The Last Alibi (A JASON KOLARICH NOVEL)

by David Ellis

  “I see. It also helps you distinguish between crimes committed by that killer versus crimes committed by a copycat.”

  “That’s also true. You can’t be a copycat if you don’t know the killer’s signature in the first place.”

  “So, Detective, what was Marshall Rivers’s signature, his calling card, never before made public?”

  Shauna laid that on pretty thick. Detective Austin doesn’t seem impressed with the melodrama. Or maybe he’s just pissed off he has to make this information public. Maybe he wanted to save it for the book he’s going to write.

  He says, “The offender injected a drug called fentanyl into each victim.”

  “Can you tell us what fentanyl is?” Shauna asks.

  “I’m not a chemist or a coroner, but, generally, yes. It’s a very powerful narcotic, kind of like morphine or heroin, but typically much more potent. It mostly comes here illegally from Mexico. We see it a lot here in the city as ‘China white’ or ‘AMF.’ It’s not the biggest drug problem we have, but it’s definitely out there.”

  “Isn’t it true that fentanyl can also be used as an incapacitating agent?”

  “Yes, it can be.”

  “Meaning it can be used to knock out or paralyze a victim.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And it’s powerful, isn’t it? It’s more powerful as an incapacitating agent than, say, GHB, the date-rape drug.”

  Detective Austin hedges, his head moving side to side. “You may be going past my knowledge base. I’ve heard people say what you just said, but I don’t know it to be true. It’s powerful, I’d agree with that.”

  Shauna can live with that. “And in fact, Detective, didn’t you come to believe that Marshall Rivers used the fentanyl injection to incapacitate his victims?”

  Austin bows his head, a curt nod. “That’s correct. Now, whether he incapacitated them immediately with the fentanyl injection or whether he first subdued them and then used it to prevent them from fighting back—that’s a difficult thing to know.”

  “And it’s also possible that he wasn’t using it to subdue them at all. That he was just injecting them as some kind of branding, to put his personal stamp on the murders. Isn’t that also possible?”

  “You can never rule that out,” says Austin. “Sometimes with these sociopaths, they do strange things like that. They want ownership over the murders.”

  Good. Well done, Shauna.

  “Now, Detective, fentanyl doesn’t show up on a routine toxicological screen performed on someone during an autopsy, does it?”

  Austin grimaces, chuckles to himself. “No, it surely does not.”

  “You know that from firsthand experience, don’t you, Detective? From your investigation into the north side murders?”

  “That’s correct. Our medical examiner performed a routine tox screen on these victims, and that test doesn’t check for fentanyl.” He makes a face, indicating his opinion of that routine drug screen. “We only came upon this because we found a broken hypodermic needle at one of the crime scenes. I think it was Holly Frazier, the third victim . . . Yeah, it was, it was Holly’s. So we had the needle tested, and it contained traces of fentanyl. Then we sent the medical examiner back to specifically test the other victims for the presence of fentanyl. Those tests came back positive every time, going back to the first two victims and going forward to the next two. All five victims tested positive for fairly high doses of fentanyl.”

  “Judge,” Shauna says, “at this time, I’d like to refer the jury to the stipulation previously entered into between the parties and read to the jury, in which it is stipulated that the autopsy of Alexa Himmel included a routine toxicological screen.”

  Which made sense, to be fair to the government, especially when the cause of death in Alexa’s case was a bullet to the head or neck region. It’s not like they had any reason to think this was connected to the knife murders committed by Marshall Rivers, not back then in late July.

  “Very good,” says the judge.

  “Detective Austin, were you aware of additional testing performed by the county medical examiner this weekend on the blood and body of the victim in this case, Alexa Himmel?”

  “Yes. I oversaw it. Dr. Agarwal performed the tests.”

  “Dr. Mitra Agarwal is the chief deputy medical examiner?”

  “Yes.”

  “A very competent pathologist?”

  “The best.”

  “And was it your understanding that Dr. Agarwal’s charge was to search for the presence of fentanyl in Alexa Himmel’s blood?”

  “Yes, that was the reason for the additional testing.”

  “And was it, Detective? Was the drug fentanyl found in Alexa Himmel’s body?”

  “Yes, it was,” he says.

  The jury reacts. Everyone reacts. The same chemical injected into the other five victims was injected into Alexa, too. It’s the first piece of hard evidence tying Alexa Himmel’s death to Marshall Rivers. We just got back the ME’s report yesterday. Shauna said that she was waiting over at the county attorney’s offices when Roger Ogren came storming out of his office and passed her without saying a word, his face flushed—like he’d just swallowed a bug, Shauna said. Katie O’Connor, the second chair in the trial, was actually the one who broke the good news to Shauna. Roger Ogren, no doubt, had been sure that the test would come up negative. But when it didn’t, he was obligated to tell us so.

  Now he’s probably kicking himself, thinking he shouldn’t have ordered the additional test. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Shauna, in her closing argument, would have blistered the prosecution and police so hard for not doing the additional testing—What are they hiding? If the government is so sure that Marshall Rivers didn’t kill Alexa, here’s their chance to prove it! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if the government doesn’t have that level of confidence in their case, how can you?—that Ogren probably would have been shamed into doing it, anyway. This way, at least, he’s wearing the white hat, ordering the test voluntarily.

  “Dr. Agarwal found traces of fentanyl, injected postmortem, in Ms. Himmel’s jugular vein,” Austin says.

  That is a point Austin has added, no doubt, at the request of Roger Ogren. The other victims were injected antemortem—prior to death—while their blood continued to circulate, carrying that drug into the far reaches of their bodies, easily detectable as long as your toxicology test was looking for it. A drug injected postmortem, as it was with Alexa, obviously does not travel; the blood has stopped circulating. Instead, the drug tends to pool in the vein or muscle where it was injected, in this case the jugular vein in Alexa’s neck. So Roger Ogren will try to drive a truck through this distinction: The others were injected while alive, but Alexa Himmel was injected after death.

  102.

  Jason

  “Detective Austin,” says Shauna, “we’ve discussed that Marshall Rivers’s use of the fentanyl injection on his victims was information that was withheld from the public, correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Why is that? I mean, you solved the five murders, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So isn’t the Marshall Rivers investigation closed?”

  “No, it is not closed.”

  “And why not?” she asks.

  Austin doesn’t hesitate in his response. I thought he might. I thought that Roger Ogren might get to him, make him tone down a few things. But in the end, the north side murders were a huge deal and they belong to Austin; he doesn’t care much at all about my case.

  He says, “Because we’ve always suspected there was a sixth victim.”

  Another wave of murmurs ripples through the gallery. A sixth victim! The North Side Slasher lives on!

  “Detective, I’d like to show you a document marked as Defense Exhibit One. I’m going to put it up on the screen here and ask you if you recognize this.”

  The jurors, fully consumed with this testimony, turn their heads in unison, li
ke spectators at a tennis match, to the projection screen.

  Now u finaly know who I am

  Now u will never forgit

  Number six was difrent

  But she was my favorit

  “Detective,” says Shauna, “do you recognize this document?”

  “Yes, I do. When we searched Marshall Rivers’s apartment on August second, we found these words typed on his computer. This is a printout of those words.”

  Shauna moves for admission of the document, which is granted without objection. She pauses, giving the jurors some time to read it, and reread it, and process it.

  “This document, taken from the computer of Marshall Rivers, has never been made public, either, has it?” Shauna asks.

  “No, it has not.”

  “It was only yesterday that this document was turned over to the defense. Is that your understanding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Detective, this note led you to investigate the possibility that Marshall Rivers had killed a sixth person, correct?”

  “It was a possibility.”

  “Did you ever find that sixth victim, Detective?”

  “No, we did not.”

  Shauna is quiet a moment. She looks over at the jurors, who are reading the words on the projection screen with great interest, trying to make them jibe with things that I said during my testimony.

  “Detective, the third line of this note says that ‘number six was different,’ with the last word misspelled. Do you read it the same way?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Marshall Rivers’s first five murders were relatively . . . similar, weren’t they? They involved an ambush, they involved injections of fentanyl and, ultimately, brutal cutting and slashing with a folding lockback knife with a partially serrated blade. Isn’t that correct?”

  “It is, yes.”

  “Wouldn’t an attack that ultimately ended up as a shooting in the back with a handgun qualify as ‘different’?”

  “Ob-jection,” Ogren says, more as a whine. Shauna’s question is clearly out of line.

  “Sustained.”

  “Well, Detective,” says Shauna, “as the lead investigator on the north side murders and on Marshall Rivers himself, do you now believe that this note was written specifically for Jason Kolarich?”

  “Objection!” Roger Ogren calls out. He’s right again, but it still sounds like a gripe, a grumpy complaint.

  “Sustained,” says the judge.

  “Okay,” says Shauna, nodding. “Well, didn’t you take from this note that this sixth murder, his ‘favorite,’ held a unique, personal significance to Marshall Rivers?”

  “Judge!” Ogren calls out.

  “Because the last victim was Jason Kolarich’s girlfriend?”

  “Ms. Tasker, stop right there,” says Judge Bialek. “The objection is sustained. These questions are inappropriate for this witness and you know it. Now move on.”

  Shauna knows they’re inappropriate. A courtroom tactician ordinarily wouldn’t even ask these questions of a witness. She would save them for closing argument, identifying each line of the note found on Marshall’s computer and tying it to his obsession with me. Now you finally know who I am, now you will never forget—corroborating my testimony that Marshall came to me in disguise and under an assumed name. Number six was different, as Shauna said, because it turned from a knife attack to a shooting. She was my favorite, because it wasn’t just some random woman, but rather a woman very special to me.

  Typically, the lawyer would save these arguments for closing, when she is free to argue anything she wants from the evidence. She wouldn’t ask them of a witness who could fight her. But Shauna has a couple of reasons for doing it now. One, she wants the reporters to hear it. She wants them to take this information and publish stories and call for an end to this prosecution, to build public pressure.

  And second, she knew Roger Ogren would object. She hoped he would object. Because now the prosecution looks like it’s hiding the truth. The white hat Roger Ogren is wearing has just received a stain or two.

  103.

  Jason

  “Since we’re on the topic of the inventory of Mr. Rivers’s apartment in early August,” says Shauna, “did you or your colleagues look at any keys or key chains recovered from his apartment?”

  “Yes, we did,” says Austin. “He had a key ring that held six keys. I remember when we first searched his apartment on August second, they were hanging on a hook by his front door. Anyway, yes, this weekend we took a look at the keys on that key ring.”

  “Detective, did you visit Mr. Kolarich’s house yesterday?”

  “I did.”

  “And who was with you when that happened?”

  “I was accompanied by Detective Raymond Cromartie, Katie O’Connor from the county attorney, and you, Counselor.”

  “What was the purpose of the visit?”

  “To see if any of the keys on Marshall Rivers’s key chain opened Mr. Kolarich’s door.”

  “And did any of the keys from Marshall Rivers’s key chain fit into the lock on Mr. Kolarich’s front door?”

  He nods. “Yes, one of them did.”

  That juror in the front row, the one who tends to visibly react—the one who leaned back in his chair and looked around at his colleagues when he watched me lie in the police interview—now repeats that gesture, making faces at the woman next to him, only this time I daresay his allegiance has switched to the defense.

  “May I approach the witness?” Shauna asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Defense Exhibit Four,” she says, holding up a clear bag containing a single, rather shiny silver key. “Is this the key that you found on Mr. Rivers’s key chain that opened Jason Kolarich’s front door?”

  “That’s it,” Austin says.

  Shauna holds up the bag for the jury to see. No need to formally publish it, to actually hand it to the jurors. It’s just a basic house key. But it will mean everything to Shauna in closing argument. Marshall Rivers jumped Alexa as she entered Jason’s house, and he kept her key as a souvenir. He wanted Jason to know he’d killed her.

  The mystery of Alexa’s missing house key is no longer a mystery.

  104.

  Jason

  “Detective,” says Shauna, “just one final area of inquiry. We talked previously this morning about the fact that Marshall Rivers injected fentanyl in his victims. Did you find evidence at his apartment that he was doing this?”

  “Yes. When we searched his apartment, we found over a dozen fentanyl patches, which can be broken down and cooked and then used for injection. We found a pack of unopened hypodermic needles. And we found three used hypodermic needles in a plastic sandwich bag.”

  “And back on August second, when you discovered these three used hypodermic needles, did you test them for the presence of fentanyl?”

  “We did. All three tested positive for fentanyl.”

  “Did you find anything else on those hypodermic needles?”

  Austin raises a fist to his mouth and clears his throat. “One of them contained trace DNA of the first two victims in this case, Alicia Corey and Lauren Gibbs,” he says. “The second hypodermic needle contained trace DNA belonging to the fourth victim, Nancy Minnows. And the third needle showed trace DNA of the fifth victim, Samantha Drury.”

  “So . . . one needle had the first two victims’ DNA, another had the fourth, and another had the fifth.”

  Austin nods. “Correct. And as I said before, the third victim, Holly Frazier—the needle used to inject her had broken off and was left at the crime scene. That’s how we learned about the fentanyl in the first place.”

  “Sure.”

  That was no accident, the needle breaking off at the third crime scene. Marshall Rivers wanted the cops to know all about the fentanyl.

  “As for why Rivers used the same needle for the first two victims,” says Austin, “it’s anybody’s guess.”

  Except mine. I don’t have to g
uess. That’s the needle Marshall Rivers stuck behind my framed prosecutor’s certificate on my office wall. At that point, he had only killed the first two women. He needed their DNA on that needle so it would implicate me.

  “Now, Detective, did you recently submit those three hypodermic needles for additional DNA testing?”

  “Yes, we did. Last Friday, following the testimony of Mr. Kolarich, we decided to have those three needles checked for the presence of Alexa Himmel’s DNA.”

  “Did you expedite that testing?”

  “We did. Yeah, I think our county lab set a new record. We got the results back last night, Monday night.”

  “And?” Shauna turns toward the jurors.

  Detective Austin says, “The hypodermic needle that contained trace DNA of the first two victims, Alicia Corey and Lauren Gibbs, also contained trace DNA belonging to Alexa Himmel.”

  Check, please.

  The judge immediately bangs her gavel, and the additional sheriff’s deputies manning the courtroom rush to silence the roar from the spectators. It takes them a while. This is too splashy for the reporters to resist. Especially when taken with everything else that has come out today—the note on Marshall’s computer that jibes with my story, my house key on Marshall’s key ring. With the possible exception of Roger Ogren and Katie O’Connor, there is not a single person in this courtroom who thinks I killed Alexa Himmel.

  That was one busy needle. First, it was injected into Alicia Corey. Then it was sunk into the skin of Lauren Gibbs. Then it was hidden behind a certificate on my wall. Then it was tucked safely away in my bedroom.

  Then it was sunk into Alexa’s jugular vein.

  But ultimately, it made its way back to the apartment of Marshall Rivers.

  It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. Marshall was using that needle to implicate me for murder. And it ends up being used as evidence that exonerates me of a different murder.