Her Lost Alibi by David Berens (e reader .txt) 📕

box, the label read: 2010620-MM-14-4217399A. The one under that had the same long code then the letter B. The third one C.

If she was looking for an old case, this one fit the bill. Dog-eared and crumpled pages jutted out from under the top of the box, trying to escape. For a moment, she had a vision of the mouse that had been living in the other box in the basement.

“I seem to remember a thing or two about that case,” Minter said, scratching his beard and studying the ceiling. “Morales shot a man in cold blood. Couple of witnesses saw him do it. Slam dunk case for the prosecution. Seems odd for a case like that to have three big old boxes like this, doesn’t it? Not real sure what it’s doing here either. Seems to me the murder took place in Florida … or maybe New York.”

Amber tilted her head to the side as dust motes swirled in the orange afternoon sun shining across the boxes. “Who knows,” she muttered.

She heard the bubbling pour of another drink in his tumbler behind her. “Then it would seem we have some light reading to do.”

She turned to see he was offering her another glass of the Darjeeling tea. She was not surprised to smell the bourbon in it.

5

1000 Miles

Seven minutes before Minter Tweed’s grandfather clock struck midnight, Amber opened the third box. A rooster crowed in the distance and she wondered why in the world it was up at this hour. Then again, why in the world was she up at this hour. Most of what she’d been poring over was repetitive, dull, and utterly normal for a murder case: chronological record, crime scene log, crime report, death report, property and evidence reports, crime lab reports, vehicle reports, arrest reports, related crime reports, follow-up reports, victim information, suspect information, photo line-ups, witness list with statements, officer at scene reports, crime scene notes and diagrams, crime scene photographs, ambulance and medical records, medical examiner’s reports, communications (teletypes, press releases, police bulletins, wanted flyers, newspaper clippings, and agency-generated social media posts regarding the investigation,) search warrants, miscellaneous notes and computer runs, video or CCTV if any exists, and an eliminated suspects list.

The volume of information was staggering, yet unremarkable in any way. As she leafed her way through the reams of endless paper, it seemed to Amber that Chief Decker might be right. This case seemed to be open and shut.

Marcario—referred to as Marc in most of the reports—gunned down Eric Torres in cold blood. Marc shot him once in the side, then crime scene techs said it was likely that Eric had fallen or kneeled down. The ME confirmed with gunshot residue and stippling that the fatal shot was point blank to his forehead. Two eye-witnesses independently picked Morales out of a standard group of mugshots. Even with zero trace of residue on his hands, the jury deliberated for just under two hours before sentencing him to life in prison.

“Why in the world would Governor Cruz want this case to come up again?” She said stuffing papers back into the box. “This thing is rock solid. I’m just going to type up the report, scan the file into the database, and shred it. There’s nothing to look at here.”

“Don’t be so sure, Miss Cross,” Tweed said, wagging a single, yellow carbon copy sheet between two fingers.

“What’s that?” She asked. “And you can call me Amber.”

He laid the sheet flat on the conference table and slid it toward her with one finger. “It seems that our fine, young Mr. Morales provided alibis.”

“Alibis?”

“Fifteen of them.”

She thumbed through the back of the third box. “That can’t be right,” she said. “I didn’t see any alibi reports.”

“Curious,” Tweed said around the chewed black stalk of a pipe he had yet to light.

Amber squinted at the sheet of names. “Why wouldn’t they call these people?”

Standing with a cacophony of snaps and cracks, he ambled to the French doors looking out over the dark square below them. A couple of late night party-goers were stumbling past, laughing and shouting, their feet clicking along the cobblestone walk. He couldn’t make out their faces, but he could discern with remarkable accuracy their age, sex, height, weight, and build—a talent he’d developed long ago when discussing clients with the police department.

“They had eye-witnesses,” he said, striking a match and lighting his pipe.

“Yes, but there are fifteen people that say— “

He turned to look at her, interrupting her with a tone not unlike a Harvard professor. “Miss Cross, have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor?”

She shrugged. “Hasn’t everyone?”

He studied her, a strange look in his eye, as if he was … setting a trap. “Then you’ll know that when you are presented with two explanations for an event, it is very likely the simpler one will be found to be correct, yes?”

“Sure. I guess.”

He knelt down and tapped the piece of paper with the alibis listed on it. The smell of vanilla and cherry wafted around her in the intoxicating pipe smoke. “On the one hand, you have a complex puzzle of explanations that could have been somehow concocted by Mr. Morales to assure a jury that he was not at the scene of the crime, but in fact over one-thousand miles away. A jigsaw of facts that would require interviews, depositions, affidavits, statements, testimonies, timelines, and on and on to support that particular explanation of events.”

Amber felt her eyelids getting heavy. She was exhausted, but she knew something important was happening. Tweed smacked his hand down on the top of the nearest box, jolting her awake.

“And here, on this hand, you have two people, independently picking Mr. Morales out of a notebook of suspects, saying they are sure beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the crime.”

He pulled his pipe out of his mouth and blew a perfect smoke ring. She watched in a daze as he blew a second ring, inside the first. “It would seem that our