Read Beyond Suspicion Online

Authors: James Grippando

Tags: #Thriller

Beyond Suspicion (7 page)

BOOK: Beyond Suspicion
6.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
13


The Swyteck house was an active crime scene. An ambulance and the medical examiner’s van were parked side by side on the front lawn, a seeming contradiction between life and death. The driveway was filled with police cars, some with blue lights swirling. Uniformed officers, crime scene investigators, and detectives were coming and going at the direction of the officer posted at the door. The first media van had arrived soon after the police. More had followed, and six of them were parked on the street. Neighbors watched from a safe distance on the sidewalk.

Assistant State Attorney Benno Jancowitz tried not to smile.

Jancowitz was a veteran in the major crimes section, with two dozen murder trials under his belt, and he had the seemingly carved-in-wax worry lines on his face to prove it. The Miami-Dade office kept at least one prosecutor on call to attend crime scenes, but it was no coincidence that Jancowitz was on this particular assignment. A buddy had tipped him off that the body was at Jack Swyteck’s house, knowing that it would be of special interest to Jancowitz.

After four years of death-penalty work for the Freedom Institute, Jack was persona non grata at the state attorney’s office. In fact, he’d handed Jancowitz his first loss ever in a capital case. Jack’s stint as a federal prosecutor had only worsened things. He was assigned to the public-corruption section and put two cops in jail for manufacturing evidence in the prosecution of a murder that was only made to appear gang-related. The assistant state attorney in the case was Benno Jancowitz. He was never accused of any wrongdoing himself, but the controversy had definitely bumped him off the fast track within the state attorney’s office.

Jancowitz caught up with the assistant medical examiner just as she was hoisting her evidence into the back of the van.

“Hey there,” he said.

“Mr. Jancowitz, how are you, sir?” It was her style to be rather stiff and formal even with people she liked.

“You about finished in there?”

“Almost. Pretty messy scene, I’m afraid.”

“I know, I saw.”

She removed her hair net and latex gloves. “Was the victim a friend of the Swytecks?”

“No. A client, as I understand it.”

“Ah,” she said.

He wasn’t sure what the “ah” meant. Maybe something along the lines of
All lawyers at some point in the relationship are capable of killing their client.
“How soon before she’ll be coming out?”


She
won’t be coming out. It’s a body now.”

“That’s one of the things I was going to ask. How long has she been an it?”

She laid a hand atop her evidence kit and said, “I should be able to give you a better idea once I get these maggots under the microscope.”

“You got maggots?”

“I scraped them from her eyes. Some in her nose, too. Looks like they’re hatching, or about to hatch.”

“Where does that put the time of death?”

“Twelve hours, give or take. Not everyone puts as much stock in forensic entomology as I do, but I’m a firm believer that the insect pattern that develops on a corpse is about as reliable an indicator of time of death as you’ll find. Absent a witness, of course.”

“But you need flies to have maggots.”

“Right. Flies are drawn to the smell of a dead body within ten minutes. They lay thousands of eggs, usually in the eyes, nose, and mouth. That’s why the hatching is so crucial in determining time of death.”

“But this body was indoors.”

“Well, they don’t call them
house
flies for nothing.”

“I didn’t really notice any flies inside.”

“Doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

“House was all sealed up, too. Air conditioner was on.”

“There was that broken window pane in the back, on the French door. Flies could have easily come in through that.”

“Yeah. Or the flies that laid the maggots could have found the body outside in the open air. Before it was moved inside.”

“That would sound a lot more like homicide than suicide.”

“Yes,” he said, thinking aloud. “It would, wouldn’t it.”

Cindy was waiting in the car. She and Jack had been backing out of the driveway, on their way to her mother’s house, when a detective arrived on the scene. Cindy was eager to get away from the chaos, but the detective promised to keep Jack only a few minutes. A few minutes had turned into half an hour.

She peered through the windshield, her stomach churning at the sight of her house being transformed into a crime scene. Long strands of yellow police tape kept the onlookers at bay, which triggered a wholly incongruous thought in Cindy’s mind. Strangely, it reminded her of the day Jack had asked her to move in with him before they were married. He’d tied yellow ribbons to the dresser handles as a way of marking the drawers that would be hers. If only it were possible to go back to simpler times.

A knock on the passenger-side window startled her. To her relief, it was a police officer. Cindy lowered the window.

“Would you like some coffee?” It was a female officer who spoke with a hint of a Jamaican accent. The voice was mature and confident, which made Cindy realize that this cop wasn’t as young as she looked.

“No, thank you.”

“It’s Starbucks. Still hot.”

“Thanks, but caffeine is the last thing my nerves need right now.”

“I can understand that.” She rested the paper cups on the car hood, reached through the open window, and offered her hand. “I’m Officer Wellens. Call me Glenda.”

“Nice to meet you,” Cindy said as they shook hands.

Glenda glanced casually toward the house and asked, “You know the woman?”

“She was one of my husband’s clients.”

“Wow.”

“Why is that a wow?”

Glenda shrugged and said, “That was just the first thought that popped in my head. Isn’t that what’s going through your head right now? Like, ‘Wow, how did this happen?’”

“My thoughts are more along the lines of, ‘Why did this woman kill herself in my house?’”

“I could give you my two cents’ worth. ‘Course, you’re talking to a woman who’s seen about a million domestic violence calls.”

“What makes you think this has anything to do with domestic violence?”

“Didn’t say it did. It’s just my point of view, that’s all. Gorgeous young woman strips herself naked and slits her wrist in her lawyer’s bathtub. All I’m saying is that I’m trained to think a certain way, so certain thoughts go through my head.”

“Like what?”

She leaned against the car and struck a neighborly pose, as if talking over the kitchen windowsill. “I look at this situation and say, ‘This woman was trying to make a statement.’”

“You mean she left a note?”

“No, honey. Maybe ten percent of the folks who commit suicide actually leave a note. Most of them let the act speak for itself.”

“What kind of statement does this make?”

“I warned you about my point of view, now. You really want to hear what I’m thinking?”

“Yes.”

Glenda narrowed her eyes, and as if she suddenly fancied herself an FBI criminal profiler. “I look at this crime scene, I see a woman who’s obviously at the end of her rope, flipping back and forth between fits of anger and bouts of depression. She can’t take it no more. She’s so wigged out she can’t even express herself in words. So she does this. This is her message.”

“What’s the message?”

“You askin’ my opinion?”

“Yes, your opinion.”

“Something along the lines of: ‘You think this was a fling, sucker? You think I was your little plaything? Well, guess again. I’d rather kill myself in your bathtub than let you and your pretty wife go on living happily ever after as if I never even existed.’”

Cindy looked away. “That’s not what this is.”

“Or, it could be she didn’t want to die.”

“What do you mean?”

“If she really just wanted to off herself, she could have crawled in her own bathtub and slit her wrists. But no. She does it in a place where she knows her lover will find her. She’s maybe played out this fantasy in her mind a hundred times. Her man comes home, finds her on the brink of death, he rushes her to the emergency room. Her hero rescues her. He waits at her bedside all night long at the hospital, clutching her hand, praying for her to come to. He realizes how she doesn’t want to live without him. And he realizes he can’t live without her either.”

“That’s too weird.”

“That’s the real world, sister. Tragic. Lots of people end up killing themselves when what they really wanted was someone to find them in the nick of time and save them.”

“Everything you’re saying is… it all assumes that my husband was having an affair.”

Glenda raised an eyebrow, as if to say,
Well, duh!

“That’s not the way it is with Jack and me.”

“I’m glad to hear that. ’Cause to look at this, I surely would have thought otherwise.”

“Jack would never cheat on me.”

“Good for you. My boyfriend’s the same way.”

“Really?”

“’Course. He knows I’d cut his balls off if he did.”

“How romantic.”

Glenda laughed, then took another hit of coffee. She scrunched her face, as if confused, but Cindy was already onto the fact that Glenda was much smarter than she let on. “One thing I was wondering about. The house alarm.”

“What about it?” asked Cindy.

“I notice you have one. But it didn’t go off when that glass on the French door got busted.”

“It wasn’t on.”

“You don’t use your alarm?”

“We only set it when we’re home.”

“How’s that?”

“I’ve had some bad-” She stopped, not wanting to reveal too much of herself and her dreams. “I’ve had some trouble with prowlers in the past. I’m kind of a ‘fraidy cat.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“I’m worse than most. I have the motion sensors turned up so high, all it takes is a strong puff of wind to trigger the sirens. That used to happen all the time when we weren’t home, and the city of Coral Gables ended up socking us with seven hundred bucks in fines for false alarms. Finally Jack said enough. We don’t activate the alarm when we’re not home. If somebody wants our stuff, we have insurance. The only thing we care about is whether someone is trying to break into our house while we’re still inside it.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

“At a hundred bucks per false alarm, you’d be surprised how many people use their alarms that way.”

“You’re right, I see it all the time. But one other thing makes me curious: How do you suppose Jessie knew that you guys don’t set your alarm while you’re away?”

Cindy thought for a moment, then looked at her and said, “Maybe she thought we had a silent alarm. It could be as you said, she wanted someone to come save her before she died.”

Glenda screwed up her face and said, “Nah, doesn’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Like you said, your husband wasn’t having an affair.”

Cindy didn’t answer.

Glenda finished her coffee. “Then again, maybe we should ask Mr. Swyteck about that. What do you think?”

“I’m not going to tell you how to do your job.”

“Fair enough. Nice talkin’ to you, Mrs. Swyteck.”

“Nice talking to you, too.”

She handed Cindy a business card. “I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure things are just fine and dandy between you and Mr. Swyteck. But just in case there’s something you want to talk out, woman to woman, my home number is on the back. Call me. Anytime.”

“Thank you.”

“You bet.”

They shook hands, and Cindy raised the passenger-side window. She watched from behind tinted glass as Officer Wellens cut through the chaos in the front yard and returned to the scene of the crime.

14


It was the most unpleasant evening Jack had ever spent on his patio.

Assistant state attorney Benno Jancowitz was bathed in moonlight, seated on the opposite side of the round, cast-aluminum table. Between his chain-smoking and the burning citronella candle, it was olfactory overload. Yet at times Jack could still almost smell Jessie’s blood in the air, his mind playing tricks on the senses.

“Just a few more questions, Mr. Swyteck.” Smoke poured from his nostrils as he spoke, his eyes glued to his notes, as if the answers to the world’s problems were somewhere in that dog-eared notepad. So far he’d spent almost the entire interview combing over the civil trial Jack had won for Jessie.

Finally he looked up and said, “Know anybody who’d want Jessie Merrill dead?”

“I might.”

“Who?”

“The viatical investors who I beat at trial.”

“What makes you think they’d want to kill her?”

“She told me in those exact words. She thought they were out to kill her.”

“Pretty sore losers.”

“They apparently thought she’d cheated them.”

“Did she? Cheat them, I mean.”

Jack paused, not wanting to dive headlong into the matter of a possible scam. “I can’t really answer that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re getting into an area protected by the attorney-client privilege.”

“What privilege? She’s dead.”

“The privilege survives her death. You know that.”

“If there was foul play, I’m sure your late client would excuse your divulgence of privileged information.”

“She might, but her heirs will probably sue me.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Right now, Jessie’s estate has at least a million and a half dollars in it. Hypothetically, let’s say I breach the attorney-client privilege and tell you she scammed the investors out of that money. Her estate just lost a million and a half bucks. Her heirs could have my ass in a sling.”

“You want to talk off the record?”

“I’ve said enough. If something happened to Jessie, I want to help punish the people who did it. But there are some things I can’t speak freely about. At least not until I’ve talked to her heirs.”

The prosecutor smiled thinly, as if he enjoyed having to pry information loose. “Did Ms. Merrill call the police about this alleged threat on her life?”

“No.”

“Did she tell anyone else about it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So she was in mortal fear for her life, and the only person she told was her lawyer?”

“Don’t taunt me, Benno. I’m trying to help, and I’ve told you as much as I can.”

“If you’re implying there’s a possible homicide here, it would help for me to understand the motive.”

“The investors reached a viatical settlement thinking Jessie would be dead in two years. It turns out they might have to wait around for Willard Scott and Smucker’s to wish her a happy hundredth birthday. In and of itself, that’s pretty strong motive.”

He wrote something in his pad but showed no expression. “Answer me this, please. When’s the last time you saw Ms. Merrill?”

“Last night.”

“What time?”

“Around midnight.”

“Where’d you two meet up?”

“She was waiting for me.”

“Where?”

“The parking lot.”

“You go anywhere?”

“No. We talked in my car.”

He raised an eyebrow, and Jack immediately regretted that answer.

“Interesting,” he said. “What did you two talk about?”

“That’s when we had the conversation I just told you about. When she told me she thought the investors might kill her.”

“Is that when she told you she’d scammed the investors?”

“I didn’t say there was a scam. I told you twice already, I can’t talk about that.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’m not being coy. I may end up telling you everything. Just let me do my job as a lawyer and sort out the privilege issue with her heirs, whoever they might be.”

“Take your time. Get your story straight.”

“It’s not a matter of getting my story straight. It’s a thorny legal and ethical issue.”

“Right. So, other than this sacred attorney-client relationship that you’ve chosen to carry into eternity, did you have any other kind of relationship with Ms. Merrill?”

“We dated before I met my wife.”

“Interesting.”

It was about his fifth “interesting” remark. It was getting annoying.

He glanced at his notes once more and said, “Just a few more questions. Some mop-up stuff. Ever hear her threaten to kill herself?”

“No.”

“She ever make any utterances of farewell or final good-byes-like, those bastards won’t have me to kick around anymore?”

“No.”

“Ever hear her say she can’t go on anymore, that life isn’t worth living?”

“No.”

“Did she have any kind of physical pain that she couldn’t deal with?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Were you fucking her?”

“Huh?”

He seemed pleased to have set up the question so nicely, having caught Jack off-guard. “You heard me.”

“The answer is no.”

“Other than those viatical investors you mentioned, can you think of anyone else who’d want her dead?”

“From the looks of things, maybe she wanted herself dead.”

He nodded, as if he’d already considered Jack’s theory. “Breaks and enters through the French door, grabs a bottle of vodka from the liquor cabinet, goes upstairs, slits her wrist. Which leaves one gaping question: Why would she kill herself in your house?”

“Who knows? Maybe to make some kind of statement.”

“Exactly what kind of statement do you think she was trying to make?”

“I can only guess. I was her lawyer. Maybe she didn’t like the job I did.”

“You’d just won her a million and a half dollars.”

“That’s a complicated situation. I already told you, I need to sort out some privilege issues before I can talk freely.”

“Ah, yes. The scam.”

“I never said there was a scam.”

The prosecutor’s nose was back in his notes. The silence lasted only a minute or two, but it seemed longer. “Lots of nice pictures in your house,” he said finally. “I like that black-and-white stuff.”

Jack had no idea where he was headed. “Thanks. My wife took them.”

“She’s good with the camera, is she?”

“She’s a professional photographer.”

“That what she does for a living?”

“Partly. She’s gotten into design work lately. Graphic arts. She’s really good on the computer.”

“Pretty busy lady, I would imagine.”

“It’s a full-time commitment.”

“And your job? Hell, that’s more than a full-time commitment.”

“I’m busy, yeah. We’re both busy people.”

Jancowitz glanced toward the house and then back. “How are things with you and your wife?”

“Couldn’t be better.” He felt a bit like a liar, but his marriage was no one’s business. Jancowitz didn’t seem to believe him anyway.

The prosecutor said, “I couldn’t help noticing earlier. You seemed pretty eager to get her in the car, off to the sidelines, as soon as the police started showing up here tonight.”

“Cindy was attacked by a man five years ago. Turning her house into a crime scene is a pretty upsetting experience for her.”

Again, Jancowitz offered that long, slow nod of skepticism.

“What are you trying to say, Benno?”

He gnawed his pencil. “Well, so far we got a gorgeous young woman, who used to be your lover, dead and naked in your bathtub. Blood is dry, body’s still not at room temperature, rigor mortis is fading, but the larger muscle groups haven’t completely relaxed. Medical examiner will pin it down better, but I’d guess she’s been dead no more than twenty-four hours.”

“Which means?”

“Which means that the little talk you had in your car last night certainly puts you in contention for the last person to see her alive. And we’ve already established that you were the first person to see her dead.”

“You’re ignoring the empty bottle of vodka, the slit wrist. I told you about those viatical investors just to give you the whole picture. It could be just me, but this maybe, kind-of, sort-of, looks a little like suicide, don’t you think?”

“One thing I’ve learned after twenty-two years. Looks can be deceiving.”

He gave Jack the kind of penetrating look that prosecutors laid only on suspects. Jack didn’t blink. “Sorry. I don’t scare easy. Especially when I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Jancowitz closed his notebook, rose slowly, shook Jack’s hand, and said, “I just love a challenge. I’ll be in touch.”

“Anytime.”

He crossed the patio and walked back inside the house. Through the bay window Jack saw him stop in the family room to admire a long wall that was lined with Cindy’s photographs. He turned, grinned, and gave the thumbs-up, as if he were admiring her work. He seemed pleased to see that Jack had been watching him.

“Twit,” Jack said quietly as he returned the phony smile.

Jack waited for him to disappear into the living room, and then he took out his cell phone and dialed.

It was late, but somehow he sensed he was going to need a lawyer. A good one.

BOOK: Beyond Suspicion
6.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Grounded by Jennifer Smith
Woman Walks into a Bar by Rowan Coleman
Derailed II by Nelle L'Amour
Silent Whisper by Andrea Smith
Tube Riders, The by Ward, Chris
Dinner with Buddha by Roland Merullo
La mujer que caía by Pat Murphy