Most Dangerous Place

by James Grippando

  He watched her sleep for a moment and laid a hand on her shoulder—and she started, sitting bolt upright at his mere touch. She was breathless.

  “You scared me,” she said.

  Keith comforted her, and she settled back into the bed. But it was as if she slept with one eye open.

  Keith worried about what was to come. They hadn’t even reached the hard part yet. He wondered how he and Isa would cope, how Melany would fare, when a trial would force his wife to relive in a public courtroom the most traumatic experience a woman could face.

  He wanted to stroke her hair and kiss her gently on the temple, but he didn’t. He didn’t dare disturb the rest she’d finally found.

  Chapter 15

  Jack woke early Saturday morning. Andie was asleep on the other edge of the mattress. Between them, stretched sideways like the horizontal line in the letter “H,” lay Riley. He slid out of bed quietly, trying not to wake her, but she was already up.

  “Daddy, let’s play Swiper.”

  Swiper was the mischievous orange fox on Dora the Explorer, Riley’s favorite TV show. He swiped everything. Precious stones. Blueberries from Blueberry Hill. Jack and Andie’s sex life.

  I could strangle that fox.

  “How about we cook breakfast for Mommy?” Jack whispered.

  It struck her as an excellent idea, and they tiptoed out of the bedroom like Swiper making off with the loot.

  The view from the kitchen was one of the things Jack loved about his house, and an air of nostalgia colored his appreciation of the morning sunlight twinkling on the bay beyond their tiny backyard. They were down to their final months on Key Biscayne, and Jack was missing it already. For eight years he’d been a “key rat,” dating back to life before Andie, thanks to a sweetheart lease on one of the original “Mackle houses.” Hundreds of the two-bedroom concrete shoe boxes were built for World War II veterans who were willing to brave what was, at the time, little more than a mosquito-infested swamp. Jack’s was the last remaining Mackle on the waterfront. With the landlord unwilling to renew the lease, Jack’s only hope of saving the old house from the bulldozer was a winning lottery ticket worth at least $7 million.

  “Make pancakes. Okay, Daddy?”

  “Perfect,” said Jack, his gaze sweeping the kitchen. He had no idea where the griddle was stored, but he was slightly proud of himself for at least knowing that he needed one.

  The tick-tick-tick of a dog’s nails on the tile floor echoed in the hallway, and a sleepy golden retriever entered the kitchen. “Hey, Max,” said Jack as he opened the French door to the backyard. “Need to use the bathroom, buddy?”

  “Max already made potty,” said Riley. She was pointing at the puddle in the family room. Max was well trained, and his one accident a year was always the fault of the knucklehead named Jack who forgot to let him out the night before.

  Jack grabbed a roll of paper towels and was cleaning up Lake Okeechobee when his cell rang from the kitchen counter, where he’d left it to charge overnight. It was a new ringtone: “Hello,” by Adele. She’d sung it as the encore to last night’s concert, and on the way home Andie had programmed it into Jack’s cell.

  “Oh, Mommy’s favorite song!” shouted Riley, and then she sang alone, plugging in her own lyrics:

  “Hello from the other kitty . . .”

  The thought of Riley and her mother tooling around town in the SUV singing their Adele–Hello Kitty parody made Jack smile. But the voice on the line was Manny’s, which took the smile away.

  “Good morning, Jack. Sorry to call on a Saturday, but I just got off the phone with Sylvia Hunt.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You went after her pretty hard for not sharing a copy of the probable-cause affidavit, so she said this time she wanted to give us a heads-up.”

  “What do you mean ‘this time’? She didn’t change her mind about bail, did she?”

  “No. The grand jury returned a true bill last night, and she’s unsealing the indictment at nine a.m.”

  “Why an indictment on top of the existing information? Are there additional charges?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me why. Strategic reasons, I presume.”

  Jack could see strategic value where the prosecution of a victim of sexual assault had proven controversial, and the state attorney wanted a grand jury’s stamp of approval. But he’d done too many capital cases to overlook the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which required a grand jury indictment in only one type of case—where the state was seeking the death penalty.

  “Let’s hope it’s just strategy,” said Jack.

  Chapter 16

  The team met at the Freedom Institute at 9:30 a.m. Jack, Manny, and Isa gathered around the Formica-top table in the so-called conference room. Keith waited in Jack’s office, apart from the lawyers’ conversation with their client.

  The interior renovation of the Freedom Institute was transformational, but not without nostalgia. One room hadn’t changed a bit, and by unanimous vote of the team it never would—the sixties-vintage kitchen was a time capsule in honor of Jack’s mentor. It was not only where lawyers and staff had eaten their bagged lunches since the Institute’s founding, but it also served as the main (and only) conference room. Hanging on the wall over the coffee maker was the same framed photograph of Bobby Kennedy that had once hung in Neil’s dorm room at Harvard.

  “I think Keith is mad that we keep excluding him,” said Isa.

  “He understands he’s not the client,” said Jack. “It’s important that you do, too.”

  “Aren’t things that a husband and wife say to each other protected by some kind of privilege?” asked Isa.

  “To some extent,” said Jack. “But there’s no good reason for Keith to be here. If he ever has to answer questions under oath, the less he knows the better. Every time he says ‘I refuse to answer because the things my wife told me are privileged,’ it sounds like you’re hiding something.”

  “Could Keith be a witness at trial?” she asked.

  “Impossible to know for sure,” said Jack. “Right now, let’s focus on what we do know. The indictment lays out two charges against you. Count one: felony murder in connection with a kidnapping. Count two: conspiracy to commit murder. The conspiracy count means that you formulated a plan with others to murder Gabriel Sosa. The agreement is the crime.”

  “I didn’t agree to anything,” she said.

  “The felony murder count means that you participated in the kidnap and abduction of Gabriel Sosa. During that kidnapping, someone—but not you—killed Gabriel.”

  “I’m confused. Am I charged with kidnapping or murder?”

  “First-degree murder,” said Jack.

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “It’s a well-established principle. People have been executed for driving the getaway car when it was their partner in crime who actually shot and killed the bank teller. It makes no difference who committed the murder. If you participate in a crime like kidnapping or robbery, and somebody ends up killed, you are guilty of felony murder. That’s the way the rule works.”

  “You said ‘executed.’ Am I facing a death penalty?”

  “No,” said Jack. “I was slightly concerned about that when I heard the case was going to a grand jury. It’s possible that the prosecutor asked for it, but the grand jury didn’t bite. Under the current indictment, even if you are convicted on all charges, there is no possibility of the death penalty.”

  “I’ll take that as a bit of good news,” said Isa. “But how bad could the sentence be?”

  “Worst-case scenario?” asked Jack.

  “Yes. Worst case.”

  “Life without parole.”

  She shrank a little in her chair. It wasn’t the death penalty, but it was daunting enough.

  “We’ll never get to that point,” said Manny.

  “How can you be sure?” asked Isa.

  “This is not a case the prosecution wants to take to trial. As long
as you’re willing to consider a plea to a lesser charge, life without parole should never enter your mind.”

  “I’m not going to plead guilty to something I didn’t do. Even if it is, as you say, a ‘lesser charge.’”

  Jack and Manny exchanged glances, as if each were wondering how many thousands of times the other had heard similar assertions from clients.

  “Let’s take a look at the indictment,” said Jack.

  “Before we get into this,” Manny interjected, “I just want to say that, as your lawyers, we are well aware that there are always two sides to every story. An indictment is just one side—the government’s.”

  “Okay.”

  “I should also add that the indictment does not include all of the evidence that the prosecution presented to the grand jury. That will come later, when we get the actual transcripts of the proceeding.”

  “When is that?” asked Isa.

  “Soon,” said Manny. “We’ll work out a schedule with the prosecutor. But I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go ahead, Jack.”

  “Thanks. The first couple of paragraphs track the previous allegations. You went to a bar with your boyfriend and his friend. You pointed out Gabriel Sosa and said that he had sexually assaulted you earlier that spring in your dorm room.”

  “And as I said before, all of that is true.”

  “Who was your boyfriend’s friend?”

  “I can’t remember his name. I’m not sure I ever knew. Never saw him before or since.”

  “The indictment doesn’t name him either,” said Jack. “But my guess is that when we do get the transcripts, we will find out that the chief witness is your boyfriend, David Kaval.”

  “I told you I don’t know where he is.”

  “My investigator nailed that down last night,” said Jack. “He’s in Florida State Prison serving time for armed robbery.”

  “Which makes it even more likely that he is testifying against you,” said Manny. “He probably cut a deal.”

  “Almost certainly,” said Jack. “Regardless of who the informant is, the indictment says that when Sosa left the bar and went to his car, you, along with your boyfriend and his friend, followed Sosa in a white van. True?”

  “That’s true.”

  Jack hesitated. He’d expected her to say the opposite. “Why did you follow him?”

  “David said we were going to scare him.”

  “Scare him how?”

  “I don’t know. David didn’t say.”

  “Who’s van was it?”

  “It belonged to David’s friend. I didn’t even want to go.”

  “But you did.”

  “Yes.”

  The old refrigerator behind Jack grumbled. Isa’s response hung in the air until the mechanical groaning ceased, and Jack continued. “The indictment then says: ‘About a mile into the drive, the van intentionally rear-ended Sosa’s car. When Sosa got out of his car to check the damage, Isa’s boyfriend and his buddy jumped out and confronted Sosa.’ True?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Jack tried again. “Is that true, Isa?”

  “Yes.”

  Another unexpected admission. “How did Kaval and his friend confront him?”

  “We pulled off to the shoulder of the road, the way anyone would after being in a fender bender. Sosa was standing between the back of his car and the front bumper of the van. David and his buddy blocked him in, David on the driver’s side and his bigger friend on the other side. So Gabriel was trapped and couldn’t go anywhere.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In the front seat of the van.”

  “Did you hear what was said?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone touch Sosa?”

  “David shoved him.”

  “Hard?”

  “No. It was like middle-school stuff. They were trying to scare him. I got out of the van and told David to stop it. But he ignored me. He shoved Gabriel again.”

  “Harder?”

  “Mmm-hmm. He knocked him to the ground and then started yelling at him. ‘Get up! Get up, you pussy!’”

  “What did you do?”

  “I screamed at David. I told him to stop it and leave Gabriel alone. But he just yelled back at me. ‘Get outta here, Isa! Go! Get lost!’”

  “What did you do?”

  She drew a breath, then started to shake. “I ran.”

  “Where?”

  “To my dorm room. We were less than a mile away from campus. I started running, and I didn’t stop until I got there. And I locked the door.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  She averted her eyes, staring down at the table. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She took a moment, then looked at Jack. “Do you have any idea what David would have done to me if I had called the police?”

  “Given the fact that he’s now in prison for a violent crime, I suppose I can imagine,” said Jack.

  “Your imagination is not that dark,” said Isa. “At least I hope not.”

  Jack would need to hear more about her boyfriend, but first he wanted to get through the chronology. “When did you hear again from David and his buddy?”

  “I never heard anything from his friend. The next morning, David called me.”

  “How did that go?”

  “I said, ‘I hope you didn’t hurt him.’ And David said he didn’t. They just scared him. ‘Scared the shit out of him,’ were his exact words. And then he said, ‘You can sleep easy now. You don’t have to worry about him coming around and bothering you anymore.’”

  “What did you take that to mean?”

  “That Gabriel was so scared he wouldn’t dare enter the same zip code I lived in.”

  “It didn’t occur to you that he wouldn’t be coming around because he was dead?”

  “No.”

  The old refrigerator whined once more. Jack gave the electric motor a moment to stop shrieking, and when silence was restored, he gave Isa a few more seconds to consider her answer. She added nothing.

  “Anything else you want to tell us?” asked Jack.

  “No. That was it.”

  Jack reviewed his notes, making sure he’d asked all the necessary follow-ups. Then he checked the indictment again. “The indictment tells a different story. It says that your boyfriend and his buddy threw Gabriel into the back of the van and drove to an automotive shop. And it says you were there.”

  “That’s not true. I ran back to my dorm.”

  “It says that Sosa was systematically tortured over a period of hours at the automotive shop. On Saturday morning, his brutalized body was found dumped on the side of Krome Avenue in south Miami-Dade County.”

  “I don’t know anything about torture or finding a body. The last I saw they were standing between the van and Gabriel’s car, bullying him.”

  “Why did you run?” asked Jack.

  She didn’t answer right away, but from her body language, Jack guessed that she’d asked herself the same question many times before. “I don’t know. I was scared. I was angry. I couldn’t stand the sight of Gabriel Sosa again. I just suddenly knew that I couldn’t possibly stay there another second. So I ran.”

  “Before Kaval and his friend took Sosa to the automotive shop?”

  “Yes. This is the first I’ve heard of any automotive shop.”

  “The last line of the indictment alleges that the entire scheme was planned, orchestrated, and choreographed by Isabelle Bornelli.”

  “That doesn’t even sound like something David would say.”

  “These are not his exact words. This is a summary written by the prosecutor.”

  “Whoever said it, that’s just not true.”

  Jack leaned into the table a bit, not to intimidate, but to let her know that something was troubling him. “Let me ask you this, Isa. What did you think was going to happen when you pointed out Gabriel Sosa to your boyfriend in the bar?”

  “I don’t know.”


  “You have to do better than that,” said Jack.

  She collected herself and then answered. “I thought he would tell Gabriel that he wasn’t going to get away with what he’d done to me. Tell him that he’d better not have any ideas about coming back a second time.”

  “Tell him?” asked Jack. “Let’s be real, Isa. You knew he would do more than have a conversation with Gabriel.”

  “I thought he would do what any boyfriend would do when he found the man who raped his girlfriend. But this whole idea that I came up with a plan to kill Gabriel is crazy.”

  Manny rose and leaned against the counter. “Especially if he didn’t rape you.”

  “Excuse me?” said Isa.

  “There was no reason for you to point him out to your boyfriend, to kidnap him, to scare him—and definitely not to kill him—if, as you told the doctor at the campus clinic, all you and Gabriel did was engage in unprotected sex.”

  “But that’s not what happened,” she said.

  “That’s not the issue,” said Manny. “Can the state attorney prove that anything more than that happened?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Isa.

  “Technically, the prosecutor doesn’t have to prove motive. But in a case like this, if the government can’t prove motive, a jury will never convict you.”

  “But they shouldn’t convict me for any reason. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Just listen to what I’m saying. There’s no way the government can prove you were sexually assaulted. You didn’t report it. Your attacker is dead. There was no medical examination of your body to confirm sexual assault. If Jack and I are right, the case is built on the testimony of your ex-boyfriend, who is a convicted felon serving time for armed robbery. We’ll shred him on the witness stand as a scumbag who cut himself a nice deal in exchange for his testimony against you.”