Alibi (17 page)

And then Peter Nagoshi nodded, now leaving his father’s huddle to face the room and say: “Forgive me, gentlemen, I am afraid this revelation is unexpected. This is a difficult time for my family and I apologize for any impropriety.”

The older Nagoshi indicated for his son to retake his seat—and the rest of the room followed in unison.

“I mean you no disrespect, Lieutenant Mannix,” Peter Nagoshi went on, his red cheeks flush, his breathing now deep. “And I understand your reasoning that police investigators must sometimes operate in secrecy. But if what you say is true, I do not agree that this was a detail to be kept from us. Jessica was my sister, her child was my niece or nephew—my father’s grandchild—a Nagoshi heir.

“We have not honored this child by mourning its loss,” said the younger Nagoshi, his voice now rising a notch. “Rather it has been used as a pawn in your so far fruitless investigations and we . . .”

“Peter,”
said John Nagoshi before turning to Mannix himself. “I apologize for my son’s reactions, Lieutenant. But I have to say I agree with him. This is a significant truth and I am afraid I do not see how . . .”

“Mr. Nagoshi is right,” said Katz, prompting Joe, Frank and Leo to do a double take toward the sycophantic ADA at the head of the table. “This detail should not have been kept from his family.

“I can assure you, Mr. Nagoshi,” the Kat went on, now turning to the corporate giant with an expression that suggested both sympathy and determination, “I did not agree with this obviously unsuccessful tactic, but I am afraid the DA’s office is often at the mercy of investigators whose job it is to provide the raw material for a case that . . .”

“Who was the father of this child, Lieutenant?” interrupted Nagoshi, still focusing on Joe.

“We have no idea, sir,” said Joe. “We have a DNA sample from the fetus but once again we need something to compare it to.”

“How far along was she?”

“Thirteen weeks, sir,” said Joe. “But just because your daughter was pregnant, does not mean the father of the child was her killer. Our medical examiner stressed there was no evidence of rape either on the night of your daughter’s death or previously, which suggests any sexual relations she had had in the past were consensual.”

Peter Nagoshi bristled in his seat and Joe took a breath before going on. “Look Mr. Nagoshi, I am sorry this detail was withheld from you and your son, but in all honesty I still believe it should be kept within the four walls of this room. We do not want a situation where every asshole in town is claiming to be the father of your unborn grandchild and believe me, there are scum out there low enough to waste our time with such rubbish in some ridiculous attempt to get their hands on your fortune.

“Furthermore,” Joe went on before Katz could interrupt, “I still believe this detail can help us find the offender. If Special Agent Jacobs is right, then maybe it was the news of her pregnancy that rocked the killer’s world. Maybe it was this unborn child that sent the murderer over the edge and if that is the case then . . .”

“Two million dollars,” said Nagoshi.

“I’m sorry, sir?” said Mannix.

“Two million American dollars for information that leads to the arrest of the man who murdered my family. One million for each life, Lieutenant, a tawdry amount is it not?”

The room fell silent again, until . . .

“Mr. Nagoshi,” said Katz, his eyes wide at just the mention of such a substantial reward, “I think that is a
very
good idea. It could just be the key to . . .”

“No,” said Joe, now completely exasperated by the unexpected turn of events at this evening’s meeting. “Forgive me, sir, but that is a
huge
mistake. For every idiot who will come out of the woodwork claiming to be Jessica’s lover, there will be another thousand concocting fanciful crap just so they can get their hands on the reward.”

“I shall trust your judgment that the pregnancy should be kept quiet, Lieutenant,” said Nagoshi. “But monetary incentives are my area of expertise and I am afraid you have no jurisdiction as to how I allocate my finances. The reward stands, Lieutenant. I shall contact the press today and if you do not wish the Boston Police to be the relevant point of contact, then I shall set up my own team of investigators to . . . as you say, sift through the
koedame
.”

Joe looked at him then, the others in the room virtually forgotten, the two of them negotiating like broker to broker, expert to expert, man to man.

“All right, Mr. Nagoshi,” said Joe at last. “You win. But I want to ask one favor—one small favor before we send out an invitation to every greedy piece of scum this side of Maine to bombard this investigation with bullshit.”

Joe took a breath, not sure what he was about to do was right. He had not intended to mention James Matheson at this meeting, especially after his recent conversation with David. But this evening’s events had been anything but predictable, and right now he would do everything he could to prevent this case—a case he and Frank were slowly and carefully unraveling—from turning into the three-ring circus from hell. “There is a new lead, sir,” Joe went on, carefully choosing his words. “A young man who we believe may have had some form of personal relationship with your daughter.”

“What?”
said a now red-faced Roger Katz.

“Detective McKay and I have spent the past twenty-four hours making some discreet inquiries about this boy,” said Mannix, ignoring the now furious ADA. “And I want to make it clear that, at least at this point, we have no evidence to suggest he is guilty.

“He is popular, intelligent, independently wealthy and one of the highest performers at Deane’s School of Law—scholastically and athletically. We also believe he has an alibi and with all due respect, sir, we need at least until the weekend to check it out.”

Joe stopped there, taking a sip of water to cool his now dry throat before taking another breath and moving on. “So that’s the deal, Mr. Nagoshi. It’s now Wednesday evening. Forty-eight hours and you get to post your reward. We come up blank, you put up your money. Two more days and you have it your way. Just give us a chance to . . .”

“All right, Lieutenant,” said Nagoshi, “I accept your deal. But you must also promise me a full report on this boy before the week is out.”

“I can assure you, Mr. Nagoshi,” interrupted Katz, “I will make sure Lieutenant Mannix provides you with . . .”

“It’s a deal,” said Mannix, ignoring the ADA yet again, his eyes never leaving the Japanese businessman who now stood to walk across the room and shake Joe’s outstretched hand.

Sawyer Jones was in his Deane University dorm room, sitting on the edge of his single metal-framed bed and facing toward the large, open bay window that gave uninterrupted passage to the cool, biting southeasterly breeze. It was late. The lights were off but the moon cast a single beam through the window and Sawyer had squeezed his lithe frame into the path of said beam in an almost primitive urge for natural illumination. He looked at his bedside digital for the tenth time in the past hour. A quarter after midnight and he was already counting the hours until the sun crept over the horizon like a welcome visitor promising warmth and activity and banishing the shadows of the endless night that brought nothing but loneliness and regret.

It was his birthday. As of fifteen minutes ago, Sawyer was seventeen years of age.

Seventeen
, he said to himself. At the very least it sounded older than sixteen, but then Sawyer’s age had been playing tricks on him since he was a child, since he was tested and assessed and labeled as “exceptionally gifted” by a never-ending succession of fascinated educational experts who viewed him as the intellectual specimen from heaven.

“He read Dickens at five,”
his New Hampshire blue-chip tax attorney father would tell the experts—paying more attention to their attention than he did to his actual son.
“He conquered calculus by seven, Pythagoras by eight, the theory of relativity by nine and the molecular breakdown of DNA by the age of eleven.”

His fellow Deane students had no idea and he had no intention of telling them. The university administrators knew, of course, but he had asked that his age and gifted status remain confidential and they saw no need to protest as long as his grades were satisfactory, which of course they were.

He
looked
sixteen, but given his high grades and ingrained ability to “mix it with the big kids,” his boyish features were taken as just that. In fact, his angelic appearance fit perfectly on the face of one who spent all of his spare time trying to right the wrongs of this burgeoning bourgeois world. It was almost as if he were born to it. He was passionate about helping those less fortunate, that was fair to say, but Sawyer was passionate about everything he took on, and that was part of the problem. His role as Solidarity Global Youth Director had given him a worthy outlet for his overactive social conscience, and selfishly, a means of making friends.

Friends
, he said to himself.
From the Greek “philos,” meaning fondness
. Even now he found his brain was in overdrive, a coping mechanism no doubt, given the depth of his despair, the burden of his loss, the intensity of his
guilt
. Jessica was his friend. Dear, sweet, beautiful Jess who saw him for what he was and accepted him with all his quirks and hidden eccentricities. He even had his own secret name for her—J No—which was extremely teen of him, and therefore, perhaps, not so inappropriate after all. His motives for “conscripting” her were selfish—and she knew it. But she assumed such selfishness sprung from his desire to parade her, the daughter of one of the biggest multinational chief executives on the planet, as an advocate for international workers’ rights. The stories of injustice troubled her, but her knowledge that her father’s policy of optimal working conditions for all Nagoshi Inc. employees made her proud and determined to see other global corporations follow suit.

True, her status as a corporate princess was a drawcard, but if he was truly honest with himself, Sawyer would have to admit that, in the end, it was not about her father. It was, at least eventually, and probably from the outset, all about her. For Sawyer loved her the minute he set eyes on her a little over a year ago. That long, smooth hair, perfect porcelain skin, bright almond eyes and sparkling smile. And he loved her even more as he got to know her spiritually and intellectually—their analytical sparring elevated him to a new level of cerebral and emotional bliss. And that was why he felt so sick, rotten to his very core. He was nauseous, dizzy, hot, cold, dry, thirsty, hyped, exhausted and, as was
so
typical of the “bona fide intellectual genius” that was Sawyer Hudson Jones, fully operational all at the very same time. But despite appearances, sitting here in the murky gloom of obscurity, the guilt was all consuming. It sat like a parasite eating away at his insides. Feeding on his shame, his remorse, his
inconsolable sorrow
. It lay low in his belly throughout the day and consumed his entire body in the long, black, solitary hours of darkness.

Sawyer glanced at his bedside clock. 12:35 a.m. He had to prepare an agenda for the SG fundraising meeting scheduled before classes at 7:30 and had not yet put pen to paper. He was an intelligent person. And while he knew there was no way to rewrite history, he reasoned there must be a way to, in the very least, atone for what he had done.

That’s it!
he said to himself now, feeling warm reassurance from the familiar format of “problem and solution.” There was no puzzle beyond Sawyer’s grasp, he had never,
ever
experienced the frustration of being unable to answer a question, unravel a riddle, demystify an enigma.

Peto reperio verum-i
—seek a solution and you will find the truth.

And so Sawyer decided he would start with a shower. He summoned all of his strength and rose from his bed—his legs finding their balance, his lungs consuming the fresh night air, his eyes refocusing on the twinkling fairy lights that graced the Deane University gazebos like fireflies sitting in circles. But it was his stomach that would not follow suit. For just as Sawyer was about to announce himself ready for another day, his gut wrenched like a garbage compactor, forcing its meager contents upward so that he barely had time to race to his tiny bathroom before purging himself of the sickness that bled like a river inside.

“Nagoshi Incorporated Chief Executive Officer John Nagoshi is on the verge of offering a record seven-figure reward for information leading to the arrest of his teenage daughter’s killer, according to a reliable source involved with the case,”
David read aloud from Marc Rigotti’s piece on the front page of this morning’s
Tribune
. David had just arrived at Myrtle’s, Joe having called late last night to ask if he would meet him for an early morning coffee, and had barely taken off his coat before an obviously furious Joe pushed the paper in front of him, and said, “Get a load of this.”

“The reward, according to the source,”
David went on,
“will be offered as early as Friday in an attempt to draw new information on the brutal murder of nineteen-year-old Deane University student, Jessica Nagoshi, who was strangled to death in the greenhouse of her father’s expansive Wellesley estate almost two months ago.

David looked up at Joe, a new flush of rage now coloring his detective friend’s unshaven face.

“ ‘John Nagoshi is a successful executive with unparalleled business acumen,’ ”
David continued quoting after a nod from Joe.
“ ‘And he knows that money talks,’ said the source who did not wish to be named. ADA Katz, who has promised to prosecute the case personally if and when it gets to trial, has been patient with the police but knows that time is of the essence.