“Phone records show that Jamal Cousin also received a text message from Cooper Bartlett. And another one from Baine Robinson. Lucky for them, Jamal deleted the message, so we don’t know what was said. But those messages were sent just a few minutes after the one you sent.”
“I didn’t send any message!”
The state attorney interjected, his tone much friendlier than the detective’s. “Mark, we’d really like to know what your friends texted to Jamal.”
“I don’t know anything about any text messages to Jamal.”
The detective leaned closer, retaking control. “Let’s cut to the chase here, Mr. Towson. The critical time period here is roughly eighteen to twenty-six hours ago. Can you tell us where you were late Friday night and after midnight ’til about two a.m. Saturday?”
Mark glanced at the state attorney, who offered a nod of encouragement. “We’re just looking for the truth, Mark.”
“I went to bed pretty early. Like eleven thirty. I had an accounting midterm Friday morning and was up late Thursday studying.”
“What time did you get up on Saturday?”
“Probably around ten.”
“Was anyone with you?”
“No. That’s one of the perks of being president. I get my own room.”
“No girlfriend?”
Mark shook his head.
The detective put an even finer point on it. “So no one but you can tell us where you were from eleven thirty Friday night until ten a.m. Saturday. Is that right?”
Mark froze. The state attorney tried his “good cop” routine again. “You can answer, Mark. We just need your help.”
“You don’t want my help. This is crazy. You’re trying to pin this on us.”
The men stared back in silence.
Mark took a breath. “Seriously? You think the three of us lynched Jamal Cousin? Is that what this is about?”
“We’re just three adults having a conversation,” the state attorney said in a matter-of-fact tone. “No one’s accusing you of anything. You’re not under arrest.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that. But—” Mark stopped himself. “Can I have my cell back, please?”
It was inches from the detective’s elbow. He slid it across the table, and Mark caught it.
“Another text message you need to delete?” the detective asked.
“Yeah, how’d you know?” said Mark, instantly regretting the sarcasm. Then he pressed entry number one on his contact list, which simply read DAD.
CHAPTER 4
Jack Swyteck woke to a warm face washing—and dog breath.
“Max!” he said, groaning as he nudged his golden retriever away from the bed. The bedroom was dark, not a sliver of sunlight coming through the windows. Jack had just finished a two-week jury trial on Friday afternoon. Saturday had been the first “date” with his wife in a fortnight, and Sunday was his day to sleep in.
“Get up, Daddy!”
It was something Max would have said, if he could talk, but the voice was that of his three-year-old daughter. Jack rolled over and checked the clock on the nightstand: 5:11 a.m.
“Righley, honey. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Time to get up.”
“Mommy?” he said hopefully. He reached across to Andie’s side of the mattress, but she wasn’t there. For two months she’d been training for a half marathon. On weekdays she took to the treadmills at the Miami Field Office, which were available to all FBI agents. On weekends she did her roadwork, but rarely before sunrise—too many drunks still driving home. Yet there she was, standing at the foot of the bed, dressed in running clothes and ready to head out.
“Why so early?”
“Your father woke me up.”
Harry Swyteck was the former governor of Florida, since retired from politics. “My father?”
“He called your cell at five. You slept through it. I didn’t.”
“What does he want?”
“He said he’ll meet you at the Executive Airport at six-fifteen. It’s important. You’re going to Gainesville.”
The twin-engine prop plane left Miami at 6:35 a.m. with five rows of empty seats separating Jack and his father from the only other passenger on the flight. Jack had seen Saturday’s media coverage of “Florida’s first lynching in more than fifty years.” It was the lead story on the evening news statewide, and national networks had also covered it. By the time Jack had gone to bed, bloggers were abuzz and social media was overheating, though the name “Towson” had not yet been mentioned.
Harry thanked Jack for a third time after takeoff.
“Tucker Towson was a college kid knocking on doors for me when I ran for state legislator. By my second term as governor, he was my deputy chief of staff. I think of him like a little brother.”
“I get it,” said Jack.
“I should have checked with you before telling him you’d fly up with me,” said Harry. “But when an old friend calls at four o’clock in the morning and says his son is in serious trouble, you just get on a plane and—”
“Dad, it’s no problem. Really.”
Fifteen years of criminal defense work and a string of high-profile trials—mostly capital cases, including one in which his client was finally proven innocent after four years on death row—had earned Jack an impressive reputation. Still, Jack was under no illusion that this gig was strictly about his legal prowess. Although his father had been out of office for more than a decade, the surname Swyteck still carried weight, especially at the University of Florida, Harry’s alma mater.
Jack spent the first half of the flight listening as Harry brought him up to speed on his call from Tucker, including what Tucker had told him about the racist text message from Mark Towson’s phone. Then Jack took to the Internet. Ten minutes before landing, Jack looked up from his iPad and said, “There’s absolutely no mention anywhere of that text message from Mark to Jamal.”
“You sure?”
Jack was. Saturday’s coverage had focused on the tragic loss of life, with endless words of praise from relatives, friends, teachers, and virtually anyone who’d ever known Jamal Cousin. The Sun Sentinel story about an inner-city kid who stayed out of gangs and became the first in his family to attend college was downright inspirational. The breaking news on Sunday morning was that three white fraternity brothers had been hauled in for questioning and released sometime after midnight, and that one of them was the son of Tucker Towson, former deputy chief of staff to Governor Swyteck. Law enforcement refused to comment further.
“The police must be keeping that part of the investigation confidential,” said Jack.
“Maybe they don’t want to release it until they can prove for sure that Mark sent it. Which is reasonable. If that text is as bad as Tucker told me, his son will need a bodyguard when it goes public.”
The jet landed at Gainesville Regional Airport around eight o’clock. A taxi took them toward campus. Jack was still on his iPad, reviewing the latest coverage, when he looked up and noticed how the business side of University Avenue had changed since his undergraduate days—except for the colors.
“I see Sherwin-Williams is still running a sale on orange and blue,” said Jack.
The driver took them past the main campus, then past the law school, and finally to a quiet residential neighborhood west of the university.
Tucker and his wife, Elizabeth, had met as freshmen at UF and moved back to Gainesville in their fifties—not out of nostalgia, but because UF Health Shands Cancer Hospital offered Elizabeth a fighting chance against breast cancer. Both their children attended UF, and the empty-nesters lived alone in a four-bedroom ranch-style house at the end of a cul-de-sac. It wasn’t often that Mark spent a Saturday night at home, but last night had been an exception.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” said Harry, as the taxi turned in to the Towsons’ street.
A group of students had already gathered at the end of the street. They were not from the Gator welcom
e committee. Jack counted about a dozen demonstrators, blacks and whites, their posters sending a message to the neighborhood. JUSTICE FOR JAMAL. END HATRED.
“I figured there would be protests at the Theta house,” said Harry. “But not here.”
“The article in the Sun mentioned that Mark graduated from Gainesville High,” said Jack. “They must have guessed he’d go home to deal with this.”
A demonstrator stepped toward the taxi and brandished her sign: RACISM IS TAUGHT.
“Or they blame his parents,” said Harry.
The taxi continued past the demonstrators, pulled into the driveway, and stopped. Jack reached for the door handle, but Harry stopped him.
“Before we go in, there’s something I want to be totally clear about.”
“Sure.”
“Tucker is a special friend, so I was happy to arrange this meeting. But I made no commitments beyond that.”
“We’ll see how it goes.”
“I’m not finished,” said Harry. “I’m all for keeping an innocent college kid from becoming the victim of a witch hunt, which is what Tucker assures me this is. But if the boy actually sent that text message and gets indicted for lynching Jamal Cousin, I have no problem with you walking away from this case.”
“Dad, he wouldn’t be my first guilty client. And even if he did send that text, it doesn’t mean he killed Jamal.”
Harry grimaced. “See, you’re already doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Your Freedom Institute mind-set.”
Jack’s first job out of law school at the Freedom Institute—defending death row inmates after Governor Harry Swyteck signed their death warrant—had once divided this father and son. They’d worked past it over the years. Or so Jack had thought.
“Do you want me to help this kid or not?” asked Jack.
Harry breathed out. “If he’s being railroaded, I do. But if he’s not . . .”
“If he’s not, then he really needs my help.”
“Damn it, Jack. Now I’m sorry I called you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not a hotshot young lawyer fresh out of law school who can do whatever he pleases. You’re married to a law enforcement officer.”
“Andie would never tell me what cases to take.”
“Of course she wouldn’t. But have some sense, Jack. I’m speaking now as a former cop. Andie is out there in the field every day. Black agents, white agents—they all got each other’s back.”
“And you think that’s going to change because I defend Mark Towson?”
“If he sent that text, it will. Look, Jack, if you come out of this meeting saying ‘I’m in this no matter what,’ that’s up to you. But if Tucker’s son did this, and Andie asks my opinion, I’m not going to pretend that you’re doing me any favors for my old friend. I’ll be the first to give you a swift kick in the ass for defending the racist son of a bitch. Understood?”
“Yeah,” said Jack, his gaze drifting toward the line of demonstrators at the end of the driveway. “Understood.”
CHAPTER 5
Jack met alone with his new client in the dining room. Harry waited in the living room with Tucker and Elizabeth Towson. The pocket door was closed for privacy. The furniture was traditional, straight out of an Ethan Allen showroom. A framed portrait hanging on the cabbage-rose wallpaper captured Mark with his parents and younger sister in a much happier time.
“I had nothing to do with this,” said Mark.
“That’s a good start,” said Jack.
They spoke for almost an hour, covering everything from the first time Mark met Jamal to the police interrogation. One new piece of information was that all three boys had left the sheriff’s office without their cell phones. By the time the interrogation ended, the police had obtained a warrant to seize the phones.
“The detective kept telling me I wasn’t under arrest,” said Mark.
“They don’t have to arrest you to seize your cell phone.”
“But why did he keep saying that? I felt like he was telling me that if I tried to leave, he would arrest me.”
“Bluffs like that are standard police interrogation tactics,” said Jack. “The detective was also making it clear on the recording that he wasn’t legally required to tell you that you have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Miranda doesn’t kick in until you’re arrested.”
“Seems slimy to me. Especially after they lied to get me to come to the station. The cop said it was to talk about campus safety.”
“That’s allowed, as long as the police have a good reason to lie.”
“What reason could they have other than to trick me?”
“We can ask. But it doesn’t take a genius to think one up.”
“That sucks. This whole thing sucks.”
Frustration was setting in. It was obvious that Mark hadn’t slept all night, like all clients who lie awake and overanalyze their predicament.
There was a knock at the door, and Mark’s father entered. “Jack, sorry to interrupt, but it’s important. There’s something you should see on the TV.”
He pronounced “TV” like “Stevie.” His son had inherited the Towson height and preppy good looks, but the accent was all Tucker.
“All right, let’s break.”
Jack and his client rose and followed Tucker into the living room. Harry had stepped out. Elizabeth was seated on the couch. The worry lines Jack had noticed on her face just an hour earlier now seemed carved in wax. A sixty-inch flat screen hung on the wall. Frozen on the screen and cued up to replay was the image of an African American legal giant in Florida. The banner below his face read: “Leroy Highsmith, attorney and spokesperson for the Cousin family.” He was standing before a bouquet of microphones from at least a dozen different news organizations.
“Do you know Highsmith?” asked Tucker.
“I’ve met him,” said Jack. “He’s not a criminal defense lawyer.”
“More like a criminal.”
“He’s a plaintiff’s lawyer.”
“Same thing. The man built his practice on ‘Have You Been Injured?’ billboards posted on all roads out of Disney World. His specialty is convincing juries that every bump on the noggin is a life-threatening brain injury.”
“He has definitely won some big verdicts,” said Jack.
“And he’s at it again.”
“At what again?” asked Jack.
“One of the boys the police took down to the station last night is Baine Robinson. That family is loaded. Baine’s father is a citrus baron from Orange County—probably one of the richest men ever to graduate from UF. The Robinson School of Agriculture was named after Baine’s grandfather.”
“I’m not sure I follow your point about Leroy Highsmith,” said Jack.
“Highsmith practically has his own cottage industry suing companies like Robinson Citrus. Watch,” said Tucker, reaching for the television remote. “Listen to what Highsmith just said five minutes ago in this press conference, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Tucker pressed the remote, rewound the DVR, and the on-screen image came to life. Highsmith was a gifted orator, speaking with the passion of a preacher and the precision of a brilliant lawyer.
“Strange fruit,” he said, holding a transcript of the text message in his left hand. “Strange fruit hanging from the tree. Chilling words that Billie Holiday sang so powerfully more than seventy-five years ago. But this isn’t 1939, you say. The days when just looking at a white man the wrong way could cost a black man his life are over, you say. Lynchings are behind us, you say.” He paused for effect, then lowered his voice. “Not so,” he said, shaking his head in sadness. “Not so.”
Mark grabbed the remote and paused the recording. “Who’s Billie Holiday? I never heard of him.”
“Her,” said Jack.
“I don’t know that song! I never heard of strange fruit!”
“We know,” his mother said softly. “We bel
ieve you.”
Tucker took the remote, and with his push of the button, Highsmith continued.
“On behalf of Jamal, his mama and daddy, the entire Cousin family. And on behalf of the nearly five thousand black men who were lynched in this country. I call on State Attorney Oliver Boalt and on all decent folk in Suwannee County to see to it that there is justice for Jamal. Justice without delay!”
Applause followed, and the screen went black.
Tucker tossed the remote onto the couch. “You see, Jack? He’s not helping Jamal’s family out of the goodness of his heart. He smells money.”
“I didn’t really get that,” said Jack.
“The man says he wants justice. To him, justice means a quick guilty verdict against some frat boys at UF, followed by a multimillion-dollar wrongful-death lawsuit against their families—which I can’t pay, but the Robinson family surely can.”
It wasn’t unusual for clients to reach for conspiracy theories when facing criminal accusations. This one seemed pretty far afield. “Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” said Jack.
There was a quick knock at the front door, but it was just Harry’s way of announcing his return. He let himself in. His expression was noticeably grim as he approached.
“How did it go?” Tucker asked Harry.
“How did what go?” asked Jack.
Elizabeth spoke just above a whisper. “Your father went to visit Dick Waterston,” she said, meaning the university president.
Harry stepped farther into the living room, facing the others. “I did what I could,” said Harry. “The president’s office will be issuing a press release at one o’clock.”
Tucker put his arm around Mark’s shoulder, seeming to know what Harry was going to say next.
“The text message is unacceptable student conduct,” said Harry.
Jack watched as Tucker led his son toward the window, where Elizabeth joined them. The family turned away, their backs to the Swytecks as they gazed out the French doors toward the swimming pool. Harry delivered the final blow.
“Mark is being expelled from the University of Florida.”
Mark’s chin hit his chest. Elizabeth sobbed and hugged her son.
A Death in Live Oak Page 3