“But you did sexually assault her,” said Jack, testing him.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You raped her, and that’s why you needed forgiveness.”
“No, damn it! I’ve said it all along. This was not a rape. That’s why I wanted to testify at trial, but I listened to my lawyer and didn’t say anything.”
“You wanted to get on the witness stand and say that Sashi consented to having sex with you? Really?”
“Yes! It was her idea! She practically raped me.”
Jack rose. “Let’s go, Hannah.”
“Wait,” said Reeves. “Where you going?”
“The bullshit is about knee deep so far. I’ve been practicing law way too long to wait for it to reach all the way up to my eyeballs. We’re leaving.”
“You can’t leave.”
“Yes, we can. Meeting you in person is not an indispensable part of defending you. I have other things on my mind besides your sorry ass. My wife is seven months pregnant and in the hospital. I flew up here only to see if there really was some possibility that Sashi Burgette was alive. If you’re going to lie, I’m getting on the next plane back to Miami.”
Jack started toward the door, and Hannah followed.
“Okay, everybody just be cool,” said Reeves. “Sit down and listen to me.”
Jack stopped. “No more b.s.?”
“Fine. You want the straight story? I’ll give it to you.”
The lawyers returned to their seats. Reeves lowered himself into the chair across from them. He rubbed his face, as if coaxing the words out of his mouth, and then spoke.
“She got away,” he said.
“Say that again?”
“I didn’t pick her up in my car. We never had sex. Sashi got away from me. That’s the truth.”
Jack and Hannah exchanged glances. They were finally getting somewhere. “Start at the beginning,” said Jack. “The cops brought you in to the station around three in the morning Sunday. When did you first see Sashi?”
“It was the Friday before that. Friday afternoon.”
“Where did you see her?”
“There’s a park on the north side of the canal just off Cartagena Circle.”
“Ingraham Park.”
“Right. Lots of joggers cut through there on the way into Coconut Grove or back toward Cocoplum. It’s a steady parade of some pretty hot chicks. Not so much on the weekends, when all the fatties who exercise once a week come out. But on Friday evening, you get the hard-core fitness types who work out like maniacs and don’t head over to South Beach till midnight.”
“That’s where you saw Sashi?”
“Yeah. Actually, I’d seen her there before.”
“Exercising?”
“No. Never. She would walk there. If you wander a little ways off the trail, there’s a rock ledge behind some trees and bushes along the canal. I’d seen her four or five times before. She would head over there and sit on the grass along the ledge, doing nothing. She’d just sit there for an hour or more, usually till sunset. Then she’d get up and walk back toward Cocoplum.”
“Anybody with her?”
“No. Always alone. And she saw me there before, too.”
“How do you know that?”
“She smiled at me. I know you think this is bull, but that girl was definitely interested. I could see it in the way she walked by me, sticking that little ass out.”
“I’m gonna leave, Dylan.”
“Okay, okay.”
“No, not okay. You’re talking about a seventeen-year-old girl who looked like the prom queen. Let me go out on a limb here, but I’m guessing you weren’t the prom king.”
“Still say she was interested.”
“Last warning,” said Jack.
“Fine. I thought she was interested.”
“I’ll accept that,” said Jack. “So on this particular Friday afternoon, you decided to make your move?”
“Yeah. I had a toolbox in my trunk. There’s a knife I kept in there.”
“Toolbox, huh?” said Jack, translating in his mind: rape kit.
“Yeah. And you know what? I didn’t even bother to go get the knife. Didn’t think I needed it. She’s there by the ledge all alone, layin’ back on the grass and staring up at the sky. Knees up. She’s wearing one of those little plaid skirts from the private schools. She’s practically asking for it.”
“I’m sure,” said Jack, resisting the urge to slap him. “Then what?”
“I walked toward her, real quiet. She’s still layin’ on the grass. I know you call me a liar, but it looks to me like she’s already spreadin’ her legs a little. ‘Don’t move,’ I tell her.”
“Where was the knife?”
“In my hand.”
“So you did have a knife.”
Reeves glared. “Fuck you and your lawyer tricks. Yeah, all right. I brought it just in case.”
Never failed. Details like a deadly weapon were memories these guys flushed when they got on death row. “Did you cut her?”
“No.”
“Press the blade to her throat?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. What I do remember is that things were going pretty smooth. Not much resistance. I get her panties off, then for two seconds I take the knife away to unzip my pants, which was stupid. I should have kept the knife right where it was and told her to do me. She kicked me right in the nuts. I mean bull’s-eye. I’m hurtin’ like you can’t imagine.”
“Then what?”
“That’s it. She ran off, and I was in no shape to run after her. I kind of limped back to my car and got the hell out of there. I never saw the girl again.”
Jack said nothing. The silence lingered. Finally, he spoke. “Nice story,” said Jack. “It fits really well with Debra Burgette’s hope and wish that her daughter is still alive. Too bad it doesn’t hold water.”
“It’s the truth,” said Reeves.
“Can’t be,” said Jack. “This was Friday, you said. You were stopped by Miami-Dade police Sunday morning at three. Your DNA was found on Sashi’s panties. They were still wet. It’s not possible that your semen was still wet thirty hours after the fact.”
“Look, genius, here’s the deal. I spent five hours getting shitfaced drunk at a strip club Saturday night. Naked dancers shaking their pussies in my face all night long.”
“So?”
“Sometime after two in the morning, I walk to my car. I reach for my keys, and guess what I find? I still have the girl’s panties in my coat pocket. Do I have to spell this out for you?”
“You sprayed her panties,” said Hannah.
Reeves glared, wholly unappreciative of her statement of the obvious. “Like I’m the first guy to do it,” he said.
There was a knock, and the door opened. The guard entered.
“Sorry to interrupt, folks. But I need to borrow the prisoner for about fifteen minutes. We need to take measurements for the burial suit.”
“Burial suit?” said Reeves, looking at Jack. “They don’t just bury me in what I’m wearing?”
“No,” said Jack. “You get a burial suit.”
Reeves shook his head, muttering. “It’s okay to kill me, but it’s a crime if my clothes don’t fit. Can you believe this place?”
Jack didn’t mention the legally required autopsy—would the cause of death really be a mystery? “We’ll wait right here,” said Jack.
Reeves rose. The guard refastened the shackles and led him away, leaving Jack and Hannah alone in the room.
“Do you believe him?” asked Hannah.
“He’s a punk. He’s probably stupid enough to stick to his story that he had consensual sex with Sashi if his only alternative is to admit to the world that he jerked off on her panties. So, yeah. Maybe I do believe him.”
“Me, too.”
Jack sat back and folded his arms, thinking. “Remind me of one thing, though, would you?”
“What?”
Jack breathed in and out. “Why is
it that we want to save this guy?”
Hannah chuckled. “Good one, boss. You are so funny.”
“Yeah, a riot,” Jack said. “A regular prison riot.”
CHAPTER 11
Three o’clock was pickup time for the elementary and middle school students at Grove Academy. Debra Burgette was right on time, but as any Grove parent knew, “on time” meant the back of the line. Debra would spend the next thirty minutes trapped in her Mercedes, inching her way up the palm-tree-lined driveway to the campus entrance, where a teacher would pluck Alexander from a line of well-behaved third-graders and buckle him into the backseat of his mother’s car.
The SUV ahead of her moved up a car’s length, and Debra rode its bumper. Purely out of boredom, she reached for her cell phone, but then she thought better of it. Debra was already on driver probation for two previous offenses in the cell-free zone, and security guards roamed the campus and parking lot like Secret Service agents.
Miami had its share of distinguished private schools, but for anyone who wanted the one-stop option of “pre-K through 12,” Grove Academy was of singular distinction. The wooded five-acre campus was in Coconut Grove, right on Biscayne Bay, and students who didn’t come to school each morning in a Lexus or BMW might arrive by boat. No class had more than twelve students. Mandarin Chinese was offered as early as age three. Classrooms had the latest SMART Board technology, and any student who didn’t have a brand-new tablet every September was living in the Dark Ages. About once every decade, someone made it through the fifth grade without being named a “Duke TIP kid,” but the best of the best weren’t aiming for Duke, or any other college south of Cambridge, with the possible exception of that one in New Haven.
Debra would never forget the day Alexander had started there.
Or the day Sashi was expelled.
It happened on a warm and sunny April afternoon, just three months after Sashi’s command of the English language had improved enough for her to enter the freshman class.
Mr. and Mrs. Burgette, the headmaster will see you now,” said the administrative assistant.
Debra and her husband were seated on a leather couch in the waiting area. Debra held a four-inch expandable file in her lap. In it were copies of e-mail exchanges with Sashi’s teachers, disciplinary reports, appeals of disciplinary decisions, and an assortment of letters and pleas in which Debra had begged the administration to give Sashi another chance.
Gavin rose first, seemingly resigned to the inevitable. Debra followed, clutching her file and hoping for a miracle. The assistant led them into a cherry-paneled office, and then she retreated into the hallway and closed the door. Headmaster Avery McDermott and Associate Head of School Karen Feinberg greeted them politely but without smiles. McDermott offered his guests the matching striped armchairs and took his seat behind a massive and beautifully carved desk that was worthy of the Oval Office. The associate head pulled up a Winsome side chair and sat to the head’s right.
“Well,” said the headmaster. “Here we are again.”
McDermott had been headmaster at Grove Academy for more than ten years but still spoke with a New England accent. He was a distinguished academic type whose salt-and-pepper beard made him look a little like Ernest Hemingway—without the turtleneck, of course, in the Miami heat.
Debra scooted to the edge of her chair, knees together, and with the bulging file resting atop her thighs. “Thank you so much for this opportunity to meet,” she said in a voice that sounded overly obsequious, even to her own ears. “It’s so, so very kind of you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have happy news for you,” said McDermott. “The number of second chances granted to your daughter in her short stay is unprecedented in the school’s history. The terms of Sashi’s latest probationary period were very specific. One more violation of our code of conduct would mean expulsion.”
“What did she do this time?” asked Gavin.
“What is she alleged to have done?” asked Debra, correcting him.
“Well, let me walk you through it,” said McDermott. “Sashi typically spends her lunch hour alone on the lawn in the Quad.”
“That’s her comfort zone,” said Debra, “her cocoon. She puts in her earbuds, finds a quiet place outdoors, and lies in the sun. It makes her feel safe. She does it all the time.”
Gavin cut her a sideways glance, telling her to cool it. When it came to defending Sashi, he called her “the fountain of TMI”—too much information.
“Yes,” said the headmaster. “But today she assumed an inappropriate pose.”
“How do you mean inappropriate?”
“She was on her back with her knees up.”
“She’s fourteen,” said Debra. “Part kid, part woman. I’m sure she didn’t realize what some of the older boys might be thinking.”
“Her skirt was riding down her thighs. Her panties were visible. Some of the students who witnessed it say that she intermittently spread her legs.”
“Which students? There are a lot of kids who don’t like Sashi.”
“I can’t provide names, Ms. Burgette. But the Quad is an area on campus where the lower school and high school overlap. Some of the children who witnessed this were first-and second-grade boys who got their first look beneath a teenage girl’s skirt. I can assure you that their parents will not be happy.”
“I understand,” said Gavin. “As you know, our Alexander is just a kindergartner, so I totally get it. We will personally apologize to those families if that will resolve this matter.”
“It won’t,” said the headmaster. “There’s more.”
Debra closed her eyes, absorbing the blow. Somehow, however, she’d known it was going to get worse.
“One of our second-grade teachers, Dennis Jenkins, approached Sashi and told her to stop. She ignored him. When he bent down to tap her on the shoulder, she struck him.”
Silence. Then Debra spoke. “Maybe he startled her. Like I said, if she was parting her legs, she was probably dozing off.”
“She didn’t strike him just once,” said the headmaster. “It was vicious. We’re talking repeated blows. She bloodied the man’s nose. It may be broken.”
“This is really bad, I know,” said Debra. “But you have to understand. Sashi and Alexander were adopted from an orphanage in Russia. We don’t know the whole story. Sashi is only beginning to open up to her psychiatrist. I’m sure that when she looked up and saw this strange man standing over her, something probably snapped. Some memory came to her. She must have thought that—”
“Ms. Burgette,” he said, interrupting, “I’m well aware of the difficult circumstances. We’ve been over this before. If this were a first offense, I might feel differently. But Sashi was already on probation for stealing another student’s cell phone. At some point, the academy must enforce its rules.”
“How can we clear this up?” asked Gavin.
“We’re handling it,” said the headmaster. “Our legal counsel has been put on notice. The law requires us to report an altercation between a student and a teacher to the Department of Children and Family Services. I’m sure Mr. Jenkins will be exonerated, but our school policy requires that he be suspended until the evaluation is completed.”
“Is all that necessary?” asked Debra.
“You don’t know the half of it,” said the headmaster. “The grapevine is fully engaged, and I’ve already gotten one call from the media. These stories get twisted, and I’m doing the best I can to keep this from spinning into a story of ‘teacher attacks student.’ The chairman of the board of trustees has called a special meeting for tonight. It goes on and on.”
“What can we do to help?” asked Gavin.
“First of all, if you are contacted by the media, please do not talk to them.”
“You have my word,” said Gavin. “Again, I’m very sorry about this.”
“I’m sorry, too,” said the headmaster. “But the bottom line is that your daughter can no longer stay at Grove Academy.”
“But . . . why?” asked Debra.
Gavin did that thing with his hand, waving off her question. Debra hated when he did that. It was really becoming a bad habit.
“Can Alexander stay?” asked Gavin.
“Yes, of course. This is about your daughter. Alexander is clearly GA material.”
“Material?” asked Debra.
“There is one condition to Alexander’s staying here, however,” said the headmaster.
“Name it,” said Gavin.
“Our lawyers have asked that you sign this agreement,” he said as he handed it to Gavin. “It basically acknowledges the promises that you made in the application materials upon enrollment: all matters relating to student discipline shall remain confidential.”
Gavin gave it a quick read. “Sure,” he said, signing. Then he handed Debra the pen.
She hesitated.
“Ms. Burgette,” said the headmaster, “it is in no one’s interest for this incident to become public information. The DCFS investigation is strictly confidential. There will be a buzz around the campus for a few days, but our IT director and her staff have spoken with every single student who witnessed this incident, and they have made it absolutely clear that any postings to social media will result in immediate suspension. My hope is that we have this under control and that it will soon be forgotten.”
“Sign it,” Gavin told her.
“But—”
“Sign the document, Debra,” said Gavin.
She did.
Gavin rose. “Thank you, Mr. McDermott. Let us know if there is anything more you need from us. We will be happy to cooperate. Debra, let’s go.”
“We’re really not finished here,” said Debra.
There went that dismissive wave of the hand again. Gavin really needed to stop doing that.
“Debra. Let’s go,” he said.
There were quick handshakes all around, and then Gavin whisked Debra out of the headmaster’s office, through the lobby, and into the sun-baked parking lot. Debra did most of the talking on the walk to their car.
Gone Again: A Jack Swyteck Novel Page 6