Alibi (39 page)

“Jesus, Sara,” David began, lowering his voice, the two of them now leaning into each other, feeling somehow “safe” in this huddle of unknown conspiracies. “How did you . . . ?”

“Sawyer recorded it,” Sara began. “He was brilliant, David, he just waltzed out of that grand jury hearing room and stood a foot to Katz’s right. He was smart enough to think of calling my number and, well, needless to say Katz had no idea he was sharing his very private conversation with the lead defense counsel and his co-chair.

“The good news is we know he is up to something,” Sara went on. “But the bad news is . . .”

“We have no idea what it is,” finished David.

“Exactly,” she said, picking up her spoon to stir the soup Mick had delivered moments ago.

“So we have to assume Simpson and Westinghouse’s testimonies were basically a relay of what they told Joe,” added David. “But that Simpson has something else, some
bombshell
that, judging by Katz’s excitement, could be devastating to our client.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Sara. “We have to fight this, David. The ADA has a legal obligation to provide us with all evidence discovered in the course of his investigations, and if he is guilty of a failure to disclose, then we can demand the evidence be precluded from trial.”

“But we don’t even know what it is, Sara. And worse still, we found out about it via means of an illegal recording of a private conversation.”

“This is no time to have a go at Sawyer, David,” she said, pulling back a little.

“I wasn’t,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her close again. “I’m grateful, believe me. The kid is kinda freaky but he’s damn smart. It’s just that now we are between a rock and a hard place—we can’t go to Stein with it, and we can’t stroll on up and ask the Kat what the hell he has in his illegal bag of tricks.”

“Then we have to go to . . .”

“One of the boys,” finished David.

“Westinghouse,” she countered.

“No. He may not be the ringleader, Sara. By the sound of things,” he said, gesturing at her cell, “Simpson is still pulling his strings.”

“Who then?” she asked, their soup still ignored.

“The only other person who can help us,” he said before bending down to retrieve the small cassette from his briefcase. He took the tiny plastic tape from a side pocket and placed it in front of her.

“What’s that?” she asked at last.

“I’m guessing it’s a tape from James’ home answering machine.”

“What is it with today and secret recordings?” she said, looking up at him again. “David, tell me you didn’t lift that from the search.” said Sara, pointing at the cassette, the uneasiness in her expression obvious.

“Not me, his father. He retrieved it before the cops had a chance to . . .”

“What’s on it?” she interrupted.

“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to find out. But I was going to suggest we head back to the office and use Nora’s dictaphone. Then . . .” He looked at his watch, it was almost four. “First thing tomorrow we take it to the one person who will hopefully be able to shed some light on both of our recorded mysteries.”

“James,” she said at last. “He was the third musketeer, he knows how Simpson thinks.”

“And he has nothing to lose,” finished David. “Grab your coat, Sara. Something tells me that whatever it is, we have to get on top of this thing before it blows up in our faces.”

Two hours later Roger Katz did something he had not done in his entire career—he left the office early. Well, six o’clock may not seem early to some, but it was to him. Hell, he was rarely out of his workplace by nine—a fact his incompetent assistant Shelley could attest to, given she was forbidden to leave until he had officially called it a night.

But the past two days had been so glorious, so fucking
triumphant
that he needed some way to release the incredible rush of adrenalin that surged through him like a drug. He pictured porky Shelley doing her own little dance of freedom as she replaced her scuffed heels with her dirty sneakers and headed out the door early with a rare smile on her fat freckled face, which, come to think of it, was not a vision he needed in his blissfully ecstatic mind on this fine November evening, and so he banished it before it had a chance to take form and spoil . . . there, it was gone!

Was the fulfillment of ambition better than sex?
Definitely!
Many men, he knew, might find this admission emasculating, many more would consider it an indication of his assumed “poor performance” in bed, but Katz had every faith in his “performance” and knew men who made such postulations were insecure beings who saw a few seconds of Neanderthal pleasure as the ultimate in human highs. Those men were not capable of realizing the true ecstasy of the ultimate career accomplishment, and never would be.

He was headed for the gym, his red Corvette now weaving down Beacon, the roof down despite the cold, the body shining from its weekly wax and Beyoncé singing “Survivor” on the radio. How appropriate! Come to think of it, that Sara Davis looked a little like the Beyoncé chick, which made for a much more pleasant vision than Shelley, and so he settled on that for a while.

The past forty-eight hours had started well and gone from good, to better, to
fan-fucking-tastic
! First, there was his brilliant craftwork in persuading Judge Stein to introduce not one but two charges of murder, then there was the mastery of his work in convincing the grand jury to issue the indictment, and then that wonderful “Ace in the Hole” delivered by young H. Edgar Simpson. The kid was an arrogant son of a bitch, but he liked the way his mind worked, probably because it operated in a fashion not unlike his own.

Simpson had the reward, but some time in the past two days he had realized that his career prospects, his social standing, were much more important than the money which, to a trust fund baby like him, would be nothing more than spare change in any case.

Simpson had realized (a realization carefully reinforced by Katz), that James Matheson, his beloved college comrade,
had
to be found guilty if Simpson were to survive. For if found innocent, both H. Edgar and his puppet Westinghouse would be branded as personal and professional lepers—the Judases who got it
wrong
! And so in order to assure a conviction, Simpson had been doing some detective work of his own, work that resulted in him coming up with a little gem that would shock that holier-than-thou Cavanaugh to his Irish-American roots and secure his client the ultimate of sentences.

No doubt about it, this day was a winner! A triumph made all the sweeter a mere hour ago when AG Sweeney called to offer his own personal congrats.

“Well done, Roger,”
he had said.
“The feticide charge, the indictment—you are a credit to your office, Mr. Assistant District Attorney, and to the legal fraternity of Massachusetts as a whole. Men like you are a walking, talking argument against those who claim that justice can be bought. In fact, I just got off the phone to some friends at the AG’s office in DC—they are tired of the criticism that money can buy an acquittal and you, my friend, are now their poster boy for egalitarian justice. They are watching this case carefully, Roger, as am I, and so far you have been nothing short of impressive.”

It was true, the Attorney General had copped some flack in recent years over a string of high-profile criminal cases where rich and powerful defendants with fat wallets and expensive attorneys had walked. Which was another reason why this case was so important to him—it gave him a chance to launch his “justice for one, justice for all” policy, a slogan he planned to use in next year’s election for Suffolk County DA. Regardless of whether he believed it or not, it was a damned fine catch-phrase and one he could well ride all the way to DC.

And so, he would hit his exclusive Copley Square Health Club, pump some iron and just as his toned arms were reaching that edge between push and pain, he would position himself on the treadmill directly behind the front row of ever-present white “Beyoncé-esque” bootie that gyrated in tiny Lycra shorts for the appreciative audience of lawyers, bankers and other corporate types in the rows behind. Like everything else in this fine democracy, this was commercialism at its best. The girls displayed their merchandise, the boys decided to buy, and before you knew it those tight little butts were seated in luxury European convertibles with Tiffany diamonds on their fingers and Amex Blacks in their purses.

Yes, life was good, and while Katz did not need the added satisfaction of scoring some flawless ass this evening, he was more than happy to window-shop with the best of them, knowing that today was a day of victory, and the best was yet to come.

Beep. Click.
Shuffle. Pause.

“James,”
the recording began.
“It’s me, Heath. It’s Saturday. About, um . . . four,”
the voice went on in a half whisper.
“I am just about to put on my penguin suit for this Halloween thing and . . .

A pause. A breath.

Pause. Shuffle.
Click. Beep, beep, beep.

“Jesus,” said David at last. He looked across at Arthur, who had cracked some icy cold longneck bottles of his favorite Aussie beer and was sitting gobsmacked, a mustache of the bitter white foam sitting untouched on the stubble above his upper lip.

“I don’t believe this,” said Sara. “Westinghouse thought James knew about their little scheme from the get go. H. Edgar lied to him from the outset. The boy is pathological.”

“So it appears,” said Arthur, using the back of his right hand to wipe the froth before standing from his chair. “So we need to slow things down a little,” he said, as he started to pace the room. “Backtrack and put ourselves into Simpson’s head.”

“Okay,” began David, now looking up at his boss. “When John Nagoshi posted the reward, Simpson saw an opportunity. He somehow found out James was seeing the girl on the quiet and knew the police would want to question him.”

“So,” Sara went on, “he brings Westinghouse on board. He tells him that while they know James is innocent, and Barbara Rousseau’s alibi will prove it, they have a window of opportunity to make some money.”

“Exactly,” said Arthur. “But he lies to Westinghouse, assuring him James knows of their little scam. He sets up the night at the university bar, gets Matheson drunk and . . .”

“When James starts telling them about Jessica, Simpson manipulates it into some form of confession,” finished David.

“Wait,” said Sara, now rising from the couch. “If this was about the money, why did Simpson involve Westinghouse at all? Why concoct a lie for two when it would have been easier to go it alone and take the entire reward for himself.”

“He needed him,” offered David, picking up on her train of thought. “Westinghouse and James were too tight. If H. Edgar went out on his own Westinghouse would have sided with James. This way he divides and conquers.”

“You’re right,” said Sara. “After that night at the bar, he tells Westinghouse to stay away from James, and given Westinghouse believes Rousseau will come through with the alibi, he thinks they will all be ‘home and hosed’ by Saturday night, after James hands himself in and the French girl clears his name.”

“Which is why they negotiated a deal based on an arrest, not on a conviction,” added Arthur.

“Okay,” said David. “But what are Simpson’s motives? I mean, we all agree it couldn’t
just
be about the money. Why would a kid worth tens of millions of dollars go to all this trouble to sell his best friend up the river?”

“Maybe it’s an ego thing?” suggested Sara. “Joe says the kid is arrogance personified. Maybe he concocted this whole thing so that he could prove to himself and others just how clever he is.”

“Which explains everything apart from the shoes, lass,” said Nora, making them all stop in their tracks. “How did young Mr. Simpson know about the girl’s missing shoes?”

David looked around him, his colleagues equally as chagrined. It was the most obvious question of all—how Simpson came to know about the shoes, how he planted the idea in Westinghouse’s head that it was James who had spoken of them in the first place—but one they had forgotten to ponder in their rush to discover the truth. But when he thought about it, when the fog cleared and Nora’s simple query rang crisply and candidly in his mind, David realized there was only one answer to her all important question, and as Sara’s eyes lit up, he knew she saw it too.