Chapter 40
The next morning, Jack left the courthouse with a spring in his step. He’d spent two hours trying to convince a judge to suppress
evidence in a case that had nothing to do with Elliott. He won.
What a difference it made to have a client who actually spoke to him.
Jack hurried down the granite steps and started toward the parking lot. February was his favorite month in South Florida.
While most of the country was dealing with the worst of winter, Miami was at the peak of paradise. He put on his Wayfarer
sunglasses, loosened his silk necktie, and slung his suit coat over his shoulder. It was one of those perfect days that transported
him back to his life as a young lawyer, Jack before Andie, when he would put the top down on his red convertible and take
the scenic route along the river back to his office, cruising to U2 with his iPod at full volume.
Jack stopped at the entrance to the lot. These days there was no red convertible waiting for him, iPods could be found only
in the back of junk drawers, and his playlist was populated mostly with music that Righley liked. And, as usual, there was
more work to be done. Since his talk with CJ, he’d been contemplating the timing of his next move in Elliott’s case. He was
coming off a nice win in another case, and maybe he was on a roll.
No time like the present.
Jack pivoted, walked straight to the state attorney’s building, and checked in with the receptionist. Julianna Weller had a lunch appointment on her calendar but was willing to grant Jack “a quick meeting with a hard stop at noon.” Jack rode the elevator up and two minutes later was in the prosecutor’s office.
She greeted him cordially but checked her watch as she took a seat behind her desk.
“You have thirteen minutes,” she said, reminding him that “hard stop at noon” meant a very hard stop.
Jack settled into the armchair and wasted no time. “I’m here to talk about the analysis of the fingerprints lifted from Helena
Pollard’s Beretta.”
“What about it?”
“After the deposition, you told me there may be a print on the gun that doesn’t belong to Helena. What’s the status?”
“It’s been confirmed. There is indeed a print on the gun that does not belong to her.”
It was not the answer Jack had expected. “Whose print is it?”
“It can’t be determined.”
An even more puzzling answer. “Excuse me?”
“As I told you before, the print in question is of low quality. Our expert has been able to rule out the possibility that
it belongs to Helena Pollard. However, the specimen is not of sufficient quality to determine whose print it is.”
“How convenient for you,” said Jack. “If it can’t be determined whose fingerprint it is, you can argue that it belongs to
my client.”
“We all have to play with the cards we are dealt,” said Weller.
“That doesn’t mean I have to let you deal from the bottom of the deck.”
“I don’t appreciate that remark.”
“I don’t accept your analyst’s conclusion as final. I want my own fingerprint expert to examine that so-called inconclusive
fingerprint.”
“What do you think that will accomplish?”
“If your expert was able to rule out the possibility that the print belongs to Helena, it seems to me that he could have done
the same for Elliott—if you’d ask him to do that analysis. I can think of only one reason you didn’t ask: You were afraid he’d rule out Elliott.
So, if you’re too chicken to run that test, I’ll get my own expert to do it.”
“That’s quite a risk to take on your part, isn’t it? What if your expert confirms that the fingerprint belongs to Elliott Stafford?”
Jack didn’t share what he’d learned from CJ—that he’d given Helena the gun. Jack was betting that the “inconclusive” print
belonged to him.
“I’m willing to take that risk,” said Jack. “Because if I’m right, I have reasonable doubt.”
“Didn’t know you were a gambling man, Mr. Swyteck. Allow me to up the stakes for you.”
“What do you mean?”
She retrieved a folder from her desk drawer and handed it to Jack. “The ballistics report just came in this morning. I was
going to put it in the mail, but here’s your copy.”
Jack opened the report, but the prosecutor fed him the bottom line.
“The markings in the barrel of Helena Pollard’s gun match the ricochet bullet that was recovered from the dog. In other words,
her gun is the murder weapon.”
“Unless Owen Pollard shot himself.”
“I think we’re way beyond that,” she said. “My point is: If I were you, I’d leave well enough alone and just be happy that
it can’t be scientifically proven that the unidentified print belongs to Elliott Stafford.”
“Maybe you would, Julianna. But in so many ways, you are not me. Get the gun to my expert for the fingerprint analysis. Or
I’ll file a motion to compel with the court.”
“I understand your position,” she said, and then she checked her watch. “If you’ll excuse me, your time is up.”
“Yes,” said Jack, rising. “Time is up.”
Elliott was in his cell bunk.
“Yard time” at Turner-Guilford-Knight Correctional Center was from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Most of the inmates on Elliott’s cell block had signed up and seized the opportunity to get outdoors on a beautiful afternoon, maybe go for a walk or a jog, play basketball, or just feel the sunlight on their faces.
Elliott didn’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything.
He lay quietly in his top bunk, resting his head on a thin pillow, his gaze cast upward at a drawing of some sort on the ceiling.
The inmate before Elliott, or someone before her, had sketched an image in pencil.
With the passage of time, it had faded to the point that Elliott couldn’t tell what it might have been in its original glory.
He’d given up trying to discern the jailhouse artist’s intent and instead turned it into whatever he wanted to see, the way children might interpret the clouds, depending on how they were feeling.
On night one in his cell, he’d seen a unicorn.
By the end of the week, it looked more like a pit bull.
That afternoon, he saw nothing at all in the art.
Because he was feeling nothing on the inside.
As a teenager—after Elle had set the high school bathroom on fire—Elliott had been told that depression wasn’t a single feeling.
It was the “lack of feeling,” a muted emotional state of emptiness and apathy, and the complete loss of interest in activities
that would normally bring pleasure. By that measure, Elliott knew he was “depressed.” To some extent, depression was a predictable
response to incarceration, living with three other inmates in a metal cage the size of a typical bathroom. Elliott’s emotional
suffering, however, was not just about the institutionalized deprivation of any sense of self-worth and personal identity.
His suffering, in large part, was self-inflicted. The “speech strike” was taking its toll. His only break in his vow of silence
had been the argument with his mother in the mess hall. Even with all the history it had dredged up, he couldn’t deny that
it had felt good to finally speak. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could maintain his silence.
Especially if his lawyer was so determined to prove him innocent by proving someone else guilty.
“What?” Elliott gasped, as his throat was suddenly in the firm grasp of an enormous hand. Before he could react, his attacker yanked
him from the bunk and slammed him facedown on the floor. The impact nearly knocked him unconscious, but Elliott fought to
stay alert.
“Eyes to the floor!” his attacker said.
Elliott knew it was his cellmate, Mona, and the smell of bologna on her breath confirmed it.
Elliott fought through the mind-fog and did as commanded.
A trickle of blood ran from his mouth to the floor, the impact having caused him to bite his lip.
This would not turn out well, he feared, and he hoped that the sound of approaching footsteps was a guard.
All hope faded, however, as the shoes of an inmate came into focus and stopped just inches away from his face.
Mona still had him pinned to the floor, her knee buried into Elliott’s kidney, so there were at least two of them. The woman standing over him spoke.
“They’re sending me back to Lowell tomorrow,” she said.
Even without the reference to Florida’s largest maximum-security prison for women, Elliott would have recognized his mother’s
voice. “Good riddance,” he said.
Mona slammed her knee into his back like a sledgehammer, and Elliott groaned.
“Watch your mouth,” his mother said. “I need one thing from you before I go.”
“Fuck off.”
Mona punished him with her knee again, another blow of the sledgehammer. Elliott closed his eyes, trying to manage the pain.
“Elle and I had a secret,” his mother said.
Elliott gulped. He knew exactly what “secret” his mother was talking about.
“I need to know that Elle’s secret is safe with Elliott,” she added.
Elliott didn’t answer. Mona’s knee burrowed so deep that Elliott thought he might cough up his spleen.
“Bad things can happen after I’m gone,” his mother said. “Much worse than this. I need to hear you say that Elle’s secret
is safe with Elliott.”
The crushing pain in his back was unbearable. “Okay!” he said, but it was little more than a grunt.
“Okay what?” his mother asked.
“The secret is safe. It always has been.”
“Good,” his mother said. “My work here is done.”
Mona gave him one last knee in the spine and then rose. Elliott could breathe again, but he didn’t move, didn’t even lift
his face from the floor.
His mother said something on the way out. Elliott couldn’t hear it, but it made Mona laugh. Elliott didn’t care. He just watched
their footsteps at eye level as the two women left him alone in the cell.