James Grippando - The Pardon

“He didn’t fight it,” she said.

“What did he do?”

Gina shrugged. “He left.”

“What time did he leave?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she said shaking her head. “Sometime before three o’clock.”

“Before three,” he repeated, as if to remind the jury that Goss was not murdered until four. The point seemed to register with most of them. “Was he drunk or sober?”

Gina’s mouth was getting dry. She sipped some water, then answered, “He still appeared to be a little drunk.”

“Did he take anything with him?”

“His car keys.”

“Anything else?”

She nodded. “He took the flower with him-the chrysanthemum he found under Cindy’s pillow. The one he said was from Eddy Goss.”

“And did he say anything at all before he left?”

Gina took a deep breath. “Yes, he”-she looked into her lap-“he said, ‘This has got to stop.’ “

McCue turned and faced the jury, looking as if he were about to take a bow. “Thank you, Miss Terisi. I have no further questions.”

McCue buttoned his jacket over his round belly and returned to his chair. The courtroom filled with the quiet rumble of spectators conferring among themselves, each seeming to confirm to the other that the accused was most definitely guilty as charged.

“Order,” said the judge with a bang of her gavel. The courtroom came to a hush. The judge checked the clock on the wall. It was almost five o’clock. “I see no reason to keep the jury any longer today,” she said. “We’ll resume tomorrow morning with defense counsel’s cross-examination of this witness.”

“Your Honor,” Manny politely interrupted. He had to do something to keep the day from ending on this devastating note. “If I might just begin my cross-examination. Perhaps just twenty minutes-”

“The defense will have all the time it needs-tomorrow. This court is in recess,” she announced as she ended the day with another sharp bang of the gavel.

“All rise!” shouted the bailiff, but his instruction was totally unnecessary. Everyone in the courtroom immediately stood and sprung into action. Television reporters rushed to meet five o’clock deadlines. Print journalists ran for the rail, hoping to get an interview with the prosecutor, the defense-or maybe even the government’s star witness.

Jack jumped up, too, immediately looking behind him. He needed to say something to Cindy, but she was already gone. She’d darted from her seat the instant Judge Tate’s gavel had landed on the block.

He stood beside his chair as he scanned the buzzing courtroom. Where is she? He flinched as he felt Manny’s hand on his arm. “You and I have to talk,” his lawyer said.

Jack sighed. He could barely speak. “Cindy and I have to talk,” he said quietly.

Jack raced home as quickly as he could, weaving in and out of rush-hour traffic. He was relieved to see Cindy’s car in the driveway. She hadn’t left him-at least not yet. He rushed into the house, then froze as he heard the sound of dresser drawers slamming shut in the bedroom.

“What are you doing?” asked Jack as he appeared in the bedroom doorway.

Her half-filled suitcase was lying open across the bed. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” she said as she dumped a drawer of panty hose into her suitcase.

He sighed. “It looks like you’re doing exactly what I would do. Looks like you’re giving me exactly what I deserve. But I’m asking you not to.”

She wouldn’t even look at him. She just kept packing. “Why shouldn’t I leave?”

“Because I’m sorry. You just don’t know how sorry I am. You don’t know how much I love you.”

“Stop it,” she glared. “Just stop it.”

“Cindy,” he pleaded, “it’s not what you think. You’ve got to remember: This all happened right after the Goss trial, when everything was so crazy. I was being stalked by some guy who had tried to run me over and who’d just killed Thursday. I’d just come from Goss’s apartment after stabbing myself in the hand. And then Gina managed to convince me that I was being naive to think you’d ever come back to me. She told me you and Chet were definitely not going to be ‘just friends’ over there.”

“Hold it,” she said, looking at him with utter disbelief. “Are you listening to what you’re saying? Less than twelve hours after I left for Italy, you were in bed with my best friend because you were afraid that you couldn’t trust me. That makes a lot of sense, Jack,” she said with sarcasm, then resumed packing.

“You don’t understand, I was drunk-”

“I don’t care. Have you been drunk for the past two months, too? Is that why you didn’t tell me about it? Or maybe you just thought it was best for me to hear about it for the first time in a crowded courtroom, so I could be humiliated in front of the entire world.”

“I was going to tell you,” he said weakly.

“Oh, were you? Or did you just think you could sweep this problem under the rug, like you do with all the problems between you and your father? Well, that obviously hasn’t worked very well with that relationship, has it? And it won’t work with me anymore, either. What you and Gina did is bad enough. But keeping it from me is unforgivable,” she said, then closed up her suitcase and bolted out the bedroom door.

He stepped out of the way, then followed her down the hall. “Cindy, you can’t leave.”

“Just watch me,” she said as she opened the front door.

“I mean, you can’t leave town. You’re still under the trial subpoena. It’s possible you could be recalled as a witness. And if you don’t appear, you’ll be in contempt of court.”

She shook her head in anger. “Then I’ll just move into a hotel.”

“Cindy-”

“Good-bye, Jack.”

He searched desperately for something to say. “I’m sorry,” he called as she headed down the front steps.

She stopped and turned around, her eyes welling as she looked back. “I’m sorry, too,” she said bitterly. “Because you ruined it, Jack. You just ruined everything. ”

He felt completely empty inside, like a lifeless husk, as he watched her toss her suitcase into the car and pull out of the driveway. He tried to feel something, even anger at Gina. But another voice quickly took over. He could hear his father repeating that lesson Jack had never seemed to learn as a boy, probably because Harold Swyteck had tried so hard to teach it to him. It was the same lesson Jack had fired back at his father the night Fernandez was executed. “We’re all responsible for our own actions,” Jack could hear his father telling him. The memory didn’t help Jack with his sense of loss. But somewhere deep inside, he felt a little stronger because of it.

“I’ll always love you,” he whispered over the lump in his throat as Cindy drove away. “Always.”

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.