Hear No Evil (2 page)

J
ack didn’t think of himself as a drinker, but after the head-spinning meeting with the adoptive mother of his biological offspring—“son” seemed way too personal at this point—he found himself in need of a drink. His friend Theo Knight owned a bar called Sparky’s near the entrance to the Florida Keys, which was a long way to go for a glassful of solace, but Theo had a way of making it worth the trip.

“Bourbon,” Jack told the bartender. He knew the risk of not ordering a premium brand, but just walking through the door at a place like Sparky’s was living dangerously, so what the hell?

Sparky’s was an old gas station that had been converted into a bar, the term “converted” used loosely. If you looked around, you’d swear the guys from the grease pit had never left, just sidled up to the bar in their grimy coveralls, wondering where the awesome band and drunken bikers had suddenly come from. The joint was a definite moneymaker, often crowded, especially when Theo picked up his sax and blew till dawn. He could have afforded to do a little renovation, but clearly he liked things the way they were. Jack suspected that it was all about ego, that Theo smiled to himself every time some tight ass and his Gucci-clad girlfriend visited a dive they wouldn’t ordinarily be caught dead in, all just to hear Theo and his jazz buddies belt out tunes worthy of Harlem’s best.

It was still early evening, and the band wasn’t up yet. Theo was on
stage alone. He didn’t often sing or play the piano, except when his closest friends were around. Jack watched from his bar stool, nursing a throat-singeing bourbon as Theo sang his heart out and put his own satirical lyrics to popular tunes. Tonight’s victim was Bonnie Raitt and her 1991 R&B megahit, “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” a thoroughly depressing song in its own right about a woman who takes her cold-hearted boyfriend to bed one last time before getting dumped. Theo’s shtick was to doctor it up and rename it, simply, “The Suicide Song.”

The audience was in stitches. Theo never failed to deliver. At least among drunks.

“Hey, Jacko!” Theo had finally spotted him, and, like it or not, his arrival had been announced to the entire crowd. Theo stepped down from the small stage and joined his friend at the bar.

“Funny gig,” said Jack.

“You think suicide is funny?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Wrong answer. Everything’s funny, Jack. Until you learn that, I’m afraid I’m just gonna have to keep charging you double for rot-gut whiskey.”

Theo signaled to the bartender, who quickly set up a round of drinks. Another bourbon for Jack, club soda for Theo. “Gotta play tonight,” said Theo, as if apologizing for the soft drink.

“That’s the whole reason I came here.”

“Liar. After ten years, you think I don’t know you? Jack Swyteck don’t drink straight bourbon from the well unless he’s been dumped, indicted, or both.”

Jack gave a little smile, though it was somewhat disconcerting to be so transparent.

Theo was suddenly looking past him, and Jack followed his gaze across the bar, where his bass player was setting up for the evening gig.
A crowd started gravitating toward the stage, staking out the good tables, and Jack knew he didn’t have his friend’s attention for long. But what else was new?

“So, what happened this time?” asked Theo.

“Two words for you: Jessie Merrill.”

“Whoa. How weird is it to hear that name, right after I sang ‘The Suicide Song’?”

“She’s back.”

“From the dead?”

“I didn’t mean literally, moron.”

Jack took a minute to bring him up to speed on Lindsey Hart. Theo wasn’t a lawyer, but if Jack decided to take Lindsey’s case, Theo would surely find his way into an investigative role, so it wasn’t a breach of the attorney-client privilege. Besides, Jack needed to talk this out with someone, and Theo was one of the few people who knew the whole Jessie Merrill story. He was also the only client Jack had ever known to spend time on death row for a murder he didn’t commit.

Theo let him finish, then smiled and shook his head. “For a guy who gets laid on about every other solar eclipse, you sure have a knack for squeezing the maximum fuck-up value out of relationships.”

“Thanks. And for the record, that’s every other
partial
solar eclipse.”

“You’re an animal, dude.” Theo grabbed a handful of peanuts, munched as he spoke. “This Lindsey in deep shit?”

“Not sure. I tried to read the investigative report before I came over here, but my mind’s all over the place.”

“That talk about Jack Junior caught you a little off guard, huh?”

“A little? I’ve known about the adoption for a couple years now, ever since Jessie passed away. But I guess it really hit home when Lindsey showed me his picture. I actually have a kid out there.”

“No, it’s her kid. All you did was have sex with your girlfriend.”

“It’s not that simple, Theo. He looks just like me.”

“Does he, really? Or do you just see it because his mother says so, and for some weird-ass Darwinian reason you want it to be true?”

“Trust me. There’s a strong resemblance.”

“Could have been worse, I suppose. Could have looked like one of your friends.”

“Can you ever be serious?”

“No, but I can fake it.” Theo took a drink. “So, you gonna be her lawyer?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What’s your gut tell you? She innocent?”

“Why should that matter? I’ve represented lots of clients who were guilty. I even thought
you
were guilty when I first took up your appeal.”

“But I wasn’t guilty.”

“I would have fought just as hard even if you were.”

“Maybe. But I sense that this case is different.”

“You see the dilemma, too?”

“Yeah, except where I come from, we don’t call it no dilemma. We call it gettin’ caught in your own zipper.”

“Ouch. But I guess it applies.”

“Course it applies. Let’s say your client is charged with murdering her husband and you agree to be her lawyer. Let’s say she’s guilty, but you’re able to work your magic and convince the jury she’s not. She walks. Where does that leave you?”

“Forget me. Where does it leave her son?”

“Living with a murderer, that’s where.”

Jack stared down into his bourbon and said, “Not something any self-respecting criminal defense lawyer should do to his own flesh and blood.”

“On the other hand, if you don’t take the case…Let’s say she’s innocent, but some boob of a lawyer blows it—like my trial lawyer did—and she gets convicted. The boy ends up losing both his mom and his dad, or at least the only mom and dad he ever knew. Can you live with that?”

“I’d say you’ve covered both horns of the dilemma.”

“Fuck your dilemma. That’s a thousand tiny metal teeth zipping right into your—”

“I got the picture, Theo. What do you think I should do?”

“Simple. Take her case. If you get into it and find out she’s guilty, resign.”

“That’s dicey. Once a murder case gets going, you can’t just withdraw. The judge won’t let you out if the only grounds you have for withdrawing are that you suddenly think your client is guilty. If that were the standard, you’d have lawyers dropping out in the middle of trial every day.”

“Then you gotta find a way to convince yourself that your client is innocent
before
you take the case. How about asking her to take a lie detector test?”

“I don’t believe in them, especially with someone as emotionally distraught as she is. Might as well flip a coin.”

“So, what are you telling me?”

“Bottom line, she could be indicted tomorrow, for all I know. I need a quick answer, and, as usual, there is none.”

Theo took the drink from his friend’s hand, placed it on the bar, and pushed it aside. “Then get off the fucking bar stool, go home, and read that investigative report. Read it the way you’d read it if that boy was just another boy.”

His tone was stern, and Theo wasn’t grinning, but Jack knew the words were coming from a friend. Jack rose, then laid a five on the bar to cover the two drinks.

“Hey,” said Theo. “I wasn’t kidding.”

“I know.”

“I mean the tab, genius. Till you find that sense of humor, I’m charging you double, remember?”

Jack reached for his wallet and threw another bill on the bar. “Thanks for teaching me a lesson,” he said with a chuckle. But as he zigzagged through the noisy crowd and headed for the exit, passing one pointless conversation after another, he couldn’t help but wonder what all the forced laughter was about, and his smile faded.

He wished Theo were right. He wished to God everything were funny.

T
he following afternoon, Jack was on the fifth floor of the U.S. attorney’s office in downtown Miami. He’d been up most of the night combing over a copy of the NCIS report Lindsey Hart had left with him. Jack had never seen an investigative report from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services before, but it was similar to scores of civilian homicide reports he’d examined over the years, with one major exception: the blacked-out information. It seemed that something—sometimes an entire paragraph, even an entire witness statement—was excised from each page, deemed by Naval Command to be too sensitive for civilian eyes.

Jack’s first thought had been that the NCIS was withholding information from Lindsey because she was a murder suspect. He phoned a friend in the JAG Reserves, however, and discovered that it wasn’t all that unusual for the family of slain military personnel to receive highly redacted investigative reports. Even when death was unrelated to combat—be it homicide, suicide, or accident—survivors didn’t always have the privilege of knowing exactly what their loved one was doing when he died, whom he’d last spoken to, or even what he might have written in his diary just hours before a 9 mm slug shattered the back of his skull. To be sure, the military often had legitimate needs for secrecy, especially at a place like Guantánamo, the only remaining U.S. base on communist soil. But it was Jack’s job to be skeptical.

“You know I wasn’t being cute on the phone, right, Jack? I really do have absolutely nothing to do with the Hart case.”

Gerry Chafetz was seated behind his desk, hands clasped behind his
head, a posture Jack had seen him assume countless times when Gerry was his supervisor. Back then, they’d toil late into the evening, arguing over just about everything from whether the Miami Dolphins had won more football games wearing their aqua jerseys or their white jerseys to whether their star witness was a dead man with or without the federal witness protection program. Jack sometimes missed the old days, but he knew that even if he’d stayed, things could never have been the same. Gerry had worked his way up to chief assistant to the U.S. attorney, which would have made him a lot less fun to argue with, since now he knew everything.

“The case is here in Miami. Am I right?” asked Jack.

Gerry was stone silent. Jack said, “Look, it’s no secret that Lindsey Hart is a civilian who can’t stand trial in a military court. She’s originally from Miami, so it doesn’t take a breach of national security to figure out that if she’s indicted for the murder of her husband, it will be right here in the Southern District of Florida.”

Still no reply from Gerry.

A smile tugged at the corner of Jack’s mouth. “Come on, Gerry. You won’t even give me that much?”

“Let me put it this way: Theoretically, you’d be correct.”

“Good. Theoretically, then, I’d like you to convey a message from me to the prosecutor assigned to this case. I’ve read the NCIS report. What there is of it anyway. Half of it was blacked out.”

“Actually, Ms. Hart is pretty lucky to have a report at all.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It can take as long as six months, at least, for the agency to issue a final report. This one moved very quickly. Your client should be happy about that.”

Jack smiled to himself. Just as he’d thought: The chief assistant
did
know everything. Jack said, “Technically, she’s not my client. Not yet, anyway. Like I said on the phone, I’m still debating whether to take the case.”

“How do you know there’s going to be a case?”

“The NCIS ruled her husband’s death a homicide.”

“I meant a case against
her
.”

Jack gave him an assessing look. “Are you telling me—”

“I’m not telling you anything. I thought I’d made that clear from the beginning.”

“Okay. Right or wrong, Ms. Hart seems to think she’s the prime suspect.”

Gerry was deadpan, silent.

Jack said, “That’s a pretty nerve-racking position to be in, for a woman who maintains her complete innocence.”

“They all maintain their innocence. That’s why I’m still sitting on this side of the desk. I respect you, Jack, but I sleep easier knowing that I don’t defend the guilty.”

Jack moved to the edge of his chair, locking eyes with his old boss. “That’s why I’m here. I’m in a tough spot with this case. Lindsey Hart is—” He stopped himself, not wanting to say too much. Gerry was an old buddy, but he was still on the other side. “Let’s just say she’s a friend of a friend. Of a very close friend. I want to help her if I can. But I don’t want to get involved in this if…”

“If what?” Gerry said, scoffing. “If she’s guilty?”

Jack didn’t return the smile. His expression was dead serious.

“Come on, Jack. You didn’t expect me to look you in the eye and say, ‘Yup, you’re right buddy. Take the case. These investigators are breathing down the neck of the wrong suspect.’ Or did you?”

“At this point, I just want to know how honest my own client is being with me. I need to verify something. It has to do with the time of death.”

“Even if I knew the details of this case, which I don’t, I couldn’t comment on the investigation.”

“Sure you could. It’s just a question of whether you will or not.”

“Give me one good reason why I should.”

“Because I’m calling in every favor, every ounce of friendship that ever existed between us.”

Gerry averted his eyes, as if the plea had made him uncomfortable. “You’re making this awfully personal.”

“For me, it doesn’t get any more personal than this.”

Gerry sat quietly for a moment, thinking. Finally, he looked at Jack and said, “What do you need?”

“There’s a ton of information missing from the NCIS report, but one hole in particular has me scratching my head. Lindsey Hart says that her husband was alive when she left the house at five-thirty
A.M.
The medical examiner puts the time of death between three and five
A.M.
”

“Not the first time the forensic evidence contradicts a suspect’s version of events.”

“Hear me out on this. The victim was shot in the head with his own weapon. The report makes no mention of a silencer. In fact, he was shot with his own gun, which was recovered in the bedroom just a few feet away from his body. No silencer in sight, no tattered pillow or blanket that was used to muffle the noise.”

“So?”

“They had a ten-year-old son. If Lindsey Hart shot her husband between three and five
A.M.,
don’t you think their son would have heard the gun go off?”

“Depends on how big the house is.”

“This is a military base. Even for officer housing, we’re talking two bedrooms right next to each other, eleven hundred total square feet.”

“What does the NCIS report say?”

“Nothing that I could find. Maybe it’s on one of the pages that was blacked out.”

“Maybe.”

“Either way, I want to know how the investigators account for the sound of the gunshot. How is it that a woman fires off a 9 mm Beretta, and her ten-year-old-son in the next room sleeps right through it?”

“Could be a sound sleeper.”

“Sure. That could well be their explanation.”

“And if it is?”

Jack paused, as if to underscore his words. “If that’s the best they can come up with, Lindsey Hart may have just found herself a lawyer.”

A weighty silence lingered between them. Finally, Gerry said, “I’ll see what I can do. Keeping Jack Swyteck off the case might be just enough incentive for the lead prosecutor to cough up a little information.”

“Wow. That may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”

“Or maybe I just don’t like women who murder their husbands and then run out and hire a sharp defense lawyer.”

Jack nodded slowly, as if he’d deserved that. “The sooner the better on this, okay?”

“Like I said, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Sure.” He rose and shook Gerry’s hand, then thanked him and said good-bye. He knew the way out.