On Thursday morning, two hours before the scheduled arraignment of Jamal Wakefield in Miami-Dade County circuit court, Jack went to the Pretrial Detention Center with just one objective:
“I’m withdrawing as counsel,” he told Neil.
The long prison corridor was lined with iron bars, and Neil had been waiting for Jack outside one of the attorney-client conference rooms. Charged with a capital offense, Jamal was held in a safety cell, away from the drunk drivers and petty thieves, which meant that he was allowed just two “under glass” visits per week. Inmates were allowed to meet and talk privately with their lawyers, however, and Jamal Wakefield was waiting on the other side of the locked door. Jack blurted out the words before Neil could even say hello.
“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “I’ll do whatever I can today to transfer the case to you. But I’m out.”
Neil just smiled, completely unfazed. “Like old times, isn’t it?”
It was indeed deja vu. Jack had probably resigned a dozen times from the institute before actually packing up and leaving. It wasn’t just the emotional drain of defending the guilty. As he’d told Neil more than ten years ago, he probably could have stuck it out if he had met just one guy on death row who was genuinely sorry for what he’d done. But those weren’t the kind of cases that the institute handled.
“Give me one chance to change your mind,” said Neil.
“It won’t work.”
“I’ll cut off my ponytail if it doesn’t.”
Whoa. That was serious. “You’re on,” said Jack.
The guard unlocked the door from the inside, and the two lawyers entered.
“I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” the guard said, and then he closed the door.
The fluorescent lights overhead were so bright that Jack almost needed sunglasses. The floor was bare concrete, and the cinder-block walls were pale yellow with no windows. Seated at the Formica-topped table was Jamal Wakefield. The transformation since Gitmo was startling. A shave and a haircut alone made him look years younger, and even after three years of incarceration, it was easy to see how handsome McKenna’s boyfriend had once been. Jack truly didn’t recognize him.
The silver-haired man seated beside Jamal, however, was another story.
“Long time no see,” said Peter Swenson.
In a classic case of overcorrection, Jack had literally switched sides after leaving the institute, spending the next two years of his career as a federal prosecutor. As Neil knew well, Swenson was the polygraph examiner that Jack had used regularly to test his informants.
“With my ponytail on the line, I wanted Jamal to be examined by someone you trust,” said Neil.
“All right,” said Jack. “You got my attention.”
Advance clearance was required to administer a polygraph in jail, but Neil had taken care of that, and Swenson’s equipment was ready to go. Two fingers on Jamal’s left hand were wired to electrodes. Pneumograph tubes wrapped his chest and abdomen. An inflatable rubber bladder rested on the seat of the hard wooden chair beneath him, and another was behind his back. A blood pressure cuff squeezed his right bicep.
“Time’s a-wastin’,” said Neil. “Let’s roll.”
Swenson turned his attention to his cardio amplifier and galvanic skin monitor atop the table. The paper scroll was rolling as the needle inked out a pulsating line.
“All set,” he said.
Jack knew the drill, and Swenson had taken care of the preliminaries before his arrival. The first task was to put the subject at ease. He started with questions that would make Jamal feel comfortable with him as an interrogator. Do you like music? Have you ever owned a car? Is your hair purple? They seemed innocuous, but with each answer Swenson was monitoring the subject’s physiological response to establish the lower parameters of his blood pressure, respiration, and perspiration. It was almost a game of cat and mouse. The examiner needed to quiet him down, then catch him in a small lie that would serve as a baseline reading for a falsehood. The standard technique-Jack had seen it unfold many times-was to ask something even a truthful person might lie about.
“Have you thought about sex in the last ten minutes?”
“Uh, no.”
Jamal blinked about five times. It wasn’t something that men necessarily liked to admit-especially when charged with the obsession-driven murder of their girlfriend-but it was a scientific fact that anyone with a Y chromosome thought about sex every three minutes. The room fell silent as the examiner focused on his readings. He appeared satisfied. He knew what it looked like on the polygraph when Jamal lied. Now he could test his truth telling on the questions that really mattered.
“Is your name Jamal Wakefield?”
“Yes.”
“Are we in Miami, Florida?”
“Yes.”
Jamal seemed almost robotic in his responses-and rather than staring off blankly at the wall or the ceiling, he was looking straight at Jack, fully aware of the man he needed to convince.
“Is today Sunday?”
“No.”
“Are you fluent in Chinese?”
“No.”
“Did you kill McKenna Mays?”
“No.”
“Have you ever climbed Mount Everest?”
“No.”
“Are you a man?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sitting in a chair?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who killed McKenna Mays?”
“No.”
Not a flinch. It was making Jack uncomfortable, the way Jamal had locked eyes with him, but Jack wasn’t going to be the one to back down.
“Do you wear eyeglasses?”
“No.”
“Are you in jail?”
“Yes.”
“Is your prison jumpsuit orange?”
“Yes.”
“Were you in the United States at the time of McKenna Mays’death?”
“No.”
“Are you glad this test is over?”
Jamal almost answered, then realized that he was being toyed with. He almost seemed to smile as his gaze slowly shifted from Jack to the examiner.
“I guess so,” he said.
Swenson disconnected the monitors. “I’ll need a few minutes to interpret the results,” he said as he packed up the equipment.
Neil summoned the guard. The door opened, Swenson left the room, and the lawyers were alone with their client.
Jack looked at Neil and said, “If that test shows any signs of deception, I’m out.”
“Understood,” said Neil.
“Even if the test is clean, I’m probably still out.”
Jamal spoke up. “I didn’t kill McKenna.”
Jack glanced over. “You shouldn’t have waited until today to tell me that.”
“Last time we talked, I hadn’t been charged with anything.”
“The guy has a point,” said Neil.
Jack and Jamal had locked eyes again. “You don’t deny the fact that you were McKenna’s boyfriend, do you?”
“I don’t deny that.”
“So you knew you were the prime suspect in McKenna’s murder.”
“Yes,” Jamal said. “I knew.”
“And that never once came up in our conversation at Gitmo, even after we switched to English.”
Jamal paused, then said, “That wasn’t my fault.”
“Whose fault was it?”
“Yours.”
“Mine?” said Jack, incredulous.
Jamal’s expression was completely serious. “I thought if I started speaking English to you that it would help build trust between us. The opposite happened. The way you reacted, you just shut me down.”
Jack replayed the moment in his mind. The English had definitely come as a surprise, and in hindsight Jack probably could have handled it better.
“I don’t remember shutting you down,” said Jack.
“I’m not saying you did it intentionally. That’s just the way it played out. You mentioned your grandfather was from the Czech Republic, and I told you I’d been there.”
“You told me in English,” said Jack.
“And from that point on, the whole conversation was all about my native tongue. We never followed up about Prague.”
“What was there to follow up about?”
Jamal gave him an assessing look. “That’s where I was when McKenna was murdered.”
The words came over Jack like an arctic front. Before he could speak, there was a knock at the door. Neil opened it, and Swenson entered the room. The lawyers and their client looked at him with anticipation, and Swenson delivered the news without delay.
“The test shows no signs of deception in any of the three areas of examination,” said Swenson.
Neil was openly smug about it, and he couldn’t help summarizing: “He didn’t kill McKenna, he doesn’t know who did, and he was outside the country when it happened.”
It was a bit of theater orchestrated by his old boss, but Jack had to admit that it was pretty effective.
The examiner’s work was finished. Neil thanked him, and Jack did likewise, and when the door closed, Jack’s gaze shifted back to the young man seated at the table before him. There were definitely still signs of prolonged incarceration-the thin face, the skin tone a bit off, the unhealthy fingernails. But Jamal was becoming more of an enigma with each passing minute.
“Something is missing here,” said Jack. “The police have a recording of the victim saying in her dying breath that you killed her, but you were in Prague?”
“That’s right,” said Jamal.
“Am I to believe that this case is as open and shut as handing over your passport to the state attorney?”
“My passport won’t show that I went anywhere.”
“Were you traveling illegally?”
“You could say that.”
“What about an airline ticket?”
“I can’t help you there.”
“Credit card statements or cell phone records?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Any photographs of you out of the country?”
“No.”
“Travel records of any kind?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
Jack puzzled for a moment, then asked, “Were you traveling with someone?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“That’s not really clear.”
“Are you being a smart-ass?”
“Not at all.”
“How did you get there?”
Jamal glanced at Neil, apparently seeking a green light-as if to ask, Do you think Swyteck is ready for this? Jack followed the prisoner’s gaze toward Neil, who simply pulled up a chair for his co-counsel.
“It’s a long story,” said Neil.
Jack didn’t move. Then finally, he came to the table and took a seat.
“All right,” he told his client, “let’s start at the beginning.”