The Girl in the Glass Box

by James Grippando

  “Tell me about the first time your husband hit you,” said Jack.

  She took a breath before answering, took another breath before telling the judge about the second beating, and took even deeper breaths before describing the next one and the one after that.

  “Would you please raise your hair up over your head and show Judge Kelly the back of your neck?” asked Jack.

  She did, revealing a four-inch scar that ran along the base of her hairline. The judge leaned over the bench for a closer inspection.

  “Looks a little faded,” the judge said. “How old is that scar?”

  “It’s from about six years ago.”

  “Okay. Proceed, Mr. Swyteck.”

  “Ms. Rodriguez, how did you get that wound?” asked Jack.

  “My husband. He burned me.”

  “With what?”

  “A chain,” she said, and then her voice lowered. “A dog chain.”

  “You mean a choker chain that’s used to restrain an animal?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Was the chain hot?”

  “Yes. With his cigarette lighter, he made it hot. It’s how they do it.”

  “When you say ‘they,’ who do you mean?”

  “Eighteen. It’s a gang in El Salvador. This is one of the things they do. Make the chain glowing hot in the fire and put it around the neck.”

  “Put it around whose neck?”

  “Women who disobey.”

  “Wives? Girlfriends?”

  “Property,” she said.

  Jack paused, and not only because Julia needed it. To elevate his client from an abused spouse to a member of a persecuted group under U.S. immigration law, Jack needed to impress upon Judge Kelly that Jorge was only a part of Julia’s fears.

  “Is your husband a member of the gang known as Eighteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he did this to you? He put a glowing-hot dog chain around your neck?”

  She nodded.

  “You have to answer audibly,” the judge said.

  “Yes. He did this while he was—”

  Julia’s voice trailed off. Jack gave her a moment.

  “Your husband did this while what?” asked Jack.

  “While he raped me.” A tear rolled down her cheek. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped it away.

  “Do you need a break?” asked Jack.

  “No,” she said, sniffling. “I would rather get this over with.”

  Julia was openly distraught, and Jack allowed her to recover, but he may have paused too long. The judge broke the silence.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Rodriguez. Could you back up a second? I didn’t hear you say what triggered this violent episode. The burning, the assault.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

  “Let me just ask you, then,” the judge said. “Why did your husband do that?”

  It was the question Jack had not planned to ask, but a judge had the absolute right to question the witness, whether Jack liked it or not.

  Julia swallowed hard. “He accused me of being with another man.”

  “That you’d been intimate with another man?” the judge asked pointedly.

  “Yes.”

  Jack had the sinking feeling that all trial lawyers dread, the feeling that the judge was on a roll and the roll was in the wrong direction.

  “Had you in fact been intimate with another man?” the judge asked.

  Julia lowered her eyes, answering in a voice that was barely audible. “Yes.”

  “Was that the first time you had been intimate with another man?”

  “You mean while I was married to Jorge?”

  “Yes,” the judge said, “while you were married.”

  “No.”

  “No, it was not the first time?” the judge asked in an accusatory tone.

  “I’m sorry, I misunderstood you. Yes, it was the first time.”

  The judge didn’t seem to believe that she’d misunderstood, or at least that was Jack’s impression. Jack would have liked to point out that in some places women were still stoned to death for being an accused adulteress, but that didn’t justify Jorge’s actions.

  “Very well,” the judge said, as he settled back into his leather chair. “You may proceed, Mr. Swyteck.”

  Jerrell rose. “Judge, would it be appropriate to ask who Ms. Rodriguez was sleeping with?”

  “No,” Jack fired back, “it’s certainly not appropriate now, during my examination. Nor will it be appropriate after I’ve finished and Ms. Jerrell has her right to cross-examination.”

  “Perhaps my question was too broad,” said Jerrell. “As the court may be aware, a man named Hugo Martinez was murdered this past Friday night here in Miami. Ms. Rodriguez’s photo was found on his cell phone. I think it’s appropriate to ask if Ms. Rodriguez’s lover was Hugo Martinez.”

  “This isn’t cross-examination,” said Jack.

  “Technically, you’re right, Mr. Swyteck. Ms. Jerrell, sit tight until it’s your turn. But, seeing that we’ve already gone this far down the road, let me ask the question. Ms. Rodriguez, did your husband do these things you just described because you were having an affair with this man, Hugo Martinez?”

  Jack didn’t like the way the judge had phrased the question, as if it were Julia’s fault, but an objection would only have aggravated the situation.

  Julia swallowed her response, but the microphone picked it up. “I believe so.”

  “Got it,” said the judge. “Mr. Swyteck, do you have any more questions?”

  “Yes,” said Jack. “Many more.”

  “Okay, proceed.”

  Jack moved on from the sexual assault, and the questions wouldn’t get any easier for Julia to answer. There was the forced abortion that had nearly killed her, the futility of reporting domestic violence to the police, Jorge’s threat to kill Beatriz if she ever divorced him, and all the other things that had led to her decision to risk her life and that of her daughter to flee San Salvador. Jack would spend the rest of the morning bringing it all out on direct examination, but he had one overarching concern.

  He wasn’t sure that the Honorable Judge Patrick Kelly was even listening.

  Chapter 53

  Detective Barnes left the Criminal Justice Center with a search warrant in hand. His partner, Damien Reyes, rode with him to the Downtown Dadeland Apartments. They were hoping to find a pair of women’s shoes in Rosa Fields’ apartment. The home run would be a match to the footprints in the blood-sprayed concrete outside apartment 201 at the West Wind Apartments.

  “How’d you connect the girl?” Reyes asked.

  “Luck,” said Barnes. The property manager at West Wind Apartments had a nice kickback arrangement with the towing company that removed illegally parked cars, so he made it his practice to walk the parking lot every now and then to write down tag numbers. The fact that one of twenty-odd tags on the property manager’s list belonged to Rosa Fields didn’t mean much by itself. The fact that she had a misdemeanor conviction on her criminal record for trading sex for drugs made her a person of interest.

  “I’m thinking a threesome gone wrong,” said Barnes.

  “Not easy to get a hooker to talk about a john, let alone two johns,” said Reyes.

  Barnes tucked the warrant into his coat pocket. “A footprint that puts her at the scene of a homicide should be all the leverage we need.”

  The ride to Downtown Dadeland Apartments took half an hour. A pair of officers in the taupe-and-brown uniforms of the MDPD met the detectives outside the rental office. Barnes entered and found the manager behind her desk eating lunch. She took one more bite of her foot-long sub and stepped around her desk to inquire.

  “Diana Stokes,” she said, still chewing. “Can I help you?”

  Barnes showed her the papers. The manager wiped her hands with a napkin and inspected the warrant.

  “I run a first-class operation here,” said Stokes. “Pretty picky about my ten
ants. You mind telling me what this is about?”

  “Police business.”

  “I just ask because Rosa seemed like a nice kid when she moved in. She’s a student at Miami-Dade. Her parents came in the first week of classes and paid the rent for a whole year. From Indiana. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I think you’re saying they’re from Indiana.”

  “They’re good people, is what I’m saying. These New Yorkers sign as guarantors for their kids and claim they’re worth a million bucks, which means they got nothing in the bank but two million in debt. Parents from Indiana say they’re worth a million, it means they got two million in the bank, but they discount it to a million just in case the Apocalypse hits tomorrow and the financial world crumbles. That’s the kind of family this girl is from. But, come to think of it, I have been getting some complaints from her neighbors lately.”

  “What kind of complaints?”

  “Sketchy men coming and going from her apartment. It’s mostly students and young professionals here.”

  “You might call Rosa a professional,” said Reyes, offering up a little cop humor.

  The manager seemed to take some of his meaning. “She’s not mixed up with drugs, is she? Pretty girl like her, that’d be a cryin’ shame.”

  Barnes didn’t even want to get started on the number of cryin’ shames he’d seen. “Can you take us up, please? We didn’t get a no-knock warrant.”

  The manager grabbed her master passkey from her desk. “Follow me.”

  Barnes and his partner followed her out of the rental office, and the two MDPD officers rode up with them in the elevator. Rosa’s apartment was at the end of the hall. The manager knocked and, getting no answer, used her passkey to open the door. The MDPD officers stood guard outside the door as the detectives entered.

  “Miami-Dade Police,” Barnes announced, stopping just inside the doorway. There was no response. He could see the living room and kitchen from where he stood.

  The manager was right behind him. “Oh, my God! This is a furnished apartment. It’s all gone.”

  “Sold it for drugs, I’m guessing,” said Barnes.

  The manager went to the kitchen. “The appliances, too!”

  Detective Reyes walked to the bedroom. “Nobody here,” he said.

  Barnes went down the hall, past the bedroom, the only furnished room, and then to the bathroom. The light was on. Used towels hung on the rack. The sink area was a mess. Shaving cream was splattered in the basin and on the faucet.

  “Looks to me like a man was here,” said Barnes.

  “There’s no rule against overnight guests,” said the manager. “Unless it’s more than five consecutive nights.”

  Reyes emerged from the bedroom with a look of disappointment. “No shoes matching the description in the warrant.”

  “If she stepped in blood, she probably tossed them,” said Barnes.

  “Stepped in blood?” the manager asked with concern.

  “You mind if we check your trash chute and Dumpster?” asked Barnes.

  “Does your warrant cover that?”

  “I don’t need a warrant to search through trash.”

  “Then be my guest. But I don’t like the sound of this. What blood are you talking about?”

  Barnes didn’t answer. He shone his penlight on the shaving cream and took a closer look. A few whiskers were visible. Had Rosa’s apartment been a designated crime scene, he would have bagged the whiskers for the lab, but this was the execution of a search warrant, and he could collect only the items specified in the warrant.

  The detective’s gaze followed the sweep of his flashlight across the bathroom. It came to rest on the silver chain hanging on a hook behind the door.

  “Is that a dog choker?” he asked.

  “Looks like it,” said the manager.

  “Do you allow pets in this building?” asked Barnes.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “In this town a prostitute with a dog chain barely qualifies as kinky.”

  “Oh, my God,” said the manager. “This girl’s a hot mess.”

  Barnes glanced over his shoulder, toward a living room with no furniture, toward a kitchen with no oven and no refrigerator, just empty spaces where appliances used to be.

  “Do you have security cameras in this building?” asked Barnes.

  “Yes,” said the manager. “At the main entrance and in the parking garage.”

  “I’d like to see if Rosa came or went with anyone since Friday night.”

  “It’s not continuous video, but I’ll share what I have. Do you have a picture of the guy you’re looking for?”

  Barnes switched off his penlight. He’d put that exact request to Julia Rodriguez but, according to her lawyer, she’d turned a page in her life and left every photograph of her estranged husband in El Salvador.

  “That’s what I’m hoping your surveillance cameras can give us,” said Barnes.

  Chapter 54

  In Miami-Dade circuit court, where Jack tried the occasional civil case, a wall plaque in each courtroom proclaimed: we who labor here seek only truth. There was nothing similar in the Criminal Justice Center, where Jack did most of his trial work. Those words were also notably absent in the Miami Immigration Court. Jack wondered if the judicial gods were trying to tell him something.

  “Ms. Jerrell, you may cross-examine,” said Judge Kelly.

  Jack’s direct examination of his client had taken the full morning, and the judge had ordered everyone back by one o’clock. They’d gone to lunch, but Julia had returned with an empty stomach, having eaten almost nothing. She seemed to know, without Jack having to tell her, that the hard part was yet to come.

  “Thank you, Your Honor.” Jerrell gathered her notebook and stepped to the podium, facing the witness. She dispensed with the “good afternoon” and went straight into attack mode.

  “Ms. Rodriguez, in response to a question from your lawyer, you testified that you were afraid of your husband, correct?”

  Jack had prepared her for that precise question, but it still seemed to jar her, especially right out of the gate. “Yes.”

  “In fact, you said you were so afraid of retaliation by your husband that you were afraid to testify in court today.”

  “Yes.”

  “Here in Miami.”

  The geographic reference seemed to perplex her. “Yes. This courtroom. In Miami.”

  “And that’s because your husband is here in Miami, correct?”

  “Objection,” said Jack, rising. “There’s been no evidence to establish that point.”

  “Overruled. The witness may answer.”

  Julia paused, but she took Jack’s cue. “I don’t know where my husband is.”

  “Precisely,” said Jerrell, her voice rising. “You don’t know if he’s here in Miami, back in El Salvador, or on the planet Mars, do you?”

  “Well, I know he’s not on Mars.”

  Jerrell skated right over the remark, her voice taking on an even icier edge. “Ms. Rodriguez, you had a lover by the name of Hugo Martinez, correct?”

  “I wouldn’t call him my lover. Hugo was a good friend, and for a short time, it was more than that. I ended it, and we stayed friends.”

  “You were intimate with Mr. Martinez while you were married to Jorge Rodriguez, were you not?”

  “Yes,” Julia said softly.

  “Is it fair to say that you ended the sexual relationship with Mr. Martinez out of fear of your husband?”

  “That was part of it,” Julia said, clearly uncomfortable. “I also knew it was a sin. But I told my priest what my life was like with my husband, and even he said God would forgive—” She stopped, choked with emotion.

  While Jack had never thought of Julia as “cheating” on her husband, it was clear that even after all she’d endured, the breach of a marriage vow, even to a monster like Jorge, was something that Julia had not yet reconciled with her faith.

  Jack needed to speak up. “Yo
ur Honor, this is an asylum hearing, not a scarlet letter inquisition. Ms. Rodriguez befriended a coworker in the church bakery who made her feel safe from a husband who abused her, raped her, and threatened to kill their daughter if she divorced him.”

  “Mr. Swyteck, I detest speaking objections from counsel, especially when your client is on the stand. But just this once, I’m going to let you get away with it. Ms. Jerrell, please pursue an appropriate line of inquiry with this witness.”

  “Glad to, Your Honor. Ms. Rodriguez, let’s keep this simple: You know that Hugo Martinez was murdered, correct?”

  “I know he was shot.”

  “He was shot at close range in the back of the head. Does that sound like a suicide or an accident to you?”

  “Objection,” said Jack.

  “Sustained. Let’s not argue with the witness,” the judge said.

  “My apologies. Ms. Rodriguez, the shooting was here in Miami, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to be as honest as you possibly can be: Do you believe that Hugo Martinez was shot by your husband?”

  Jack was on his feet again. “Objection, Judge. My client isn’t privy to the homicide investigation. Her speculation is irrelevant.”

  “Judge, her state of mind certainly is relevant. In order to be granted asylum under U.S. law, Ms. Rodriguez must show that she has a reasonable fear of returning to her country. If her husband is here in Miami, she has nothing to fear about being deported and sent back to El Salvador.”

  “That’s a complete distortion of the law and facts,” said Jack.

  “Overruled. I’ll allow the question for the limited purpose of determining whether the witness’s alleged fear of returning to El Salvador is reasonable. Ms. Rodriguez, please answer the question.”

  Julia was smart enough to see the trap that Jerrell was setting, but the judge had left her little wiggle room. “I don’t know how to answer that question. I don’t know who killed Hugo.”

  “Let me ask it this way,” said Jerrell. “True or false, Ms. Rodriguez? If your husband is here in Miami, it’s safer for you to be in El Salvador than to be in Miami.”