Afraid of the Dark

by James Grippando

  Her hand was a tight fist, the tissue balled up inside it. Jack sensed she had more to say, so he merely listened.

  “My son is not a terrorist.” She drew a breath, as if she resented having to say it. “If he was, the government wouldn’t have failed so miserably at that court hearing you handled in Washington.”

  Logic supported her, but so far, logic hadn’t been the test in this case. “You’re right about that,” said Jack.

  “I didn’t help my son run from the law,” she said. “I spoke with Jamal only once after McKenna’s death. He was calling from Prague.”

  “Tell me about that,” said Jack.

  “It was a total surprise. I could hear the fear in his voice. He didn’t have any money or a credit card, so he called collect. He told me how he’d been abducted, drugged, and taken to some kind of interrogation facility. That would have sounded crazy to most parents, except for what was going on in our neighborhood.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “American boys of Somali descent recuited to fight for al-Shabaab. It’s been all over the news for several years now. There were two boys from Jamal’s high school who ended up dead.”

  “Is that what they grilled Jamal about in Prague?”

  She hesitated, as if suddenly suspicious. “Jamal must have told you what they grilled him about.”

  “I want to know what your son told you when he called from Prague.”

  “Are you testing me?”

  The woman was no dummy. “No,” said Jack. “I’m testing him.”

  Again she paused, as if she didn’t see the difference. “He told me that they wanted to know about his work for McKenna’s father. The encryption stuff. Isn’t that what Jamal told you?”

  It was, but Jack didn’t answer. “What else did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. That was when I told him about McKenna. The only thing that shocked him more was when I told him he was wanted for her murder.”

  “Did he deny killing her?”

  She looked up at him, meeting his gaze. “Of course he did. I told him to come home to Minnesota. But he was too scared. I had no idea what he was going to do. Only after you got involved did I find out that he contacted his father, who managed to get him to Somalia under the name Khaled Al-Jawar. You know the rest.”

  Jack came around the desk, trying to soften his approach. “Let me play prosecutor again, Ms. Wakefield. How do you know that your son didn’t just make up all that stuff about being abducted and interrogated in Prague?”

  “Because I talked to him on the phone. I heard his voice. I know my son, and I know he wasn’t lying.”

  “You’re his mother. I want you to try to put that aside.”

  “What mother can put that aside?”

  “What I’m trying to say is that his mother won’t be a juror at the trial. How do we convince a jury that Jamal didn’t kill McKenna, run off to Prague with help from his father, and then make up a story about a secret interrogation facility just to support an alibi?”

  She thought for a moment, trying to put motherhood aside. “Jamal’s father has no connection to Prague. But the man you were supposed to meet at Lincoln Road Mall on Saturday night did.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “Just the things I read in the newspaper. But it helped make some sense of the lies the police have told.”

  “What lies are you talking about?”

  “Many of them—starting with what happened to McKenna’s mother.”

  “You mean her suicide?”

  “That was no suicide. They never found her body.”

  “They found her canoe upside down in the Everglades and an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her car. She drove to her favorite spot in Biscayne National Park and floated off peacefully.”

  “Not even the police believe that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A homicide investigator came to talk with me.”

  Jack did a double take. “When?”

  “Several times. In between the time McKenna died and when her mother disappeared.”

  “What about?”

  “There were e-mails or Internet chat communications or something of that sort that Shada Mays was having. I don’t know specifics, but the detective made it clear enough to me that the police suspected Shada was onto something.”

  “What do you mean ‘something’?”

  “Chuck Mays wasn’t the only person in that family who knew how to use a computer. Shada was tracking her daughter’s killer on the Internet and got too close to him.”

  “The detective told you that?”

  “Yes. Because the theory was that Jamal killed McKenna, and that McKenna’s mother was talking with him online, luring him back to the States so that he could be brought to justice.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

  “Of course you haven’t. Because it doesn’t wash anymore. The theory was that McKenna’s mother talked Jamal into meeting with her in person, but when she tried to turn him in or get him to turn himself in, Jamal killed her and covered his tracks by making it look like suicide. Now the cops know that Jamal was in Guantánamo when McKenna’s mother was having those online chats with her daughter’s killer. I may be going out on a limb here, but I don’t think enemy combatants at Gitmo had Internet.”

  Jack went cold. He’d smelled cover-ups before, but this one had a capital C. “So they can deny that Jamal was in a black site in Prague when McKenna was killed,” said Jack.

  “But they can’t deny that he was locked up in Gitmo when McKenna’s mother was talking to McKenna’s killer.”

  “Which, of course, leaves the big question,” said Jack. “Who was Shada Mays having those online communications with?”

  “Answer that,” she said, “and I think you’ll know who killed McKenna Mays. And her mother.”

  Jack was beginning to wonder if this could also explain the inexplicable, the thing that had puzzled him since his meeting with Chuck Mays. It was one thing for the victim’s family to question whether the police had the right man. It was another thing entirely for Chuck Mays to express those doubts to Jack, the lawyer for the man accused of murdering his daughter.

  “Thank you,” said Jack. “This has been an eye-opener.”

  “I didn’t come for ‘thanks.’ I want to know what you think.”

  Jack walked around the desk to his phone, ready to speed-dial Neil Goderich. “If what you’re saying is true, I think your son has sat in jail long enough.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Andie rode the Green Line into Washington for a status meeting with the supervisory agent in charge of her undercover operation. Her Metro stop was U-Street/Cardozo, near Howard University, and she took the escalator up to the Thirteenth Street exit. A cold front was pushing through that afternoon, and the temperature had dropped almost ten degrees since lunchtime. January was not her favorite time of year to visit the capital, and this latest trip north had confirmed that her Seattle roots had dissolved and that she was officially a thin-blooded Floridian.

  Andie cinched up her coat and started toward the Hotel LaDroit. Her undercover role was a round-the-clock commitment, and meetings at FBI offices were out of the question. Andie wondered what Jack would have said about her meeting an ex-marine like Harley Abrams at a cheap hotel. Before she could even laugh at the thought, however, Harley stopped her on the sidewalk. He’d just walked out of Ben’s Chili Bowl—A WASHINGTON LANDMARK, the sign above the window said, famous for its place in civil rights history and its “Chili Smokes” hot dogs.

  “Whoa, I don’t need to eat for a week,” said Harley. “Let’s talk while I walk this off.”

  Andie was almost shivering. “Aren’t we meeting indoors?”

  “This way,” he said. “Ten minutes, tops.”

  “Let’s make it five,” said Andie. She set a brisk pace to the corner, where Harley led her up a side street.

  “This wasn’t on my original agenda,�
� he said, “but I got another call this morning from Justice about your fiancé. To put it mildly, there are serious concerns about the direction his defense strategy is taking.”

  They stopped at a traffic light. There was a dentist’s office on the corner, and it occurred to Andie that between the worsening weather and the continuing assault on Jack—this was not the first conversation with her supervisor about Jamal Wakefield—today’s status meeting was turning out to be about as pleasant as a root canal.

  “How do they know what Jack’s defense strategy is?” she asked.

  “Well, the lawyers at Justice are making certain assumptions.”

  “They can assume all they want,” said Andie. “It’s like I told you before: If Jack wants to defend Jamal Wakefield, that’s his decision.”

  The light turned green. Andie buried her hands in her coat pockets, and Harley matched her stride across the street.

  “Don’t get defensive,” he said. “I’m sharing this with you only because I thought you should know. That’s all.”

  Andie paused to consider the source. Harley was one of the good guys, and it was pointless to kill the messenger. “Okay, sorry. I appreciate the heads-up.”

  Harley stopped midway down the block. Andie was eager to find warmth inside a comfortable lobby, but there wasn’t a hotel in sight. In fact, the neighborhood had turned questionable.

  “Don’t tell me you got us lost,” said Andie.

  They were standing in front of a hardware store, but Harley’s gaze had drifted toward a small shop across the street. The plate-glass windows were blacked over, but the sign on the door—CAPITAL PLEASURES, it read—featured a tall blonde in tight black leather with strategically placed nickel studs.

  “Harley, this seems inappropriate.”

  “That’s why I’m going to let one of our female agents handle this. Cherie Donner from the Washington field office is sort of an expert in this field. She’ll be here any minute, take you inside, and show you around. Then the two of you will meet in private. She can explain everything.”

  “Explain what?”

  “Let me put it this way,” he said. “Your undercover role is entering a new phase.”

  Andie let it sink in. She’d played a prostitute on her first undercover assignment in Seattle, but this was her first venture into the world of leather and chains.

  “Are you asking me to play some kind of dominatrix?”

  “I would have volunteered myself, but does anybody really want to see me in a getup like that?”

  Andie shook off the thought in a hurry. “Definitely not, but I—”

  “Relax,” he said. “I was just kidding about wearing the stuff. It’s more of an education into a lifestyle and certain male fetishes that Agent Donner will introduce you to.”

  She took another quick look across the street, wondering what Jack would say about her visit to Capital Pleasures.

  Honey, do you like the riding crop with the rhinestones, or without?

  “You’re okay with this, right?” he asked.

  “Sure, I’m fine. There’s just one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t expect me to whip my husband into dropping his case,” she said as she thumped him on the chest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Monday evening Jack got his first taste of Somali cuisine. It was at Cafe Nema—in Washington, D.C.

  Proving that Jamal had been held at a secret detention center in Prague was step two of the alibi defense. Step one was proving that a facility had ever existed in the Czech Republic in the first place—an even bigger hurdle. The defense team needed a heavy hitter, and it was Neil who had arranged for them to meet with Stan Haber, a corporate litigator who believed that everyone deserved a lawyer. That belief wasn’t incompatible with profit: Over the years, Haber and his powerful Washington firm had logged thousands of billable hours trying to convince juries that Big Tobacco didn’t know cigarettes were addictive. Lately, he’d spent his time defending Gitmo detainees free of charge.

  “Who ordered the sambousa with basmati rice pilaf?” the waitress asked.

  Flaky fried triangles of dough filled with curried vegetables weren’t exactly exotic, but Cafe Nema was more about the experience. At the basement level, a few steps below U Street, the dimly lit room was ripe for conversation, a cozy mix of foreign ex-pats and hip U-Streeters. Battered brick walls displayed a collage of brightly colored oil paintings, and a large Somali flag hung on a section painted fire-engine red. Photos of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington hung above the worn wooden bar, where counter and stools bore the nicks, scratches, and other badges of use. Older men spoke French and Arabic, savoring plates of kibeh (a torpedo-shaped pastry filled with beef and onions). Students from nearby Howard University gathered at tables to kibitz or send text messages from their cell phones. Jazz music set the mood without interfering with the buzz of voices.

  “Sambousa is mine,” said Jack.

  The waitress served the platters and quickly brought another round of beers. Neil steered the conversation back toward business.

  “Stan has been on top of black detention sites ever since the Washington Post broke the story in 2005.”

  Jack already knew all that, but Neil’s brief segue was all the encouragement Haber needed to remind them that he had been among the first volunteers to visit Guantánamo, and that he’d played a key role in securing the game-changing decision of the Supreme Court that detainees must be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

  “Obviously, we’d love to have someone like you on board,” said Jack. “But here’s my concern. Our job is to get Jamal acquitted on charges of first degree murder. Nothing more. I don’t want to turn his case into a foreign-policy battle where my client is collateral damage in a war against the CIA.”

  “Then you’re dreaming,” said Haber. “The CIA doesn’t care why you want the information. You want to prove that secret detention sites existed in Eastern Europe—something the United States and every Eastern European country has denied for years. Even the Red Cross had to push for five years to get access to the detainees, and they still didn’t get information about all the black sites.”

  “Are you saying you can’t help us?” asked Neil.

  Haber emptied his beer bottle into a tall glass. “When you represent a detainee from a black site, you’re fighting every step of the way for information that the CIA does not want to be made public. My client is a good example. Mohammed was thrown into the back of a van by a group of strongmen who wore black outfits, masks that covered their faces, and dark visors over their eyes—probably commandos attached to the CIA’s paramilitary Special Activities Division. He was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location. It’s the beginning of a process designed to strip the detainee of any dignity.”

  “Sounds like what Jamal described,” said Jack.

  “Disorientation is also a big part of it. For my client it was twenty days in a pitch-black cell with Eminem’s ‘Slim Shady’ and Dr. Dre blaring nonstop. Then it was day after day of ghoulish Halloween sounds, always in total darkness, always in solitary confinement. They’d chain him to the ceiling hanging by his wrists so that his toes could barely touch the ground, then they’d bring him down for waterboarding. He spent hours in something called a dog box, which, as the name, implies isn’t big enough for a human being. These are all tactics that were used effectively by the KGB, but you have to remember that the KGB was interested in securing false confessions to crimes against the state, not the gathering of reliable intelligence. It got to the point where my client tried to kill himself by running his head into the wall. Didn’t work. He just knocked himself unconscious.”

  “He’s probably much better at flying airplanes into buildings,” said Jack—and he’d shocked himself, the words having come like a reflex.

  “Whoa,” said Neil.

  Jack’s mouth
opened, but the explanation was on a slight delay, as if his brain needed extra time to process what was going on. “It’s not that I make light of torture,” he said, still trying to comprehend. “I just . . . I think I had an Andie moment.”

  “A what?”

  “My fiancée,” said Jack. “She’s an FBI agent. You kept going on and on about the treatment at these black sites, and suddenly I could almost hear Andie whispering into my ear: ‘Before you get all ACLU on me, remember what most of these guys would do if given the chance.’ ”

  The other men exchanged glances, and Neil tried to lighten things up. “These things happen with Jack. Not many guys spend four years at the Freedom Institute before jumping ship to be a federal prosecutor.”

  “Ah, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, are you?” said Haber.

  “A sheep in wolf’s clothing, if you ask my fiancée. I lasted only two years at the U.S. attorney’s office.”

  Haber drank from his beer and nodded. “I guess none of us is easy to figure out. Look at Neil and me: a couple of Jews defending Islamic extremists.”

  “Funny, Grandpa Swyteck said the same thing about me.”

  Haber looked confused again, so Jack explained. “Since getting Alzheimer’s, my grandfather thinks that he’s Jewish.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “Chicago. Both of his parents were born in Bohemia. Somewhere around Prague.”

  “Are there any Czech Jews named Swyteck?” asked Haber.

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “The name is another one of those Ellis Island disasters.”

  “For your grandfather to be Jewish, it really matters what his mother was.”

  “Her maiden name was Petrak,” said Jack, “which I checked out on the Internet. It means ‘Peter the Rock’—as in the Apostle Peter being the first pope, the rock upon which Christ founded his church.”

  “That doesn’t sound too Jewish,” said Haber.

  “You never know,” said Neil. “A lot of Eastern European Jews had good reason to assume a gentile surname, even before the Nazis. How do you think Goldsmith became Goderich?”