Blood Money (23 page)

Chapter Forty-Two

A
chorus of jeers followed Jack and Hannah down the courthouse steps as they left the Justice Center. In two hours the defense had to be back in Judge Matthews’ chambers. The Shot Mom haters had been playing to cameras outside the courthouse since eight thirty
A.M.
, and they would be there when Jack returned at one
P.M.
, braving ninety-five-degree heat and ninety-percent humidity. The jury-tampering allegations had given the mob a shot in the arm, and their sheer stamina was astounding.

Jack rode shotgun on the way back to the office and made a phone call while Hannah drove. It was the first time a judge had ordered him to “bring your FBI agent with you.” Andie took the news better than Jack had expected.

“I’ll talk to my ASAC,” she said. “I’ll need his approval.”

“Remind him how cooperative I’ve been with law enforcement since Rene’s murder. I even let the FBI monitor my cell phone.”

“That will help.”

“Andie,” said Jack, using his I-need-this voice. “It’s important.”

“I get it,” she said.

They were on Main Highway, less than a quarter mile from Jack’s office. The sun glared on the windshield, flickering from light to dark as they cruised in the intermittent shadows of sprawling banyan limbs. They passed the gated entrance to Ransom Everglades Upper School, and Jack glanced uneasily at the stone wall along the jogging trail. Right behind that wall, near the large oak, he’d met a stranger he now knew as Merselus and received the threat against “someone you love.”

“Are you selling your office?” asked Hannah.

“No, why?”

She slowed the car as they approached the driveway. “Then why is there a For Sale sign out front?”

“Stop here,” he said as she turned into the driveway. Jack got out and checked the sign:
JUSTICE FOR SALE
, it read.

Jack looked farther down the jogging trail, a tree-lined stretch of rooted-up asphalt that ran from his driveway entrance to the T-shaped intersection at the end of Main Highway. There were more signs, one about every fifteen feet, each with the same message:
JUSTICE FOR SALE
. The anger rose up inside him. It was one of those watershed moments, a little thing that triggered much more of a reaction than it should have. Cumulatively, he’d had enough. Jack pulled the first one from the ground, yanked a second, then another. He gathered up about a dozen of them and walked back to the car, muttering under his breath.

“Jack, it’s no big deal,” said Hannah.

Jack opened the door, threw them into the backseat, and then slammed the door shut. Hannah parked the car and followed him up the steps and into the office. The screen door slapped shut behind them. Bonnie was at the reception desk, working the phone. She had the frazzled expression on her face that Jack was seeing far too much of lately. She slammed down the phone as he entered.

“I need that air horn,” she said.

“Not again,” he said.

“Nastier than ever,” said Bonnie. “All this ‘justice for sale’ nonsense. They’re picking that up from Faith Corso. That’s the running subtitle of her show. And you don’t even want to know what her fans are saying online about you.”

“Bloggers are back?”

“Oh, my Lord,” said Bonnie. “It’s insane. It’s ugly. It’s—”

“It’s thinkism,” said Hannah.

“It’s what?” said Jack.

“That’s the name Dad gave it. Thinkism.”

“And what exactly did Neil mean by that?”

“It’s the new ‘ism,’ said Hannah, “born of the Internet. Race and gender are less important in the virtual world. It’s more about what you think. But the way Dad saw it, some people will always need a reason to hate. If they can’t see you and hate you for how you look, all their hatred is aimed at what you say. Racists and sexists just aren’t cool anymore. But they can all be thinkists, spread the same kind of emotional and irrational hatred, and not only will they get away with it, but people will actually follow their Tweets. Before you know it, there’s a virtual lynch mob outside your door trying to hang you from a tree for thinking differently than they do. Thinkism.”

“Neil came up with that?” asked Jack.

“Yup.”

“One smart guy,” said Jack.

“He was definitely no thinkist.”

Hannah’s cell phone rang. She stepped into the hallway to take it. Jack followed up with Bonnie on the Internet postings.

“Is there anything that you think I should be concerned about?”

“Yeah, all of it.”

Hannah stepped back into the room, her face ashen.

“What’s wrong?” said Jack.

“It was him,” she said in a flat, serious tone. “The same voice I played in the courtroom today.”

Bonnie said, “Now he’s calling
you
?”

Jack said, “He probably figured out that my cell is monitored by the FBI. It’s the same reason Sydney has been calling me on Theo’s phone. What did he say?”

“It was short,” said Hannah. “I didn’t even have time to think. I should have recorded it.”

“It’s okay,” said Jack. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Tell your boss I watch BNN. Tell him I heard him say Sydney Bennett is afraid to come to court. Tell him if he mentions one word about me to the judge, it’s someone he loves all over again.”

She paused, and the reference to “someone you love” gave Jack chills.

“Did he say anything else?” asked Jack.

“Yeah,” said Hannah. “He said to check the signs.”

“The signs?” said Bonnie.

Jack knew immediately. “The For Sale signs.”

Jack hurried out the door and down the steps, his footfalls crunching in the pea-gravel driveway as he raced to the car and yanked open the door. The signs were piled loosely in the backseat where he had left them. He grabbed the one on top and checked it more carefully, but there was nothing of note—just the message,
JUSTICE FOR SALE
. He did the same with the second, the third, and three more. Finally, he checked the backside of the seventh sign and froze.

There was simply an address: 1800 Davis Road, Apartment 406.

“What is it?” asked Hannah.

Jack showed her and said, “My great-uncle’s address.”

“Your great-uncle?”

Jack’s throat tightened. “
Abuela’
s brother in Tampa. It’s where I sent my grandmother.”

Chapter Forty-Three

A
t one
P.M.
Jack and Hannah were in chambers. Judge Matthews was seated in a tall leather chair behind his oversize desk. The American flag was draped on a pole behind him and to his right, and the flag of the state of Florida was to his left. A rectangular table extended forward from the front of his desk to create a T-shaped seating arrangement, the defense on one side of the table and the prosecution on the opposite side. At the narrow end of the table, directly facing the judge, was FBI Agent Andie Henning. With her was an assistant U.S. attorney, who looked to be at most three or four years senior to Hannah.

“Mr. Swyteck, the floor is yours,” said the judge.

The AUSA spoke up. “Before we begin,” she said, “I wanted to make sure the court is aware of the relationship between Mr. Swyteck and FBI Agent Henning.”

“I’m aware. Mr. Swyteck, proceed.”

Jack spoke while seated, as was customary in chambers. “Judge, I want to begin by saying that although this is an unusual way for me to oppose the government’s motion to set aside the not-guilty verdict, the chain of evidence that I am about to proffer does, in fact, confirm that Sydney Bennett had nothing to do with the bribe paid to juror number five in her criminal trial.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” the judge said.

“First, we do not dispute the testimony of Mr. Hewitt that the man who offered him the bribe is the same man who met Sydney Bennett at Opa-locka Airport on the night of her release.”

“Excuse me,” said the prosecutor, “you mean the man who
embraced
Sydney Bennett at the airport.”

“Ms. Crawford, you will have your say,” said the judge. “Continue, Mr. Swyteck.”

“We would also ask the court to accept Mr. Hewitt’s testimony on cross-examination that the man who offered him the bribe is the same man who made the anonymous call to the FBI that led to Mr. Hewitt’s arrest.”

“We don’t dispute that,” said the prosecutor.

“Good,” said Jack. “The evidence I would proffer is that this same man has done the following things. First, he attacked me about a block away from my office and demanded to know where Sydney Bennett was. We have a hospital record and a police report to substantiate that attack. Second, that same man murdered Dr. Rene Fenning.”

“What?” said the prosecutor.

“Excuse me, Ms. Crawford. I’ll ask the questions. But Mr. Swyteck, I think her question is a good one:
What?
”

“This is the sensitive part of the criminal investigation that I mentioned in the courtroom this morning. The killer’s ‘signature,’ so to speak, has not been released to the public. That is to avoid the possibility of copycats or other compromising factors.”

“What is the signature?”

Jack glanced at Andie, then addressed the judge. “My attacker told me that if I did not lead him to Sydney Bennett, he would hurt someone I love. Rene Fenning is someone I used to date. Years ago. She was on her way to meet me for coffee when she was murdered. Her body was found with the words ‘someone you love’ written on her abdomen.”

All eyes—the judge’s, the prosecutor’s, the assistant U.S. attorney’s—were suddenly aimed at Andie.

Andie shifted uncomfortably. “This, uh, isn’t what it sounds like.”

“No, not at all,” said Jack.

“Well, isn’t that special,” the judge said. “If we could all step out of
Peyton Place
for a moment, let me ask you for this clarification, Mr. Swyteck. I see the link between the man who bribed Mr. Hewitt and the one who called the FBI. I see the link between the man who attacked you and the one who murdered Dr. Fenning. But I don’t see the link between the two. What is it?”

Jack said, “The link is a conversation I had with Sydney Bennett on the telephone early Saturday morning. She called me. She was terrified. She told me that the man she met at the airport was named Merselus, that he tried to strangle her, and that she was now on her own, on the run, afraid for her life, and afraid to come into court.”

The prosecutor raised both hands in the air like an umpire. “Hold on a second. Judge, I know this is just a proffer, but the court can’t seriously allow this evidence into the record. For one thing, how does the defense intend to introduce this evidence? Is Mr. Swyteck going to be a witness?”

“That’s where Agent Henning comes in,” said Jack. “We live together. She overheard the conversation.”

The judge looked straight at Andie, down the length of the long rectangular table. “Agent Henning, is it true that you heard Ms. Bennett say all those things to Mr. Swyteck?”

“Actually, I heard only one side of the conversation. I heard Jack talking to her. Then he told me what she said after they hung up.”

The prosecutor groaned. “So we’ve got double hearsay,” she said. “The defense proposes to have Agent Henning tell the court what Mr. Swyteck told her that Sydney Bennett said to him. I think maybe I’ll object,” she said, adding a dose of sarcasm.

“Ms. Crawford has a point,” said the judge. “And you’ve got an attorney-client privilege problem on top of it. A lawyer can’t just come into court and reveal the things his client said to him unless his client has agreed to waive the privilege.”

“With all due respect, that seems a bit hypertechnical,” said Jack. “I’m confident that Sydney Bennett would waive the privilege under the circumstances and allow me to tell you what she said.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” the judge said. “The privilege belongs to the client. Only the client can waive it.”

If the judge himself was mounting that kind of opposition, Jack could feel all momentum slipping away. The prosecutor seized on it.

“Plus,” said Crawford, “we’re left with the fact that this highly unreliable evidence proves nothing. The issue here is whether Sydney Bennett was involved in bribing a juror. This hearing isn’t about who killed Dr. Fenning.”

Jack responded, “Judge, it all comes down to one thing: This Merselus, whoever he may be, is obsessed with Sydney Bennett. It fits with our theory that he bribed the juror on his own in order to get Sydney acquitted. When things didn’t go well between him and Sydney at the airport and Sydney ran away from him, he attacked me to find her. When that didn’t work, he killed Dr. Fenning to show me that he fully intends to act on his threats. When that didn’t work, he called the FBI to make sure they arrested Hewitt red-handed when he collected his bribe.”

“I don’t get that last part,” said the judge.

“He knew that Hewitt’s arrest would force Sydney to come out of hiding and return to this courtroom. The bottom line, Your Honor, is that if you force Sydney Bennett to come out of hiding to defend this motion, you are playing into this killer’s hands.”

“Oh, come on,” said the prosecutor. “That’s a sky-is-falling argument if I ever heard one. If anything, Merselus is an old boyfriend—some rich sugar daddy, I daresay—who bribed a juror to get her acquitted, and then once she got out of jail, she dumped him. She used him, just like she uses everybody else in her life. He got mad and made an anonymous call to the FBI to get Brian Hewitt caught collecting his bribe. That would put Sydney back in jail, where she belongs.”

The judge considered it. “Ms. Crawford actually does have a way of making things fit.”

The judge’s leaning was no surprise to Jack. It had been clear throughout the trial that he was of the mind that Sydney Bennett had murdered her daughter. The prosecutor continued to hammer away.

“Judge, we are talking about a manipulative, conniving woman who murdered her two-year-old daughter and was caught embracing the man who bought off a juror.”

“Okay, I have your argument,” said the judge. “Let me tell you where I come out. Mr. Swyteck, as the record stands now, I believe the prosecution has demonstrated that Sydney Bennett is sufficiently connected to the jury tampering in this case to justify overturning the verdict of not guilty.”

“Judge, but—”

“Don’t interrupt,” the judge said. “Since we do have the FBI here, I’m feeling charitable today. I’ll give you seventy-two hours to bring in Sydney Bennett. I’m not forcing her to testify, but I am telling you that, even if I allowed you to go forward with the evidence you’ve proffered, it isn’t enough to save your client’s not-guilty verdict. If she isn’t here in this courtroom within seventy-two hours, I will enter an order granting the prosecution’s motion to set aside the verdict on the grounds of jury tampering. And I will issue a warrant for the arrest of Sydney Bennett. That’s my ruling. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Very well,” said the judge. “Mr. Swyteck, notify my assistant if and when you are ready to proceed.”