Chapter 46
Jack decided to take the rest of the day off. He drove home to Key Biscayne, flopped on the couch, and switched on their streaming
service. He and Andie liked to watch old movies together, but he noticed she’d been watching one without him.
Love Story. It was more than fifty years old, and they’d both seen it before.
He hit play on the remote control and found that she’d queued it up precisely to the first scene in which Ali MacGraw tells Ryan O’Neal,
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” It made him smile because he remembered how they’d had the same reaction when
watching it together: The line made no sense, and the opposite was true. Then it occurred to him that perhaps Andie was working
a kind of reverse psychology on him and had queued up that line to send him a message:
You still owe me an apology.
It was up to Jack to figure out what for.
Whatever it was, a little unconditional love from a goofy golden retriever could only make Andie more receptive, so he put
Max in the back seat and drove to downtown Miami to meet Andie for midafternoon coffee at the Cuban pastry shop around the
corner from the FBI field office. All the outdoor tables were occupied by old, highly caffeinated Cuban men smoking cigars
and playing dominoes. Max sniffed out an inside table with a view of the alley and a half-eaten empanada that someone had
left on a napkin. It was gone in a single gulp.
“Amazing how he works up such an appetite sleeping all day,” said Jack.
“Aww,” she said, hugging Max. “He’s a good boy.”
Jack smiled. Bringing in canine reinforcements had been the right move.
The server arrived with their order. Espresso for Andie. Café Americano—Abuela would have choked—for Jack. Andie asked about his case, and Jack shared the good news about bail. Then he said what he’d come
to say.
“I saw the movie you left for me.”
She smiled. It was a choreographed move after all. “And?”
“I’m sorry.”
She tasted her espresso. “For what?”
Jack had figured it out on the drive from Key Biscayne. “For accusing you of trying to turn me against Theo.”
“Apology accepted.” She added a little sugar to her demitasse but said nothing more.
“That’s it? Just ‘apology accepted’?”
“What more is there to say?”
It wasn’t like her to be so stingy with her words. “I don’t know,” said Jack. “Maybe something like ‘I’m glad we got rid of
the Rule. It’s much better now that we talk to each other about our jobs, but you’re right, Jack: If you want to use Theo
as your investigator, that’s really your decision.’”
“I do like the change we made.”
Not a word about Theo. He waited for more.
“Let’s face it,” she said with a sigh. “The old days when we avoided all conversations about our jobs are the bad old days. If I were an engineer and you were a construction lawyer, I wouldn’t hesitate to give you my opinion on a design
defect or something else within my sphere of knowledge. Why should we have to live on opposite sides of a wall because I’m
an FBI agent and you’re a criminal defense lawyer?”
She seemed determined to keep Theo out of the conversation. Jacked didn’t push it.
“I agree. We shouldn’t be walled off from each other.”
She tasted her espresso. “But we both know that there will still be things we can’t tell each other, right?”
“Yeah, I get that,” said Jack.
“There will be client confidences that you can’t share with me.”
The difference between “client confidences” and keeping secrets had been at the heart of their disagreement over Theo. “Comes
with being a lawyer,” said Jack.
“And there will always be aspects of an active investigation I can’t tell you.”
“Of course.”
“And after everything comes to light—maybe even as the lead story on the evening news—you won’t be mad at me for not having
told you sooner. No matter how much you wished I’d told you or thought I should have told you.”
“Andie, what are you getting at?”
“I just—” She stopped herself.
“Just what?”
She was clearly struggling, searching for words. “The truth is, I just want to help you with your cases, if I can.”
It felt like an odd change of subject—that she was about to say something very different when she’d stopped herself. “You
just want to help me? Really?”
“Yeah, really. Like this case you have right now.”
Definitely changing the subject. But Jack followed her lead. “Okay. I’m intrigued. How might you help me in a case like this
one? Give me an example.”
“Fine. I will. Let’s start with the fact that the only witness who places your client at the crime scene is a child. I’ve
interviewed dozens and dozens of children who were traumatized by violent crime. Both victims and witnesses.”
“Great. How much weight would you attach to a six-year-old boy’s identification of my client at the scene?”
“It depends on the kid.”
“Yeah, that much I figured out on my own.”
She grimaced. “Maybe that’s a bad example. But I know other things—less subjective things—you may have no clue about.”
“Try me.”
“Fingerprints.”
“What about them?”
“I’ve been following your case enough in the news to know about the dispute over fingerprints on the gun. The unidentifiable
fingerprint in particular. Would you like my take on it?”
“Sure.”
“Again, this is not inside information from any particular FBI investigation. It’s just something I’ve learned over the years
about the science of fingerprint analysis.”
Jack’s phone rang on the table, and the incoming number popped up on the screen.
“Hold that thought,” he told Andie. “It’s from the state attorney’s office.”
Jack answered. Julianna Weller was on the line.
“Jack, I wanted you to know that your client has been released from jail.”
“I appreciate the update.”
“There’s more,” she said.
Jack braced himself for another ambush, or at least a curveball. “Tell me.”
“Your client came straight from the jail to my office. He’s here now.”
“Why?”
“He says he wants to confess.”
Jack’s grip on his phone tightened. “Put Elliott on the line.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Of course he doesn’t, thought Jack. “Julianna, I will be there in ten minutes. Do not speak to my client before I get there. He has a right to
speak to his lawyer.”
“Understood.”
The call ended, and Jack quickly shared the predicament with Andie.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go right now,” he said. “Can Max stay with you?”
“Yes, of course. But let me finish what I was saying first.”
“Andie, I really have to go. My client wants to confess to murder!”
Jack started to push away from the table, but she grabbed him by the wrist. “Which makes what I’m about to tell you a matter
of life and death,” she said.
“Andie, I have to—”
“One minute, Jack. Listen to me. Please. Let me do this for you. It might help you finally make sense of all this. And keep
your client from making a terrible mistake.”
Jack was on the edge of his chair. He could see in Andie’s eyes that it wasn’t just important. It had suddenly become urgent.
Or maybe it was intended to make up for something—some other way in which she felt she was letting him down.
“Thirty seconds, tops,” he said.
“Deal,” she said.
And then she told him.