David Ellis - The Last Alibi

“We do.”

“And we have proof that she had gone to the trouble of preparing an entire letter to the disciplinary board that oversees lawyers, accusing you of misconduct. We have proof she did that , don’t we?”

“We do.”

“But this one conversation where, apparently, Alexa Himmel said to you, ‘Don’t worry, Jason, I’d never hurt you,’ that conversation, we only have your word.”

“You only have my word, yes.”

“And we have proof-in fact, you’ve admitted-that in the past, when it comes to Ms. Himmel, you’ve been willing to lie.”

“I did lie at the police interview, yes.”

He’s doing a pretty good job of kicking me in the balls here.

“The night of the murder, Mr. Kolarich. Can anyone verify that you were at the beach from mid-afternoon until sometime after sundown?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Can anyone verify that you went for a three- or four-hour drive around town afterward?”

“No. Just me.”

“You didn’t make a single phone call on your cell phone during that entire interval of time, did you?”

“I don’t remember making any. I’m not entirely sure from my own memory, but the CDRs you pulled of my cell phone for that night say I didn’t, and I have no reason to quarrel with that.”

“You didn’t stop for gas.”

“No.”

“You didn’t even eat food, did you?”

“I-no, I don’t think-well, I brought some granola bars with me. I remember I ate granola bars on the beach. There wasn’t much food I could hold down when I was going through withdrawal. But those granola bars I could eat.”

“What kind of granola bars, by the way?”

“Oh, they come in a green box. They’re hard, not soft. Oats and honey flavor, I think it is.”

“What brand?”

“I don’t know the name of the brand. Green box.”

“The call to your home phone at 8:16 P.M. on Tuesday, July thirtieth,” he says, jumping quickly, having taken a shot with the granola thing, trying to catch me in a lie but not scoring. “You say it was a voice mail.”

“Correct.”

“You listened to it after you called 911, you said.”

“Right.”

“You never mentioned it to Detective Cromartie, did you?”

“The voice mail? No, I’m sure I didn’t.”

“Or to the patrol officer who first responded.”

“I’m sure I didn’t.”

“So we have to take your word for that , too. The fact that there was a voice mail.”

“You do.”

Ogren flips around his notes. He’s probably close to done. He should be, anyway. Quit while you’re ahead. And he’s definitely ahead.

“One final topic,” says Ogren. “The matter of Alexa Himmel’s supposed house key.”

“It’s not a supposed house key. I gave her a key to my house.”

“When did that happen, Mr. Kolarich?”

My eyes drift to the ceiling. “Oh, the beginning of July. About the time she moved in with me.”

“Where did you get it made?”

“Witley’s Hardware down the way from my house, about three blocks.”

“Did you pay for it with a credit or debit card?”

“A credit card? It was, like, four or five dollars. No, I believe I paid in cash.”

“You’ve never paid for something that was four or five dollars with a debit card? You’ve never swiped your debit card at a McDonald’s or a Walgreens?”

Knowing Ogren, he’s memorized my credit card bills and will point to examples where I did that very thing. So I have to tread lightly. “I imagine I have, yes,” I say.

“But not for this purchase. For this purchase, it was cash.”

“That’s right. But I did buy it. She did have a house key.”

“But you have no corroboration for that.”

“I don’t.”

“And you can’t tell us what happened to this. . this key.”

“No.”

“Nor can you explain to us how Alexa Himmel got into your house before you were home, if she didn’t have a house key.”

“But she did have a house key, Mr. Ogren, and that’s how she got in. I just don’t know what happened to it.”

“But we’re taking your word, and your word alone, for that, as well.”

I sigh. “I guess you are, Mr. Ogren.”

Roger has done a valiant job of showing that every piece of our defense, thus far, has been built on my testimony and mine alone. The word of an admitted liar! A man who would say anything to stay out of prison! Do not believe that man!

“Your Honor, we reserve the right for further questioning during rebuttal,” Ogren says. “But for the time being, I have nothing further.” He only had last night to prepare for this cross-examination, after I threw out all sorts of things yesterday I’d never said publicly. He did well, very well with the time he had. But he’s not done with me by a long shot. The prosecution gets a rebuttal case, and he surely has already mobilized his considerable resources to proving that the things I’ve said on the witness stand are lies.

Many of them are, of course. Some of them are not. We’ll see what his cops can come up with over the next few days.

Shauna

“Let’s take ten minutes,” says the judge after Roger Ogren completes his cross-examination of Jason.

I nod to Jason’s brother, Pete, give him one of those grim half smiles, and then walk straight to the anteroom. Jason goes to talk to Pete for a minute, so it’s just Bradley and me inside the room.

“Redirect,” Bradley says. “I was thinking-”

“I wouldn’t do redirect, personally,” I say. “We got our points out, he got his out. He did a nice job.”

“It was okay.”

“No, it was better than okay. It was very good. He shaved down our entire case to resting on the credibility of Jason’s testimony. That’s not a good place for us.”

“Then let me do some redirect.”

I shake my head. “Bradley, nothing that Jason can say will change the fact that it’s Jason saying it. The guy standing trial for his life. The guy they’ve already seen lie repeatedly to a police detective in that interview. They have to take his word for everything he says, because there’s no corroboration. No one saw him on the beach or driving around the night of the murder. No one heard his conversation with Alexa where she assured him she wouldn’t send that letter.”

I shake my head again, for no apparent reason other than it seems appropriate.

“So. . what? What now?” Bradley asks. “We call Detective Austin, the lead on the north side murders, and pump him for information?”

I shrug. “Not much else we can do.”

“We’re fishing, in other words,” he says.

“Totally.”

“Because what Roger Ogren said in there was right, Shauna,” Bradley goes on. “Marshall Rivers was the North Side Slasher, not the North Side Shooter . If Rivers killed Alexa, then he switched MOs from butchering women to shooting them in the head.”

And here I didn’t think I could feel any worse. I know all of this, of course, but hearing it in such a tidy, withering summary, from my own cocounsel no less, lights a tiny bomb in my stomach.

“That’s going to be a pretty hard thing to sell to the jury,” says Bradley. “Don’t you think?”

“Maybe so,” I say.

Or maybe not. I know more than Bradley about what happened that night, but far, far less than Jason. To varying degrees, our client has kept us both in the dark.

We’re all going to find out together.

TRIAL, DAY 6

Tuesday, December 17

Jason

Standing room only in the courtroom again today, the gallery seats full and people jammed all along the walls. The press requests for this trial, previously modest, tripled over the weekend, including now correspondents from national media outlets. The media’s favorite story of the summer, the North Side Slasher, has returned for an encore.