Afraid of the Dark (12 page)

Jack said, “The premise underlying a dying declaration is that a victim of a violent crime has no reason to lie about the identity of her attacker if she knows that she is about to die. The key concept is that she must know—or at least
believe
—that death is imminent. The opposite is true here. Sergeant Paulo told her repeatedly that she was
not
going to die.”

“To put her at ease,” said the prosecutor.

“Precisely my point,” said Jack. “Sergeant Paulo testified that the victim was so scared that she couldn’t even speak. After he told her
three times
that she was not going to die, she was able to name her attacker. Clearly, she did not believe her death was imminent—or even likely.”

The judge seemed troubled. The prosecutor was clearly worried.

“Judge, we—” said the prosecutor, but the judge cut him off.

“Hold it, Mr. McCue. I’m thinking.”

Jack glanced at Neil, who looked almost as surprised as Jack. This was a long shot that had played out much better than either of them had anticipated.

The judge asked, “What is left of the government’s case against Mr. Wakefield if this recording is excluded?”

“Virtually nothing,” said Jack.

“That’s not true,” said the prosecutor.

The judge asked, “Is there any physical evidence linking the defendant to the commission of the crime?”

“None,” said Jack.

“It burned in the fire,” said the prosecutor.

“It never existed,” said Jack. “My client was in a detention facility in the Czech Republic at the time of the crime.”

The Justice Department lawyer was suddenly yanking at the prosecutor’s sleeve, and the two of them huddled into an intense exchange of whispers. The judge leaned back in his chair until he was staring up at the ceiling tiles, retreating even deeper into thought.

“Judge, we’d like a recess,” said the prosecutor.

“I’m in the middle of my examination,” said Jack.

The judge ignored the exchange between the lawyers, rocking in his chair and thinking aloud. “If I rule this recording inadmissible,” he said, “I would imagine the defense will be filing a motion to dismiss the indictment.”

“That would be correct,” said Jack.

That sent the prosecution scrambling. “Judge—”

“Quiet, Mr. McCue.”

“Judge,” said the prosecutor, “I have an announcement. The state of Florida withdraws its objection to the release of Mr. Wakefield on bond.”

The judge seemed poised to rebuke him for the sudden change of position, but he quickly appreciated that his own butt was off the hook. Throwing out McKenna’s dying declaration would have been front-page news—and letting accused murders go free was generally not a career-enhancing move for an elected state court judge.

“That certainly changes things,” said the judge.

Smart move
, thought Jack. The government was better off letting Jamal out of jail on pretrial release than digging in its heels and losing the entire case at a bail hearing.

“We would ask for release on the prisoner’s own recognizance,” said Jack.

“Bail should be set at one million dollars,” said the prosecutor. “And Mr. Wakefield should be required to wear a GPS tracking bracelet.”

“A tracking device seems like a reasonable request in a case of first degree murder,” said the judge. “But a million dollars? Really now. Anything further from the defense?”

Jack knew when to cut and run. “No, Your Honor.”

“Bail is set at seventy-five thousand dollars,” said the judge. “The prisoner is to be released on the condition that he remain in Miami-Dade County and wear an ankle bracelet at all times. The witness is dismissed. We’re adjourned.”

With a bang of the gavel and bailiff’s announcement—“All rise!”—the judge started toward his chambers.

Jack looked at Vince. He was frozen in his chair, as if he were reliving McKenna’s funeral, so distraught that the bailiff’s command to rise probably hadn’t even registered. As Jack started back toward the defense table, Alicia caught his eye. She was on the other side of the rail in the first row of public seating behind the prosecution. Her stare was deadly. She moved to the defense side of the courtroom, came to the rail, and practically leaned over, leaving just a few feet between her and Jack.

“Shame on you,” she said.

Jack could find no response. It wasn’t the foulmouthed vitriol he might have gotten from other cops or their wives, but that only made it worse.

“Shame on
you
,” she said, and it was even worse the second time. She walked to the center of the rail, pushed through the low swinging gate, and went to her husband on the stand.

Neil laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “That was a great piece of lawyering, my friend. I’m proud of you.”

The words were lost on Jack. His client attempted to shake his hand in gratitude, but Jack’s gaze was fixed on the witness stand. Vince was still in a state of shock, his wife trying to console him.

At that moment, Jack hated his job.

Chapter Twenty-four

F
or the first time in three years, Jamal Wakefield was a free man.

His mother had come up with the 10 percent fee for F. Lee Bail-me Inc.—the only bail bondsman in Miami with a sense of humor—to post the $75,000 bond. It was just
pretrial
release, and he was a long way from an acquittal, but that was not going to spoil his Saturday night on South Beach. A 5.3-ounce Omnilink ankle bracelet was a small concession in the big scheme of things. Some chicks might even think it was cool. Jamal the bad boy. Computer genius. Smarter than the losers in law enforcement who monitor ankle bracelets. Smarter than the guy who invented the damn device. Smarter than the interrogators who had thought barking dogs and waterboarding would make him talk. Smarter than Vince Paulo, the prosecutors, and his defense lawyers put together. Smarter than anyone he’d ever met.

Except Chuck Mays.

“Lookin’ hot,” Jamal said to a couple of young women who were too busy to notice him. They were dressed to kill and pleading their case to a rock-solid bouncer who was the keeper of the gate to the hottest new dance club on South Beach. The waiting line extended down the sidewalk, around the corner, and halfway up the block again. Most of the hopefuls would never see beyond the bouncers. Fat chance for the khaki-clad conventioneer from Pittsburgh who was dressed to sell insurance. The Latin babe in the staccato heels was a shoo-in. Most of the rejects would shrug it off and launch plan B. Others would plead and beg to no avail, only embarrassing themselves. A few would curse at the bouncers, maybe even come at them, driven by a dangerous combination of drugs and testosterone, only to find out that the eighteen-inch biceps weren’t just for show.

After three years of incarceration, Jamal wasn’t wasting any time. He walked straight to the front of the line. “Hey, good to see you, my friend,” he said as he slid a wad of cash into the bouncer’s hand.

The guy was a tattooed pillar of Brazilian marble, but money always talked.

“Next time don’t pretend to fucking know me,” he said as he tucked away the cash and pulled the velvet rope aside.

The main doors opened, and Jamal was immediately hit with a flash of swirling lights and a blast of music.

Club Inversion was once known as Club Vertigo, a hot nightclub that Jamal and McKenna used to hit with fake driver’s licenses that had made them of age. It had a new name and a new owner, but the look and feel of the place was the same, the inside of the four-story warehouse having been gutted and completely reconfigured with a tall and narrow atrium. The main bar and dancing were on the ground floor, and several large mirrors suspended directly overhead at different angles made it difficult at times to discern whether you were looking up or down. With even a slight buzz, the pounding music, swirling lights, and throngs of sweaty bodies were enough to give anyone a sense of vertigo. The sensation worked both ways, with hordes of people watchers looking down on the dance crowd from tiered balconies. Jamal wasn’t sure why they’d changed the name to Club Inversion, but it seemed a bit ironic.

You want inversion? Try it with your face completely covered by a wet cloth that they keep soaking and soaking with a steady stream from a canteen until your breathing is so restricted that you’re sucking nothing but water into your lungs, and it hurts so much and you’re so sure you’re gonna die that you’d confess to any—

Jamal shook off the thought.

A woman at the bar was checking him out, peering over the sugar-coated rim of her cocktail glass. She appeared to be alone, which was a little strange, since women in South Beach typically arrived in groups. Maybe her girlfriend had already hooked up for the night, and she was on her own. Jamal made eye contact but kept cool about it. She was a dark-haired beauty wearing a clingy white dress and a gold necklace that played off her brown skin. He could feel the pulse of the music beneath his feet, almost smell the mix of perfume and perspiration wafting up from the crowd. Albino Girl was on stage at the other end of the club, a Vegas-style act in which a dancer managed to keep time to the music while a thirteen-foot lemon-yellow albino python coiled around her sculptured body.

The woman at the bar tossed her hair, and then she glanced again in Jamal’s direction. Three years of detention had made him rusty, but not oblivious. He walked toward her. She smiled and said something as he approached, but it was impossible to hear her over the music. He could have texted her, but after being off the hookup circuit for so long, he wondered if it was no longer cool to text someone who was standing right next to you. He gestured toward the dance floor, and she followed, leaving her drink at the bar.

They danced to Lady Gaga, and Jamal liked what he was seeing. It was bizarre to think that if it weren’t for Jack Swyteck he’d be in prison tonight, and he wondered how many other guys in the club were wearing ankle bracelets with GPS tracking.

Probably more than anyone would guess.

“I’m thirsty,” she said, shouting into his ear.

Jamal led the way through the crowd, and she had her thumb in his belt loop as they headed back to the bar. Then she gestured toward the restroom and shouted something. After a momentary delay it registered:
“Order me another drink.”

He nodded and walked back to the bar. Her half-empty cocktail was exactly where she had left it, but there was another beside it. He could only surmise that some other dude had ordered her a fresh drink, and Jamal wondered who the competition was. Then he looked closer, and he froze. The new drink was resting atop a paper cocktail napkin, and the napkin came with a handwritten note:

Are you afraid of The Dark?

His gaze swept across the bar, but it was a sea of unfamiliar faces. He turned the napkin over, and the message continued on the other side.

You should be
, it read.

The music pounded, and the crowd around him was into it, but Jamal could barely breathe. The capital letters—the
T
and the
D
—were a familiar signature, even if this was the first time he’d seen it in over three years.

He glanced toward the ladies’ restroom, where his best shot at a hookup for the night was making herself even sexier. He liked this girl, and he wanted her as badly as any man fresh out of prison would. But if the Dark was here, it was better to leave her out of this.

Jamal stuffed the napkin into his back pocket and headed for the exit.

Chapter Twenty-five

J
ack kissed his grandfather good night at eleven.

The west wing of Sunny Gardens of Doral was entirely for Alzheimer’s patients. Jack’s grandfather lived on the ground floor with other “mild to moderate” residents, those with no track record of wandering off in the middle of the night. Soothing colors brightened the interior walls, sound-absorbent carpeting quieted the floors, and calming music played in the hallways. It was an instrumental version of what Jack thought he recognized as an old Cat Stevens song. His own version of another vintage 1970s hit by the same artist came to mind.

Another Saturday night, and I ain’t got no Andie. . .

With Andie out of town, it had seemed like a good idea to spend time with Grandpa. Unfortunately, he’d slept the whole time, and after two hours of channel surfing through some really bad Saturday-night television, Jack decided to try another day.

His cell rang as he crossed through the lobby toward the exit. It was Andie, and it made him smile to know that he wasn’t the only one feeling lonely.

“You read my mind,” said Jack. “I was just thinking of you.”

“Me, too.”

Jack heard music in the background. It sounded like a nightclub. “Where are you?” he asked.

“
Jack
,” she said, in that tone that said,
You know I can’t tell you.

“Right. Sorry,” he said.

“Tell me how you’re doing,” said Andie.

Jack seated himself on the couch next to the birdcage in the lobby. The sleeping parakeet didn’t seem to notice. “Yesterday was horrible,” he said.

“Horrible?”

“The court held a hearing on bail for Jamal Wakefield. We won, but I had to cross-examine Vincent Paulo.”

“
Had to
, huh? Like somebody was holding a gun to your head?”

“Andie, come on. Don’t be like that.”

“I told you how I feel about that case.”

Jack heard laughter in the background, and then the muffled sound of Andie speaking to someone else—
“Just a couple more minutes”
—with the phone away from her mouth.

“Are you on duty?” asked Jack.

“What?” asked Andie.

“It sounds like a party going on,” said Jack. “I was just wondering if you were on or off duty.”

“I’m always on,” she said.

Always.
For an instant, Jack wondered if she was with her “sexually deviant boyfriend,” but he caught himself

It’s her job, Swyteck.

“Jack, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll call you again, next chance I get.”

“Sure.”

“I love you,” she said.

“Love you, too,” he said, and then the line was silent.

The Sunny Gardens lobby was quiet as a mausoleum, which was the very next stop on the route for just about everyone who lived there. Most were lonely widows or widowers, and probably all of them would have given up their six months or a year at Sunny Gardens for another week or even a day with the spouses who had left them. Jack had all the respect in the world for Andie and her career. But hanging around a place like Sunny Gardens did make him wonder about her readiness to volunteer for assignments that reduced their relationship to weeks or perhaps even months of catch-as-catch-can phone conversations.

You knew this was her job when you popped the question.

Jack was parked in the Sunny Gardens private lot, but without a handicapped parking pass, he had a long walk to his car. He counted thirty handicapped spots in the first row of parking alone, not a single one of them being used. It made him want to stake out South Beach and confront the twenty-five-year-old triathlete who was using his eighty-seven-year-old grandmother’s pass to grab the best parking spots all over town.

Jack followed the sidewalk toward the overflow lot. The first phase of Sunny Gardens was vintage 1970s construction, which meant that there were plenty of mature olive trees along the walkway to block out the street lighting. Jack dug into his pocket for his car keys, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he’d heard footsteps behind him, but no one was in sight. Jack continued toward the lot, but tripped over a crack in the sidewalk. The row of olive trees had given way to even larger ficus trees, whose relentless root system had caused entire sections of the sidewalk to buckle. The canopy of thick, waxy leaves made the night even darker, forcing Jack to locate his car more from memory than sight.

Again, he heard footsteps. He walked faster, and the clicking of heels behind him seemed to match his pace. He came to an S-curve in the sidewalk and, rather than follow the concrete patch, cut straight across the grass. The sound of the footsteps behind him vanished, as if someone behind him were tracing his own silent path. He returned to the sidewalk at the top of the S-curve. A moment later, he heard the clicking heels behind him do the same.

He definitely felt like he was being followed.

Jack stopped and turned. In the pitch darkness beneath the trees, he saw no one, but he sensed that someone was there.

“Andie, is that you?” It was way too hopeful to think that she was going to surprise him again with a visit, but calling out the name of
anyone
seemed less paranoid than a nervous “Who’s there?”

No one answered.

Jack reached for his cell phone. Just as he flipped it open, a crushing blow between the shoulder blades sent him, flailing, face-first to the sidewalk. The phone went flying, and the air rushed from his lungs. As he struggled to breathe and rise to one knee, an even harder blow sent him down again. This time, he was too disoriented to break the fall. His chin smashed against the concrete. The salty taste of his own blood filled his mouth.

“Why . . . are,” he said, trying to speak, but it was impossible to form an entire sentence.

He was flat on his belly when the attacker grabbed him from behind, took a fistful of hair, and yanked his head back.

“One move and I slice you from ear to ear.”

Jack froze. A steel blade was at his throat. The man’s voice sounded foreign, but Jack couldn’t place the accent. More important, the threat sounded real.

“Take it easy,” said Jack.

“Shut up,” the man said. “Did he give you any photographs?”

“Who? Photos of what?”

“Ethan Chang. Did he give you the photographs he told you about?”

“No. I never met him.”

He yanked Jack’s head back harder. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. I never met him, I swear.”

“Lucky for you. But now consider yourself warned.”

“Warned of what?”

“Forget everything you ever heard about Prague.”

“I don’t—” Jack stopped in midsentence. The blade was pressing harder against his throat.

“The lawyers have been way too subtle. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. And by the way. Remember how Ethan Chang heard you talking to your grandfather’s girlfriend about Pio Nono?”

“Yes.”

“I heard it, too,” he said. “So believe me when I tell you this: Until you have a wife or children, there is nothing more painful than watching your grandfather suffer at a time in his life when he is too old and too confused to understand why anyone would want to hurt him.”

“Leave him out of this.”

“That’s up to you,” the man said as he pulled the blade away from Jack’s throat—and then slammed the butt of the knife against the back of Jack’s skull.

Jack fought to stay conscious, but he saw nothing, heard nothing, as his world slowly turned darker than the night itself.