Hear No Evil (3 page)

T
he answer came back sooner than anticipated. It was anything but what Jack had expected.

Jack had taken an easy weekend, a little boating on the bay with Theo, some work in the yard. Nothing could stop him from wondering how different his life might have been. At first, his attraction to Jessie Merrill had been overwhelmingly physical. She was a striking beauty, definitely not a prude, though the bad-girl image was mostly an act. She was easily as bright as any of the women he dated in law school, and if her impressive sphere of knowledge included knowing how to please, who was Jack to hold it against her? Unfortunately it hadn’t occurred to him that she might be “The One” until after her flawless rendition of the time-honored “I don’t deserve you, sure hope we can still be friends” speech. Jack would have given anything to get her back. Five months later, when she actually
did
come back, Jack had already fallen for Cindy Paige, the girl of his dreams, his bride to be, the woman he would eventually divorce and never speak to again. Jessie graciously backed away and wished him well, never bothering to tell him that she was carrying their baby.

What if he’d never met Cindy? Would he and Jessie have gotten married? Would Jessie have avoided the life choices that had courted death at such a young age? Perhaps Jack would have a son to take to baseball games, to go fishing with, to viciously defend from the corrupting influences of Uncle Theo. By Sunday night, Jack had created the perfect little world, the three of them living happily ever after, the
image of his son firmly in his head, everything about him as real as it could be—the sound of his voice, the smell of his hair, those skinny ten-year-old arms that wrapped around him as they wrestled on the floor.

Then came the Monday morning phone call from the U.S. attorney’s office, the reminder that nothing in life was ever really perfect.

“Lindsey Hart’s son is deaf,” said Gerry Chavetz.

Jack could hardly speak, and he managed to utter only the obvious. “That’s why he didn’t hear the gunshot.”

“That’s why he can’t hear anything,” said the prosecutor.

Gerry continued to speak, and Jack gripped the phone tightly, as if fearful that it might drop from his hand. Jack should have probed for more information, and he would have kept Gerry talking all morning if the boy had been just another boy. But circumstances made it impossible for Jack to pretend that he didn’t care, and his connection to Lindsey Hart’s son was something Gerry and the rest of the world had no business knowing. He couldn’t afford a slipup.

“Gerry, thanks a ton for the favor.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to defend her?”

“I have to think about that.”

“But you said—”

“I know. I’m sorry, but I really have to run.”

The phone landed with a little extra weight as he laid it in the cradle. He walked to the kitchen window and stared out toward Biscayne Bay, watching in silence as a warm southeasterly breeze carried in an endless roll of waves that gently lapped the seawall. It wasn’t the overpowering force of nature, the kind of display that could strike fear in the soul. But it was unstoppable nonetheless, as unrelenting as the surge of emotions coursing through Jack’s veins.

An image flashed in his mind, Jack standing in the hospital’s nursery and holding a baby, the proud young father smiling ear to ear as a doctor slowly approaches, a serious expression on his face that robs Jack of his grin. It’s obvious that the news is not going to be good, and Jack somehow realizes that the doctor is going to tell him that his son can’t hear. Suddenly, the image transforms itself. Jack is no longer a father but a little baby in another man’s arms. The man at the hospital is Jack’s father, a young Harry Swyteck, and miraculously this sleepy little newborn named Jack can both hear
and understand
as the doctor lays
his hand on Harry Swyteck’s shoulder and says softly, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Swyteck. We did everything we could, but we could not save your wife.” Jack feels himself falling as his father collapses into a chair, feels his father’s body shake as the grim reality sets in, feels the young widower’s embrace tighten as though he will never let this child go. Harry is saying something, trying hard to speak, his voice muffled, his face buried in the cotton blanket that is wrapped around his son. The words are a confusing mixture of love and anger, an anger both bitter and enduring. In his mind’s eye, Jack is still wrapped in that blanket as the years are flying by. His father continues to speak, seemingly unaware that the boy is growing up, convinced that his son can’t hear him anyway. Jack isn’t exactly sure when it happens, but at some point the doctor returns. He refuses to look Jack or his father in the eye, as if he doesn’t know which one should receive the distressing news.

“The boy is deaf
,” says the doctor, and it’s Harry who sobs, though it pains Jack to know that it will take almost thirty years to get his hearing back, to understand what his father is trying to say to him.

Jack stepped away from the window and shook off the distorted memories, though they weren’t memories at all, just painful images of a past that never seemed to stop haunting him, a past he had never let himself explore fully. The discovery of his own son wasn’t going to make matters any easier.

Or would it?

As he reached for the telephone, he was suddenly a lawyer again. He dialed the InterContinental, put on his game voice, and told the hotel operator, “I’d like to speak to one of your guests, please. Her name’s Lindsey Hart. It’s urgent.”

J
ack met her in his office, face-to-face. He needed to judge Lindsey’s credibility, and for that a phone call wouldn’t do.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was deaf?”

Lindsey stiffened at his accusatory tone, but she spoke calmly. “He was born that way. I thought you knew.”

“Please, don’t lie to me.”

“That’s the honest truth.”

Jack considered her words but focused mostly on the body language. Her mouth was growing ever tighter. “I don’t buy it,” he said.

“Why would I deceive you about something like this?”

“All I know is that after I read the NCIS investigative report, I called and told you that I was troubled by the medical examiner’s determination of the time of death. It didn’t make sense to me that you allegedly fired off a gun in your house before five
A.M.,
and yet there was no witness statement in the report from your son, no mention of him at all. It was inconceivable that he would have slept right through a shooting in the next room.”

“And I agreed with you.”

“But you left out the key fact.”

“He can’t
hear
, Jack. That doesn’t make him an armchair. He can sense things.”

“So when I called you and said there was a huge hole in the investigative report,
that’s
what you thought I was talking about—that your
son should have
sensed
a gunshot in the next room?”

“A door slamming, the panicky footsteps of the shooter scampering about the room. All that movement creates palpable sensations.”

“Please, just answer my question. Is that really what you thought I was talking about?”

Jack wasn’t happy about being so hard on her. But if there was one thing he couldn’t handle, it was a client who lied to her lawyer.

“No,” she said finally. “I knew exactly what you were thinking. Your assumption was that he should have heard the gunshot.”

“You knew that. Yet, you still let me rush over to the U.S. attorney’s office and argue that Lindsey Hart couldn’t have shot her husband, not without the boy hearing it.”

“I didn’t know you were going to talk to the prosecutor. You said that you needed a little more time to think, that you’d let me know if you decided to take the case.”

“So, it was okay to mislead me, so long as it was just between the two of us?”

She lowered her eyes and said, “I felt like I was already unloading an awful lot on you without telling you that he was deaf.”

She sounded sincere, but again her mouth was tightening in tell-tale fashion. Jack said, “I’m not sure that explains everything.”

She spoke in a low, quiet voice, still no eye contact. “You have to understand. After you read the investigative report, when you called me, you sounded so high on the idea that the time of death proved me innocent. I…I just didn’t want to shoot down the best thing I had going for me. Not right out of the gate.”

“Did you think you could trick me into being your lawyer?”

She was suddenly trembling. Jack instinctively snatched the box of tissues from his desktop and gave her one.

“I’m innocent,” she said, her voice quaking. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be accused of killing the father of your child, and to be innocent?”

“I can only imagine.”

“Then don’t you see? At the time, it didn’t matter to me
why
you thought I was innocent. All that mattered was that you believed I didn’t do it.”

“Misleading me hardly reinforces that belief.”

“If I could prove my innocence to you, then I wouldn’t need you.”

She dabbed away a tear, and Jack gave her a moment to compose herself. “Fair enough. But if you lie to me, you can’t have me.”

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Ever since this thing started, it’s felt like no one is on my side. The police, everyone. They all seem to have their minds made up.”

“Why do you think that’s the case?”

“I think it’s because of something I said to the
Gazette
.”

“What’s the
Gazette
?”

“It’s the local paper down at the base. They asked me what I think happened to my husband, so I told them. And they printed it. From that day on, you’d think I was wearing a big stamp across my forehead that reads ‘
ENEMY COMBATANT
.’ ”

“What did you say?”

She hesitated, as if she wasn’t quite sure if Jack was ready to hear her theory. “My husband wasn’t so much murdered as he was…eliminated.”

“How do you mean, eliminated?”

“Silenced.”

“By whom?”

She seemed unaware of it, but her hand had become a tight, angry fist around her tissue. “That NCIS investigative report has been completely sanitized. Doesn’t it make you wonder what they’re hiding?”

“From what I understand, that kind of redaction is not unique to this case.”

“I’m sure it happens all the time. Whenever the navy has something to hide.”

She was starting to sound paranoid, but Jack measured his words. “After all you’ve been through, you’re certainly entitled to a certain amount of skepticism.”

“You may not be aware of this, but the military’s track record on homicide investigations is less than stellar.”

“That’s a pretty sweeping indictment.”

“I’m not saying they’re incompetent. I’m saying that certain people in the military are not beyond a cover-up.”

“And you know this because…”

“I was married to a career officer for twelve years. And I’ve done my homework. Did you know that the NCIS once tried to convince a
mother and father that their son had shot himself in the head even though it was a scientific fact that he couldn’t have produced the bullet trajectory unless he was standing on his head when he pulled the trigger?”

“That’s appalling.”

“It gets better. In another case, the NCIS issued a finding on July ninth that a Marine’s wounds were self-inflicted. You know when they got the results back on ballistics, gunshot residue, and blood and tissue tests? August sixth.”

“Obviously, you’ve looked into this. But this isn’t a case of homicide covered up as suicide.”

“The point is, they are capable of doing whatever suits their needs. They needed my husband out of the way, but no one would ever have believed that he had committed suicide. He loved life too much. So they did away with him, and instead of calling it suicide, they make it look like his wife did it. And then they issue this so-called investigative report that’s completely full of holes. All meaningful information is blacked out in the name of protecting military secrets and national security.”

Jack gave her a long, hard look. “For the sake of argument, let’s assume a cover-up. You’re saying that the military decided not to paint his death as suicide because they didn’t think anyone would ever believe he killed himself.”

“That’s right.”

“But for some reason the military came to the conclusion that no one would have any trouble believing that you would kill your husband.”

She didn’t answer right away, obviously uncomfortable with the way Jack had dissected things. “That’s the essence of any frame-up,” she said.

“A frame-up is a huge leap. Especially when you’ve shown me no motive.”

“If you knew my husband, you’d understand my suspicions. We spent almost a third of our marriage on that little fenced-in chunk of Cuba. Year after year, I begged him to put in for a transfer. People are nice enough there, and it has a sense of community. But I hated the isolation. Oscar, on the other hand, was Mr. Guantánamo all the way. He wanted to rise as high as he possibly could right there on the island, no desire to go anywhere. Then, suddenly, that’s all out the window.
Two weeks before he was killed, completely out of the blue, he tells me he thinks it’s time to leave.”

“Change of heart, maybe?”

“No. It was a lot of little things—the way he lay awake at night, the fact that he was suddenly going to bed with a loaded gun in the nightstand. He probably didn’t think I noticed these things, but I did. He was worried about something. He was suddenly acting like a man on the run. Like a man who knew something he wasn’t supposed to know.”

“Such as?”

“The military is full of secrets. And plenty of people have died trying to keep them.”

“I need more than that.”

“Then help me find it, damn it.”

She was clearly frustrated, and Jack could understand it. He rose, walked around to the front of his desk, and took a more casual seat on the corner of it, no barriers between them. “Look, you’re probably thinking that lawyers defend guilty clients all the time, so why is this guy so obsessed with guilt or innocence. But this case is—”

“Different,” she said, finishing the thought for him. “I know.”

“You understand why?”

“Of course. You want what’s best for your,” she caught herself, then said, “for my son. Just as I do. Which is why I would never—even if I’d wanted Oscar dead—I would
never
have shot him in our house while our son was sleeping in the next room. Deaf or not. Does that make any sense at all to you, Mr. Swyteck?”

Jack met her stare, and suddenly the silence between them was no longer uncomfortable. It was as if the proverbial light had finally come on. “Yes, it does, Lindsey. And I think it’s probably time you started calling me Jack.”