Hear No Evil Read online

  “I got the picture, Theo. What do you think I should do?”

  “Simple. Take her case. If you get into it and find out she’s guilty, resign.”

  “That’s dicey. Once a murder case gets going, you can’t just withdraw. The judge won’t let you out if the only grounds you have for withdrawing are that you suddenly think your client is guilty. If that were the standard, you’d have lawyers dropping out in the middle of trial every day.”

  “Then you gotta find a way to convince yourself that your client is innocent before you take the case. How about asking her to take a lie detector test?”

  “I don’t believe in them, especially with someone as emotionally distraught as she is. Might as well flip a coin.”

  “So, what are you telling me?”

  “Bottom line, she could be indicted tomorrow, for all I know. I need a quick answer, and, as usual, there is none.”

  Theo took the drink from his friend’s hand, placed it on the bar, and pushed it aside. “Then get off the fucking bar stool, go home, and read that investigative report. Read it the way you’d read it if that boy was just another boy.”

  His tone was stern, and Theo wasn’t grinning, but Jack knew the words were coming from a friend. Jack rose, then laid a five on the bar to cover the two drinks.

  “Hey,” said Theo. “I wasn’t kidding.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean the tab, genius. Till you find that sense of humor, I’m charging you double, remember?”

  Jack reached for his wallet and threw another bill on the bar. “Thanks for teaching me a lesson,” he said with a chuckle. But as he zigzagged through the noisy crowd and headed for the exit, passing one pointless conversation after another, he couldn’t help but wonder what all the forced laughter was about, and his smile faded.

  He wished Theo were right. He wished to God everything were funny.

  3

  The following afternoon, Jack was on the fifth floor of the U.S. attorney’s office in downtown Miami. He’d been up most of the night combing over a copy of the NCIS report Lindsey Hart had left with him. Jack had never seen an investigative report from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services before, but it was similar to scores of civilian homicide reports he’d examined over the years, with one major exception: the blacked-out information. It seemed that something-sometimes an entire paragraph, even an entire witness statement-was excised from each page, deemed by Naval Command to be too sensitive for civilian eyes.

  Jack’s first thought had been that the NCIS was withholding information from Lindsey because she was a murder suspect. He phoned a friend in the JAG Reserves, however, and discovered that it wasn’t all that unusual for the family of slain military personnel to receive highly redacted investigative reports. Even when death was unrelated to combat-be it homicide, suicide, or accident-survivors didn’t always have the privilege of knowing exactly what their loved one was doing when he died, whom he’d last spoken to, or even what he might have written in his diary just hours before a 9 mm slug shattered the back of his skull. To be sure, the military often had legitimate needs for secrecy, especially at a place like Guantánamo, the only remaining U.S. base on communist soil. But it was Jack’s job to be skeptical.

  “You know I wasn’t being cute on the phone, right, Jack? I really do have absolutely nothing to do with the Hart case.”

  Gerry Chafetz was seated behind his desk, hands clasped behind his head, a posture Jack had seen him assume countless times when Gerry was his supervisor. Back then, they’d toil late into the evening, arguing over just about everything from whether the Miami Dolphins had won more football games wearing their aqua jerseys or their white jerseys to whether their star witness was a dead man with or without the federal witness protection program. Jack sometimes missed the old days, but he knew that even if he’d stayed, things could never have been the same. Gerry had worked his way up to chief assistant to the U.S. attorney, which would have made him a lot less fun to argue with, since now he knew everything.

  “The case is here in Miami. Am I right?” asked Jack.

  Gerry was stone silent. Jack said, “Look, it’s no secret that Lindsey Hart is a civilian who can’t stand trial in a military court. She’s originally from Miami, so it doesn’t take a breach of national security to figure out that if she’s indicted for the murder of her husband, it will be right here in the Southern District of Florida.”

  Still no reply from Gerry.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Jack’s mouth. “Come on, Gerry. You won’t even give me that much?”

  “Let me put it this way: Theoretically, you’d be correct.”

  “Good. Theoretically, then, I’d like you to convey a message from me to the prosecutor assigned to this case. I’ve read the NCIS report. What there is of it anyway. Half of it was blacked out.”

  “Actually, Ms. Hart is pretty lucky to have a report at all.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It can take as long as six months, at least, for the agency to issue a final report. This one moved very quickly. Your client should be happy about that.”

  Jack smiled to himself. Just as he’d thought: The chief assistant did know everything. Jack said, “Technically, she’s not my client. Not yet, anyway. Like I said on the phone, I’m still debating whether to take the case.”

  “How do you know there’s going to be a case?”

  “The NCIS ruled her husband’s death a homicide.”

  “I meant a case against her.”

  Jack gave him an assessing look. “Are you telling me-”

  “I’m not telling you anything. I thought I’d made that clear from the beginning.”

  “Okay. Right or wrong, Ms. Hart seems to think she’s the prime suspect.”

  Gerry was deadpan, silent.

  Jack said, “That’s a pretty nerve-racking position to be in, for a woman who maintains her complete innocence.”

  “They all maintain their innocence. That’s why I’m still sitting on this side of the desk. I respect you, Jack, but I sleep easier knowing that I don’t defend the guilty.”

  Jack moved to the edge of his chair, locking eyes with his old boss. “That’s why I’m here. I’m in a tough spot with this case. Lindsey Hart is-” He stopped himself, not wanting to say too much. Gerry was an old buddy, but he was still on the other side. “Let’s just say she’s a friend of a friend. Of a very close friend. I want to help her if I can. But I don’t want to get involved in this if…”

  “If what?” Gerry said, scoffing. “If she’s guilty?”

  Jack didn’t return the smile. His expression was dead serious.

  “Come on, Jack. You didn’t expect me to look you in the eye and say, ‘Yup, you’re right buddy. Take the case. These investigators are breathing down the neck of the wrong suspect.’ Or did you?”

  “At this point, I just want to know how honest my own client is being with me. I need to verify something. It has to do with the time of death.”

  “Even if I knew the details of this case, which I don’t, I couldn’t comment on the investigation.”

  “Sure you could. It’s just a question of whether you will or not.”

  “Give me one good reason why I should.”

  “Because I’m calling in every favor, every ounce of friendship that ever existed between us.”

  Gerry averted his eyes, as if the plea had made him uncomfortable. “You’re making this awfully personal.”

  “For me, it doesn’t get any more personal than this.”

  Gerry sat quietly for a moment, thinking. Finally, he looked at Jack and said, “What do you need?”

  “There’s a ton of information missing from the NCIS report, but one hole in particular has me scratching my head. Lindsey Hart says that her husband was alive when she left the house at five-thirty A.M. The medical examiner puts the time of death between three and five A.M.”

  “Not the first time the forensic evidence contradicts a suspect’s v
ersion of events.”

  “Hear me out on this. The victim was shot in the head with his own weapon. The report makes no mention of a silencer. In fact, he was shot with his own gun, which was recovered in the bedroom just a few feet away from his body. No silencer in sight, no tattered pillow or blanket that was used to muffle the noise.”

  “So?”

  “They had a ten-year-old son. If Lindsey Hart shot her husband between three and five A.M., don’t you think their son would have heard the gun go off?”

  “Depends on how big the house is.”

  “This is a military base. Even for officer housing, we’re talking two bedrooms right next to each other, eleven hundred total square feet.”

  “What does the NCIS report say?”

  “Nothing that I could find. Maybe it’s on one of the pages that was blacked out.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Either way, I want to know how the investigators account for the sound of the gunshot. How is it that a woman fires off a 9 mm Beretta, and her ten-year-old-son in the next room sleeps right through it?”

  “Could be a sound sleeper.”

  “Sure. That could well be their explanation.”

  “And if it is?”

  Jack paused, as if to underscore his words. “If that’s the best they can come up with, Lindsey Hart may have just found herself a lawyer.”

  A weighty silence lingered between them. Finally, Gerry said, “I’ll see what I can do. Keeping Jack Swyteck off the case might be just enough incentive for the lead prosecutor to cough up a little information.”

  “Wow. That may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”

  “Or maybe I just don’t like women who murder their husbands and then run out and hire a sharp defense lawyer.”

  Jack nodded slowly, as if he’d deserved that. “The sooner the better on this, okay?”

  “Like I said, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Sure.” He rose and shook Gerry’s hand, then thanked him and said good-bye. He knew the way out.

  4

  The 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.”

  5

  Jack 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 tigh
ter. “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.”