Alibi

by Sydney Bauer

  “Of course, there were times when our friendship was tested. There were moments when our mateship was stretched. There was even one incident when anger grew beyond intent and resulted in regrets set in stone.

  “But even then, even now as I sit and record this statement, the mark of such incidents still fresh in my memory, I knew, I know, that my regrets at such times are equaled or surpassed by those of my American friend.

  “And so, as I read the reports in the newspapers, as I hear the international bulletins regarding the nature of the case at hand, I sit and shake my head and wish beyond all hope that I can do my bit in informing all involved of the simple things I know to be true.”

  David paused there, his eyes lifting slightly toward his client, who was now openly starting to cry.

  “James Matheson is a man of integrity. He is incapable of the violent act described, and perhaps more importantly, no doubt sitting before you, destroyed by what has come to pass.

  “And so—as a student of the law who has witnessed and researched case upon case where innocent lives have been destroyed, as a man who is no stranger to the sorrows of hardship, as an adult who was once a boy who sought strength in the bonds of mateship, I ask you, each and every one of you to consider the third victim in this heinous crime, and allow my good and innocent friend to grieve his losses in peace.

  “Thank you.

  “Mr. Lawson W. Flinn.”

  87

  That night, overwhelmed by the intensity of it all, tired beyond all comprehension and still confused as to how all this had come to pass, David sought out his best friend—Homicide Lieutenant Joe Mannix.

  Joe was on the phone when David slumped into the chair across from his birch laminate desk, Frank McKay having shaken his hand with a nod before heading off for the night. And when Joe glanced up, he finished his conversation with haste before returning the handpiece to its cradle and looking across at his obviously exhausted friend.

  “I thought you would be celebrating,” said Joe at last.

  David shrugged. “I wanted to make sure you were okay with this,” he said.

  “With what?”

  “With my not going after him, with my letting him off the hook when it came to the reward.”

  Joe said nothing.

  “They donated it to charity,” explained David.

  Joe nodded. “What’s an odd mill or two when your reputation is at stake?

  “You shouldn’t beat yourself up,” said Joe after a pause. “You were hired to defend your client and that is exactly what you are doing.”

  “Then why do I feel like crap?”

  “Because you are an idealistic son of a bitch and none of this sits right with your high and mighty goddamned conscience.”

  They sat there for a while, the vague sound of a homicide police scanner buzzing somewhere in the background.

  “I am beginning to think we will never know who did this, Joe.”

  “Not every mystery gets solved, David, but if it is any consolation Susan rang earlier. She is going to triple test everything.”

  “She’ll be running the bureau by Christmas,” said David.

  “I know.”

  “Did he tell you his friend was a paraplegic?” asked Joe after a time.

  “No. At first he thought Flinn and his family would support him despite the troubles of their past but, when Flinn and Buntine seemed to procrastinate, James thought the worst and decided not to tell us exactly what had gone down. He was scared of what we would think of him, Joe,” said David, “which just goes to show how much this whole thing has fucked him up.”

  “I guess,” said Joe.

  David nodded.

  “The kid called earlier,” said Joe after a time. “Mr. Lim is going home tomorrow.”

  “Just another one of my screwups,” said David.

  “Mr. Lim was gonna be suffering no matter what, David. At least you brought him and John Nagoshi together.”

  “Nah, Sawyer gets credit for that.”

  “Another genius in the making,” added Joe. “And one with scruples, no less.”

  “When he runs for president, I’ll vote for him,” said David.

  “Me too,” said Joe. “The Kat calling Rousseau tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, if she makes it in time. If not, we start our case. And James wants to take the stand right away.”

  “I thought you were meant to leave the big guns until the end.”

  “You are, but James argued that the jury needs to hear him now, while Flinn’s statement is still fresh in their minds. Right now they are willing to—almost wanting to—see him as the decent young man his Australian friend described.”

  “And timing is everything.”

  “Something like that.” They sat there in silence a minute longer, as good friends tend to do.

  “Did you know,” began Joe at last, “that as of this evening, a Fox poll voted you odds-on favorite?”

  “Then why do I have this horrible feeling that we missed something, and that it is all going to blow up in our faces? I lose this one, Joe—I send this kid to a life in prison—and I don’t think I will ever forgive myself.”

  “I know,” said Joe.

  David nodded. “Anyways, I just wanted to say, you know, thanks Joe, for everything.”

  “Not sure if I helped.”

  “You just did.”

  88

  The morning editions said it all. “KATZ LICKS HIS WOUNDS AS AUSSIE TESTIMONY BACKFIRES, ‘BEST MATE INNOCENT,’ SAYS FRIEND,” “DEANE’S DYNAMIC DUO DONATE REWARD TO CHARITY,” and from the Tribune, “ ‘GENUINE’ MATHESON EXPECTED TO TAKE THE STAND.”

  Sara looked up from the papers before her, a piece of rye toast going cold in her hand. “Simpson and Westinghouse leaked their own donation to the press,” she said, looking across the breakfast bar at David who had barely touched his coffee.

  “It didn’t make it into testimony,” he said. “They had to get it out there somehow.”

  And she nodded, finally discarding the toast. “The Herald calls them ‘local heroes.’ ”

  “And every law firm in town will now be flocking to employ them. I wouldn’t be surprised if Westinghouse Senior has to bid for his own kid.”

  “Nah,” said Sara. “He’ll just be made junior partner before he hits twenty-three—harborview office and all.”

  They sat there for a moment, drinking their coffee in silence.

  “Did you tell Marc about James’ testimony?” she asked, referring to the Tribune’s front page exclusive, and the fact it was written by their good friend, Deputy Editor Marc Rigotti.

  “He called late. You were asleep.”

  “So you have decided to put him up front?” she asked, noting the trace of uncertainty in David’s expression. “It’s the right thing to do, David, he is up for it.”

  And David nodded. “Is it just my imagination, Sara,” he said after a time, “or are they breeding kids smarter these days?”

  “Not smarter, just with a better eye to self-preservation,” she said.

  “Well,” he said at last, rising from his chair to lean across the bar and take her face in his hands. “When we have a kid, I’m gonna tell him that life isn’t just about looking out for yourself.”

  “You won’t have to,” she said, kissing him now. “He or she will sense it, just by watching their dad.” And then he kissed her in return.

  She looked at her watch. “If we shower together, we have a spare ten minutes before we have to head out the door.”

  David just stared at her, a look of pure admiration on his face.

  “Come on,” she said at last, as she headed around the bar and took his hand. “The clock is ticking.”

  “All right, Mr. Lim,” said Sawyer, shaking the sleet from his hair. “This is the end of the line.” And Lim looked at him.

  “This is where you check in for your flight, Mr. Lim. It boards in under an hour so you had better join the line.” Lim said nothing.

&n
bsp; “I want to say,” said Sawyer at last, “that it has been a pleasure, Mr. Lim, and that I hope, in some small way, we have managed to ease your burdens, and that of your brother’s family back home.

  “And if it’s okay with you, I might leave you here because I really wanted to get to court today and you know, hide somewhere at the back so I can at least hear what is going on without the judge spotting me and . . .” Sawyer paused, realizing the Chinese man before him had no idea what he was prattling on about. He looked at his watch.

  “Is that okay, Mr. Lim?” he said, gesturing toward the now lengthening line. “If you check yourself in? The lady behind the counter will point you toward the gate.”

  “Sawyer Jones, good man,” said Lim at once—“good man” he had said—the second time in as many days. “I thank you, my family thank you, my brother thank you.”

  And Sawyer nodded, taking the man’s hand. “You’re okay, Mr. Lim.”

  “You also okay,” returned Lim with a rare smile.

  And then Mr. Lim nodded, before offering Sawyer some small blessing in Chinese and joining the now growing line to begin his long and lonely journey back home.

  89

  “The defense calls James Matheson,” said David, the five words the press and everyone else present had hoped beyond all hope to hear.

  The room was packed to full capacity. So much so that another room, complete with video monitors and audio equipment, had been set up next door so that the additional press, who had flown in for this closing stage, could bear witness to this highly anticipated event when the real star of this show would finally get to have his say.

  Stein had ordered the clerk to open the windows, an odd request considering the cold, but necessary given the stifling nature of the aged heating system and the pure numbers who breathed and coughed and shuffled in this mosh pit of legal finales.

  James looked nervous. His wide green eyes were watering. His right hand was clenched, his breathing was short and his normally olive skin was almost translucent in its paleness. He got to his feet, looked behind him toward his parents who gave encouraging smiles before stepping around the desk and walking slowly toward the stand. He held his head high, never avoiding the jury’s gaze and nodding at the judge in greeting as he moved behind the partition and took that famous oath.

  He shifted the pants of his dark gray suit, adjusted his subtly striped green tie and ran his fingers through his short dark hair before taking his seat and looking up at his attorney with an expression that said “let’s do this”—to which David nodded before opening his mouth to begin.

  “Come on, Chief,” said Frank McKay now standing in his boss’s office doorway, a small piece of white tissue blotting the tiniest spot of blood on his lower left cheek.

  “Jesus, McKay,” said Joe, looking up at his partner. “What the fuck does it tell our public when the likes of us who carry guns, McKay, can’t even control a razor?”

  “It was Kay’s,” said Frank in explanation, “one of those cushy pink numbers with the blue strip that are meant to moisturize your skin. But to be honest, boss, the fucker tore me to shreds, and now my complexion feels like sandpaper.”

  “Your complexion, Frank?” said Joe, barely managing to contain a smile. “Get rid of the shit paper and we’ll get going. Matheson is probably taking the stand as we speak.” But just as Joe was grabbing his keys and rounding his desk to head for the door, his phone rang for the umpteenth time in the past thirty minutes.

  “Geez,” he said as he turned toward it. He was hoping someone else in the squad would pick it up and take a message, but the room was largely empty thanks to an apparent double suicide in Mattapan. And so he pocketed his keys and reached across the desk for the phone.

  “Mannix,” he said aggressively, making it more than plain to the unknown caller that they had better make it quick.

  “Chief,” said the voice. “It’s me, Susan. Thank Christ you’re still there.” And then Joe felt the anticipation rise from his gut.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Wicks rechecked the prints,” she said. “And he found something.”

  “Something or someone?” asked Joe, a curious and now clean-faced McKay now perched just inside his door.

  “Both. We got a match, Chief, on a print inside Simpson’s glass.”

  “Inside?”

  “Yeah, a thumb.”

  “Shit,” said Joe, wishing beyond all hope that what he was thinking was wrong. “Does the print match one from inside the greenhouse.”

  “Two—the one off of the flower and the one near the door.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Shit.”

  “Chief?” said Susan after a time, as if waiting for further instructions.

  “Okay, Susan,” said Joe now staring at Frank. “This is what I need you to do.”

  “The thing is, Mr. Cavanaugh,” said James to a now perfectly still courtroom, “that Jessica was so different from anyone I had ever known. She was smart and beautiful and funny, but she was also surprising and interested and incredibly attuned to everything that went on around her. She could see things in people that I could never hope to see—like that someone was lonely or uncomfortable or depressed. And then she would seek them out and talk to them and include them without the slightest trace of pity.

  “Jess was one of those rare people who saw happiness as a right, not as a luxury. She cut through the complications and stripped things bare. She . . . she,” James paused there, obviously frustrated with his inability to capture the essence of his former love, and David told him it was okay to slow down, take his time.

  “I remember that first weekend in New York,” he said, perhaps feeling that giving an example was easier than expressing his feelings outright. “We were at the Met and standing in front of this painting and all I saw was a picture of a girl bathing. But Jess saw color and depth and light and texture. She saw that girl’s life beyond the picture. The frame meant nothing to her, Mr. Cavanaugh, because she looked into it, not at it. And maybe that’s why I loved her so much.” James took a breath then, casting the slightest glance at his late girlfriend’s father.

  “I have had a lifetime of people assessing me by my achievements, not in a bad way, but just because that’s the way it normally goes. But Jess, she saw beyond all that from the first moment we met, and the fact that she fell in love with me, well, that was the most amazing thing of all.”

  Sawyer saw the irony in it, the fact that he was now in his very own line to get past the front security checkpoint at Boston’s Superior Court. Some crazy tourist had come in and pulled out her camera and started snapping away at the court’s interior steps because she thought they were the ones the lawyers came down in the TV show Boston Legal and she couldn’t wait to get all the way home to Topeka and give evidence to one and all of her serious brush with fame. Of course the camera—complete with shots of her entire East Coast over-fifties coach tour—was confiscated within seconds, leaving the woman beyond consolation and causing a hell of a backlog at the court’s front steps.

  Ten minutes later the line started to move again and Sawyer put down his bag to be checked, while another guard ran him over with an electric prod.

  “You here for the Matheson thing?” asked the guard. “Because it’s standing room only up there.”

  “That’s okay,” said Sawyer. “I go to Deane,” he added, not wanting the guard to think he was one of those shameless voyeurs. “I’m friends with defense counsel,” he added.

  “And I’m Tom Cruise,” said the guard. “And Katie sends her regards.”

  Seconds later he was on his way and taking the stairs two at a time toward the elevators. He was late, but at least when the judge called for morning recess Sara would know he moved hell or high water to be here.

  “Look, Dean,” said Joe over the noise. “The thing is, we can to-and-fro this thing until the cows come home but I really don’t need your permission
.” Frank was at the wheel, the removable siren light now flashing on top of their unmarked sedan.

  “We have a warrant and this is nothing more than a courtesy call. You want to meet us and show us the way to the dorm then that would be great. But either way we are going in.”

  “Enter via the east gate,” said Johns after a pause. “There’s a garage down and inclined to your left. I’ll meet you there in ten,” he said before hanging up.

  “Real charmer that one,” said Frank above the siren.

  “Fucking university of pricks,” said Joe before rubbing at his forehead with his right hand.

  “There are a million explanations for this, Chief,” said Frank at last.

  “He was in that greenhouse, Frank.”

  “Yeah, but maybe long before the girl died.”

  And then Joe’s cell rang again and, expecting it to be Johns, he pressed “receive” quickly to say: “We’re almost there.”

  But it wasn’t Johns; in fact, it was the last person in the universe Joe was expecting to hear from this morning.

  “Lieutenant Mannix,” said the obviously distressed girl.

  “Who is this?” asked Joe.

  “It’s Barbara Rousseau, Lieutenant. And I need to speak with you urgently.”

  “Everything they said was true,” said James without hesitation. The court was now reeling at this blatant admission. “Heath and H. Edgar, they are my best friends, and that night, at the bar, I was drunk and emotional and sick with grief.

  “You have to remember that the last time I saw her we barely spoke. She still wanted to keep everything quiet, and that night, the last Friday before semester, she was with her girlfriends and I was with the guys, and considering we had made arrangements to hook up after the orientation the following day I never realized how much I would regret not being with her until . . .”