A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal)

by William L. Myers Jr.

  “How long until we get the results?” Piper asks.

  The agent glances at Susan, and Tommy sees warmth in his eyes. “Given your sixty-day deadline, I’ll make this a priority. Two weeks.”

  “That’ll give us just enough time to plug the results into our brief and get it filed with the court.”

  “And if it doesn’t have the mother’s prints on it?” asks Sonny Foster.

  “It will,” Lois says, her eyes boring into the former police chief.

  “This is bullshit.” Foster turns away.

  Mel Ott nods to Piper and Susan, then follows his former boss down the field and past the barn to the driveway leading to the farmhouse. The FBI team leaves next, and after Tommy fills the hole back in, he, Piper, Susan, and Lois leave the old graveyard for their cars. Piper and Susan drove up together. Tommy picked up Lois from Philly International and met them at the farm.

  “If no one minds,” Tommy says, “I’m going to stay up in the area for a few more hours. Gotta see a man about a horse.” He climbs into his truck’s flatbed and places the shovel into a diamond-plate aluminum storage box in the back.

  “That’s fine,” Piper says. “I can drive Lois back to the city. You’re staying a few days, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Lois says. “It’s been a while since I’ve been back. I haven’t seen the Barnes yet, or the Rodin Museum since it’s been updated. And it’s good to be away from Georgia for a few days.”

  Tommy gets into his truck and waits for them all to drive off. After they’re gone, he waits a few minutes, then climbs back into the truck bed and removes the shovel from the storage box.

  “I hope I’m wrong,” he says as he trudges up the field to the little cemetery. Once there, he positions himself in front of the second headstone, the one dated 1894, and starts to dig. It takes only a few minutes before the shovel hits something solid. He sighs, keeps digging, and there it is. A second box. He lifts it, places it on the ground, and opens it.

  “Shit.”

  A paper bag holding a second hammer—this one with a blue handle. The reason Lois Beal was so worried and had to make sure she had him dig in front of the correct headstone.

  Shit.

  26

  THURSDAY, MAY 30, CONTINUED

  Mick looks up from his Inquirer to see Angie approaching his desk to drop off his mail. He can tell from her face she’s frustrated about something.

  “What’s the matter?” he asks.

  “Susan’s father. Again. He’s called three times this morning. I told him Susan was out of the office on a case, but I guess he doesn’t believe me. Not that I blame him; she ducked his calls all morning yesterday, even though she was here. Then he caught her leaving the building to go to lunch, and they got into a big fight outside.”

  He sighs. “I’ll talk to her. I don’t want you put in the middle of this.”

  She thanks him and turns to leave. At the door, she turns back. “Is Susan working on the Nunzio case now?”

  “No. Vaughn’s still my second chair. Why?”

  “Because that US Attorney Martin Brenner called here this morning. But he didn’t ask for you, he asked for Susan.”

  “That shit. I told him Nunzio isn’t going to deal with the government. I guess he thinks he can do an end run around me with Susan.” She did say he was relentless. “Get him on the phone for me, please.”

  Angie leaves, and he returns his attention to the newspaper. Two stories are getting major play on the front page. The first is about the suicide of New York mob boss Frank Valiante and the disappearance of his son, his chief lieutenants, and most of his soldiers. According to the story, the Valiante crew vanished without a trace, almost as though they’d intended to cover their tracks so that no one would know where they were headed. Given the lack of mob violence since their departure, the feds think it likely they will all eventually resurface. But local mob boss Jimmy Nunzio isn’t taking chances; fearful of retaliation against his family, he’s requested police protection for his wife at their South Philly row house, where she is now holed up. Nunzio’s daughter, Christina, the story says, remains out of the country, in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

  The second story, somewhat related, is about the upcoming election for district attorney, a close contest between the embattled incumbent Emlin Fellner and his first assistant, Devlin Walker. With four years of low conviction rates and an exploding opioid crisis, Fellner has been looking for something to run on and has all but promised a conviction in the Nunzio case. “The Philly mob, a century-long scourge of our city, will finally come to an end when this bloodthirsty gangster sees the inside of a prison,” Fellner is quoted as saying. Yesterday, the story’s reporter called Mick, asking for a quote. Given Nunzio’s obvious guilt, he offered up his typical smorgasbord of banalities about the presumption of innocence, due process, and—what the guilty always say after they’re charged and before they plead—that Nunzio is looking forward to his day in court, confident he’ll be vindicated once all the facts are out.

  He leans back in his chair, looks to the ceiling, and closes his eyes. Only two weeks from trial, and nothing in the case has gelled for him. All he sees is a tangle of strings. Nunzio and Giacobetti supposedly running from their building; the smashed-in warehouse door; Valiante’s missing bodyguards; the plasticuff wounds on Tony Valiante’s wrists and ankles; the arresting officer smelling pasta in the warehouse; Nunzio’s decision to kill Valiante with his knife rather than his gun; Giacobetti gone from the warehouse when the police arrived. And then there’s everything that has happened since. The bizarre scene at the lodge in the Poconos; Angelo’s capture; Frank Valiante’s “suicide” and his missing crew; Rachel Nunzio as the descendant of legendary mob boss Lenny Maher; brave Christina Nunzio, putting on a good face despite her broken heart; Uncle Ham and HML.

  How to make sense of it all, for his own understanding? And how to arrange the mess into a pattern he can use to persuade the jury that Nunzio is . . . what? Innocent? Impossible. He was caught red-handed, the knife in his hand, the corpse bleeding out a few steps away. Sympathetic? No way—Nunzio murdered the guy in front of his own horrified daughter.

  Maybe Vaughn can help him find some answers. He walks down the hall to the large conference room, where Vaughn and the team have been setting up to prepare for trial. He enters the room to see the conference table covered with case materials—police reports, photographs, the autopsy report, witness statements. Also on the table is a stack of newspaper clippings. Across the room, Vaughn has set up two easels with corkboards. At the top of the first, he has thumbtacked a label that reads “Prosecution’s Witnesses.” The first two names are Trumbull and Piccone, the police officers who first came to the warehouse. The third name is that of Mick’s nemesis, the chief homicide detective who took over the case, John Tredesco. CSU lead investigator Matthew Stone is the fourth. Listed as number five is Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Ari Weintraub.

  The second easel, “Defense Witnesses,” has three names: 1. James Nunzio? 2. Christina Nunzio? 3. John Giacobetti? The list ends with “Other?” Below the names is written: “Defense Theory?”

  Mick focuses on the question marks, then smiles at Vaughn, who’s standing by the second easel. “I see you have it all worked out.”

  “Only thing left is our victory speech for the press.” Vaughn slumps into a chair. “Seriously, Mick, who are we going to call? What’s our story here? I’m stumped.”

  He sits across the table from Vaughn. “That makes two of us. I tried to bring it up when I saw Nunzio a couple days ago, but he shut me down again.”

  “Is he serious? Trial’s in a few weeks!”

  Mick shrugs.

  “Did he say anything about pleading out?”

  “No, and even if he does, Pagano’s planning to try the case at this point.” Mick points at the easels. “Why not, right, with the DA making the case a centerpiece of his campaign? There’s not going to be a deal.”

  V
aughn chews on this. “Nunzio’s sitting on something. An ace in the hole.”

  “What I’m thinking. But he’s not ready to share it with me.” Mick stands and retrieves a bottle of water from a silver serving tray on the cabinet beneath the audiovisual screen. When he turns back toward the table, Vaughn shifts gears.

  “What do you think about this whole Valiante thing? The suicide? The disappearances?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it.” He’s told Vaughn all about the odyssey at the lodge—except for the likely fact that Nunzio wiped out Valiante’s crew in the Poconos and used the gathering at the lodge to alibi his men. There’s no way he’s going to burden his team with that knowledge.

  “Nunzio has to be breathing a sigh of relief that Frank Valiante’s dead,” Vaughn says. “Still, he has to worry about Angelo and the rest of Valiante’s crew. You think they’re still going to come after Nunzio, with Frank gone?”

  Mick doesn’t answer, unwilling to go further with it.

  A moment later, his associate’s face brightens. “That’s great news about Darlene Dowd.”

  “I know,” Mick says. “Piper’s over the moon about it.”

  Vaughn shakes his head. “What a job we have, eh? On the one hand we get to right a terrible wrong, win freedom for someone like Darlene Dowd.”

  “And on the other hand, we have Jimmy Nutzo.”

  He stands as Angie calls on the conference-room phone. She tells Vaughn a client is calling with an emergency. Vaughn excuses himself to take the call in his office, and Mick walks to the easel with the list of prosecution witnesses. He scans the names.

  “Which of you is Nunzio’s ace in the hole?” he asks aloud.

  And what could you possibly say that would save him from a guilty verdict?

  It’s close to 8:00 when Mick pulls into the garage. He pushes the button that automatically closes the garage door and gets out of the car. Even before he walks into the kitchen, he can smell that Piper is cooking dinner. He’s surprised, given that she had a full day with the Lois Beal case. To celebrate the favorable developments, he’d planned to take her out to dinner at Nectar or Estia Taverna, spur of the moment.

  “Hey,” he says, entering the kitchen. Piper turns from the counter, her face aglow. Before she can say anything, he says, “You look happy.”

  “You should have been there! My heart was pounding a mile a minute when Tommy was digging up that grave. And then when he lifted out the metal box and opened it . . . The hammer was there, just like Lois said it would be . . . Darlene’s going to get out, Mick. She never should have been imprisoned in the first place, and she’s lost fifteen years of her life. But she’s still young, and she’ll be free.”

  “Congratulations, sweetheart.” He puts his hands on her waist, kisses her, and envelops her in a long hug.

  “Champagne?” she asks. “I have a Ruinart Brut. It’s a blanc de blancs. It’ll go well with the lobster.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You know too much about wine.”

  She cocks her head, smiles. “Is that ever really possible?”

  It’s a warm evening, and they eat on the back patio. Piper dishes the food onto their plates, then goes back inside and calls Gabby to join them.

  “How was practice?” Mick asks when Gabby sits down.

  “Nailed it,” she answers. “Thanks to Christina. All those tips she gave me made me way better than everyone else.”

  He exchanges glances with Piper. Gabby has gushed almost nonstop about Christina Nunzio since she returned from the lodge. She’s regaled them about Christina’s beauty, her “amazing” skills at soccer, her helpfulness as a coach, and her overall excellence as a human being. Gabby even expressed her admiration for the graceful way Christina ate dinner—something she observed from across the dining room at the lodge.

  The first night they were back together, Piper’s patience with Gabby’s hero worship quickly wore thin.

  “I don’t like our daughter idolizing the daughter of a vicious mob boss,” she had told him later that night.

  “The good news is, she’ll be doing it from afar. She’s seen her first and last of the Nunzios.”

  “That whole family is covered in blood,” Piper said. “It pisses me off that she was even exposed to them.”

  Mick couldn’t disagree.

  “Coach is moving me forward,” Gabby says.

  “That’s great,” he says. Gabby had been practicing as a midfielder. Moving forward means her coach is looking at her as a striker.

  “I know I can score at least one goal a game. At least.”

  “That’s our girl.” He smiles and winks at Piper, who narrows her eyes.

  After dinner, he and Piper remain on the patio while Gabby goes inside to watch TV. It doesn’t take long to finish the champagne, so he brings out a bottle of Chardonnay and two fresh glasses.

  “I called Darlene again today, at the prison,” Piper says.

  He takes a sip of the wine, then raises something that’s been troubling him since he found out about the new evidence.

  “I’m sure she’s happy she might get out,” he says. “But how does she feel knowing it was her mother who killed her father, and that her mother kept it secret until she was on her deathbed? That she let Darlene rot in prison.”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked her, and she hasn’t raised it. I’m guessing it must be too painful for her to talk about. Maybe even to think about. She could be holding back her feelings until after her trial. She knows she needs to focus.”

  He nods. “That makes sense. What about Lois Beal? Cindy told her she killed her husband, but Lois just sat back and let Darlene remain incarcerated?”

  Piper frowns. “I’m not sure what to think about Lois. She seems like a decent person—”

  “For an armored-car robber and fugitive.”

  “Right. Which explains why she didn’t come forward, given the police chief’s threat.”

  “But that was years before, when the crime had just been committed. Do you know whether the chief had retired by the time Cindy Dowd confessed to Lois?”

  She doesn’t answer. He knows by the look on her face not to press the point. In the law, victory can be fleeting, and it’s important to savor your wins whenever they occur—and for as long as you can.

  “Hey.” He smiles and holds up his glass. “You’re doing a great thing. Here’s to you.”

  He waits for her to raise her own glass, and they toast.

  It’s close to midnight when Tommy knocks on the door to the large house on 108th Street in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. The two-story vacation home is a modern five-bedroom, four-bath property on a half acre of prime beachfront real estate. It is owned by Raymond Thorne, a former CIA agent now running his own security firm. Sometime ago, Tommy did freelance work for Thorne that worked out well. Thorne even offered to bring him on full-time. Tommy declined, but they remained friends.

  As soon as he opened the second metal box and saw the blue-handled hammer, he knew Thorne was the man to bring it to. Thorne’s forensic lab was top-shelf, and he could be trusted to keep their transaction secret.

  Thorne answers the door. He’s a sharp-looking man in his late fifties, clean-cut, with a square jaw and blue eyes. The perfect look for an agent of the CIA, which recruited him right out of college.

  They shake hands, and Thorne leads him inside. The first floor is an open-design space with a large living room, kitchen, and bar. They walk up to the bar, and Tommy takes a seat. He sets the metal box on the floor. Thorne goes behind the bar, pulls out a bottle of Glenlivet XXV, and pours them each a couple of fingers. They clink tumblers and throw back the scotch. Thorne pours again, and then it’s time for business.

  When Tommy is done talking about the hammer, Thorne casts him a hard look.

  “This is evidence in a murder case?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “You have an exemplar, for the prints?”

  He nods. “Plastic water bottle. I put
it in the box with the hammer.”

  It’s Thorne’s turn to stare.

  “The subject was drinking out of the bottle. In my truck,” Tommy says.

  “You expect a match?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Then what?”

  He shrugs.

  Thorne empties his glass, pours another one. “We find what you’re expecting, you’re not going to be able to use it in court. Big chain-of-custody issues here. But I guess you already know that.”

  He nods. “Whatever happens, this hammer’s never going to see the inside of a courtroom.”

  “Uh-huh. Then why go through the exercise? Especially since you already know the answer, or think you do.”

  “Before I call her out on it, I want to be sure.”

  “This’ll help your client?”

  Tommy looks at him but doesn’t answer.

  “Not my business. I get it.” Thorne pauses. “After I’m done testing it, you want me to lose it?”

  “No need to lose what’s never been found.”

  27

  FRIDAY, MAY 31

  Mick leaves the courtroom following a suppression-of-evidence hearing in a narcotics case and finds John Tredesco waiting for him in the hallway. He grimaces as soon as he sees the lanky, pot-gut detective.

  “It makes me happy to see you, too,” Tredesco says.

  “What can I do for you?” he asks, not slowing down.

  “When can I talk to Giacobetti? And the daughter?”

  Mick glances over his shoulder as he pushes the button for the elevator. “Flying pigs, Tredesco. Icebergs in Hades.”

  The doors open, and Tredesco follows him into the crammed elevator. Neither says anything on the ride down.

  “See you later,” Mick says, striding out of the elevator.