Gone Again: A Jack Swyteck Novel

by James Grippando

  Jack was suddenly thinking ahead seventeen years, trying to imagine the mistakes his own daughter was going to make. Hopefully none as bad as Sashi’s, but who was to judge?

  “You have to remember, Jack: this was a case with no witnesses, and the police never recovered a body. ‘No body’ should equal ‘no conviction.’ My strategy was to make the prosecution prove its case, not to shift the burden to us to prove that Dylan didn’t do it.”

  “Like you say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

  “No. I’m going to stand my ground on this. It was the right strategy, and I’d do it again. If I could just find my notes here . . .”

  Jack watched as Graner flipped through the pages one by one. Every so often he would pause, as if he’d found something interesting, then shake his head and move on. With equal frequency he’d remove a stray item—an empty french fry container or an electric bill he’d forgotten to pay—and toss it aside.

  Then he hit pay dirt.

  “Here we go,” he said, as he handed his notes to Jack. They were still part of the original yellow legal pad that had never been pulled apart.

  Jack laid the pad on the table, took a seat, and started reading. Graner watched over his shoulder, mostly in silence, with only an occasional interruption.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” asked Graner.

  “What?”

  “How hard it can be to read your own handwriting.”

  “I thought it was just me,” said Jack. He kept slogging through it. The handwritten words at the bottom of page five caught his attention. He read them to himself, then aloud, for Graner’s benefit, in case he couldn’t make it out: “‘Scumbag,’” said Jack, quoting verbatim, “‘but could be innocent.’ You’re talking about Dylan Reeves there?”

  “Yeah,” said Graner. “That’s what I wrote.”

  “Why?”

  Graner retrieved his notes from Jack and took a couple of minutes to scan ahead. His eyes narrowed, his lips puckered, and his face went through a half dozen other contortions in an effort to shake something loose from a foggy memory. “Damned if I remember. A lot of booze since then. Maybe it was just my impression.”

  “Were you drunk when you interviewed him?”

  “I told you I was sober for eight years before this case.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” said Jack.

  He looked at his notes—chicken scratch—and shook his head. “Yeah, I was probably drunk.”

  He seemed to be soul-searching, struggling to say more. Jack gave him a moment.

  “You know, this was my first capital case,” said Graner. “You handle a couple of robbery cases, some DUIs, and you think you’re a criminal lawyer. You lose at trial, maybe your client does a little jail time. I found out quick when I took on this case: not every lawyer is cut out to do death work.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  “But let me be clear about this,” said Herb. “I might not have a perfect memory—or any memory—of what was said in an interview three years ago. But I pulled myself together in that courtroom.”

  “Dylan said he smelled scotch on your breath.”

  “I took one shot in the morning, okay? Just to calm my nerves. I was not ineffective.”

  Jack hadn’t come to argue that point. “Take another look at the notes, Herb. See if you can make out anything that would have made you write ‘might be innocent.’”

  He groaned—not because he didn’t want to help, Jack sensed, but only out of self-loathing and regret over the lawyer he’d become. He took a minute. Then another. Finally, there was a glimmer in his eye.

  “FU.”

  Jack recoiled. “Fuck you, too.”

  “No. It’s here in the notes. FU. That means ‘follow up.’ These are possible witnesses I was supposed to follow up with and interview. Two of them.”

  “Can you make out the names?”

  He held the paper closer to his eyes. “Michael, is the first name. Last name,” he said, squinting, “Volkov. Not Michael. Now I remember. It was a Russian name. Mikhail Volkov.”

  Jack wrote it down. “Second name?”

  “Just two capital letters. Maybe somebody’s initials,” he said, showing Jack the scribble on the yellow notepad page.

  “BB,” said Jack, reading it. “What does that mean?”

  There was another spark in Graner’s eye. “Bad Boy!” he said. “That’s it: Bad Boy.”

  “As in Carlos Bad Boy?” asked Jack, his adrenaline pumping. “In your first interview, Dylan Reeves told you about Carlos Bad Boy Mendoza?”

  “I’m pretty sure all I got out of Dylan was ‘Bad Boy.’ I seem to recall that Dylan didn’t know his real name.”

  Jack looked at the notes again, shaking his head with disbelief. “Okay. Really, really think hard. Tell me anything you can remember that Dylan Reeves told you about this ‘Bad Boy.’”

  Graner shook his head, grimacing. “I really don’t remember. Maybe nothing. You should ask Dylan.”

  “I already asked him six different ways if he knew anything about Carlos Mendoza. I got nothing.”

  “Show him my notes. Ask him again.”

  “I will. But right now, let’s drill down on what you remember.”

  Graner fell back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair, exasperated. “I don’t remember shit, okay?”

  “Try.”

  “I am trying,” he said, suddenly more annoyed than exasperated. “Fuck it. You know what? If Dylan Reeves won’t talk to you about Bad Boy to save himself, don’t make me feel like the bad guy for not remembering. It isn’t my fault.”

  It was a pretty lame rationalization from a lawyer who was charged with the responsibility of defending a capital case—but in a way, he had a point.

  Why wouldn’t Dylan Reeves have told me?

  “If I were you, Jack, you know what I’d do?”

  “I couldn’t even begin to guess,” said Jack.

  He leaned into the table and stabbed the other name on the notepad with his index finger. “I’d find this Mikhail Volkov. And I’d talk to him.”

  Jack considered it, nodding slowly. “Not a bad idea. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”

  Graner gathered up his notes. “Let me make a copy of this for you. I think the machine still works.” He started toward the door, then stopped.

  “You’ll keep me in the loop, right?” he asked.

  Jack assumed he was talking about the ineffective-assistance argument. “Sure.”

  “I told you this was the case that made me relapse—that not all lawyers are cut out for death work. That goes double when you think maybe your client didn’t do it. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I do, Herb.”

  Their gaze held for a moment longer, and Jack could feel the pull of Graner’s unspoken wish—his need for Jack to say that he’d done a good job for Dylan Reeves, or, at the very least, that he hadn’t let his client down.

  “I’ll make those copies.”

  “Thanks,” said Jack, and then he added what he could. “You’ve been a big help.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Jack left the duPont Building with a photocopy of Herb Graner’s interview notes. In fifteen minutes he was at Cy’s Place in Coconut Grove.

  Cy’s Place was Theo’s second successful establishment, a true jazz club that he’d named after his great-uncle Cy. It was special in Jack’s book. The grand opening had proved to be the night when everything clicked for Jack and Andie. They’d talked and laughed till two a.m. as Uncle Cy on the saxophone gave them the flavor of the old Overtown Village and its long-gone heyday as Miami’s “Little Harlem.” Six months later, at the second anniversary of his thirty-ninth birthday, Jack had taken a knee on the dance floor and popped the question in front of all of his friends, Neil Goderich among them. It was one of the last times he’d see Neil.

  “My buddy says he’ll get back to us in five minutes,” said Theo. He was on the working side of the bar. Jack was on a stool that probably s
hould have had his name inscribed on it.

  “Sounds good,” said Jack.

  It was a short list of people who could find a missing witness with a Russian surname and possible underworld connections—especially considering Jack’s time constraints. He couldn’t just ask Andie to run a background check through the FBI database, not unless she wanted to lose her job. That left Theo as his best option. Theo had connections on both sides of the law. Jack didn’t ask which side he was using to track down Mikhail Volkov.

  “You two guys sound like a couple of hockey players,” Theo said, and then he broke into the voice of a play-by-play announcer: “Volkov with the kick-save; Swyteck on the rebound—and he scooores!”

  “Seriously? What do you know about hockey?”

  “Why wouldn’t I like hockey?”

  Jack tugged at the soggy label on his longneck bottle. “I’m gonna leave that one alone.”

  Theo stepped away to tend to another customer—one who actually paid.

  Free beers. There’d been so many of them. Happy times, mostly. But it made him think of some lonely nights, too, from the end of his first marriage to the end of the road with Renée or Valerie or so many other flavors of the month who turned out not to be “the one.” After one too many shots of Theo’s “tequila with no training wheels”—no salt and no lime—he’d call himself a cab, put himself to bed, and, in between wishing that the bed would stop spinning and that his head would stop pounding, he’d wonder if someone like Andie might ever come along. Actually, his mind had never conjured up “someone like Andie.”

  He reached for his cell and dialed her number. It went to voice mail, so he left a message. “Hey, honey. Another late night. Call me when you get this message. Love you.”

  “Aww. Love you, too,” said Theo in his mushy voice.

  “Go away.”

  “Uh-uh. My buddy got back to us.” He laid the printed report on the bar top. Jack took it and held it up to the neon beer sign for easier reading.

  “Two prior convictions,” said Jack, summarizing. “Three years probation for violation of Florida Statutes, Title Sixteen, Chapter Eight Hundred.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Lewd and lascivious conduct. Everything from child molestation to indecent exposure. If Volkov got no jail time, my guess is that his offense involved some kind of exhibition and not anything physical.”

  “Like jerking off in public?”

  “Could be.”

  Theo leaned on the bar, resting on his forearms in a way that made the muscles in his arms seem even more intimidating. “We need to pay jerko a visit. I can leave Manny in charge and go right now.”

  “Just show up at his door? That’s your plan?”

  “What do you want to do? Skype? Face time?”

  “No. But that’s a long drive. He lives in South Broward. We could get there and he might not even be home.”

  “Jack, read the conditions of probation. Dude has a nine p.m. house-arrest curfew.”

  Jack checked. He’d missed it in the dim bar lighting. I still want to think this through.”

  “What’s there to think through? We got a name. We got an address. He’s gotta be home. And you got no time to hire an astrophysicist to write you a decision-making algorithm.”

  “Huh? How do you know about algorithms?”

  “I learned it playing hockey. What the fuck, Jack? You think I wipe down the bar all night long and don’t learn a thing? I know enough about algorithms to know that technology is overrated.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really. Some things get done right the first time. You leave that shit alone. There’s no improving it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . great music. I mean, does it work for you if Joe Cocker skips the fast train and buys a ticket for an aeroplane because”—he paused for effect, then broke into song—“My baby, she sent me an e-mail”?

  Jack thought about it. “I see your point.”

  “How could you miss it?”

  “So, getting evidence from a witness is like great music?”

  “Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing, baby.”

  Jack folded up the report and tucked it into his coat pocket. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go see Mr. Volkov.”

  CHAPTER 47

  On the way home from the courthouse, Debra stopped by Aquinnah’s house to pick up Alexander. He’d spent the evening with his older sister while Mom and Dad sat on opposite sides of Judge Frederick’s courtroom.

  Aquinnah lived in a nicely updated duplex on a quiet street in Miami Shores, not far from Barry University. Gavin owned it “as an investment,” renting out one side and letting Aquinnah live in the other so that she wouldn’t have to stay in student housing. It was much more space than Aquinnah needed, and sometimes Debra wondered if he’d bought it just so Aquinnah wouldn’t feel the need to escape the dorm and visit her mother.

  Alexander was ready to go and had his school backpack over his shoulder when Debra arrived. It was another thirty minutes from Aquinnah’s place to Cocoplum. As always, Alexander made efficient use of the time. He was in the backseat, doing his homework in the glow of the reading lamp. There had been no argument about it. No temper tantrum. No need to threaten or bribe him. Debra hadn’t even asked if he’d finished his homework while at his sister’s house. He’d just cracked his textbook and done it.

  My good boy.

  Raindrops started to fall as she pulled into the driveway.

  “Let’s run for it,” she said.

  They jumped out of the car and hurried up the walkway to the front door. The leafy canopy of an oak had shielded them from most of the downpour, and they were mostly dry when they got inside.

  “Go up to your room, put on some dry clothes, and finish your homework,” she said.

  “I finished my homework in the car.”

  More resistance than usual, but he was nine, after all. “Then check it.”

  “Mom, it was so easy.”

  “Check it anyway.”

  “I did check it.”

  “Go up and recheck it,” she said.

  Alexander took a step back, confused by a tone he rarely heard from his mother. “Okay. I’ll check it.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

  He slung his backpack over his shoulder and went upstairs. Debra stood in the foyer and watched until he got all the way up and she heard his bedroom door close. Then she walked briskly down the hallway to the study.

  The study had once been Gavin’s home office. Overnight, it had transformed into the at-home storage and control center for the “Find Sashi” campaign. Bankers boxes lined the floor. The closets and bookshelves were stuffed with flyers, ribbons, banners, posters, reward notices, and everything else that had been part of the “Find Sashi” effort. The most important materials were in a locked cabinet behind the cluttered desk. Debra dug the key from the desk drawer and unlocked the cabinet.

  There were six shelves from floor to ceiling. Each shelf held a tightly packed row of three-ring binders that were arranged like library books, spine out. Each notebook contained something that Debra thought might be relevant to Sashi’s disappearance, or to the trial of Dylan Reeves—everything from copies of newspaper coverage to a transcript of her call to 911 to report Sashi missing. Debra’s notion of “might be relevant” was beyond broad. Or so the police had told her when she’d carted a set of notebooks into the Miami-Dade police station for the detectives on the case. Debra had created an index, but it was strictly for the benefit of law enforcement. She’d been through these notebooks so many times that she didn’t need an index. She went straight to binder no. 44 and pulled it off the shelf.

  It popped when she cracked it open; the binders were squeezed so tightly together on the shelf that the laser-jet ink had bonded several printed pages together. She peeled the sticky ones apart, taking care not to rip any.

  Debra was still thinking about the soun
d of those footsteps that had followed her from the courthouse to her car. She’d seen no one, but she had heard something. One thought had led to another, and the chills she’d felt tonight harked back to Tuesday’s trip to the dance academy—to that man staring at her and Alexander on their way to Matryoshka Deli Food. Could those have been his footsteps that she’d heard tonight? Or was she truly paranoid? The encounter in Sunny Isles had happened well after sunset, but the lighting in the strip mall was more than adequate, and she’d gotten a pretty good look at him.

  And now that she’d had time to reflect, it was starting to come clear that perhaps she’d seen that man’s face before.

  Too anxious to sit, she stood at the desk and flipped through the first few pages eagerly. There were tabs in the notebook. The pages that followed each tab were printed copies of e-mails and other online communications. Each tab contained a different online conversation between Sashi and the strangers that she’d met in the virtual world. It also held copies of the photographs they’d exchanged.

  Debra gasped as she flipped past Tab D: a color photo of a potbellied man and his Viagra-inspired manhood. It was enough to make a mother vomit, and the mere sight of it triggered a memory so painful that Debra had to pause and collect her breath. That photo had been the last straw—the one that had prompted her threat to send Sashi back to Russia.

  Debra refocused and continued on through the notebook. It was like watching a horror movie, only real. Men of all ages, races, and backgrounds had been snared in Sashi’s web. Her m.o. had been consistent. She would tantalize her targets with a series of communications and tease them with increasingly provocative selfies, which had undoubtedly translated into hours of self-gratification for the pathetic recipients. Each was deluded into thinking that he could have his way with a beautiful, sex-starved seventeen-year-old girl. All he had to do was dial the number that Sashi provided in the final e-mail.

  Little did he know that the frantic voice on the line would be that of Sashi’s mother.

  Debra turned to the next tab and froze. Shielding her eyes from the pasty-white naked male’s body, she focused on the lines of the man’s face, his piercing dark eyes, the contours of his clean-shaven head. The challenge was to compare the photograph in the notebook to a mere memory, although the image was burned in her mind. The face on the page; the man at the strip mall. The face; the man. Back and forth she went, several more times than necessary—because she wanted to be certain.