Alibi (48 page)

It took him almost forty minutes to make it to Government Center, where he parked illegally without bothering to lock his Land Cruiser. He ran down City Hall Plaza past Scollay Square and into Sudbury Street—negotiating the various construction site blockades and dodging the “face-down” pedestrians heading for the various T stations at Government Center, Park Street and Downtown Crossing. Finally, he turned into the narrow Bulfinch Place where he entered the first building on the block. He picked up his pace and ran through the lobby, calling for the elevator while watching the lethargic light dial mark its slow descent to the ground floor.

He moved in the second the doors opened, forgoing the usual decorum of allowing the existing passengers to exit first. And then he counted the seconds until the elevator rose one floor, two, three, four, realizing that his anger, if anything, had not subsided but multiplied over the past hour—reason now completely forgotten, retribution his only goal.

“Where is he?” he asked as he entered the main reception of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

“I am sorry, sir,” said the counter clerk, looking up from her desk. “It’s after seven, our offices are closed and . . .”

“Never mind,” said David, ignoring the girl’s protests as he bounded down the hallway past various empty laminate desks and dark, windowless offices.

The place looked deserted, which David knew was rare for the DA’s office even at this late hour on a Friday evening. But then he heard them, the congregation down the corridor. Friday night drinks or the like—Katz no doubt lording it over his troops like some godforsaken aristocrat rewarding his slaves with the pleasure of his company, dishing out the advice with no end of references to his stellar expertise.

He reached the end of the gray carpeted passageway, Katz’s secretary still glued to her desk—too low on the ladder to warrant an invite, but high enough to require that she stay late to take her more superior colleagues’ messages.

“Is Katz in there?” asked David, the girl’s wide eyes telling him she knew exactly who he was.

“I . . . This is a private function and . . .”

“Is he in there?”
David repeated, and in that second he could have sworn the young girl gave the very slightest of smiles.

“Sure,” she said, lowering her voice. “In fact, he is entertaining the attorney general.”

And then the girl did something completely unexpected. She stood from her chair, negotiating her rather substantial bulk back from behind her desk, and gestured toward the closed conference room door, beyond which David could hear the civil joviality of Friday night backslapping playing out like some sycophantic lovefest.

“Stuff it,” she said at last, standing back to let him pass. “My boss is an asshole, Mr. Cavanaugh, in case you haven’t already noticed. You’re the last person he’d be expecting to be seeing this evening so . . . let’s shake this party up a little, shall we?” She pointed to the door. “Be my guest.”

“Shit,” said Joe, crouching low to look over the bald technician’s shoulder.

The light in the laboratory was low and had an eerie green tinge to it. The room buzzed with the dull hum of high-tech machinery, the requisite cool temperature adding to the feeling of sterility and detachment. Joe considered the two images before him, his heart sinking at what he saw. The print on the left looked nothing like the one on the right. It was not a match. H. Edgar Simpson was not in the Nagoshis’ greenhouse—or if he was, he left no evidence to prove it.

“As you can see,” said the technician, who Susan had introduced as an Agent Wicks, “the print on the left, the one from the greenhouse, has a number of large loops and whorls.

“You have to realize we only get ‘accidentals’ like this—meaning a clean print showing the complete loops and the whorls—about five percent of the time so at least we had something reasonable to work with.

“As for the one on the right—from the drinking glass you supplied—well, admittedly it’s not as clear, but Blind Freddy could tell you this one comes from a completely different individual. The ridges arch and curve differently, the loops exit to the left, whereas in the first print they exit to the right.

“I could do some point comparison but, and forgive the pun, there really isn’t any point. They’re apples and oranges, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Shit,” said Frank. “This case will not cut us a break.”

He was right. Joe felt like they had been walking backward the minute they had arrived in Quantico—Ned Jacobs blowing their profiler ideas out of the water, Susan’s technician buddy dashing their hopes of placing Simpson at the crime scene with one flick of his “ninety-eight percent accuracy rate” screen.

“Look,” said Susan, after thanking Wicks and directing her two obviously disappointed friends back out of the laboratory. “It’s not all bad. The prints aren’t a match, but that doesn’t mean Simpson wasn’t in that greenhouse. You keep telling me how smart the kid is—so maybe he was careful, wore gloves or . . .”

“It doesn’t make any difference,” said Joe, stepping back so Susan could exit the heavy lab door first. “No evidence is still no evidence, and Jacobs is set on his sexual attraction theory so . . .”

While profiler Jacobs had agreed the killer’s organized, controlling approach to the murder could fit someone of either Peter Nagoshi or H. Edgar Simpson’s personality, he was still convinced the killer had some sort of sexual attraction to Jessica. He said the shoes were the key, as many perpetrators saw their victim’s feet as extremely erotic.

“The feet are incredibly sensual—but safe,” he had explained. “Removing her shoes was a particularly clean way to assert his control over her. He did not need to rape her, to risk revealing his identity by leaving his DNA at the scene. But still he managed to commit this crime in the way that he needed to commit it. No, I am afraid my assessment stands, gentlemen. The killer was attracted to her—no doubt in my mind.”

And so Jacobs had effectively destroyed both of their theories in one sweeping observation.

The scene was just as David expected—small groups of mostly males congregating in clusters—talking, drinking, smiling. The large conference room table had been pushed aside to create a wide open space in which to mingle. The curtains were wide open, revealing the city lights below. The men were basically clones of one another—dark suits, short hair, their ages in that appropriate margin that spread comfortably above or below the respectable watershed that was middle age. The women were dressed much the same, their suit skirts ending just above the knee, long enough to scream credibility and short enough to win the eye of an ever-appreciative ADA.

And there he was, all genuine interest and ingratiating smiles. He was chatting with Sweeney and his entourage, his dark brown suit screaming fine Italian wool, his shoes so damned shiny they must have required a set of high-powered double As just to maintain the wattage.

David moved forward, ignoring the stares from the few suits who had already looked across to see him bounding across the floor. And then Katz glanced upward, no doubt distracted by the peripheral image of a man torpedoing across the room toward him.

“Cavanaugh,” said Katz at once, and in that moment David saw three emotions shift quickly across his expression—alarm, anger, and then, perhaps, a determination to swallow his panic and “strut his stuff” in front of the powerful, influential supporter beside him.

“What an unexpected surprise,” he said, turning toward David, a sort of half smile, half grimace on his perfectly chis eled face.

“We need to talk,” said David. “We can do it here, in front of your fearless leader, or you can choose to step outside.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Katz began. “But I am afraid this is a private function.”

“Your choice, Katz,” interrupted David, “because to be honest I don’t give a crap who hears what I have to say.”

“Excuse me,” said Sweeney, now moving into their space. “Mr. Cavanaugh,” he said, extending his hand on instinct, before quickly withdrawing it at David’s glare. “Counselor, I have heard great things about you and your work, but I am afraid this behavior is completely unacceptable.”

“So sue me,” said David, turning toward the AG.

“For God’s sake,” said Sweeney, his face now flush with color. “Roger, call security.”

Katz was obviously in a bind: on one hand he needed to obey Sweeney; on the other, he did not want to look like a pussy in front of his entire staff, who were now viewing the exchange with great interest. So in the end he compromised. He leaned into David’s ear and whispered,
“Outside, now,”
before straightening his tie and directing David toward the back of the room.

The silence was deafening, the suits lost in some mesmerizing game of people tennis—except there were two balls in play and both had been lobbed straight to the back of the court and, sadly, out of bounds.

The minute they were out the door Katz let loose, no doubt realizing he had a small window of opportunity to show his wares before the slow moving air pump closed the door with a hiss.

“What the hell do you think you are doing, Cavanaugh? How dare you waltz in here uninvited. Shelley, call security. I want Mr. Cavanaugh here arrested for trespassing.”

“No chance,” said David, noticing Shelley had not moved an inch. “The DA’s office is open to all citizens of this fine state and I am, whether you like it or not, Roger, one of those fine goddamned taxpayers. You fucked with me today, Roger. You screwed with my client. You had him expelled from Deane knowing full well how that would play out in the press.”

The door shut with an almost inaudible
click
and Katz took a quick step back. “So, you heard about my little call to Dean Johns? An extremely insightful administrator, if ever there was one.”

“You are one sick fuck, Katz,” said David, his heart now pumping in triple time.

“Really? Then why do I feel so healthy, Cavanaugh? I am sitting pretty with a long career and a life full of promise ahead of me. Which is more than I can say for you, or your client who . . .”

“There is no way you will win this, Roger. James Matheson is innocent and the court will know the truth. One day you are going to have to face what you do to these people, count the lives you have ruined and be accountable for them. What you did today was a perversion of justice, plain and simple. So, while racing toward this speedy trial you requested, you better make sure you prepare a speech for Stein as to why you effectively tainted a statewide jury pool by interfering with . . .”

“You’re not filing a counter motion?” interrupted an obviously confused Katz.

“Why would I? James is innocent. We want to make sure he is home for Christmas.”

“And so you shall,” smiled the Kat. “Christmas 2999. Of course he will be well into his hundreds and his eyesight might not be as great as it is right now, but in the very least he’ll enjoy seeing in the new millennium and sipping the odd glass of cider.”

David took a breath before looking straight into his enemy’s dark brown eyes, seeing nothing but arrogance and overconfidence and greed. He took a step forward—slowly, carefully, until he was face-to-face with the shiny-faced ADA, Katz’s stance now unsure, his breath hot and sour and tinged with the slightest trace of fear.

“Are you listening to me, Roger?” David asked, his voice barely over a whisper. “You need to listen to me because what I am about to say is going to change your life.

“I am going to win this thing, you pathetic excuse for an attorney, and sink your precious future in the process. I am going to cut you down and wring you out and leave you bloodied and bare and wishing you never took me on in the first place.

“I am nothing if not determined, Roger—even you can give me that. And so know,” he said, “know, in here,” he said again, this time pushing his right fist hard against Katz’s chest, “that it is my mission to expose you, to humiliate you—personally, professionally, publicly—for your criminal manipulation of the law and the oath you swore to uphold. Your total disregard for humanity is beyond evil, Roger, and I will not rest until you get what you deserve.”

Just then they were interrupted by a figure approaching from down the hall, and David, whose eyes did not leave the ADA’s, presumed it was the security guards ready to remove him from the premises. But it could not be the guards, he thought, at least not yet, as Shelley had not lifted a finger to summon them.

It was a waiter, carrying a fresh tray of drinks. And as he eyed the pair, obviously sensing the tension and making a rather wide circle around them in an effort to reach the conference room door unscathed, David called
“Wait!”
before grabbing the man’s arm and reaching across to grab an icy cold beer from his tray.

“Humph,” said Katz, taking a swallow, momentarily relieved to have David leave the confines of his precious personal space. “What do you plan to do, tough guy?” he asked, finding a new surge of confidence as he took another step back. “You gonna throw a drink in my face? Don’t worry, I’ve had more than a few whores respond in exactly the same way when they have been disappointed by my rejection.”