The Pardon

Chapter 7

Governor Swyteck woke at six o’clock Thursday morning. As he showered and shaved, his wife, Agnes, lay awake in bed, exhausted after a night spent tossing and turning. Harold Swyteck was not a man who kept secrets from his wife. Yesterday he’d fabricated a story about a bad fall to explain his disheveled appearance to his security guards. But he told his wife the truth-as much out of concern for her safety as out of a need to be honest.

Agnes listlessly flipped on the television with her remote, tuning in to the local “News at Sunrise.” Harry was in it again, this time appearing with a group of ministers, priests, and rabbis who were endorsing his candidacy. As her husband gratefully acknowledged the clergy’s words of praise, she felt a surge of pride, but then her thoughts returned to what he’d told her the previous evening.

Agnes had always feared that a lifetime of public service could put her Harry in danger-that eventually or of his enemies might do something more than just threaten. But her fear gave way to more complicated feelings when Harry told her that this particular attacker had special knowledge about the Fernandez case. Agnes knew all too well how her husband had anguished over the decision not to grant a stay of execution-how he’d second-guessed the clarity of his own judgment. She understood her husband’s pain. She shared it. Not just because there was no way to know whether the right decision had been made, but because of Jack.

She’d pretty much botched it as a stepmother. She knew that. She’d tried to reach out to her stepson countless times, but there was nothing left but to accept the reality of his bitterness. She might have had a fighting chance of winning his love but for a low moment twenty-three years before. It had happened the day that her doctor broke the news that she and Harry would never have children, and the awful truth had caused her to reach for the bottle.

She’d been too drunk to pick Jack up after kindergarten, so a neighbor had dropped him off. Jack came in quietly through the back door, making a conscious effort to avoid his new “mother,” whom he still didn’t trust.

“Jack,” Agnes had muttered as her eyes popped open. Her tongue was thick as frozen molasses. “Come here, sweetie.”

Jack tried to scoot past her, but Agnes reached out and managed to grab him by the back of his britches as he passed. She wrapped her arms around him in an awkward embrace and mashed her lips against his cheek. “Give Mommy a big hug,” she said, stinking of her gin martini. He struggled to get out of her grip, but Agnes squeezed him tighter. “Don’t you want to give Mommy a hug?” she asked.

“No,” he grimaced. “And you’re not my mommy!”

Resentment flared within her. She pushed little Jack off her lap but held him tightly by the wrist, so he couldn’t go anywhere. “Don’t you dare talk to me that way,” she scolded. Then she slapped him across the face. The boy burst into tears as he struggled to get loose, but Agnes wouldn’t release him.

“Let me go, you’re hurting me.”

“Hurt is the only thing you understand, young man. You don’t appreciate anything else. I’m the one who changed your dirty diapers. I’m the one who. . who”-she struggled to find the words-“lost sleep with all your crying in the night. Not your mother. I did it. I’m your mother. I’m all you’ve got!”

“You’re not my mommy. My mommy’s in heaven!”

Agnes didn’t know where the ugly words were coming from, but she couldn’t stop them. “Your mother isn’t dead, you little brat. She just didn’t want you!”

Jack’s hands trembled as he stared at his stepmother. “That’s a lie!” he cried. “A lie, lie, lie! That’s all it is! That’s-”

“. . the news at sunrise,” The anchorman’s voice drew Agnes out of her past. “From all of us at channel seven, have a great day.”

Agnes hit the off button as she returned from her memories. The governor stepped from the bathroom, dressed and ready to take his phone call at the corner of Teeth and Monroe, ready to find out the truth about Rau1 Fernandez. However, last night he’d promised his wife that he wouldn’t go without her blessing. She’d promised to sleep on it. As he stood at the foot of the bed, adjusting his necktie, she knew it was time for her to give him an answer.

“Well?” he asked.

Agnes sighed. It wasn’t an easy decision. Even taking a phone call could be dangerous. The man did have a knife. But if this was a way to ease Harry’s pain, a way to fix the rupture between her husband and her stepson, she couldn’t stand in his way.

“Don’t you dare take any chances, Harry Swyteck.”

The governor smiled appreciatively, then came to her and kissed her on the lips. “I’ll call you when it’s over. And don’t worry-I’m the original Chicken Little remember?”

Agnes nodded but without conviction. In the beginning of their marriage, when Harry had been on the police force, such assurances were offered on a daily basis. It was her knowledge of her husband’s innate bravery that worried her so much.

He pulled away, then stopped as he reached the door. “But if I don’t call by one-”

“Don’t say it, Harry,” she said, eyes glassy now with tears. “Don’t even think it.”

He nodded slowly. “I’ll call you,” he promised. Then he was out the door.

More out of an ingrained sense of obligation than passion for his work, Jack put on jeans and a polo shirt-typical summer attire at the Freedom Institute-gave Thursday a friendly pat on the rump, and headed out the door. In the car he brooded on whether he would tender his resignation. When he arrived at nine o’clock, he still hadn’t come to a decision. It was his first day back in the office in almost three weeks, since the Goss trial had begun. He stood in the foyer, taking a hard look at the place where he’d worked for the past four years. The reception area was little more than a hallway. Bright fluorescent lighting showed every stain on the indoor-outdoor carpet. A few unmatched chairs lined the bare white walls. An oversized metal desk was at the end of the hall. It belonged to the pregnant woman who served as both the Institute’s receptionist and only secretary. Behind her were four windowless offices, one for each of the lawyers. Beyond that was a vintage sixties kitchen, where the lawyers did everything from interviewing witnesses to eating their bagged lunches.

“Victory!” chorused Jack’s colleagues as he stepped into the kitchen. All three of the Institute’s other lawyers were smiling widely and assuming a celebratory stance around the Formica-topped table. There was Brian, a suntanned and sandy-haired outdoor type who moved as smoothly in court as he did on water skis. And Eve, the resident jokester who helped everyone keep sanity, the only woman Jack had ever known to smoke a pipe. And Neil Goderich, who’d lost his ponytail since establishing the Institute twenty-eight years ago, but who still wore his shirt collar unbuttoned beneath his tie-not just to be casual, but because his neck had swollen more than an inch since he last bought a new dress shirt.

The home team cheered as they broke out a six-dollar bottle of cold duck and popped the cork.

“Congratulations!” said Neil as he filled four coffee-stained mugs.

They raised their cups in unison, and Jack smiled at their celebration; although he didn’t share the festive mood, he appreciated the gesture. He considered them all friends. At his first interview four years ago he’d learned they were down-to-earth people who believed in themselves and their principles. They were honest enough to tell even the son of a prominent politician that anything “politically correct” was a walking oxymoron. It was the strength of their collective character that made it hard for Jack to leave. But suddenly, he knew the time had come.

“Excellent job!” said Neil, a sentiment echoed by the others.

“Thank you,” said Jack, hoping to stem any further backslapping. “I really appreciate this. But. . as long as everyone’s here, I might as well take this chance to tell you.” He looked at them and sighed. “Guys, Eddy Goss was my last case. I’m leaving the Institute.”

That took the fizz right out of their cold duck.

Jack placed his cup on the table, turned, and quietly headed toward his office, leaving them staring at one another. The announcement had been awkward, but he didn’t feel bike explaining. With no other job offer in hand, he was having a hard time explaining it to himself.

He spent a couple of hours packing up his things, going through old files. At eleven o’clock Neil Goderich appeared in his doorway.

“When you first came here,” Neil began, “we honestly wondered if you’d ever fit in.”

Jack picked up some books, placed them in a box. “I wondered the same thing.”

Neil smiled sadly, like a parent sending a kid off to college. He took a seat on the edge of Jack’s desk, beside a stack of packed boxes. “We never would have hired your type,” he said as he stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “You had ‘big greedy law firm’ written all over your resume. Someone who clearly valued principal and interest over interest in one’s principles.”

“Then why’d you hire me?”

Neil smiled wryly. “Because you were the son of Harold Swyteck. And I could think of no better way to piss off the future law-and-order governor than to have his son come work for a long-haired leftover from a lost generation.”

It was Jack’s turn to smile. “So you put up with me for the same reason I put up with you.”

“I suspected that was why you were here,” he said, then turned serious. “You were tired of doing everything your old man said you should do. The Institute was as far off the beaten path as you could get.”

Jack fell silent. He and Neil had never spoken about his father, and Neil’s unflattering perception of the relationship was more than a little disturbing.

Neil leaned forward and folded his hands, the way he always did when he was speaking on the level. “Look, Jack. I read the papers. I watch TV. I know you’re catching hell about Goss, and I know the bad press can’t be doing the governor’s campaign any good. Maybe you feel guilty about that. . maybe your old man is even pressuring you to leave us. I don’t know, and that’s none of my business. But this much is my business: You’ve got what it takes, Jack. You’re an incredibly talented lawyer. And deep down, I know you’re not like all those people out there who are perfectly content to put up with poverty and drugs and homelessness and all the other problems that turn children into criminals, so long as the criminal justice system allows them revenge. The Freedom Institute deprives them of that revenge-of their sense of ‘justice.’ But we are doing the right thing here. You’ve done the right thing.”

Jack looked away, then sighed. He had never been as sure about right and wrong as Neil was, though there had indeed been times when he saw the higher purpose, when he actually believed that each acquittal reaffirmed the rights of all people. But it took more than vision to defend the likes of Eddy Goss day after day. It took passion-the kind of passion that started revolutions Jack had felt that passion only once in his life: the night his father had executed Raul Fernandez. But that was different. Fernandez had been innocent.

“I m sorry, Neil. But the lofty goals just don’t drive me anymore. Maybe I wouldn’t be leaving if I’d defend d just one murderer who was sorry for what he’d done. Not innocent, mind you. Just sorry. Someone who saw a not-guilty verdict as a second chance at life, rather than another chance to kill. Instead, I got clients like Eddy Goss. I hate to disappoint you, but I just can’t stay here anymore. If I did, I’d be nothing but a hypocrite.”

Neil nodded, not in agreement but in understanding. “I am disappointed,” he said, “but not in you.” He rose from the edge of the desk and shook Jack’s hand. “The door’s open, Jack. If ever you change your mind.”

“Thanks.”

“Got time for lunch today?”

Jack checked his watch. Almost eleven-thirty. He had no official plans, but right now he figured he needed a stronger dose of good cheer than Neil could provide. “I’d like a rain check on that, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Neil said, giving him a mock salute as he turned and left.

Ten minutes later, Jack’s thoughts were on Cindy as he walked toward his car, weighed down with three of the ten boxes he’d packed. He’d still had no return call from her. Which meant either she hadn’t gotten his messages or she was sending him a message of her own.

He thought back to the last night they’d been together, how she’d told him she was going over to her best friend Gina’s to console her. The story might have been believable if it had been anyone but Gina-a woman to whom the adjective needy didn’t apply. Certainly Jack had never thought of her that way, and he knew her quite well. It was through her that he’d met Cindy. Fourteen months ago, a mutual friend had fixed him up on a blind date with Gina. It was their first and only. She’d kept Jack waiting in her living room nearly an hour while she got ready. Cindy was Gina’s roommate back then, and she kept Jack entertained while he waited. He and Cindy clicked. Boy, did they click. He spent the rest of the evening with Gina just trying to find out about Cindy, and Cindy was the only woman he’d dated ever since. At first, Gina had seemed upset by the turn of events. But as he and Cindy became more serious, Gina came to accept it.

He checked the traffic at the curb, waited for the light to change, then started across the boulevard toward the Institute’s parking lot. He was still wrapped up in his thoughts and struggling under the weight of the boxes when he noticed a car rolling through the red light. He picked up his pace to get out of the way, but the car increased its speed. Suddenly, it swerved sharply in his direction. He dove from the street to the sidewalk to keep from getting run over. As he tumbled to the concrete, he caught a glimpse of the retreating car. The first letter on the license plate was a Z. In Florida, that meant it was a rental.

His heart was in his throat. He couldn’t stop shaking. He looked to see if there were any witnesses, but he saw no one. The Freedom Institute wasn’t in a neighborhood where many people strolled the sidewalks. He remained on the ground for a moment, trying to sort out whether it was an accident, some street gang’s initiation rite, just another crazy driver-or something else. He didn’t want to be paranoid, but it was hard to dismiss the event as an accident. He picked himself up, then froze as he thought he heard a phone ringing. He listened carefully. It was his phone, a cheap but reliable car phone he’d installed at Neil Goderich’s insistence, just in case his twenty-year-old Mustang happened to leave him stranded in one of those questionable areas that were breeding grounds for Freedom Institute clientele.

He looked around. He was still alone. The phone kept ringing. He walked to his car, disengaged the alarm with the button on his key chain, and opened the door. The phone must have rung twenty times. Finally, he picked up.

“Hello,” he answered.

“Swyteck?”

Jack exhaled. It was that voice-that raspy, disguised voice on his home telephone two nights ago.

“Who is this?”

There was no answer.

“Who is this?”

“You let the killer loose. You’re the one who let him go.”

“What do you want from me?”

There was a long pause, an audible sigh, and then the response: “Stop the killer, Swyteck. I dare you.”

“What-” Jack started to say. But he was too late.

The line clicked, and they were disconnected.