Gone Again

by James Grippando

  Debra rose and walked away, her pace quickening as she crossed the restaurant. She stopped near the elevator, reached inside her purse, and dug out her car keys.

  Attached to the key ring was a single tricolor gold earring.

  She squeezed that earring so tightly that it left a mark in her palm. Then she hurried through the lobby, out the sliding doors, and into the parking lot.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jack dropped Theo at his apartment in the Grove and continued on to the Freedom Institute. He took the backstreets, which were surprisingly smooth sailing. Traffic planners had finally given up all hope that south Florida drivers would actually stop at stop signs. Throughout Miami’s suburbs, four-way stops were being replaced with tiny traffic circles—embryonic Cartagena Circles of a sort, sans the spandex-clad cyclists. The idea was to at least slow down the guys who would otherwise race through stop signs. Fat chance. Like everyone else, Jack was weaving through the new traffic circles like a test driver through racing cones. He slowed down a little when Debra returned his call. He had her on Bluetooth.

  “Jack, I just got your message. I am so sorry about the mix-up with the Tribune.”

  At least she wasn’t denying that the press release was hers. “We need to straighten this out and get them to issue a retraction.”

  “Please, don’t do that.”

  “I’ve already e-mailed the managing editor. If the story isn’t down from the Miami Tribune website by nine o’clock, I’m personally walking into the newsroom and raising hell.”

  “Jack, I’m begging you. Don’t make Sashi pay for my screw-up.”

  “This is not about Sashi, and this is not a ‘screw-up.’ I haven’t even decided for certain that I’m going to represent Dylan Reeves, but you used my name and quoted me on something I never said. You’re making things up.”

  “I’m sorry about the quote. But I swear: I tried to reach you on your cell last night at least five times. You didn’t answer. And I told the reporter to call you and confirm the quote before running a story.”

  “Hold on a second.” Jack pulled over to the curb and checked the call history on his cell. Five missed calls from Debra’s number. Two missed calls from a number that he didn’t recognize, which he presumed were from the Tribune reporter. All were during his “alone time” with Andie in the hospital, when his phone was off.

  He got back on the line but left the car in park. “Okay. I found them in my call history.”

  “See? I wasn’t lying.”

  “But you can’t put my name in a press release, send it to the newspaper, and then tell the reporter to confirm it. That’s why they call it a release.”

  There was silence on the line.

  “Debra? You still there?”

  “Yes,” she said in a voice that quaked. “I apologize. Last night was awful. Aquinnah and I stayed in that empty ballroom for two hours after you left. Just the two of us. It ended in a total shouting match, with Aquinnah telling me to wake up, Sashi’s dead, and no one was coming to help me find her.”

  “That’s not an easy thing to hear.”

  “No. It was beyond painful. Because Sashi is alive. I know it in my heart. That’s when I drafted the press release. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I honestly thought you were on board. I’ve lost friends over this. I destroyed my marriage. Now Aquinnah and I are screaming at each other. If I lose you . . . then I’ve lost,” she said, her voice cracking. “Then I’ve just lost everything.”

  Jack gripped the steering wheel and took a breath. There was a chance that Dylan Reeves was innocent—that he didn’t kill Sashi. But that didn’t mean Sashi was alive. It was a distinction he chose not to verbalize. Not yet.

  “You haven’t lost me, Debra.”

  Jack gave one final read to the emergency motion for stay of execution. It was filed electronically at 9:01 a.m.

  “Really good work,” he told Hannah.

  “Thanks, chief.”

  It wasn’t cause and effect, but at 9:02 there was a knock on the front door. Jack’s secretary popped from her chair like a jack-in-the-box and answered it.

  “My name’s Gavin Burgette,” the man said, “and I need to see Jack Swyteck.”

  It was Debra Burgette’s ex-husband, and he didn’t look happy. Jack introduced himself and invited him back to the kitchen.

  Gavin was a private-equity manager in the Brickell Financial District, and he looked the part, dressed in a perfectly fitted suit that Jack guessed was Savile Row. The resemblance between Gavin and his biological daughter was strong, though the square jaw and Roman nose that made him the classically handsome type were probably features that Aquinnah fretted about when she looked in the mirror.

  “How can I help you?” asked Jack.

  Gavin dropped his copy of the Miami Tribune on the kitchen table. It was folded open to the article about Sashi. Jack noticed that his unauthorized quote was underlined in fountain-pen ink.

  “What has Debra been telling you?”

  Jack invited him to sit, and they took chairs on opposite sides of the table. Jack didn’t try to hide anything, even if it was the two-minute version.

  Gavin leaned forward, looking Jack in the eye. “Sashi is dead. Dylan Reeves raped and murdered her. Executing him won’t bring my daughter back, but I’ve made peace with that. I’ll never know exactly what happened to Sashi. But I’ll know exactly what happens to the man who took her away. I damn well plan to be there when they stick the needle in his arm.”

  “You and Debra are in very different places.”

  “Yeah. We are. I don’t owe you a marriage counselor’s insight into what happened between us, but Debra self-destructed over this. You’re aware, I’m sure, that she blames me.”

  “I’ve never heard Debra blame you.”

  “You will. She’ll tell you I was too strict with Sashi, I wasn’t understanding enough, I lacked patience, and that’s why Sashi ran away like she did. The first ten times we brought her back home safely. This last time was different. She ran into Dylan Reeves, and the result was catastrophic. Debra wants to believe that Sashi is alive, that this time is going to turn out like all the other times Sashi ran away but finally came home, unharmed. It’s not totally Debra’s fault. The silent phone call she gets every year on Sashi’s birthday messes with her head.”

  “Who do you think is doing that?”

  “Talk to the police. They say it’s a hoax. Who’s evil enough to do something like that? I don’t know. Could be anybody. I’m in private equity. I make a lot of enemies. We raise capital, we buy a company that’s in trouble, we strip it down and fire two hundred employees, and we sell it for a profit. Maybe some guy in a deal I did lost his job, lost his house, lost his wife. He hates my fucking guts. Who knows? But I do know this: you, Mr. Swyteck, are destroying what’s left of my family.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Yes, you are. Do you think it doesn’t tear my guts out to pick up a newspaper and see some lawyer making shit up about my daughter being alive just to get some scumbag off death row?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Jack, choosing not to throw Debra under the bus. “But that was a complete mix-up.”

  “Fuck you, a mix-up! Do you think Aquinnah doesn’t suffer with this? How about my son? Alexander’s nine years old now. Do you think it’s healthy for Debra to be telling him that his sister is coming home?”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “Do you?”

  “I know this is difficult for—”

  “Oh, please. You know, I’ve punched a lot of walls since Sashi went missing. I haven’t punched anybody in the face yet. You’re close.”

  He pushed away from the table and started for the door. Then he stopped, turned, and pointed his finger at Jack. “I want you to stay away from Debra. Do your damn job if you have to and file whatever fucking papers you lawyers file for walking pieces of shit like Dylan Reeves. But stop messing with me and the two kids I have left. That’s not a request. That’s a threat.
Got it?”

  Jack said nothing. If he’d learned anything from Neil, it was to respect the victim’s family—and “Never, ever, try to get the last word.”

  Burgette turned and left, his footfalls pounding on the old wooden floors, the door slamming on his way out.

  Jack stayed seated. He couldn’t disagree with anything Mr. Burgette had said. He was still processing it, and it would probably change some things. It didn’t change everything.

  “Hannah?” he called out.

  “Yeah?” she said as she appeared in the doorway.

  “Call the warden’s office at FSP,” he said. “I want to meet Dylan Reeves.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Jack and Hannah flew into Jacksonville, an hour’s drive from Raiford, and they reached Florida State Prison after lunch. A correctional officer escorted them to Q-Wing, their footfalls echoing in the long prison corridor.

  Florida had 404 convicted murderers on death row, the male inmates divided between FSP and Union Correctional Institute across the river. All executions were carried out at FSP, so as soon as the governor signed a warrant, the inmate was moved to a cell on the ground floor of Q-Wing, the same floor on which he would die by lethal injection. Dylan Reeves was one of three on “death watch.” Each temporary resident was detained in his own twelve-by-seven-foot cell. Reeves was in Cell No. 2. The other “newbie,” a Pensacola man convicted of killing his ex-wife and her eight-year-old daughter, had his death warrant signed two minutes after Dylan Reeves’, so he was in Cell No. 3. After each execution, inmates were moved to the next cell, working their way down the pipeline to Cell No. 1, the “bad luck cell,” the launching pad to the gurney next door.

  In Cell No. 1 was Elmer Hudson, whose crime fell into the category of “unspeakable,” even by Freedom Institute standards.

  “How’s your daddy doing, Jack?” the guard asked.

  Jack had been thinking about his father, who’d signed twenty-four death warrants in his two terms, resulting in twenty-one executions. Even at that pace, more inmates died of natural causes than at the hand of an executioner who, by law, would forever be anonymous.

  “He’s just fine,” said Jack. “Doing a lot of fishing these days.”

  “That’s good,” the guard said. “Fishing’s good for the soul.”

  Small talk. It felt awkward in a place where the stakes couldn’t be higher and everything was done according to established procedures, from the initial cell-front interview—“Burial or cremation?”—to the last meal: “Sorry, no lobster; forty bucks is the limit, and it has to be locally available.” Jack had always thought it was the ritual that lent a numbing comfort to those who labored in the business of state-administered death. But maybe it was the small talk.

  “The governor probably won’t remember me, but tell him Bud from DR says hello.”

  DR. Most Miamians would immediately think Dominican Republic. The former governor would know it was death row. “I will,” said Jack.

  A private room at the end of the cell block was for attorney visits. The electronic lock buzzed, the door opened, and the officer directed the lawyers inside.

  “Age before beauty,” said Hannah, allowing Jack to enter first.

  Dylan Reeves was in the center of the room, seated at a small rectangular table and flanked by a pair of stone-faced guards. Reeves wore the same blue pants that were standard-issue at FSP, but his V-neck T-shirt was the bright-orange color that distinguished death-row inmates. Purple tattoos crept up both sides of his neck to his earlobes. He was slouching in his chair, as if to create the impression of cool indifference, but his eyes told a different story. Jack was still feeling the effects of having slept in the armchair in Andie’s hospital room. Reeves looked as though he hadn’t slept at all. It was one thing to contemplate death in the abstract, to acknowledge that “someday” we all must die; it was quite another to lie alone at night in a prison cell, counting down the exact number of hours you had left on earth.

  “Get up,” said the guard.

  The chains rattled as the prisoner rose. The correctional officers removed the shackles from his hands and ankles, and Reeves returned to his seat.

  “I’ll be right outside the door,” the guard told Jack. “Buzz if you need anything.”

  “Thanks,” said Jack.

  The guards left, and the door closed behind them. Jack and Hannah seated themselves in the hard wooden chairs across the table from their client.

  Jack had read enough of the file to know that there was virtually nothing to recommend this life that was scheduled to end soon on death row. High school dropout. In and out of juvie for drug-related offenses. Fired from his last job at a loading dock for stealing electronics. Arrested for armed robbery at a convenience store and served two years on a plea bargain for naming his accomplice. He had been out on probation when the police stopped him for drunk driving and found Sashi’s panties in the backseat of his car.

  “So, you two are gonna save my life. Is that it?”

  “That’s the plan,” said Jack.

  “What if it doesn’t work?”

  Jack paused. That was the thing about capital cases: there was no Plan B. “We’re hopeful,” said Jack.

  Reeves sat forward in his chair, the cool indifference melting away. “Really? Why?”

  “Mostly a matter of procedure. You lost your direct appeals and your state habeas petition. But you haven’t been on death row long enough to exhaust all of your rights in the federal courts.”

  Reeves rose and began to pace, suddenly energized. “That’s what really pisses me off. There’s a guy I met in the yard two weeks ago. He’s been on death row for thirty-four years, I think he said. I’ve been here less than three.”

  Jack recalled his conversation with Sashi’s father, for whom three years was way too long. “I’m sure that seems unfair to you.”

  “You’re damn right. Why me? Why not the old guy?”

  “The governor has complete discretion to sign a warrant for any inmate on death row. He’s giving priority to any case involving an underage victim who was sexually assaulted.”

  “Oh, is that right?” he said, sniffing. “What about cases where there was no victim. Are those getting priority, too?”

  “That point is made in the papers we filed with the court,” said Hannah.

  “Yeah, I skimmed through what you sent. Why isn’t that the first argument? You’ve got an innocent client! Shouldn’t that be on page one?”

  “No,” said Jack. “If we had DNA evidence proving that someone else committed the crime, yeah, that would be on page one. But we don’t have anything close to that. We have a mother who thinks her daughter is still alive.”

  “That has to count for something,” said Reeves.

  “At this stage of the process, the goal is to keep you alive. Trying to convince a judge that you’re innocent isn’t necessarily the easiest way to do that.”

  Reeves shook his head, still pacing. “Now you sound like my trial lawyer. And he was a fucking alcoholic who came to court half-drunk and stinking of scotch.”

  Jack glanced at Hannah and asked, “Is that true?”

  Hannah nodded. “I’m afraid so. Herb Graner is his name. Six months after the trial, he was suspended from the practice of law for substance abuse. He did a six-week treatment program to get his law license back, but he relapsed.”

  “We need to interview Graner,” said Jack.

  “Unfortunately, he’s back in rehab right now,” said Hannah, “and he hasn’t returned my calls. Not sure he’d be all that keen about talking to us, anyway. We say some pretty unflattering things about him in our brief. Ineffective assistance of counsel is one of the major arguments.”

  Reeves stopped pacing and fired back. “That was in Leon’s brief, too. And in Tommy’s brief, and in Clarence’s. You know what? All those guys are dead. Ineffective assistance never wins. I could be represented by a fucking German shepherd and the Supreme Court would say that’s not ineffective
assistance of counsel.” He stepped closer, palms planted on the tabletop. “What’s the best argument? What’s the one I’m gonna win on?”

  “Errors at the sentencing phase of trial are usually the best arguments,” said Hannah.

  She was right, and it had been that way as long as Jack could remember. Phase I of a capital case was “guilt/innocence”: Did the defendant commit murder in the first degree? The penalty phase followed: Were there special circumstances warranting the death penalty? Reeves’ special circumstances were kidnapping and sexual assault.

  “Even judges who are philosophically opposed to the death penalty are reluctant to override a jury’s guilty verdict,” said Jack. “That’s just the way it is. Especially when you get to death watch.”

  “That’s what Elmer told me—the guy in the cell ahead of me. You make it to death watch and it’s, like, nobody wants to be the party pooper and stop the march to the gurney.”

  Jack had seen it firsthand. Issues that might normally get a court’s attention, absent a death warrant, suddenly become “meritless” under the tension of a looming execution date.

  “We have good arguments,” said Jack.

  “One is very good, in my opinion,” said Hannah. “When there is no recovery of a body, the law requires more than a confession to convict the accused of murder.”

  “The better point is that I didn’t confess to anything.”

  “It’s on video,” said Jack. “You clearly nodded your head. A confession doesn’t have to be verbal.”

  “That detective asked me if I needed forgiveness. But I never said I killed anybody.”

  “Then why did you need forgiveness?”

  “I was tired. I was hungover. I was still drunk from the night before. He started quoting scripture to me, and I nodded. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because my old man was a preacher. A fucking hypocrite who was banging anything that moved, but still a preacher. All that matters is that I didn’t kill that girl.”

  “But you did sexually assault her,” said Jack, testing him.