to her.”

  “You mean rape her?”

  “What I’m sayin’ is that she got away. I didn’t rape her. I didn’t kidnap her. If you want to be legal about it, I stole her panties. That’s it.”

  “If that’s the truth, then what happened to Sashi?”

  He sat forward in his chair, leaning onto the table, his dark and tired eyes meeting Jack’s stare. “I have no idea. I’m guessing Mikhail knows, and that’s why he has no voice and no dick. But I’d be makin
’ shit up if I told you what happened to Sashi after she ran away from me in that park. All I know is I didn’t kill her.”

  Jack took a minute to organize his thoughts, jotting a few of them down on his notepad. Then he looked at his client. “In twelve hours, I’ll be in Judge Frederick’s courtroom, and Carlos Mendoza will be on the witness stand. I have enough pieces to put together a good-faith theory of what happened.”

  “Okay.”

  “The problem is, how to present it to the judge. I’m not sure he’d let me call yet another witness. And even if I subpoena Mikhail Volkov, he won’t tell the truth. He won’t say a word about Carlos Mendoza, especially in a courtroom.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  “So, here’s where we are. You can’t testify. Volkov won’t testify. The only way I can prove my theory is to go after Carlos Mendoza on the witness stand tonight and see if I can break him.”

  “Then do it.”

  “No. First I need you to understand fully what I’m going to do, and I need your permission to do it. Because this isn’t going to leave you smelling like a rose. You may think all you did is steal Sashi’s panties, but attempted sexual assault of a minor involving the use of a deadly weapon—your knife—is a felony of the first degree. My strategy won’t get you out of prison. But it might save your life.”

  There was silence. Somehow, during all those hours wrapped up in his thoughts in Cell No. 1, Reeves had apparently managed to blot out that knife again. He pushed away from the table and started to pace, walking lightly on his overworked feet. Finally, he stopped and looked at Jack.

  “You got any other bright ideas on how to keep me off the gurney? I mean anything at all?”