The Last Alibi

38

Shauna

Roger Ogren hits “Play” on the remote. The television screen, facing the jury but angled so the defense may view it as well, comes to life in black-and-white. The fuzzy screen shows a nondescript room. Detective Ray Cromartie is in shirtsleeves, tie pulled down. Jason sits across a metal desk from him, his hair hanging into his eyes, in a button-down dress shirt open at the collar. To Jason’s right is Bradley John, our associate, his hair slicked back, still wet from the thirty-second shower he must have taken when he got the call from me in the middle of the night.

Cromartie, on the witness stand, has already introduced the fact that Jason gave a recorded statement. The defense has stipulated to the admissibility of the videotaped statement, at least the portions that Roger Ogren plans to introduce. The whole thing wasn’t very long, only about thirteen minutes-short enough that, if I were the prosecutor, I’d probably play the whole thing. But Ogren has decided to just pull out a couple of vignettes. One of the phrases Jason has always used to describe Ogren is control freak, and that fits. He just wants it exactly the way he wants it.

The screen shows Jason nearly front-on, only slightly angled so that a bit of Cromartie’s profile is also apparent. I’m sure the detective isn’t wild about the jury spending time with a close-up of the bald spot on the crown of his head or the fact that his tie is showing beneath his collar in the back, but presumably they’re spending more time on Jason, staring into the table, his eyes narrowed as if in concentration. To look at him, you wouldn’t know that a woman was just found dead in his town house.

“I don’t know what time Alexa got to my house,” Jason says on the tape. “She said she was going to be there by six-thirty or seven, but I don’t know. And I don’t remember exactly when I got home. I wasn’t checking that sort of thing. Just like I don’t know what time I called 911. All I know is that I walked upstairs and I found her there. She was. .” Jason waves a hand, like he’s making a throwaway point. “She was obviously dead. I. . just stared at her at first. I couldn’t believe it. She was. . gone. Then I dialed 911.”

“You drove home tonight? That’s how you got home?” Cromartie asks. His voice has more of an echo to it, the acoustics favoring Jason, the primary focus.

Jason nods. “Yeah, I drove.”

“That’s your SUV parked in the garage?”

Jason nods, his eyes rising to the ceiling over Cromartie’s head. He scratches his hand.

“You came into the house through the garage?” Cromartie asks. “The door to the garage?”

Jason nods absently. Still scratching his hand-the knuckles, the palm, searching for the itch. “Right. I walked into the house and went upstairs,” he says.

“Was the front door locked, Jason? The front door, not the door that opens to the garage.”

The clock in the corner of the TV screen keeps time by the second: 4:12:06. . 4:12:07. . 4:12:08. .

“Jason-”

“I assume the front door was locked, yeah. I always lock the front door,” Jason says.

“And what about the back door, Jason? Was that locked?”

“Of course,” Jason says. “I live in the city.”

Cromartie nods, that bald spot on the top of his head moving out of sight and then back in. “And what about the door to the garage? Is that usually locked, Jason?”

Jason shrugs. “Sometimes? Sometimes not, I guess.”

“From outside, can you get into the garage without an opener?” asks Cromartie.

Jason shakes his head. “No.”

“No?” Cromartie presses.

“No. You need a. . garage-door opener.”

“Did Alexa have a garage-door opener?”

“No,” Jason says. “Just me.”

“And you said Alexa was already there, dead, when you got home,” says Cromartie.

Jason looks at him like he is mentally impaired. “Yeah. Of course.”

“How did she get into the house, Jason? If she got there before you.”

Still scratching his hand. Now his forearm, too. Jason looks down in thought.

4:12:45. . 4:12:46. . 4:12:47. .

“Jason-”

“Front door, I guess.” Jason shrugs. “She’d just use her key, I guess.”

“Her key? Did Alexa Himmel have a key to your town house?”

4:12:55. . 4:12:56. . 4:12:57. .

At 4:13:04, Bradley John says, “If he remembers. It’s late, and it’s been a difficult night, to say the least. Most people would be asleep right now.”

“Understood, Counselor,” Cromartie replies with ice. “If he remembers.”

4:13:19. . 4:13:20. .

The jury is fixated on the tape, each of the jurors craned forward.

At 4:13:25, Jason looks up at Detective Cromartie and says, “Yeah, Alexa had a key.”

Stop tape.

Roger Ogren stands in front of the blank screen. “Detective Cromartie, did you find a set of keys on the person of Alexa Himmel that night?”

“I did.”

“And what, if anything, did you do with those keys, Detective?”

“I personally tested each of the keys on each of the doors to the defendant’s town house. The front door, the side door opening into the garage, and the back door.”

“And what did you find, Detective?”

“None of the keys on her key chain opened any of his doors. She had three keys. One was to her Prius. One we later determined was the key to her house, and the third was a key to her office at work. There was no key to the defendant’s house on that chain.”

“Well, Detective.” Roger Ogren angles slightly toward the jury, his hands open in wonder. “Maybe Ms. Himmel had such a key, but free of that key chain.”

“I considered that possibility, of course. We searched every inch of that town house and we searched the victim, Ms. Himmel. We combed the area outside the house. We turned every inch of the defendant’s property inside out. There was no freestanding key to the defendant’s house. The only keys to his house were on the defendant’s key chain.”

“Well, as far as you could tell, was there any way that Ms. Himmel could have gotten into the defendant’s locked house before he got home?”

“None.” The detective shakes his head. “She had no key and no garage-door opener. I couldn’t find any way that Ms. Himmel could have walked through a garage door or a locked front or back door. The windows didn’t provide any access, either-they were not reachable from the ground. The defendant’s statement didn’t wash.”

“Objection,” I say. “Move to strike.”

“The last comment is stricken,” says the judge, trying to unring the bell.

Ogren then moves back to the tape again, just at the point that he stopped.

“Alexa didn’t have a key, Jason,” says Detective Cromartie, leaning forward now, on the attack. “I checked. I checked every key on her key chain. She had no way of getting into your house without you letting her in.”

Jason, running his nails up and down his arm, squirming a bit in his chair, shakes his head.

4:13:44. . 4:13:45. . 4:13:46. .

“She didn’t have a key, son,” says Cromartie. “If she did, tell me where it is. Or tell me how else she could have possibly gotten inside your house. I’m trying to help you, Jason, but you gotta help me. Tell me how in God’s name she could have gotten into your house without you. Tell me how in the world she could have been in your home, dead or even alive, before you got home.”

Jason sucks his lips into his mouth. His hands fidget. He shakes his head absently. He drums his hands on the metal table. “We’re done,” he says to his lawyer, Bradley John.

“We’re done,” Bradley says to the detective.

“I have a lot more questions, Jason. A lot more. Like, where were you tonight that you didn’t get home until after midnight? Can anyone vouch for you? How did Alexa-”

“I said we’re done,” Bradley says again. “That means we’re done.”

Stop tape.

As Roger Ogren kills the DVD player, several of the jurors get aha looks on their faces, solemn nods, grim realizations. I imagine cartoon bubbles over their heads, displaying their thoughts, the words “That’s right, you are done” in bold letters.