The Pardon

Chapter 38

Harry Swyteck received a full report on the day’s events in his Tallahassee office. Gina’s testimony was first he’d heard of Jack’s stalker. While the rest of the world took the story as Jack’s motive to kill Eddy Goss, he saw it differently, because he also had been harassed before the murder-and he, too, had believed it was Goss.

His first instinct was to make a public statement, but it was quite possible that going public with what had happened to him could strengthen the case against Jack. From the jury’s standpoint, evidence that both Swytecks were being threatened would only double Jack’s motive to kill Goss. And even telling Jack wouldn’t be wise because he’d have to divulge everything he knew when he testified in his own defense.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. “This just came,” his secretary said as she entered his office, handing him a large, sealed envelope. “I didn’t want to interrupt, but the courier said it relates to your son’s trial.”

“Thank you, Paula.” It was a brown envelope, with no return address. He was immediately suspicious. He waited for her to disappear behind the closed office door, and then he cautiously slit the seal with his letter opener and peered inside. He paused. Photographs-again. He feared it was more of the same horrible photographs his blackmailer had shown him after his carriage ride in the park. But there was only one photo this time. Slowly, he removed the large black-and-white glossy, then froze. He’d never seen the shot before, but the subject was certainly familiar. It was taken on the night of the murder. It was a photo of the governor walking away from Goss’s apartment, after he’d chickened out and decided not to go inside, toting the shoe box full of cash his blackmailer had told him to deliver to apartment 217 at four o’clock in the morning.

His hands shook as he laid the photograph facedown on his desk. Only then did he notice the message on the back. It was a poem-brief, but to the point:

One word to your son,

one word to the cops,

we double the fun,

the other shoe drops.

The governor went rigid in his chair, disgusted by the way he was being manipulated. But he knew exactly what “shoe” would drop. This was one last threat-a solemn promise that if he came forward in defense of his son, the police would shortly come into possession of the wing tips that could connect the governor and his extraneous footprints not only to the murder of Eddy Goss, but to that of Wilfredo Garcia as well. And there was more still: The tape recording of the bribe, the payoff for the victim’s photographs-all of it would bring into public focus that this entire tragedy was rooted in the execution of an innocent man.

The governor held his head in his hands, agonizing. He felt compelled to act, yet at the same time paralyzed. He had to make sure he didn’t play into the hands of the enemy. He had to figure out a way to help his son-without self-destructing.