Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [63]
“So tell me what’s on your mind, Jack.”
It seemed absurd to discuss Jamal under these circumstances. More precisely, it would have seemed absurd, if it hadn’t felt so choreographed. This was all staged, of course—Mays taking the steam out of a potential confrontation by holding a fireside chat with his mouth full of McKenna’s favorite childhood snack.
“Jamal is on my mind,” said Jack. “I’m trying to figure out who cut off his foot, tortured him to death, and then dumped his body less than two hundred yards from where your wife disappeared in the Everglades.”
“You’re on fire,” said Mays.
“What?”
“Your marshmallow is burning.”
Jack yanked it out of the fire, and the flaming mess dropped like red-hot lava onto his foot, just above the shoe leather. Jack jumped up and let out a yelp, then smothered the flame with his jacket. It had burned through his sock, and he was sure the skin would blister. Mays roared with laughter, and Jack decided not to say what he was thinking.
Mays looked at him and said, “No, I’m not.”
“You’re not what?” said Jack.
“You think I’m enjoying this.”
Jack felt chills. He was dead-on. The guy really is a genius.
“Truth is,” said Mays, “I haven’t enjoyed a damn thing in three years.”
Jack couldn’t imagine ever being friends with Mays, but it was impossible not to feel sorry for a man who’d lost so much. Even though Jack knew he was risking a punch in the nose, he could think of only one response.
“Jamal didn’t kill your daughter.”
Mays narrowed his eyes, and Jack braced himself for that punch.
“I guess we’ll never know,” said Mays.
“I think his killer is the same person who killed your wife. And I think whoever killed your wife also killed your daughter.”
The fire hissed, and the last remnants of Jack’s marshmallow burst into flames on a charred log.
Jack continued. “Technically, the attorney-client privilege survives the death of a client, but there are things about his detention in Prague that would have come out at trial, and that Jamal wanted you to know. For one, Jamal’s interrogators threatened to kill McKenna if he didn’t talk.”
That drew a slight reaction—enough for Jack to discern that it was the first time Mays had heard it.
“What did they want to know?” asked Mays.
“The questions were all about the work he was doing for you. Project Round Up, to be specific.”
“I don’t talk about that.”
“Neither did Jamal—which got him killed. So tell me: Why would someone in Prague interrogate him about Project Round Up?”
No response. A burning log shifted, sending sparks fluttering upward like a swarm of fireflies.
“Does it have to do with national security?” Jack asked. “Rounding up terrorists?”
Mays stared into the fire, apparently unwilling even to consider the question.
“I know much more than you think I do,” said Jack, though he was careful not to use Andie’s name. “I know that the FBI seized Jamal’s computers after McKenna was murdered, and that they found encrypted messages that related to terrorist organizations.”
Mays leaned forward, poking at the ashes with his stick. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“Did you know his father was a recruiter for al-Shabaab?”
“I wouldn’t know al-Shabaab from shish kebab.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Nobody told me anything about his old man until after Jamal was indicted for murder.”
Jack hesitated, but this was getting frustrating. “We’re tap dancing here,” said Jack, “so let me just say it straight: I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will. Because I’ve got a theory, and I think it’s a good one. Like everyone else in your business, you want to be the go-to guy for technology and homeland security.”
“Is that a crime?”
“No. But it’s not merely patriotic. It’s profitable. I think you and Jamal were working on a supercomputer that could find and tap into encrypted messages between suspected terrorists. I think Jamal was using his father to get access to those messages so that you could test your decoding algorithms. Maybe Jamal even pretended to