Last to Die (3 page)

Tragically, neither had her daughter.

Anything to iron today, Miss Sally?

Instinctively, she covered her breasts at the sound of a voice, but she was alone in the dressing room. Dinah was waiting on the other side of the closed door.

I don't think so, she answered, pulling on her robe.

As the sound of Dinah's footsteps faded away, Sally opened the door and walked to the bathroom to fix her hair and makeup. She returned to the dressing room to select an outfit, which took longer than usual, as she wanted it to be just right. She settled on a basic blue Chanel suit with a peach blouse and new Ferragamo shoes, finishing the look with a strand of pearls with matching earrings. Her platinum and diamond wedding band - two rows of stones for a total of four karats - felt like overkill, as always, but she wore it anyway. She thought she'd put it away for good with the divorce, but today it served a purpose.

Sally stepped back and took one last look in the mirror - a good, long look. For the first time in ages, she allowed herself a trace of a genuine smile.

This is your day, girl.

She grabbed her purse and headed downstairs, leaving through the front doors to the porte cochere, where her Mercedes convertible was parked and waiting with the top down. Her hair was secure in a French twist, but she nevertheless donned the Princess Grace look, a white scarf and dark sunglasses. She climbed behind the wheel, started the engine, and followed the brick driveway to the iron gate. It opened automatically, and she exited to the street.

She drove at a leisurely pace through her neighborhood, the warm south Florida sun on her face. It was a glorious day, even by Miami standards. Seventy degrees, relatively low humidity, a cloudless blue sky. Growing up as a girl, she'd always wanted to live in the Venetian Isles. They sat side by side in the bay, like four giant stepping-stones between the mainland and the larger island of Miami Beach proper. Homes on the waterfront were a boater's dream, many with drop-dead views of cruise ships in port and the colorful skyline of downtown Miami beyond. Technically speaking, it was her dream come true to have a nine-thousand-square-foot house in the midst of this urban paradise.

Be careful what you wish for.

Sally stopped to pay the toll, then continued across the Venetian Causeway. A couple of old Cuban men were fishing on the Miami side of the bridge, right beneath the sign that read ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING.

She was just north of downtown Miami, not exactly the safest part of town, but it was an area in transition. In the not-too-distant past, she would have driven miles out of her way to avoid cutting through here.

She crossed Biscayne Boulevard, made a couple of quick turns, and stopped at the traffic light. The entrance ramp to the interstate was just ahead, the lone escape route to about a dozen east-west lanes perched directly above her. She could hear the expressway traffic, the steady drone of countless cars and noisy trucks echoing all around her. She usually timed her approach so that she could breeze through with no red lights, especially at night, but that wasn't always possible. Like clockwork, the homeless guys emerged from their cardboard homes beneath the on-ramp. Armed with tattered rags and plastic squirt bottles filled with dirty water, they seemed determined to clean the world's windshields. There were two of them. One came toward her, and the other went to the SUV in front of her.

The SUV burned rubber and ran the red light, leaving Sally alone at the intersection, just her and the window washers. It was mid-morning, but in the dark shadows it seemed like dusk. Interstate 395 and the ramps that fed into it crisscrossed overhead like concrete ribbons. Sally's window washer took a different strategy than the guy with the SUV, approaching not from the side but from the front of the vehicle. She couldn't have run the red light without running over him.

No thanks, she shouted.

He kept coming, smiling, taking aim with his squirt bottle. The other washer returned to his home beneath the ramp, apparently having conceded the Mercedes to his competition.

I said, No thanks.'

He walked all the way up to the front of her car, standing close enough to snap off her hood ornament. Suddenly, the darkness seemed to break. They were surrounded by scattered beams of sunshine, as if the clouds had shifted just enough to allow patches of daylight to break through the crevices in the maze-like expressway overhead. The longest, brightest ray seemed to fix on her big diamond ring. It was sparkling like fireworks. On any other day, she might have discreetly slid her hand from atop the steering wheel and dropped it in her lap. But not today.

The man was still staring at her through the windshield. Then, slowly, he raised his arm and took aim, straight at her face. She waited for the stream of greasy water to hit the glass, but it didn't come. A moment later, she realized that he wasn't holding a squirt bottle.

She froze, her eyes fixed on the black hole at the end of the polished metal barrel. It lasted only a split second, but it was as if she were suddenly floating outside her own body, watching the scene unfold. In her mind's eye, she could see the flash of powder from the barrel, see the windshield shatter, see her head snapping back, her body slumping forward, and the spray of blood on the leather seats. She could even hear the horn blasting as her face hit the steering wheel and came to rest there. And for the second time in the same day, she saw herself smiling a genuine smile.

With the lonely crack of a revolver that echoed off concrete, her living nightmare was finally over.

Chapter
Three The sun was setting as Jack Swyteck pulled into his driveway. He lived on Key Biscayne, an island practically in the shadows of downtown Miami, but a world apart. Across the bay, beyond the sprawling metropolis and somewhere over the distant Everglades, fluffy bands of pink, orange, and magenta were slowly dissolving into the darkness of night. It wasn't until all color had vanished from the sky that it suddenly dawned on him what day it was. Exactly one year to the day that he and Cindy began the separation that ended their five-year marriage in divorce.

Happy Anniversary, he told himself.

Jack was a trial lawyer who specialized in criminal defense work, though he was open to just about anything if it interested him. By the same token, he turned away cases that he didn't find interesting, the upshot being that he liked what he did but didn't make a ton of money doing it. Profit had never been his goal. He had spent his first four years out of law school at the Freedom Institute, a ragtag group of idealists who defended death row inmates. At the time, Jack's father, Harry Swyteck, was Florida's law-and-order governor and staunchly pro-death penalty. Jack's job didn't sit well with him, but that was sort of the idea. Four years of tweaking his old man proved to be plenty, and in case anyone had written him off as a bleeding heart liberal, he completely shifted gears and made a name for himself as a fair but aggressive federal prosecutor. He left the U. S. attorney's office on good terms, but almost two years later he was still trying to find his stride in private practice. To be sure, everything from a messy divorce to a dead client in his bathtub had served as distractions along the way, and he was determined to give his own firm a fair shot before changing professional course again.

Hey, Theo! he called out across the lawn.

Theo didn't seem to hear him. He was busily scrubbing down his twenty-four-foot sport fisherman, which at the moment was suspended by davits and hanging over the water. The one saving grace of Jack's austere rental house was the fact that it was on the water with its own dock. This was his third rental since the divorce, part of his whirlwind quest to find the perfect digs for a divorced man with no kids, no addictions, and surprisingly little interest in dating. His latest experiment was a Mackle home, a simple three-bedroom, one bathroom, cinder-block structure with a small screened-in porch and, of course, no central air conditioning. In the early 1950s, the Mackle brothers built scores of these basic beach homes, mostly for WWII veterans and their young families. Back then, Key Biscayne was little more than a mosquito swamp, so Mackle homes were about the cheapest housing around, with a typical closing price of twelve thousand dollars. Today, the lot alone went for about twelve grand per foot of linear waterfront. It seemed that about every third or fourth day a developer would drop by, aching to enter Jack's living room with a bulldozer and blueprints. His was the last of the waterfront Mackles still standing.

Yo, Theo!

Still no response. Working on a boat with the music blasting was enough to put Theo in another world. Since Jack didn't own a boat, he let Theo dock his behind the house. It was perfect for Theo, who ran his bar at night, fished and slept all day on the boat. He was one of those rare friends who never seemed to age, which wasn't to say that he didn't look older from one year to the next. He just refused to grow up, which made him fun to have around. Sometimes.

Theo was hosing down the deck as Jack approached. Catch anything? asked Jack.

Theo kept cleaning and said, Not a damn thing.

It's like they say: That's why they call it fishin', not -

Theo turned the hose on him, giving his suit a good splash.

Catchin', said Jack. He was dripping wet but pretended that it hadn't happened, wiping the water from his face.

You know, Swyteck, sometimes you are just so full of -

Wisdom?

Yeah. That's exactly what I was gonna say. Wisdom.

I guess it takes a real genius to taunt an ex-con who's holding a garden hose, said Jack as he brushed the water from his pinstripes.

Theo climbed out of the boat, smiled, and gave Jack a bear hug so big that his feet left the ground. Theo had the height of an NBA all star, the brawn of a football linebacker.

Jack took a step back, surprised. What's that for?

Happy Anniversary, buddy.

Jack wasn't sure how Theo knew, but he figured he must have mentioned something to him about the one-year milestone. I wouldn't exactly call it a happy anniversary.

Aw, come on. You gonna hold a grudge because I splashed you with a little water?

Exactly what anniversary are you talking about? asked Jack.

What anniversary are you talking about?

It was a year ago today that Cindy and I separated.

Cindy? Who the hell gives a rat's ass about her? I was talking about us.

Us?

Yes. Ten years ago this week. You and me met for the first time. Remember?

Jack thought for a second. Not really.

Now you're hurtin' my feelings. I remember everything about it. It was a Friday morning. Guard comes and gets me from my cell, tells me I have a meetin' with my new court-appointed lawyer from the Freedom Institute. Of course, I'm sittin' on death row without a damn thing to do, except lay there and ask myself, Theo, would you like the mustard sauce or drawn butter with your last meal of stone crabs and fried sweet potatoes?' So I'm bouncin' off the walls at the thought of a new lawyer. So I go down, and there you are, sittin' on the other side of the glass.

What did you think when you saw me?

Honestly?

Honestly.

Typical white Ivy League graduate with a save-the-black-man guilt complex.

Gee. And all this time I thought I'd made a lousy first impression.

Theo narrowed his eyes, as if quizzing him. Remember the first thing I said to you?

Probably something along the lines of Got any money, dude?'

No, smart ass. I looked you right in the eye and said, Jack, there's something you need to know right up front: I am an innocent man.'

I do remember that.

And do you remember what you said?

No.

You said, Mr. Knight' - you called me Mr. Knight back then - there's something you need to know right up-front: I think you're a big, fat, fucking liar.'

Did I really say that?

Oh, yeah. Exact quote.

Wow. You must have thought I was an asshole.

I still think you're an asshole.

Thanks.

Theo smiled, then grabbed him by the shoulders and planted a big kiss on his cheek. Happy Anniversary. Asshole.

Jack smiled. Theo and his kisses. A last-minute release from death row for a crime you truly didn't commit could make you want to hug everyone for the rest of your life. Or it could have the opposite effect. It all depended on the man.

Theo said, Grab that cooler, will ya'?

Jack took it by the handles, and Theo gathered up the fishing poles with the other gear. Empty bottles rattled inside the cooler as the men crossed the lawn to the driveway. Theo popped the trunk. Jack put the cooler inside, then helped Theo break down the poles and mount them on the roof rack.

Anything else? asked Jack.

Yeah, actually. I need a favor. Big one.

What?

Did you happen to see that story in the local section a few days ago? That rich woman who got shot in the head while waiting on the red light to get on the expressway?

I might have skimmed it. I've been in trial too long. Not seeing much news.

Theo opened the car door, pulled something from the console, and handed it to Jack. It was a newspaper clipping. Read this.