Afraid of the Dark (8 page)

Chapter Sixteen

V
incent Paulo hated Sunday nights. Always had. It was the thought of Monday morning that dragged him down. Tonight, however, the culprit was Saturday night—the fallout from what had happened yesterday evening at Lincoln Road Mall, to be exact.

“Are you coming to bed?” asked Alicia.

It was almost eleven, and he was seated in a rocking chair on the screened-in porch, facing their backyard. Crickets made their music in the bushes. Water gurgled from the fountain in the garden. Vince was on his third beer since the Miami Heat had fallen hopelessly behind in the third quarter of the LeBron James show.

“In a little while,” he said.

His wife waited, and he sensed her concern. Finally, her footsteps trailed away to the kitchen, and Vince returned to his thoughts.

Actually, when Vince was a little boy, it wasn’t just Sunday nights that he’d hated. Bedtime in general was a problem. Vince was afraid of the dark. He would lay awake for the longest time—for hours, it seemed, the covers pulled over his head, too scared to make a move. “Just close your eyes and go to sleep,” his mother would say. But Vince couldn’t do it. The Scooby-Doo night-light was of some comfort. But closing his eyes would have meant total darkness, and it was in that black, empty world that monsters prowled.

Ironic
, he thought, that he now lived in that world—and that it was indeed a monster who had put him there.

Over the past three years Vince had tried not to think about the day he’d lost his sight, or at least not to dwell on it. Hindsight could eat you up, even on the small stuff. Going blind was definitely not small stuff. How many people could say,
If only I hadn’t opened that door, I would never have lost my eyesight
? Of those, how many could actually live with the result—truly
live
with it, as in live a happy life. Vince was determined to be one of those people.

There had been major adjustments, to be sure. For a time, he’d given up active duty completely to teach hostage negotiation at the police academy. Of all the skills that made a talented negotiator, sight was not chief among them. He was still a good listener, with sharp instincts, common sense, and street smarts. He could still intuit things from a hostage taker’s tone of voice over the phone, or from a mere pause in the conversation. In fact, losing his sight had seemed to strengthen those other, more important skills. Proof of that had come just a few months after his return to work, when, in his first job as a blind negotiator, he’d talked down a homeless guy from a bridge. That feat paled in comparison to the subsequent crisis that had put him in the national spotlight. A delusional and well-armed gunman took four people hostage in a motel and demanded to speak with the mayor’s daughter. One of those hostages was Theo Knight—Jack Swyteck’s best friend. And now Swyteck was returning the favor by defending Jamal Wakefield.

You’re welcome, asshole.

Alicia came up behind him and slid her arms around his shoulders. “Why are you so quiet tonight?”

He took a long pull from his beer bottle, as if to tell her that he was in no mood to talk.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked, but he didn’t answer.

“I’ll get a couple more beers,” she said.

“I’m good,” he said.

“Then I’ll get one for myself,” she said as she started toward the kitchen.

It was hard for Vince to imagine life without Alicia, even if he had broken off their relationship after the accident. They’d reunited and then married only after Vince was convinced that there was no pity in those beautiful eyes he could no longer look into. At the first sign that she had stood by him out of sympathy, he would relieve her of that obligation and move on with his life. And he would be happy. That was a solid place to be, emotionally, and it had taken him many months—years—to get there.

The apprehension of Jamal Wakefield had sent him tumbling back to square one.

“I brought you a frosted mug,” she said.

“I said I was good,” he told her.

He heard Alicia put the mug on the coffee table and settle into the rocking chair beside him. “Knock the
Biggest Loser–
sized chip off your shoulder, Vince.”

She was right, and he knew it. “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.”

Somewhere in the yard, bullfrogs croaked in the night. A cool breeze through the screen felt good on his face. Alicia reached over and touched his hand, which felt even better.

“Are you going to make me drag it out of you,” she said, “or are you going to tell me how your meeting went with Detective Lopez?”

Lopez was the unit supervisor of the Crime Scene Squad at Miami Beach Police Department, and he was working the suspicious death on Lincoln Road Mall. Vince’s meeting with him had lasted almost an hour that morning, while Alicia was in church.

“Dead guy’s name is Ethan Chang,” said Vince. “A twenty-nine-year-old ex-pat who was living in Prague.”

“What was he doing over there?”

“No idea. Probably chasing Czech fashion models.”

“Probably the same reason he went to Miami Beach last night.”

“Only if he works fast. He flew into MIA yesterday and was ticketed on a return flight to Prague tonight.”

As if on cue, the rumble of a jet at thirty thousand feet cut through the night sky. Vince waited for the distant noise to fade away completely, then said, “He had pictures of Jamal Wakefield with him.”

“Pictures?”

“He had a cell phone, too. Jack Swyteck’s number was in the call history.”

“He talked to Swyteck before he died?”

“Turns out Swyteck was at a sidewalk café about fifty feet away when the guy dropped dead on Lincoln Road Mall. Detective Lopez took his statement last night.”

“Is Swyteck a suspect?”

“No. His story is that an anonymous informant called him yesterday and told him to meet at eight o’clock on the mall. The guy promised to bring Swyteck some photographs to support Jamal Wakefield’s alibi.”

“What alibi?”

Vince told her, and he took the long pause as a sign of her incredulity. Finally, Alicia said, “So the photographs show that Wakefield was held in some kind of a detention facility in Prague when McKenna was murdered?”

“I’m sure that’s what Swyteck will argue in court.”

“Exactly what did Lopez tell you is in the pictures?”

“It’s definitely Jamal. He’s handcuffed. He looks tired and scared. But there’s no way to tell where he is or when the photos were taken.”

“Does he look like Jamal Wakefield from Miami, or like Khaled al-Jawar from Somalia?”

“Clean shaven, like Jamal. But he didn’t have long hair and a beard when he arrived in Guantánamo. So these photographs could have been taken when he was in Gitmo—
after
the murder.”

“Could have been? Or were?”

“Were,” said Vince. “Definitely were, if you ask me.”

“Are they ruling his death a homicide?”

“Toxicology report will take a few weeks. But they found a suspicious mark on his ankle. So, unofficially, yeah. Lopez is going with foul play. Probably will call in Miami-Dade Homicide.”

Alicia couldn’t help chuckling. “What’s the theory—somebody jabbed him with a poison-tipped umbrella à la James Bond?”

Vince didn’t answer.

“You’re joking, right?” she said.

He turned in his chair and removed his sunglasses, as if to look her in the eye. “Do I look like I’m joking?” he asked, his tone taking on an edge. “Is there anything about this that should strike me as remotely funny?”

“Vince, come on.”

“No, I’ve kept my head about this for three years. I’ve been upbeat. I’ve been positive. I’ve done all the things that make people say they admire me right before they go home and tell their wife, ‘Thank God I’m not Vince Paulo.’ ”

“They don’t say that.”

“Yes, they
do
, Alicia. And I’m okay with it. Most of the time. But not right now. Jamal Wakefield is back, he’s got himself a couple of smart lawyers, and they’ve cooked up a really clever alibi. How do you expect me to act?”

“I don’t expect anything. I’m just a little worried about you.”

“Of course you are. Everybody is. The blind guy gets sad, and it’s because all blind people are depressed. The blind guy gets angry, and it’s because all blind people are bitter. Why can’t I have the same emotions everybody else has? Why does everyone assume that if there’s a smile on my face, it’s fake, and if there’s no smile on my face, it’s because I hate my life? I hate Jamal Wakefield—that’s what I hate. And there is nothing wrong with my wanting to nail the son of a bitch who butchered McKenna Mays and left me like this.”

He felt her touch again, but he pulled his hand away.

“Vince, I don’t think I like what I’m hearing.”

“Then go to bed,” he said as he reached for his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Jack Swyteck,” he said, dialing.

“Vince, don’t. You’ve been drinking.”

He kept dialing.

“It’s after eleven,” said Alicia.

Vince ignored her. On the third ring, Swyteck answered his cell.

“Swyteck, it’s Vince Paulo.”

Jack hesitated, obviously caught off guard. “How are you, Vince?”

“Been better. I know it’s late, but there are a couple things I just need to get off my chest.”

“Okay,” said Swyteck, some trepidation in his voice. “I’m listening.”

“None of this would be an issue if we didn’t know each other. But you and I have some history, so it needs to be said.”

“You’re right. That history, as you say, is one of the reasons I’ve been so reluctant to get involved. And I didn’t want to rush into making ridiculous accusations against the U.S. government about black sites. I’ve gone back and forth on this, but there’s too much tipping the other way, Vince. Even Chuck Mays seems to have his doubts, and now we have Mr. Chang suddenly silenced. I’m taking the case. I was actually going to call you.”

“When? After the opening statement?”

“I don’t want this to become personal.”

“Funny,” said Vince, “but the only time people say that is when they know it already is.”

The lawyer didn’t answer.

Vince said, “Chuck Mays told me about the conversation he had with you at his house yesterday morning.”

“I figured he would. I know you two are friends.”

“But friends don’t always agree,” Vince said. “You understand what I’m saying?”

“I think I do.”

“Well, let me spell it out for you. You mentioned Chuck as a reason for taking the case. If, in any way, Chuck conveyed some concerns about indicting the right man, I want you to know that I don’t share his doubts.”

“That’s your view.”

“If you want to get literal about it, you might say it was my
last view
. I was the one who found McKenna in her room. I was holding McKenna in my arms when she tried to look up and told me who did it. But all that will come out at trial.”

“It will, which is why I don’t think this conversation is—”

“No, you need to hear what I have to say. You go ahead and represent Jamal Wakefield. I don’t care. The truth is, I want him to have a good lawyer. Because I want him convicted, and I don’t want him filing appeals for the next ten years claiming that his counsel was ineffective. I want the conviction to stick.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t understand, Swyteck. You can’t possibly
understand
. I want it to stick, and I will do what it takes to make it stick. Count on it.”

Vince hung up, and it was only then that he realized how tightly he was squeezing the phone. He breathed in and out, then massaged the pain between his eyes.

“Vince, I—”

“Don’t say it,” he told her.

Alicia reached out and laced her fingers with his. “I love you,” she said.

Vince let out another deep breath. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”

Chapter Seventeen

J
ack was still stinging on Monday morning. The phone call from Vince Paulo hadn’t gone as badly as he thought it would; it had been even worse. Jack probably should have been the one to initiate the call; maybe he should have even told him about the polygraph. But that probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Vince’s anger was completely unavoidable. Maybe even justified.

You don’t understand, Swyteck.

Jack closed his eyes for a moment—and held it. It could actually feel soothing, even calming in a way. Until you wanted it to end. Jack pushed himself to get to that point—eyes closed until he couldn’t stand the darkness any longer—and then he forced himself to remain without sight. Sixty seconds passed. It felt like an hour. Two minutes went by, and he was in hell. After five minutes, he would have cut off his legs rather than stay this way forever. And he realized Vince was right.

You can’t possibly understand.

At nine
A.M.
, Jack had a court hearing in a foreclosure action—was there a condo anywhere in Miami-Dade County
not
in foreclosure?—and by midmorning he had returned to his office in Coconut Grove. It was an old one-story cottage on a forested stretch of Main Highway, near a three-way intersection that, depending on the chosen path, could lead to a chic shopping district, where hippies had once run head shops; waterfront mansions, where those former hippies now lived; or the Grove ghetto, where their children and grandchildren cruised in their BMWs to buy drugs. A ninety-year-old clapboard cottage wasn’t what Jack had envisioned when his lease in Coral Gables had expired, but it was “loaded with charm”—real-estate-agent speak for caveat emptor.

Jack pushed through the door—it always stuck on humid mornings—and his secretary nearly tackled him as he stepped inside.

“You had eleven calls,” she said, “including three from a woman who refused to leave her number and would identify herself only as”—Carmen stopped to check her notes—“oh, here it is: ‘the most beautiful and intelligent woman in the world.’ ”

Jack rolled his eyes. “By any chance did that woman sound a little like Andie?”

The lightbulb went on. “As a matter of fact, she did!”

Jack’s cell had been turned off in the courthouse, and in a free moment Andie had obviously tried to touch base with him at his office.

“Oh, one more thing,” said Carmen, and then she lowered her voice, as if it were a secret. “You have an unexpected visitor. She’s waiting in your office.”

Jack read between the lines and tried not to groan. He loved his maternal grandmother—Abuela
—
but it was a busy Monday morning, and she had a way of just showing up at his office whenever it had been too long since he’d last visited her. Usually, it was to wonder aloud if she was going to live long enough to teach Spanish to the great-grandchildren who, by the way, Jack and Andie needed to hurry up and give to her.

Jack whispered his reply. “I really don’t have time this morning.”

“But she was practically in tears.”

“Abuela?”

“No, Maryam Wakefield. Jamal’s mother. She came all the way from Minnesota.”

“You put her in my office? I don’t even know the woman.”

“Where else could I put her?”

Jack glanced at the tiny waiting area, but it was packed with dozens of exhibit boxes from a five-week trial in a bank fraud case, no place for anyone to sit. Just six months into a new lease, and he’d already outgrown the space.

“All right, hold my calls.”

Jack stepped around a few boxes and entered his office. Maryam Wakefield rose from the armchair, quickly introduced herself, and immediately apologized for having arrived unannounced.

“To be honest,” she said, “I hadn’t planned on coming to see you. I’m in town to visit Jamal. In fact, I just came from the . . .”

Her voice cracked. For Jack, she was hardly the first mother to get emotional about a son in jail on charges of first degree murder. That first look at a loved one on the other side of the glass was rarely a comfort.

“Please, have a seat,” said Jack.

She lowered herself into the chair, and her eyes begged for a tissue. Any experienced criminal defense lawyer kept plenty around.

“This is such a roller coaster,” she said, taking the Kleenex. “It’s like someone calling to say, ‘Good news, Mrs. Wakefield: After three years, we finally found your son. The bad news is that he’s in jail and, with any luck, he might not get the death penalty.’ ”

She dabbed away a tear, though few were left after her visit to the jailhouse.

Maryam Wakefield was not much older than Jack, probably no more than twenty years old when she’d given birth to Jamal. She was an attractive woman with a few strands of gray, but the strain of the past three years had aged her, and the tired eyes and sad expression seemed almost permanent. Jack knew from Jamal that she was of Somali descent on her mother’s side, but the name “Wakefield” had come from a father who was the descendant of slaves and not sure of his African roots.

“Anyway,” she said, “the reason I came is because Jamal told me how hard you have been working for him. I’m not rich by any stretch, but it’s important for Jamal to have a good lawyer,” she said, her hand shaking as she pulled her checkbook from her purse. “If you can hold this check until my daughter’s disability check clears next Thursday, and then hopefully I can write you another one after I sell off some of my—”

“Put that away,” said Jack. “I volunteered for this case. The only person to thank is Neil Goderich at the Freedom Institute.”

“Will he take a check?”

Jack couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, but usually it’s from rich people who didn’t see him sneaking up at a cocktail party and missed their chance to turn and run.”

She didn’t seem to get it, but that wasn’t important. She closed her purse, folded her hands in her lap, and heaved a heavy sigh of what seemed like a combined sense of relief and
Now what?

“Jamal tells me you’re working on the alibi,” she said. “I might be able to help with that.”

Jack paused, trying to be discreet. A mother helping her son with an alibi.
Now there’s a twist.

Maryam continued. “I know what you’re thinking. But Jamal was crazy about McKenna. He called me when she broke up with him. He sounded devastated.”

“On a help scale of one to ten,” said Jack, “I’d have to rate that as ‘not so much.’ ”

“I realize that it cuts both ways.”

“Obsession usually cuts only one way,” said Jack.

“You don’t understand. Before he disappeared, the last conversation I had with my son, he told me he was coming home—back to Minnesota.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t remember the exact date. But it was on his cell, so I’m sure there are phone records.”

Jack made a note to get it. “You’re sure it was before the murder?”

“Of course I’m sure. I called him the next morning to check on his travel plans, but he didn’t answer. I kept calling his cell, his apartment. No answer. I called McKenna’s father at work, Jamal’s friends. No one knew where he was, but his car was still in Miami—still parked outside his apartment. I was hoping he’d bought a bus ticket and just slept on the trip, but it was like he’d vanished. That was when I filed a missing person report, which of course got me nowhere.”

“None of that’s in dispute,” said Jack. “The prosecutor will simply say that the breakup sent him into a reclusive funk. Maybe he drank himself unconscious and slept under a bridge or on the beach for a night or two. He snapped, killed McKenna, and went on the run.”

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Swyteck: How does a nineteen-year-old kid with a warrant out for his arrest get all the way from Miami to Somalia, completely undetected?”

“The same way as any other kid whose father has alleged connections to a Somali terrorist organization.”

She looked away, and Jack could see that the lasting stigma of that relationship cut very deep. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t accusing you or anyone else. I’m just thinking like a prosecutor.”

Her expression was still one of shame—and anger. “I hardly knew Jamal’s father,” she said. “We never married. Jamal did a family tree for one of his eighth-grade projects, and after that, he wanted to know more about his father. He was good with computers—a genius, really—and when Jamal was in high school they developed an online relationship. If I’d known what kind of things he was involved with, I would never have let Jamal communicate with him.”

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.”