“Where are you going?”
“Just call.”
“Jack, don’t go in there!”
He dialed 911 and handed her the phone. “Just stay on the line while I check this out.”
He hurried across the room to the dresser and took the gun from the top drawer. He quickly removed the lock and started toward the bathroom. Jack didn’t think of himself as a gun person, but one attack against your wife has a way of making you forever mindful of self-defense. Cindy called his name once more, a final plea to keep him from doing something stupid, but she was soon in conversation with the 911 operator.
“My crazy husband is going in there right now,” Jack heard her say. But that didn’t stop him. Too many weird things had happened in the last two weeks. He wasn’t about to let something-or
He stood in the bathroom doorway with arms extended and both hands clasped around the gun. He was aiming at nothing but at the ready. “Who’s in here?”
He waited but got no answer.
“The police are on their way. Now, who’s in here?”
Still no answer. He stepped inside and checked the floor. He saw no blood, but he’d ventured no farther than the first of two sinks-his sink. It wasn’t quite far enough inside their bathroom to see into the back area by the big vanity mirror and Roman tub-the place where Cindy had seen the blood.
He took two more steps and froze. He was standing at Cindy’s sink. Her medicine cabinet was half-open, and in the angled reflection he saw it: a glistening, crimson line of blood on a floor of white ceramic tile.
His pulse quickened. Jack had seen plenty of blood before, visited many a crime scene. There was nothing like seeing it in your own house. “Do you need help?”
His voice echoed off the tiled walls, as if to assure him that no answer would come. He took two more steps, then a third. His grip tightened on the gun. His steps became half-steps. Weighted with trepidation, he turned the corner. His eyes tracked the bright red line to its source. He faced the Roman tub and gasped.
A bloody hand hung limply over the side-a woman’s hand. For an instant Jack felt paralyzed. He swallowed his fear and inched closer. Then he stopped, utterly horrified yet unable to look away.
She was completely unclothed, only blood to cover her nakedness. An empty bottle of liquor rested at her hip. It was literally a bloodbath, her life seeming to have drained from the slit in her left wrist. Red rivulets streaked the basin, the thickest pool of blood having gathered near her feet.
“Jessie,” he said, his voice quaking. “Oh… my… God.”
13
•
The Swyteck house was an active crime scene. An ambulance and the medical examiner’s van were parked side by side on the front lawn, a seeming contradiction between life and death. The driveway was filled with police cars, some with blue lights swirling. Uniformed officers, crime scene investigators, and detectives were coming and going at the direction of the officer posted at the door. The first media van had arrived soon after the police. More had followed, and six of them were parked on the street. Neighbors watched from a safe distance on the sidewalk.
Assistant State Attorney Benno Jancowitz tried not to smile.
Jancowitz was a veteran in the major crimes section, with two dozen murder trials under his belt, and he had the seemingly carved-in-wax worry lines on his face to prove it. The Miami-Dade office kept at least one prosecutor on call to attend crime scenes, but it was no coincidence that Jancowitz was on this particular assignment. A buddy had tipped him off that the body was at Jack Swyteck’s house, knowing that it would be of special interest to Jancowitz.
After four years of death-penalty work for the Freedom Institute, Jack was persona non grata at the state attorney’s office. In fact, he’d handed Jancowitz his first loss ever in a capital case. Jack’s stint as a federal prosecutor had only worsened things. He was assigned to the public-corruption section and put two cops in jail for manufacturing evidence in the prosecution of a murder that was only made to appear gang-related. The assistant state attorney in the case was Benno Jancowitz. He was never accused of any wrongdoing himself, but the controversy had definitely bumped him off the fast track within the state attorney’s office.
Jancowitz caught up with the assistant medical examiner just as she was hoisting her evidence into the back of the van.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Mr. Jancowitz, how are you, sir?” It was her style to be rather stiff and formal even with people she liked.
“You about finished in there?”
“Almost. Pretty messy scene, I’m afraid.”
“I know, I saw.”
She removed her hair net and latex gloves. “Was the victim a friend of the Swytecks?”
“No. A client, as I understand it.”
“Ah,” she said.
He wasn’t sure what the “ah” meant. Maybe something along the lines of
“
“That’s one of the things I was going to ask. How long has she been an it?”
She laid a hand atop her evidence kit and said, “I should be able to give you a better idea once I get these maggots under the microscope.”
“You got maggots?”
“I scraped them from her eyes. Some in her nose, too. Looks like they’re hatching, or about to hatch.”
“Where does that put the time of death?”
“Twelve hours, give or take. Not everyone puts as much stock in forensic entomology as I do, but I’m a firm believer that the insect pattern that develops on a corpse is about as reliable an indicator of time of death as you’ll find. Absent a witness, of course.”
“But you need flies to have maggots.”
“Right. Flies are drawn to the smell of a dead body within ten minutes. They lay thousands of eggs, usually in the eyes, nose, and mouth. That’s why the hatching is so crucial in determining time of death.”
“But this body was indoors.”
“Well, they don’t call them
“I didn’t really notice any flies inside.”
“Doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“House was all sealed up, too. Air conditioner was on.”
“There was that broken window pane in the back, on the French door. Flies could have easily come in through that.”
“Yeah. Or the flies that laid the maggots could have found the body outside in the open air. Before it was moved inside.”
“That would sound a lot more like homicide than suicide.”
“Yes,” he said, thinking aloud. “It would, wouldn’t it.”
Cindy was waiting in the car. She and Jack had been backing out of the driveway, on their way to her mother’s house, when a detective arrived on the scene. Cindy was eager to get away from the chaos, but the detective promised to keep Jack only a few minutes. A few minutes had turned into half an hour.
She peered through the windshield, her stomach churning at the sight of her house being transformed into a crime scene. Long strands of yellow police tape kept the onlookers at bay, which triggered a wholly incongruous
