Neil had a pained expression, as if he wanted to follow Jack’s reasoning, but wasn’t quite with him. “So somebody cuts off Jamal’s foot and dumps his body where McKenna’s mother disappeared. Why?”
“Not just somebody,” said Jack. “I think we’re talking about McKenna’s killer. The same guy who killed Shada when she started closing in on him. The same guy who killed Jamal as soon as he got out of jail and-maybe-picked up on the trail Shada was following.”
“Could be,” said Neil. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a client anymore. So I’m not sure what we can do about it.”
“I know what I want to do,” said Jack.
“What?”
“I’m going to have another talk with Chuck Mays.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
It was Monday evening when Jack returned to the Mays estate on Tahiti Beach in CocoPlum.
For nearly two days, his phone calls to Chuck Mays had gone unanswered, and an unannounced visit seemed too confrontational. Finally, a secretary called from MLFC headquarters late Monday afternoon to say that Mr. May’s would be jet-lagged but expecting Jack at his house around nine P.M.
Jack rang the doorbell and waited.
“In the backyard,” said Mays, his voice crackling over the intercom speaker at the entrance. “I’m making s’mores.”
S’mores? Jack didn’t verbalize his thoughts, but his expression was caught on a security camera, and Mays’ voice crackled again on the speaker.
“Don’t act like you don’t fucking like them, Swyteck.”
An Eagle Scout couldn’t have said it better.
The door unlocked with an automated click, which Jack took as his invitation to enter unescorted. The rear of the house was a wall of windows, and from the foyer Jack could see all the way through to the backyard. Beyond the patio, on a finger of land that protruded into the moonlit waterway, a campfire glowed in the darkness. The sliding-glass door was unlocked, and Jack followed the path of stepping-stones around the pool and through the garden to find Chuck Mays seated on a log before a crackling fire. It was a cool night for Miami, but it was still south Florida, which meant that Mays was wearing hiking shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt that said, 1f u c4n r34d th1s, u r34lly n33d 2 g3t l41d.
If you can read this, you really need to get laid. The speed with which he’d decoded it troubled Jack. Damn, I miss Andie.
Mays handed him a skewered marshmallow, seeming to sense that Jack had solved the riddle. “S’mores are the next best thing,” he said.
A light breeze was blowing in from the water, but it was still too warm for a jacket. As Jack removed his, the wind shifted and the smoke overcame him, sending Jack scrambling to the other side of the campfire, where he could breathe.
“S’mores were McKenna’s favorite when she was a little girl,” said Mays. He stuffed the toasted marshmallow between two graham crackers and waited for the chocolate to melt. Jack found a hot spot above some glowing embers and held his marshmallow over it. Mays stuffed the gooey treat into his mouth, chewing roundly.
“So tell me what’s on your mind, Jack.”
It seemed absurd to discuss Jamal under these circumstances. More precisely, it would have seemed absurd, if it hadn’t felt so choreographed. This was all staged, of course-Mays taking the steam out of a potential confrontation by holding a fireside chat with his mouth full of McKenna’s favorite childhood snack.
“Jamal is on my mind,” said Jack. “I’m trying to figure out who cut off his foot, tortured him to death, and then dumped his body less than two hundred yards from where your wife disappeared in the Everglades.”
“You’re on fire,” said Mays.
“What?”
“Your marshmallow is burning.”
Jack yanked it out of the fire, and the flaming mess dropped like red-hot lava onto his foot, just above the shoe leather. Jack jumped up and let out a yelp, then smothered the flame with his jacket. It had burned through his sock, and he was sure the skin would blister. Mays roared with laughter, and Jack decided not to say what he was thinking.
Mays looked at him and said, “No, I’m not.”
“You’re not what?” said Jack.
“You think I’m enjoying this.”
Jack felt chills. He was dead-on. The guy really is a genius.
“Truth is,” said Mays, “I haven’t enjoyed a damn thing in three years.”
Jack couldn’t imagine ever being friends with Mays, but it was impossible not to feel sorry for a man who’d lost so much. Even though Jack knew he was risking a punch in the nose, he could think of only one response.
“Jamal didn’t kill your daughter.”
Mays narrowed his eyes, and Jack braced himself for that punch.
“I guess we’ll never know,” said Mays.
“I think his killer is the same person who killed your wife. And I think whoever killed your wife also killed your daughter.”
The fire hissed, and the last remnants of Jack’s marshmallow burst into flames on a charred log.
Jack continued. “Technically, the attorney-client privilege survives the death of a client, but there are things about his detention in Prague that would have come out at trial, and that Jamal wanted you to know. For one, Jamal’s interrogators threatened to kill McKenna if he didn’t talk.”
That drew a slight reaction-enough for Jack to discern that it was the first time Mays had heard it.
“What did they want to know?” asked Mays.
“The questions were all about the work he was doing for you. Project Round Up, to be specific.”
“I don’t talk about that.”
“Neither did Jamal-which got him killed. So tell me: Why would someone in Prague interrogate him about Project Round Up?”
No response. A burning log shifted, sending sparks fluttering upward like a swarm of fireflies.
“Does it have to do with national security?” Jack asked. “Rounding up terrorists?”
Mays stared into the fire, apparently unwilling even to consider the question.
“I know much more than you think I do,” said Jack, though he was careful not to use Andie’s name. “I know that the FBI seized Jamal’s computers after McKenna was murdered, and that they found encrypted messages that related to terrorist organizations.”
Mays leaned forward, poking at the ashes with his stick. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“Did you know his father was a recruiter for al-Shabaab?”
“I wouldn’t know al-Shabaab from shish kebab.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Nobody told me anything about his old man until after Jamal was indicted for murder.”
Jack hesitated, but this was getting frustrating. “We’re tap dancing here,” said Jack, “so let me just say it straight: I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will. Because I’ve got a theory, and I think it’s a good one. Like everyone else in your business, you want to be the go-to guy for technology and homeland security.”
“Is that a crime?”
“No. But it’s not merely patriotic. It’s profitable. I think you and Jamal were working on a supercomputer that could find and tap into encrypted messages between suspected terrorists. I think Jamal was using his father to get access to those messages so that you could test your decoding algorithms. Maybe Jamal even pretended to be sympathetic to his father’s cause. That’s what got him on somebody’s terrorist watch list. That’s what got him
