David Ellis - The Last Alibi

“Hey-”

“But you know what? I didn’t fight that, either. I didn’t fight him because I couldn’t afford anyone to represent me and because I didn’t care, anyway. I didn’t care if the restraining order was a hundred feet or a hundred yards or a mile. I had no intention of going anywhere near him after what he did to me.”

“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

“And now I finally meet a nice guy and he hears all this and he thinks. . whatever you think. .”

“I believe you,” I say. “I do.”

She looks at me for a long time, her expression easing, her breathing slowing, the tears drying up. She takes a deep breath, runs her fingers through her wet hair.

“I believe you,” I say again.

Jason

Monday, July 22

“Hey.” Joel Lightner sticks his head in my office, cautious.

I wave him in. “It’s okay, Lightner. You’re still doing a job for me, whatever else.”

“You’re pissed at me,” he says when he walks in and helps himself to a seat.

“You’re not at the top of my list right now,” I agree.

“I’d like to see that list. I’m pretty sure there’s only one name on it: Alexa Himmel.”

I put down the court opinion I was reading. “I take it you didn’t come to apologize.”

“Apologize? Why would I apologize? For the background check? Shauna asked me for a favor, and she was doing it out of genuine concern for you. And she’s right to be concerned.”

I raise my hands in surrender. “Let’s stick with business,” I say.

He holds his stare a moment, just to show his displeasure, before moving on. “We’re having a hard time digging up records, like you thought,” he says. “We’ve found some in a warehouse. So far, no recently released ex-cons-by recently , I mean in the last eighteen months-were interrogated by you. We aren’t done, but we’re starting to run out of places to check. There are big gaps. You got moved around all the time when you were on Felony Review. It’s not like you even stuck at one station house.”

None of this is a surprise, but it’s a big blow nonetheless. We’re running out of places to check. We’re running out of ways to catch “James.”

“Joel, this signature, the thing he does to all the victims. I need to know what it is.”

“We’ve already talked about this,” he says. “They won’t tell me. I won’t ask.”

“It’s the key to this, the more I think about it. Whatever it is he’s doing to them, he’d probably want to tie it to me, right? If he’s framing me, he’d want to make that signature tailored to me.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Joel agrees. “If he’s doing some strange, crazy thing to all the victims, he’s probably doing it because it implicates you. But what?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s why you have to get it for me.”

Joel raises his hands. “I can’t help you. Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t tell me.”

There’s got to be some way. I have to figure out that calling card he’s leaving at every crime scene.

“Okay.” Joel starts to look uncomfortable, rubbing his hands, stalling. “So. . so listen.”

I look up at him.

“I’m just going to say this as your friend. I’m not sure about that lady, Jason. I got a bad feeling about her.”

“You don’t know her.” I wave a hand. “Leave it alone.”

“Jason-”

“She has a very sweet side, Joel. She does. Does she come on strong? Okay, maybe. But she’d do anything for me.”

“Yeah? That so?”

“Yeah.” I nod at him. “The alibi, for example. She’s willing to say I was with her at the time of each of the five murders. She’s willing to be my alibi. Now, how many people would do that?”

Lightner doesn’t seem as impressed as I am. “I remember in my office, you guys said you were going to square up dates to confirm.”

“Yeah, we confirmed dates, and you know what? She wasn’t with me on any of those nights. Not one, Joel. And yet she’s willing to say she was. If the police walked in right now, she’d swear on a Bible that we spent those evenings together at my house.”

Joel thinks about that for a long time, seemingly unmoved, but thinking. “That’s a dangerous game, first of all. It could get you both in trouble.”

“I know. I told her that. I told her there were all kinds of ways you can attack an alibi. But she said she was home alone, just like me, on each of those nights, but she didn’t do anything that would establish that. Didn’t make any phone calls. Didn’t order food to the house or order a movie off of TV or have any visitors over or anything that would tie her to her house.”

I don’t even know how to order a movie off the television, she said.

And I never, ever have food delivered.

“It’s still a bad idea,” Lightner says again.

“I know, Joel. I’m not going to let her do it. But the point is that she’s willing to do it. Does that sound like someone who cares about me, or someone who doesn’t?”

Joel makes a face. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he says.

“Is there another way?”

Joel lets out a bitter laugh and shakes his head again. “Of course there’s another way,” he says. “And if you didn’t have your head so far up your ass, you’d see it, too, Counselor.”

I wave a hand. “Then enlighten me,” I say.

He leans forward and cups his hand over his mouth, like he’s shouting across a canyon. “She’s not just giving you an alibi,” he says. “She’s giving herself one, too.”

TRIAL, DAY 4

Thursday, December 12

Shauna

Judy Bialek hurries into her reception area, two work bags slung over her shoulder, looking just a bit disheveled as she nods to her receptionist and waves to the lawyers waiting for her. “Sorry I’m late, everybody, crazy morning,” she sings as she brushes past us into her chambers. She is a divorced mother of three kids, all in high school. It is somehow comforting, in the midst of the angst and stress of this trial, to see the judge coping with some stress of her own.

Not that a judge is ever late. The meeting starts when the judge says it starts. Judges make you wait all the time-I remember once Judge DeCremer, in the civil division, scheduled no less than four pretrial conferences for the same time and made us all wait for him. I showed up with my client at one o’clock and left at a quarter to five.

The receptionist’s phone buzzes. “You can go on in,” he says to us.

Inside her chambers, the judge looks a bit more composed, sitting behind her long black desk, everything neatly in its place, her hair pulled up in back now, her black robe hanging to the side on a coatrack.

“I want to talk schedule,” she says. “The government only has one more witness, is that correct, Mr. Ogren?”

“That’s correct, Judge. Her direct testimony won’t take half an hour.”

“Okay. And then the government will rest?”

“Yes, we will.”

The judge nods. “Ms. Tasker, I suppose the defense will move for a directed verdict.”

“Absolutely, Judge,” I say, but nobody in this room thinks the judge is going to toss the case for lack of evidence. This case is going to the jury.

“Assuming that your motion is denied, Ms. Tasker, can you give me an idea of whom you plan to call, and why, and how much time you need? Oh, and I forgot-you reserved your opening statement. How much time do you expect to use on your opening, too?”

I haven’t told them anything yet. The defense is entitled to considerable leeway in withholding its game plan in a criminal case. Jason, of course, has the right to testify and the right not to testify, and that gives me the right to leave everyone guessing. Beyond whether Jason testifies, I haven’t given a hint as to whom I may call in our defense, if anyone.