Alibi (46 page)

“I’m a Catholic, Sara, born and raised, and I value human life as much as the next guy. But I am also an attorney, hired to save a young man’s life, and if that means fighting the feticide tooth and nail then that is exactly what I’ll do.”

And she nodded, knowing he was right and feeling the sting of his candor, both at the same time.

“And if it was me?” she said at last, asking the one question she knew he would not want to hear. “If it was me and our baby who were murdered in that greenhouse—me and your potential son who lost their lives in a brutal double massacre.”

“Then I would walk to my dresser, pull out my gun and shoot the person responsible until he died twice over—once for you and once for . . .” His voice began to falter and for some inexplicable reason, she loved him all the more for it.

“I am sorry,” she said at last, the tears now falling freely down her face.

“Don’t be,” he said. “That’s why I love you—and why, despite it all, you give me a reason to cherish this crazy world we live in.”

“Quantico, Virginia, is in Prince William County, twenty-three miles north-northeast of Fredericksburg near Dumfries and Stafford along Highway 619,” Frank began. “It is totally surrounded by Marine Corps Base Quantico and the Potomac River. It is located south of the mouth of Quantico Creek on the Potomac and, as of the 2004 census, had a population of 561.”

“And if you don’t give it a rest, Frank,” said Joe, peering through the rain-soaked windscreen, “I will leave you here to make it an even 562.”

“The FBI Academy is located on the Marine Corps Base,” continued a now grinning Frank, raising his eyebrows above his bifocals and extending his arm so that the brochure was now even farther away from his pink, flushed face. “The 385-acre Facility provides the security, privacy and safe environment necessary to carry out the diverse training and operations functions for which the FBI is responsible.”

“Safe.” Joe laughed. “I’m sure it was until about a year ago when Leigh torpedoed the place with her presence. Simba says she spent the first eighteen weeks of training correcting her superiors and the next six months trying to get her head across every damned unit on the base.”

“I thought all new agents were recruited to field offices immediately after training?”

“They are,” said Joe. “But according to Leo, when she topped her academy class and asked if she could spend the next six months learning how the FBI lab techs and profilers work, her Special Agent in Charge found it impossible to say ‘no.’ ”

“Imagine,” said Frank with a chuckle. “Someone finding it hard to say ‘no’ to Susan. Just didn’t have the balls to stand up to her, is all.”

“And we did?” countered Joe.

“Absolutely,” smiled Frank.

They had just turned into the Academy’s western gate and were approaching the third and final security checkpoint, the first two having been manned by the Marines and this final one by the FBI Police. Joe and Frank pulled out their IDs while the officer checked their names on the visitors’ sheet and within minutes they were told to park at the main reception stop. Agent Leigh would drive down from the main facility to pick them up.

Joe held tightly to his briefcase, which contained the glass Sawyer had retrieved from the Deane Law School Common Room. For some reason he had become very protective of this lone piece of evidence, so much so that he had physically opened his case and checked on it three times in the past six hours.

“Don’t worry, boss,” said Frank, as if reading his mind. “Susan said she could pull some strings in Latent Prints. Get it rushed through on the quiet.”

Joe nodded.

“And Agent Jacobs is all lined up. Simba called him personally and asked him to meet us under the radar.”

“We have to be careful we don’t mention Simpson or Nagoshi by name,” reminded Joe. “Jacobs is stand up but I don’t want to place him in the middle of things.”

“So we just allude to our two suspects via character rather than name,” said Frank.

“Exactly, and if either of their profiles fit, well, at least we know we are on the right track.”

Half an hour later, Simpson’s prints had been rushed to the Latent Print Unit to be compared to the two unidentified prints from the Nagoshi greenhouse, and Joe and Frank were getting an impromptu but extremely informative tour of the new FBI laboratory facility from their ex-fellow detective, now FBI Agent Susan Leigh.

Leigh was obviously genuinely excited about showing her ex-boss and partner around her new “home” and was, as usual, a walking encyclopedia of information.

“This place is amazing,” she said. “The lab, which is only six years old, by the way, takes up almost 500,000 square feet over four floors, three of which are dedicated to specialized laboratories and offices for the scientists and technicians who work here. All laboratory areas are separate to offices to avoid evidence contamination—they even have special biovestibules that act as airlocks between the two work spaces, where the technicians change in and out of their examination gear.”

“So what kind of stuff are we talking here?” asked Frank. “I mean, apart from the obvious.”

“Some serious shit, McKay,” said the enthusiastic Leigh, falling back into the comfortable cop to cop vernacular. “This place conducts over a million examinations a year with over fifteen units following different areas of expertise. There are the obvious ones, like latent prints and DNA analysis but there are other units who look solely after chemistry, computer analysis, explosives, firearms, audiovisual, hazardous materials, minerol ogy, questioned documents, photographic and racketeering.”

They stopped in front of a glass display showing a range of guns and other armaments, everything from homemade pistols to rocket launchers.

“See that there,” said Susan, pointing at a small handgun that sat snug inside a rather thick book. “The perp carved out the pages in the shape of the weapon so that the pistol was a tight fit. Then he walked into a bank, book in hand, and proceeded to rob the joint.”

“How much did he score before he got popped?” asked Frank.

“Not enough,” said Susan with a half smile on her face. “Here,” she said gesturing to them both. “Lean forward. Take a closer look at the book.”

Frank and Joe moved closer to the glass to get a better view. It was a thick, hard cover version of an old novel, the pages fibrous and yellowed with age.

“Jesus,” said Joe. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yep,” smiled Susan at her ex-chief’s astute observation. “Margaret Mitchell’s
Gone With the Wind—
first edition, May 1936. Basically, we worked out that this big thinker would have had to have robbed ten banks to get the book’s worth back again. The idiot hacked his payroll to pieces and spent the rest of his life paying for it.”

“Obviously a budding rocket scientist in the making,” said McKay.

“Aren’t they all?” said Susan.

They had made the decision on the way down to tell Susan as much as possible without compromising her position as a federal law enforcement officer. They trusted their ex-coworker 100 percent, but were also determined not to place her in a position where she felt obliged to inform her superiors of the nature of their investigations.

“So,” said Leigh once they were seated in a windowless meeting room on the third floor of the sprawling facility. “How much can you spill?”

“Not much, except to say the prints, and the matter we want to discuss with Special Agent Jacobs, are related to an ongoing investigation.”

“Ongoing, huh?” said Susan with a half-smile. “I thought the Nagoshi case was closed.”

“It’s nothing for you to worry about, Susan,” said Joe. “Just dotting our ‘I’s, crossing our ‘T’s.”

“Damn it,” she replied, her dark brown eyes now alight with interest. “And here I was getting all excited at the prospect of being asked to help you both with some covert little gem—something that might rub that asshole Katz the wrong way.”

Joe smiled before stealing a glance at Frank who gave him the slightest of nods. “You enter at your own risk, Susan,” he said at last.

“Then let me the hell in.”

Sara sat down beside him and took a breath. This was not going to be easy. They had decided to tell James everything, not just because it was his life they were dealing with, and not just because they needed to ask him questions relating to their two alternative hypotheses, but also because they knew he had a bright legal mind, and could well be of assistance as they built their case for trial. They would have liked to have waited until he was out of the infirmary, but they had effectively strangled their preparation time the minute they had decided to agree to Katz’s motion for a speedy trial, and now had to live with the consequences.

And so Sara started with Peter Nagoshi, and Mr. Kwon and Mr. Lim, and the human rights atrocity that was Nagoshi Inc.’s automobile plant in Guangdong. James sat up in his bed, listening to it all—silent, still, apart from his right hand, which seemed to twitch involuntarily every few seconds or so.

“I don’t believe this,” he said at last. “For starters, Jess rarely mentioned her brother. I sensed they weren’t close but she never criticized him openly, apart from making the odd jibe at his conservatism and obsession with work.”

Sara frowned. This was a blow in itself. They were hoping Jessica had relayed some form of concern regarding her brother’s ambition and determination to usurp her as future company CEO. They thought perhaps she might have told James about China and her fears that Peter was going behind their father’s back. But then again, she only spoke to Mr. Lim mere hours before her death, so she probably didn’t get the opportunity to . . .

“Jess would have been pissed,” said James, interrupting her thoughts. “She hated that sort of thing. She often spoke of her father’s humanitarianism and, if she found out, I am sure she would have been determined to fix things.”

There was a pause.

“So she knew?” he asked after a time. “About what was going on in China?”

“She found out the night before she died.”

“Oh,” he said, nodding his head. “Did he kill her?” he asked at last.

“Perhaps. In fact, we believe it was either Peter or . . . ,” Sara hesitated, not knowing exactly how to tell him.

“Or who?” said James, his voice rising a little.

“Or your friend H. Edgar Simpson.”

James was speechless, the color now draining from his face completely.

“This is crazy,” he managed. “You cannot be serious. What are you guys trying to do, Sara? Jess’s brother, H. Edgar? Are my chances that slim? Is my situation that dire that already, months before trial, you are leaning toward a last resort ‘Plan B’?”

Sara knew what James was asking and, in all honesty, she could not blame him. “Plan B” was a term used when desperate defense lawyers, with no real proof of their client’s innocence, play the only card they have left—throwing up a series of alternative scenarios, or more specifically, possible perpetrators, in an effort to establish reasonable doubt. Truth be told, no matter how despairing, it was a viable strategy, but they knew that in order to maintain at least some form of credibility they needed to narrow their field of potential alternatives to one—which was why Sara was so determined to push on, in the hope that James might assist them in identifying the real killer in their midst.

“Think about it, James,” she began. “Why did H. Edgar turn you in in the first place? And you need to look beyond the motive of greed.”

“It was all a game. He thought Barbara would come through with an alibi.”

“Did he?” she interrupted. “Then why didn’t he recant his testimony after you were arrested?” Sara took a breath, now looking her client directly in the eye. “We believe H. Edgar had another motive for lying about your confession, James. The reward money, the ‘game’ as you call it, definitely appealed to his sense of superiority, and certainly helped get Westinghouse on board. But we have further evidence, we have
proof
, that H. Edgar has provided the ADA with fresh, far-reaching evidence against you, and is intent on revealing it at trial. He is not your friend, James. In fact, he is . . .”

“No,” said James, interrupting her. “H. Edgar is a mercenary bastard, but I can’t believe he would go as far as you suggest.”

“He sold you out, James, and convinced your other best friend to do the same.”

“Heath wouldn’t do this either. Unless, perhaps . . . H. Edgar convinced him that I . . .”

“That you killed her? Which is probably what he did.”

Sara took his shaking hand in hers. She wanted to comfort him, to stress that he was not alone. But selfishly, the twitching was also upsetting her, as it emphasized James’ frailty, weakness, vulnerability.

“I am sorry, James, but we believe H. Edgar manipulated Westinghouse for his own personal gain and, perhaps more to the point, to divert the blame away from himself.”