The Victim (3 page)

Over his shoulder he saw the front wheel wells of the sedan aglow with orange and yellow flames. The acrid stench of burning rubber permeated the air. A loud hiss and billows of steam shot up like pillars from the busted front end. The fire had consumed the radiator.

Grayish smoke curled off the lip of the crushed-in hood as the flames tore into the engine.

He planted his heels in the rocky ground and pumped his arms. His calves cramped up. The soles of his shoes caught a smattering of loose gravel and he slid, tumbling forward and breaking his fall with his hand.

A piercing
boom
rocked the ground beneath his feet. He glanced behind him and saw a cloud of black smoke mushrooming off the wreckage. Flames rose, crackling and straining against the wind as they consumed what remained of the two cars. Burnt paint gave way to charred black metal. The melting tires burst into gunshot pops of pressurized air.

He ran, out of breath, gazing over his shoulder.

A towering wall of smoke engulfed the horizon behind him as if the world had been set on fire.

CHAPTER 2

January 13, 2014

Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building

Miami, Florida

Anton Mackey paced the hallway, concerned that the jury had been out for over thirty minutes. Orlando Rivera stood at the other end, talking on his cell phone to his wife. He was speaking Spanish but Anton could make out the gist of it. His pained expression and anxious voice made it sound as if he were preparing her for the worst.

He hung up and walked back.

“
So?”

“
I’m not a psychic, Orlando. I think we did everything we could. The State’s case was weak; we knew that coming in. It’s in their hands now.”

Orlando placed a hand on Anton’s shoulder. “It’s in God’s hands. I put my faith in the Lord that the jury will see through this persecution. I feel very much like Jesus. I’m being crucified so that the police and prosecutors can protect their lies and misinformation. I am the sacrificial lamb—”

You got arrested because you were driving drunk,
Anton wanted to say, nodding along. Orlando was a high-maintenance client who liked to call once a day and rant for fifteen minutes. He’d heard the Jesus spiel before. But the guy had paid him eight grand in cash so he could rant all he pleased.

It had been an uneventful misdemeanor trial. One witness, patrol cop who had pulled over his client six months earlier for blowing a solid red at Biscayne and 79th. He’d worn his black City of Miami Police Department uniform, his shiny Sam Browne belt indicative of a cop who hadn’t seen enough Florida sun to toughen the leather just yet. He was maybe twenty-three, clean-shaven, with a military haircut. Probably an Iraq or Afghanistan vet who went straight into the academy after returning from a deployment.

The prosecutor’s direct examination had been unremarkable, completely without thought. Anton could almost see in his mind the very pages in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office training manual from which the twenty-five-year-old newly minted lawyer had recited it word for word. They were using the same manual today as they had back when he was a county court prosecutor seven years earlier.

The State’s sole witness tried to hold a tough guy’s grimace, eyes scrunched and narrow, cheeks sucked in, the high-set bones standing out amid his angular face. Thick veiny arms protruded from a shirt that was a size too tight, notwithstanding the bulk of his kevlar vest. He was a young macho type whose arrogance had lost him points with the jurors. That arrogance was the key to Anton’s cross.

Anton had crafted his line of questioning by stressing, through his examination, that his client had exhibited no signs of impairment with his driving and response to the stop.

He fired off one question after another, attacking every one of the cop’s observations. Odor of alcohol? The officer couldn’t say what it was nor how much. Flushed face? The officer admitted that he had never seen Orlando Rivera before, thus he didn’t know whether he had a naturally ruddy complexion. Bloodshot eyes? The officer agreed that it was 2 a.m. and bloodshot eyes are a symptom of fatigue. One by one, Anton dissected each bit of evidence into reasonable doubt.

When he glanced at the jurors, they were attentive. Several were taking notes.

Having been through a DUI stop before, Orlando had double-refused. There were no field sobriety tests nor breath results upon which to build a case. The State’s prosecution was crafted entirely on the observations of one officer. As a prosecutor, Anton had won his share of one-officer DUI cases. He knew nothing was certain when it came to putting your fate in the hands of a jury. He’d even made a defense offer of a breakdown to reckless driving with six months of DUI probation, but the State refused. This was Orlando Rivera’s third DUI in the past eleven years.

The young assistant state attorney wouldn’t even discuss a plea. Zealous advocacy was respected, but his straddled the line between confident and cocky. That always irked Anton, especially by inexperienced prosecutors. But he fit the mold of the State Attorney’s Office. Twenty-five, law school out of state, had moved here for the job. Sharp, clean-shaven face with a haircut that would make Johnny Unitas proud. He’d probably become a chief one day.

It was one o’clock on a Monday—the criminal courthouse’s trial day. The place was empty, as most cases had likely been continued or had pled out. A handful of courtrooms were in trial, mainly public defender cases. Private attorneys rarely took their cases to trial. The clients with that kind of cash had too much to lose.

Anton sensed the worry in Orlando’s eyes. He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. Jury seemed to be with us.”

Orlando ran his hand through his unkempt mop of mousy hair. He had a dark complexion—probably some
mulaton
in his pedigree. Deep pockmarks in his cheeks formed little cloverleaf patterns. He wore khakis and a tucked-in Lacoste, which wasn’t doing any favors in hiding his swollen potbelly. Black circles framed his eyes and he had the bulbous nose of a heavy drinker.

“
Your closing was good,” he commented.

Anton thanked him. Per the procedure in Florida, Anton got sandwiched between the prosecution’s first close and rebuttal close. The ASA’s first close wasn’t bad. He did what he could with what he had. He had harped on the elements of the crime, the applicable law, and how each element had been proven so that the State’s burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt had been satisfied.

The ASA had made the stupid decision to spend the first three minutes of his closing touting the marvels of the American jury system and thanking—
fucking thanking
—the jury. The six men and women who had to get up early, pay to park, wait in line for thirty minutes, wait in the jury pool room for almost two hours, and miss an entire day of work.

It was a very technical closing, not a lot of theatrics, but that would come with more confidence and experience. Jack had always told Anton, “When you don’t have the facts, argue the law. When you don’t have the law, argue the facts.”

When Anton got up there he didn’t use trial boards or Power Points or anything visual. He brought a legal pad to the podium, which he moved out of the way, clearing more floor space. He liked to use the space in front of the jury box. Good for movement, gesticulation.

He set the legal pad atop the podium, just an outline of bullet-points to keep him on track. The closing would be an inductive endeavor, threading together the facts and the evidence from beginning to end, ultimately showing the jury that the State’s case was built on the
possibility
that Orlando Rivera was impaired on the night he ran the red light on Biscayne. The State wanted the jury to guess. And you can’t guess somebody guilty.

Anton had unbuttoned his jacket, roosted an elbow onto the podium. His eyes swept the jury box, making a brief but important connection with each of the six men and women who would shortly decide his client’s fate.

He was brash and animated, beginning his slow, cocksure stroll before the jury box. He placed his hand on the rail, an old trial trick Jack had taught him that subconsciously made the jurors connect with you. This snapped the jurors back to reality and got them away from that robotic style of thinking the State had tried to instill in them during their closing.

Orlando asked him where the bathroom was and Anton pointed him in that direction. He told him he would meet him outside of the courtroom in fifteen minutes. He needed a Cuban coffee.

He took the escalator downstairs, amazed at how empty the courthouse felt in the afternoons. As a prosecutor, he was in trial at least three times a month. Much less as a defense attorney.

Au Bon Pain, the coffee shop on the first floor of the Gerstein Building, was filled with jurors whose judges let them break for lunch until 1:30, and a hoard of sloppily dressed traffic ticket lawyers waiting for the pretrial conference calendars.

Anton ordered a
cafecito
and waited. When the lady at the counter called his number, she handed him a small paper cup with a stack of small plastic thimble-looking things. Those were the little shots that you were supposed to pour but Anton insisted on drinking his Cuban coffee the
gringo
way. He peeled off the lid and drank it straight from the paper cup. It warmed his belly, set his adrenaline into gear.

He felt his iPhone vibrate on his belt. He removed it from its case and saw a text from Gina. She had attached a picture of Charlotte in a baby swing at the park in their community. She was smiling with exhilaration, showing off the two front teeth that had thankfully broken through after two weeks of sleepless nights and lots of doses of infant Tylenol. She had pudgy little arms and bright blue eyes, like her mother, and wispy blond hair that was finally starting to come in. Anton couldn’t believe that she was already nine months old.

A second text message buzzed in his hand. A 305 number. Judge Vega’s bailiff.

Verdict
, it read.

CHAPTER 3

March 16, 2003

Payson, Arizona

She blinked.

Her hands were stiff, clutching the steering wheel. She managed to wiggle her fingers.

She ran her dry tongue across her bottom lip. She tasted blood.

Everything hurt. She could feel her heart beating in the tender knot above her left eye. That must have been where her forehead smacked the steering wheel on impact.

“
Evan?” she said, really forcing out the words. Nothing more than a wet whisper. “Evan?”

He let out an unearthly groan, his head languidly rolling back along his rigid neck. Kelsie looked down and saw blood seeping through his jeans along his thigh, a long bone splinter poking out from a tear in the denim.

“
Kel?” His voice was hoarse, teeming with pain. His chest rose and fell quickly. “Are…?”

“
I’m okay,” she said, preempting his question.

The whites of his eyes fluttered. He smacked his mouth. His lips were parched, crusted with flakes of skin.

She smelled smoke.

It poured into the cabin, drifting in through the A/C vents. She clamped her hand over her mouth and nose, trying not to inhale despite her deep panicked breaths. Her eyes stung and watered. Her throat seized up. She couldn’t breathe. She tugged at her seatbelt but it wouldn’t give. She pressed the button but it wouldn’t release.

She felt a sting in the soles of her feet. She pulled them off the floorboard; strings of melted rubber stuck to the floor mat. Flames snapped and popped around her.

She tugged on the door handle. It wouldn’t budge. The frame, mangled on impact, held the door in place.

A blast sent a shuddering vibration through the car, rocking her in her seat. Evan slumped forward, his neck snapping limply as his chin bounced off his chest. Smoke filled the cabin, distorting her sense of where things were. She could barely make out the hand in front of her face.