Truth and Consequences Read online

  Elke wrinkled up her nose. “Wait, you think he’s guilty, right?”

  “I want something to investigate,” said Iain, jaw set.

  Something was off with him today. Elke didn’t know what it was, but something was off.

  Iain held up a finger. “I seem to remember that Fisher had an alibi.”

  Elke let out a disbelieving laugh. “You don’t even believe in alibis.”

  “We never found this alibi, did we?”

  “No,” said Elke. “We ran into dead ends, and then I guess I got distracted. I don’t even remember the girl’s name.”

  “Mary Johnson,” said Frankie.

  Elke nodded slowly. That conversation she’d had with Amos was slowly coming back to her now. She’d been so distracted that she’d really dropped the ball on Mary Johnson. Mary was Fisher’s alibi, and she could be the key to the entire case, and Elke had completely let the woman drop by the wayside. Elke felt a stab of guilt. “We’ve been working so hard to solve this case that we forgot what we’re actually supposed to be doing.”

  “Proving Curtis is innocent,” murmured Frankie.

  “Exactly,” said Elke. She looked at the other two. “All right, well, let’s find this Mary Johnson. Amos said he couldn’t find her because her name is too common and her parents’ names are too common. So, let’s go back further, see if we can’t find grandparents or something. Hudson? You think you can handle that?”

  He nodded. “No problem.” He left the conference room.

  Huh. He didn’t even seemed fazed by the thought of interviewing people.

  “I’ll go to her last known address,” said Elke. “And Hart…”

  “Didn’t Curtis say she worked at the local diner near the school? I’ll go and check there, see what they know.”

  “Great,” said Elke, smiling. Maybe they’d get somewhere with this case after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Elke knocked on the door of Mary’s old address, the place her emergency card had listed as her residence. It was a ranch-style house with white siding and blue shutters. Then Elke waited.

  No one came to the door.

  She knocked again.

  Waited.

  Nothing.

  She walked down the steps from the front stoop and went over to the garage. She peered in one of the windows. Empty. Maybe no one was home.

  Well, it was probably stupid to come to this house anyway, because it wasn’t as if Mary still lived there. Someone else did. They wouldn’t know where the previous occupants lived. Maybe she should try the neighbors.

  She walked next door to a yellow house with precisely trimmed hedges. She knocked on the door.

  This time, it was promptly opened by an elderly woman wearing an apron that said, Kiss the Cook.

  “Hi there,” said Elke.

  “Are you selling something?” said the woman. “Because I’m busy right now—”

  “I’m not selling anything. I work with the Haven Hills Conviction Review Unit. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions.”

  The woman looked over her shoulder. “I’ve got to keep my eye on the oven. How long will this take?”

  “Just a minute or two.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “About five years ago, a family lived next door.” Elke pointed to Mary’s old house.

  “If you say so,” said the woman. “Some realtor owns that house. He can’t sell it, so he’s always renting it out to someone new. People come and go so quick, I can’t keep track of them.”

  Elke’s heart sank. “So, you don’t remember a family living there five years ago? Two parents and a teenage girl?”

  “No.” The woman’s voice was flat.

  “And I guess you wouldn’t have any idea where they went.”

  “None.” Inside the house something beeped loudly. “That’s my oven. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”

  “Of course,” said Elke. “Thank you for your—”

  The woman shut the door in Elke’s face.

  “Time,” said Elke. She sighed and backed up the walk, looking around. Should she try the house on the other side? The one across the street? Might as well. They weren’t going to get anywhere otherwise.

  No one answered at the house across the street. Actually, the house looked like it might have been abandoned. There were no curtains on the windows and no smoke coming from the chimney. The grass, though brown from the winter, looked as if it had been long when the first snow of the season had matted it down.

  Elke continued over to the house on the other side of the street.

  She rang the doorbell.

  Inside, she heard barking. Lots of barking. A moment later, the door opened, and a little boy of about ten or eleven stood there holding two large dogs by the collar. “Hello?” he said brightly.

  The dogs were still barking, straining to get away from the little boy.

  “Um, is your mother or father at home?” said Elke.

  “Nope,” said the little boy. “My gran’s babysitting, but she’s asleep on the couch.”

  “Oh,” said Elke.

  The dogs barked and tried hard to get at her. Their big pink tongues hung out of their mouths.

  “You don’t, um, remember a family living next door five years ago?” said Elke.

  “Kind of,” said the boy. “There was a girl, but she was way older than me.” He shrugged.

  “You don’t remember hearing where they went?”

  The boy shook his head.

  One the dogs got free from the boy’s hold.

  “Lucky!” he screamed.

  Elke caught the dog’s collar. She passed the dog back to the boy.

  “Thanks,” said the boy.

  “Sure,” said Elke. “And thank you for your time.”

  The boy beamed. “No problem. Hey, who are you, anyway? Are you a cop?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” said Elke.

  “Oh,” said the boy, looking disappointed.

  * * *

  “Sure, we remember Mary,” said Jennifer Forrest, the owner of the diner where Mary had worked. Jennifer was a rotund woman with gray roots coming in against her brown ponytail. She had a big smile. “She was a real nice girl. Only worked here for about four or five months, but she was a good worker. Always went the extra mile. Not a lot of kids her age like that, you know?”

  “Right,” said Frankie.

  Jennifer was standing behind the counter in the diner. Frankie was on the other side.

  “What do you want to know about her?” said Jennifer.

  “Well, I don’t suppose she left a forwarding address or anything,” said Frankie.

  “No, sorry. When she left, we settled up and gave out her last paycheck,” said Jennifer. “She’d given her two weeks notice, so I was able to have that ready for her, and I didn’t need to know her new address. But I’m fairly sure she said she was moving to Virginia.”

  “Virginia, huh?” said Frankie.

  “Yup, I’m fairly sure,” said Jennifer. “Her parents were getting divorced, and her mother had family in Virginia, so that’s where she was headed.”

  “Thanks,” said Frankie. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Virginia,” said Frankie. “We need to be looking in Virginia. She moved there with her mother because her parents were getting a divorce.”

  She was in the doorway of Iain’s office and Elke was right behind her.

  “Virginia, huh?” said Iain. “Okay, well I had no luck with the grandparents. At all. I couldn’t even find her grandparents. There are way too many Marys, Ashleys, and Roberts with the last name Johnson. I can’t narrow it down at all.”

  “Well, we don’t have access to Virginia’s DMV records,” said Elke, “so she wouldn’t be in our database.”

  “We don’t even know if she lives in Virginia anymore,” said Iain. “This was five years ago. Maybe she moved.”

  “So, what do we do?” said F
rankie.

  Iain stroked his chin. “Okay, well, her parents were divorced? What if her mother got remarried? I might be able to do search in Vital Records and see if there are any Ashley Johnsons with marriage certificates in the last five years.”

  “Do it,” said Elke.

  * * *

  Later, Iain came out into the conference room with a printout. “Uh, not bad. Looks like about ten different Ashley Johnsons.”

  “Divide them up,” said Elke. “Ten means three for each of us with one left over. Let’s find phone numbers, and I’ll call four people if you guys each take the other three.”

  “Fine,” said Iain.

  “Okay,” said Frankie.

  They divided up the names and each went to their own offices.

  Iain searched for phone numbers first, going by each Ashley Johnson’s new husband’s name. Then he called the first number.

  “Hello?” answered a woman.

  “Yes, I’m looking for Ashley Murdock?” said Iain.

  “That’s me.”

  “You didn’t by any chance happen to live in Haven Hills, Maryland a few years back, did you?”

  “Um, no,” said the woman. “Sorry.”

  “No problem,” said Iain. “Thank you for your time. Have a good day.” He hung up.

  He tried the next number.

  A man answered. “Hello?”

  “I’m looking for Ashley George,” said Iain.

  “That’s my wife. She’s asleep right now.”

  “Well, perhaps you can tell me if she lived in Haven Hills, Maryland about five years ago?”

  “No, we were living in North Carolina five years ago. We just moved here six months ago.”

  “All right, well thank you very much.” Iain hung up.

  He tried the next number.

  It rang, and then someone picked up. “Hello?”

  “Hi, I’m looking for Ashley Ramirez.”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Mrs. Ramirez, I wonder if you lived in Haven Hills, Maryland about five years ago?”

  “Why, yes, actually, I did. What’s this about?”

  “I work with the Conviction Review Unit here in Haven Hills. We’re part of the District Attorney’s office, and I’m trying to reach your daughter Mary.”

  “Oh, is she in any trouble?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Iain said. “It’s only that we’d like to talk to her about a case we’re investigating. She may be a key eyewitness.”

  “Really?” said Ashley. “Okay, well, would you like her phone number?”

  “Yes, that would be great,” said Iain, smiling.

  * * *

  Iain called the number for Mary Johnson.

  It rang.

  And rang.

  And rang.

  Voicemail never picked up. Iain didn’t remember hearing a phone ring this many times since he was a little kid. He had forgotten phones could even ring so many times. He was about to hang up.

  “Hello?” said someone on the other end, someone out of breath.

  “Hi there,” said Iain. “I’m looking for Mary Johnson.”

  “Speaking,” she said. “May I ask who’s calling, please?”

  “I’m Detective Iain Hudson with the Haven Hills Conviction Review Unit.”

  “Haven Hills, no way,” said the woman. “I used to live in Haven Hills. I went to high school there for a hot second.”

  Iain grinned. Well, this had taken some doing. “Five years ago?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Do you remember a person named Curtis Fisher?”

  “Sure,” she said. “That was crazy freaky. We were friends, but apparently, he killed his girlfriend. I think they put him away for the rest of his life.”

  Elke appeared in his doorway. She raised her eyebrows at him.

  He nodded at her, a huge grin on his face.

  Elke jumped up and down, soundlessly cheering.

  “Here’s the thing, Ms. Johnson,” said Iain. “Curtis seems to think you’re his alibi.”

  “What?” said Mary. “Wait a minute, he did kill his girlfriend, didn’t he?”

  “You probably don’t remember the day that Allison Ross was killed, considering it was five years ago—”

  “Yeah, I remember,” she said. “I was running lines with Curtis that day, actually. That was what was so weird, because he must have gone right from doing that with me to, like, killing her.”

  Well, she’d just confirmed Fisher’s story. That wasn’t a bad sign.

  “Look,” said Mary. “This is not a great time. I wonder if maybe we could talk in the morning or something? I can give you my cell. It’s better to reach me on. We only have this landline for emergencies and stuff. I’d talk now, but I’ve got a curious puppy who is probably electrocuting himself right now, so, could we talk later?”

  “That would be fine,” said Iain. “What time tomorrow?”

  They set it up and hung up the phone.

  Elke gave him a thumbs up. “We found her!”

  “We did,” said Iain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “I’m just really, really confused right now,” said Mary over the phone the next day. “You’re saying that if he was running lines with me he couldn’t have killed Allison?”

  “Well, that’s what Curtis is saying,” said Elke. “You’re his alibi, that’s what he’s always claimed.”

  “Why didn’t anyone say something to me at the time?” said Mary. “I mean, we moved right after that, I guess.”

  “I think it probably had something to do with your mother’s remarriage,” said Elke. “No one was looking for the right name.”

  “Man, I always thought Curtis was a nice guy. It confused me to think that he was a murderer. I wish I would have known back then that I could have helped. I would have been glad to testify at his trial.”

  “You can help him now.”

  “Good, I want to. Anything I can do, just let me know.”

  “For now, I just need to know exactly what you remember about that afternoon.”

  “Okay, let’s see. I was planning to try out for the school play, and Curtis was too, so we both made plans to get together to run lines for the tryouts.”

  “And he did meet you?”

  “Yeah, definitely.”

  “He was on time, met you where you’d agreed to meet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “In the auditorium, behind the stage. The backstage area there, we could be a little bit away from what was going on, and we were semi-supervised because the drama teacher was working with the stage crew building scenery on the other side of the curtain.”

  “The drama teacher, you say? Did this person see Curtis?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. We came through the auditorium to go back there, but the teacher wasn’t really paying attention to us. She had told us it was okay to be back there doing prep work, though, if we wanted.”

  “You remember her name?”

  “Mrs. Dawson.”

  “Thanks,” said Elke. This was going better than she might have hoped.

  “Like I said, I don’t know if she’d be much help.”

  “We’ll check it out, though. If we have more witnesses, it will only help Curtis. So, then you worked on lines together. How long were you doing that?”

  “Oh, maybe a half hour,” she said.

  “And then you left?” Elke’s heart sank. This wasn’t as much help as it could have been, was it?

  “No, and then we talked for another half hour or so. We had a class together earlier that day, Trigonometry, and he was confused about something. I think it was cosigns. I tried to explain it to him, but he kept making it more complicated that it really should have been, and he just wasn’t getting it. I think I told him he was going to need a tutor or something. I can’t remember exactly what I said.”

  “No, that’s great,” said Elke. “It’s amazing you’re rememb
ering it in as much detail as you do.”

  “Well, I thought a lot about it last night,” said Mary. “And it all started coming back to me pretty easy. I was surprised.”

  “I’m glad. It’s good to know. So, after about an hour, you left?”

  “Yeah,” said Mary. “It was about 4:00, and I remember that because I had to catch the activity bus home, and it was leaving at 4:15. It picked kids up all the way down by the football field, which was across campus, and I knew it was a bit of a walk, so I left the auditorium around 4:00.”

  “And Curtis? Did he leave too?”

  “Yeah, but I assumed he went to his car.”

  “Excellent,” said Elke. “That’s great. Thank you for your time.”

  * * *

  “Hi there,” said Sheri Dawson, head of the drama department at Haven High School. “What can I do for you? I hear this is something about that Curtis Fisher kid?”

  “That’s right,” said Elke, offering the teacher her hand. “I’m Elke Lawrence, and this is my associate Detective Iain Hudson. We just have a few questions for you.”

  Iain shook Mrs. Dawson’s hand as well. They were standing in the lobby of the high school’s auditorium.

  “Well, I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” said Mrs. Dawson. “I never had him for class and he was never in one of my plays.”

  “No, but he was planning on auditioning for you,” said Elke. “He claims he spent the afternoon when he was supposed to be murdering his girlfriend backstage running lines with another student. We found that other student, and she confirms it. She says that you were on the other side of the curtain working with the stage crew.”

  Mrs. Dawson’s eyes widened. “I suppose that could be the case. I used to let kids hang out backstage if I was here for after-school practice or something. Kids would come to me and say that they had nowhere to go after school and that they needed a quiet spot to do their homework while they waited for their parents to get off work. I’d tell them that if they didn’t cause any trouble, it was fine to be backstage. I figured it was better for them to be there, on school property, than God knows where, maybe doing drugs or something.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” said Iain.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Dawson pressed her lips into a perturbed line. “Of course, I don’t do it anymore.”