Gone Again: A Jack Swyteck Novel Read online

  DEDICATION

  FOR TIFFANY

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by James Grippando

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  Welcome Home, Jack!

  Jack Swyteck was standing outside the Freedom Institute, and the handwritten greeting on a Post-it was stuck to the front door. It was Monday morning, and Jack had moved in his office furnishings over the weekend. The doormat at his feet displayed a less welcoming message, but it summed up the sense of humor of the lawyers who worked there: COME BACK WITH A WARRANT.

  It made Jack smile, even if this wasn’t the full-blown homecoming that his former colleagues wanted.

  More than a decade had passed since Jack’s resignation, but a four-year stint with the Freedom Institute had been his first job out of law school. At the time, “law-and-order” governor Harry Swyteck—Jack’s father—was on his way toward signing more death warrants than any chief executive in Florida history. Their public clash was a political embarrassment. Harry might not have taken it so personally if Jack hadn’t aligned himself with a ragtag group of former hippies who were under the mistaken impression that the state flower was cannabis and the national anthem was “Kumbaya.” There was Eve, the only woman Jack had ever known to smoke a pipe. Brian, the gay surfer dude. And Neil Goderich, their fearless leader, a ponytailed genius who had survived Woodstock. To outsiders, Jack was the odd man out. But they became friends, and his resignation didn’t change that. The split was more about style than substance. Forcing the government to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt was enough for Jack. Getting another guilty man off death row didn’t make him want to break out a three-dollar bottle of cold duck and throw a party. Or issue a press release.

  Jack pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  “Jack is back!” shouted Hannah. Neil’s daughter was as young and idealistic as Jack had been when Neil had taken him under his wing. It was hard to believe that his mentor was gone forever, walking on over the hill with Abraham, Martin, and John.

  “I guess you could say I’m back,” said Jack. “Sort of.”

  Hannah was a foot shorter than Jack, and she raised up on her toes to give him a big hug and a peck on the cheek. Eve and Brian were standing right behind her, each with a small suitcase in hand. Jack would have bet money that Brian’s corduroy jacket was the same one he’d worn on the day of Jack’s resignation. Maybe the elbow patches were new.

  “Sorry to say hi and bye,” said Hannah. “But Governor Scott signed two more death warrants last night. We’re off to FSP to see our client.”

  Jack remembered those trips to Florida State Prison. That was how he’d met his best friend, Theo Knight, the only innocent man Jack had ever defended at the Institute. “Safe travels,” said Jack.

  “You wanna come with?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You sure?”

  Jack almost said “Dead sure,” but caught himself. “I’m positive.”

  “Okay, then. You know where Mr. Coffee is. Be sure to lock up when you leave. Three of our neighbors had break-ins this month.”

  “Is there an alarm I should set?”

  She chortled. “Have you been gone that long? We’re lucky if the lights go on when we flip the switch.”

  He knew money was tight; it was the reason he’d returned.

  They filed past him and out the door, looking less like the talented lawyers they were and more like something from the Island of Misfit Toys. It wasn’t really necessary for them to travel all the way to Florida State Prison; the sojourn was a holdover from the old days, when Neil would organize a vigil outside the prison gates before an execution. Back in the days of an old electric chair that was prone to misfire, resulting in flaming heads and contorted purple faces, they might draw a hundred impassioned protesters or more. Lately, it was basically Hannah, Eve, and Brian.

  The door closed, and Jack was alone. He’d requested no fanfare to mark his return, and his old friends had more than honored the request, thanks to Governor Scott.

  Jack put down his briefcase and looked around. The historic house on the Miami River had changed little. The foyer doubled as a storage room for old case files, one box stacked on top of the other. The bottom ones sagged beneath the weight of denied motions for stay of execution, the box tops having warped into sad smiles. The old living room was the reception area and secretarial work station. The dining room, Florida room, and a downstairs bedroom served as offices for the lawyers. The furniture screamed “flea market”—chairs that didn’t match, tables made stable with a deck of playing cards under one leg. The sixties-vintage kitchen was not only where lawyers and staff ate their bagged lunches; it also served as the main (and only) conference room. Hanging on the wall over the coffeemaker was the same framed photograph of Bobby Kennedy that had once hung in Neil’s dorm room at Harvard.

  It saddened Jack. Neil was the first friend Jack had ever eulogized, and his widow had taken Jack at his word when he’d pulled her aside after the funeral and said, “If there’s anything I can ever do for you . . .”

  “Well, there is one little thing,” she’d said.

  Sarah’s mission was for Jack to fill Neil’s shoes. Jack wasn’t interested. He was a sole practitioner with a thriving practice. But when it became a matter of survival for the Institute, Jack made an accommodation. His lease was up in Coconut Grove, so he moved “Jack Swyteck, P.A.” into the old digs, taking Neil’s office. He wasn’t officially affiliated with the Freedom Institute, just a subtenant, but Jack’s monthly rent check would keep the Institute from going completely broke.

  His cell rang. It was his wife.

&nbs
p; “When are you coming home?” asked Andie.

  “I just got here.”

  “I spilled a protein shake all over my gun-cleaning mat. Can you cut through midtown on the way home and buy me a new one? Johnson Firearms is the only shop that carries that mat with all the parts diagrammed for the Sig Sauer P250.”

  Jack chuckled.

  “Why is that funny?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t a pregnant wife usually send her husband on a run for ice cream or salt-and-vinegar potato chips?”

  “Mmm. That sounds good.”

  “Which?”

  “Both.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Ice cream, potato chips, and a gun-cleaning mat. Anything else?”

  “If I lie here long enough, I’ll probably think of something.”

  “You’re bored, aren’t you?”

  “Out of my mind,” she said, sighing.

  FBI Agent Andie Henning was seven months pregnant and four days into a short medical leave from the Miami field office. Her first and second pregnancies had ended in miscarriage. That history, together with high blood pressure, had prompted her doctor to order five days of bed rest.

  “Tell me everything is going to be okay,” she said.

  “It’s all going to be okay.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes. And you are going to be a great mother.”

  “No, I’m not. What if my next undercover assignment is six months long and I never even get to see my little—”

  “Stop,” said Jack. “The Bureau isn’t going to send a new mother on a six-month undercover assignment.”

  “Well, that’s a whole ’nother problem, isn’t it? What if the boys at headquarters say to themselves, ‘Oh, Henning’s doing the mommy thing now,’ and I’m stuck doing background checks on single young women who are angling for my job?”

  “Andie, this is why you have high blood pressure. Breathe, okay?”

  Another sigh crackled over the line. “You’re right.”

  “You better now?”

  “Triple fudge swirl.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the ice cream I want.”

  Jack smiled. “Triple fudge it is.”

  Jack worked all morning in the kitchen, which was the only room where the AC seemed to be blowing cool air. He was without his secretary, having given Bonnie the day off after a weekend of overtime on the office move. The old refrigerator emitted an annoying buzz, which Jack silenced every so often with a quick kick to the side panel. The overall ambience didn’t exactly convey the image of powerhouse legal representation. Jack wondered what his paying clients would think.

  Should’ve thought of that before you moved in, dummy.

  A car pulled up in the driveway. Jack probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that the tires skidded to a crunchy stop on loose gravel. The car door slammed, and the patter of footfalls on the sidewalk bespoke a brisk pace. An urgent knock on the door followed, which continued until Jack could open up. A fortyish attractive blonde was standing on the front porch.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  In the moment she took to catch her breath, Jack noted that her car was a Mercedes and that her designer jeans and cotton blouse, though casual, probably weren’t from Target.

  “I’m looking for Neil Goderich,” she said.

  “Unfortunately, Neil passed away last year.”

  She seemed confused by the news, though not particularly sorry to hear it. “This is where he worked, right?”

  “Yes. For twenty-eight years.”

  “I need to speak to someone in charge. Mr. Goderich was the lawyer for Dylan Reeves.”

  “Who’s Dylan Reeves?”

  “Governor Scott signed his death warrant last night.”

  That jibed with the sudden exodus of Hannah and crew. “Do you know Mr. Reeves?”

  “Yes. I mean, no.” She paused, as if suddenly aware how incoherent she sounded. “Actually, he was convicted of raping and murdering my seventeen-year-old daughter.”

  Jack took a half step back, sympathetic, but cautious. A part of him would forever find it amazing that the families of victims didn’t beat the crap out of criminal defense lawyers more often.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “You don’t have to be,” she said.

  “I am. Sincerely.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Sashi isn’t dead.”

  Jack did a double take. “What?”

  “My daughter is alive.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. But Sashi is alive. I know she’s alive. And I need you people to help me prove it, before they execute this man for killing her.”

  “I don’t actually—” Jack stopped himself.

  “You don’t what?”

  Jack was about to say that he didn’t actually work for the Institute, which was exactly what he’d told Andie when he’d promised that he wasn’t going back to death-penalty work. But he’d checked that line at the door.

  “I don’t know your name,” said Jack.

  “Debra. Debra Burgette.”

  “Come inside, Debra. We should talk.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Jack led Debra to the kitchen, talking as they walked. “I honestly don’t know anything about Dylan Reeves’ case,” he said. “But I assume the police never recovered a body, if you’re telling me that Sashi is alive.”

  “That’s right,” said Debra. “When the prosecutor told me they were bringing murder charges against Dylan Reeves, I was frankly pretty surprised. I didn’t know you could do that before finding the victim.”

  “It’s difficult,” said Jack, “especially with all the CSI shows on TV. Jurors want physical evidence, and they want a forensics expert to tell them when, where, and how the victim died. That’s why you have cases like Natalee Holloway, the high school girl from Alabama who disappeared in Aruba. Nobody was ever charged. But a missing victim doesn’t necessarily mean a conviction is impossible.”

  Jack offered her a chair and cleared his work from the table. The fridge was buzzing louder than ever, and Jack silenced it with a swift kick. “Sorry about that.”

  Her gaze swept the room. “No problem. This is about what I expected.”

  Jack took a seat opposite her. “I don’t want to make this painful for you, but can you start at the beginning?”

  Debra collected herself, and the look in her eyes was one that Jack had seen before: the desperation and disbelief that attended a mother’s recitation of what had happened to her child.

  “Sashi went missing on a Friday. I drove her to school, like I did every day. Traffic was backed up much worse than usual. We just were not moving. Sashi was afraid she was going to be late, so she got out about four blocks from the school to walk the rest of the way.” She took a breath, then continued. “That was the last time I saw her. That was a terrible mistake.”

  She was playing that deadly game—blaming herself.

  “Would you like some water?” he offered.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Did she ever get to the school?”

  “No. The administration called around mid-morning and left a message that she was marked absent at homeroom. Unfortunately I didn’t get the message till after lunch. I called her cell, but she didn’t answer. I drove around to a few places that are within walking distance of the Prep. I was hoping maybe that she wasn’t ready for a test or hadn’t done her homework, so she decided to cut school. I didn’t find her anywhere. Dismissal for the upper classes was at three, and that’s when I started calling her friends. Nobody knew where she was. What scared me more is that none of them had even seen her on campus—which told me that she never got there.”

  “Did Sashi have her own car?”

  “No. Sashi was seventeen but never got her driver’s license, which was never a problem. We live in Cocoplum. There are jogging paths and cycling lanes that go on for miles.”

  “I know the area. I u
sed to run along Old Cutler Road.”

  “Nice and shady, right? Sashi could easily have walked home from school if she wanted to kill an hour. She did like to go for long walks. I spent the whole afternoon checking her favorite places. The coffee shop, the park, the pond down by Matheson Hammock. If something was bothering her, or if she just wanted time alone, it was normal for her to find one of those places and do whatever teenagers do on their phones for hours on end. When it was getting dark, and still no Sashi, I really started to worry.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “I called my husband. He was on his way home from a business trip. I was pretty unnerved at this point, so he told me to calm down and that he’d handle it.”

  “So he called the police?”

  “No. Sashi had been gone less than twelve hours at this point. This wasn’t a four-year-old who had suddenly vanished.”

  Jack could have told her that seventeen is still a child, that most police departments had protocols that kicked in at four hours or less, and that the archives of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were filled with tragic examples of parents who had thought they needed to wait eight hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hours. But like all those other parents, she probably felt guilty enough. “So what did you do?”

  “I couldn’t just sit still till my husband got home. I took a photo with me and started going door to door in the neighborhood around the school, asking people if they’d seen Sashi. No leads. Around eight o’clock I met Gavin at the house. We searched one more time for any clues as to where she could have gone. We walked the whole neighborhood again, asking if anyone had seen her. We got back around ten o’clock. I went upstairs and checked her room one more time. I found her cell. Sashi never left the house without her cell. That’s when the panic set in. It was more than twelve hours at this point. I called the police and made an official missing-person report. We enlisted friends to drive around, looking. That lasted all night, no sign of Sashi. By morning, MDPD had thrown everything they had at it: patrol cars, rescue dogs, helicopters, you name it. We had dozens of volunteers combing the neighborhood. The whole community stepped up. We looked everywhere.”

  “I seem to recall seeing this on the news.”

  “Yes, by six o’clock Saturday morning the local media was all over the story. For the next twenty-four hours, it was all about finding Sashi. Twenty-four god-awful hours. Then the headline changed.”