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.’ ”
“What did you say?”
She hesitated, as if she wasn’t quite sure if Jack was ready to hear her theory. “My husband wasn’t so much murdered as he was…eliminated.”
“How do you mean, eliminated?”
“Silenced.”
“By whom?”
She seemed unaware of it, but her hand had become a tight, angry fist around her tissue. “That NCIS investigative report has been completely sanitized. Doesn’t it make you wonder what they’re hiding?”
“From what I understand, that kind of redaction is not unique to this case.”
“I’m sure it happens all the time. Whenever the navy has something to hide.”
She was starting to sound paranoid, but Jack measured his words. “After all you’ve been through, you’re certainly entitled to a certain amount of skepticism.”
“You may not be aware of this, but the military’s track record on homicide investigations is less than stellar.”
“That’s a pretty sweeping indictment.”
“I’m not saying they’re incompetent. I’m saying that certain people in the military are not beyond a cover-up.”
“And you know this because…”
“I was married to a career officer for twelve years. And I’ve done my homework. Did you know that the NCIS once tried to convince a mother and father that their son had shot himself in the head even though it was a scientific fact that he couldn’t have produced the bullet trajectory unless he was standing on his head when he pulled the trigger?”
“That’s appalling.”
“It gets better. In another case, the NCIS issued a finding on July ninth that a Marine’s wounds were self-inflicted. You know when they got the results back on ballistics, gunshot residue, and blood and tissue tests? August sixth.”
“Obviously, you’ve looked into this. But this isn’t a case of homicide covered up as suicide.”
“The point is, they are capable of doing whatever suits their needs. They needed my husband out of the way, but no one would ever have believed that he had committed suicide. He loved life too much. So they did away with him, and instead of calling it suicide, they make it look like his wife did it. And then they issue this so-called investigative report that’s completely full of holes. All meaningful information is blacked out in the name of protecting military secrets and national security.”
Jack gave her a long, hard look. “For the sake of argument, let’s assume a cover-up. You’re saying that the military decided not to paint his death as suicide because they didn’t think anyone would ever believe he killed himself.”
“That’s right.”
“But for some reason the military came to the conclusion that no one would have any trouble believing that you would kill your husband.”
She didn’t answer right away, obviously uncomfortable with the way Jack had dissected things. “That’s the essence of any frame-up,” she said.
“A frame-up is a huge leap. Especially when you’ve shown me no motive.”
“If you knew my husband, you’d understand my suspicions. We spent almost a third of our marriage on that little fenced-in chunk of Cuba. Year after year, I begged him to put in for a transfer. People are nice enough there, and it has a sense of community. But I hated the isolation. Oscar, on the other hand, was Mr. Guantánamo all the way. He wanted to rise as high as he possibly could right there on the island, no desire to go anywhere. Then, suddenly, that’s all out the window. Two weeks before he was killed, completely out of the blue, he tells me he thinks it’s time to leave.”