Hear No Evil

by James Grippando

  “Yes,” she said quietly, releasing him.

  Jack opened the door and led the way back to the courtroom, putting a good ten feet of airspace between himself and his client.

  46

  At seven o’clock that night, Jack drove to Alice Wainwright Park just south of downtown Miami. Leaving the car, he followed the exercise trail toward the rock-lined edge of Biscayne Bay and took a seat on the wooden bench near a kiosk that faced the mangroves. He knew he was in the right place because he was seventy-five paces east of the graffiti-covered wall that proclaimed, MADONNA, YOUR GUARD IS AN ASSHOLE, a leftover complaint from years earlier when the singer lived in one of the exclusive waterfront mansions in the neighborhood.

  And then he waited, exactly as he’d been instructed.

  Trial had adjourned for the day at five P.M. The afternoon session was devoted to forensic experts whom Jack had hired to neutralize the testimony of the medical examiner, particularly with respect to Captain Pintado’s time of death. All had gone well enough, but Jack had much higher expectations for what the evening might bring.

  His cell phone rang, and he answered quickly. It was Sofia.

  “Don’t we have a meeting?” She was referring to their standard date for evening debriefings after each trial day.

  “I may not make it tonight,” said Jack.

  “You still thinking of withdrawing as counsel? I can’t say I’d blame you, if you did.”

  “No. Like Lindsey said, I promised to stay on the case as long as I believe she’s innocent. And don’t think I’m nuts, but I’m suddenly leaning that way again.”

  “What happened?”

  “Alejandro Pintado called me back. He’s supposed to meet me in about two minutes.”

  “What about?”

  “After Lindsey testified this morning, he went home and sifted through some of his son’s personal effects. I guess Lindsey was too distraught to deal with shipping his things from Guantánamo after his death, so Oscar’s father took care of it and had everything shipped back to Miami. Anyway, guess what the old man found.”

  “No idea.”

  “The digital camera Lindsey testified about.”

  There was silence on the line. “Don’t tell me…”

  “Yup,” said Jack. “Some very interesting photographs were still on it. I’ll let you know how our meeting goes.”

  Jack hung up and tucked the cell phone into his pocket. He waited a few more minutes, then checked his watch. Quarter past seven. Pintado had told him to be at this particular bench no later than seven P.M. He wasn’t late yet, at least not by Miami standards. Jack watched a couple of shirtless college boys toss a Frisbee on the lawn, and it was hard to believe that just five thousand beers ago, he’d once had abs like that, too.

  “Hello, Jack.”

  He turned and saw Alejandro Pintado seated at the other end of the bench, which startled him a bit. “What are you, the stealth bomber or something?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m glad you came.”

  “This was something I couldn’t do over the phone.”

  Jack noticed the dossier tucked under Pintado’s arm. “Is that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pictures?”

  “No.”

  “No?” said Jack, surprised.

  Pintado laid the dossier on the bench beside him. “It’s in no one’s interest for those photographs ever to see the light of day.”

  “Don’t mean to quibble with you, Mr. Pintado. But those photographs are evidence.”

  “They are evidence of the fact that your client had sex with Oscar’s best friend. She’s admitted that. There’s no need to show the world pictures of it.”

  “That’s not the point. They were taken with your son’s camera. Probably by your son.”

  “Probably,” he said, then looked away. “When I went down to Guantánamo after Oscar died, I cleaned out his locker at the Officer’s Club. Lindsey probably didn’t even know about it. I guess that’s why she never found the pictures. I didn’t even think to download the images myself until she testified about the digital camera.”

  Jack gave him a moment, trying not to embarrass him. “Look, Mr. Pintado. I know this has to be awful for you. Your son is dead, and now you find out that he was taking these photographs of his wife. But this was no run-of-the-mill lovers’ triangle. This was an abused woman caught between two men. I don’t know what brought things to a head. Maybe Oscar didn’t like the way Lieutenant Johnson started coming around the house when he wasn’t there, pestering Lindsey for sex. Maybe in some sick way Johnson really started to like Lindsey, and he got tired of Oscar hanging around and taking pictures every time he had sex with her. Something went wrong, and Oscar got shot. Your grandson’s father is dead. And now his mother is standing trial for a murder she didn’t commit.”

  “You think it was Johnson,” said Pintado. It wasn’t a question, more like a statement.

  “Don’t you?” said Jack.

  “I don’t know. But I do know this much: I want to hear from the lieutenant.”

  “So do I. That’s why the other day I asked you for any information you could give me about his whereabouts. I want to subpoena him.”

  A seagull landed at their feet. Pintado shooed it away. “You were right, you know. Johnson is in Miami. Torres wants to keep him out of the trial if he can. Says he wants him in town just in case he might need him for rebuttal. But I think he wants him here so that you never find him.”

  “I’m sure Torres is convinced that Lindsey did it. He doesn’t want me pecking away at Johnson on the witness stand and filling jurors’ minds with reasonable doubt.”

  “I agreed with that strategy,” said Pintado. “But I’m not sure I do anymore.”

  Jack glanced at the dossier. “You got something for me?”

  “The address is inside here. You get your process server out there tonight, you’ll have Johnson in trial tomorrow.”

  Jack reached for the dossier, but Pintado pulled back. “Not so fast.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Pintado gave him a sideways glance, then held it. “Did Lindsey ever tell you how Brian became deaf?”

  Jack reeled a bit, taken by the sudden shift in their conversation. “No. She just said it wasn’t her fault.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me that she’d keep it from you.”

  “Keep what?”

  He patted the dossier and said, “There’s a copy of Brian’s medical history in here as well. It will tell you how he went deaf.”

  Jack wanted to know, but he wasn’t sure what Pintado was trying to accomplish. “How did you get this?”

  “My lawyer. As a grandparent I had no legal right to see it before. But now that Lindsey’s in jail and my wife and I are Brian’s custodians, the doctor had to hand it over to us. I got it just a few days ago.”

  “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Read it. And once you do, I think you’ll agree with me.”

  “Agree with you on what?”

  Pintado’s eyes narrowed, his expression very serious. “No matter how this trial turns out-even if it turns out that Lindsey didn’t kill Oscar-Brian belongs with his grandparents.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Read the file, Jack. Then you will.”

  Their eyes remained locked for several long moments. Then Jack reached for the dossier, and this time Pintado didn’t pull back. Jack took it from him and said, “All right. I’ll read it. With interest.”

  47

  A sly old trial lawyer from north Florida (the only part of Florida that was truly “the South”) once told Jack, “Catchin’ a gator is the easy part. It’s lettin’ him go that’ll cost you fingers and toes. If it ain’t the snapping jaws, it’s the swoosh of the tail that gets ya.” It was another way of saying to be careful what you wish for; you can wrestle a witness onto the stand, but once his mouth opens, it can be a buss or a bite. That old man�
��s words echoed in Jack’s mind as he prepared to do battle with Lieutenant Damont Johnson, knowing full well that this was one witness who’d be jamming him at every turn.

  Jack had filled the morning session with other witnesses, most importantly an expert who testified that it wasn’t uncommon for a physically or psychologically abused wife to keep her suffering to herself, even deny it to authorities. A subpoena wasn’t slapped on Johnson till midmorning, and he was finally hauled into court as the last witness of the day.

  “The defense calls Lieutenant Damont Johnson,” Jack announced.

  It was as if the collective pulse of the courtroom had suddenly quickened, the excitement palpable. Spectators stirred in their seats, jurors straightened to attention, and the media reached for pen and paper. The courthouse artist worked furiously at the lieutenant’s likeness, as if utterly confident that this was evening-news material. For an instant, Jack had almost felt that it didn’t matter what Johnson said, that it was worth the dumbfounded expression on the prosecutor’s face just to bring Johnson into the courtroom. Soon enough, however, that initial excitement wore off.

  “Lieutenant, was it you or Captain Pintado who drugged Lindsey Hart the first time you had sex with her?”

  Johnson did a double take, but kept his composure. He was an imposing figure in his own right, dressed in the white uniform of an officer, his hat in his lap. It was hard to maintain a sense of dignity, given the nature of the questioning, but he was holding his own. “Excuse me, but neither one of us drugged her.”

  “You’re saying she was a willing participant?”

  “I’m saying it was her idea.”

  The prosecutor smiled, and to say that Jack was headed down the wrong track would have been the trial’s grandest understatement. He knew better than to think that Johnson would admit to having forced Lindsey to have sex. He wasn’t going to break down on the witness stand and tearfully confess that he killed Oscar Pintado. That kind of drama happened on television every week, but rarely in a real courtroom. Jack had to score the sure points in his direct examination, let Torres have a shot on cross, and then hope for a few strategic openings that he might capitalize on through redirect. That was the plan, anyway.

  Jack said, “Let’s see what we can agree on, shall we, Lieutenant?”

  “Sure.”

  “You had sex with Lindsey Hart, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oscar Pintado saw you have sex with his wife?”

  “That’s true.”

  “He even took photographs?”

  Johnson shifted, as if slightly uncomfortable with that notion. “Yes. He did.”

  “Do you also agree that this is something most husbands don’t do?”

  “Not the ones I know.”

  “Not even for their best friends?”

  “Right again.”

  “You were Oscar Pintado’s best friend, weren’t you?”

  “Best friend on the base. I wouldn’t say I was his best friend in the world.”

  “All right. Am I correct in assuming that having sex with Oscar’s wife wasn’t part of your friendship from day one?”

  “That’s a fair assumption.”

  “That’s something that developed after you two had been friends for a while, correct?”

  “Right.”

  Jack paused, debating how to proceed. He could launch into a series of questions about how the sex got started, who suggested it, that sort of thing. But that strategy was likely to elicit only lies, or at the very least answers Jack didn’t like. He took a safer approach.

  “Oscar Pintado came from a very wealthy family, did he not?”

  “That’s my understanding.”

  “He’s not the kind of guy who would be tempted by an offer of money from one of his friends.”

  “What are you trying to say?” he said, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

  “You didn’t give him money to have sex with his wife, did you?”

  “Of course not. Like I said, it was Lindsey’s idea.”

  Jack stepped closer, doing little to mask his skepticism. “Her idea, huh? Let me ask you something, Lieutenant. How many men are on the naval base in Guantánamo at any one time?”

  “I don’t know. Several thousand, for sure.”

  “Most of them between the age of twenty and thirty?”

  “Most of them, yeah.”

  “Most of them in pretty darn good shape? Physically, I mean.”

  “Sure.”

  “Most of them don’t have wives or girlfriends with them on the base, do they?”

  “Relatively few do.”

  “So, what you’re telling us is this,” said Jack as he walked toward his client, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “While living on a Caribbean Island and surrounded by several thousand hard-bodied, twenty-something men-most of whom hadn’t been intimate with a woman in quite some time-my extremely attractive client decided that she needed to have sex with you while her husband watched and took pictures. This was her great idea; is that what you’re saying?”

  A light chorus of chuckles emerged from the audience. Even one of the jurors smiled. The witness burrowed his tongue into his cheek, a sure sign that Jack was getting to him.

  Jack said, “Is that what you’re saying, Lieutenant?”

  “Look, all I know is that Oscar told me she-”

  “Whoa, objection!” shouted Torres. “What Oscar told him is hearsay, Judge.”

  “Sustained.”

  Jack said, “But, Judge-”

  “I sustained the objection, Mr. Swyteck. Move on.”

  Jack could have argued about exceptions to the ruling, but it was clear that the judge had heard enough about sex, and he was in no mood to reconsider. Jack’s point was made, nonetheless. It was time to wrap up.

  “Lieutenant, just a couple more questions. Obviously you’re an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If you wanted to know tomorrow’s patrol routes for Coast Guard vessels in the Florida Straits, you’d know how to get that information, wouldn’t you?”

  “They don’t give me that information.”

  “I didn’t ask that. I said, you’d know how to get it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Just because I know how to get it doesn’t mean-”

  “Lieutenant, please. Just answer my question. You’d know how to get that information, right?”

  Johnson fell silent, as if trying to figure out a way to deny it. Finally, he said, “Yeah. I’d know how to get it.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  Jack returned to his seat. He didn’t expect smiles from his client, but she looked positively ashen. It was understandable. They’d flirted with fire. But they’d come out ahead.

  Thank God.

  Torres approached the witness. “How nice to see you here today, Lieutenant.” His voice had just a hint of sarcasm.

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  All semblance of familiarity drained from Torres’s face. His voice had a definite edge to it, somewhere between a police interrogator and drill sergeant. “Lieutenant, I want to take you back to the morning of June seventeenth, the day Captain Pintado died.”

  “All right.”

  “We’ve heard testimony in this case that sometime before six A.M. you went to Captain Pintado’s house. Do you admit or deny you were there at that time?”

  “I was there.”

  “We’ve also heard testimony that you entered the house without knocking. Do you admit or deny that?”

  “I admit it.”

  “Finally, we heard testimony that you were seen running from the house a few minutes later. Do you admit or deny that?”

  “I admit that also.”

  Jack looked on, confused. The witness was readily admitting the very things that Jack had thought he would never admit. Something wasn’t right.

  Torres said, “Lieutenant, would you please tell the jury why you went
to Captain Pintado’s house that morning?”

  “Lindsey called me on the telephone. She told me to come over.”

  “Did she tell you why she wanted you to come over?”

  “She told me that Oscar was gone. She said that he’d taken Brian fishing, so it could be just the two of us.”

  “What did you take that to mean?”

  He shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “That we could have sex without Oscar being around.”

  “Were you agreeable to that?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “She said, ‘I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Come straight to the bedroom. I have a big surprise for you.’ ”

  “What did you do?”

  “What do you think? Got in my car and drove over.”

  “What happened when you got there?”

  “I did exactly as she told me. The door was unlocked and I went inside, straight back to the bedroom. That’s when I found Oscar’s body. He was still in bed, soaked in blood.”

  Torres was clearly energized, practically tripping over his own questions, so caught up in his own roll. “What did you do?”

  “I ran through the house, made sure there weren’t more bodies. That’s when I found Brian in his room.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  “Yes. You know, he’s deaf, but he can read lips to a certain extent. I said, ‘Brian, what happened to your father?’ ”

  “Did he respond?”

  Johnson said, “Brian started to cry. Then he looked at me and said-”

  “Objection, hearsay,” said Jack. There was a knot in Jack’s stomach as he spoke. He wanted to hear the answer-perhaps he wanted to hear it more than anyone else in the courtroom-but the prosecutor’s strategy was crystal clear. He was trying to convince the jury that Lindsey had set up Johnson for the murder she’d committed.

  Torres said, “Your Honor, it’s an excited utterance by a ten-year-old boy whose father has just been shot in their own home.”

  The judge considered it, then said, “I’ll allow it. The witness may answer.”