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 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.’ ”
