“Thanks,” said Boalt, and he inhaled the menthol.
Dr. Ross led them to the examination room. Detective Proctor’s eyeglasses fogged as they entered, the lenses not yet adjusted to the chilly room. The examiner waited for him to wipe them clean.
“Ready?” asked Dr. Ross.
“Yep,” said Proctor, but the state attorney hesitated. Boalt had seen the bodies of dozens of homicide victims and thousands of gruesome photographs. The ability of an evil mind to find perverse ways in which to end another life was limitless. He’d seen shootings, stabbings, burnings, clubbings, and so much worse. But a lynching? Never. Maybe it was Leroy Highsmith’s “terrorist” speech. Or maybe it was that, not really so long ago, these acts of racial terrorism were not unheard of in Suwannee County—and not once had a coroner affixed an actual cause of death. Boalt was having trouble getting his mind around this one.
“Okay, let’s do this,” he said.
They moved to the center of the room, where the body of Jamal Cousin was laid faceup on the stainless steel table. Dr. Ross had been at work since 5:00 a.m. Two deep incisions ran laterally from shoulder to shoulder, across the breasts at a downward angle, meeting at the sternum. A long, deeper cut ran from the breastbone to the groin, forming the stem in the coroner’s classic “Y” incision. The victim’s lungs were set aside on the dissection table.
Dr. Ross aimed her laser pointer at ligature marks around the wrists and ankles. “A hog-tied victim makes it pretty easy to rule out suicide or accident. The manner of death is clearly homicide.”
“That’s the easy part,” said Boalt. “Where are you on cause of death?”
She switched off her pointer. “I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. One: asphyxiation—in this case, hanging. Or, two: death by drowning.”
Boalt thought through the implications of the second—drowning. “You realize that, even at high tide, Jamal’s head was high enough above the river that his nose and mouth would never have been underwater.”
“That’s an external fact for you to sort out. I’m looking solely at the body and, forensically speaking, I cannot rule out drowning.”
“I need you to explain that to me, doc,” said Boalt.
“Happy to,” said Ross, and suddenly her inner teacher emerged. “Drowning cannot be proven by autopsy. It is a diagnosis of exclusion, based on the circumstances of death. The first thing I do is determine if the body shows any signs of life-threatening trauma.”
“What do you see in Jamal’s case?” asked Boalt.
Ross switched on her laser pointer. “The body has bruising at the arms, suggesting that he may not have gone quietly to the river. And you saw the abrasions at his wrists and ankles. None of those injuries are life-threatening. Of course, the compressed airway from the ligature at the neck is in the category of life-threatening, but only if he was still alive when he was hanged.”
“Can’t you determine that?” asked Boalt.
“I do see classic signs of asphyxiation that are not typically seen in drowning. Petechial hemorrhages, for one,” said Ross, pointing her laser at the victim’s eye orbits, “the little blood marks on the face and in the eyes from burst blood capillaries. But there are other indicators that the victim may have been dead, or near dead, before he was hanged.”
“How can you tell?”
She genuinely seemed happy that he asked. “Sand in the mouth and throat,” said Ross. “That’s a critically important fact if you think about what happens in a drowning. The normal reaction when the head goes underwater is to hold your breath. Eventually, you can’t do it any longer, and your body is forced to gasp for air. That presents a major problem if you can’t reach the surface.”
“If you’re hog-tied, for example,” said Boalt.
“Correct. So the victim starts gulping water into the mouth and throat, literally inhaling water into the lungs. This, of course, sends the victim into an even more frenzied panic. If he doesn’t break the surface, his lungs continue to fill, struggling and gasping in a vicious cycle that can last several minutes, until breathing stops. In a river, a hog-tied victim would twist and flail, gulping at anything. It’s entirely likely that he would have kicked up sand and dirt from the river bottom, and some of it ended up in his mouth and throat.”
“And is that what you see in Jamal Cousin?” asked Boalt.
The laser pointed to the surgical incision at Jamal’s throat. “That’s exactly what I see.”
“So you’re leaning toward death by drowning as opposed to hanging?”
The laser pointer shifted to organs on the tray. “I’ll know more when I’ve examined the lungs,” she said, switching off the laser. “But we may never know with absolute certainty.”
“But it’s one or the other, right? Drowning or hanging?”
“Or, as I suggested, some combination of the two.”
Boalt took a moment, theorizing. “An up-and-down motion, maybe? Like a medieval dunking in the town square?”
“Again, those kinds of mechanics are your department,” said Dr. Ross.
Detective Proctor breathed a heavy sigh, as if visualizing the picture that Boalt had just painted. “Not a pleasant way to go.”
Boalt stepped away, inhaling the menthol below his lip, but it wasn’t the odor that had brought on the sudden nausea. “Nothing pleasant about this case.”
CHAPTER 14
Jack’s flight landed at Miami International Airport on Monday evening. Andie picked him up on her way home from work, greeting him with a kiss at the curb for arrivals.
Jack held his smile a little longer than usual as he settled into the passenger seat.
“What?” she asked.
“I forgot you were blond these days.”
Andie’s natural raven-black hair and green eyes made for an exotic beauty. She’d dyed her hair honey-blond and cut it to shoulder length for a “partial” undercover assignment, which had been taking her someplace—Jack didn’t know where—three days a week for the past two months.
“Some men have to cheat if they want another woman,” she said. “All you have to do is wait for my next assignment.”
Jack laughed, but it did kind of make him feel lucky.
Andie maneuvered back into the flow of slow-moving traffic. “Righley can’t wait to see you. I told Abuela to let her stay up ’til we get home.”
Abuela was Jack’s maternal grandmother, but in some ways, Righley was her first grandchild. The Castro dictatorship had kept her from coming to Miami until Jack was in his thirties, more than three decades after the death of Jack’s Cuban-born mother. By then, Jack was hopelessly Anglo, raised by his non-Hispanic father and stepmother. It was Abuela’s mission to make sure that Righley knew her ropa vieja from her picadillo.
The sun dipped behind the Miami skyline on the drive home to Key Biscayne, and night had fallen by the time Andie pulled the car into the garage. Jack had barely set foot in the kitchen when Righley came flying around the corner.
“Daddy, Daddy, there a spidey on the house!”
Jack smiled and gobbled her up into his arms. “A spider?”
“Yeah. Big one! Come see!”
She wiggled out of his grasp, jumped to the floor, and ran to the living room. Jack followed her all the way to the front door.
“Come on, come on! Open it!”
Jack turned the dead bolt. He heard a toilet flush at the other end of the house, followed by the quick shuffle of Abuela’s feet in the hallway.
“Righley, no!” she shouted, but Jack had already opened the front door.
He froze.
Abuela hurried into the room, scooped up Righley, and spirited her away. Andie was standing in the living room, as dumbstruck as Jack. It had been too dark outside to notice when they’d pulled up to the house, but there was no mistaking the spray-painted image on the door.
“There’s a swastika on our house,” said Andie. She approached slowly, in utter disbelief, then led Jack outside and closed the d
oor.
“I’m sorry,” was all Jack could say.
“Who would do this?”
“It’s a high-charged case. It could be any punk who watches the news.”
Andie looked at it again, and it pained Jack to see the expression on her face. “Jack, I have never told you not to take a case.”
“I know. And I love you for that.”
“When you and the Freedom Institute decided to sue the president of the United States to get a detainee out of Gitmo, I said ‘no problem.’ You wanted to stop the execution of a man convicted of murdering a seventeen-year-old girl—fine, it’s your decision. But this . . .”
“Is the same thing,” said Jack.
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s not.”
“How is it different?”
“Because it is, Jack. It just is.”
They stood in silence. A passenger jet rumbled in the night sky above them, on its way to Miami International.
“Are you asking me to quit?”
Andie looked away, clearly struggling. “I don’t know.”
More silence. “If it helps, I don’t believe Mark had anything to do with the lynching.”
Their eyes met. “How do you know, Jack?”
“You know I can’t get into that. Any more than you can tell me where your next undercover assignment will be.”
Andie’s head rolled back, as if searching the stars for patience. “Well, isn’t that convenient?”
“Would it make you feel better if I told you he was guilty?”
She shot a look of resentment, and Jack quickly regretted his words.
“No, Jack. It wouldn’t. But I can tell you what would. I’d feel so much better if I didn’t have to walk into that house, our home—” Andie paused, fought back the tears, and continued in a calmer voice—“and tell our daughter why there’s a fucking swastika on our front door.”
She yanked open the door, went inside, and slammed it shut before Jack could follow.
He wanted to reassure her, to tell her how rare it was for people to act out against the lawyer in a case, but he let her go. It wasn’t as if this was the first time. Eddie Goss came to mind. Defending a man who had confessed to the near decapitation of a high-school cheerleader wasn’t a popular move, especially when the victim was white and her accused killer wasn’t. It didn’t matter that the confession was coerced. Someone had splattered Jack with pig’s blood on the courthouse steps. It was the tipping point for Jack—the trial that had brought an end to his four-year stint at the Freedom Institute. Jack had resigned after Goss was acquitted.
Maybe Andie was right. Maybe it was time to hit the reset button again.
Jack went to the garage for a can of paint. All he could find was leftover “princess pink” from Righley’s room; not his first choice for a front door, but anything was better than a swastika. He gave it a quick coat and went back inside the house. Andie—the dyed-blond hair almost threw him again—was on the couch in front of the television. Jack washed his hands at the kitchen sink and then took a seat at the other end of the hump in the camelback.
“So, I was thinking about what you—”
“Stop,” said Andie. “Before you say anything, I want you to watch this.” She aimed the remote at the flat screen, rewound the cable news broadcast, and then let it replay. A reporter was standing on a busy college campus, her shoulder-length hair fluttering in the autumn breeze.
“Is that UF?” asked Jack.
“California, I think. Just watch.”
On-screen, the reporter spoke into the camera as students in the background passed by on foot and on bicycles. “The apparent lynching of an African American college student in Florida has been a shock to campuses across the country. But for some students, it has also been an education. At least that’s what we discovered when we set out this weekend and asked a simple question: ‘Do you know what lynching is?’”
The coverage jumped to a quick sequence of taped interviews in which white college students, each flagged down randomly, attempted to answer the reporter’s “simple” question. The first guy was dressed like a rapper and sounded stoned. “Lynching? Uh . . . no, man. I dunno.” The segment jumped to two sorority women dressed in their Greek-letter T-shirts. The pretty blonde answered: “It’s like those knights in Old England who got on horses and, like, charged at each other with those really long sticks, right?” Her friend laughed and corrected her, getting it almost as wrong. “That’s jesting, you ditz!”
Andie hit the PAUSE button. The room was silent.
“That’s sad,” said Jack.
“Beyond sad. I swear, if you asked them what was the ‘date which will live in infamy,’ they’d probably say the day Miley Cyrus left the Disney Channel.”
It wasn’t a funny subject matter, but if there was one thing that criminal defense lawyers and FBI agents had in common, it was the struggle to keep a sense of humor in an insane world.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” asked Jack.
Andie looked at him, her eyes two beacons of distress. “What bubble do those kids live in? I don’t want Righley to grow up that stupid.”
“What are you really saying?”
She didn’t answer right away, but her dismay slowly morphed into resignation. “I think you know.”
Jack slid across the couch and gave her a kiss. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The back of his hand brushed her thigh. “Any shot at makeup sex?”
Andie grabbed the remote and changed the channel. “Don’t push your luck.”
Jack’s cell vibrated in his pocket. He checked the number, stepped away, and took Tucker’s call in the kitchen.
“I just heard from the dean of students,” said Tucker. “The university has agreed to an expedited hearing. It’s at ten o’clock this Friday.”
“You know how I feel about rushing into this,” said Jack.
“There’s no choice. I’ve laid out the options for Mark. He wants this. The family needs this.”
“You don’t need to rush.”
“Jack, Lizzy’s cancer is back.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“We just found out last week.”
“Does Mark know?”
“Yes. That’s why he doesn’t want this dragging out for months and months. We don’t have months and months.”
Jack thought back to the conversation about the polygraph: Mark’s concern that an unreliable test might tell his mother that her son was a liar.
Jack went to the magnetic calendar posted on the refrigerator. Friday had a big red circle around it—parents’ day at Righley’s preschool. He hoped Andie could make it. He hoped Righley never landed in Mark Towson’s shoes.
“I need a full day with Mark before the hearing,” said Jack.
“Sure. Oh, and, Jack? The dean told me that there can be only one other person with Mark at the hearing. Those are the university’s rules. It’s called an ‘adviser.’”
“I’m happy to do it. But I also see Candace’s point about getting a lawyer who specializes in disciplinary hearings.”
“No,” said Tucker. “The rules say the adviser can be anybody. Doesn’t have to be a lawyer. In fact, I’m told that in most cases it’s a parent.”
“In most cases, the student isn’t looking at a possible indictment for murder.”
“If it comes to that, the courthouse is your turf. But this university is my turf, Jack. Both Lizzy and I are Gators. We sent our children here. I was dead serious about what I said before you left. I have to fight for my son. If only one person can go into that hearing with Mark, it will be me.”
Jack could have pushed back, but nothing in Tucker’s voice even hinted that the matter was up for debate. “Then we’ll need two days for prep.”
“That’s fine.”
The extra day was to talk him out of it, not to prep. But Jack let it be for now. “All right, then. See you Wednesday morning.”
CHAPTER 15
At 10:00 a.m. Friday morning, Mark Towson was seated at the end of a long rectangular table in Peabody Hall. His father was at his side. They were in one of the oldest buildings on campus, a restored redbrick gem in the heart of the university’s historic district. Peabody was originally Teacher’s College, and it was still home to the College of Education when Mark’s great grandparents had met at the University of Florida. It was now the Office of the Dean of Students, including Student Conduct & Conflict Resolution—the site of Mark’s disciplinary hearing.
“Just try to relax,” his father said.
They were alone in a room that was much smaller than Mark had expected. Lying awake all night, he’d envisioned something on the order of the Supreme Court of the United States or the United Nations General Assembly Hall. It was more like a classroom.
“I can’t relax,” said Mark.
The door opened. “Team Towson” rose in a show of respect as the seven members of the student conduct hearing committee—four men, three women—entered the room and took their seats at the table. The oldest, about the age of Mark’s father, positioned herself dead center as chairwoman. Beside her was a middle-aged man, the committee’s faculty representative. The remaining five were students. Each had a personal laptop. The rules stated that a student conduct hearing was not open to the public, but Mark had left his own laptop lying around in so many places that it was hard for him to imagine that anything on a college student’s laptop was truly confidential.
“Good morning. I am Dr. JoAnn Pinter, and I will serve as chairwoman of this committee. Mr. Towson, this is not an adversarial hearing. The rules of evidence and procedure that apply in a court proceeding do not apply to student conduct proceedings. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The charge against you is the creation of a hostile educational environment through a racist threat of violence against a fellow student. Specifically, you are charged with sending the following text message, which was retrieved from the cell phone of Jamal Cousin.”
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