The Perfect Alibi

by Phillip Margolin

“Thanks for picking me up.”

  “First time here?”

  Carrie nodded.

  “I’ll point out some of the tourist attractions on our way to the Meatpacking District.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Ivar Gorski. I’ve had someone on him ever since you told me about the photo. My man just called. Gorski’s in his office.”

  * * *

  Ivar Gorski’s office was on the second floor of an old brick building near the High Line and the new Whitney Museum and a few blocks from the Hudson River. Jacobs had determined that Gorski didn’t advertise his services online or any other place. He surmised that the PI had a small list of clients who were willing to pay a lot for services that might cross the line between legal and illegal.

  The lettering on the office door read GORSKI INVESTIGATIONS, and that door opened into an unmanned waiting room. Gorski was seated at a small desk in a room off the waiting area. He looked up when he heard the door open.

  “Yes?” he said with obvious surprise. Anders guessed that Gorski was rarely visited by people he did not expect.

  “We’re here on police business, Mr. Gorski,” Jacobs said as he flashed his shield.

  Gorski didn’t look alarmed.

  “I’m Manhattan homicide detective Herschel Jacobs, and this is Carrie Anders, a homicide detective from Portland, Oregon.”

  “How can I help you?” Gorski asked in a heavy Eastern European accent.

  The detectives took seats across from him.

  “We have a few questions relating to a recent trip you took to Portland,” Carrie said.

  “Yes?”

  “Why were you in Oregon?” Carrie asked.

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

  Carrie smiled. “Come on, Ivar. We know you were employed by Norcross Pharmaceuticals to follow Leonard Voss, who was suing the company.”

  Gorski didn’t respond.

  “Would you care to explain why you rented the car you used in Oregon under a phony name?” Anders asked.

  “These questions are very aggressive. I think I should consult an attorney.”

  “That’s your decision, but let me show you something first.” Carrie placed her laptop on Gorski’s desk and ran her fingers over the keyboard. Then she turned it so he could see the screen. “That’s you driving a block from the home of Rita and Leonard Voss. Does that help you remember why you were in Portland?”

  Gorski smiled pleasantly. “I don’t want to be rude, but I must decline to answer any of your questions until I have consulted my attorney.”

  “You do know that someone murdered Mr. and Mrs. Voss and burned down their house?”

  Gorski kept smiling but said nothing.

  “Take a good look at the date and time of this picture. It was shot from a traffic camera on the date that Mr. and Mrs. Voss were murdered and minutes after a neighbor saw flames coming from their house.”

  Gorski looked at the screen, then back at Anders.

  “We know you were hired by Norcross to follow Leonard Voss in connection with his lawsuit. We know that Norcross wanted to bury the suit to avoid adverse publicity about its product. We also know that Tyler Harrison, the attorney who represented Norcross, and Frank Nylander, Mr. Voss’s attorney, were both murdered.”

  Gorski smiled. He looked perfectly relaxed. “I couldn’t have murdered Tyler Harrison,” he said. “I was in Oregon when he was killed.”

  “Oh, so you know when Mr. Harrison was killed?”

  Gorski stopped smiling. He realized he’d made a mistake.

  Carrie waited a beat. Then she said, “You’re probably thinking that this picture isn’t enough to get a conviction, and you may be right. But it is enough to get an indictment, after which the Multnomah County district attorney will hold a press conference during which she will lay out everything she knows about the motive for the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Voss. That means that all your hard work to keep the public ignorant of the side effects of Norcross’s drug will be for naught. If you have an alibi for Harrison, I guess we’ll only be able to indict you for killing Mr. and Mrs. Voss. Either way, Norcross and you lose.”

  Gorski shrugged. “Do what you have to do.”

  “We will. But there is a way out for you. Even if you’re acquitted, the publicity will ruin your reputation.”

  “You’ve taken up enough of my time,” Gorski said. “Please leave. If you want to contact me again, do it through my attorney.”

  “No problem,” Anders said. “Once we’re gone, you can call Norcross and tell them what we have in store for them. But, if you do that, there’s something you should think about. If someone at Norcross did order you to kill Leonard Voss to keep him quiet, don’t you think they might hire someone to eliminate the only person who can incriminate the company? If you didn’t kill Harrison, someone else on Norcross’s payroll did.”

  Carrie paused to let what she’d said sink in.

  “We know Norcross is behind the murders of Leonard and Rita Voss. Tell us who gave you your orders, and we might be able to deal.”

  “This is getting tedious, Detective.” Gorski smiled. “If you don’t leave, I’ll have to call the police.”

  Anders laughed. “I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor. I wonder if your buddies at Norcross will be laughing when we tell them about our visit.”

  Anders and Jacobs stood up.

  “See you around,” Carrie said before she and Jacobs left.

  “What do you think?” Jacobs asked when they were walking toward his car.

  “I think that Ivar Gorski is one tough customer.”

  “Do you think he’ll deal?”

  “Honestly, no, but I intend to turn up the heat anyway.”

  PART SIX

  THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Private practice was often feast or famine. A few new cases had come in the door in the past few weeks, but none of them were very complex, so Robin had a lot of time on her hands. One afternoon she decided to organize the files in Doug Armstrong’s case so they could be put in storage.

  Around six, Robin’s stomach began to growl and she decided to call it a day. She’d been going through the files Detective Jacobs had sent her from New York when he’d sent the questions he wanted Doug Armstrong to answer. She’d put the photographs of Tyler Harrison’s law office in a neat stack and started to put a rubber band around them when something in the photograph on the top of the pile caught her eye. The photo showed Harrison’s desk and the college and law school diplomas on the wall behind it.

  Robin picked up the photo and studied it. Harrison had graduated from Columbia University, a prestigious Ivy League school, but he had continued his legal education at the Warren E. Burger School of Law at Sheffield University in Arkansas.

  Robin frowned. Something about Sheffield University rang a bell, but she couldn’t remember where she’d heard about the school before. Robin conducted a web search and learned that Sheffield was a small Christian college in a rural area of Arkansas.

  Sheffield’s law school was definitely third tier, and Robin couldn’t understand why Harrison had gone there. A graduate of Columbia would be able to go to a better law school than the one at Sheffield even if he had terrible grades. And why Arkansas? And how had a graduate of Sheffield’s law school landed a position at a prestigious New York firm that would do most of its hiring at top ten law schools?

  Then Robin remembered where Sheffield had come up before. She felt light-headed. After taking a few deep breaths, Robin mulled over the implications of her discovery. When she was calm, Robin found the phone number for Greta Harrison, Tyler’s widow.

  It was nine at night in New York, still early enough to call.

  “Mrs. Harrison?” Robin asked when a woman answered the phone.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to call this late. My name is Robin Lockwood. I’m an attorney in Portland, Oregon.”

  “What is this about?” Greta
asked in the tone Robin often used when she suspected that a caller was a solicitor.

  “You know Detective Herschel Jacobs?”

  “Yes,” Greta answered warily.

  “Frank Nylander was an attorney in Portland. He met with your husband in New York to negotiate a case during the week your husband was killed. Detective Jacobs called me a while ago to ask me to help him with your husband’s case because I was representing an attorney in Oregon who was the partner of Frank Nylander.”

  “I still don’t understand why you’re calling.”

  “I ran across something odd that might help Detective Jacobs, and I have a strange question to ask you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I was going through a file and I noticed a photograph of Mr. Harrison’s diplomas. I saw that he graduated from Columbia, which is a very prestigious university, but he went to a small law school in Arkansas. Can you tell me why your husband went to law school at Sheffield instead of a more prestigious institution?”

  “How could that possibly be relevant to finding my husband’s killer?”

  “It may not be. I may be way off base.”

  There was dead air for a moment. Robin waited.

  “The answer to your question is very simple. Tyler and I met at Columbia. Although I was in medical school and he was a freshman, we were almost the same age because Tyler had been in the army for several years before he went to college.

  “The year Tyler graduated from Columbia, I decided to go to a rural county in Arkansas that was in dire need of a physician. Tyler had excellent grades and could have gone to law school anywhere, but we were in love and he insisted on applying to Sheffield’s law school so we could be together. Tyler graduated number one in his class and edited the law review. Several people at his law firm knew him from Columbia. They told the partners about him when he applied. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Thank you. That’s very helpful. I have one more question: What year did your husband graduate from Sheffield?”

  Mrs. Harrison told Robin. The sick feeling she’d experienced when she saw the photograph of Harrison’s diploma returned.

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with finding the person who murdered Tyler,” Mrs. Harrison said.

  “To be honest, I’m not certain it will help. If it does, you can count on me telling Detective Jacobs what I’ve discovered.”

  Robin said good night and hung up. She spun her chair around so she was looking out the window, but she wasn’t seeing any of the sights. Doug Armstrong had gone to the Warren E. Burger School of Law at Sheffield around the same time as Tyler Harrison. He and Harrison were the only lawyers she’d heard of who had gone there. In fact, Robin had never heard of Sheffield or its law school, and she doubted that anyone who didn’t live in Arkansas had heard of the school. Anyone, that is, but Frank Nylander. But what did that mean?

  Robin let her imagination run wild. Frank is in Tyler Harrison’s office negotiating the Voss case. He sees Harrison’s diploma and he says, “What a coincidence. My law partner went to your law school at the same time you were there. His name is Doug Armstrong. Did you know him?”

  What had Harrison answered? The class at Sheffield was small, so it would have been odd if Harrison didn’t know Doug. Robin bolted upright in her chair. After a few minutes, she did a web search for the Warren E. Burger School of Law alumni association.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Robin was too distracted to work, so she went to the gym. An hour of exertion left her exhausted but did not bring her peace of mind. It had rained for most of the day, but the rain stopped by the time she started walking home. It was not uncommon for Robin to solve problems in her cases during a long walk, and she got a few ideas before she arrived at her apartment.

  Jeff was interviewing witnesses for Mark Berman, her law partner, so Robin whipped up a quick dinner of leftover Thai food. She paid very little attention to her food because the implications of what she’d discovered kept tumbling around in her brain. She had brought a chopstick’s worth of pad thai halfway to her mouth when she remembered the bullet. As Robin sat up, she forgot to grip the chopsticks, and the noodles dropped back onto her plate.

  Detective Jacobs had told her that the bullet that killed Tyler Harrison and the bullet that killed Rex Kellerman had come from the same gun. That made no sense if Rex had nothing to do with the New York case, unless …

  Robin grabbed her phone and punched in the number for Carrie Anders’s cell phone.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Carrie asked.

  “Do you have any suspects in Rex Kellerman’s murder?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Humor me, will you?”

  “Remember our conversation on the division of labor between people who are paid to solve crimes and those people who are paid to represent people who are arrested for a crime?”

  “Please, Carrie.”

  “If you know something, you should tell me.”

  “I don’t know anything. I just have an idea. If I get anything concrete, I promise I’ll let you know. So, do you have any suspects?”

  “No one we can do anything about.”

  “What about Doug Armstrong? Do you know where he was when Rex was killed?”

  There was silence on the line. When Carrie spoke, she was angry. “Do you know something that makes you think Armstrong killed Kellerman?”

  “I don’t have any evidence that Doug is guilty, but I might be able to help you if a few things pan out.”

  Robin heard Carrie let out a breath. “We talked to Marsha Armstrong. She said that she and Doug were home all night. When we talked to Doug, their stories matched.”

  “And you believe them?”

  “Yes, but that’s not because they can prove they were together. It’s just their word.”

  “And there’s nothing else. No one called Doug during the time Rex was killed and he didn’t call anyone? They didn’t have visitors?”

  “Like I said, all I have is their word.”

  “Okay, thanks. One more thing: Do you know what kind of gun was used to murder Rex?”

  “We think it was a Glock. Why?”

  “Like I said, I have an idea.”

  “Robin, do not go off on your own on this.”

  “I won’t. I promise. After Atlanta and what happened in the garage with Blaine, I don’t need any more drama in my life.”

  “I’m glad you realize that.”

  “I do,” Robin said before she disconnected, but she was lying.

  * * *

  Robin was still up when Jeff came home.

  “Oh, hi. I thought you’d be in bed.”

  “I need you to check on something for me tomorrow.”

  “No kiss, no hug?”

  Robin gave him a peck on the cheek. “Can you do this first thing tomorrow?”

  “Do what?”

  Robin told him, and Jeff looked puzzled. “We’re not representing Armstrong anymore. Why do you need to look into this?”

  Robin explained what she thought Jeff would find and what the implications were if she was right.

  “Assuming your hunch pans out, what are you going to do with the information?”

  Jeff looked shell-shocked by the time Robin finished explaining her plan. “Are you out of your fucking mind?!”

  “It’s the only way I can think of to get the evidence we need.”

  “You do not need evidence, because you are not a police officer. You need to explain what you know to Carrie Anders, a sworn officer of the law, and let her act on it.”

  “How? There’s no way Carrie can get a search warrant based on guesses. And even if she did search, Doug isn’t stupid. No one will be able to find it.”

  “I can’t let you risk your life, Robin.”

  Robin glared at Jeff. “I make my own decisions. If you don’t want to help, I’ll find someone who will.”

  “Be reasonable.”

  “I
have spent hours thinking this out. If you can come up with another way to get what we need, tell me and I’ll back down. If not, I’m going ahead with my plan whether you like it or not.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Ivar Gorski watched Marvin Turnbull drive out of the Norcross garage. He waited until there were a few cars between him and Turnbull before pulling into traffic and following him. Ivar was certain he knew where the CEO was headed. Turnbull was married with two children who were in high school, but he had a mistress who lived in an apartment on Long Island. Turnbull changed up the days he visited her because he didn’t want his wife to notice a pattern, but he got horny at least once a week.

  Patience was one of Ivar’s strong points, and the trait paid off when Turnbull passed the freeway entrance that would have taken him home and kept going to the entrance that would lead him to his love nest.

  Three quarters of an hour later, Turnbull parked on a side street. When he got out of his car, he was wearing a Windbreaker with a hood to conceal his face. He hurried to the entrance to the garden apartment and let himself inside with a key. If Turnbull kept to his routine, he would be inside the apartment until eleven. Then he would drive home.

  Ivar settled in and passed the time reading War and Peace. He had developed the habit of reading the Russian classics after assassinating a literature professor who had angered a Russian politician by publishing an essay that condemned corruption in his department. On the way out of the professor’s apartment, he had seen Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in a bookshelf. The title amused him, so he’d taken the book and found it engrossing. Now that he had read all of Dostoevsky and Gogol, he was on to Tolstoy.

  At ten to eleven, Turnbull reappeared. Ivar closed his book and slipped out of his car. Turnbull turned the corner and was enveloped in shadows. Ivar walked up behind Norcross’s CEO and shot him with a silenced pistol. He was headed back to his car before Turnbull collapsed on the sidewalk. He was fairly certain that no nosy neighbor had seen him or his car, but he wasn’t worried if he was in error. He had worn a disguise, and the car was stolen. He would leave it at the airport tonight before boarding a flight to Madrid using a ticket he had obtained under the false name that matched the name in his forged passport.