“I’m not going to keep him around just because I wrote him a check. That hundred grand is a sunk cost. If you think he should go, he goes.”
Jack drained what was left of his draft. “So far I’d say he’s been an asset. I can work with him, if that’s Isa’s decision.”
“I get it that this is Isa’s decision. But as her lawyer, and as my friend, you can’t let tonight be the final word on how Manny and Isa’s old man came to be of like mind on the sexual assault.”
“Don’t worry about that. Another talk with Felipe should clear things up.”
“Good luck finding him. He still hasn’t reached out to Isa. Since that meeting in your office, it’s as if the guy has dropped off the planet.”
“Have you been looking for him?”
“No, but he didn’t exactly leave us with the impression that we’d heard the last from him. Then nothing.”
Jack retrieved his cell and pulled up Theo’s number. “If he’s still in Miami, I know someone who can track him down.”
Chapter 23
Sylvia was sitting in front of the vanity mirror and applying her makeup when Swyteck called.
After two months of duds from an online dating service, she was less than an hour away from an actual second date. The trial against Isa Bornelli was turning into her most high-profile case in years, however, so she took the call. But she made it clear that a call at home on the weekend was not going to be standard operating procedure.
“This had better be important, Swyteck.”
It was. Sylvia thanked him, promised nothing, and called the state attorney immediately.
“This had better be important, Sylvia.”
It caught her off guard—the way the state attorney’s greeting had echoed her own warning to Swyteck. Sylvia took a minute to update Benitez about the Tribune’s proposed article. The two prosecutors agreed that it was a mixed question of law and public relations, so Sylvia conferenced in the director of media relations, Alex Cruz.
“If the story is inaccurate, you need to correct it,” said Cruz. “We’re already losing the social-media battle in this case.”
“Define losing,” said the state attorney.
“Bloggers are really starting to chime in,” said Cruz. “Uniformly, they are sympathetic to Bornelli. I’ve been sending you the links by e-mail.”
The state attorney barely had time to read e-mails, let alone the links inside them. “Give me the gist, Alex.”
“Naturally you have outliers—the extremists who not only applaud Bornelli for killing her attacker but hope that she castrated him, too. But there are also some serious discussions. The most credible one, with tons of hits and comments, simply asks, ‘What responsibility does a rape victim bear for the murder of her rapist?’ The general view seems to be ‘some responsibility,’ but almost every commenter agrees that first-degree murder with a sentence of life in prison without parole is a case of the prosecutor overcharging.”
“That’s because they don’t know the facts,” said Sylvia.
“Exactly,” said the state attorney. “Which is exactly why we can’t let the Tribune run a Sunday story that gets the facts dead wrong.”
They agreed that Sylvia should make the phone call to Michael Posten. He’d covered many of her trials over the years, and she knew how to handle him. She hoped.
She dialed his cell, then startled herself with her own reflection. The left side of her face was ready for date night; the right looked like the bad “before” photo on a morning-show segment of extreme makeovers.
Posten was pleasant, and she got straight to the point.
“I had a phone conversation with Jack Swyteck,” said Sylvia. “He tells me that you have a copy of a report prepared by the MDPD homicide detective who interviewed Isa Bornelli.”
“So what if I do?”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you that a homicide investigation is considered ‘active’ through trial until conviction. That report is not public information.”
“Oh, so now you’re threatening to put rape victims and journalists in jail? Making all kind of friends, aren’t you, Sylvia?”
“This is not a threat. Right now I’m just trying to figure out how you got it so wrong if you actually have a copy of the record.”
“All right, I’ll be honest. I bluffed Swyteck. I don’t exactly have the report. I’ve been told what’s in it.”
“By whom?”
“You know I can’t tell you my source.”
“Inside or outside the department?”
“Can’t say.”
“Fine,” said Sylvia. “Swyteck sent me your headline. Whoever told you that Bornelli admitted to police that she ‘just went along’ with the murder of Gabriel Sosa is dead wrong.”
“Can I see the MDPD record and draw my own conclusion?” asked Posten.
“It will be released to the defense on Monday along with the other evidence presented to the grand jury. The judge will decide what will be made public. If you intend to print your story before then, I want to be quoted on the record as follows: ‘The alleged admission is a complete distortion of the MDPD investigation record and of the evidence that the state attorney presented to the grand jury.’”
“Ooo-kay,” he said. “I’m not a complete idiot. But if you’re taking that position, you have to give me something else. You just killed six paragraphs.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“Yeah, I have one thread I’m toying with.”
“Tell me.”
He chuckled. “Not so fast. Let’s go about this a little differently. What evidence do you have that Isa Bornelli was actually raped?”
Sylvia paused, deciding how much she should give him. “She told it to an MDPD homicide detective. It’s in the report you almost mischaracterized.”
“The interview that happened more than a month after the alleged assault.”
“Approximately. Yes.”
“That’s all you have?”
“I have no further comment on that.”
“Well, maybe you’d like to comment on this: I’ve been told that Ms. Bornelli more than went along with the rape. That she wasn’t raped.”
The prosecutor froze. Still, she could sense the enjoyment on the other end of the line as her mind raced with the implications that story would have on her case. No rape. No motive.
“You still there?” asked Posten.
“Yes. Do you have a source on that?”
“Do I have a source?” he said, his chuckle dissolving into a serious tone. “I have the source.”
Chapter 24
“The grand jury materials are here from the state attorney,” Jack’s assistant told him. “I put them on your desk.”
It was Monday morning. Bonnie was always the first one into the office, and she never looked like she had just rolled out of bed. Sometimes Jack wondered if roadrunners actually slept.
“Thanks, Bonnie. Call Manny and let him know.”
“Already did. He has a morning hearing and will be here at eleven.”
“Good. Call Isa and tell her to come then, too.”
“Already did that, too.”
Of course you did.
Jack went into his office. Following an indictment, court rules required the prosecution to share all evidence presented to a grand jury, and the evidence against Isa Bornelli was laid out across his desk. Bonnie had been with him so long that she knew how to organize things before he even reviewed them. On the far left was the indictment, followed by the transcript, and so on, all in neat and labeled piles. Jack switched on the lamp, settled into his desk chair, and started with the transcript, making notes on his pad as he worked through it.
“Knock, knock.”
Jack looked up from his desk. It was Hannah Goldsmith, the head of the Freedom Institute—Neil’s daughter and successor.
Hannah was a foot shorter than Jack, but what she lacked in stature she made up for in energy. Her mother had asked
Jack to step in after Neil’s death. “Hannah’s too young,” she’d pleaded, overlooking the fact that her daughter had already passed the age at which Neil had founded the Institute.
“Need any help with anything today, Jack? I’m kind of slow right now.”
Jack smiled and shook his head. “Here’s a concept: go to the beach.”
She stepped into his office and pulled up a chair, sitting the way she always did—on the front edge and leaning forward slightly, like a schoolkid who knew the answer to every question and was primed to thrust her hand into the air.
“Eve, Brian, and I have been talking. The Institute would have gone under if Jack Swyteck, P.A., hadn’t moved in as a subtenant. We can’t possibly pay you back for all the repairs and improvements you and Andie have made around here. So we thought we could take turns working a few hours a week on your cases. Like contract attorneys, except you don’t have to pay us.”
Eve, the only woman Jack had known to smoke a pipe, and Brian, who’d been wearing the same corduroy jacket since Reagan was president, had started at the Institute before Jack was in law school. Both were excellent lawyers who worked long hours for little pay.
“You don’t have to do that,” said Jack.
“We know. We want to. So whatcha workin’ on? Bornelli?”
They’d talked about the case the way all lawyers do, mostly chitchat over lunch in the “conference room.” Jack valued her opinion—Hannah didn’t have her father’s experience, but she definitely had his IQ.
“I’m about halfway through the grand jury transcript,” said Jack. “As we suspected, the chief witness against Isa is her old boyfriend, David Kaval. He’s serving time in FSP for armed robbery.”
“How’d they connect him to the murder? No, let me guess: he shot his mouth off to a jailhouse snitch.”
“Good guess, but no. DNA. Sosa was blindfolded when the police recovered his body. The best forensic lead was a drop of blood on the blindfold that didn’t belong to Sosa. Fast forward a few years, Kaval is convicted of armed robbery. They ran his DNA through the CODIS database. Bang. They had a match.”
Hannah was more than familiar with the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, which linked DNA from crime scenes to that of convicted felons and others in the database. CODIS was alphabet soup to most clients of the Freedom Institute, and usually—but not always—it spelled death by lethal injection.
“So Kaval cut a deal in exchange for testimony against Isa?”
“Yup,” said Jack. “He gets ten years for his role in the kidnapping and murder of Gabriel Sosa, to be served concurrently—in effect retroactively—with his current sentence.”
“In other words, he gets a free pass on the Sosa murder.”
“That he does.”
“Is he a credible witness?”
“Can’t tell from the grand jury transcript. But we’re in luck,” he said as he reached for the DVD on his desk. “The state attorney’s initial plan wasn’t to take this case to a grand jury, so the prosecutor went to FSP and questioned him under oath before Isa’s arrest warrant was issued. You want to watch with me?”
“Wow, what a coincidence!” she said, throwing up her hands. “It was next in my Netflix queue.”
Bonnie knocked on the door frame and poked her head into the office. “Isa Bornelli is here early.”
“Good thing I didn’t pop the popcorn,” said Hannah, rising.
“No, stay,” said Jack. “I’d like your impression, if Isa has no objection.”
“No objection to what?” asked Isa, as she entered the office.
Jack made the introductions, and Isa was fine with Hannah staying to view Kaval’s video. Bonnie backed herself out of the office and quietly closed the door. Jack explained what was on his desk and then led her and Hannah to the sitting area. Hannah arranged the chairs to face the wall-mounted LCD. Jack cued up the DVD and took the chair between Hannah and his client as the first image appeared. It was just the name of the witness and the date of the examination—black letters and numbers on a white screen—but Jack suspected that it was enough to get his client’s pulse racing.
“You okay?” he asked.
Isa nodded.
The name and date vanished, and David Kaval was suddenly staring straight at them.
Isa recoiled and looked away. “Oh, my God,” she said, breathless.
“You sure you’re okay with this?” asked Jack.
She didn’t answer. Slowly, her gaze returned to the video.
Kaval was seated at a wooden table, filmed straight-on, his head and upper body centered on the screen. Orange is for death row at FSP, so he wore the standard-issue blue V-neck T-shirt. He was clearly no stranger to the prison weight room: he had the chest and biceps of a boxer, and his bulging forearms were covered in purple tattoos. Jack had interviewed many inmates at those same FSP tables, and the way Kaval dominated it, Jack estimated that he was over six feet tall. Beautiful women fall for bad boys all the time, but Isa Bornelli with David Kaval struck Jack as an extreme case.
“He looks so different,” said Isa. “So hard.”
“Prison can do that,” said Jack.
“No,” said Isa. “I romanticized him in college. I had it in my head that he was ruggedly handsome. He was just a thug.”
Sylvia Hunt’s voice interrupted—“Please state your name”—but the camera never left Kaval. Over the next few minutes, the prosecutor led the witness through his personal background, his criminal history, and his deal with the state attorney’s office. Then she turned to his “relationship” with Isa Bornelli.
“We dated off and on in college.”
“For how long?”
“A year or so. We met when she was a freshman at the University of Miami. I was in my fourth year at Miami Dade College.”
“You were a senior?”
“No. Like I said, it was my fourth year, but—no, I wasn’t a senior.”
“You said your relationship was off and on. What was your status in March of Ms. Bornelli’s sophomore year?”
“Off.”
“How ‘off’ was it?”
“We had a big argument on Valentine’s Day. She said it was over.”
“Was it?”
“In her mind, maybe.” He flashed a confident grin. “I always knew she’d be back.”
“What a creep,” said Isa.
Jack paused the video. “If there’s anything you want to correct along the way, tell me, and I’ll stop.”
“I just don’t want the two of you to think that I was in love with this man. Love had nothing do with us.”
“Understood,” said Jack. He hit play, and the video resumed.
“Did you in fact see Ms. Bornelli again after that breakup?”
“Yeah. She called a few weeks later and asked me to stop by.”
Isa grabbed the remote and hit pause. “That’s a lie. He must have tried me on my cell a hundred times. I never answered. Then one morning he just showed up outside my dorm. He stood there and waited ’til I came back from class.”
Jack made a note of it on his legal pad. “Got it,” he said, and the video continued.
“What did you do on that day?”
“Nothing special. We went for a walk. Got lunch. We just hung out together. But I could tell something was wrong with her. I asked if it was me—if she wanted me to leave. She said no, I definitely should stay. She said she just wanted me to be there for her. She needed someone she could count on.”
“Did you have any idea what she meant by that?”
“Not at the time. But later on I did.”
“What happened?”
“We went to dinner. Around eight o’clock I drove her back to her dorm and parked. We were sitting there in the dark, and for no reason she started crying. I asked her what was wrong, and that’s when she told me.”
“Ms. Bornelli told you what?”
“She said she went on a date. And I said, baby, no big deal. What’s one date? Then she look
ed over at me and said, ‘He raped me.’”
“What was your reaction?”
“I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, how? Who did this to you?”
“Did she tell you?”
“Not at first. She said she didn’t report it, so it didn’t matter who did it. I said ‘bullshit’—sorry. ‘Isa, you gotta tell me who did this to you. You gotta tell me.’”
“Did she give his name?”
“‘Give’ probably isn’t the right word. I kind of had to pull it out of her. She was bawling her eyes out. It was like, you know, she’d never talked to anyone about this. All kind of tears running down her face.”
“What did you do?”
“I told her it was okay to cry. But she had to tell me his name. I switched on the locks so she couldn’t open the door and said, ‘Isa, we’re not going anywhere ’til I get the name of that fucking coward who did this.’”
“What was Ms. Bornelli’s response?”
“She was still crying. I took a minute to calm myself down and not sound so pissed off. Finally she seemed to get it under control. I asked if she was ready to tell me. She said, ‘His name is Gabriel Sosa.’”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Good girl. You did the right thing. Thank you for telling me.’”
“Was there any further discussion?”
“You mean while we were in the car that night?”
“Yes, Mr. Kaval. While you were in the car.”
“I asked her to tell me more about this guy Sosa.”
“What did she say?”
“She was sniffling, not really looking at me. More like looking out the window. So I asked her again. ‘Isa, is there anything else you want me to know?’”
“What was her response?”
“She shook her head. Then she said, ‘I just wish he was dead.’”
“Those were Ms. Bornelli’s exact words to you? ‘I just wish he was dead’?”
“Yes. Those were her exact words.”
Jack paused the video. Silence enveloped the room. He gave Isa a moment; they all needed one. Then he asked, “Did you tell him that?”
Isa lowered her eyes and brought a hand to her forehead. “I . . . I don’t remember.”
Most Dangerous Place Page 13
