The Girl in the Glass Box

by James Grippando

  “Why didn’t they take Julia to trial?”

  “Special circumstances.”

  “Because she was sexually assaulted, you mean?”

  “Not exactly,” said Santos. “She said she was sexually assaulted by her husband.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Jack. “Did the fact that she was raped by her husband make the prosecutor more or less inclined to take Julia’s case to trial?”

  “Less. Much less.”

  “I don’t follow that logic.”

  “That’s because you don’t know this prosecutor. Mucho machismo.”

  “So?”

  “He wasn’t cutting Julia a break and giving her no jail time because she was sexually assaulted.”

  “Because her husband forced her to have it?”

  “No. That never really factored into it.”

  “Then why?”

  “The prosecution just wanted the case to go away.”

  “But why?”

  “Because no man should be prosecuted for raping his wife.”

  Jack was stunned, silent.

  Santos shrugged. “Machismo.”

  Chapter 24

  Jack exited the terminal at Miami International Airport and was immediately struck by how much warmer it was in subtropical Miami than in tropical San Salvador. Such was the difference between twelve feet and three thousand feet above sea level. Jack removed his jacket, said good-bye to Theo, and waited in the cab line outside “Arrivals.”

  Jack had initially thought his meeting with Julia’s Salvadoran lawyer was a home run. It turned out, however, to be more like a ground-rule double. That a public prosecutor had gone out of his way to avoid prosecuting Julia’s husband for sexual assault was definitely something Jack could have used in Julia’s claim for asylum. Getting Santos to repeat what he’d said privately in a publicly filed affidavit was another matter.

  “I practice in these courts every day,” he’d told Jack. “I can’t publicly humiliate one of the lead prosecutors.”

  Jack was finally next in line for a cab and climbed into the back seat. The driver happened to be a Salvadoran named Gustavo. Jack didn’t mention it, but Gustavo must have been so much happier not having to pay half his wages to the 18th Street gang for “protection.”

  “A donde?”

  It bugged some of Jack’s friends when people in the service industry assumed that they spoke Spanish. Most of them, however, didn’t actually want their English-only sons and daughters driving taxis on the streets of Miami.

  Jack gave Gustavo the address to Cecilia’s house. She’d been texting him. Said she was “very worried” about Beatriz. It was after dark, just about seven p.m., when Jack reached the house. Cecilia invited him in, but it was not the typical warm Salvadoran welcome.

  “We have a serious problem,” she said.

  Beatriz was in her room, and Cecilia’s roommates were in the kitchen. Cecilia didn’t offer him a seat in the tiny living room, so they talked while standing just inside the front door.

  “There’s something wrong with Beatriz,” she said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “She doesn’t shower, brush her hair, or even change her clothes. I don’t remember the last time I saw her eat anything. She’s skinny like a rail. I’ll bet she’s lost ten pounds. I checked her backpack this morning. Beatriz never showed me, but there’s a note from every single one of her teachers saying that she hasn’t turned in any homework. On her last math quiz she didn’t even answer any of the questions. Blank page. She’s flunking everything. My niece is normally an A student.”

  “Poor kid. She’s obviously depressed.”

  “I’m depressed. This goes way beyond that.”

  “She wasn’t this bad the last time I saw her. Did something happen since last week?”

  “She wasn’t sleeping at night,” said Cecilia. “She woke up before sunrise one morning, screaming. An hour later I found her asleep in the shower. I honestly think that’s the last time she bathed.”

  “Are kids giving her a hard time at school?”

  “I don’t think that’s it. I called her math teacher, Ms. Alvarez. Beatriz freaked out yesterday at school. She thought ICE was coming to get her.”

  “Oh, boy. Can I talk to her?”

  “Probably not.”

  Jack detected a hint of anger in her voice. “What do you mean ‘probably not’?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Cecilia led Jack down the hall. Beatriz’s door was closed, but Cecilia didn’t even bother to knock or call out her niece’s name before opening it. She entered, and there really wasn’t room for the bed, the dresser, and two visitors, so Jack stood in the doorway.

  Beatriz was asleep but not beneath the covers. She lay atop the comforter, still dressed in street clothes. Jack was immediately alarmed to see how thin and pale her face looked.

  “Those are the same clothes she was wearing yesterday morning when I sent her off to the bus stop.”

  “How long has she been here like this?”

  “Since she got home from school yesterday. Thirty-some hours now.”

  “Have you tried to wake her?”

  “No. The poor girl probably didn’t sleep for a week. I’m letting her rest. Look how exhausted she is. We’re standing here talking right next to her and she doesn’t even stir.”

  Jack moved as close as he could to the bed. Beatriz’s breathing seemed normal. Her lips were very dry.

  “You said she wasn’t eating. Has she at least been drinking water or anything?”

  “I don’t know. Not much, I’d guess. She hasn’t gotten up to go to the bathroom.”

  Jack took Beatriz’s wrist, which felt unusually bony even for a teenage girl, and checked her pulse. Seventy seemed normal, but the fact that she didn’t stir upon his touch, and that her hand dropped limply at her side when he released her wrist, gave him concern. He just didn’t like the way she looked. Didn’t like it at all.

  “We should call a doctor,” Jack said.

  “No,” Cecilia said, and her body language underscored the firmness in her voice “What we should do, Mr. Swyteck, is stop treating this child like a piece of evidence—like a thing—in my sister’s case.”

  “That’s not fair, Cecilia.”

  “Yes, it is. That morning Beatriz woke up screaming? That was the day after your friend the psychiatrist hypnotized her.”

  “We’re not going to do that again.”

  “You got that right,” said Cecilia, “because I am not going to allow it. Those papers that you had Julia sign in the jail—they named me Beatriz’s health-care surrogate. It’s time for me to step in and protect my niece.”

  “That’s fine,” said Jack. “You should take her to see a doctor.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “I’m just saying that it would be a smart thing for you to consider, as health-care surrogate.”

  “Maybe. But right now, as the head of the house where Beatriz lives, the smart thing for me is to tell you to leave her alone. Leave her out of this deportation nightmare, and tell my sister to stop being so damn selfish.”

  Cecilia’s eyes were like burning embers. They were standing barely a foot apart in the tiny bedroom, and Jack felt he was finally meeting the tougher of the two Rodriguez sisters.

  “I’m going to leave now, Cecilia. But Beatriz is still Julia’s daughter. Take her to a doctor. Or you will hear from Julia’s lawyer.”

  Jack stepped out of the room, walked to the front door, and let himself out of the house. Before getting into his car he stopped and looked back at the house. Maybe Cecilia was right and Beatriz was just exhausted. But she’d seemed more unconscious than asleep.

  Jack pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed 911 for an ambulance.

  Chapter 25

  Duncan McBride was a party animal. At least for another hour.

  It was Safari Night at Club Cheek-ah, a Miami strip club that boasted the hotte
st Latina babes in South Florida. The artwork on the marquee made it clear that the “cheek/chica” double entendre had nothing to do with their pretty faces.

  McBride downed another shot of tequila in the front seat of his car, alone. It was coming up on two a.m., and this was his third trip of the night to “the well” for refueling. Drinks inside the club were crazy expensive. Experience had taught him that the affordable way to sustain a buzz was to head to the parking lot every ninety minutes or so, get in his car, knock back three or four shots of inexpensive firewater, and then just suck up another twenty-dollar cover charge on reentry. He had it down to a system. A night at Club Cheek-ah would cost him nearly a week’s salary. He did it once a month.

  “Party time,” he said to himself, liking that handsome dude looking back at him in the rearview mirror. He shoved the bottle of tequila into the glove box, knocking the maintenance manual, his car registration, and a few other papers to the floor in his haste. He gathered them up and shoved them back in the box, pausing to take another look at one document in particular. A process server had ambushed him in the parking lot at Café de Caribe that morning and served him with the subpoena to appear as a witness in Julia’s immigration case. The caption said it related to an “Emergency Motion to Reconsider Release of Detainee on Bond” filed by attorney Jack Swyteck. It made McBride chuckle.

  We’ll see about that, Swyteck.

  He closed the glove box and climbed out of the car a little too quickly. Tequila head rush. He let it pass. Then, with a spring in his step, he crossed the parking lot to the club entrance, coughed up the cover charge for a third time, and stepped into the swirling lights and blaring dance music. His pockets weren’t exactly bulging with cash, but if he played it smart, he had at least one more lap dance in his budget. A brunette wearing nothing but a pair of purple five-inch heels gave him a smile and, with a graceful turn, offered an eye-popping look at her round, firm bottom.

  “Like what you see, cutie?”

  Dancers at Club Cheek-ah hailed from virtually every South American and Central American country on the map. McBride had his favorite.

  “Dominican women are the most beautiful women in the world,” he said with a smile.

  “Thank you, sweetie. You’re cute, too.”

  This one was smokin’ hot. He’d had his eye on her for hours, but she’d paid him no mind. Some “suit” had monopolized her all night, but finally he’d gone home to his wife. Now she belonged to McBride.

  “I’m Sherida,” she said, and with a comely expression she led him past the line of pole dancers to a booth in the back. Sherida sat dangerously close to him, but he knew that the road to his desired destination was paved with twenty-dollar bills. The lap dance was a well-honed art form at Club Cheek-ah. Completely naked women worked on very drunk men, and the old saw about a fool and his money played out on a nightly basis.

  This is going to be so good.

  “How about a bottle of champagne?” she asked.

  McBride hesitated. That would set him back about two hundred bucks. Not really within his budget, but this Dominican with the perfect ass was the gold standard.

  “No problem,” he said.

  Sherida signaled to the bartender, an exaggerated gesture that made her breasts rise before McBride’s eyes. He would have liked to pull her even closer, but club rules forbade any physical contact that wasn’t dancer-initiated. It was strictly enforced—which McBride had learned the hard way.

  “What’s your name?” asked Sherida.

  McBride told her, and Sherida told him what a “big strong” name it was, how cute his eyes were, how much she loved his smile—all the things men heard from naked women who worked for tips. McBride wanted to enjoy it, but his head was buzzing. Too many tequila shots on that last trip to the car. He never actually passed out, but too often he overdid it, which made him sweat, which made him stink, which turned off the dancers. He could feel the dampness in his armpits. The odor couldn’t be far behind. The polite thing would have been to excuse himself and slather on the overpriced cologne sold by the attendant in the men’s room, but he didn’t budge. He didn’t want her to latch onto someone else.

  The server brought the overpriced bottle of champagne. McBride reached into his pocket for his wallet. It wasn’t there. He checked the other pocket. No wallet. Panic set in. He rose, patted himself down, checking every pocket twice. It wasn’t anywhere.

  “Somebody stole my wallet.”

  Sherida rolled her eyes. “That’s what they all say.”

  “No, I mean it. My wallet is gone.”

  Sherida said something in Spanish and signaled for the bouncer. In a flash, a man dressed all in black who was at least a foot taller than McBride arrived at the table.

  “Give this loser the boot,” said Sherida. “No money.”

  “No! I have lots of money. Somebody took my wallet.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go, pal.”

  McBride wanted to plead his case, but the guy had more muscles than Brussels and showed no sign of a sense of humor.

  “Maybe it’s in my car,” he said to Sherida.

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  The bouncer grabbed him by the arm and showed him to the exit. The buzz from all that tequila and the anticipation of Sherida bouncing up and down on his lap had dissolved into drunken embarrassment. It was getting difficult to put one foot in front of the other. The lot was about half full, and as he staggered across the pavement, trying to remember where he’d parked, he hardly noticed the guy sitting on the trunk of his car, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, buddy,” the man said. “Did you lose your wallet?”

  McBride stopped and struggled to focus. The man was holding up a wallet for him to see.

  “Hey, yeah! Where’d you find it?”

  “Bathroom floor.”

  McBride had no memory of going to the men’s room. He walked toward the man, smiling with gratitude. “Thank you so much.”

  The man took a long drag from his cigarette, then opened the wallet. “Gotta make sure it’s you,” he said as he read from the driver’s license. “Duncan McBride?”

  “That’s my name.”

  He exhaled, blowing a cloud of smoke into McBride’s face. “You the Duncan McBride who works at that coffee shop, Café de Caribe?”

  “That’s right. I’m the manag—”

  It was the combination of things—both the knife at his throat and the speed with which the man moved—that silenced McBride midsentence. The man’s face was right in front of McBride’s, his eyes black as coal.

  “Don’t hurt me,” McBride pleaded.

  “Don’t resist. Keys. Nice and slow.”

  McBride’s hand shook as he dug the car keys from his pants pocket. The man snatched them away, and the trunk popped open. “Get in.”

  McBride emitted a whimper, completely involuntary, and the twitch of the six-inch serrated blade at his throat told him that he didn’t dare scream. The man shoved him into the trunk, his face toward the spare tire, and then he bound McBride’s wrists behind his back with the ease and quickness of someone who had done this before.

  The trunk slammed shut, and McBride lay in a tight ball in total darkness, his head resting on the wheel well as the engine started and his car pulled away.

  Chapter 26

  Jack was back in the Orlando Immigration Court, Judge Greely presiding. Simone Jerrell from the Department of Homeland Security was seated on the opposite side of the courtroom. Julia appeared by videoconference from the Baker County Facility, just like at the last hearing, except that she looked more worried this time. A teenage daughter in a hospital four hundred miles away could do that to a mother.

  “Good morning, everyone,” said Judge Greely. “I understand that the detainee has filed an emergency motion seeking reconsideration of this court’s previous denial of her request for release on bond.”

  “Correct,” said Jack.

  The judge flipped through the stack of pleadings
before him. “Before we get to that, has the respondent asserted any defenses on the merits to the department’s application seeking Ms. Rodriguez’s deportation?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” said Jack. “We are asserting a defensive claim for asylum, based on the failure of her home country of El Salvador to protect her from sexual violence.”

  “Did ICE conduct a credible-fear interview?” the judge asked.

  Typically, the first step in an asylum application was an interview by ICE to determine whether the applicant had a “credible fear” of further persecution if ordered to return to her home country—a prerequisite to asylum.

  The DHS lawyer rose. “Ms. Rodriguez has not been interviewed.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is an awfully belated claim of asylum,” said Jerrell. “As far as I can tell, it’s based on a sexual assault that allegedly happened some six years ago.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” said Jack.

  “For your client’s sake, there had better be,” the judge said. “But we’ll address that at the final hearing. For now, tell me why your client should be released on bond prior to that hearing, Mr. Swyteck.”

  “As you may recall, the court was inclined to release Ms. Rodriguez on bond until the department introduced into evidence a criminal complaint filed by a Mr. Duncan McBride, who is the manager of the coffee shop where Ms. Rodriguez was employed. Today, it was our intention to prove that Mr. McBride filed that complaint to retaliate against Ms. Rodriguez for rejecting his unwanted sexual advances.”

  The judge shuffled through the papers in the file before him. “I see you have submitted an affidavit from Ms. Rodriguez so stating.”

  “Yes. I also intended to cross-examine Mr. McBride here today,” said Jack. “He was served with a subpoena commanding his appearance in court, but he has ignored the subpoena.”

  The judge didn’t look happy. “Ms. Jerrell, that criminal complaint from Mr. McBride is the chief reason I ordered detention. Where’s your witness?”

  “We don’t know,” she said sheepishly.