Bailey nudged him and said, Now you know why Ernesto is so glad to be home after ten weeks in South America.
No words would come, but finally Jack found his voice. Yeah. Now I know.
Mia offered her hand, the consummate actress. Very nice to meet you, Mr. Swyteck.
It tapped every ounce of strength to take her hand, and it felt strangely cold as their skin touched. Yeah, said Jack in a hollow voice. Lovely.
Chapter
4
Very nice to meet you, Mr. Swyteck. Yes, indeed. And it was very nice seeing you naked, making you scream, and hearing you say that you weren't interested in seeing anyone else but me, all while the husband you conveniently forgot to tell me about was two thousand miles away on business in South America.
Very nice to meet you, too. Mrs. Salazar.
It was Monday night - a full forty-eight hours after the disaster - and Jack's anger was still roiling. Mia had gone to great lengths to make her scheme work. The Palm Beach lifestyle, her circle of friends, and the waterfront mansion were all left behind, ninety miles north of Miami. Her husband owned property all over the world, so she moved into their condo on South Beach, living the ten-week life of sex and the single girl. She put the wedding band in the jewel box. She told her friends she was traveling. She told Jack she was studying for her licensing exam and looking for the right job as a real estate agent - hence her little joke about kissing and real estate location, location, location. Jack had bought it completely, the entire amazing, beautiful, lying package.
I knew there was something I didn't like about her, said Theo. He was on Jack's couch, remote control in hand, eyes glued to the TV screen.
Right, said Jack. The only thing you didn't like was that she's not into group sex.
Actually, I think she might have come around on that.
Jack could only wonder if there was anything else Theo might like to say in his undying effort to make matters worse. He went to the kitchen to grab a cold beer.
In hindsight, the warning signs had been there. When their talks became personal - when Jack opened up about mistakes he'd made, his failed marriage and relationships - she wasn't as specific about her own past as she might have been. He never actually met any of her friends. She would sometimes veto his restaurant choices for no apparent reason. Typical guy that he was, he didn't mind in the least that she seemed more interested in talking about him. Of course, it wasn't that she was so totally taken. She was just hiding herself.
Fool, fool, fool, he said into the open refrigerator.
You left off a fool,' Theo shouted from the couch.
Jack twisted the cap off his beer bottle and returned to the living room. Of all the guys in the world, why do you think she had to pick me?
Tom Cruise is too savvy?
Seriously. What did I ever do to her?
Nothing. Sometimes the world is a random place.
I don't believe that.
Eighty-four percent of the world disagrees with you.
How do you know that?
It's a statistical fact. Then again, sixty-one-point-seven percent of all statistics are made up on the spot, so you never really know.
It was impossible to have a serious conversation when Theo had a remote control, two basketball games, and a picture-in-picture television set. Jack went back to the kitchen and stared out the window. Some explanation would have been nice, and he was starting to wish he'd made more of the conversation Mia had forced on him earlier in the day. The psycho-calling had actually started around midnight Saturday and didn't stop until late Sunday night. Jack ignored all her pleading messages. She waited until Monday morning to show up, unannounced, outside his law office. Part of him had wanted to keep on walking and tell her to get lost. But something - and it was more than just curiosity - had made him stop and listen to what she wanted to say.
I'm sorry, Jack. Truly sorry.
That doesn't really help, he said.
They were standing beside one of those pathetic little olive trees that sprouted from a square hole in the sidewalk in the name of city-sponsored landscaping. The morning traffic was streaming past them. Mia had a tired, sorrowful look on her face, as if she hadn't slept since Saturday. She glanced across the street, toward an old man who pretended not to notice as his collie fertilized one of the sickly olive trees.
The other night, she said, when I was at your house before the cocktail party. I want you to know that I meant what I told you before I left. I have no interest in seeing anyone else.
You mean besides your husband?
I don't have what you'd call a happy marriage. I never have. Ernesto has done this to me for years. Cheating, I mean.
Really? How long have you been doing it to him?
Her eyes were like lasers, and they were aimed straight at Jack. I'm not like that. This whole thing is new to me. It started and ended with you.
I see. One dumb lawyer evens the score for Ernesto's string of bimbos - is that it?
Stop it, she said, her voice breaking. This wasn't about getting even. Our marriage was over before he left on his business trip.
It sure didn't look that way at the cocktail party.
Ernesto Salazar doesn't easily let go of the things he wants.
You're not a thing.
You're not Ernesto.
Did you tell him you wanted a divorce?
I did, a few months ago. He asked me - no, he warned me to think long and hard before I take that step. It was like a threat. Scared me enough to drop it for a while. Then I met you, and I realized that I had to get out.
So it's my fault, is that it?
No. You were anything but to blame. You were
What?
Nothing. Just forget it.
No, tell me, please. I'd really like to know exactly what the hell I was.
She looked away, then back. You were the first man I've made love to in almost two years.
It wasn't the answer he'd expected. So, you and Ernesto
I told you: The marriage was over long before I met you.
Jack certainly knew what a failing marriage could do to one's sex life, no matter how great the glory days had been. But two years was a long time, especially for two people who were still living together in the same house. Mia, you really don't have to explain.
I feel like I owe you this much.
Trust me, it's not going to make things any different between us. You lied to me in the worst way. End of story.
I don't blame you if you hate me. But it killed me that I wasn't - that I couldn't be - honest with you. It still tears me up. I want to tell you the way it really is.
I don't need to hear it now.
Do you mean that?
Of course he didn't. He wanted to hear it, absorb it, analyze it, the way any good lawyer would. Then he wanted to play it over and over again in his mind until his head exploded and his heart resembled a pincushion, like any other wounded lover. But his Y chromosome was slapping him upside the head, pointing out rather convincingly that any self-respecting man would deny her the privilege of easing her conscience with a lame psychoanalytical excuse that would undoubtedly sound like television talk show drivel.
I'm sorry. I have work to do. Good-bye, Mia. He ducked into his office before she could say another word. He was alone in the vestibule, lights off, leaning against the inside of the smoked-glass door, hoping that she wouldn't knock, hoping that she would. Should he have let her keep talking? Could she possibly have had a good reason for lying, something that made perfect sense and that would restore the broken trust?
Or is she just jerking my chain all over again?
An uneasy silence seemed to lurk outside the office door. Finally, he heard footfalls on the sidewalk. Two tentative steps - stop. Two more steps - stop. A click of her heel followed, then another and another, until their entire relationship faded into nothing.
Mia was gone.
Chapter
5
FBI Special Agent Andie Henning watched through the calm eyes of a trained professional as the assistant medical examiner dissected Ashley Thornton's right lung.
Torrents of icy air gushed from the air-conditioning vents in the ceiling, making the autopsy room so cold that Andie almost had to remind herself that she was still in Florida. It felt more like winter in her native Seattle, where her remarkable performance in an undercover assignment caught the eye of the FBI Critical Incident Response Group. With a degree in psychology, she was quickly singled out as crisis-negotiator material. Seattle had no openings for field negotiators, so after intense training with the Crisis Negotiation Unit at the academy, she transferred to Miami, a city with enough real-life hostage-barricade incidents to keep a negotiator's skills sharp for life. Miami held the added attraction of being two thousand miles away from her ex-fiancE. But that was another story.
Bright lights glistened off the white sterile walls and buff tile floors. The unclothed, grayish purple cadavar lay faceup on the stainless steel table in the center of the room. Two deep incisions ran laterally from shoulder to shoulder, across the breasts at a downward angle meeting at the sternum. A long, deeper cut ran from the breastbone to the groin, forming the stem in the coroner's classic Y incision. The liver, spleen, kidneys, and intestines were laid out neatly beside a slab of ribs on the large dissection table. The cadaver was literally a shell of a human being, strangely reminiscent of the hollowed-out half of a watermelon on a table of hors d'oeuvres.
Andie smeared another dab of Vicks VapoRub beneath her nostrils to cut the odor. A trip to the medical examiner's office wasn't exactly a daily occurrence for an FBI agent. The vast majority of homicides were strictly state and local matters. Kidnapping, however, was a federal offense, and unfortunately Andie's increasing specialization in negotiation had earned her more trips to the medical examiner's office than desired.
Very interesting, said Dr. Feinstein.
The doctor was still examining the right lung, working at a small and brightly lit dissection table on the other side of the cadaver. His powers of concentration were such that his bushy gray eyebrows had pinched together and formed one continuous caterpillar that stretched across his brow. He laid his scalpel aside and snapped a digital photograph, which gave Andie a moment of uneasiness. Not that it was the examiner's fault, but it seemed that humiliation of the victim continued even in death.
What do you see? asked Andie.
The doctor took a step back and almost smiled. Andie felt a digression coming on.
The first thing you have to understand, said Feinstein, is that drowning cannot be proven by autopsy. It is a diagnosis of exclusion, based on the circumstances of death.
Ashley Thornton's case presents some rather grim circumstances.
Yes, it does. But a dead body underwater does not always mean a drowning. I've seen victims strangled and then thrown into swimming pools. I've seen victims hit over the head with a hammer and then tossed into the lake.
Are you suggesting that's what happened here?
Quite to the contrary. Yes, she has some scrapes, and a simple fracture where her tibia locked up with that steel grate inside the cave. The aquifer is moving water, so you can't expect to recover a body in perfect condition. The significant point is that I see no signs of life-threatening trauma.
So, in your process of diagnosis by exclusion, what does that tell you, Doctor?
Not as much as this, he said, returning to the dissection tray. He grabbed a penlight and motioned Andie toward him. The focused beam of light was shining through the dissected wall of the right lung.
Do you see that? asked Feinstein.
Looks like dirt.
Sand. In a drowning case, that, my friend, is about as close to a home run as you can get.
She has sand in her lungs? asked Andie.
Yes. Now, that's a critically important fact if you think about what happens when you drown. Your normal reaction when the head goes underwater is to hold your breath. Eventually, you can't do it any longer, and your body is forced to gasp for air. That presents a major problem if you can't reach the surface.
Or if you're trapped inside an underwater cave.
Exactly. So the victim starts gulping water into the mouth and throat, literally inhaling water into the lungs. This, of course, sends the victim into an even more frenzied panic, and the struggle becomes more desperate. If she doesn't break the surface, her lungs continue to fill, and she struggles and gasps in a vicious cycle that can last several minutes, until breathing stops.
And the victim takes in sand with the water?
Not always. Sand can end up in the mouth and throat when the current pushes a lifeless body along the bottom. But here the body was essentially fastened to this steel grate, and sand ended up not only in the mouth and throat, but also in the lungs. And think about where this victim was struggling.
In an underwater cave.
A cave with a sand bottom. Drowning is a slow, agonizing death. The final minutes of life are sheer terror and panic. This woman was trapped in a cave with a low ceiling. The more she flailed around in the dark, trying to find air, the more sand she kicked up. Within the tight confines of this cave, the sand had nowhere to go except into her lungs.