“No, that was your exact word,” said Isa. ‘I guarantee.’”
He was still smiling, but it was a bit awkward. “Well, if I used that word, it must have been after you told me what happened to you in your cell.”
Jack looked at Isa. “What happened?”
She lowered her gaze.
Manny answered. “A male correctional officer was planning to sexually assault her.”
Jack took a moment. “I couldn’t be more sorry to hear that happened to you, Isa. And forgive me for probing, but I need to be clear on the facts. The plan was never executed, I’m hoping.”
“No,” said Isa.
“How did you find out about it?”
She took a breath, and the radiance Jack had seen just moments earlier seemed to fade.
“At first it was just a feeling I had about this particular guard. I tried to not let it get to me. I told myself that I was being paranoid—that the resurrection of Gabriel Sosa had me seeing a rapist in any man who had control over me. But it turned out I wasn’t imagining things.”
Jack waited for her to continue, but she was silent.
“Her cellmate blew the whistle,” said Manny.
“She told me that the guard had a plan,” said Isa.
“Can I ask what the plan was?”
Isa held her head in her hands, elbows on the table. “Do we really have to talk about this?”
“Sorry.”
Manny answered for her. “In a nutshell, the security cameras inside each jail cell don’t record every minute of the day. They’re motion activated. The guard used threats and coercion to get Isa’s cellmate to agree to stand motionless in front of the camera’s sensor—effectively freeze it—while he assaulted Isa.”
“Would that work?” asked Jack.
“Thankfully, we’ll never find out. The cellmate told Isa and gave her my name. We met this morning, I took it to the state attorney, and we had a deal in twenty minutes.”
“That’s fast.”
“My sense is that the state attorney knows she reached too far in charging Isa with first-degree murder, and that whole team is feeling the prosecutorial equivalent of buyer’s remorse. All I had to do was spell out the headline they narrowly avoided: ‘Rape Victim Jailed and Raped Again after State Attorney Opposes Bail.’ They caved immediately.”
“That helps to make sense of the message I got this morning from Sylvia Hunt. She made a vague reference to allegations.”
“Oh, she called you?”
“Yes. Interestingly, neither of you did.”
“That was my decision,” Isa said softly.
“This isn’t about hurt feelings, but I’m going to need an explanation,” said Jack.
“The bottom line is that I didn’t want Keith to know about this. It would have just made him worry about something he couldn’t fix. It’s the same reason I didn’t tell him about Gabriel Sosa. I didn’t want our marriage to become one long therapy session where every time we made love, my husband asked me, ‘Oh, are you okay with this, honey? Was that too traumatic for you?’ There was no reason for him to know. This was for me to deal with.”
Jack wondered if the old adage about lawyers—“The lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”—applied to psychologists. “I understand what you’re saying, and that’s your decision. But I’m not Keith.”
“But I felt that if I told you, you might tell Keith.”
“No. What you tell me does not go to Keith.”
“I know,” she said.
“Do you? Because if you don’t believe it, then I can’t represent you.”
She paused, then answered. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It won’t happen again.”
Jack had no idea if he could believe her. But he had a good place to start—a test question.
“On Wednesday we talked about the flight you booked to Hong Kong on the day after Melany’s surgery. You said the prosecutor was right: it was a contingency escape plan. I need you to tell me what you thought you might have to escape from.”
“Okay, then, I’ll tell you: my college boyfriend. David Kaval.”
“What made you think you might have to escape from him?”
“Because he’s a crazy man,” said Isa. “I know that doesn’t sound like a term that someone who holds a degree in psychology would use, but trust me when I say this: David Kaval is crazy.”
“Is he still in Miami?”
“I have no idea where he is.”
“Why did you think you might have to escape from him?”
“Because—” she started to say, then stopped, struggling with the question. “Let me put it this way. When I left the University of Miami to finish college in Switzerland, it was as much to get away from him as it was to get away from the memory of Gabriel Sosa. He’s not just crazy. He’s scary crazy.”
Jack had a long mental list of follow-up questions, but Isa’s phone rang. She answered, and a smile came to her face. “It’s Melany,” she told her lawyers. Jack listened to one side of the conversation.
“Hi, honey. Are you being a good girl and resting? . . . You’re bored. . . . Oh, yeah, Daddy’s real busy, sweetie. But I’m just finishing up now. I’ll be home real soon. . . . Fifteen minutes. I promise, okay? . . . I love you, too.”
She hung up. “Guys, David Kaval is a very long story, and right now I need to be with Melany. Can we continue this later?”
“Sure,” said Manny.
Jack was eager to learn more about Kaval, but it wasn’t urgent enough to keep Isa from her daughter. And it couldn’t hurt for him to do his own checking on Kaval before having a more in-depth conversation with Isa.
“No problem,” said Jack.
Isa thanked them and left the room. Manny rose and shook Jack’s hand. “Looking forward to working with you, Jack. This should be very interesting.”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “It will definitely be interesting.”
Chapter 14
Friday was date night. The marquee event was the Adele concert at the arena; but first, an early dinner. Jack ordered the churrasco with chimichurri, and Andie had the Peruvian ceviche with avocado. A bottle of Malbec was on the table between them.
They were at one of their favorite sidewalk cafés at the quieter end of the street, where the residential stretch of Miami Avenue transitioned into restaurant row. Farther south, sprawling royal poinciana trees and a few Old Spanish houses harkened back to an era before high-rises, when Mary Brickell pioneered the area in true Miami style, platting out beautiful wide boulevards and then selling off parcels of her extensive landholdings to entice the insanely rich to build waterfront estates. A few of the early mansions remained, owned by the likes of Sly Stallone and Madonna, when Jack had opened his first law office, but even those weren’t on Brickell Avenue proper. What made the Brickell area worth a drive for locals was the upscale district of bars and restaurants, which were also popular with the wealthy South American crowd that fueled the surrounding condo market.
Jack’s cell vibrated on the table. He checked the number and put it away.
“Who was that?” It was a question Andie wouldn’t have asked before Riley was born. Something about motherhood had activated the “need to know” gene, as if every call that interrupted a date meant that an inquisitive two-year-old had stuck her spoon in the toaster and was being rushed to the emergency room.
“Another reporter,” said Jack. “They’ve been calling all day since Isa was released.”
“Do you need to return it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Manny negotiated Isa’s release. Part of his deal with the state attorney was that we wouldn’t talk to the media until an internal investigation into the corrections officer’s misconduct is complete.”
“And you’re bound by that agreement?”
“Yes. Manny and I are cocounsel.” Jack left it at that. As a rule they didn’t talk much about Jack’s c
ases, but there were always the gray areas around the fringe where basic communication between husband and wife trumped confidentiality between criminal-defense lawyer and FBI agent.
“How’s that working out?” asked Andie. “You and Manny, I mean.”
“We’ll see.”
“You know he does ninety percent drug cases, right?”
“How did you know that?”
“One of our narcotics agents texted me: ‘Hey, Henning, your husband has stooped to a new low.’”
From the standpoint of most of Andie’s colleagues, it was better that Jack defended death-row inmates than drug dealers. “Does that bother you?” asked Jack.
“No. Does it bother you?”
He was quiet.
“It does bother you, doesn’t it,” she said.
“It’s not the drug clientele.”
“Then what?”
Jack hesitated. Her question was a little deeper than the “gray area around the fringe.”
“I don’t know if we should talk about that.”
“Jack, I’m your wife. There’s obviously something on your mind, and it’s turning you into a not very fun date. Talk to me.”
It was on his mind, and the conversation he and Keith had in his office with Felipe Bornelli wasn’t privileged. He put down his fork and told her.
Andie poured more wine, listened, and held her comment until Jack finished. “So Isa’s father wants you off the case?”
“That’s what he told me,” said Jack.
“Do you think he went out and found Manny Espinosa to replace you?”
Andie had a way of knowing exactly what he was thinking. “That’s not the way Manny, Keith, or Isa tell me it came about. In fact, from what I’m told about Isa’s relationship with her father, never in a million years would she hire a lawyer he recommended.”
“How did she get Manny’s name?”
“From her cellmate.”
“The same cellmate who said that a correctional officer was planning to rape Isa?”
Jack did a double take. “How did you know about that? That hasn’t been made public.”
“The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is getting involved. Our office has been called in to investigate. I’m not breaching any confidentiality by telling you. It’ll be in the newspapers tomorrow.”
Jack drank from his wineglass—much more than just a sip. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d been afraid to talk about one of his cases and possibly “spill the beans” to Andie, only to find out that she knew more than he did.
“It makes sense that the feds would get involved,” said Jack. “But to your first point—who hired Manny—there’s something fishy about the sequence of events here. On Wednesday the judge denied bail. Two hours later Felipe Bornelli showed up in Miami to tell me that he doesn’t approve of the lawyer his daughter hired. Less than forty-eight hours later, Manuel Espinosa has her out of jail, and Isa is eating out of the palm of his hand.”
“Nobody thinks you’re a lousy lawyer, Jack. Put your ego aside: Why would Isa’s father hire Espinosa?”
“I don’t know. I’m not buying his story that he doesn’t want Governor Swyteck’s son representing his daughter. But I got the clear vibe that for some reason he wants to control the case.”
“What are you going to do about that?”
Jack thought. “I could talk to Isa again.”
She shook her head. “Before that.”
“I could go straight to Felipe.”
A grimace. “Or?”
Jack thought for a moment. “I could talk to Isa’s cellmate.”
“Bingo. And at the risk of crossing a line I shouldn’t cross, you might want to do that before the feds interrogate her.”
They were in that gray area again, but Jack was glad they’d gone there. “I feel better. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and Jack felt her foot sliding around his ankle. “I’ll think of some way for you to pay me back.”
He smiled hopefully. “Where do you put the odds of Riley staying in her own bed tonight?”
Lately it seemed that whenever Mommy and Daddy went out, Riley had a bad dream. Their last two date nights had ended in slumber parties: Jack, Andie, Riley, and Dora the Explorer.
“Fifty-fifty.”
“Do you think she might leave us alone if we swore on a stack of Bibles that she has nothing to worry about—she’s going to be an only child?”
Andie laughed. “Our little girl is smart, Jack. But not that smart.”
Friday was their first night in the new condo at the Four Seasons residences, and Keith was loading the refrigerator. Home delivery was the way to grocery shop in the Brickell area. Most stores would even unpack and put things away for you, but Keith liked everything “just so”—dairy on the top shelf, bottled water and soft drinks on the bottom, expiration dates facing out. He couldn’t help doing it himself. But he still tipped well.
“Wow, gracias,” the deliveryman said.
A few dry goods remained on the kitchen counter, but the perishables were taken care of. Melany was sound asleep in her new bedroom, which was adjacent to the master suite. Isa had said she was exhausted and wanted to lie down, but Keith spotted her out on the terrace, which was accessible from the master at one end and the breakfast nook at the other. She was wearing a bathrobe, her hair pulled back in a clip. He joined her at the rail.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
“No,” she said quietly.
It didn’t surprise him. He wondered what nightmares had followed her home from the detention center.
They had a north-facing view, which was spectacular. The financial heart of Miami was at their feet, and they could almost reach out and touch the city lights along Biscayne Bay.
“A little like Hong Kong,” said Keith.
“Yeah. That’s what Melany told me.” Her voice was flat, and even though the vista was sprawling, she seemed intensely focused, as if she had picked out something of interest.
“You okay?” he asked.
Her gaze remained fixed. “See that building down there? The west side of Brickell Avenue, next to the Marriott?” she said, pointing.
“The glass one on the corner?”
“Uh-huh. When I was a girl living in Miami, that was the Office of the Consul General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Where my father used to work.”
“Did you ever go there?”
“Nope. Not once.”
They’d never had a real conversation about her father, and Keith wasn’t sure if this was the right time. But he was still bothered by the way Felipe had shown up at Jack’s office and made it clear that he wanted Jack off the case. “He’s an unusual man,” said Keith.
“Tell me about it. It’s funny how you get images in your head about people. In my mind’s eye, I will always see my father wearing one of those red T-shirts that everyone in the Chavez government used to wear. A red T-shirt and a windbreaker in the colors of the Venezuelan flag.”
“That’s not what he was wearing when Jack and I talked to him.”
“Have you heard from him since then?”
“No,” said Keith. “Have you?”
“I would tell you if I had.”
“Would you?”
She looked at him. “Yes, Keith. Why would you even ask that?”
He was taken aback by the question, given what secrets had been revealed in the previous two days. But he wasn’t looking for an argument. “I just want to make sure he’s not here to stir up trouble.”
“I’m not going to worry about that. Manny and Jack can handle it.”
He noticed that she’d mentioned Manny’s name first. “Okay. But I don’t want you to be too taken with Manny.”
“What do you mean?”
He chose his words carefully. “Your father didn’t just say that he wanted Jack off the case. He said that he planned to share information that will bring into question your claim tha
t Gabriel Sosa assaulted you.”
Isa closed her eyes slowly, then opened them, absorbing the blow. “He is—” She paused, searching for the right word. “He’s just unbelievable.”
Silence came over them. Keith thought of his own daughter—how he would react if a nineteen-year-old Melany called to tell him she’d been assaulted. “I can’t get over your father’s reaction. How could he just reject out of hand any possibility that you were raped?”
Isa hesitated, as if reluctant to talk about it. “You don’t know my father. I can’t say that I have a perfect recollection of the phone conversation, after what had just happened to me. I was already numb, and when he started blasting me for inviting a boy up to my room on the first date, I just went—I don’t know, catatonic.”
Keith felt his anger rising inside, but he didn’t know if he should show it. He didn’t know how to deal with any of his feelings or sudden developments that had changed their lives from the moment they’d landed in Miami.
“It was a huge mistake not to report it,” said Isa.
“You can’t beat yourself up about that.”
“I hung up the phone with my father and I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know how much time passed, but then another wave of panic set in. What if I got pregnant? I went to the campus clinic to see a doctor. The nurse at the desk must have sensed how traumatized I was. She asked if I wanted to report anything to the authorities. All I could hear was my father’s booming voice in my head. Not even my own father believed I was raped. So I told her no. I had nothing to report. When I got in to see the doctor I told her I had sex without protection. I got the morning-after pill. And that was the end of it.”
“You did the best you could,” said Keith.
Tears came to her eyes. “I wasn’t thinking at that time. I felt ashamed. I felt guilty. I didn’t want to come forward because I didn’t want anyone to know.”
Keith held her in the darkness. “It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s totally okay now.”
“I’m going to try to lie down again,” she said. “I need to sleep.”
“I’ll join you.”
Keith opened the door and they went inside. Isa went straight to the bed. Keith made a stop in the bathroom, and by the time he emerged, Isa was already asleep. He quietly climbed under the covers and rested his head on the pillow. The air conditioner kicked on, then off. He didn’t check the time, but the A/C cycled on and off two more times, and he was still unable to sleep. He, too, felt ashamed. And guilty. He thought of the things that he and Isa had done in the bedroom, the things he’d said to her in moments of passion, and he wondered if they had made her cringe inside. Sex had never been anything but a strong point in their relationship. Or so he’d thought. Was he that insensitive? Had she tried to tell him and he wasn’t listening?
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